Philosopher Views

Philosopher Views
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
LIFE AND WORK

Born Wesley Cook on April 24th, 1954, Mumia Abu-Jamal occupies a place as a catalyst
for international outcry against injustice and prolific critic of institutional, state, and
economic exploitation of minorities and other marginalized groups. At age 15, Mumia
began actively participating in the Black Panther Party (BPP) after attending a protest in
South Philadelphia opposing presidential candidate George Wallace. A keen ability for
writing quickly helped Mumia find his role in the BPP where he served as an information
officer and journalists for the organizations newspaper and other communiqus. This
revolutionary political outlook and activism quickly led to Mumias placement on the
FBIs Security Index and daily surveillance by police forces.
In spite of these efforts, Mumia earned a career as an acclaimed journalists both within
the United States and internationally. Among other networks, NPR, the National Black
Network and the Associated Press broadcast Mumia nationally. His interviews ranged
from Bob Marley to international political leaders. Named one of Philadelphias people to
watch by the Philadelphia magazine and elected president of the Philadelphia chapter of
the association of Black Journalists, Mumias brand of journalism that brought access to
the press to those who were formally voiceless was gaining more power and popularity.
A fact underscored by urging by political leaders that Mumia temper his comments
because his perspectives and coverage incited unrest.
This career was interrupted on December 9, 1981, when Mumia was charged with
murdering a Philadelphia police officer. During his trial, Mumia was denied several
aspects of his civil protections, including choice of jury and counsel. Likewise, much of
the evidence used to secure the conviction has sense been disputed or found to be
inaccurate. Although many organizations, including Amnesty International, and
individuals, ranging from celebrities to activist, have taken up Mumias cause the
subsequent conviction and death sentence are still in place. However, while appeals
continue, Mumia has continued his journalistic career from death row. On a regular
basis, the journalists/activists produces essays that address subjects running the gambit
of political, social, and economic issues. In each instance, Mumia continues to treat the
subjects from a critical perspective informed by his experiences with the topics he
entertains. Many of these have been published in various volumes (see below) and have
received both critical acclaim and earned Mumia harsher punishments in prison.
Additionally, many can be heard on http://prisonradio.org/mumia.htm.
MUMIAS PHILOSOPHY
Much of what Mumia writes is constrained by the circumstances of his incarceration.
Rather than full texts addressing the subject, the nature of his work is often smaller.
Several vignettes on a topic shape an overall perspective on the issue or interrogation of
a problem. The next section of this overview highlights several of the major topics
addressed by Mumia that are also relevant to debate. Following a discussion of the
arguments advanced by Mumia, I will consider more closely how they may be applied to
debate.
ON INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
As is elaborated in greater detail in the following sections, Mumia believes that racism
and oppression exists not just in the acts of individuals, but are also facilitated and
caused by institutional structures whose interests such acts serve. Mumia provides
several arguments to warrant this claim. He suggests that the so-called international
community, which actually represents a minority of the worlds people utilize their
power to create conditions that serve their interests. Likewise, he cites structures of
discipline in prison that prevent prisoners from engaging in educational programs.
Policies which studies reveal target minorities most strictly. Mumia believes that, the
state raises its narrow institutional concern, to control by keeping people stupid, over a
concern that is intensely human: the right of all beings to grow in wisdom, insight, and
knowledge for their own sakes as well as their unique contribution to the fund of human
knowledge. That, this institutional concern targets dissidents and minorities the most,
for Mumia, underscores the racism implicit in the overarching policy.
Similarly, Mumia suggests that institutional oppression is upheld by equally bleak
opportunities for political recourse. As he notes, democracy means government by the
people, but a brief foray into history proves otherwise. Noting the denial of rights to
African-Americans, Native Americans, and Asian American citiziens by the Supreme
Court, along with structural oppression women, Mumia suggests that the United States
could hardly be considered democratic or offering political recourse to its citizens. As he
puts it, for, if women are 52 percent, Blacks 12.5 percent, Hispanics 9.5 percent, and
Asians/Native Americans/others 3.8 percent, then Americans have been systematically
from democracys empty promises. Only in America can a democracy oppress a
majority.
Last, Mumia believes that this institutional oppression is further carried out by a war on
the poor. He notes that, for example, many poor mothers, often minority, are targeted
for criminal sanctions that if committed by wealthy individuals would merely merit
treatment at the Betty Ford Clinic. Likewise, policies towards youth close schools in
favor of building boot camps and prisons as graduate schools for minorities and the
impoverished. Last, homelessness and poverty become increasingly criminalized as
beggars are targeted by politicians and expanding prisons: Americas only growth
industry.
ON PRISONS AND THE JUSTICE

SYSTEM
Nowhere does the institutional machinery of oppression reveals itself, in Mumias
estimation, than in the prison system. Mumia believes that far from their proclaimed
ends to serve justice, that prisons are political organs of the state. First, as suggested
above Mumia believes that all persons are political prisoners. He argues that when
people are caged in prisons for resisting the government and the system it attempts to
instate, you have political prisoners. However, one need not necessarily be politically
active for Mumia to consider them a political prisoner. Further, he argues, every
prosecution is a public and symbolic act, a political act by the state to give the populace
an illusion of control, to show that were taking care of this problem.
Similarly, Mumia agrees with Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Justice Stephen Reinhardt,
when he argues, President Reagan and Bush have ensured that the federal courts will
not be representative. Instead, they are a bastion of White America...[and] stand as a
symbol of White Power. Mumia argues that prisons and criminal justice are politically
motivated both at the level of who is incarcerated and the reasons why, as well as the
treatment receieved once incarcerated. Observing the unpunished brutalization of
several prisoners at Pennsylvanias Camp Hill prison, Mumia believes that concepts like
justice, law, and crime have different meanings depending on who committed the
act, against whom it was committed, and what position that person has in the system.
For example, prisoners offenses often pale in comparison to the brutalization received
by guards. However, Mumia believes, that in an American where African-Americans
constitute a larger portion of prison, and especially death row, populations than the
national and state populatces from which they come, the question of a politically
motivated justice system is unmistakable.
Last, Mumia believes that the justice system itself is implicated in a politically, and often
racially motivated, institutional structure. Motivated by his experience with the criminal
trial that led to his prosecution, several of Mumias writings target the problems with the
justice system. Two instances reflect the problems that Mumia identifies in that
criminal justice system. First, as you might expect, Mumia believes the death penalty is
applied in racist manner. Citing the McClesky v. Kemp case, in which the Supreme Court
rejected efforts to place a moratorium on the death penalty based on discriminatory
application, Mumia argues that agreeing with the cases claims would call into question
the entire justice system. As Justice Powell said when reviewing the case, McCleskys
claim, taken to its logical conclusion, throws into serious question the principles that
underlie our entire criminal justice system. Mumia believes evidence for McCleskys
claim is all to obvious in the numbers of minorities on death row.
Likewise, Mumia suggests that the criminal justice system systematically denies rights
to minorities. Citing the Georgia case of Hance v. Zant, Mumia suggest that the criminal
justice system deliberately denies protections to minorities who come before. In the
specific case he cites, an African-American mans jury of peers included several white
jurors who agreed a conviction would mean thered be one less nigger to breed. A
fact, Mumia explains gave pause to neither the appeals courts of Georgia, the US
Supreme Court, of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Such inequitable
protection for rights is not uncommon Mumia argues. He relates his own trial during
which he was both denied his right to self-defense and council of his choice and forced
to utilize a court-appointed attorney. At the same time in a courtroom in the same
building, he notes that another defendant enjoyed the privilege of a private lawyer and
his father, another lawyer, to aid in his defense. Mumia believes the disparate
treatment can only be isolated to race and class.
ON RELIGION AND THE STATE
Mumia believes that the relationship between religion, particularly Christianity, and the
state is both still alive and well, and is one that facilitates oppression. As he explains,
the reality of religion is this: it has often been less a force for liberation than a tool for
oppression an impetus for civil unrest, warfare and genocide. To support his claim,
several arguments are advanced. First, he suggests that a commitment to religion has
failed to avoid brutal oppressions of small countries by self-proclaimed peacekeeping
forces. Likewise, he cites the work of Jesuit scholar Ignacio Martin-Baro who claims that
missionaries conversions of workers contributed to a breakdown in the political and
labor organizations of those workers and led many plantation bosses to encourage
workers to join the evangelicals and led to the intertwining of religious and state
interests.
In addition to harmful socio-political consequences, Mumia believes that the intertwined

relationship between religion, state, and economic interests, cause cultural harms as
well. Noting two cases, Mumia argues that religion in the US, in particular, has served to
oppress cultural minorities to the benefit of the material interests of dominant cultures.
First, he cites the history of the Cherokee in the US. In an effort to assimilate, Cherokees
in Georgia adopted religious and political practice from whites in the region. The effect
was that not only did this process efface their culture, but also that the newly civilized
people were deprived of their lands and livelihoods despite efforts at assimilation.
Second, Mumia suggest that Christianity and similarly organized religions undermine
solidarity between struggling peoples. Mumia cites an example of a half-Black
Episcopalian priest from his childhood whose religious office forced the priest to reject
solidarity with other African-Americans and hide his racial background. As an alternative
Mumia suggests individuals should place in organizations that value unity, natural law,
and resistance and rebellion against systems bent on global self-destruction. For Mumia,
the Move organization provides such a model.
ON TERRORISM
Mumia also believes that the definition of terrorism should be expanded to include a
wide range of activities that one might not think of when considering the subject. He
argues that many individuals in the United States who think of terrorism, think not of
efforts by people attempting to attack the United States, but instead of the constant fear
they live in of police who brutalize, pummel, or suppress dissent against the political
situation that faces black...brown...and working-class white America. Mumia believes
that these practices ostensibly carried out in the name of justice, are in reality acts of
police terrorism enacted on American citizens.
Likewise he believes that the history of US foreign policy should be examined as a series
of terrorist acts. To support this argument, he examines a litany of Latin American
dictators supported by US funds and hosted on state visits to the United States. At the
same time, these dictators systematically curtailed labor and rights movements. He
notes, For millions of people who live in the countries south of the Rio Grande, US
claims to wage a 'war against terrorism', are dismissed with deep cynicism, if not ill
humor. For they know that the US has always been the motivating force behind the
sheer terror that has ravaged their societies since the 1800s. Similarly, he cites
President Lyndon Johnsons admission that operations by the US in Cuba were merely an
outpost of Murder Inc. Likewise, Mumia argues that the US supported pirate planes
that left Florida to drop napalm on Cuban sugar factories and other covert military
actions. All these incidents Mumia suggest expands our notion of what terrorism is and
also sheds light on the current war on terror. His hope is to remind readers that,
Terrorism isn't grown merely in foreign deserts: it's as present as our own back yards.
ON POLITICAL CHANGE
Mumia adopts a theory of political change similar to others cited in the volume. He
encourages listeners who wish to resist the institutional racism, constructions of
terrorists threat, and corrupt justice system to organize, organize, organize, and, then,
organize. Like Esteva, Mumia subscribes to an ethic that believes solutions must come
from the organized efforts by local communities to refuse to give power to the state. For
Mumia, this includes resisting the effort by the media to do the work of the government
by presenting images of terrorists, crime, and other problems that later justify polices
that fix them at the expense of minorities, the poor or other marginalized groups.
Like Esteva, Mumia also agrees that individuals should refuse to use the same tactics
used by those who seek to oppress them. For example, Mumia argues that violence
violates the self and that as a tactic it should be avoided when possible. Instead of
attempting to break the old system, Mumia suggests political change must emerge from
a new system. In other words, Mumia supports revolutionary action, not merely a reform
of current state polices.
APPLICATION TO LINCOLN DOUGLAS
The ideas that Mumia discusses are wide ranging enough to provide topical discussion of
nearly any issue. From Hurricane Katrina, to the UN, to Iraq/Abu Gharib, to the
immigration debate, Mumia offers insightful commentary that focuses on the
implications of an contemporary events for issues of race, class, equality and social
justice. More obviously, for topics that examine issues of criminal justice Mumia offers
extensive application.
You can also use Mumia to construct arguments that indict state and international
actors. For example, many of the topics that you may encounter will likely question
under what circumstances the US or UN should act in a given situation. Mumia suggests
that their action will likely be problematic whatever the circumstances. Additionally,
Mumia offers alternative approaches that avoid the problems of focusing the debate only
the actors prescribed by the debate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. Live From Death Row. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
---. Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience. New York: Plough, 1997.
---. All Things Censored. New York: Seven Stories, 2000.
---. We Want Freedom. Cambridge: South End, 2004.
---. Prison Radio Essay Audio Transcripts. PrisonRadio.Org. Last accessed 6/30/2006.
http://www.prisonradio.org/mumia.htm. Updated Regularly.
---. Section in Still Black, Still Strong. New York: Semiotext(e), 1993.
Boyd, Herb. Autobiography of a People. New York: Doubleday, 200.
Weinglass, Leonard. Race for Justice. Maine: Common Courage, 1995.
THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IS

INHERENTLY OPPRESSIVE
1. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT HAS BECOME A BLACK MARCH TO DEATH
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL, JOURNALIST/ACTIVIST/POLITCAL PRISONER, 1995
LIVE FROM DEATH ROW, 92
Everyday in America the trek continues, a black march to death row. In Pennsylvania,
where African-Americans constitute 9 percent of the population, over 60 percent of its
death row inhabitants are black. Across the nation, although the numbers are less stark,
the trend is unmistakable. In October 1991, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its
national update, which revealed that 40 percent of Americas death row population is
balck. This, out of a population that is a mere 11 percent of the national populace. The
five states with the largest death rows have larger percentages on death row than in
their statewide black populations.
2. ALL STAGES OF LAW ENFORCEMENT SUBJECTS AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND OTHER

MIONRITIES TO SPECIAL VENGEANCE
LIVE FROM DEATH ROW, 92-3
Statistics are often flexible in interpretation and, like scripture, can be cited for any
purpose. Does this mean that African-Americans are somehow innocents, subjected to a
setup by state officials? Not especially. What it does suggest is that state actors, at all
stages of the criminal justice system, including slating at the police station, arraignment
at the judicial office, pretrial, trial, and sentencing state before court, treat AfricanAmerican defendants with a special vengeance not experienced by white defendants.
This is the dictionary definition of discrimination.
3. EMPIRICALLY, THE SEVEREST PUNISHMENTS ARE DEALT OUT ALONG CLASS LINES
ALL THINGS CENSORED, 235
Thats what capital punishment really means. Those that aint got the capital gets the
punishment, the old saying. Once again we see the inherent truths that lie in the
proverbs of the poor. That old saying echoed when it was announced that district
attorney of Delaware County, Patrick Meehan, would not seek the death penalty in the
case of John E. Dupont, the wealthy corporate heir charged with the shooting death of
Olympic champion David Schultz. The Delaware County DAs office said, No
aggravated circumstances justifying the death penalty existed. Could it be that
DuPonts personal wealth, estimated at over $400 million, was a factor? In one fell
swoop, the state ensured that wile millionaires may be murders, they are not eligible for
the preserve of the poor, Americas death row.
4. PRISONS DEHUMANIZE THEIR INMATES

LIVE FROM DEATH ROW, 89
A dark repressive trend in the business field known as corrections is sweeping the
United States, and it bodes ill both for the captives and for the communities from which
they were captured. America is revealing a visage stark with harshness. Nowhere is that
face more contorted that in the dark netherworld of prison, where humans are
transformed into nonpersons, number beings cribbed into boxes of unlife, where the
very soul is under destructive onslaught. We are in the midst of the Marionization of US
prisons, where the barest illusion of human rehabilitation is stripped from the mission, to
be replace by dehumanization by design.
5. DECISIONS MADE BY THE JUSTICE SYSTEM MEASURE STATUS NOT FACTS

DEATH BLOSSOMS, 6
The Death Penalty is a creation of the State, and politicians justify it by using it as a
stepping stone to higher political office. Its very popular to sue isolated cases always
the most gruesome ones to make generalizations about inmates on death row and
justify their sentences. Yet it is deceitful; it is untrue, unreal. Politicians talk about
people on death row as if they are the worst of the worst, monsters and so forth. But
they will not talk about the thousands of men and women in our country serving lesser
sentences for similar and even identical crimes.
THE WAR ON TERRORISM SHIFTS THE

FOCUS FROM STATE-SPONSORED
TERRORISM
1. US HISTORY INCLUDES A LONG PATTERN OF STATE-SANCTIONED TERROR
WHAT WAR AGAINST TERRORISM?,
http://www.prisonradio.org/maj/maj_5_23_04_war.html
It is ever so easy for us to talk about the 'War Against Terrorism', and accept it as a
given; an obvious truth.
Yet, it is exceedingly difficult to speak on it, if one has but an inkling of the history of the
US, in its own regions and neighboring territories, for the last century, or even 50 years.
There, we find a history of US-sanctioned and supported barbarism, against people
throughout the length and breadth of Central and South America, who have had to
endure (if they survived!) decades under ruthless generals, monsters who wreaked
unholy havoc upon their people, or rapine, torture, murder and more; in the name of
their masters the norteamericanos. For millions of people who live in the countries
south of the Rio Grande, US claims to wage a 'war against terrorism', are dismissed with
deep cynicism, if not ill humor. For they know that the US has always been the
motivating force behind the sheer terror that has ravaged their societies since the
1800s.
2. THE MEDIA USES THE WAR ON TERROR TO MASK US COMPLICITY IN TERRORISM

A TALE OF TERRORISTS, http://www.prisonradio.org/maj/maj_5_19_04_tale.html
To say the word, "terrorist", is to evoke an image inculcated into our consciousness of a
scowling, bearded and turbaned fundamentalist Arab. That is the sheer power of the
corporate media, in its ability to shape and limit our thinking. For what's lost is the
distinction between retail terrorism and state terrorism. When a state unleashes its
power against innocents, it's acceptable collateral damage; when a group does it, it's
animalistic evil, and sheer barbarity. The media's innate bias in favor of nation-states
and corporate power makes state violence the norm, and thus makes it virtually
invisible. That's because the media is owned by the wealthy and uses its influence to
protect its class interests. The day this is written, a US plane fired high-powered
weaponry into a wedding party in Iraq; at least 40 people were killed. The same day
Israeli tanks open fire on a Palestinian protest march to Rafah, killing some 20 unarmed
civilians, including women and children. No corporate media agency will call these acts
"terrorist", but for the Iraqis and Palestinians on the receiving end of the tanks, fighter
planes, and helicopter gunships, terror is probably the overwhelming feeling.
3. THE US ACTIVELY TRAINED TERRORISTS TO FOSTER REBELLION IN LATIN AMERICA

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER TERRORISM,
http://www.prisonradio.org/maj/maj_5_12_04_time.html
The brutal US-trained, armed, and paid dictators used their militaries, and their police to
wage internal wars against their own people, to protect US and national elite profits at
all costs. Using places like what was formerly known as the School of the Americas, at
Fort Benning, Georgia, the US trained a vast coterie of torturers, saboteurs, and
terrorists. Tens of thousands of workers, peasants, and youth were tortured, imprisoned,
exiled and killed by these US-trained attack dogs. For Latin Americans, the school
became known as 'la escuela de golpas' coup school.
4. THE WAR ON TERROR PROVIDES A JUSTIFICATION FOR DEHUMANIZATION OF A PEOPLE

A TALE OF TERRORISTS, http://www.prisonradio.org/maj/maj_5_19_04_tale.html
But under the reigning media regimes, Arabs can only be projected as terrorists, and
even when they are subjected to massive state violence, it is overlooked as if they are
somehow complicit in their own oppression. And because they are permanent suspects,
they are somehow responsible for calling this extreme carnage on themselves. It's war ..
and 'war is hell'. Oh, well! We are witnessing the dehumanization of a people where
Arab = terrorist - and any degree of violence visited upon them is acceptable. When we
digest this media mental poisoning, we become a party to this evil, and acquiesce in
acts of media violence. We must all reject it, for the mind-poison that it is, and call state
terror the evil that it is whether the culprit is American or Israeli.
RESISTING OPPRESSION BY STATE

INTERESTS REQUIRES LOCAL,
GRASSROOTS ORGANIZATION
1. POLITICAL CHANGE REQUIRES WIDESPREAD MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL
TRANSFORMATION
THE POWER OF PROTESTS, http://www.prisonradio.org/maj/maj_2_20_protest.html
If people really want Peace; if they want to transform this infernal addiction to war that
drives every administration, then they must begin to organize to deeply transform this
political order, starting from the bottom, ending at the top. That really means the end of
the 'strategy' of 'the lesser evil' in American politics. It means voting, yes; but voting for
what people really want, and really need. It means seeing both major parties as traitors
to democracy, as wards of the same corporate interests who want, not only war-- but
War Without End for generations, to protect their swinish wealth and opulence. It
means Change. In a word, revolution. It means that, or it means nothing. It means
washing away the deep American addiction, not only to oil, but to hierarchy, the need to
obey one's 'leaders'. It means social transformation.
2. FAILURE TO ORGANIZE SUPPORTS OPPRESSIVE STATE REGIMES

DEATH BLOSSOMS, 11
People say they dont care about politics; theyre not involved or dont want to get
involved, but they are. Their involvement just masquerades as indifference or
inattention. It is the silent acquiescence of the millions that supports the system. When
you dont oppose a system, your silence becomes approval, for it does nothing to
interrupt the system. People use all sorts of excuses for their indifference. They even
appeal to God as a shorthand route for supporting the status quo. They talk about law
and order. But look at the system, look at the present social order of society. Do you
see God? Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law
there is only the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it built on a long history of
injustices: racism, criminality, and the enslavement and genocide of millions. Many
people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually it is insane not to.
3. ACTING WITHIN DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURES SILENCES MINORITY VOICES

ANOTHER STOLEN DEMOCRACY, http://www.prisonradio.org/maj/maj_7_31_04stolen.html
If the major media is to be believed, the recent election is a done deal; done... over and
done with. It was free and fair, and folks should just accept it, and quietly move on. If
Greg Palast, an American journalist usually working out of London, is to be listened to,
American democracy has been ripped off again. Palast, author of *The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy*, really did the prodigious legwork to crack the Florida
debacle back in 2000. He demonstrated, quite convincingly, it seems to me, how the
White House, Florida's Governor, Jeb Bush, and the then-Secretary of State, Katherine
Harris, essentially stole the elections there, by undercounting and spoiling sufficient
votes to allow Bush to eke out a win in the Sunshine State back in 2000. Palast now
argues that, once again, this time utilizing dirty tricks, and ambitious politicians, the
same thing happened in the states of Ohio and New Mexico. In a brief, 4-page Internet
article, Palast presents facts and figures that once again demonstrates that there is a
system in place in the U.S. that uses terms like democracy; but in practice, it's
something else again. It's bait and switch; it's hide and don't seek; it's actually the
disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands, and indeed, millions of Americans, based
on their race, their ethnicity, and often, their economic class.
4. SOCIAL CHANGE REQUIRES A VAST GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT

STILL BLACK, STILL STRONG, 165
There [are] several orgianziations in the U.S. of varying ideological persuasions who
have revolutionary theories that they believe will transform Americas present social,
political, and economic reality. Do they have the power to enforce them and change the
reality now? No. What it is going to take, more than anything, is the cohesion of many
forces, the building of mass power to change those realities, in the sense that no one
organization has the power to transform it themselves. This is a vast country with 260
million people and to suppose that organization of 200, 300 peopole is going to affect
the deep degrees of transformation that need to take place, is pretentious. Look at the
fact that at its height the BPP had 15,000, 16, 000 members and was cooperating with
other revolutionary organizations as well.
THE DEATH PENALTY IS JUSTIFIED

1. CAPTIAL PUNISHMENT DETERS ACTS OF WAR AGAINST CIVILIZED SOCIETY
George Pataki, Governor of New York, 1997
DEATH PENALTY IS A DETERRENT, http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/Articles/Pataki.htm
I know, as do most New Yorkers, that by restoring the death penalty, we have saved
lives. Somebody's mother, somebody's brother, somebody's child is alive today because
we were strong enough to be tough enough to care enough to do what was necessary to
protect the innocent. Preventing a crime from being committed ultimately is more
important than punishing criminals after they have shattered innocent lives.
No case illustrates this point more clearly than that of Arthur Shawcross. In 1973,
Shawcross, one of New York's most ruthless serial killers, was convicted of the brutal
rape and murder of two children in upstate New York. Since the death penalty had been
declared unconstitutional, Shawcross was sentenced to prison. After serving just 15
years-an absurd prison term given the crime-he was paroled in 1988. In a horrific 21month killing spree, Shawcross took 11 more lives. That is 11 innocent people who would
be alive today had justice been served 24 years ago; 11 families that would have been
spared the pain and agony of losing a loved one. By reinstating the death penalty, New
York has sent a clear message to criminals that the lives of our children are worth more
than just a IS-year prison term. Moreover, it has given prosecutors the legal wherewithal
to ensure New York State never has another Arthur Shawcross. Applying the ultimate
punishment Too often, we are confronted with wanton acts of violence that cry out for
justice. The World Trade Center bombing and the murderous rampage on the Long Island
Rail Road by Colin Ferguson are but two examples. The slaying of a police officer in the
line of duty is another. To kill a police officer is to commit an act of war against civilized
society.
2. THE COMPOSITION OF DEATH ROW INMATES REFLECTS SOCIAL REALITIES

Roger Clegg, General Counsel; Center for Equal Opportunity, 2001
THE COLOR OF DEATH, http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/clegg061101.shtml
The fact is that capital criminals dont look like America, and no one should expect them
to. No one is surprised to find more men than women in this class. Nor is it a shock to
find that this group contains more twenty-year-olds than septuagenarians. And if as
the left tirelessly maintains poverty breeds crime, and if as it tiresomely maintains
the poor are disproportionately minority, then it must follow as the left entirely
denies that minorities will be overrepresented among criminals. Heather Mac
Donald sums up the figures that bear all this out: Males between the ages of 14 and 24,
less than 8 percent of the population, commit almost half the nations murders; black
males of the same age, less than 1 percent of the population, committed some 30
percent of the countrys homicides in the 1990s.
3. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DOES NOT DELIBERATELY TARGET MINORITIES

Thomas R. Eddelman, 2002
TEN ANTI-DEATH PENALTY FALLACIES, http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2002/06-032002/vo18no11_fallacies.htm
The claim that the death penalty unfairly impacts blacks and minorities is a deliberate
fraud. The majority of those executed since 1976 have been white, even though black
criminals commit a slim majority of murders. If the death penalty is racist, it is biased
against white murderers and not blacks. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics, blacks committed 51.5% of murders between 1976 and 1999, while whites
committed 46.5%. Yet even though blacks committed a majority of murders, the Bureau
of Justice Statistics reports: "Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme
Court in 1976, white inmates have made up the majority of those under sentence of
death." (Emphasis added.) Whites continued to comprise the majority on death row in
the year 2000 (1,990 whites to 1,535 blacks and 68 others). In the year 2000, 49 of the
85 people actually put to death were whites.
WAR ON TERROR IS JUSTIFIED BY THE

POST 9/11 ERA; SUPPORTS HUMAN
RIGHTS
1. RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE WAR ON TERROR SERVE HUMAN PROGRESS
John Gray, 2005
NEW STATESMAN, accessed on May 5, 2005,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4722_134/ai_n9487577
It is no accident that torture has been reintroduced by the world's pre-eminent liberal
state. To be sure, torture is used by many regimes--not only those inspired by liberal
ideals. It is routinely employed in tyrannies and the ramshackle failed states that litter
the globe; but only in liberal states is it part of a crusade for human rights. Liberalism is
a project of universal emancipation, and torture will be necessary as long as the spread
of liberal values is resisted. When the Bush administration authorises the use of torture,
it does so in the cause of human progress.
2. THE STAKES IN THE WAR ON TERROR WARRANT VIOLATING LEGA

PROTECTIONS
John Gray, 2005
NEW STATESMAN, accessed on May 5, 2005,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4722_134/ai_n9487577
The intensifying war in Iraq looks like being a watershed in modern history. Critics of the
war have focused on the suffering it has involved and pointed to a number of errors that
have been made in the course of the country's ongoing reconstruction. The suffering and
mistakes are real enough, but they should not be allowed to conceal the much larger
change of which the war is a part. Liberal societies are evolving rapidly to a higher stage
of development, in which many traditions will become obsolete. Under the aegis of the
world's most advanced liberal state, torture and collective punishment have once again
become normal practice in the conduct of war. To some this may seem anomalous, even
contradictory. In reality it is the inner logic of liberal values applied in a time of
unprecedented transformation. Liberalism is a universal creed and the crusade for
freedom cannot be fettered by archaic legal procedures. Treaties such as the Geneva
Convention may have served the cause of freedom in the past, but today they are
obstacles to liberal values. A global revolution is in progress in which such quaint relics
have no place.
3. CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT HAS VERIFIED THAT PROSECUTING THE WAR

ON TERROR HAS NOT INFRINGED ON CIVIL RIGHTS/LIBERTIES
Paul Rosenzweig, Senior Legal Research Fellow (Heritage Foundation), 2004

CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY, accessed May 5, 2006,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/tst031904a.cfm
I believe that a governing rule for assessing our response to terror can be readily
summarized from the writings of Chief Justice Rehnquist. He wrote: In any civilized
society the most important task is achieving a proper balance between freedom and
order. In wartime, reason and history both suggest that this balance shifts in favor of
order in favor of the governments ability to deal with conditions that threaten the
national well-being. Thus far, I believe we have succeeded in meeting that goal. With
respect to the Patriot Act (now using those words in the narrower and technical sense of
a particular law), the record is, in fact, one of success. The Inspector General for the
Department of Justice has reported that there have been no instances in which the
Patriot Act has been invoked to infringe on civil rights or civil liberties. This is consistent
with the conclusions of others. For example, at a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on
the Patriot Act Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) said, some measure of the criticism [of the
Patriot Act] is both misinformed and overblown.
Mortimer Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler was born in New York City, the son of an immigrant jewelry
salesman. At the age of 14 he dropped out of school at and went to work as a secretary
and copy boy at the New York Sun, a prominent newspaper at the time, hoping to
become a journalist. Shortly there after, he began taking night classes at Columbia
University to improve his writing skills. At Colombia he became interested in the great
philosophers and thinkers of Western civilization, especially after reading the
autobiography of the great English philosopher John Stuart Mill.
Adler was inspired to continue his reading after learning that Mill had read Plato when he
was only five years old, while Adler had not yet read him at all. A book by Plato was lent
to him by a neighbor and Adler became hooked. After receiving a scholarship he
decided to study philosophy at Columbia University. Here he became so focused on
philosophy that he failed to complete the required physical education course to earn a
bachelor's degree. Despite this, his understanding of the classics was so great that
Columbia University awarded him a doctorate in philosophy a few years after he began
teaching there.
Adler became an instructor at Columbia University in the1920s. He continued to

participate in the Honors program, started by John Erskine, which focused on reading the
great Classics. His tenure at the university included studying with such prominent
thinkers as Erskine and John Dewey, the famous American pragmatist philosopher. This
environment inspired his early interest in the study of the Great Books of Western
Civilization. He also promoted the idea that philosophy should be integrated with
science, literature, and religion.
This early work resulted in the publication of Dialectic in 1927. Here Adler focused on
providing a summation of the great philosophical and religious ideas of Western
Civilization, ideas further influenced by his fascination with medieval thought and
sensibility. It is this combination of interests that dominated his career at educational
and research institutions like the University of Chicago, the University of North Carolina
(Chapel Hill), the Institute for Philosophical Research, and the Aspen Institute. Adler
helped to found the latter two institutes. At the Aspen Institute, he taught business
leaders the classics for more than 40 years. He was also on the board of the Ford
Foundation and the board of the Encyclopedia Britannica, where his influence was
clearly shown regarding its policies and programs. He is also the co-founder, along with
Max Weismann, of The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas. This center is accessible
online at http://www.thegeatideas.org/.
In 1930, Adler was appointed to the philosophy faculty at the University of Chicago. This
appointment led to a conflict with the faculty because of several innovations he
proposed in the schools curriculum. The changes he proposed were based on his
central interests in the reading, discussion, and analysis of the classics and an
integrated philosophical approach to the study of the separate academic disciplines.
These conflicts with the faculty led to his reassignment, in 1931, to the Law School as
professor of the philosophy of law. While Adler continued his educational reforms on a
more conservative basis he continued to integrate the concepts of seminars on great
books and great ideas into his programs at other educational institutions.
In 1952, his work in this area culminated in the publication of the Great Books of the
Western World by the Encyclopedia Britannica Company. The work on which he had
concentrated since his Columbia University days, together with a lecture series and
essays produced in Chicago, resulted in several publications, including The Higher
Learning in America (1936), What Man Has Made of Man (1937), and his best-selling
How to Read a Book, published in 1940 and still in print, occasionally revised and
updated since it was first published. In 1943, his How to Think about War and Peace,
written in the social and political climate of WWII, was published as he continued his
advocacy of a popular, yet intelligent, approach to public education.
Throughout his career as a philosopher and educator, Adler wrote continually,

consistently focusing on a multi-disciplinary and integrated approach to philosophy,
politics, religion, law, and education. Such works as The Common Sense of Politics
(1971), Six Great Ideas (1981), and The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus
(1984), reflect this concern. He has also been involved with Bill Moyers in creating a
series of video programs focusing on the subject of the American Constitution and
biographies of the justices of the Supreme Court and has also been involved in
producing videos on the Great Ideas. In 1977, Adler published an autobiography entitled
Philosopher at Large, which was followed later by another autobiographical account
entitled A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a
Philosopher at Large (1992). He has spent a lifetime making philosophy's greatest
texts accessible to everyone. As he has written, No one can be fully educated in school,
no matter how long the schooling or how good it is. And throughout his teaching career,
Adler remained devoted to helping those outside academia educate themselves further.
No one, no matter how old, should stop learning, according to Adler. He himself has
written more than twenty books since he turned 70.
UNDERSTANDING ETHICS
To begin an ethical understanding of Adler we must start with what he calls the ethics of
common sense. The teleological ethics of common sense, argues Adler is the only
moral philosophy that is "sound" in the way in which it develops its principles, "practical"
in the manner in which it applies them, and "undogmatic" in the claims it makes for
them. Why or in what way is it the only sound moral philosophy? By "sound" he means
both adequate and true. So when he says that the teleological ethics of common sense
is the only sound moral philosophy, he is saying that it is the only ethical doctrine that
answers all the questions that moral philosophy "should" and "can" attempt to answer,
neither more nor less, and that its answers are true by the standard of truth that is
appropriate and applicable to normative judgments.
In contrast, other theories or doctrines try to answer more questions than they can or
fewer than they should, and their answers are mixtures of truth and error. Thus,
teleological ethics includes the truth of naturalism in that it fully recognizes the moral
relevance of empirical facts, especially the facts of human nature and human behavior,
but without committing the error of naturalism--the error of denying the distinction
between fact and value, the error of attempting to reduce normative judgments to
statements of empirical fact. Avoiding this error, it also avoids the fallacy of attempting
to draw normative conclusions from premises that are entirely factual.
While agreeing with the intuitionists that ethics must have some principles that are
intuitively known (that is, self-evident), teleological ethics maintains that there need be
and can be only one such normative principle, and that all other normative judgments
can be derived as conclusions from it. It thus avoids the error of regarding as intuitively
known (and known without any relation to empirical fact) a whole series of propositions
about moral duties or obligations that are not self-evident and depend for their truth
upon matters of fact.
The ethics of common sense also includes the truth of utilitarianism because its first
principle is the end, the whole good to be sought, and because all its conclusions are
about the partial goods that are either constitutive or instrumental. But it avoids the
mistakes of utilitarianism that lie in a wrong conception of the ultimate end and in an
erroneous treatment of the relation between the individual's pursuit of his own ultimate
good and his obligations to the rights of others and the good of the community. By
correcting the most serious failure of utilitarianism, one that it shares with naturalism-the failure to distinguish between needs and wants, or between real and apparent
goods--it is able to combine a practical or pragmatic approach to the problems of human
action in terms of means and ends with a moral approach to them in terms of
categorical oughts. Whereas, in the absence of categorical oughts, utilitarianism and
naturalism are merely pragmatic the ethics of common sense, at once teleological and
deontological is a moral philosophy that is also practical.
By virtue of its distinction between real and apparent goods, this pragmatic moral
philosophy retains what truth there is in the various forms of "non-cognitive ethics," such
as the "emotive theory of values"; it concedes that all judgments concerning values that
are merely apparent goods are nothing but expressions of emotional inclinations or
attitudes on the part of the individual who is making the evaluation. While conceding
this, it avoids the error of supposing that all value judgments or normative statements
must be emotional or attitudinal expressions of this sort, incapable of having any
objective or ascertain able truth, comparable to that of descriptive statements of fact. It
avoids this error by correcting the failure to recognize that the truth of descriptive or
factual statements is not the only mode of objective truth, and that there is a standard
of truth appropriate to normative judgments quite distinct from that appropriate to
descriptive statements. The foregoing explanation of the soundness of teleological
ethics--by virtue of its encompassing whatever is sound in other approaches, divorced
from the errors with which it is mixed in these other approaches--also helps to explain
why Adler argues that teleological ethics is the most practical form of moral philosophy,
or the only practical form of it.
DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS?
Another important contribution that Adler provides to the conversation regarding ethics
is a response to the age old question; does the end justify the means? Can it sometimes
be right to use a bad means to achieve a good end? Don't the conditions of human life
require some shadiness and deceit to achieve security and success? First, Adler explains
the sense in which the word "justifies" is used in the familiar statement. After that we
can consider the problem you raise about whether it is all right to employ any means good or bad - so long as the end is good.
When we say that something is "justified," we are simply saying that it is right Adler
argues. Thus, for example, when we say that a college is justified in expelling a student
who falls below a passing mark, we are acknowledging that the college has a right to set
certain standards of performance and to require its students to meet them. Hence, the
college is right in expelling the student who doesn't. Now, Adler reminds us that nothing
in the world can justify a means except the end which it is intended to serve. A means
can be right only in relation to an end, and only by serving that end. The first question to
be asked about something proposed as a way of achieving any objective whatsoever is
always the same. Will it work? Will this means, if employed, accomplish the purpose we
have in mind? If not, it is certainly not the right means to use. This brings us to the heart
of the matter. Since a bad end is one that we are not morally justified in seeking, we are
not morally justified in taking any steps whatsoever toward its accomplishment. Hence,
no means can be justified - that is, made morally right - by a bad end.
But what about good ends? Adler argues that we are always morally justified in working
for their accomplishment. Are we, then, also morally justified in using any means which
will work? Adlers answer to that question is plainly yes; for if the end is really good, and
if the means really serves the end and does not defeat it in any way, then there can be
nothing wrong with the means. It is justified by the end, and we are justified in using it.
People who are shocked by this statement, responds Adler, overlook one thing: If an
action is morally bad in itself, it cannot really serve a good end, even though it may on
the surface appear to do so.
People in power have often tried to condone their use of violence or fraud by making it
appear that their injustice to individuals was for the social good and was, therefore,
justified. But since the good society involves justice for all, a government which employs
unjust means defeats the end it pretends to serve. You cannot use bad means for a good
end any more than you can build a good house out of bad materials. It is only when we
do not look too closely into the matter that we can be fooled by the statement that the
end justifies the means. We fail to ask whether the end in view is really good, or we fail
to examine carefully how the means will affect the end. This happens most frequently in
the game of power politics or in war, where the only criterion is success and anything
which contributes to success is thought to be justified. Success may be the standard, by
which we measure the expediency of the means, but expediency is one thing and moral
justification is another.
ARISTOTLES NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
For guidance on moral philosophy Adler turns first and foremost to Aristotle. In my
opinion, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, properly construed, is the only sound,
pragmatic, and undogmatic work in moral philosophy that has come down to us in the
last twenty-five centuries (it is the ethics of common sense and is both teleological and
deontological). Its basic truths are as true today as they were in the fourth century B.C.
when that book was delivered as a series of lectures in Aristotle's Lyceum. He goes on
to say that instead of trying to expound Aristotle's Ethics in summary fashion, I am
going to state the indispensable conditions that must be met in the effort to develop a
sound moral philosophy that corrects all the errors made in modern times.
The definition of prescriptive truth, which sharply distinguishes it from the definition of
descriptive truth. Descriptive truth consists in the agreement or conformity of the mind
with reality. When we think that that which is, is, and that which is not, is not, we think
truly. To be true, what we think must conform to the way things are. In sharp contrast,
prescriptive truth consists in the conformity of our appetites with right desire. The
practical or prescriptive judgments we make are true if they conform to right desire; or,
in other words, if they prescribe what we ought to desire.
In order to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, we must formulate at least one self-evident
prescriptive truth, so that, with it as a premise, we can reason to the truth of other
prescriptives. Hume correctly said that if we had perfect or complete descriptive
knowledge of reality, we could not, by reasoning, derive a single valid ought. Modern
efforts to get around this barrier have not succeeded, first because modern writers have
not had a definition of prescriptive truth, and second because they have not discovered
a self-evident prescriptive truth.
The distinction between real and apparent goods must be understood, as well as the fact
that only real goods are the objects of right desire. Now, in light of the definition of
prescriptive truth as conformity with right desire, we can see that prescriptions are true
only when they enjoin us to want what we need, since every need is for something that
is really good for us. If right desire is desiring what we ought to desire, and if we ought
to desire only that which is really good for us and nothing else, then we have found the
one controlling self evident principle of all ethical reasoning--the one indispensable
categorical imperative. That self-evident principle can be stated as follows: we ought to
desire everything that is really good for us.
In all practical matters or matters of conduct, the end precedes the means in our
thinking about them, while in action we move from means to ends. But we cannot think
about our ends until, among them, we have discovered our final or ultimate end--the end
that leaves nothing else to be rightly desired. The only word that names such a final or
ultimate end is "happiness." No one can ever say why he or she wants happiness
because happiness is not an end that is also a means to something beyond itself.
The fifth condition is that there is not a plurality of moral virtues (which are named in so
many ethical treatises), but only one integral moral virtue. There may be a plurality of
aspects to moral virtue, but moral virtue is like a cube with many faces. The unity of
moral virtue is understood when it is realized that the many faces it has may be
analytically but not existentially distinct. In other words, considering the four so called
cardinal virtues--temperance, courage, justice, and prudence--the unity of virtue
declares that no one can have any one of these four without also having the other three.
This explains why a morally virtuous person ought to be just even though his or her
being just may appear only to serve the good of others.
Acknowledging the primacy of the good and deriving the right therefrom. The primacy
of the good with respect to the right corrects the mistake of thinking that we are acting
morally if we do nothing that injures others. Our first moral obligation is to ourselves--to
seek all the things that are really good for us, the things all of us need, and only those
apparent goods that are innocuous rather than noxious.
CONCLUSION
We are all faced with having to choose between one activity and another, with having to
order and arrange the parts of life, with having to make judgments about which external
goods or possessions should be pursued with moderation and within limits and which
may be sought without limit. Adler argues that this is where virtue, especially moral
virtue, comes into the picture. The role that virtue plays in relation to the making of such
choices and judgments determines, in part at least -- our success or failure in the pursuit
of happiness, our effort to make good lives for ourselves. In order to explain Adler points
out the distinction between perfections of all sorts (of body, of character, and of mind)
and possessions of all sorts (economic goods, political goods, and the goods of
association) carries with it a distinction between goods that are wholly within our power
to obtain and goods that may be partly within our power but never completely so. The
latter in varying degrees depend on external circumstances, either favorable or
unfavorable to our possessing them. However, Adler goes on, not all goods that are
personal perfections fall entirely within our power. Like external goods, some of them are
affected by external conditions.
According to Adler the only personal perfection that would appear not to depend upon
any external circumstances is moral virtue. Whether or not we are morally virtuous,
persons of good character would appear to be wholly within our power -- a result of
exercising our freedom of choice. But even here it may be true that having free time for
leisure activities has some effect on our moral and spiritual growth as well as upon our
mental improvement. Only in a capital intensive economy can enough free time become
open for the many as well as for the few.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adler, Mortimer J., "THE HUMAN EQUATION IN DIALECTIC,"Psyche 28 (April 1927), 68-82.
---,"SPENGLER, THE SPENGLERITES, AND SPENGLERISM," Psyche 29 (July 1927), 73-84.
---, DIALECTIC. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1927.

---, ART AND PRUDENCE: A STUDY IN PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. New York: Longmans,
Green and Co., 1937.
---, WHAT MAN HAS MADE OF MAN: A STUDY OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF PLATONISM
AND POSITIVISM IN PSYCHOLODY. Psychology. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937.
---, PARTIES AND THE COMON GOOD" The Review of Politics 1 (January 1939) 51-83.
---, THE CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION" The Social Frontier (February 1939),
140-145
---, RELIGON AND THEOLOGY. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961.
---, ETHICS, THE STUDY OF MORAL VALUES. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1962.
---, THE CONDITIONS OF PHILOSOPHY; ITS CHECKERED PAST, ITS PRESENT DISORDER,
AND ITS FUTURE PROMISE. New York: Atheneum, 1965.
---, FREEDOM: A STUDY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT IN THE ENGLISH AND
AMERICAN TRADITIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1968.
---, THE TIME OF OUR LIVES; THE ETHICS OF COMMON SENSE. New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1970.
---, THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973.
---, THE AMERICAN TESTAMENT. New York: Praeger, 1975.
---, PHILOSOPHER AT LARGE: AN INTELECTUAL BIOGRAPHY. New York: Macmillan, 1977.
---, REFORMING EDUCATIONS: THE SCHOOLING OF A PEOPLE AND THIER EDUCATION

BEYOND SCHOOLING. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1977.
---, THE PAIDEIA PROPOSAL: AN EDUCATIONAL MANIFESTO. New York: Macmillan, 1982.
---, A VISION OF THE FUTURE: TWELVE IDEAS FOR A BETTER LIFE AND A BETTER
SOCIETY. New York: Macmillan, 1984
---, TEN PHILOSOPHICAL MISTAKES. New York: Collier Books, 1987.
---, REFORMING EDUCATION: THE OPENING OF THE AMERICAN MIND. New York:
Macmillan, 1989
---, INTELLECT: MIND OVER MATTER. New York: Macmillan. 1990.
---, HAVES WITHOUT HAVE-NOTS: ESSAYS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY ON DEMOCRACY AND
SOCIALISM. New York: Macmillan, 1991.
---, DESIRES,RIGHT & WRONG: THE ETHICS OF ENOUGH. New York: Macmillan, 1991.
---, THE DIFFERENCE OF MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES. New York: Fordham
University Press, 1993.
---, THE ANGELS AND US. New York: Collier Books, 1993
---, THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF PHILOSOPHY: METAPHYSICAL, MORAL, OBJECTIVE,

CATEGORICAL. New York: Macmillan Pub. Co, 1993.
---, ARISTOTLE FOR EVERYBODY: DIFFICULT THOUGH MADE EASY. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1997.
---, HOW TO SPEAK, HOW TO LISTEN. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
PHILOSOPHICAL "TRUTH'S" DON'T

EXIST
1. THE PURSUIT OF EPISTEMIC KNOWLEDGE IS ILLUSORY
Mortimer Adler, philosopher, THE CONDITIONS OF PHILSOPHY, 1965, p. 30.
Episteme represents an illusory ideal that has bemused mans understanding of his
efforts and his achievements in the pursuit of knowledge. It has led philosophers to
misconceive philosophy and to make unsupportable claims for their theories or
conclusions. In that branch of philosophy which is called epistemology (especially in the
form that it takes in contemporary Anglo-American thought), the abandonment of
episteme would eliminate three problems with which it obsessedthe problem of our
knowledge of material objects, of other minds, and of the past. These are baffling,
perhaps insoluble, problems only when they claim is made that we can have knowledge
of material objects, other minds, and the pastknowledge which has the certitude and
finality of doxa for episteme, and the problems cease to be problems, or at least to be
baffling. Abandoning episteme as an illusory ideal would not only shrink epistemology to
its proper size, but it would also starve, if not silence, the skeptic who feeds on the claim
to achieve episteme in any department of human inquiry.
2. A MODERATE INTERPREATION OF KNOWLEDGE AS OPINION IS MORE ACCURATE

In what sense of knowledge, then, are history, science, mathematics, and philosophy
branches of knowledge? If episteme sets too high a standard, what is the moderate or
weaker sense of the word knowledge in which it is applicableand equally applicable
to the disciplines just mentioned?
The properties of knowledge in this moderate sense are that it consists of propositions
which are (1) testable by reference to evidence, (2) subject to rational criticism, and
either (3) corrigible and rectifiable or (4) falsifiable. The Greeks had another word which I
propose to use for knowledge in this sense. That word is doxa, and it is usually
rendered in English by the word opinion. As the properties enumerated above indicate,
what is being referred to is responsible, reliable, well-founded, reasonable opinion. When
the English word opinion is used to signify the opposite of knowledge, what is being
referred to usually lacks these very properties. It is irresponsible, unreliable, unfounded,
unreasonable; it is mere opinion, sheer opinion, irrational prejudice.
3. PHILSOPHY IS ONLY A BRANCH OF KNOWLEDGE

Mortimer Adler, philosopher, THE CONDITIONS OF PHILSOPHY, 1965, p.21-24
To be intellectually respectable, as history and science are generally recognized to be,
philosophy must be a branch of knowledge. It must be a mode of inquiry that aims at,
and results in, the acquisition of knowledge which is characteristically different from the
knowledge that is aimed at and achieved by historical scholarship and scientific
research. There is a sense of the word knowledge which sets too high a standard of
achievement for it to be applicable to either historical scholarship or scientific research.
At times in the past, it was thought that mathematics could measure up to this high
standard. At times, philosophy also was thought to be knowledge in this high or strong
sense. But in the centuries which have seen the greatest development of scientific
research and historical scholarship, it has seldom, if ever, been thought that either
scientific or historical knowledge was knowledge in this sense.
All that is required by the first condition is that philosophy should aim at and acquire
knowledge in the same sense that science and history do, not in a loftier sense of that
term.
The attributes of [epistemic] knowledge in the high or strong sense are: (1) certitude
beyond the challenge of skeptical doubts, (2) finality beyond the possibility of revision in
the course of time. Such knowledge consists entirely of (3) necessary truths, which have
either the status of (4) self-evident principles, that is, axioms, or of (5) conclusions
rigorously demonstrated therefrom.
THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE IS A KEY

COMPONENT OF PHILOSOPHY
1. PHILOSPHY MUST BE EVALUATED IN TERMS OF TRUTH AND GOODNESS
Mortimer Adler, philosopher, THE CONDITIONS OF PHILSOPHY, 1965, p. 31-32.
For philosophy to be respectable as a branch of knowledge, philosophical theories or
conclusions must be capable of being judged by appropriate criteria of goodness; or, in
other words, they must be capable of being judged by reference to an appropriately
formulated standard of truth. The two words that require comment are italicized ones
goodness and truth. The criteria of goodness appropriate to anything that claims
to be knowledge are criteria of truth. To say, in connection with historical scholarship,
scientific research, or philosophical though, that one conclusion is better than another is
to say that it is sounder or truer. When I lay down the requirement that philosophical
theories or conclusions must be capable of being judged for their relative truthone
truer or sounder than anotherI am saying that if philosophy is a branch of knowledge,
in the same sense that history or science is, then it can never suffice merely to find one
philosophical theory more to our liking than another; or to regard one as better than
another simply because it is more pleasing to consider, more harmonious to
contemplate, or more useful for whatever purpose we have in mind. We must be able to
say that it is truer than another, or at least to hope that we can find some theory which
is truer than others. And when we say this, we must use the word truer in the same
sense in which we apply it in making judgments about scientific theories or historical
conclusions, relative to one another. What is that sense? Since we are not here
concerned with episteme, but only with knowledge in the sense of doxa, we can
eliminate at once the standard of indubitable and incorrigible truth that is set by selfevident propositions and demonstrated conclusions. We can also eliminate, I think, the
standard of truth which would be set by statements that are completely verified by
empirical data, if complete verification were possible, as many now realize it is not.
2. PHILOSOPHY MUST QUESTION THE NATURE OF BEING AND EXISTENCE

The last condition concerns the subject matter of those questions which are purely
philosophical that is, which belong to philosophy, and to philosophy alone, as a special
field of learning or mode of inquiry. Such questions must be primarily questions about
which is and happens in the world or about what men should do and seek, and only
secondarily questions about how we know, think, or speak about that which is and
happens or about what men do and seek. Questions about what men do and seek are
concerned with human conduct and the organization of society. They deal, for example,
with such matters as good and evil; right and wrong; the order of goods; duties and
obligations; virtues and vices; happiness, lifes purpose or goal; justice and rights in the
sphere of human relations and social interactions; the state and its relations to the
individual; the good society, the just policy, and the just economy; war and peace.
3. PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE MUST BE PUBLIC, NOT PRIVATE

Mortimer Adler, philosopher, THE CONDITIONS OF PHILSOPHY, 1965, p. 36-37.
To be worthy of respect as a mode of inquiry aiming at knowledge and developing
theories capable of being tested for their relative truth and capable of being falsified,
rectified, or improved, philosophy too should be conducted as a public enterprise. The
operative word here is public. We have come to see that any human work is personal
in some sense and to some degreea scientific theory, a historical interpretation, as
well as a poem or a painting. But the inescapable personal character of any work does
not necessarily make it exclusively personal in the sense of being wholly private. It can
have a public as well as a private aspect. There may be some things which are
exclusively private, such as certain emotional experiences, the mystics vision, the voice
of conscience, and the like. The exclusively private is, of course, also incommunicable.
Hence insofar as knowledge in general, and any branch of knowledge in particular, is
communicable, it cannot be exclusively private.
IT IS POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH TRUTH IN

VALUE JUDGEMENTS
1. VALUE JUDGEMENTS CAN BE TRUE FOR INDIVIDUALS
Mortimer Adler, Philosopher, THE TRUTH AND THE GOOD -IS AND OUGHT.
http://www.radicalacademy.com/adlertruthgood.htm, Accessed June 1, 2003. p-np.
Now let us turn in the opposite direction and ask whether there is any truth in our value
judgments -- our judgments about things as good or bad. When such judgments are
challenged, most people find it difficult to defend them by giving reasons calculated to
persuade others to agree with them. Since individuals obviously differ from one another
in their desires, what one person regards as good may not be so regarded by another.
Unless I am lying, my statement that I regard something as good (which is tantamount
to saying that I desire it) is a true statement about me, but that would seem to be as far
as it goes. The judgment that the object in question is good would not appear to be true
in a sense that commands universal assent -- good not just for me but for everyone else
as well.
2. SUBJECTIVE VALUE JUDGEMENTS ARE TRUE

We are thus brought face to face with the much disputed question about the objectivity
or subjectivity of value judgments. In the contemporary world, skepticism about value
judgments prevails on all sides. Value judgments, it is generally thought, express
nothing more than individual likes or dislikes, desires or aversions. They are entirely
subjective and relative to the individual who makes them. If they have any truth at all, it
is only the truth that is contained in a statement about the individual who is making the
judgment -- the truth that he regards a certain object as good because he, in fact,
desires it.
3. FINDING TRUTH IN VALUE STATEMENTS IS NECESSARY TO CONFRONT SKEPTICISM

To refute the skeptical view, which makes all value judgments subjective and relative to
individual desires, we must be able to show how prescriptive statements can be
objectively true. An understanding of truth as including more than the kind of truth that
can be found in descriptive statements thus becomes the turning point in our attempt to
establish a certain measure of objectivity in our judgments about what is good and bad.
Only through such understanding will we be able to show that some value judgments
belong to the sphere of truth, instead of all being relegated to the sphere of taste and
thus reduced to matters about which reasonable men should not argue with one another
or expect to reach agreement.
THE SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE IS

HOPELESS
1. CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE IS OUTSIDE THE REALMS OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
Robert Adams, Professor of Philosophy at Sophia University, NISHIDA KITAROS STUDIES
OF THE GOOD AND THE DEBATE CONCERNING UNIVERSAL TRUTH IN EARLY 20THCENTURY JAPAN, 1999, http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Asia/AsiaAdam.htm, Accessed
June 1, 2003. p-np.
Takahashi Satomi (1886-1964) gives a third competing view, one based on the idea that
the human condition is characterized by radical finitude, which means that there are
certain limits beyond which human knowledge or experience cannot reach. This
existential insistence on human finitude leads him to dismiss all absolutist claims,
including Nishidas panentheism and Kats positivism. This outlook is found in Takahashis
critique of Nishida, one of his earliest publications, which appeared in the March and
April 1912 issues of Tetsugaku zasshi under the title of Facts of Phenomena of
Consciousness and their MeaningOn Reading Nishidas Studies of the Good.
2. SKEPTICISM IN REGARDS TO TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE CAN NEVER BE OVERCOME

June 1, 2003. p-np.
In the essay, Takahashi addresses the metaphysical implications of Nishidas conception
of pure experience, and the reasons for his dissatisfaction with Nishida become clear: for
by claiming that in pure experience human beings connect to the infinite mystery of
God, the unifying force of the universe, Nishida has implied that human beings are at
ground infinite beings, a conclusion Takahashi vehemently disagrees with: It is not to be
expected that the entirety of realities infinitude could be manifest in the finite
development [found in human beings]. Takahashi goes on to say that Nishidas use of
pure experience as the model for the sacred encounter in fact cheapens the mystery of
religion by equating the experiences of average people and those of saints: There would
be nothing simpler in this world, he asserts, than attaining enlightenment, if we could
unite ourselves to the spirit of the universe merely by forgetting the distinction between
ourselves and things .If humans are not privy to the most immediate truths of the
universe, they are likewise unable to comprehend any absolute truths about the physical
universe. Human finitude in this respect indicates for Takahashi that skeptical doubts can
never be completely overcome; nor does he think they should be, for skepticism of
certain truth enlivens the creative aspect of human thought. Though many in the history
of philosophy have rejected skepticism, calling it suicidal, it is he says always skepticism
that calls forth new philosophies.
3. HUMANS BEINGS MUST BE CONTENT WITH LIMITED TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE

June 1, 2003. p-np.
Accepting the limitations of human knowledge does not, however, lead Takahashi to
espouse a radical form of skepticism. He holds what should be termed a pragmatic view
of truth, similar to the Human view of knowledge appropriated by Nishida, but without
Nishidas subordination of human knowledge to Gods perfection. Human beings must be
satisfied with relatively certain truth, which is generally reliable but, as a product of the
human mind, limited. Through the course of history such reliable knowledge has
accumulated in a dialectical process, as new knowledge answers old doubts but at the
same time gives rise to new problems. The solving of these problems in turn leads to the
formation of more new knowledge, which creates different doubts to answer, and so on
in an unending process that leads, over time, to a gradual increase of what he calls
fundamental knowledge that is, knowledge that can be relied on. New doubts are formed
as new knowledge answers old doubts, but at the same time a core of reliable
knowledge is solidified and expanded.
ANTI-FEDERALISTS
Perhaps the greatest question that American political theory has struggled with is to
what extent the power of the federal government should be limited. There have been a
variety of different approaches to that question over the years, with that of the AntiFederalists being one of the most extreme. Given their position in history as one of the
main political groups at the time of the crafting of the Constitution, the Anti-Federalists
are no mere moment in history, but instead have had a profound influence upon the
entirety of American politics. This essay will explore the context surrounding the AntiFederalists, some of the major figures behind the movement, and the various potential
pros and cons to such a political system.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The driving issues in early American political theory arose as a response to the
treatment of the original colonies by Great Britain. The American Revolution came about
for a myriad of reasons, all connected to the desire to have independence from the
tyrannical rule of the British monarchy. Therefore the issue of liberty was foremost in the
minds of Americans when considering how to craft a government of their own. The first
attempt was guided by the Articles of Confederation, which established a very limited
central government with strong powers left to the individual states. The Confederation
could not collect taxes, regulate commerce, or a great many other things that are matter
of course for the federal government today. Moreover, amending the Articles required
unanimity among the states.
Viewing these and many other aspects of the Articles as deep flaws, many called for
some kind of reform. During the time of various Constitutional Conventions, a great deal
of writing was done by various political figures that advocated different positions on
what direction the country ought to take. Although far from universally read at the time
the pamphlets were mostly published in New York a group of 85 documents which
came to be known as the Federalist Papers came to be the most famous articulation of
Federalist views. These papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John
Jay under the pseudonym Publius, advocated a much stronger central government
than what the Articles provided. This federalist camp by and large supported the
proposed Constitution that was being debated at the Conventions. The inability of the
federal government to take care of a lot of problems, notably the Shays Rebellion that
occurred in Massachusetts for half a year before it could be quelled, seemed to the
Federalists a clear signal that a new Constitution was needed.
Although the new Constitution was passed largely the way that the Federalists hoped it
would be, support for it was by no means unanimous. The contingent of people who felt
that the proposed Constitution had too strong of a Central government were known as
the Anti-Federalists. Contemporary readers might feel as if these terms are backwards,
given that in todays lexicon federalism refers to the doctrine that the federal
government should not encroach upon the proper powers of the states. However, it is
important to keep in mind that terminology changes, and back at the time of the signing
of the Constitution the Anti-Federalists were those opposed to it on the grounds that it
gave too much power to the federal government. They felt that the essence of
democracy could only be carried out on a small scale, the benefits of which were lost in
such a massive government. Anti-federalists, therefore, supported a more direct
democracy, as opposed to the republican government that connected to the citizens
only via mediating representatives.
Anti-Federalist differ from the Federalist Papers in a few significant ways. First, the AntiFederalists were not as organized in their publications; there is not an established
number to each document or speech that constituted Anti-Federalist contributions to the
political debate. Secondly, the identity of the authors of the Anti-Federalist papers is not
always known. Even though the Federalist Papers bore the same pen name, who did
which paper (Hamilton, Jay, or Madison) is well documented. The Anti-Federalists also
used pseudonyms borrowed from past figures from Rome (as well as other names), but it
is not always conclusive which actual person lies behind what name. This is partially due
to the less organized nature of the Anti-Federalists, and partially to the fact that history
has not glorified their accomplishments as it has the Federalists.
WHO THEY WERE
While the issue of which Anti-Federalist authors were behind the works of pseudonyms
such as Brutus, Old Whig, or Federal Farmer may be an ongoing debate, some of
the more important figures in the theory are well known. One such person is Patrick
Henry. While his famous quotation in which he prefers liberty to life became one of the
central rallying cries of the Revolution, Henry did not support the Constitution that was
eventually passed in 1787. Henry associated the Federalist supporters with the kind of
aristocracy that the Revolutionary War was meant to free America from. The inclusion of
a Bill of Rights into the Constitution is owed in part to Patrick Henry; while he never
supported the Constitution, one of his greatest criticisms of it was the lack of any explicit
limitations upon the powers of the federal government, which the Bill of Rights provided
(to some extent). While the Bill of Rights was not included in the initial signing of the
Constitution, it was promised to be included by Congress shortly thereafter.
Another prominent Anti-Federalist was George Clinton. No, not the one in the Funkadelic
Parliament. George Clinton was the first governor of New York during the ratification of
the Constitution, and later would become Vice President for both Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison. Clinton authored some of the Anti-Federalist papers that were published
under the name Cato. Clinton did his best to block ratification of the Constitution, but
when it was approved by the requisite nine states at the Convention in his very own
state, Clinton acquiesced. Ironically he ended up Vice-President to Madison, one of the
authors of the Federalist Papers. Clinton despised Madison, but took the post after his
own Presidential ambitions were dashed. There are a great many other important AntiFederalist thinkers: James Winthrop, Samuel Bryan, Richard Henry Lee, Robert Yates, and
others. While of course they all had minor differences, the thread running through them
all was a mistrust of too massive a government.
THE CASE FOR THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS
So what is it that is positive about the theory of Anti-Federalism? The primary emphasis
is upon promoting liberty and freedom. But what liberties are being shoved aside in the
current system? The premise behind Anti-Federalism goes deeper than knee-jerk
mistrust of the federal government. To understand Anti-Federalists merely in terms of
modern-day states-rights discourse would be in a sense misleading; while they share
some of the same beliefs, Anti-Federalism is an entirely different view of what
government means than is considered in contemporary political discourse.
The first major premise in Anti-Federalism is that true government is only possible on a
small scale. When the words big or small are used to describe governments today,
it is typically meant to designate the bureaucracy, or amount of control, that the
government has. And it is true that Anti-Federalists would argue for a less massive
government, but they would also stress that said governing body has to be concerned
with a vastly smaller area than the US currently is. This is because when a regime is in
control over a large enough populace, direct democracy becomes simply unfeasible.
Today what we have is a republic, where representatives are elected with the supposed
task of voicing the opinions of all of the people in Congress. There would be no way for
common individuals to stroll onto the floor of Capitol Hill any time they wished and have
a real voice in crafting national legislation.
Direct democracy of that sort is appealing to Anti-Federalists because it makes up for

the myriad of shortcomings in the current system of representation. For one, there is
no way for Representatives to actually know the desires of the people they are voting
for. The closest way to understanding the will of the electorate polling is remarkably
inaccurate, and only samples a small part of the population. Even were polling perfectly
accurate, the problem of majority tyranny arises. Especially given the USs selfproclaimed status as a melting pot of races, cultures, ideas, and so on, it becomes all
the more difficult for any group to get the policy they want. Since potential actions to be
taken by Congress are almost never a black and white issue, there are a host of different
possible options to be argued for. This ensures that oftentimes the majority opinion does
not even constitute over half of the population, making most of the peoples wishes
going unheeded. This is democracy at its most tenuous.
Part of the problem stems from the type of people that are going to be the
Representatives in a large republic. The Anti-Federalists argued that a result of that type
of government would be that only the elite would have the capability to run for office. To
achieve enough public recognition to get elected, one would have to not be tied to any
sort of private concerns that would distract from that goal. No one struggling to earn
enough money to survive, let alone the middle class who spend a great deal of time
working to (for example) put their kids through college, have the time and resources to
become a serious politician. This problem has gotten even more out of control given the
importance of self-advertisement during campaigns.
The current controversy over money spent in campaigns is telling. But even if stringent
campaign finance reform measures were to pass, there would still be cultural and
economic barriers that would make it extremely difficult for anyone but the elite class to
realize the goal of playing a role in the public sector. Therefore, the type of person who is
elected into office will never be the same type of person that she or he is supposed to
represent. While it is certainly possible for a person of a different station to understand
the situation of a common person, this is often not the case. How can a rich white
Senator born into privilege know how difficult it is to be poor? It becomes difficult for any
interest aside from the elites to be advanced in government. Indeed, many AntiFederalists charged that it was elite interests that motivated the structure of the
government set up in the Constitution.
But even if all of the things above were not true, and Senators and Representatives were
somehow able to represent the wishes of their constituents completely accurately, AntiFederalists would still have a large problem with the massive republic that we live in
today. The difference lies in the fact that our conception of politics is as a means to an
end. In other words, people tend to be only concerned with issues such as
representation insofar as they get what they want. Provided that a Senator votes the
way someone theoretically would want them to, the political sphere and ones own
relationship to it can be safely ignored. Anti-Federalists, on the other hand, find that
situation lacking, precisely because they see participation in politics as an end to itself.
Christopher Duncan explains why it is that Anti-Federalists place intrinsic value upon
direct democracy. The reason for this is because, interestingly enough, Anti-Federalism
dovetails nicely with one of the main tenets of Hannah Arendts belief on the nature of
politics. Arendt, an important political theorist from this century, contends that the
highest form of human existence lies in the participation in politics. She draws upon
Greek culture in her book THE HUMAN CONDITION to explain the various degrees of
human activity. The lowest is that of labor, whereby one toils to take care of private
necessities, such as food and shelter. The next highest is work, which encompasses
crafts, the arts, and similar pursuits. There is the possibility of public appreciation of
work, but it is often still private in nature. Finally, the highest type of human activity is
what Arendt says the Greeks considered true action: politics. Once all private demands
are met, then one can spend their time caring for the polis (city). The ancient Greeks
despised labor, and therefore used slavery to divest themselves of the need to do tasks
that they consider menial. Therefore the most glory came from being an honored
statesman in the city-state.
This is not to suggest that the Anti-Federalists merely wanted to copy the Greeks, but
instead that understanding the rationale behind the Greek priority of action in the public
realm sheds light on why Anti-Federalists find value in pure democracy. In fact, many of
the Anti-Federalists papers make explicit reference to Greek and Roman societies
before they developed strong tyrannical central governments as being ideals insofar as
democracy is concerned. Anti-Federalists desired the smaller town-hall type
governments were individual could have a say and come to some consensus about
issues that affected them and their town. Only that way can the desire to life a public
life, and therefore be happy and free, be achieved.
THE CASE AGAINST THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS
As pretty of a picture of an idyllic small town democracy this paints, one can readily find
fault with such a small-scale system of government. The same problems that were
apparent at the time of the Articles of the Confederation are still present in a system
that devolves a great deal of authority. First and foremost is a problem with security from
threats both internal and external. The incapability of internal uprisings and the like to
be dealt with a weak central government was arguably shown back as early as Shays
Rebellion. What is to stop one state from deciding to use aggressive force against
another to take, say, some economic resources? Threats from other countries are even
more frightening. Even if every state kept standing militias, it would seem difficult to
coordinate efforts, and without a strong federal ability to tax, there is no way a national
army could be built and maintained that would comport to the standards necessary to
be competitive. A strong central government seems to be a prerequisite of peace and
order. Even if there is some sacrifice of liberties in order to make those things possible,
is it not obvious that life and peace are more important? Being free from ones own
government is hardly a concern when another country is invading.
In addition to security, economic prosperity seems to be a direct result of a strong

federal government. Given how complex the economic system is today, there are a
variety of important tasks that can only be performed by the national government that
seem integral to maintaining a healthy economy. Having a national bank system, issuing
bonds, the Federal Reserve all are functions that are distinctly national in character.
None could be performed during the Articles of Confederation. A thriving economy is a
necessary condition for a lot of other things, such as funding of the sciences and arts.
Would the technological and cultural progress that has been made in the past two
hundred years be possible in a country with decentralized governments?
Yet another goal that has become of more importance in recent years that seems
impractical without a strong central government is the protection of the environment.
While the Anti-Federalists sought to organize small like-minded communities,
environmental theory has taught that those situations are dangerous given the
transitory nature of pollution. The negative effects of industry in one county or state
could most directly affect another area completely, with those citizens lacking any
method of recourse. Environmental disputes were not much of a problem back in
colonial times when the majority of the United States had yet to even be charted by
European settlers, but it is a huge issue now. Strict laws governing the states are needed
to keep them accountable for their environmental damage.
One of the revolutions in the past hundred years has been the increasing role of the
federal government as the protector of individual rights from state discrimination. This
picture of rights flips on its head the problem envisioned by the Anti-Federalists of a
tyrannical national government. The most famous example of this comes with the
controversy concerning segregation in the South. Until the Supreme Court decision of
Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, schools wouldnt allow blacks the same
educational opportunities. This case was but the most visible of a massive effort by the
federal government to outlaw a host of racist policies held by many States. These
protections against discrimination apply to sexism and other forms of oppression
through the Equal Protection amendment. By passing amendments that protect rights
not merely through limiting the power of the federal government but instead positively
restricting certain behavior of the states and local governments, a brand new turn is
taken in the relationship between individuals, rights, and the government. There might
not be any way to have stopped that discrimination throughout the country in the
system promoted by the Anti-Federalists.
While the fundamental motivation for the Anti-Federalists was the protection of liberty
through democracy, it is very possible that their mistrust of a strong central government
was not merely reactionary fear stemming from their dealings with Great Britain. Many
authors claim that the federal government has proven to be self-limiting in such a
fashion so as to avoid the pitfalls the Anti-Federalists predicted. Power over such things
as taxation has certainly not spiraled into overwhelming tyranny. Nor is there a complete
disregard for the rights and powers of the states even within this system. The 50 states
retain a massive amount of control over criminal laws, internal commerce, and so forth.
Few would call the powers that the federal government claims right to now tyrannical
by any means.
RESPONSES TO SOME OF THE ATTACKS ON THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS
While this list of problems might seem difficult for the Anti-Federalists to overcome, hope
is not lost yet.
Many authors specifically respond to some of these criticisms and explain why they
might not seem as problematic as they seem. With regard to the security issue, one
might question the incentive for other countries to attack the United States if it were
more decentralized. Countries dont just go around attacking each other for land
nowadays; wars tend to start due to tensions over disagreements. In that sense there
likelihood of an attack against the US might decrease; countries would no longer have
cause to resent the US throwing its superpower weight around world affairs. As for
internal problems, it is natural that uprisings like the Shays Rebellion would occur during
a countrys birth pangs, but there is less reason to believe such events would be a
matter of course without a powerful federal government.
Issues such as the environment and minority rights could be dealt with in a collective
fashion. Just because power would be devolved to a large degree does not mean that
national laws would not work pending the acceptance of the majority of states. Given
the swing in opinion towards protecting the environment and ending discrimination, it is
logical that even without things like strong Supreme Court decisions it is still plausible
that those problems would be voluntary dealt with by the states.
It is certain that the country would be less economically prosperous if it had developed
more along Anti-Federalist lines, but economic might is not necessarily the highest aim
for a country. Money alone cannot produce happiness, and it can even create tensions in
a society where the wealth is increasingly becoming concentrated in a small percentage
of the population. As the lower class gets larger and poorer, it is natural to question just
how successful the country is economically, no matter what the Gross Domestic Product
statistics say. Participation in a public democracy, as Hannah Arendt suspects, can be

much more fundamental to human happiness than amassing material wealth. Perhaps
the widespread depression exhibited in American society today is a result of the
alienation felt towards ones fellow humans. The Federalist model did establish an
effective system for pursuing ones private wishes, but those are nothing more than
glorified necessities taken too far. True happiness is found in ones civic existence, and
therefore in direct democracy.
CONCLUSION
Anti-Federalism, as a political theory taken in general, has many potential benefits and
downfalls. The most skillful use of it will be to argue for a particular type of democracy
that actually involves people, instead of merely a republic where no ones interests but
the very powerful are furthered. It can be used in its specific historical context to
criticize or justify the Constitution, or to help argue for or against other political
objectives that would affect the balance of power between the people and their state,
local, federal governments.
One thing that is important to keep in mind for the purpose of utilizing this theory in a
debate round is that one does not necessarily have to advocate every thing that the
Anti-Federalists would. Instead, its principles of maintaining a genuine democracy can be
utilized to argue in favor of smaller changes, such as greater states rights in a particular
area. Even if the federal government has not proven to turn into a tyranny, there is little
denying that politics in this country has become an affair of the rich and elite, excluding
most people from participating in it in any meaningful way. Moreover, no political system
is wholly comprised of one ideology or another; the Constitution may have been
promoted mainly by Federalists, but its inclusion of a Bill of Rights, as well as a few other
modifications to it are distinctly Anti-Federalist in nature. The American political tradition
has always been a product of the dialectic of both of those movements. Truly
understanding the various twists and turns of American politics requires a grasp upon its
roots in both the Federalist as well as Anti-Federalist traditions. Both theories have
strong advantages and disadvantages that can be used to shed light on a variety of
political issues in our own day and age.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ackerman, Bruce. WE THE PEOPLE: FOUNDATIONS, Harvard University Press, 1992.
Arendt, Hannah. THE HUMAN CONDITION, University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Bailyn, Bernard. THE DEBATE ON THE CONSTITUTION: FEDERALIST AND ANTIFEDERALIST

SPEECHES, ARTICLES, AND LETTERS DURING THE STRUGGLE OVER RATIFICATION, Library
of America, 1993.
Berns, Walter. TAKING THE CONSTITUTION SERIOUSLY. Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Dolbeare, Kenneth. DIRECTIONS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT. John Wiley & Sons,
inc. 1969.
Dry, Murray, and Storing, Herbert. THE COMPLETE ANTI-FEDERALIST, University of

Chicago Press, 1981.
Duncan, Christopher. THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS AND EARLY AMERICAN POLITICAL

THOUGHT. Northern Illinois University Press, 1995.
Hoffer, Robert. A POLITICS OF TENSION: THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION AND

AMERICAN POLITICAL IDEAS, University of Colorado Press, 1992.
Ketcham, Ralph. THE ANTI-FEDERALIST PAPERS AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

DEBATES, Penguin, 1986.
Sinopoli, Richard. FROM MANY, ONE: READINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL
THOUGHT, Georgetown Press, 1997.
Storing, Herbert. WHAT THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS WERE FOR, University of Chicago Press,
1981.
Wood, Gordon. THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Alfred Knopf, 1992.
THE ANTI-FEDERALIST VISION OF

SMALLER GOVERNMENT IS SUPERIOR
1. IT IS EMPIRICALLY SHOWN THAT ONLY SMALL GOVERNMENTS AVOID CORRUPTION
Brutus, Anti-Federalist Writer, FROM MANY, ONE: READINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL
AND SOCIAL THOUGHT, 1997, p. 37.
In a large republic there are men of large fortunes, and consequently of less moderation;
there are trusts too great to be placed in any single subject; he has interest of his own;
he soon begins to think that he may be happy, great and glorious, by oppressing his
fellow citizens; and that he may raise himself to grandeur on the ruins of his country. In
a large republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to
exceptions, and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is easier
perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses are of
less extent, and of course are less protected. History furnishes no example of a free
republic, any thing like the extent of the United States. The Grecian republics were of
small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time,
extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was,
that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the
most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.
2. GOVERNMENTS THAT RULE OVER SIMILAR PEOPLE OPERATE MORE EFFICIENTLY

Brutus, Anti-Federalist Writer, FROM MANY, ONE: READINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL
AND SOCIAL THOUGHT, 1997, p. 38.
In a republic, the manners, sentiments, and interests of the people should be similar. If
this be not the case, there will be a constant clashing of opinions; and the
representatives of one part will be continually striving against those of the other. This
will retard the operations of government, and prevent such conclusions as will promote
the public good. If we apply this remark to the condition of the United States, we shall be
convinced that it forbids that we should be one government. The United States includes
a variety of climates. The productions of the different parts of the union are very variant,
and their interests, of consequence, diverse. Their manners and habits differ as much as
their climates and productions; and their sentiments are by no means coincident. The
laws and customs of the several states are, in many respects, very diverse, and in some
opposite; each would be in favor of its own interests and customs, and, of consequence,
a legislature, formed of representatives from the respective parts, would not be too
numerous to act with any care or decision, but would be composed of such
heterogenous and discordant principles, as would constantly be contending with each
other.
3. SMALLER SCALE POLITICS ALLOW FOR HAPPINESS VIA A GENUINE PUBLIC SPHERE
Christopher Duncan, Professor of Political Science, THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS AND EARLY

AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT, 1995, p. 170-171.
The question the Anti-Federalists worried about was not how we organize our polity for
order and greatness but how we organize our polity for public happiness and political
salvation. Agrippas claims that freedom is necessary for industry and that in
absolute governments, the people, be the climate what it may be, are in general lazy,
cowardly, turbulent, and vicious to an extreme are but his way of saying that without
the sense of attachment and empowerment that comes with public participation, there
can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no happiness. This is the theoretical
thread that ties AntiFederalist thought together. It is the notion that the Constitution as
a centralizing, ultimately disempowering, document will leave them bereft of their power
to save themselves, that it will ultimately, in the words of Hannah Arendt, banish the
citizens from the public realm into the privacy of their households, and demand of them
that they mind their own private business. This would certainly be a torturous existence
for a people who believed their individual chance for redemption was tied intimately to
their shared public life. Self-government for the Anti-Federalists was not just a
mechanistic device to ensure the safety of their fortunes, it was an opportunity to
transform themselves and expand their circle of concerns while encouraging others to
do the same. Political participation for the Anti-Federalists became an end to be pursued
as well as a means.
ANTI-FEDERALISM GIVES RIGHTS AND

PREVENTS DISCRIMINATION
1. ONLY SMALLER LIMITED GOVERNMENTS ALLOW LIBERTY
Cato, Anti-Federalist Writer, FROM MANY, ONE: READINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICAL AND
SOCIAL THOUGHT, 1997, p. 42.
From this picture, what can you promise yourselves, on the score of consolidation of the
United States, into one governmentimpracticability in the just exercise of ityour
freedom insecureeven this form of government limited in its continuancethe
employments of your country disposed of to the opulent, to whose contumely you will
continually be an objectyou must risque much, by indispensably placing trusts of the
greatest magnitude, into the hands of individuals, whose ambition for power, and
aggrandizement, will oppress and grind youwhere, from the vast extent of your
territory, and the complication of interests, the science of government will become
intricate and perplexed, and too mysterious for you to understand, and observe; and by
which you are to be conducted into a monarchy, either limited or despotic; the latter, Mr.
Locke remarks, is a government derived from neither nature, nor compact. Political
liberty, the great Montesquieu again observes, consists in security, or at least in the
opinion we have of security; and this security therefore, or the opinion, is best obtained
in moderate governments, where the mildness of the laws, and the equality of the
manners, beget a confidence in the people, which produces this security, or the opinion.
This moderation in governments, depends in a great measure on their limits, connected
with their political distribution.
2. ANTI-FEDERALISM STOPS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

James Etienne Viator, Associate Professor of Law, Loyola University New Orleans School
of Law, LOYOLA JOURNAL OF PUBLIC INTEREST LAW, Spring, 2000, p. 37-8.
Furthermore, the phenomenon of white bloc voting makes race-conscious districting a
properly narrow means to further the "compelling interest" in full freedom for black
Americans -- the compelling interest of solving racial problems through representation in
Congress by those who share a commitment to this unique interest in political liberty on
account of their membership in the historically "raced" community. Using an innovative
mixture of campaign news stories and public opinion surveys of voters, Keith Reeves
demonstrated the continued presence of bigoted attitudes among white voters, which
results in the continuing existence of white bloc voting; and this racially biased voting
excludes blacks from the fair and equal representation recommended both by the AntiFederalists and Section 2 of the VRA. It is this stubborn persistence of racially polarized
voting that confirms the enduring wisdom of and necessity for the Anti-Federalist view
that representatives should be "made of the same stuff collectively as their
constituents." Thus, shared racial experience and the legacy of white hostility and
bigotry constitute the compelling reason for majority-black districts as a necessary
means to effectuate the Anti-Federalist insight that in order to guarantee liberty "like
best represents like."
ONLY ANTI-FEDERALIST POLITICS ALLOW TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE MULTIPLICITY OF

INTERESTS
Christopher Duncan, Professor of Political Science, THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS AND EARLY
AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT, 1995, p. 78.
In other words, they have agreed to protect each other from external dangers to their
collectivenot individualliberties, and to work together, not on questions of the
general welfare but on questions of mutual and general welfare. If that latter clause is
read correctly, it should be clear that there was no such thing as the general welfare of
the country; rather, there was a series of particular welfares that could only be
considered general when in fact the question at issue was one of mutual concern as
determined by the state itself. The distinction here is once again of critical importance
from a theoretical perspective, in that under the Articles of Confederation there was no
truth or Platonic form, that transcended the local community and its own particular
determinations about right and wrong, useful or not, other than those basic natural laws
(but these, too, were open to a good deal of relative interpretation). Communal
welfare and justice were both the products of local political conversations, and any
attempt to conflate the judgments of those independent entities had to be agreed to by
them and the like associations involved in order to be legitimate. Thus the mode of
operation was consensual rather than majoritarian or adversarial, which accounts for the
nine-vote decision-making threshold and the provisions for unanimity with regard to
amendment that marked the Articles.
AN ANTI-FEDERALIST GOVERNMENT
WOULD BE UNSAFE AND INEFFECTIVE
1. AN ANTI-FEDERALIST SYSTEM WOULD BE VULNERABLE TO FOREIGN ATTACK
Robert Webking, Assistant Professor of Political Science, The Federalist: Government
Power and Individual Rights, THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITY, 1983, p. 9.
The first of the advantages is the increased safety from foreign attack that comes with
Union. Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to
direct their attention that of providing for their safety seems to be the first. Other
nations must be prevented from having just causes for warring with the Americans and
they must also be discouraged from attacking injustly on the pretext of trumped up
charges. With the Union the Americans will be less likely to present just causes for war
to foreign nations because there will be a single interpretation of the law of nations and
of treaties. That single interpretation will not be dominated by the unjust desires of any
part of the Union. Moreover, should the national government provide a just cause for war
to a foreign nation it is far more likely that the dispute will be settled without recourse to
war with one large nation than it would be with several smaller confederacies. Publius
notes the reality that acknowledgements, explanations, and compensations are often
accepted as satisfactory from a strong united nation when they would not be accepted
from a weaker power.
2. THE ORDER THAT COMES FROM A FEDERALIST GOVERNMENT OUTWEIGHS LIBERTY

Thomas E. Baker, Director of the Constitutional Resource Center, BYU JOURNAL OF
PUBLIC LAW, 1999, p. 76.
In any civilized society the most important task is achieving a proper balance between
freedom and order. In wartime, reason and history both suggest that this balance shifts
to some degree in favor of order - in favor of the government's ability to deal with
conditions that threaten the national well-being. It simply cannot be said, therefore, that
in every conflict between individual liberty and governmental authority the former
should prevail. And if we feel free to criticize court decisions that curtail civil liberty, we
must also feel free to look critically at decisions favorable to civil liberty. To conclude his
historical exegesis, the Chief Justice brings us back one last time to Lincoln's dilemma to
ask and answer rhetorically, "Should he, to paraphrase his own words, have risked losing
the Union that gave life to the Constitution because that charter denied him the
necessary authority to preserve the Union? Cast in these terms, it is difficult to quarrel
with his decision."
3. ADVANCES IN CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY MAKE ANTI-FEDERALISM IMPRACTICAL

Larry D. Kramer , Professor of Law, New York University Law School, COLUMBIA LAW
REVIEW, January, 2000, p. 291-292.
The specific limits of federal power envisaged by the Founders in 1789 are gone, and
any effort to roll back federal power to what it meant at the Founding would be foolish as
well as utterly impractical. Even the harshest critics of New Deal jurisprudence
acknowledge that changes in society, culture, and the economy require a different kind
of national authority today, both practically and as an interpretive matter. Hence,
notwithstanding any purported claims of fidelity to original intent, the limits on Congress
proposed by today's advocates of judicially-enforced federalism in fact look nothing like
any limits that existed when the Constitution was adopted. The question thus becomes,
which process should determine the appropriate revised allocation of authority between
the federal government and the states: constitutional politics or judicial edict?
Mesmerized by the mantra "our Federal government is one of limited powers," the
Justices assume that it necessarily falls on them to define new limits - some limits, any
limits, even if those limits bear no resemblance to anything imagined by the Founders or
observed in the past. But imposing novel judicially-defined limits just for the sake of
having judicially-defined limits is an ill-conceived formalism. In a world of global markets
and cultural, economic, and political interdependency, the proper reach of federal power
is necessarily fluid, and it may well be that it is best defined through politics. Certainly,
as we have seen, this is more consistent with the original design than the Court's new
made-up limits-for-the-sake-of-limits. Embracing the hurly-burly of politics while paying
attention to how states protect themselves in that domain is a much "truer"
interpretation of our Constitution.
FEDERALIST THEORY PROTECTS

INDIVIDUAL AND MINORITY RIGHTS
1. STRONG CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IS SELF-RESTRAINING
Larry D. Kramer , Professor of Law, New York University Law School, COLUMBIA LAW
REVIEW, January, 2000, p. 252-3.
North Carolina lawyer-planter Archibald Maclaine, writing as Publicola, made the charge
of Anti-Federalist duplicity even more explicitly: I find some people are so strangely
infatuated, as to think that Congress can, and therefore will, usurp powers not given
them by the states, and do any thing, however oppressive and tyrannical. I know no
good grounds for such a supposition, but this, that the legislative and judicial powers of
the state have too often stepped over the bounds prescribed for them by the
constitution; and yet, strange to tell, few of those, whose arguments I am now
considering, think such measures censurable - The conclusion to be drawn here is
obvious - The objectors hope to enjoy the same latitude of doing evil with impunity, and
they are fearful of being restricted, if an efficient government takes place.
2. A FEDERALIST GOVERNMENT ENSURES PROSPERITY AND INCLUSION OF MINORITIES

Robert Webking, Assistant Professor of Political Science, The Federalist: Government
Power and Individual Rights, THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLITY, 1983, p. 7-8.
Publius original argument about how a people can secure the advantage and avoid the
disadvantage of majority rule rests upon a distinction between species of popular
government. In a pure democracy, where people gather to rule themselves directly, he
writes, the danger of majority faction is unavoidable. Such a form of government can
exist with only a small territory, and in a small community it is virtually certain that
there will be a majority with the same partial interest. In a republic, however, the
problem can be avoided. The difference between a pure democracy and a republic is
that in the latter the people do not rule directly, but through representatives.
Representation yields a number of happy advantages for Publius, but the decisive one is
size. A republic can be very much larger than a pure democracy, and because it is larger
it can include a great variety of people with many different kinds of economic activities
and, hence, a multiplicity of interests. The existence of many distinct interests means
the existence of many interest groups or factions. The existence of many factions rather
than merely two makes it likely that there will be no majority faction. All factions will be
minority factions and each faction will be prevented from using the government unjustly
by the fact of majority rule. Extend the sphere, Publius writes, and you take in a
greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the
whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.
3. A FEDERALIST THEORY OF LEGAL RIGHTS STOPS DISCRIMINATION
Daan Braveman, Dean and Professor of Law, Syracuse University College of Law, THE
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, February, 2002, p. 619.
Perhaps the most significant breakthrough in the transformation process occurred in
Brown v. Board of Education. In striking down state segregation, the Supreme Court
dramatically altered the relations between the states and the national government, and
made the federal courts the primary guardians of federal rights. In the years following
Brown, the lower federal courts became the litigation forum for state school segregation
cases, as well as actions challenging a wide range of other state activities, including
zoning, reapportionment, police misconduct, and prison conditions. Notably, Brown was
not decided in isolation but rather at a time when the world outside the courtroom was
changing dramatically. The other branches of the federal government had a national and
international agenda, which included the expansion of federal rights and a federal
interest in protecting those rights from state deprivation. "A new spirit of nationalism"
replaced the isolationism of the turn of the century and, as Judge Gibbons stated: "In the
global village, deference to local solutions for problems that transcend local interests is a
quaint anachronism." By the 1960s, the structure envisioned during Reconstruction was
firmly established. Individuals had federal rights, federal remedies, and a federal forum
to challenge state conduct that violated federal law.
Hannah Arendt
Political Philosopher (1906-1975)

Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover in 1906, the only child of a Jewish engineer. After
completing undergraduate work, she studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger and Karl
Jaspers at Heidelberg, and earned her doctorate when she was twenty-two. She left
Germany in 1933 because of Hitlers rise to power, and resided in France, where she was
active in the Zionist movement. In 1940 she moved to the United States. During her
early years in America she was unable to find an academic post despite her outstanding
qualifications. However, in 1952, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and, the
following year, was invited to deliver the Christian Guass lectures at Princeton.
Throughout her remaining career, she taught courses in philosophy at the University of
California, the University of Chicago, Columbia, Northwestern, and Cornell, among
others. At the time of her death in 1975, she was University Professor of Political
Philosophy at the new School for Social Research, in New York. As one of the twentieth
centurys most prominent and controversial philosophers, Arendt is best known for her
writings on revolution, violence, totalitarianism, and other political phenomena. The
following biography examines Arendts notions of: (1)
Balancing freedom and responsibility, (2) importance of speech, (3) ideology and
totalitarianism, (4) application to debate.
Throughout all of Arendts writing runs a single philosophical paradox: how do we protect
and support the human capacity to freely constitute a political community, to make new
beginnings, and, at the same time, ensure that this freedom of action is responsible?
That is, how do we maintain a balance between freedom and responsibility? In an
attempt to answer this question, Arendt identified two types of excess, each of which
threatens to destroy the balance between freedom and responsibility. One is an
unreflective confidence that human beings can mold themselves and the world in any
way they wish. This assumption is manifested in the scientific attitude and its uncritical
endorsement of control over nature, and most ominously in totalitarian regimes. The
second type of excess is attached to thinking, not acting, and consists in the theoretical
postulation of a realm of truth, or being, accessible to reason and authority over human
action. That is, humans celebrate reasoning and logic at the expense of emotions and
feelings. The emotionless logic embraced by this form of thought, Arendt feared, would
denigrate human activity and diminish the importance of freedom.
Arendt also argued that action and speech are the supreme expressions of civilization,
for they reveal open-mindedness and freedom as constitutive elements of human
existence. Speech and action have several abilities including the opportunity to change
peoples opinions, alter unjust government policies, and promote those issues at the
heart of freedom. With the interest in speech and action, Arendt continued to challenge
the Western tradition of separating speech with behavior. Instead she argued that a life
without speech and action is literally dead to the world. In addition, Arendts approach to
the study of politics, and particularly her refusal to measure the worth of the political
realm by absolute/objective standards seemed a possible way Out of what she perceived
to be an impasse in political theory; this impasse she would describe roughly as the
contest between the ancient and the modern modes of inquiry. Though these two modes
are different they share a common rejection for the inherent freedom of political activity.
The ancient mode of inquiry is reflective of a transcendental view of political justice.
In Arendts analysis, ideological thinking and totalitarian thinking are one and the same.
In each case thought presents itself as an all-encompassing logic of totality. All
phenomena of present, past, and future are claimed to be perfectly knowable by one in
possession of true knowledge. In addition, Arendt contested the ideologists claims to

sole possession of the truth. Moreover, Arendts true goal was to redeem politics,
humanity and the world. The process of redeeming politics depended on an acceptable
rhetorical vision one that embraced freedom and opportunity. The effect of this
rhetorical vision, Arendt posited, was to inspire the reader to go forth and change the
current political system and promote desirable political action.
Hannah Arendts usefulness to debate lies in her discussion of politics, government,
action and violence.
Especially important is her discussion of the effect of government form on civil
disobedience and violence. While her philosophy is essentially practical, interested in the
consequences of values, rather than their intrinsic usefulness, there is still much to use.
The debater may be interested in her assumptions and prioritizing of freedom, as central
to political systems. Moreover, her philosophy provides much for the discussion of the
effects of values on particular issues.
Bibliography
Hannah Arendt. Approaches to the German Problem. PARTISAN REVIEW 12 (1945): 93106.
Hannah Arendt. Authority in the Twentieth Century. REVIEW OF POLITICS 18(1956):

403-417.
Hannah Arendt BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE: EIGHT EXERCISES IN POLITICAL THOUGHT.
New York: Viking Press, 1968.
Hannah Arendt. CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC; LYING IN POLITICS, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ON

VIOLENCE, THOUGHT ON POLITICS AND REVOLUTION. New York: Harcourt Brace,
1972.
Hannah Arendt. EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM: A REPORT ON THE BANALITY OF EVIL. New
York:
Penguin Books, 1963.
Hannah Arendt. From an Interview. NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS 25(1978): 18.
Hannah Arendt. History and Immortality. PARTISAN REVIEW 24 (1957): 11-53.
Hannah Arendt. THE HUMAN CONDITION. Chicago: University of Chicago Ness, 1958.
Hannah Arendt. Imperialism: Road to Suicide. COMMENTARY 1(1946): 27-35.
Hannah Arendt. THE JEW AS PARIAH: JEWISH IDENTITY AND POLITICS IN THE MODERN
AGE.
New York: Grove Press, 1978.
Hannah Arendt. LECTURES ON KANTS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Chicago: University of

Chicago Ness, 1982.
Hannah Arendt. MEN IN THE DARK TIMES. New York Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968.
Hannah Arendt. ON REVOLUTION. New York: Viking Ness, 1963.
Hannah Arendt. ON VIOLENCE. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970.
Hannah Arendt. Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility. JEWISH FRONTIER.

(1945): 19-23.
Hannah Arendt. THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM. New York: Harcourt, Brace. 1951.
Hannah Arendt. Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship. LISTENER (1964): 185-7,

205.
Hannah Arendt. Public Rights and Private Interests. In SMALL COMFORTS FOR HARD
TIMES:
HUMANISTS ON PUBLIC POLICY. Mooney and Stuber (Ed.). New York: Columbia
University Ness, 1977.
Hannah Arendt. RACHEL VARNHAGEN: THE LIFE OF A JEWISH WOMAN. New York:
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974.
Hannah Arendt. Religion and the Intellectuals, a Symposium. PARTISAN REVIEW 17

(1950):
113-116.
Hannah Arendt. Thinking and Moral Considerations. SOCIAL RESEARCH 38 (1971): 417446.
Hannah Arendt. Understanding and Politics. PARTISAN REVIEW 20(1953): 377-392.
Hannah Arendt. Understanding Communism. PARTISAN REVIEW 20(1953): 580-583.
VALUE SYSTEMS REQUIRE MAJORITY

SUPPORT
1. MUST HAVE SUPPORT OF MANY INDIVIDUALS TO REVERE VALUES
Hannah Arendt, Former Professor of Political Philosophy at the new School for Social
Research, CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC, 1969, p. 68.
What had been decided inforo conscienhiae has now become part of public opinion, and
although this particular group of civil disobedients may still claim the initial validation-their consciences--they actually rely no longer on themselves alone. In the market place,
the fate of conscience is not much different from the fate of the philosophers truth: it
becomes an opinion, indistinguishable from other opinions. And the strength of opinion
does not depend on conscience, but on the number of those with whom it is
associated--unanimous agreement that X is an evil...[sic] adds credence to the believe
that X is an evil.
2. PUBLIC SUPPORT NECESSARY TO MAKE SENSE OF PUBLIC VALUES
Research, THE HUMAN CONDITION, 1958, p. 35.
We no longer think primarily of deprivation when we use the word privacy, and this is
partly due to the enormous enrichment of the private sphere through modem
individualism. However, it seems even more important that modern privacy is at least as
sharply opposed to the social realm--unknown to the ancients who considered its
content a private matter--as it is to the political, properly speaking.
3. POWER IS GWEN TO HUMANS BY GROUPS
Research, ON VIOLENCE, 1970, p. 44.
When we say of somebody that his is in power we actually refer to his being
empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment of the
group, from which the power originated to begin with (potestas in populo, without a
people or group there is no power), disappears, his power also vanishes.
MUST EXAMINE ACTIONS TO

UNDERSTAND VALUES
1. VALUES SIGNIFICANCE LIES IN SOCIETAL ACCEPTANCE
Research, BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE, 1954, p. 33.
The term value owes its origin to the sociological trend which even before Marx was
quite manifest in the relatively new science of classical economy. Marx was still aware of
the fact, which the social sciences have since forgotten, that nobody seen in his
isolation produces values, but that products become values only in their social
relationship. His distinction between use value and exchange value reflects the
distinction between things as men use and produce them and their value in society, and
his insistence on the greater authenticity of use values, his frequent description of the
rise of exchange value s a kind of original sin at the beginning of market production
reflect his own helpless and, as it were, blind recognition of the inevitability of an
impending devaluation of all values.
2. MUST NOT LOOK TO THE ENDS OF ACTION TO DETERMINE VALUES
Research, CRISES OF THE REPUBLIC, 1969, p. 62-63.
Our legal codes distinguish between crimes in which indictment is mandatory, because
the community as a whole has been violated and offenses in which only doers and
sufferers are involved, who may or may not want to sue. In the case of the former, the
states of mind of those involved are irrelevant, except insofar as intent is part of the
overt act, or mitigating circumstances are taken into account; it makes no difference
whether the one who suffered is willing to forgive or the one who did is entirely unlikely
to do it again.
3. HUMAN EXISTENCE DEPENDENT ON UNDERSTANDING ACTION
Research, THE
HUMAN CONDITION, 1958, p.206-207.
Similarly, the attempt to eliminate action because of its uncertainty and to save human
affairs from their frailty by dealing with them as thought they were or could become the
planned products of human making has first of all resulted in channeling the human
capacity for action, for beginning new and spontaneous processes which without men
never would come into existence, into an attitude toward nature which up to the latest
stage of the modern age had been one of exploring natural laws and fabricating objects
out of natural material.
FREEDOM IS THE CENTRAL VALUE IN

SOCIETY
1. FREEDOM IS A SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM
In its simplest form, the difficulty may be summed up as the contradiction between our
consciousness and conscience, telling us that we are free and hence responsible, and
our everyday experience in the outer world, in which we orient ourselves according to
the principle of causality. In all practical and especially in political matters we hold
human freedom to be a self-evident truth, and it is upon this axiomatic assumption that
laws are laid down in human communities, that decisions are taken, that judgments are
passed.
2. VALUE OF FREEDOM IS THE DIRECT AIM OF POLITICAL ACTION
Freedom, moreover, is not only one among the many problems and phenomena of the
political realm properly speaking, such as justice, or power, or equality; freedom, which
the only seldom--in times of crisis or revolution--becomes the direct aim of political
action, is actually the reason that men live together in political organization at all.
Without it, political life as such would be meaningless. The mson dtre of politics is
freedom and its field of experience is action.
3. POLITICS AND ACTIONS ARE DEPENDENT ON FREEDOM
The field where freedom has always been known, not as a problem, to be sure, but as a
fact of everyday life, is the political realm. And even today, whether we know it or not,
the question of politics and the fact that man is a being endowed with the gift of action
must always be present to our mind when we speak of the problem of freedom; for
action and politics, among all capabilities and potentialities of human life, are the only
things of which we could not even conceive without at least assuming that freedom
exists, and we can hardly touch a single political issue without, implicitly or explicitly,
touching upon an issue of mans liberty.
4. VALUE OF FREEDOM CENTRAL TO FREE SPEECH
Research, ON
REVOLUTION, 1963, p. 121.
To be sure, this passion for freedom for its own sake, for the sole pleasure to be able to
speak, to act, to breathe (Tocqueville), can arise only where men are already free in the
sense that they do not have a master. And the trouble is that this passion for public or
political freedom can so easily be mistaken for the perhaps much more vehement, but
politically essentially sterile, passionate hatred of masters, the longing of the oppressed
for liberation. Such hatred, no doubt, is as old as recorded history and probably even
older; it has never yet resulted in revolution since it is incapable of even grasping, let
alone realizing, the central idea of revolution, which is the foundation of freedom, that is,
the foundation of a body politic which guarantees the space where freedom can appear.
5. FREEDOM IS AN IMPORTANT VALUE FOR LIBERATION
Research, ON
REVOLUTION, 1963, p. 26.
But this difficulty in drawing the line between liberation and freedom in any set of
historical circumstances does not mean that liberation and freedom are the same, or
that those liberties which are won as the result of liberation tell the whole story of
freedom even though those who tried their hand at both liberation and the foundation of
freedom more often than not did not distinguish between these matters very clearly
either. The men of the eighteenth-century revolutions had a perfect right to this lack of
clarity; it was in the very nature of their enterprise that they discovered their own
capacity and desire for the charms of liberty, as John Jay once called them, only the
very act of liberation. For the acts and deeds which liberation demanded from them
threw them into public business, where, intentionally or more often unexpectedly, they
began to constitute that space of appearances where freedom can unfold it charms and
become a visible, tangible reality.
Aristippus
'I possess, I am not possessed'
---Aristippus
INTRODUCTION
Aristippus was a follower of Socrates, and the founder of the Cyrenaic school of
philosophy. He taught that the ultimate goal of all actions is pleasure, and that we
should not defer pleasures that are ready at hand for the sake of future pleasures or as a
reflection on the past. His philosophy came to be known as egoistic hedonism. He was
willing to break the social conventions of his day and engage in behavior that was
considered undignified or shocking for the sake of obtaining pleasurable experiences.
The Cyrenaic school developed these ideas further and influenced Epicurus, later Greek
skeptics, Herbert Spencer, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and even Ayn Rand, among
other well known philosophers.
LIFE AND WORK
Not much is known about the life of Aristippus, as the main source for information on
him is by Diogenes Laertius, who wrote over 500 years after Aristippus' death. In fact,
the very timeline of his life is unknown and falls somewhere within 430-370 B.C.
Diogenes account of Aristippus lacks reliability as it was based on many scandalous
stories that were told in moral contempt (OKeefe 2001) and as a way to promote rival
conceptions of hedonism (Guthrie 1969). As a result, most research on Aristippus is
based in negativity, as he was a focal point of moral outrage. Without first hand
accounts of Aristippus philosophy, from his own writings or more accurate, less
politically and/or morally motivated second and third hand accounts, it is impossible to
say for certain what his life was like or what his beliefs entailed.
What we do know of Aristippus life is as follows: He was born in Cyrene, a Greek colony
in Northern Africa. He moved to Athens and became one of Socrates most scandalous
pupils, with his advocacy of sensual pleasure and his acceptance of money for his
instruction (OKeefe 2001; Guthrie 1969). Along with his daughter, Arete, his grandson,
Aristippus the Younger, and a few other disciples, he formed the basis for the Cyrenaic
school (OKeefe 2001). Instructing and including a female in the creation of a school
(even if it was his daughter) was far ahead of his time and largely unheard of. Granted,
however, she never did receive the credit she deserved or was given as much regard as
Arete the Younger.
The Cyrenaic School of Philosophy, founded in the city of Cyrene, flourished from about
400 to 300 B.C., and had for its most distinctive tenet hedonism, or the doctrine that
pleasure is the chief good (McNeil 1995). From Socrates, the school derived its doctrine
of the supremacy of pleasure from happiness as the chief good and from Protagoras, its
relativistic theory of knowledge. It is unclear how much of the developed Cyrenaic
school of thought is based in Aristippus the Elders teachings or his grandsons, who is
reported to have systematized much of the Cyrenaic philosophy (OKeefe 2001; Guthrie
1969). Arete and Aristippus the Younger are believed by some to be even more focused
than Aristippus the Elder on momentary pleasure as the goal, not an overall pleasant life
(Merlan 1972). Information about the school rarely differentiates origins based on the
Elder or the Younger Aristippus (and pays little to no regard to Arete, since she was
female).
ETHICAL BASIS OF HEDONISM
Like other Greek ethical thinkers, Aristippus' ethics are centered on the question of what
goal humans actions aim at and what is valuable for its own sake. Aristippus
identification of the end as pleasure makes him a hedonist. His definition of pleasure
included not merely sensual gratification but also mental pleasures, domestic love,
friendship, and moral contentment-all that is commonly understood to comprise
happiness" (Bhattacharya). He was depicted as showing disdain for conventional
standards as being mere societal prejudices (OKeefe 2001).
He argued that the difference between good and bad came down to the question of
pleasure. The good is pleasurable; the bad is painful. Therefore, the good life is one
which produces pleasure and personal satisfaction to a person and avoids pain
(Wellborn 1999). Xenophon reported that Aristippus advocated immediate gratification
and not worrying about future pleasure (OKeefe 2001). He argued that the only thing
people have control over is what is in the present, which is why pleasure should be the
goal. One should not worry about the implications that pleasure could have for your
future, or be absorbed by lessons of the past (Margolin 2001; Guthrie 1969). In fact,
Aristippus argued against seeking happiness, which he defined as a collection of past
and future pleasures, as only particular and immediate pleasure should be sought (Irwin
1991). The good life may have been the end result of a lifetime of happiness through all
of the particular pleasures, but it should not, in and of itself, be the goal.
Aristippus largely agreed with Socrates lack of support for religion and science.
Springing from the conception of good and bad, Aristippus went as far as to argue for
the non-existence of objects that were not based on such a dichotomy, such as math
(Guthrie 1969). In fact, he argued that math, among other elements of the physical
world, should not be studied, but only practical principles of conduct should be (Guthrie
1969). Scientific truths can not be classified as good or bad, but only as observations
of truth. In contrast, conduct can be good or bad and/or have good or bad
motivations. Like Socrates, Aristippus rejected institutionalized religion. He called it
ridiculous to pray and make requests to the divinity: doctors, he said, do not give food or
drink to a sick man when he asks for it, but when it is good for him (Guthrie 1969).
Aristippus philosophy of hedonism is often viewed as self-absorbed and lacking any

sense of community responsibility, but Aristippus conception of hedonism actually
required good judgment and self-control (Wellborn 1999, Lester 1999, Margolin 2001).
He believed that as long as you are clear-headed and single-minded in your pursuit of
pleasure, it is not as though pursuing pleasure in this way is making you do anything
unwillingly, or making you lose your self-control and that, "what is best is not abstaining
from pleasures, but instead controlling them without being controlled." (OKeefe). His
famous phrase is considered to be, I possess, I am not possessed. To be controlled by
ones emotions and desires threatens self-absorption to the point of detriment to the
community, but self-control and good judgment enable pleasure without such threat.
Like Socrates, Aristippus took great interest in teaching the ethical dimensions with his
philosophy of hedonism. He believed in practical ethics, not religious or community
obligations based on morality. He did warn his students not to inflict any pain or
suffering (Margolin 2001). However, research on his support for self-control often turns
out to be contradictory. For instance, he is said to have asserted that ones property
could never be too large for comfort, and on the other to have advised his friends to
limit their possessions to what they could save, with their own lives, from a shipwreck
(Guthrie 1969). Perhaps the contradictory nature of the research on Aristippus is due to
the absence of any primary sources.
VIEWS ON FREEDOM
Aristippus disagreed with Socrates and Platos reliance on governmental control and the
belief that there consists two types of people, those who are fit to govern others and
those who should be subject to their rule. Instead he argued that neither rule nor
slavery appealed to him, but in his opinion there was a third, middle way: the road to
happiness lay through freedom, which was certainly not the lot of a ruler or commander,
with all the risks and hard work that it entailed (Guthrie 1969). Thus, he rejected a
society based on hierarchy and authority, and hoped for freedom instead.
In fact, he argued that his willingness and flexibility to do anything whatsoever for the
sake of pleasure made him free. He was master of himself (OKeefe 2001) and refused
to be incumbent to the control of any particular state or sociopolitical bonds and duties
(Guthrie 1969; Merlan 1972). He had a sort of detached attitude towards pleasure, which
ensured that he would always retain mastery over the pleasure and would never allow it
to enslave him. He takes what he, as he knows, could with equal ease leave (Merlan
1972).
Aristippus' promotion of freedom and his rejection of governmental institutions and

control would seem almost anarchistic, if it were not for his egoistic hedonism. It could
be argued that such an attitude is at the base of some individualist anarchist
philosophers, even though their ideas are highly ridiculed and despised in the rest of the
anarchist community.
Although Aristippus thought highly enough of his daughter Arete to teach her (which is
largely unheard of during that era), it seemed unlikely that his support for freedom was
intended to include women, based on the underlying sexist assumptions of his rhetoric.
For instance, when Aristippus was criticized for sleeping with a courtesan, he asked
whether there was any difference between taking a house in which many people have
lived in before or none, or between sailing on a ship in which many people have sailed
and none. When it was answered that there is no important difference, he replied that it
likewise makes no difference whether the woman you sleep with has been with many
people or none. (OKeefe 2001) Although this exchange shows Aristippus support for
womens sexual freedom, it retains objectification of women through the comparative
object being based on mans property.
THE ROOTS AND HERITAGE OF THE CYRENAIC SCHOOL
Aristippus, along with his disciples, started the Cyrenaic School. The Cyrenaics started
their philosophical inquiry by agreeing with Protagoras that all knowledge is relative.
That is true, they said, which seems to be true; of things in themselves we can know
nothing. From this they were led to maintain that we can know only our feelings, or the
impression which things produce upon us. (McNeil 1995) Knowledge, according to the
Cyrenaics, is rooted in the fleeting sensations of the moment, and it is therefore futile to
attempt the formulation of a system of moral values in which the desirability of present
pleasures is weighed against the pain they may cause in the future (Margolin 2001).
Transferring this theory of knowledge to the discussion of the problem of conduct, and
assuming, as has been said, the Socratic doctrine that the chief aim of conduct is
happiness, they concluded that happiness is to be attained by the production of
pleasurable feelings and the avoidance of painful ones. Pleasure, therefore, is the chief
aim in life. The good man is he who obtains or strives to obtain the maximum of
pleasure and the minimum of pain. Virtue is not good in itself; it is good only as a means
to obtain pleasure. (McNeil 1995)
In rejection of the philosophies of the Cyrenaic School, Epicurus emphasized the

superiority of social and intellectual pleasures over those of the senses. In contrast,
Aristippus promoted immediate pleasure and taught that pain should always be avoided.
Epicurus taught that pain is sometimes necessary for good health and that self-restraint
and rational control of ones desires is the way for long-term pleasure (Bhattacharya;
Gosling 1969; Margolin 2001). He further classified sensual pleasure as pleasure in
motion; the state of ataraxia, which is pleasing in itself. He discarded transitory
stimulation in favor of enduring satiation. (Bhattacharya) The term epicure,
originated from Epicurus beliefs and is defined as a person of refined taste. For
Epicurus, a good person was someone who lived for pleasure but was smart enough to
know which pleasures were most desirable (Wellborn 1999).
Both the Epicureans and the Cyrenaic School were based in ethical, not psychological,
hedonism. Psychological hedonism views humans as psychologically constructed to
exclusively desire pleasure; whereas, ethical hedonists argue that humans have a
fundamental moral obligation to maximize happiness or pleasure (Margolin 2001; Irwin
1991).
Many philosophers drew from the Cyrenaic School and the Epicureans promotion of
pleasure as the base human goal. Herbert Spencer argued that pleasure, in its ultimate
sense, defines ethics since that which pleases us and gives us joy, is also beneficial for
our survival and evolution (Bhattacharya). However, he added to this theory the
dimension that humans should seek to avoid pain.
Jeremy Bentham sought to classify all pleasures and with his student, John Stuart Mill,
refined it into the social philosophy of utilitarianism, that the greatest good for the
greatest number was the ultimate aim of all good social policy. For Bentham and Mill,
good meant pleasure, which was defined as what was most useful in providing the most
pleasure for the most people (Wellborn 1999). These philosophers were aware of the
burden of having desires and attachment to their possessions as fulfilling these desires
(Margolin, 2001), but took a universalistic, social approach to hedonism, instead of the
egoistic approach of their forbearers (Gosling 1969).
Ayn Rand also promoted pleasure and wrote in Atlas Shrugged, "by the grace of reality
and the nature of life, man-every man-is an end in himself; he exists for his own sake,
and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose." However,
Rand rejected the sensual pleasure promotion of the Cyrenaic School and the Epicureans
and only took into account the morality of joy (Bhattacharya). In The Virtue of
Selfishness, she wrote, Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy-a joy without
penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for
your own destruction." For Rand, the defense of pleasure was not just an ethical choice,
but also a reaction working against the anti-egoistic pleasure stance of religious
authorities and moral philosophies such as utilitarianism (Bhattacharya). Rand stated in
Atlas Shrugged, "For centuries the battle of morality was fought between those who
claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your
neighbors; between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of
ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of
incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that
the good is to live it." (Bhattacharya)
CRITICS OF HEDONISM
The major answer to hedonism is that it will result in self-gratification and greed
(Margolin 2001; Wellborn 1999). Inevitably, Aristippus support for self-control will not
be followed by most that seek pleasure based on his source of morality. The idea that
seeking pleasure is a moral good makes the likelihood for greed even higher, since it
legitimizes negative thoughts and actions in promotion of the end goal of pleasure. The
result of greed is a breakdown in community and the rule of law (arguable as good or
bad).
Second, many argue that the promotion of pure pleasure is unrealistic (Margoline 2001;
Wellborn 1999). Inevitably, increasing one persons or groups pleasure will decrease
another persons or groups pleasure. For instance, increasing the wealth of one person
has the alternate effect of decreasing the wealth of another. There can only be a
classification of wealthy if there is an alternate classification of poor. Likewise, a
developer may find pleasure in chopping down old growth forests to erect parking lots,
but this destroys the pleasure of the forests, the animals in the forests, and the culture
of the people who rely on the forests.
Additionally, it is not possible to know what pleasure feels like without feeling pain. If
everyone were wealthy, than the capitalist goal of accumulation would no longer be
exciting, since everyone would have all of the toys and play they already wanted.
Likewise, always experiencing pleasure may decrease the motivation of people to
achieve, thereby threatening to destabilize capitalism (again this is arguable as good or
bad).
Likewise, promotion of pleasure for an individual or group is likely to have the effect of
hurting the rights of another individual or group. If the KKK seeks pleasure in their racist
attitudes and actions, it would have the result of hurting the right to life as well as the
right to happiness of people of color. Likewise, pleasure for a photographer may be
filming her/his neighbor, but this could infringe on that persons privacy. Unfortunately,
Aristippus does not define or classify hedonism. He argues that self-control is important
and so is not causing harm to ones community; but does not define or classify what
would be outside of the boundary of self-control.
Some anarchist literature could be useful in its coordination with hedonist arguments
against state control and authority, since both philosophies seek freedom as the final
goal. However, it is unlikely that Aristippus would consider himself an anarchist, as he
does not identify with mutual aid or community self-sufficiency. Likewise, most
anarchists are unlikely to agree in total with Aristippus or the Cyrenaics school of
hedonist thought, as it is based largely in individualism. Promotion of pleasure inevitably
results in greed because of capitalist socialization. Additionally, some may argue that
hedonism justifies obedience to law to avoid punishment, which would hurt pleasureseeking (Malaspina 1908).
Anarchists are likely to argue that Aristipus and hedonism are more closely aligned to
libertarianism, since libertarians seek diminished government control and regulation, but
increased support for corporations and capital accumulation. Even though Aristippus
argues for self-control and not harming the community, he also does not argue in
support of community responsibility or taking an active stance in promoting freedom.
Instead, he believes that in seeking pleasure, one should not harm others, but does not
argue that a person should take an active stance in trying to help others or in trying to
create a society that is better.
Finally, some argue that hedonism has no moral or ethical basis at all, because it is not
based in responsibility or duty (Malaspina 1908; Wellborn 1999). It rests on a false
psychological analysis; tendency, appetite, end, and good are fixed in nature antecedent
to pleasurable feeling. Pleasure depends on the obtaining of some good which is prior to,
and causative of, the pleasure resulting from its acquisition. The happiness or pleasure
attending good conduct is a consequence, not a constituent, of the moral quality of the
action. (5) No general code of morality could be established on the basis of pleasure.
Pleasure is essentially subjective feeling, and only the individual is the competent judge
of how much pleasure or pain a course of action affords him. What is more pleasurable
for one may be less so for another. Hence, on hedonistic grounds, it is evident that there
could be no permanently and universally valid dividing line between right and wrong.
(6) Hedonism has no ground for moral obligation, no sanction for duty. If I must pursue
my own happiness, and if conduct which leads to happiness is good, the worst reproach
that can be addressed to me, however base my conduct may be, is that I have made an
imprudent choice. (Fox 1910)
IMPLICATIONS FOR DEBATE
Supporting hedonism is a difficult task to take on, because it comes with a good deal of
ideological baggage. As is discussed in the Critics of Hedonism section, hedonism has
a lot of negative moral baggage attached to it, since it is an individualist philosophy.
The fact that hedonism answers back many common debate moral philosophies like
utilitarianism, deontology, and others, makes it useful; but also shows that there is a lot
of disagreement with it. This is a difficult topic to find support for and is a topic in which
finding answers to it is relatively easy. What follows are ideas on how you could use the
philosophies of Aristippus, but be wary, because they will not be easy to support in a
debate round.
First, the categorical imperative, utilitarianism, and hedonism philosophies are usually
used as moral justifications. However, the categorical imperative and the utilitarianism
approaches are most often at odds with the hedonistic, self-centered philosophies.
(Lester 1999). John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham broke away from the Cyrenaic
Schools egoistic hedonism, forming the philosophy of utilitarianism, a universalistic
hedonism, thus making Aristippus philosophy of hedonism a sound response to theirs.
Whereas utilitarianism argues for the greatest good for the greatest number;
Aristippus hedonism argues for the greatest good for the individual where good is
defined as pleasure. Whereas utilitarianism looks to consequences, Aristippus
hedonism (like deontology) looks only to the present.
Second, just as Aristippus answers moralistic philosophies, his philosophy also answers
religious and spiritual justifications. As mentioned earlier, he followed Socrates in not
supporting institutionalized religion, but beyond that, spiritual and religious philosophies
often seek repression of pleasure such as repression of sexuality and indulgence. His
philosophy of egoistic hedonism promotes immediate pleasure seeking while
maintaining ethical limits through self-control and good judgment.
Third, Aristippus could be used to argue against nationalism, the law, or state rule, as
these forms of authority and coercion inevitably impinge on an individuals freedom to
experience pleasure. If your value is pleasure and your criterion is freedom, you can
argue that a specific law, form of governance, or type of social control extends a system
of coercion and authority that threatens an individuals freedom to experience pleasure.
You would use Aristippus and the Cyrenaic Schools theories on egoistic hedonism to
argue that such an extension is immoral.
Finally, hedonism can be used to argue against Hobbes social contract. Hobbes argues
that in the state of nature, all individuals are depraved, brutish, totally self-centered,
and interested only in their own survival and pleasure (Wellborn 1999). However,
Aristippus would argue that the state of nature is good, because it lacks government
control and manipulation, which prevents pleasure seeking. The social contract limits
pleasure, which is bad since according to Aristippus, pleasure seeking should be the end
goal of all actions and therefore it is a moral right.
Of course, you may be wondering how you are going to define pleasure, i.e. what counts
as good and what counts as bad for the contentions supporting your value of hedonism.
Likewise, you may be wondering how you would calculate pleasure for your criterion.
You could look to Bentham (1748-1832), one of the followers of Aristippus, who decided
to make hedonism measurable. Benthams Hedonic Calculus argues that there are four
measures of the intrinsic value of an individual experience: First, intensity signifies the
degree of pleasure or pain. Second, duration denotes how long the feelings last. Next,
certainty measures the likelihood to receive the feelings. Finally, propinquity is a
measure of the effort to achieve that feeling-state of pleasure. He argues that there are
two measures of the instrumental value of an individual experience: Fecundity measures
the probability of the pleasurable experience being followed by additional sensations of
the same kind; whereas, purity measures the probability of it not being followed by
sensations of the opposite kind. Finally, Bentham argues that there is one measure of
the social dimension of experience, which is extent, to determine the number of people
affected by the pleasure. (Graber)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bhattacharya, Anupama. THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE.
http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/happiness/pleasure.asp.
ETHICS: THE NATURE OF THE GOOD.

<http://www.slider.com/enc/18000/ethics_The_Nature_of_the_Good.htm>.
Accessed 4/30/03
Fox, James J. Hedonism. THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, Vol VII. 1910.

<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07187a.htm>. Accessed 4/30/03.
Gosling, J.C. PLEASURE AND DESIRE (Oxford University Press, 1969).
Graber, Glenn. The Difference Between Right and Wrong. UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE.
<http://itc.utk.edu/graber/hedonism.html>. Accessed 4/30/03.
Guthrie, William and Keith Chambers. A HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY, Vol 111: THE
FIFTH CENTURY ENLIGHTENMENT. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.1969).
Irwin, T.H. Aristippus Against Happiness. MONIST. 55-82. (Jan 1991).
Lackey-Douglas. Time and Value from Aristippus to Plotinus. JOURNAL OF NEOPLATONIC

STUDIES. 1(1):91-110. (Fall 1992).
Lester, Paul Martin. Chapter Three: Finding a Philosophical Perspective.

PHOTOJOURNALISM: AN ETHICAL APPROACH (NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999).
Margolin, Jennifer. HEDONISM AT ITS BEST AND WORST.

<http://hyper.vcsun.org/HyperNews/battias/get/cs327/thought/11.html?nogifs> (7 May
2001). Accessed 4/30/03
McNeil, Russell. MALASPINA GREAT BOOKS.

<http://www.malaspina.com/site/person_128.asp>. (1995). Accessed 4/30/03.
Merlan, Philip. Minor Socratics. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 10:143-152.

(April 1972).
OConnor, David K. THE EROTIC SELF-SUFFICIENCY OF SOCRATES IN THE SOCRATIC

MOVEMENT. Vander Waedt, Paul A (ed.). (Cornell University Press: Ithaca. 1994).
OKeefe, Tim. THE INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY.

<http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aristip.htm>. (2001). Accessed 4/30/03.
Tarrant, Harold. THE HIPPIAS MAJOR AND SOCRATIC THEORIES OF PLEASURE IN THE
SOCRATIC MOVEMENT. Vander Waedt, Paul A. (ed). (Cornell University Press: Ithaca.
1994).
Webber, Jenny. The Ethics/Skills Interface in Image Manipulation. Presented at the OzCHI
CONFERENCE ON INTERFACES FOR THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY.
<http://www.csu.edu.au/OZCHI99/> (1999). Accessed 4/30/03.
Wellborn, Charles. If It Feels Good, Do It. CHRISTIAN ETHICS TODAY: JOURNAL OF

CHRISTIAN ETHICS. Issue 25, Vol 5, No. 6, (December 1999).
Wolfgang-Rainer, Mann. The Life of Aristippus. ARCHIV-FUR-GESCHIETE-DERPHILOSOPHIE. 78(2):97-119. (1996).
PLEASURE IS THE HIGHEST VALUE

1. ANTI-PLEASURE CONDITIONING UNDESERVINGLY MAKES HEDONISM A SOCIAL TABOO
Anupama Bhattacharya., Editor of Life Positive Plus, LIFE POSITIVE., October 2001, The
Pleasure Principle,. <http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/happiness/pleasure.asp>,
accessed April 30, 2003. p.-np.
"A lot of anti-pleasure conditioning goes into our upbringing," says Sood. "As children,
we are told not to feel proud of our achievements. As teenagers, our tentative forays
into discovering our sexuality are repressed, when we earn money, we are told it is the
root of all evil. Name anything you enjoy-sex, food, luxury, achievement, ambition,
appreciation-it is all branded with the devil's name!" No wonder, feelings of pleasure
almost always bring up feelings of guilt and shame. And the greater your sacrifice, or
self-torture, the higher your stature on the scales of morality. Isn't it time we step back
and ask 'why'? SELF-DENIAL We usually think of charity, compassion, humility, wisdom,
mercy, sacrifice and other 'virtues' as morally good and pleasure as, at best, morally
neutral. In fact, all the virtues are a classic case of self-denial. Why else should
asceticism be considered the height of virtue? Why should human beings be born with
the capability of enjoyment, if the goal is to deny them?
2. HEDONISM IS AT THE BASIS OF BEING HUMAN, IT MAKES LIFE WORTHWHILE

Anupama Bhattacharya, Editor of Life Positive Plus, LIFE POSITIVE., October 2001, The
Pleasure Principle,. <http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/happiness/pleasure.asp>,
accessed April 30, 2003. p- np.
"Organized religions might have their own code of conduct," says Atmara Yogini, a USbased personal growth trainer, "but spirituality does not preach asceticism. What's the
point of being human if you cannot take pleasure in the beauty around you?" And how
worthwhile would life be if shafts of light breaking through the clouds, a flower
blossoming in the wilderness, raindrops caressing your limbs, don't fill you with joy? And
why should one be born with a body if one doesn't take pleasure in it? Or have the
capacity to feel joy, yet deny it? Pleasure is as much a part of the human experience as
life itself.
3. IGNATIEFF BELIEVES RADICAL SELFISHNESS TO BE AN EXPRESSION OF MORAL VIRTUE

Charles Wellborn, Professor of Religion Emeritus at Florida State University, CHRISTIAN
ETHICS TODAY, December 1999, If It Feels Good, Do It. Issue 25, Vol 5, No. 6. p-np.
Strangely enough, this kind of "feel-good" approach to matters of sexual and economic
ethics does not lack its academic defenders. In a lecture last year at the University of
Toronto the respected cultural commentator, Michael Ignatieff, argued that radical
selfishness was an expression of moral virtue. Human beings, he said, have a prime duty
to themselves and a prime right to individual freedom and happiness (pleasure).
Ignatieff did not hesitate to face the consequences of his belief. We must, he said,
accord respect to an individual's needs "against the devouring claims of family life."
4. HEDONISTS ARGUE THAT TRUTH CANT BE KNOWN AND THEREFORE THE BEST
SENSORY EXPERIENCES SHOULD GOVERN LIFE
Jennifer Margolin. CSU Northridge. HEDONISM AT ITS BEST AND WORST. May 7, 2001.
<http://hyper.vcsun.org/HyperNews/battias/get/cs327/thought/11.html?nogifs>,
accessed April 30, 2003. p-np.
Concerning the nature of pleasure, Epicurus explains that at least some pleasures are
rooted in natural and, as a rule, every pain is bad and should be avoided, and every
pleasure is good and should be preferred. Hedonists held that we can never know truth,
the only thing we know is what we can sense, such as hearing, smelling, tasting and
touching. Therefore, we should seek out the best sensory experiences. However, without
knowledge of what exactly is the best, you have to basically try everything in order to
know what brings you the most pleasure. There is that old adage, One mans trash is
another mans treasure. What is an ideal perfection of happiness to one, is completely
opposite for another. Basically, meaning to each is own and thine own self be true.
Pleasures of the mind and pleasures of the body have such different meanings and
rationales for people. The whole of modern life is governed by pleasure and pain since
the enjoyment of the senses always seem to dominate.
HEDONISM IS NOT AN ETHICAL SYSTEM

1. CYRENAIC PHILOSOPHY OF HEDONISM ISNT AN ETHICAL SYSTEM, SINCE ITS NOT
BASED IN OBLIGATION.
Malaspina Great Books (<http://www.malaspina.com/site/person_128.asp>) [Adapted
from William Turner, Catholic Encyclopedia
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04591a.htm> (1908)] Accessed June 1, 2003. p-np.
There was no consistency in the Cyrenaic theory of conduct; probably none was looked
for. Indeed, in spite of the example of the founders of the school, the later Cyrenaics fell
far below the level of what was expected from philosophers, even in Greece, and their
doctrine came to be merely a set of maxims to justify the careless manner of living of
men whose chief aim in life was a pleasant time. But, taken at its best, the Cyrenaic
philosophy can hardly justify its claim to be considered an ethical System at all. For good
and evil it substituted the pleasant and the painful, without reference, direct or indirect,
to obligation or duty. In some points of doctrine the school descends to the
commonplace, as when it justifies obedience to law by remarking that the observance of
the law of the land leads to the avoidance of punishment, and that one should act
honestly because one thereby increases the sum of pleasure.
2. HEDONISM HAS NO MORAL BASIS AND DESTROYS COMMUNITY
ETHICS TODAY, December 1999. If It Feels Good, Do It. Issue 25, Vol 5, No. 6. p-np.
The crucial fact about the "feel-good" philosophy is that it ignores any sense of an overarching moral imperative which places limits upon the exercise of personal freedom in
the name of community responsibility. Individual freedom is a precious moral right, but
freedom without responsibility has no moral basis. To act with no understanding that
one's actions inevitably impinge, at some point, upon the freedom of others is the road
to moral anarchy. And with moral anarchy there is no community.
3. HEDONISM AS A MORAL IMPERATIVE THREATENS TYRANNY OF THE WORST ORDER,

SUCH AS NAZISM
The shape of that order will depend totally on the will of the rulers in power, and, since
those rulers are themselves, like their subjects, corrupted human beings, that order may
well be tyranny of the worst order. Hobbes hoped for beneficent rulers, but the history of
the 20th century has taught us that, in the name of order, dictatorial rulers like Hitler
and Stalin may seek to impose the most diabolical kind of structure upon their people,
all in the name of "the greatest good for the greatest number. To move from the "feel
good" idea to the extremes of Nazism and Communism may seem like a huge jump, but
the logic is inexorable.
4. EVEN WITHIN DEMOCRACY, HEDONISM RESULTS IN INJUSTICE AND OPPRESSION

Even in a democratic society like our own, still guided to some extent by a sense of
moral imperative, the dangers are fully apparent. True, those less powerful elements in
our society, whether they be economic, ethnic, or social, rightly feel that they have no
alternative except to organize themselves into power blocs of their own, more nearly
equipped to oppose discrimination and oppression. Yet, if these new power groups are
concerned only with their own welfare--their own "pleasure," with no real regard for the
rights of others, the result can only be a continuation of injustice. The political, social,
economic, or racial structure may be turned upside down, but one oppressive group will
only have been substituted for another.
5. THE HEDONIST ETHIC IS INEVITABLY SELF-DEFEATING

The "feel-good" ethic is finally and inevitably self-defeating. The individual who lives only
for his own pleasure will eventually face the situation in which his "pleasure" is opposed
by another individual or group with more power, and the individual's pleasure will be
replaced with misery. When power becomes the only ingredient in the social process, the
weak must inevitably suffer.
HEDONISM RESULTS IN GREED

1. SHOULD SUPPORT UTILITARIANISM OVER HEDONISM, WHICH RESULTS IN
CONSUMERISM AND COMPETITION
Jennifer Margolin, CSU Northdridge. HEDONISM AT ITS BEST AND WORST. May 7, 2001
<http://hyper.vcsun.org/HyperNews/battias/get/cs327/thought/11.html?nogifs>. p-np.
People are so completely spoiled by the availability of having anything and everything in
their hands at any given moment, that we have lost touch with the simple things that
life has to offer. It seems that there will always be a constant pursuit of endless
gratification. We live in an industrialized nation where the ideological norm is how to get
to the top, or how to step on others to get to the top. Granted, this is not a way of life for
everyone, however, this is what we are being taught. You must pay your dues by
working hard in order to achieve any kind of happiness and financial security. People are
more focused on being consumers, rather than focusing on their inner self without any
of the material possessions that they think makes themselves better or more well
adjusted individuals. There needs to be a modification of the idea that people cannot be
happy without artificial luxuries, and more of a focus on individuals doing good deeds for
others as well as themselves. This not only benefits that particular individual, it also
benefits that charity in which they are helping. In any case, when you give as well as
receive, this is an absolute great way to derive pleasure and happiness by making it a
completely selfless act.
2. FRAMEWORK FOR HEDONIST ETHICS UNCLEAR AND RESULTS IN OVERINDULGENCE

AND MENTAL AND PHYSICAL PAIN
Jennifer Margolin, CSU Northdridge. HEDONISM AT ITS BEST AND WORST. May 7, 2001
<http://hyper.vcsun.org/HyperNews/battias/get/cs327/thought/11.html?nogifs>. p-np.
Another problem with a hedonist lifestyle is the issue of overindulgence. With the
ultimate goals being pleasure and happiness, how does one determine what is moral
and what is simply wrong? Who and what draw the line? If something gives you
pleasure, why wouldnt you pre-occupy yourself with it and exclude everything else that
didnt bring you joy? There is an insatiable amount of certain desires and self-interest,
once one is shown these types of pleasures. We are a world enslaved by trying to fulfill
and pursue our desires, whether they are physical or mental. Human happiness
consists in genuine freedom, liberation from pleasures and all pleasure seeking and
attachments, which is ultimately to live in accordance with nature by shedding the
artificial creations of human beings which are the cause of further desires and
attachments. The selfish pursuits of ones constant hunger are causes for our mental
and physical pain by not being able to fulfill every wish and desire.
3. HEDONISM PROMOTES CONSUMERISM

We must not deceive ourselves, however, into thinking that sex is the only moral
problem area in our modern society. We live in an entrepreneurial age, and the selfmade man, economically speaking, is our hero. To be rich--to "make it" economically-has been established as the ultimate hallmark of success. Our consumer-oriented
society encourages us to value economic achievement--sometimes however brought
about--as the most admirable of all goals. This means that material prosperity has been
equated with the highest pleasure, and the "if it feels good, do it" philosophy reigns
supreme.
4. HEDONIST CONSUMERISM RESULTS IN STEALING
In an age in which all of us are bombarded with television advertisements--and, indeed,
programs-which constantly tell us that happiness consists in what we can buy, is it
surprising that the underclass in our society who cannot financially afford all the luxuries
they see paraded before them on television decide to steal or loot them? If "pleasure" is
the end of all life, and if "`pleasure" means the acquisition of goods, then why not use
any means to obtain them? Why should others have them, when you do not? The
"greasy thumbprint" of human sin leaves its mark here, as everywhere.
Aristotle
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ARISTOTLE
Aristotle was born in about 384 BCE at Stageira in Thrace in Ancient Greece. He was
raised among royalty, since his father, Nciomachus, was the physician to the King of
Macedonia, Amyntas II. At about age seventeen Aristotle went to Athens, the center of
culture and philosophy in Ancient Greece. He studied at The Academy and became a
member of this school, which was founded by Plato. 1 It is fair to say, then, that as Plato
followed Socrates, Aristotle followed Plato. Plato was Aristotles mentor and good friend.
Even though Aristotle wound up disagreeing with Plato, he always showed enormous
respect for the great thinker. Eventually Aristotle would proceed to start his own school,
called the Lyceum.
The important works of Aristotle are from this period, where his thought had matured
and he struck out on his own to create a way of doing philosophy that remains the
primary alternative to the Platonic conception of philosophy. The major works of this
time are divided into five categories2: the De Interpretatione (on proposition and
judgment), the Prior Analytics (on inference), Posterior Analytics (on proof, knowledge)
all on Logic; the Metaphysics; the Physics and many other smaller works on natural
sciences, biology, psychology, physiology; the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics on moral
and political issues; The Rhetoric and the Poetics on Persuasion and Literature.
Most of the works of Aristotle are not polished dialogues or even treatises. Instead, they
are lecture notes or long developed outlines. Part of this is due to historical accident. We
know that Aristotle wrote dialogues like his master Plato and popular works of the time.
But this is also due to the way in which Aristotle did philosophy and the way in which
that tradition has been carried on by other Aristotelians.
THE MODE OF ARISTOTLES PHILOSOPHY
Plato marks the beginning of western philosophy, as we know it. This is marked by an
interest in particular questions: What is, How do we know what is, and what ought we to
then do. Platos answers to the questions are developed in dialogues, where Socrates
questions people about their beliefs and shows, through a logical dialectic, the answers
to these questions.
1 Frederick Copleston, S.J. A History of Philosophy, Volume 1, Chpt. 27.
2 Frederick Copleston, S.J. A History of Philosophy, Volume 1, Chpt. 27
Aristotle also starts from the opinions of others, but not by dialogue. Instead, he builds
from observation of others and their opinions a philosophy that is compressive and
systematic. Aristotles method worked not just for the important questions but for all of
knowledge. This explains why Aristotle and not Plato dealt with the natural sciences and
physics. Aristotles method remains, in basic outline, the scientific method of today. He
began with observation and worked his way up from those observations, by means of
inference to general principles. From those principles he deducted back to the world to
show us how not only the world behaved but also how we should behave.
ARISTOTLES INFLUENCE
Aristotle did not catch on in western philosophy like Plato did. The neo-platonists
would come to dominate philosophy until the rise of Christianity. The first major Christian
philosopher, Augustine, took that Platonic thought and combined it with Christian
theology. Augustines work would be the cornerstone of Christian philosophy until
Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Where did Aristotle go?
Although Aristotle was not embraced by the western tradition, he did not disappear.
Some libraries and some scholars keep Aristotle alive and in about the 9 th Century
Aristotles thought experienced a renascence, not in Europe but in the Islamic world.
Islamic theologians and philosophers were beginning to form their own systems and
were in search of the kind of foundation that would be useful. Since the Persian tradition
had always been more interested in the sciences Aristotle became very in for a while in
Islamic thought. Aristotle traveled from Persia with the Islamic religion across North
Africa, into Spain in about the eleventh century and from Spain some manuscripts, now
in Persian, made their way into Paris in the twelfth century. It is there that they were
discovered by Aquinas and used to form what stands as the most systematic and
compressive philosophy. Aquinas was more than a Christian Aristotle but the mode of
philosophy, the terms used and questions asked were all Aristotelian.
Thomistic thought reigned in western philosophy until Descartes in the seventeenth

century. Sure, some theologians and philosophers were critical and argued that the
secular Aristotle was corrupting Christianity. But there was a desire at the time for a
systematic philosophy that would explain the world in a clear and comprehensive
manner. The thinkers in Paris were amazed at Aristotles insights and used them to their
advantage.
With the scientific revolution and enlightenment, however, Aristotle, Aquinas, and their
ilk were dismissed as outdated, tied to religion, and out of style. Modernity began with
an explicit rejection of Aristotles influence on the Scholastics. In the twentieth century,
however, modernity has began to falter. The enlightenment project of universal reason
and skeptical doubt seems, according to many, to have petered out, as its nave
optimism runs headlong into the reality of a complicated world in which we must live.
And so there has been recently an Aristotelian revival again. Thinkers are returning to
the ancient Greeks to find resources to ask, once again, the questions of philosophy:
What is? How do we know? What are we to do? Aristotles physics and natural sciences
are outdated--but the method was right all along. In particular, ethicists are returning
the Aristotle to fashion a system of ethics that is responsive to human existence and
nuanced enough to avoid nave assumptions, or worse, cultural imperialism.
MILL AND KANT AS DEAD ENDS
Part of the project of modernity was to create a moral system that was adequate to the
assumption of universal reason. The two possibilities became utilitarianism (Mill) and
deontology (Kant). Utilitarianism argued that our ethical actions should be that which
maximizes utility--the greatest good for the greatest number, as the slogan goes. Moral
actions would be determined on a cost-benefit analysis, so that what a person should do
would be based on how much good would be created for how many people.
The obvious flaw of utilitarianism--obvious to use now but incompressible to a true

believer in the power of the scientific revolution--is that we can never really know what
the consequences of our actions will be. And it seems to us that the moral good of an
action must be assessed not after the consequences have occurred but before we take
any action at all.
Deontology is a system of moral based on the universal reason of humankind. Kant say
that every person was a rational moral actor and that therefore a person should make
moral decisions on this basis. From this followed Kants categorical imperative: always
act as if the maxim by which you act was a universal law. Therefore (as the famous
example goes) do not lie because that would mean everyone could lie and human
community would become impossible.
And yet, critics argue that different situations call for different actions. Circumstances
seem to alter what we ought to do in a given situation. If a lie prevents the destruction
of hundreds of people, and we know when we tell that lie it will do so, that lie seems
ethical. And so, back and forth, Kantians and Utilitarians have argued for the last two
centuries, coming to impasse after impasse, unable to fashion a moral philosophy that is
both workable and coherent.
Two dominant alternatives have emerged: one is a post-modern orientation,

characterized either by nihilism or pragmatism. In this perspective, we cannot know and
either throw up our hands or just act anyway. The other alternative is neoAristotelianism.
ARISTOTLES ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY
Aristotle starts his analysis of any subject with the teleological question: that is, what is
the end or purpose of this? He sees that everyone seems to aim at some good; whence
the good has rightly been defined as that at which all things aim. 3 Each person, of
course has different ends: the physician intends to heal the sick, the warrior to win the
battle, etc. But if there is an end which we desire for its own sake and for the sake of
which we desire all other subordinate ends or goods, then this ultimate good will be the
best good, in fact, the good. Aristotle sets himself to discover what this good is and what
the science corresponding to it is.4 Since the good is the good as such, it would not only
be the true end of individual action but also of the state. Aristotles political philosophy is
based in his ethics for individual.
So what is the end for man? Aristotle says that it is happiness or fulfillment. Through a
long train of argument, he shows that this happiness must be not, as we commonly think
of it, a state but rather an activity. This makes sense: we are happy when we are doing
things: talking with friends, being entertained, thinking about something interesting,
doing something exciting. So what sort of activities are happy activities? Aristotles
answer is that happiness consists in activities in accord with the moral and intellectual
virtues. When our activities are virtuous, then we will be happy.
ARISTOTLES CONCEPTION OF VIRTUE
Aristotles conception of virtue is what followers have called the doctrine of the mean.
That is, the virtue is the mean--the middle--between two vices. Courage, for example, is
the mean between foolishness (the excess) and cowardliness (the deficiency). Each
virtue is, in some way, the mean between two extremes, one of excess and one of
deficiency. Virtue, then, is a disposition, a disposition to choose according to a rule,
namely, the rule by which a truly virtuous man possessed of moral insight would
choose.5 What this means is that the capacity of judgment--prudence as Aristotle calls
it, is the virtue par excellence, the ability to determine what is the mean and what is not.

Aristotles claim is not that the mean is universal and valid for everyone. Instead, it is
that we determine the relative to us and to our circumstances. Moral judgments are
always made based on the circumstances that present themselves to the moral actor. In
this way, Aristotle avoids the legalistic ethics of a Kantian system but also accounts for
more than the consequences of an action. It is proper in Aristotles system to pay
attention to the consequences, but this does not dominate the decision making process.
In fact, what marks Aristotles system is that the truly virtuous person becomes so
accustomed to acting virtuously that she does not stress or even deliberate about
what is moral in a situation. Acting according to virtue becomes habit.
ARISTOTLES CONCEPTION OF VICE
For Aristotle, virtue and vice are not exclusive categories into which all individuals must
fall. There are further extremes (divinity or heroism and bestiality) and intermediate
levels as well. These are primarily continence and incontinence and resistance and
softness. Incontinence and intemperance are primarily understood in terms of their
relation to decision and reason. Both the incontinent and the intemperate person posses
decision (although not correct decision).
The incontinent person knows what the right thing to do is, but is unable to do such
things because they are overcome by either their emotions or their appetites. These two
(emotions and appetites) are distinct forms of incontinence. Aristotle writes that "if
someone is incontinent about emotion, he is overcome by reason in a way; but if he is
incontinent about appetite, he is overcome by appetite, not by reason" (1149b 3). The
warrant for this claim is that to be overcome by emotions is to hear the commands of
reason but to follow them to excess while to be overcome by appetite is simply to ignore
(or worse, manipulate) reason to serve the ends of pleasure. It is for this reason that to
be overcome by appetites is worse than to be overcome by emotions, for it is appetites
which are most in conflict with reason.
This conflict between reason and desire is the distinctive feature of not on incontinence,
but even of continence. For the continent person still possess a difference between
desire and reason, but is able to overcome such desire and to follow the dictates of
reason.
Temperance and intemperance, in contrast, illustrates no such difference between desire

and reason. For the temperate person wants what is right and to the correct degree.
Temperance, like all the moral virtues, expresses the mean between two extremes. What
signifies a person as temperate, intemperate, or deficient is decision about the pursuit of
pleasure.
Aristotle writes, "One person pursues excesses of pleasant things because they are
excesses and because he decides on it, for themselves and not for some further result.
He is intemperate; for he is bound to have no regrets, and so is incurable, since
someone without regrets is incurable." 6. Thus, just as there is no conflict in the mind of
the temperate person, the intemperate also has no conflict. He has decided upon
choosing pleasure, his reason has not been overcome by appetite or emotion.
It is for this difference that Aristotle argues that intemperance is worse than
incontinence. Aristotle writes, "Moreover, the incontinent person is the sort to pursue
excessive bodily pleasures that conflict with correct reason, but not because he is
persuaded [it is best]. The intemperate person, however, is persuaded, because he is
the sort of person to pursue them. Hence the incontinent person is easily persuaded out
of it, while the intemperate person is not." 7 With the intemperate person, all someone
caring for their character must do is convince then to follow their reason. With the
intemperate person, however, one must also convince them that their reason has erred
in reaching a conclusion.
ARISTOTLES CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE
Justice is one of the main virtues in Aristotles thinking. By justice, Aristotle means both
obeying the law and what is fair and equal. Justice is a mean in the sense that it
produces a state of affairs that stand midway between that in which A has too much and
in which B has too much.8 Aristotle, as we should expect, distinguishes between unjust
actions where the damage to another is forseen and when it is not.
Another way of thinking about justice is that justice is a mean between being too strict
and showing too much mercy. To act according to justice is to ensure that a person gets
their due without costing another their own due.
ARISTOTLE AND POLITICS
Aristotle is clear from the beginning that human beings exist in society. People are not
self-sufficient in themselves and need society to find happiness and exercise virtue. He
who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself,
6 Nicomachean Ethics, 1150a 20.
7 Nicomachean Ethics, 1151a 12.
must be either a beast or a god.9 Society serves the function to make virtuous action
more possible and more likely. Without society, basic needs would dominate our
existence and virtue would be difficult if not impossible. Society is organized by the
State, which for Aristotle meant the city-state.
Copleston, the authority on the Thomistic and Aristotelian thread in philosophy,

summarizes Aristotles conception of the state as follows:
The only real guarantee of the stability and prosperity of the State is the moral goodness
and integrity of the citizens, while conversely, unless the State is good and the system
of its education is rational, moral, and healthy, the citizens will not become good. The
individual attains his proper development and perfection though his concrete life, which
is a life in Society, i.e. in the State, while Society attains its proper end through the
perfection of its members. That Aristotle did not consider the State to be a great
Leviathan beyond good and evil is clear from the criticism he passes on
Lacedaemonians. It is a great mistake, he says, to suppose that war and domination are
the be-all and end-all of the State. The State exists for the good life, and it is subject to
the same code of morality as the individual. As he puts it, the same things are best for
individuals and states.10
ARISTOTLE, SLAVERY, AND SEXISM
Aristotle, without question, espoused the usefulness of slavery. He argued that some
people were born to different stations and that slavery was one way that the state could
ensure the well-being of most of its members. And Aristotle also saw the place of women
as providing for the essential needs of the family and as being subservient to the men
who ruled the household.
The question is whether or not these conceptions were vitally important to Aristotles
ethics or whether or not they can be removed and Aristotles ethics can be applied
without these difficulties. Aristotelians argue that the system is not dependent on this
hierarchy and that, in fact, Aristotles virtue of justice is a warrant for abandoning these
hierarchies.
Critics argue, on the other hand, that Aristotles ideas of virtue as self-sufficient activity
means that virtue is excluded for people who must attend, on a regular basis, to daily
necessities. Virtue becomes, on this reading, a provision of the aristocracy that Aristotle
himself was a member of rather than a way we can all make decisions.
ARISTOTLE IN DEBATE
So, how does this ethical system help us in debate? First, it functions as a real
alternative to the dead ends of Mill and Kant, giving moral thinking another possibility.
Debates that continually focus, round after round on the comparison between utility and
rights, lack freshness and insight. Incorporating Aristotle and virtue ethics into your
debates can not only catch people off guard but also provide new and better ways to
examine the standard questions of debate.
Second, Aristotelian ethics allow a balance of circumstances and principles to guide

moral decisions. Aristotle is most often called a common-sense philosopher, and this is
especially true of his ethics. This balance will allow you to support your claims based on
both principles such as justice and on consequences.
Third, Aristotle is a good counter to those that argue for different moral criteria for a
State as opposed to individuals. Values such as security would not, in Aristotles system
trump other ethical concerns but instead be simply a means to ethical society. When
deciding questions about state action, we would first look to whether or not that action
would promote the development of the virtue of the citizens.
Bibliograhy
Aristotle, THE ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE, (New York: Arno Press, 1973).
Aristotle, EUDEMIAN ETHICS, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Aristotle, METAPHYSICS, (New York: Dutton, 1956).
Aristotle, THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1936).
Aristotle, PHYSICS, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969).
Aristotle, POLITICS, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998).
Aristotle, ON RHETORIC : A THEORY OF CIVIC DISCOURSE, (New York: Oxford University

Press,
1991).
Aristotle, A TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT, (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1912).
J.O. Urmson, ARISTOTLES ETHICS, (New York: B. Blackwell, 1988).
Cooper, John Madison, REASON AND HUMAN GOOD IN ARISTOTLE, (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard
University Press, 1975).
Crisp, Roger and Michael Slote, VIRTUE ETHICS, (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997).
VIRTUE ETHICS ARE NECESSARY

1. CHARACTER TRAITS EXIST PRIOR TO OBLIGATION
Roger Crisp, Fellow at St Annes College, Oxford, and Michael Slote, Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Maryland, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 4
We saw earlier that virtue ethics differs from other forms of moral philosophy through its
insistence that aretaic notions like virtue, admirability, and excellence are more basic
than--or even replace--deontic notions like moral obligation and rightness. Clearly, what
Anscombe says about the emptiness of attributions of moral obligation favours virtue
ethics, so understood, over other approaches that have been taken in the recent history
of ethics. What also argues in favour of virtue ethics, however, is the fact that, unlike
moral philosophers 'since Sidgwick', Plato and Aristotle appear to consider certain
actions out of bounds independently of considerations of consequences. Given the
'corruption' of the opposite view, this should encourage us (once we have done our
homework in philosophical psychology) to pursue an ethics more like Plato's or
Aristotle's and in particular, then, an ethics with a distinctly virtue-ethical commitment
to making virtuous character or character traits central to ethical concern.
2. THE OUGHT NO LONGER EXISTS WITHOUT ITS TRADITION

G.E.M. Anscombe, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 31
To have a law conception of ethics is to hold that what is needed for conformity with the
virtues failure in which is the mark of being bad qua man (and not merely, say, qua
craftsman or logician)-that what is needed for this, is required by divine law. Naturally it
is not possible to have such a conception unless you believe in God as a law-giver; like
Jews, Stoics, and Christians. But if such a conception is dominant for many centuries,
and then is given up, it is a natural result that the concepts of 'obligation', of being
bound or required as by a law, should remain though they had lost their root; and if the
word 'ought' has become invested in certain contexts with the sense of 'obligation', it
too will remain to be spoken with a special emphasis and a special feeling in these
contexts. It is as if the notion 'criminal' were to remain when criminal law and criminal
courts had been abolished and forgotten. A Hume discovering this situation might
conclude that there was a special sentiment, expressed by 'criminal', which alone gave
the word its sense. So Hume discovered the situation in which the notion 'obligation'
survived, and the word 'ought' was invested with that peculiar force having which it is
said to be used in a moral' sense, but in which the belief in divine law had long since
been abandoned: for it was substantially given up among Protestants at the time of the
Reformation. The situation, if I am right, was the interesting one of the survival of a
concept outside the framework of thought that made it a really intelligible one.
3. VIRTUES WORK WITHOUT METAPHYSICAL BIOLOGY

Alasdair MacIntyre, Duke University VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 134
The time has come to ask the question of how far this partial account a core conception
of the virtues-and I need to emphasize that all have offered so far is the first stage of
such an account-is faithful to; tradition which I delineated. How far, for example, and in
what ways is it Aristotelian? It is-happily-not Aristotelian in two ways in w good deal of
the rest of the tradition also dissents from Aristotle. First, although this account of the
virtues is teleological, it does not require identification of any teleology in nature, and
hence it does not require any allegiance to Aristotle's metaphysical biology. And
secondly, just because of the multiplicity of human practices and the consequent
multiplicity of goods in the pursuit of which the virtues may be exercised-goods which
will often be contingently incompatible and which will therefore make rival claims upon
our allegiance-conflict will not spring solely from flaws in individual character. But it was
just on these two matters that Aristotles general account of the virtues seemed most
vulnerable; hence if it turns out to be the case that this socially teleological account can
support Aristotles general account of the virtues as well as does his own biologically
teleological account, these differences from Aristotle himself may well be regarded as
strengthening rather than weakening the case for a generally Aristotelian standpoint.
VIRTUE ETHICS WORK BEST

1. NEED A TELOS TO AVOID ARBITRARY DECISION
John McDowell, Professor at University of Pittsburgh, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 140
Ought we always at a certain point just to give up in the interests of the practice itself?
The medieval exponents of the virtue of patience claimed that there are certain types of
situation in which the virtue of patience requires that I do not ever give up on some
person or task, situations in which, as they would have put it, I am required to embody in
my attitude to that person or task something of the patient attitude of God towards his
creation. But this could only be so if patience served some overriding good, some telos
which warranted putting other goods in a subordinate place. Thus it turns out that the
content of the virtue of patience depends upon how we order various goods in a
hierarchy and a fortiori on whether we are able rationally so to order these particular
goods. I have suggested so far that unless there is a telos which transcends the limited
goods of practices by constituting the good of a whole human life, the good of a human
life conceived as a unity, it will both be the case that a certain subversive arbitrariness
will invade the moral life and that we shall be unable to specify the context of certain
virtues adequately. These two considerations are reinforced by a third: that there is at
least one virtue recognized by the tradition which cannot be specified at all except with
reference to the wholeness of a human life-the virtue of integrity or constancy. 'Purity of
heart', said Kierkegaard, 'is to will one thing.' This notion of singleness of purpose in a
whole life can have no application unless that of a whole life does.
2. UNCODIFIABILITY IS GOOD
It seems plausible that Plato's ethical Forms are, in part at least, a response to
uncodifiability: if one cannot formulate what someone has come to know when he
cottons onto a practice, say one of concept-application, it is natural to say that he has
seen something. Now in the passage quoted in 4, Cavell mentions two ways of avoiding
vertigo: 'the grasping of universals' as well as what we have been concerned with so far,
'the grasping of books of rules'. But though Plato's Forms are a myth, they are not a
consolation, a mere avoidance of vertigo; vision of them is portrayed as too difficult an
attainment for that to be so. The remoteness of the Form of the Good is a metaphorical
version of the thesis that value is not in the world, utterly distinct from the dreary literal
version which has obsessed recent moral philosophy. The point of the metaphor is the
colossal difficulty of attaining a capacity to cope clear-sightedly with the ethical reality
which is part of our world. Unlike other philosophical responses to uncodifiability, this
one may actually work towards moral improvement; negatively, by inducing humility,
and positively, by an inspiring effect akin to that of a religious conversion.
3. VIRTUE ETHICS EMBODIES KNOWLEDGE OF THE VIRTUOUS

A kind person can be relied on to behave kindly when that is what the situation requires.
Moreover, his reliably kind behaviour is not the outcome of a blind, non-rational habit or
instinct, like the courageous behaviour-so called only be courtesy-of a lioness defending
her cubs. Rather, that the situation requires a certain sort of behaviour is (one way of
formulating) his reason for behaving in that way, on each of the relevant occasions. So it
must be something of which, on each of the relevant occasions, he is aware. A kind
person has a reliable sensitivity to a certain sort of requirement which situations impose
on behaviour. The deliverances of a reliable sensitivity are cases of knowledge; and
there are idioms according to which the sensitivity itself can appropriately be described
as knowledge: a kind person knows what it is like to be confronted with a requirement of
kindness. The sensitivity is, we might say, a sort of perceptual capacity.
VIRTUE ETHICS ARE HARMFUL

1. VIRTUE ETHICS ARE NON-DEMOCRATIC
Roger Crisp, Fellow at St Annes College, Oxford, and Michael Slote, Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Maryland, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 24
Clearly, virtue ethics needs to expand its recent moral horizons so as to take in larger
questions of political morality. Otherwise, contemporary virtue ethics will fail to meet
Schneewind's criticism that virtue ethics, while acceptable in and for the relatively
homogeneous and peaceful societies that typified the ancient world, is unsuitable to the
more diverse and conflict-ridden conditions of modern and contemporary life, conditions
that require political thought and political principles that can help to reduce tensions and
allow us to live with one another. There is danger for virtue ethics in the attempt to meet
this challenge not merely because it may be unable to produce a political philosophy,
but because the political philosophy it manages to produce may be of the wrong kind.
The political ideals associated with virtue ethics in the ancient world were by and large
anti or non-democratic. Neither Plato nor Aristotle, for example, thought democracy an
ideal form of government, and it is difficult to see how a plausibly democratic social ideal
could be developed, say, out of Aristotle's ethical views.
2. VIRTUE ETHICS CANNOT DEAL WITH CONFLICT

Jerome B. Schneewind, Johns Hopkins University, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 199
To what extent is virtue itself involved in creating this misfortune? Here, I think, the
history I have been tracing offers us a clue. If we ask why the project of the Grotians was
to establish a law-like code of morals, the answer must be that they took the central
difficulties of life to be those arising from disagreement-disagreement involving nations,
religious sects, parties to legal disputes, and ordinary people trying to make a living in
busy commercial societies. It is not an accident that the very first word in the body of
Grotius's text is 'controversiae. I have tried to show that the natural lawyers did not
think this the only morally pertinent problem area. They saw that there is an important
part of our lives in which the problem arises not from disagreement but from the scarcity
of resources for helping others. No single person, perhaps not even any society, can help
everyone who is suffering or in need. But some can be helped even if not all can. The
theory of imperfect duties provides one way of thinking about how we are to distribute
resources in situations where only some can be helped. The serious issues involved here
seemed less urgent to the natural lawyers than the problems arising from disagreement
about strict justice, which they took to pose threats to the very existence of society.
They therefore gave first priority to what they thought might assist with those
controversies. In tackling these problems, classical virtue theory is of little or no use.
Aristotle does not tell us what a virtuous agent (phronimos) is to do to convince
someone who is not virtuous to agree with him, other than to educate him all over
again. He does not suggest criteria which anyone and everyone can use to determine
who is a virtuous agent and who is not. He does not discuss the situation in which two
virtuous agents disagree seriously with one another. And consequently he does not
notice what seems to be an implication of his view: that if two allegedly virtuous agents
strongly disagree, one of them (at least) must be morally defective.
3. THE DOCTRINE OF THE MEAN FAILS TO ACHIEVE JUSTICE

Jerome B. Schneewind, Johns Hopkins University, VIRTUE ETHICS, 1997, p. 183
His criticisms are brief. He points out the implausibility of the doctrine of the mean with
respect to virtues such as truthfulness (said to be a mean between boastfulness and
dissimulation), but his main fire is reserved for justice. Aristotle himself, says Grotius,
could not make the doctrine work when it came to this virtue. For he could not point to a
mean in any appropriate passion, or any action coming from the passions, which could
plausibly be said to constitute justice. So he resorted to making claims about the things
justice is concerned with-possessions, honours, security-because only about these would
it be reasonable to say that there could be a too much or a too little. And even here,
Grotius continues, the doctrine of the mean fails. A single example shows this. It may be
a fault not to take what is my own property-for example, if I need it in order to support
my child-but it is surely not doing an injustice to another to claim less than is mine.
Justice consists wholly in 'abstaining from that which is another's'. And Grotius adds that
'it does not matter whether injustice arises from avarice, from lust, from anger, or from
ill-advised compassion'.
VIRTUE ETHICS ARE PHILOSOPHICALLY

FLAWED
1. VIRTUE ETHICS ARE UNCLEAR
Robert B. Louden, Professor of Philosophy at University of Southern Maine, VIRTUE
ETHICS, 1997,
p. 202
But what about virtue ethics? What are the hallmarks of this approach to normative
ethics? One problem confronting anyone who sets out to analyse the new virtue ethics in
any detail is that we presently lack fully developed examples of it in the contemporary
literature. Most of the work done in this genre has a negative rather than positive
thrust-its primary aim is more to criticize the traditions and research programmes to
which it is opposed rather than to state positively and precisely what its own alternative
is. A second hindrance is that the literature often has a somewhat misty antiquarian air.
It is frequently said, for instance, that the Greeks advocated a virtue ethics, though what
precisely it is that they were advocating is not always spelled out. In describing
contemporary virtue ethics, it is therefore necessary, in my opinion, to do some
detective work concerning its conceptual shape, making inferences based on the
unfortunately small number of remarks that are available.
2. VIRTUE ETHICS ARE REDUCTIONIST

ETHICS, 1997,
p. 204
So for virtue ethics, the primary object of moral evaluation is not the act or its
consequences, but rather the agent. And the respective conceptual starting-points of
agent- and act-centred ethics result in other basic differences as well, which may be
briefly summarized as follows. First of all, the two camps are likely to employ different
models of practical reasoning. Act theorists, because they focus on discrete acts and
moral quandaries, are naturally very interested in formulating decision procedures for
making practical choices. The agent, in their conceptual scheme, needs a
guide-hopefully a determinate decision procedure-for finding a way out of the quandary.
Agent-centered ethics, on the other hand, focuses on long-term characteristic patterns
of action, intentionally down-playing atomic acts and particular choice situations in the
process. They are not as concerned with portraying practical reason as a rule-governed
enterprise which can be applied on a case-by-case basis.
3. VIRTUE ETHICS ARE EPISTEMOLOGICALLY UNSOUND

ETHICS, 1997,
p. 210
There is also an epistemological issue which becomes troublesome when one focuses on
qualities of persons rather than on qualities of acts. Baldly put, the difficulty is that we
do not seem to be able to know with any degree of certainty who really is virtuous and
who vicious. For how is one to go about establishing an agent's true moral character?
The standard strategy is what might be called the 'externalist' one: we try to infer
character by observing conduct. While not denying the existence of some connection
between character and conduct, I believe that the connection between the two is not
nearly as tight as externalists have assumed. The relationship is not a necessary one,
but merely contingent. Virtue theorists themselves are committed to this claim, though
they have not always realized it. For one central issue behind the 'Being vs. Doing'
debate is the virtue theorist's contention that the moral value of Being is not reducible
to or dependent on Doing; that the measure of an agent's character is not exhausted by
or even dependent on the values of the actions which he may perform. On this view, the
most important moral traits are what may be called 'spiritual' rather than 'actional'.
Molefi Kete Asante
Afrocentricity
Molefi K. Asante (previously Arthur L. Smith) has been called a visionary and
revolutionary in his thinking about African-American philosophy. His philosophy differs
from Cornel Wests in that it has less of a socio-political -- and more of a cultural -approach in holding onto African roots in todays culture. While Asante emphasizes the
African in African-American, West emphasizes the American.
This biography will highlight some specific elements of Afrocentricity, the necessity of an
Afrocentric perspective, according to Asante, and the five levels of awareness that the
Afrocentric person possesses. Finally, it will present two ways that blacks can gain
additional independence: the first is to change the names given to them by their
ancestors owners back to African names, and second, blacks must create their own
language, or at least not be bound to current language usage as a step in reclaiming
their cultural roots.
Asante s philosophy of Afrocentricity is complex, combining elements of philosophy,

science, history, and mythology to offer a critical social perspective for AfricanAmericans. It is clear from his writings that he borrows ideas from a diverse group of
thinkers, including Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Elijah
Muhammad, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Malcolm X. Afrocentricity is both a critique of modem
society and a prescription of how blacks should hold onto their African roots. For
example, in much of Asante s writings, he critiques the Eurocentric perspective which
is heavily influenced by white men. He maintains that it is too narrow and does not
account for the African experience.
His prescription for blacks living in the United States is even more elaborate than the
bibles ten commandments. He provides direction for male/female romantic
relationships, he explains the notion of truth grounded in African mythology and black
struggle and argues that African Americans should be focused on such truths in order to
become whole, well-functioning adults in society. But, according to Asante, Afrocentricity
is not a back to Africa movement, rather, it is an uncovering of ones true self or
center. It is an awakening into African culture for a sense of African genius and values. It
is a process of reclaiming more and more of African history and culture. Afrocentricity is
the belief in the centrality of Africans in todays culture. He sees Afrocentricity as a way
for Afro-Americans to climb out of their demise and become who they were meant to be.
In this sense, Afrocentricity improves blacks quality of life.
Within Asantes philosophy of Afrocentricity, Africa is placed at the center because, as

Asante maintains, it resembles black people, speaks to them, looks like them, and wants
for them what they want for themselves. Placing Africa at the center also prevents
African-Americans from being detached, isolated, and spiritually lonely people in a
society which is filled with anti-African rhetoric and symbols. Without an Afrocentric
perspective, an African-American person operates in a manner that is predictably self
destructive. For example, the black persons images, symbols, lifestyles, and manners
are contradictory, and therefore destructive, to personal and collective growth and
development. In Afrocentricity, Asante maintains that African Americans have the
possibility of being proud of a culture which has produced people of strength of mind,
body and character.
Asante recommends several changes for blacks who are committed to living an
Afrocentric existence. First, he recommends the changing of ones slave name to an
African one. This, he believes, will create a greater sense of unity among AfricanAmericans. Asante argues that because blacks have accepted their white names as their
own, they have lost much of their African heritage. He says that the truly Afrocentric
individual will change his or her name to demonstrate a belief in Africa. Second, he
maintains that freedom is based on seizing the instruments of control. In other words, to
be truly free, black language must begin to be liberated so that Afrocentrists can talk
and act separately from others. Asante recommends the use of African terms to describe
contemporary life as well as creating new words to describe black experiences.
Asante is criticized for being a separatist, meaning that he encourages blacks to resist
assimilation into
American culture (Menand, 1992). Speaking to black youth, he maintains that
assimilation is death
(Asante, 1989), and that identification with the African in each black person is the way to
personal and social transformation.
Today, Asante is a faculty member at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is a professor

and chairperson of the Department of African American Studies. There are a number of
ways the debater could incorporate Asantes work into debate. Initially, his argument
which suggests that we need and African perspective regarding values could be used.
For example, the debater could critique various values by arguing that they ignore the
African perspective. A debater could argue that by embracing an African perspective our
value system could be more aware of the subtle forms of discrimination.
Bibliography
Molefi K. Asante, Television and black consciousness. JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION,
1976,
137-141.
Molefi K. Asante, AFROCENTRICITY: A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY. Buffalo, NY: Amulefi,

1979.
Molefi K. Asante & M. Appiah, The Rhetoric of the Akan Drum. WESTERN JOURNAL OF
BLACK
STUDIES, 1979.
Molefi K. Asante & A. Barnes, Demystification of the Intercultural Encounter. In M. K.

Asante et al., Eds., HANDBOOK OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION, Beverly Hills, CA:
Sage, 1979. Molefi K. Asante, Ed., HANDBOOK OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION.
Beverly Hills, CA:
Sage Publications, 1979.
Molefi K. Asante, The Communication Person in Society. CONTEMPORARY BLACK

THOUGHT:
ALTERNATIVE ANALYSES IN SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980,
pp. 15-28.
Molefi K. Asante, International lntercultural Relations. CONTEMPORARY BLACK

THOUGHT:
ALTERNATIVE ANALYSES IN SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980,
pp. 43-58.
Molefi K. Asante, Televisions Impact on Black Childrens Language: An Exploration.

CONTEMPORARY BLACK THOUGHT: ALTERNATIVE ANALYSES IN SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL
SCIENCE. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980, pp. 181-194.
Molefi K. Asante & A. S. Vandi, Eds., CONTEMPORARY BLACK THOUGHT: ALTERNATIVE

ANALYSES IN SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980.
Molefi K. Asante & K. W. Asante, AFRICAN CULTURE: THE RHYTHMS OF UNITY. Westport,
CT:
Greenwood, 1985.
Molefi K. Asante, THE AFROCENTRIC IDEA. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.
Molefi K. Asante, AFROCENTRICITY. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1989.
Louis Menand, School daze: The trend toward multicultural education may be more
confusing than elucidating. HARPERS BAZAAR, September, 1992, p. 380.
Arthur L. Smith, THE RHETORIC OF BLACK REVOLUTION. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1969.
Arthur L. Smith, Socio-Historical Perspectives of Black Oratory, QUARTERLY JOURNAL

OF SPEECH, 1969, 56, 264-69.
Arthur L. Smith, Markings of an African Concept of Rhetoric, TODAYS SPEECH, 1971,

19, 13-18.
Arthur L. Smith, TRANSRACIAL COMMUNICATION. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,

1973.
AFROCENTRISM LIBERATES THE

OPPRESSED
1.AFROCENTRICISM QUESTIONS ONES APPROACH TO ALL ACTIVITIES
Molefi K. Asante, Professor of African American Studies, Temple University,
AFROCENTRICITY, 1989, p. 45-6.
Afrocentricity questions your approach to every conceivable human enterprise. It
questions the approach you make to reading, writing, jogging, running, eating, keeping
healthy, seeing, studying, loving, struggling, and working. If you do not come from an
Afrocentric base, then you are in serious ethical and cultural trouble. No human being,
who would be free, can be free by submitting when he does not have to submit A fool is
the person who cannot see that there are no longer any chains around his ankles, yet he
walks as if he has weights at the bottom of his legs.
2. AFROCENTRISM LEADS TO INTELLECTUAL WHOLENESS
Molefi K. Asante, Professor of African American Studies, Temple University, THE
AFROCENTRIC IDEA, 1987, p. 164.
More damaging still has been the inability of European thinkers, particularly of the newpositivist or empiricist traditions, to see that human actions cannot be understood apart
from the emotions, attitudes, and cultural definitions of a given context The Afrocentric
thinker understands that the interrelationship of knowledge with cosmology, society,
religion, medicine, and traditions stands alongside the interactive metaphors of
discourse as principal means of achieving a measure of knowledge about experience.
The Afrocentrists insist on steering the minds of their readers and listeners in the
direction of intellectual wholeness.
3. AFROCENTRIC CRITICISM ACCOUNTS FOR AESTHETICS AND ETHICS Molefi K. Asante,
Professor of African American Studies, Temple University, THE AFROCENTRIC IDEA, 1987,
p. 177.
The aim of criticism is to pass judgment, and judgment is concerned with good and bad,
right and wrong; criticism is, therefore, preeminently an ethical act One may appropriate
other qualities to the critical act, but it is essentially a judgment. The Afrocentric critic is
also concerned with ethical judgments but finds the aesthetic judgment equally
valuable, particularly as the substantial ground upon which to make a decision about the
restoration of harmony and balance. Indeed, Afrocentric criticism essentially combines
ethics and aesthetics.
4. AFROCENTRIC SCIENCE IS BASED UPON HISTORY AND HERITAGE Molefi K. Asante,
Professor of African American Studies, Temple University, THE AFROCENTRIC IDEA, 1987,
p. 80-81.
The Afrocentric perspective upholds the significance of science; indeed in the sense that
it is based upon history and heritage, Afrocentricity is itself a science. Western science,
with its notions of knowledge of phenomena for the sake of knowledge and its emphasis
on technique and efficiency is not deep enough for our humanistic and spiritual
viewpoint. Therefore its limitations are clearly revealed in our history.
5. AFROCENTRIC VICTORY WILL PRESERVE AFRICAN CULTURE

But understand that the true Afrocentric love is found only in the context of the profound
cause; otherwise it degenerates into a spectacle of buying and selling. What is one more
diamond ring if there is no sense of identity, not togetherness in a victorious union as an
expression of the relationship? The answer is clearly nothing more than the meaningless
play on rituals established to support the cash, flesh, or dependent connection. To get
beyond this, we must seriously rise up in victory for Afrocentricity. This will reconstruct
our families, reorganize our values, and protect our culture.
LANGUAGE IS KEY TO AFRICANAMERICAN LIBERATION

1. LANGUAGE WILL LEAD TO LIBERATION FOR BLACKS
It becomes impossible for us to direct our future until we control our language. The
sense of language is in precision of vocabulary and structure for a particular social
context. If we allow others to box us into their concepts, then we will always talk and act
like them. Language is the essential instrument of social cohesion. Social cohesion is the
fundamental element of liberation.
2. CHANGING THE SLAVE NAME WILL LEAD TO GREATER UNITY AMONG BLACKS Molefi K.
Asante, Professor of African American Studies, Temple University, AFROCENTRICITY,
1989,
p. 28.
Changing of names will not in itself change economic and social oppression; but it will
contribute to the creation of new economic, political, and social forces that anticipate
substantive change. The name changing action is at once a rejection and an acceptance,
a necessary condition of a new perspective on our place in the world. There is little
question that how we perceive ourselves influences how others perceive us. This being
so, and other things being equal, the acceptance of African names will establish a more
distinct perception of our Afrocentricity. A Muslim takes an Arabic name; a Christian
takes a Christian name; we take African names.
3. AFRICAN-AMERICANS HAVE GREAT POTENTIAL FOR CHANGING LANGUAGE Molefi K.
Asante, Professor of African American Studies, Temple University, AFROCENTRICITY,
1989, p. 32.
Africans have shown a remarkable ability to humanize any language we have spoken
whether it was Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, or Russian. What Nicolas Guillen did
to Spanish, what Alexander Pushkin did to Russian, what Langston Hughes did to
English, and what Aime Cedaire, the greatest of all poets, did to French, suggest that it is
in the soul of our people to seize and redirect language toward liberating ideas and
thought. We have met the challenges of an alien culture, a racist mentality, and an
exploitative enterprise with our African ability to transform reality with words and
actions.
CURRENT LANGUAGE STRUCTURES

OPPRESS AFRICAN AMERICANS
1. EXISTING LANGUAGE STRUCTURES EXCLUDE THE OPPRESSED Molefi K. Asante,
Professor of African American Studies, Temple University, THE AFROCENTRIC IDEA, p.
114-115.
Always, the protester must use different symbols, myths, and sounds than the
established order. Otherwise, to speak the same language means that you will always be
at a disadvantage, because the oppressed can never use the language of the
established order with as much skill as the establishment. The oppressed must gain
attention and control by introducing another language, another sound. To speak the
same language as the oppressor does not lead to a positive result.
2. EUROPEAN CLASSIFICATIONS OF NON-WHITES PRECLUDE AFROCENTRISM Molefi K.
Asante, Professor of African American Studies, Temple University, CONTEMPORARY
BLACK THOUGHT: ALTERNATIVE ANALYSES IN SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE, 1980,
P. 48-49.
Classification of peoples allowed Europeans to speak of progressive cultures,
backward cultures,
inferior and superior cultures, and primitive and advanced cultures. Europe was
teacher and others were, by virtue of their lower places in this modern version of the
Great Chain of Being, students. They were underdeveloped, culturally deprived,
disadvantaged, and culture-poor. This conception of the world is demonstrably
unsympathetic to alternative perspectives.
3. CONFORMITY TO THE SLAVE NAME LEADS TO BLACK SEPARATISM
AFROCENTRICITY, 1989, p. 27.
To come to terms does not mean to acquiesce in what has been done historically, but to
challenge and modify the mistakes of the past. We are victims of our names because we
have previously refused to assert that we are African people. It used to be fashionable
for blacks to say that they were only part African because of their Indian, Irish, Jewish,
Chinese, or Gypsy blood. For some reason these blacks never admitted having English
blood, the most likely foreign strain present in African-Americans.
AJ Ayer
INTRODUCTION
A proposition is said to be verifiable, in the strong sense of the term, if, and only if, its
truth could be conclusively established in experience. But it is verifiable, in the weak
sense, if it is possible for experience to render it probable. In which sense are we using
the term when we say that a putative proposition is genuine only if it is verifiable?
...a priori truth is a tautology. And from a set of tautologies, taken by themselves, only
further tautologies can be validly deduced. But it would be absurd to put forward a
system of tautologies as constituting the whole truth about the universe. And thus we
may conclude that it is not possible to deduce all our knowledge from 'first principle;' so
that those who hold that it is the function of philosophy to carry out such a deduction
are denying its claim to be a genuine branch of knowledge. - Ayer (Language, Truth and
Logic)
AYER ON ETHICS
While some philosophers like Kant believe that the categorical imperative is an
appropriate way of dealing with ethical questions, Ayer takes a far more extreme view.
The categorical imperative means that you should make a decision based on whether or
not that would be a good decision if everyone made it. In fact, Ayer will go so far as to
assert that ethics cannot exist, and that questions of what is or is not ethical behavior
are entirely meaningless. For example, the statement Murder is wrong, would, for most
people, constitute a judgment on the ethics of murder or taking the life of another.
However, Ayer would argue that rather than making that claim, the statement only has
one relevant part. All the statement argues is that Murder is. The second half of the
proclamation is based on feelings rather than any physical or observable fact. For this
reason, the second half of the proclamation is wrong. As a result, since the statement
contains no actual knowledge or information it is tantamount to meaningless.
For logical positivists, only statements containing knowledge or information are worth
pursuing, and since any statement containing feelings, or emotions are devoid of
knowledge, they too are meaningless. In all cases, Ayer rejects the attempts to set up
what he refers to as a realm of values to establish certain things in society that are or
are not valuable to society at large. Statements such as, Murder is wrong merely
communicate personal disapproval and individual feelings about the act, but do not
warrant any significant evaluation or understanding. That is because they are nonfalsifiable in nature. The statement can be neither proven nor disproved through
empirical understanding and situations or through pure logical extrapolation, thus is not
relevant for examination.
CRITICISMS OF AYER AND LOGICAL POSITIVISM
There are a number of general criticisms of the philosophy of logical positivism and more
specifically of AJ Ayer himself. These criticisms allow individuals to escape the problems
that logical positivist level at metaphysical philosophers as well as other individuals who
choose not to endorse the mindset proposed by the logical positivists.
The first major criticism of logical positivism comes from the fact that there is virtually
no enforcement of the standards of belief that it lays out. While the idea of verifiability
both of the strong and weak variety is appealing to individuals who already accept the
mindset of logical positivism, metaphysical philosophers can merely choose to ignore or
otherwise refuse to acknowledge the problems or solutions set up by logical positivism.
There are no external reasons that people should be held to making sure that all
important statements are verifiable.
If this approach is taken, philosophers of any school of thought outside logical positivism
can easily escape the criticisms leveled at them. The idea that the metaphysical
questions are meaningless because they are not verifiable only has relevance because
they choose to accept it. Should the philosopher or reader decide that they are not
appropriate ways of determining the importance of a statement, they lose their power.
The second major criticism of logical positivism is that it endorses a relatively strange
way of looking at philosophy. Whereas every form of philosophy prior to logical
positivism accepted that theorizing on questions that cannot necessarily be proven is
important, logical positivism rejects this mindset. The basis of much of philosophy is that
the role of a philosopher is to ponder the questions that cannot be answer, not, as Ayer
would often have us believe, to ponder the importance and role of language in society as
a while.
The third criticism of logical positivism is that it has far-reaching and often times
undesirable ramifications on science and other aspects of society. If the basis for validity
of statements is accepted, and everything worth philosophizing about must be
falsifiable, it threatens the very basis for society. For instance, empirical science often
times is based on all sorts of things that cannot always be considered falsifiable. Much of
the hypothesis that describe the way the world functions work almost exclusively in a
manner that cannot be based on experience or logic. As a result, if logical positivism is
endorsed entirely, the criticism is that it would handicap science and cripple its ability to
develop theories on anything but the most fundamental of questions.
AYER ON LINGUISTICS
As is evident by even the titles of the books written by AJ Ayer, the emphasis that Ayer
would place in philosophy is on linguistics and language. AJ Ayer believes that the
function of philosophers ought to study the clarity and function of language in an
attempt to understand how society functions and gather more information.
Ayer argues that analytic propositions, or tautologies can serve the function of helping to
shed light on linguistic studies. By evaluating those things that are linguistically or
logically consistent it can begin to help clarify the way in which linguistics functions in
society and for philosophers. This exploration is one of the major elements that AJ Ayer
believes ought to be emphasized on behalf of most modern philosophers, since value
and metaphysics are not worthy of examination due to their failure of the test of
falsifiability.
He also argues that philosophy is a critical activity entirely. It ought to be focused on the
criticism of language and linguistics primarily, and that these criticisms can help to
formulate and understanding of society at large. While most philosophers tend to believe
that philosophy is about determining the meaning of something, be it life, death or any
other element in society, Ayer provides an alternative perspective. Rather than believing
that philosophy is about meaning, he believes that philosophy is about definitions and
understanding the language that characterizes meaning.
AYER ON METAPHYSICS
Ayer spends much of his time criticizing the manner in which metaphysical philosophers
approach their role in society. He believes that in most cases the approach to the world
that utilizes non-falsifiable information to be meaningless, and that approach is the crux
of metaphysical philosophy. There are a number of problems that Ayer feels makes
metaphysics a meaningless field of approach that only serves to de-legitimize
philosophy in general.
The first problem that Ayer finds with metaphysics is that it continues to refer to a
transcendent reality that cannot be seen or experienced in any empirical manner. This
becomes particularly important when criticisms of Ayer come into play. Many
metaphysical philosophers cleverly turn their theories around and point out that anyone
criticizing metaphysics is merely another metaphysicist with an alternative theory.
However, Ayer deftly avoids this criticism by delineating precisely where he attacks
metaphysics. His claim is that metaphysics improperly apply the rules governing the use
of language. The violation of the principles of linguistics is, in Ayers mind, a far bigger
offense that having a misdirected understanding of the world. Since metaphysics applies
theory to situations that can never be tested or explored, it violates the very role of
philosophy.
The second major problem that Ayer finds with metaphysical philosophy is that it has a
tendency to evaluate the existence of a supernatural being or existence. While this
particular theory is never rejected out of hand by Ayer, he considers it to be impossible
to falsify. Since it is impossible to ever determine if a God actually exists or not, it is
meaningless to attempt to discover it, or to bother pondering the existence of such a
being.
AYER ON THE ROLE OF PHILOSOPHY
Since Ayer was a philosopher, it is not surprising that he spent much of his time
attempting to determine what exactly the role of the philosopher was in society. What
questions ought to be examined, and when, if ever a conclusion can be drawn from
outside the empirical existence. The understanding of logical positivists, and specifically
AJ Ayers re-interpretation of logical positivism, known as logical empiricism
contributes to this understanding of how philosophers ought to approach their situation
in the world of academia.
Since Ayer rejects metaphysical philosophy, he clearly does not accept the idea that a
philosopher should interpret the meaning of non-falsifiable information. Rather Ayer
argues that the primary function of a philosopher is to discover the understanding of
definitions and the role that linguistics plays in recognizing society. Since philosophy, in
Ayers mind is a solely critical activity, its function is to examine and criticize the
linguistics of society. The only situation that philosophers can accurately explore is that
of linguistics. Situations that are non-falsifiable, or fall under the subject of metaphysics,
are meaningless according to Ayer. At the same time anything that is necessarily correct
in society is not worth examining because it has already been determined as being
correct and thus warrants no new analysis.
One of the primary ideas that Ayer puts forward is that the only way people gather
information about the mind is through their understanding and examination of the body.
Ayer explains that the sense-memory from which all understanding is based cannot be
the same from one person to another. This concept, although it seems relatively
complicated, is actually quite simple. So long as individuals are fundamentally different
they can never have the exact same experience. Even if two people see the same
situation and it involves the same people, the understanding that emerges from that
experience will still remain different. The two people will never have exactly the same
experience, thus any conclusions that emerge will always differ at some level. It is the
role of linguistic philosophers to attempt to clarify and understand these modifications
so that an understanding of the world at large is much more possible and can actually
occur effectively.
AYER IN LD DEBATE
AJ Ayer performs a relatively interesting role in Lincoln-Douglass Debate. Since the

primary ideal of Ayer is that value debate is meaningless, since there is no where to
factually evaluate the truth of a particular value, it seems to provide an interesting
avenue to kritik the entire message in debate. Since virtually every round will devolve
into some element of value consideration, Ayer provides an effective means of changing
the focus from values to linguistics, and the power and meaning of words.
The philosophy of AJ Ayer can also be used effectively to call into question any
information that falls outside of Ayers ascribed strong or weak verifiability. If a
statement made by the opposing team is unable to be tested and explored in the
manner that Ayer claims is most appropriate, then it can be relatively easily discredited.
While it seems interesting that Ayer helps to contribute some effective kritik ground for
either side of the resolution, his work also provides an appropriate alternative. Any
criticism is more effective if it includes some way in which the audience or the other
team would be able to avoid the criticism. In this manner, Ayers determination that there
is always linguistic structure worthy of criticism and evaluation as well as debate makes
it an effective alternative for the opposing team to explore.
Ayer is also effective in deployment for topicality positions. Since Ayer has determined
that philosophy at its root is not even about what something should or should not be, or
questions of ethics and morality. Rather Ayer believes that the primary function of
philosophy ought to be discussions about definitions. Thus providing an appropriate
warrant for any discussion of the definitions within a round. While the opposing team is
likely to want to dismiss these claims, having Ayer provide evidence to support the fact
that linguistic debate is the most important form if not the only form is particularly
beneficial.
Finally, one of the functions of debate is to persuade the audience that your positions
are correct. Since Ayers draws intensely from personal experience as it is based
exclusively on that which is empirical, or derived from experience. As a result, the
argumentation can often appeal directly to the personal nature of the type or style of
argument in obtaining persuasive appeal among the audience.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ayer, AJ. LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC. Dover: Pubns. 1946.
Ayer, AJ. LOGICAL POSITIVISM. Free Press. 1966
Ayer, AJ. PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. Viking Press. 1991.
Ayer, AJ. PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Vintage Books. 1984
Ayer, AJ. FREEDOM AND MORALITY AND OTHER ESSAYS. Clarendon Press. 1987.
Ayer, AJ. THE MEANING OF LIFE. Scribner. 1990.
Foster, John. AYER (ARGUMENTS OF THE PHILOSOPHIES). Routledge, Kegan & Paul. 1985
Hahn, Lewis. THE PHILOSOPHY OF AJ AYER. THE LIVING PHILOSOPHERS VOL 21. Open
Court Publishing Company. 1992.
Hanfling, Oswald. AYER: THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS. Routledge. 1999.
MacDonald, GF. PERCEPTION AND IDENTITY: ESSAYS PRESENTED TO AJ AYER WITH HIS
REPLIES. Cornell University Press. New York. 1979.
Martin, Robert. ON AYER. Wadsworth Publishing. 2000
Rogers, Ben. AJ AYER: A LIFE. Grove Press. 2000.
STATEMENTS OF VALUE ARE

IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE
1. DELINIATIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG CONTAIN NO TRUTH AND ARE MEANINGLESS
Andrew Knowlton, Professor of Philosophy at Bates College, A.J. AYER AN END OF
METAPHYSICS, 1990. p. 2.
As a result of Ayer's discussion of logical empiricism, some interesting questions are
raised concerning the validity of ethics and theology. Ayer believes that statements of
ethics are like those of metaphysics, factually meaningless. Take for example the
statement, "Adultery is wrong." Ayer wants to argue that this statement makes only one
factual, verifiable observation, "Adultery is." Wrongness, having no existence as an
actual, observable phenomenon, communicates a feeling, not a fact. Ayer rejects any
attempt to set up a "realm of values" over the world of experience. Adultery is wrong
neither makes an empirical statement about adultery nor relates adultery to some
transcendental realm. The only thing that the statement "Adultery is wrong" expresses is
our feelings about adultery, our feelings of disapproval, or our attempt to persuade
others not to commit adultery. In all of these cases, "Adultery is wrong" conveys no truth
or information, therefore it is thought of as a meaningless statement.
2. THE ONLY WAY TO DESTABALIZE POWER RELATATIONS IS TO QUESTION KNOWLEDGE

John Ransom, Professor Of Political Science, Duke University, FOUCAULTS DISCIPLINE,
1997. p. 23-24.
The second point that is missed by Foucaults critics is the possibility that instead of
describing an omnipotent form of power with an unbreakable hold on our subjective
states, the power-knowledge sign marks a kind of weakness in the construction of
modern power. An unnoticed consequence of Foucaults observations on the relation
between knowledge and power is the increased importance of knowledge. If power and
knowledge are intertwined, it follow that one way to understand power - potentially to
destabilize it or change its focus - is to take a firm hold on the knowledge that is right
there at the center of its operations.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE WHY

THINGS HAPPEN
1. INABILITY TO PROVE CAUSAL CONNECTION RENDERS DISCUSSION OF WHY IRELEVENT
Kenneth Rothman, Professor, University of Massachusetts Medical School, CAUSAL
INFERENCE-INFERRING CAUSAL CONNECTIONS -HABIT, FAITH, OR LOGIC, 1988. p. 6.
An understanding of the process of causal inference is often muddled by differing
concepts of the term inference in empirical science, a problem that may reflect the
uncertainty of the process itself. What passes for causal inference by scientists is often
just decision - making perched upon weak criteria that lack a logical base. Many of the
commonly used modes of causal inference are fallacious, their popularity not
withstanding.
2. EVEN THOUGH IT IS POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH EMPIRICAL TRUTH IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO

PROVE CONCLUSIONS ABOUT IT
Kenneth Rothman, Professor, University of Massachusetts Medical School, CAUSAL
INFERENCE-INFERRING CAUSAL CONNECTIONS -HABIT, FAITH, OR LOGIC, 1988. p. 10.
Empirical knowledge, on the other hand, seems to accumulate through a different
method, one that does not guarantee correct conclusions no matter how carefully it is
applied. Even with multiple repetitions, the assignment of a causal interpretation or the
formulation of a law of nature from the series of perceptions cannot be construed as a
logical extension of the observations, despite our innate tendency to do so.
3. HUMANS CAN'T APPROPRAITE TRUTH

John Novak, Professor Colgate University Why I am not a Russellian. FREE INQUIRY,
1995. p. 38.
As appealing as [Russells] claim for foundational certainty is, there is another point of
view. That is, that life is messier and that human perception does not have this
privileged access to knowledge; knowledge claims regarding the empirical world are
always inferential. In actuality, all knowledge is mediated, that is, constructed from
some perspective within problematic situations. Thus, experience is always occurring in
some context and must be filtered through some perspective to become knowledge.
CLAIMS TO UNIVERSAL TRUTH SUSTAIN

NEGATIVE POWER RELATIONS
1. RELYING SOLEY ON PROOF DEVALUES OTHER FORMS OF THINKING
Charlie Brown, Assistant Professor Of Philosophy at Emporia State Univ.,
Anthropocentrism and Ecocentrism, MIDWEST QUARTERLY, 1995, p. 2.
Scientific thinking has attained its form of universality, its unequaled scope of
application by omitting from its discourse not only the realm of values and divergent
points of view but also human feeling and sentiments. By elevating this skewed
universality to a privileged position as the only valid form of thinking all other forms of
thinking have been devalued.
2. FOCUSING ONLY ON WHAT CAN AND CANNOT BE PROVED IGNORES THE "OTHER"
William Cornwall, Professor of Philosophy at Mary Washington College, MAKING SENSE
OF THE OTHER: HUSSERL, CARNAP, HEIDEGGER, AND WITTGENSTEIN. 1999,
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Comp/CompCorn.htmm Accessed June 1, 2003. p-np.
Phenomenology and logical positivism both subscribed to an empirical-verifiability
criterion of mental or linguistic meaning. The acceptance of this criterion confronted
them with the same problem: how to understand the Other as a subject with his own
experience, if the existence and nature of the Other's experiences cannot be verified.
3. ADHERENCE TO SCIENCE OVERLOOKES CRUCIAL COMPLEXITIES

Dennis OBrien, President emeritus of the University of Rochester, He Didnt Add Up.
COMMONWEAL, September 28, 2001. p. 22.
Russell's exalted notion of truth was, he said, "as stern and pitiless as God." He ironically
cited the pope as someone who also holds to exalted truth--though of course the pontiff
had it all wrong. The issue for Russellian scientists and papal catechists is to avoid the
temptation of simplifying the intricate, entangled world of concrete realities in the
interest of a simplistic and thus stern and pitiless Beyond. A contemporary philosopher,
Nancy Cartwright, writes powerfully against the Russellian kind of scientific simplification
in favor of what she calls "the dappled world"--a phrase deliberately taken from Gerard
Manley Hopkins (The Dappled World, 1999). Her concern is ultimately moral. Those who
seek to simplify physical and emotional reality make a mess of the multiple multilayered
nonreducible realities of human life. Bertrand Russell's life is a proof text of that
assertion.
CLAIMS TO UNVERSAL KNOWLEDGE

CREATE AN EPISTIMOLOGICAL TRAP
1. CLAIMS TO UNVERSAL KNOWLEDGE CONTROL THE SOCIAL BODY
Michael Clifford, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mississippi State University,
POLITICAL GENEALOGY AFTER FOUCAULT, 2001. p. 98-99.
The phrase power/knowledge to a great extent expresses the intimacy of discourse
and power relations. Power proceeds through the deployment of various knowledge for
the normalization and cohesion of the social body. Knowledge both guides and sanctions
practices of subjugation and objectification that at once govern and define individuals.
The production of knowledge, in turn, requires entrenched institutional apparatuses
(such as education, science, media) where it can emerge and be disseminated.
Knowledge must conform to rules of acceptance, diffusion and consumption that go
beyond the laws of rarity and exclusion governing the emergence of statements within a
discursive formation. In fact, the embodiment of knowledge in real institutional and
social practices makes it an essential feature of the network of power relations itself. At
the juncture of power/knowledge, discourse becomes a formidable tool of control and
power. Indeed, at this juncture it becomes virtually impossible to distinguish discourse
and power since real practices of spatialization and differentiation are immediately and
inseparably attended by knowledges that explain what these bodies are in truth, what
they need, how they should be organized. Truth is not something outside of power;
rather, it is the concrete forms effected by the juncture of power and knowledge. Every
society is governed by a regime of truth, which consists at the same time of (1) the
types of discourses which it accepts and makes function are true, and (2) political
structures whose function is to articulate such discourses in concrete forms onto the
social body.
2. TRUTH CLAIMS CREATE PRISONS OF SUBJECTIFICATION THAT ARE IMPOSED ON

PEOPLE
Michael Clifford, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mississippi State University,
POLITICAL GENEALOGY AFTER FOUCAULT, 2001. p. 99-100.
A relation of self to self can be understood as a form of reflexivity, says Foucault - that
is, as a mode of self-examination and assessment. Discourses of truth can be
understood as forms of rationality as a thematic complex of representations bearing
on common objects and held together by certain principles or standards of organization
whose validity is internal to the complex itself. In technologies of the self we have forms
of rationality applied by the human subject to itself. While it is appropriate to speak of a
discourse of truth peculiar to the self, the construction of such discourse involves the
application of forms of rationality, or discourses, which come from sources independent
of the individual. Religious discourses, discourses of philosophy and medicine, political
or juridical discourses, and (perhaps most important to modern subjectivity) the
disciplines of the human sciences such discourse are applied by individuals to
themselves in the constitution of themselves as subjects. Such discourses carry their

own values, norms, expectations to which, through the process of subjectivacation, the
individual feels obliged to conform, thus comprising part of the ethical dimension of a
relation of the self with self. More often then not, however, these discourses are imposed
on individuals.
Kurt Baier
INTRODUCTION
Kurt Baier (Dunedin, New Zealand) is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University
of Pittsburgh. Author of the acclaimed work The Moral Point of View he has published
numerous articles on reason and philosophy. Kurt Baier is a moral philosopher whose
works and ideas have spanned forty years. His work has changed with the times, but still
the core remains the same. The crux of Baiers work is focused upon practical reason
and its affirmative role in morality. Baier argues that morality can generally be based in
individuals and does not have to be grounded in God. Accordingly, we can find answers
to important human questions without recourse to faith in a supernatural deity.
REASON, RATIONALITY
For Baier, individuals are acting in reason when we seek a good life that is based upon
our own standards. Reason is generally the ability to assess something as a good thing
and act in accordance with it by some motive. Individuals must be able to judge relevant
actions and motivations. Early in Baiers earliest work The Moral Point of View, on page
161, there are important differences between motive and reason. First, it is a difference
between the types of behavior to which the explanations are properly applicable;
explanations in terms of the agents reason refer to behavior involving deliberation,
explanations in terms of motives do notreasons refer to supposed facts, motive to the
agents behavioral disposition. Beyond just a generic description of reason and
rationality, Baiers work is largely premised upon what he refers to as practical reason.
First, it is important to understand that reason can be grounded upon two sides, a
subjective, and objective view. The subjective view can be a conception of each
individuals unflawed conception of the preferred life for herself, (The Rational Moral
Order, p.268) or a persons internal pure conception of the good life for herself. Though
the distinction in this sentence is rhetorically minute, the importance of the distinction to
Baiers philosophy is not. The preferred life is not always the life that is good for the
individual. A debate coach may prefer to live a season of sacrifice for her or his students,
but that life may not be the best directly for a debate coaches physical well being. Baier
refers to the former as self-anchored and to the latter as self-grounded.
On the objective side of the base of practical reason is a view that shows there are some
reasons not based in the subjects view of anything. The objective view also has two
possible sides. The first is agent-relative, an individual does what is best for
herself/himself regardless of ideal situations. The second part is agent neutral, which is
simply doing something because it is considered inherently right or good. The reason
this view is agent-neutral is that a person may act in this manner regardless of whether
one wants or prefers to act in this manner. Baiers moral philosophy is based upon selfanchored subjective views. In terms of LD debate, it may useful to do research on
objective moral standards as a way to reply to Baier. These arguments can be found in
Kantian as well neo-Kantian moral philosophers.
According to Baier, although we have self-anchored subjective reasons, in compromising

situations, we may all want some set of guidelines as overriding self-anchored reasons if
these reasons are the best for all. (Russell) In these situations, everyone has reason to
want some set of guidelines which supercede self-anchored reasons as long as those
guidelines would further each persons chance equally to live a choice-worthy life. So in
this situation the general guidelines override the individual but ultimately the individual
must choose whether compliance with those guidelines is productive. In his last major
work, The Rational Moral Order, Baier explains, [reason] is the best method because it
consists in following certain general guidelines made available to us by our culture for
the purpose of enabling us to guide ourselves in our attempts to find answers to such
important questions. (page 50) Ultimately for Baier, social guidelines are the closest
attainable approximation to the actual guidelines we should live our lives by. When
there are available social guidelines it is prima facie rational to think that the available
social guidelines are ones best bet without any other contradicting reason. (The
Rational Moral Order, p.268)
MOTIVE
Baier identifies something he calls the Motivation Problem. This is to highlight that
moral philosophy has done an inadequate job of explaining why a person is motivated to
act in accordance with a moral reason. According to conventional thinking, we can
always do what we have reason to do because there is a reason to do this. Beyond being
tautological, this explanting does not create a difference between motive and reason.
We can be unmotivated in a certain moral direction even though we may recognize that
it is the right thing to do. For Baier if moral philosophy is going to resolve this issue, the
discipline must account for two conditions. The first being that philosophers would have
to bring to the fore of societal morals an objective procedure that can help reason
conclusions about what we ought do. (The Rational Moral Order, p.51) Secondly, they
would have to explain how we can be motivated to act in situations that our inclination
is otherwise.
One question that has been ever-present through Baiers academic career is What Shall
I do? (The Moral Point of View) This question for Baier, at a deeper level of examination,
is seeking a reply to, What is the best course open to me, that is, the course supported
by the best reasons? For Baier, at least in this work, when we think of this question two
different tasks arise. The first, which is a theoretical task of figuring out the best possible
action. The second is a practical task of executing the theoretical conclusion. Baier is
really focused on grappling with the question of the motive power of reason, which is to
say the ability to be motivated by a reason. Baier is adamant about explaining that just
because we are aware of a reason does not mean we will necessarily act in accordance
with that reason. The question that plaques Baier is about the motive power of reason
ishow [are we] able to accomplish the practical task of deliberation, even when our
strongest desires oppose it [?](The Rational Moral Order, pg. 142) The answer to this
question for Baier at least, lies within rationality. When we act in a rational manner we
are acting within the conventions of Rationality. As Baier explains, There is, then no
mystery about why we act in accordance with the outcome of our [theory] deliberations,
that is, in accordance with what we take to be the best reasons: it is because we want to
follow the best reasons. (page 142) Since there is really no question for Baier why we
act in accordance with our reason, but questions why we even stop to reason in the first
place. He argues that is a socially constructed and engrained phenomena. Baier
explains that we have all been trained in ways to act in accordance with action that
maybe in opposition to our impulses. Generally in Euro-American culture, people have
been taught not to follow impulses or instinct or inclination, but to think firstwe have
been trained to do it even in the face of strong contrary impulses. (page 149)
MORAL DELIBERATION
In terms of moral deliberation, Baier suggests that we have two steps in deliberating
morals. First is simply the identification of pros and cons of a moral choice and the
second is the weighing of competing forces and options. Accordingly, we make our
decisions within a moral rules of reason, such as, that killing may be wrong so that is a
reason against killing. We weigh by using rules of superiority, which is just a fancy way
of saying we prioritize choices. Baier want to highlight that what is conventionally
referred to as moral convictions can function as moral rules of reason, as moral
consideration-making beliefs. (The Rational Moral Order, pg 171) Moral deliberation is
a calculative process, a method of working through moral questions. As for the role of
Moral philosophers, Baier suggests all that can be expected is the clarification of the
calculus, the statement of general rules, and the methods of using them in particular
calculations.(172-173) This suggests that philosophers take a unique role in
constructing a culture's methods of dealing with moral and ethical questions. It is not
that philosophers are going to answer all of our problems, but rather provide us with a
tool to guide us on our moral journeys. For Baier this also means that this calculative
process of moral deliberation can be right or wrong.
MORAL POINT OF VIEW
Moral systems for Baier, must pass through a sort of test that can not be subjected on
the law or a divine moral code. Initially in Baier's work he refers the moral point of view
as that which a person of good will follows in deliberating a moral consideration. On way
of resolving problems is by attempting to understand a situation from the multiple
perspectives different people occupy. For Baier, the moral point of view overrides all of
these views, it is how a person of good will acts.
As explained above, Baier thinks that morality is self-anchored in that it is not

necessarily self-interested. As explained over forty years ago, if the point of view of
morality were that of self interest then there could never be moral solutions of conflicts
of interest. (The Rational Moral Order, pg 190-91) For Baier, the moral point of view
goes beyond self-interest and is based upon principles. The contemporary text Baier
applies is a moral guideline is true if and only if it would be more to everyones
advantage that people generally comply with it than that people generally not comply
with it.( Schneewind, pg 187) So again, Baiers moral philosophy is focused around the
individuals' ability to reason and that that process is not just self centered. Furthermore,
Baier explains that the three criteria for determining whether a certain behavior should
be morally prohibited by a certain group depends on: (i) the consequences would be
undesirable if everyone did it, (ii) all are equally entitled to engage in it, and (iii)
engaging in this sort of behavior is an indulgence, not a sacrifice. Morality is a societal
system that adheres with these aforementioned criteria.
A constant issue in moral philosophy arise here in terms of others willingness to

reciprocate within a moral system. For Baier, it is rational for everyone to want to
reciprocate. This happens only when one has reason to believe that others are likely to
reciprocate. (The Rational Moral Order, p.179) This feeling of reciprocation is what Baier
refers to as Limited Conditional Good Will. In order for an individual to espouse this
limited good will, a person must be reasonably assured that others will cooperate. Baier
vaguely refers to societal guidelines as the ways in which people can be assured of
matter of a fact that others will reciprocate, otherwise it would be irrational for one to
choose to engage in an activity that would not be reciprocated.
These systems, according to Baier, must be acted upon by everyone in a culture. He

writes, Moral Principals are not merely principles on which individuals must act without
making exceptions, but they are principles meant for everybody " (The Moral Point of
View, pg. 179) From this logic, Baier follows by arguing that these principals must be
taught openly and universally. In a moral system, Morality is meant to be taught to all
members of the group in such a way that everyone can and ought always act in
accordance with these rules. (pg 179) This point is important within the history of
European moral philosophy and theology, because it does not limit the morality to
simply a virtue within only a small elite group but has the possibility of being a holistic
societal system. In Baiers early work, he follows this line of argument by criticizing
certain cultural systems that privilege only part of the population. He argues that in
some societies morality is really only a premature cluster of rules and laws that
privilege ruling elites. (pg. 200-201) He is using this as a historical example, a locus
point of discussion between historical legal systems. This part of his writing can be
appropriated for argument construction within a LD round. One way is to criticize current
moral systems as mere simulations and extensions of contemporary legal systems which
are reliant upon a heavy currency of societal oppression.
This clearly also indicates Baiers view on the nature of people. He denies that all
people are moral by nature. One way of arguing this point for Baier is to claim that
animals and robots are not moral and would be if there was a morality by nature. He
also argued that if acted morally without deliberation, people themselves would be
robotic like in the sense that an individual would automatically do was considered
morally reasonable. Morality is our second rather than our first nature. (pg. 257)
Rather for Baier, the process moral deliberation is how one acts morally.
WHY SHOULD WE BE MORAL?
According to Baier, we should be moral because being moral is following rules designed
to overrule self-interest whenever it is in the interest of everyone alike that everyone
should set aside his interest.(pg. 314) This means that the best possible life for
everyone requires sacrifice, that it is not just self-interested reasons. Moral reasons are
superior to individual interests. Moral systems are supposed to override self-interest
when it is disadvantageous to other people he argues that is the raison d etre of a
morality. It is in this section that Baier briefly lays out some of these universal rules. (pg
309) These include: Thou shall not kill, Thou shall not lie, Though shall not steal. He
also includes discussion of cruelty, torture, cheating, and rape.
In order to examine the complications of rules we should consider the following example
from Baier. Would be morally wrong for me to kill my grandfather so that he will be
unable to change his will and disinherit me? Assuming that my killing him will be in my
best interest but detrimental to my grandfather, while refraining from killing him will be
to my detriment but in my grandfathers interest, then if ethical conflict-regulation is
sound, there can be a sound moral guideline regulating this conflict (presumably by
forbidding this killing) (page 202). Many authors have taken up this very example of
inheritance, and oppose Baiers simplified way of dealing with the complications of selfinterest. The added bibliography will suggest an article that deals with this issue.
DEBATE POSSIBILITIES
I have already begun to briefly drop notes on how Baier may be helpful in debate
rounds. This section will attempt to deal with some of the different sides to arguing a
particular authors moral point of view. It is important first to recognize that Kurt Baier
has been publishing work since at least 1958. This means that deploying his arguments
requires extra attention. First, though he has been writing for so long he is still one
author, which means he literally has not kept up with all of his major critics over the
decades. Simply put, you do not want to deploy an argument that your author may have
lost already in the literature base or maybe at least you want to be aware of some of the
holes that you can plug in terms of academic debate. Another issue that arises is
because Baier has been writing for so long, he has taken different positions and
viewpoints at different times in his career. This presumably means that there are points
of conflict within his own philosophy that are seen by some as failures of his and seen by
others as his willingness to adapt to the times. With those important concerns
mentioned, let us now move to the specifics of how his moral arguments can be
appropriated and or successfully executed.
One of the easiest ways to deploy his criticism is against authors Baier directly criticizes.
Though his early work appropriates Kant, he ultimately disagrees with Kantian and neoKantian reliance on categorical imperatives. His argument is mainly that Kant does not
account well for the motivation to action, instead his theory presumes motivation
inherent in rational maxims. The criticism implies that we are just robotic beings who
have no real ability to reflect, feel, reason and move towards a particular direction on
ones accord. This is a disheartening view of humanity that possibly justifies corrupt
moral systems that are not based upon caring or at least non self-centered individuals
but rather on the ability of some to construct systems that privilege a particular group,
or identity inequitably.
Further, debaters basic claims of morals and their accompanying value structures can
be undermined if they are premised upon either a supernatural deity or solely in selfinterest. Values that cannot be tested according to society-anchored moral reasons are
most likely unsound morals that do not help people live lifes that are fruitful for
themselves or others. Though many debaters will not accredit the values they advocate
to a supernatural force there are still ways to win links. One way is to be able to verbally
question the reasons and motives behind certain espoused values. Baiers test is simply
if it a more beneficial for a group do something than to not. On closer examination of
many conventional values such as individual liberty can be masks for inequity of all sorts
within our culture.
Debaters could advocate a moral-value based upon Baiers standards. The reason this
could be helpful is that Baier provides some generic tests or criteria for these values,
discussed above. To reiterate, Baier identifies moral reasons as self-anchored and society
anchored. This means that individuals must choose to comply with a given societal
moral system, but do not necessarily act in accordance with self-interest. One can argue
that instead something like an individual liberty one should be grounded in a selfanchored system in which individuals rationally choose to act in accordance with moral
reasons that will bring good onto others, even at times when it causes the individual
grief. In debates, deploying narratives that affirm this sort of ethic may be a powerful
way of explaining a powerful concept. Though Baiers work has its problems, his
explanation of self-anchored reasons goes far beyond the norm of self-interested moral
philosophers. It allows the space to recognize that even though we may not be moral
naturally all the time, we can as people begin to create a moral system which adapts to
the different needs of growing and diverse societies.
My last suggestion differs drastically from all the aforementioned but still may be worth
considering on its own terms. It is important first to recognize that questions of nihilism
are often suppressed within academic settings but sometimes debate may allow the
space to discuss the process of an enduring nihilism. Though the term nihilism can be
intended in different manners, I use it here simply to refer to the essential Nietzschean
concept, in which values continually devalue themselves. In this nihilistic setting no
value or moral is choice worthy, it is a dreadful and horrible endeavor that many feel is
necessary to travel in order to overcome the dualistic European value structure.
Though discussion of nihilism can be complex, I suggest that it is possible to apply Baier
to a situation of Nietzchean nihilism. In order to argue this point one must note that
nihilism arises as a result of the death of God. (God both as a being, and as a metaphor
for the morals and values that are tied to God.) Some have said in a state of nihilism all
is permitted, but the point for some authors is to overcome nihilism in a possible
inventing of something out of nothing. Though Baiers work is possibly undermined from
the standpoint of a nihilistic perspective, there is room to maneuver Baiers ideas,
meaning that you could add your own ideas to those of Baier. At a basic level one must
use Baiers idea of a moral system not based upon a God. And since Baier identifies
moral systems as relatively fluid societal structures, one could argue that a new
formulated society structure could create a moral and value structure out of a state of
nothingness.
CONCLUSION
Kurt Baier is a moral philosopher who has created work that has spanned a long period
within the disciplines that analyze moral philosophy. It is important to note that his work
has even contributed to the fractioning of the original disciplines that analyzed questions
of morality. We must not forget that most European philosophers have historically based
morality within the confines of Religion. The point here is not to argue that Religious
systems are immoral but rather to highlight how questions of morality have almost
always been limited to theology. Baier is crucial in that he fundamentally denies the
need for a religious deity or God in the process of developing a sound moral system.
Baier has filled this vacuum through the actions of the individuals. He argues throughout
his various works that moral reasons are self-anchored in that they executed through the
individual but are not always in favor of the individual. The moral point of view is one
that is founded upon this principal, but this self-anchored principal is always superceded
by societal-anchored reasons. For Baier, sound moral systems that are preexisting to an
individual's participation in that culture are prime facie rational, and should be followed.
It is also important to note that reasons that appear to an individual do not inherently
motivate a person to act in a way that would attain the reason in consideration. Baier
answers the question of motivation by arguing that we act in accordance to principals
that are based upon the best reasons. This also implies that our moral choices have the
possibility of being true or false. Baier presents a simple test for the validity of a Moral
claim. Baier argues a moral guideline is true if and only if it would be more to
everyones advantage that people generally comply with it than that people generally
not comply with it.
In this process of trying to figure out which morals to adhere to individuals must asses
the theorized reasons for acting and second must enact the reason the was chosen in
the process of deliberation. For Baier, moral philosophers have a unique role in clarifying
the calculus that is used by individuals to deem something morally rational, but the act
of performing the moral is always constrained to individuals and their own experience.
In this respect, we conclude by appreciating what we can of Baiers suggestions for
ourselves. Each of us can appreciate his contributions to the history of moral philosophy
as well as his possible contributions to our individual experience. He has articulated that
we must construct societal systems that are not based upon exploitation but upon
principals that allow others not only to be considered, but prioritized. This prioritization
of the other over the self stands in contrast to most of European philosophy much like
the general position of Kurt Baier and his moral point of view.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baier, Kurt. THE RATIONAL AND THE MORAL ORDER: THE SOCIAL ROOTS OF REASON
AND MORALITY. (The Paul Carus Lecture, No 18) Open Court Publishing Company.
January 1995.
Baier, Kurt. THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW: A RATIONAL BASIS OF ETHICS. Cornell
University Press, NY 1958.
Baier, Kurt. REASON, ETHICS, AND SOCIETY: THEMES FROM KURT BAIER WITH HIS
RESPONSES. Schneewind, ed. Open Court Publishing Company 1996.
Baier, Kurt. VALUES AND THE FUTURE; THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ON
AMERICAN VALUES. Open Court Publishing Company 1996.
Baier, Kurt. PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DEATH: A HUMANIST PERSPECTIVE. N.Y. :

Prometheus Books, 1997.
Baier, Kurt. AUTARCHY, REASON, AND COMMITMENT. (in Symposium on Stanley I. Benn,
A Theory of Freedom) Ethics, Vol. 100, No. 1. (Oct., 1989), pp. 93-107.
Baier, Kurt. JUSTICE AND THE AIMS OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. (in Symposium on
Rawlsian Theory of Justice: Recent Developments) Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 4. (Jul., 1989),
pp. 771-790.
Griffin, James. SYMPOSIUM ON RATIONALITY AND THE MORALITY REPLY TO KURT BAIER.
Ethics, Vol. 96, No. 1. (Oct., 1985), pp. 130-135.
Symposium on Stanley I. Benn. A THEORY OF FREEDOM: PRACTICAL REASON AND

MORAL PERSONS. Gerald Gaus Ethics, Vol. 100, No. 1. (Oct., 1989), pp. 127-148.
DEFENDING IRRATIONALITY AND LISTS. (in Discussion) Bernard Gert Ethics, Vol. 103,
No. 2. (Jan., 1993), pp. 329-336.
Phillips, Michael. WEIGHING MORAL REASONS. Mind, New Series, Vol. 96, No. 383. (Jul.,
1987), pp. 367-375.
REASON IS THE BEST JUSTIFICATION

FOR ACTION
1. REASONS PROVIDE A LEGITIMATE FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION
Kurt Baier, philosophy, 1958, THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW: A RATIONAL BASIS OF ETHICS,
1958, p-np.
It is unfortunate that the means-end model has dominated philosophical thinking in this
field. It has led some philosophers, maintaining (rightly) that we can ask which is best
thing to aim at in these circumstances, to conclude (wrongly) that there must be an
ultimate aim or end, a summum bonum, to which all ordinary aims or ends are meanly
means. Hence, they claim whether this or that is the better end to aim at must be
judged by its serving the ultimate end or summun bonum. Other philosophers,
maintaining rightly that there can be no such ultimate end or summum bonum, have
concluded (wrongly) that we cannot ask which is the better end to aim at. They have
claimed that reason can tell us only about what are the best means to given ends, but
that the ends themselves cannot be determined or judged by reason. However, being a
good means to a certain end is not only the criterion of the merit of a course of action.
2. MEANS ENDS JUSTIFICATION IS FLAWED

1958, p-np.
The error which this means-end model of the evaluation of the lines of action forces on
us is this. It compels us to think that what is a reason for (or against) doing something is
determined by what we are aiming at. Since different people aim at different things and
since they frequently argue about what to aim at, either we are compelled to assume
that there is one objectively determined end or aim which we must aim at if we are to
follow reason, or, if reject objective ends as absurd, we are compelled to renounce all
reasoning about ends. However, it is not true that our ends determine what is a reason
for doing something, but, on the contrary, reasons determine we ought to, and
frequently do, aim at. What is a reason for doing this, or against doing that, is
independent of what this or that man is actually aiming at. The best course of action is
not that course which most quickly, least painfully, least expensively, etc., leads to
gaining of our ends, but it is the course of action which is supported by the best reasons.
And the best reasons may require us to abandon the aim that we actually set our heart
on.
3. REASONS ARE AGENT NEUTRAL

1958, p-np.
Our conclusion is this. All consideration-making beliefs are person-neutral. They are
simply true or false, not true for me and false for you or vice versa. On the other hand,
all considerations or reasons are considerations or reasons for someone in some
particular context or situation may not be the reasons for someone else or for the same
person in another context or situation. For a given fact is a reason only because it is a
reason for a particular person when deliberating about a number of alternative lines of
action open to him.. Considerations or reasons are not propositions laid up in heaven or
universal truths, but they are particular facts to which, in particular contexts, universally
true (or false) consideration-making beliefs apply.
VALUE JUDGMENTS ARE BENEFICIAL

1. VALUE JUDGMENTS ARE VERIFIABLE
1958, p-58.
Not all comparisons and rankings are value judgments. Moreover, there is no doubt that
factual, that is, nonevaluative, comparisons and rankings are empirically verifiable. This
man is taller than that and She is a tall girl for her age are ordinary empirical claims. If
we are clear about the logic of empirical comparisons and rankings, we will be in a
position to say whether what distinguishes evaluative from nonevaluative comparisons
and rakings makes the former unverifiable in principle. It is my contention that the
misunderstanding of the logic of empirical comparisons and rankings is, at least partly,
responsible for the view that value judgments are not verifiable. An elucidation of factual
comparisons and rankings will in any case, throw a good deal of light on the nature of
value judgments.
2. VALUE JUDGEMENTS ARE VERIFIABLE EVEN THOUGH THEY MAY BE VAGUE

1958, p-59.
It is often said that value judgments are vague. One of the things we mean by
vagueness of a claim is just this, that in a comparatively large number of cases it will be
impossible to determine whether the claims true or false, because the criteria on which
it is based conflict. Vagueness is not incompatible with empirical verifiability. In ranking
something, we are not directly comparing two objects, but are concerned with only one.
In comparing, we want to know which of two objects has a given property to a higher
degree. In ranking we want to know the degree to which one object has the property in
question. Nevertheless, rankings too are sorts of comparison, though more complex.
When we rank a man as tall, we assign him the highest rank on a three-place scale, tall,
medium, short. Knowing the meaning of tall involves knowing the logical relationship
between being tall, of medium height, and short. One must know the number, names
and order of the places on the scale. One must know that tall means taller than of
medium height and short, that of medium height means taller than short but shorter
than tall and, that short means shorter than tall and of medium height. it is not
enough to know what that tall is the opposite of short; for that would not have allowed
us to distinguish between opposites such as dead and alive, which are not capable of
degrees, and opposites such as tall and short, which are.
3. VALUES CAN BE VERIFIED BY EXPERTS

1958, p-np.
Well, my objector may say, maybe you can get some sort if empirical verification of
value judgments, but you cant get anything that is really important. What makes for
greater certainty and more reliable information is the formulation of ones claims in the
scientific manner. You wont find matters of opinion, let alone of taste, in the sciences.
Scientist do indeed need their imagination, their hunches, their flair, an so on. But they
need them only in order to think up new ideas; they dont need them when it comes to
verification of proof of these ideas. This is perfectly true, but not as damaging as might
be thought at first/ For the same precision is possible in the field of value judgment also.
Consider the following simple case. Jones is good at judging distances and lengths. He
can say how long it will take a person to walk from one place to another, whether the
dressing table or the carpet will fit in the bedroom, whether the tree to be felled would
hit the house if it happened to fall that way, and so on. Normally, that he has good
judgment could be confirmed only by waiting for the disputed event to take place.
BAIERS MORALITY UNDERESTIMATES

THE ROLE OF THE PUBLIC
1. CRITICISM OF THEM (BAIER AND RAWLS) ON THIS POINT IS THAT THEY DO NOT SEEM
TO FULLY APPRECIATE THE FORCE OF THE CLAIM THAT MORALITY MUST BE PUBLIC.
Bernard Gert, MORALITY, A NEW JUSTIFICATION OF THE MORAL RULES. 1988. p-np.
Both Baier and Rawls agree that morality must be a public system, that it must consist
of rules or principles that are known and could be accepted by all those whose behavior
is supposed to be governed by that system, and that for a moral system this includes all
rational persons. They both agree that the content of that system should be determined
by the agreement of impartial rational persons. These features are what make a theory
a version of morality as impartial rationality. The publicity of morality is a crucial feature
for both Baier and Rawls; they are concerned with the content of a moral system that
would be openly used by everyone to determine the moral acceptability of an action.
They both rule out as being inconsistent with the very nature of morality any system
that could not be openly taught and defended. If a Utilitarian maintains that he has a
system that will result in the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but only if no
one knows that anyone else is using that system to guide his behavior, both Rawls and
Baier would claim that the Utilitarian is not putting forward a moral system. They are
interested in a system to which everyone can openly appeal, either as grounds for acting
themselves or for judging the actions of others. My only criticism of them on this point is
that they do not seem to fully appreciate the force of the claim that morality must be
public. That morality is a public system that applies to all rational persons places
considerable constraints not only on the content of a moral system, but also on the
foundations of that system, the moral theory that generates it. If a moral system must
be such that it can be understood and can be accepted by any rational person, it must
be based solely on beliefs that are held by all rational persons, what I call rationally
required beliefs. This not only rules out religious views as the basis of morality, it also
rules out scientific views insofar as such findings are not known to all rational persons.
Rawls, who allows those behind his veil of ignorance to have all general knowledge,
including the findings of all the sciences, could not be appealed to and accepted by all
those to whom it applies, that is, to all rational persons. In fact, Rawls makes no use of
the findings of any science in developing his moral system, but the fact that he thinks
that it is allowable to use such findings indicates that he does not fully appreciate the
constraints imposed by morality being a public system that applies to all rational
persons.
2. BAIERS PARTICULAR RANKING OF REASONS CREATES SERIOUS AND UNRESOLVED

PROBLEMS.
For Baier, as for most contemporary philosophers who have attempted to put forward an
account of rationality, there is a very close connection between acting rationally and
acting on reasons. According to Baier, acting rationally simply consists in acting on the
best reasons. Baier gives content to this formal account by providing a list of various
kinds of reasons and ranking them according to their weight. He regards self-regarding
reasons of law, religion or morality. Baier wants an account of rationality such that for
any course of action everyone will always agree whether the reasons supporting that
way of acting are better, worse, or equal to the reasons supporting some alternative
course of action. Baiers particular ranking of reasons creates serious and unresolved
problems when ones self-interest conflicts with the much greater interests of others.
His strong distinction between moral reasons and altruistic reasons, the former being
stronger than self-regarding reasons and the latter being weaker, prevents Baier from
saying that it would be morally good to sacrifice ones own interests between altruistic
reasons and moral ones. When he discusses an actual case of this sort he uses the term
decent to characterize acting in ones interests and thereby, e.g., ruining a competing
business firm. But on his own theory, he cannot consider these judgments of the
alternative ways of acting to be moral judgments. It is clear that something has gone
wrong.
MORAL SYSTEMS FAIL

1. MORAL SYSTEMS ARE INADEQUATE WHEN ONE ATTEMPTS TO USE THEM AS A
PRACTICAL GUIDE TO CONDUCT.
In summary, the faults commonly found in the theory of morality as impartial rationality
are not faults intrinsic to the theory; rather, they are faults that stem from an
inadequate statement of the theory. Baier and Rawls both provide inadequate accounts
of rationality, neither fully recognizing that rationality should be analyzed in terms of
content rather than form and that irrationality rather than rationality should be taken as
basic. Both regard impartiality as requiring unanimity, and thus do not realize that
equally informed impartial rational persons may, in many circumstances, advocate
different ways of acting, neither regards the question of enforcement as essential to
basic moral theory, thus making it unlikely that they will provide an adequate moral
system, one that distinguishes between moral rules, which may be enforced, and moral
ideals, which should not be. Neither gives serious consideration to either the
formulation of particular moral rules or to the procedure for determining exceptions to
these rules. Baier and Rawls never attempt to apply their accounts to particular ethical
problems; they emphasize the evaluative rather than the practical aspects of morality as
impartial rationality. This may explain, in part, why their moral systems are inadequate
when one attempts to use them as practical guides to conduct. My criticism of their
presentations of morality as impartial rationality is designed to show that one need not
reject this theory if one does not accept it must be as a practical theory. Morality as
impartial rationality is, or can be presented as, a practical ethical theory. As such it can
provide useful guidance to those who are looking for help in solving real moral problems.
In the following chapter 1 shall provide some practical applications of the moral system
that I have provided.
2. NEITHER SPENDS MUCH TIME OR EFFORT IN DEVELOPING HIS THEORY IN SUCH A WAY
AS TO PROVIDE A MORAL SYSTEM THAT WOULD BE USEFUL TO PEOPLE.
Baier and Rawls both present morality as impartial rationality primarily as an evaluative
theory. Neither spends much time or effort in developing his theory in such a way as a
way as to provide a moral system that would be useful to people who want a moral
guide to action. The most important part of such a moral system is the formulation of
specific moral rules together with a method for theories of most philosophers, including
the versions of morality as impartial rationality presented by Baier and Rawls, have been
seriously inadequate. Most time, of course, is spent developing the basic theory from
which the moral rules will be derived. The formulation of the moral rules themselves is
usually done quite quickly, and generally very carelessly. This may be due to the
acceptance of Mills view that the various schools of ethics recognize.to a great
extent the same moral laws; but differ as to their evidence, and the source from which
they derive their authority.
MICHAEL BAKUNIN
REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST-ANARCHIST
(1814- 1876)
Life And Work
Bakunin was born in Prjamuchino, Russia in 1814. Because he came from an aristocratic
family and was prepared for military service, he gamed a perspective on soldiers and
wage-earners that was to color his later writings. He saw soldiers as serfs who were
bribed by pay and decorations. They worked like other members of the proletarian class,
except that these people were paid to keep down their fellow proletarians. Always highly
passionate, he resigned his commission and instead went to study in Moscow.
He spent his younger days under the reign of the brutal Czar Nicholas, who was the
worst oppressor the Russians had seen to that point. Since the reign of Nicholas
tolerated no level of rebellion in politics, or in literature, economics, and/or religion,
Bakunin turned to philosophy. Hegalianism was at a high point, and like others, Bakunin
was influenced by it. Bakunin draws on Hegels notion of Dialectic, which argues that life
and history consist of reconciling different notions--thesis, antithesis, and synthesis--to
create his own brand of Historical Materialism.
He spent five years studying in Moscow, and then obtained permission to study in
Germany. Given more freedom than in his native country, he attempted to develop
radical ideas predicated on Hegelian philosophy. Also in Germany at the time was Ludwig
Feurbach, another Hegelian scholar, who wrote an influential text called The Essence of
Christianity. Feurbach took an atheist stance, and called for a materialist interpretation
of history. Marx, Engels, and Bakunin were all duly impressed with Fuerbachs work, and
his thoughts influenced their respective philosophies.
France, for Bakunin, might be the most important place he studied. There, he visited
Paris and met Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who that same year was to publish what many
consider his magnum opus, The Creation of Order in Humanity. Bakunin also met Karl
Marx, and had many discussions with him. This period is essential to Bakunins
development as a thinker, because his views began to lean towards Proudhons political
beliefs and Marxs economic analyses. Though Bakunin despised Marxs egotistical
nature, he considered him a genius on matters economic and a sincere revolutionary.
Bakunin gleaned from Marx his devotion to the notion of Historical Materialism, the belief
that economic facts produce inevitable results and ideas in humanity.
Still, he rejected the notion of the state as a mechanism to manage the economy, a vast
difference between himself and Marx. This is probably the source of his mistrust for Marx
and his admiration for Proudhon:
Marx, however sincere his revolutionary desires, mistrusted the people. He believed in
the necessity of state intervention to save the masses, which made him an authoritarian
in the eyes of the liberty-loving Bakunin, who thought the masses could and should
liberate themselves.
Bakunin was ordered to leave Paris in 1847 after he delivered a speech advocating
freedom for Poland. However, the revolution of February 1848 deposed King Louis
Phillipe and brought Bakunin back to Paris, where he took part in many political
movements. Soon, though, he was drawn to spread revolution to Prague, where he led a
movement to overthrow the state. In Saxony, he tried it again, but was arrested and
extradited to Russia. His home country claimed him as a fugitive. He was captured,
though, and condemned to death in May 1850. His sentence was commuted to
imprisonment for life, eight years of which he spent in solitary confinement. His family
succeeded in gaining his release after the death of Nicholas I. Even the mild Alexander II
felt it would be best to keep the firebrand under watch in Siberia, where he spent four
years, only to escape on an American ship bound for Japan. At the end of 1861, he
reached London.
Brings His Anarchism To The West
He threw himself into revolutionary schemes with greater enthusiasm than before. He
met with Alexander Hertzen, another Russian in exile, and worked with him on a Polish
insurrection. He and Hertzen's publications, which demanded the abolition of the State,
were a source of growing conflict with the Marxists. He joined the Congress of the
International Association (the First International), founded by Marx, and in September of
1869, a Congress meeting found they had more sympathy for Bakunins views on
inheritance than they did Marxs. Marx, notoriously possessive of the First International,
was not pleased. This was the beginning of a divide that would last for years. It started
with the inheritance question, but that was only a minor skirmish. The real battle was
over the role of the state. The Bakuninists felt the state had to be abolished, while the
Marxists clung to the notion that the state was necessary to bring about socialism.
1870 saw the advent of the Franco-German war, a period that spawned some of
Bakunins best work. He hoped for social revolution in France to depose the oppressive
Napoleon Ill. He wrote A Letter To A Frenchman for the purpose of inciting such a
movement He even went to Lyons to spark an anarchist movement, but when the
movement sputtered and failed, he was forced to flee. Depressed over the failure, his
growing cynicism about the bourgeoisie spurred him on to write what many consider his
finest book, The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution. Though not totally
finished, Bakunin worked on it from 1870 to 1872, and covered all manner of subjects,
from philosophical to political to economic to historical. It is here where he develops his

Historical Materialism in detail.
Though not optimistic about the prospects for a social revolution, Bakunin was
nevertheless drawn to the cause of the Paris Commune, which existed from March
through May of 1871. Interestingly enough, this is still touted by DeLeonist members of
the Socialist Labor Party USA to be the ideal expression of socialism. Bakunin, on the
other hand, saw the Commune as the justification why his theories were superior to
Marxs, because there was no vanguard party involved. In 1872, the split between the
Marxists and the Bakuninists became too much, however, and Bakunin was expelled
from the Congress of the First International. Bakuninists were to start a new International
in Switzerland, though, which would outlive Bakunin himself. Prematurely old due to his
lifelong activist struggles and his eight-year confinement, he died on July 1st, 1876.
The Philosophy Of Bakunin
Bakunin, though not a Marxist, subscribed to many Marxist tenets, including Historical
Materialism. He accepted the Marxist notion of the class war. He also believed in the
abolition of private property and the necessity of democratizing the means of
production. However, Marx favored the use of the state, which Bakunin was unwilling to
accept He thought Marx an elitist for not believing in the workers ability to liberate
themselves, and thought him short-sighted for thinking a state--which to Bakunin was, of
necessity, competitive and a dominant capitalist structure--could establish true
egalitarian socialism. This helps explain Bakunins other beliefs, like his delineation
between individual liberty and true liberty.
Unrestrained individualism was, of course, anathema to Bakunin, but he also believed

that individualism without social concern was simply an excuse for egoism. He thought
that true liberty could only be achieved in and through society. This is not to say that
Bakunin felt the individual could be forced into a social compact A student of Proudhon
and a lover of liberty, Bakunin believed in free association and voluntary cooperation,
mistrusting the communists for their unwillingness to commit to the goal of liberty.
Bakunin also thought, however, that there could be no liberty while economic slavery
to the state existed. Bakunin also rejects the notion of voting and universal suffrage. For
him, to vote is to justify the system, and since it serves no revolutionary good, there is
no reason whatsoever to partake in it. Though, as a Historical Materialist, he believed in
the inevitability of class struggle, Bakunin also thought that inevitability meant giving
up. He explains several places that just because the situation looks hopeless, it is good
for the human spirit and for the collective good to struggle against evil.
15
Debate Application
Bakunins critique of the social contract thinkers, particularly Rousseau, is scathing. He

sees no such free organization of people taking place under the state. Besides,
Bakunin argues, if the social contract theory is true, we dont need the state anyway,
because we can enter into voluntary, mutual agreements with each other. This is useful
against any case that values the social contract, or argues that we get rights from the
state. Bakunins value against socialist philosophers is obvious. What is less obvious,
however, is the depth of his criticism. Not only can he be used to characterize Marx et. al
as authoritarian, but also to attack their theories for ignoring the rights of individuals.
Bakunin argues that there will always be victims under such a program, and his
commitment to stopping such injustice makes his theory superior to most. Bakunin also
staunchly opposes notions of patriotism for obvious reasons, given the allegiance it
implies to a state. This can be useful against any case that attempts to rally the judge
around a flag or the good of a specific nation.
Bakunin, needless to say, is useful against any case that glorifies voting, democratic
participation, or allegiance to a representative government. For Bakunin, this just
ignores the economic chains we are beholden to. To Bakunin, any act of change that
doesnt fundamentally alter the state system is as useless as running in place. All these
fiery sentiments make him a very useful thinker to debaters.
Bibliography
Michael Bakunin, BAKUNIN ON ANARCHY, Edited by Sam Dolgoff, Vintage Books: 1971.
Michael Bakunin, MARXISM, FREEDOM AND THE STATE, Freedom Press: 1950, reprinted
1990.
Isaiah Berlin, KARL MARX: HIS LIFE AND ENVIRONMENT, Home University Library: Fourth
Edition, 1996.
Charles Gide and Charles Rist, A HISTORY OF ECONOMIC DOCTRINES: FROM THE TIME
OF THE PSYIOCRATES TO THE PRESENT DAY, Translated By R. Richards, Boston: D.C.
Heath, 1948.
K.J. Kenafick, MICHAEL BAKUNIN AND KARL MARX, Melbourne: 1948.
TORCH OF ANARCHY magazine, Nov. 18, 1895, pp. 92-93.
COMMON LIBERTY IS THE KEY VALUE

1. LIBERTY OF THE MASSES IS THE PARAMOUNT GOAL
Michael Bakunin, Anarchist philosopher, quoted in KJ. Kenafick, MICHAEL BAKUNIN AND
KARL MARX, 1948, page 300.
We understand by liberty, on the one hand, the development, as complete as possible of
all the natural faculties of each individual, and, on the other hand, his independence, not
as regards natural and social laws
but as regards all the laws imposed by other human wills, whether collective or
separate. When we demand
the liberty of the masses, we do not in the least claim to abolish any of the natural
influences of any individual or of any group of individuals which exercise their action on
them. What we want is the abolition of artificial, privileged, legal, official, influences.
2. LIBERTY MUST MEAN NO RESTRICTIONS

Michael Bakunin, Anarchist philosopher, MARXISM, FREEDOM, AND THE STATE, 1950,
page 17-8. No, I mean the only liberty which is truly worthy of the name, the liberty
which consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers
which are to be found as faculties latent in
everybody, the liberty which recognizes no other restrictions than those which are
traced for us by the laws of our own nature; so that properly speaking there are no
restrictions, since these laws are not imposed on us by some outside legislator, beside
us or above us; they are immanent in us, inherent, constituting the very basis of our
being, material as well as intellectual and moral; instead, therefore, of finding them a
limit, we must consider them as the real conditions and effective reason for our liberty.
3. LIBERTY STEMS FROM EQUALITY AND ABOLITION OF THE STATE

page 18. I mean that liberty of each individual which, far from halting as at a boundary
before the liberty of others, finds there its confirmation and its extension to infinity; the
illimitable liberty of each through the liberty of all, liberty by solidarity, liberty in
equality; liberty triumphing over brute force and the principle of authority which was
never anything but the idealized expression of that force, liberty which, after having
overthrown all heavenly and earthly idols, will found and organize a new world, that of
human solidarity, on the ruins of all Churches and all States.
POWER CORRUPTS THOSE THAT WIELD IT
Michael Bakunin, Anarchist philosopher, quoted in Isaiah Berlin, fellow of All Souls
College, Oxford University, past President of the British Academy, KARL MARX: HIS LIFE
AND ENVIRONMENT, Fourth Edition, 1996, page 206.
We believe power corrupts those who wield it as much as those who are forced to obey
it. Under its corrosive influence some become greedy and ambitious tyrants, exploiting
society in their own interest, or in that of their class, while others are turned into abject
slaves. Intellectuals, positivists, doctrinaires, all those who put science before life ...
defend the idea of the state as being the only possible salvation of society--quite
logically since from their false premises that thought comes before life, that only
abstract theory can form the starting point of social practice ... they draw the inevitable
conclusion that since such theoretical knowledge is at present possessed by very few,
these few must be put in possession of social life, not only to inspire, but to direct all
popular movements, and that no sooner is the revolution over than a new social
organization must at once be set up; not a free association of popular bodies ... working
in accordance with the needs and instincts of the people, but a centralized dictatorial
power, concentrated in the bands of this academic minority, as if they really expressed
the popular will.... The difference between such revolutionary dictatorship and the
modern State is only one of external trappings. In substance both are a tyranny of the
minority over a majority in the name of the people--in the name of the stupidity of the
many and the superior wisdom of the few; and so they are equally reactionary, devising
to secure political and economic privilege to the ruling minority and the ... enslavement
of the masses, to destroy the present order only to erect their own rigid dictatorship on
its ruins.
EQUALITY IS A PARAMOUNT CONCERN

1. WITHOUT EQUALITY, NO OTHER HUMAN VALUE HAS MEANING
page 18. I am a convinced upholder of economic and social equality, because I know
that, without that equality, liberty, justice, human dignity, morality, and the well-being of
individuals as well as the prosperity of nations will never be anything else than so many
lies. But as upholder in all circumstances of liberty, that first condition of humanity, I
think that liberty must establish itself in the world by the spontaneous organization of
labour and of collective ownership by productive associations freely organized and
federalized in districts, and by the equally spontaneous federation of districts, but not by
the supreme and tutelary action of the State.
2. PASSION FOR EQUALITY IN THE MASSES IS UNQUENCHABLE

page 61 The instinctive passion of the masses for economic equality is so great that if
they could hope to receive it from the hands of despotism, they would indubitably and
without much reflection do as they have often done before, and deliver themselves to
despotism. Happily, historic experience has been of some service even with the masses.
To-day, they are beginning everywhere to understand that no despotism has nor can
have, either the will or the power to give them economic equality. The programme of the
International is very happily explicit on this question. The emancipation of the toilers
cart be the work only of the toilers themselves.
ROUSSEAUS PHILOSOPHY IS FLAWED

1. ROUSSEAUS VIEWS NECESSARILY HINDER LIBERTY
page 17. I am a fanatical lover of Liberty; considering it as the only medium in which can
develop intelligence, dignity, and the happiness of man not official Liberty, licensed,
measured and regulated by the State, a falsehood representing the privileges of a few
resting on the slavery of everybody else; not the individual liberty, selfish, mean, and
fictitious advanced by the school of Rousseau and all other schools of bourgeois
Liberalism, which considers the rights of the individual as limited by the rights of the
State, and therefore necessarily results in the reduction of the rights of the individual to
zero.
2. ROUSSEAU IS WRONG ABOUT SOCIETY BEING A FREE AGREEMENT

Michael Bakunin, Anarchist philosopher, BAKUNIN ON ANARCHY, Edited by Sam Dolgoff,
1971, p. 128.
It was a great mistake on the part of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to have thought that
primitive society was established through a free agreement among savages. But JeanJacques is not the only one to have said this. The majority of jurists and modem
publicists, either of the school of Kant or any other individual and liberal school, those
who do not accept the idea of a society determined by the Hegelian school as a more or
less mystical realization of objective morality, nor of the naturalists the idea of a society
determined by the Hegelian school as a more or less concept of a primitive animal
society, all accept, nolens volens, and for lack of any other basis, the tacit agreement or
contract as their starting point.
MARXISM IS AUTHORITARIAN AND

WRONG
1. MARXISTS ARE AUTHORITARIAN, AS OPPOSED TO THE LIBERTARIAN ANARCHISTS
page 19. Hence, two different methods. The Communists believe they must organize the
workers forces to take possession of the political power of the State. The Revolutionary
Socialists organize with a view to the destruction, or if you prefer a politer word, the
liquidation of the State. The Communists are the upholders of the principle and practice
of, authority, the Revolutionary Socialists have confidence only in liberty. Both equally
supporters of that science which must kill superstition and replace faith, the former
would wish to impose it; the latter will exert themselves to propagate it so that groups of
human beings, convinced, will organize themselves and will federate spontaneously,
freely, from below upwards, by their own movement and conformably to their real
interests, but never after a plan traced in advance and imposed on the ignorant
masses by some superior intellects.
2. THE STATE IS THE CAPITALIST UNDER THE IDEAL OF MARXISM

page 26. All work to be performed in the employ and pay of the State--such is the
fundamental principle of Authoritarian Communism, of State Socialism. The State having
become sole proprietor--at the end of a certain period of transition which will be
necessary to let society pass without too great political and economic shocks from the
present organization of bourgeois privilege to the future organization of the official
equality of all--the State will be also the only Capitalist, banker, money-lender, organizer,
director of all national labour and distributor of its products. Such is the ideal, the
fundamental principle of modem Communism.
3. MARXIAN SOCIALISM EQUALS LOVE OF THE STATE

page 29. Let us see now what unites them. It is the out and out cult of the State. I have
no need to prove it in the case of Bismarck, the proofs are there. From head to foot he is
a States man and nothing but a States man. But neither do I believe that I shall have
need of too great efforts to prove that it is the same with Marx. He loves government to
such a degree that he even wanted to institute one in the International Workingmens
Association; and he worships power so much that he wanted to impose and still means
to-day to impose his dictatorship on us. It seems to me that that is sufficient to
characterize his personal attitude. But his Socialist and political programme is a very
faithful expression of it. The supreme objective of all his efforts, as is proclaimed to us by
the fundamental statutes of his party in Germany, is the establishment of the great
Peoples State (Volksstaat).
4. HISTORY PROVES AFFIRMING THE STATE AFFIRMS COMPETITION AND ENDLESS WAR
page 29. But whoever says State, necessarily says a particular limited State, doubtless
comprising, if it is very large, many different peoples and countries, but excluding still
more. For unless he is dreaming of the Universal State as did Napoleon and the Emperor
Charles the Fifth, or as the Papacy dreamed of the Universal Church, Marx, in spite of all
the international ambition which devours him to-day, will have, when the hour of the
realization of his dreams has sounded for him--if it ever does sound--he will have to
content himself with governing a single State and not several States at once.
Consequently, who ever says State says, a State, and whoever says a State affirms by
that the existence of several States, and whoever says several States, immediately says:
competition, jealousy, truceless and endless war. The simplest logic as well as all history
bear witness to it.
THE STATE IS ABSOLUTELY

IRREDEEMABLE
1. ANY AND ALL STATES TEND TOWARDS CONFLICT AND DOMINATION Michael Bakunin,
Anarchist philosopher, MARXISM, FREEDOM, AND THE STATE, 1950, page Any State,
under pain of perishing and seeing itself devoured by neighbouring States, must tend
towards complete power, and, having become powerful, it must embark on a career of
conquest, so that it shall not be itself conquered; for two powers similar and at the same
time foreign to each other could not co-exist without trying to destroy each other.
Whoever says conquest, says conquered peoples, enslaved and in bondage, under
whatever form or name it may be.
2. THE STATES MORAUTY IS TO CRUSH TRUE, HUMAN MORALITY

page 30. The State, for its own preservation, must necessarily be powerful as regards
foreign affairs; but if it is so as regards foreign affairs, it will infallibly be so as regards
home affairs. Every State, having to let itself be inspired and directed by some particular
morality, conformable to the particular conditions of its existence, by a morality which is
a restriction and consequently a negation of human and universal morality, must keep
watch that all its subjects, in their thoughts and above all in their acts, are inspired also
only by the principles of this patriotic or particular morality, and that they remain deaf to
the teachings of pure or universally human morality. From that there results the
necessity for a State censorship; too great liberty of thought and opinions being, as Marx
considers, very reasonably too from his eminently political point of view, incompatible
with that unanimity of adherence demanded by the security of the State. That in reality
is Marxs opinion is sufficiently proved by the attempts which he made to introduce
censorship into the International, under plausible pretexts, and covering it with a mask.
3. STATISM ALWAYS REQUIRES SLAVES

page 3 3-4. Slavery can Change its form and its name--its basis remains the same. This
basis is expressed by the words:
being a slave is being forced to work for other people--as being a master is to live on the
labour of other people. In ancient times, as to-day in Asia and Africa, slaves were simply
called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of serfs, to-day they are called
wage-earners. The position of these latter is much more honourable and less hard than
that of slaves, but they are none the less forced by hunger as well as by the political and
social institutions, to maintain by very hard work the absolute or relative idleness of
others. Consequently, they are slaves. And, in general, no State, either ancient or
modem, has ever been able, or ever will be able to do without the forced labour of the
masses, whether wage-earners or slaves, as a principal and absolutely necessary basis

of the liberty and culture of the political class: the citizens.
4. WE CAN ONLY BE HAPPY AND FREE WITHOUT THE STATE

Michael Bakunin, Anarchist philosopher, quoted in Isaiah Berlin, fellow of All Souls
College, Oxford University, past President of the British Academy, KARL MARX: HIS LIFE
AND ENVIRONMENT, Fourth Edition, 1996, page 205.
We revolutionary anarchists are the enemies of all forms of State and State
organizations ... we think that all State rule, all governments being by their very nature
placed outside the mass of the people, must necessarily seek to subject it to customs
and purposes entirely foreign to it. We therefore declare ourselves to be foes ... of all
State organizations as such, and believe that the people can only be happy and free,
when, organized from below by means of its own autonomous and completely free
associations, without the supervision of any guardians, it will create its own life.
JAMES BALDWIN
SOCIAL COMMENTATOR AND ESSAYIST

1924 - 1987
Biographical Background
Once described as the most considerable moral essayist now writing in the United
States,11 James Baldwin was a prolific writer of the mid~20th century. His work included
fiction, poetry and drama, as well as political essays. It was as an essayist that he
gained the most attention. The frequent topic of his writings was race relations and the
struggle for civil rights among African-Americans.
His noteworthiness as an American writer is somewhat ironic; he lived most of his adult
life in France.
However, he did not consider himself an expatriate, instead preferring to think of himself
as a kind of trans-Atlantic commuter.12 Even though he did live abroad, his impact on
the American civil rights movement of the 1960s was profound. In addition to his works
on racial matters, Baldwin also wrote about discrimination against homosexuals and was
an early critic of Americas involvement in the Vietnam War.
As a minority within a minoritya black homosexualBaldwin was able to write

insightful, thought-provoking, and controversial essays that challenged traditional social
practices and structures. He strongly believed that it was his purpose to question,
confront, and probe for the truth. As quoted by biographers Fred Standley and Louis
Pratt, Baldwin believed that real writers question their age. 13
Born in Harlem, New York, Baldwin was the oldest son (out of nine children) of a
preacher and was himself also trained as a Pentecostal minister. Many of his biographers
believe his religious background had a strong influence on his writing, as evidenced in
such books as Go Tell It On the Mountain and The Fire Next Time.
Baldwin left home at the age of 17 and tried his hand at various jobs including waiting
on tables and writing book reviews. In one collection of his essays, Notes of a Native
11 Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt, Conversations with James Baldwin. (Jackson,
Mississippi:University Press of Mississippi, 1989), p. vii.
12 lbid., p. vii.
13 lbid., p. vii.
Son, Baldwin explained that he was a writer, even from his earliest childhood days: I
must also confess that I wrotea great dealand my first professional triumph, in any
case, the first effort of mine to be seen in print, occurred at the age of twelve or
thereabouts, when a short story I had written about the Spanish revolution won some
sort of prize in an extremely short-lived church newspaper. 14
Philosophical Foundations and Ideas
Over the course of his career which spanned four decades, Baldwins writing focused on
such diverse topics as the indivisibility of the private life and the public life, the essential
need to develop sexual and psychological consciousness and identity, and the explosive
and destructive state of race relations. His constant examination of the human condition
also revealed his belief that there is an indispensable interdependency among
individuals, nations, and the world.
Baldwin did not think any topic was sacred or beyond the analysis of society. A sampling
of his diverse subject matters confirms this belief: American foreign policy, the influence
of Christianity on blacks and whites, Third world countries, and the images presented in
Hollywood.
While Baldwin wrote about a variety of seemingly unrelated topics, the root of his work
bad one message:
each individual is a worthy and valuable human being. Henry Louis Gates, professor of
English and Afro-American Literature at Cornell University, called Baldwin a conscience
for black people as well as an entire country. 5
Through his writing, Baldwin was able to influence the rhetoric of several civil rights
leaders. According to Professor Gates, Baldwin educated an entire generation of
Americans about the civil-rights struggle and the sensibility of Afro-Americans as we
faced and conquered the final barriers in our long quest for civil rights. 6
Summary of Selected Works
14 James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son. (New York: The Dial Press, 1963), p. 7.
55 Lee A. Daniels, James Baldwin, Eloquent Writer In Behalf of Civil Rights, Is Dead, The
New York Times December 2, 1987, p. 1
66 lbid., p. 1.
As was noted earlier, Baldwin was a prolific writer, producing a variety of works including
novels, essays, plays, and commentaries. The following works are a small sample of the
diversity of his writing.
From 1955 through 1963 he wrote several essays that contributed to the civil rights
movement burgeoning in the South. The first collection of these were presented in Notes
of a Native Son, published in 1955. In 1961, the next set of essays was published in
Nobody Knows My Name. Baldwins third essay book of this period was The Fire Next
Time, published in 1963.
Baldwins first novel was partially autobiographical. Go Tell ft On The Mountain told the
story of a ministers son who grew up poor in Harlem in the 1930s. The novel involves
the relationship between the son and his autocratic father who hated him. Baldwin
himself considered this book the keystone of his career. Mountain is the book I had to
write if I was ever going to write anything else, be said. I had to deal with what hurt
me most. I had to deal, above all, with my father. 7
The book that drew the most criticism was Giovanni s Room, written in 1956. It was
derided for its unadulterated view of homosexuality.
Criticism
Throughout his career, Baldwin attracted much attentionnegative as well as positive.

One critic claimed that Baldwin celebrated the victimization of African-Americans.
According to well-known jazz critic and essayist Stanley Crouch, Baldwin sanctified the
oppressed and elevated victimization in African-American literature. 8 He further
criticized Baldwin by saying that be influenced the cultural nationalists who
transformed white America into Big Daddy and the Negro movement into an obnoxious,
pouting adolescent demanding the car keys. 9
Eldridge Cleaver, a former member of the Black Panther Party, believed that Baldwins
1962 novel Another Country revealed a hatred of blacks. Other critics found fault with
Baldwins writing style. Some said his style was too halting, others claimed it was too
sweeping. Still, others thought he was better at one style of writing than another. For
example, poet Langston Hughes once observed, Few American writers handle words
77 lbid., p. 1.
88 ltabari Njeri, Crouch to the Contrary; Books: In Notes of a Hanging Judge, Stanley
Crouch Lambastes Black Intellectuals for Separatists Attitudes That He Says Betray The
Civil Rights Movement, Los Angeles Times. May 21, 1990, p. 1.
99 lbid., p. 1.
more effectively in the essay form than lames Baldwin. To my way of thinking, he is
much better at provoking thought in the essay than he is in arousing emotion in
fiction.10
Conclusion and Summary
The writer Randall Kenan eloquently described Baldwins place in literary and social
philosophy history. He wrote, More than any other writer of his generation, white or
black, gay or straight, man or woman, it would not be an exaggeration to say, James
Baldwin exerted a moral hold on the American imagination nonpareil in the annals of this
countrys literature and its public debate for nearly four decades, a status clearly in
league with that of Emerson and Thoreau and Douglass. 11
Whether one agrees with Baldwins assertions or not, all readers of his work can agree
that there is one prevalent theme throughout his writing: love. He espoused the need for
love among individuals. He pleaded for understanding among people of different
backgrounds, based on love of humans. It is from his strong conviction in the power of
love that his voice arose and spoke to millions of people to create a better world.
1010 Daniels, James Baldwin, Eloquent Writer In Behalf of Civil Rights, Is Dead, p.1.
1111 Randall Kenan, James Baldwin: A Biography. Book reviews, The Nation. .May 2,
1994, p. 596.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baldwin, James. Another Country. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1962.
__ Giovannis Room. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1956.
_ Go Tell It On The Mountain. New York The Dial Press, 1953.
_ Nobody Knows My Name. New York: The Dial Press, 1961.
Notes of a Native Son. New York: The Dial Press, 1963.
_and Margaret Mead. A Rap on Race. London: Dell Publishing Co., 1961.
_ _and Nikki Giovanni. A Dialogue. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1975.
Bigsby, C.W.E. The Divided Mind of lames Baldwin, Journal of American Studies 14, no.
2 (1980):
325-42.
Bloom, Harold. James Baldwin. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.
Eckman, Fern Marja. The Furious Passage of James Baldwin. New York M. Evans and Co.,
Inc., 1966.
Howe, Gregory and W. Scott Nobles. James Baldwins Message for White America,
Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (1973): 142-151.
Kenan, Randall. James Baldwin: A Biography (book reviews), The Nation, May 2, 1994,
p. 596.
Kinnamon, Kenneth, Ed. James Baldwin: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century
Views. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Lee A. Daniels. James Baldwin, Eloquent Writer in Behalf of Civil Rights, Is Dead, The
New York Times. December 2, 1987, sec. A, col. 5, p. 1.
Macebuh, Stanley. James Baldwin: A Critical Study. New York: Third World Press, 1973.
Pratt, Louis. James Baldwin. Boston: Twayne, 1978.
Standley, Fred L. and Nancy V. Burt. Critical Essays on James Baldwin. Boston,
Massachusetts: G.K. Hall & Co., 1988.
THE DEHUMANIZATION OF AFRICANAMERICANS IS PERVASIVE

1. SOCIETY HAS SOUGHT TO DEHUMANIZE AFRICAN-AMERICANS James Baldwin, Moral
Essayist, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, 1963, p. 24-5.
Time has made some changes in the Negro face. Nothing has succeeded in making it
exactly like our own, though the general desire seems to be to make it blank if one
cannot make it white. When it has become black, the past as thoroughly washed from
the black face as it has been for ours, our guilt will be finishedat least it will have
ceased to be visible, which we imagine to be much the same thing.
2. AFRICAN-AMERICANS HAVE BEEN DEHUMANIZED IN AMERICAN HISTORY James

Baldwin, Moral Essayist, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, 1963, p. 23-4.
One may say that the Negro in America does not really exist except in the darkness of
our minds. This is
why his history and his progress, his relationship to all other Americans, has been kept in
the social arena.
He is a social and not a personal or a human problem; to think of him is to think of
statistics, slums, rapes, injustices, remote violence; it is to be confronted with an endless
cataloguing of losses, gains, skirmishes; it is to feel virtuous, outraged helpless, as
though his continuing status among us were somehow analogous to diseasecancer,
perhaps, or tuberculosiswhich must be checked, even though it cannot be cured.
3. DEHUMANIZATION OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS DEHUMANIZES ALL AMERICANS James

Baldwin, Moral Essayist, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, 1963, p. 24.
Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible for our dehumanization of ourselves:
the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his. Time and our
own force act as our allies, creating an impossible, a fruitless tension between the
traditional master and slave. Impossible and fruitless because, literal and visible as this
tension has become, it has nothing to do with reality.
4. THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS HAS BEEN IGNORED

James Baldwin, Moral Essayist, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, 1963, p. 23.
The story of the Negro in America is the story of Americaor, more precisely, it is the
story of Americans. It is not a very pretty story: the story of a people is never very pretty.
The Negro in America, gloomily referred to as that shadow which lies athwart our
national life, is far more than that. He is a series of shadows, self created, intertwining,
which now we helplessly battle.
5. WHITE VISION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY IS INACCURATE AND USELESS James Baldwin,

Moral Essayist, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, 1963, p. 157. I do not think, for example, that
it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the worldwhich
allows us little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life,
which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and whiteowes a great
deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men
a human separation which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne in
on usvery faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very much against our will
that this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless.
6. EFFECT OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS ON CULTURE HAS BEEN BETRAYED James Baldwin,

Moral Essayist, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, 1963, p. 23.
As is the inevitable result of things unsaid, we find ourselves until today oppressed with
a dangerous and reverberating silence; and the story is told, compulsively, in symbols
and signs, in hieroglyphics, it is revealed in Negro speech and in that of the white
majority and in their different frames of reference. The ways in which the Negro has
affected the American psychology are betrayed in our popular culture and in our
morality; in our estrangement from him is the depth of our estrangement form
ourselves.
BLACK MALES LOSE SELF-IDENTITY IN

SOCIETY
1. BLACK MALES SEXUALITY IS DESTROYED IN AMERICAN SOCIETY
James Baldwin, Essayist, JAMES BALDWIN NIKKI GIOVANNI, A DIALOGUE, 1973, p. 39-40.
The price of being a black man in Americathe price the black male has had to pay is
expected to pay, and which he has to outwitis his sex. You know a black man is
forbidden by definition, since hes black, to assume the roles, burdens, duties and joys of
being a man. In the same way that my child produced from your body did not belong to
me but to the mater and could be sold at any moment. This erodes a mans sexuality,
and when you erode a mans sexuality you destroy his ability to love anyone, despite the
fact that sex and love are not the same thing. When a mans sexuality is gone, his
possibility, his hope, of loving is also gone.
2. STANDARDS OF CIVILIZATION ARE INTERNALIZED

James Baldwin, Essayist, JAMES BALDWIN NIKKI GIOVANNI, A DIALOGUE, l973p. 52-3. The
standards of the civilization into which you are born are first outside of you, and by the
time you get to be a man theyre inside of you. And this is not susceptible to any kind of
judgment, its a fact. If youre treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.
3. BLACK MALES ARE TREATED AS SLAVES IN SOCIETY

James Baldwin, Essayist, JAMES BALDWIN NIKKI GIOVANNI, A DIALOGUE, 1973p. 53.
If certain things are described to you as being real theyre real for you whether theyre
real or not. And in this civilization a man who cannot support his wife and child is not a
man. The black man has always been treated as a slave and of course he reacts that
way, one way or another.
BLACK HATRED OF WHITES STEMS

FROM RAGE
1. BLACK HATRED OF WHITES STEMS FROM RAGE
James Baldwin, Essayist, THE DEVIL FINDS WORK, 1976, p. 61-2.
This is, perhaps, a very subtle argument, but black men do not have the same reason to
hate white men as
white men have to hate blacks. The root of the white mans hatred is terror, a
bottomless and nameless terror, which focuses on the black, surfacing, and
concentrating on this dread figure, an entity which lives only in his mind. but the root of
the black mans hatred is rage, and he does not so much bate white men as simply want
them out of his way, and, more than that, out of his childrens way.
2. BLACKS HAVE RAGE IN THEIR MINDS FOR WHITES

James Baldwin, Essayist, THE DEVIL FINDS WORK, 1976, p. 62.
When the white man begins to have in the black mans mind the weight that the black
man has in the white mans mind, that black man is going mad. And when he goes
under, he does not go under screaming in terror: he goes under howling with rage.
BALDWIN WAS INCONSISTENT IN HIS

OPINIONS
1. BALDWIN WAS INCONSISTENT IN CLAIMING HIS RACIAL IDENTITY
C.W.E. Bigsby, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 103-4. For it was
Baldwins assumption that the question of colour, crucially important on a moral level,
concealed a more fundamental problem, the problem of self. And it is in that sense that
he felt most American. But he negotiates a privileged position for himself by claiming an
American identity (while naturally disavowing the guilt for a prejudice which he did not
originate and for a history which he played no part us determining), and simultaneously
embracing a Negro identity (while declining the cultural temporizing and disabling
pathology which he otherwise identifies as the natural inheritance of the black
American.).
2. BALDWIN WAS INCONSISTENT IS ASSESSING MORAL BEHAVIORS OF INDIVIDUALS

C.W.E. Bigsby, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 110.
His [Baldwins] desire to establish his belief that individuals are responsible moral
creatures is simultaneously undermined by his conviction that their crime is ineradicable
and human beings ineluctably wicked. The problem does not reside in language alone,
but in his own terrible ambivalences which lead him to accuse and defend, condemn and
rescue with equal conviction. The deficiency is an intellectual one.
3. BALDWIN OFFERED CONTRADICTORY SOLUTIONS TO RACIAL PROBLEMS

C.W.E. Bigsby, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 110.
Even now, in one mood, he sees a solution in some kind of symbolic union of black and
white for which he can find no historical justification and for which he can establish no
social mechanism. When asked, some twenty-five years after his first essay, how he
meant to go about securing his solution to the problem, his reply was simply, * dont
know yet, And then, slipping into the opposite mood, which has always been the other
side to this sentimental vision, he offered the only solution which he could see:
Blow it up.
BALDWIN WAS PAROCHIAL IN HIS

VIEWS OF RACE ISSUES
1. BALDWIN EXCLUDED NON-AMERICAN BLACKS FROM RACIAL DEBATE
Stephen Spender, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 229.
One suspects that for Mr. Baldwin it is sacrilege to suggest that there are Negroes
outside America; and from this there follows the implication that the Negro problem is
his problem that can only be discussed on his terms. Hence too his contempt for most
people who, in the main, agree with him, especially for poor despised American Liberals.
He has, as a Negro, a right, of course, to despise liberals, but he exploits his moral
advantage too much.
2. BALDWIN WAS BIASED TOWARD ONLY AMERICAN BLACKS AS OPPRESSED PEOPLE

Stephen Spender, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 231.
Mr. Baldwins bias towards discussing the American Negro as though he had no
characteristics in common with Negroes elsewhere or other oppressed people and
classes contributes to his tendency to think that the problem can only be met by all
Negroes and all white Americans being seized at the same moment by the same wave of
love. My argument is that the relationship of Negro to white exists within a situation
comparable to other situations. It is partly a situation of color, partly one of class.
3. OPPRESSION OF BLACKS MUST BE COMPARED WITH NON-AMERICAN BLACKS Stephen

Spender, NQA, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES BALDWIN, 1988, p. 229.
Sometimes by Negro Mr. Baldwin means people with black skins originating in Africa, but
sometimes he defines them by the situationthat of being oppressed. And indeed if the
Negro problem is resolvable, the only useful way of discussing it is to consider American
Negroes in a situation which is comparable with that of workers and of Negroes
elsewhere. To write as though Negroes do no exist anywhere except in America is to
induce despair, to suggest that in American white and black cannot become integrated
to the (rather limited) extent to which they have been, for example, in Brazil.
MURRAY BOOKCHIN
SOCIAL ECOLOGY (b. 1921)

Life And Work
Murray Bookchin is an important social anarchist thinker with an intriguing background.

Bookchin was
born in New York City on January 14, 1921. His parents, who were immigrants, had been
involved in the Russian revolutionary movement. In the first part of the 1930s, Murray
entered the Communist youth movement at the age of nine. When the end of the
decade rolled around, though, he had become disillusioned with the movement. The
reason, which was to become a theme in Bookchins critiques of socialism, was that
communism was authoritarian in nature and had a lack of respect for individual rights.
Though Bookchin has called himself an anarchist since the I 950s, he has said that his
beliefs were anarchist much earlier. Following the Stalin-Hitler pact in September 1939
he became active in labor. He helped organize unions in northern New Jersey, where he
worked as a foundryman. Oddly enough, Bookchin served in the U.S. Army during the
1940s. After discharge, he was an autoworker and became deeply involved in the United
Auto Workers (UAW). Following the great General Motors strike of 1948, he started to
wonder whether the labor movement would ever be able to make the fundamental
changes the system required. He worried that labor advances were mere reforms, with
workers being assimilated into the capitalist system of exploitation.
Concerned with individual rights, he called himself a libertarian socialist, and began
working with others who had forsaken Marxist orthodoxy, many of them German exiles.
At the time he was writing under pen names including M. S. Shiloh, Lewis Herber (under
which name he would publish his first American book), Robert Keller, and Harry Ludd.
Bookchins largest contribution to the anarchist intellectual tradition is probably his

theory of social ecology. Involved with the New Left movement of the 1 960s, he wrote
many books which helped develop
these ideas, Including Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Crisis In Our Cities (1965), and
Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971). Drawing on these ideas, he co-founded and became
director of the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont in 1974. Bookchin, in
addition to teaching at the Institute, also taught at the Alternative University in New
York, at City University of New York, and at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where he was
full professor of social theory before he retired in 1983. He still teaches two courses at
the Institute for Social Ecology--though his health problems preclude much of his
previous activities. However, he is still on the editorial advisory boards of Anarchist
Studies and Society And Nature and Cassell has just published his new book,
Reenchanting Humanity.
Basic Philosophies
Bookchin has sought to integrate a wide variety of progressive philosophies into one
cohesive whole. Still staunchly against oppression of all forms, Bookchins social ecology
might best be generalized as left-libertarian. However, he incorporates many other ideas
into his critique of modem capitalism, such as his favor of decentralized, local structures,
and his concern with human inequity (racial, sexual, and class-based) and, of course, his
ecological concerns. Bookchins theories argue that the reason humans dominate nature
primarily generates from the domination of human by human--such as men-over-women
(patriarchy), white-over-black (racism), and rich-over-poor (classism). Bookchin wishes to
challenge all hierarchical dominant structures through his left-libertarian critique.
Bookchin also criticizes biocentric notions advanced by such deep ecologist groups as
Earth First! He argues that biocentric ideas distract us from capitalism as the primary
source of problems, promote misanthropic philosophies that are counterproductive, and
wholeheartedly reject even ecologically beneficial technologies.
All these things, Bookchin argues, prevent a cohesive strategy that will defend the
environment as well as
people: the strategy of social ecology. Bookchins dialogue with Dave Foreman in
Defending The Earth helps illustrate many of these criticisms. Bookchins fully-developed
arguments against the biocentric, pantheistic eco-spiritualists can be found in Which
Way For The Ecology Movement?
Bookchin also diverges from many radical environmentalists, like Kirkpatrick Sale and
Jerry Mander, in his refusal to wholly condemn technology. He believes that ecotechnologies can and should be developed. In fact, the Institute for social ecology has
been developing eco-technology since 1974. While he admits to the risk associated with
technological advances, he notes that they can give us tools like solar collectors,
efficient windmills, and ecologically designed buildings.
like most radical populists, Bookchin believes that democratic decision making and local
initiatives are key for a truly Green politics. Unlike most, however, he has a blueprint for
a green revolution. He has called for a new politics of participatory democracy, or
libertarian municipalism. Bookchins brand of politics is based on popular assemblies at
municipal, neighborhood, and town levels: a form of direct-democratic participation. He
has acknowledged the danger that small communities can become isolationist and
parochialist, so to avoid the risk of this, he advocates a civic confederalism, by which a
decentralized society confederates in an alliance. The group of localities counters the
influence of the centralized nation-state and its market forces.
As an alternative to the unbridled market of capitalists, or the nationalized economy

promulgated by Marxian socialists, or to the workers ownership and self- management
of industry advocated by syndicalists, Bookchins view calls for a municipalized
economy. He feels that co-operatives, though positive, are not sufficient enough to
challenge the intimidating powers of the state and the market, but a mutually
supporting confederated structure could present such a challenge. The politics of
confederation stand in stark opposition to other radical and mainstream social theories.
Another place Bookchin takes a different path than many radical ecologists is in his
criticism of populationist ideology. Though he admits that a bourgeoning population can
cause environmental woes, he feels that populationist dogma--that population problems
are the most pervasive, most insidious threat to the ecology--is counterproductive. He
argues that the Nazis used populationist imagery to justify their ethnic cleansing. He
reminds us that United States populationists often speak of the growing population in
terms of Third World population, and alerts us to the racist overtones these arguments
have. He argues that focusing on population distracts us from the true, social causes of
ecological woes--thus blurring our critique of capitalism and preventing us from
addressing problems in a social-ecological manner. He points to history as an illustration
that population warnings are often overstated, and is skeptical of the populationists antiimmigrant, neo-Malthusian character.
Despite his awareness of overwhelming social problems, Bookchin, now in his seventies,
takes an optimistic view of social transformation. He not only feels that humans can
mobilize to change society, but also argues in many places that it is inevitable. His
rationale is that, since humans have an innate desire for freedom as well as revolutionary
impulses, these urges can only be suppressed with the annihilation of man himself.
These Eros-derived impulses can be delayed, but they can never be eliminated. He
also argues that, looking historically, the statist structure should have become obsolete
long ago, and that due to its ripeness and decay the structure must fall.
The mechanism by which Bookchin argues the transformation will occur is this: in the
face of a profound crisis, such as the one capitalism faces right now, people will mobilize
against the evils of the statist, capitalist structure. As we confront the growing problems,
Bookchin says, our desire to change will also grow, and, in fact, [un the face of such a
crisis, efforts for change are inevitable. The problem comes when we accept small,
token gains from the statist structure and allow dissent to me moved into the
institutional bounds of Treasonable dissent. Bookchin argues that reforms just mask
the oppressive, hierarchical structures that capitalisms nature makes inevitable. He
warns against co-optation, saying that
reforms are just those in power throwing a bone to those who have no power. He argues
that if the ecology movement does not ultimately direct its main efforts toward a
revolution in all areas of life that the movement will simply degenerate into a safety
valve for the existing order.
Debate Application
Bookchins debate applications are manifold and versatile. He offers a stinging critique
against any mainstream thinking--defenders of the market system, people who argue for
economic efficiency, those who argue for a strong federal system with no regard for the
local. However, he offers an equally applicable criticism of many progressive/radical
thinkers, rejecting the biocentric notions and anti-technology ideas of Earth First!,
among others.
He offers helpful analysis into the pratfalls of many other radical philosophies--socialism,
comniunitarianism--which neglect the tights of the individual. Bookchins defense of
personal liberties makes his philosophy advantageous against these thinkers. Moreover,
it is also apparent that Bookchins historical analysis and inevitability arguments make
responding to practicality and other arguments relatively simple. From a broader
perspective, it can also be argued that the limited focus of many debaters is bad--by
focusing on one issue, be it the ecology, the economy, or individual rights--they are
shortsighted, missing the comprehensive approach social ecology offers.
Bibliography
Murray Bookchin, DEFENDING THE EARTH: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MURRAY BOOKCHIN
AND DAVE FOREMAN, Boston: South End Press, 1991.
Murray Bookchin, THE ECOLOGY OF FREEDOM, Cheshire Books, 1982.
Murray Bookchin, POST-SCARCITY ANARCHISM, Black Rose Books, 1977.
Murray Bookchin, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT? Boston: South End Press,
1994.
Charles Crute, FREEDOM MAGAZINE, 13th June 1992
Peter Marshall, DEMANDING THE IMPOSSIBLE, London: Harper Collins, 1992.
CRISIS AND THE RESULTING SOCIAL

SHIFT IS INEVITABLE
1. THE CRISIS AND CHANGE IS INEVITABLE: THE ONLY QUESTION IS CO-OPTATION
Murray Bookchin, Philosopher, former Professor at many Universities, Director Emeritus
of the Institute
for Social Ecology, DEFENDING THE EARTH, 1991, page 76.
In the face of such a crisis, efforts for change are inevitable. Ordinary people all over the
globe are becoming active in campaigns to eliminate nuclear power plants and weapons,
to preserve clean air and water, to limit the use of pesticides and food additives, to
reduce vehicular traffic in streets and on highways, to make cities more wholesome
physically, to prevent radioactive wastes from seeping into the environment, to guard
and expand wilderness areas and domains for wildlife, to defend animal species from
human depredation. The single most important question before the ecology movement
today, however, is whether these efforts will be co-opted and contained within the
institutional bounds of reasonable dissent and reformism or whether these efforts will
mature into a powerful movement that can create fundamental, indeed revolutionary,
changes in our society and our way of looking at the world.
2. THE REVOLUTIONARY IMPULSE CANNOT BE CONTAINED

of the Institute for Social Ecology, POST-SCARCITY ANARCHISM, 1977, page 61.
The Eros-driven impulses in man can be repressed and sublimated, but they can never
be eliminated. They are renewed with every birth of a human being and with every
generation of youth. It is not surprising today that the young, more than any economic
class or stratum, articulate the life-impulses in humanitys nature--the urgings of desire,
sensuousness, and the lure of the marvelous. Thus, the biological matrix, from which
hierarchical society emerged ages ago, reappears at a new level with the era that marks
the end of hierarchy, only now this matrix is saturated with social phenomena. Short of
manipulating humanity s germ plasma, the life-impulses can be annulled only with the
annihilation of man himself.
3. DESTRUCTION OF THE STATE STRUCTURE IS INEVITABLE AND OVERDUE

The decay of the American institutional structure results not from any mystical failure of
nerve or from imperialist adventures in the Third World, but primarily from the
overripeness of Americas technological potential. like the hanging fruit whose seeds
have matured fully, the structure may fall from the lightest blow. The blow may come
from the Third World, from major economic dislocations, even from premature political
repression, but fall the structure must, owing to its ripeness and decay.
4. CO-OPTATION CAN DELAY BUT NOT STOP THE CRISIS AND REVOLUTION
True, a great deal of the pursuit of this discontent can be diverted into established
institutional channels for a time. But only for a time. The social crisis is too deep and
world-historical for the established institutions to contain it.
CO-OPTATION THROUGH REFORMS IS

THE BIGGEST DANGER
1. ONLY REVOLUTION IS EFFECTIVE: ALL OTHER ACTIONS PRESERVE THE BAD SYSTEM
of the Institute
for Social Ecology, DEFENDING THE EARTH, 1991, page 78.
I have long argued that we delude ourselves if we believe that a life-oriented world can
be developed or even partially achieved in a profoundly death-oriented society. U.S.
society, as it is constituted today, is riddled with patriarchy and racism and sits astride
the entire world, not only as a consumer of its wealth and resources, but as an obstacle
to all attempts at self-determination at home and abroad. Its inherent aims are
production for the sake of production, the preservation of hierarchy and toil on a world
scale, mass control and manipulation by centralized, state institutions. This kind of
society is inexorably counterposed to a life-oriented world. If the ecology movement
does not ultimately direct its main efforts toward a revolution in all areas of life--social as
well as natural, political as well as personal, economic as well as cultural--then the
movement will gradually degenerate into a safety-valve for the established order.
2. REFORMS CAN NEVER STOP THE SYSTEMS HORRORS: THEY DELAY REAL ACTIONS
of the Institute for Social Ecology, DEFENDING THE EARTH, 1991, page 77.
Conventional reform efforts, at their best, can only slow down but they cannot arrest the
overwhelming momentum toward destruction within our society. At their worst, they lull
people into a false sense of security. Our institutional social order plays games with us to
foster this passivity. It grants long-delayed, piecemeal, and woefully inadequate reforms
to deflect our energies and attention from larger acts of destruction. Such reform
measures hide the rotten core of the apple behind an appealing and artificially red-dyed
skin.
3. IMPROVING LIFE WITHIN THE CURRENT SYSTEM LEADS TO CO-OPTATION

To be sure, moving from todays capitalist society--based on giant industrial and urban
belts, a highly chemical agribusiness, centralized and bureaucratic power, a staggering
armaments economy, massive pollution and exploited labor--toward the ecological
society that I have only begun to describe here will require a complex and difficult
transition strategy I have no pat formulas for making such a revolution. A few things
seem clear, however. A new politics must be created that eschew the snares of co-
optation within the system that is destroying social and ecological life. We need a social
movement that can effectively resist and ultimately replace the nation-state and
corporate capitalism; not one that limits its sights to improving * the current system.
4. NO COMPROMISES ARE GOOD: MUST AVOID CO-OPTATION AT ALL COSTS

of the Institute for Social Ecology, DEFENDING THE EARTH, 1991, page 78-9.
It does mean, however, that the immediate goals we seek and the means we use to
achieve them should orient us toward the radical fundamental changes that are needed
instead of towards co-optation and containment within the existing, hopelessly
destructive system. I am convinced that we will fail to keep our political bearings and
avoid co-optation unless we develop a bold and uncompromising vision of a truly
ecological future. The highest form of realism today can only be attained by looking
beyond a given state of affairs to a constructive vision of what should be. It is not good
enough to merely look at what could be within the normal institutional limits of todays
predatory societies. This will not yield a vision that is either desirable or sufficient. We
cannot afford to be content with such inherently compromised programs.
Our solutions must be commensurate with the scope of the problems. We need to
muster the courage to entertain radical visions which will, at first glance, appear
utopian to our cowed and domesticated political imaginations.
ECOLOGICAL STRATEGIES MUST BE

SOCIAL AND NOT SINGLE-ISSUE
1. ONLY SOCIAL ECOLOGY COMBATS ALL HIERARCHIES
Murry Bookchin, Philosopher, former Professor at many Universities, Director Emeritus of
the Institute for Social Ecology, DEFENDING THE EARTH, 1991, page 97.
Women, poor folks, and people of color are tight, I think, to be very wary of a philosophy
which interprets vital questions of human solidarity, democracy and liberation as
optional and secondary concerns, at best, and evidence of anti-ecological or
anthropocentric selfishness, at worst. Ecological philosophy, if it is to provide a solid
base for alliance-building, must be a social ecology that critiques and challenges all
forms of hierarchy and domination, not just our civilizations attempt to dominate and
plunder the natural world. It must be set as its overarching goal, the creation of a nonhierarchical society if we are to live in harmony with nature.
2. SOCIAL ECOLOGY IS BEST TO BUILD ALLIANCES THAT STOP HIERARCHY

of the Institute for Social Ecology, DEFENDING THE EARTH, 1991, page 97-8.
Social ecology provides a better foundation for alliance-building and a respectful unityin-diversity because it understands that the very concept of dominating nature stems
from the domination of human by human, indeed, of the young by their elders, of
women by men, of one ethnic or racial group by another, of society by the state, of one
economic class by another, and of colonized people by a colonial power. It thus stresses
all the social issues that most deep ecologists or reform environmentalists tend to
ignore, often downplay, or badly misunderstand. From this perspective, the fight against
racism is not just a mere political item that can be added to defending the Earth; it is
actually a vital and essential part of establishing a truly free and ecological society. The
difficult work of building alliances across ethnic lines is thus seen, as Jim correctly says,
as a moral as well as a strategic imperative for the ecology movement.
3. SOCIAL ECOLOGY AVOIDS RACISM, SEXISM, MISANTHROPY, AND ECO-WOES

A clear, creative, and reflective left green perspective can help us avoid this fate. It can
provide a coherent philosophical framework or context that can avoid the moral
insensitivity, racism, sexism, misanthropy, authoritarianism, and social illiteracy that has
sometimes surfaced within deep ecology circles. It can also provide a coherent
alternative to the traditional lefts neglect of ecology or its more recent, purely utilitarian
commitment to reformist environmentalism.
4. AS LONG AS HIERARCHIES EXIST, WE WILL BE AT THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION

Our present society has a definite hierarchical character. It is a propertied society that
concentrates economic power in corporate elites. It is a bureaucratic and militaristic
society that concentrates political and military power in centralized state institutions. It
is a patriarchal society that allocates authority to men to varying degrees. And it is a
racist society that places a minority of whites in a self-deceptive sovereignty over a vast
worldwide majority of peoples of color. While it is theoretically possible that a
hierarchical society can biologically sustain itself, at least for a time, through draconian
environmental controls, it is absolutely inconceivable that present-day hierarchical and
particularly capitalist society could establish a nondomineering and ethically symbiotic
relationship between itself and the natural world. As long as hierarchy persists, as long
as domination organizes humanity around a system of elites, the project of domination
nature will remain a predominant ideology and inevitably lead our planet to the brink, if
not into the abyss, of ecological extinction.
DECENTRALIZATION IS NECESSARY TO
SOLVE
1. BOOKCHIN PROVES THAT DECENTRALIZATION IS BEST
David Levine, The Learning Alliance, a non-profit grassroots environmental organization,
DEFENDING THE EARTH, 1991, page 13.
According to Bookchin, decentralized forms of production and food cultivation tailored to
the carrying capacities of particular bioregions are not only more efficient and
ecologically sustainable, they also restore humanitys intimate contact with the soil,
plant and animal life, sun and wind. This, he believes, is the only way to fully anchor and
sustain a widespread ecological sensibility within our culture. Furthermore, he maintains
that only by challenging the profit-seeking, grow or die dynamic of the corporate
capitalist economy and creating an alternative economy oriented to ecologically
sustainable production to meet vital human needs can we genuinely protect the planet
from the ravages of acid rain, global warming, and ozone destruction.
2. DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS ARE BEST FOR ECOLOGY AND ENERGY

By decentralizing our communities, we would also be able to eliminate societys horribly
destructive addiction to fossil fuels and nuclear energy. One of the fundamental reasons
that giant urban areas and industries are unsustainable is because of their inherent
dependency on huge quantities of dangerous and nonrenewable energy resources. To
maintain a large, densely populated city requires immense quantities of coal, petroleum,
or nuclear energy. It seems likely that safe and renewable energy sources such as wind,
water, and solar power can probably not fully meet the needs of giant urban areas, even
if careful energy conservation is practiced and automobile use and socially unnecessary
production is curtailed. In contrast to coal, oil, and nuclear energy, solar, wind, and other
alternative energy sources reach us mainly in small packets, as it were. Yet while
solar devices, wind turbines, and hydroelectric resources can probably not provide
enough electricity to illuminate Manhattan Island today, such energy sources, pieced
together in an organic energy pattern developed from the potentialities of a particular
region, could amply meet the vital needs of small, decentralized cities and towns.
DEEP AND MYSTICAL ECOLOGISM

HURTS TRUE ENVIRONMENTALISM
1. DEEP ECOLOGY AND NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY WILL BE USED BY REACTIONARIES
of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT, 1994,
page 4. Despite their indifference to social issues and their emphasis on personal
salvation, ecomystics usually premise their views on a biometaphysics, as
contradictory as this may seems. Ecofeminist celebrations of the alleged intuitive
powers and soulful women over male rationality and aggressiveness easily lend
themselves to a crude sociobiogism that is more genetic than cultural. The numinous
Self that we must presumably develop if we are to attain self-realization, to use the
language of Arne Naess, Bill Devall, and George Sessions, has very earthy implications
that can lead to highly reactionary conclusions.
2. MISANTHROPIC ENVIRONMENTALISM CRUSHES ALL GOOD ECOLOGISM

of the Institute for Social Ecology, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT, 1994,
page 29.
The misanthropic strain that runs through the movement in the name of biocentrism,
antihumanism, Gaian consciousness, and neo-Malthusianism threatens to make ecology,
in the broad sense of the term, the best candidate we have for a dismal science. The
attempt of many mystical ecologists to exculpate the present society for its role in
famines, epidemics, poverty, and hunger serves the worlds power elites as the most
effective ideological defense for the extremes of wealth on one side and poverty on the
other. It is not only the great mass of people who must make hard choices about
humanitys future in a period of growing ecological dislocation; it is the ecology
movement itself that must make hard choices about its sense of direction in a time of
growing mystification
Answering Bookchin
Introduction
Give Murray Bookchin credit: the old guy just keeps churning out writings, despite being
at death's door for what seems like a decade at least. From reading his stuff, you would
think he hangs on just for the sheer pleasure of confounding (and viciously dissing in
print) his critics. And you know what? maybe he does. But no matter.
Through his voluminous writings, intriguing analysis and excellent evidentiary support
for his claims, Bookchin is one of those authors who has achieved lasting fame in
debate. His work has been cited by debaters for what seems like forever.
Why, then, are there so few specific on-point refutations offered when debaters argue
Bookchins critiques of capitalism, the state, deep ecology, etc.? As one of my debaters,
who makes his living arguing 'Uncle Murray' said to me one day: Don't people realize
that there are tons of people who FLAT-OUT HATE Bookchin? Which is true. There is no
love lost between Murray and (most of) his critics, who attack the old social ecology
scholar with a virulent hatred that seems irrational and obsessive.
Thats true of some more than others. You have your goofy deep-ecologist attacks on
Bookchin, which criticize him for being a crotchety old man more than anything else.
Bob Black has compared him to Elmer Fudd, for example. David Watson also falls into
this category - and be advised, some of these sources are more reasonable and credible
than others. For a pretty good comparison between Bookchins ideas and the thought of
a (moderately) reasonable deep ecologist, check out DEFENDING THE EARTH, Bookchins
dialogue with former Earth First!er Dave Foreman.
Then you have your environmental movement scholars that admire Bookchin for his
contribution to the cause, but see a few shortcomings in his philosophy that they think
ought to be ironed out. A few of these people, like John Clark, are bitter toward Bookchin
and his way of thinking. Others, like Michael Albert, seem to have honest questions
about Bookchins visions that they would like to see addressed.
So, when deciding how to organize the four pages of cards Im supposed to produce for
this, I figured, why not produce FOUR DIFFERENT ways of attacking Bookchin? Thats
right, you get criticisms of Murray Bookchin from the perspective of Deep Ecology,
Ecocommunitarianism, Participatory Economics, and Socialism/EcoMarxism as well.
Not that these are the only four ways out there, but it shows you the kind of opposition
he has engendered. Thats not to say the opposition is overwhelming. Murray has tons of
support from ecologists, labor people and anarchists as well.
And youll see why if you check out some of his books. Agree or disagree with him, the
man has clearly put a ton of time and energy into understanding history, philosophy and
the way that various important issues intersect. This makes him one of the most
important radical thinkers of the 20th century.
Reading Bookchin
Since his first writings, Murray Bookchins thought has changed a lot. Thats not
surprising, considering hes seen monumental changes in society. Bookchin got his start
as a young socialist, only later evolving into the kind of social anarchism that marks his
thinking today. Although he wrote one of the first reasoned critiques of technology and
its impact on the environment -- predating even Rachel Carsons SILENT SPRING - he
later came to consider technology a crucial part of social revolution. And though at one
time he was wary of any dealings with any kind of state, hes come to reconsider that
position.
This is important when you consider how to answer Bookchins arguments. Many of the
debaters utilizing his evidence will not be familiar with the latest changes in Bookchins
thinking, so if you are, that can work out well for you.
The Institute for Social Ecology, where Bookchin is a director emeritus, has a website at
www.social-ecology.org where you can access the institutes journal, HARBINGER, at no
charge. They continue to publish interviews with the director, which will keep you up-todate.
This isnt to say that Bookchin changes his ideas like some people change their
underwear: his viewpoint on capitalism has been remarkably consistent over the years;
so has his criticism of state power, his derision of anti-environmental policies, and his
defense of direct democracy. All of this manifests itself in a political program that
Bookchin calls Libertarian Municipalism.
To understand how to answer the philosophy, youve got to understand the philosophy.
So lets take some of Murrays major issues in order.
Bookchin's Critique Of Capitalism
This is one of his most mainstream (among the left) ideas. Bookchin believes that
capitalism commodified the very essence of life, reducing human beings and the
environment to mere items for purchase.
This, he argues, counteracts sustainability. If corporations can buy anything -- drilling the
pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for a few short years' supply of polluting oil
seems to be a current example -- then priceless treasures become just more fodder for
the death-inspired growth machine.
This has more of an impact than just beauty: Bookchin claims that, left unchecked,
capitalism will make the earth unsuitable for complex forms of life, effectively leaving
the planet for the roaches.
There are two ways to answer this type of thinking. The first is to simply take a
"capitalism good" approach, which I'll address in the next few paragraphs. I think the
best strategy, though, is to attempt to critique Bookchin's solution step. If you can win
that Libertarian Municipalism is not as effective at getting away from capitalism as
something else might be, you can undercut the argument in what I think is a more
effective way.
But if you debate in a more conservative district, or simply (shudder) prefer the
capitalism good argument, you should check out Martin Lewis' book GREEN DELUSIONS.
Lewis, ironically, enough, shares some assumptions with Bookchin. Both of them agree
that technological solutions will ultimately be required to solve the world's mental
problems. With a world population that's growing every day, someone has to produce
enough food to feed these people and enough energy to keep them warm. But that's
about the only thing the two of them would agree on.
Lewis would say that capitalism is the only potential way to achieve this type of
technological savvy. Isn't it capitalism that brought us such bounties as nuclear power
(!)? Didn't capitalism give us factory farming, where animals are swollen to such an
absurd degree that they can no longer mate naturally - but have produced the largest
chicken breasts you've ever seen?
In all seriousness, Lewis says that the profit motive encourages people to produce new
technologies, which lead to better and more successful ways to protect the environment.
Now, Bookchin might respond that the profit motive has other side effects as well - such
as those technologies being used to produce, well, PROFIT - instead of sustainability.
Bookchin, though no longer a socialist, would also point out that several non-capitalist
countries (the Soviet Union among them) have produced serious technological
breakthroughs as well.
At any rate, Lewis writes powerful if flawed evidence that can help you answer
Bookchin's critique of capitalism. His arguments, I should point out, are incompatible
with the other arguments including in the evidence section - it's a bad idea to say
capitalism is good in one part of your speech and criticize it in another.
Bookchin's Critique Of The State
Like all anarchists, Bookchin has a critique of the state. Unlike many anarchists, his is
well-thought-out and developed into a coherent and logical criticism.
It isn't just some abstract entity called "the state" that Bookchin is critiquing. It's any
monolithic governmental entity that exercises power controlling the citizenry. That
applies especially to fascist or authoritarian regimes( the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany)
but applies as well to liberal democracies like the United States.
Bookchin criticizes the republican form of government, where individuals elect

representatives to vote (allegedly) based on the views of their constituents. This type of
government, Bookchin reasons, is less and less likely to actually fairly represent the
interests of the populace. The further removed the people are from the decision-making
process -- and the places where decisions are made -- the less their views are
considered, and the more undemocratic it is.
It isn't just a problem with political organization, though that is certainly an issue. It's an
issue of size. Bookchin admires some of the Greek city-state forms of government,
where political space was created through directly democratic public meetings. This was
able to happen because the political entities were smaller than they are today. The
United States has 270,000,000 citizens. Think it's easy to form a consensus among
them? Heck, you couldn't even fit half of them into the largest sports stadium in the
land.
But if the political entities are smaller -- municipalities -- then most, if not all, of the
people affected by decision-making processes can get involved. This type of
"municipalism" is desirable to Bookchin.
Additionally, he espouses, large states are more likely to be repressive. Simply the
existence of a large state apparatus makes the exercise of repressive power more likely.
Repression is undesirable -- civil liberties are desirable. Thus, a political organization that
promotes "libertarianism" is better than an oppressive state.
Hence, Bookchin's idea of "Libertarian Municipalism." We'll go into more detail about
what this entails a little bit later, but for now, let's talk about how you answer his "state
bad" argument.
The best way to answer the argument is to emphasize a few of the good things the state
does. Might the state protect vulnerable people against assaults of the powerful? What
about social welfare programs for the homeless? Financial aid programs for students?
Laws that act against racist violence? These are all positive things to reasonable people.
Additionally, one might point out that the alternatives to the state don't look good at this
time. If you don't have a state, you don't have laws that stop corporations from polluting
the environment. You don't have child labor laws. You don't have 40-hour work week
laws. Basically, any alternative to the state might just exacerbate the very capitalism
that Bookchin hates.
No less a figure than MIT professor and noted anarchist thinker Noam Chomsky has
made this argument. While Chomsky agrees that state power is in some ways
fundamentally illegitimate, that power is also the only thing that constrains corporations
from exploiting people and the world's environment.
In some ways, Chomsky concludes, anarchists must actually defend and strengthen the
federal government -- despite the fact that they would ultimately like to see that
government abolished. This is perhaps the best single argument against Bookchin's
critique of the state, and it can be found in Chomsky's 1997 book POWERS AND
PROSPECTS.
Bookchin is also far from the only anarchist to make this claim, so if you think anyone in
your region will be running this argument, you owe it to yourself to check out Chomsky.
Finally, consider that Bookchin himself has changed his views over the years. There are
some Bookchin scholars, such as Alan Rudy and Adam Light, who interpret his most
recent writings as embracing reformism as opposed to revolution. This can be an
effective argument, particularly if your opponent does not know Bookchin well. You can
argue that Bookchin used to consider total rejection of the state as the only way to get
social transformation, but that he has reconsidered that viewpoint.
A word of warning: Bookchin's long-time companion, Janet Biehl, has written that this is
a poor way to determine Bookchin's current way of thinking. Still, it is an argument some
have made.
Bookchin's Ideas About Technology
While many environmentalists are anti-technology, Bookchin isn't. Rather, he has a more
subtle view of advanced science, saying that it is shaped by the social situations in
which we find ourselves.
One of his most famous works is called POST-SCARCITY ANARCHISM, which refers to
Bookchin's theory of technology. The only truly liberatory society, according to Murray, is
a "post-scarcity" one. All the liberty in the world doesn't mean much if people are dying
from resource scarcity.
Technology, he reasons, is a necessity for the kind of revolution we need. If, after that
revolution, technology can provide the types of food and energy humans require, then
we can think about getting to libertarian municipalism. One little-known fact about
Bookchin's philosophy is that he says these "post-scarcity" technologies already exist -we just have to get to a point where they can be used for the benefit of all.
What Are The Problems With Libertarian Municipalism?
As we've seen, there are a lot of different schools of thought that criticize Bookchin. Let's
take some of these criticisms in order, beginning with the most vehement critics of
Bookchin and proceeding through the others in descending order.
Deep ecologists oppose Bookchin's notions of technology. Many of them primitivists,

such as Bob Black, John Zerzan and David Watson, these people don't see ANY role for
technology in the ideal society.
There is some variance in the opinion about exactly how much technology Bookchin is in
favor of. To the deep ecologists, however, even allowing for the possibility of high-tech
fixes opens the door for a technological snowball. Some of Bookchin's remarks favoring
biotechnology have been used to indicate that he endorses more tech rather than less.
To people like Black, Watson and the like, technology can never be used in a manner
positive for humans or the environment. While Bookchin would say that the social
system of capitalism is responsible for many of the ills of technology -- the profit motive
causing technology to be used as a labor replacement, for example -- the deep
ecologists argue that it will always alienate humans from their natural roles in society
and pollute the ecosystem.
If you make your living fishing, for example, and someone produces a machine that can
catch fish quicker and more efficiently than you can, that does two things. First, you can
no longer do what you've always done, diminishing what might be your natural role in
things. Second, it allows quicker and more effective resource extraction, which
contributes to (in this case) overfishing and environmental devastation. This occurs, they
say, independent of social factors like the economic system.
Bob Black also plays the "more anarchist than thou" card, accusing Bookchin of
defending statism himself. To Black, even defending the kind of city-state politics that
Bookchin does is pretty non-anarchist. Even the directly democratic public meetings that
Bookchin insists will empower the populace are, to Black, just another statist solution.
John Clark, a professor of philosophy at Loyola University, says that he was inspired by
Bookchins thought at first. But he broke from Bookchin to develop his own form of social
ecology, one that he calls ecocommunitarianism.
According to Clark, Bookchins thought doesnt approach a true ethics, but merely
constitutes top-down moralizing. This is counter to the goals that Bookchin himself
claims to espouse.
Alan Rudy and Andrew Light offer a more complimentary critique, agreeing that
Bookchin has made a significant contribution to ecology and social theory. But to the two
of them -- socialists -- Bookchin ignores the pivotal role of labor in society.
Their viewpoint, which might be considered an attempt to advance ecosocialism as an

alternative to Bookchins social anarchism, claims that to commit this fallacy can do
nothing but alienate the vast majority of people in society - working people.
Michael Albert, one of the editors of Z Magazine, published a thoughtful criticism of

Libertarian Municipalism on the Z website, inviting other activists (and Bookchin and
Biehl) to respond with their thoughts. You can access this forum at www.zmag.org, which
will help you see the divergent strains of argument.
Albert's criticisms are fair-minded, and intended more to assist Bookchin's critique than
destroy it. Still, he raises points that debaters can exploit. What means for dispute
resolution exists in Libertarian Municipalism? A public meeting? Well, why would have an
entire public meeting to, say, resolve a dispute between neighbors? Wouldn't that be a
lot of meetings that would involve a lot of people? Would such meetings be attended?
Wouldn't they just bore people?
There are other issues, issues of justice. Let's say these small municipalities that
Bookchin envisions have something (or develop something) that is of interest beyond
the borders of the municipality. Lets say theres a municipality that surrounds the Grand
Canyon, or the University of Oregon. Do the people who happen to live in the area
around these treasures have more of a right to decide what happens to them than the
rest of us? Think before you answer: this may mean accepting a nuclear waste dump in
the Grand Canyon
Conclusion
The best strategy to beat Murray Bookchin contains two steps: first, read as much of the
mans (recent) work as you can in order to enhance your understanding of his
philosophy. Second, pick the school of thought you feel most comfortable defending of
the four Ive listed. Then, familiarize yourself with their criticisms of Bookchin.
Personally, I think Clarks viewpoint provides the deepest and truest criticism of
Bookchin - I think deep ecologists misanalyze his work, I think the ecosocialist tradition
isnt yet well-developed, and I think Alberts ideas are more meant to be thoughtprovoking than anything. But of course, you should argue what youre most comfortable
arguing. Good luck, and good hunting.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hakim Bey, THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE, ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHY, POETIC
TERRORISM, Autonomedia, 1991.
Bob Black, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, CAL Press, Columbia, 1997.
Murray Bookchin, POST SCARCITY ANARCHISM, Wildwood House, London, 1971.
Murray Bookchin, TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY, Black Rose, Montreal, 1980.
Murray Bookchin, REMAKING SOCIETY: PATHWAYS TO A GREEN FUTURE, South End Press,
Boston, MA., 1990.
Murray Bookchin, SOCIAL ANARCHISM AND LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM, AK Press,

Edinburgh/San Francisco, 1995.
Murray Bookchin, THE MODERN CRISIS, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1986.
Murray Bookchin, THE ECOLOGY OF FREEDOM: THE EMERGENCE AND DISSOLUTION OF

HIERARCHY, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, 1982.
Murray Bookchin, "Communalism: The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism",

DEMOCRACY AND NATURE, No. 8 (vol. 3, no. 2), pp. 1-12.
Murray Bookchin, WHICH WAY FOR THE ECOLOGY MOVEMENT?, AK Press, Edinburgh/San
Francisco, 1994.
Murray Bookchin, THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL ECOLOGY, Black Rose Books,

Montreal/New York, 1990.
Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue between Murray
Bookchin and Dave Foreman, Black Rose Books, Montreal/New York, 1991.
David Watson, BEYOND BOOKCHIN: PREFACE FOR A FUTURE SOCIAL ECOLOGY,

Autonomedia/Black and Red/Fifth Estate, USA, 1996.
David Watson, AGAINST THE MEGAMACHINE: ESSAYS ON EMPIRE AND ITS ENEMIES,
Autonomedia/Fifth Estate, USA, 1997.
ECOCOMMUNITARIANISM IS BETTER
THAN BOOKCHIN'S IDEAS
1. ECOCOMMUNITARIAN POLITICS IS BETTER THAN BOOKCHIN'S MUNICIPALISM
John Clark, professor of philosophy at Loyola University, SOCIAL ECOLOGY AFTER
BOOKCHIN, 1998,
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/municipaldreams.html,
accessed May 10, 2001.
This analysis forms part of a much larger critique, in which I attempt to distinguish
between social ecology as an evolving dialectical, holistic philosophy, and the
increasingly rigid, nondialectical, dogmatic version of that philosophy promulgated by
Bookchin. An authentic social ecology is inspired by a vision of human communities
achieving their fulfillment as an integral part of the larger, self realizing earth
community. Ecocommunitarian politics, which I would counterpose to Bookchin's
libertarian municipalism, is the project of realizing such a vision in social practice. If
social ecology is an attempt to understand the dialectical movement of society within
the context of the larger dialectic of society and nature, ecocommunitarianism is the
project of creating a way of life consonant with that understanding. Setting out from this
philosophical and practical perspective, I argue that Bookchin's politics is not only
riddled with theoretical inconsistencies, but also lacks the historical grounding that
would make it a reliable guide for an ecological and communitarian practice.
2. BOOKCHIN'S IDEAS ARE NOT TRULY ETHICAL, JUST DOGMATIC AND MORALIZING
BOOKCHIN, 1998,
One of my main contentions in this critique is that because of its ideological and
dogmatic aspects, Bookchin's politics remains, to use Hegelian terms, in the sphere of
morality rather than reaching the level of the ethical. That its moralism can be
compelling I would be the last to deny, since I was strongly influenced by it for a number
of years. Nevertheless, it is a form of abstract idealism, and tends to divert the energies
of its adherents into an ideological sectarianism, and away from an active and intelligent
engagement with the complex, irreducible dimensions of history, culture and psyche.
The strongly voluntarist dimension of Bookchin's political thought should not be
surprising. When a politics lacks historical and cultural grounding, and the real
stubbornly resists the demands of ideological dogma, the will becomes the final resort.
3. BOOKCHIN'S VIEWS WON'T LEAD TO REAL SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

BOOKCHIN, 1998,
Certain tendencies that have always impeded Bookchin's development of a truly
communitarian outlook are already evident in his conclusions on the place of
"consciousness" in this process. "What consciousness must furnish above all things is an
extraordinary flexibility of tactics, a mobilization of methods and demands that make
exacting use of the opportunities at hand." In this analysis, Bookchin expresses a
Bakuninism (or anarcho-Leninism) that has been a continuing undercurrent in his
thought, and which has recently come to the surface in his programmatic municipalism.
His conception of consciousness at the service of ideology stands at the opposite pole
from an authentically communitarian view of social transformation, which sees more
elaborated, richly developed conceptions of social and ecological interrelatedness (not in
the sense of mere abstract "Oneness," but rather as concrete unity-in-diversity) as the
primary challenge for consciousness as reflection on social practice.
MURRAY BOOKCHINS IDEAS ARE

MISGUIDED AND DANGEROUS
1. BOOKCHINS NOTION OF SOCIAL VS. LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM IS AWFUL, STALINIST
Bob Black, anarchist, ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM, 1997, p. 3.
SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM may well be the worst book about
anarchists that any of them has ever written. According to the cover blurb, Murray
Bookchin, born in 1921, has been `à lifelong radical since the early 1930s.'' Radical'' is
here a euphemism for Stalinist''; Bookchin was originally a militant in the Young
Pioneers and the Young Communist League. Later he became a Trotskyist.
2. BOOKCHINS MOVEMENT IS A PATHETIC FAILURE

About 25 years ago, Murray Bookchin peered into the mirror and mistook it for a window
of opportunity. In 1963 he wrote, under a pseudonym, Our Synthetic Society, which
anticipated (although it seems not to have influenced) the environmentalist movement.
In 1970, by which time he was pushing 50 and calling himself an anarchist, Bookchin
wrote ``Listen, Marxist!'' a moderately effective anti-authoritarian polemic against
such Marxist myths as the revolutionary vanguard organization and the proletariat as
revolutionary subject. In this and in other essays collected in Post-Scarcity Anarchism,
Bookchin disdained to conceal his delight with the disarray of his Marxist comradesturned-competitors. He thought he saw his chance. Under his tutelage, anarchism would
finally displace Marxism, and Bookchin would place the stamp of his specialty, ``social
ecology,'' on anarchism. Not only would he be betting on the winning horse, he would be
the jockey. As one of his followers has written, if your efforts at creating your own mass
movement have been pathetic failures, find someone else's movement and try to lead
it''.
3. BOOKCHIN IS AN EGOMANIACAL LEADER

Something went awry. Although Dean Bookchin was indeed widely read by North
American anarchists one of his acknowledged sycophants calls him the foremost
contemporary anarchist theorist' in fact, not many anarchists acknowledged him as
their dean. They appreciated his ecological orientation, to be sure, but some drew their
own, more far-reaching conclusions from it. The Dean came up against an unexpected
obstacle. The master-plan called for anarchists to increase in numbers and to read his
books, and those parts came off tolerably well. It was okay if they also read a few
anarchist classics, Bakunin and Kropotkin for instance, vetted by the Dean, with the
understanding that even the best of them afford mere glimpses of the forms of a free
society subsequently built upon, but transcended by, the Dean's own epochal discovery,
social ecology/social anarchism. Bookchin does not mind standing on the shoulders of
giants he rather enjoys the feel of them under his heel so long as he stands tallest of
all.
4. BOOKCHIN USES STALINIST TACTICS

Where Bookchin accuses rival anarchists of individualism and liberalism, Stalinists
accuse all anarchists of the same. For example, there was that Monthly Review
contributor who referred to Bookchinism as a crude kind of individualistic anarchism!
In other words, capitalism promotes egotism, not individuality or individualism. ... The
term bourgeois individualism' an epithet widely used today against libertarian
elements, reflects the extent to which bourgeois ideology permeates the socialist project
these words being, of course, those of Bookchin the Younger. That the Dean reverts to
these Stalinist slurs in his dotage reflects the extent to which bourgeois ideology
permeates his project. Fanatically devoted to urbanism, the Dean was being
complimentary, not critical, when he wrote that the fulfillment of individuality and
intellect was the historic privilege of the urban dweller or of individuals influenced by
urban life Individuality's not so bad after all, provided it's on his terms.
BOOKCHINS NOTION OF LIBERTARIAN

MUNICIPALISM IS FLAWED
1. BOOKCHINS VIEWS OFFER NO WAY TO RESOLVE DISPUTES
Michael Albert, author and activist, ASSESSING LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM, November,
1999, http://www.zmag.org/lmdebate.htm, ACCESSED May 10, 2001.
Why are noted anarchists proposing political institutions? Isn't that contrary to
abolishing the state? Only if you accept "the interchangeability of politics with
Statecraft," replies Bookchin, and advocate throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So
libertarian municipalism instead proposes "large general meetings in which all the
citizens of a given area meet, deliberate, and make decisions on matters of common
concern." And it notes that "if the political potential of the municipality is to be fulfilled,
community life must be rescaled toa manageable size." The decision-making
assemblies must contain everyone in the municipality and "meet at regular intervals,
perhaps every month at first, and later weekly, with additional meetings as people [see]
fit." Given their modest size, these assemblies "could meet in an auditorium, theatre,
courtyard, hall, park, or even a church-indeed in any local facility that was sufficiently
large to hold all the concerned citizens of the municipality." Insofar as libertarian
municipalism is a vision for a new type polity, in addition to wondering why the authors
don't discuss mechanisms for adjudicating disputes (the kind of thing that now leads to
law suits) and handling difficult problems of enforcement-I also wonder why they feel
that each citizen needs to be directly involved, face-to-face, in all decisions. While the
general thrust of the assembly vision seems positive, why must it be exclusive? Why is it
unwise to use other decision-making mechanisms as well, when assemblies aren't
optimal? I am not sure, for example, why libertarian municipalism feels that no means of
representation can ever be designed to function compatibly with popular assemblies,
preserving democracy but functioning better in situations that transcend small group
concerns.
2. LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM CREATES A TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY

Bookchin's warning seems correct to me, but I am not sure how the insight is
incorporated in the libertarian municipalist vision. Why does libertarian municipalism
take for granted (a) that all decisions should be taken by a majority vote, and (b) that
the control of each institution in the society, regardless of how wide a constituency it
affects, should be entirely in the hands of the assembly for the particular municipality in
which it happens to reside. Put less abstractly: Why should a majority decide aspects of
my life that affect only me? And why should a university or the Grand Canyon be totally
under the auspices of those who happen to live where it sits?
3. BY REJECTING PARTICIPATORY ECONOMICS, BOOKCHINS IDEAS WILL FAIL

Watching markets gobble up everything in their path, Libertarian Municipalists fear that
economic institutions per se are imperial and will try to usurp political functions by their
very nature, or will at the very least create a context precluding political democracy. I
think this is correct about markets, and also about central planning, for that matter, but
is wrong about participatory economics. But be that as it may, what is ironic is that as a
counter to the imagined inevitable imperial economy, Libertarian Municipalists propose
an imperial polity, usurping economic functions not even just implicitly, or as a byproduct, but in principle and as a celebrated priority. And, oddly, as a result of taking on
this added function, the institutions would not only fail to do economics justly and
cooperatively, but would devolve into a centralized hierarchical economic bastardization
of their intended decentralized democratic form.
BOOKCHINS VIEWS IGNORE LABORS

KEY ROLE
1. BOOKCHIN'S POLITICAL VISION IS FLAWED: IT IGNORES LABOR
Alan Rudy, Research Fellow, University of Alberta, Andrew Light, Doctorate in Sociology,
UC Santa Cruz, "Sociology and Social Labor: a consideration and critique of Murray
Bookchin," MINDING NATURE, edited by David McCauley, 1996, p. 318-319.
This paper is a critque of social ecology and Bookchin's form of political anarchism out of
an emerging socialist ecological tradition, something Bookchin once claimed was a
contradiction. We begin with an exposition of some of Bookchin's central ideas: his
theory of the development of domination in the early evolution of human society, the
importance of the transition to capitalism for human society, and his exposition of a new
future for modern society rooted in his Kropotken-inspired evolutionary anarchism. The
next section criticizes this work. Our central critique is that Bookchin powerfully
underplays the importance of labor as a mediating force within and between the social
relations of humans, and within and between humans and the nonhuman natural world.
This critique is advanced in relation to some of Bookchin's positions relative to
capitalism, most notably that Bookchin fails to see the importance of the qualitative
change evidenced by the development of social labor under and through capitalism's
uneven and combined development. The primary consequences of Bookchin's neglect of
labor as a category of analysis, and of social labor as a defining characteristic of
capitalism and its contradictions, are that Bookchin's natural histories are incomplete
and produce a problematic analysis of historical change. These problems derive from the
theoretical rigidity of his political project, which results in a skewed interpretation of
material, global, and political problems.
2. BOOKCHINS THEORY AND STYLE STILL HAVE SERIOUS SHORTCOMINGS

Bookchin," MINDING NATURE, edited by David McCauley, 1996, p. 323.
For these reasons and more, including his support of feminism, gay rights, and struggles
against racism, Bookchin's contributions to left ecology must not be understated.
However, while his work has been and remains important to the development of left
ecology, his theory (and, too often, his polemical style) have serious shortcomings,
which this paper is intended to address.
3. BOOKCHIN HAS MOVED AWAY FROM HIS VIEWS OF TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

Bookchin," MINDING NATURE, edited by David McCauley, 1996, p. 323-324.
While he has maintained a messianic vision of the future, Bookchin's more recent
ecotopic visions have become increasingly low-technology affairs. In the early 1980's his
view of technology had evolved to the point where his concerns were focused on "how
we can contain (that is absorb) technics within an emancipatory society." In 1986, in his
introduction to the second edition of Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Bookchin wrote that, if he
were to rewrite the book, he would "temper the importance [he gave] to the
technological 'preconditions' for freedom." Similarly, his perspective on scarcity, viewed
"as a drama of history that our era has evolved technologically," has changed to the
point "that such an interpretation is now unsatisfactory." Most recently, Bookchin has
said that what must be overcome is not the contradiction between the modern potential
for post-scarcity and its lack of realization but rather the "gravest most single illness of
our time...disempowerment."
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Burke was a prominent literary and social critic who focused on the use of
rhetoric by speakers and the way rhetoric was used strategically to affect audiences. His
doctrine is very marxist and anti-scientific in nature. He was born in 1897and began
school only to drop out in 1918 finding it too constraining. His first several books were
written as literary and social criticisms without any cohesive project in mind. They do
include some interesting argumentative tools however, such as the idea of trained
incapacity, which we will be exploring.
In 1945, he began a trilogy of books on rhetorical interpretation that he called

Dramatism by writing A Grammar of Motives. This was followed in 1950 with A Rhetoric
of Motives. These two were to be followed by a third called A Symbolic of Motives, but he
had lost interest in the project by then and moved on to working on The Rhetoric of
Religion which dealt more with his new interest in the power of words as ultimate terms.
In the early seventies, he renewed his attacks on the use of technology and how it
appeared to be dominating humanitys definition of its own ends. He started to spend
time reworking his older projects before dying in the early nineties.
What criteria might be necessary for finding a single word that summed up Burkes
whole project? One might suggest motive since it appears frequently, and is found
even in the title of two books he wrote and one he intended to, but I dont think this
sums up Burkes project for getting at motives. For that, we need a word that that can
be used in place of the grammar of motives, or the rhetoric of motives, or the symbolic
of motives. The one word that best describes the process of getting at the grammar,
rhetoric, and symbol of motives is Dramatism.
Our first reason for this might be that it best gets at the concept of the motive. The
titular word for our own method is dramatism, since it invites one to consider the
matter of motives in a perspective that, being developed from the analysis of drama,
treats language and thought primarily as modes of action (A Grammar of Motives xxii).
Burke has a need to separate the concept of motion from that of action. In motion,
physical forces alone move something. In action, a will is involved in creating the
movement. There is a motive behind the movement that is created by the will. The
confusion of these two things is referred to as the pathetic fallacy. The pathetic fallacy
that occurs when motion and action are confused has the impact of dehumanizing the
actor by implying that his or her motives are physical motion instead of purposeful
action. Thus, dramatism is an important label for Burkes project because it creates a
separation between Burkes project and others such as science that might see motives
as motion and not as action. Dramatistic analysis leaves room for the will, while science
might blot it out as just physical motion.
Our second reason for using dramatism is that it best fits with the other terms developed
by Burke for analysis of human beings. In A Grammar of Motives, Burke establishes the
pentad for analysis of action. His introduction refers to the pentad as The Five Key
Terms of Dramatism (Grammar xv). The terms themselves (act, scene, agent, agency,
and purpose) are suggestive of watching a drama. It is clear that in using these as his
key or most basic terms of analysis, Burke intends his project to be defined in a word as
the dramatistic.
Finally, we might suggest that this is the most fitting term because Burkes dramatistic
pentad was made as a grounding for the later works. After writing about the coming
works on the Rhetoric of Motives and the Symbolic of Motives, Burke writes that we
found in the course of writing that our project needed a grounding in formal
considerations logically prior to both the rhetorical and the psychological (Grammar
xviii). It is the dramatic pentad that forms the grounding for all of the rest of Burkes
project. Since it is the dramatic that is the basis from which we get at the motive and at
people as symbol using animals, we should think of the dramatic as the word best
fitting Burkes whole project.
TRAINED INCAPACITY AND COMIC

CORRECTIVES
Lets assume some debater was debating policy for two years and then this debaters
partner quit. Now, our debater will have to make a transition into LD debate.
Unfortunately, after two years debating policy, our debater has picked up some bad
habits, talking too fast for example. This is what Burke calls trained incapacity. When you
learn to do things a certain way, you are simultaneously learning how to be incapable of
doing them certain other ways. This is especially useful for criticizing social theorists. For
example, Burke applies this to his fellow marxists. They have learned to explain all social
degradation in terms of the economic. The obvious problem with this is that they are
incapable of conceiving other notions of problems or other ways to fix them.
But how can someone whos trained as a marxist break out of this trained incapacity?
Since a marxist has learned to think of things in the economic, how can the marxist
possibly see his or her way out of thinking this way? The marxist isnt just going to
assume everything he or she already believes is already wrong. Burkes solution to this
problem is a comic corrective, the foremost of them is called perspective by incongruity.
Perspective by incongruity means to make an interpretation of something that is the
complete reverse of what common sense or standard reason would tell you. Then look
for ways that the perspective by incongruity could be correct as a means of opening up
new perspectives.
What Burke chiefly wants to avoid here is the danger of taking ideas to an extreme.
Even perspective by incongruity can go too far. Another common danger Burke guards
against is the rebunking of an idea shortly after the debunking of that same idea. For
example, lets look at post-modernism. Post-modernism attempts to defeat reason by
critically analyzing its presuppositions. It supposes that one cannot have any kind of a
cohesive or objective truth, only subjective interpretations. At this point, postmodernism has debunked reason. The problem comes after this at the point that postmodernists attempt to fill the void they themselves have created by appealing to the
same objective standards they just attacked. They do this by attempting to show that
there are contextual realities that are created by a community standard in which most
everyone is involved. This is rebunking. A hypocritical abuse of argument has occurred in
which the post-modernist make him or herself the victim of the same attack that postmodernism was subjecting other ideas to.
BURKEAN COMMUNICATION
Burkes earlier works begin to get at the notion of a rhetors motive by looking first at
the idea of auditors form. Burke writes in Counter-Statement that form is the creation
of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite.
(31) As an audience member watching or looking on an action, I am forever attempting
to identify with the symbols within that scene that will appeal to my form. As a rhetor, I
appeal to the piety of particular symbols as a means of courting members of my
audience. Burkean persuasion occurs when identification meets courtship. I will
demonstrate this first by examining the output of the rhetor and second by examining
the input of the audience.
The output of the rhetor is designed to court the audience by appealing to piety. We
should begin first with the concept of courtship. By the principle of courtship in
rhetoric we mean the use of suasive devices for the transcending of social
estrangement (A Rhetoric of Motives 208). This does not necessarily mean that the
ideas involved would estrange the audience without the use of persuasion. It is entirely
possible that the audience has never considered the idea and is estranged in this way,
although the other still applies. The key thing to pull from our definition of courtship is
the idea of transcendence, which means that we will suppress one idea by referring
instead to another that we may value more highly. For example, a world leader might try
to raise support for his or her government by appealing to the publics sense of
nationalism. Nationalistic pride might spur citizens to forget about the current
governments record. That is courtship via transcendence. In order to enact this, we
must have some other principle to which we can appeal. Piety is this principle to which
we may appeal to transcend another value. Piety is the sense of what properly goes
with what a sense of the appropriate (Permanence and Change 74-75). When we
transcend something, we are saying There is an appropriate order to things that
suggests we should value this one principle over this other. Piety suggests a hierarchy
of principles. The transcendence of courtship is the laying out of those principles.
The input of the audience is designed to identify with those ideas that satisfy the form of
the individual audience members. As an audience member, I am looking for ideas that
satisfy aspects of my form. It is this desire that spurs on my attempt to identify with
symbols. Burke writes in Attitudes Toward History that identification is hardly other
than a name for the function of sociality. (267) Identification is a consubstantiality
between me and a symbol. It is when I define myself as the symbol (although not that
symbol alone). Audience members do this to satisfy their forms. Persuasion is the
meeting of identification and courtship. The rhetor courts, or appeals to piety, which the
audience member transcends towards in an attempt to fulfill his or her form by
identifying with it. It is action on two levels. The rhetor acts in courting the audience
member toward piety, while the audience member identifies with the piety to fulfill his
or her form.
HIERARCHY, PERFECTION, AND THE

NEGATIVE
Burke claims, at one point, that man is the symbol using animal that is goaded by
perfection and a sense of hierarchy. This comes from the construction of the negative
that is required by symbol using such as language. Burke tells us that the negative is
found nowhere in nature, i.e. there is no such thing as nature as a non-existent
something, a zero. The idea of a non-thing is a concept constructed within the mind. The
zero or the nothing is a creation used for the purpose of symbol usage.
With the invention of the zero comes the need for hierarchy. Once human beings have
begun to distinguish between the something and the nothing, they began to distinguish
between those things that came closer to being called one thing versus those things
that were not so close. Human beings are now constructing scales or values for things
that are arranged in hierarchies.
Next comes the desire for perfection. Once a hierarchy is established, it is only natural
for human beings to desire to climb it or claim those values or things that are towards
the top of the hierarchy. This is found inherently within the use of language or symbol
use. Recall that Burkes project focuses on the rhetors use of symbols and an attempt to
get at the motives of the rhetor. The very fact that rhetors have motives, that they have
purpose in action, implies an end. The idea of an end or a goal implies with it that there
is an attempt to attain some value within the hierarchy (a goal suggests a shift within
the hierarchy).
CRITICISMS OF BURKE
Compared with Burke, who examines the rhetor, Foucault examines the broader societal
use of rhetoric and Derrida examines the narrower rhetoric itself. Foucault looks more
broadly while Derrida looks more narrowly. Burkes project focuses on the rhetor. When
Burke attempts to define man as the symbol using animal he is attempting to discover
the origin of the symbol. He focuses on the rhetor as an origin. It is for this reason that
so much of his work is concerned with motives. In seeing the rhetor as an origin of
symbols, the most obvious question for Burke to ask is why symbols originated from the
source that they did. Interpretation is itself a story (with motives behind it) that is about
the possible motives behind some other act.
Foucaults view of rhetoric is broader. Foucaults structuralism makes him see people as
only parts of a greater whole. The rhetoric of an individual is really only a piece of a
larger discursive sphere in which communication takes place. Individuals are just parts
of the society and cultural structure that is constructed within them (they are
constructed as parts of the structural whole). This really doesnt conflict that much with
Burke. It still leaves a lot of room to deal with motives even though it explains them as
not originating from the individual rhetor. Instead, the origin comes from what has been
constructed within the rhetor by the larger social and cultural structure. Thus, the only
real difference between the two is that Foucault does not see the individual as the origin
of rhetorical motive.
Derridas focus is narrower than Burkes. Derrida focuses on the printed word alone.
Once the author has written a word on a page and another has read it, that word is no
longer the authors. When the reader proceeds to read the printed word, the reader is
bringing his or her own experiences and interpretations to the word. The author does not
exist within the mind of the reader to guide the interpretation. The reader is alone with
the written word and nothing else. This is significant to our reading of Burke in that
Derridas deconstruction argues that the motive of the rhetor means nothing at all. The
reader may interpret the written word in any way the reader wishes, even if it is the
direct opposite of the intent of the rhetor.
Derrida and Foucault reveal Burkes project to be tense. Burke insists upon an individual
rhetor with motives is the key to analyzing rhetoric. In dissent to this, Foucault says no
to the individual and Derrida says no to motive.
BURKE IN LD DEBATE
Most of Burkes work can be found as highly useful in developing the criteria debate, but
not so much for values. He doesnt suggest many terms as concrete values, and is
rather vague on the few that he does advocate for the sake of interpretation and
criticism. First, I might look at the pentad as a potential criteria. Burke examines
rhetorical work in terms of the dramatic pentad: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.
He takes two parts of the pentad and examines the relationship between the parts that
he refers to as a ratio. For example, we might do an act-scene ratio. This would compare
the elements that are part of an purposive act versus the parts that are caused by the
surrounding scene.
How could that possibly be useful to a LD debater? The pentadic elements help pick
apart the extreme over-estimations of parts of the dramatic act. For example, a debater
might be claiming that society is largely equal right now and because of that people
should be largely responsible for themselves without the aid of others. In terms of the
pentad, this act of being responsible for the self is being viewed as in domination of the
scene, the potential that society might make the actor disadvantaged in some way. You
have to argue that your opponent is discounting too much of an element of the pentad.
The discounting of an element of the pentad is due to an extreme over-estimation of the
importance of one of the elements, in this case the act.
This is especially important if you are able to argue that the favoring of your opponents
idea could create trained incapacities that endanger your own. The critique that you are
now making of your opponents case position is that its core ideology is monolithic in
scope and will block out the sun for opposing perspectives. Consider, for example, the
implications of glossing over the definition of justice by calling it fairness or equality, etc.
The cult of justice in value debate does not do justice to the ideal of academic or
educational debate by avoiding what justice is as a value. Glossing over such discussion
is a way of avoiding meaningful debate on the issue and not of creating interpretations
that lead to better understanding.
Another possibility for a good argument is making use of the pathetic fallacy. I think that
this might work best as a critique of the idea of progress. Watch for an attempt by an
opponent to elevate principles, such as the scientific, over the humanistic or the
cultural. Recall that the idea of the pathetic fallacy was one in which action was
confused with motion. An opponents pathetic fallacy is an act of dehumanizing the will.
It reduces human motive and purpose to physical causality. The progress of which they
speak is actually a death of the human soul.
Perhaps the best choice for arguments in using Burke comes out of his idea of the
creation of morality by the use of the negative. He thinks that the creation of hierarchies
is a consequence of the use of symbols, and more specifically, the use of language.
These hierarchies are both good and bad. On one hand, they do create desire and greed
for those things commonly found at the top of the hierarchy. On the other, they are also
responsible for hierarchies that place the good, the moral, and the just at the top. It is
only the construction of these hierarchies that makes the moral possible.
The value debate round is a good example of this line of thinking. When your opponent
establishes a case with a value and criteria, your opponent is choosing one hierarchy
over another. Some hierarchies place the idea of the common good at the top, while
others place individual rights at the top. The choice of one hierarchy over another
displays motive, and motives may be analyzed in forming a story about your opponents
case.
The terms that come to dominate as the top of a hierarchy are referred to as ultimate
terms by Burke. Ultimate terms are terms that carry with them an almost religious
worship. For example, think of the way science is sometimes thought of as a god of the
twentieth centurys design. The same way we revere sciences ability to discover truth,
we worship the justice of our democratic institutions and constitutions, we admire
selflessness and self-sacrifice, is the same way we worship may of the ultimate terms in
our vocabulary. It might be said that all values are really just ultimate terms that are
worshipped for different reasons or motives.
Burke opens up the question of motive in the debate round. Who would really value this?
Why would they value this idea or this set of positions? Although I think unequal
application of goods or benefits is a common argument, I dont often hear the premises
or motives for creating the argument challenged. The value of quality of life is a great
example of a value that is begging for Burkean interpretation. Whos quality of life is
being referred to? What is a quality life? A debater usually responds to this with a clich
or trite answer concerning what is generally true about living well, but this is a view of
living well from the perspective of who? Why does this single person create this
particular conception of what a quality life is? Burke will always look for some sort of
motive behind any piece of rhetoric, including the answers to questions given in a
debate round.
Since there exists a hierarchy of terms, Burke claims that there also exists a neverending attempt to get closer to the ultimate that is at the hierarchys top. This is the
pursuit of perfection. It is also the use of this desire that allows rhetoric to work. Rhetoric
appeals to this desire within people in order to motivate action on their part. Appealing
to the higher ideal or ultimate term allows the audience to identify with the position of
the rhetor. When the rhetor is attempting to get the audience to ignore a distasteful idea
by appealing to a higher one, it is referred to by Burke as courtship. Courtship is the
base principle behind the LD debate: the transcendence of one value over another in the
mind of the audience.
ANSWERING BURKE IN THE DEBATE

ROUND
This is much easier than making use of Burke because Burke is so elitist that he is
difficult to make coherent arguments out of and even more difficult to communicate to a
judge. This gives the opponent of someone running Burke many advantages. I would
attempt to play off of any confusion my opponent had in the communication of Burke.
Burkes ideas are highly abstract and not well understood as large impacts in the debate
round. This brings me to my next strategy, which would be to point out that the Burkean
critique has no relevant impact to the value debate round. It might be useful for
examining the discourse of the debate, and the motives for which the values stand, but
the round must ultimately be decided on the basis of ultimate terms, and Burke offers no
guidance on which are to be most carefully examined.
Burkes discourse suffers several problems also. He is sometimes thought to be

Eurocentric, and doesnt use bisexual terminology when the politically correct think that
he should. He is also rather elitist. This plays well for the opponent of Burke in the
debate round where the elitism of Burke can come off as snobbery, especially if it
appears to be ridiculously critiquing time tested values such as freedom and equality.
The summation of my strategy would be to push my case hard while weighing their
impacts to the Burkean critique. The critique impacts are difficult to pull off, and I would
doubt that they could be clearly communicated enough to defeat pointed questions.
CONCLUSION
Kenneth Burke forms the twentieth century part of the tradition of rhetoric. I think it is
imperative that debaters learn some of his ideas and understand them as explanations
for the ways arguments are made in the debate round and in the real world. Burke
claims that rhetoric is a strategy for encompassing a situation within symbols or
symbolic communication. This is the most imperative understanding that a debater can
get about the idea of debating. The debaters goal is to most effectively court the judge
by use of strategies that encompass a situation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kenneth Burke, ATTITUDES TOWARD HISTORY (University of California Press: 1937).
Kenneth Burke, COUNTER-STATEMENT (University of California Press: 1931).
Kenneth Burke, A GRAMMAR OF MOTIVES (University of California Press: 1945).
Kenneth Burke, LANGUAGE AS SYMBOLIC ACTION (University of California Press: 1966).
Kenneth Burke, PERMANENCE AND CHANGE (University of California Press: 1935).
Kenneth Burke, THE PHILOSOPHY OF LITERARY FORM (University of California Press:

1941).
Kenneth Burke, A RHETORIC OF MOTIVES (University of California Press: 1950).
Kenneth Burke, THE RHETORIC OF RELIGION (University of California Press: 1961).
Foss, Sonya K, Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp, CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON

RHETORIC
(Waveland Press Inc. Prospect Heights, Illinois: 1991).
RHETORIC CREATES MORALITY OUT OF

THE NEGATIVE
1. MORAL ACTION IS TIED TO LANGUAGE
Sonja K. Foss, Karen A. Foss, Robert Trapp, Sonja Foss is Professor of Rhetoric at
Washington University, Robert Trapp is Professor of Rhetoric at Willamette University,
CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON RHETORIC, 1991, p. 190
Moral action arises only as a consequence of the hortatory, judgmental uses of the
negative that are possible in language; moral action is not possible apart from language.
Burke reaches this conclusion by examining the relationship between the negative and
his starting point for dramatism, action. The negative allows the establishment of
commands or admonitions that govern the actions of individuals, which Burke refers to
as "thou shalt nots," or "do not do thats. " The Ten Commandments are examples of
such "thou shalt nots. " The ability to distinguish between right and wrong thus is a
consequence of the concept of the negative. Without the negative implicit in language,
moral action, or action based on conceptions of right and wrong behavior (such as law,
moral and social rules, and rights), would not exist.
2. HUMAN BEINGS INEVITABLY CREATE HIERARCHIES

The concept of the negative inherent in language necessarily leads to the establishment
of hierarchies constructed on the basis of numerous negatives and commandments and
the degree to which they are followed. Hierarchy might be called as well "bureaucracy,"
"the ladder," "a sense of order," or, as Rueckert describes it, "any kind of graded,
value-charged structure in terms of which things, words, people, acts, and ideas are
ranked." It deals with "the relation of higher to lower, or lower to higher, or before to
after, or after to before" and concerns the "arrangement whereby each rank is overlord
to its underlings and underling to its overlords." Hierarchies may be built around any
number of elements-a division of labor, possession of different properties, differentiation
by ages, status positions, stages of learning, or levels of skill. No one hierarchy is
inevitable, and hierarchies are crumbling and forming constantly. What is important,
Burke emphasizes, is the inevitability of the hierarchic principle -the human impulse to
build society around ambition or hierarchy on the basis of commandments derived from
the concept of the negative.
3. THE NEGATIVE IS A CONSTRUCTION CREATED BY HUMAN MOTIVE
Choice, which we saw earlier is essential for action, is made possible only through the
concept of the negative, which provides for distinctions among acts. Burke begins the
development of his notion of the negative by examining the world of motion or nature. In
this world, he finds, no negatives exist; I everything simply is what it is and as it is. " A
tree, for example, is a tree; in no way can it be "not a tree. " The only way in which
something can "not be" something in nature is for it to "be" something else. As Burke
explains, "To look for negatives in nature would be as absurd as though you were to go
out hunting for the square root of minus-one. The negative is a fiction peculiar to
symbol-systems, quite as the square root of minus-one is an implication of a certain
mathematical symbol system." There is no image of nothing in nature. The negative is a
concept that has no referent in reality; it is purely a creation of language. The notion of
the negative was added to the natural world as a product of our language; with
language, humans invented the negative. The negative is the essence of language,
according to Burke, and "the ultimate test of symbolicity. "
BURKES METHODS MAKE THE BEST

STRATEGIES FOR ANALYZING RHETORIC
1. THE PENTADIC ELEMENTS ARE BEST USED TO GET AT A RHETORS MOTIVES
Kenneth Burke, A GRAMMAR OF MOTIVES, 1950, p. xv.
What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it? An
answer to that question is the subject of this book. The book is concerned with the basic
forms of thought which, in accordance with the nature of the world as all men
necessarily experience it, are exemplified in the attributing of motives. These forms of
though can be embodied profoundly or trivially, truthfully or falsely. They are equally
present in systematically elaborated metaphysical structures, in legal judgments, in
poetry and fiction, in political and scientific works, in news and in bits of gossip offered
at random. We shall use five terms as generating principle of our investigation. They
are.- Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, Purpose. In a rounded statement about motives, you
must have some word that names the act (names what took place, in thought or deed),
and another that names the scene (the background of the act, the situation in which it
occurred); also, you must indicate what person or kind of person (agent) performed the
act, what means or instruments he used (agency), and the purpose. Men may violently
disagree about die purposes behind a given act, or about the character of the person
who did it, or how he did it, or in what kind of situation he acted; or they may even insist
upon totally different words to name the act itself. But be that as it may, any complete
statement about motives will offer some kind of answers to these five questions: what
was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it
(agency), and why (purpose).
2. COMIC CORRECTIVES AVOID THE INCONSISTENCIES OF DEBUNKING

Kenneth Burke, ATTITUDES TOWARD HISTORY, 1937, p. 166
We hold that it must be employed as an essentially comic notion containing two-way
attributes lacking in polemical, one-way approaches to social necessity. It is neither
euphemistic nor wholly debunking-hence it provides the charitable attitude towards
people that is required for purposes of persuasion and co-operation, but at the same
time maintains our shrewdness concerning the simplicities of cashing in. The
mystifications of the priestly euphemisms, presenting the most materialistic of acts in
transcendentally eulogistic coverings, provided us with instruments too blunt for
discerning the play of economic factors. The debunking vocabulary (that really flowered
with its great founder, Bentham, who developed not merely a method of debunking but
a methodology of debunking, while a group of mere epigones have been cashing in on
his genius for a century, bureaucratizing his imaginative inventions in various kinds of
"muck-raking" enterprises) can disclose material interests with great precision. Too great
precision in fact. For though the doctrine of Zweck im Rech veritable Occam's razor for
the simplification of human motives, teaching us the role that special material interests
play in the "impartial" manipulations of the law, showing us that law can be privately
owned like any other property, it can be too thorough; in lowering human dignity so
greatly, it lowers us all. A comic frame of motives avoids these difficulties, showing us
how an act can "dialectically" contain both transcendental and material ingredients,
both imagination and bureaucratic embodiment, both "'service" and "spoils.
3. TRAINED INCAPACITY STOPS US FROM MAKING CREDIBLE INTERPRETATIONS

Sonja Foss, Professor of Rhetoric at Washington University, Karen Foss, and Robert Trapp
is Professor of Rhetoric at Willamette University, CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON
RHETORIC, 1991, p. 189
The result of occupational psychosis and its accompanying terministic screens is "trained
incapacity," the condition in which our abilities "function as blindnesses." As we adopt
measures in keeping with our past training, the very soundness of that training may lead
us to misjudge situations and adopt the wrong measures for the achievement of our
goals; thus, our training becomes an incapacity. A person trained to work in the
competitive business world of the United States, for example, may be unable to
cooperate with other businesspersons because of that training, even when cooperative
action alone will prevent the failure of the business. Given different occupations,
terministic screens, and the consequent trained incapacity, some differences among
members of a hierarchy are likely to be significant-as with a king and peasant, for
example, an accountant and a musician, or a Sunday painter and a renowned
professional artist. In other cases, the differences among beings are imaginary;
members of different racial groups, for example, may see differences where none exist.
In either case, members lack knowledge about other beings and see different modes of
living in other classes as implying different modes of thought.
BURKES PROJECT IS FUNDAMENTALLY

FLAWED
1. BURKE OVEREMPHASIZES THE INDIVIDUAL RHETOR
Carole Blair, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication at University of
California, Davis, KENNETH BURKE AND CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN THOUGHT, 1995 , p.
131
A discourse thus cannot be understood by understanding its authorship, nor can a
discourse reveal a unitary author. Discourses constitute and are constituted by
numerous forces. Certainly people speak, but they do not speak as independent,
unsituated, or unconditioned ethoi. What accounts for a particular discourse is other
discourse and the social sanctions that enable or constrain it. Foucault does not
thematize the ethos or cogito of an author as an end or a means of studying discourse;
he subverts the relation between author and work. Thus, the humanistic themes that
continue to pervade Burkes critical program despite his own occasional suspicions
about them, are set aside in Foucaults project. This posthumanism, which separates
Foucault from Burke, finds its source in their differential views of language use.
2. CONSTRAINTS ON INDIVIDUAL DISCOURSE GIVE RHETORIC POWER

Carole Blair, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication at University of
California, Davis, KENNETH BURKE AND CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN THOUGHT, 1995 , p.
141
It is rarity that invests the statement with power. Since not just anyone can speak, at
just any time, in just any manner, about just any topic, the rules of discursive practice
function as enablers and constrainers of who can speak, when, in what ways, and about
what. As a result, what is said counts; it makes a difference, even if a small one, in the
field of discourse it enters.
3. RHETORICAL MOTIVES DO NOT EXIST

James W. Chesebro, Chair and Professor in Communications at Indiana State University,
KENNETH BURKE AND CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN THOUGHT, 1995 , p. 177
Third, writing no longer represents reality. For Derrida, all of the traditional relations
among the signified (reality), signs (language), and signifiers (human beings) have been
drastically reconfigured. Signs (language) no longer represent the signified (reality).
Even more pointedly, not only have signs become a reflection of signifiers, but also the
signified is not solely and absolutely a reflection of the signifiers. As Derrida has put it,
in the last instance, the difference between signified and signifier is nothing. Thus, an
exploration of a text becomes a study of only a human construction. As Derrida is now
famous for noting, There is nothing outside of the text. In context, Derrida has
maintained that reading cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something
other than it, toward a referent (a reality that is metaphysical, historical,

psychobiographical, etc.) or toward a signified outside the text whose content could take
place, could have taken place outside of language, that is to say, in the sense that we
give here to that word, outside of writing in general. Thus, human beings are trapped
inside language. In Derridas view, writing has never and will never contain positive
terms for the positive entities in reality. He likewise maintains that speech, now
conditioned and determined by the written mode, provides only an illusion of immediacy
and directness as a signifying system for dealing with reality. Human knowledge is
literally and solely contained within the texts human beings have created. Accordingly,
insofar as we understand through language, the unidimensional nature of language
encourages political oppression, inhibits explorations of reality and the search for truth,
and perhaps more profoundly for a philosopher such as Derrida, no longer allows human
beings to equate being or essence with the subjective.
BURKES PROJECT MAKES HARMFUL

ASSUMPTIONS
1. BURKES DEFINITION OF MAN IS ESSENTIALIST OF WOMEN
Celeste Michelle Condit, Associate Professor of Speech Communication at University of
Georgia, QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH, August 1992, p.np.
Burke defines Man as the symbol using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal,
inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from his natural
condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved
by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection. This strikes me as a fairly perceptive
summary of the average Euro-American heterosexual XY. But essentialist feminism has
taught us that it is not a good summation of the majority of experiences of the other
genders. For example, for most Euro-American heterosexual XXs of the past, it is the
positivity of particular experiences (e.g. maternal love) that has formed the dominant
influence on languaging. Consequently, for such women the fact that the negative is a
unique creaton of language does not mean that it forms the essense of language.
Similarly, as radical feminist critics of science and technology, especially critics of the
new birth technologies, have pointed out, it is men who have created the instruments
that separate women from their natural conditions and it is largely for this reason that
the separation has been so oppressive.
2. BURKES DRAMATISM IS ETHNOCENTRIC

Georgia, QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH, August 1992, p.np
I suspect that at some time, in more or less perfected form, persons in all cultures
engage in victimage rituals. What I am suggesting is that victimage may not be the
dominant motive structure of all cultures. What Burkes ethnocentric version of
Dramatism threatens to blind us to is the multiplicity of different motive structures
available in language. To move post-Burke is not, then, to deny that victimage is a
should look for other universally available potentials in language and add them to the
Dramatistic dictionary. Additionally, it is to hint that while victimage might show up in
many cultures, the nature of victimage might very substantially. The Burkean definition
of "victimage may need casuistric streching.
3. BURKE WOULD HAVE US LAUGH AT OUR OWN CLASS OPPRESSION

Georgia, QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH, August 1992, p.np.
The need for revision is made urgent by the fact that another great depression is
reasonably likely in the near future. We are approaching the point in the business cycle
where so much wealth is held by so few persons that consumption becomes inadequate
to support industrial production. That we have reached such a point so soon after
experiencing the Great Depression is frustrating, but a great deal of business money has
been spent helping Americans to forget that unbridled capitalism tends towards
temporary collapses. However, it is not merely that the public is gullible. Even
academics never learned the lessons that those such as Burke taught the last time
around. Burke would have us transcend this tragedy by adopting a comic frame. Burke
accepted Marxs analysis of the class situation, but he rejected Marxs solution. At
several points Burke suggests a preference for socialism, but he also indicates that a
specific economic form is not the fundamental problem. In other words, he locates the
problem of wealth and poverty outside of capitalism, at a deeper level, in language
itself, where the urge to hierarchy tends to be generated (or, I would argue, at least
exacerbated). Burkes analysis has been shown to be largely correct; we have learned
that even in non-capitalist systems, dominated by discourses of equality, hierarchies
reappear; and those on top systematically allocate to themselves more of the goods of
social life than they allow to their equals.
Judith Butler
Imagine the spectacle of a gay pride parade: flamboyant cross-dressing, same-sex
displays of affection, signs and posters advertising the legitimacy of outside the
mainstream conceptions of sexuality, lesbians dressed as "butch" or "femme,"
transsexuals, male transvestite "drag queens," even gay men and lesbians who look like
they could have come right out of the corporate business world -- all in some way defy
societal expectations of the correct performance of gender through their appearance in
the parade. Some people welcome the idea, others believe it to be a disgusting
abomination, and the majority finds it slightly distressing or somewhat unsettling. Why
does gay pride make some people feel "unsettled"? Judith Butler would argue that what
is being "unsettled" are the norms and taken for granted assumptions about gender that
are common in our culture and society.
Martha Nussbaum, a professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, writes,
Butler's main idea, first introduced in Gender Trouble in 1989 and repeated throughout
her books, is that gender is a social artifice. Our ideas of what women and men are
reflect nothing that exists eternally in nature. Instead they derive from customs that
embed social relations of power. 15 Judith Butler is a professor of Comparative Literature
and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Butler's ideas of gender as
something we "do" not something we "are" recasts contemporary debates over
feminism, women's political issues, and gay/lesbian studies.
WHAT IS GENDER?
Simone de Beauvior, an early feminist, said that "one is not born, but rather, becomes a
woman." This observation, that women are not biologically determined creatures, but
rather, through an accumulation of social norms, practices, and expectations, they fulfill
their assigned roles in order to become women, provides a starting point for Judith
Butler. For Butler gender is not a "stable identity." Rather, gender is constituted and
instituted "through a stylized repetition of acts."
Butler derives influence from "the phenomenological theory of acts" put forth by such
philosophers as Huserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Mead. She explains that phenomenology
grounds theory in lived experience. It "seeks to explain the mundane way in which social
agents constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic
social sign." Butler is influenced by "post-modern" or "post-structural" philosophy that
15 Nussbaum, Martha. The Professor of Parody--The hip defeatism of Judith Butler. The
New Republic. Feb 22, 1999. p. 37.
challenges the idea that behind the signs, symbols, and words we use to describe our
realities, there is an objective and perfect truth. These philosophers argue that social
reality is brought about by the ways we describe it and act it out. These actions are so
daily, ordinary, and commonplace, that we rarely question them.
For example, the woman who applies lipstick everyday without question constitutes her
social reality in which women are supposed to have colorful lips. However, there is no
objective reality behind this woman's conception of femininity as including makeup. No
laws or rules are written somewhere that state that women have red lips. Further, there
is no independent "choosing and constituting agent prior to language (who poses as the
sole source of its constituting acts)." Hence, there is no "woman" behind the act of
application of makeup who is an independent, free, unchanging, choosing agent. Butler
challenges classical philosophical idea of the stable subject, as opposed to the objects
that subject acts upon. The woman, would be traditionally considered the subject, as
opposed to the object, the makeup she chooses. Butler argues, however, that the
woman is also an object. She is an object of the "constitutive acts" that create what it
means to be feminine. Butler challenges the divide between the subject and object. 16
Butler adopts a division that many feminists make between "sex" and "gender."
Feminists argue that "sex" is the biological fact of being a man or a woman, depending
on the body one has when born. Gender, in contrast, is the social and historical meaning
assigned to bearers of those body parts. Butler argues that this doesn't deny "the
existence and facticity of the material or natural dimensions of the body," meaning,
Butler doesn't want to say that there are no such things as breasts, penises, ovaries, etc.
Her argument is rather that the way we understand the fact of these material and
natural body parts is determined by our history, society, and culture. The words we use
to describe body parts themselves would have no resonance with us if it was not for the
historical norms that gives them meaning. Without the repetition of these norms, there
would be no gender at all. Butler seeks to analyze how the material and natural
dimensions of the body come to acquire meaning as gender.
Butler conceives of our understanding of the body as a set of "possibilities." A possibility

is not something concrete and certain in the objective world. It is not an "interior
essence" or fixed and stable identity. Possibility conveys the sense that a body could
potentially undergo a process that would create meaning for it. She writes "the body is
always an embodying of possibilities both conditioned and circumscribed by historical
convention. In other words, the body is a historical situation, as Beauvoir has claimed,
and is a manner of doing, dramatizing, and reproducing a historical situation." Our
historical conventions place limits on the possibilities we have for understanding our
embodiment, but we reproduce those historical conventions when we adopt them in
order to understand our bodies as "male" or "female." Enacting gender is a way of
"taking up" or "rendering" historical possibilities.
16 Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." THEATRE JOURNAL. 1988. Volume 40. p. 519.
Butler's phenomenological understanding of acts leads her to conceive of gender as a

"performance or a "drama" using the metaphor of the theatre. Daily performances both
constitute what gender means and enact it. Butler writes, "By dramatic, I mean only that
the body is not merely matter but a continual and incessant materializing of
possibilities." A person is not her or his body. A person "does" her or his body. The body
is an enactment, a drama, a playing out of scripts that are determined by history,
culture, and society. Butler, however, laments the fact that the conventions of language
force her to construct sentences with an active subject, the "I" who plays out gender on
an object, "my body." She argues, "the possibilities that are embodied are not
fundamentally exterior or antecedent to the process of embodying itself." The
possibilities that are played out are also "active subjects" in the sense that they
prescribe limits on the meaning that can be expressed, and the "I" is their object. 17
It is also important to note that this drama is repeated on a continual basis. Butler writes
"the body becomes its gender through a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and
consolidated through time."18 She explains, "As anthropologist Victor Turner suggests in
his studies of ritual social drama, social action requires a performance which is repeated.
This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already
socially established; it is the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation." 19 The
drama must repeat itself continually to inscribe itself onto our collective subconscious. It
becomes a ritual. Every time it is repeated, it increases its legitimacy and status as
normal and natural.
Gender is not only a performance, it is a historical strategy. Gender is "a strategy of

survival" for a culture that depends on two genders, masculinity and femininity, to
maintain its hegemony and transmit its norms. Butler writes, "Discrete genders are part
of what 'humanizes' individuals within contemporary culture." Your humanity is
dependent on whether you are properly a "man" or a "woman." Those who fail to meet
the definition of one or the other, for example, hermaphrodites, those born with both
male and female sexual equipment, are considered monstrous and inhuman, creatures
that need to be surgically "fixed" to meet the definition of either "man" or "woman" for
acceptance as human.
Punishment is the result of choosing not to conform to gender rules. Women considered
too masculine and men considered too feminine are regularly ridiculed and ostracized.
They are not "real women" or "real men." The young boy who wants to go to ballet class
with his sister is laughed at on the playground and encouraged by his father to play
hockey instead. Examples abound. Butler writes that this ostracism is a cultural strategy:
"those who fail to perform their gender right are regularly punished." They are punished
17 Butler. "Performative Acts" p. 521.
for failing to strive for a certain ideal of femininity or masculinity. However, this ideal is
not a "natural fact." Butler writes that gender is "a construction that regularly conceals
its genesis." It hides the way it came into being with the illusion of an origin in science,
biology, or natural fact. Gender purports to be natural and essential, when it is only
constituted by "tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and
polar genders." These actions increase the credibility of the gender system: "The
authors of gender become entranced by their own fictions whereby the construction
compels one's belief in its necessity and naturalness." Gender is a drama and also a
fiction.20
Nusbaum provides a clear articulation of Butler's conception of gender as a

performance: "when we act and speak in a gendered way, we are not simply reporting
on something that is already fixed in the world, we are actively constituting it,
replicating it, and reinforcing it. By behaving as if there were male and female "natures,"
we co-create the social fiction that these natures exist. They are never there apart from
our deeds; we are always making them be there." 21 Butler describes the hegemonic
order of gender as a set of scripts that have already been rehearsed and are given to
each individual. The act has been going on since before the actors "arrived on the
scene" and the scripts will survive the individuals who act them out. However, for their
perpetuation, these dramas must be continually "reproduced as reality." 22

21 Nussbaum. p. 37.
BUTLER AND A POLITICS OF

PERFORMANCE
Butler argues that from a realization that gender is performance, and not emanating
from a natural, fixed, stable source, we can challenge dominant and hegemonic norms
about how gender should be enacted. The result is a proliferation of gender
performances, much like the gay pride parade. Nussbaum explains Butler's idea of
resistance: "by carrying out these performances in a slightly different manner, a parodic
manner, we can perhaps unmake them just a little." 23 Alternative gender performances
open up a space to reconceptualize dominant categories and provide more freedom for
identity.
Butler notes that this type of resistance is a difficult way to establish a basis for political
action. She writes, "it seems difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a way to
conceptualize the scale and systemic character of women's oppression from a
theoretical position which takes constituting acts to be its point of departure. Although
individual acts do work to maintain and reproduce systems of oppression, and, indeed,
any theory of personal political responsibility presupposes such a view, it doesn't follow
that oppression is a sole consequence of such acts." The relationship between acts of
gender constitution and oppression is more difficult to describe than simple cause and
effect. She writes that this relationship is neither "unilateral nor unmediated." The only
possibility for resistance is to transform "hegemonic social conditions rather than the
individual acts that are spawned by those conditions."
Despite this warning, Butler sees potential for resistance in performative acts. Deriving
inspiration from the feminist slogan, "the personal is political," Butler claims that the set
of acts that constitute gender are "shared experience and 'collective action.'" These acts
do not belong just to individuals, rather, they are public acts that make sense in cultural
and social contexts. Butler doesn't want to say that individuals have role, "Surely, there
are nuanced and individual ways of doing one's gender, but that one does it, and that
one does it in accord with certain sanctions and proscriptions, is clearly not a fully
individual matter." 24 Butler wants to say that gender is neither an individual choice nor
is it fully "inscribed" on an individual by society, culture, and history. She explains that
"actors are always already on the stage, within the terms of the performance."
Butler calls attention to the point at which the analogy between the theatre and
gendered performances breaks down. In the theatre, we do not believe that the
performances are meant to represent reality. But in our daily lives, those performances
constitute our realities. She describes, "the sight of a transvestite onstage can compel
23 Nussbaum. p. 37.
pleasure and applause while the sight of the same transvestite on the seat next to us on
the bus can compel fear, rage, even violence." This experience, in which "the act is not
contrasted with the real, but constitute a reality that is in some sense new, a modality of
gender that cannot readily be assimilated into the pre-existing categories that regulate
gender reality" presents an opportunity to restructure the limits of possibility for
gendered performance. These experiences, which most often leave people feeling
unsettled (but isn't "she" really a "he"?) call into question whether or not a "reality" of
gender exists. More than just calling into question the reality of gender, the transvestite
"challenges, at least implicitly, the distinction between appearance and reality that
structures a good deal of popular thinking about gender identity." Gender is "real only to
the extent that it is performed."25
In addition to this "critical genealogy of gender," a "politics of performative gender acts"

is imperative. This politics "both redescribes existing gender identities and offers a
prescriptive view about the kind of gender reality there ought to be." The drag queen
effectively redescribes an existing feminine gender identity and challenges the
association with biological sex. She/He should be able to demonstrate the complexity of
gender free from punitive consequences. 26 Butler writes, "The possibilities of gender
transformation are to be found precisely in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in
the possibility of a failure to repeat, a de-formity, or a parodic repetition that exposes
the phantasmatic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction." By
recognizing that genders are "neither true nor false" we give license to an infinite
configuration of gendered performances, not only in gay pride parades, but in everyday
life. 27

27 Butler, Judith. . GENDER TROUBLE: FEMINISM AND THE SUBVERSION OF IDENTITY.
(New York: Routledge, 1990). p. 141.
BUTLER AND FEMINISM

Butler explains the applicability of her theory of gender to feminists: "From a feminist
point of view, one might try to reconceive the gendered body as the legacy of
sedimented acts rather than a predetermined or foreclosed structure, essence or fact,
whether natural, cultural, or linguistic." A vision of feminist politics that arises from
Butler's theory would be starkly different from mainstream feminist organizing in the
United States today. Butler writes "There are thus acts which are done in the name of
women, and then there are acts in and of themselves, apart from any instrumental
consequence, that challenge the category of women itself." Acts done in the name of
women would be the majority of feminist political projects, for example, attempts to
integrate women into previously male dominated fields, attempts to set aside specific
places for women, such as "women-only" Women's Studies courses, or women's
shelters, or attempts to restructure government and society to accommodate women's
concerns, such as child-rearing, maternity leave, and education.
Butler is critical of this sort of feminist political action. She writes, "one ought to consider
the futility of a political program which seeks radically to transform the social situation of
women without first determining whether the category of woman is socially constructed
in such a way that to be a woman is, by definition, to be in an oppressed situation."
Butler criticizes feminism for an unquestioned acceptance of the stable category of
"women." The idea of "women" as a category is dependent on social, historical, and
cultural contexts. The idea of a "universal woman" who is the subject of feminist
discourse, obscures differences between women and "provides a false ontological
promise of eventual political solidarity." Ontology is a theory of being, what it means to
exist. There is no objective existence as a "woman." Every woman's experience is
mediated by her race, class, age, gender, nationality, and a myriad of factors too
numerous to list. Every woman's experience does not fit the mold of oppression
feminism seeks to combat.28
The binary gender system that feminism perpetuates continues to channel people into
the categories of "men" and "women," closing down options for subversive, alternative
gendered performances. A politics of gendered performances, however, can break down
conceptions of femininity that tie women to domestic work and keep men from childrearing. It destroy the notion that men need to be masculine and women need to be
feminine in order to achieve normalcy, thus increasing the political, social, and cultural
potentials for every individual.
CRITICISMS OF BUTLER
Martha Nussbaum, a well known Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of
Chicago, takes Butler to task for what she calls a moral quietism on the scale of
radical libertarianism. Nussbaum writes, For Butler, the act of subversion is so
riveting, so sexy, that it is a bad dream to think that the world will actually get better.
What a bore equality is! No bondage, no delight. In this way, her pessimistic erotic
anthropology offers support to an amoral anarchist politics. Nussbaum considers Butler
to be too theoretical and to have too little application to practical life. Nussbaum
criticizes Butler for failing to write in a way that is clear and accessible for those
unfamiliar with post-modern jargon.
Others criticize Butler's politics of gender subversion as being too decontextualized.

Susan Bordo critiques Butler's theory of subversion, "She does not locate the text in
question (the body in drag) in cultural context (are we watching the individual in a gay
club or on the "Donahue" show?), does not consider the possibly different responses of
various readers (male or female, young or old, gay or straight?) or the various anxieties
that might complicate their readings 29 Although Bordo agrees with Butler "in theory,"
she questions the likelihood that drag performances can destabilize the "binary frame"
of gender identities.30 Bordo recommends that the subversiveness of gender
performances be analyzed in social and historical context. 31 Bordo is also critical of drag
performances for perpetuating "highly dualist gender ontologies" and considers gender
ambiguity a better way to destabilize the notion that there are only two impermeable
and fixed genders, male and female.32
JUDITH BUTLER AND DEBATE
Butler's theory that there is no truth to gender is vital in debates over feminism,
women's issues, and gender. Butler's theory can provide the basis for a powerful critique
of calls for legal changes that fail to question gender norms. Butler's theory can also
provide reasons to reinvision status quo conventions about gender in order to open
political space and freedom for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and others. A good starting
place to gain an understanding of Butler's work is her book Gender Trouble.
29 Bordo, Susan. UNBEARABLE WEIGHT. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

p. 292-293
30 Bordo. p. 293.
31 Bordo. p. 294.
32 Bordo. p. 293.
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(THINKING
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Routledge, 1993).
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Number 3,
p. 82
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Routledge,
1997).
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Routledge,
1992).
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Stanford
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FRANCE. (New York : Columbia University Press, 1987).
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1998, Volume 28, Number 1, p. 19
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Judith Butler.
SIGNS. Winter 1998, Volume 23, Issue 2, p. 275
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WOMEN'S
HISTORY, Spring 1998 Volume 10, Number 1, p. 9
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Kaufman-Osborn, Timothy. Fashionable Subjects: On Judith Butler And The Causal

Idioms Of
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Parker, Andrew and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. PERFORMATIVITY AND PERFORMANCE. (New
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EPIDEMIC.
Ed. Judith Butler and Maureen MacGrogan. (New York : Routledge, 1993).
GENDER IS PERFORMANCE
1. GENDER NORMS ARE CONSTITUTED IN REPETIVE ACTS.
Judith Butler, Associate Professor of Humanities, Johns Hopkins University, GENDER
TROUBLE, 1990, p. 148
If taken as the grounds of feminist theory or politics, these "effects" of gender hierarchy
and compulsory heterosexuality are not only misdescribed as foundations, but the
signifying practices that enable this metaleptic misdescription remain outside the
purview of a feminist critique of gender relations. To enter into the repetitive practices of
this terrain of signification is not a choice, for the "I" that might enter is always already
inside: there is no possibility of agency or reality outside of the discursive practices that
give those terms the intelligibility that they have. The task is not whether to repeat, but
how to repeat or, indeed, to repeat and, through a radical proliferation of gender, to
displace the very gender norms that enable the repetition itself. There is no ontology of
gender on which we might construct a politics, for gender ontologies always operate
within established political contexts as normative injunctions, determining what qualifies
as intelligible sex, invoking and consolidating the reproductive constraints on sexuality,
setting the prescriptive requirements whereby sexed or gendered bodies come into
cultural intelligibility.
2. GENDER IS NOT NATURAL.

TROUBLE, 1990, p. 148-149
Ontology is, thus, not a foundation, but a normative injunction that operates insidiously
by installing itself into political discourse as its necessary ground. The deconstruction of
identity is not the deconstruction of politics; rather, it establishes as political the very
terms through which identity is articulated. This kind of critique brings into question the
foundationalist frame in which feminism as an identity politics has been articulated. The
internal paradox of this foundationalism is that it presumes, fixes, and constrains the
very "subjects" that it hopes to represent and liberate. The task here is not to celebrate
each and every new possibility qua possibility, but to redescribe those possibilities that
already exist, but which exist within cultural domains designated as culturally
unintelligible and impossible. If identities were no longer fixed as the premises of a
political syllogism, and politics no longer understood as a set of practices derived from
the alleged interests that belong to a set of ready-made subjects, a new configuration of
politics would surely emerge from the ruins of the old. Cultural configurations of sex and
gender might then proliferate or, rather, their present proliferation might then become
articulable within the discourses that establish intelligible cultural life, confounding the
very binarism of sex, and exposing its fundamental unnaturalness. What other local
strategies for engaging the "unnatural" might lead to the denaturalization of gender as
such?
3. GENDER IS NOT FIXED; IT IS A PRACTICE.

TROUBLE, 1990, p. 33
Woman Itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be
said to originate or to end. As an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention
and resignification. Even when gender seems to congeal into the most reified forms, the
"congealing" is itself an insistent and insidious practice, sustained and regulated by
various social means. it is, for Beauvoir, never possible finally to become a woman, as if
there were a telos that governs the process of acculturation and construction. Gender is
the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid
regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a
natural sort of being. A political genealogy of gender ontologies, if it is successful, will
deconstruct the substantive appearance of gender into its constitutive acts and locate
and account for those acts within the compulsory frames set by the various forces that
police the social appearance of gender. To expose the contingent acts that create the
appearance of a naturalistic necessity, a move which has been a part of cultural critique
at least since Marx, is a task that now takes on the added burden of showing how the
very notion of the subject, intelligible only through its appearance as gendered,
admits.of possibilities that have been forcibly foreclosed by the various reifications of
gender that have constituted its contingent ontologies.
BUTLER PROVIDES A BASIS FOR

FEMINIST POLITICS
1. BUTLERS PRESCRIPTIONS DESTABLIZE HEGEMONIC SEXUAL CATEGORIES
Susan Hekman, Professor of Political Science, University of Washington, HYPATIA, Fall
1995, p. 151.
Butler defines her own political position in the context of a discussion of the growing
literature on "radical democracy." She rejects what she declares to be the impossible
ideal of this position radical inclusivity. In a densely argued critique of Slavoj Zizek's
politics, Butler rejects his claim that politics should be grounded in the "real" that lies
outside the symbolic. Butler makes it clear that for feminist politics this means that
instead of invoking "woman" as the real beyond the symbolic, we should instead
"mobilize the necessary error of identity". She argues that we can and should invoke the
category "woman," but our aim in doing so must be to open the category as a site of
permanent political contest. Butler's prescriptions for a feminist politics, then, come to
something like this: feminists can deploy the categories of abjection which, although
constituted by the hegemonic law of sex, can be used to destabilize that law. Although
categories such as "queer" are not inherently destabilizing, they can and should be used
as a site of resignification and refiguration of the symbolic that produce them. In other
words, it is not enough to be "queer," one must be "critically queer."
2. BUTLERS CRITIQUE OF GENDER SPURS POLITICAL ACTION

Lisa Duggan, Professor of History, New York University, JOURNAL OF WOMENS HISTORY.
Spring, 1998, p. 9.
But Sokal and his supporters, including Rosen, Epstein, and Pollitt, aim their attacks at a
very amorphous target called "postmodernism," "deconstruction," or "cultural studies"-all very different intellectual practices, and not all guilty as charged--or just designated
as Theory, or personified as Judith Butler--whom many see as having an almost magical
power to destroy progressive activism. From another point of view, Butler's work has
enabled forms of activism. Perhaps it is this queer activism ("harmless cross-dressing")
and not Theory alone that is the underlying target of some of the attacks. Polarizing
"theory" and "politics" (the "academic" and the "activist" as Rosen, Epstein, and Pollitt
do) requires some major oversights and distortions. Many of the arguments assigned to
"academic/ theory" can be found in "political/ activist" discourses too. During the 1980s,
interventions into leftist and feminist politics on the grounds of race and sexuality
appeared in grassroots organizing and organizational conflicts as well as in scholarship
and theory. Many leftist feminists have only belatedly and begrudgingly accommodated
these interventions. Historians and others located in the university have some reason to
assign them to a younger generation of "pomo"-influenced scholars. Sometimes, the
impulse to attack Theory and its pretensions can function as a displacement of
generational tensions and political conflict.
3. FEMINIST POLITICS MUST CONTEST THE MEANING OF THE TERM WOMEN.

Jane Mansbridge, Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values,
Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, American Political Science
Review, December 1995, p. 1003.
Butler then turns to the political necessity within feminism to "speak as and for women."
This necessity, she writes, needs to be reconciled with the complementary necessity of
continually contesting the meaning of that word. Feminists should assume that "'women'
designates an undesignatable field of differences," so that "the very term becomes a site
of permanent openness and resignifiability." She urges, on these grounds, that "the rifts
among women over the content of the term ought to be safeguarded and prized, indeed,
that this constant rifting ought to be affirmed as the ungrounded ground of feminist
theory".
BUTLERS FEMINISM DESTROYS ANY

CHANCES FOR REAL CHANGE
1. BUTLER OFFERS NO POSSIBILITIES FOR REAL CHANGE
Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago, THE NEW
REPUBLIC, February 22, 1999, p. 37.
Up to this point, Butler's contentions, though relatively familiar, are plausible and even
interesting, though one is already unsettled by her narrow vision of the possibilities for
change. Yet Butler adds to these plausible claims about gender two other claims that are
stronger and more contentious. The first is that there is no agent behind or prior to the
social forces that produce the self. If this means only that babies are born into a
gendered world that begins to replicate males and females almost immediately, the
claim is plausible, but not surprising: experiments have for some time demonstrated
that the way babies are held and talked to, the way their emotions are described, are
profoundly shaped by the sex the adults in question believe the child to have. (The same
baby will be bounced if the adults think it is a boy, cuddled if they think it is a girl; its
crying will be labeled as fear if the adults think it is a girl, as anger if they think it is a
boy.) Butler shows no interest in these empirical facts, but they do support her
contention. If she means, however, that babies enter the world completely inert, with no
tendencies and no abilities that are in some sense prior to their experience in a
gendered society, this is far less plausible, and difficult to support empirically. Butler
offers no such support, preferring to remain on the high plane of metaphysical
abstraction. (Indeed, her recent Freudian work may even repudiate this idea: it suggests,
with Freud, that there are at least some presocial impulses and tendencies, although,
typically, this line is not clearly developed.) Moreover, such an exaggerated denial of
pre-cultural agency takes away some of the resources that Chodorow and others use
when they try to account for cultural change in the direction of the better.
2.BUTLERS DENIAL OF SEXUAL DIFFERENCE DENIES FEMINISM IMPORTANT TOOLS

And yet it is much too simple to say that power is all that the body is. We might have
had the bodies of birds or dinosaurs or lions, but we do not; and this reality shapes our
choices. Culture can shape and reshape some aspects of our bodily existence, but it
does not shape all the aspects of it. "In the man burdened by hunger and thirst," as
Sextus Empiricus observed long ago, "it is impossible to produce by argument the
conviction that he is not so burdened." This is an important fact also for feminism, since
women's nutritional needs (and their special needs when pregnant or lactating) are an
important feminist topic. Even where sex difference is concerned, it is surely too simple
to write it all off as culture; nor should feminists be eager to make such a sweeping
gesture. Women who run or play basketball, for example, were right to welcome the
demolition of myths about women's athletic performance that were the product of male-
dominated assumptions; but they were also right to demand the specialized research on
women's bodies that has fostered a better understanding of women's training needs and
women's injuries. In short: what feminism needs, and sometimes gets, is a subtle study
of the interplay of bodily difference and cultural construction. And Butler's abstract
pronouncements, floating high above all matter, give us none of what we need.
3. BUTLERS CRITIQUE IS FATALISTIC

REPUBLIC, February 22, 1999, p. 37
In its small way, of course, this is a hopeful politics. It instructs people that they can,
right now, without compromising their security, do something bold. But the boldness is
entirely gestural, and insofar as Butler's ideal suggests that these symbolic gestures
really are political change, it offers only a false hope. Hungry women are not fed by this,
battered women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not find justice in it, gays and
lesbians do not achieve legal protections through it. Finally there is despair at the heart
of the cheerful Butlerian enterprise. The big hope, the hope for a world of real justice,
where laws and institutions protect the equality and the dignity of all citizens, has been
banished, even perhaps mocked as sexually tedious. Judith Butler's hip quietism is a
comprehensible response to the difficulty of realizing justice in America. But it is a bad
response. It collaborates with evil. Feminism demands more and women deserve better.
BUTLERS FEMINISM IS MORAL

QUIETISM
1. BUTLERS FEMINISM IS QUIETISM AND RETREAT
Many young feminists, whatever their concrete affiliations with this or that French
thinker, have been influenced by the extremely French idea that the intellectual does
politics by speaking seditiously, and that this is a significant type of political action.
Many have also derived from the writings of Michel Foucault (rightly or wrongly) the
fatalistic idea that we are prisoners of an all-enveloping structure of power, and that
real-life reform movements usually end up serving power in new and insidious ways.
Such feminists therefore find comfort in the idea that the subversive use of words is still
available to feminist intellectuals. Deprived of the hope of larger or more lasting
changes, we can still perform our resistance by the reworking of verbal categories, and
thus, at the margins, of the selves who are constituted by them. One American feminist
has shaped these developments more than any other. Judith Butler seems to many
young scholars to define what feminism is now. Trained as a philosopher, she is
frequently seen (more by people in literature than by philosophers) as a major thinker
about gender, power, and the body. As we wonder what has become of old-style feminist
politics and the material realities to which it was committed, it seems necessary to
reckon with Butler's work and influence, and to scrutinize the arguments that have led
so many to adopt a stance that looks very much like quietism and retreat.
2. BUTLERS FEMINISM CONSIGNS WOMEN TO SUBORDINATION

But let there be no mistake: for Butler, as for Foucault, subversion is subversion, and it
can in principle go in any direction. Indeed, Butler's naively empty politics is especially
dangerous for the very causes she holds dear. For every friend of Butler, eager to
engage in subversive performances that proclaim the repressiveness of heterosexual
gender norms, there are dozens who would like to engage in subversive performances
that flout the norms of tax compliance, of non-discrimination, of decent treatment of
one's fellow students. To such people we should say, you cannot simply resist as you
please, for there are norms of fairness, decency, and dignity that entail that this is bad
behavior. But then we have to articulate those norms-and this Butler refuses to do.
3. BUTLER ESCHEWS LEGAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE; CONSIGNING WOMEN TO

SUBORDINATION
Isn't this like saying to a slave that the institution of slavery will never change, but you
can find ways of mocking it and subverting it, finding your personal freedom within
those acts of carefully limited defiance? Yet it is a fact that the institution of slavery can
be changed, and was changed--but not by people who took a Butler-like view of the
possibilities. It was changed because people did not rest content with parodic
performance: they demanded, and to some extent they got, social upheaval. It is also a
fact that the institutional structures that shape women's lives have changed. The law of
rape, still defective, has at least improved; the law of sexual harassment exists, where it
did not exist before; marriage is no longer regarded as giving men monarchical control
over women's bodies. These things were changed by feminists who would not take
parodic performance as their answer, who thought that power, where bad, should, and
would, yield before justice. Butler not only eschews such a hope, she takes pleasure in
its impossibility. She finds it exciting to contemplate the alleged immovability of power,
and to envisage the ritual subversions of the slave who is convinced that she must
remain such. She tells us--this is the central thesis of The Psychic Life of Power--that we
all eroticize the power structures that oppress us, and can thus find sexual pleasure only
within their confines. It seems to be for that reason that she prefers the sexy acts of
parodic subversion to any lasting material or institutional change. Real change would so
uproot our psyches that it would make sexual satisfaction impossible. Our libidos are the
creation of the bad enslaving forces, and thus necessarily sadomasochistic in structure.
Antonio Caso
(1883-1946)
INTRODUCTION
Jose Vasconcelos, at the funeral oration for Antonio Caso, stated that he was, the most
eloquent voice of Mexican philosophy, that voice which kindled in human minds the love
for truth and beauty. You were a despiser of everything vile and wicked; you were
disdainful of money, and you turned your back on power. With your great gifts you
might have gained materially comfortable positions of influence. Many times Fortune
knocked at your door, but you refused to open because you had decided to remain loyal
to your vocation as a thinker. Meanwhile, your conscience stayed wide awake,
sensitive to noble actions and sublime ideas. Those who follow your leadership
recognized in your balanced mind the marks of the classicist; in your sensitivity, those of
the romanticist; in the integrity of your conduct, those of the gentleman. Maestro
complete: wherever there is a school, there is your fatherland. Mexicano universal:
through you our nation occupies a distinguished place in contemporary thought.
(Reinhardt, A Mexican Personalist, 1946, p. 20). Caso wrote extensively in several
areas of philosophy, including theory of knowledge (Problemas Filosoficos), ethics (the
Existencia and other works), social philosophy (La Persona Humana y el Estado
Totalitario), philosophy of history (El Concepto de la Historia Universal y la Filosofia de
los Valores), history of philosophy, and aesthetics, which is contained chiefly in his
Principios de Estetica and in his Existencia como Economia, como Desinteres y como
Caridad.
LIFE AND TIMES

Antonio Caso was born in Mexico City to the liberal, positivist, engineer, Antonio Caso
Moreli and to Doa Maria Andrade, who was a Catholic and instilled in Caso an
admiration for Christ. In 1897, he entered the Preparatory National School, where he
was taught by Ezequiel Chvez and Justo, who influenced him toward positivism
(although Caso would fight against it later). He received his bachelor's degree in law
from the National School of Jurisprudence, which he attended from 1902-1906.
He devoted his life to teaching philosophy, logic, ethics, aesthetics, literature,

philosophy of history and sociology in the Preparatory School, the School of
Jurisprudence and Superior Studies (now the School of Philosophy and Literature of the
UNAM). He was the director of the National Preparatory School in 1909; secretary of the
National University in 1910; rector of the National University from 1920-192); and
director of the School of Philosophy and Literature from 1930-1932. He taught without
imposing a philosophic system. He was the first to teach the philosophic intuitionism of
Bergson, the thesis of Spengler, phenomenology of Husserl, neotomism of Maritain,
existentialism and historicism of Dilthey. He taught philosophy and sociology as useful
tools to learn the truth.
Antonio Casos philosophical contentions were based in his intellectual rebellion against
positivism and the tyrannical rule of President Diaz (from 1876 to 1911, except for one
four-year period). The ideals of the Cientificos (the party of the scientists) were political
order and economic progress, with positivism as the intellectual tool and President
Porfirio Diaz as the political force to operate it. Some historians argue that traditionally,
when positivism is applied to politics, an extreme form of democracy arises, proclaiming
the absolute rule of the people (Radical Academy). Freedom is understood as the full
liberty of the individual, so long as it doesnt threaten the rights of others. This laissezfaire doctrine in economics leads to Manchesterism, a theory based on a liberal principle
of economic freedom, which allows the employer to pay the lowest possible wage
without any moral responsibility toward the worker. This was exemplified through the
rule of Diaz. During his rule, foreign capital dominated the economic life of Mexico, with
foreign ownership of most of the land, industries, and natural resources.
Caso founded, together with Alfonso Reyes, Pedro Henriquez Urea, Jose Vasconcelos
and Carlos Gonzalez Pea, the magazine Savia Moderna, under the direction of Alfonso
Cravioto and Luis Castillo Ledon. Upon the dissolution of the magazine, the group
became the Ateneo de la Juventud (1909-1910), which was propelled against positivism
by skepticism of the Don Justo Mountain range. They openly lectured and wrote against
positivism and sought to renew the cultural atmosphere in Mexico through freedom of
expression, anti-intellectualism, spiritualism, and patriotism. Caso was a member of the
first governing body of the UNAM in 1945, a member of the Mexican Academy of
Language, and a founding member of El Colegio Nacional in 1943. In 1920, he traveled
as plenipotentiary ambassador of Mexico to Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

The universities of Havana, Lima, Guatemala, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro granted
him the title of Honorary Doctor.
IDEALISM (ANTI-POSITIVISM)
The National Preparatory School that Antonio Caso attended was strongly under the
positivist influence of Auguste Comte. Positivism is a narrow philosophy of science that
denies any validity exists at all to knowledge that is not derived through accepted
methods of science. So, in opposition to Aristotle, science cannot be the knowledge of
things through their ultimate causes, since material and formal causes are unknowable.
Theoretical speculation as a means of obtaining knowledge is rejected for verifiable
experience in all affairs, including the physical, social, and economic world. Positivism
holds three primary contentions: First, that the sciences emerged in strict order,
beginning with mathematics and astronomy, followed by physics, chemistry, and biology
in that order, and finishing in the newest science of sociology. Second, that all thought
follows the law of the three stages, passing progressively from superstition to science
by first being religious, then abstract or metaphysical, and finally by being positive or
scientific. Third, that sense experience is the only object of human knowledge as well
as its sole and supreme criterion. Hence abstract notions or general ideas are nothing
more than collective notions; judgments are mere empirical colligations of facts
(Sauvage 1911).
Caso went along with positivism in his youth, but changed his thinking after graduating
from the School of Jurisprudence. Along with Jose Vasconcelos, Pedro Henriquez Urena,
and Alfonso Reyes, he helped form the Ateneo de la Juventud, consisting of about fifty
members. They sought the destruction of Porfirism, the removal of foreign economic
controls in Mexico, and the lessening of the influences of positivism on the cultural and
educational life of Mexico (Flower 1949). Caso critiqued positivism for creating a
generation of Mexicans greedy for material wealth and willing to support a dictator for
thirty years (Haddox 1971). Caso claimed that the positivists tried to kill the essence of
soulful Mexico, but that the Ateneo de la Juventud sought to discover the proper
character of Mexico and to develop a Mexican philosophy (Haddox 1971). It was difficult
for a philosophical revolution to occur, because of the colonial mentality that resulted in
dependency on Spain for its ideas, institutions, customs, and traditions (Haddox 1971).
Caso also critiqued positivism for its arbitrary emphasis on specific limited aspects of
human experience (Caso, Positivismo, Neopositivism 1941).
Caso is labeled an idealist. He argued that rational knowledge must be based in

intuition and feeling instead of purely on verifiable experience, like positivism (Caso,
Problemas Filosoficos, 1915). The goal of knowledge should be to teach people how to
live. Intuition is linked to a concept that leads to action (Haddox 1971). In his later
works, he moves beyond his social pragmatism and argues that pure theoretical
knowledge can never satisfy human goals, but that the goal of activity becomes a life of
love and sacrifice for others (Caso, La Filosofia de la Cultura, 1936). He argued that
philosophy should be based on all aspects of human experience, including the poetic,
historical, political, scientific, and religious spheres (Caso, La Existencia como Economia,
1916; Caso, Filosofos y Doctrinas Morales, 1915).
EXISTENCE
Caso sought to explain existence and assign it value. This is an important search, since
how existence is defined is a fundamental aspect of society and determines how culture
is transmitted and renewed (Leon 1998).
He believed that a being can obtain the ultimate happiness in love and contemplation of
God; and that hope for this also gives joy (Haddox 1971). Caso was critical of any
philosophical systematization of existence, which he felt always reduced reality down to
a positivist view of it as rational, empirical, or practical (Haddox 1971). Instead, he
sought a synthesis of the diverse aspects of existence to provide an integrated picture of
the whole world (Haddox 1971).
Caso sought to establish a synthesis between six different points of view regarding
existence (Caso, La Existencia com Economia, 1943): First is the metaphysical point of
view which explains existence by means of eternal truths, which is opposed to the
historical point of view, which views reality based on its changing character. Third is the
criterion of utility, which seeks the most personal gain with the least amount of effort,
which is opposed to the ethical, Christian point of view that seeks charity and unselfish
love. Finally is the logical view, which is based on purely formal relations among
abstract ideas, versus the aesthetic view which is that of intuitions of beauty free of any
practical interest.
Caso argues that the three levels of being; thing, individual, and person, follow an
ascending path starting with inanimate objects and ending in God (Caso, La Persona
Humana y el Estado Totalitario, 1941). A thing is a physical, inanimate object that can
be divided up with no essential change in nature. Individuals are living, organic beings
composed of heterogeneous parts that cannot be divided up without killing the being.
There are three forms of individuals: plants, brute animals, and humans. Finally, a
person is a human who conceives of general ideas, creates values, has a spiritual
dimension, and creates culture.
PERSONALISM AND NATIONAL

IDENTITY
As a personalist, Caso argued that a sociopolitical order based in biological-individualism
over the spiritual-personal side of human nature leads to individualistic, laissez-faire
capitalism or communism (Haddox 1971). He argues that both systems view humans
purely in egoistic, economic terms. The individualistic capitalist wants more through
his/her own economic activities; whereas, the communistic egoist wants more through
the economic activities of the community (Haddox 1971). He saw communism as a
dogmatic religion, but without a god (Caso, La Persona Humana y el Estado Totalitario,
1941). He argued that instead of the nationalism he supported, communism results in a
form of nationalism with the state as the idol (Caso, El Peligro del Hombre, 1942).
Egoism fosters the extremes of laissez-faire individualistic capitalism or totalitarian

communism; personalism leads to a just society in which the rights and duties of both
the individual and the community are not opposed but justly coordinated (Haddox
1971, p.38). Caso argued that society exists for the realization of human nature and the
perfection of personality; that society is a means and never an end (Haddox 1971).
Humans were born for society, not the other way around, as many moralists argue. He
argued that neither the individual nor the community was worth more, but a society
based on justice was paramount. This is a moral union of men [sic], respecting their
value. The community that tyrannizes man [sic] forgets that persons are persons,
spiritual centers of cultural action, not mere biological unities. The individual who is
opposed to the communityforgets that above the egoistic individual is human culture,
which is always a synthesis of values. (Caso, La Persona Humana y el Estado Totalitario,
1941, p. 191-2). Only a society based on moral union enables a person to realize her/his
spirituality (Haddox 1971).
Caso argued with his personalistic humanism that freedom is a means for developing the
human person (Haddox 1971). He sought freedom for the human person, political and
civil freedom, freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of thought and expression,
and freedom to have private property. However, even though his rhetoric about freedom
sounds anarchistic in its orientation (except for his support of private property), he
argues that these freedoms can only be preserved and fostered under a system of laws
that require authority for their enforcement. He argued that without liberty, law, and
authority, a just civil society is impossible (Krause 1961). He actually went as far as to
argue that unrestricted freedom would foster anarchy, which results in tyranny and
threatens barbarism (Krause 1961).
However, he did not believe in unfettered state control and argued that the state must
never be made absolute and unlimited in its power and value, but should be recognized
as limited in its social construction (Haddox 1971). He believed that the main purpose of
the state is to protect the rights of the individual, as to enable self-development.

However, he argued that the only political system that allows for this is representative
democracy, which he believed was like Christianity in that both were keys to personal
dignity, political equality, and the transcendent value of all humans. (Caso, La Persona
Humana y el Estado Totalitarion, 1941). He argued that only a representative
democracy could foster a society based on the supreme values of goodness, justice,
love, and holiness (Haddox 1971).
Caso called for a renewed Mexican patriotism and nationalism. He argued that, We
Mexicans must never forget that the native country comes before the race, just as the
race comes before humanity. That is to say, the best way to serve the race is to be a
good patriot and the best way to serve humanity is to work for the race. La patria is a
reality like the individual, like the family: the race is an ideal like humanity. (Caso, El
Problema de Mexico y la Ideologia Nacional, 1924, p.78) He believed that such a form
of nationalism was necessary to break the colonial mentality that kept Mexicans
dependent on Spain and apathetic toward the creation of a new system. He called for a
firm and constant desire to obtain something better (Caso, El Problema de Mexico y la
Ideologia Nacional, 1924).
ETHICS
The two ideals that Caso sought for Mexico were freedom and love. He argued that the
human moral conscience has become drugged. He [sic] is saturated with avarice for
material possessions, for more and more outer goods with less and less concern for his
[sic] inner, spiritual perfection. Man [sic] seems to be running away from himself [sic]
with no knowledge of where he is going. (Caso, Principios de Estetica, 1925, p. 207). In
turn, he argued that this causes violence, tyranny, injustice, and warfare. He believed
that creative freedom was necessary to achieve the desired political and intellectual selfdetermination of Mexico and that humans were inherently capable of heroic, selfsacrificing love; but that this was only possible through freedom (Haddox 1971). The
ability to give and not just take was what Caso believed was uniquely human (Haddox
1971). He believed that moral progress is the movement toward self-perfection, through
self-sacrifice (Haddox 1971). The person, in contrast to the economic-individualist,
seeks to be more of a humanist, through her/his ethical and social activities (Haddox
1971).
He imbued his sense of humanism with a faith in the innate goodness of humans and the
Christian ideal of charity (Haddox 1971). He believed that Christianity is critical to
opposing this moral downturn and the real hope for humanity. He believed that
individuals and nations should imitate Jesus (Caso, El Problema de Mexico y la Ideologia
Nacional, 1955, p. 96). He believed that faith compensates for the failure of reason in
knowing that God is real (Caso, Desarticulando paralogismos, 1936). Although Caso
was a Christian, he opposed dogmatic Catholicism and institutional religion (Caso, La
Cronica, 1921).
EDUCATION
As a teacher, Caso sought to not just create good philosophers, but good people and
good citizens (Haddox 1971). He believed that it is the role of the teacher to awaken in
her/his students human personality (Haddox 1971). For Caso, education was a perpetual
search for truth (Haddox 1971). The purpose of education is to inform, not deform; to
discuss, not persuade; and to liberate, not dictate (Krause 1961).
AESTHETICS
Caso argues that art is a product of social tradition and creative genius. It is
representative of the insatiable endeavor to symbolize what cannot be expressed.
Utilizing the writings of Alfonso Caso, he argues that there are four classes representing
the arts: First, a being that has moved, i.e. architecture and ornamentation; second, a
being that is moving, i.e. sculpture and painting; third, a movement of being, i.e. poetry
and music; and fourth, a being and its movement, i.e. dance and drama. (Berndston
1951)
Caso argues that there are five conditions of art or aesthetic experience: First is the
general state of demansia vital or vital exuberance. Living beings have a special
impetus to push inert matter into partnerships of creation. He argues that the universe
as a whole is made of energies which are based on the principle that a quantitative
increase in causes results in a qualitative differentiation in effects (Berndston 1951, p.
324). Caso does not make very clear how art illustrates the theory of vitality. However,
he does state that, beauty affords a rich concentration of ideas; he cites Schiller on the
contrast between work, which indicates lack, and play, which implies fullness; and
undoubtedly he assumes the general relevance in aesthetic production of the external
factor of leisure and the internal factor of novel creation. (Berndston 1951, p. 324)
The second condition of art is disinterestedness, which implies a kind of contemplation.

Things are viewed as an end rather than in relation to our desires. It does not imply the
negation of desire or of pleasure; on the contrary, it means that the object contemplated
is so satisfying that there is no transitive movement of conation (Berndston 1951, p.
324). Caso based his theory on Kant, Schopenhauer, and Bergson, with Nietzsche and
Santayana in disagreement. Caso argues that catharsis and the disinterestedness of art
guarantees its morality, because only interested acts can be immoral (Caso, Principios
de Estetica, 1944). He uses the theory of disinterestedness to argue that art should be
dissociated from play (Caso, Principios de Estetica, 1944). Therefore, play must be
classified with work (Berndston 1951).
The third condition of art is based on intuition, which is an awareness of reality in its full
individuality (Berndston 1951). The basic element of intuition is based on Kant, and
involves seeing things as they are without the conceptual artifices of experience. This is
done through seeing things with disinterest and to view things as instruments
(Berndston 1951). The second element is the belief that there is no logic to the nature
of art. His theory of value claims to strip the evaluator of arbitrary decision by noting
the ineluctable contributions of the object, of society, and even of God (Berndston
1951, p. 325).
The fourth condition of art is empathy; which Caso defines as an effusion of the soul
upon the things of the world (Berndston 1951, p. 326). Empathy is part of intuition,
in that the subject is the object; we endow the subject with the attributes of our own
selves. This happens in three circumstances: The first is in construction of religious
myths in which nature is invested with the hopes and fears of the subject (Berndston
1951). The second is in dealing with aesthetics, which is the projection of pure feeling
and a minor form of mysticism. It includes any perception of emotional or mental
processes or behavior directed toward action or change as attributes of objects
(Berndston 1951). The third type is logical, which states that every object is a coherent
and synthetic diversity of attributes or qualities. That which synthesizes is subjective
even though it is the condition of all objects (Caso, Principios de Estetica, 1944).
The final condition of art is creative intuition or expression (Berndston 1951). Since it is
not possible to embody our emotional states in objects and these objects do not want to
remain latent, they tend toward action. Thus, our emotional states move, in the
metaphysical passage, from the indeterminate (empathy) into the determinate
(expression). He argues that expression is the end result of intuition. The way that
expressive factors relate to what is expressed is similar to the relation of body and mind
(Principios de Estetica 1944; Existencia como Economia 1943).
CASO IN DEBATE
Caso never identified himself with one system of thought, but instead took from other
philosophers and their modalities. As such, Caso makes for good support of many other
philosophers, but also provides criticisms and thoughts for change on all of their
philosophies. For instance, Max Scheler, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer
all helped inform Casos ethics; Caso took methodology from the pragmatist William
James and took aesthetics from Benedetto Croce. For his theory of knowledge, he
borrowed from the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl and for his philosophy of history,
he borrowed from Nicolas Berdyaev and Wilhelm Dilthey. Caso also had minor influence
from Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Heinrich Rickert, Maine de Biran, Max Stirner,
and Emile Meyerson.
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POSITIVISM IS FALSE
1. A GROUP OF HUMANS ARE A COLLECTION OF INDIVIDUALS, THE COLLECTION WILL
NOT TAKE ON A LIFE OF ITS OWN
Peter Landry, political scientist, BIOGRAPHIES: JOHN STUART MILL. June 1997.
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Philosophy/Mill.htm Accessed April 30,
2003. p-np.
No one will question the laudable goals of those who subscribe to positivism, including
the "social scientists" of today; it is just that the premises on which these people
proceed, are wrong. Human beings are individuals and a collection of them is but just
that, a collection of individuals; and the collection will not take on a different life of its
own: society is not an independent creature with a separate set of governing laws. It was
on this basis that Sir Karl Popper formulated his criticisms. Popper thought that both Mill
and Comte were wrong in treating collections of people as if these collections were
physical or biological bodies, such that scientific methods might be employed to predict
future events. "That Mill should seriously discuss the question whether 'the phenomena
of human society' revolve 'in an orbit' or whether they move, progressively, in 'a
trajectory' is in keeping with this fundamental confusion between laws and trends, as
well as with the holistic idea that society can 'move' as a whole - say, like a planet."
2. SENSE EXPERIENCES NOT THE ONLY OBJECT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

George M. Sauvage. Positivism. NEW ADVENT: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA. June 1, 1911.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12312c.htm. Accessed April 20, 2003. p-np.
Positivism asserts that sense experiences are the only object of human knowledge, but
does not prove its assertion. It is true that all our knowledge has its starting point in
sense experience, but it is not proved that knowledge stops there. Positivism fails to
demonstrate that, above particular facts and contingent relations, there are not abstract
notions, general laws, universal and necessary principles, or that we cannot know them.
Nor does it prove that material and corporeal things constitute the whole order of
existing beings, and that our knowledge is limited to them. Concrete beings and
individual relations are not only perceptible by our senses, but they have also their
causes and laws of existence and constitution; they are intelligible. These causes and
laws pass beyond the particularness and contingency of individual facts, and are
elements as fundamentally real as the individual facts which they produce and control.
They cannot be perceived by our senses, but why can they not be explained by our
intelligence? Again, immaterial beings cannot be perceived by sense experience, it is
true, but their existence is not contradictory to our intelligence, and, if their existence is
required as a cause and a condition of the actual existence of material things, they
certainly exist. We can infer their existence and know something of their nature. They
cannot indeed be known in the same way as material things, but this is no reason for
declaring them unknowable to our intelligence (see AGNOSTICISM; ANALOGY).
3. TRUTHS ARE NOT DETERMINED MERELY BY EXPERIENCE, INSTEAD THEY ARE THE
RESULT OF A SUBJECTIVE NECESSITY BASED ON EXPERIENCE
George M. Sauvage. Positivism. NEW ADVENT: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA. June 1, 1911.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12312c.htm. Accessed April 20, 2003. p-np.
Again, Positivism, and this is the point especially developed by John Stuart Mill (following
Hume), maintains that what we call "necessary truths" (even mathematical truths,
axioms, principles) are merely the result of experience, a generalization of our
experiences. We are conscious, e. g. that we cannot at the same time affirm and deny a
certain proposition, that one state of mind excludes the other; then we generalize our
observation and express as a general principle that a proposition cannot be true and
false at the same time. Such a principle is simply the result of a subjective necessity
based on experience. Now, it is true that experience furnishes us with the matter out of
which our judgments are formed, and with the occasion to formulate them. But mere
experience does not afford either the proof or the confirmation of our certitude
concerning their truth. If it were so, our certitude should increase with every new
experience, and such is not the case, and we could not account for the absolute
character of this certitude in all men, nor for the identical application of this certitude to
the same propositions by all men. In reality we affirm the truth and necessity of a
proposition, not because we cannot subjectively deny it or conceive its contradictory,
but because of its objective evidence, which is the manifestation of the absolute,
universal, and objective truth of the proposition, the source of our certitude, and the
reason of the subjective necessity in us.
INDIVIDUALISM AND COMMUNISM

RESULT IN EGOISM
1. INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIALISM DONT NURTURE SPIRITUALITY
Antonio Caso, philosopher, LA PERSONA HUMANA Y EL ESTADO TOTALITARIO, (translated
by Rene Cantu and John H. Haddox), 1941, p. 189.
The error of individualism and the error of socialism are singularly similar, because in
their extreme forms, both social theories, both philosophical creeds, do not take
cognizance of the superior nature of the human being, the level of his spiritual being.
2. INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIALISM DIMINISH PEOPLES DIGNITY

Individualism and communism reduce the dignity of the person. The person and the
culture are concomitant. The person implies society in his development. Society needs,
in turn, the person in order to be. The spirit blossoms above life, as does life above
physical nature.
3. INDIVIDUALISM AND COMMUNISM RESULT IN THE WORST FORM OF EGOISM

Individualism and communism are identified as two forms of egoism. The community is
egoistic, it claims its own continuity and priority over the individual. Prior to individuals
is the community. In it they were born and exist. It is the whole, and the individuals the
parts. The individual, part of a whole, has to be subordinate to the community. This is
the egoistic essence of communism. This is also the egoistic essence of individualism:
the individual declares, in turn, that his being is the only real one. He says: I conceive
the state as a means for my happiness; society was established for my felicity. I am
myself. That which is of God is divine but I am not God; what is human belongs to
humanity. I am what is real. My good is what I want to possess, not what others want to
give me, and if they dont want to give it to me, I shall get it somehow.
4. COMMUNISM AND ANARCHY RESULT IN EGOISM

The only solution to conflict is axiological, ethical, and juridical. Communism and
individualism oppose rights, the law. The issue is that of two individuals, two biological
units, which tear at each other. Above tyrannical communities and individuals who
believe themselves absolute within an anarchy there is something else: spiritual human
society composed of persons. Just persons and just societies must prevail. Communism
and anarchism are two errors that have the same baneful root: an overvaluation of
intrinsic and vital egoism.
5. INDIVIDUALISM AND RATIONALISM ARENT MORAL. ONLY PERSONALISM IS MORAL

BECAUSE IT AFFIRMS SPIRITUALITY
Antonio Caso, philosopher, EL PELIGRO DEL HOMBRE, (translated by Dario Prieto and
John H. Haddox), 1942, p. 50-51.
Individualism and rationalism are false because they represent the improper use of
reason in metaphysics and ethics. Reason, yes; rationalism, no. Personalism, yes,
because it stands for spirituality and affirmation; individualism, no, because
individualism fails to recognize the moral law, the necessity for each person to realize
his place in the midst of a society that is, inescapably, the spiritual heir of all the
centuries, the work of generations that precede us, and in the present, a spiritual union,
a solidarity, of efforts to form our own personality by relations with other persons.
Tradition is love for what used to be; solidarity is love for the present. The human
person is realized, in terms of tradition and solidarity, both through self-respect and
through love for others.
PERSONALISM IS A BAD MORAL

OBJECTIVE
1. POLITICS CONTROLLED BY PERSONALISM EMPIRICALLY HURTS ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
Jesse Souza, Professor, University of Heildelberg. BEYOND HYBRIDISM AND
PERSONALISM: A NEW INTERPRETATION OF THE BRAZILIAN DILEMMA.
http://www.iuperj.br/professores/texto1jesse.htm. Accessed April 20, 2003. p-np.
Personalism, in the works of Buarque, is understood both as a cultural and social
heritage from the pre-modern Portugal which colonized Brazil, as well as a consequence
of the rural inheritance which was implanted here. Personalism is pre-modern because it
implies a dominance of primary sentiments and emotions over the modern calculation of
interests. For Srgio Buarque, this cultural trace would take on peculiar institutional
forms such as patrimonialism in politics, based on the emotional choices typical of a
kinship based society leading to the constitution of a universe of political and economic
privileges that impede the development of universal standards in politics and of a
horizontal solidarity based on rational class interests. The theme of patrimonialism, the
most important guiding force of Brazilian social and political criticism since that time,
would be developed by various authors including Raimundo Faoro, Simon Schwartsman
and Fernado Henrique Cardoso, and would become the dominant vision, whether in the
reflexive realm or in the practical-political realm, among the explanations about the
causes for the Brazil's relative backwardness.
It is the undisputed presence of personalism, and its more important institutional
materialization in patrimonialism, which explains Brazil's relative backwardness in
relation to the United States for example, the only nation in the Americas with a
comparable territory and population, and which is used as an explicit, or more often,
implicit measure of Brazil's comparative backwardness.
2. PERSONALISM WRONG LOCATES THE ESSENCE OF BEING IN A PERSONS MENTAL
CAPACITIES, INSTEAD OF LOOKING TO THE INHERENT MORAL WORTH OF HUMANS
James W. Walters, Ethics professor at Loma Linda University, Is Koko a person?
DIALOGUE, 1997.
p. 34.
In physicalism, the essence of a person is found in his or her biological make-up. All
humans are persons, ipso facto. Accordingly, Baby P (see sidebar) is surely a person, and
so is Baby K, only she is severely handicapped. The physicalist tries to save every
human life possible: the 400 gram newborn with the remotest chance of survival and the
Alzheimers patient who might be kept alive an extra year. Although William E. May, the
Roman Catholic theologian, distinguishes "moral beings" from "beings of moral worth,"
both categories are in the physicalist camp. He argues that moral beings are those
creatures who are "capable of performing acts of understanding, of choice, and of love."
These humans are moral beings because they are "minded" entities. However, not all
humans are "minded" moral beings (i.e. anencephalic newborns). But regardless, all
humans are "beings of moral worth" because all share "something rooted in their being
human beings to begin with." This "something is the principle immanent in human
beings, a constituent and defining element...that makes them to be what they and who
they are...; it is a principle of immateriality or of transcendence from the limitations of
materially individuated existence." Personalism. Contrasted with physicalism,
personalism sees the essence of a person as being located in one's mental capacities
and ability to use these in satisfying ways.
POSITIVISM IS KEY TO SOCIAL

TRANSFORMATION
1. POSITIVISM KEY TO SOCIAL REORGANIZATION NECESSARY FOR CIVILIZATION
Auguste Comte, philosopher, THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF AUGUSTE COMTE,
translated by Harriet Martineau, 2000, p. 39.
The positive Philosophy offers the only solid basis for that Social Reorganization which
must succeed the critical condition in which the most civilized nations are now living. It
cannot be necessary to prove to anybody who reads this work that Ideas govern the
world, or throw it into chaos; in other words, that all social mechanism rests upon
opinions. The great political and moral crisis that societies are now undergoing is shown
by a rigid analysis to arise out of intellectual anarchy. While stability in fundamental
maxims is the first condition of genuine social order, we are suffering under an utter
disagreement which may be called universal. Till a certain number of general ideas can
be acknowledged as a rallying point of social doctrine, the nations will remain in a
revolutionary state, whatever palliatives may be devised; and their institutions can be
only provisional. But whenever the necessary agreement on first principles can be
obtained, appropriate institutions will issue from them, without shock or resistance; for
the causes of disorder will have been arrested by the mere fact of the agreement.
2. ONLY POSITIVISM INFORMS ON THE LOGICAL LAWS OF THE HUMAN MIND

translated by Harriet Martineau, 2000, p. 35-6.
The study of the Positive Philosophy affords the only rational means of exhibiting the
logical laws of the human mind, which have hitherto been sought by unfit methods. To
explain what is meant by this, we may refer to a saying of M. de Blainville, in his work on
Comparative Anatomy, that every active, and especially every living being, may be
regarded under two relations the Statical and the Dynamical, that is, under conditions
or in action. It is clear that all considerations range themselves under the one or the
other of these heads. Let us apply this classification to the intellectual functions. If we
regard these functions under their Statical aspect that is, if we consider the conditions
under which they exist we must determine the organic circumstances of the case,
which inquiry involves it with anatomy and physiology. If we look at the Dynamic aspect
we have to study simply the exercise and results of the intellectual powers of the human
race, which is neither more nor less than the general object of the Positive Philosophy.
In short, looking at all scientific theories as so many great logical facts, it is only by the
thorough observation of these facts that we can arrive at the knowledge of logical laws.
These being the only means of knowledge of intellectual phenomena, the illusory
psychology, which is the last phase of theology, is excluded. It pretends to accomplish
the discovery of the laws of the human mind by contemplating it in itself; that is, by
separating it from causes and effects. Such an attempt, made in defiance of the
physiological study of our intellectual organs cannot succeed at this time of day.
3. POSITIVISM KEY TO RENEWING EDUCATION

translated by Harriet Martineau, 2000, p. 37-8.
The second effect of the Positive Philosophy, an effect not less important and far more
urgently wanted, will be to regulate Education. The best minds are agreed that our
European education still essentially theological, metaphysical, and literary must be
superseded by a Positive training, conformable to our time and needs. Even the
governments of our day have shared, where they have not originated, the attempts to
establish positive instruction; and this is a striking indication of the prevalent sense of
what is wanted. While encouraging such endeavors to the utmost, we must not however
conceal from ourselves that everything yet done is inadequate to the object. The
present exclusive specialty of our pursuits, and the consequent isolation of the sciences,
spoil our teaching. If any student desires to form an idea of natural philosophy as a
whole, he is compelled to go through each department as it is now taught, as if he were
to be only an astronomer, or only a chemist, so that, be his intellect what it may, his
training must remain very imperfect. And yet his object requires that he should obtain
general positive conceptions of all the classes of natural phenomenon. It is such an
aggregate of conceptions, whether on a great or on a small scale, which must
henceforth be the permanent basis of all human combinations. It will constitute the
mind of future generations.
NOAM CHOMSKY
INTRODUCTION
Noam Chomsky is an internationally respected scholar in the fields of linguistics, politics,
philosophy, cognitive science, and psychology. He has published over seventy books
and a thousand articles in these subjects, helping to make him the most cited living
person today. Though Chomskys primary focus is in linguistics, his scholarship in
political science is particularly relevant to debate. Noam Chomsky is a self-professed
libertarian socialist, and a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism. He has published
numerous books and articles that offer searing criticisms of the United States
government, often describing it as the true source of terror. Chomsky has also provided
much scholarship on the construction of governments and the problems with the current
capitalist system, thus he should be a key source of information for any political debate.
LIFE AND WORK
Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on

December 7, 1928. His Father, William, had fled Russia in
1913 in an attempt to escape drafting into the Czarist army.
His father initially worked in a sweatshop, but eventually was
able to put himself through John Hopkins University and earn
his doctorate. He soon became a leading scholar in
medieval Hebrew language, publishing a book on the
subject, and also ran a Hebrew elementary school with the
assistance of his wife. Chomskys father greatly influenced
many of his early works in the field of linguistics. Noam
Chomskys Mother, Elsie Simonofsky, was born in Belarus but
had emigrated to the United States at a young age. She too
influenced Chomsky greatly, as she was a left-leaning social
activist who taught Chomsky the importance of examining
the political roots of social problems. Chomskys family was
very active in the Jewish community, and they were leaders
in the revival of the Hebrew language and Zionism (a strain
that Chomsky says would be considered anti-Zionism today).
Noam Chomskys education began at a very young age; when he was not yet two, he
was sent to Oak Lane Country Day School. Temple University ran this Deweyite
experimental school, and Chomsky remained there until he was 12. He later attended
Central High School in Philadelphia, and upon graduation enrolled in the University of
Pennsylvania. In 1955, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, after
conducting extensive research at Harvard University. Upon obtaining this degree,
Chomsky became a professor of linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
where he continues to teach today. He currently holds the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of
Modern Language and Linguistics.
It is important to note though that Chomsky does not believe his education came from
the schools, but rather from the beliefs he was exposed to as a child. From a very young
age, Chomsky was an eager reader, reading the works of authors ranging from Austen to
Dostoevsky. His parents encouraged this intellectualism, and they were constantly
debating political issues during dinner. When Chomsky turned 14, he traveled to New
York City in search of more radical political thinkers. There he became acquainted with
the socialist-anarchist Jewish community that helped to foster his libertarian-socialist
beliefs and his support of anarcho-syndicalism.
CRITIQUE OF NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM

Noam Chomsky is a very vocal critique of capitalism, specifically the neoliberal
initiatives popularized by President Ronald Reagan. Chomsky argues that neoliberal
policies have been implemented to benefit only the wealthiest members of American
society, and have significantly impaired the ability of millions to overcome poverty.
Neoliberal initiatives are characterized as free market policies that promote market
activity with minimal governmental interference. The policies are directed towards
encouraging private enterprise and consumer choice. President Ronald Reagans tax
cuts are a prime example of neoliberal policies: the tax cuts were directed towards the
wealthy members of society in an attempt to encourage entrepreneurship. Chomsky
refers to neoliberalism as capitalism without the gloves on, and argues that such policies
are detrimental to both democracy and social welfare.
THE UNDEMOCRATIC NATURE OF NEOLIBERALISM

One of Chomskys primary arguments against neoliberalism is that is destroys
democracy. He offers two warrants for this assertion. First, he points out that
neoliberalism requires the government not to interfere in the workings of the economy.
Under neoliberal doctrine, it is believed that the marketplace should determine
environmental regulation, prices, wages, and so on. Thus, following the principles of
neoliberalism, a democratic government is not allowed to act in anyway that affects the
marketplace. Chomsky explains the problem with this situation when he points out that
democracies are suppose to represent the will of the people, and give them a voice over
the policies that affect them. Economic issues, though, often have the greatest impact
on people, but neoliberalism does not allow for any governmental action. Issues of
resource planning or the location of business is thus left up to the whims of the business
owners, who can choose to move their factories at any time despite the unemployment
that may result. Chomsky argues that it is undemocratic to allow individuals to make
decisions of such social importance without any interference from a democratically
elected government.
Ultimately, following the neoliberal doctrine, democratic governments have very little
control over important issues involving the economy. According to Noam Chomsky, this
lack of control is one of the primary reasons that voting participation is declining. He
argues that when voters see the lack of control they have over important economic
issues, they lose the desire to vote. The voters know that regardless of their vote, the
government will continue with its policy of protecting private interests and refusing to
interfere in the market. In fact, Chomsky believes that the US government prefers the
low level of participation so that the existing social order is not disturbed. The poor and
minorities, the ones who tend to be hurt most by neoliberal policies, are overrepresented
in the non-voting population. When these groups do not vote, it is easier for the federal
government to continue with its policies that benefit primarily the wealthy. Chomsky
believes this is one reason that the two political parties have resisted electoral reforms
that would encourage more voting participation or the creation of new political parties.
Secondly, Chomsky argues that neoliberal initiatives undermine democracy by creating

severe social inequality. As a key example, Chomsky notes that the United States is the
wealthiest nation in the world. However, at a time of soaring profits, poverty continues
to be a persistent phenomenon in the society. Over the past fifteen years, businesses in
the United States have posted record profits. However, at the same time, incomes for
the majority of workers have either stagnated or declined, making income inequality the
highest it has been in seventy years. Furthermore, the United States has the highest
level of child poverty out of any industrialized society. Chomsky argues that this
economic inequality destroys the possibility for political equality. Wealthy business
owners can easily gain more political power through campaign donations and media
advertisement, neither of which are available to the average citizen. As a result,
politicians are more likely to adhere to the interests of the wealthy (the ones who
finance their elections), than the interests of the working class.
STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT POLICIES IN DEVELOPING NATIONS

Unfortunately, as Chomsky explains, the United States has not only adopted neoliberal
policies, but it has thrust them upon developing nations. Following World War II, when
the United States was the dominant force in the international economy, it sought to
enact trade policies that were beneficial to its economy. Chomsky explains that the US
government, along with international financial institutions, developed structural
adjustment policies based on the ideals of neoliberalism. These structural adjustment
policies were steps that developing nations had to take in order to receive a loan from
the World Bank. Referred to as the Washington Consensus, the structural adjustment
policies required countries to liberalize their trade and finance laws, not allow
governmental interference in the market, end inflation, and privatize all businesses.
Chomsky argues that these structural adjustment policies severely harmed the
economies of the developing nation because they were unable to control important
economic issues. He explains that every developed nation has used governmental
interference in order to protect its businesses and benefit the people. Even the United
States developed with significant governmental protectionism of its primary crops, such
as cotton. However, the structural adjustment policies offer governments no alternative.
Chomsky notes that these policies are to blame for the Asian economic crisis, as
governments were forced to cut public spending at the time when they needed it the
most.
For these reasons, Noam Chomsky believes that capitalism is an unjust system. He
believes that it is essential workers have control over their social, political, and economic
lives. Thus, he offers as an alternative anarcho-syndicalism.
ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM
Noam Chomsky is a strong supporter of the anarcho-syndicalist strain of anarchism. As
noted previously, he became introduced to these ideas through the socialist-anarchist
Jewish community in New York City. Following this school of thought, Chomsky
advocates in numerous scholarly works for an anarchic society based on socialist
ideology. He argues that such a society is the only true way to ensure freedom and
liberty to every individual, as well as the only method to achieve social justice.
A HIGHLY ORGANIZED SOCIETY

The society Chomsky describes is not one without rules, but rather a bottom-up form of
organization. A community based upon anarcho-syndicalism would be a highly
organized society derived from natural units or communities. The primary natural units
would be the workplace and the neighborhood, and from these two units a highly
integrated form of social organization would be formed through federal arrangements.
Members of the communities would make the decisions, thus people would always have
control over the relevant issues that affect their lives and their homes.
Noam Chomsky has suggested two possible ways of organizing an anarcho-syndicalist

society. He first explains that a network of workers councils could be developed to help
organize and control the workplaces and communities. The next level of bureaucracy
would then be representation across the different factories, crafts and industries.
Finally, the top level of representation would consist of general assemblies of workers
councils, which could act on a regional, national, and international scale.
The second form of organization Chomsky describes would entail local assemblies that
deal with local issues, regional assemblies that control regional issues, such as trade,
and finally a national or international level of assemblies. Chomsky says he is unsure of
what would be the best way to organize the society, but he believes that either of these
two would be preferable to the current form of government in the United States. The
key component of both these forms is that they grant significant autonomy and control
to the workers in the society. Chomsky maintains that there should not be any elections
in such a form of government, but that all people should be expected to participate in
the decision-making at some point in their lives. And, most importantly, those who are
making decisions only do so temporarily, and must continue to work in their
communities. Thus, decisions are always made by the affected parties.
VALUE OF TECHONOLOGICAL PROGRESS

Chomsky concedes that the general populace must become much more educated if they
are to maintain jobs and conduct management affairs. He explains, however, that
technological advancements have made this possible. In an interview with Peter Jay,
Noam Chomsky states that currently institutions do not allow workers to have access to
the information and training to control their own affairs. However, Chomsky believes it
is possible for people to control not only the their immediate affairs but also the entire
economic system. This is possible because today, much of the necessary work that is
required to keep a decent level of social life going can be consigned to machines at
least, in principle, - which means that humans can be free to undertake the kind of
creative work which may not have been possible, objectively, in the early stages of the
industrial revolution (Relevance). Thus, technology will be able to complete much of
the labor that now requires people, and this will produce enough excess time for people
to become acquainted to the process of controlling their affairs.
THE ANTI-CAPITALIST ASPECTS

Finally, it is important to note that a major tenet of anarcho-syndicalism is that workers
are not paid for their labor. Rather, the society provides for the needs of all of the
people, and workers are allowed to choose the jobs that provide them the most
fulfillment. Chomsky argues that choosing jobs based on desire as opposed to a needed
paycheck will provide enough satisfaction that no monetary compensation would be
necessary. He believes that there are few jobs everyone would refuse to do (he
maintains these jobs are bad because the current system has no reason to make them
more attractable) but if there are jobs everyone refuses to do, then the community will
share them. Thus a cooperative society will be established where everyone finds
fulfillment in their work, while at the same time contributing to the wellbeing of the
society.
Noam Chomsky feels that an anarcho-syndicalist system would be vastly preferable to

the current democratic system of the United States because of its greater ability to
achieve justice. He has stated that he does believe in the founding ideals of the United
States, such as its emphasis on individuality and liberty. However, he believes that the
United States is deficient because the government has no control over the economic
sector of the society. He points out that the United States was established before there
were large concentrations of private wealth, and thus there was no need to regulate
large corporations in the interest of the people. However, today there is such a need
and the United States government has no power. Currently, businesses can leave
communities, leave many workers unemployed, without seeking approval from the
affected individuals. Thus, over one of the main components of a persons life, their
economic livelihood, they truly have no control. Chomsky argues this is not democratic,
and may even serve to undermine democracy. If workers are dependent on a company
for a job, they may be willing to revoke democratically approved environmental
regulations merely to maintain their financial stability. Chomsky believes that such a
system is neither democratic nor just. However, in an anarcho-syndicalist society,
workers would have control over the relevant matters of their lives, such as the
businesses, and thus will be able to determine what is best for their society.
CRITICISM OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

Noam Chomsky is a very vocal critic of the US governments international policies. He
has repeatedly indicted the US government as the main source of terror, and maintains
that the US invades countries and supports coups in order to extend its economic
dominance. In fact, he says that all actions of the US government are taken to ensure
economic and ideological control worldwide.
Chomsky explains that business interests control much of the US government, through
routes such as campaign donations and friendly relationships. As a result, the actions of
the US government are directed towards maintaining a US-dominated economic system.
These actions are taken to fulfill both short-term economic and long-term ideological
goals. For example, Chomsky has argued that the United States involved itself in
Vietnam because the socialist aspirations of the north threatened its economic interests.
Most recently, Noam Chomsky has been one of the many critics of the war in Iraq. He
argues that it is a further example of US imperialism. In 1945, the State Department
recognized the energy resources in the Gulf to be a stupendous source of strategic
power, and one of the greatest material prizes of world history (609 Moral Truisms). In
order to gain control of this prize, Noam Chomsky maintains that the United States
invaded Iraq to obtain control of the oil. In his article Its Imperialism, Stupid, Noam
Chomsky refers to Zbigniew Brzezinski , a senior planner and analyst, who stated that
US control over the Middle East would give it political leverage over the European and
Asian economies who are dependent on oil from that region. Thus, Chomsky states, the
true reason for going to war is neither the debunked WMD theory nor democratic
aspirations (since the US is not adverse to supporting non-democratic regimes), but
rather economic control.
Further, Chomsky maintains that the United States government is one of the primary
perpetrators of global terror. He argues that the United States government routinely
targets civilian populations and overthrows democratically elected governments that it
disagrees with. For example, in 1962 the Kennedy administration altered the focus of
the Latin American military assistance program from hemispheric defense to internal
security (Moral Truisms 607). This change in policy really mean a shift from toleration
of the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military to direct complicity in their
crimes, to US support for the methods of Heinrich Himmlers extermination squads.
The United States became highly involved Latin American state-sponsored terrorism,
seeking to quash any anti-capitalist sentiment that the US determined a threat. One
notable example is in Colombia, where in 1962 the Kennedy Special Forces instructed
the paramilitary on methods of sabotage and terrorist activities against communist
proponents. In fact, the president of the Colombian Permanent Committee for Human
Rights, Alfredo Vasquez Carrizosa, has stated that the United States military trained the
Argentine, Uruguayan, and Colombian militaries to use terrorist activities in killing
social workers, trade unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the
establishment, and who are assumed to be communist extremists (608).
Because of its targeting of innocent civilians, Noam Chomsky refers to the United States
as the main wielder of power. However, because the United States is the sole
superpower and has tremendous propaganda abilities, the government is able to deem
those who go against it as terrorists and itself as the protector of freedom. Thus, the US
acts with impunity, naming its acts of aggression as necessary defensive tactics.

Noam Chomskys scholarship can be very useful in numerous debate rounds. His
writings provide a plethora of examples of US imperialism, and his extensive list of facts
will provide you with a deep understanding of the under-belly of US foreign policy. In
his writings, Noam Chomsky has examined most of the United States economics and
military dealings, and provides a good understanding of the governments true
intentions. Thus, if you are debating any resolution that focuses on US foreign policy,
militarism, or democracy promotion, Noam Chomsky would be an ideal source of
information.
Furthermore, his critique of neoliberal economic policies will be extremely useful in
economic debates. Many resolutions in the past have asked questions about the
effectiveness of free trade, development processes, and capitalism. Chomskys
numerous books and articles on this topic will provide you with a plethora of arguments
against free market capitalism.
Finally, Chomskys writings on anarcho-syndicalism are also important sources of debate
information. In his scholarship, Chomsky offers an enlightening criticism of the current
capitalist system and the problems of US democracy. Such arguments would be very
useful in debates about economic development, democratic governments, and
globalization. The change he offers, a socialist anarchic society, is a possible alternative
you could propose in any debate about governmental organization.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barksy, Robert F. Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.
Chomsky Info: The Noam Chomsky Website. 2006. Noam Chomsky Official Website. 26
Jul. 2006 <http://www.chomsky.info/>.
Chomsky, Noam. 9-11. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001.
---. Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with David Barsamian. Monroe: Common Courage
Press, 1992.
---. Commentary: Moral Truisms, Empirical Evidence, and Foreign Policy. Review of
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Metropolitan Books, 2006.
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Metropolitan Books, 2003.
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Books, 2005.
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http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20050704.htm>.
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Courage Press, 1994.
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Nationhood. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003.
---. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. Boston: South End
Press, 1989.
---. Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order. New York: Seven Stories Press,
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<http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19760725.htm>.
---. World Orders, Old and New. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Chomsky, Noam, et al. Acts of Aggression: Policing Rogue States. New York: Seven
Stories Press, 1999.
Chomsky, Noam, et al. The Cold War & The University: Toward an Intellectual History of
the Postwar Years. New York: New Press, 1997.
Pateman, Barry, ed. Chomsky On Anarchism. Edinburgh: AK Press, 2005.
Macedo, Donaldo, ed. Chomsky on Miseducation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2000.
THE US GOVERNMENT IS CORRUPT

1. GOVERNMENTS ARE CONTROLLED BY THE WEALTHY
Noam Chomsky, professor, 1999.
PROFIT OVER PEOPLE: NEOLIBERALISM AND GLOBAL ORDER, p. 20.
Whether accurate or not, this description serves to remind us that the governing
institutions are not independent agents but reflect the distribution of power in the larger
society. That has been a truism at least since Adam Smith, who pointed out that the
principal architects of policy in England were merchants and manufacturers, who
used state power to serve their own interests, however grievous the effect on others,
including the people of England. Smiths concern was the wealth of nations, but he
understood that the national interest is largely a delusion: within the nation there are
sharply conflicting interests, and to understand policy and its effects we have to ask
where power lies and how it is exercised, what later came to be called class analysis.
2. THE US GOVERNMENT IS WILLING TO SACRIFICE RIGHTS FOR PROFIT
PROFIT OVER PEOPLE: NEOLIBERALISM AND GLOBAL ORDER, p. 20-1
The United States had been the worlds major economy long before World War II, and
during the war it prospered while its rivals were severely weakened. The statecoordinated wartime economy was at last able to overcome the Great Depression. By
the wars end, the United States had half of the worlds wealth and a position of power
without historical precedent. Naturally, the principal architects of policy intended to use
this power to design a global system in their interests. High-level documents describe
the primary threat to these interests, particularly in Latin America, as radical and
nationalistic regimes that are responsive to popular pressures for immediate
improvement in the low living standards of the masses and development for domestic
needs. These tendencies conflict with the demand for a political and economic climate
conducive to private investment, with adequate repatriation of profits and protection
of our raw materials ours, even if located somewhere else. For such reasons, the
influential planner George Kennan advised that we should cease to talk about vague
and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and
democratization and must deal in straight power concepts, not hampered by
idealistic slogans about altruism and world-benefactions though such slogans are
fine, in fact obligatory, in public discourse.
3. THE US OVERTHREW A DEMOCRACY IN ORDER TO CRUSH A SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

PROFIT OVER PEOPLE: NEOLIBERALISM AND GLOBAL ORDER, p. 21
Radical nationalism is intolerable in itself, but it also poses a broader threat to
stability, another phrase with a special meaning. As Washington prepared to overthrow
Guatemalas first democratic government in 1954, a State Department official warned
that Guatemala had become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El
Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program
of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and
large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the population of Central American
neighbors where similar conditions prevail. Stability means security for the upper
classes and large foreign enterprises, whose welfare must be preserved.
4. THE US GOVERNMENT EXERCISES FOREIGN POLICY TO CONTAIN DISSENT

Nationalist regimes that threaten stability are sometimes called rotten apples that
might spoil the barrel, or viruses that might infect others. Italy in 1948 is one
example. Twenty-five years later, Henry Kissinger described Chile as a virus that
might send the wrong messages about possibilities for social change, infecting others as
far as Italy, still not stable even after years of major CIA programs to subvert Italian
democracy. Viruses have to be destroyed and others protected from infection: for both
tasks, violence is often the most efficient means, leaving a gruesome trail of slaughter,
terror, torture, and devastation.
THE US GOVERNMENT IS MORALLY JUSTIFIED IN ITS ACTIONS
1. THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IS REQUIRED TO PURSUE THE INTERESTS OF ITS PEOPLE

Dinesh DSouza, scholar at Hoover Institution, 23 Feb. 2006.
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, accessed 7/27/06,
<http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/fp1.cfm>.
Many European, Islamic, and Third World criticsas well as many American leftists
make the point that the United States uses the comforting language of morality while
operating according to the ruthless norms of power politics. To these critics, America
talks about democracy and human rights while supporting ruthless dictatorships around
the world. In the 1980s, for example, the U.S. supported Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua,
the Shah of Iran, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
Today, America is allied with unelected regimes in the Muslim world such as Pervez
Musharaff in Pakistan, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and the royal family in Saudi Arabia.
Moreover, the critics charge that Americas actions abroad, such as in the Gulf War and
Iraq, were not motivated by noble humanitarian ideals but by the crass desire to
guarantee American access to oil. These charges contain an element of truth. In his
book White House Years, Henry Kissinger says that America has no permanent friends or
enemies, only interests. It is indeed true that American foreign policy seeks to protect
Americas self-interest, but what is wrong with this? All it means is that the American
people have empowered their government to act on their behalf against their
adversaries. They have not asked their government to remain neutral when their
interests and, say, the interests of the Ethiopians come in conflict. It is unreasonable to
ask a nation to ignore its own interests, because that is tantamount to asking a nation to
ignore the welfare of its own people.
2. THE US MUST ALLY WITH DICTATORS TO PROTECT AGAINST GREATER EVILS

But what about the United States backing Latin American, Asian, and Middle Eastern
dictators such as Somoza, Pinochet, Marcos, and the Shah? It should be noted that, in
each of these cases, the United States eventually turned against these dictatorial
regimes and actively aided in its ouster. In Chile and the Philippines, the outcomes were
favorable: The Pinochet and Marcos regimes were replaced by democratic governments
that have so far endured. In Nicaragua and Iran, however, one form of tyranny promptly
gave way to another. Somoza was replaced by the Sandinistas, who suspended civil
liberties and established a Marxist-style dictatorship, and the Shah of Iran was replaced
by a harsh theocracy presided over by the Ayatollah Khomeini. These outcomes help to
highlight a crucial principle of foreign policy: the principle of the lesser evil. It means that
one should not pursue a thing that seems good if it is likely to result in something worse.
A second implication of this doctrine is that one is usually justified in allying with a bad
guy in order to oppose a regime that is even more terrible. The classic example of this
was in World War II. The United States allied with a very bad man, Josef Stalin, in order
to defeat someone who posed an even greater threat at the time: Adolf Hitler. Once the
principle of the lesser evil is taken into account, many of Americas alliances with tin-pot
dictators become defensible. America allied with these regimes to win the Cold War. If
one accepts what is today almost a universal consensusthat the Soviet Union was an
evil empirethen the United States was right to attach more importance to the fact
that Marcos and Pinochet were reliably anti-Soviet than to the fact that they were
autocratic thugs.
3. THE US GOVERNMENT CAN PURSUE INTERESTS AND IDEALS SIMULTANEOUSLY

Critics of U.S. foreign policy judge it by a standard applied to no one else. They
denounce America for protecting its self-interest while expecting other countries to
protect theirs. Americans need not apologize for their country acting abroad in a way
that is good for them. Why should it act in any other way? Indeed, Americans can feel
immensely proud about how often their country has served them well while
simultaneously promoting noble ideals and the welfare of others. So, yes, America did
fight the Gulf War partly to protect its access to oil, but also to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi
invasion. American interests did not taint American ideals; just the opposite is true: The
ideals dignified the interests.
CAPITALISM IS AN UNJUST SYSTEM
1. NEOLIBERAL POLICIES DESTROYED THE BRAZILIAN ECONOMY

In the highly praised history of the Americanization of Brazil that I mentioned, Gerald
Haines writes that from 1945 the United States used Brazil as a testing area for modern
scientific methods of industrial development based solidly on capitalism. The
experiment was carried out with the best of intentions. Foreign investors benefited,
but planners sincerely believed that the people of Brazil would benefit as well. I need
not describe how they benefited as Brazil became the Latin American darling of the
international business community under military rule, in the words of the business
press, while the World Bank reported that two-thirds of the population did not have
enough food for normal physical activity. Writing in 1989, Haines describes Americas
Brazilian policies as enormously successful, a real American success story. 1989
was the golden year in the eyes of the business world, with profits tripling over 1988,
while industrial wages, already among the lowest in the world, declined another 20
percent; the UN Report on Human Development ranked Brazil next to Albania.
2. CAPITALISM HAS LED TO SIGNIFICANT ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN THE US

Changes in global order have also made it possible to apply a version of the Washington
consensus at home. For most of the U.S. population, incomes have stagnated or
declined for fifteen years along with working conditions and job security, continuing
through economic recovery, an unprecedented phenomenon. Inequality has reached
levels unknown for seventy years, far beyond other industrial countries. The United
States has the highest level of child poverty of any industrial society, followed by the
rest of the English-speaking world. So the record continues through the familiar list of
third world maladies. Meanwhile the business press cannot find adjectives exuberant
enough to describe the dazzling and stupendous profit growth, though admittedly
the rich face problems too: a headline in Business Week announces The Problem Now:
What to Do with All That Cash, as surging profits are overflowing the coffers of
Corporate America, and dividends are booming. Profits remain spectacular through
the mid-1996 figures, with remarkable profit growth for the worlds largest
corporations, though there is one area where global companies are not expanding
much: payrolls, the leading business monthly adds quietly. That exception includes
companies that had a terrific year with booming profits while they cut workforces,
shifted to part-time workers with no benefits or security, and otherwise behaved exactly
as one would expect with capitals clear subjugation of labor for 15 years, to borrow
another phrase form the business press.
3. GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF THE MARKET HAS BEEN KEY IN ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT
Standard economic history recognizes that state intervention has played a central role in
economic growth. But its impact is underestimated because of too narrow a focus. To
mention one major omission, the industrial revolution relied on cheap cotton, mainly
from the United States. It was kept cheap and available not by market forces, but by
elimination of the indigenous population and slavery. There were of course other cotton
producers. Prominent among them was India. Its resources flowed to England, while its
own advanced textile industry was destroyed by British protectionism and force.
Another case is Egypt, which took steps toward development at the same time as the
United States but was blocked by British force, on the quite explicit grounds that Britain
would not tolerate independent development in that region. New England, in contrast,
was able to follow the path of the mother country, barring cheaper British textiles by
very high tariffs as Britain had done to India. Without such measures, half of the
emerging textile industry of New England would have been destroyed, economic
historians estimate, with large-scale effects on industrial growth generally.
CAPITALISM HAS BEEN ESSENTIAL IN

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
1. INDIVIDUAL CHOICE ALLOWED BY CAPITALISM ENSURES PERSONAL LIBERTY
Johan Norberg, author and political activist, 2001.
IN DEFENCE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM, p. 23
This development has resulted, not from socialist revolution but, on the contrary, from a
move in the past few decades towards greater individual liberty. The freedom to choose
and the international exchange have grown, investments and development assistance
have transmitted ideas and resources. In this way benefit has been derived from the
knowledge, wealth and inventions of other countries. Imports of medicines and new
health care systems have improved living conditions. Modern technology and new
methods of production have moved production forward and improved the food supply.
Individual citizens have become more and more free to choose their own occupations
and to sell their products. We can tell from the statistics how this enhances national
prosperity and reduces poverty among the population. But the most important thing of
all is liberty itself, the independence and dignity which autonomy confers on people who
have been living under oppression.
2. CAPITALISM HAS DECREASED GLOBAL POVERTY

IN DEFENCE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM, p. 25
Between 1965 and 1998, the average world citizens income practically doubled, from
2,497 to 4,839 dollars, corrected for purchasing power and in fixed money terms. This
has not come about through the industrialised nations multiplying their incomes. During
this period the richest one-fifth of the worlds population increased their average income
from 8,315 to 14,623 dollars, i.e. by roughly 75 percent. For the poorest one-fifth of the
worlds population, the increase has been faster still, with average income rising during
the same period from 551 to 1,137 dollars, i.e. more than doubling. World consumption
today is more than twice what it was in 1960. Material developments in the past halfcentury have resulted in the world having over three billion more people liberated from
poverty. This is historically unique. UNDP, the UN Development Programme, has
observed that, all in all, world poverty has fallen more during the past 50 years than
during the preceding 500. In its 1997 Human development report, the UNDP notes that
humanity is in the midst of the second great ascent. The first began in the 19th
century, with the industrialisation of the USA and Europe and the rapid spread of
prosperity. The second began during the post-war era and is now in full swing, with first
Asia and then the other developing countries noting ever-greater advances in the war
against poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy.
3. CAPITALISM HAS AIDED THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRATIC REGIMES

IN DEFENCE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM, p. 37-38
At present there are 47 states which are violating basic human rights. Worst among
them are Afghanistan, Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Saudi
Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Turkmenistan that is, countries least affected by globalisation
and least oriented in favour of the market economy and liberalism. While deploring and
combating their oppression, suppression of opinion, government-controlled media and
wire-tapping, we should still remember that this was the normal state of affairs for most
of the worlds population only a few decades ago. In 1973 only 20 countries with
populations of more than a million were democratically governed.
WARD CHURCHILL
AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES
Life and Work

Ward Churchill is an activist, author and scholar covering many issues important to
progressives, but be is most concerned with the fate of Native Americans. Churchills
political activism, he says, started shortly after he came out of the United States Army in
1969. After being drafted and sent to Vietnam, he became disillusioned and irritated
about the posture of his government. Not only did he not consider Vietnam a just war,
but he began to feel that, as a Native American, he was sent to Southeast Asia to
uphold a treaty which did not require that I be there.
As he began to research the application of federal law to Native Americans he found that
the United States was in the process of standing in complete violation of 371 odd
treaties that were on record with my people or related peoples right here in North
America. Given this fact, Churchill took the stance that if were going to be busy
enforcing treaties, it ought to be home, not over there [in Vietnam].
Though Churchills focus is certainly on Native issues, his career as an author and
political voice has been characterized by abroad-based, diverse background. He has
written and edited books which deal with subjects as far-ranging as crime policy, the
FBIs domestic covert wars, and specifically the way movements like the Black Panthers
were treated by both the United States government and law enforcement agencies.
As Churchill became politically active, he moved to Peoria Illinois where he had a

roommate by the name of Mark Clark. Clark happened to be a defense captain for the
Illinois Black Panther Party. In December of 1969, less than a year after Churchills
discharge from the army and political awakening, Clark became the first Panther killed in
an armed raid by the FBI. The raid, which took place on an apartment on Monroe Street
in Chicago, also took the life of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Panthers.
Churchill, somewhat understatedly, says that this caught my attention. Since there
was clear evidence from the onset of direct FBI involvement, and since there was a clear
attempt made to cover that up, Churchill became involved in the effort to bring out the
truth about the assassinations of Hampton and Clark.
From there, one thing followed another. After he joined the American Indian Movement,
Churchill began working on the famous Leonard Peltier case. Along the way, he began to
discover through his investigations what he considered this pattern of FBI repression. Of
covert operations directed against activists in the United States that was so pervasive it
had an effect on everything I was trying to do, and everybody I was around. This
included, naturally, the Black Panthers and AIM.
Churchill began to write extensively about his experiences and the research he did about
politics. The first book he put out was an edited collection of essays on the applicability
of Marxist theory to the circumstances of the American Indians within the United States,
Marxism And Native Americans. He established a relationship with the independent
collective publishing house South End Ness, and put out books including the Agents Of
Regression focusing on FBI misdeeds, primarily against the American Indian Movement
in the 1970s, but also on the Black Panther Party. Since then, Churchill has put out
several other books, and published regularly in magazines such as Z.
Today, Churchill is professor of American Indian studies at the University of Colorado at

Boulder. There he is the Associate Director of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and
Race in America. Churchill also serves as co-director of the American Indian Movement
of Colorado, Vice Chairperson of the American Indian Anti-Defamation Council, and a
National Spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.
Basic Ideas And Philosophy

Churchills most adamant stances--and most useful philosophical viewpoints--come in
such books as STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND and INDIANS ARE US?, where he presents the
case for a self-determining and self-governing Native North America.
In these books Churchill argues that the United States has no actual legal right to occupy
the territory it does. Churchill draws on history to argue that, after the revolutionary war,
the United States was an international pariah, shunned economically by other countries.
Thus, the United States needed to do two things: 1) Acquire its own economic wealth so
as to attain self-sufficiency, and 2) maintain the appearance of compliance with
international law while it was doing so, to avoid further alienating potential allies among
other countries. Churchill posits that then-Chief-Justice John Marshall inverted
international law, custom, and convention, by finding that the Doctrine of Discovery
imparted preeminent title over the Americas to the European settlers.
Through a series of opinions, Churchill says, Marshall declared the new lands effectively
vacant, though the Native Americans were indisputably occupying those lands. Through
convoluted and falsely premised reasoning, according to Churchill, Marshall
established the somewhat paradoxical policy that Indian nations were entitled to keep
their land, but only so long as the intrinsically superior US agreed to their doing so.
Churchill also documents situations where he feels that the US has violated the
principles set up in international law at Nuremberg. For instance, he discusses the case
of Julius Streicher, a nazi who was condemned to death not for murder, but for running a
magazine that published inflammatory caricatures of Jews. Streicher was found to have
contributed to the dehumanization of Jewish people through his publications. Churchill
juxtaposes these findings against 1) the USs record of genocide against Native
Americans through land policies, bounty policies, etc., and 2) the caricatures of Native
Americans throughout history and contemporary culture. He places one of the nazi
caricatures immediately opposite the Cleveland Indians mascot, Chief Wahoo, and lets
the striking similarity speak for itself.
Churchill also points out the feasibility of returning lands to their original owners. He
notes that most of the land initially taken from Native Americans is not held by private
individuals, but by the government or corporations. He also claims that 2/3 of the total
land mass could still reside in the hands of non-natives. As an activist for many
progressive causes, he is careful to point out the benefits this could have for other
progressive causes, such as pacifism. Efforts to stop US hegemony and militarism, for
instance, would be greatly advanced by the weakening of US military might that
returning the land would represent.
Churchill is also concerned with all manner of social issues related to the condition of
Native peoples. He writes extensively on what he calls radioactive colonialism; that is,
the tendency of the US federal government to use resources it finds on Native
reservations while leaving the hazards of those resources for those who get no benefit
from them. He notes that one hundred percent of US uranium reserves were obtained
from reservation lands, but that the government admitted in 1991 that, since the 50s, it
had been dumping wastes from these products at 2,000 times a level deemed safe.
Churchill is suspicious of many other revolutionary agendas advanced by radical

groups in the United States. He deals with the subject at length in MARXISM AND NATIVE
AMERICANS, but refers to it elsewhere in many other places. He opines that any
revolution which still allowed the continuance of
colonialism--non-Native occupation of traditional Native lands--would merely be a
continuance of the oppression which existed before, merely in another form. By contrast,
Churchill argues that the realization of the Native land struggle would pave the way for
many liberatory agendas, such as the elimination of sexism, racism, and discrimination
against homosexuals.
Churchill, as this should show, is concerned with many of the same issues progressives
axe in terms of inequalities, class disparity, and discriminatory practices. He merely
traces all these back to a common root: the colonial ideology which has been in place
since Columbus. He argues that land rights and the recognition of such are a necessary
precondition for the success of all these other transformative movements.
Application To Debate
Churchills application to debate comes on a few levels. On any topic where issues of
self-determination are prevalent, Churchill can be counted on to defend those values.
Understandably, the value of self-determination is what he hopes will eventually assist in
the liberation of the land he so hopes for. Churchill is a staunch advocate of related
values, such as localized democracy and direct self-reliance for communities.
Churchill also provides debaters with excellent insight to multiculturalism. Not only will
he defend the Native American worldview, and the ecological and social insights it can
bring to virtually any other culture, but he will passionately argue that lack of
multicultural respect can have genocidal consequences. His savage indictments of
sports mascots are only one example. Churchill also points out how nazi ideologies were,
in some respects, based on the same Manifest Destiny policies that helped massacre
and drive from their homes countless Native peoples in North America. This kind of
historical analysis and documented evidence is convincing in any debate on cultural
issues.
Churchill is also useful against any type of radical philosophy which leaves the native
peoples in the same position the status quo holds for them. According to Churchill, to
ignore the sufferings of the Native Americans is to commit the same sin of oppression
that the dominant paradigm does, and to gloss over the insights that Native Americans
can bring to matters ecological, spiritual, and social is a risk we take at our peril. He
indicts certain socialists, anarchists, communists, feminists, and progressive activists of
all shapes and sizes on this point.
Finally, Churchills attack on New Age spiritualities and specifically the Mens
Movement led by Robert Bly is of particular venom. Churchills assault comes down
specifically on Bly and his ilk, but is directed more generally (and usefully against) any
philosophy which co-opts elements of native traditions while being unconcerned with the
fate of actual Native Americans. Churchill condemns these fake shamans and declares
that such practices are sacred to Native Americans, and must not be allowed to fall into
the hands of individuals using them to make money, or who will corrupt them in any
way.
Bibliography
Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, AGENTS OF REPRESSION : THE FBIS SECRET WARS
AGAINST THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY AND THE AMERICAN INDIAN MOVEMENT, Boston,
MA: South End Press, 1988.
Ward Churchill, STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND: INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE TO GENOCIDE,

ECOCIDE, AND EXPROPRIATION IN CONTEMPORARY NORTH AMERICA, Common Courage
Press, 1993.
Ward Churchill, INDIANS ARE US?: CULTURE AND GENOCIDE IN NATIVE NORTH AMERICA,
Common Courage Press, 1994.
M. Annete Jaimes, editor, THE STATE OF NATIVE AMERICA: GENOCIDE, COLONIZATION

AND RESISTANCE, Boston: South End Press, 1992.
UNITED STATES CLAIMS TO NATIVE

LANDS ARE SUSPECT
1. EVEN MARSHALL ADMI1TED US CLAIMS TO NATIVE LANDS WERE DUBIOUS
Ward Churchill, professor of American Indian studies at the University of Colorado at
Boulder, Associate Director of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America,
co-director of the American Indian Movement of Colorado, THE STATE OF NATIVE
AMERICA, edited by M. Annette mimes, 1992, p142. Such lofty-sounding (and legally
correct) rhetoric was, of course, belied by the actualities of US performance. As Chief
Justice Marshall pointed out rather early on, almost every white-held land title in the
country--New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and parts
of the Carolinas--would have been clouded had the standards of international law truly
been applied. More, title to the pre-revolutionary acquisitions west of the 1763
demarcation line made by the new North American politico-economic elite would have
been negated, along with all the thousands of grants of land in that region bestowed by
Congress upon those who had fought against the Crown. Not coincidental to Marshalls
concern in the matter was the fact that he and his father had each received 10,000 acre
grants of such land in what is now West Virginia. Obviously, a country that had been
founded largely on the basis of a lust to possess native lands was not about to relinquish
its pretensions to ownership of them, no matter what the law said. Moreover, the
balance of military power between Indians and whites east of the Mississippi River
began to change rapidly in favor of the latter during the post-revolutionary period. It was
becoming technically possible for the US simply to seize native lands at will.
2. US MANIPULATED COURT CASES TO SUBVERT INTERNATIONAL LAW

AMERICA, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, 1992, p 142. Still, the requirements of
international diplomacy dictated that things seem otherwise. Marshalls singular task,
then, was to forge a juridical doctrine that preserved the image of enlightened US
furtherance of accepted international legality in its relations with Indians on the one
hand, while accommodating patterns of illegally aggressive federal expropriations of
Indian land on the other. This he did in opinions rendered in a series of cases, delineated
in Table: Key Indian Laws and Cases at the front of this volume, beginning with Fletcher
v. Peck (1810) and extending through Johnson v. McIntosh (1822) to Cherokee Nation v.
Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832). By the end of this sequence of
decisions, Marshall had completely inverted international law, custom and convention,
finding that the Doctrine of Discovery imparted preeminent title over North America to
Europeans--the mantle of which implicitly passed to the US when England quit-claimed
its thirteen dissident Atlantic colonies--mainly because Indian-held lands were effectively
vacant when Europeans found them. The chief justice was forced to coin a whole new
politico-legal expression--that of domestic, dependent nations--to encompass the

unprecedented status, neither fish nor fowl, he needed native people to occupy.
3. THIS HYPOCRITICAL DOCTRINE JUSTIFIED HITLERS POLICIES, AMONG OTHERS

co-director of the American Indian Movement of Colorado, STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND,
1993, page 7-8.
As Perversions of Justice demonstrates, the philosophical/legalistic rationalization of
such circumstances is not new. Rather, the present situation is simply the outgrowth of a
juridical doctrine which has been evolving in the U.S. since before the very earliest
moments of the republic. This ideology of expansionism--popularly known as Manifest
Destiny--has ongoing direct impacts upon the indigenous peoples of North America. The
ideology also supported philosophical developments elsewhere. A salient example is
Adolf Hitlers concept of lebensraumpolitik (politics of living space). The ideology
stipulated that Germans were innately entitled, by virtue of an imagined racial and
cultural superiority, to land belonging to others. This rendered Germany morally free in
its own mind to take such lands through the aggressive use of military force.
GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS

STILL OCCURS TODAY
1. THE MOTIVE FOR GENOCIDE STILL EXISTS TODAY
1993, page 7.
The history of 500 years of warfare directed against the indigenous inhabitants of the
Americas is gradually coming to light. Even those who acknowledge the genocidal
nature of European and Euroamerican policies regarding American Indians, however,
tend to see them as the extremes of a different era: the brutality of the Conquistadors or
the massacres permeating the saga of the Winning of the West. The underlying
motivation prompting the genocide of Native Americans, the lust for their territories and
the resources within them, is typically hidden behind a rhetoric extolling the
settlement of essentially vacant and undiscovered lands. To admit otherwise risks
revealing that the past motive for genocide exists as much today, and in some ways
more so.
2. GENOCIDAL AND ECOCIDAL POLICIES ARE WAGED AGAINST NATIVE AMERICA

1993, page 7.
This volume of the series on Genocide and Resistance illustrates through a sequence of
case studies that the destruction of indigenous peoples through the expropriation and/or
destruction of their land bases is very much an ongoing phenomenon in both the United
States and Canada. The processes are not simply genocidal; they are increasingly
ecocidal in their implications. Not only the people of the land are being destroyed, but,
more and more, the land itself. The nature of native resistance to the continuing
onslaught of the invading industrial culture is shaped accordingly. It is a resistance
forged in the crucible of a struggle for survival.
3. EVEN AFTER REDUCING NATIVE POPULATION BY 98%, GENOCIDE CONTINUES

co-director of the American Indian Movement of Colorado, INDIANS ARE US?, 1994, page
76-77.
By 1900, the national project of clearing Native Americans from their land and
replacing them with superior Anglo-American settlers was complete. The indigenous
population had been reduced by as much as 98 percent. Approximately 97.5% of their

original territory had passed to the invaders. The survivors were concentrated, out of
sight and out of mind of the public, on scattered reservations, all of them under selfassigned plenary (full) power of the federal government. There was, of course, no
tribunal comparable to that at Nuremberg passing judgment on those who had created
such circumstances in North America. No US official or private citizen was ever
imprisoned--never mind hanged--for implementing or propagandizing what had been
done. Nor had the process of genocide against Indians been completed. Instead, it
merely changed form. Between the 1 880s and the 1980s, more than half of all
American Indian children were coercively transferred from their own families,
communities and cultures to those of the conquering society. This was done through
compulsory attendance at remote boarding schools, often hundreds of miles from their
homes. Native children were kept for years and systematically deculturated:
indoctrinated to think and act in the manner of the Euroamericans rather than as
Indians.
MUST CHALLENGE STEREOTYPICAL

CULTURAL IMAGES
1. RACIST SPORTS MASCOTS DEHUMANIZE JUST LIKE NAZI AND KKK IMAGES
70.
Lets get just a little bit real here. The notion of fun embodied in rituals like the
Tomahawk Chop must be understood for what it is. Theres not a single non-Indian
example deployed above which can be considered acceptable in even the most marginal
sense. The reasons are obvious enough. So why is it different where American Indians
are concerned? One can only conclude that, in contrast to the other groups at issue,
Indians are (falsely ) perceived as being too few, and therefore too weak, to defend
themselves effectively against racist and otherwise offensive behavior. The sensibilities
of those who take pleasure in the Chop are thus akin to schoolyard bullies and those
twisted individuals who like to torture cats. At another level, their perspectives have
much in common with those manifested more literally--and therefore much more
honestly--by groups like the nazis, the aryan nations, and ku klux klan. Those who
suggest that this is okay should be treated accordingly by anyone who opposes nazism
and comparable belief systems.
2. EMPIRICS SHOW THAT REJECTING RACIST SPORTS MASCOTS ISNT HARMFUL

70-1.
Fortunately, there are a few glimmers of hope that this may become the case. A few
teams and their fans have gotten the message and have responded appropriately. One
illustration is Stanford University, which opted to drop the name Indians with regard to
its sports teams (and, contrary to the myth perpetrated by those who enjoy insulting
Native Americans, Stanford has experienced no resulting drop-off in attendance at its
games). Meanwhile, the local newspaper in Portland, Oregon, recently decided its longstanding editorial policy prohibiting use of racial epithets should include derogatory
sports team names. The Redskins, for instance, are now simply referred to as being the
Washington team, and will continue to be described in this way until the franchise
adopts an inoffensive moniker (newspaper sales in Portland have suffered no decline as
a result). Such examples are to be applauded and encouraged. They stand as figurative
beacons in the night, proving beyond all doubt that it is quite possible to indulge in the
pleasure of athletics without accepting blatant racism into the bargain. The extent to
which they do not represent the norm of American attitudes and behavior is exactly the
extent to which America remains afflicted by an ugly reality which is far different from
the moral leadership it professes to show the world. Clearly, the United States has a
very long way to go before it measures up to such an image of itself.
LIBERATION OF NATIVE AMERICANS

WILL HELP LIBERATE OTHERS
1. LIBERATING NATIVE LAND PAVES THE WAY FOR MOST EVERY PROGRESSIVE AGENDA
AMERICA, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, 1992, p 177 When we think about it like this, the
great mass of non-Indians in North America really have much to gain, and almost
nothing to lose, from native people succeeding in struggles to reclaim the land which is
rightfully ours. The tangible diminishment of US material power that is integral to our
victories in this sphere stand to pave the way for realization of most other agendas-from anti-imperialism to environmentalism, from African-American liberation to
feminism, from gay rights to the ending of class privilege--pursued by progressives on
this continent. Conversely, succeeding in any or even all of these other agendas would
still represent an inherently oppressive situation if their realization is contingent upon an
ongoing occupation of Native North America without the consent of Indian people. Any
North American revolution which failed to free indigenous territory from non-Indian
domination would simply be a continuation of colonialism in another form.
2. LIBERATION OF NATIVE AMERICA IS KEY TO POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE

AMERICA, edited by M. Annette Jaimes, 1992, p 177 Regardless of the angle from which
you view the matter, the liberation of Native North America, liberation of the land first
and foremost, is the key to fundamental and positive social changes of many other sorts.
One thing, as they say, leads to another. The question has always been, of course, which
thing is to be first in the sequence. A preliminary formulation for those serious about
achieving (rather than merely theorizing and endlessly debating) radical change in the
United States might be first Priority to First Americans. Put another way, this would
mean US Out of Indian Country. Inevitably, the logic leads to what weve all been so
desperately seeking: The US--at least as weve come to know it-out of North America
altogether. From there, it can be permanently banished from the planet. In its stead,
surely we can join hands to create something new and infinitely better. Thats our vision
of impossible realism. Isnt it time we all went to work on attaining it?
3. MUST LIBERATE NATIVES TO DIMINISH OPPRESSIVE POWER OF THE US

1993, page 422.
The principle is this: sexism, racism, and all the rest arose here as a concomitant to the
emergence and consolidation of the Eurocentric nation-state form of sociopolitical and
economic organization. Everything the state does, everything it can do, is entirely
contingent upon its maintaining its internal cohesion, a cohesion signified above all by
its pretended territorial integrity, its ongoing domination of Indian Country. Given this, it
seems obvious that the literal dismemberment of the nation-state inherent to Indian
land recovery correspondingly reduces the ability of the state to sustain the imposition
of objectionable relations within itself. Realization of indigenous land rights serves to
undermine or destroy the ability of the status quo to continue imposing a racist, sexist,
classist, homophobic, militarists order upon non-Indians.
Constitutional Originalism
Responses
Introduction
The United States Constitution forms the basis for all other American lawmaking and is
therefore rightly known as the highest law in the land. The Constitution outlines the
powers of the government and the limitations of that power. It also sets out the
processes by which government exercises that power: the rules governing executive
offices, legislative bodies and courts that rule the nation. The Constitution is remarkably
short considering that its text is meant to serve these broad and important functions.
The Constitutions concision is not without problems. Many of its passages are vague
and therefore require interpretation and application to specific instances in order to give
the document meaning. Different schools of interpretation have arisen to reconcile the
complex ambiguities of the constitution. Originalism is one such model of constitutional
interpretation. This essay is devoted to exploring how a Lincoln-Douglas debater might
answer an opponent who argues that originalist Constitutional interpretation ought to be
valued.
Originalists argue that constitutional interpretation should remain faithful to the

original understanding or original meaning of the governing principles or political
philosophy of the framers.33 To varying degrees, such theorists argue that the judiciary
is best served by preserving the original meaning of the constitution as understood by
its framers. This feature distinguishes originalism from competing interpretive
philosophies that place more importance on the underlying values of the Constitution
and their evolving meaning in a democratic society. Originalisms prominent proponents
include Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Yale Professor of Law (and failed
Supreme Court nominee) Robert Bork.
Some Lincoln-Douglas debaters might choose to link originalism to political philosophy

by using theories of consent. Such debaters might argue that when the Constitution was
written and ratified, citizens entered into a social contract with the United States as a
sovereign state. They, therefore, agreed to abide by the laws that were enacted under
the provisions of that charter. There were, however, limits to the powers. Some
restrictions were procedural, like the provision that both houses of Congress must
approve all legislation for it to become law. Others placed absolute boundaries on the
kinds of powers exercised. For example, bills of attainder (legislative acts calling for the
33 David OBrien, Constitutional Law and Politics: Volume Two, Fourth Edition,
punishment of particular individuals for criminal activities) are prohibited absolutely by

the U.S. Constitution.
Constitutional originalists would argue that the democratic polity only consented to
establish a government bound by those particular rules. Thus, any action outside of the
bounds of the Constitution as originally agreed to by the people is illegitimate. The
consent of the people, in fact, is one of the justifications for judicial review made by
Chief Justice John Marshall when he first outlined the concept in Marbury v. Madison. He
argued that the original limits of the people on the power of the government they
established must be protected through judicial action:
That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such
principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on
which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a
very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it to be frequently repeated. The principles,
therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. To what purpose are powers
limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may,
at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? It is a proposition too plain
to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that
the legislature may not alter the constitution by an ordinary act. Between these
alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount
law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts,
and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. 34
Thus, the principle of judicial review is predicated upon a notion of consent. If consent is
intended to be tangible--something beyond the dreams of political theoristsit must be
embodied. For many, the Constitution is the enactment of the consent of the governed.
But that consent can be guaranteed in perpetuity only if the Constitution is interpreted
with its original meaning in mind.
34 Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 176-77 (1803).
Answering Consent
There are several difficulties with the attempt to use the Constitution to prove that
governed actually consented to becoming political subjects. The most obvious is that no
one who actually agreed to the Constitution are still alive today. It is hard to argue that
the next generation should necessarily be bound by the actions of their ancestors. In
addition, entire classes of individuals who now have legal equality, such as women and
African Americans, had no avenue for legal participation in the formation of the
Constitution. They were not able to vote at any stage of the ratification process. On what
grounds could it be said that these people had consented to its adoption? Even if we
were to limit consideration to those who were considered citizens at the time of the
founding, to say the people consented to the Constitution would be a vast
overstatement. It certainly was not all of the people, as many argued and voted against
the adoption of the present Constitution. Nor did all people participate in the process on
equal terms. Those who were present at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
had a greater part in the creation of the governing document than those who only voted
for a representative to a state legislature or ratifying convention. If justified government
is predicated upon an absolute interpretation of the consent of the governed, the
Constitution certainly fails on those terms.
Determining "Original Intent"

The changes in the Constitution over time also problematize originalist interpretation.
When the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments granted African Americans
citizenship, all of the rights given to citizens by the original Constitution and Bill of
Rights then applied to these new citizens on the same terms. Bluntly put, the original
framers never intended to grant these individuals rights. It can be argued that we ought
not value the ideals of racists and of the original intent of a racist document. Even if we
do consider the so-called original meaning of these documents, how are we to reconcile
these different framers intentions? It seems inconsistent with the original intention of
the constitution to simply transplant the rights meant for the original citizens (i.e., white
men) upon all citizens.
Time is also an interesting factor in the consideration of an example provided by the

most recent amendment to the Constitution, which provides that No law, varying the
compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect,
until an election of Representatives shall have intervened. 35 It was first ratified in 1789
by the state of Maryland, but didnt take effect until New Jersey became the 38th state
to ratify the amendment in 1992. 36 Under an originalist interpretation of the
constitution, what meaning should the Supreme Court read into the amendment? Even
supposing that each state took perfect records of their ratification proceedings, it would
be extraordinarily difficult to create a consistent interpretation of the amendments
original intent. While the meaning of this particular amendment relatively self-evident,
the problems raises valuable questions about originalisms viability. Who does the
originalist mean by a framer of the amendment: The literal author of the amendment,
the Congress that proposed it, the ratifying legislatures of the states, and the voters who
elected each of those bodies? Each of these could be considered framers in some
sense.
Another problem with originalist readings of the constitution is the nature of the
Constitutions language itself. The provisions of the Constitution, for the most part, are
general rather than specific. The Eighth Amendment, for example, prohibits cruel and
unusual punishment rather than outlining a list of punishments that are unacceptable.
Originalists might understand this as simply a question of economy, as it would be
nearly impossible to list out every conceivable type of torture meant to be banned by
the amendment. They would contend that the list of impermissible punishments ought
to remain fixed by the understanding of the amendment when it was adopted. Others,
however, argue that the lack of a definite list points to an understanding of the terms
cruel and unusual that must change over time, as standards of acceptable
35 Amendment XXVII to the U.S. Constitution, online, accessed May 21, 2001,
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.amendmentxxvii.html.
36 Full ratification information is available at
http://www.law.emory.edu/FEDERAL/usconst/amend.html .
governmental provision change. This was been recognized in a decision by then-Chief

Justice Earl Warren in 1958, . . . that case that the words of the Amendment are not
precise, and that their scope is not static. The Amendment must draw its meaning from
the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. 37 As
such, it would be expected that the Eighth Amendment would continue to be interpreted
more broadly where the fewer punishments would be allowable as time progresses. This
would make the original meaning of the term cruel and unusual punishment irrelevant.
Other Constitutional provisions are meaningful precisely because their effect changes
over time. The commerce clause, whereby the federal government is given jurisdiction
over the regulation of interstate commercial activities, has vastly expanded over time.
This is largely because the business is now more frequently conducted across inter-state
lines. To interpret the clause as narrowly of as it was originally intended. The great
flexibility of the clause seems to be its defining characteristic. Few would disagree with
this interpretation of the commerce clause. The disputed question, however, is to what
degree that sort of reading of the commerce clause ought to be instructive for reading
other Constitutional provisions.
37 Trop v. Dulles, Secretary of State, et al., 356 U.S. 86 (1958).
Individual Rights and Equality

Other Constitutional questions have specific controversies that impact the originalism
debate. Among the most controversial of all constitutional questions concerns the right
to privacy. The Constitution never uses the word privacy, but that hasnt stopped the
Supreme Court from crafting a Constitutional right based upon the concept. The first
Supreme Court case explicitly recognizing a general right to privacy (in the sense of the
right to autonomous action) was Griswold v. Connecticut. 38 It ruled that although there is
no right to privacy explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, there is a right to privacy
implicit in the rights explicitly catalogued by the document. As such, there is a more
general zone of individual privacy that extends beyond the specific provisions:
The association of people is not mentioned in the Constitution nor in the Bill of Rights.
The right to educate a child in a school of the parents' choice -- whether public or private
or parochial -- is also not mentioned. Nor is the right to study any particular subject or
any foreign language. Yet the First Amendment has been construed to include certain of
those rights. The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights
have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life
and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association
contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Fifth
Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of
privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth
Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." 39
This constitutional reading conflicts with an originalist understanding of Constitutional

interpretation. An originalist would argue that had the framers intended for there to be a
right to privacy, they would have put in the text of the Constitution.
This objection to a non-textual right to privacy points to originalisms pragmatic problem

of de facto support for political conservatism. Arguably, the Supreme Courts wisest and
most far reaching decisions were only possible when it departed from an originalist
reading of the Constitution. Decisions like Brown v. Board of Education 40 (overturning
racial segregation in public schools), Roe v. Wade 41 (granting the right to abortion), and
Romer v. Evans42 (overturning Colorados Constitutional amendment banning local
38 Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1968).
39 Griswold, at 485.
40 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
41 Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
42 Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996).
sexual orientation nondiscrimination policies) were all predicated on an expansive

reading of the rights accorded by the constitution than would have been made at the
time of its writing. In Brown, Chief Justice Earl Warren argued that the scant historical
documentation of the understanding of the Fourteenth Amendments affect on education
made it impossible to interpret the amendment from a historical perspective. He wrote,
public school education at the time of the Amendment had advanced further in the
North, but the effect of the Amendment on Northern States was generally ignored in the
congressional debates. As a consequence, it is not surprising that there should be so
little in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment relating to its intended effect on public
education.43 This, among other considerations, allowed the Warren Court conclude that:
In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the
Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896 when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We
must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place
in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if
segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the
laws.44
Thus, it was no longer the framers understanding of the amendment which controlled
the meaning of the constitution, but the modern implications of the underlying principles
of the document. By looking at the document in a contemporary light, the court was able
to consider new legal understandings of the amendment. For example, it considered
sociological evidence of the detrimental effects of segregation on African American
children. Under a originalist understanding of constitutional interpretation, such
evidence would be less relevant to the ultimate question. Adopting a dynamic reading of
the constitution allowed the court to conclude that in the field of public education the
doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal.45 It is questionable whether such a conclusion would be possible a
under the logic of originalism. As the Plessy decision upholding separate but equal
proves, the Courts interpretation of the meaning of the Fourteenth amendment had not
always been so progressive. Similarly, Roe and Romer depart from an originalist reading
to create a more expansive sphere for individual rights.
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented from the majority opinion in Romer. He argued that the
Supreme Court, through the unilateral use of its judicial fiat, arbitrarily made the law of
the land that opposition to homosexuality is as reprehensible as racial or religious
bias.46 This, Scalia argued, violated the fundamental tenets of democracy:
43 Brown, at 490.
44 Brown, at 492-93.
45 Brown, at 494.
46 Romer, at 636.
Whether it is or not is precisely the cultural debate that gave rise to the Colorado
constitutional amendment (and to the preferential laws against which the amendment
was directed). Since the Constitution of the United States says nothing about this
subject, it is left to be resolved by normal democratic means, including the democratic
adoption of provisions in state constitutions. This Court has no business imposing upon
all Americans the resolution favored by the elite class from which the Members of this
institution are selected, pronouncing that "animosity" toward homosexuality is evil.
[Romer] has no foundation in American constitutional law, and barely pretends to.
Striking it down is an act, not of judicial judgment, but of political will. 47
Objections to the anti-democratic nature of Constitutional interpretation is one of the

strongest arguments in favor of originalist constitutional reading. It is widely noted that
the judicial branch is the least democratic of the three branches, because the federal
judiciary is appointed rather than elected. This case is instructive in that regard: six
unelected judges overturned the decision of 54% Colorado voters. But majoritarianism is
not the sole value of American government. Few would argue that the Jim Crow laws
even if popularly agreed towould be democratic or just insofar as they singled out a
racial group for discrimination. The function of these decisions is to circumscribe the
ability of the majority to discriminate against disliked minorities.
The ultimately contingent nature of the act of Constitutional interpretation was noted in
the Courts preface to Roe: "We bear in mind, too, Mr. Justice Holmes' admonition in his
now-vindicated dissent in Lochner v. New York (1905): "[The Constitution] is made for
people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions
natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment
upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of
the United States."48
The court was predicting the arguments from opponents of their decision concerning the
vast changes in Constitutional interpretation over time. If we are to accept the
contention that a document could have changing contextual meanings, what could be
identified to give the document any meaning? One solution to this difficulty is to point to
broad values that the Constitution upholds. In addition to be an intuitively appealing
connection to Lincoln-Douglas debaters, the value approach proved fundamental for
much of the most important Constitutional jurisprudence of the twentieth century.
Justice Louis Brandeis made one such connection in relation to the Fourth Amendments
implicit valuation privacy in a 1928 dissenting opinion:
The makers of our Constitution recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature,
of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and
satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans
47 Romer, at 636-53.
48 Roe, at 117. Internal citations omitted.
in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as
against the Government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights
and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable
intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual must be deemed a
violation of the Fourth Amendment.49
In this case, Brandies focused not upon the particular provisions of the Fourth
Amendment, but on the underlying values that it upheld. Like the Court as a whole in
Brown, Roe, and Bowers, Brandies believed that the Constitution held meaning that went
far beyond the particulars of its text.
Conclusion
Lincoln-Douglas debaters faced with the prospect of arguing against originalism should
force their opponents to defend the practical political implications of adopting that
understanding of the Constitutions meaning. As these examples show, often times the
Supreme Court has used expansive readings of the constitution combined with its
powers of judicial review to formulate progressive protections for the rights of minorities.
Would valuing an originalist interpretation allow those same decisions to be made? If
not, what realistic alternative is there to provide for minority rights other than expansive
judicial readings of the constitution? As Colorados Amendment 2 proves, often times the
majority is more than willing to suppress the rights of the minority. Obviously, it would
be even more difficult to fashion a national super-majority to protect the rights of these
same minorities.50 Even if such a super-majority were fashioned, constitutional
provisions could never contemplate every conceivable contingency requiring legal
protection. This may be the strongest reason to reject the originalists constitutional
reasoning.
There are many lines of argument with which a debater can attack constitutional
originalism. Whether one prefers to use theoretical objections or practical considerations
to argue against the interpretive philosophy is largely a matter of personal preference. In
either case, there are ample arguments for Lincoln-Douglas debaters to draw upon to
answer originalism.
49 Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), dissenting opinion by Justice
Brandeis at 478.
50 Under the only amendment process that has been employed, Constitutional changes
require a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and the ratification of three-fourths
of the state legislatures (i.e., 38 states).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arthur, John. WORDS THAT BIND: JUDICIAL REVIEW AND THE GROUNDS OF MODERN
CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1995.
BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Burns, Walter. TAKING THE CONSTITUTION SERIOUSLY. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1987.
Dorsen, Norman, ed. THE EVOLVING CONSTITUTION: ESSAYS ON THE BILL OF RIGHTS
AND THE U.S. SUPREME COURT. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989.
GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 479 (1968).
Maltz, Earl M. RETHINKING CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: ORIGINALISM, INTERVENTIONISM, AND

THE POLITICS OF JUDICIAL REVIEW. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1994.
Nichol, Gene R. Colorado Law Review. Summer 1999, p. 953.
OBrien, David M. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AND POLITICS: VOLUME TWO, FOURTH EDITION.
New York: WW Norton & Company, 2000.
Peretti, Terri Jennings. IN DEFENSE OF A POLITICAL COURT. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

Perry, Michael J. THE CONSTITUTION IN THE COURTS : LAW OR POLITICS? New York :
Oxford University Press, 1994.
ROE V. WADE, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
ROMER V. EVANS, 517 U.S. 620 (1996).
Scalia, Antonin. A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION: FEDERAL COURTS AND THE LAW.

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Tribe, Laurence H. and Michael C. Dorf. ON READING THE CONSTITUTION. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Whittington, Keith E. CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION: TEXTUAL MEANING, ORIGINAL

INTENT, AND JUDICIAL REVIEW. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1999.
THE CONSTITUTIONS TEXT REFUTES

ORIGINALISM
1. ORIGINAL INTENT CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS LACK TEXTUAL GROUNDING
Laurence H. Tribe, Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University Law School,
and Michael C. Dorf, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, On Reading the
Constitution, 1991, p. 10-11.
Another proponent of locating the ultimate interpretive authority in the Framers' intent,
Raoul Berger, has argued that the original intent of the Framers is "as good as written
into the text" of the Constitution. That viewpoint became something of a manifesto for
former Attorney General Meese, who often spoke and wrote of a "jurisprudence of
original intent. But consider the practical difficulties of applying such a theory when, for
example, Berger looks at the Fourteenth Amendment, a text proposed to the states by
Congress and voted on by no fewer than thirty-seven state legislatures. Berger purports
to know that the original purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was far less noble than
some of us have come to believe; the primary intended beneficiaries of the Fourteenth
Amendment, he tries to show, were racist white Republicans. And therefore, he says,
giving the Fourteenth Amendment the meaning that the Supreme Court has given it in
modern times is ahistorical and illegitimate. Let us suppose that Berger's history is
correctthat one really could make that confident an assertion about something as
fleeting and elusive as collective intent. In fact, suppose that the real purpose of those
who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment was to deny equality to the freed slaves to
whatever degree would prove politically possible. That is, suppose the Fourteenth
Amendment was a palliative designed to preserve peace, but that the reason for not
writing so racist a credo into the Constitution's text was a sense that some of the
Amendment's support might not withstand such candor. Even if this supposition were
historically correct, and even if you believed that original intent should control
constitutional interpretation, it still does not follow that it would be legitimate to read the
Fourteenth Amendment to effect the hidden racist agenda. Why not? For one reason,
because the Fourteenth Amendment became "part of th[e] Constitution" in accord with
Article Vthe provision of the Constitution that describes how amendments become law.
They become law when they are ratified through a specified process by a certain
number of states. There is nothing in Article V about ratifying the secret, hidden, and
unenacted intentions, specific wishes, or concrete expectations of a group of people who
may have been involved in the process of enacting a constitutional guarantee.
2. THE CONSTITUTIONS VAGUENESS PROVES ORIGINALISM CALLS FOR INTERPRETATION

Eric J. Segall, Associate Professor of Law at Georgia State College of the Law,
Constitutional Commentary, Fall 1998, 15 Const. Commentary 411, p. 424.
So, Dworkin asks, why does the "resolute text-reader, dictionary-minder, expectation
scorner," change his mind when it comes to the "most fundamental American statute of
them all?" Dworkin hypothesized that a true textualist-originalist would conclude that
many of the provisions of the Bill of Rights were written so generally and vaguely that
the Framers must have intended them to be interpreted over time. Had the Framers
intended these provisions to have a fixed meaning, they would have written them
differently, more specifically. Of course, this generally means that judges will have great
discretion to interpret those phrases, which explains why many modern-day
conservatives, like Justice Scalia, reject semantic originalism - it affords judges too much
power. But Scalia has already rejected looking at the expectations of the Framers at the
expense of the text. Scalia's textualism-originalism, therefore, is selective and
inconsistent. A true originalist, according to Dworkin, would interpret the Constitution
the way the Framers intended - as embodying broad principles that judges must apply to
differing factual situations by employing independent moral judgment. This "magnet of
political morality is the strongest force in jurisprudence," and the Constitution reflects
that principle in its broad provisions protecting liberty and equality.
ORIGINALISM DOES NOT PREVENT

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM
1. ORIGINALISM DOES NOT PREVENT JUDICIAL INTERVENTION IN POLITICAL AFFAIRS
Earl M. Maltz, Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law,
RETHINKING CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: ORIGINALISM, INTERVENTIONISM, AND THE
POLITICS OF JUDICIAL REVIEW, 1994, p. 19.
Most discussions of the efficacy of an originalist approach to judicial review have been
shaped by the premise that originalism is synonymous with noninterventionism. As
Robert W. Bennett has noted, this assumption is fatally flawed.'" Admittedly, from an
originalist perspective the Tenth Amendment does operate as an important restraint on
the freedom of action of the federal courtsa point whose significance will be explored
later in greater detail. Adoption of originalism does not, however, amount to a complete
renunciation of judicial interventionism. Some of the interventionism required by a pure
originalist analysis would no doubt be applauded even by left/center constitutional
theorists. For example, even under the narrowest view of the original understanding of
the First Amendment and the Reconstruction amendments, the Court would be required
to provide some protection for freedom of speech and the rights of racial minorities,
respectively. The degree of interventionism mandated by originalism on these matters
would no doubt be insufficient to satisfy the desires of left/center theorists, but the
results would nonetheless be clearly distinguishable from a stringently
noninterventionist regime. Further, originalist analysis would support interventionism in
some areas where left/center theorists have typically been strong advocates of judicial
deference. Among the best examples are such provisions as the contracts clause and
the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which were plainly understood to render
substantial protection for the rights of property holders and other members of the
wealthier classes.
2. ORIGINALISM IS AS PREDICATED UPON IDEOLOGY AS ITS ALTERNATIVES

Richard A. Posner, Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
and Senior Lecturer at University of Chicago Law School, Stanford Law Review, July 1990,
42 Stan. L. Rev. 1365, p. 1372.
Although Bork derides scholars who try to found constitutional doctrine on moral
philosophy, it should be apparent by now that he is himself under the sway of a moral
philosopher. His name is Hobbes, and he too thought the only source of political
legitimacy was a contract among people who died long ago. This may have been a
progressive idea in an era when kings claimed to rule by divine right, but it is an
incomplete theory of the legitimacy of the modern Supreme Court. There are other
reasons for obeying a judicial decision besides the Court's ability to display, like the
owner of a champion airedale, an impeccable pedigree for the decision, connecting it to
its remote eighteenth-century ancestor. And Bork knows this, for he believes that judges
should give great weight to precedents, even when a precedent rests on a mistaken
interpretation of the Constitution.
3. ORIGINALISM IS CANNOT SUPPORT LEGITIMACY THROUGH TACIT CONSENT

John Arthur, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the program in Philosophy, Politics
and Law at Binghamton University, WORDS THAT BIND, 1995, p. 31-32.
Indeed, I will argue, originalism cannot successfully link tacit consent with its conception
of constitutional interpretation. There is no plausible defense of the claim that the
people, today, consent to the specific, historical limits on elected officials envisioned by
the framers. To begin, it is clear that modern-day citizens are not generally aware of the
actual, historical meanings historians might tell us were in the minds of the framers at
the time the Constitution was ratified. Indeed, historians are themselves often at odds
about such questions. But how, then, can citizens today be said to have tacitly
consented to those specific meanings, if they cannot and do not understand them?
Suppose, for instance, that historical research showed that the widely accepted, settled
meaning given by the current generation of judges to a constitutional provision was not
the one shared by the framers. Would originalists then argue that the Constitution has
been wrongly understood because the people had consented to those original limits on
their legislature instead of the limits the Courts have settled on? That seems completely
implausible.
ORIGINALISM IS IMPRACTICAL
1. ORIGINALISM IS PLAGUED WITH DIFFICULTIES IN APPLICATION
Gene R. Nichol, Professor and Dean Emeritus at University of Colorado School of Law,
Colorado Law Review, Summer 1999, 70 U. Colo. L. Rev. 953, p. 968.
The theory of original intention, like other constitutional methodologies, is plagued with
difficulties. The frequent scarcity of ratification debate records, the difficulty of
attributing a single intention to so large and diverse a group, the vagaries of constructed
history, the Framers' apparent ambivalence about intention, and the abstract and
aspirational nature of many constitutional provisions cast significant doubt on the ability
of original intention to accurately guide judges.
2. THE CONSTITUTION IS TOO VAGUE TO SUPPORT AN ORIGINALIST READING

Laurence H. Tribe, Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University Law School,
and Michael C. Dorf, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, On Reading the
Constitution, 1991, p. 15.
One basic problem is that the text itself leaves so much room for the imagination.
Simply consider the preamble, which speaks of furthering such concepts as "Justice" and
the "Blessings of Liberty. " It is not hard, in terms of concepts that fluid and that plastic,
to make a linguistically plausible argument in support of more than a few surely
incorrect conclusions. Perhaps a rule could be imposed that it is improper to refer to the
preamble in constitutional argument on the theory that it is only an introduction, a
preface, and not part of the Constitution as enacted. But even if one were to invent such
a rule, which has no apparent grounding in the Constitution itself, it is hardly news that
the remainder of the document is filled with lively language about "liberty," "due process
of law," "unreasonable searches and seizures," and so forthwords that, although not
infinitely malleable, are capable of supporting meanings at opposite ends of virtually any
legal, political, or ideological spectrum. It is therefore not surprising that readers on both
the right and left of the American political center have invoked the Constitution as
authority for strikingly divergent conclusions about the legitimacy of existing institutions
and practices, and that neither wing has found it difficult to cite chapter and verse in
support of its "reading" of our fundamental law. As is true of other areas of law, the
materials of constitutional law require construction, leave room for argument over
meaning, and tempt the reader to import his or her vision of the just society into the
meaning of the materials being considered.
3. ORIGINALISM IS AN INCONSISTENT ARGUMENT OF CONVENIENCE

Gene R. Nichol, Professor and Dean Emeritus at University of Colorado School of Law,
Colorado Law Review, Summer 1999, 70 U. Colo. L. Rev. 953, p. 968-70.
But these drawbacks are rank pettiness compared to originalism's central difficulty: its
principal advocates relentlessly refuse to stick by it. Originalism works if they agree with
the outcome dictated by history. If history does not lead them where they want to go,
they simply reject it. Judge Bork, of course, was famously guilty of such maneuvers.
Bork's originalism provided energetic critiques of much of the modern liberal agenda.
But when he became a candidate for the highest judicial office, for rather obvious
political reasons, he was unwilling to cast aside staples of American constitutional law
like Brown v. Board of Education and Craig v. Boren. As a result, the articulate, strident,
and condescending jurist was reduced to ambivalent babble. In Printz, Justice Scalia
faced a powerful historical claim directly refuting his proffered rule. But rather than give
in, he put his head down and pressed on - explaining at every turn why the lessons of
the founding period have nothing to offer. This, admittedly, has not been Scalia's typical
pattern. Usually when history is inconvenient, he simply ignores it. Justice Scalia's
takings jurisprudence, for example, is completely inconsistent with the original
understanding that only a physical invasion presents a constitutional violation. He does
not seem to care. His wholesale revision of the jurisprudence of the Free Exercise Clause
in Employment Division Department of Human Resources v. Smith was accomplished
without even a nod toward the original meaning of the provision. In Lujan v. Defenders of
Wildlife, Scalia fashioned a powerful new Article III doctrine to invalidate a federal grant
of statutory standing. Neither the text of the Constitution nor historical practice
supported his bolstered injury requirement. So he simply did not talk about them. The
act of Congress was invalidated because he and his colleagues thought it was a bad
idea.
PROBLEMS OF HISTORICAL
KNOWLEDGE MAKE ORIGINALISM
IMPOSSIBLE
1. HISTORYS INDETERMINACY MAKES ORIGINALISM INDEFENSIBLE
Emil A. Kleinhaus, editor, Yale Law Journal, October 2000, 110 Yale L.J. 121, p. 122-24.
The originalist project, by all accounts, relies heavily on historical analysis. In order to
elucidate the original meaning of the vague terms that pervade the Constitution, Justices
often either delve into primary sources or rely on historians to explain those sources.
Referring to the process of historical inquiry in constitutional law, Justice Scalia admitted,
"It is, in short, a task sometimes better suited to the historian than the lawyer." Yet
originalists minimize the difficulty of gaining a clear understanding of the Constitution
and its amendments through historical research. Edwin Meese, for example, declared
that "the Constitution is not buried in the mists of time." If Meese was right, the
originalist project is relatively simple. Given the opportunity to interpret a vague
constitutional provision in the appropriate case, an originalist judge will consult the text
and relevant historical sources and bring the law into line with the original
understanding. The originalist thus ascribes excessive doctrinal change to nonoriginalist
adventurism and defends further short-term change on the grounds that it will bring the
Court's jurisprudence permanently back to its historical foundations. As one scholar put
it, originalism "seeks to freeze meanings against erosion by time." The postulate that
originalism, because it seeks to ground constitutional law in a particular moment, must
lead to a set of "frozen" results is widely affirmed, but it is not always accurate. Despite
the best efforts of historians to reach decisive historical conclusions, the most plausible
interpretation of a historical text changes over time. Historians' understanding of the
Constitution and its amendments develops as they interpret and synthesize
documentary evidence. Further, since research about particular historical questions
intensifies after Justices "declare" history, historical conclusions that are incorporated
into the law can be particularly vulnerable. To the extent that Justices rely on historians
when they declare history, Justices' conception of the document's original meaning must
change along with historians'. Moreover, to the extent that Justices engage in
independent historical inquiries, their conception of the document's original meaning
can change even more dramatically as they encounter previously overlooked documents
or compelling secondary interpretations of those documents. Therefore, even if the
Supreme Court's jurisprudence were to coincide exactly at a particular point in time with
the Justices' conception of the original understanding, that coincidence would not spell
the end of non-amendment-based constitutional development, unless Justices simply
ignored new information after that point. Ultimately, the more Justices use historical
research as a decisive interpretative tool, the more substantial the body of law that one
scholar has called the "common law of history" becomes, and the more vulnerable the
Court itself becomes to extralegal historical criticism.
2. THE VALUES OF THE FRAMERS ARE UNKNOWABLE, FORCING JUDICIAL ACTIVISM

John Arthur, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the program in Philosophy, Politics
and Law at Binghamton University, WORDS THAT BIND: JUDICIAL REVIEW AND THE
GROUNDS OF MODERN CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY, 1995, p. 34-35.
Defenders of original intent stress that judges should ignore their own values in favor of
the values of the framers, so presumably in this case we would need to ask what the
framers would do, given their values, if they understood our world as we do. But it is by
no means clear that the "values" people hold can be sharply separated from their beliefs
about the "facts." The value the framers (or anybody else) place on privacy and the
importance of a warrant will be influenced by their beliefs about the dangers posed by
modern technology as well as the risks posed by police intrusions on privacy. But if (as
this suggests) the framers' values would change as they learned what we know, then
what is left of the original claim that judges should rule in accord with the framers'
values but not their (now outdated) understanding of the world? How are judges to know
what the framers' values were? The temptation, of course, will always be for judges to
attribute their values and beliefs to the framers, thinking that if the framers were here
they would see the world as we do. Put that way, however, it is no longer clear that we
are talking about "the framers" as much as about ourselves. Since any judge would
presumably think the framers would take a reasonable position on these issues, there
will no longer be a sharp distinction between our own ideas about what the Fourth
Amendment requires and what the framers understood it to require.
Mary Daly and Sonia Johnson

Progressive thinkers seek to promote new values. They engage in discourse about how
to view the world, the harms and advantages of various perspectives, and how action
follows thought. The belief is that values guide and influence our actions. Values serve
as lenses with which to view the world. If I believe that we should value hierarchy and
competition over equality and cooperation, I am both more likely to take actions
supporting elitism, and more likely to view world events from a perspective which
normatively judges existing social arrangements to be desirable.
Moreover, values form a framework of rhetoric, the way in which we seek to persuade
others. The impact of values on rhetoric is significant. We choose our words based on
our values. We interpret the words of others in the same way. The very act of naming
something in terms which denote desirability or undesirability has an impact on how we
engage the world. Naming is very important. We can kill and save lives with names.
This essay concerns the attempts of two feminist activists, Mary Daly and Sonia Johnson,
to re-think values, and in doing so, to find new names and new concepts for the
challenges they see. Daly and Johnson see patriarchy--a set of metaphysical
assumptions as well as material social practices--as being overarching and far-reaching
in its impact on humanity. As an alternative to patriarchy, Daly and Johnson seek to
instill "feminist" values onto the world. Feminist values reject patriarchy: specifically,
feminist values reject aggression, war, capitalism, elitism, and the inequality of
hierarchy. Feminist values support cooperation, nurturing, the affirmation of life, and the
community of women who sustain such norms.
In what follows, I shall give a brief description of the lives and struggles of Mary Daly and
Sonia Johnson. Then, I will describe their conception of feminist values and how those
values are designed to replace current patriarchal norms. After discussing the
implications of these projects on value debate, the essay will conclude with a synopsis of
the potential problems of feminism and possible objections to Daly and Johnson's
projects.
BIOGRAPHIES: MARY DALY

Mary Daly was born October 16, 1928, in New York, to working class Irish-Catholic
parents. She exhibited a love for books at an early age, and decided she wanted to be a
philosopher by the time she was in high school. However, her life would be filled with
frustration because, in the first half of the 20th century, such a profession was simply
not available to most American women.
Daly attended an all-woman's college in Albany, New York. There, she learned that
women could be powerful instructors, even though they were limited in what they were
allowed to do and say. Without any money, Daly was limited in her post-graduate
options. She opted to pursue an MA in English at the Catholic University of America, and
then went on to study theology at St. Mary's college in Indiana. At the age of 25, she
received her Ph.D. in religion. Denied admission to the University of Notre Dame solely
because she was a woman, Daly took a teaching position at a small catholic school in
Massachusetts.
Eventually, Mary Daly discovered she could study philosophy outside the United States.
In 1959, she went to Switzerland on an exchange scholarship to study philosophy at the
University of Fribourg. She stayed in Switzerland for seven years. Later, returning to the
United States, she accepted a position as assistant professor at Boston College, where
she has been battling the administration ever since. During that time, Daly has
published a plethora of feminist manifestos.
These writings are eclectic and challenging. They often play with words and change the
elemental meanings of those words, so as to show her readers how words mix with
values. The title of her most important work, for example, is GYN/ECOLOGY--a play on
the medical science of gynecology and the ecology of feminism. Her life, like her work,
has been filled with attacks on patriarchy, and a defiant insistence on the power of
exclusively female communities.
SONIA JOHNSON
Sonia Johnson was born in Idaho and was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latterday Saints (Mormons). She recalls that early in her life she learned that
opposition to the Church was simply unthinkable, and that its teachings stretched into
every corner of members' lives. Johnson attended Utah State University, where she met
her future husband Richard. For many years after her marriage, Sonia Johnson lived the
stereotypical life of a conservative housewife. Soon, however, after she and her family
moved to Virginia, they began to read feminist literature. Although Johnson didn't realize
at first that she was being affected by this literature, things would quickly change.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the nation was immersed in a battle between
proponents and opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed amendment to
the U.S. constitution which was to read simply: "Equality of rights under the law shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." This
seemingly innocent amendment, however, was the center of controversy for many
liberals and conservatives. Conservatives took the amendment to be an encroachment
on the freedom of local communities to deal with gender issues as they saw fit. Anti-ERA
activists contended that the amendment would force women to go into combat if they
were in the military; that it would call for unisex bathrooms; that it would regulate who
could be promoted or hired by private businesses, and so on.
In July, 1978, Sonia Johnson joined thousands of other women for a march on
Washington, D.C., urging passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. For her increasing
involvement with this cause, she was excommunicated from the Mormon Church in
1979. In 1980, Johnson and several other women chained themselves to a building in
Washington to protest the Republican Party's abandonment of ERA. In 1981, she joined
seven other women in Illinois on a hunger strike. In 1984, she was the Citizens' Party's
candidate for U.S. president. During and after that time, Johnson wrote several books
calling for a shift in values from patriarchy to feminism, and for the empowerment of
women's communities.
FEMINISM AS A VALUE FRAMEWORK

Feminism is not merely a "doctrine," or a set of assumptions designed to produce a
particular dogma. It is more accurate to describe feminism (a rich philosophy with many
sub-categories) as a "framework." Frameworks don't merely make observations about
the world. Frameworks serve as guides to interpret the observations of others.
Frameworks are like "criteria" in that they provide a filter with which to evaluate both
human experience and philosophical interpretation.
HOW FEMINISM FRAMES SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Most philosophies that end with "ism" are systemic philosophies. They try to make sense
of virtually all relevant data through their particular framework. This does not mean that
such philosophies attempt to explain everything, but that they attempt to explain, and
make sense of, all those phenomena that they deem to be their concern. Marxism, for
example, does not attempt to explain why electrons are negatively charged, since such
a fact has nothing to do with Marxism's concern that workers are exploited, or that the
owners of capital and property tend to establish social hegemony. Crime, on the other
hand, would be a Marxist concern because it can be explained by an appeal to existing
economic and social relations.
Similarly, feminists believe that social problems, especially those concerning oppression,
are within the focus of systemic approaches to feminism. These social problems usually
stem from the following manifestations of patriarchy: 1. Valuing aggression and
competition over peace and cooperation. One of patriarchy's central principles is that
problems and differences between people can best be solved by one party aggressively
challenging, fighting, and beating, another party. Because of this tenant, feminists frame
problems like war, domestic violence, and capitalism as manifestations of a culture of
competition and violence created by men. 2. Acquisitiveness. Capitalism is not simply an
economic system, but a value system embraced by people who believe the earth was
essentially made for the use of those humans most ruthless in exploiting it. Another of
patriarchy's major principles is that those who have enough power to acquire things
should acquire what they want, regardless of the social costs. Because of this, feminists
frame problems like environmental exploitation, poverty, and colonialism as
manifestations of the male ethos of greed. 3. Power and hierarchy. Patriarchy thrives on
the notion that people are not really equal. Leadership and submission are natural
attributes of human existence. While "equality" may be possible under the law, all this
really means is that there is some vaguely "level" playing field upon which people can
compete for the top spots in society. Feminists believe that patriarchal obsession with
"leadership," "credibility," politics, and force creates hierarchies which judge individuals
based on their place in some male-created "scale." This means that patriarchal society is
fundamentally and foundationally un-democratic, regardless of legal guarantees of
rights.
For Daly, the "foreground" of human existence is currently patriarchy. It is a set of beliefs
and practices created by men, to justify the rule and dominance of men. Daly and
Johnson both argue that, for centuries, we have known that communities of women do
not practice the kinds of ethics glorified by patriarchy. Communities of women are not,
they argue, competitive, acquisitive, or power hungry.
The problem is that these communities that promote feminist values have been kept
"underground" by patriarchy. Whenever women attempt to move these values into the
"public" sphere, the realm we call "political," men do not allow this to happen. And on
the other side, men bring their patriarchal values into the private world of women,
enforcing their will through domestic abuse, rape, propaganda, dividing women from one
another, and owning those things which are necessary for human existence.
People have become so accustomed to the current system that they do not believe it
can be changed. Even if they think change is desirable, they do not believe it is possible.
Those who see it as possible do not always think it is desirable. This is due to
patriarchy's control of virtually all ideological institutions. Men control religion, which
reminds women that God is Male, and that the male in society is therefore closer to God
than the female. Men control the media, which means that our daily indoctrination of
news and education includes the glorification of competition and acquisitiveness. Finally,
men control property, money, and the means of production, meaning that they have the
material forces to back up their ideological notions. Images in the media, in education,
and everyday life serve to reinforce the notion that nothing can be changed.
WAR AND VIOLENCE VERSUS PEACE

For Mary Daly, violence and aggression mark patriarchy as the "foreground". That is,
violence characterizes the main way of being in the patriarchal world. This violence
destroys people's potential. Daly likens the war ideology of patriarchy to a religion where
innocent people are sacrificed on the altar of war.
In place of such violence, radical feminism offers a way of being that celebrates life.
There are several reasons why a feminist ideology would be life affirming and peaceful.
First, women experience a connection to life through their power of giving life. For a
woman to nurture a child in the womb for nine months, and experience the pain and
ecstasy of giving birth to that child, means that she will materially and spiritually
experience the process of life itself. Second, Daly writes of a "pure lust," which is not a
sexual or pornographic lust, but is a feeling of intimate connection to the rest of the
world. Although both women and men are capable of feeling this "pure lust," most men
do not, because they are more deeply influenced by patriarchy; and many women do not
experience it, because through socialization, discouragement, and punishment, the
patriarchy has driven them away from it.
It seems obvious that a world that embraced life in every form would reject war. But why
would violence necessarily also be rejected? For radical feminists, the coercion of
violence is a corollary to war: It springs from an ethic, which assumes cooperation is
unnatural and coercion almost inevitable. That ethic is patriarchy. Daly argues that
verbal aggression is a prerequisite to physical aggression. She writes: This use of verbal
violence to unleash and support inclinations toward physical violence is operative also in
the highest echelons of the military machine. On this level, too, male demonic
destructiveness is clearly linked to hatred and contempt for women and all that men
consider to be female. (Mary Daly, GYN/ECOLOGY, 1978, p. 359) For Daly, "enemy"
territory and the bodies of women are one and the same in the eyes of aggressive,
warlike males.
INTERCONNECTEDNESS
Whereas patriarchy emphasizes our divisions, radical feminism emphasizes our
connectedness: with each other, with the earth, and with our history. The main
manifestation of this for feminism is, of course, women's connections to one another.
Foss, Foss and Griffin write: To be a Radical Feminist is to become a member of a
minority, to place one's trust in other women, and to reclaim women's relationships with
other women to embrace the cognitive and affective shift that takes place in the soul
as a result, and to embark on the spiraling journey of female becoming that takes
women into the background. (Foss, Foss and Griffin, FEMINIST RHETORICAL THEORIES,
139) Realizing that interconnectivity allows women to stop patriarchy from pitting them
against one another. In the current system, white women are pitted against Black
women; rich women are told to subordinate poor women. Radical feminism offers a
vision wherein each woman has more in common with every other woman than with any
man. So, at least within the confines of gender, radical feminism wants women to be
interconnected.
NON-HIERARCHICAL RELATIONS
Whereas patriarchy believes hierarchy to be inevitable, radical feminism rejects that
inevitability. Radical feminists see human beings as fundamentally able to be equal, and
deserving to build social relationships which maximize that equality; not in some
abstract legal sense, but in real and concrete ways. Two strains of Sonia Johnson's
thinking help clarify why radical feminist values necessitate the rejection of hierarchy.
First, for Johnson, all oppression is based fundamentally upon the oppression of women.
Since family and domestic relations are, and always have been, the most primary and
original relations (before we enter the "outer world" we first have relations with our
family), dominance in the intimate sphere is a prerequisite for other types of dominance.
Johnson's metaphor is familiar: at one time, long ago, men from one tribe decided to
attack the tribe across the river. Thus war was born. But Johnson says there is a story
even before that story: The men in that tribe first had to dominate and "colonize" the
women and children in their tribe. Once they were able to do that, they were
subsequently confident and powerful enough to decide to conquer other people too.
Extended to everyday relations today, the metaphor becomes clearer. Women must be
subordinated today for men to fight wars. They must keep having babies to turn into
faithful workers, soldiers, and other mothers. They must "keep the home fires burning"
while the men are away killing each other. If patriarchy values aggression and
dominance, it feeds upon the dominance over, and aggression towards, the essentially
peaceful women who help sustain the patriarchy through their reproductive and
nurturing capacities.
Second, Johnson argues for the empowerment of "ordinary" women, not self- or otherdesignated spokespersons for some elite group of feminist adjudicators. Johnson is fond
of saying that she is Sonia Johnson, and no one else, and she can only absolutely
influence herself. She believes that true feminism is not the product of a few elite
women theorizing in classrooms or boardrooms, but is in fact a movement of millions of
women who have realized their self-responsibility, and even more millions upon whose
everyday experience feminism must be based.
Ultimately, non-hierarchical relations require (1) self-responsibility from each person, and
(2) the willingness to sacrifice for others. This is a radical vision of democracy that says
"leadership" is a sham, because it implies that different people are differently equipped
to take responsibility for their endeavors. True, we ALL need help from one another, no
one more or less than another. But the ultimate end to that help ought to be
empowerment, not dependency. Patriarchy thrives on dependency, on relationships of
dominance and submission wherein the dominated party feels she NEEDS to be
dominated. Johnson's radical feminist values reject such a framework in favor of mutual
trust and self-empowerment.

Most value debates center around questions we have long assumed to be basic
philosophical dilemmas. Some of these include freedom versus order, justice versus
mercy, and sovereignty versus law. In each of these cases, a "zero-sum" is assumed.
That is, it is assumed that some people will use their liberty to harm others. It is
assumed that some leaders will take advantage of an ordered society to coerce others. It
is assumed that justice requires harm, or that mercy requires allowing harm to go
unpunished. It is assumed that sovereign nations will inevitably harm people within their
borders, or that law is always coercive.
Radical feminists claim that these assumptions only hold true under a patriarchal system
where people are pitted against one another. Thus, feminism attempts to dismantle that
belief by providing an alternative where people are encouraged to cooperate and freely
associate with one another, and where individuals, communities, and nations see
violence as primarily unacceptable and certainly avoidable. A radical feminist president
would have waited longer to go to war with Iraq in 1991; or would have avoided war
altogether, by offering solutions which were nurturing, understanding, and constructive
to all parties. The fact that this seems "utopian" or unrealistic is further proof that we are
led to believe the current state of affairs is the only possible reality.
Feminism provides the framework for searching for the systemic causes of problems
rather than accepting their existence and establishing ad hoc solvency procedures for
them. In the evidence section to follow, Sonia Johnson writes: Feminism...far from being
a "single issue," is a perspective, a way of looking at all the issues. It provides a
framework for evaluating them. It is a world view, a complete and complex value
system, the only alternative to patriarchy. Feminism is, in short, the most inclusive and
descriptive analysis of the human situation on earth--at this time or any other, as far as
we know. (Sonia Johnson, GOING OUT OF OUR MINDS: THE METAPHYSICS OF LIBERATION,
1987, p. 237.)
In addition to offering a comprehensive philosophy with which to weigh other competing

value claims, radical feminism promotes a radical version of democracy, which
challenges traditional interpretations of the concept of government. Feminism promotes
a concept of democracy, which is participatory, inclusive, and constructive. Debaters
arguing from a radical feminist standpoint must convince critics that human beings are
not naturally self-serving, aggressive, or acquisitive. The point of feminism is that we
were made to be those things, and can hence be unmade from those things.
PROBLEMS WITH FEMINISM

Any systemic philosophy is answerable on the grounds that it is too absolutist. Radical
feminism is no exception. Readers of Johnson, Daly, and other radical feminists will
notice an undertone of absolutism in their writings. Johnson constantly claims that
feminism is "universal" in its comprehension. The claim that all women everywhere have
more in common with one another than any woman has with any man seems
unreasonable. Daly speaks of male-ness and war as if they were one and the same.
What follows is a brief list of potential objections to radical feminism.
First, it is unclear that the values put forth by these radical feminists are exclusively
"feminine" in nature. The problem is that whenever one argues that "men" can have
"feminist" values, one is playing into the binary framework of "masculine" and
"feminine" which critics of feminism say is the problem. If, as a man, I think one should
seek peace and cooperation, I am not necessarily embracing a "feminine" side. I may
simply be embracing an ethic that I believe to be desirable. By claiming that everything
desirable is "feminist," radical feminists are simply creating an opposition where no such
opposition may be warranted.
Second, the fixation on values such as nurturing and care as being exclusively
"feminine" can harm both men and women. For example, one offshoot of radical
feminism, called "ecological feminism," claims that women are more connected to the
earth and that an embrace of feminist values is therefore, naturally, an embrace of
ecological values. Critics of the eco-feminist movement claim that by tying women to
"life," "birth," blood and soil, radical feminists merely chain women to their "natural"
roles as mothers and housekeepers. But women should be empowered to do whatever
they feel is right, rather than be kept in roles that are deemed "nurturing" and
"peaceful." Peace may be another name for subservience.
Third, feminism in this radical nature seems too divisive to really succeed. It alienates
both men and those women who do not share in its vision. Readers will notice not only a
systemic obsession with blaming all problems on patriarchy, but a tendency to equate
all of the evils of patriarchy with "men." The problem is that most men are not
responsible for these evils. A small group of powerful people controls the means of
production and political influence in the world. Most of those people are men, but some
are women, and they appear no less inclined to exploit the weak than do their male
colleagues. Moreover, it is difficult to see how women alone can transform the world if
they comprise only half of the human race.
CONCLUSION
This essay has explained the value basis of the radical vision of feminism. Sonia Johnson
and Mary Daly theorize that the ignorance of women's voices, as well as the physical,
spiritual and political oppression of women, have been responsible for most of the social
evils, and a considerable amount of private evils, in world history. Debaters arguing
about feminism should not personalize the issues so much that they are perceived as
attacking all men. People arguing against feminism should not appear so defensive as to
seem they are attacking women's attacks on patriarchy. Instead, an engagement with
the fundamental, foundational structures of feminist argumentation will allow a
cooperative and peaceful exchange of ideas, something which all debaters, feminists or
otherwise, should value.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cornell, Drucilla. AT THE HEART OF FREEDOM: FEMINISM, SEX AND EQUALITY, Princton,
N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1998.
Daly, Mary. GYN/ECOLOGY: THE METAETHICS OF RADICAL FEMINISM, Boston: Beacon

Press, 1990.
Daly, Mary. PURE LUST: ELEMENTAL FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY, San Francisco: Harper, 1992.
Evans, Judith. FEMINIST THEORY TODAY: AN INTRODUCTION TO SECOND-WAVE

FEMINISM, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995.
Foss, Karen A., Foss, Sonja K., and Griffin, Cindy L. FEMINIST RHETORICAL THEORIES,
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999.
Johnson, Allan G. THE GENDER KNOT: UNRAVELING OUR PATRIARCHAL LEGACY,

Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1997.
Johnson, Sonia. FROM HOUSEWIFE TO HERETIC, Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1981.
Johnson, Sonia. GOING OUT OF OUR MINDS: THE METAPHYSICS OF LIBERATION, Freedom,
CA: Crossing Press, 1987.
Kemp, Sandra and Judith Squires. FEMINISMS, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
FEMINISM IS A DESIRABLE VALUE

1. FEMINISM AS A VALUE ADVANCES COMPASSION, NON-VIOLENCE, AND EQUALITY
Sonia Johnson, Feminist, GOING OUT OF OUR MINDS: THE METAPHYSICS OF LIBERATION,
1987, p. 267-268.
Feminism is the articulation of the ancient, underground culture and philosophy based
on the values that patriarchy has labeled "womanly," but which are necessary for full
humanity. Among the principles and values of feminism that are most distinct from those
of patriarchy are universal equality, non-violent problem solving, and cooperation with
nature, one another, and other species. Feminists place great value on non-hierarchical
social, political, economic, and emotional or psychic relationships. Prizing compassion
and genuine hearing of others' words and feelings, we put human needs and the quality
of life at the top of our list of priorities.
2. FEMINISM IS NOT ELITIST--ITS VALUES STEM FROM THE CONDITION OF ALL WOMEN
1987, p. 238.
Feminism is not an analysis thought up by several brilliant women peering in from the
outside and then trying to impose their conclusions upon those enmeshed in the actual
situation they describe. Though hundreds of women from as many countries may write
about it, may work to form the richness and abundance of it into coherent theory, the
raw material is provided by the daily epiphanies of half the human race.
FEMINISM CAN GUIDE VALUE AND CRITERIA DISCUSSIONS
1. FEMINISM IS A UNIVERSAL VALUE, NOT A TREATMENT OF INDIVIDUAL ISSUES

1987, p. 236-237.
It is discouraging enough that the public views as a "single issue" the concern of half the
human race about every aspect of our lives, public and private. It is doubly
disheartening that many feminists also equate feminism and "women's rights." While
women's rights are an important aspect of feminism, they are only an aspect. Feminism
is not about "issues" at all. It is about a totally different human possibility, a nonpatriarchal way of being in the world. It is about a new universal habit, a new mind.
2. FEMINISM IS A FRAMEWORK NECESSARY FOR UNDERSTANDING ALL PROBLEMS

1987, p. 237.
Feminism, I said, far from being a "single issue," is a perspective, a way of looking at all
the issues. It provides a framework for evaluating them. It is a world view, a complete
and complex value system, the only alternative to patriarchy. Feminism is, in short, the
most inclusive and descriptive analysis of the human situation on earth--at this time or
any other, as far as we know.
SEXISM IS THE CAUSE AND CONTEXT

OF GREATER HUMAN PROBLEMS
1. DOMINATION OF WOMEN LEADS TO OTHER FORMS OF VIOLENCE AND DOMINATION
1987, p. 241.
Feminism posits that men raped and exploited and enslaved women before they went
across the river and invaded the neighboring tribe. It posits that men learned the powerover paradigm in their kitchens and bedrooms, their caves and huts, through their most
intimate, most formative relationships, which were with mothers, lovers, and wives, and
that they subsequently applied it in all areas of their lives, operating within that
dominant/submissive, dichotomous mindset in all subsequent affairs. Thus did the
sadomasochistic paradigm, which is patriarchy, slouch into the world.
2. SEXISM IS THE PROBLEM WHICH CONTEXTUALIZES ALL OTHER PROBLEMS

1987, p. 243.
But women, not taken in any more, are saying, "No, you don't understand. The way you
treat women is central to all these problems: central to making peace in the Middle East
and Central America, central to decreasing tension between the Soviet Union and the
U.S., central to eliminating terrorism, central to restructuring the world economy."
Feminists insist in the face of monumental disbelief and boredom that sexism is the
Original Sin, "the fundamental lie that marks all human ideas, customs, and institutions,"
and that all the seemingly insurmountable problems in the world are the fallout from this
most radical corruption. It is clear, therefore, that the only hope for this planet is in a
global transformation in the status of women.
3. AGGRESSION AND WAR STEM FROM THE OPPRESSION OF WOMEN

Mary Daly, Associate Professor of Theology, Boston College, GYN/ECOLOGY: THE
METAETHICS OF RADICAL FEMINISM, 1978, p. 357.
Clearly, the primary and essential object of aggression is not the "opposing" military
force. The members of the opposing team share the same values and play the same war
games. The secret bond that binds the warriors together, energizing them, is the
violation of women, acted out physically and constantly re-played on the level of
language and shared fantasies. In the absence of women, defeating the enemy is
envisaged as making him into a woman. Yet the warriors always attempt to seal the
ultimate victory by the actual rape, murder, and dismemberment of women.
4. WAR IS JUSTIFIED THROUGH PATRIARCHY'S SYMBOLIC PRACTICES

Mary Daly, Associate Professor of Theology, Boston College, GYN/ECOLOGY: THE
METAETHICS OF RADICAL FEMINISM, 1978, p. 357.
In order to understand the misogynistic roots of androcratic aggression, we must
comprehend that the perpetual War is waged primarily on a psychic and spiritual plane.
This is not to minimize physical invasion/occupation/destruction, but to grasp the total
horror. The most noxious forms of aggression are not reducible to the biological level
alone, but involve also the fabrication of "symbolic universes in thought, language, and
behavior." These universes are all present in each concrete violent act of aggression.
"FEMINIST VALUES" ARE WRONG

1. LIBERATION REQUIRES REJECTING DISTINCTIONS AMONG MASCULINE AND FEMININE
Margaret Talbot, Book Reviewer, THE NEW REPUBLIC, May 31, 1999, p. 34.
In that vision, let us remind ourselves, the struggle for equal dignity, equal possibility,
and equal worth was supposed to change and to benefit men, too. Women's rights were
thwarted by culture, not by nature; by cruel social arrangements, not by timeless male
troglodytism. "We do not fight with man himself," the nineteenth-century feminist
Ernestine Rose observed, "but only with bad principles." In the great feminist vision,
neither men nor women were to be defined by, let alone reduced to, their anatomy. For
liberal feminism, as Martha Nussbaum has argued, sex, like caste and rank, was a "
morally irrelevant characteristic" that acquired its significance historically and not
biologically--through law and custom, which are amenable to moral and historical
agency. Otherwise politics are meaningless, and women have reason only for despair.
2. GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY ARE INVALID

There is plenty of empirical evidence to complicate and to counter these generalizations,
not least our own experiences of women and men who fit neither mold. There is a
preponderance of studies that show that most psychological sex differences are small to
moderate, and exceeded by variation within each sex. In few other aspects of life,
certainly, would we regard animal behavior or the behavior of our anthropoid ancestors
as inescapable blueprints for our own actions. (Indeed, as Angier puts it in her delightful
new book, Woman: An Intimate Geography, "many nonhuman female primates gallivant
about rather more than we might have predicted before primatologists began observing
their behavior in the field--more, far more, than is necessary for the sake of
reproduction.")
3. THE "NATURE" OF FEMININITY IS FALLACIOUS--THERE IS NO SUCH THING

Liberal feminists and egalitarians of both sexes have usually made it a premise of their
thinking that none of us can know precisely the essence of womanhood in the absence
of social conditions. "What is now called the nature of woman," John Stuart Mill
observed, "is an eminently artificial thing--the result of forced repression in some
directions, unnatural stimulation in others." American women in 1999 are no longer such
constricted houseplants, clipped to bend in one direction and unable to grow in another
direction, but neither do they exist in a sexless utopian zone. Surely humility on the
subject of what constitutes a whole, a real, an essential woman is in order.
FEMINIST VALUES ARE UNNECESSARY

1. CULTURAL NORMS CAN CHANGE WITHOUT IMPOSING FEMINIST VALUES
Most importantly, it is a fundamental lesson of human history that a change in cultural
norms can effect a change in sexual behavior--so that, for instance, when women are
given the social opportunity and the cultural sanction, many of them will not feel it
necessary to hide their libidos (and their thongs). For the evo- psycho school of
misogyny (and it is misogyny, whether it is delivered in liberal or conservative voices), it
is enough that we have all known men and women who resemble the evolutionary
stereotypes. But in truth it is not enough. The reality of biological differences is
undeniable, but it is also not the only reality, or the most significant reality.
2. FEMINIST ESSENTIALISM IGNORES CULTURAL FACTORS AND CULTURAL CHANGE

The difference feminists could have argued that there are jerks of both sexes, and that
men in general are prodded by a variety of social clues to express their jerkiness in one
way--by crushing beer cans on their heads, say, or by pummeling people--while women
in general express their jerkiness in another way--by emotional manipulation or verbal
abuse; and they could have argued that both these tendencies are subject to change as
cultural expectations change, though they will in all probability never be
interchangeable. But that is not what the difference feminists wish to argue. They are
not especially struck by the infinite variety of human beings. Like the evolutionary
psychologists, they prefer to believe that men are one way and women are another way,
and so it has been and so it shall be. And what point is there in social and political
reform, if the problem is biological? Genes are impervious to legislation.
3. CURRENT CONCEPTIONS OF GENDER EQUALITY ARE SUFFICIENT

Danielle Crittenden, Author of What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes
the Modern Woman, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, July 9, 1999, p. 31
Perhaps the best solution for women would be to accept that they have achieved
equality with men in every important way. Having had every legal, economic, political,
and social impediment removed, we may have at last run up against the impediments -if you wish to call them that -- of our sex. To achieve any more, to be able to live the
same lives as men, we would actually have to be men -- and this, I suspect, is not an
enticing goal to most women.
ANGELA DAVIS
INTRODUCTION
Angela Davis is an internationally respected scholar and political activist. She has been
embroiled in controversy numerous times, clashing with both the government of the
United States and individual critics. Due to her outspoken political activities and the
relationships she has formed, Angela Davis was targeted by the US criminal justice
system in 1970. This period further led to the growth in her anti-prison sentiment,
making her an important figure in the abolitionist movement today. Angela Davis should
be viewed as a primary source for information because her radical beliefs and critiques
of racism, classism, and sexism in the United States are both revealing and important
issues to bear in mind during most debates.
LIFE AND WORK

Angela Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama on January 26, 1944. This was a period
in American history when Jim Crow Laws were still enforced, and neighborhoods were
rife with racial tension. Both of her parents were educated, her mother was an
elementary school teacher and her father was first a teacher then a service station
operator. Her parents introduced her to political activism, as her mother was a
campaigner for the NAACP before the state shut it down. They managed to buy a home
in an un-segregated neighborhood, where Angela spent most of her childhood. This
neighborhood was often referred to as Dynamite Hill, because homes of black families
were bombed so often by the Ku Klux Klan.
Angela Davis was unable to escape the racial tensions that were always present in her
life. She was a very intelligent young girl, but due to segregation she was forced to
enter decrepit elementary and middle schools. At age 14, she was accepted into a
program run by the American Friends Service Committee, which placed black youths in
integrated, northern schools. Through this program, she was able to attend Elizabeth
Irwin High School, a radical school in New York City. She moved to New York with her
mother, who wanted to obtain her MA from NYU. The school quickly introduced her to
the ideas of communism and socialism, an education that would stay with her
throughout her life. While attending this school, she also joined the Communist youth
group, Advance.
When Davis graduated from high school, she attended Brandeis University on
scholarship; only three African American students attended the school. She studied
French, and spent a year in Paris. While she was there, she learned of the Birmingham
Baptist Church bombing in September 1963. This event greatly affected her as she
knew the four girls who were killed. When Davis returned from Paris, she became more
interested in philosophy and audited a course offered by Herbert Marcuse. Marcuses
ideas have greatly influenced Angela Davis, particularly his belief that it is the duty of
the individual to rebel against the system. After graduating from Brandeis University,
she studied philosophy at Johann Wolfgang van Goethe University in Frankfurt.
However, she soon wanted to join the civil rights movements that were arising in the
United States, so she returned and studied under Marcuse at University of California at
San Diego. After earning her masters degree, Davis returned to Germany and obtained
her Ph.D. in philosophy.
After receiving her Ph.D., Angela Davis became a lecturer of philosophy at the University
of California in Los Angeles. In 1967, she joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, the Black Panther Party, and the following year the American Communist
party. However, when the Federal Bureau of Investigations notified her employers of her
political activities, her contract was terminated. She was later rehired though, after the
community amassed popular support for her.
On August 18, 1970, Angela Davis was put on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List.
She was charged with conspiracy, kidnapping and homicide; the government argued
that she had aided in the attempted escape from Marin County Hall of Justice of Black
Panther members. Angela Davis was on the run for several months, before finally being
captured. Though she was later acquitted of the charges, Davis spent 18 months in
prison.
Today, Angela Davis continues to be a very prominent social activist. She is a professor
at University of California in Santa Cruz, and she is an outspoken proponent of the
abolition of US prisons and the death penalty. Though Davis is no longer a member of
the Communist party, she continues to maintain that capitalism is an unjust system, and
democracy would be better achieved through a socialist system.
CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONALIZED
RACISM
PRISONS AS RACIST INSTITUTIONS
Angela Davis is a very vocal critique of racism in the United States, which she argues not
only continues but is actually institutionalized in the society. She points to prisons as the
embodiment of this problem, and argues that the penal system is simply an extension of
slavery. Angela Davis believes that racism, classism, and sexism continue to be
significant societal problems, with the prison system being used to both isolate those
affected by the problems and to exact a profit from their free labor (a situation referred
to as the prison industrial complex). Essentially, Angela Davis believes that many of the
problems facing American society today, such as crime and poverty, are intricately
related to issues of race and capitalism. This makes her an important source of
information for many debates on social problems.
Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, racism continued to be a prevalent
sentiment, even among those who had supported the end of slavery. Very few whites
were able to view blacks as intelligent beings, much less as their equals. As a result,
racism became institutionalized in governmental practices. Especially in the South,
segregation became the rule of law. In other ways too, such as voting restrictions, ruling
whites sought to disenfranchise the newly freed African Americans. Lynchings occurred
throughout the South, and served as powerful reminders to blacks that even though
they were legally free, there were not equals.
Angela Davis argues that during this period, prisons emerged as a way to return freed
slaves to bondage. While the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution banned slavery
in most situations, it maintained that involuntary servitude was legal if an individual had
been convicted of a crime. Thus, with the abolition of slavery, prisons became important
sources of free labor to plantations and other businesses that had previously relied on
slaves. A convict-lease system was quickly developed, and states enacted Black Codes
that criminalized many activities for African Americans, such as being unemployed.
These Codes, coupled with the prevalent racist beliefs that blacks were more prone to
criminality, led to extremely high incarceration rates for African Americans. Once in
prison, Angela Davis points out that the newly freed slaves were rented out to bosses,
and sometimes forced to work on the same plantation they had worked as slaves. Thus,
prisons became a method to control black labor, as the prison populations were
overwhelmingly African American.
Unfortunately, the increased incarceration rates, according to Davis, further fueled the
racist beliefs about African American criminality. These beliefs continue to affect social
justice policy today. In fact, Angela Davis points out that police departments in major
urban areas have admitted the existence of formal procedures designed to maximize the
number of African-Americans and Latinos arrested even in the absence of probable
cause (Are Prisons 31). The continued use of racial-profiling policies, Davis argues,
proves that color continues to be imputed to criminality.
And though the convict-lease system has been abolished, its use deeply affected the
criminal justice system and has shaped much of its infrastructure. Today, the policies of
the convict-lease system, such as exploitation, have reemerged in the patterns of
privatization, and, more generally, in the wide-ranging corporatization of punishment
that has produced a prison industrial complex (Are Prisons 37). Davis explains that
prisons are significant sources of profits, to be made by the companies that supply the
prisons with food, the phone call providers, the corporations who run prisons for profit,
etc. And because there is profit to be made, these corporations have a vested interest
in encouraging the growth of the prison population. And this, Davis argues, is the
reason that prison populations continue to increase despite the drop in the crime rate.
And to this day, the minorities are disproportionately overrepresented in the prison
population. Angela Davis argues that this occurs because the government uses prisons
as a way to house and isolate the undesirable sectors of the society, such as
minorities and the poor. She states that the American population accepts the racist
targeting of minorities because they have been brainwashed by the government and
media. She points out that black men are often treated as criminals in the media and
sources of entertainment. Over time, images such as the criminal black man effects a
persons perception, and they learn to view black men as a criminal group. These leads
to the acceptance of the racial profiling of black men.
Ultimately, Angela Davis forcefully argues that racism continues to be a significant

problem in the United States. This racism is especially obvious in the criminal justice
system, where minorities are often targeted and then imprisoned for profit. Reading her
books and articles will provide you with significant analysis about the harm racism
continues to cause our society, as well as about possible alternatives to achieve a more
just system.
ECONOMIC RACISM
Another mode of institutionalized racism that Angela Davis discusses is in the economic
sphere. She points out that African Americans are severely overrepresented in the
poverty rates. For example, the Childrens Defense Fund has found that black children
are far more likely to be born into poverty than they were five years ago. They are also
twice as likely as Caucasian children to die in the first year of their lives, and they are
three times as likely as white children to be placed in class designed for mentally
handicapped students (Women 74). Angela Davis points out that many conservative
political scientists have blamed African Americans for their poverty. These political
scientists argue that the rise in single mother homes has led to increased poverty.
However, Davis claims that this analysis is both flawed and detrimental.
Angela Davis first points out that the birthrate for single African American teenage
women has actually decreased since the 1970s, thus the conservatives claim seems not
to hold true. Davis goes on to further argue that political scientists use the African
American family as a scapegoat for the ineffective policies of the federal government.
The Reagan administration vocally attacked the African American family unit as the
reason for persistent poverty, which allowed him to simultaneously advocate lower
social spending. He argued that the welfare system helped perpetuate the problems in
many African American families, such as lower marriage rates, and so claimed that
decreasing welfare programs would strengthen families and decrease poverty.
Unfortunately however, this plan was not successful. Angela Davis argues that the true
causes of the initial poverty were racism, job outsourcing, and lack of social protections.
Davis turns to census data to prove that increases in the unemployment rate result in
both higher poverty rates and higher rates of one-parent homes. Thus, she believes that
the welfare programs that enable families to find jobs are essential in order to eradicate
poverty. However, when the Reagan administration cut social spending, many families
were left with no mechanisms of support, and so fell deeper into the cycle of poverty.
THE GENDERED PENAL SYSTEM

In her critiques of the current justice system, Angela Davis focuses upon race and
gender as important aspects in the punishment process. She persuasively argues that
women, and specifically minority women, face unique problems in the penal system.
Her analysis on the role that race and gender play illustrates a larger process that is
occurring in the US. As Davis writes, The deeply gendered character of punishment
both reflects and further entrenches the gendered structure of the larger society. Thus,
understanding Daviss critique of the penal system can be essential to recognizing the
gendered structure of and its effects on society.
Female prisoners have historically been treated very differently than male prisoners.
This differential treatment is partly due to the smaller size of the female prison
population, but also to the sexist beliefs still prevalent in US society. To begin with,
Angela Davis argues that female prisoners are viewed differently than male prisoners
are. She notes that masculine criminality has always been treated as more normal than
female criminality, with a significant number of female criminals being labeled as
insane. For example, females are far more likely to be committed to mental institutions
than men, illustrating that men are viewed as criminals whereas women are treated as
insane. This continues today, with female inmates being much more likely to receive
psychiatric drugs than their male counterparts.
Angela Davis points out that when prisons first became popularized as modes of
rehabilitation, women were not housed in private facilities. Rather, there were kept in
large communal cells in male prisons. These women were viewed as fallen and it was
not believed they could reform themselves (it was expected that men could). As a
result, the women were housed in large cells, and suffered from neglect and sexual
abuse.
When separate prisons were first developed for women, they were drastically different
than the institutions designed to house men. Instead of cells, cottages and rooms were
built to provide a sense of domesticity; the women in the prison were taught
homemaking courses, such as sewing and cooking, in an attempt to prepare them for
their lives of motherhood. Angela Davis argues that this system both reinforced societal
norms of femininity, while also training poor women for lives of domestic service. Many
of the female prisoners, once they were released, used the skills they had learned to
become cooks, washerwomen, and maids for more affluent families. Davis further
points out that this more lenient cottage system was truly only open to the white female
prisoners; black prisoners were still overwhelming forced to serve their time in male
prisons. This is an example of how issues of race have complicated gender problems,
according to Davis. The prison system sentenced white women to domesticity training,
while denying the femininity of minority women and placing them within chain gangs.
In the twentieth century, the use of reformatories for women was abolished. A new
approach, referred to as separate but equal, arose that focused on making female
prisons the same as male prisons. This separate but equal approach has, ironically,
made conditions in female prisons more repressive in order to bring them to the same
level as the male prisons. Angela Davis argues that this policy of separate but equal is
inherently unjust because it accepts the male prison as the norm, thus female prisons
are unable to take into account the special situations that many female prisoners face.
One example of this is that Alabama decided in 1996 to begin a female chain gang, in
order to ensure equality with the men who were already serving on them. This same
logic is also employed to deny women the extra healthcare that females often require.
Thus, instead of attempting to solve for the unique problems females face, such as
pregnancy and health concerns in prisons, government officials have turned a blind eye
under the mantra of separate but equal.
Angela Davis also identifies sexual abuse as a continuing problem in female prisons.
She points out that male prison guards often trade sex with inmates for special
treatment, or demand sexual favors under the threat of physical harm. The perpetrators
of these crimes are rarely punished because the female inmates possess little recourse.
Angela Davis even argues that the sexual abuse is accepted because female criminals
have been hypersexualized to a point that sexual assault is expected. For example, the
chief medical officer at a California prison argued that the female prisoners enjoyed
getting superfluous gynecological exams because they enjoyed male contact. Though
later fired for this comment, the chief medical officer voiced a belief held by many
across the United States. Female criminals are hypersexualized, thus the sexual abuse
occurring within prisons is viewed as normal, even justified.
The analysis that Angela Davis offers of the conditions of womens prisons is quite eyeopening. She describes the sexist and racist ideologies that helped to form the current
system, and the ongoing abuse that women are forced to endure. Unfortunately, these
prison practices not only affect the women sentenced for a crime, but they imprint the
society as a whole. The differential treatment women of color receive as opposed to
white women, as well as the hypersexuality attributed to female prisoners, affects
societal relationships with racism and sexuality. Thus, Angela Davis identifies prison
abolition as one of the most important reforms needed in the United States.

Angela Davis will be a useful source of information for numerous debate rounds. Her
criticisms on the institutionalized racism in the United States will be helpful in numerous
ways. First, an understanding of the lingering effects of slavery on our society will
enable you to evaluate the actions of the United States government. In a debate round,
you can listen critically to the plan of action outlined your opponent, and seek to identify
whether they would further complicate the issues of racism. Furthermore, Daviss
analysis on the prison industrial complex can be key in teaching you to identify the profit
incentives of governmental actions. Ultimately, her critiques will challenge your beliefs
on the workings and altruism of the US government, and force you to examine in depth
the true situation in the United States.
Furthermore, Davis analysis about economic racism and social programs will be helpful
in any economic debate. Her arguments about the necessity of welfare programs can
provide fertile ground for case ideas, and her criticisms of the capitalist system will
enable you to develop unique alternatives to the current economic system.
Finally, Angela Daviss analysis of women in prison is an important source of information

on the intersections of race, gender, and class. She points out that the prison system is
both shaped by and reinforces traditional gender and racial expectations, thus her
analysis will be useful in any debate you have about race or gender. The revealing
information she provides about sexual abuse in US prisons can also be a strong
argument to use whenever you are debating social injustices or governmental failures.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, Angela Y. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture. New York:
Seven Stories Press, 2005.
---. Angela Davis: An Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1974.
---. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
---. The Black Family Under Capitalism. Black Scholar 17.5 (1987).
---. Black Women and the Academy. Callaloo 17.2 (1996): 422-431.
---. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie
Holiday. New York: Random House, 1998.
---. Childcare or Workfare. New Perspectives Quarterly 7.1 (1990).
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http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAdavisAN.htm>.
THE US SUFFERS FROM

INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM
1. IGNORING ISSUES OF RACE ALLOWS THE PROBLEMS TO PERSIST
Angela Davis, philosopher/political activist, 1998.
THE ANGELA Y. DAVIS READER, p. 62.
When the structural character of racism is ignored in discussions about crime and the
rising population of incarcerated people, the racial imbalance in jails and prisons is
treated as a contingency, at best as a product of the culture of poverty, and at worst
as proof of an assumed black monopoly on criminality. The high proportion of black
people in the criminal justice system is thus normalized and neither the state nor the
general public is required to talk about and act on the meaning of that racial imbalance.
Thus Republican and Democratic elected officials alike have successfully called for laws
mandating life sentences for three-time criminals, without having to answer for the
racial implications of these laws. By relying on the alleged race-blindness of such
laws, black people are surreptitiously constructed as racial subjects, thus manipulated,
exploited, and abused, while the structural persistence of racism albeit in changed
forms in social and economic institutions, and in the national culture as a whole, is
adamantly denied.
2. MINORITIES ARE VASTLY OVERREPRESENTED IN THE PENAL SYSTEM

THE ANGELA Y. DAVIS READER, p.63-4
Which is to say that there are presently over 5.1 million people either incarcerated, on
parole, or on probation. Many of those presently on probation or parole would be behind
bars under the conditions of the recently passed crime bill. According to the Sentencing
Project, even before the passage of the crime bill, black people were 7.8 times more
likely to be imprisoned than whites. The Sentencing Projects most recent report
indicates that 32.2 percent of young black men and 12.3 percent of young Latino men
between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine are either in prison, in jail, or on probation
or parole. This is in comparison with 6.7 percent of young white men.
3. PRISON CONSTRUCTION HIDES THE PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH RACISM

THE ANGELA Y. DAVIS READER, p. 66-7
Because of the tendency to view is as an abstract site into which all manner of
undesirables are deposited, the prison is the perfect site for the simultaneous production
and concealment of racism. The abstract character of the public perception of prisons
militates against an engagement with the real issues afflicting the communities from
which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological
work that the prison performs it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging
with the problems of late capitalism, of transnational capitalism. The naturalization of
black people as criminals thus also erects ideological barriers to an understanding of the
connections between late twentieth-century structural racism and the globalization of
capital.
4. RACISM IS PREVALENT, BUT HIDDEN, IN TODAYS SOCIETY

THE ANGELA Y. DAVIS READER, p. 66.
The fear of crime has attained a status that bears a sinister similarity to the fear of
communism as it came to restructure social perceptions during the fifties and sixties.
The figure of the criminal the racialized figure of the criminal has come to represent
the most menacing enemy of American society. Virtually anything is acceptable
torture, brutality, vast expenditures of public funds as long as it is done in the name of
public safety. Racism has always found an easy route from its embeddedness in social
structures to the psyches of collectives and individuals precisely because it mobilizes
deep fears. While explicit, old-style racism may be increasingly socially unacceptable
precisely as a result of antiracist movements over the last forty years this does not
mean that US society has been purged of racism. In fact, racism is more deeply
embedded in socio-economic structures, and the vast populations of incarcerated people
of color is dramatic evidence of the way racism systematically structures economic
relations. At the same time, this structural racism is rarely recognized as racism.
What we have come to recognize as open, explicit racism has in many ways begun to be
replaced by a secluded camouflaged kind of racism, whose influence on peoples daily
lives is a pervasive and systematic as the explicit forms of racism associated with the
era of the struggle for civil rights.
THE US JUSTICE SYSTEM IS NOT

INFECTED WITH RACIST INTENTIONS
1. THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM DOES NOT TREAT BLACK DEFENDANTS MORE
HARSHLY
Eli Lehrer, writer for the Heritage Foundation, 9 Oct. 2000.
<http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed100900.cfm>.
Little evidence exists that black criminals face discrimination in the criminal-justice
system. Black "overrepresentation" in that system is in the number of criminals arrested.
Racist cops aren't responsible for this disparity: Blacks get arrested at the same high
rates in cities like Atlanta and Washington where the political establishment is almost
entirely African-American and the police forces reflect the population's ethnic makeup. In
a study on sentencing disparity commissioned by the Center for Equal Opportunity,
former University of Maryland professor Robert Lerner finds that arrested blacks get sent
to prison at a lower rate than arrested whites in just about every category that the
government measures. Lerner found that blacks were twice as likely to get off on rape
charges, around 50 percent more likely to escape punishment when charged with simple
assault, and a third more likely to beat the rap on drug dealing. The difference in favor of
black offenders existed in 12 out of 14 categories of crime.
2. MINORITIES BENEFIT FROM LEGAL DISCRIMINATION

In my view, this is complete nonsense. As a nonwhite immigrant, I am grateful to the
activists of the civil rights movement for their efforts to open up doors that would
otherwise have remained closed. But at the same time, I am struck by the ease with
which Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement won its victories, and by the
magnitude of white goodwill in this country. In a single decade, from the mid-fifties to
the mid-sixties, America radically overhauled its laws through a series of landmark
decisions: Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights
Act, the Fair Housing Act. Through such measures, America established equality of rights
under the law. Of course, the need to enforce nondiscrimination provisions continues,
but for nearly half a century, blacks and other minorities have enjoyed the same legal
rights as whites. Actually, this is not strictly true. For a few decades now, blacks and
some minorities have enjoyed more rights and privileges than whites. The reason is that
America has implemented affirmative action policies that give legal preference to
minority groups in university admissions, jobs, and government contracts. Such policies
remain controversial, but the point is that they reflect the great lengths to which this
country has gone to eradicate discrimination. It is extremely unlikely that a racist society
would grant its minority citizens legal preferences over members of the majority group.
Some private discrimination continues to exist in America, but the only form of
discrimination that can be legally practiced today benefits blacks more than whites.
3. BLACK DEFENDANTS ARE NOT TARGETTED BY DRUG SENTENCES

Black murderers face shorter sentences than their white counterparts and (contrary to
leftist dogma) make fewer trips to death row. Even when it comes to the federal law
punishing crack possession much more harshly than powder-cocaine possession-a
favorite topic of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton-racism doesn't enter the picture. In his
1997 book Race, Crime and the Law, Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy
shows that the law passed with the enthusiastic support of black congressmen who saw
crack becoming the drug of choice in their districts. The use of methamphetamine and
heroin-predominantly by whites-has soared in the 1990s, while the penalties for this use
have remained stable. Would black Americans be better off if the situation were
reversed, and crack dealing went on uninterrupted in American inner cities while police
cracked down on rural whites using methamphetamine? If this happened, civil-rights
leaders would organize protest marches in favor of stronger drug-enforcement efforts in
inner cities-and would be right to do so.
A GENDERED RESPONSE TO THE

PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IS
NECESSARY
1. FEMALE CRIMINALITY IS TREATED UNEQUALLY IN SOCIETY
ARE PRISONS OBSOLETE, p. 65-6
It is from this perspective of the contemporary expansion of prisons, both in the United
States and throughout the world, that we should examine some of the historical and
ideological aspects of state punishment imposed on women. Since the end of the
eighteenth century, when, as we have seen, imprisonment began to emerge as the
dominant form of punishment, convicted women have been represented as essentially
different form their male counterparts. It is true that men who commit the kinds of
transgressions that are regarded as punishable by the state are labeled as social
deviants. Nevertheless, masculine criminality has always been deemed more normal
than feminine criminality. There has always been a tendency to regard those women
who have been publicly punished by the state for their misbehaviors as significantly
more aberrant and far more threatening to society than their numerous male
counterparts.
2. MALE PRISONS ARE DESIGNED AS THE NORM

Paradoxically, demands for parity with mens prisons, instead of creating greater
educational, vocational, and health opportunities for women prisoners, often have led to
more repressive conditions for women. This is not only a consequence of deploying
liberal that is, formalistic notions of equality, but of, more dangerous, allowing male
prisons to function as the punishment norm.
3. SEXUAL VIOLENCE IS COMMITTED AGAINST FEMALE PRISONERS

As the level of repression in womens prisons increases, and, paradoxically, as the
influence of domestic prison regimes recedes, sexual abuse which, like domestic
violence, is yet another dimension of the privatized punishment of women has become
an institutionalized component of punishment behind prison walls. Although guard-onprisoner sexual abuse is not sanctioned as such, the widespread leniency with which
offending officers are treated suggests that for women, prison is a space in which the
threat of sexualized violence that looms in the larger society is effectively sanctioned as
a routine aspect of the landscape of punishment behind prison walls.
4. FEMALE PRISONS ARE HYPSEXUALIZED TO CONDONE RAPE

The criminalization of black and Latina women includes persisting images of
hypersexuality that serve to justify sexual assaults against them both in and outside of
prison. Such images were vividly rendered in a Nightline television series filmed in
November 1999 on location at Californias Valley State Prison for Women. Many of the
women interviewed by Ted Koppel complained that they received frequent and
unnecessary pelvic examinations, including when they visited the doctor with such
routine illnesses as colds. In an attempt to justify these examinations, the chief medical
officer explained that women prisoners had rare opportunities for male contact, and
that they therefore welcomed these superfluous gynecological exams. Although this
office was eventually removed form his position as a result of these comments, his
reassignment did little to alter the pervasive vulnerability of imprisoned women to
sexual abuse.
THE US JUSTICE SYSTEM PROMOTES

JUST OUTCOMES
1. THE US GOVERNMENT HAS ATTEMPTED TO ATONE FOR ITS PAST FLAWS
So what about slavery? No one will deny that America practiced slavery, but America
was hardly unique in this respect. Indeed, slavery is a universal institution that in some
form has existed in all cultures. In his study Slavery and Social Death, the West Indian
sociologist Orlando Patterson writes, Slavery has existed from the dawn of human
history, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. There is no
region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution. The Sumerians and
Babylonians practiced slavery, as did the ancient Egyptians. The Chinese, the Indians,
and the Arabs all had slaves. Slavery was widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, and
American Indians had slaves long before Columbus came to the New World. What is
distinctively Western is not slavery but the movement to end slavery. Abolition is a
uniquely Western institution. The historian J. M. Roberts writes, No civilization once
dependent on slavery has ever been able to eradicate it, except the Western. Of
course, slaves in every society dont want to be slaves. The history of slavery is full of
incidents of runaways, slave revolts, and so on. But typically, slaves were captured in
warfare, and if they got away, they were perfectly happy to take other people as slaves.
2. PRISONS ARE NOT RUN FOR PROFITS

The contention that the quest for profits has driven America's fourfold increase in prison
capacity since 1980 is equally specious. Private-prison operators, a chief bugbear of the
Left, incarcerate a measly 5 percent of America's convicts. Prisons contract out more
services than they did 15 years ago, but so do nearly all other government agencies.
The overwhelming majority of prison services remain in the hands of money-losing
government bureaucracies. Unlike their military-industrial counterparts, which produce
some of America's leading exports and sell civilian goods ranging from jetliners to
computer hardware, major prison-related producers sell little outside of America's
borders and almost nothing to private citizens. While a few states, California and
Tennessee most prominently, do count corrections-industry groups among their most
powerful lobbies, they remain exceptions. No sizeable cities have prison-reliant
economies, and few people outside of declining farm towns actually want to live near
prisons. Indeed, the presence of a large jail proved a major stumbling block in the effort
to revitalize Chicago's South Loop.
3. CRIME IN THE US IS LESS DUE TO SENTENCING STRUCTURES

The bulk of the evidence shows that longer sentences really do work. And an honest look
at the international data presents a good case for building prisons: A 1998 study from
the British Home Office, their equivalent of the Justice Department, cited the U.S. as one
of only two major Western countries to see their crime rates drop between the late
1980s and late 1990s. Canada, France, England, and Switzerland all have more crime
per capita than the United States. A study commissioned by the Justice Department's
Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in 1998, Englishmen were twice as likely as
Americans to have their cars stolen, about a third more likely to get mugged by an
armed assailant, and nearly ten times more likely to have their home broken into while it
was occupied. The study's authors suggest an explanation: "An offender's risk of being
caught, convicted and incarcerated has been rising in the United States but falling in
England."
SIMONE DEBEAUVOIR
FRENCH EXISTENTIALIST AND FEMINIST

(1908-1987)
Simone DeBeauvoir epitomizes the excellence of the French intellectuals of the 20th
Century. Articulate, refined, somewhat humorous but gravely serious at times,
DeBeauvoir was a better writer than her companion, Jean-Paul Sartre; some even say
she was a better thinker as well. Her ideas were both an affirmation of Sartres
existentialism and a refutation of it, for while she argued that we could not justify our
values through appeals to higher authority, while she agreed with Sartre that the
universe was largely a moral void, she insisted that values must be chosen as values,
and she realized long before Sartre did that such values necessarily required deference
to the needs arid situations of other people.
Simone DeBeauvoir made the leap from radical individualist to the continuity of women-a step few intellectuals take. With the publication of The Second Sex, DeBeauvoir would
always be known as a feminist, and what an existentialist feminist had to say would be
pretty interesting. DeBeauvoir did not invent, nor did she leave behind, a comprehensive
set of ideas; she started no movements, gathered no followers. What she did was think
and write, and did these things better than any writer of her time.
Life And Work

Simone DeBeauvoir was one of three daughters born in Paris to a middle-class family;
Simone was born in 1908. The mother was a devout Catholic, while the father was a
bitter, cynical atheist. The two had agreed to stay together despite their differences, and
Simone would be influenced by their opposing views of the world, and the synthesis
created by them. She learned about religious and moral guilt; about the longing for the
afterlife and rewards for suffering, only to hear from her other parent that no such things
existed. That longing for transcendence, DeBeauvoir would later argue, is much of the
basis for ethics. The fact that it can never be satisfied, she would go on to say, is part of
the impossibility of the ethical task.
From an early age, the young girl was determined to be a writer. She graduated with a
degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne in 1929 (finishing just behind a short, wall-eyed
but brilliant student named Jean-Paul Sartre), taught school until 1938, published her
first novel, She Came To Stay in 1943, and had no job but writing until her death.
Three events shaped Simone DeBeauvoirs life (her considerable autobiographical

memoirs give abundant insight into such influences). First, her relationship with Sartre
affected both the content and style of her philosophy and fiction. She and Sartre
developed existentialism as an ethical system derived from the existential analytical
work of Martin Heidegger as well as the ethical challenges of Friedrich Nietzsche. But
Sartre was her emotional as well as intellectual companion, and her love for him, as well
as their mutual desire that there should be no marriage or children in the relationship,
raised important questions in her mind regarding divisions between men and women, as
well as other types of social divisions.
Second, in 1939, the Germans occupied much of France. This changed Sartres and
DeBeauvoir lives considerably; both were sympathetic to the French Resistance and
DeBeauvoir lived through a dangerous and worrisome period when Sartre was a prisoner
of war in Germany. These episodes made DeBeauvoir concerned with ethics, the kind of
ethics an existentialist can willfully hold, and the need for self-sacrifice. Her novels of the
period reflect such ambiguous ethical calls; The Blood of Others begins with the hero
sitting at the deathbed of his mortally wounded lover, who has been injured in a mission
against the Germans. The hero spends a great deal of time wondering about how his
choices affect others; the Germans will kill innocent people in answer to Resistance
activities. It is difficult, DeBeauvoir thought, but inevitable nonetheless, to make ethical
decisions.
Finally, DeBeauvoir was affected by the 20th Century womens movement. She knew
that she was fortunate in economic and social circumstances to be allowed into life both
as a woman and an intellectual. She realized these privileges did not exist for the
majority of women in the world. She firmly believed, and passionately argued, that
women needed financial independence and the ability to work and prosper as human
beings in order to realize their freedom. But she never rejected the masculine world,
and in fact did not believe masculine categories of the world were themselves subject to
criticism. For her, the problem would be material, economic, social, and individual; it
would never reflect the metaphysics of masculinity in the way other feminists made the
problem out to be.
Sartre died in 1980; DeBeauvoir would write that she had loved him so much she wanted
to jump into the death his body was experiencing, to die with him. By that time, her
life was about over, too. But by the time of her death in 1987, she had published around
twenty works of fiction and philosophy, including philosophical works such as The
Second Sex and The Ethics of Ambiguity and novels like She Came to Stay, The Blood of
Others, The Mandarins and All Men are Mortal. Finally, her memoirs comprise several
volumes, from Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter an autobiography of her childhood, to her
much more somber farewell to Saitre and to her own brilliant career.
The Impossibility And Necessity Of

Ethics
Sartre once remarked that any ethics which fails to admit of its own essential
impossibility contributes to ethical failure. By this he meant that ethics are rules which
humans invent, fully aware that we can never live up to them, but feeling as if we need
them anyway. Such an attitude is similar to Simone DeBeauvoirs view that ethical
choices are inevitable, even if ethical systems themselves are not always philosophically
valid.
Existentialism holds that humans make their own values, just as we make ourselves in
every way through the sum total of choices we adopt and actions and attitudes we take
or assume. Within that view of the world, it is generally acknowledged that there is no
higher source which makes actions or ethical systems right or wrong. Actions and
ethics can, then, only be validated or rejected with regard to the people concerned with
them. This makes individuals (and groups) absolutely responsible for their lives.
But many people, DeBeauvoir argues, respond to this moral void by celebrating the
darkness of the valueless life. She points out that nihilism is dangerous because it is a
glorification of the negative, rather than an attempt to fill the void with ones own
personal meaning. Nihilists, she says, are true cowards because they escape from the
necessity of making our own values in accordance with what we consider to be a life
worth living. The consequences of such nihilism are dangerous because nihilists often
give themselves over to the sheer, raw, cynical power of hatred and to the love of power
itself, and this leads to totalitarian movements such as Nazism.
Only in embracing ones own values, wherever they are chosen or made, can an
individual feel secure enough in his or her own individuality that he or she would not
think of supporting such oppressive or hateful movements like Nazism. This is also true
because, as is so often ignored by students of existentialism, my freedom does not
simply exist in myself, but is constantly contingent upon the gestures and recognition of
other free people. We exist and make our values together, even if we ultimately commit
to them as individuals. Nihilism also removes the connection we have, as free
individuals, to other people, making acts of great cruelty possible.
The Woman Question

Simone DeBeauvoir, considered a mother of contemporary feminism, never referred to
herself as a feminist. She never advanced a philosophical system called feminism. What
she did do was frame the question of being a woman in terms accessible to most women
in 20th Century Europe and the United States, whether those women considered
themselves feminists or not. She did this by initially and honestly admitting that
although she didnt know what it really meant to be a woman, she knew it was the first
thing she would ever say about herself when defining herself, and she figured this was
probably the case with most women.
For DeBeauvoir, the question of male oppression is historical and ethical as well as
political. In The Second Sex she traces the historical roots of womens subordination and
concludes that there may be no systematic explanation for it, at least no explanation
which can lend itself to systematic reform. What needs to happen, she argues, is for
women to consciously empower themselves, individual woman by individual woman,
through economic and spiritual emancipation from men. Although she acknowledges
that men may resist such emancipation (and also points out that many women enjoy the
pedestal which patriarchy occasionally places them on), she does not see a solution
which can be implemented quickly and comprehensively, and she does not feel that
feminine emancipation requires an abandonment of the present base and superstructure
of society.
In prescribing individual economic empowerment as a solution to womens oppression,

DeBeauvoir distances herself from two schools of thought which see the problem and
solution differently. First, she rejects Marxian socialism as ill-equipped to deal with the
problem of women, not only because Marxism is too collectivist and historicist to do
justice to the validity of individual human experience, but also because Marxism sees
the problem of womens rights in the same eyes with which it views the antagonism
between labor and capital; and, DeBeauvoir says, womens bodies are not factories, and
women have unique problems which male workers do not have.
Second, DeBeauvoir rejects essentialist or radical feminist theories which call for the
separation of women from men and the cultivation of special feminist values and a
womens culture distinct from patriarchy. Again, DeBeauvoir does not think that the
male world of philosophy, business and enterprise is bad because it is male. It may
be bad for other reasons; it may require some revolutionary change (even, she admits, a
socialist change), but it is not bad simply because males inhabit it. And as long as that is
the world before us, women would do well to become actualized and independent in that
world. Feminisms which mystify the feminine (in the form of goddess worship or the
glorification of childbearing and menstruation, etc.) simply continue oppression by
separating women and glorifying the very attributes which weaken their participation in
society.
Not Enough Of A Feminist?

Such dismissal of radical feminism leads many critics to accuse DeBeauvoir of complicity
in the oppression of women. It can be pointed out that her tendency to privilege the
social world (mostly dominated by males and masculine values) over some alternative
feminine world is simply her way of ignoring the uniqueness of womanhood. In other
words, by arguing that women must become more economically viable, competitive and
socially adept, DeBeauvoir may simply be saying that in order for women to stop being
oppressed as women, they just need to become more like men. This is a typical
criticism leveled against many liberal feminists, such as Betty Friedan, and its charge
against DeBeauvoir places her squarely in the liberal camp.
Moreover, why does DeBeauvoir ignore the need for collective action? Even if many
women were to follow her prescription and try to gain economic emancipation, this
would only result in a few women being happier. The laws, social customs and economic
makeup of society would still be largely in the hands of men. And the fact that these
women would need to act like men in order to become emancipated would only further
strengthen patriarchy. Many radical feminists and socialists argue that the entire
structures of society must change before real change can benefit all women.
While valid as arguments pertaining to the political philosophy espoused by DeBeauvoir,

these objections may be based on a misunderstanding of her purpose for writing The
Second Sex in the first place. The book was not a political manifesto, nor was it a
philosophical principia devoted to unmasking patriarchy and offering a replacement for
it. It was one womans attempt, at least as that woman tells it, to understand oppression
and marginalization in todays world, which means a world full of capitalism, competition
and material considerations. Since DeBeauvoir knew most women were not as privileged
as she herself had been, she also knew that those women would not feel at all aided in
their personal lives by reading about prescribed changes in social structures or collective
consciousness. What they wanted was to hear what a well-read woman had to say about
being a woman, and how one can be a woman and still be a human being. In that, she
largely succeeded. And given DeBeauvoirs disenchantment with Stalinist Communism,
it is likely she eschewed large-scale social experiments (conducted by men) to solve the
inner, subjective dilemmas of womanhood.
Implications For Debate

Simone DeBeauvoirs work offers two areas of value for debaters. First, her observations
on values and ethics can answer those who call for a rejection of values and ethics, and
this answer can be constructed in a way that avoids the very appeal to transcendent
values that is most often the object of nihilist or relativist attacks. In other words,
DeBeauvoir remains a radical in the sense that she does not call for a conservative
treatment of values, but she sees importance in them nonetheless.
Second, her treatment of feminism is a middle ground between radical feminism and
anti-feminism. She argues that women must consciously choose their own liberation;
this is both an ethical imperative and also an answer to those who would impose
feminism on all people as a sweeping political change.
DeBeauvoir argues that separatism (a radical form of feminism) is a setback to humanity

as well as to women. This serves as a rejoinder to advocates of a feminist
reconceptualization of values, those who believe that certain philosophical approaches
are male-centered and others are feminist. And she notes that for women to became
empowered, economic liberation (though not necessarily of the Marxist variety, she
qualifies) is a prerequisite for any meaningful change in the lives of individual women.
Again, this can be a response to those who believe that reconceptualizing values and
philosophies could liberate women: The answer is that women must be liberated in
bread and butter issues, economically and physically, rather than relying on the
philosophers to suddenly become feminists and strive for nurturing values.
What makes Simone DeBeauvoir fun and rewarding as a source for philosophical debate
is her incredible voice as a writer. She is very easy to read and even easy to read aloud.
Debaters should familiarize themselves with her work, since in a field of contemporaries
(Sartre, Heidegger, etc.) who are cryptic and often difficult to understand, DeBeauvoir
writes for understanding, with her audience in mind and largely assumed to be nonphilosophers. This makes her invaluable as a debate source.
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SOCIETY MUST REJECT NIHILISM

1. FAILURE TO FREELY CHOOSE ETHICS LEADS TO NIHILISM
Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY, 1972, p. 52.
Conscious of being unable to be anything, man then decides to be nothing. We shall call
this attitude nihilistic. The nihilist is close to the spirit of seriousness, for instead of
realizing his negativity as a living movement, he conceives his annihilation in a
substantial way. He wants to be nothing, and this nothing that he dreams of is still
another sort of being, the exact Hegelian antithesis of being, a stationary datum.
Nihilism is disappointed seriousness which has turned back upon itself.
2. NIHILISM MAKES FAILURE INEVITABLE

Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY, 1972, pp. 53-4. One
can go much further in rejection by occupying himself not in scorning but in annihilating
the rejected
world and himself along with it. For example, the man who gives himself to a cause
which he knows to be lost chooses to merge the world with one of its aspects which
carries within it the germ of its ruin, involving himself in this condemned universe and
condemning himself with it. Another man devotes his time and energy to an undertaking
which was not doomed to failure at the start but which he himself is bent on ruining. Still
another rejects each of his projects one after another, frittering them away in a series of
caprices and thereby systematically annulling the ends which he is aiming at.
3. NIHILISM LEADS ITS ADHERENTS TO WANT TO DESTROY HUMANITY

Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY, 1972, p. 55.
The attitude of the nihilist can perpetuate itself as such only if it reveals itself as a
positively at its very core. Rejecting his own existence, the nihilist must also reject the
existences which confirm it. If he wills himself to be nothing, all mankind must also be
annihilated; otherwise, by means of the presence of the world that the Other reveals he
meets himself as a presence in the world.
4. NIHILISM LED TO NAZISM

Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE ETHICS OF AMBIGUITY, 1972, pp. 55-6. But
this thirst for destruction immediately takes the form of a desire for power. The taste of
nothingness joins the original taste whereby every man is first defined; he realizes
himself as a being by making himself that by which nothingness comes into the world.
Thus, Nazism was both a will for power and a will for suicide at the same time. From a
historical point of view, Nazism has many other features besides; in particular, beside
the dark romanticism which led Rauschning to entitle his work The Revolution of
Nihilism, we also find a gloomy seriousness. But it is interesting to note that its ideology
did not make this alliance impossible, for the serious often rallies to partial nihilism,
denying everything which is not its object in order to hide from itself the antinomies of
action.
POLITICS OF SEPARATISM CANNOT

LIBERATE WOMEN
1. WOMEN NEED NOT SEPARATE THEMSELVES FROM MEN TO BE LIBERATED
Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE SECOND SEX, 1989, p. 686.
The fact is that men are beginning to resign themselves to the new status of women;
and she, not feeling condemned in advance, has begun to feel more at ease. Today the
woman who works is less neglectful of her femininity than formerly, and she does not
lose her sexual attractiveness.
2. WOMEN MUST BE AUTONOMOUS PARTICIPANTS IN SOCIETY

Mystical fervor, like love and even narcissism, can be integrated with a life of activity
and independence. But in themselves these attempts at individual salvation are bound
to meet with failure: either woman puts herself into relation with an unreality: her
double, or God; or she creates an unreal relation with a real being. In both cases she
lacks any grasp on the world; she does not escape her subjectivity; her liberty remains
frustrated. There is only one way to employ her liberty authentically, and that is to
project it through positive action into human society.
3. FEMININE DOMAINS OR VALUES SIMPLY REINFORCE INEQUALITIES

In truth women have never set up female values in opposition to male values; it is man
who, desirous of maintaining masculine prerogatives, has invented that divergence. Men
have presumed to create a feminine domain--the kingdom of life, of immanence--only in
order to lock up women therein.
THE MYSTIFICATION OF WOMEN PERPETUATES THEIR OPPRESSION
1. HOLDING UP MYSTICAL WOMANS IDEALS ENTRENCHES MALE OPPRESSION

Simone DeBeauvoir, French philosopher. THE SECOND SEX, 1989, p. 77. Condemned to
play the part of the Other, woman was also condemned to hold only uncertain power
slave or idol, it was never she who chose her lot. Men make the gods; women worship
them, as Frazer has said; men indeed decide whether their supreme divinities shall be
male or female; womans place in society is always that which men assign to her; at no
time has she ever imposed her own law.
2. ASSOCIATING WOMEN WITH NATURE AND MYSTICISM CONTINUES OPPRESSION

The devaluation of women represents a necessary stage in the history of humanity, for it
is not upon her positive value but upon mans weakness that her prestige is founded. In
woman are incarnated the disturbing mysteries of nature, and man escapes her hold
when he frees himself from nature.
3. THE SO-CALLED MATRIARCHAL GODDESS PERIOD IS A MYTH

But in truth that Golden Age of Woman is only a myth. To say that woman was the Other
is to say that there did not exist between the sexes a reciprocal relation: Earth, Mother,
Goddess--she was no fellow creature in mans eyes; it was beyond the human realm that
her power was affirmed, she was therefore outside of that realm. Society has always
been male; political power has always been in the bands of men
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher most commonly associated with the term
Deconstruction, calls into question much of what we take for granted about writing,
reading, and philosophy. The ideas presented in his groundbreaking 1966 lecture at
Johns Hopkins University, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences, shook the foundations of the Western philosophical tradition, caused an
uproar, and spawned countless interpretations and criticisms. Since 1966, Derrida has
published more than twenty books and now lectures in France and the U.S. 51
Deconstruction has become widely influential with important ramifications for many of
the ideas presented in Lincoln Douglas debates.
51 Powell, Jim. DERRIDA FOR BEGINNERS. (New York: Writers and Readers Publishing,
Inc., 1997). p. 6
WHAT IS DECONSTRUCTION?
The very question What is Deconstruction defies answer. The point of deconstruction is
that it "deconstructs itself." It is self reflexive and enigmatic. In a letter to a Japanese
professor, Derrida advises a friend about translating his texts. Derrida tells his friend
what deconstruction is not. Deconstruction is not analysis nor is it critique, because the
dismantling of a structure is not a regression toward a simple element, toward an
indissoluble origin. These values, like that of analysis, are themselves philosophemes
subject to deconstruction.52 Deconstruction invites us to question whether there is a
simple origin or element behind language. Deconstruction isnt about digging up the
true meaning of texts, philosophies, or ideas, because it questions the very idea of
true meaning.
What is the relation between deconstruction and the truth? To get an idea of how the
Western philosophical tradition construes the idea of truth, it is useful to examine Platos
philosophy, specifically, his ontology. Ontology is philosophy that addresses questions of
being, or what is. For example, for Plato, there are actual tables, and there is the form
of the table. The form of the table is the idea of a table that guides us in understanding
which objects are tables. This form is table-ness: it is what makes a table a table. For
Plato, there are invisible yet underlying ideas and meanings that give structure to all
words and representations. Furthermore, these invisible yet underlying forms are
superior to their manifestations in the world. The ultimate forms are of beauty, truth,
and the good. The ultimate life is the life spent in philosophical contemplation of the
forms.
Derrida turns this conception on its head. Derrida asks whether there really is tableness. There is no universal idea of a table that everyone has in mind when the word
table is said. Some people might be thinking of their dining room table, some people
might imagine a coffee table, some people might think of a nightstand. The only way to
think about the form of the "table" is to contemplate particular tables. Derrida questions
the idea that any words have fixed and certain meanings behind them. Anagrams, which
are single words that signify multiple ideas, are an example. An English example is the
word sound which can signify a body of water, stability, or noise.
In his book, Dissemination, Derrida gives the example of the Greek word pharmakon.
Derrida discusses the problems of translating pharmakon, a word that can mean "
'remedy,' 'recipe,' 'poison,' 'drug,' 'philter,' etc." 53 Derrida describes the loss of a
52 Derrida, Jacques. Letter to a Japanese Friend. WRITING AND READING DIFFERENTLY.
Ed. Atkins, G. Douglas and Michael L. Johnson. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas,
1985). p. 3
53 Derrida, Jacques. DISSEMINATION. Trans. Barbara Johnson. (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1981). p. 71
"malleable unity" that is inherent in translation. The word pharmakon demonstrates

related yet opposing meanings all linked to the same signifier (word). This example
demonstrates that words and phrases, as signifiers dont neatly match up with
transcendental signified ideas or objects. Translation involves the important choices of
which meanings to include and which to exclude. The situation parallels philosophy, in
that philosophers must decide what to include and exclude in the category of
philosophy, for example, Plato includes logos, reason, and rationality, while excluding
myth, writing, and metaphor. This is why Derrida writes, With this problem of
translation we are dealing with no less than the problem of the very passage into
philosophy itself. 54
Just as deconstruction is not analysis nor critique, nor is it a method. Derrida is

frightened that the term method has technical and procedural connotations.
Deconstruction cant be transformed into a set grouping of standards, rules, or
procedures. You cant put a text into one end of the Deconstruction Machine and see a
deconstructed version come out the other side. Deconstruction, rather, involves a
relationship between a reader and a text that is open to spontaneity and never before
seen connections. Derrida fears the label method will have a domesticating effect on
deconstruction. However, just as deconstruction is not a method, nor is it a singular
event. It is not an act or an operation because these terms presuppose that a reader
performs operations on a text, from a standpoint above and outside of the text. 55
Derrida uses the analogies of weaving and a game to describe the relationship between
a reader and a text. Derrida writes that a text hides from the first comer, from the first
glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. These laws and rules might
be described as contexts or grounding. The use of the words laws and rules seems
at first to be confusing way to describe grounding, in that we generally consider laws
and rules to be explicit, universally known, and understood, for example, the U.S.
Constitution or the Bibles Ten Commandments. However, the laws and rules that inform
a texts content, format, and structure are not laid out. Derrida writes that they can
never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called
perception.
These rule of a text may not be explicit, however, nor are they secret. Their
accessibility opens the possibility for a good deconstructive reading. Derrida uses the
analogy of undoing and reconstituting a web to describe any reading. The text is not the
web and the reading external to it; rather, each reading is part of the web; it pays
attention to certain threads in the text as well as adding its own. Derrida writes that no
criticism can master the game and survey all the threads at once. Criticism is
deluded when it attempts to look without touching. Derrida writes that the web will
catch fingers, even if the reading attempts not to lay a hand on the object. Object is
54 Derrida, DISSEMINATION. p. 72
55 Derrida, Letter to a Japanese Friend. p. 3
placed in quotation marks to indicate that the idea of a text as an object obscures the
(con)fusion between a text and a reading.
This however, does not give license to bad readings and criticisms that are not attentive
to the threads of a text. Derrida writes that a person who adds any old thing to a text
is undertaking just as foolish a reading as the person who thinks she can read from an
objective standpoint. This type of reading adds nothing because the seam wouldnt
hold. A good deconstructive reading, therefore, is self-aware: willing to risk the addition
of a new thread while remaining attuned to the laws and rules of the text. This type of
reading is "double" in that it pays attention both to the text and the reader; it reads
itself.56
Despite all of the above analysis, all of the above words about what deconstruction is
and what it is not, we have not captured (and cannot capture) the full force of the term
(if such a thing exists). Derrida is not satisfied with the word, "deconstruction" although
it might be the least bad option. Derrida writes that deconstruction "deconstructs itself"
It's reflexivity "bears the whole enigma." At the end of his letter to a Japanese friend
Derrida writes, "All sentences of the type 'deconstruction is X' or 'deconstruction is not
X' a priori miss the point, which is to say they are at least false." 57 This is an interesting
revelation, in light of the fact that Derrida spent most of his letter constructing
sentences just like that. Does his letter deconstruct itself at this point? Apparently, that
is what Derrida is trying to get at. Derrida writes, "What deconstruction is not?
Everything of course! What is deconstruction? Nothing of course!" 58
Derrida concludes that deconstruction has meaning only in the context of a chain of
significations, which Derrida says is the case for all words. John Caputo, in the book,
Deconstruction in a Nutshell, comments about the irony of trying to fit deconstruction
into a nutshell, when "the very meaning and mission of deconstruction is to show that
things--texts, institutions, traditions, societies, beliefs, and practices of whatever size
and sort you need--do not have definable meanings and determinable missions." 59
Nutshells are just the "least bad" way to define. As far as I can tell, the difference
between a deconstructive nutshell and the traditional sort is that the deconstructors
understand the trouble with nutshells.
In her essay, Teaching Deconstructively, Barbara Johnson writes, "Deconstruction has

sometimes been seen as a terroristic belief in meaninglessness. It is commonly opposed
59 Caputo, John D. DECONSTRUCTION IN A NUTSHELL. (New York, Fordham University
Press, 1997). p. 31
to humanism, which is then an imperialistic belief in meaningfulness. Another way to

distinguish between the two is to say that deconstruction is a reading strategy that
carefully follows both the meanings and suspensions and displacements of meaning in a
text, while humanism is a strategy to stop reading when the text stops saying what it
ought to have said." 60 Johnson asks the question could we have chosen to read
literally?61. A purely humanistic, literal reading strategy is impossible. Deconstruction
pays attention to the limitations inherent in any reading. It pays attention "to what a text
is doing--how it means not just what it means" (141). This is not nihisitic destruction of
meaning and texts, rather, it is a more careful way to attend to texts and meaning.
In response to a question at a roundtable discussion, Derrida commented that the

hallmark of his work is "respect for the great texts." Deconstruction is "an analysis which
tries to find out how their thinking works or does not work, to find the tensions, the
contradictions, the heterogeneity within their own corpus" 62. Deconstruction pays
attention to the tension between disruption and attentiveness to a text. However,
Johnson concludes, "no matter how rigorously a deconstructor might follow the letter of
the text, the text will end up showing the reading process as a resistance to the letter." A
certain blindness, or humanism, accompanies any reading. This, however, does not
deter Johnson: "it is precisely as an apprenticeship in the repeated and inescapable
oscillation between humanism and deconstruction that literature works its most rigorous
and inexhaustible seductions."63
Deconstruction is often a playful approach to texts. The philosophical tradition construes

play as outside of philosophy, along with myth, "magic," and emotion. In the tradition,
philosophy must take itself seriously. This is also a notion Derrida would like to call into
question. His own writing is playful; it acts out. He includes plays on words, puns,
creative hyphenations to call attention to the parts of words or suggest other meanings
(con-text, where the prefix "con" means "with"), brackets and parentheses that suggest
ambiguous readings (for example, "(t)here:" is this word here or there?), and marking
out words with X's to put them "under erasure" in order to question the notion of fixed
concepts.
Derrida views language and texts as always in play, and not governed by rules and
structures. Powell writes, "He says we should continuously attempt to see this free play
in all our language and texts--which otherwise will tend toward fixity, institutionalization,
centralization, totalitarianism. For out of anxiety we always feel a need to construct new
centers, to associate ourselves with them, and marginalize those who are different from
60 Johnson, Barbara. Teaching Deconstructively. WRITING AND READING DIFFERENTLY.
Ed. Atkins, G. Douglas and Michael L. Johnson. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas,
1985). p. 140
61 Johnson, p. 148
62 Caputo, p. 9
63 Johnson, p. 148
their central values."64 The philosophical tradition has always tried to turn free play into
games with rules. This implication of this free play is that if you come away from this
explanation of deconstruction with more questions than answers you just might be on
the right track. Answers constitute mastery, understanding, and regulation that is
impossible.
Another key Derridean idea/non-idea is "Diffrance." The term is not the same as the
French word "Diffrence," with an "e," although the two are pronounced in the same way.
The term is meant to connote both and neither a deferring and a differing. Like
"pharmakon" it cannot be pinned down and defined. The "a" in "Diffrance" is meant to
be disruptive, because when we see the "a" we are understanding nothing. It shakes the
division between signifiers and signifieds. Diffrance is meant to resist this opposition
between the "sensible," the words on the page, and the "intelligible," the ideal forms.
Derrida explains, "Diffrance is not only irreducible to any ontological or theological-ontotheological--reappropriation, but as the very opening of the space in which
ontotheology--philosophy--produces its system and its history, it includes ontotheology,
inscribing it and exceeding it without return." 65 By this he means that diffrance is prior
to God and metaphysics and ontology, all the systems used answer questions about how
and why we exist in the world, because diffrance is what allows you to separate the
categories of presence and absence in the world in the first place.
64 Powell, p. 29
65 Derrida, Jacques. MARGINS OF PHILOSOPHY. Trans. Alan Bass. (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1982). p. 6
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE DEBATE ROUND

There is a dangerous tendency for Lincoln Douglas and Policy debaters who seek to use
the works of Derrida in the debate round. That tendency is to reduce Derrida's
philosophies into radical subjectivist nihilism. These debaters may argue that because
Derrida demonstrates that the meanings of words are dependent on contexts that all
words have no meanings whatsoever. They may argue that all meaning depends on
one's subjective viewpoint, and is hence indecipherable. They may claim that because
there is no such thing as the "Truth," the judge cannot affirm the resolution.
The problem with this sort of argument is that, of course, if there is no truth or meaning,
the judge can neither affirm nor deny the resolution, hence, the debate cannot be
decided. This sort of application of "deconstruction" to the debate round also relies on a
poor reading of Derrida's texts. Deconstruction is not nihilistic, rather, it is precisely
attuned to meanings. Recognizing that texts do not have one true meaning and
interpretation does not abolish the concepts of meaning and interpretation altogether.
Deconstruction carefully traces the meanings of a text, including the what the text
literally says, as well as how the text goes about saying it, what it conspicuously leaves
out, and what possible unintended meanings can emerge when we stop worrying about
what the author, or framer of the resolution intended and examine also plays of
language and context. Deconstruction also deconstructs itself. A deconstructive reading
is double: it is aware of what it itself brings to a text. Debaters should be aware of what
they bring to the debate.
When I say text here, I do not mean to confine Derrida's analyses to the written word.
Rather, consider a text to be a broad term that can imply institutions, laws, cultures, and
practices. Deconstruction authorizes alternative readings of dominant institutions and
practices of power. As such, it is potentially politically subversive. Deconstruction can
give license to such practices as critical race theory, critical legal studies, and feminist
analysis; practices that analyze "how" a text, a law, or a practice may marginalize racial,
gendered, and sexual others, even though (or because) it doesn't mention them.
Deconstruction can also be a way to re-examine the idea of what counts as evidence.
Can performance, play, poetry, and paradox constitute ways to affirm and negate
resolutions just as values and criteria? Do these playful forms count as well as the
doctrines of philosophers and quotes and evidence from experts?
Deconstruction may be an original and compelling way for debaters to affirm or negate a
resolution. For example, take the resolution "The right of the individual to immigrate out
be valued above the nation's right to limit immigration." A traditional affirmation of this
resolution would probably lead one towards the value of "justice" and the criteria of
political philosophers, like John Rawls, for example, whose "Difference Principle" provides
the moral grounding upon which to argue that everyone, regardless of their social
status, ought be guaranteed the same opportunities, including choice in immigration. A
traditional negation might utilize the criteria of libertarians who argue that the same
value, "justice," is best guaranteed by protecting the freedom of individuals to earn
money without competition from immigrants.
Instead, how might a deconstructive negation of this resolution proceed? This negation
could be based on questioning the dichotomies that the language of the resolution is
premised on, for example, the question of "immigration" itself is based on the initial
divisions between individual/nation, citizen/alien, and inside/outside. Derrida's
deconstruction provides tools for questioning the naturalness of such divisions.
In Dissemination, Derrida explores the nature of divisions and exclusions and the
philosophical/interpretive tradition of privileging what is present as opposed to what is
absent, suspended, or displaced. Immigrants are an excellent example of this practice
manifested in political discourse. Derrida argues that the hegemonic role of logic is to
"keep the outside out." However, the problem arises that "this elimination, being
therapeutic in nature, must call upon the very thing it is expelling, the very surplus it is
putting out. The pharmaceutical operation must therefore exclude itself from itself." 66.
Exclusions must call upon the thing that they exclude. In excluding the other, on whom
they rely for self-constitution, they remove their own possibility. For there to be such a
thing as a "citizen," there must also be "non-citizens," immigrants, aliens, and others, or
the word "citizen" would have no meaning at all, it wouldn't make sense. Derrida's
philosophy invites us to ask, how is the citizen constituted by the immigrant, and vice
versa? How is the nation constituted by the individual, and vice versa?
Derrida examines the Greek word "pharmakos" which means both "evil" and "outside." 67
The pharmakos was a scapegoat in rituals to rid the city or the body of "what is the
vilest in itself."68 The pharmakoi were also men put to death in an annual Athenian ritual
of sexual purification. The ritual was necessary as the way the "city's body proper
reconstitutes its unity, closes around the security of its inner courts, gives back to itself
the word that links it with itself within the confines of the agora, by violently excluding
from its territory the representative of an external threat or aggression." 69 These
external threats are also internal. They have broken into the sanctity of the city. The
scapegoats were most often "degraded and useless beings" of Athens. Not only was it
necessary for Athens to cleanse the city of these threats for the city to reconstitute itself
in security. It is also necessary for humanity to "keep the outside out." Derrida explains,
"By this double and complementary rejection it delimits itself in relation to what is not
yet known and what transcends the known: it takes the proper measure of the human in
66 Derrida, DISSEMINATION. p. 128.
opposition on one side to the divine and heroic, on the other to the bestial and
monstrous."70 Deconstructive readings of contemporary discourse on the "immigrant"
will find references to these people as "dirty," "bestial," "lazy," poor workers who must
be kept out in order to keep the "nation" and economy clean and free.
The sacrifice of the pharmakos is a type of tracing "played out on the boundary line
between inside and outside." It is a way for the nation to "trace and retrace" the line
between inside and outside. The nation's self constitution depends on the exclusion of
these inside outsiders. These pharmakos are beneficial in the role they serve in
cleansing the city, but also harmful as evil outsiders. Derrida writes that these
contradictions undo themselves in the "passage to decision or crisis." 71 In a footnote
Derrida quotes Frye, who says that the pharmakos, like immigrants, are "neither
innocent nor guilty."72
Must the human community always retrace its lines by excluding others? If
deconstruction's project is break through and examine the sorts of oppositions
(inside/outside) that require the sacrifice of scapegoats, what political possibilities are
opened up? Derrida's project is "in going beyond the bounds of that lexicon." A lexicon is
the way we understand our language. Derrida wants to go beyond the ways we
traditionally understand language, as including and excluding. In doing this "we are less
interested in breaking through certain limits, with or without cause, than in putting in
doubt the right to posit such limits in the first place." 73
If we put in doubt the rights of the affirmative to posit the difference between the citizen
and the immigrant, we have negated the resolution in an exciting and untraditional way.
We have called into question the right of the affirmative to make these distinctions, and
we have located the source of oppression and inequality not in the "nation's right to limit
immigration" as the affirmative would have it, but rather, in the very terms of the
resolution itself. This may be why Derrida says that "Deconstruction is justice" and it is
one of many possibilities that deconstruction has to offer Lincoln-Douglas debate. 74

74
Martin, Bill. HUMANISM AND ITS AFTERMATH. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities
Press, 1995). p. xi
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DECONSTRUCTION IS GOOD
1. DECONSTRUCTION IS JUSTICE
Jacques Derrida, Professor of Philosophy, quoted by Bill Martin, HUMANISM AND ITS
AFTERMATH, 1995, p. xi.
It is this deconstructable structure of law [droit], or, if you prefer to justice, as droit, that
also insures the possibility of deconstruction. justice in itself, if such a thing exists,
outside or beyond law, is not deconstructable. No more than deconstruction itself, if
such a thing exists. Deconstruction is justice. I think that there is no justice without this
experience, however impossible it may be, of aporia. Justice is an experience of the
impossible. A will, a desire, a demand for justice whose structure wouldn't be an
experience of aporia would have no chance to be what it is, namely, a call for justice.
Every time that something comes to pass or turns out well, every time that we placidly
apply a good rule to a particular case, to a correctly subsumed example, according to a
determinant judgment, we can be sure that law [droit] may find itself accounted for, but
certainly not justice. Law [droitl is not justice. Law is the element of calculation, and it is
just that there be law, but justice is incalculable, it requires us to calculate the
incalculable, it requires us to calculate with the incalculable; and aporetic experiences
are the experiences, as improbable as they are necessary, of justice, that is to say of
moments in which the decision between just and unjust is never insured by a rule.
2. DECONSTRUCTION OPENS SPACE FOR DIVERSE VOICES

Bill Martin, Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University, HUMANISM AND ITS AFTERMATH,
1995, p. 2.
I aim to open a space for reading the writerly dimensions of western political modernity
and some of its canonical texts, as well as to open a common space for diverse voices
that have recently begun to make themselves heard. The aim, indeed, is to open the
"archive" of difference as found in both the canon of western modernity-even if in the
form of a repression of the other that must be read in the margins-and in the experience
of the masses. Even in the western and especially U.S. atmosphere of historical
amnesia., nothing is truly or fully forgotten. There is an archive of difference and the
strivings of people toward justice that may not be in books (or the books may not always
be in the hands of the people), that may not be in peoples minds (or in their conscious
thoughts), but that exists in their hearts, their lives, their forms of life, and the social
institutions that they inhabit and have marked with their lives. This characterization of
the archive and the need to open it, and to let it open itself, is deconstructive in both the
letter and the spirit of Derrida's work. My entire text must be the argument for this last
claim, and I hope that the reader will be convinced. The problem is truly that of showing
the coterminousness and compearance (co-appearance) of deconstruction and justice.
3. DECONSTRUCTION TAKES APART RACISM
Niall Lucy, nqa, INTERPRETATIONS: DEBATING DERRIDA, 1995, p. 6-7.

They have real effects, if Derrida is right, because-at the level of conditions of possibility,
conceptual axioms, or discursive statements-they are the same as those that sanction
apartheid. That is why apartheid is so abhorrent-or why it ought to be-and not because
those who suffer under a state-sanctioned racism (which in a sense is everyone) suffer
to a 'greater' extent than others. It isn't the effects of apartheid that constitute it, as a
special case, as the ultimate racism. It isn't the effects but rather the logic of apartheid
that is offensive. And it is this logic that Derrida mourns in 'Racism's Last Word',
precisely because it is not a 'special' logic; to this extent apartheid is not a special case,
even while being also-and necessarily-a 'unique appellation'. The word concentrates
separation, raises it to another power and sets separation itself apart: 'apartionality,'
something like that. By isolating being apart in some sort of essence or hypostasis, the
word corrupts it into a quasi-ontological segregation. At every point, like all racisms, it
tends to pass segregation off as natural-and as the very law of the origin. Such is the
monstrosity of this political idiom. Surely, an idiom should never incline toward racism. It
often does, however, and this is not altogether fortuitous: there's no racism without a
language. The point is not that acts of racial violence are only words but rather that they
have to have a word. Even though it offers the excuse of blood, color, birth-or, rather,
because it uses this naturalist and sometimes creationist discourse-racism always
betrays the perversion of man, the 'talking animal.'
DECONSTRUCTION OPENS NEW WAYS

OF THINKING
1. DERRIDA CHALLENGES THE NOTION OF "RESOLUTION"
David Wood, Director of the Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature, University
of Warwick, DERRIDA: A CRITICAL READER, 1992, p. 1-2
What once seemed to be a philosophical reflex - marking out a critical distance from the
philosopher or the position one is dealing with - is triply problematized in the case of
Derrida. Derrida does not, typically, take up philosophical positions, traditional or
otherwise. Nor does he ever unequivocally endorse the particular discourse he happens
to be employing or engaged with. Finally, the kind of relationships that Derrida
establishes with the texts he reads do not resolve themselves within, and indeed
fundamentally problematize the idea of, a homogenous space in which critical distances
can be measured and marked out.
2. DERRIDA EXPANDS THE SPACE OF READING

David Wood, Director of the Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature, University
of Warwick, DERRIDA: A CRITICAL READER, 1992, p. 3
None of Derrida's readers is required to take on board the various dimensions of his
writing that we have singled out. But not to notice the specificity of the relations he
establishes to other texts, not to recognize that Derrida is elaborating a new space of
reading, is surely to fail to address the real challenge (and seduction) of his work. The
differences between, say, Gaschd's articulation of Derrida's work as a theory of
infrastructures (in The Tain of the Mirror), Llewelyn's drawing out of an ethics of
responsibility, Nancy's evocation of the passion of the text and Sallis's account of
Derrida's mimetic mechanisms are real enough. What unites them with the other
contributors-Michel Haar, Geoffrey Bennington, Robert Bernasconi, Christopher Norris,
and Richard Rorty, and what Manfred Frank so clearly resists-is an engagement with the
expanded space of reading that Derrida's writing exemplifies without fully determining
(a structure which takes us close to Irene Harvey's concerns). This space involves both
the kind of features on which Gasch6 has concentrated-supplementarity, infrastructures
and so on-which would suggest the possibility of something like a deconstructive logic,
and the ethical space, the space of responsibility, which Llewelyn deals with here, and
which Derrida. is increasingly concerned to emphasize himself. We can begin to think the
relation between the two by coming to think of deconstructive readings not as
undermining a finished text, but as a responsiveness that re-engages with the conditions
of a text's production, with the desire that philosophy (and perhaps all theory)
articulates even when it is lost sight of. It might almost be worth the metaphysical
overdraft required to say that Derrida is engaged in a theatrical re-animation of the
textual space of philosophy's passion.
DECONSTRUCTION IS NOT NIHILISM
1. DECONSTRUCTION IS NOT NIHILISM

Niall Lucy, nqa, INTERPRETATIONS: DEBATING DERRIDA, 1995, p. 1
The modest aim of this book is to encourage people to read the work of Algerian-born
French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Before it is 'political', I take reading to be a first
principle of my profession. As a professional humanities academic, my own teaching and
research practices do not otherwise make any sense to me or hold any value unless they
begin from this principle, regardless of what might follow. In a word, I think it is
unprofessional of anyone involved in humanities scholarship to hold an opinion on
Derrida's work or what 'Derrida' stands for without having read him. My point is that too
much of what currently passes for a knowledge of Derrida's work-in academic journals
and in the popular press, in lectures and at conferences, and in university corridors-is
inadequate, ill informed, and very often wrong. The reason for this is that many of those
who have written Derrida off haven't actually read very much of what he has written, if
anything at all. Whatever else it may be, that's not a good model of critical practice.
DECONSTRUCTION IS NOT PROPERLY

POLITICAL
1. DECONSTRUCTIVE "PLAY" IS SILLINESS THAT DESTROYS ITS POLITICAL POTENTIAL
1995, p. xii-xiii.
In asking whether deconstruction might be the possibility of justice, Derrida is asking
whether there might be another conception of politics, another thinking of the polis. This
book aims to sharpen the sense of the alternative conception, theoretically and
practically, and to show why it is necessary to political thinking and praxis. In pursuing
this aim I connect especially with central themes in the Marxist tradition (or traditions).
However, I am greatly concerned here with the fate of deconstruction. I worry that it
may not be able to do all of the work that it could do, because of its tendency-the
tendency, at any rate, of "what is now called deconstruction, in its manifestations most
recognized as such"-to get bogged down in etymological play. This tendency gives way,
with some proponents of deconstruction, and sometimes with Derrida's work as well, to
a kind of silliness lacking any political edge whatsoever. This silliness seems to me a
preoccupation that a tired and even cynical Eurocentrism might indulge in. There are
better possibilities in deconstruction, especially when Marxist and Kantian themes are
engaged. In some respects this text is a workbook for such an engagement.
2. DERRIDA IS NOT AMMUNITION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities, University of Virginia, DERRIDA: A CRITICAL
READER, 1992, p. 236.
The quarrel about whether Derrida has arguments thus gets linked to a quarrel about
whether he is a private writer-writing for the delight of us insiders who share his
background, who find the same rather esoteric things as funny or beautiful or moving as
he does-or rather a writer with a public mission, someone who gives us weapons with
which to subvert 'institutionalized knowledge', and thus social institutions. I have urged
that Derrida be treated as the first sort of writer, whereas most of his American admirers
have treated him as, at least in part, the second. Lumping both quarrels together, one
can say that there is a quarrel between those of us who read Derrida on Plato, Hegel and
Heidegger in the same way as we read Bloom or Cavell on Emerson or Freud-in order to
see these authors transfigured, beaten into fascinating new shapes-and those who read
Derrida to get ammunition, and a strategy, for the struggle to bring about social change.
Norris thinks that Derrida should be read as a transcendental philosopher in the Kantian
tradition-somebody who digs out hitherto unsuspected presuppositions. 'Derrida', he
says, 'is broaching something like a Kantian transcendental deduction, an argument to
demonstrate ("perversely" enough) that a priori notions of logical truth are a priori ruled
out of court by rigorous reflection on the powers and limits of textual critique.'9 By
contrast, my view of Derrida is that he nudges us into a world in which 'rigorous
reflection on the power and limits . has as little place as do 'a priori notions of logical
truth'. This world has as little room for transcendental deductions, or for rigour, as for
self-authenticating moments of immediate presence to consciousness.
3. DERRIDA HAS NO GROUND FROM WHICH TO ASSAULT LOGOCENTRISM

READER, 1992, p. 237.
On my view, the only thing that can displace an intellectual world is another intellectual
world-a new alternative, rather than an argument against an old alternative. The idea
that there is some neutral ground on which to mount an argument against something as
big as 'logocentrism' strikes me as one more logocentric hallucination. I do not think that
demonstrations of 'internal incoherence' or of 'presuppositional relationships' ever do
much to disabuse us of bad old ideas or institutions. Disabusing gets done, instead, by
offering us sparkling new ideas, or utopian visions of glorious new institutions. The result
of genuinely original thought, on my view, is not so much to refute or subvert our
previous beliefs as to help us forget them by giving us a substitute for them. I take
refutation to be a mark of unoriginality, and I value Derrida's originality too much to
praise him in those terms. So I find little use, in reading or discussing him, for the notion
of 'rigorous argumentation'.
DECONSTRUCTION IS ELITIST
1. DECONSTRUCTION IS CLASSIST
1995, p. 9.
A debt of gratitude is owed to the Yale School. It was the pathway through which Jacques
Derrida's work came to be disseminated in North America. I do not wish to engage in
crude or reductive analysis. However, launched as it was as a North American
movement, deconstruction bears the marks of its elite class origins. There is the need,
then, to extend deconstruction beyond the halls of the Ivy League academies and far
beyond the academy in general. There is a further need for a kind of "recovery" (another
word that seems funny in this context) of deconstruction, a return to Derrida's texts and
to their position in relation to the canons of western philosophy and literature. I need not
ignore or disparage the work of the Yale critics in order to move this agenda. Finally,
there is the need to deepen the project of deconstruction, which again means taking
deconstruction beyond the academy, particularly beyond the academy's superficiality
with regard to the most significant questions facing humanity. Here the class character
of much deconstruction as practiced in the academy, and the class character of the
academy, as stamped upon much of the practice of deconstruction, stands as a major
obstacle in the way of a deconstruction that really works, on every level, to let the other
speak.
DECONSTRUCTION IS BASED ON A FLAWED VIEW OF LANGUAGE
1. IT NOT DEMONSTRATE CONTRADICTIONS INHERENT IN LANGUAGE

READER, 1992, p. 241.
Nominalists like myself-those for whom language is a tool rather than a medium, and for
whom a concept is just the regular use of a mark or noisecannot make sense of Hegel's
claim that a concept like 'Being' breaks apart, sunders itself, turns into its opposite, etc.,
nor of Gasch's Derridean claim that 'concepts and discursive totalities are already
cracked and fissured by necessary contradictions and heterogeneities'. The best we
nominalists can do with such claims is to construe them as saying that one can always
make an old language-game look bad by thinking up a better one-replace an old tool
with a new one by using an old word in a new way (for example, as the 'privileged'
rather than the 'derivative' term of a contrast), or by replacing it with a new word. But
this need for replacement is ours, not the concept's. It does not go to pieces; rather, we
set it aside and replace it with something else.
2. LANGUAGE SHOULD NOT BE THOUGHT OF AS A MEDIUM

READER, 1992, p. 242.
Gasch is quite right in saying that to follow Wittgenstein and Tugendhat in this
nominalism will reduce what he wants to call 'philosophical reflection' to 'a fluidization or
liquefaction (Verflussigung) of all oppositions and particularities by means of objective
irony'.19 Such liquefaction is what I am calling Aufhebung and praising Derrida for
having done spectacularly well. We nominalists think that all that philosophers of the
world-disclosing (as opposed to the problem-solving) sort can do is to fluidize old
vocabularies. We cannot make sense of the notion of discovering a 'condition of the
possibility of language'-nor, indeed, of the notion of 'language' as something
homogeneous enough to have 'conditions'. If, with Wittgenstein, Tugendhat, Quine and
Davidson, one ceases to see language as a medium, one will reject a fortiori Gaschs
claim that '[language] must, in philosophical terms, be thought of as a totalizing
medium. That is only how a certain antinominalistic philosophical tradition-'the
philosophy of reflection'-must think of it.
RENE DESCARTES
PHILOSOPHER 1596 - 1650
Regarded as the founder of modem philosophy, Rene Descartes is among the most
highly regarded European philosophers who ever lived. His scholarship in the fields of
science, mathematics and philosophy has ranked him among the most brilliant men in
modem history.
Descartes was born on March 31, 1596 in La Haye-Descartes, France, to parents who
were fairly well-to-do. Originally, the town was only named La Haye, but Descartes was
added in his honor. He never married, although he apparently lived with a Dutch woman
far many years who bore him a daughter who died in childhood
Because his parents had some wealth, Descartes received a quality education at the
Jesuit academy of La Flche in France and later received a law degree from the
University of Poitiers. As a young man he was able to travel throughout Europe, mostly
as a volunteer in national military units, like the Dutch and Bavarian armies. It was
during these travels that Descartes began to develop his concepts in philosophy and
mathematics. Among some of the men who influenced Descartes were the Dutch
scientist Isaac Beeckman and Pierre Cardinal de Brulle, a leading figure in the Roman
Catholic Renaissance in France.
Philosophical and Methodological

Summary
Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. Anyone who has studied philosophy is familiar
with this phrase.
It is paradoxically a simple yet, highly complex philosophical notion. And it is the root of
Descartess
beliefs.
Several different terms have been used to describe the type of philosophy Descartes
developed, among them are rationalism, objectivism, and epistemology. Rationalism is
generally considered the kind of philosophical belief that knowledge stems from reason,
not experience. The term objectivism has been attached to Cartesian philosophy
because it is rooted in the notion that knowledge should be free of subjective elements
that are attributed to the person expressing the knowledge. In other words, there must
be a source for knowledge outside of experience. Finally, epistemology is the central
area of philosophy that is concerned with the nature and justification of knowledge
claims.
Rationalism, objectivism, and epistemology all represented theories that were

contradictory to the prevailing philosophical tenants of Descartess day. Essentially,
most European teaching of that time was based on skepticism, that is, humans can not
be certain of very much. Therefore, Descartes was unique among his contemporaries
because he held that there was an alternative philosophical position. He rejected
skepticism and instead felt that one must suspend belief of any perceptions that are
based on sensory data. In other words, just because something is perceived by sight or
sound, for example, does not necessarily mean that is real or true.
According to scholar C.G. Prado, Descartes best represents the view that human reason
is capable of determining objective truth, and therefore of gaining timeless and certain
knowledge. Prado writes, Descartes view was that truth is objective, that it is timeless
and autonomous in the sense of being wholly independent of human interests, and that
it is accessible to human reason. Thus, Prado claims that for Descartes, the only proper
aim for inquiry was to seek absolute knowledge. 1
Descartes believed that information obtained through the senses could never be
conclusive and even deceptive. Therefore, in order to construct a new basis for
discerning what was true and to be believed he began with what he knew to be a fact
not based on the senses: I think, therefore I am. This one sentence was not based on
anything be had touched, smelled, saw, or tasted, it was a fact.
11 C.G. Prado, Descartes and Foucault. (Canada: University of Ottawa Press, 1992), p. 6.
While Descartess search for truth seems to be based on a simple premise, over the
centuries it has generated enormous amounts of research, study, and debate. It is
perhaps the most widely studied philosophical theory in Western thought several experts
have tried to synthesize and explain Cartesian philosophy. One of the these experts is
C.G. Prado, who wrote that the Cartesian method analyze[s] the complex into its simple
components, and to test those components by comparing them to an indubitable sample
of truth. Only when the various components have been found to be individually true can
the aggregate, the original complex notion, be accepted as true. 2
22 lbid., Descartes and Foucault p. 40.
Divinity of God
Because Descartes did not devote his research to only one area of scholarship, it is
difficult to summarize his philosophy regarding all topics. However, it is possible to
develop a cursory summary of some of his better known topics, such as God and
science, and to synthesize the process that is called die Cartesian method of philosophy.
Descartes held a firm belief in a higher being, namely the Christian God. It was this
belief in God that allowed Descartes to create many of his theories. He had no doubt
that a benevolent God existed and guaranteed that some beliefs can be relied upon as
universally and absolutely true. His reliance on the existence of God has been termed
the Divine guarantee of knowledge. For some of Descartess critics this absolute belief in
God is a contradiction in philosophy because Descartes had no factual basis on which to
base this belief. Descartes himself pondered this apparent contradiction. Descartes
resolved this dilemma by developing what he believed was a logical conclusionbased
mostly on faith.
In Descartess opinion, God was the embodiment of perfection. Further, God implanted
the notion of imperfection in humans, since humans could not possibly know perfection
based on experience. Therefore, it was only logical to Descartes that God was the
perfect being who created people and who is the measure by which all other
comparisons to perfection must be made.3
33 Georges Dicker, Descartes An Analytical and Historical Introduction (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993), p. 88.
Contributions to Science
Descartes used a similarly strong belief in his scientific views. Basically, he felt that it
was possible to describe the attributes of the physical world entirely by mathematical
physics in a single set of numerical laws. This theory was opposite of the Aristotelian
theories that were taught up until the seventeenth-century in Europe. Such scientific
theory held that independent sets of natural laws governed the behavior of objects.
However, Descartes rejected such explanations for science because they assumed that
humans could know for what purpose God had designed and created the world.
Descartes applied his radical view of science to a variety of scientific and mathematical
topics including analytic geometry, physics, astronomy, meteorology, optics, and
physiology. It is probably in the area of physiology that Descartes made some of his
most important contributions to science.
He laid the foundation for the conception of the human body as a machine whose
structure and behavior were to be understood entirely on mechanical principles. 4 His
greatest treatise on the topic of body and mind can be found in The Passions of the Soul,
a book which highlighted his views on physiology.
44 lbid., p. 37.
Summary of Writings and Publications

Descartes was a prolific writer on a variety of topics. The following summaries are
offered to provide brief descriptions of some of his more well known works. The English
translation of the original title is listed first, with the title in its publication language
either French or Latinoffered in parentheses.
Discourse on Method (Diccours de la mthode)

Published anonymously in 1637 as three essays, it is widely regarded as one of the
classics of French literature. This volume contains an autobiography, sketches of
Descartess method and metaphysics, examinations of scientific questions (including an
account of Harveys discovery of the circulation of the blood, which Descartes was
among the first to appreciate and to publicize), and a discussion of the conditions and
prospects of further progress in the sciences.
The World (U Monde)

This book presented parts of Descartess system of physics and the results of his
research in physiology and in embryology. This was an impactful and controversial book
that was not published until after his death. Descartes stopped its publication because
he feared the repercussions it might have created. He wrote it at the time Galileo was
being condemned by the Catholic Church for espousing the Copernican theory of the
solar system. Descartes also relied on Copernicus for some of the foundations in this
book, and thus he did not want to endure the same fate as Galileo.
Meditations Concerning Primary Philosophy (Mediationes de prima philosophia)

Many scholars believe this was Descartes most important work. Published in 1641, it
established the framework of concepts and the basic assumptions that he believed the
progress of science required. It is this book that is frequently analyzed and used to
demonstrate Descartess philosophy.
Principles of Philosophy (Principia philosophiae)

This full account of Descartess philosophical and scientific views was published in Latin
in 1644.
However, it did not receive the positive reaction he had hoped for among the religious
authoritiesboth
Catholic and Protestant It was a disappointment to Descartes that eventually many of
his books were later
placed on the Catholic Churchs list of banned materials.
Treatise on the Passions (Us passions de 1 me)

This was Descartess last book which was written in 1649. Considered by many scientists
to be a groundbreaking volume, it dealt mainly with psychology, ethics and the
relationship between mind and body.
Criticism and Conclusion

Empiricists provided some of the harshest criticism of Descartes, especially John Locke,
George Berkely and David Hume. These men argued that experience is the sole source
of knowledge and reason is only the means for productive manipulation of experiential
knowledge.
Among contemporary philosophers, the group labeled Post-modernists offer theories

that contradict
Descartes. As was stated above, Descartes was an objectivist. Conversely, some Postmodernists like
Foucault are constructivists. Foucault believed that the Cartesian explanation of
knowledge deriving from a
divine source was absurd. While Descartes sought to investigate an objective and
independent reality,
Foucault believed experience contributed much more to reality and knowledge than
Descartes did.5
The criticism of empiricists and post-modernists not withstanding, the influence of

Descartes on modern philosophy cannot be understated. As Cottinghain, Stoothoff and
Murdocb wrote in their introduction to a translation of Descartess writings, it is to the
writings of Descartes, above all others, that we must turn if we wish to understand the
great seventeenth-century revolution in which the old scholastic world view slowly lost
its grip, and the foundations of modern philosophical and scientific thinking were laid. 6
Descartes conceived fresh programs for philosophy and science during a time when the
European intellectual environment still focused on teachings of the Middle Ages and
Renaissance.
55 lbid., Descartes and Foucault p. 97.

66 John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, Descartes Selected
Philosophical Writings (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge,
1988), p. vii.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boney, Willis. Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays. Notre Dame, Indiana: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1967.
Butler, Ronald Joseph. Cartesian Studies. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1972.
Cottingham, John, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Descartes. Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Cristaudo, Wayne. The Metaphysics of Science and Freedom: From Descartes to Kant to
Hegel. Brookfield, Vermont: Gower, 1981.
Curley, Edwin M. Descartes Against the Skeptics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1978.
Descartes, Rene. Descartes Dictionary. Translated by John M. Morris. New York:

Philosophical Library, 1971.
Descartes, Rene. Descartes His Moral Philosophy and Psychology. Translated by John J.
Blom. New York:
New York University Press, 1978.
Descartes, Rene. Descartes: Philosophical Writings. Translated and edited by Norman

Kemp. London:
Macmillan, 1952.
Descartes, Rene. Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings. Translated by John

Cottinghanr, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge
Grene, Marjorie Glicksman. Descartes. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1985.
Kenny, Anthony John Patrick. Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy. New York: Random
House, 1968.
Lennon, Thomas M. The Battle of the Gods and Giants: the Legacies of Descartes and
Gassendi 1655-1715. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Mahaffy, John Pentland, Sir. Descartes. Edinburgh; London: W. Blackwood and Sons,
1902.
Mellone, Sydney Herbert. The Dawn of Modern Thought: Descartes. Spinoza. Leibniz.
London: Oxford University Press, 1930.
Pearl, Leon. Boston, Descartes. Twayne Publishers, 1977.
Scbouls, Peter A. The Imposition of Method: A Study of Descartes and Locke. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1988.
Sorell, Tom. Descartes. Oxford: New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Watson, Richard A. The Breakdown of Cartesian Metaphysics. Atlantic Highlands, New

Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1987.
Watson, Richard A. The Downfall of Cartesianism 1673-1712. A Study of Epistemological

Issues in Late 17th Century Cartesianism. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986.
Wilson, Margaret Dauler. Descartes. London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.
Wolf Devine, Celia. Descartes on Seeing: Epistemology and Visual Perception.

Carbondale: Published for the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.; Southern Illinois
DOUBTFUL EVIDENCE MUST BE

REJECTED
1. REASON CREATES DOUBT ABOUT ALL BELIEFS
Rene Descartes, Philosopher, DESCARTES SELECTED PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS, 1988, p.
76.
Reason now leads me to think that I should hold back my assent for opinions which are
not completely
certain and indubitable just as carefully as I do from those which are patently false. So,
for the purpose of rejecting all my opinions, it will be enough if I find in each of them at
least some reason for doubt And to do this I will not need to run through them all
individually, which would be an endless task.
2. ALL DOUBTFUL OPINIONS MUST BE REJECTED TO DETERMINE TRUTH

160.
Since we began life as infants, and made various judgments concerning the things that
can be perceived by the senses before we had the full use of our reason, there are may
preconceived opinions that keep us from knowledge of the truth. It seems that the only
way of freeing ourselves from these opinions is to make the effort, once in the course of
our life, to doubt which we find to contain even the smallest suspicion of uncertainty.
3. ALL BELIEFS MUST BE REJECTED BASED ON DOUBT

123.
In just the same way, those who have never philosophized correctly have various
opinions in their minds which they have begun to store up since childhood, and which
they therefore have reason to believe may in many cases be false. They then attempt to
separate the rest and making the whole lot uncertain. Now the best way they can
accomplish this is to reject all their beliefs together in one go, as if they were all
uncertain and false.
OBJECTIVE REALITY IS USED TO JUDGED

IDEAS
1. THERE ARE DIVERSE DEGREES OF REALITY
Rene Descartes, Philosopher, THE PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS OF DESCARTES, 1968, p. 56.
There are diverse degrees of reality or (the quality of being an) entity, for substance has
more reality than accident or mode; and infinite substance has more than finite
substance. Hence there is more objective reality in the idea of substance than in that of
accident; more in the idea of an infinite than in that of a finite substance.
2. IDEAS CONTAIN LESS REALITY THAN SUBSTANCE

There is no doubt that those which represent to me substances of something more, and
contain so to speak more objective reality within them, that those that simply represent
modes or accidents; and that idea gain by which I understand a supreme God, eternal,
infinite, omnipotent, the Creator of all reality in itself than those by which finite
substances are represented.
3. IDEAS ARE SUBJECT TO OBJECTIVE REALITY

Now the reality attaching to an idea is distinguished as two-fold by you. Its formal reality
cannot indeed be anything other than the fine substance which has issued out of me,
and has been received into the understanding and has been fashioned into an idea. (But
if you will not allow that the semblance proceeding from an object is a substantial
effluence, adopt whatever theory you will, you decrease the images reality.)
But its objective reality can only be the representation or likeness to me which the ideas
carries, or indeed only that proportion in the disposition of its parts in virtue of which
they recall me. Whichever way you take it, there seems to be nothing really there; since
all that exists is the mere relation of the parts of the idea to each other and to me, i.e. a
mode of its formal existence in respect of which it is constructed in this particular way.
But this is no matter, call it, if you like, the objective reality of an idea.
EVIDENCE BASED ON PERCEPTIONS

CANNOT BE TRUSTED
1. PERCEPTIONS DERIVED FROM SENSES CANNOT BE BELIEVED
76. Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the
senses or through the senses. But from tune to time I have found that the senses
deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even
once.
2. EVIDENCE OBTAINED FROM SENSES CANNOT BE TRUSTED

160-1. Given then, that our efforts are directed solely to the search for truth, our initial
doubts will be about the existence of the objects of sense-perception and imagination.
The first reason for such doubts is that from time to time we have caught out the senses
when they were in error, and it is prudent never to place too much trust in those who
have deceived us even once. The second reason is that in our sleep we regularly seem
to have sensory perception of, or to imagine, countless things which do not exist
anywhere; and if our doubts are on the scale just outlined, there seem to be no marks by
means of which we can with certainty distinguish being asleep from being awake.
3. INTELLECT NOT SENSES PROVIDE ABILITY TO REASON

124. But the sense alone does not suffice to correct the visual error in addition we need
to have some degree of reason which tells us that in this case we should believe the
judgment based on touch rather than that elicited by vision. And since we did not have
this power of reasoning in our infancy, it must be attributed
not to the senses but to the intellect. Thus even in the very example my critics produce,
it is the intellect alone which corrects the error of the senses; and it is not possible to
produce any case in which error results from our trusting the operation of the mind more
than the senses.
4. WHAT IS PERCEIVED BY THE SENSES MUST NOT BE JUDGED AS REAL

184. In order to distinguish what is clear in this connection from what is obscure, we
must be very careful to note that pain and colour and so on are clearly and distinctly
perceived when they are regarded as merely sensations or thoughts. But when they are
judged to be real things existing outside our mind, there is no way of understanding
what sort of things they are. If someone says he sees colour in a body or feels pain in a
limb, this amounts to saying that he sees or feels something there of which he is wholly
ignorant, or, in other words, that be does not know what he is seeing or feeling.
5. JUDGEMENTS BASED ON SENSES CAN VARY WIDELY

185. But the way in which we make our judgment can vary very widely. As long as we
merely judge that there is in the objects (that is, in the things, whatever they may turn
out to be, which are the source of our sensations) something whose nature we do not
know, then we avoid error; indeed, we are actually guarding against error, since the
recognition that we are ignorant of something makes us less liable to make any rash
judgment about it.
6. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO TRULY UNDERSTAND WHAT OUR SENSES PERCEIVE

185. Of course, we do not really know what it is that we are calling a colour; and we
cannot find any intelligible resemblance between the colour which we suppose to be in
objects and that which we experience in our sensations. But this is something we do not
take account of, and, what is more, we clearly perceive to be actually or at least possibly
present in objects in a way exactly corresponding to our sensory perception or
understanding. Ad so we easily fall into the error of judging that what is called colour in
objects is something exactly like the colour of which we have sensory awareness; and
we make the mistake of thinking that we clearly perceive what we do not perceive at all.
JOHN DEWEY
"Men have never fully used [their] powers to advance the good in life, because they
have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they
are responsible for doing."
John Dewey
INTRODUCTION
This essay will explore the life and thought of John Dewey, a distinctively American
pragmatist philosopher. Dewey has influenced famous contemporary thinkers such as
Richard Rorty and Donald Davidson in the area of philosophy, as well as countless
teachers and educational theorists. What makes Dewey uniquely American is his
pragmatism. Dewey held that transcendent truths were not as important as the
collective experience of ordinary human beings. For Dewey, the ultimate test of a theory
or idea was whether it worked for ordinary people applying the theory or idea.
After examining Deweys interesting life, I will attempt to explain both the philosophy of
pragmatism and Deweys educational philosophy. Both of these philosophies stem from
particular assumptions such as the vitality of experience and usefulness, the primacy of
collective and community activity over individual reflection, and the belief that humans
can progress and improve themselves over time. A brief synopsis of some general
objections of Dewey follows, along with some ideas about how Dewey can be used in
value debate.
Life and Work

John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, on October 20, 1859, the son of a grocer.
Dewey's father owned a general store in the small Vermont community, and Dewey grew
up listening to local customers at the store discuss politics and culture. From a very early
age, John Dewey witnessed the kind of community participation that would inspire his
views on society, politics and education. Burlington possessed paradoxical traits (and in
many ways, still does): It was both a local intellectual center and a community of simple
farming and trade. If, as some critics have charged, Dewey possessed an unreasonable
utopian trust in communities, it may very well have been his youth in Burlington that
inspired that trust. At the same time, Dewey would come to reject the small town
provincialism of Burlington in favor of the changing and growing national community
that characterized the second half of the 19th century.
Dewey stayed in Burlington after graduating from the public schools, and enrolled at the
University of Vermont. He graduated in 1879, at the age of twenty, and taught high
school for three years. These early teaching experiences no doubt forced Dewey to
realize that something was not quite right with the education system in America.
Students were herded in and out of classrooms, taught to memorize proofs and facts and
histories, and expected to regurgitate them faithfully. There seemed to be different
"tracks" for different students, from base "vocational" education to higher forms of
learning, and these divisions were often based on students' economic circumstances
rather than any useful distinctions. Not surprisingly, Dewey left public school teaching in
favor of exploring the alternatives that might be available.
In the fall of 1882, Dewey enrolled in the philosophy graduate program at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, Maryland. Two years later, he received his PhD. in philosophy,
and received an appointment from the University of Michigan to teach philosophy and
psychology. By now, the young scholar had experienced a wide range of educational
models, from the naive provincialism of small town public schools to the progressive
possibilities of advanced study in philosophy. He was beginning to realize that what
separated these extremes was not so much the "natural talent" of students as the
philosophical commitments of the instructors and administrators. He would come to
understand that if teachers and administrators believed in students, saw students as
valuable in and of themselves, rather than seeing them as defects to be corrected or
workers to be trained, most students would take advantage of the opportunities afforded
them, and grow accordingly.
In 1894, Dewey was appointed professor of philosophy and chair of the department of
philosophy, psychology and pedagogy at the University of Chicago. It was at Chicago
where Dewey would begin experimenting with his progressive theories of education, and
these experiments, along with his prolific and rigorous essays in philosophy and
psychology, brought national fame to the young man from Burlington. However, the
experiments and the progressive thinking also brought Dewey directly into conflict with
University of Chicago President William Rainey Harper, who by all accounts represented
exactly the kind of "old school" traditionalism Dewey opposed. In 1904, Dewey left the
University of Chicago to become a professor of philosophy at Columbia University in New

York City.
John Dewey would stay at Columbia for the next 47 years. His writings and experiments
enjoyed free reign and institutional encouragement, and he would produce a body of
work nearly unmatched in the history of American philosophy. He wrote essays and
books about epistemology, politics, ethics, and education. He influenced teachers and
educational theorists all over the world. To them, he offered a notion that was both
politically radical and educationally sound: Education must occur through real, genuine
experience, engaged to the child by teachers who visibly value the child, and allow the
child to participate in his or her own education.
(http://inst.augie.edu/~mafjerke/dewey.htm)
Perhaps one of the most significant, and least known, of Dewey's achievements came in
1937 when he chaired the "Dewey Commission," an effort to clear Soviet revolutionary
leader Leon Trotsky of Josef Stalin's charges that Trotsky was a counterrevolutionary
sabuteur. A collection of anti-Stalinist left activists and anti-capitalist figures asked
Dewey to chair the commission because, although Dewey was no socialist, he was
viewed by leftists as fair, impartial, and concerned with social justice. Dewey's
commission cleared Trotsky of all of Stalin's charges, which did not stop Stalin's agents
from assassinating Trotsky in Mexico a short time later
(wsws.org/history/1997/may1997/dewey.shtml).
Dewey's role in vindicating Trotsky is important because it shows how his concern for
justice and solidarity overrode his differences with the communists. At a gathering of
Trotsky's defenders, Dewey and Trotsky shared a laugh when Trotsky reportedly said "If
more liberals were like you, I might be a liberal," and Dewey replied "If more socialists
were like you, I might be a socialist." This exchange speaks volumes about Dewey's
philosophy and politics. He believed that shared experiences were always more
important than ideological doctrines. The fact that he could share such honest and
sincere humor with one of the most dogmatic ideologues of the 20th century
underscores Dewey's commitment to pluralism.
John Dewey died on June 1, 1952. No other 20th century American philosopher has
enjoyed a greater impact on the day-to-day workings of the system, and despite this
impact, few philosophers are more misunderstood.
Deweys Philosophy of Pragmatism

Dewey's metaphysical assumptions naturally lead to an embrace of the kind of
pragmatism advocated in the 19th century by William James (1842-1910) and Charles
Saunders Peirce (1839-1914). James and Peirce believed that theoretical soundness was
not a matter of adherence to some kind of transcendent logic, removed from everyday
experience. "Truth" for pragmatists is not determined in reference to absolute
metaphysical principles, but rather in reference to what "works," and what coheres with
the genuine experience of living subjects. This explains why, concerning the philosophy
of religion, William James was more concerned about people's personal religious
experiences than with the various logical "proofs" for God's existence, or appeals to the
truth of scripture.
Similarly, Dewey sees humans as part of nature, and sees nature as constantly
changing. "A thing is its history" for Dewey, and that history is lived experience (Gordon
L. Ziniewicz, www.fred.net/tzaka/deweynew.html). Humans, as part of nature, also have
a history of change, both as a race and as individuals. Like existentialists, Dewey
believes that what constitutes "human nature" is a history of experience. But unlike
existentialists, Dewey believes that history and experience are collective as well as
individual. This will become important later, when we see how strongly Dewey believes
in cooperation instead of competition.
Pragmatism holds that there is no such thing as "absolute certainty," in theory or
practice. Humans may, through experience and reflection (in fact, Dewey sees mental
reflection as part of the sum of human experience), reach near-certainty about theories
or ideas. This near-certainty results not from an abstract examination of a theory or idea,
but through a contemplation of the consequences of behaving as if the theory or idea
were true.
For example, I may have the idea that procrastination is an undesirable character trait,
that I should adhere to my schedule and not put things off until the last minute. I may
have this idea because my parents kept pounding it into my head, because my teachers
warn me about it, and so on. But unless the "procrastination is bad" idea is validated by
my lived experience, I could never consider it "true." In fact, my experience may
contradict the advice of my parents and teachers. I may work well under the pressure of
the last minute. I may be talented enough to pull off last-minute miracles. My lived
experience tells me that it is okay to procrastinate.
At least, until the inevitable time that my last-minute miracle doesn't happen. My
assignment is poorly written; my teacher tells me it's obvious I wrote it the night before.
I fail. At that point, I reconsider the original idea, and begin to think that procrastination
might be bad after all.
This example illustrates two important aspects of Dewey's pragmatism. First, as already
stated, my lived experience is more important than logic or metaphysics in determining
the truth or falsity of a claim. Second, however, the example shows that theories and
ideas change. I hold something true as long as my experience verifies it. When my
experience no longer verifies it, I no longer have sound reason to hold it true.
For Dewey, experience can be active or passive, and includes reflection as well as
interaction. Thus, experience is not (as it was for the empiricists), the simple reception
and contemplation of external data. It includes long-term, rigorous meditation on ideas
and things. It may even include mystical, emotional, or religious experience. As long as
those things add to my understanding of the way the world works (and remember, I am
part of the world), then they are valuable parts of the way I know things. (Ziniewicz,
IBID)
Many scholars refer to these pragmatic ideas as John Deweys instrumentalism. In

sum, instrumentalism holds that humans encounter problems and exercise mental
inquiry to solve those problems. They experiment, test, propose and oppose, and
through trial and error reach a higher stage of understanding. The journey to higher
levels of understanding has no end, as there is no absolute certainty:
Dewey's 'instrumentalism' defined inquiry as the transformation of a puzzling,

indeterminate situation into one that is sufficiently unified to enable warranted assertion
or coherent action; and the knowledge that is the object of inquiry is, Dewey insisted,
just as available in matters of morals and politics as in matters of physics and chemistry.
What is required in all cases is the application of intelligent inquiry, the self-correcting
method of experimentally testing hypotheses created and refined from our previous
experience. What counts as 'testing' may vary with the 'felt difficulty' in need of
resolution-testing may occur in a chemistry laboratory, in imaginative rehearsal of
conflicting habits of action, in legislation that changes some functions of a government but in all cases there is a social context, mediating both the terms of the initial problem
and its solution, and being in turn transformed by the inquiry.
(http://www.xrefer.com/entry/551811)
Finally, Dewey is a strong proponent of collectivism and cooperation. There are many
reasons for this beyond mere progressive political sentiment. Rather, his collectivism
stems directly from his belief in the universality of experience as the arbiter of
knowledge. I do not learn things merely by self-reflection. My experiences include the
stories and experiences of other people. Moreover, "community ideals" are those ideas
and principles that a community develops over time, as a result of collective experience.
This explains Dewey's strong support of schools and progressive education, which we'll
examine in the next section. Finally, Dewey supports community ideals because,
pragmatically speaking, we achieve more cooperating with others than we achieve on
our own.
In summary, Dewey's philosophy is an affirmation of humans as part of an ever-changing
natural world. Abstract principles are only valuable insofar as they cohere to our
experiences of and in this ever-changing natural world. Part of this experience is our
membership in a community, where we learn from and with other people. The best
political world is one that maximizes the strength of communities, to the maximum
benefit of all participants.
Deweys Views on Education

Education is not a preparation for life; Education is life itself.
John Dewey
As might be suggested by his pragmatism, John Dewey believed education must be

informed by genuine experience, constant interaction, and community values. Although
he did not reject the notion that some individuals may be more motivated than others to
learn, he nevertheless believed that one's environment was a huge determining factor in
one's educational development. In many ways, then, Dewey's theory of education was a
direct result of his pragmatist philosophical perspective. (www.infed.org/thinkers/etdewey.htm)
One of the most significant differences between traditional educational approaches and
Dewey's "progressive" views of education was his perspective on the role of teachers.
Dewey did not view instructors as absolute authorities imposing ideas and practices on
students. Rather, he saw teachers as facilitators, guiding students through the learning
process, and he believed this ought to be done as democratically as possible. Contrary
to the picture some critics have painted of Dewey, he did not believe in some kind of
simplistic (and utopian) democracy where students have as much authority as teachers.
He simply believed that much more democracy was possible in the classroom; that
students could be taught the virtues of democracy by learning to participate, in feasible
ways, in their own educational experiences.
Dewey rejected the "checklist" rigor of individual assignments and isolated studies in
favor of group learning, discussion, and genuine experiences. If students are learning
about agriculture, Dewey would rather students visit a farm and share in some of the
farm work than just read about farms in a book. If the subject was politics and
government, Dewey would prefer that students form their own governments and raise
issues and solicit votes than merely listen to a lecture on how governments function in a
democracy.
Objections to Dewey
Critics of John Deweys philosophy include both philosophers opposed to pragmatism,
and political activists opposed to the soft, utopian liberalism of Deweys political
positions. Objections to pragmatism usually come in the form of metaphysical assertions
that the truth of a claim is not dependent upon the experiential validation of that claim.
To cite the example I used in the section on pragmatism, those opposed to Dewey would
argue that the statement You should not procrastinate has a truth-value independent
of my verification of that statement with my own experience.
However, more strongly worded objections come from the political side. Primarily,
Dewey is charged with having utopian aspirations regarding cooperation and
progressivism, but at the same time ignoring real-world barriers to his utopia.
Conservatives, for example, charge that Dewey believes all citizens (and particularly
students, in regards to his educational philosophy) have the same basic abilities, or the
same potential for genius; that Dewey seems to believe that all differences come from
the environment. Conservatives believe that people have different abilities, and that
perceived inequalities in society are really just the result of the cold, hard fact that
some people are more talented and industrious than others.
More criticism comes from those to the political left of Dewey, such as Marxists. For
them, Dewey is a liberal in the negative sense of the term. He believes everyone can
get along, even though Marxists believe that there can be no reconciliation between
the ruling class and the working class. Thus, Dewey offers a vision of universal
enlightenment and progressive, community virtues, but offers no material means of
getting to such a world. The desire that we all get along and progress together is not
enough.
Implications for Debate

Deweys educational philosophy is in a class by itself, and any value debate topic
dealing with education should inspire a great deal of research on Deweys ideas. But in
this section I will concern myself only with his general philosophy. The following main
points suggest ways in which debaters can incorporate the ideas of John Dewey:
Democracy: Obviously, Dewey is a strong proponent of democracy, for unique reasons.
Dewey believes that we learn, both individually and collectively, through
experimentation and the consideration of all ideas and possibilities. For Dewey, the clash
of ideas and approaches found in a healthy democracy is the paradigm example of a
progressive society.
Necessity of Experience rather than Idealism: Dewey provides a solid answer to
philosophers such as Plato, Hegel, Ayn Rand, Leo Strauss, and other thinkers who
believe that the Truth is a transcendent set of principles simply waiting to be
discovered. Rather, Dewey believes, we make the truth, not in some relativistic sense,
but through genuine human experience. Moreover, Dewey would accuse these idealist
and objectivist philosophers of being foundationally anti-democratic. A natural
conclusion to Deweys philosophy is that our collective notions of truth ought to be
decided democratically. The idea that Truth emanates from on high is contrary to the
notions of progressive, participatory democracy.
Cooperation versus Conflict: Obviously, Dewey believes that we learn more together
than we do apart, and that we achieve more when we unite around common goals than
when we compete with one another. He rejected the notion of competition in academics
and embraced the idea that we can learn cooperatively, helping each other out, learning
from common struggles.
CONCLUSION
John Dewey represents something very important about American philosophy. Instead of
being concerned about what is ideally true, metaphysically true, logically true or
mathematically true, Dewey was concerned about the truth of what works for people in
their everyday lives. This is radically democratizing, and wholly appropriate to a people
who, at least in principle, rejected the divine right of kings and the assumptions of
aristocracy. It is appropriate to an experiment in democracy amidst pluralism and
uncertainty.
Debaters wishing to incorporate Dewey's ideas ought to research both the foundations
of his pragmatism, and the implications of his pragmatism on his educational theories.
Although these two aspects of his philosophy are intimately related, the literature is
divided rather distinctively. Debaters might also contemplate the fact that, as they
search the library for Dewey's works, they might well be using the Dewey Decimal
System, devised by John Dewey to catalogue books in libraries.
In many ways, Dewey would be a strong advocate of academic debate. Like the
participatory models of education he advocated, debate is an exercise in empowering,
involved activity. It is student-centered and relies on the students experimenting,
succeeding and failing, and learning from each exchange. In fact, understanding why
debate is educational for you can help you understand exactly the kind of education that
Dewey wanted for students.
At the same time, debaters should be aware that objections to pragmatism are
important. Dewey and his followers talk about the importance of democracy and
participation, but they seem unable to suggest ways to dismantle the very real power
structures that block these possibilities. Perhaps creative debaters can synthesize
Deweyan pragmatism with effective political strategies for actually opening up the real,
material possibility of change in a world where, despite Dewey's efforts, elitism still
remains.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Melvin C. FOUNDATIONS OF JOHN DEWEYS EDUCATIONAL THEORY (New York:
Atherton Press, 1966).
Campbell, James. UNDERSTANDING JOHN DEWEY: NATURE AND COOPERATIVE

INTELLIGENCE (Chicago: Open Court, 1995).
Dewey, John and James Hayden Tufts. ETHICS (New York: H. Holt, 1936).
Dewey, John. A COMMON FAITH (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960).
Dewey, John. ART AS EXPERIENCE (New York: Minton, Balch & Company, 1934).
Dewey, John. ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC (New York: Dover Publications, 1953)
Dewey, John. EXPERIENCE AND NATURE (La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company,
1958).
Dewey, John. FREEDOM AND CULTURE (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1939).
Dewey, John. HOW WE THINK (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1910).
Dewey, John. INDIVIDUALISM OLD AND NEW (New York: Minton, Balch & Company,
1930).
Dewey, John. LECTURES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1899).
Dewey, John. LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1900-1901 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois

Dewey, John. LIBERALISM AND SOCIAL ACTION (New York: Capricorn Books, 1963).
Dewey, John. THE CHILD AND THE CURRICULUM, AND SCHOOL AND SOCIETY (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1956).
Dewey, John. THEORY OF THE MORAL LIFE (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1980).
Dewey, John. DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF

EDUCATION (New York: The Macmillan company, 1916).
Gavin, W. J. CONTEXT OVER FOUNDATION: DEWEY AND MARX (Boston: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1988).
Haskins, Casey, and Seiple, David I.. DEWEY RECONFIGURED: ESSAYS ON DEWEYAN
PRAGMATISM (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999).
Nissen, Lowell. JOHN DEWEYS THEORY OF INQUIRY AND TRUTH (The Hague: Mouton,
1966).
Popp, Jerome A. NATURALIZING PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION: JOHN DEWEY IN THE

POSTANALYTIC PERIOD (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998).
Schilpp, Paul Arthur. THE PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN DEWEY (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1951).
Soneson, Jerome Paul. PRAGMATISM AND PLURALISM: JOHN DEWEYS SIGNIFICANCE FOR
THEOLOGY (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
TRUTH IS PROGRESSIVE AND EVOLVING

1. ADAPTING TO SOCIAL CONDITIONS DETERMINES OUR ABILITY TO THINK WELL
John Dewey, American pragmatist philosopher, PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION, 1968, p.
296.
Thinking, however, is the most difficult occupation in which man engages. If the other
arts have to be acquired through ordered apprenticeship, the power to think requires
even more conscious and consecutive attention. No more than any other art is it
developed internally. It requires favorable objective conditions, just as the art of painting
requires paint, brushes, and canvas. The most important problem in freedom of thinking
is whether social conditions obstruct the development of judgment and insight or
effectively promote it. We take for granted the necessity of special opportunity and
prolonged education to secure ability to think in a special calling, like mathematics. But
we appear to assume that ability to think effectively in social, political and moral matters
is a gift of God, and that the gift operates by a kind of spontaneous combustion. Few
would perhaps defend this doctrine thus boldly stated, but upon the whole we act as if
that were true.
2. SOCIAL CONDITIONS INTERACT WITH INDIVIDUALS, PRODUCING CHANGING

CONCEPTIONS OF MORALITY
298.
Constant and uniform relations in change and a knowledge of them in laws, are not a
hindrance to freedom, but a necessary factor in coming to be effectively that which we
have the capacity to grow into. Social conditions interact with the preferences of an
individual (that are his individuality) in a way favorable to actualizing freedom only when
they develop intelligence, not abstract knowledge and abstract thought, but power of
vision and reflection. For these take effect in making preference, desire and purpose
more flexible, alert, and resolute. Freedom has too long been thought of as an
indeterminate power operating in a closed and ended world. In its reality, freedom is a
resolute will operating in a world in some respects indeterminate, because open and
moving toward a new future.
3. FREEDOM CONSISTS IN RECOGNIZING AND ADAPTING TO CHANGE

John Dewey, American pragmatist philosopher, LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1991, p. 89.
Judgment or responsibility depends upon the balance between the subject and the
predicate, between the natural self and the ideal self. In obligation, the element of
tension or resistance between the two is perhaps the more emphasized, the explicit
thing. But the necessary unity between the two is involved. In the idea of responsibility
that unity of the natural and the ideal self (that it is the business of the natural self to
become the ideal self and of the ideal self to be realized in the natural self) is the
prominent thing. The point of simple tension between the two has been passed, and the
emphasis is on the other side of the identity between the two. In other words, the
possible self does not represent a remote, abstract possibility but is the possibility of the
actual self. The actual self is not complete as long as it is stated simply as given. It is
complete only in its possibilities. That is the basis of responsibility. Carry that identity
farther. Make it not merely an identity in conception but in action, and you have
freedom. Freedom is the equivalent of the reality of growth.
THERE ARE NO TRANSCENDENT MORAL

TRUTHS
1. VALUES ARE DEPENDENT UPON REAL WORLD CONSEQUENCES AND CIRCUMSTANCES
John Dewey, American pragmatist philosopher, PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION, 1968,
pp. 48-49.
For ordinary purposes, that is for practical purposes, the truth and the realness of things
are synonymous. We are all children who saw really and truly. A reality which is taken
in organic response so as to lead to subsequent reactions that are off the track and aside
from the mark, while it is, existentially speaking, perfectly real, is not good reality. It
lacks the hallmark of value. Since it is a certain kind of object which we want, one which
will be as favorable as possible to a consistent and liberal or growing functioning, it is
this kind, the true kind, which for us monopolizes the title of reality. Pragmatically,
teleologically, this identification of truth and reality is sound and reasonable:
rationalistically, it leads to the notion of the duplicate versions of reality, one absolute
and static because exhausted; the other phenomenal and kept continually on the jump
because otherwise its own inherent nothingness would lead to its total annihilation.
Since it is only genuine and sincere things, things which are good for what they lay claim
to in the way of consequences, which we want or are after, morally they alone are real.
2. MORAL AND LEGAL RULES ARE NOT FIXED AND TRANSCENDENT, BUT CHANGE IN
RESPONSE TO HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES
139.
Failure to recognize that general legal rules and principles are working hypotheses,
needing to be constantly tested by the way in which they work out in application to
concrete situations, explains the otherwise paradoxical fact that the slogans of the
liberalism of one period often become the bulwarks of reaction in a subsequent era.
There was a time in the eighteenth century when the great social need was
emancipation of industry and trade from a multitude of restrictions which held over from
the feudal estate of Europe. Adapted well enough to the localized and fixed conditions of
that earlier age, they became hindrances and annoyances as the effects of new
methods, use of coal and steam, emerged. The movement of emancipation expressed
itself in principles of liberty in use of property, and freedom of contract, which were
embodied in a mass of legal decisions. But the absolutistic logic of rigid syllogistic forms
infected these ideas.
FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY REQUIRE

MATERIAL EQUALITY
1. ABSTRACT FREEDOM IS NOT ENOUGH: WE NEED THE MATERIAL AND ECONOMIC
MEANS TO BE FREE
281.
The notion that men are equally free to act if only the same legal arrangements apply
equally to allirrespective of differences in education, in command of capital, and the
control of the social environment which is furnished by the institution of propertyis a
pure absurdity, as facts have demonstrated. Since actual, that is, effective, rights and
demands are products of interactions, and are not found in the original and isolated
constitution of human nature, whether moral or psychological, mere elimination of
obstructions is not enough. The latter merely liberates force and ability as that happens
to be distributed by past accidents of history.
2. FREEDOM REQUIRES THE OBJECTIVE, MATERIAL MEANS TO ATTAIN CHOICE

John Dewey, American pragmatist philosopher, PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION, 1968,
pp. 297-98.
I sum up by saying that the possibility of freedom is deeply grounded in our very beings.
It is one with our individuality, our being uniquely what we are and not imitators and
parasites of others. But like all other possibilities, this possibility has to be actualized;
and, like all others, it can only be actualized through interaction with objective
conditions. The question of political and economic freedom is not an addendum or
afterthought, much less a deviation or excrescence, in the problem of personal freedom.
For the conditions that form political and economic liberty are required in order to realize
the potentiality of freedom each of us carries with him in his very structure.
DEWEYS PHILOSOPHY IS GENERALLY

REMOVED FROM REALITY
1. DEWEYS MORAL PHILOSOPHY HAS NO OBJECTIVE BASIS
George Novack, Marxist philosopher and activist, PRAGMATISM VERSUS MARXISM, 1975,
p. 251.
Deweys theory of ethics suffers from the same faults as his theory of knowledge. Just as
ideas have no validity before all the returns are in but must be tested afresh in each
instance, so moral judgments have no verifiable value or weight in advance of their
results in action. Instrumentalist morality goes from case to case and from one step to
the next without reaching any general standards of right or wrong and what makes them
so. The most it can offer is a reasonable assumption or hopeful expectation that this way
may be better than that, without examining the requisite objective grounds for the
hypothetical belief.
2. DEWEYS PHILOSOPHY HAS BEEN DISPROVEN BY 20TH CENTURY HISTORY

p. 256.
Any philosophy which had not lost contact with the realities of social life should have
been able to foresee, at least in broad outline, the growth and outbreak of these
upheavals; to have interpreted their meaning; to have prepared and equipped people to
cope with them; and thereby to have helped influence the course of events in a
progressive direction. Certainly a philosophy like instrumentalism, which claims to be so
realistic and practical, should have done no less. However, the record shows that at
every critical turn of American history in the twentieth century, Deweyism has been
caught off guard and overwhelmed by the sweep of events. Instead of playing a
directing role, its adherents have been towed along in the wake of the more aggressive
and dominant forces of plutocratic reaction. Their perplexity and powerlessness was first
exhibited in the First World War; it has been duplicated in every serious crisis convulsing
the United States since that time.
DEWEYS PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

IS FLAWED
1. DEWEY FAILS SYNTHESIZE THE TEACHERS ROLES AS PARTICIPANT AND AUTHORITY
R.S. Peters, professor of the philosophy of education at the University of London, JOHN
DEWEY RECONSIDERED, 1977, p. 114.
Deweys view of the teacher, who is societys agent for the transmission and
development of its cultural heritage, is also unsatisfactory, for it slurs over the dualism
between the teachers position as an authority and the legitimate demand for
participation. A teacher is not just a leader in a game, like a football captain. In a
game most of the participants know how to play; but pupils come to a teacher because
they are ignorant, and he or she is meant to be, to some extent, an authority on some
aspect of the culture. This disparity between teacher and taughtespecially in the
primary schoolmakes talk of democracy in education problematic, unless
democracy is watered down to mean just multiplying shared experiences and
openness of communication, as by Dewey. If democracy is to include, as it usually
does, some suggestion of participation in decision-making, we are then confronted with
current tensions underlying the question of how much participation is compatible with
the freedom and authority of the teacher.
2. DEWEYS EDUCATIONAL THEORIES IGNORED SOCIAL CONDITIONS

DEWEY RECONSIDERED, 1977, p. 115.
Deweys treatment of the psychological principle was equally unsatisfactory; for it
combined a conception of the child, which was almost as idealistic as his conception of
democracy, with a too limited view of what he called the social medium. This led him
to oversimplify the dualism between what he called internal conditions and what is the
result of social influences. Dewey was impressed, as I have reiterated, by the informal
learning that went on in the home and in the local community and wanted to forge a link
between this sort of learning and learning at school. But he did not ask the questions
which home? and which local community?, for sociologists have catalogued the vast
disparities that exist between homes in this respect.
DEWEYS JUSTIFICATIONS FOR

DEMOCRACY ARE FLAWED
1. DEWEYS PHILOSOPHY OF DEMOCRACY IS MYSTICAL AND IMPRACTICAL
DEWEY RECONSIDERED, 1977, pp. 114-115.
Dewey himself never paid much attention to institutional issues. This was not just
because he lived before the days when participation became an issue. It was also
because his attitude towards the democratic way of life was semi-mystical. When the
emotional force, the mystical force, one might say, of the miracles of the shared life and
shared experience is spontaneously felt, the hardness and concreteness of
contemporary life will be bathed in a light that never was on land or sea. I wonder if he
always felt like this about sitting on committees!
2. DEWEYS BELIEF IN DEMOCRACY IS BASED ON MYSTICAL, RELIGIOUS NOTIONS

p. 291.
Dewey derived his basic stance toward democracy not, as he contended, from a
scientific investigation of the history of society and a realistic analysis of American
conditions, but rather from a tradition that was rooted in the mystical equality promised
by the Christians. He accused the dualistic idealist philosophers of Greek and modern
times of operating with ideal fancies instead of dealing with the given facts. Yet he
committed the same error of metaphysical abstraction in the pivotal question of his
whole philosophy: the origin, meaning, and application of democracy. He approached
democracy not in its concrete manifestations throughout class society, but as an
abstraction to be stuffed with the content he preferred to give it. Democracy to him was
less a historical phenomenon than a secular religion.
DEWEYS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

IGNORES HUMAN NATURE AND
HISTORY
1. DEWEY IGNORES NATURAL DIFFERENCES AND INEQUALITIES
Anthony Flew, professor of philosophy at the University of Reading, JOHN DEWEY
RECONSIDERED, 1977,
p. 87.
But even if we do concede that this opposite tendency really is implicit in the original
insistence upon maximum interplay with other forms of association, there is no getting
away from the truth of Bantocks contention that there are strong pressures of equality
of outcome in the work of John Dewey; for if associations are good and democratic in so
far as their members share numerous and varied interests, and if education for
democracy is to be a matter of concentrating on the development of various but always
shared interests, then the variety of those shared interests, and the scope for
independent individual development, necessarily must be limited correspondingly. It
must, that is to say, be limited by and to whatever happens to be the maximum
attainable either by the least richly talented or by the modal majority. Maybe Dewey
himself would have been unhappy about the full force of these implications. But he
never comes to terms in this context with the truth that people vary enormously in all
natural endowments.
2. DEWEY IGNORES CLASS CONFLICT

pp. 250-51.
Dewey refused to believe that class conflict arises from deep-seated, compelling, and
ineradicable causes in the capitalist system. It was an occasional and subordinate
phenomenon that could be overcome by joint effort, good will, mutual give and take. He
therefore looked to different agencies and means than the Marxists for achieving the
desirable ends of a better life. He wrote: That work can be done only by the resolute,
patient, cooperative activities of men and women of good will, drawn from every useful
calling, over an indefinitely long period. In other words, class collaboration is the
preferable means of social reformation, political action, and moral improvement. Class
struggle goes in the wrong direction and gives disastrous results.
W.E.B. DU BOIS
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHER 1868 - 1963

Life and Work
William Edward Burghardt DuBois was the most prolific black writer in American history.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in February of 1868, DuBois was to bravely
enter the world of letters as an unapologetic proponent of racial equality and
communitarian social philosophy. Before he had even graduated from high school,
DuBois served as a correspondent for the newspaper New York Age, and by the time of
his death in 1964 he had easily published millions of words on hundreds of subjects
influencing scholars and activists such as Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Cornell West,
and Molefi Kete. Historians believe him to be one of the greatest minds, black or white,
that America has ever produced.
After attending Fisk University, then graduating cum Laud from Harvard, DuBois taught
at both the Universities of Pennsylvania and Atlanta. His academic life, however, was
always considered secondary to his work in political writing and activism. In 1903 he
published The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of personal essays that, 60 years later,
would influence the development of Black Studies programs across the nation. He was a
co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as well as
the Pan African Congress, and he edited several political journals, including The Crisis
and The Horizon. It was while writing for these journals that the core of his social
thought was most clearly defined.
Socialism as Black Liberation

More than any of his well-known Black contemporaries such as Booker T. Washington,
DuBois was a strong proponent of radical racial equality and socioeconomic reform.
Many of his colleagues, like Washington, were accommodations who favored low-key,
incremental, non-confrontational Black activism. Such attitudes made DuBois angrier
even than the white racism he encountered. His general formula for Black liberation
included (1) Communitarian Socialism, (2) a rejection of American-style individualism,
and (3) a recognition of the absolute moral repugnance of racism, especially apologetics
for segregation based on the assumption that colored races were inferior.
DuBoiss socialism, while never as radical as that of Marx or Lenin, nevertheless held
that economic oppression was the greatest evil facing humanity. Socialism, he felt,
would be necessary to liberate oppressed races because only it would do away with the
material foundations of oppression. It was not enough to simply give abstract rights, like
those found in the Constitution; those rights could only be guaranteed with access to the
material means of fulfilling them. The right to life, for example, made little difference to
a starving person. That person would need the actual resource of food in order to attain
that right. Capitalism, however, guaranteed starvation for some, because crises of
overproduction and underconsumption effectively priced out the poor from buying
adequate means of living. Likewise, the right to liberty (due process, fair trial, etc.) was
not in itself a guarantor against a justice system where the richest members of society
could afford far better legal representation than the incompetent state-appointed
lawyers divvied out to the poor. Only a socialist society, where the wealth was fairly
divided to all members of the community, could promise real freedom; material freedom.
There was a second reason, more moral in scope, that DuBois favored socialism.
Capitalist thinkers often justify rampant inequalities of wealth by pointing out that the
richest members of society must have had to work very hard, that the wealth was, after
all, generated by their efforts. DuBois answered by pointing out, as had Marx a century
earlier, that wealth in all its forms was always a social creation. One person alone cannot
mine the resources, build the factory, manufacture the equipment and make and
distribute, say, an automobile. Potentially thousands of people are in some way involved
in the making of any individual product Moreover, the wealth an individual owner invest
in his or her production was itself acquired through tremendous social processes. So
while DuBois acknowledged that we often make particular people the trustees of our
wealth, that wealth is social all the same, and this implies both that all members of the
community ought to have some access to that wealth (whether in the form of massive
social programs or simple co-ownership) and that at the very least some people ought
not be made rich at the expense of others. Since socialism alone could make these
principles work in reality, DuBois considered himself more a socialist than a capitalist.
The spiritual degradation of acquisitive individualism was also a target of DuBoiss stern,
often almost prophetic polemics. For DuBois, all social and political issues were
somehow interconnected. For example, he resigned from the NAACP because he felt the
organization was too accommodating to U.S. Cold War policies, and he later gave up his
American citizenship and spent the remainder of his life in Ghana. In both cases, he was
making an individual choice to protest large social forces. DuBois always believed that
individuals ought to be more concerned about the community than themselves. The
ultracompetitive world of capitalism pitted individuals against each other. Only through
organization and self-sacrifice could humans realize the full extent of their humanity.
Individuals had a moral obligation to do these things; without collective identity, people
were like leeches sucking the lifeblood of those around them.
The Dynamics of Racism

Concerning racism, DuBois, while unbending and unapologetic, nevertheless saw the
deep complexities of the issue. He never ignored the more moderate Black activists,
giving them plenty of space to publish their views in his magazines. And his analysis of
the phenomena of racism recognized the fear whites had of losing the privileges and
power they were so used to. Nevertheless, he repeatedly wrote that the world would
never be free from the throes of war and hostility until all people were seen as
fundamentally equal, their sameness and unity emphasized, their differences cherished
and respected. As with other issues, he viewed racial relations and warmaking between
nations as essentially interconnected; during the First World War he often wrote that the
world was witnessing large-scale bigotry of the same grain as the small-scale prejudice
found in the American South.
During the first half of the Twentieth Century, when DuBois did most of his writing, many
scientists were claiming that they could prove the inferiority of some races and the
superiority of others. This deeply disturbed DuBois, who immediately saw such pseudoscience as a horrifying justification for segregation at least and genocide at worst.
These racial scientists appealed to data such as IQ tests and comparative brain anatomy
to prove their points. DuBois rejected all such efforts and repeatedly pointed out that
they were based on faulty, often dishonest data. To really see the potential of various
races, he reasoned, one must examine them all at their best. If this was impossible for
Blacks because of their social situations, then those situations had to be corrected.
DuBoiss refutation of racial science is especially relevant today given the publication in
1994 of Charles Murray and Richard Hemsteins The Bell Curve, which critics have
pointed out contains the same justifications of racial inequality that DuBois attacked
over 50 years ago. DuBois would probably have been deeply disturbed that such ideas
are still influencing many powerful policy makers.
Opposition from Black Moderates and

Others
As one of the first writers to examine the connection between economic exploitation and
racial equality,
W.E.B. DuBois naturally met with considerable objection from more conservative
thinkers. Many pro-capitalists of all races feel that socialism is neither necessary nor
sufficient to liberate oppressed peoples.
Instead, a system, like capitalism, which rewards effort and discourages laziness, would
be a fair proving ground to all people regardless of skin color or nationality. Such
thinkers reason that, absent government interference with market forces, a natural
hierarchy will emerge that includes successful representatives of all races. Such
individualists would accuse DuBois of confusing equality of opportunity with equality
of result The former is the ideal of a sound market-based society where everyone had a
fair chance to enter the game of life. The latter, which punishes the successful on
behalf of the failures, will only discourage the innovation, creativity and risk-taking that
pushes society forward through technological and cultural advancement
Additionally, many Black radicals are suspicious of any brand of Marxism, even DuBoiss
politics. Their argument is more pragmatic than philosophical: By emphasizing conflict
and demanding social changes that no powerful whites would possibly agree with, Black
radicals invite more, not less, oppression, and may even set the movement back.
Malcom X, for example, gave Black liberation a bad name by calling whites devils and
advocating violence, while Martin Luther King emphasized peaceful means of protest
and change. Although DuBois was in many ways half M.L. King and half Malcom X,
moderate Black liberationists would have preferred he be more like King, thereby
avoiding potential backlash. But while DuBois heard plenty of these arguments, his
moral indignation of institutional and personal racism was unbending, and he was never
willing to keep silent about those issues.
Debaters can find many resources in the writings of W.E.B. DuBois, especially since so
many of his arguments reveal the interconnectedness of various political, social and
philosophical issues. They can use his arguments to point out, for example, that while
capitalism seems to uphold abstract criteria of justice and individual rights, its practical
history is one not only of immiseration but also of the exacerbation of racism, which
would turn the appeal to individual rights. And DuBois appeal to duty to community is
one of the most powerful our Twentieth Century has yet produced.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
William L Andrews (Ed.). CRITICAL ESSAYS ON W.E.B. DUBOIS (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co.,
1985).
DeMarco, Joseph P. THE SOCIAL THOUGHT OF W.E.B. DUBOIS (Lanham, Md.: University
Press of America, 1983).
DuBois, W.E.B. AFRICA, ITS GEOGRAPHY, PEOPLE AND PRODUCTS (Girard, Kansas: LittleBlue, 1930).
. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WEB. DUBOIS (New York: International Publishers,

1968).
. BLACK FOLK THEN AND NOW (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1939).
. COLOR AND DEMOCRACY: COLONIES AND PEACE (New York: Harcourt, Brace
and Company, 1945).
. THE EDUCATION OF BLACK PEOPLE: TEN CRITIQUES (Amherst University of

Massachusetts Press, 1973).
. PAMPHLETS AND LEAFLETS (White Plains: Kraus-Thornson, 1986).
. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS (two Volumes) (Millwood: Kraus-Thomson,

1983).
. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON (White Plains: Kraus-Thomson, 1985).
. THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK (New York: New American Library, 1969).
. W.E.B. DUBOIS SPEAKS (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970).
DuBois, Shirley Graham. HIS DAY IS MARCHING ON (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1971).
Harris, Thomas E. ANALYSIS OF THE CLASH OVER THE ISSUES BETWEEN BOOKER T.
WASHINGTON AND W.E.B. DUBOIS (New York Garland, 1993).
Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. DUBOIS: BIOGRAPHY OF A RACE 1868-1919 (New York:
Henry Holt And Company, 1993).
Marable, Manning. W.E.B. DUBOIS: BLACK RADICAL DEMOCRAT (Boston: Twayne

Publishers,
1986).
COMMUNITY IS THE HIGHEST VALUE

1. COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS ARE KEY TO FREEDOM
W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 96.
For the accomplishment of all these ends we must organize. Organization among us has
already gone far but it must go much further and much higher. Organization is sacrifice.
It is the sacrifice of opinions, of time, of work and of money, but it is, after all, the
cheapest way of buying the most priceless of gifts--freedom and efficiency.
2. PRIVATE CONCERNS ARE A MYTH--EVERYTHING IS PUBLIC

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON, 1985, p.6.
I do not believe that government can carry on private business as well as private
concerns, but I do believe that most of the human business called private is no more
private than Gods blue sky, and that we are approaching a time when railroads, coal
mines and many factories can and ought to be run by the public for the public. This is
the way, as I see it, that the path leads and I follow it gladly and hopefully.
3. INDIVIDUAUSTIC SEPARATION LEADS TO SLAVERY

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON, 1985, p. 97. You
cannot physically separate people today without turning back civilization one
thousand years. Even at that time separation had to be absolute and complete or it
meant conquest, slavery and caste. It means the same today and only fools are unaware
of the fact.
4. INDIVIDUAL MUST DEFER TO THE COMMUNITY

Organization is sacrifice. You cannot have absolutely your own way--you cannot be a free
lance; you cannot be strongly and fiercely individual if you belong to an organization. for
this reason some folk bunt and work alone. It is their nature. But the worlds greatest
work must be done by team work. This demands organization, and that is the sacrifice of
some individual will and wish to the good of all.
5. INDIVIDUALS CANNOT BE BLAMED FOR THEIR SOCIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

There still persists, the conviction that unemployment primarily and at bottom is the
fault of the man who is without work. It may not be his fault under present
circumstances but he surely must have been idle and careless in his youth, wasteful and
thoughtless as a young man, to be found in his full manhood or in middle age without
work. This is cruelly untrue and leads to injustice and social disaster.
SOCIALISM IS NECESSARY FOR

LIBERATION
1. SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY WAY TO LIBERATE BLACKS
W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON, 1985, p. 6.
In the socialist trend thus indicated lies the one great hope of the Negro American. We
have been thrown by strange historic reasons into the hands of the capitalists hitherto.
We have been objects of dole and charity, and despised accordingly. We have been
made tools of oppression against the workingmans cause--the puppets and playthings
of the idle rich. Fools! We must awake! Not in a renaissance among ourselves of the evils
of Get and Grab--not in private hoarding squeezing and cheating, lies our salvation, but
rather in that larger ideal of human brotherhood, equality of opportunity and work not
for wealth but for Weal--here lies our shining goal.
2. WEALTH IS SOCIAL AND MUST BELONG TO THE COMMUNITY

Wealth is a social product, and not an individual acquisition. At present we allow certain
men to be custodians of this social wealth, partly because of the worth of their services
in helping the community to accumulate it and partly because of their wise use of their
trust. But we never forget where wealth in the last analysis belongs--i.e., to the
community. we take it for taxes, we seize it when grossly misused, we limit the amount
and method of its disposal. Why? Because WE own it. We, i.e., organized society created
the wealth in unison and it was not created by any one man or corporation. If this is true,
then every worker in the community has some claim on this common wealth.
3. ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION IS THE GREATEST EVIL WE FACE

It is the shame of the world that today the relation between the main groups of mankind
and their mutual estimate and respect is determined chiefly by the degree in which one
can subject the other to its service, enslaving labor, making ignorance compulsory,
uprooting ruthlessly religion and customs, and destroying government, so that the
favored Few may luxuriate in the toil of the torture Many.
4. SOLVING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY SHOULD BE OUR FIRST PRIORITY

If we are coming to recognize that the greatest modern problem is to correct
maladjustment in the distribution of wealth, it must be remembered that the basic
maladjustment is the outrageously unjust distribution of world income between the
dominant and suppressed peoples; the rape of the land and raw material, and monopoly
of technique and culture.
5. CAPITALISM DESTROYS DEMOCRACY

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 633. It has
always been felt that the United States was an example of the extraordinary success of
capitalists
industry, and that this was proven by the high wage paid labor and the high standard of
intelligence and comfort prevalent in this country. Moreover, for many years, democratic
political control of our government by the masses of the people made it possible to
envisage without violence any kind of reform in government or industry which appeared
to the people. Recently, however, the people of the United States have begun to
recognize that their political power is curtailed by organized capital in industry and that
in this industry, democracy does not prevail; and that until wider democracy does
prevail in industry, democracy in government is seriously curtailed and often quite
ineffective.
RACISM IS MORALLY REPUGNANT

1. WE HAVE A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY TO FIGHT AGAINST RACISM EVERYWHERE
Whenever I meet personal discrimination on account of my race and color I shall protest.
If the discrimination is old and deep seated and sanctioned by law, I shall deem it my
duty to make my grievance known, to bring it before the organs of public opinion and to
the attention of men of influence, and to urge relief in courts and legislatures. I will not,
because of inertia or timidity or even sensitiveness, allow new discriminations to
become usual and habitual. To this end I will make it my duty without ostentation, but
with firmness, to assert my right to vote, to frequent places of public entertainment and
to appear as a man among men.
2. NO FREEDOM FOR WHITES WITHOUT THE LIBERATION OF NON-WHITES

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 564-565. But,
fortunately, there can be no leisure, no freedom, no enduring wealth for the white
minority of mankind, even though today they are powerful, so long as the great dark
majority of human beings are slaves. The future of the darker races is thus involved with
the future of the white race, and all of us march, if we march at all, toward the physical
survival, the economic equality, and the spiritual freedom of all men
of every race and color.
3. FIGHTING RACISM IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARD ELIMINATING VIOLENCE

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 726. The
Pacifist today who takes his job seriously and sees war for what it really is, will role up
his sleeves first and attack race prejudice; and then he will attack all general, colonels,
captains and ammunition makers; and then he will attack military schools and cadets;
and finally, he may get us to the place where the world will realize that war is hell.
THEORIES OF RACIAL INFERIORITY ARE

WRONG
1. SOCIAL SUPREMACY DOES NOT PROVE RACIAL SUPERIORITY
It is true that the lighter skinned races are leading civilization today. It is not true that
civilization is the invention of the white race or that they have made the greatest
contributions to it. It is false that nay race has or ever will have a right to monopolize the
earth and its fruit, or the human mind and its thoughts.
White Supremacy is the last scared yell of the dog about to be beaten.
2. PEOPLE OF GREAT ABILITY COME FROM ALL RACES

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 8 1-82.
It is argued however, that it may be granted that the physical stamina of all races is
probably approximately the same and the physical comeliness is rather a matter of taste
and selection than of absolute racial difference. However, when it comes to intellectual
ability the races differ so enormously that superior races must in self-defense repel the
inferior sternly, even brutally. Two things, however, must be said in answer to this: First,
the prejudice against the Jews, age long and world wide is surely no based on inferior
ability.
we have only one name to Jeremiah, Dlsraeli and Jesus Christ to set our minds at rest on
the point. Moreover, if we compare the intellectual ability of Teuton and Chinese which is
inferior? Or, if we take Englishman and Bantu, is the difference a difference of native
ability or of training and environment? The answer to this is simple: We do not know. But
arguing from all known facts and analogies we must certainly admit in the words of the
secretary of the First International Races Congress, that an impartial investigator would
be inclined to look upon all the various important peoples of the world as, to all intents
and purposes, essentially equals in intellect, enterprise, morality and physique.
RIANE EISLER
FEMINIST
Life And Work

The philosopher of Riane Eislers was shaped by an early brush with death. Born in
Vienna, Austria, around the time Hitler came to power, she became at the age of six a
refugee from the Nazis. She and her parents, fleeing for their lives, escaped Nazi
Germany on one of the last boats to leave Germany. The very next boat, the St. Louis,
became a famous example of ill-fate through its portrayal in the film The Voyage of the
Damned. Eisler, fundamentally changed by the experience, recalls as a child standing
there at the quay by the water, and there was this boat out there. It was inconceivable
to me how people could be so cruel as to send these people back to death. This
experience was one Eisler drew on when writing her most famous work, The Chalice and
the Blade in 1987. She described the country from which she escaped as one of the
prime examples of a dominator culture, which is her term for a hierarchical society
characterized by violence.
The rest of Eislers childhood was spent in Cuba, growing up in the Havana tenements,
until she emigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen. Soon, she began the
multidisciplinary studies which were to color her lifes work. She studied sociology and
anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, earning Phi Beta Kappa
status. She went on to earn a J.D. from the UCLA School of Law. For the rest of her life,
Eisler has been involved in research, writing, teaching, lecturing and community
organizing. Though she is most famous for her books, she has also been a professor,
teaching at the University of California and Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles.
Eisler is active in the political arena, sponsoring legislation to protect the human rights
of women and children. She founded organizations such as the Los Angeles Womens
Center Legal Program, the first of its kind in the United States. Probably her most famous
affiliation, though, is with the Center for Partnership Studies, a non-profit organization
which she was encouraged to create after witnessing the grassroots response to The
Chalice and the Blade. Today, many college courses and university courses utilize The
Chalice and the Blade as a resource for study. This is fitting, considering the fact that the
book has been called the most significant work published in all our lifetimes and the
most important book since Darwins Origin of Species. Due to her influence, the
network of Centers for Partnership Education is expanding worldwide. Approximately
twenty exist in the world right now.
In October of 1992, the worlds first International Partnership Conference was held. The
conference, held in Crete, attracted more than five-hundred people from forty different
countries. Eisler is also a member of the General Evolution Research group, a group of
scientists who have dedicated themselves to view living systems differently than the
prevailing, rigid Aristotelian mindset. Eisler continues to lecture and give keynote
addresses at many symposia, as well as organizing conferences on basic human rights.
Most recently, she has embarked on a tour in support of her latest book, Sacred
Pleasure, which is a history of human sexuality and an argument concerning the taboo
nature of the sexual urge in culture.
Basic Ideas And Principles

Though Eisler is most definitely committed to feminism, she is not traditional. She offers
what most would consider a radical perspective. Eisler believes that most of the
popular culture battles that shape our world (communism versus capitalism, religion
versus secularism, East versus West) are really are just very superficial manifestations
of tension between two dramatically different modes of social organization. This
struggle, she argues, has been raging for centuries upon centuries, dating back through
recorded history and well into pre-history. She identifies the two different types of
societies as partnership and dominator models, respectively.
Traditional feminist theory holds that past effeminate societies were ruled my women in
matriarchies. Eisler radically challenges that assumption, concluding instead that these
cultures were partnership oriented societies which forswore hierarchical gender
relationships in favor of an egalitarian paradigm. From Eislers perspective, the notion of
domination being an integral part of human life is a conceptual trap. She notes that the
archaeological evidence does not support the idea that men were placed in positions of
subordination, and argues that the evidence supports the existence of peaceful, agrarian
(or Neolithic) societies. Specifically, Eisler notes that the Biblical story of the Garden of
Eden may be the ultimate end of folk memories which long for the days of partnership
and harmony with nature that these early societies represented. She reaches the same
conclusion about the myth of Atlantis, which she calls a garbled recollection of the
ancient Minoan civilization, a remarkably peaceful and creative culture where, she
believes, partnership reigned.
Rather than accept the traditional terminology, then, of patriarchy--rule by the father-vs. matriarchy--rule by the mother--Eisler proposes a new, and she says, more precise
set of terms. Using the Greek root words for man (andros) and ruled (kratos), Eisler
refers to a dominator culture as an androcracy. Her alternative, the partnership culture,
she calls by the new term gylany, from the Greek gyno (woman) and the Greek word
an, coming from andros (man), thus implying a synthesis of the two genders.
Eisler believes that certain cultural epochs are marked by social shifts that lead us
toward partnership or towards domination. She calls this view of history cultural
transformation theory, and says that we are now living in a time of extreme
disequilibrium where the old order can be shaken to its foundations. Eisler refuses to
believe that these shifts are inevitable, instead claiming that people within cultures can
shape the transformation for either good or ill. She contends that during our pre-history,
there seems to have been a very different direction in the mainstream cultural
revolution, more a partnership direction, but that in a similar period of extreme
disequilibrium in our pre-history, there was a shift towards the dominator model.
Similarly, our actions today can determine whether we make the shift a positive one or a
negative one.
Eisler offers a different perspective from many people committed to feminism. She sees
feminism as a struggle for liberation of women, but envisions a society where no group
would need to be liberated--that is, a group where burdens, responsibilities and respect
would be shared equally. This gives her immense credence in gender-issues debates.
She also offers interesting and compelling historical and cultural data for her claims,
which can only help the cause. The criticism she offers of Enlightenment philosophers
can also be useful. She sees the kind of pure rationality embraced by most traditional
Western thinkers as linear, mechanistic, and flawed. She considers such ideas
insufficient to spark the transformation she feels we need. In that sense, her views make
useful tools against these types of thought.
Eisler views technology in a different way from many feminist theorists. Many radicals
view technology as something to be almost uniformly feared as a linear expression of
Western dominance. Eisler has two interesting comments on the matter. First, she
argues that our technology does not produce our culture, but it is our culture that
determines whether technology is beneficial or not. She points out that under dominator
societies, technology has almost always been a euphemism for weaponry, while in some
of the partnership-based societies she studies, none of the weapons stockpiles or
exploitative technologies are evident. Thus, she argues that Blade technologies are a
product of Blade culture, and not proof that technology is evil in and of itself.
Second, communications technology is one of the ways Eisler feels partnership can be
fostered. This kind of technology, she says, is more decentralized and grassroots than
almost any other we have seen, allowing progressive movements to organize and
connect with each other. These ideas are useful in debating technological issues.
Eisler also offers substantive analysis why other transformative, allegedly revolutionary
strategies such as socialism, communism, etc., fail to provide partnership. In Eislers
calculus, power relationships are fundamental, and before we challenge those basic
hierarchies, we fail to provide partnership. In Eislers calculus, power relationships are
fundamental, and before we challenge those basic hierarchies, we cannot achieve any
great leap forward. She discusses the shortcomings of many philosophies which fail to
address the gender question in the context of domination versus partnership. She also
offers defense of many human values-including progress, equality, and freedom--as
means to the end of gylany. This can be useful to debaters in formulating and defending
a value stance based on one of these three ideals.
Bibliography
Riane Eisler, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, originally published in 1987, revised edition,
1995, Harper Collins.
Riane Eisler, THE PARTNERSHIP WAY, 1990, Harper Collins. Riane Eisler, SACRED
PLEASURE, 1995, Harper San Francisco.
Georg and Linda Feurstein, Editors, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, 1993.
ONLY CHALLENGING DOMINATOR

STRUCTURES CAN CHANGE SOCIETY
1. MANY PROGRESSIVE IDEAS CHALLENGE SYMPTOMS, NOT THE PATRIARCHAL ROOT
Riane Eisler, J.D., former professor at UCLA and Immaculate Heart College, Cofounder of
the Center for Partnership Studies, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, 1995, page 164.
During the nineteenth and into the twentieth century other modern humanist
ideologies--abolitionism, pacifism, anarchism, anticolonialism, environmentalism--also
emerged. But like the proverbial blind man describing the elephant, they each described
different manifestations of the androcratic monster as the totality of the problem. At the
same time, they failed to address the fact that at its heart lies a male-dominator,
female-dominated model of the human species.
2. ONLY TWO WAYS EXIST TO STRUCTURE SOCIETY: DOMINATOR OR PARTNERSHIP

the Center for Partnership Studies, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, 1995, page xix.
If we stop and think about it, there are only two basic ways of structuring the social
relations between the female and male halves of humanity. All societies are patterned on
either a dominator model--in which human hierarchies are ultimately backed up by force
or the threat of force--or a partnership model, with variations in between. Moreover, if
we reexamine human society from a perspective that takes into account both women
and men, we can also see that there are patterns, or systems configurations, that
characterize dominator, or alternative, partnership, social organization.
3. A JUST AND BALANCED SOCIETY REQUIRES PARTNERSHIP

the Center for Partnership Studies, VOICES ON THE THRESHOLD OF TOMORROW, Edited
by Georg and Linda Feurstein, 1993, page 128.
On the one side lies a dominator future, a future in which the blade--amplified a
millionfold by high technology--still holds sway, a future that most probably takes us to
an evolutionary dead end. On the other side is a partnership future, a future in which the
chalice and not the blade will once again hold sway. However, this better future for
ourselves and our children will continue to be a utopia rather than a pragmatopia unless
we recognize that a more just and balanced society requires for its foundations a more
just and balanced relation between the two halves of humanity: women and men.
4. FEMINISM IS THE ONLY CHALLENGE TO THE DOMINATOR MODEL
The only ideology that frontally challenges this model of human relations, as well as the
principle of human ranking based on violence, is, of course, feminism. For this reason it
occupies a unique position both in modern history and in the history of our cultural
evolution.
5. POSITIVE CULTURAL EVOLUTION DEPENDS ON OUR REJECTION OF DOMINATION

The view of power symbolized by the Chalice--for which I propose the term actualization
power as distinguished from domination power--obviously reflects a very different type
of social organization from the one we are accustomed to. We may conclude from the
evidence of the past examined so far that it cannot be called matriarchal. As it cannot
be called patriarchal either, it does not fit into the conventional dominator paradigm of
social organization. However, using the perspective of Cultural Transformation theory we
have been developing, it does fit the other alternative for human organization: a
partnership society in which neither half of humanity is ranked over the other and
diversity is not equated with inferiority or superiority. As we will see in the chapters that
follow, these two alternatives have profoundly affected our cultural evolution.
Technological and social evolution tend to become more complex regardless of which
model prevails. But the direction of cultural evolution--including whether a social system
is warlike or peaceful--depends on whether we have a partnership or a dominator social
structure.
DOMINATOR SOCIETIES MISUSE

TECHNOLOGY
1. TECHNOLOGY IS NOT BAD EXCEPT IN A DOMINATOR CONTEXT
the Center for Partnership Studies, THE CHALICE AN]) THE BLADE, 1995, page xx.
If we look at the whole span of our cultural evolution from the perspective of cultural
transformation theory, we see that the roots of our present global crises go back to the
fundamental shift in our pre-history that brought enormous changes not only in social
structure but also in technology. This was the shift in emphasis from technologies that
sustain and enhance life to the technologies symbolized by the Blade:
technologies designed to destroy and dominate. This has been the technological
emphasis through most of recorded history. And it is this technological emphasis, rather
than technology per se, that today threatens all life on our globe.
2. DOMINATOR TECHNOLOGY WILL ALWAYS BE MISUSED

Lane Eisler, J.D., former professor at UCLA and Immaculate Heart College, Cofounder of
the Center for Partnership Studies, THE PARTNERSHIP WAY, 1990. page 32.
The same technological base can produce very different types of tools: tools to kill and
oppress other humans or tools to free our minds and hands from dehumanizing
drudgery. The problem is that in dominator societies, where masculinity is identified
with conquest and domination, every new technological breakthrough is basically seen
as a tool for more oppression and domination.
3. HISTORY SHOWS THE RISE OF THE DOMINATOR PARADIGM CORRUPTS TECHNOLOGY

Our social and technological evolution can--and, as we saw, did--move from simpler to
more complex levels under first a partnership and later a dominator society. However,
our cultural evolution, which directs the uses we make of greater technological and
social complexity, is radically different for each model. And this direction of cultural
evolution in turn profoundly affects the direction of our social and technological
evolution. The most obvious example is technology. Under the cultural guidance of the
partnership paradigm the emphasis was on technologies for peaceful purposes. But with
the rise of the dominator paradigm, there was the vast shift to the development of
technologies of destruction and domination that has steadily escalated over the
centuries into our own endangered nine.
4. GYLANIC CULTURE WOULD USE TECHNOLOGY IN BENEFICIAL WAYS

Since technologies of destruction would no longer consume and destroy such a vast
portion of our natural and human resources, as yet undreamed (and presently
undreamable) enterprises will be economically feasible. The result will be the generally
prosperous economy foreshadowed by our gylanic prehistory. Not only will material
wealth be shared more equitably, but this will also be an economic order in which
amassing more and more property as a means of protecting oneself from, as well as
controlling others will be seen for what it is: a sickness or aberration.
PARTNERSHIP CULTURE IS PRACTICAL

AND FEASIBLE
1. EMPIRICS PROVE A NON-PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY CAN EXIST
We have been taught that civilization has its civilization has its origins in brutally maledominant and highly warlike societies. But more recent archaeological excavations
indicate that stories of a more peaceful and harmonious time when women were not
dominated by men are also based on earlier realities. For example, Mesopotamian and
later Biblical stories about a garden where woman and nun lived in partnership most
probably derive from folk memories of the more peaceful and egalitarian first agrarian
(Neolithic) societies, which planted the first gardens on this Earth. Similarly, the legend
of how the fabled civilization of Atlantis sank into the sea appears to be a garbled
recollection of the ancient Minoan civilization, a remarkably peaceful and uniquely
creative culture now believed to have ended when Crete and some surrounding islands
were massively damaged by earthquakes and enormous tidal waves. Here, as in the
earlier Neolithic, the subordination of women does not appear to have been the norm.
Cretan art shows women as priestesses, as figures being paid homage, and even as
captains of ships.
2. PARTNERSHIP SOCIETY IS PRAGMATIC: IT IS A PRAGMATOPIA

This is why we urgently need both a new word and a new blueprint for the future. For a
new word, I am proposing the word pragmatopia. Like utopia, this is also a term formed
of Greek roots; it derives from the Greek term pragma (thing or reality, as in
pragmatic) and topos (place). And for a new, but at the same time very old,
blueprint I am proposing what I have called a partnership rather than a dominator model
of social organization: not an ideal society, but a society where neither women nor socalled feminine values like caring, compassion, and non-violence are any longer
devalued. I chose the word partnership to describe this type of social organization
because it is already in common usage as a term connoting mutuality of benefit. But I
define it much more precisely, as a model of social organization where diversity is not
equated with inferiority or superiority and where the primary principle of social
organization is linking rather than ranking.
3. PAST SOCIETIES SHOW THE PRAGMATISM OF PARTNERSHIP
All this information about our lost past inevitably sets in motion conflict between the old
and the new in our own minds. The old view was that the earliest human kinship (and
later economic) relations developed from men hunting and killing. The new view is that
the foundations for social organization came from mothers and children sharing. The old
view was of prehistory as the story of man the hunter-warrior. The new view is of both
women and men using our unique human faculties to support and enhance life. Just as
some of the primitive existing societies, like those of the BaMbuti and the !Kung, are not
characterized by warlike cavemen dragging women around the hair, it now appears that
the Paleolithic was a remarkably peaceful time. And just as Heinrich and Sophia
Schliemann defied the scholarly establishment of their time and proved the city of Troy
was not Homeric fantasy but prehistoric fact, new archaeological findings verify legends
about a time before a male god decreed woman be forever subservient to man, a time
when humanity lived in peace and plenty. In sum, under the new view of cultural
evolution, male dominance, male violence, and authoritarianism are not inevitable,
eternal givens. And rather than being just a utopian dream, a more peaceful and
egalitarian world is a real possibility for our future.
DOMINATOR SOCIETIES THREATEN

SURVIVAL
1. DOMINATOR SOCIETIES THREATEN ALL LIFE FORMS ON THE PLANET
the Center for Partnership Studies, THE PARTNERSHIP WAY, 1990, page 220.
The real issue, integrally related to the great contemporary debate of technology as
savior or villain, is that in our high technology age, a dominator society is fundamentally
maladaptive, threatening not only our species, but all life forms on this planet. For how
long can the population explosion be arrested as long as women are denied access to
birth control technologies, as long as they themselves continue to be viewed primarily
as technologies for reproduction? How can environmental pollution and degradation be
arrested as long as men continue to identify with the manly conquest of nature rather
than the womens work or environmental housekeeping? Most critically, how can we
survive in a world still ruled by the Blade at a time when we have the ultimate
technologies of destruction: the technologies for ending all life.
2. ANDROCRACY COULD LEAD US TO NUCLEAR EXTINCTION

What was once merely a science fiction scenario is now a serious possibility. This is that
after humanity has wiped itself out in a nuclear war our earth will be taken over by
cockroaches, one of few life-forms immune to radiation. If that should happen it would
be a fitting finale for androcracy--and a grim evolutionary joke on us. The system that
has stunted out cultural evolution would finally have succeeded in producing the kind of
creatures it is best suited for: insects rather than humans.
3. MOST CONTEMPORARY CRISES ARE AS A RESULT OF DOMINATION MINDSET

the Center for Partnership Studies, THE PARTNERSHIP WAY, 1990, page 220.
Many of our contemporary global crises--such as environmental pollution and the threat
of nuclear holocaust--are the result of the emphasis a dominator system places on socalled masculine values of conquest and domination. For example, in the United States
almost 60 percent of every tax has gone to financing foreign intervention, nuclear
weapons, and other military expenditures, with only a fraction of it left (after interest
payments on the national debt) for human services. And in the poorest, most
overpopulated, and most warlike and violently repressive developing regions of the
globe such as parts of the Middle East and Latin America, women and so-called feminine
values such as caring and nonviolence are most suppressed and despised.
4. MUST USE CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION THEORY TO CHALLENGE WAR IMAGES

the Center for Partnership Studies, THE CHAUCE AND THE BLADE, 1995, page 159.
All is not hopeless if we recognize it is not human nature but a dominator model of
society that in our age of high technology inexorably drives us toward nuclear war. All is
not futile if we recognize that it is this system, not some inexorable divine or natural law,
that demands the use of technological breakthroughs for better ways of dominating and
destroying--even if this drives us to global bankruptcy and ultimately to nuclear war. In
short, if we look at our present from the perspective of Cultural Transformation theory, it
becomes evident that there are alternatives to a system founded on the force-based
ranking of one half of humanity over the other.
5. NEARING A SOCIAL SHIFT THAT WILL LEAD EITHER TO PARTNERSHIP OR EXTINCTION

Today we stand at the threshold of another--and potentially decisive--social shift. For in
our high technology age we either complete the shift to a different model of social
organization or face the possibility of extinction.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON

"It is one soul that animates all men."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
INTRODUCTION
Ralph Waldo Emerson surely epitomizes the uniqueness of 19 th century American

philosophy. Emerging at a time when American thought was struggling to forge its own
identity, reflective of both the optimism and the cynicism of the American political
experience, Emersons transcendentalism is a spiritual and philosophical reflection of his
time. But it is also an inspiring statement of the universality of human experience. By
painting humans with broad brushstrokes as half-animal and half-divine, and by
attempting to chronicle humanitys relation to the absolute, Emerson is the American
Hegel.
Emersons work included poetry and personal essays as well as philosophy, and there is
a heavy religious element in all of his writing. Nevertheless, his work contains important
implications for political philosophy. In this essay I will attempt to explain his philosophy
as a whole, but I will also pay special attention to the political implications of Emersons
work, along with the way in which these political elements can be used in value debate.
Emersons Life and Times

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1803, into a family whose
male members were typically clergymen. He studied divinity at Harvard. Well-educated
and taught to embrace open-mindedness as well as religion, Emerson was ordained a
Unitarian minister in 1929. He was a good speaker, delivered a good sermon or two, but
something was missing. He would begin his sermons with words from the Bible, but
would gradually find himself discussing the unfathomable ideals found in nature, or
abstract philosophy. He had problems trying to find his way back into the Bible to close
the speeches. Although some of his parishioners liked his style, others did not.
Stumbling for appropriate words at the bedside of a dying veteran of the American
Revolution, the dying man reportedly told Emerson: Young man, if you dont know your
business, you had better go home (www.litkicks.com).
Although he had entered into the ministry with high hopes (and Unitarianism has always
been a liberal and progressive religion, even back then), Emerson resigned from ministry
and journeyed to England in 1832 following the death of his first wife, Ellen Tucker. She
had died of tuberculosis after they had been married only eighteen months. This broke
Emersons heart and caused a deep spiritual crisis. His time in England was spent
cultivating friendships and intellectual associations with people like William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Needless to say, by the
time he returned to America, Emerson had a newfound optimism, as well as a greater
understanding of philosophy.
He returned to America in 1834, but tragedy would strike at his optimism once again.
That same year, Ralph Waldos brother Edward died. To make matters worse, his brother
Charles died in 1836. Emerson would be a haunted man the rest of his days. His writings
and lectures contained dark clouds even in his most arduous attempts to celebrate the
glory of humanity. By the time Charles had died, Emerson had remarried (his second
wife was named Lydia Jackson), settled in Concord, and begun to publish essays about
the human spirit, freedom and independence, and the undesirability of following
tradition. Among these early essays was one of his greatest, Self-Reliance, a polemic
about the necessity of complete individual freedom
(http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/poet/emerson.html, www.litkicks.com).
Emerson co-founded a journal, and collected a group of fellow writers (both male and
female; like his friend John Stuart Mill, Emerson believed in womens emancipation), and
started a tradition known as the New England Transcendentalists. Expanding outside
that small circle of colleagues, Emerson discovered one of the most influential thinkers
of the 19th century, when he met and wrote a letter of recommendation for Henry David
Thoreau. Two decades later, Emerson would again contribute to the intellectual history
of America by promoting the work of poet Walt Whitman. Along the way, he promoted
Buddhism and other eastern religions, opposed slavery, fought for womens equality,
and remained a dedicated, if cynical, proponent of democracy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson died of pneumonia on April 27, 1882. His life had never been as
peaceful and content as his privileged New England upbringing might have predicted; he
lost a spouse, two brothers, a child, he had his house burn down, and lived through the
Civil War. But he remained, at least in principle, optimistic about humanity, who he saw
as intrinsically tied to the transcendent and divine.
This mystical trust in human transcendence led many of Emersons contemporaries to

view him less as a philosopher than a divine seer of sorts. Philosophers usually seek
some kind of analytic understanding. Emerson, in contrast, seemed to de-value
understanding in favor of heavenly emotions. In this sense, he was even more a mystic
than Plato. As George Santayana characterizes him:
Similarly, Emerson had a habit of characterizing important figures of his time as

somehow transcendent, removed from day-to-day history, even as they sought to reform
the conditions of the time. He held Daniel Webster in such high esteem for Websters
opposition to slavery that he identified Webster as representative of the American
continent (Thomas J. Brown, LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY, Spring, 2000, p. 669).
This paradoxical figure would influence a certain strain of American thought well into the
20th century. Emerson was the first major thinker in America to offer up non-Western,
non-linear thinking as an alternative to the dry, academic science of modernist
philosophy. He influenced Henry David Thoreau and, in doing so, inspired civil
disobedience advocates from Ghandi to Martin Luther King. And his marriage of
philosophy, theology and poetry brought romanticism to America, a continent perhaps
more ready for it that Europe had ever been.
Today, however, it is impossible to systematize or categorize Emersons thinking. Even

to call it transcendentalism seems a stretch, since -isms are usually systems, and
Emerson was as anti-systemic as they come. However, certain major themes stand out
in his writings, and have great potential for debates over morality, values, and politics.
Emersons Ideas
"Whosoever would be a man, must be a nonconformist...A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of
little minds...To be great is to be misunderstood."
In this section I will argue that it is possible to trace several complimentary (if
sometimes contradictory) ideas in Emersons writings. I will describe his Platonic
conception of spirit as primary and matter as secondary; his differences from Plato
(especially in Emersons faith in humanity and democracy); and his mystical vision of
feeling or mood over logic as the basis of human understanding.
To understand transcendentalism, one must first and foremost understand its derivation
from Platonism. Plato, one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Western
civilization, was the first major figure to posit a distinction between spirit and matter.
Plato believed that the realm of "being" was absolute, unchanging, immaterial, and
incorruptible, while the realm of "becoming," where matter, people and history existed,
was a degraded and corrupt reflection of "being." Things changed, living entities died,
and perfection was unattainable.
Plato envisioned a realm of "perfect forms," where the things and ideas we contemplate
exist in a state of unchanging consistency. Ordinary humans could contemplate this
world of spirit provided they shed their worldly concerns and concentrate only on
philosophical ideals. But humans could never really reach such a world; they could only
contemplate it.
Emerson's transcendentalism was an optimistic version of Plato's distinction between

spirit and matter, being and becoming. Although, as we shall see, Emerson did not
believe history or human interaction were irrelevant, he did believe that a mystical
spirit-reality existed and was the true inspiration for human greatness.
It is instructive to note that Emerson differed from Plato in a few important ways:
1. As mentioned, Plato rejected human matters, history, politics and the like, as
corruptible facets of the realm of becoming. Emerson, on the other hand, believed it
impossible "to extricate oneself from the questions in which your age is involved.
2. It was fortunate that Emerson believed history and human interaction were important,
because, unlike Plato, Emerson believed human beings and human endeavors were
innately good. This was reflected in Emersons faith in democracy, a system of
government Plato categorically rejected.
3. Whereas Plato ultimately appealed to reason and a kind of logic to govern
philosophical thought, Emerson and the other transcendentalists turned toward the
mystical world of the Romantics. Emerson put forth a mystical sense of "vision,"
including emotions such as love, as the basis of genuine knowledge.
I wish to concentrate on this last point a little more. Emerson trusted instinct and
emotion, which he saw as our connection to the divine, more than he trusted logic and
analytic thought. He wrote: "Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with
your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous
glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from your bed, or walk abroad in the morning after
meditating the matter before sleep on the previous night" (Emerson, "Intellect").
This way of thinking has been called Emersons epistemology of moods. Like the
German and British Romantics, Emerson believed that it was possible to think too
much, and in doing so lose the spontaneous connection to creation and nature that
Romantics saw as vital to a higher kind of understanding.
Emersons "epistemology of moods" is an attempt to construct a framework for

encompassing what might otherwise seem contradictory outlooks, viewpoints, or
doctrines. Emerson really means to "accept," as he puts it, "the clangor and jangle of
contrary tendencies" (CW3: 36). He means to be irresponsible to all that holds him back
from his self-development. That is why, at the end of "Circles," he writes that he is "only
an experimenterwith no Past at my back" (CW2: 188). In the world of flux that he
depicts in that essay, there is nothing stable to be responsible to: "every moment is
new; the past is always swallowed and forgotten, the coming only is sacred" (CW2: 189)
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/).
In other words, higher understanding, based more on feeling than analysis, transcends
the old Aristotelian maxim that things cannot be both true and false. Like Hegel,
Emerson believed contradictory premises were simply stepping-stones to a higher,
comprehensive understanding.
This serves as a useful transition into Emersons belief in the connectedness of all
creatures and things. Since that connectedness is more real than the analytic
separateness of individual thinking, it would make sense that a transcendentalist would
value the spirit of emotion more than the analysis of individual thoughts. After all,
Emerson viewed emotion as the emanation of the divine, and in turn viewed the divine
as an aggregate reflection of all creatures and things. He was very close, in this respect,
to being a pantheist.
Transcendentalism, as its name implies, holds that all living creatures and things of the
earth are united as something mystically higher and more whole than the sum of their
parts. Emerson combined this idea of the essential unity of all things and creatures with
a belief in the innate goodness of humanity.
Like many of transcendentalism's central themes, the notion of a "unitary soul" uniting
all humankind seems more "Eastern" than "Western." But the idea that we are all joined
by one common soul has immediate and important political implications that give a
strong metaphysical basis to the American political ideal of equality. This is apparent in
Emerson's position against slavery.
For Emerson, democracy, however imperfect, was a method by which human beings
could serve as "lenses through which we read our own minds."
Like friendship and reading, democracy offered a variation of the process by which other
individuals act as "lenses through which we read our own minds." As each person
searches for the perfectly fitted lens, "the otherest," some geniuses manage to serve
large groups because they 'stand for facts, and for thoughts.' (Thomas J. Brown, LAW
AND SOCIAL INQUIRY, Spring, 2000, p. 669).
Emerson refused to see distinctions based on skin color or national origin as being more
important than the common humanity that unites Black and white, or other distinct
groups. This, of course, explains his opposition to slavery and his position in favor of
womens emancipation.
There are two more important political implications found in Emerson. First, since
governments are not the ultimate source of morality, morality is more important than
obeying the law. In his essay Self-Reliance, Emerson argues that Nature reveals moral
truth. In The American Scholar he argues that institutions and books do not reveal
truth as well as can be revealed through our personal relationships with the divine
mediated, presumably, through Nature. Because of this, Emerson was a strong supporter
of civil disobedience against unjust laws.
Second, self-reliance is valuable to Emerson because he sees power as something

that makes us human, and dependence on others as a natural indictment of that power.
This obsession with power has long been a rallying point against Emerson. Because he
held an almost Nietzschian awe of power, critics sometimes contend that he glosses
over many injustices that are on par with slavery, such as rapid industrialization or
capitalist exploitation.
Objections to Emerson
As already noted, critics fault Emerson on two levels:
Inconsistency and lack of coherent foundation: Emerson was as much a mystic and poet
as he was a philosopher. Some critics, George Santayana among them, doubt that its
even proper to call Emerson a philosopher. Those arguing against Emerson can gain a
great deal of ground by citing the numerous instances where his thoughts lead to
mystical pronouncements instead of solid and warranted conclusions.
Obsession with power: As much as Emerson extolled the sins of slavery and patriarchy, he
also extolled the virtues of capitalism, the necessity of self-reliance, and the power of
individual action. This is another instance of the inconsistency cited earlier, but it also
reflects Emersons desire to be a truly American thinker at a time when Americans were
confronting and conquering the frontier. The problem is that Emerson never really
comes to terms with how his pronouncements on power (Life is a search after power, he
declared) problematized his political stance against oppression.

First, Emersons philosophy strongly supports civil disobedience and the refusal to follow
unjust laws. This is the most well-known of Emersons philosophies, and it inspired Henry
David Thoreaus entire essay Civil Disobedience. Emersons embrace of civil
disobedience comes from two areas of his philosophy: anti-majoritarianism, and the
notion of morality transcending states and governments
Second, Emersons philosophy makes a very optimistic statement about human nature.
Insofar as human beings embrace their connection to transcendent, divine virtue (which
Emerson also calls beauty), they will perform virtuously. This is true of every human
being. In this way, Emerson is part Plato (humans must understand the transcendent
world in order to be good) and part Aristotle (humans must actually practice virtuous
behavior to be in tune with the divine).
Although critics accuse Emerson of justifying evil, exploitative systems (such as ruthless
capitalism), it may be reasonably replied that Emerson simply believes seemingly
miserable situations (such as poverty) will ultimately culminate in human growth and
transcendence. In this way, Emerson is like John Stuart Mill (who believed capitalism
would evolve into a just economic system) or G.W.F. Hegel (who believed all bad states
of affairs would transcend into good things).
Third, Emerson takes virtuous behavior to be among the highest ethical goods, because
it is a reflection of transcendent beauty and goodness. This may be among Emersons
most Platonic philosophical notions. It serves as an intrinsic justification for moral
behavior. It may even be an alternative to deontological or utilitarian modes of ethics.
These ethical codes arguably allow one to escape from various moral responsibilities by
assigning greater and lesser values to respective moral commands. For example,
deontological ethics mandates the disregard of consequences, while utilitarian ethics
mandates an exclusive focus on consequences. Transcendentalist ethics, on the other
hand, would probably call for a unity of intentions and consequences, since all
phenomena and actions are linked in some way.
Debaters interested in incorporating Emerson into their arguments should be cautioned

that he is far from a systematic thinker. As noted above, his stance often seems antifoundationalist and anti-analytic, meaning that there will be a certain awkwardness
involved in using his ideas for the sometimes-binaristic world of debate. However,
Emersons eloquence, his optimism about humanity and democracy, and his powerful
statements against human bondage and majoritarianism, compensate for his imperfect
attempt to do justice to the paradoxical nature of human existence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Gay Wilson. RALPH WALDO EMERSON: A BIOGRAPHY (New York: Viking Press,
1981).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. A YANKEE IN CANADA, WITH ANTI-SLAVERY AND REFORM PAPERS
(Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1866).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. EMERSON ON EDUCATION: SELECTIONS (New York: Teachers

College Press, 1966).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. FORTUNE OF THE REPUBLIC (Boston: Hougton, Osgood and
Company, 1878).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. INDIAN SUPERSTITION (Hanover, N.H.: Friends of the Dartmouth
Library, 1954).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. NAPOLEAN, OR THE MAN OF THE WORLD (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1947)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT, AND OTHER PAPERS (Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin, 1900).
THE EARLY LECTURES OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1959).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. THE CONDUCT OF LIFE: NINE ESSAYS ON FATE, POWER, WEALTH
(New York: Scott-Thaw, 1903).
Gougeon, Len and Myerson, Joel, eds. EMERSONS ANTISLAVERY WRITINGS (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1995).
Haight, Gordon Sherman, ed. THE BEST OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON: ESSAYS, POEMS,
ADDRESSES (New York: W. J. Black, 1941).
Huggard, William Allen. EMERSON AND THE PROBLEM OF WAR AND PEACE (Iowa City:
The University Press, 1938).
Konvitz, Milton R. and Whicher, Stephen E., eds. EMERSON: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL
ESSAYS (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978).
McGiffert, Arthur Cushman Jr., ed. YOUNG EMERSON SPEAKS: UNPUBLISHED

DISCOURSES ON MANY SUBJECTS (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1968).
Porte, Joel. REPRESENTATIVE MAN: RALPH WALDO EMERSON IN HIS TIME (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1978).
Robinson, David. APOSTLE OF CULTURE: EMERSON AS PREACHER AND LECTURER

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).
Sealts Jr., Merton M. and Ferguson, Alfred R., eds. EMERSONS NATURE: ORIGIN,
GROWTH, MEANING (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1969).
Smith, Susan Sutton, ed. THE TOPICAL NOTEBOOKS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990)
BEAUTY IS THE HIGHEST VALUE

1. BEAUTY IS THE ULTIMATE END OF THE UNIVERSE AND ALL ACTIVITY
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American transcendentalist philosopher, EMERSON ON
TRANSCENDENTALISM, 1986, p. 15.
The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an
ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its
largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair.
Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All.
2. VIRTUOUS ACTS ARE BEAUTIFUL AND EXPRESSES THE RATIONALITY OF THE UNIVERSE
The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfection.
The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy, is that which is
found in combination with the human will. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.
Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place
and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the
property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and
estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and
abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.
POWER IS DERIVED FROM VIRTUOUS BEHAVIOR
1. WE DERIVE POWER FROM BEING VIRTUOUS AND HONEST

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American transcendentalist philosopher, EMERSONS PROSE AND
POETRY, 2000,
p. 15.
One measure of a mans character is his effect upon his fellow-men. And any one who
will steadily observe his own experience will I think become convinced, that every false
word he has uttered, that it to say, every departure from his own convictions, out of
deference to others has been a sacrifice of a certain amount of his power over other
men. For every man knows whether he has been accustomed to receive truth or
falsehoodvaluable opinions or foolish talkingfrom his brother, and this knowledge
must inevitably determine his respect.
2. VIRTUOUS ACTS PLACE US IN UNISON WITH THE POWER OF NATURE

In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to
draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretches out her arms
to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow
his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the
decoration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame
will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the central
figure of the visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, Socrates, Phocion, associate themselves fitly
in our memory with the geography and climate of Greece. The visible heavens and earth
sympathize with Jesus. And in common life whosoever has seen a person of powerful
character and happy genius will have remarked how easily he took all things along with
him,--the persons, the opinions, and the day, and nature became ancillary to a man.
MORALITY IS INNATE AND

TRANSCENDENT
1. THE TRUE SOURCE OF MORALITY IS IN THE UNWRITTEN LAWS OF HUMANITYS
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE UNIVERSE AND EACH OTHER
TRANSCENDENTALISM, 1986, pp. 72-73.
The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the presence of certain divine laws.
It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish
details, principles that astonish. The child amidst his baubles is learning the action of
light, motion, gravity, muscular force; and in the game of human life, love, fear, justice,
appetite, man, and God, interact. These laws refuse to be adequately stated. They will
not be written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. They elude our persevering
thought; yet we read them hourly in each others faces, in each others actions, in our
own remorse.
2. TRANSCENDENT MORAL LAWS EXIST IN HUMAN INTUITION

The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the
soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject
to circumstance. Thus in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant
and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled.
CIVIL LAWS MUST BE A REFLECTION OF TRUE, TRANSCENDENT JUSTICE
1. LAWS WITHOUT TRANSCENDENT JUSTICE ARE USELESS

POETRY, 2000,
p. 361.
I question the value of our civilization, when I see that the public mind has never less
hold of the strongest of all truths. The sense of injustice is blunted, a sure sign of the
shallowness of our intellect. I cannot accept the railroad and the telegraph in exchange
for reason and clarity. It is not skill in iron locomotives that marks so fine civility as the
jealousy of liberty. I cannot think the most judicious tubing a compensation for
metaphysical debility. What is the use of admirable law-forms and political forms, if a
hurricane of party feeling and a combination of monied interests can beat them to the
ground? What is the use of courts, if judges only quote authorities, and no judge exerts
original jurisdiction, or recurs to first principles? What is the use of a Federal Bench, if its
opinions are the political breath of the hour? And what is the use of constitutions, if all
the guarantees provided by the jealousy of ages for the protection of liberty are made of
no effect, when a bad act of Congress finds a willing commissioner?
2. WE HAVE A DUTY TO BREAK IMMORAL LAWS

POETRY, 2000,
p. 362.
An immoral law makes it a mans duty to break it, at every hazard. For virtue is the very
self of every man. It is therefore a principle of law, that an immoral contract is void, and
that an immoral statute is void, for, as laws do not make right, but are simply declatory
of a right which already existed, it is not to be presumed that they can so stultify
themselves as to command injustice.
EMERSONS PHILOSOPHY LEGITIMIZES

RUTHLESS POWER AND COMPETITION
1. EMERSON SAW CAPITALIST IMPERIALISM AS THE UNFOLDING OF DIVINE WILL
Robert Milder, Professor of English at Washington University of Saint Louis, THE
CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1999, p. 68.
Emerson was not co-opted by liberal capitalism so much as he hastened to join it,
since aligning himself with the divinely empowered forces of the age was always the
condition for a living philosophy. The Young American (1844)Emersons battle cry
for the new era of industrial expansion and manifest destiny, as his editors call itis
therefore less an apology for Laissez-faire capitalism than an attempt like Henry
Adamss sixty years later to plot the lines of force that were remaking contemporary
society. The difference is that where Adams the ironist would dwell on multiplicity and a
vertiginous acceleration of energies without immanent purpose or foreseeable end,
Emerson the seeker of unity is at pains to assimilate the new forces to a cosmic and
social teleologyto survey history for the perspective of the over-god of the Channing
ode and, in doing so, marry Right to Might.
2. EMERSON GLORIFIED POWER AND ELITISM

Daniel Aron, philosopher, EMERSON: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS, 1962, p. 90.
Emersons respect for power and its achievements is even more glowingly expressed in
two others essays, Power and Wealth. Here he reiterates his preference for the
bruisers and pirates, the men of the right Caesarian pattern who transcend the
pettiness of talkers and clerks and dominate the world by sheer force of character.
Life is a search after power, he announces, and the successful men who understand
the laws of Nature and respond to the godhead within themselves, who convert the sap
and juices of the planet to the incarnation and nutriment of their design, are
unconsciously fulfilling the plan of a benevolent providence. In these essays and
elsewhere, Emerson was not only synchronizing the predatory practices of the
entrepreneur with the harmony of the universe and permitting merchants (as Bronson
Alcott shrewdly said) to find a refuge from their own duplicity under his broad shield;
he was also outlining a code of behavior that the superior man must follow, and
sketching the ideal political economy under which the superman might best exercise his
uncommon talents.
3. EMERSONS PHILOSOPHY LEGITIMIZES UNCHECKED CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION

Robert Milder, Professor of English at Washington University of Saint Louis, THE
CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1999, pp. 68-69.
By emphasizing the anti-feudal power of trade, which displaces the physical
strength of kings and aristocrats and installs the enlightened forces of computation,
combination, information (and) science, in its room. Emerson can associate capitalism
with amelioration in nature, which alone permits and authorizes amelioration in
mankind. Implicit in his words are the notion that the civic world is part of nature and
subject to its processes and that advancement occurs by cooperating with these
processes rather than directing them toward immediate human ends. The political
corollary to this belief is an almost unmitigated laissez-faire: Trade is an instrument of
that friendly Power which works for us in our own despiteOur part is plainly not to
throw ourselves across the track, not to block improvement, and sit till we are stone, but
to watch the uprise of successive mornings, and to conspire with the new works of new
days.
EMERSONS PHILOSOPHY IS
IRRELEVANT TO EVERYDAY AND
POLITICAL LIFE
1. TRANSCENDENTALISM PLACES ITSELF ABOVE ORDINARY HUMAN EXPERIENCE
Michael Lopez, Professor of English at Michigan State University, EMERSON AND POWER,
1996, p. 32.
Empty, vacantthe image is invoked repeatedly in Henry Jamess and Santayanas
portrayals of Emerson. For James, Emersons memory evoked an unforgettable series of
impressions of New Englands cultural barrenness. Emersons personal history, he
recalled, could be condensed into the single word Concord, and all the condensation in
the world will not make it look rich. He continued, in his 1888 essay, to associate
Emerson with the terrible paucity of alternatives, the achromatic picture his
environment presented him. As far as James was concerned, the whole Concord school
had, as Matthiessen notes, enacted a series of experiments in the void. Emersons
special capacity for moral experiencewhich for James meant Emersons ripe
unconscious of evil, his inability to look at anything but the soulwas the result of his
coming to maturity in a community that had to seek its entertainment, its rewards and
consolations, almost exclusively in the moral world. The decidedly lean Boston of
Emersons day was self-enclosed, an island above the extremes of common human
experience.
2. EMERSONS PHILOSOPHY IGNORES THE EVILS OF THE REAL WORLD

Michael Lopez, Professor of English at Michigan State University, EMERSON AND POWER,
1996, p. 32-33.
Emersons limited moral world was, like the New England (of) fifty years ago, sealed
off, perpetually untested by the beguilements and prizes of experience. Boston existed
serenely, James writes (and he means Boston to stand for Emerson), like a ministry
without an opposition. It was no surprise, then, that his eyes were thickly bandaged
to all sense of the dark, the foul, the base, and no surprise that there was a certain
inadequacy and thinness in (Emersons) enumerations and quaint animadversions.
We get the impression, James concludes, of a conscience gasping in the void, panting
for sensations, with something of the movement of the gills of a landed fish.
3. EMERSONS PHILOSOPHY LACKS ANY SPECIFIC CONTENT OR DEFINITION

George Santayana, philosopher, EMERSON: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS, 1962,
p. 31.
This effect was by no means due to the possession on the part of Emerson of the secret
of the universe, or even of a definite conception of ultimate truth. He was not a prophet
who had once for all climbed his Sinai or his Tabor, and having there beheld the
transfigured reality, descended again to make authoritative report of it to the world. Far
from it. At bottom he had no doctrine at all. The deeper he went and the more he tried
to grapple with fundamental conceptions, the vaguer and more elusive they became in
his hands. Did he know what he meant by Spirit or the Over-Soul? Could he say what
he understood by the terms, so constantly on his lips, Nature, Law, God, Benefit, or
Beauty? He could not, and the consciousness of that incapacity was so lively within him
that he never attempted to give articulation to his philosophy.
4. EMERSONIAN MYSTICISM VOIDS ALL REASON AND UNDERSTANDING

George Santayana, philosopher, EMERSON: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS, 1962,
p. 35.
Mysticism, as we have said, is the surrender of a category of thought because we divine
its relativity. As every new category, however, must share this reproach, the mystic is
obliged in the end to give them all up, the poetic and moral categories no less than the
physical, so that the end of his purification is the atrophy of his whole nature, the
emptying of his whole heart and mind to make room, as he thinks, for God. By attacking
the authority of the understanding as the organon of knowledge, by substituting itself for
it as the herald of a deeper truth, the imagination thus prepares its own destructing. For
if the understanding is rejected because it cannot grasp the absolute, the imagination
and all its worksart, dogma, worshipmust presently be rejected for the same reason.
Common sense and poetry must both go by the board, and conscience must follow after:
for all these are human and relative. Mysticism will be satisfied only with the absolute,
and as the absolute, by its very definition, is not representable by any specific faculty, it
must be approached through the abandonment of all.
Epicurus
Epicurus was a Greek philosopher born around 341 BC, he grew up in the Athenian
colony of Samos, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. He was educated at home by his
father, who was a schoolteacher. He was also be taught by various philosophers over
the course of his life. At the age of 18 he went to Athens to join the military service.
After a brief stay in the military, he joined his father in Colophon, where he to began to
teach. Epicurus founded a philosophical school in Mitilni on the island of Lsvos about
311. It was two or three years later that he became head of a school in Lampsacus (now
Lpseki, Turkey). Returning to Athens in 306, it was there that he settled permanently
and taught philosophy to a body of devoted followers. Often instruction took place in
the garden of Epicurus home, and because of this his followers were known as
philosophers of the garden. Both women and men frequented his garden, students
from all over Greece and Asia flocked to Epicurus school, attracted as much by his
charm as his intellect.
Epicurus was a prolific author, but almost none of his own works survived. This is
probably because the Christian authorities, which were largely in control, viewed his
ideas as ungodly. Diogenes Laertius, who probably lived in the third century, wrote a 10book Lives of the Philosophers, which included three of Epicurus letters in its recounting
of the life and teachings of Epicurus. These three letters are brief summaries of major
areas of Epicurus philosophy. The Letter to Herodotus summarizes his metaphysics,
while the Letter to Pythocles gives atomic explanations for meteorological
phenomena, and the Letter to Menoeceus summarizes his ethics. The Letter to
Menoeceus also includes the Principal Doctrines, which is comprised of 40 sayings that
deal mainly with ethical matters.
The absence of Epicurus own writings means that we have to rely on later writers to
reconstruct Epicurus thought. Two of these most important sources are the Roman poet
Lucretius and the Roman politician Cicero. Lucretius was an Epicurean who wrote De
Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), a six-book poem expounding Epicurus
metaphysics. Cicero was an adherent of the skeptical academy, who wrote a series of
works setting forth the major philosophical systems of his day, including Epicureanism.
Another major source is the essayist Plutarch who was a Platonist. However, both Cicero
and Plutarch were very hostile toward Epicureanism, so they must be used with care,
since they often are less than charitable toward Epicurus, and may skew his views to
serve their own purposes. Although the major outlines of Epicurus thought are clear
enough, the lack of sources means many of the details of his philosophy are still open to
dispute.
Epicureanisms essential doctrine is that the main goal of life is pleasure or the supreme
good. In this view intellectual pleasures are valued above sensual ones, which tend to
disturb peace of mind. Epicurus taught that true happiness is the serenity that comes
from conquering our fear of the gods, of death, and of the afterlife. The ultimate end of
Epicurean speculation about nature is to facilitate the end of these fears. Epicurus
believed that the universe was infinite and eternal, consisting only of bodies and space.
The bodies according to Epicurus are either compound or atoms the indivisible stable
elements of which the compounds are made up of. The world, as seen through the
human eye, is produced by the whirlings, collisions, and aggregations of these atoms,
which individually possess only shape, size, and weight.
In biology, Epicurus predicted the modern doctrine of natural selection. He postulated

that natural forces give rise to organisms of different types and that only the types able
to support and propagate themselves have survived. Epicurean psychology is very
materialistic. It argues sensations are caused by a continuous stream of films or idols
cast off by bodies and impinging on the senses. All of these sensations are believed to
be absolutely reliable; error exists only when a sensation is not interpreted properly.
The soul is regarded as being composed of fine particles distributed throughout the
body. The conclusion of the body in death, Epicurus taught, leads to the conclusion of
the soul, because it cannot exist apart from the body. Since death means total
extinction, it has no meaning either to the living or to the dead, for when we are, death
is not; and when death is, we are not.
The prime virtues in the Epicurean system of ethics are justice, honesty, and prudence,
or the balancing of pleasure and pain. Epicurus preferred friendship to love, because in
his view it was less distressing. His personal hedonism taught that only through selfrestraint, moderation, and detachment can one achieve the kind of tranquility that is
true happiness. Despite his materialism, Epicurus believed in the freedom of will. He
suggested that even the atoms are free and move spontaneously on occasion. Epicurus
did not deny the existence of gods, but he emphatically maintained that as happy and
imperishable beings of supernatural power they could have nothing to do with human
affairs, although they might take pleasure in contemplating the lives of good mortals.
Epicurus' ethics is a form of egoistic hedonism, or more simply, he says that the only
thing that is intrinsically valuable is one's own pleasure, anything else that has value is
valuable merely as a means to securing pleasure for oneself. Epicurus does however
recommend a virtuous, moderately abstinent life as the best means to securing
pleasure.
ETHICS
Epicurus' ethics starts from the common Aristotelian notion that the highest good is
what is valued for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else. Epicurus agrees
with Aristotle that happiness is the highest good. However, he disagrees with Aristotle
by identifying happiness with pleasure. Epicurus gives two reasons for this association.
First, pleasure is only thing that people do value for its own sake. Everything we do,
claims Epicurus, we do for the sake ultimately of gaining pleasure for ourselves. This is
supposedly confirmed by observing infants who instinctively pursue pleasure and shun
pain. This is also true of adults, argues Epicurus, but in adults it is more difficult to see
because adults have much more complicated beliefs about what will bring them
pleasure.
The second argument that Epicurus puts forth lies in one's introspective experience.
Individuals immediately perceive that pleasure is good and that pain is bad, in the same
way that one immediately perceives that fire is hot. No further argument is needed
argues Epicurus, to demonstrate the goodness of pleasure or the badness of pain.
Although all pleasures are good and all pains evil, Epicurus posits that not all pleasures
should be chosen nor should all pains be avoided. Instead, one should calculate what
their long-term self-interests, and forgo what will bring pleasure in the short-term if
doing so will ultimately lead to greater pleasure in the long-term.
Epicurus argues that pleasure is tied closely to satisfying one's desires. He distinguishes
between two different types of pleasure: moving pleasures and static pleasures.
Moving pleasures occur when one is in the process of satisfying a desire (e.g., eating a
hamburger when one is hungry). These pleasures involve an active stimulation of the
senses. These feelings are what most people call pleasure. However, Epicurus argue
that after one's desires have been satisfied, (e.g., when one is full after eating), the
state of satiety, of no longer being in need or want, is in itself pleasurable. Epicurus
calls this a static pleasure, and believes that these pleasures are the best. Because of
this, Epicurus denies that there is any intermediate state between pleasure and pain.
When one has unfulfilled desires, this is painful, and when one no longer has unfulfilled
desires, this steady state is the most pleasurable of all, not merely some intermediate
state between pleasure and pain.
Epicurus also distinguishes between physical and mental pleasures and pains. Physical
pleasures and pains concern only the present, whereas mental pleasures and pains also
encompass the past (fond memories of past pleasure or regret over past pain or
mistakes) and the future (confidence or fear about what will occur). The greatest end of
happiness, argues Epicurus, is anxiety about the future. If one can banish fear about the
future, and face the future with confidence that one's desires will be satisfied, then one
will attain tranquility (ataraxia), the most exalted state. In fact, given Epicurus'
conception of pleasure, it might be less misleading to call him a tranquillest instead of

a hedonist.
DESIRE
The close connection of pleasure with desire-satisfaction requires that Epicurus devote a
considerable part of his ethics to analyzing different kinds of desires. If pleasure results
from getting what you want (desire-satisfaction) and pain from not getting what you
want (desire-frustration), then there are two strategies you can pursue: you can either
strive to fulfill the desire, or you can try to eliminate the desire. For the most part,
Epicurus advocates the second strategy, that of minimizing your desires down because
then they are easily satisfied. Epicurus distinguishes between three types of desires, (1)
natural and necessary desires, (2) natural but non-necessary desires, and (3) vain
and empty desires.
Natural and necessary desires include the desires for food and shelter. These desires
are easy to satisfy, difficult to eliminate, and bring great pleasure when satisfied,
according to Epicurus. In addition, they are naturally limited. That is, if someone is
hungry, it only takes a limited amount of food to fill the stomach, after which the desire
is satisfied. An example of a natural but non-necessary desire is the desire for luxury
food. Although food is needed for survival, one does not need a particular type of food
to survive. Thus, despite his hedonism, Epicurus advocates a surprisingly frugal way of
life. Although one shouldn't spurn extravagant foods if they happen to be available,
becoming dependent on such goods ultimately leads of unhappiness. Vain desires on
the other hand include desires for power, wealth, fame, and the like. They are difficult to
satisfy because they have no natural limit. If an individual desires wealth or power, no
matter how much they get, it is always possible to get more, and the more they get, the
more they want. These desires are not natural to human beings, but inculcated by
society and by false beliefs about what we need. Epicurus thinks that these desires
should be eliminated. If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him more
money; rather, reduce his desires. By eliminating the pain caused by unfulfilled desires,
and the anxiety that occurs because of the fear that one's desires will not be fulfilled in
the future, the wise Epicurean attains tranquility, and thus happiness.
Epicurus' hedonism was widely denounced in the ancient world as undermining

traditional morality. Epicurus, however, insists that courage, moderation, and the other
virtues are needed in order to attain happiness. However, the virtues for Epicurus are all
purely instrumental goods--that is, they are valuable solely for the sake of the happiness
that they can bring oneself, not for their own sake. Epicurus says that all of the virtues
are ultimately forms of prudence, of calculating what is in one's own best interest. In
this, Epicurus goes against the majority of Greek ethical theorists.
JUSTICE
Epicurus is one of the first philosophers to give a well-developed contractual theory of
justice. Epicurus says that justice is an agreement neither to harm nor be harmed, and
that we have a preconception of justice as what is useful in mutual associations.
People enter into communities in order to gain protection from the dangers of the wild,
and agreements concerning the behavior of the members of the community are needed
in order for these communities to function, e.g., prohibitions of murder, regulations
concerning the killing and eating of animals, and so on. Justice exists only where there
are such agreements.
Like the virtues, justice is valued entirely on its utility for each of the members of
society. Epicurus argues that the main reason not to be unjust is that you will be
punished if you are caught, and that even if you do not get caught, the fear of being
caught will still cause you pain. He adds that this fear of punishment is needed mainly
to keep the masses, which otherwise would kill, steal, etc., in line, The Epicurean wise
person recognizes the usefulness of the laws, and since they do not desire great wealth,
luxury goods, political power, they see that they have no reason to engage in the
conduct prohibited by the laws. Although justice only exists where there is an
agreement about how to behave that does not mean that any behavior dictated by the
laws of a particular society are thereby just. Since the justice contract is entered into
for the purpose of securing what is useful for the members of the society, only laws that
are actually useful are just. Thus, a prohibition of murder would be just, but antimiscegenation laws would not. Since what is useful can vary from place to place and
time to time, what laws are just can likewise vary.
THEORY OF MIND AND DEATH

Epicurus is also one of the first philosophers to put forward an Identity Theory of Mind.
The main point that Epicurus wants to establish is that the mind must be a body,
because of its ability to interact with the body. Likewise, the mind affects the body, as
our ability to move our limbs when we want to demonstrate. Only bodies can interact
with other bodies, so the mind must be a body. Epicurus argues that the mind cannot be
something intangible, as Plato thinks, since the only thing that is not a body is void,
which is simply empty space and cannot act or be acted upon. The mind, then, is an
organ in the body, and mental processes are identified with atomic processes. One
important result of Epicurus' philosophy of mind is that death is annihilation. The mind is
able to engage in the motions of sensation and thought only when it is housed in the
body. Upon death, says Epicurus, the container of the body shatters, and the atoms
disperse in the air. The atoms are eternal, but the mind made up of these atoms is not,
just as other compound bodies cease to exist when the atoms that make them up
disperse.
If death is annihilation, says Epicurus, then it is 'nothing to us.' Epicurus' main argument
for why death is not bad is contained in the Letter to Menoeceus and can be dubbed the
'no subject of harm' argument. If death is bad, for whom is it bad? Not for the living,
since they're not dead, and not for the dead, since they don't exist. Epicurus ads that if
death causes you no pain when you're dead, it's foolish to allow the fear of it to cause
you pain now. A second Epicurean argument against the fear of death, the so-called
'symmetry argument,' is recorded by the Epicurean poet Lucretius. He says that anyone
who fears death should consider the time before he was born. The past infinity of prenatal non-existence is like the future infinity of post-mortem non-existence; it is as
though nature has put up a mirror to let us see what our future non-existence will be
like. But we do not consider not having existed for an eternity before our births to be a
terrible thing; therefore, neither should we think not existing for an eternity after our
deaths to be evil.
EPICURUS IN DEBATE
Epicurus' views on morality and justice can be quite useful LD debate. Epicurus'
philosophy of justice states that only laws that benefit the whole of society are just, so
that would necessitate the other team win the debate on the law is beneficial before
then can engage the philosophical debate on whether or not the law is just.
Epicurus' moral philosophy also opens up and interesting aspect for LD debaters.
Epicurus' moral philosophy is based on the hedonistic principle that whatever increases
your happiness is the most ethical decisions to make. The way this plays out in a debate
round is, that when used as a value, Epicurus moral stance requires one side to prove
that their value and criterion make everyone happier.
THE PRINCIPLES DOCTRINE

The "Principal Doctrines" (also sometimes translated under the title "Sovran
Maxims") are a collection of forty quotes from the writings of Epicurus that
serve as a handy summary of his ethical theory:
1. A blessed and indestructible being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon
any other being; so he is free from anger and partiality, for all such things imply
weakness.
2. Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements
experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensation is nothing to us.
3. The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When such
pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of
mind or of both together.
4. Continuous bodily pain does not last long; instead, pain, if extreme, is present a very
short time, and even that degree of pain which slightly exceeds bodily pleasure does not
last for many days at once. Diseases of long duration allow an excess of bodily pleasure
over pain.
5. It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly,
and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly.
Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live
wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant
life.
6. In order to obtain protection from other men, any means for attaining this end is a
natural good.
7. Some men want fame and status, thinking that they would thus make themselves
secure against other men. If the life of such men really were secure, they have attained
a natural good; if, however, it is insecure, they have not attained the end which by
nature's own prompting they originally sought.
8. No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures
entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.
9. If every pleasure had been capable of accumulation, not only over time but also over
the entire body or at least over the principal parts of our nature, then pleasures would
never differ from one another.
10. If the things that produce the pleasures of profligate men really freed them from
fears of the mind concerning celestial and atmospheric phenomena, the fear of death,
and the fear of pain; if, further, they taught them to limit their desires, we should never
have any fault to find with such persons, for they would then be filled with pleasures
from every source and would never have pain of body or mind, which is what is bad.
11. If we had never been troubled by celestial and atmospheric phenomena, nor by fears
about death, nor by our ignorance of the limits of pains and desires, we should have had
no need of natural science.
12. It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if
he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So
without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.
13. There is no advantage to obtaining protection from other men so long as we are
alarmed by events above or below the earth or in general by whatever happens in the
boundless universe.
14. Protection from other men, secured to some extent by the power to expel and by
material prosperity, in its purest form comes from a quiet life withdrawn from the
multitude.
15. The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth
required by vain ideals extends to infinity.
16. Chance seldom interferes with the wise man; his greatest and highest interests have
been, are, and will be, directed by reason throughout his whole life.
17. The just man is most free from disturbance, while the unjust is full of the utmost
disturbance.
18. Bodily pleasure does not increase when the pain of want has been removed; after
that it only admits of variation. The limit of mental pleasure, however, is reached when
we reflect on these bodily pleasures and their related emotions, which used to cause the
mind the greatest alarms.
19. Unlimited time and limited time afford an equal amount of pleasure, if we measure
the limits of that pleasure by reason.
20. The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires
unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh
is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we
have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun
pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack
enjoyment of the best life.
21. He who understands the limits of life knows that it is easy to obtain that which
removes the pain of want and makes the whole of life complete and perfect. Thus he has
no longer any need of things which involve struggle.
22. We must consider both the ultimate end and all clear sensory evidence, to which we
refer our opinions; for otherwise everything will be full of uncertainty and confusion.
23. If you fight against all your sensations, you will have no standard to which to refer,
and thus no means of judging even those sensations which you claim are false.
24. If you reject absolutely any single sensation without stopping to distinguish between
opinion about things awaiting confirmation and that which is already confirmed to be
present, whether in sensation or in feelings or in any application of intellect to the
presentations, you will confuse the rest of your sensations by your groundless opinion
and so you will reject every standard of truth. If in your ideas based upon opinion you
hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will
not avoid error, as you will be maintaining the entire basis for doubt in every judgment
between correct and incorrect opinion.
25. If you do not on every occasion refer each of your actions to the ultimate end
prescribed by nature, but instead of this in the act of choice or avoidance turn to some
other end, your actions will not be consistent with your theories.
26. All desires that do not lead to pain when they remain unsatisfied are unnecessary,
but the desire is easily got rid of, when the thing desired is difficult to obtain or the
desires seem likely to produce harm.
27. Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole
of life, by far the most important is friendship.
28. The same conviction which inspires confidence that nothing we have to fear is
eternal or even of long duration, also enables us to see that in the limited evils of this
life nothing enhances our security so much as friendship.
29. Of our desires some are natural and necessary, others are natural but not necessary;
and others are neither natural nor necessary, but are due to groundless opinion.
30. Those natural desires which entail no pain when unsatisfied, though pursued with an
intense effort, are also due to groundless opinion; and it is not because of their own
nature they are not got rid of but because of man's groundless opinions.
31. Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or
being harmed by another.
32. Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another
not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those
peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor
suffer harm.
33. There never was such a thing as absolute justice, but only agreements made in
mutual dealings among men in whatever places at various times providing against the
infliction or suffering of harm.
34. Injustice is not an evil in itself, but only in consequence of the fear which is
associated with the apprehension of being discovered by those appointed to punish such
actions.
35. It is impossible for a man who secretly violates the terms of the agreement not to
harm or be harmed to feel confident that he will remain undiscovered, even if he has
already escaped ten thousand times; for until his death he is never sure that he will not
be detected.
36. In general justice is the same for all, for it is something found mutually beneficial in
men's dealings, but in its application to particular places or other circumstances the
same thing is not necessarily just for everyone.
37. Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in
men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a
man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no
longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds
to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble
themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts.
38. Where without any change in circumstances the things held to be just by law are
seen not to correspond with the concept of justice in actual practice, such laws are not
really just; but wherever the laws have ceased to be advantageous because of a change
in circumstances, in that case the laws were for that time just when they were
advantageous for the mutual dealings of the citizens, and subsequently ceased to be
just when they were no longer advantageous.
39. The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the
creatures he can; and those he can not, he at any rate does not treat as aliens; and
where he finds even this impossible, he avoids all dealings, and, so far as is
advantageous, excludes them from his life.
40. Those who possess the power to defend themselves against threats by their
neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee of security, live the most
pleasant life with one another; and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy is such that if
one of them dies prematurely, the others do not lament his death as though it called for
pity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Davies, 1926
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Hackett, 1994
Farrington, Benjamin, THE FAITH OF EPICURUS. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1967
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OENOANDA. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
Hibler, Richard W., HAPINESS THROUGH TRANQUILITY: THE SCHOOL OF EPICURUS.

Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984.
Hicks, Robert, STOIC AND EPICURUAN. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962.
Jones, Howard, THE EPICURAN TRADITION. New York: Routledge, 1992.
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P. Lang, 1995.
Lillegard, Norman, ON EPICURUS. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2003.
Magorian, James, THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS. Chicago: Ibis Press, 1971
Mayo, Thomas Franklin, EPICURUS IN ENGLAND. Dallas: The Southwest press, 1934.
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1960.
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Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
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1976
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Preuss, Peter, EPICUREAN ETHICS: KATASEMATIC HEDONISM. Lewiston: E. Mellen Press,

1994.
Radin, Max, EPICURUS MY MASTER. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949.
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Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970.
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PARALLEL PASSAGES FROM LUCRETIOUS. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press,
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New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
HAPPINESS IS THE PARAMOUNT VALUE

IN THE WORLD
1. ACTIONS MUST BE BASED UPON WHAT BRINGS HAPPINESS
Epicurus, philosopher, LETTER TO MENOCEUS, circa 300 B.C.E.
http://www.epicurus.net/menoeceus.html Accessed June 1, 2003. p.1.
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when
he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say
that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is
like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore,
both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes
over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and
the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he
has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things
which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be
absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it.
2. WHAT BRINGS HAPPINESS TO THE GODS BRINGS HAPPINESS TO MANKIND

Those things which without ceasing I have declared unto you, do them, and exercise
yourself in them, holding them to be the elements of right life. First believe that God is a
living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the
common sense of mankind; and so believing, you shall not affirm of him anything that is
foreign to his immortality or that is repugnant to his blessedness. Believe about him
whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For there are gods, and
the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe,
seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not
the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the
gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For the utterances of the
multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is
that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the
good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good
qualities and take pleasure in men like themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of
their kind.
3. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF DEATH

Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the
capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct
understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by
adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life
has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in
ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because
it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no
annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death,
therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is
not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or
to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.
But in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another
time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise man does not deprecate life
nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the
cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and
simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time
which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes
the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely
because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live
well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but
when once one is born to pass quickly through the gates of Hades. For if he truly
believes this, why does he not depart from life? It would be easy for him to do so once
he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in jest, his words are foolishness as those
who hear him do not believe.
We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that
neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain
not to come.
LOGIC IS NECESSARY IN ORDER TO

LEAD A MORAL LIFE
1. DESIRES MUST BE REGULATED TO LEAD A BLESSED LIFE.
http://www.epicurus.net/menoeceus.html Accessed June 1, 2003. p. 2.
We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of
the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the
necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be
rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear and certain
understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing
health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed
life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we
have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has
no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look for anything else by
which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained because
of the absence of pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure.
Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first
and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it
we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good
thing.And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose
every pleasure whatsoever, but will often pass over many pleasures when a greater
annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when
submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure.
While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is
should be chosen, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. It is,
however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and
inconveniences, that all these matters must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as
an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good.
2. REASON AND DECISION-MAKING IS THE PROPER WAY OF DECIDING WHAT IS GOOD

When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of
the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through
ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of
pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinkingbouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies
of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out
the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which
the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of all this the beginning and the
greatest good is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing even than
philosophy ; from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live
pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and
justly without living pleasantly. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life,
and a pleasant life is inseparable from them. Who, then, is superior in your judgment to
such a man? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether free from the
fear of death. He has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands
how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained, and how either the
duration or the intensity of evils is but slight. Fate, which some introduce as sovereign
over all things, he scorns, affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others
by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys
responsibility and that chance is inconstant; whereas our own actions are autonomous,
and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach. It were better, indeed, to accept
the legends of the gods than to bow beneath that yoke of destiny which the natural
philosophers have imposed. The one holds out some faint hope that we may escape if
we honor the gods, while the necessity of the naturalists is deaf to all entreaties. Nor
does he hold chance to be a god, as the world in general does, for in the acts of a god
there is no disorder; nor to be a cause, though an uncertain one, for he believes that no
good or evil is dispensed by chance to men so as to make life blessed, though it supplies
the starting-point of great good and great evil. He believes that the misfortune of the
wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that what is well
judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance.
EPICURUS' PHILOSOPHY DISPLAYS A

NEGATIVE VIEW OF DIVINITY
1. IF GOD HAS KINDNESS, GOD MUST ALSO HAVE NEGATIVE AFFECTIONS
Lactantius, philosopher, ON THE ANGER OF GOD, circa 300 A.D.
http://www.epicurus.net/anger.html Accessed June 1, 2003. p. 1.
That which follows is concerning the school of Epicurus; that as there is no anger in God,
so indeed there is no kindness. For when Epicurus thought that it was inconsistent with
God to injure and to inflict harm, which for the most part arises from the affection of
anger, he took away from Him beneficence also, since he saw that it followed that if God
has anger, He must also have kindness. Therefore, lest he should concede to Him a vice,
he deprived Him also of virtue? From this, he says, He is happy and uncorrupted,
because He cares about nothing, and neither takes trouble Himself nor occasions it to
another. Therefore He is not God, if He is neither moved, which is peculiar to a living
being, nor does anything impossible for man, which is peculiar to God, if He has no will
at all, no action, in short, no administration, which is worthy of God. And what greater,
what more worthy administration can be attributed to God, than the government of the
world, and especially of the human race, to which all earthly things are subject?
What happiness, then, can there be in God, if He is always inactive, being at rest and unmoveable? if He is deaf to those who pray to Him, and blind to His worshippers? What is
so worthy of God, and so befitting to Him, as providence? But if He cares for nothing,
and foresees nothing, He has lost all His divinity. What else does he say, who takes from
God all power and all substance, except that there is no God at all? In short, Marcus
Tullius relates that it was said by Posidonius, that Epicurus understood that there were
no gods, but that he said those things which he spoke respecting the gods for the sake
of driving away odium; and so that he leaves the gods in words, but takes them away in
reality, since he gives them no motion, no office. But if this is so, what can be more
deceitful than him? And this ought to be foreign to the character of a wise and weighty
man.
2. EPICURUS PHILSOPHY PROMOTED A GOD OF DECEPTION

But if he understood one thing and spoke another, what else is he to be called than a
deceiver, double-tongued, wicked, and moreover foolish? But Epicurus was not so crafty
as to say those things with the desire of deceiving, when he consigned these things also
by his writings to everlasting remembrance; but he erred through ignorance of the truth.
For, being led from the beginning by the probability of a single opinion, he necessarily
fell into those things which followed. For the first opinion was, that anger was not
consistent with the character of God. And when this appeared to him to be true and
unassailable, he was unable to refuse the consequences; because one affection being
removed, necessity itself compelled him to remove from God the other affections also.
Thus, he who is not subject to anger is plainly uninfluenced by kindness, which is the
opposite feeling to anger. Now, if there is neither anger nor kindness in Him, it is
manifest that there is neither fear, nor joy, nor grief, nor pity. For all the affections have
one system, one motion, which cannot he the case with God. But if there is no affection
in God, because whatever is subject to affections is weak, it follows that there is in Him
neither the care of anything, nor providence.
3. THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD IS LIMITED

Epicurus said that there was indeed a God, because it was necessary that there should
be in the world some being of surpassing excellence, distinction, and blessedness; yet
that there was no providence, and thus that the world itself was ordered by no plan, nor
art, nor workmanship, but that the universe was made up of certain minute and
indivisible seeds. But I do not see what can be said more repugnant to the truth. For if
there is a God, as God He is manifestly provident; nor can divinity be attributed to Him in
any other way than if He retains the past, and knows the present, and foresees the
future. Therefore, in taking away providence, he also denied the existence of God. But
when he openly acknowledged the existence of God, at the same time he also admitted
His providence for the one cannot exist at all, or be understood, without the other.
DIVINE POWERS HAVE NO CONTROL

OVER HUMAN BEINGS
1. HUMAN CRIME DEMONSTRATES GODS LACK OF CONTROL OVER FREE WILL
But if God takes no trouble, nor occasions trouble to another why then should we not
commit crimes as often as it shall be in our power to escape the notice of men? and to
cheat the public laws? Wherever we shall obtain a favourable opportunity of escaping
notice, let us take advantage of the occasion: let us take away the property of others,
either without bloodshed or even with blood, if there is nothing else besides the laws to
be reverenced.While Epicurus entertains these sentiments, he altogether destroys
religion; and when this is taken away, confusion and perturbation of life will follow. But if
religion cannot be taken away without destroying our hold of wisdom, by which we are
separated from the brutes, and of justice, by which the public life may be more secure,
how can religion itself be maintained or guarded without fear? For that which is not
feared is despised, and that which is despised is plainly not reverenced. Thus it comes to
pass that religion, and majesty, and honour exist together with fear; but there is no fear
where no one is angry. Whether, therefore, you take away from God kindness, or anger,
or both, religion must be taken away, without which the life of men is full of folly, of
wickedness, and enormity. For conscience greatly curbs men, if we believe that we are
living in the sight of God; if we imagine not only that the actions which we perform are
seen from above, but also that our thoughts and our words are heard by God.
2. GOD LACKS POWER

God, says Epicurus, regards nothing; therefore He has no power. For he who has power
must of necessity regard affairs. For if He has power, and does not use it, what so great
cause is there that, I will not say our race, but even the universe itself, should be
contemptible in His sight? On this account he says He is pure and happy, because He is
always at rest. To whom, then, has the administration of so great affairs been entrusted,
if these things which we see to be governed by the highest judgment are neglected by
God? or how can he who lives and perceives be at rest? For rest belongs either to sleep
or to death. But sleep has not rest. For when we are asleep, the body indeed is at rest,
but the soul is restless and agitated: it forms for itself images which it may behold, so
that it exercises its natural power of motion by a variety of visions, and calls itself away
from false things, until the limbs are satiated, and receive vigour from rest. Therefore
eternal rest belongs to death alone. Now if death does not affect God, it follows that God
is never at rest. But in what can the action of God consist, but in the administration of
the world? But if God carries on the care of the world, it follows that He cares for the life
of men, and takes notice of the acts of individuals, and He earnestly desires that they
should be wise and good. This is the will of God, this the divine law; and he who follows
and observes this is beloved by God. It is necessary that He should be moved with anger
against the man who has broken or despised this eternal and divine law. If, he says, God
does harm to any one, therefore He is not good. They are deceived by no slight error
who defame all censure, whether human or divine, with the name of bitterness and
malice, thinking that He ought to be called injurious who visits the injurious with
punishment. But if this is so, it follows that we have injurious laws, which enact
punishment for offenders, and injurious judges who inflict capital punishments on those
convicted of crime. But if the law is just which awards to the transgressor his due, and if
the judge is called upright and good when he punishes crimes -- for he guards the safety
of good men who punishes the evil -- it follows that God, when He opposes the evil, is
not injurious; but he himself is injurious who either injures an innocent man, or spares an
injurious person that he may injure many.
Arturo Escobar
Arturo Escobar is the Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Massachusetts. A native of Colombia, he is the author of numerous articles on Latin
America and the Third World. In 1996, he won the Best Book Award from the New
England Council of Latin American Studies for "Encountering Development: The Making
and Unmaking of the Third World" which provides the focus for this article. He has made
trips back to Columbia several times including a 1981-82 fieldwork project with the
Department of National Planning in Bogota. He is a harsh critic of projects seeking to
develop Third World countries.
Escobar describes his approach as poststructuralist and anthropological. By

poststructuralist, he claims to mean that his approach is discursive, in the sense that it
stems from the recognition of the importance of the dynamics of discourse and power to
study any culture (Encountering Development vii). Escobar wishes to critique the way
that policymakers talk about the Third World because his view is that our speech is a
critical part of the devastation that Western societies release on others. Development
discourse is a racial slur of the grandest kind. It defines the other as inferior according to
terms invented within the development discourse. This definition has all sorts of
nefarious implications. Those implications are explained by the parts of Escobars
anthropological approach.
Anthropology, the study of man, refers to an examination of culture, economics,

society, politics and other studies that will reveal the changes that development
discourse creates within the societies that it is imposed on. The cultural changes are the
most significant because development discourse dramatically downplays the value of
other cultures. Societies without Western technology or money are very different
culturally, but development discourse condemns these cultures because they do not
appear to take care of their own people. Of course, the definition of taking care of
people comes from the West, meaning that societies that might think they are just fine
get corrected by international banks and Western hegemony.
HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT
World War II left the United States in an unprecedented position of influence over the
whole world. The war had left much of Europe in ruins, but the United States enjoyed
economic, military and technological supremacy while also claiming a lifestyle that
surpassed any nation in the history of the planet. Escobars book opens with Harry
Trumans inaugural address as President of the United States on January 20, 1949. More
than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food
is inadequate, they are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant.
Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For
the first time in history humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the
suffering of these people I believe that we should make available to peace-loving
peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize
their aspirations for a better life Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace.
And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern
scientific and technical knowledge (Encountering Development 3). Truman suggested
that the United States use its overwhelming influence to improve the standards of living
of people world-wide. The intention was to replicate the world in the image of the United
States. The discourse began with the assumption that the lifestyle enjoyed by the people
of the United States was the model from which all other people should work in creating
their own lives.
Trumans Doctrine was immediately and universally accepted by the worlds great
powers. Industrialization, agriculture, capitalism, technology, and Westernization were
the keys to future prosperity, and no one seemed to doubt them. Why would anyone
doubt them? The nations that were most powerful and influential in the world were the
ones with these qualities. Nuclear weapons were a status symbol, as was most
technology. Economics and capital were making rich nations into richer ones. World War
II was a triumph for Western culture backed by a great Western military. It would have
been absurd not to believe in the power of the developed Western nations. Even
communists like in the Soviet Union invented socialist development schemes meant to
industrialize other countries so they could join the bloc against the United States and its
allies.
There were two immediate implications of this. First, nations began to see themselves as
developed or undeveloped, or even in transition. The United States military and
economic superiority was being translated into cultural superiority, and everyone
juxtaposed themselves comparatively to the United States as a standard. Second, the
triumph of those nations who were developed or developing was seen as inevitable. It
was the meaning of progress. Old cultural fixtures were contrary to the ability of
developing nations to care for their own peoples. When they were in the way of
progress, they were removed or forcibly forgotten.
THE TROUBLE WITH DEVELOPMENT

Development discourse is a new language of imperialism, a colonialism used to subject
other peoples to the West. Escobar quotes Homi Bhabha on this colonialism, saying that
colonial discourse is an apparatus that turns on the recognition and disavowal of
racial/cultural/historical differences. Its predominant strategic function is the creation of
a space for a subject peoples through the production of knowledge in terms of which
surveillance is exercised and a complex form of pleasure/unpleasure is incited The
objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate
types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems
of administration and instruction (Encountering Development 9). Using discourse of
development begins with the assumption that the other is an inferior being because the
other is without cellular phones and soda pop. The discourse is racist because it
presumes that white-folk must help their less fortunate, less able darker folk. The
discourse is imperialist because the help that will be imposed on the other is a method
of forcing Western culture upon that other. The discourse is Eurocentric because it
demands recognition of Western culture as the best and brightest at the cost of other
cultures.
Development discourse functions to destroy the other in two steps, representation and
management. First, the discourse represents the other in a way that makes it inferior.
Gustavo Esteva, in The Development Dictionary (1995), writes that development
always implies a favourable change, a step from the simple to the complex, from the
inferior to the superior, from the worse to the better. The word indicates that one is
doing well because one is advancing in the sense of a necessary, ineluctable, universal
law and toward a desirable goal. The word retains to this day the meaning given to it a
century ago by the creator of ecology, Haeckel: `Development is, from this moment on,
the magic word with which we will solve all the mysteries that surround us or, at least,
that which will guide us toward their solution.' But for two-thirds of the people on earth,
this positive meaning of the word `development' - profoundly rooted after two centuries
of its social construction - is a reminder of what they are not. It is a reminder of an
undesirable, undignified condition. To escape from it, they need to be enslaved to others'
experiences and dreams. The word development alone implies a bettering of something
from a condition lower than it was before the developing took place. The developing are
represented as inferior, and therefore, in need of our help.
Management, the second function of the discourse, is where the physical harm is done.
After being represented as inferior and in need of help, people of the Third World are
aided by world institutions looking to build them to look like their models in the West.
Technologies are brought in to simplify and expand production of agriculture, even if
older agricultural practices are central to a societys cultural existence. Nutrition is a
concept of the West. Escobar writes that Discourses of hunger and rural development
mediate and organize the constitution of the peasantry as producers or as elements to
be displaced in the order of things (Encountering Development 106). World Bank and
IMF planners are brought in to help order peoples and plan their economic and
infrastructural developing projects. These managers begin their projects by counting and
categorizing things. Categorization is where labeling of problems comes from, and the
creation of terms like malnutrition. Escobar sees these problems as created by
Western managers who saw differences between the Third World and the West and
assumed that they must be problems. Solutions to these problems are created by the
managers and designed mostly to recreate the Third World in the image of the West. The
harm to the environment is one of the first major catastrophes. James Petras, in the
March 1999 Journal of Contemporary Asia, writes that To speak of sustainable growth,
while the imperial state, the World Bank and their counterpart globalist investors and
politicians promote privatization and pillage is an obscenity: nowhere has privatization
been accompanied by conservation, it always has been and is associated with
heightened pillage, exhaustion and abandonment of people and lands (98). Petras
raising an interesting point, that development is harmful when it is honestly trying to do
good, but it can be even worse when the developers are out to make profits without
regard for the people. Robert McCorquodale and Richard Fairbrother, in the March 1999
Human Rights Quarterly, write that a great deal of the investment arising from
globalized economic sources for the purposes of "development" is allocated only to
certain types of projects, such as the building of dams, roads, and runways, and the
creation of large-scale commercial farms. There is little or no investment in primary
health care, safe drinking water, and basic education (735). The management
accompanying the discourse pillages its hosts.
The implications of the discourse are devastating. Zygmunt Bauman writes about the
terrible consequences. [H]umanity is divided into two parts. One confronts the
challenge of complexity, the other confronts the ancient, terrible challenge of survival.
This is perhaps the principal aspect of the failure of the modern project . . .It is not the
absence of progress, but on the contrary the development -techno-scientific, artistic,
economic, political - which made possible the total wars, totalitarianisms, the widening
gap between the riches of the North and poverty of the South, unemployment and the
`new poor' . . .Lyotard's conclusion is blunt and damning: ìt has become impossible to
legitimize development by the promise of the emancipation of humanity in its totality.'''
Yet it was exactly that èmancipation' - from want, `low standards of life', paucity of
needs, doing what the community has done rather than `being able' to do whatever one
may still wish in the future (àble' in excess of present wishes) - that loomed vaguely
behind Harry Truman's 1947 declaration of war on ùnderdevelopment'. Since then,
unspeakable sufferings have been visited upon the extant èarth economies' of the
world in the name of happiness, identified now with the `developed', that is modern,
way of life. Their delicately balanced livelihood which could not survive the
condemnation of simplicity, frugality, acceptance of human limits and respect for
non-human forms of life, now lies in ruin, yet no viable, locally realistic alternative is in
sight. The victims of `development' - the true Giddensian juggernaut which crushes
everything and everybody that happens to stand in its way - `shunned by the advanced
sector and cut off from the old ways . . . are expatriates in their own countries.'"
Wherever the juggernaut has passed, know-how vanishes, to be replaced by a dearth of
skills; commodified labour appears where men and women once lived; tradition becomes
an awkward ballast and a costly burden; common utilities turn into underused resources,
wisdom into prejudice, wise men into bearers of superstitions. (Life In Fragments:
Essays In Postmodern Morality 22-33)
CRITICISMS OF ESCOBAR
World Bank and IMF representatives disagree with much of what Escobar claims.
Economic and infrastructural development is positive because it improves the ability of
peoples and governments to recognize universal codes. They argue that human rights
are more likely to be recognized in a developed nation because the funding exists to
enforce bans on violations. Protections of human rights are most easily found in these
nations. In fact, the nations with the best human rights records are all in the West.
Developers are also very adamant about the improvement of the environment in
developing nations. Undeveloped nations are unable to recycle or clean up
environmental catastrophes because they dont have the funding or the technology.
They also fail to recognize world pollution standards because they are too poor to
survive without polluting. Once the country is developed, with sufficient funding and
strong infrastructure, then that country can effectively respond to environmental
problems. Developers claim that cultural awareness is part of their job. Development
projects are closely coordinated with government officials. Development studies closely
watch over the people and their changes as nations develop to make certain that their
lives are not adversely effected.
Most of these claims are easily debunked. Human rights do appear to improve in some
developing countries, but the definition of human rights is a Western conception of the
treatment of people. The development discourse defines what success is, and then
defines the measurement tools for declaring what is successful. Also, not all developing
countries have great human rights records. Sweatshops and slavery are not problems of
the past for these countries. The environmental improvements are miniscule, and they
dont compare to the environmental destruction that wreaks havoc during the
transitional phases of a countrys development. During transition, raw materials are
striped from wherever they may be found so that production increases enough that
profits can be seen. Cultures die out. People give up their traditions to don business suits
and automobiles, unless they are unlike enough to be too poor to escape greater
poverty and enslavement.
LD APPLICATIONS
LDs tendency to stick to Enlightenment thinking makes most of its advocacy open to
use of development discourse. Equality, welfare, and foreign policy topics in LD are the
most likely places to hear development discourse used. I am especially interested in
introducing criticisms of development discourse in the debate round because many LD
debates tacitly assume the superiority of Western conceptions of progress. To win the
debate, this argument will require convincing the judge that the older Enlightenment
framework of reason and progress must be thrown out.
Structuring a value and criteria around a development argument will be very difficult.
You can run a value such as cultural autonomy or something like it, but you are likely to
set yourself up for disaster doing this. The value that you will likely be facing on the
other side will probably refer to life, progress, or something else that will appear to
outweigh culture for most judges. You cant allow your opponent to establish a false
choice between feeding someone and seeing them represented as inferior. The
representation of them as inferior is the thing that will be used to take advantage of
those people further down the line. Development will ultimately fail to deliver the goods
it promises because of greed. It will pretend to do good while striping the environment,
enslaving people, and ruing their cultures.
I like the idea of structuring this argument aside from the case. Write a case with a
distinct thesis, but make sure that it doesnt link to your development argument, and
then read the development argument as a separate attack on the case. You can win with
the development argument by itself because it turns the opposing value of
life/progress/selflessness by showing that development will backfire. If you are not
winning the rest of your own case, you can kick out of it and win by proving that you
turn your opponents value.
One good strategy might be to frame the development discourse as symbolic of a

dangerous mindset. The inferiority that is conferred by development discourse is exactly
the kind of thinking that institutional developers use when they manage other peoples
and enslave them. You need to argue that your opponents endorsement of this mindset
is dangerous because it leaves people open to continuing to think of other cultures as
underdeveloped instead of just different. Pulling out charges of racism and cultural
insensitivity as parts of the mindset will make is more difficult for judges to
unquestionably vote in favor of the progressive improvements claimed by the
developers.
Paternalism will be a difficult argument to prove. You should use cross-examination to

bait your opponent into admitting the problems with it. Ask them how they feel about
their parents babying them. Paternalism is bad because it reduces choice and freedom.
Your opponent might give people life, but only as slaves in Nike sweatshops. Also,
development effectively destroys the ability of people to practice the kind of life that
they have been for centuries because it transplants Western culture and impresses it
upon them. Development is definitely not about choice. Development means to change
the other into something more developed than the other was before.
The poststructuralist part of the argument is the most difficult to win. It is highly unlikely
that judges will see representations of starving people as more harmful to them then the
possibility of feeding them. You need to cast some doubt on the credibility of the
arguments claiming that people are starving. Definitions of malnutrition come from the
West. People of some nations have lived on less food for centuries. The West sees
malnutrition and poverty in other countries because those countries do not appear to
look like the West. You can take the offensive against arguments that assert their ability
to save people by arguing back that the very assumption that they need to be saved is
racist and imperialist.
ANSWERING DEVELOPMENT CRITIQUES

Answering development critiques is much easier because you probably have the judge
on your side from the beginning. It will be very difficult for your opponent to prove that
the debate round should reject an Enlightenment framework valuing Western progress.
One strategy that you should consider if you think that youve got the judge on your side
is challenging the claim that development discourse invented all of the tragedies it sees
in the Third World. Argue that some of what the West sees must be as bad as we think it
is and that we should try to fix it. The trouble with this response is that, if your judge
isnt with you, it plays into the hands of your opponent by admitting that you take a
development minded perspective.
Shift the burden of proof to your opponent. It is up to them to show that the harms of
discourse outweigh the value that you are claiming. You need to push your value very
hard. Argue that the discursive problems with your position do not outweigh the need to
help people in a very troubled state. Also argue that you do not engage in development
discourse. You can distinguish development discourse from your own rhetoric by arguing
that your position is that the technology of the West should be available to those who
wish to use it. You can further this position by distinguishing the intent of your case from
development. Your case seeks to offer aid if it is wanted while developers seek to force
aid on people so that they can take advantage of them.
For offense, try questioning the value of culture and forcing your opponent to defend
culture at the top of a hierarchy of values. If culture is the greatest overriding
consideration, what should we do if people are really suffering? Your opponent will have
to defend some pretty bizarre cultural practices over values like life and autonomy to
win. Ask what we should do about malnutrition if we cant respond with aid? Your
opponent wont likely be able to respond to this except to say that culture is more
important and that will bring the debate down to a face-off between the values of life
and culture, which will go your way most of the time. Also ask lots of questions about
the impacts of the use of development discourse. If you can pin your opponent down on
how exactly the use of the discourse is harmful, you might be able to convince the judge
that the harm link story is too ridiculous to vote for.
Do not run progress as a value. That is good advice on any topic, but if the topic allows
for this kind of a critique you should definitely stay away from it. Progress plays right
into the hands of the argument and would be inescapable unless you could prove that
Western definitions of progress were better than any other cultures definitions. If a topic
demands that you take a development-minded position, I recommend that you pick
something that outweighs culture like life or autonomy. Be ready to defend these against
development arguments that attempt to turn them by showing that people die because
of development or that people get enslaved by development projects.
CONCLUSION
Value debate does not clash enough over the meanings of its own values. Ive heard
debaters argue for progress forever without really knowing questioning what sort of
progress they were speaking about. When I asked them what progress meant, the
answer was always some jargon about Western technological and societal progress. LD
debaters can open new battlegrounds for value clashes if they question these meanings
further. What is so good about Western technology? How are other people affected by it?
Is development discourse is an imperialism to be attacked or a necessary paternalism to
be welcomed? I look forward to seeing this debated out someday.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Zygmunt Bauman, LIFE IN FRAGMENTS: ESSAYS IN POSTMODERN MORALITY, Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell Press, 1995.
Shirley Boskey, PROBLEMS AND PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT BANKS, Baltimore: John

Hopkins Press, 1959.
Stephen Eccles, SUPPORTING EFFECTIVE AID: A FRAMEWORK FOR FUTURE

CONCESSIONAL FUNDING OF MULTILATERAL DEVELOPMENT BANKS, Baltimore: John
Hopkins Press, 1999.
Arturo Escobar, ENCOUNTERING DEVELOPMENT: THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE

THIRD WORLD, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Richard Grabowski, DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Business,

1996.
Catherine Gwin, U.S. RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD BANK: 1945-1992, Washington D.C.:
Brookings Institution, 1994.
Paul R. Krugman, DEVELOPMENT, GEOGRAPHY, AND ECONOMIC THEORY, Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press, 1995.
Philippe G. Le Prestre, THE WORLD BANK AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGE,

London: Susquehanna University Press, 1989.
Colin Leys, THE RISE & FALL OF DEVELOPMENT THEORY, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1996.
Raymond Frech Mikesell and Larry Williams, INTERNATIONAL BANKS AND THE
ENVIRONMENT: FROM GROWTH TO SUSTAINABILITY, AN UNFINISHED AGENDA, San
Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1992.
Carlos Pomareda, FINANCIAL POLICIES AND MANAGEMENT OF AGRICULTURAL

DEVELOPMENT, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984.
Saskia Sassen, GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, New York: The New Press, 1998.
DEVELOPMENT THINKING MANAGES

THE OTHER
1. DEVELOPMENT USES DISCOURSE TO MANAGE THE OTHER
Arturo Escobar, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts,
ENCOUNTERING DEVELOPMENT: THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE THIRD WORLD,
1995, p.106.
More than three-quarters of the population of the Third World lived in rural areas at the
time of the inception of development. That this proportion is now reduced to less than
30 percent in many Latin American countries is a striking feature in its own right, as if
the alleviation of the peasants suffering, malnutrition, and hunger had required not the
improvement of living standards in the countryside, as most programs avowedly
purported, but the peasants elimination as a cultural, social, and producing group.
Nevertheless, peasants have not disappeared completely with the development of
capitalism, as both Marxist and bourgeois economists ineluctably predicted, a fact
already hinted at in my brief account of resistance in the previous chapter. The
constitution of the peasantry as a persistent client category for development programs
was associated with a broad range of economic, political, cultural, and discursive
processes. It rested on the ability of the development apparatus system systematically
to create client categories such as the malnourished, small farmers, landless
laborers, lactating women, and the like which allow institutions to distribute socially
individuals and populations in ways consistent with the creation and reproduction of
modern capitalist relations. Discourses of hunger and rural development mediate and
organize the constitution of the peasantry as producers or as elements to be displaced
in the order of things. Unlike standard anthropological works on development, which
take as their primary object of study the people to be developed, understanding the
discursive and institutional construction of client categories requires that attention be
shifted to the institutional apparatus that is doing the developing." Turning the
apparatus itself into an anthropological object involves an institutional ethnography that
moves from the textual and work practices of institutions to the effects of those
practices in the world, that is, to how they contribute to structuring the conditions under
which people think and live their lives. The work of institutions is one of the most
powerful forces in the creation of the world in which we live. Institutional ethnography is
intended to bring to light this sociocultural production.
2. THE DISCOURSE DEVELOPS PEOPLE INTO SLAVES

Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, LIFE IN
FRAGMENTS: ESSAYS IN POSTMODERN MORALITY, 95, p. 29-33.
But what is that `development' developing? One may say that the most conspicuously
`developing' under `development' is the distance between what men and women make
and what they need to appropriate and use in order to stay alive (however the `staying
alive' may translate under the circumstances). Most obviously, `development' develops
the dependency of men and women on things and events they can neither produce,
control, see nor understand. Other humans' deeds send long waves which, when they
reach the doorsteps, look strikingly like floods and other natural disasters; like them they
come from nowhere, unannounced, and like them they make a mockery of foresight,
cunning and prudence. However sincerely the planners may believe that they are, or at
least can be, in control, and however strongly they believe that they see order in the
flow of things - for the victims (the òbjects' of development) the change opens up the
floodgates through which chaos and contingency pour into their, once orderly, lives.
They feel lost now where once they felt at home. For the planners a disenchantment - for
them enchantment; a mind-boggling mystery now wrapping tightly the once homely,
transparent and familiar world. Now they do not know how to go on; and they do not
trust their feet not steady enough to hold to the shifting and wobbly ground. They need
props - guides, experts, instructors, givers of commands.
DEVELOPMENT THINKING demeans the

other
1. DEVELOPMENT IMAGES ARE CANNIBALISTIC
1995, p.153.
As Michael Taussig said, From the represented shall come that which overturns the
representation. He continues, commenting on the absence of the narratives of South
American indigenous peoples from most representations about them, It is the ultimate
anthropological conceit, anthropology in its highest, indeed redemptive, moment,
rescuing the voice of the Indian from the obscurity of pain and time. This is to say that
as much as the plain exclusion of the peasants voice in rural development discourse,
this conceit to speak for the others, perhaps even to rescuer their voice, as Taussig
says, must be avoided. The fact that violence is a cultural manifestation of hunger
applies not only to hungers physical aspects but to the violence of representation. The
development discourse has turned its representations of hunger into an act of
consumption of images and feelings by the well nourished, an act of cannibalism, as
Cinema Novo artists would have it. This consumption is a feature of modernity, we are
reminded by Foucault (It is just that the illness of some should be transformed into the
experience of others). But the regimes of representation that produce this violence are
not easily neutralized, as the next chapter will show.
2. DEVELOPMENTS CLAIM TO REPRESENT THE OTHER IS KEY TO ITS HEGEMONY

1995, p.53.
The coherence of effects that the development discourse achieved is the key to its
success as a hegemonic form of representation: the construction of the poor and
underdeveloped as universal, preconstituted subjects, based on the privilege of the
representers; the exercise of power over the Third World made possible by this
discursive homogenization (which entails the erasure of the complexity and diversity of
Third World peoples, so that a squatter in Mexico City, a Nepalese peasant, and a Tuareg
nomad become equivalent to each other as poor and underdeveloped); and the
colonization and domination of the natural and human ecologies and economies of the
Third World.
3. CLAIMS TO REPRESENTATION ALLOW THE WEST TO WRITE THE HISTORIES

1995, p.107.
Because often decisions are made by centralized organizations headed by
representatives of ruling groups, the whole work of organizations is biased in relation to
those in power. Our relation to others in our society and beyond is mediated by the
social organization of its ruling. Our knowledge is thus ideological in the sense that this
social organization preserves conceptions and means of description which represent the
world as it is for those who rule it, rather than as it is for those who are ruled. This has
far-reaching consequences, because we are constantly implicated and active in this
process. But how does the institutional production of social reality work? A basic feature
of this operation is its reliance on textual and documentary forms as a means of
representing and preserving a given reality. Inevitably, texts are detached from the local
historical context of the reality that they supposedly represent. For bureaucracy is par
excellence that mode of governing that separates the performance of ruling from
particular individuals, and makes organization independent of particular persons and
local settings Today, large-scale organization inscribes its processes into documentary
modes as a continuous feature of its functioning This [produces] a form of social
consciousness that is the property of organizations rather than of the meeting of
individuals in local historical settings.
WE SHOULD STILL ACT TO SOLVE

WORLD PROBLEMS LIKE POVERTY
1. EVEN IF THE DISCOURSE HARMS WE MUST NOT STOP ATTEMPTS TO HELP THE OTHER
1995, p.16.
At the core of this recentering of the debates within the disciplines are the limits that
exist to the Western project of deconstruction and self-critique. It is becoming
increasingly evident, at least for those who are struggling for different ways of having a
voice, that the process of deconstructing and dismantling has to be accompanied by
that of constructing new ways of seeing and acting. Needless to say, this aspect is
crucial in discussions about development, because peoples survival is at stake. As
Mohanty insists, both projects- deconstruction and reconstruction- have to be carried out
simultaneously. As I discuss in the final chapter, this simultaneous project could focus
strategically on the collective action of social movements: they struggle not only for
goods and services but also for the very definition of life, economy, nature, and society.
They are, in short, cultural struggles. As Bhabha wants us to acknowledge,
deconstruction and other types of critiques do not lead automatically to an
unproblematic reading of other cultural and discursive systems. They might be
necessary to combat ethnocentrism, but they cannot, of themselves, unreconstructed,
represent that otherness. Moreover, there is the tendency in these critiques to discuss
otherness principally in terms of the limits of Western logocentricity, thus denying that
cultural otherness is implicated in specific historical and discursive conditions, requiring
constructions in different practices of reading. There is a similar insistence in Latin
America that the proposals of postmodernism, to be fruitful there, have to make clear
their commitment to justice and to the construction of alternative social orders. These
Third World correctives indicate the need for alternative questions and strategies for the
construction of anticolonialist discourses (and the reconstruction of Third World societies
in/through representations that can develop into alternative practices). Calling into
question the limitations of the Wests self-critique, as currently practiced in much of
contemporary theory, they make it possible to visualize the discursive insurrection by
Third World people proposed by Mudimbe in relation to the sovereignty of the very
European thought from which we wish to disentangle ourselves.
2. COOPERATION STOPS DEVELOPMENT FROM ACTING IMPERIALIST

Ismail Serageldin, Vice-President, Environmental Sustainable Development , World Bank,
NURTURING DEVELOPMENT: AID AND COOPERATION IN TODAYS CHANGING WORLD,
1995, p.5.
There is no doubt that these general principles are present in much of the public debate
everywhere in the world today. They are undoubtedly constituent elements of the
evolving world consciousness. For many in the developing world this set of constructs
has been seen as "Western," usually meaning originally European values, currently
championed by the United States and Europe. They fear the spread of these ideas as
"Westernization," which they see as the adoption-forced or voluntary-of Western values
and institutions by the rest of the world, thereby sealing the hegemony of the Western
powers by the most complete subjugation of all peoples and societies of the world; a
subjugation that ensures their adherence as marginal members of the Western world
order. This view is possibly the reflection of the insecurities that lead people to seek
refuge in the narrow constructs of the past. Perhaps the solution to all these problems
and contradictions is to carry these ideas further, much further than Western societies
have dared to do until now, and in the process create that global world order that would
be truly new and truly universal.
3. INVESTMENT IS NEEDED TO STOP INFRASTRUCTURAL COLLAPSE OF ECONOMIES

WORLD BANK INSTITUTE, 2000, Accessed May 1, 2000, www.worldbank.org.
In many of these countries there has been over the past five years a drastic compression
of funds allocated to maintenance and capital rehabilitation in infrastructure. The
warning has been made from many quarters that if this pattern were to continue,
damage to the existing stock of public infrastructure in these economies may be
irreparable. It is a well-known conclusion in public expenditure policy and fiscal
management that replacement costs tend to be a high multiple of the funds now being
saved in maintenance and basic rehabilitation. In addition, if economies in transition are
to find a steady path to growth and recovery, additional investments in local
infrastructure and services will be much needed
.DEVELOPMENT IS GOOD FOR HUMAN

RIGHTS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
1. DEVELOPMENT IMPROVES HUMAN RIGHTS RECORDS
Ismail Serageldin, Vice-President, Environmental Sustainable Development, World Bank,
1995, p. 5-6.
Women and minorities continue to suffer in most societies. Furthermore, with over 1
billion people going hungry every day, and the highly selective application of various UN
sanctions or interventions, many feel that there is a certain hollow ring to the universal
declaration of human rights and the more recent instruments all the way to the
declaration of Vienna of 1993. There is a certain hypocrisy in a world system that
recognizes the rights of citizens if they are on one side of that imaginary line we call a
political frontier but not if they are on the other, and then claims to adhere to the
universality of these basic rights. Reliance on markets, however, is not an ideological
construct as much as a pragmatic adoption of what works. It was the failure of the
centrally planned economies that led to the almost universal adoption of a free market
stance in most countries. True, some ideologues are trying to elevate free markets to the
level of ideology and to urge the elimination of government and the privatization of
everything in sight. But most reasonable people do not adopt such extreme positions.
They recognize that the ruthless efficiency of the market must be tempered by the
compassion of a caring and nurturing government, much as justice must be tempered by
mercy to be more than legalism. Furthermore, the needs of the public in terms of health,
security, and environmental protection will require a degree of regulation and control
and standard setting, even if pragmatically one would rely on incentives and markets to
obtain the desired results.
2. DEVELOPMENT IMPROVES ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS

Ismail Serageldin, Vice-Pres. Environmental Sustainable Development for World Bank,
1995, p.43.
Intuition suggests that economic growth causes environmental deterioration. Growth
requires more raw material and energy inputs-causing depletion of natural resources.
And growth brings more output, which causes more pollution. Fortunately, as in many
other areas, facts give little support to intuition. Careful statistical analysis demonstrates
three patterns of relationship between income growth and environmental damage.
These are illustrated in box figure 3-6, which is derived from an analysis of cross-country
data in the 1980s. Some problems decline as income increases. This happens because
increasing income makes available the resources for society to provide public goods
such as sanitation services and rural electricity, and once individuals no longer worry
about day-to-day survival, they can devote resources to profitable investments in
conservation. Polluted drinking water, lack of sewage facilities, indoor air pollution, and
some types of soil erosion are examples of this type of relationship. Some problems
initially deteriorate but then improve as incomes rise. Most forms of air and water
pollution fit into this category, as do some types of deforestation and encroachment into
natural habitats.
3. DEVELOPMENT IMPROVES INFRASTRUCTURE

WORLD BANK INSTITUTE, 2000, Accessed May 1, 2000, www.worldbank.org.
Most subnational governments, not only in countries in transition but also in developing
and developed countries, should be unable to finance their capital investment
responsibilities out of current savings. The same is true for public utilities, when (and if)
they are decentralized. These companies typically also lack the necessary funds for
rehabilitation, maintenance and expansion of their capital stock. The only practical
solution to this problem is for both subnational governments and public utilities to
borrow the necessary funds for new investments in capital infrastructure and for
rehabilitation. Borrowing, all kinds of borrowing, is seen in many parts of the world as an
undesirable activity. However, borrowing for justified and needed long-lived
infrastructure is both efficient and equitable. To avoid abuses of future generations by
the current generation, most countries only allow borrowing for capital investment
purposes. The particular details across international practices vary widely. Borrowing is
efficient because it allows subnational governments to make large lump-sum payments
in order to acquire the necessary infrastructure and capital equipment for the provision
of public services. In short, borrowing solves the problem of liquidity or the fact that
current savings are inadequate for financing discontinuous capital investment needs.
Feminism Responses
Mystical fervor, like love and even narcissism, can be integrated with a life of activity
and independence. But in themselves these attempts at individual salvation are bound
to meet with failure: either woman puts herself into relation with an unreality: her
double, or God; or she creates an unreal relation with a real being. In both cases she
lacks any grasp on the world; she does not escape her subjectivity; her liberty remains
frustrated. There is only one way to employ her liberty authentically, and that is to
project it through positive action into human society.
Simone DeBeauvoir, THE SECOND SEX (1989, p. 678.)
It would be ridiculous to deny that for the first ninety nine percent of history, philosophy
has been a male enterprise. Making that statement, however, also necessitates another
admission, one which at first will sound like a capitulation to feminism. The admission is
that men HAVE controlled the world for a very, very long time, not only philosophically,
but also economically, spiritually and politically. Nor would anyone in their right mind
deny that this has been unfair to and undesirable for women.
Theories abound about how to correct this problem, but there is considerably less
attention given to why the problem exists. Some have even gone so far as to defend
patriarchy, refusing to even call it a problem; Hegel saw it as a necessary component of
the structure of society, as natural as the biological process itself. But even he did not
bother to explain why, when all is said and done, when we step away from the mire of
interpersonal relations, there is this difference between genders, why one is weaker
than the other, why historically societies have generally (though not one hundred
percent exclusively) chosen this difference as the basis for so much obvious social
inequality.
Engels, who in The Origin of the Family. Private Property, and the State sought to give a
Marxist account of womens oppression, and who in fact succeeded in at least pointing
out the historical origin of the economic component of patriarchy, did not, however,
explain why the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy took place. One is generally
resigned to asserting that men have had the power just as the earth rotates around the
sun. This, in fact, is more than a mere metaphor. Defenders of patriarchy, as well as
certain types of radical feminists, often seek, and find in abundance, scientific evidence
of differences between men and women which render certain types of tasks favorable to
one or the other sex. But the question is not why they exist in the biological sense, but
instead why we have been so capable of and willing to make those differences the basis
of severe differences in social, economic, political and spiritual status. In a sense,
patriarchy is the ultimate naturalistic fallacy. It argues that because those differences
are there, they should be there. And, patriarchy is another fallacy, reasoning from the
parts (biological differences) to the whole (society).
Strange that I should begin an essay about how to answer feminism by admitting that
patriarchy is bad, acknowledging by implication (and openly as well) that women should
have the exact same legal, ethical and political status of men, in every situation except
when necessary to remedy past injustices, in which case I will further admit that
preferential treatment for women may well be justified for the same reason we might
treat Blacks and other HISTORICALLY oppressed groups with appropriate corrective
preference.
Strange, yes, but patriarchy seems strange as well, and defending it is distasteful. This
essay is not about whether or not sexism is good or bad, nor is it about my personal
beliefs. This essay is about why the systematic and universalizing philosophy known as
feminism, in most, if not all, of its versions, (1) seems very compelling and thus
appeals to both women and the men who hate sexism; and (2) wins so many debate
rounds. To this you may add a third purpose, trying to explain the most effective ways to
ANSWER feminism when it is employed as a debate strategy.
Knowing what one cannot justify is as important in deciding how to argue as is knowing
what one can justify, and in this case, you are not going to win any debate rounds by
arguing that women should be subordinate to men. You will win almost no rounds either
by arguing that women have not been oppressed, and probably only the lucky one or
two rounds denying the oppression that exists now.
I will go even further, because these experiences can be verified across the debate
spectrum: If you are a male, and your opponent runs feminism, and particularly if your
opponent is a female, and even more particularly if your judge is also female, you will
feel at a disadvantage. Sometimes that perception will be justified. Who we are is part of
the arguments we make. And gender differences are among the most obvious of
differences in our human experience; we can see them, hear them, and, theorists
generally agree, we often think through them. No debate handbook is going to get us
out of this condition, so my job is to tell you how to defeat the position argumentatively
while not coming off as Rush Limbaugh or Andrew Dice Clay.
This is a rhetorical as well as an argumentative job, and in many ways it demonstrates

how rhetoric and argument are intimately linked, because the argument choices you
make in arguing against feminism will enable, or disenable, your opponents to explain
why someone like you would make such an argument. So the first thing you need to
do is put aside any personal feelings you have against feminism and learn to respect it.
You ought to always do this, of course, but its especially important here. You never need
ridicule or dismiss something in order to beat it, but if you ridicule or ignore feminism,
you will lose.
I will begin by explaining, in careful, and seemingly tedious, detail, the general theory of
feminism and its many divergent types. Then, I will delve into some alternative ways
of seeing the problem of gender inequality. Admitting the existence of gender equality
will be the most powerful rhetorical and argumentative tool at your disposal. It will
immediately disarm a major assumed advantage for the position, and allow you to take
the moral high ground by claiming your advocacy better addresses the problem.
When answering comprehensive systems which attempt to explain oppression, positions

such as Marxism, critical race theory, and feminism, it is also important to question the
generalizations these theories make about the groups who are oppressed and the
groups who are doing the oppressing. For while no one can deny that in a general sense
women are exploited, it does not follow from this that a comprehensive theory can
cover all that oppression. Women of color are oppressed differently than white women;
while this sounds like a trivialization, the interesting thing about such theories is that the
real people you meet in everyday life who belong to these oppressed groups seldom
have much sympathy for the theories intended to liberate them. Herein lies another very
important approach to the debate: When female authors are writing very powerful
indictments of feminism, one can assume that something is probably wrong with
femimsm.
Marx is said to have had little patience with actual members of the working class who
did not blindly follow his views (of course Marx was said to have had little patience with
anyone at all except his family). Likewise, is the theory of feminism, which ought to be
true to its subject, the real, rank and file women of the world, guilty of the same charge
that can be made against all theory? That it is removed from everyday experience and
often makes universalizing assumptions which undermine its practical application? If so,
then perhaps feminism should be more suspect than other theories for that flaw,
precisely because feminism so proudly claims its exclusive privilege to understand and
liberate women.
Still another powerful option is to explain how the theory is, in fact, so far removed from
reality that it is guilty of explaining patriarchy in a way which actually results in greater
oppression of women. In this case, as we shall see, many feminists make arguments
about differences between men and women that smack of the same arguments
patriarchy has made about those differences. Such arguments prove the need to
scrutinize all theories, especially theories of liberation. As some authors in this section
will argue, feminism often avoids critical, logical scrutiny, on the grounds that logic is
the handmaiden of patriarchy. This makes it difficult to deal with philosophically, but that
evasiveness might be feminisms Achilles Heel; as Ellen Klein will argue below, women
need logic as much as men do.
WHY FEMINISM? A VERY BRIEF

HISTORY
Feminism can roughly be called the sum total of all the attempts to understand and
solve the differences that exist between men and women in all spheres of society.
Philosophy is no exception, so feminist philosophy must first, before it moves on to social
issues such as reproductive rights or domestic abuse, attempt to identify the
characteristics of philosophy itself which are susceptible to patriarchal manipulation or
contextualization.
However, early feminists were not concerned with philosophy at all. Mary Wollstonecraft,
who at the end of the Eighteenth Century penned A Vindication of the Rights of Women
might have been a brilliant philosopher, but she was more concerned simply with
articulating the political principles of her movement. Her daughter, Mary Shelly, who was
also a committed feminist, spent her time writing fiction. The rights of women, to them,
needed no philosophical justification beyond the simple and well-articulated principles of
the movement. But then again, these early feminists were more concerned with uniting
women than taking on the institutions of higher learning themselves.
But as feminism made its way into Western political consciousness, it became necessary
to explicitly outline the relationship between the demands of feminist women and the
philosophical foundations of the democratic tradition in the West. On the American
continent, this was the job of American suifragists, who were living at a time, the early
19th Century, when America was still optimistic about the foundations of democracy,
and who could place defenders of male domination at a serious disadvantage by turning
the still-radical but widely accepted classical liberal position against the old fools.
No one did this better or longer than Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a contemporary of Susan
B. Anthony. Stanton used every principle of liberal democracy to justify the emancipation
of women; once women were so obviously exposed as the rational creatures they had
always known they were, it became easy to extend the arguments of liberalism across
the flow pads of democracy. Women should have the right to vote, as they are affected
and as they affect their society as much as men do. Women should have the right to the
same educational opportunities; education was not only a way for women to survive
economically without being either a burden or a slave to men, but it was also seen as a
good in itself, the icon of liberal rationalism and an informed democracy, ideals which
the founders, however blind they were to women, praised and encouraged.
In 1919 and 1920, in what would be the largest step thus far taken in accommodation to
feminism, women were granted the right to vote, that precious gem of democracy
proudly held up to the undemocratic world. Now, women could share in this uniquely
liberal method of governance. The abstract political fight had yielded a concrete, if
somewhat concretely abstract, gain. That abstraction would be the tension between
political power on paper and political power in practice. And political power in practice
would require another step: economic power.
ROSIE THE RIVETER

Dainty but muscular, adorned with protective gear and a look of grim, almost handsome
determination, Rosie was a character in posters the War Department of the United
States government produced during the Second World War. The men were gone to fight
and die, and so the women had to go to work. This was an excellent example of how
there are times when an oppressive system shoots itself in the foot when attempting to
fulfill its aims. Clearly, women had to work in order to sustain both the war effort and the
side profits. But in so encouraging this work, the United States effort also proved, or
helped women prove, their effectiveness, their competence, and by extension their right
to full and categorical equality. The Patriarchs tried, after the war, when all those
young men came back needing jobs, to put women back in the home. They invented
family values and kept womens wages low (actually, as we shall see below, there are
no Patriarchs per say, but the fact that you were compelled by the metaphor itself
demonstrates a strength of feminism you should keep in mmd). But women kept working
and fought for higher wages. Differences still exist, but Ward and June Cleaver no longer
define the American family.
Rosie, by the way, today appears on feminist t-shirts. She has become a symbol of what
women can do, an inversion of her intended purpose, a deconsiructed and reconstructed
text. Her motto, as it appeared on the old posters, is We can do it!
THE SIXTIES
Feminist politics became feminist theory in the 1960s. Along with having worked
alongside men for twenty years, women had also begun attending colleges and
universities in mass numbers. Suddenly, in the midst of that anomolous combination of
historical forces which combined to make the 1960s what they were, women were
involving themselves in every university subject, and many were conscious of the
differences they perceived. Ten years earlier, Betty Friedan had published The Feminine
Mystique the first popular post-war feminist work, a book which probably changed the
perspectives of millions of American women.
Like everything else during the Love Decade, feminist theory exploded, went on a trip,
tamed upside down and inside out. The availability of birth control, the acceptability of
casual sex, and the subsequent realization by conscious women that sex was not
enough, would permanently alter relations between women and men. At the same time,
feminists for virtually the first time began discovering, and acting upon, differences
among themselves. Women who wanted equality with men found themselves in
disagreement with women who for whatever philosophical or personal reasons simply
didnt like men. In many cases, the women who favored equality dropped out of the
theoretical endeavor and kept working alongside men (however warily) for equality. This
meant that by the 1970s, the most popular theoretical feminists were somewhat
divorced from the sentiments of the majority of American women, who had always
generally wanted equality with men rather than a philosophical advantage against them.
Today, as we shall see, there are so many brands of feminism that it is more than valid
for Womens Studies to be a legitimate department in any major university. The unity of
awareness of patriarchy has remained. The differences in approach have gotten larger
and more numerous, to the point where a significant chunk of all feminist theoretical
writing is devoted to criticizing other feminist theoretical writing. This is not a bad thing
for feminism, since turning upon itself is what a progressive theory is supposed to do.
But it isnt bad news for those debating against feminism either, since these divisions.
make the weaknesses of many particular feminist variations painfully clear, and since
taken together, those flaws can inspire patterns which expose the potential flaws of
contemporary feminism in general.
BASIC FEMINISM
Feminist philosophy has a number of basic elements:
1. All feminists argue, with little effective opposition, that women are subordinate now
and have been throughout history. Although there are differences in the degree of
oppression agreed upon, this is an axiom.
2. Those feminists who do feminist philosophy believe that the philosophical

enterprise itself is an appropriate venue for liberating women. At first glance this may
seem hypocritical in light of the fact that so much of what is central to philosophy is
seen as male by so many feminists. The willingness to engage in philosophical
conversation can often be used as a charge against radical philosophies, but it is not
generally an effective argument, because the reply can be made that all forums are
appropriate for promoting those radical points of view.
3. Generally, feminists believe that men will and do resist changes which would be to the
advantage of women.
4. Because of #3, all feminists are concerned with the issue of consciousness, a loose
term meaning both the general male and female psyches under patriarchy, and the
ideology invented to justify or dejustify patriarchy itself.
5. Finally, feminism generally accepts the fact that there are differences between the
sexes, an acceptance commonly ignored by feminisms critics. Equality is a
compensatory movement for feminists; they acknowledge that men and women are not
the same in key ways.
VARIETIES OF FEMINISM
While these cominonalities are impressive, there are at least a dozen different versions,
probably more, of the system called feminism. Some of these feature notable authors
which I will mention. Using Alison Jaggers three categories will give us our first few
varieties, but there are even more, including some which open the door for criticism of
more conventional kinds of feminism.
Knowing all these varieties of feminism is three fourths of the battle when debating
against feminism. To this end, I urge debaters to read Alison Jaggers brilliant Feminist
Politics and Human Nature which takes the unique position of the three general types of
feminism criticizing one another. When opposing feminism, it doesnt hurt to be better
feminism.
RADICAL FEMINISM
Even this category of feminism contains several subdivisions, but in general, radical
feminists believe that current social and political structures, along with the ideology they
promote, are so corrupted and manufactured by patriarchy that nothing short of radical
change of all existing institutions will solve womens oppression. Radical feminists
usually assert that women have unique traits which are suppressed by patriarchy; often
those traits are asserted as being necessary for human well-being and survival; radical
feminists believe women favor peace, the environment, and cooperation over war and
overt technology.
LIBERAL FEMINISM
Liberal feminism is, in a sense, the philosophy of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony, and for. contemporary feminism, Betty Friedan. Liberal feminists accept
existing institutions, as well as the democratic and republican ideology, capitalism, and
statism. They seek to actualize those institutions and ideologies by including women on
equal terms with men. Liberal feminists such as Friedan are among the most vocal critics
of other, more extreme forms of feminism.
SOCIALIST FEMINISM
Socialist feminists generally subscribe to Marx and Engels theories of the way
capitalism situates its societies and citizens. Patriarchy, for socialist feminists, is a
manifestation of unjust material relations. However, the feminist contingent separates
itself from the rest of Marxism by emphasizing that patriarchy is a particularly great evil
which in many ways presents a series of unique problems requiring proactive analysis
and praxis. Socialist feminists are also critical of non-materialist types of feminism, as
well as being offended by liberal feminism for the same reasons that liberal theory is
generally shunned by Marxists.
EXISTENTIAL FEMINISM
The feminism of Simone DeBeauvoir, who authored The Second Sex, is grounded in her
unique interpretation of Heidegger, Sarrre, Kierkegaard, Levinas, and other existentialoriented Continental thinkers. Existentialism tells us we have to consciously choose our
situations; existentialist feminism argues that in many cases women spend too much
time agonizing over patriarchy and that women are thus at times complacent in their
oppression. Many other feminists dont like DeBeauvoir very much.
FAMILISM
Also called conservative feminism, this unique and obscure movement originated in
conservative American states who in the 1970s successfully defeated ratification of the
Equal Rights Amendment. There are good reasons why the family ought to be the focus
of both men and women, especially for thinkers of the conservative bent who seek
strong networks of personal and tradition-based stability as guiding points for society.
Famiists believe that both men and women should put aside any thoughts of domination,
although some are willing to concede that the mans traditional economic role might
necessitate the man as the so-called head of the household. You can imagine what
other feminists think of familists and conservatives.
DECONSTR UCTIVE FEMINISM

Deconstruction is a multifaceted and misunderstood term. In the case of feminism,
deconstruction is the method (Derrida oftbandedly says in a letter to a friend that
deconstruction is not a method) by which feminism can play with, dismantle, critique
and speculate upon the foundations of patriarchy, its various manifestations in popular
culture and university ideology. Deconstructive feminists are generally extremely critical
of radically exclusionary or strongly political feminist ideologies. In some cases, as with
Camille Paglias fascination with Madonna, deconstructive feminists seek to transform
traditionally sexist symbols into messages of liberation; and whereas legal feminists
generally distrust heterosexual sex and its pornographic ideology, deconstructive
feminists often see pornography simply as one more text, compkx and containing
strengths and weaknesses.
GENDER PLAY
This is an offshoot of deconstruction which deconstructs and generally makes fun of/with
the way gender is constructed. Gender deconstructionists point out that there are more
than merely men and women and that gender is often more a social and textual
construction than a natural state of affairs. Judith Butler believes the concept of gender
is troublesome and should give pause for thought prior to tackling feminist strategy m
the political realm. Other GDs speak of women who dress as men, and vice versa, as
well as hermaphrodites, people who have both male and female sexual organs and who
often decide to be female.
PRO-LIFE FEMINISM
A small minority of feminists, who in nearly every other way are similar to other varieties
of feminism, see abortion as a serious breach of the mother/child relationship which in
many ways makes women unique. Pro-life feminism carefully stays away from the
conservative pro-life movement and generally believe that it is patriarchys oppressive
conditions which force women to accept ~ mans solution to unwanted pregnancy. Life
is the highest value. The ideal community for pro-life feminists is one where all children
can be cared for and nurtured, not a community which takes the surgeons technology
and snuffs out life.
MYSTICAL FEMINISM
Another offshoot of radical feminism, mystical feminism seeks to give a narrative
account of the special essence of woman-ness. Mary Daly and others take witchcraft,
menstral blood, and the Goddess very seriously, endowing them with special powers in a
manner which can best be decribed as scriptural. Goddess religion has recently been
blessed with serious popular interest, and often feminists write science fiction and
fantasy stories with mystical feminist themes.
LESBIAN, OR SEPARATIST FEMINISM

Again, radical in nature, lesbian feminism emphasizes not so much sex as the ideology
of women-for-women, holding that men are not necessary for that kind of liberation, and
that most men possess inherently undesirable traits. Alison Jagger points out in her book
(cited in the bibliography) that this sort of exclusionary feminism cannot succeed as a
political philosophy because it excludes half the population of the planet, among whom
are many sincere and potentially beneficial political and personal allies (1988, p. 296).
ANARCHIST FEMINISM
Like socialist feminists, those of the anarchist bent blame capitalism. Because they are
anarchists, they also believe that statism is insideous in the maintanence of patriarchy.
And like their socialist sisters, they believe patriarchy is so insideous itself that it
requires a special analysis of its own. Anarcho-feminists advocate womens collectives,
self-supporting and nurturing in nature.
TECHNOLOGICAL FEMINISM
Shulamith Firestones monumental The Dialectic of Sex advocates using the
technological gains weve made in recent history to correct gender differences,
whether those differences are natural or constructed. Giving birth, for example, is
conceptually possible absent a real mothers womb; surrogate birth is now an
established practice. Firestone believes that feminist takeover of science and technology
is essential to women s liberation. Other feminists, particularly ecological feminists,
generally distrust technology.
LEGAL FEMINISM
Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, both articulate crusaders against
pomography and for tougher prosecution of (and radical redefinition of) rape laws, lead a
pack of legal scholars who seek to transform society by transforming the legal system.
Legal feminists have one foot on each side of the radical/liberal conflict. On the one
hand, in Towards a Feminist Theory of the State, MacKinnon argues that only a
transformation of all institutions, and in a sense the way we think, can liberate women.
On the other hand, she supports legal reforms as the most concrete means of achieving
this change. And on the third hand, should there be one, this is especially good for
debaters both for and against feminism in a debate round, since legal reforms can
always be advocated as a counter-mechanism to ensure the values of feminism while
avoiding the flaws of opponents versions of feminism.
ECOLOGICAL FEMINISM
In essence: women are closer to the earth, and further from the artificial constraints
that man has placed in his environment. This is due to many different factors, chief
among them childbearing, and it is supposed to result in a greater understanding of
nature, and more propensity and insight to save the environment. After several effective
criticisms by social ecologists such as Murray Bookchin and Janet Biel, ecological
feminists tempered their mystical links of woman and earth with a commitment to being
primarily a wing of the ecological movement which examines the relationship between
the two.
Each of these philosophies offers a potential critique to some other. Debaters should
make lists of such arguments, and should also be aware that their opponents advocacy
might often, because of perception or ignorance, differ from your own. Displaying an
understanding for and an appreciation of the different types will make your counteradvocacy more effective.
PROBLEMS WITH FEMINISM

We observe here a very important fact that we shall come upon throughout the course
of history: abstract rights are not enough to define the actual concrete situation of
woman; this depends in large part on her economic role, and frequently abstract liberty
and concrete powers vary in inverse ratio.
DeBeauvoir, THE SECOND SEX, (p. 93)
An important caveat: Most of these can only be used against certain types of feminism.
They are only answers to certain types of claims, ones which in my opinion constitute
the core of feminist argumentation in contemporary value debate. Once again, like the
section we just completed, use these arguments modularly and appropriately.
1. Logic is not inherently male.
Many feminists shun philosophical forums as irrelevant to and biased against the
perspectives of women. They also make the same argument against any counterperspective, feminist or not, which embraces logical methodology. As the evidence in
this section indicates, logic and rationality have been proven by history to be liberating
to both men and women; perhaps men more than women, but this is a call for more
rationality, not less.
2. Women are not all alike.
Gender is like any other somewhat constructed, somewhat natural human trait. Its
phenomena vary across the spectrum of political affiliation, religion, culture, race,
economic status, geographical location, physic~l condition, sexual orientation, and
social standing. A sweeping definition of woman haunts feminism and proves to be
biased towards a specific type of woman, most likely the author of your opponents
evidence.
3. Many women do not believe in patriarchy and distrust feminism.
While in many cases it would be irrelevant what the masses thought of a the truth of a
particular philosophy, but in the case of feminism, as with any liberation philosophy, it is
a serious matter that the women feminists see as victims often do not perceive
themselves to be so. Feminists might accuse these women of false consciousness, but
that seems a rather arrogant and elitist charge, which is the reason many women are
silently opposed to feminism. And regardless of the truth of the theory, without practical
application, and without public support, any philosophy of human value is little more
than a parlor game we play on the weekends.
4. Feminism undermines democracy.
Legal feminists like MacKinnon and Dworkin propose radical redefinition of both freedom
of speech and the right to an impartial trial and presumption of innocence. Legal
feminists do not believe the benefits of complete freedom outweigh the harms
unrestrained men do to women. Legal sanctions are an inevitable characteristic of our
society, they argue, so there is nothing wrong with using them. However, conservative
laws concerning issues such as what pomography actually means have a way of
silencing the very alternative views they claim to protect.
5. Changing language will not change society
Although we have not mentioned language feminists in the essay, some feminists call
for changes in language, ostensibly to eradicate the assumption of men as the superior
linguistic gender. It is a rather simplistic argument, and can easily be answered by
arguing that language reflects, and in general does not determine, reality. Meanwhile,
trying to tell people how to talk undermines democracy.
6. Feminists ignore and exacerbate racial divisions among women.
Africana womanism is a unique movement sited in this section which offers a scathing
and sound critique of feminism. Africana womanists want to trace their history to souces
other than the late 18th Century suffragists who recruited Southern women by warning
them that white women must have the vote in order to counter the threat of giving
ignorant Blacks the right to vote. Although the charge of racism cannot be leveled
against feminists today, feminists are still largely white and upper class, and this colors
their concerns in a way which almost completely alienates many Africana women.
7. Patriarchy is secondary to other concerns.
Marxism in particular is an effective approach in some circumstances against feminism.

Marx argued that the form of economic production and material distribution in society
determines the ideological relations, with the dominant classes being those who own the
means of production and employ everyone else to work for them. Although Marxists
believe strongly in the liberation of women, they also emphasize that such liberation can
only occur as the result of a struggle against capitalism, which is necessary to liberate
both the men and women of the non-ownership class.
8. Feminism is anti-male.
This is not something you need to whine about; the evidence is there, and it is very
compelling simply to argue two things: First, that a philosophy which claims exclusion is
unfair should not turn around and excluda others; and second, that it is pragmatically
disadvantageous to exclude half the worlds population from a struggle for peace, justice
and progress.
CONCLUSION
We began by realizing that much of what feminism says is true. Like other philosophical
systems, it makes some genuinely sound observations about the state of society.
Perhaps even some of its prescriptions can be shared by everyone. But at the end of the
essay, having not compromised that initial admission to the truthfulness of womens
liberation, we have seen that contemporary feminist advocacy is mired in selfglorification, internal and external struggle, squabbles over minor and major points,
often refusing to engage in conversation with anyone but one of its various selves. That
is no way to liberate anyone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cole, Eve Browning. PHILOSOPHY AND FEMINIST CRITICISM (New York: Paragon House,
1993).
Bryson, Valerie. FEMINIST POLITICAL THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION (New York: Paragon

House,
1992).
Hudson-Weems, Clenora. AFRICANA WOMANISM: RECLAIMING OURSELVES (Troy,

Michigan:
Bedford Publishers, 1994).
Caraway, Nancie. SEGREGATED SISTERHOOD: RACISM AND THE POLITICS OF AMERICAN

FEMINISM (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991).
Butler, Judith P. BODIES THAT MATTER: ON THE DISCURSIVE LIMITS OF SEX (New York:
Routledge, 1993).
Sargisson, Lucy. CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM UTOPIANISM (New York: Routledge, 1996).

Klein, Ellen R. FEMINISM UNDER FIRE (Aniherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996).
FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY: PROBLEMS, THEORIES AND APPLICATIONS (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:

Prentice Hall, 1992).
Grant, Judith. FUNDAMENTAL FEMINISM: CONTESTING THE CORE CONCEPTS OF FEMINIST

ThEORY (New York: Routledge, 1993)
Holland, Nancy J. IS WOMENS PHILOSOPHY POSSIBLE? (Savage, Md.: Rowman and

Littlefield, 1990).
Ferguson, Kathy E. THE MAN QUESTION: VISIONS OF SUBJECTIVITY IN FEMINIST THEORY

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
Humm, Maggie. THE DICTIONARY OF FEMINIST THEORY (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 1995).
Murphy, Cornelius F. BEYOND FEMINISM: TOWARDS A DIALOGUE ON DIFFERENCE

(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995).
Shugar, Dana R SEPARATISM AND WOMENS COMMUNITY (Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press, 1995).
McElroy, Wendy. SEXUAL CORRECTNESS: THE GENDER-FEMINIST ATTACK ON WOMEN

(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 1996).
McCracken, Robert D. FALLACIES OF WOMENS LIBERATION (Boulder: Shields Publishing,

1972).
Jagger, Alison M. FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1988).
FEMINISM FAILS AS A PHILOSOPHY

1. FEMINISM DESTROYS CRITICAL THINKING AND UNDERMINES EDUCATION Ellen R. Klein,
philosopher at University of North Florida, FEMINISM UNDER FIRE, 1996, p. 222. In a
democratic society--one in which our students end up voting for policies via our
representatives--educators have a duty to empower our students with the most useful
tools for making the best decisions they can. Until the feminists critics of reason have
won the day, critical thinking remains educations central task.
2. REJECTING REASON AS MALE MAKES PHILOSOPHY IMPOSSIBLE

Ellen R. Klein, philosopher at University of North Florida, FEMINISM UNDER FIRE, 1996, p.
232. For philosophy to consistently live up to its own ideals, everything (though not
everything at once) must be criticizable, even the method of critical analysis itself.
Unfortunately, radical feminist claims like those offered above suffer the same syndrome
as fundamentalist religious claims: they cannot countenance rational challenge. How can
one philosophically criticize claims or offer reasons why a position is incorrect if the
commitment to reason itself is viewed as male and, therefore, illegitimate? When
criticism is intolerable, philosophy, in principle, becomes impossible.
3. FEMINISMS PRIVILEGING OF THE OPPRESSED IS WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION Ellen R.

Klein, philosopher at University of North Florida, FEMINISM UNDER FIRE, 1996, p. 222.
Critical thinking, which is synonymous with a commitment to rationality, ought to
maintain its place as the educational ideal because it has at its heart the development of
self-sufficient, responsible members of society who have respect for themselves and
everyone else in their community. Is this commitment consistent with teaching
feministly? No, not if from a feminist perspective there are only two ways to resolve
opposition of beliefs: (I) by claiming that each person has her own perspective and all
opinions are equally valid, or (2) by giving preference to the opinion of the person who is
most oppressed.
FEMINISM IGNORES LEGITIMATE

DIFFERENCES AMONG WOMEN
1. FEMINISM UNIVERSALIZES WOMAN AND IGNORES THE VARIABLES AMONG WOMEN
Kathy E. Ferguson, philosopher at University of Hawaii, THE MAN QUESTION, 1993, p. 82.
To constitute a coherent category, some phenomenon, say, women, is pulled out of its
infinitely complex context and made to stand on its own. Some connections of that
phenomenon to others (for example, women to children) are featured, while other
connections (say, of women to violence) are silenced.
2. FEMINISM IS ESSENTIALIST
Kathy E. Ferguson, philosopher at University of Hawaii, THE MAN QUESTION, 1993, pp.
82-3. There are ways to assert ones categories that contain periodic reminders of their
partiality, and ways that do not, but the need to operate with some set of unified
categories is unavoidable. Feminists who deplore this as essentialist or universalist are
overlooking their own necessary participation in this linguistic practice.
3. FEMINISM IGNORES CLASS DIVISIONS AMONG WOMEN

Katie Roiphe, author of The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism., THE TAMPA
TRIBUNE, January 7th, 1996, p. 4.
Ones experience of being female depends on one~s social class and background. She
dramatizes a simple but often overlooked point: that the concerns of the professional
career women who figure most prominently in mainstream feminist theory are not the
same as the concerns of factory workers or innercity mothers.
FEMINISM FAILS AS A POLITICAL

APPROACH
1. FEMINISTS INTEND TO CHANGE LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, THE DENVER POST, January
14, 1996,
p. E-5.
Comipting thought is what radical feminism is all about. Feminists fully understand their
mission. The political implications of language have made linguistic study imperative
for feminists, intones the Womens Study Encyclopedia in an essay on Feminism and
Semiological Theoiy. For those uninitiated in contemporary academic jargon, semiotics
is a theory of language that asserts that words are symbols representing not only the
things they describe but, more importantly, the values of the dominant class within a
culture. If you want to change the values of a culture, you must change its language.
And feminists have been trying to change ours for a generation.
2. FEMINIST CORRUPTION OF LANGUAGE AND LOGIC RESULTS IN TOTALITARIANISM Linda

Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, THE DENVER POST, January 14,
1996,
p. E-5.
Unfortunately, the gender feminists have the upper hand in universities across the
country, and their influence spills over int6 the broader culture day by day. The attempt
to neuter language, or to put certain words off-limits because they ostensibly represent
masculine traits, is an exercise in thought control. Totalitarianism didnt disappear with
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its alive and well on many American college campuses
today.
3. DIVISIONS AMONG FEMINISM UNDERMINE WOMENS LIBERATION Alison M. Jagger,

philosopher at University of Colorado, FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE, 1988, p.
103.
The variety in their conceptions of the good society makes it difficult for radical feminists
to agree on a single strategy for womens liberation. It is hard to decide on a route when
one is uncertain about ones destination. An additional difficulty is that, although radical
feminists share certain basic assumptions about the political structure of social reality,
there are some respects in which they differ considerably.
PATRIARCHY INADEQUATELY EXPLAINS

INEQUALITY IN SOCIETY
1. PATRIARCHY IS NOT THE REAL CAUSE OF INEQUALITY
Joanne Naiman, professor of sociology at Ryerson Polytechnic University, MONTHLY
REVIEW, June 1996, P. 12.
Marxism enables us to explain how culture and forms of social organization are not
simply mysterious unexplainable creations, but are linked to particular relations of
power. The return to class must therefore begin with a structural analysis of power,
including power determined by gender, within capitalist systems. The question of power
is crucial in social science, because its distribution affects all aspects of our personal and
social lives. However, the concept of power is poorly analyzed and understood. In
standard introductory sociology textbooks it is often ignored altogether. In analyses of
gender inequality, concepts such as male dominance, male power, and patriarchy
are seldom worked through or properly explicated.
2. PATRIARCHY IS THE RESULT OF SOCIAL FORCES IGNORED BY FEMINISM Joanne

Naiman, professor of sociology at Ryerson Polytechnic University, MONTHLY REVIEW,
June 1996, p. 12.
The status differential between men and women, of course, is rife with contradictions for
males in our society. First, the main socializing agents of childhood, the mother and the
teacher, are almost all female. Moreover, while we spend an entire childhood teaching
boys not to be feminine, we simultaneously instruct them that at maturity they should
love, mate, and spend a lifetime with these inferior creatures! Is it any wonder that most
men enter into gender relationships with a totally confused set of expectations? That
they can love and beat their women at the same time? That they are at times unable to
distinguish domination from eroticism?
3. MOST MEN DO NOT HAVE MORE POWER THAN WOMEN

REVIEW, June 1996, p. 12.
It is valid to assert that men as a category do wield a certain degree of power within
capitalist systems:
however, there is a major disjuncture between the supposed reality for men and the
actual reality for most men. The reality is that most men hold very little societal power.
In most of their daily lives, in their world of work, in their control over their world, most
men are quite powerless. The only power most men have, which traditionally has been
legally sanctioned, is the power over women as individuals; even here, however, there
has been a major erosion over the last fifty years as a result of the decline in patriarchal
authority in the family. It is little wonder, then, that many men will attempt to assert
their dominance in the one sphere where it has been tolerated, and at times even
encouraged.
4. INEQUALITY IS THE RESULT OF CLASS, NOT GENDER DIFFERENCES

REVIEW, June 1996, p. 12.
It is commonly argued that men control the economic, political, and ideological spheres.
However, it is more precise to argue that men as a group have greater access to the
positions of power than do women. This is partially a result of their higher status. Very
few working people will ever achieve ownership of the means of production; more may
achieve occupational statuses that give greater amounts of power and influence. In
capitalist societies, access to these positions of power has been almost totally closed to
women until recently. Put differently, we might say that the access gates to positions
of power within capitalism have been more open to men than to women, while the
reality for most men is that, like most women, they will never have access to such
structured positions of power.
MOST WOMEN REJECT FEMINISM

1. FEMINIST UNIVERSALISM IS ELITIST AND ALIENATES MOST WOMEN
Evan Gahr, editorial writer for the New York Post, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, January 28,
1996, p. B-8.
Feminists like to think that they speak for all women. For them, marriage is an outdated
patriarchal institution that restricts women, every act of intercourse is an act of
aggression, and the very word women is an affront to womyn. But these kinds of
arguments leave most women alienated from the angry white women who make up the
feminist elite.
2. FEMINISMS REJECTION OF THE FAMILY IGNORES MOST WOMENS VALUES Evan Gahr,
editorial writer for the New York Post, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, January 28, 1996, p. B-8.
So the feminists who see marriage and motherhood as overly restrictive arent striking a
blow for female empowerment at all. They are, as Ms. Fox-Genovese demonstrates,
attacking the very things most women cherish. So while feminists are mired in the
1970s, with their emphasis on bra-burning and demonization of men, the women in Ms.
Fox-Genoveses book have a different set of priorities: Womens growing economic
independence from families has not automatically lessened their commitment to family
life. Indeed, the competing pull of work and family define many womens lives.
3. MOST WOMEN REJECT FEMINISM

Katie Roiphe, author of The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism., THE TAMPA
TRIBUNE, January 7th, 1996, p. 4.
Feminism, more than most political movements of this century, has held out the alluring
promise: This is your life. Its jargon and philosophy entered the most intimate realms of
daily life: sex, families and who is supposed to wash the dishes. It offered not just social
changes but an entire psychology of oppression to go with them. But somehow the
political interpretations still left many of us feeling the dissatisfaction Fox-Genovese
writes about, the sneaking suspicion that all of the rhetoric is irrelevant. It seems to me
that there is always a huge distance between our politics and ourselves, between the
passionate slogans on signs, shouted at marches and debated in classrooms, and what
goes on in the living moms, kitchens and bedrooms of real life.
FEMINISM IS RACIST
1. FEMINISTS HAVE FAILED TO CONFRONT THE ISSUE OF RACE
Kathy E. Ferguson, philosopher at University of Hawaii, THE MAN QUESTION, 1993, P.
168. But the fear of being called racist and the accompanying taboo of criticizing women
of color is sufficiently strong in contemporary feminism that white working class women
often express their anger only privately, to each other. And there are few ways to talk
about these glitches in the hierarchy of oppressions (white women not privileged by
class; women of color who are) that dont quickly degenerate into a contest for more
oppressed than thou.
2. AFRICANA WOMEN REJECI FEMINISM

Clenora Hudson-Weems, African Studies scholar at University of Missouri-Columbia,
AFRICA NA WOMANISM: RECLAIMING OURSELVES, 1994, p. 18.
But while some have accepted the label, more and more Africana women today in the
academy and in the conmiunity are reassessing the historical realities and the agenda
for the modem feminist movement. These women are concluding that feminist
terminology does not accurately reflect the reality of their struggle.
3. FEMINISM IS A WHITE PHILOSOPHY WHICH ALIENATES AFRICANA WOMEN Rose

Acholonu, African literaiy critic, AFRICANA WOMANISM: RECLAIMING OURSELVES, 1994,
p. 18.
The negative hues of the American and European radical feminism have succeeded in
alienating even the fair-minded Africans from the concept. The sad result is that today
the majority of Africans (including successful female writers) tend to disassociate
themselves from it.
4. FEMINISM IS RACIST AND EXCLUDES PERSPECTIVES OF NON-WHITE WOMEN Clenora

Hudson-Weems, African Studies scholar at University of Missouri-Columbia, AFRICANA
WOMANISM: RECLAIMING OURSELVES, 1994, p. 21.
Feminism, a term conceptualized and adopted by White women, involves an agenda that
was designed to meet the needs and demands of that particular group. For this reason,
it is quite plausible for White women to identify with feminism and the feminist
movement. Having said that, the fact remains that placing all womens history under
White womens history, thereby giving the latter the definitive position, is problematic.
In fact, it demonstrates the ultimate of racist arrogance and domination, suggesting that
authentic activity of women resides with White women.
FEMINIST EMPHASIS ON MALE

VIOLENCE SHOULD BE REJECTED
1. FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF MALE VIOLENCE IS WRONG John Leo, essayist, THE TAMPA
TRIBUNE, May 9, 1996, p. 19
To their credit, feminists made domestic violence a political issue. But they shaped the
issue around a theory: This violence is an expression of patriarchy as a social force and
marriage as a patriarchal institution. It is something men do to women because of the
way society is organized. An enormous amount of evidence from 30 or more studies now
shows that this paradigm is quite wrongheaded. But feminists are unwilling to adapt it to
reality, and since the modem newsroom is very supportive of feminism, news stories on
domestic violence are very carefully crafted, consistently unreliableand often just plain
wrong.
2. FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF VIOLENCE IGNORES THE FACTS IN FAVOR OF MORALIZING John

Leo, essayist, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, May 9, 1996, p. 19
The feminist insistence of using theory to mug facts has had many unfortunate results.
One is that a generalized view of men as uniquely violent and dangerous to women
(men batter because they can, the most dangerous place for a woman to be is in the
home) has leached deep into the popular culture. It turns up everywhere.
3. FEMINISTS IGNORE THE VIOLENCE WOMEN COMMIT AGAINST MEN John Leo, essayist,
THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, May 9, 1996, p. 19
In fact, children are now more likely to see Monuny hit Dad. The rate of severe assaults
by men on women in the home fell by almost 50 percent between the first National
Family Violence Survey and the most recent update of data in 1992. It dropped from 38
per 1,000 couples per year to 19. Give the feminists credit for this. They did it mostly by
themselves. But the rate of dangerous female assaults on males in the home stayed
essentially static over that period - 45 per 1,000 couples - and is now twice as high as
the male rate. Give feminists some responsibility for this too. By defining partner
violence as a male problem, they missed the chance to bring about the same decline in
violence among women. Feminist studies of partner violence rarely ask about assaults
by women, and when they do, they ask only about self-defense. Journalists, in turn, stick
quite close to the feminist-approved studies for fear of being considered softon male
violence. The result is badly skewed reporting of domestic violence as purely a gender
issue. It isnt.
4. FEMINISTS PORTRAY MEN AS MONSTERS

Alison M. Jagger, philosopher at University of Colorado, FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN
NATURE, 1988, p. 114.
Some of the most prominent radical feminists portray men as monsters. They see them
as necrophiiacs, incorrigible rapists and torturers, irrational woman-haters. While this
portrayal brings out certain destructive aspects of masculinity that are often ignored and
need to be revealed, I think that it is inadequate both descriptively and theoretically.
Descriptively, it ignores not just the relatively unimportant and always questionable
individual exceptions to masculine behavioral norms; it also ignores the way in which
those norms themselves vary cross-culturally and, in contemporary society, by race and
class. Theoretically, radical feminism provides no explanations of why men have
developed these bizaxre characteristics and so leaves the impression, sometimes
reinforced by explicit suggestion, that these characteristics are simply innate.
FEMINISM ENTRENCHES DESTRUCTIVE

BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
1. FEMINISM RESULTS IN BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
NATURE, 1988, p. 117.
In other words, if we attempt to abstract patriarchy from the specific social practices
through which men dominate women, we lose the history and only an ahistorical biology
seems to remain. Thus an ahistorical conception of patriarchy or male dominance and an
ahistorical conception of human nature reinforce each other and together encourage
biological deterrmmsm.
2. BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM RESULTS IN A NEGATIVE VIEW OF HUMANITY Alison M.

Jagger, philosopher at University of Colorado, FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE,
1988, p. 107.
Of course, there are many kinds of biological determinism. What they have in common is
the claim that the genetic construction of human beings uniquely determines quite
specific features of human social life. Usually, these features are distinctly unattractive;
they have included racial inequality, slavery, warfare, drug addiction, competition, rape,
poverty, violence, corruption, political hierarchy and, of course, male dominance.
3. BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM JUSTIFIES FATALISM

NATURE, 1988, p. 107.
Overwhelmingly, although not necessarily, such theories tend to encourage a sort of
fatalism: either they claim that we must adapt society to take account of whatever basic
unchangeable human propensities they assert, or else they claim that a society closely
resembling the presently existing one is inevitable. For this reason, it is unusual for
advocates of social change, such as feminists, to accept any kind of biological
determinism.
4. BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM RESULTS IN PREJUDICE AGAINST ALL MEN AlisonM. Jagger,

philosopher at University of Colorado, FEMINIST POLITICS AND HUMAN NATURE, 1988, p.
290.
Consequently, for lack of a better answer, many radical feminists assume that there is
simply something wrong, biologically, with men that impels them to act in such cruel
and violent ways. Radical feminists often tend toward this view not because they are
convinced of any specific biological determinist theory about the difference between the
sexes; rather they drift into it because, given the prevailing dominance of biological
reductionist forms of explanation, they see no other way to explain all the forms of male
violence against women.
Michel Foucault
Post-Structuralist Philosopher (19261984)

Michel Foucault was born in Poitier, France in 1926. As a student, Foucault was
dissatisfied with the educational system. Foucault explained the disappointment as a
continual postponement of promised knowledge. At every level, Foucault argued, the
student had to wait for the important knowledge.
Foucault studied Philosophy in Paris at the Ecole Normale Superieure, a school for the
intellectual elite.
Foucaults study of philosophy convinced him that there was no secret knowledge that
students wait for.
Disillusioned by philosophy, Foucault completed a degree in psychology and psychiatry.
Michel Foucaults death in 1984 at the age of fifty-eight created an enormous void in the
French intellectual scene.
No other thinker in recent history and had so dynamically influenced the fields of history,
philosophy, literature and literary theory, the social sciences, even medicine. As a
thinker, Foucault engaged in a series of provocative dialogues with his theoretical
forefathers--Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre--in order to reconceptualize the notions of the
human subject, and marginality, within the context of power relations.
An understanding of Foucault requires an examination of: (1) Discourse, (2) Power, (3)
Archaeology and Genealogy, and (4) application to debate.
Foucault argues that our current conception of the human being will disappear. He
argues that in the present era, the human has become the unifying element and the
center for the organization of knowledge. The human, in other words, constitutes the
foundation and origin of knowledge. Foucault argued that humans were not independent
of the their language. This is important in that it challenges the previous philosophic
position that the human subject was an autonomous being, impacted by but separate
from social structure. Foucault does not deny that discourse originates with human
beings and that the production of discourse is uniquely human. His focus, is not on
individuals, but rather on the roles human beings assume in speaking and writing and
how these are created and constrained by the norms or rules of the discursive formation.
Foucaults initial research focused on mental hospitals and prisons. Foucaults study of
mental hospitals and prisons was extended to society in general. Foucault argued that
power is embedded at all levels of society. Prisons and mental hospitals are simply the
more overt forms of power and control. As he continued to write, Foucault expanded his
examination to include sexuality and language. For Foucault, power is not something
possessed by subjects; it is a network, grid, or field of relations in which subjects
are first constituted as both the products and the agents of power. The modern
components of power are misconceived if they are taken to be essentially negative,

prohibitive instances at the top or the center of the social order, intervening in and
repressing the actions of those below or at the margins. Power is also and essentially
positive, productive, and capillary--it circulates throughout the cells and the extremities
of the social body; it is an aspect of every social practice, social relation and social
institution. Despite the diversity of subjects, the conclusion remained essentially the
same: Power was an implicit and explicit component to human life.
As an avenue to understand power components in society, Foucault offers his notions of

archaeology and genealogy. Foucault suggests that archaeology is the means to analyze
discourse in terms of the conditions that allow it to appear and that govern it. In
addition, archaeology is based in the comparative descriptions of discursive practices
with each other and of discursive practices with the elements surrounding them.
Genealogy, Foucault suggests, is the examination of the power structures inherent in
society. For example, his genealogical method uncovered the variety of discursive
practices such as the technologies of normalization and control through which social
relations take shape. That is, our language has the power to force conformity and
regulate our attitudes and behavior. Foucaults notion of genealogy radically challenged
Western political epistemology and thereby forged a new role for critical thought that is
independent of utopian models.
It is difficult to situate Foucaults political practice within a single perspective. His refusal
to become an ideologue not only challenges that traditional notion of the institution of
the intellectual in France, but it also reveals an uneasiness in articulating a general and
yet specific political project. More consistently than any other contemporary thinker,
Michel Foucault has developed the implications of a rejection of the Platonic idea of
truth. In its place he proposes what may be called a counter philosophy which traces the
lowly origins of truth in struggle and conflict in arbitrariness and contingency, in a will to
truth that is essentially intertwined with desire and power.
Any debate that centers around issues of power and control will beg for Foucaults
theory. In addition, the debater may find Foucault useful in critiquing various language
choices and structures. While Foucault does not offer any solutions to the silencing
effects of power, the debater might be able to include others solutions, while using
Foucault to demonstrate the extent to which power is manifested in society.
Bibliography
Jonathan Mac. ed. AFTER FOUCAULT: HUMANISTIC KNOWLEDGE, POSTMODERN
CHALLENGES. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988.
Michael Clarke. MICHEL FOUCAULT: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY. New York: Garland

Press, 1983.
Mark Cousins & Athar Hussain. MICHEL FOUCAULT. New York: St. Martins, 1984.
Giles Deleuze. Nomad Thought. in THE NEW NIETZSCHE, ed. D. Allison. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1984, 141-149.
Hubert Dreyfus, & Paul Rabinow. MICHEL FOUCAULT: BEYOND STRUCTURALISM AND
HERMENEUTICS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Bernard Glynn. Sexuality, Knowledge and Power in the Thought of Michel Foucault.
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM 8 (1981): 329-348.
Gary Gutting. ed. THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO FOUCAULT. Cambridge: Cambridge

Michel Foucault. ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Michel Foucault. BIRTH OF THE CLINIC. New York: Pantheon Books, 1973.
Michel Foucault. DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Michel Foucault. HISTORY OF SEXUALITY. Vol. 1. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
Michel Foucault. MADNESS AND CIVILIZATION. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.
Michel Foucault. MICHEL FOUCAULT: LANGUAGE, COUNTER-MEMORY, PRACTICE.

SELECTED ESSAYS AND INTERVIEWS. Ed. D.F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1977.
Michel Foucault THE ORDER OF THINGS. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.
Michel Foucault. POWERIKNOWLEDGE: SELECTED INTERVIEWS AND OTHER WRITINGS.

Ed.
Cohn Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
Michel Foucault. POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE: INTERVIEWS AND OTHER WRITINGS,

1977-1984. New York: Routledge, 1988.
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KNOWLEDGE IN THE THOUGHT OF MICHEL FOUCAULT. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1993.
POWER IS THE ULTIMATE SOCIAL VALUE

1. POWER IS INFUSED THROUGHOUT SOCIETY
Michel Foucault, Former Chair-College of France, POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, CULTURE.
INTERVIEWS AND OTHER WRITINGS, 1977-1984, 1988, p. 118.
First, power in the West is what displays itself the most, and thus what hides itself the
best: what we have called political life since the 19th century is the manner in which
power presents its image (a little like the court in the monarchic era). Power is neither
there, nor is that how it functions. The relations of power are perhaps among the best
hidden things in the social body.
2. POLITICS IS INTIMATELY CONCERNED WITH POWER AND FORCE

Michel Foucault, Former Chair-College of France, DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH, 1979, p. 168.
It may be that war as strategy is a continuation of politics. But it must not be forgotten
that politics has been conceived as a continuation, if not exactly and directly of war, at
least of the military model as a fundamental means of preventing civil disorder. Politics
as a technique of internal peace and order, sought to implement the mechanism of the
perfect army, of the disciplined mass, of the docile useful troop, of the regiment in camp
and in the field, on maneuvers and on exercises. In the great eighteenth-century states,
the army guaranteed civil peace no doubt because it was a real force, an everthreatening sword, but also because it was a technique and a body of knowledge that
could project their schema over the social body.
3. CONSTRUCTION OF TRUTH IS A FORM OF POWER

Indeed, truth is no doubt a form of power. An in saying that, I am only taking up one of
the fundamental problems of Western philosophy when it poses these questions: Why, in
fact, are we attached to the truth? Why the truth rather than lies? Whey the truth rather
than illusion? And I think that, instead of trying to find out what truth, as opposed to
error is, it might be more interesting to take up the problem posed by Nietzsche: how is
it that, in our societies, the truth has been given this value, thus placing us absolutely
under its thrall?
4. HUMAN SCIENCES AND POWER ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED

Philosophers or even, more generally, intellectuals justify and mark out their identity by
trying to establish an almost uncrossable line between the domain of knowledge, seen
as that of truth and freedom, and the domain of the exercise of power. What struck me,
in observing the human sciences, was that the development of all these branches of
knowledge can in no way be dissociated from the exercise of power.
POWER IS THE ULTIMATE SOCIAL VALUE

Part 2
1. KNOWLEDGE CREATES NEW MECHANISMS OF POWER
INTERVIEWS AND OTHER WRITINGS, 1977-1984,1988, p.106.
But, generally speaking, the fact that societies can become the object of scientific
observation, that human behavior became, from a certain point on, a problem to be
analyzed and resolved, all that is bound up, I believe, with mechanisms of power--which,
at a given moment, indeed, analyzed that object (society, man, etc.) and presented it as
a problem to be resolved. So the birth of the human sciences goes hand in hand with the
installation of new mechanisms of power.
2. VALUE OF FREEDOM IS TIED UP IN POWER

INTERVIEWS AND OTHER WRITINGS, 1977-1984, 1988, p.83-84.
Power is not a substance. Neither is it a mysterious property whose origin must be
delved into. Power is only a certain type of relation between individuals. Such relations
are specific, that is, they have nothing to do with exchange, production, communication,
even though they combine with them. The characteristic feature of power is that some
men can more or less entirely determine other mens conduct, but never exhaustively or
coercively. A man who is chained up and beaten is subject to force being exerted over
him.
Not power; But if he can be induced to speak, when his ultimate recourse could have
been to hold his tongue, preferring death, then he has been caused to behave in a
certain way. His freedom has been subjected to power. He has been submitted to
government.
LANGUAGE IS A CENTRAL COMPONENT

OF SOCIETY
1. DISCOURSE AT CENTER OF REALITY
Michel Foucault, Former Chair-College of France, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE,
1972, p. 48-49.
I would like to show that discourse is not a slender surface of contact or confrontation
between a reality and a language (langue), the interaction of lexicon and an experience;
I would like to show with precise
examples that in analyzing discourses themselves one sees the loosening of the
embrace, apparently so tight, of words and things, and the emergence of a group of
rules proper to discursive practical use of a vocabulary, but the ordering of objects.
2. DISCOURSE IS THE CENTER OF THE INDIVIDUAL

1972,
p. 55.
Thus conceived, discourse is not the majestically unfolding manifestation of a thinking,
knowing, speaking subject, but on the contrary, a totality, in which the dispersion of the
subject and his discontinuity with himself may be determined. It is a space of exteriority
in which a network of distinct sites is deployed. I showed earlier that it was neither by
words nor by things that the regulation of the objects proper to a discursive formation
should be defined; similarly, it must now be recognized that it is neither by recourse to a
transcendental subject not by recourse to a psychological subjectivity that the regulation
of its enunciations should be defined.
3. DISCOURSE ORDERS AND DESIGNATES MEANING

1972, p. 49.
A task that consists of not--of no longer--treating discourses as a groups of signs
(signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that
systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are
composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things. It
is this more that renders them irreducible to the language (langue) and to speech. It is
this more that we must reveal and describe.
UNDERSTANDING THE PAST DOES NOT

PROVIDE OBJECTIVE TRUTH
1. HISTORY LACKS APPEAL TO TOTALITIES
1972,
p. 7.
To be brief, then, let us say that history, in its traditional form, undertook to memorize
the monuments of the past, transform them into documents, and lend speech to those
traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal, or which say in silence something
other than what they actually say; in our time, history is that which transforms
documents into monuments. In that area where in the past, history deciphered the
traces left by men, it now deploys a mass of elements that have to be grouped, made
relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities.
2. HISTORY IS DISCONTINUOUS
1972,
p.4.
At about the same time, in the disciplines that we call the history of ideas, the history of
science, the history of philosophy, the history of thought and the history of literature (we
can ignore their specificity for the moment, in those disciplines which, despite their
names, evade very largely the work and methods of the historian, attention has been
turned on the contrary, away from vast unities like periods or centuries to the
phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity.
3. HISTORY IS INVOLVED WITH DIVISIONS RATHER THAN UNITIES

1972, p. 5.
And the great problem presented by such historical analyses is not how continuities are
established, how a single pattern is formed and preserved, how for so many different,
successive minds there is a single horizon, what mode of action and what substructure is
implied by the interplay of transmissions, resumptions, disappearances, and repetitions,
how the origin may extend its sway well beyond itself to the conclusion that is never
given--the problem is no longer one of tradition, of tracing a line, but one of division, of
limits; it is no longer one of lasting foundations, but one of transformations that serve as
new foundations, the rebuilding of foundations.
Answering Foucault
Introduction
Michael Foucault is one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, radically
reconceptualizing society, the creation of identity, and even Truth itself. Foucault is a
fairly contemporary French thinker (he died in 1984) who is fairly difficult to categorize;
he rejected labels like poststructuralist or postmodernist that many tried to place upon
him. He is part historian, part social critic, and part philosopher, and yet he tried to turn
all of those fields and more on their heads. To be able to address Foucaldian arguments
in a debate, first his essential hypotheses need to be covered. Then, this article will
examine some of the gaps and inconsistencies in Foucaults thinking, as well as the
political implications of those gaps. Finally, two major critiques of Foucault will be
covered: that from post-Marxist feminism, and that from Judith Butler.
Foucaults Basics
Perhaps the most fundamental insight underpinning most of Foucaults work has to do
with the connection between knowledge and power. Knowledge as seen in the
Enlightenment style of thinking is a series of empirical observations about the world that
can be objectively verified. Anything that passes these standards is considered true
and is added to the ever-growing canon of Western knowledge. Foucault critiques such a
conception of Truth by examining how networks of power influence peoples acceptance
of knowledge. He does not claim that power is what creates Truth, but instead that
power is what causes knowledge to be accepted as Truth. For a striking example of this,
one need to look only at the practice of authors adding their qualifications to works that
they write. Independent of explanations given within the writing, the qualification is an
appeal to authority that reassures the reader that this should be accepted since it is
coming from someone in the know. This same phenomenon occurs at all different sorts
of levels, argues Foucault, and that is what constitutes a societal body of knowledge. So
while power contributes to the formation and belief in knowledge, so does knowledge
enact power on and through people. Pure knowledge cannot do this on its own, of course
- it requires people accepting and acting upon it in certain ways. Foucault is most
interested in how a system of knowledge that is recognized by many can come to exert
influence upon and even create individuals. Such a system is essentially what Foucault
means by the term discourse, which plays a prominent role in his description of power
at play in society. A discourse is much more that mere language; the term includes a
host of practices and symbols that have a communicable meaning. Since discourses are
imbued with normative power, they end up influencing how people think and act.
In Foucaults works he studies the power of discourse in a variety of institutions. One of

his more prominent studies occurred in the famous work Discipline and Punish, which
dealt with the history of the penal system and its effects both on prisoners and the
guards themselves. The institution of the prison has a certain set of practices discourse(s) - that enframe what it means to be imprisoned, physically inscribing those
traits onto the prisoner. As an establishment that is designed to correct and punish for
deviant actions, the prisoners identity is recast in such a way that this image begins
to shape her/his behavior.
Foucault wants to move away from a linear conception of power, where it is applied by
some autonomous force onto others in some sort of deliberate plot. Discourses that prop
up the power and legitimacy of the nation-state are not necessarily coming from the
state by any means. Instead Foucault views power as if it were a center less matrix that
encompasses everyone. This wreaks havoc with the traditional view of how resistance
works, for so-called liberation movements are supposedly a reaction to an external
power that will overthrow its oppressive shackles. Foucault is exceedingly wary of such
liberation rhetoric, however, since he believes that even resistance to power is itself
dictated by the operating discourse or technology of power.
Thus, completely escaping oppressive regimes of power becomes a pipe-dream.

Foucaults strategy is instead to critique all totalizing theories - even those that profess
to counteract other more oppressive ones - on the grounds that all totalizing theory is
totalitarian. Only by exposing the influence of power upon various ways of thinking does
Foucault believe the influence of discourses be lessened (if not abolished). He calls such
investigations genealogies because they trace the creation of discourses and how
power influenced their role in society. While Foucaults thought extends to a myriad of
areas that this article does not have the room to go into, his core thesis has been
examined sufficiently, if not all of its many implications.
Arguing Against Foucault on a Factual

Basis
While Foucault is to a large extent a theoretical writer, he bases much of his theory upon
a historical examination of how the functions of institutions have changed over time and
how those changes reflect various deployments in power. In his History of Sexuality
volume 1, Foucault makes the claim that sexuality became essentially created as an
object of scientific study due to societal changes in the past few centuries. The rise of
the need for population growth to become a factor in planning the existence of a country
(and the increased ability to understand how population interacts with other factors, like
industry) meant that deviant sexual behaviors that didnt contribute to a boost in
population were considered all the more morally wrong. All manners of things relating
to population became regulated - even something as benign seeming as maternity care
was caught up in the deployment of sexuality. However, this entire study of the history
of sexuality (along with his treatments of prisons and the phenomenon of madness) was
done so in a very Eurocentric fashion. Never did Foucault really take into account any
perspective that originated outside of Europe; nor did he really consider any kind of
intellectual thought that wasnt French or German in its origin. He makes universal
theoretical claims after only looking at examples of techniques of power that is culturally
familiar.
Moreover, even the historical analysis that Foucault provides that is local isnt always
considered correct. He often gives oversimplified accounts of how institutions of power
worked, or makes grievous factual errors. Foucault points to a number of developments
in the way prisons work that he thinks have to do with changing notions of what it
means to be a criminal. However, many of the new developments that he talks
about: locking criminals up in cells that are isolated from other prisoners, the panoptic
nature of the watchtower system - were actually found in the Middle Ages, against his
belief. This is but one example of a small yet important flaw in his reasoning; many
similar generalizations pepper his writing.
One might be tempted to shrug off such nit-picking as irrelevant to the essence of his
theories. After all, if he can still establish some solid ties between societal shifts in power
and practices that encode a certain set of behaviors as normative, then Foucault is still
basically right. However, when details that run contrary to Foucaults vision surface, they
make apparent the fact that Foucaults theories are too simplistic to represent reality. If
the relationship between truth and power is a far more complex one than he claims,
then it calls into question Foucaults claims that his genealogical project is the way to
distance oneself from totalitarian thought.
There is also a question as to how internally consistent Foucault is with his critique of
totalitarian thought. Foucault does not make any value judgments on differing types of
discourses; there are ones that can be more entrenched than others, but he would never
call them good or bad. Therefore, any discourse is one that he will advocate
critiquing in a way that exposes its intertwined relationship with power. But is it possible
that when trying to get away from totalitarian thought Foucault commits some of his
own? By labeling discourse as a pervasive actor that controls society, Foucault places it
on a pedestal in a way that is totalizing in itself. He tries to distance himself from
comprehensive theory by promoting a pluralized approach to politics, sure, but that
promotion is in itself an enactment of totalizing thought. Readers of Foucaults work are
themselves engaging in a power relationship, for anyone who begins thinking differently
from his ideas is doing so because the meanings in his writings are exerting some kind
of influence. His writing might not be like regular philosophys search for a
comprehensive truth or foundational basis for meaning (Plato, Kant, etc.), but it involves
a discourse nonetheless. It is Foucaults refusal to distinguish between good and bad
discourses itself that creates the trap for himself. Since he doesnt believe that
discourses can be liberating in the traditional sense, that means Foucault can never
escape the same kind of power relationships he tries to distance himself from.
Political Implications: Why Foucault?

The fact that Foucault provides no moral compass by which to evaluate different
systems of power can itself be construed as a problem with his way of thought. While it
might be simple for him to speak of the totalitarian nature of all true discourses, that
doesnt necessarily make for a good calculus for making political decisions. How is one
supposed to be able to make weighed decisions when placed in a position to either
support or resist any given political action? Being placed in such forced choices is often
unavoidable; given how pervasive the symbols of any discourse are, it is simply
untenable to actually adopt a policy of constant extreme genealogical criticism.
Moreover, if the preceding paragraph is accurate, then it also means there is no reason
why Foucaults conception of how power works should be preferred to any other. This
leaves Foucault in an awkward position: he conceives of himself as exposing the truth
of how knowledge operates in society, yet he also criticizes modernitys rush for the
search of Truth. Instead of being able to move beyond the Enlightenments emphasis
upon the faculty of reason, he instead just entrenches the importance of reason. For
Foucault, the current of system of knowledge is inaccurate because it fails to grasp the
role power has to play; he seeks to improve the clarity of knowledge by uncovering its
genesis in discourse. This does nothing to diminish the all-powerful role that the notion
of truth plays, quite the opposite.
Even if everything Foucault says is one hundred percent correct, that doesnt necessarily
mean that his philosophy should serve as the template for action. After all, if he
envisions a bleak network of power that is inescapable, merely recognizable, then one is
prompted to question the wisdom of taking Foucault all that seriously. He never provides
much of a justification for why performing his type of genealogy is actually a good thing
to do. Other philosophers always have some sort of goal that prompts their thinking such as discovering the shining light of Truth, proving the existence of God, or
rediscovering the Being of beings. The only reason Foucault seems to want to critique is
because it opens up understanding that didnt exist before. That is a laudable reason in
and of itself, normally, but Foucault at the same time derides the will-to-truth and
exposes it as a deployment of power. We are left, then, back at square one, and no
identifiable benefit has been gained from engaging in Foucaldian critique.
Some would take this argument and extend it to the point of labeling Foucault as
promoting a nihilist ideology. Since he would argue that there is no such thing as
freedom or even an autonomous subject, it could be argued that every action, even
his genealogies, is futile. A radical enough critique makes it seem as if all meaning in the
world is merely a contrivance that has no fundamental basis, and can be shrugged off
for no reason whatsoever. This kind of thinking does lead down the path that permits
nihilism.
Normative judgments are perhaps violent in how they intermix truth and power, but they
are necessary evils. Without them, there are no grounds to object to fascist states of
government, nor oppression of any kind. Much like the meaningless that is portrayed in
Existentialist works such as The Stranger, Foucaults work leads to a state devoid of
anything that is good or bad, and those are socially created ideas that just might be
worthwhile to value.
Feminism and Foucault

There are more comprehensive attacks on Foucault that come from specific ideologies.
One of the most prominent ones comes from authors of feminism. That is not to say that
feminism and Foucault represent two diametrically opposed forces. Far from it, many
feminists consider strains of Foucaults thought as essential to their work in fighting
patriarchy. A few even find him fully compatible, or nearly so, with a feminist agenda.
One must be cautious to avoid lumping all feminist thought together and assuming it
has a cohesiveness that it truly lacks. Feminism is a large umbrella of a term, and to
assume that all feminists thought the same would be akin to believing that all
Democrats had the exact same political beliefs. To be more precise, then, it would be
wise to say that post-Marxist feminism deals an intellectual blow to Foucaults
conception of power.
A detailed explanation is needed to set the stage for this confrontation. Feminisms
essential goal is to make clear the multitude of ways that patriarchal oppression
operates in society, so as to permit resistance to it. Until feminism, what made male
domination so powerful was the fact that it wasnt really acknowledged as domination as
such. A sharply defined and regulated role in the family, household, and political life was
seen as the absolute norm for women; no one thought it odd or even remarkable that
society was gender-biased in such a fashion. Without the knowledge that such a
situation is not necessarily the normal way of being, no one can even think to resist
patriarchy. Feminisms role in bringing to light the discourse of patriarchy, (the
normative ideas like males should be the bread earners) and how it shapes the role of
both women and men, doesnt seem all to different from Foucault's thought. Indeed, this
is why many feminists owe a great debt to Foucault.
The difference comes in the relationship some feminists have to the two great thinkers
so revolutionary that all modern day theorists worth their salt have to come to grips
with: Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. That's right; the interpreter of sexual dreams and
the communist. Feminists have found some of Freuds ideas useful, but are in general
appalled by the sexist conclusions that he comes to. He pictures the sexual development
of women as inherently odd given their supposed penis-envy, and reinforces the
notion that women have a natural element to them that makes them hysterical. Since
Foucault shares many of the same conceptions about Freud, this is an issue that actually
unites some feminists to him. What proves to be a source of contention is the critical
fashion with which Foucault treats Marx. Many feminists view Marx as an integral
inspiration, given his focus on liberation from oppressive social movements. Marx used a
historical view to predict that capitalism, a subversive yet oppressive regime of power,
would topple because of a mounting resistance that emphasized equality. Patriarchy
operates in many of the same ways as capitalism; there was even a tie-in given the
unique economic oppression that women faced in industrialism. Marxs ability to connect
a host of micro-examples of bad living conditions, political disenfranchisement, etc. with
a mode of thought that extended throughout society gave feminists a way of conceiving
of patriarchy that made it out to be a tangible force. And just as that allowed Marx to
speak of resistance against capitalism, so did it free feminists to hope for liberation from
the system of patriarchy.
Foucaults criticism of Marx should be apparent. Foucault never believes in a pure

reaction to power, only a reaction dictated by power. For him, feminists are engaging in
a totalizing discourse that can never replace male domination, only slightly displace it.
Feminists who find a lot of value in Marx do not like the idea that their attempts at
liberation are merely being guided by a network of power reactions no better or worse
than patriarchy itself.
So obviously these two methods of thought are in contradiction, but how do feminists
argue that the challenge should be resolved in their favor? Firstly, they argue that
Foucaults analysis of power is incomplete and irrevocably tainted given his failure to
deal with discrimination on the basis of sex. He is much more interested in the creation
of social identities and meanings - prisons, madness institutions, sexuality (not to be
confused with sex) - than he is with natural conditions that become the basis for
domination. But such deployments of power clearly exist, and to ignore that fact
constitutes a massive oversight. Since Foucault never considers sex oppression, nor
provides any avenue for its eradication, then his philosophy is unhelpful in that regard.
Furthermore, since his analysis fails to allow feminism, then he does more than not help
the problem. Coming up with a universal view of power without considering patriarchy
just serves to mask it and allow it to perpetuate.
Another one of Foucaults beliefs that is in tension with post-Marxist feminism is his
feelings on history. Many Enlightenment thinkers have presented history as being a
continuous process where some sort of progress is constantly going on. Marx places a lot
of weight upon a view of history that privileges more advanced eras, believing them
more advanced. For him, history is just a series of clashes between oppressive
economic systems and the people. Feudalism, for example, was pervasive until the
bourgeoisie decided to revolt, and capitalism was the result. Marx saw this as a
necessary step due to the slow march of progress, and he saw the end result as being
the rise up of the proletariat to overthrow the oppressive system of capitalism. In a
similar fashion, feminists see the rise in resistance to patriarchy as a natural trend
brought out by historical conditions.
Foucault, on the other hand, engages in a critique of continuous history. He believes that
the tendency to view history as progress exists because of a desire to validate current
ways of thinking. Instead, Foucault takes a cue from Nietzsche and argues that history is
discontinuous, meaning that many events and actions are spontaneous and are not
necessarily the result of a buildup of historical forces. Even further complicating matters,
Foucault thinks that appeals to history are steeped in the power that was involved in the
creation of the historical account in the first place. This means that it is problematic for
feminists to even talk about historical oppression, which they view as necessary to being
able to recognize current-day patriarchy.
Feminism emphasizes the consequences of failing to distinguish between good and

bad discourses. The entire premise that allows the struggle against patriarchy is the
notion that discrimination against someone just because of the way that they were born
is one of the worst and least justifiable forms of power in existence. Without making any
sort of value judgment as to different forms of power, Foucault gives no grounds upon
which to fight the oppression of patriarchy, racism, or anything else.
Butler: Using Freud

Another critique of Foucault comes from the contemporary philosopher Judith Butler,
writing in The Psychic Life of Power. She agrees with many of Foucaults basic premises,
but is able to come up with a different theory on how power interacts with individual
subjects that allows for a more optimistic look into the future for change. With Foucault,
individuality itself is lost; all actions are determined by a network of power that creates
the human subject. When a stranger waves to someone on the street, and that person
finds themselves automatically waving back before even thinking about doing so, that is
evidence of a discourse in action. Instead of willing that they wave their hand, they do
so almost unconsciously in reaction to a social symbol that means greeting. The power
that such symbols possess exists in such a way that it problematizes the conception of
the autonomous human individual. For Foucault, discourses are all-powerful in such a
way that means there is no authentic self that can take actions on its own.
Butler thinks that this is too pessimistic of a view of the subject. She believes that there
does exist a kind of agency that is not completely controlled by external power
relationships. Where Butler and Foucault differ is on how power interacts with the human
mind. Foucault envisions it very simplistically: people's identities are created by the
discourses they come in contact with. Butler, on the other hand, revives elements of
psychoanalytic theory to explain how conflicting influences can combine to form
something that is greater than the sum of its parts. If there was only one overriding
consistent set of forces then Foucault would be correct. Things are much more complex,
however. People come into many situations that influences them in ways that conflict
with earlier ideas that they possess.
The way that Butler explains the construction of the subject is that initially there is
power exerted on the person, then that power becomes wielded by the subject in a selfregulating fashion. This is what a conscience is: an ideal that a person tries to inflict
upon their self. When any kind of contradiction in thinking arises, the way a person deals
with that is not to merely cancel one of the influences out but instead to make a selfreflexive turn and critically examine both sides. It is the depths of this self-reflexivity that
permits the subject to be created, as well as to take some sort of control over the
conflicting power at play on her/him.
What all this means is that people are not merely at the whim of the discourses they
come into contact with. The effects of power on individual has social implications, so
that takes out Foucaults theory that the relationship between power and knowledge can
be a viable universal theory to explain social interactions and reactions.
Conclusion
Foucault is an important thinker, but there are a great many ways to approach his
arguments. One can attack his credibility by saying that the research he does is
Eurocentric, doesnt take into account alternative perspectives, and is factually
inaccurate. Also, there is the fact that he isnt internally consistent, given the fact that
he criticizes totalitarian thinking yet employs the very same thing in his criticism. Or one
can use one of the larger critiques presented by post-Marxist feminists or Butler in their
alternative visions of how power relates to society at large.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adorno, Theodor, THE ESSENTIAL FRANKFURT SCHOOL READER, New York: Continuum,
1982.
Arac, Jonathan. Editor, AFTER FOUCAULT, London: Rutgers University Press, 1988.
Blackmur, R.P., LANGUAGE AS GESTURE, New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Bove, Paul, INTELLECTUALS IN POWER: A GENEALOGY OF CRITICAL HUMANISM, New

York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Dreyfus, Hubert and Rabinow, Paul, MICHAEL FOUCAULT: BEYOND STRUCTURALISM AND
HERMENEUTICS, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Foucault, Michael, THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, New York: Pantheon, 1972.
Foucault, Michael, THE ORDER OF THINGS: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN SERVICES,

New York: Random House, 1970.
Lyotard, Jean-Fracois, THE POSTMODERN CONDITION: A REPORT ON KNOWLEDGE,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Megill, Allan, PROPHETS OF EXTREMITY: NIETZSCHE, HEIDEGGER, FOUCAULT, DERRIDA,

Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985.
Racevskis, Karlis, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON MICHAEL FOUCAULT, New York: G. K. Hall & Co,
1999.
Rorty, Richard, CONSEQUENCES OF PRAGMATISM, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1982.
FOUCAULT PRECLUDES FEMINIST

THEORY
1. FOUCAULTS THEORY MAKE S IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSION
Issac Balbus, Professor of Political Science at U Illinois Chicago, AFTER FOUCAULT, p.
149-150.
From a feminist psychoanalytic perspective, Foucaults deconstruction of disciplinary
discourse/practice betrays all signs of its masculine origin. His ban on continuous history
would make it impossible for women even to speak of the historically universal misogyny
from which they have suffered and against which they have struggled, and would appear
to reflect the blindness of a man who so takes for granted the persistence of patriarchy
that he is unable even to see it. His gender-neutral assumption of a will-to-power (over
others) that informs true discourses and the technologies with which they are allied
transforms what has in fact been a disproportionately male orientation into a generically
human orientation, and obliterates in the process the distinctively female power of
nurturance in the context of which masculine power is formed and against which it
reacts. His critique of totalizing reason condemns as totalitarian the very awareness of
the pervasiveness of male domination which women have so painfully achieved, and
entails an equation of identity with loss of freedom that is but a conscious translation of
the unconscious opposition that men experience between autonomy and identification
with the (m)other.
2. HIS FAILURE TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN KINDS OF OPPRESSION PERPETUATES THEM

Jana Sawicki, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maine, AFTER
FOUCAULT, p. 161.
Yet, as focused as Foucault was on domains of power/knowledge in which many of the
bodies disciplined and the subjects produced and rendered docile were female, he never
spoke of male domination per se; he usually spoke of power as if it subjugated everyone
equally. As feminist critic Sanda Bartky, who is sympathetic to Foucault, rightly points
out: To overlook the forms of subjection that engender the feminine body is to
perpetuate the silence and powerlessness of those upon whom these disciplines have
been imposed.
3. FEMINISM PROVES THAT THERE CAN BE TRULY LIBERATING DISCOURSES

156-157.
Feminist psychoanalytic theory is also committed to the concept of a heterogeneous
totality. It is based on the assumption that the development of the self depends on an
identification with the other and thus that community and autonomy are not only
consistent but, in fact, mutually constitutive. It demonstrates that when the first
significant other is a woman, the male experiences the very identification that is
essential for a genuinely autonomous self as a threat to the self, and that the inevitable
result is both a damaged self and a damaged community. And it is animated by the
impulse to undo this damage by helping to create the conditions - namely co parenting under which the identification with our initial significant others would be experienced not
as an obstacle but, rather, as what it really is, an essential source of an authentic sense
of self. The feminist mothering discourse makes explicit the implicit Foucaldian
commitment to a heterogeneous totality and specifies the conditions under which this
commitment can be fulfilled. It is, therefore, as militantly (and perhaps more
realistically) antitotalitarian as the thought of Foucault.
4. TOTALIZATION CAN BE A NON-DESTRUCTIVE WAY OF DEALING WITH THE OTHER

Issac Balbus, Professor of Political Science at U Illinois Chicago, AFTER FOUCAULT, p. 154.
Surveillance, as Foucault understands it, recognizes individuals only as more or less
interchangeable parts of the power machine; it robs them of any individuality that is not
functional for the reproduction of society as a whole. It is, in short, a way of seeing the
other that homogenizes the differences between it and any other, and thereby
obliterates its autonomy. But this is not the only way of seeing the other. The other can
be recognized as an other with whom we share connections - with whom we are
identified - yet from whom we are nevertheless different. Thus the impulse to see the
whole can be an impulse to recognize - and celebrate - the persistence of heterogeneity
and autonomy within the context of community and identification.
FOUCAULT VIOLATES HIS OWN

CRITIQUE
1. FOUCAULTS CRITIQUE OF TRUE DISCOURSES VIOLATES ITSELF AND IS TOTALIZING
151-152.
The totalizing reason against which Foucault inveighs is likewise present in his work.
Despite his explicit repudiation of all forms of general discourse and his insistence on
the specificity of mechanisms of power, he speaks of disciplinary power as an
integrated system, of the spread [of disciplinary mechanisms] throughout the whole
social body, of an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of panopticism, the
omnipresence of the mechanism of discipline [and] the judges of normality, and the
formation of what might be called in general the disciplinary society. Here we are a
long way from the pluralist Foucault. As Frank Lentricchia has pointed out, a concept of
the disciplinary society is nothing if not the product of a totalizing theory of society.
Indeed, we should scarcely expect otherwise. To hold, as Foucault does, disciplinary
technologies responsible for the very constitution of the modern-individual-as-objectand-subject is necessarily to attribute to them a totalizing power that only a totalizing
theory can name. And, if these technologies lacked this totalizing power - if they were
less globally and dangerously determinative - what would be the point of Foucaults
prodigious effort to dismantle the true discourses that sustain them? The point is that
the mere identification of the object against which the genealogist struggles requires the
very concept of totality which the genealogist would unambiguously condemn.
2. FOUCAULTS CRITIQUE OF TOTALITARIAN THOUGHT IS TOTALITARIAN

Sheldon Wolin, Professor Emeritus of Politics, Princeton University, AFTER FOUCAULT, p.
186.
In a curious way, therefore, Foucault seems to have repeated the same error of totalistic
thinking with which he taxed classic theory. Foucaults error may have had its own
troubling consequences. Not only does he give us a vision of the world in which humans
are caught within imprisoning structures of knowledge and practice, but he offers no
hope of escape. Every discourse embodies a power drive and every arrangement is
repressive. There is no exit because Foucault has closed off any possibility of a
privileged theoretical vantage point that would not be infected by the power/knowledge
syndrome and would not itself be the expression of a Nietzschean will-to-power. [I]t is
not possible for us to describe our own archive, since it is from within these rules that we
speak.
3. FOUCAULTS ANTI-ENLIGHTENMENT BENT MERELY PROPS UP REASON
Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities, University of Virginia, TRUTH, POLITICS, AND

POSTMODERNISM, SPINOZA LECTURES, 1997, p. 35-6.
Many writers who use the term `post-modernism' without the scare quotes in which I
prefer to enfold it think that the new philosophical world-view - the one which has
emerged from the work of such neo-Nietzschean philosophers as Heidegger, Derrida,
and Foucault - has political implications. This new world-view is supposed to have shown
that the last two centuries' worth of attempts to achieve a heaven on earth were
somehow misguided, or somehow bound to fail. I cannot see the purported connection.
So I shall be defending two theses in this lecture. The first is that the twentieth-century
project of treating Nature and Reason as unneeded substitutes for God is continuous
with Enlightenment antiauthoritarianism. Getting rid of our sense of being responsible to
something other than, and larger than, our fellow human beings is a good idea. Insofar
as the terms `Nature; `Reason' or `Truth' are used to refer to something of this sort, we
should drop these terms from our vocabulary. We should follow through on the
Enlightenment's scepticism about non-human powers. Abandoning the last vestiges of
18th-century rationalism in favor of 20th-century pragmatism would be good for our
self-confidence and our self- respect. My second thesis is that abandoning Western
rationalism has no discouraging political implications. It leaves the Enlightenment
political project looking as good as ever. The only reason we could have for abandoning
that project would be that we had dreamed up a better one. But we have not. Nothing
should be allowed to displace utopian political hope except the glimpse of an even
better utopia than the one previously imagined. Dismissive attitudes toward bourgeois
liberal politics persist, I think, for no better reason than force of Marxist habit.
FOUCAULTS ASSUMPTIONS ARE

INCORRECT
1. FOUCAULT ONLY CONSIDERS EUROPEAN VIEWPOINTS
Edward Said, Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University, AFTER FOUCAULT, p. 9.
On the other hand, his weaknesses were quite marked even though, I think, they did not
seriously mar the quality and power of his fundamental points. The most striking of his
blind spots was, for example, his insouciance about the discrepancies between his
basically limited French evidence and his ostensibly universal conclusions. Moreover, he
showed no real interest in the relationships his work had with feminist or postcolonial
writers facing problems of exclusion, confinement, and domination. Indeed his
Eurocentrism was almost total, as if history itself took place only among a group of
French and German thinkers. And as the goals of his later work became more private
and esoteric, his generalizations appeared even more unrestrained, seeming by
implication to scoff at the fussy work done by historians and theorists in fields he had
disengaged from their grasp.
2. FOUCAULT MISTAKENLY VIEWS EVERYTHING AS DISCURSIVE

Barry Allen, Associate Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University, CRITICAL ESSAYS
ON MICHAEL FOUCAULT, p. 75.
Foucault shares philosophys traditional bias in favor of a unit of knowledge that is
logical, propositional, statement like, and valued for its truth. His conception is
completely biased toward knowledge discursively articulated, as statement, definition,
measurement, classification, and so on. He cannot see nondiscursive knowledge except
as translated into discourse. He admits there is something more to knowledge than
statements, mentioning institutions, techniques, social groups, [and] perceptual
organizations. Yet only discourse synthesizes these into a coherent discursive formation
and gives them formal value as knowledge. [The] prediscursive is still discursive...One
remains within the dimensions of discourse.
3. FOUCAULTS INFORMATION REGARDING INSTITUTIONS OF POWER IS INCORRECT

Marie-Rose Logan, Assistant Professor of French, Italian, and Humanities at Rice
University, AFTER FOUCAULT, p. 103-104.
When reading the essays devoted respectively by George Hupert to The Order of Things
and by H. C. Midelford to Madness and Civilization, one is tempted to quip with Allan
Megil: Foucault was an animal of a sort that Anglo-American historians had never seen
before. They perceive Foucault as a fashionable Left Bank thinker whose criteria for
historical research were at best questionable; they are quick to point out errors in his
information. For instance, Huppert - quite rightly - states that several quotations
including those from Belon and Montaigne are garbled up. Conversely, Midelfort
summons evidence to prove that in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, many of the
mad were in fact confined to small cells of jails or even domestic cages, and not just
gate towers as Foucault suggests. Since he is writing nearly twenty years after the
publication of Madness and Civilization, Midelfort has to contend with a wealth of crossdisciplinary responses to Foucaults book. This he does by taking a harsh stance:
Indeed, in his quest for the essence of an age, its episteme, Foucault seems simply to
indulge a whim for arbitrary and witty assertion so often that one wonders why so much
attention and praise continue to fall his way. In his 1973 condemnation of Foucault,
Huppert had already anticipated Midelforts criticism: He claims, within the chosen
stratum, to understand not this or that idea, movement, or school: he claims total
understanding.
FOUCAULTS METHOD OF CRITIQUE IS

POWERLESS TO CHANGE ANYTHING
1. RADICAL CRITICAL EXAMINATION ALONE DOESNT PRODUCE ANY REAL EFFECTS
Andrew Sullivan, Editor of the New Republic, VIRTUALLY NORMAL, 1995, p. 88-91.
Moreover, a cultural strategy as a political strategy is a dangerous one for a
minority-and a small minority at that. Inevitably, the vast majority of the culture will be
at best uninterested. In a society where the market rules the culture, majorities win the
culture wars. And in a society where the state, pace Foucault actually does exist, where
laws are passed according to rules by which the society operates, culture, in any case, is
not enough. It may be necessary, but it is not sufficient. To achieve actual results, to end
persecution of homosexuals in the military, to allow gay parents to keep their children,
to provide basic education about homosexuality in high schools, to prevent murderers of
homosexuals from getting lenient treatment, it is necessary to work through the, very
channels Foucault and his followers revile. It is necessary to conform to certain
disciplines in order to reform them, necessary to speak a certain language before it can
say something different, necessary to abandon the anarchy of random resistance if
actual homosexuals are to be protected. As Michael Walzer has written of Foucault, he
stands nowhere and finds no reasons, Angrily he rattles the bars of the iron cage. But he
has no plans or projects for turning the cage into something more like a human home."
2. FOUCAULT FAILS TO GET BEYOND LINGUISTIC ILLUSIONS

Sheldon Wolin, Professor Emeritus of Politics, Princeton University, AFTER FOUCAULT, p.
197.
The futility that emerges as the key characteristic of Foucaults politics is, I would
suggest, not the consequence of an endlessly changing world constituted by mind, but
its reflection. Foucault insisted that in adopting a genealogical method he was
deliberately choosing to remain at the surface of things, a strategy that was universally
applauded by sympathetic interpreters fatigued by the traditional talk about essence
and logos. But Foucaldian genealogies - unlike, for example, the logical positivist attack
on metaphysics - do not puncture linguistic illusions; they simply reduce metaphysical
chatter to a historical instance of power/knowledge discourse, more feckless than
psychiatry perhaps, but not necessarily its intellectual inferior.
3. FOUCAULTS CRITIQUE IS NOT A REASON TO REJECT TRADITIONAL PHILOSOPHY

Gary Gutting, Reason and Philosophy, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON MICHAEL FOUCAULT, p. 43.
In my view, however, there is no reason to think that accepting Foucaults reconception
of philosophy requires giving up the sorts of investigations that have occupied traditional
philosophers. For one thing, I do not see how the Foucaultian can rule out in principle the
possibility of our someday actually finding answers to the great, ultimate questions. He
cannot base his skepticism about traditional philosophy on anything other than the
historical fact that philosophers have for centuries failed to solve the deep problems
they have set themselves. To go further and suggest that there is some fundamental
feature of the mind or the world that excludes ultimate philosophical truth in principle
would be itself a philosophical claim in the traditional mode. Since success in answering
traditional philosophical questions is not excluded (however unlikely it may be) and
would surely be of immense value, an important lesson of our philosophical past is that
such work, even when unsuccessful, has many positive side effects.
4. THE FOUCALDIAN MISTRUST OF TRUTH IS MISGUIDED

Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities, University of Virginia, TRUTH, POLITICS, AND
POSTMODERNISM, SPINOZA LECTURES, 1997, p. 38-40.
There is a point to this suspicion, but not, I think, to the distrust which many admirers of
Foucault have for the sort of story which Hegel, Macauley and Acton told: human history
as the story of increasing freedom. Foucauldians typically have the same suspicions
about narratives of progress as they do about the Enlightenment political project. But
both suspicions are unjustified. My own view of narratives of progress is that of Thomas
Kuhn: there is no such thing as asymptotic approach to the Truth, but there is progress
nevertheless - progress detectable by retrospection. Scientific progress is made when
theories which solved certain problems are replaced by theories which solve both those
problems and certain other problems, which the earlier theories were unable to solve.
On Kuhn's view, Einstein got no closer to the way reality is ìn itself' than did Newton,
but there is an obvious sense in which he progressed beyond Newton.
Freedom of Speech Responses

Introduction
As one of the rights guaranteed by the first amendment, free speech is one of the most
frequently used values in Lincoln Douglas debate. Along these lines, there are three
primary justifications for the value of free speech. First, the ability of all members of
society to contribute to discussion creates a marketplace of ideas. Following the
Hegelian concept of a dialectic, only by allowing everyone to create an open space for
juxtaposing any idea can truth be discovered. Second, in order for citizens to participate
effectively in a democratic government, they must be able to be a part of public debate,
through which they learn about and contribute to their governance. Third, the ability to
express ones self with out restraint, some argue, enables the individual to self-actualize
and experience true autonomy and fulfillment. All of these justifications are used, in
various forms, in Lincoln Douglas debate. While sometimes explained through the
rhetoric of communitarianism, in terms of the marketplace of ideas, it is most frequently
defended as an unabashedly extreme individual right.
There are a great diversity of angles with which Lincoln Douglas debaters can attack this
value: by criticizing the notion of individual rights, by addressing several specific types
of speech (such as racist hate speech, sexual harassment, and pornography) where the
right to free speech must be limited, and by showing that in these cases, competing
values outweigh the individuals right to protected speech under the first amendment. In
addition to merely proving that the freedom of speech ought not be inviolate, these
examples demonstrate competing values and criteria the opposing debater could use as
a framework for their case. Before these arguments can be fully contextualized,
however, the history of the development of the right to free speech must be examined.
A Brief History Of Free Speech In The

United States
By the late 1700s, the concept of free speech was constituted by merely the lack of prior
restraint or censorship. This was considered important because of the rise of
newspapers and other political publications. Not until 1789, however, when the First
Congress accepted amendments to the Constitution, was a free speech amendment
advocated by James Madison. Madisons proposal was not adopted because his views on
free speech and press were too radical for his peers. The First Amendment, which was
finally ratified on December 15, 1791, states that Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of a people peaceably to
assemble.
One of the first significant challenges to the right to free speech occurred in 1798, when
Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Their purpose was to impose criminal
sanctions for any false, scandalous writing against the government of the United
States.75 However, this led to widespread protest throughout the country, so following
that period the regulation of these materials was left primarily to the states. Regulation
of materials deemed lewd or obscene became the object of censorship in the second
half of the 19th century, and this was a more pernicious regulation over free speech in
the long run, as prosecutions over obscenity escalated throughout the 19th century.
The Supreme Court has maintained that pornography, as well as fighting words, falls
outside of the bounds of protections afforded by the first amendment. However, there
are several difficulties in the regulation of pornography. For one thing, the definition of
what constitutes obscene and offensive is extremely variable. The censorship of
childrens books like Judy Blumes Are You There God, Its Me Margaret or Mark Twains
Huck Finn, as well as classics by James Joyce, Henry James, etc. demonstrates the odd
range of materials that have been considered offensive by different groups.
In light of this, the Supreme Court created a series of guidelines to determine what was
socially valuable speech and what deserved censoring. In a 1996 court case Justice
Brennan created a three pronged test in which he, combined[several previous]
requirements in holding that obscene materials are excluded from First Amendment
protection only if they fail all three requirementsthat is, they (1) have a prurient
interest that (2) appeal in a patently offensive way and (3) lack a redeeming social
value.76 The criterion of lacking social value protects most art, books, etc., putting a
fairly stringent limit on what justifies censorship.
75 David M. OBrien, Constitutional Law and Politics: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,
Fourth Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, 376.
76 OBrien, 423.
Fighting words is another category of speech that is unprotected by the First

Amendment, although it is very limited. Fighting words are those words which have a
direct tendency to cause acts of violence by the persons to whom they are addressed.
There are three main justifications for considering this type of speech unconstitutional.
First, they arent speech because they are intended to harm, like a punch. Second, they
cause a breach of the peace, like a clear and present danger. Third, they are not an
essential part of an exposition of ideas. In other significant court cases the definition of
fighting words was further narrowed.
In Cohen v. California (1971) the Supreme Court ruled that four-letter words, no matter
how offensive, are not necessarily outside the realm of protection. This case also found
that the speech had to be directed against a specific person, not a group or institution.
Furthermore, in Gooding v. Wilson (1972) the court held that in order to be fighting
words the speech had to incite an immediate breach of the peace, it could not be
something that would incite violence by others who heard about it some time in the
future. The presumption that words must incite immediate violence makes it a
problematic but rarely used restriction of free speech.
In spite of several constitutionally limited areas of speech, the Supreme Court has ruled
in favor, for the most part, of defining free speech broadly. There are many famous court
cases that demonstrate this. For example, in 1989, in the case Texas v. Johnson, the
court overturned the conviction of Johnson, who had violated a Texas statute that
banned the mistreatment of the American flag when he burned one during the 1984
Republican National Convention to protest the Reagan administration. In related cases,
the Supreme Court has held, in defiance of state and local statutes, that it is
constitutionally protected behavior to burn, tape a peace sign to, and sew an American
flag to the seat of ones pants.
In another famous example, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, the court ruled that the States
interest in preventing emotional harm does not outweigh the right to political satire. In
this specific case Hustler (a pornographic newspaper) had printed an advertisement
consisting of a picture of Reverend Falwell and a fictional interview in which he says that
he lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse while drunk. The court held that the ad
was so outrageous that it Falwell could not claim damages for emotional distress, even
though Larry Flint said, during his deposition, that he did it explicitly for the purpose of
hurting Falwell. Parody, even hurtful parody, is therefore considered to be a highly
protected form of speech.
Political liberals and leftists in the United States in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were
the driving force between the paradigmatic first amendment court cases, which
addressed attempts by the government to restrict unpopular and dissident speech.
However, in recent decades the left has become critical of free speech. Some examples
of speech that some factions would like to restrict are speech that promotes racial
stereotypes and oppression, pornography, and the lack of regulation of economic power
(which passes itself off as free speech) intended to influence the political process.
This does not deny some of the benefits of free speech that are highly valued by the left,
such as dissent, egalitarian participation in social power, individual conscience, and
individual autonomy. However, libertarianism is being abandoned by progressive
scholars who find that the first amendment in practice stands in the way, at times, of a
more humane and egalitarian society. Examining some specific court cases that have
upheld competing progressive values by restricting free speech demonstrates an
effective method of answering the value of free speech without necessitating a
conservative framework.
Preparing To Debate Free Speech

It is important, in a debate over the value of free speech, to determine precisely what it
means. What constitutes free speech? How do you draw the line between conduct and
speech? What speech is so valuable as to justify protection at the expense of other
societal values? Should it be all speech? The concept of speech is intangible. The
definition of speech changes depending on the context. At its most basic level, speech
must be a process wherein a speaker communicates to an audience with the intention of
conveying a particular meaning. This is not always explicit. For example, symbolic
actions like burning a flag is discussed in terms of first amendment free speech. Before
beginning to debate the substantive issues related to free speech, debaters need to
force their opponent to define exactly what it is they will defend.
The cross-examination period can, therefore, be very valuable in a debate over free
speech. Pressing the other on issues like what is speech and would you defend the
value of free speech in X scenario in which X could be a court case that demonstrated
some other value that has been sacrificed for the sake of free speech, a debater can
effectively set up a compelling argument for preferring their own value.
Another important thing to keep in mind, when debating against free speech, to avoid
having the debate center over what is constitutional or unconstitutional. The rulings of
the Supreme Court are not the only way to measure what ought be valued and what
ought be silenced. Because the court has a history of preferring free speech in most
cases, the opponent of free speech in a Lincoln Douglas debate will be fighting an uphill
battle if they allow the free speech proponent to frame the debate that way. By using
other criteria to frame the debate, a case in which the court upheld free speech could be
turned on its head as an example of how free speech can be used to undermine the
common good.
Absolutism and individualism

One of the first ways methods of attacking the value of free speech is by addressing the
framework within which free speech is discussed. First, free speech is most frequently
justified through its absoluteness. It is only through the inviolability of free speech that it
is justified as taking precedence over all other values. Second, free speech is based on
the assumption that rights should be accorded to individuals at the expense of the
community. This emphasis on individualism can be attacked in many ways.
The absoluteness of free speech makes it a difficult value to defend in a Lincoln Douglas
debate. Free speech is only valuable, according to its advocates, if it protects even the
most offensive and destructive speech. Protecting uncontroversial speech is largely
irrelevant, because the freedom to speak is only needed, and is only challenged, when it
offends or upsets someone. It is in those extreme cases, therefore, that the right to free
speech must be the most highly valued and protected. This makes it an easy target to
debate against. All that a debater needs to do, in order to beat the value of free speech,
is to make her opponent admit that free speech can be limited in some cases, and then
to demonstrate that the her own value is one of those cases. Extreme examples can be
useful for finding competing values that may trump speech.
While it would necessitate its own article to fully expound, the foundation of free speech
in the value of individualism or egoism can be another strong method of attacking it at
the foundational level. In order to prove that the value of free speech trumps all others,
in the context of the resolution, a debater has to prove that an individuals rights should
trump the communitys. While the concept of community speech is provocative
(consider, for example, a letter cosigned by a large group of people, a large protest, or
the internet), speech is considered to be almost exclusively an activity undertaken by
individuals. When community values, security for example, are in danger, it may be
more difficult for the free speech advocate to defend. Therefore, the opposing debater
should construct it not as the tension between one individuals right to free speech an
anothers right to a different value, but as the clash between individual rights and the
community at large.
Racism and hate speech

In the case Beauharnais v. Illinois (1952), Beauharnais had distributed a racist leaflet in
violation of an Illinois statute that declared it unlawful to portray any class of citizens as
depraved so as to expose them to contempt which could cause a breach of the peace. In
this case, racism constituted group libel. A persons education, dignity, and reputation
may are often intrinsically linked to their group affiliation. Therefore, racist speech (or
hate speech) is considered less valued than other forms of speech. Racist speech
works not by persuasion but by undermining social attitudes and beliefs, as in Nazi
Germany. It is incompatible with Fourteenth Amendment concerns for human dignity and
equality. It is a mechanism of class subordination.
Moreover, it is a situation in which counter-speech (often considered an important check

on the effects of controversial speech) is often ineffective because the initial instance of
hate speech has already destroyed participatory access. Democratic principles
recommend rejection of hate speech because it impedes the search for truth, impinges
on autonomy necessary for individual development, and subverts the democratic
process and access of minority voices. However, many university hate speech codes
have been struck down. One reason is that they, according to their opponents, attempt
to determine truth and falsity.
There are two main ways the debater attempting to refute the value of free speech can
use this concept of group libel to undermine her opponents case. First, she can argue
that racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. speech is a form of fighting words. It may be
ineffective to claim that the words incite violence and a clear and present danger,
because most frequently the victim of hate speech does not fight back. Rather, most of
the time they submit and are subjected to repeated attacks. However, one could argue
that some words, by their very nature, inflict injury. If they cause immediate emotional
distress, intentionally inflicted, they could be considered violent.
Second, a debater could argue that hate speech is dangerous and harmful not because it
causes riots or is fighting words, but rather that it perpetuates the subordination of a
group. Brown v. Board of Education could be considered to be a speech case because
when the government segregates and puts up the signs Colored and White by the
water fountain, the government is actually making a statement that is hate speech. It is
government endorsement of the concept that one type of person is intrinsically better
than another, based on skin color. That could be argued as a violation of equal
protection under the law. The Fourteenth Amendment can therefore be used as a tool
with which to refute the value of free speech. It could be highly persuasive to argue that
the Fourteenth Amendment principle of equality limits the first amendment freedom of
speech.
Critical Race Theorists argue for the renaissance of group libel laws for the equality
interests of racial minorities. This is in line with the new era of politics in which the
conservative position is becoming libertarian and the leftist position is towards
restricting free speech. Nazis, sexual harassers, and corporate conglomerates are using
the free speech principle. If democracy requires some degree of practical participation
and equal participation, and if hate speech undermines the ability of minorities to fully
participate in public life, then hate speech restrictions ironically promote free speech by
promoting equal participation in democracy.
Sexual Harassment
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits quid pro quo harassment in the
workplace. That means explicit threats not protected by the first amendment as well as
the creation of a hostile work environment (if a reasonable person would find the
situation hostile and if it would not require the government to prohibit speech intended
to contribute to debate on an issue of public concern). A hostile environment is one in
which the workplace becomes so uncomfortable that the harassed individual is unable to
perform their job as well as they ought be able to. This is broader than merely direct
harassment. Moreover, this limitation on first amendment rights is not merely a limit on
one employee saying inappropriate words to another, it is symbolic. Many of the
concerns of sexual harassment law are not speech, per se. Common examples of
harassment, either direct or creating a hostile environment, are posters or screen-savers
displaying lewd pictures, epithets, practical jokes, and unauthorized or unwanted
touching.
There are many justifications that have been used for this legislation, for example:
harassment is discrimination, not speech; the workplace is for work, not speech;
harassment is private conversation, not public discourse; workers are a captive
audience; harassment has low first amendment value. Moreover, in these cases, the
employer is often held accountable for harassment by one employee against another
employee because they are best able to see the larger picture, they are better able to
prevent a hostile environment, and they are the only person who could be held
responsible for the cumulative effect created by many harmful acts by many different
employees.
Title VII does not reach every oppressed group; for example, sexual orientation is
excluded. In using this example in a debate, therefore, it may be less useful to point to
the act itself as a situation in which values like equality and community have been held
to trump free speech (although that may also be strategic), and more useful to merely
explain the principle it displays. That is, it is justified to censor individuals when their
speech contributes to an oppressive environment for other people.
Pornography And Other Obscene

Speech
The history of the First Amendment indicates that obscenity is defined as utterly without
redeeming social value. The proper test is whether to the average person, applying
contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a
whole appeals to the prurient interest. One important aspect of the academic debate on
pornography is focused on inequality and subordination of women. However, restriction
of obscenity has at various times been about crime, immorality, corruption, the
degradation of cities, concerns about zoning concern, etc. in addition to the question of
equality.
Pornography is already limited to being accessible only to those over 18 or 21, which
raises questions of paternalism. However, in the case of Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton
(1973) the Supreme Court categorically rejected the theory that porn cant be regulated
simply because it is only shown to consenting adults. There are morally neutral,
legitimate state interests in stemming commercialized obscenity: quality of life, the total
community environment, the tone of commerce, public safety from crime, debasement
of individual personality, and distortion of human relationships. Prohibiting obscenity
without serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value is excessive control over
individual preference or taste. There is a state interest in promoting the emotional health
of its citizens, just as the FDA promotes the physical health of citizens by restricting
unhealthy products. Pornography can be addictive, may cause increased objectification
of or violence against women, and degrades the moral tone of society as a whole.
The question of whether or not (and how) pornography contributes to the victimization
of women is a hotly debated issue. MacKinnon, for example, argues that obscenity law is
intrinsically tied to masculine viewpoints of morality, which fail to take into account that
the perspective is tainted by male dominance. The feminist critique of pornography is
concerned with the politics of power and powerlessness from womens point of view. She
argues that laboratory research has indicated that long term exposure to pornography
changes mens attitudes and promotes violent and nonviolent discrimination.
Pornography is an instrument of socialization that teaches that women are less than
human, they are objects whose value is merely the sexual gratification of men.
Arguments against this are varied. Some examples are: pornography is about fantasy,
not intended to represent reality; counter-speech is the appropriate solution, not
censorship; pornography could be seen as the liberation of female sexuality; what is
oppressive or degrading is extremely variable, so standards for legal censorship would
be too vague. Despite this, the issue of pornography can be an extremely persuasive
example of how other values (for example, protecting children from victimization) trump
free speech.
Debating Free Speech

There are several important tactics a debater should use when debating against a case
with the value of free speech. First, she must force her opponent not only to define free
speech, but to agree to uphold that definition in all cases. If the other debater is unable
to do so, after all, it opens the door for the respondent to prove that certain other values
(community, equality, safe working environment, etc.) trump free speech. Depending on
the wording of the resolution, this may be sufficient in itself to win the round. In other
cases, it will merely create a space within which a debater is much more likely to be able
to win that their opposing value is superior to free speech.
Second, the respondent must not allow the debater who advocates free speech to use
constitutionality as either the explicit or implicit criterion for determining what values
are important. Because the Supreme Court has tended to allow free speech to trump
most other values in so many cases, this way of framing the debate is extremely biased
in favor of the debater who is advocating free speech. Rather, it is the arguments made
by either side in Supreme Court cases that may be useful for refuting the value of free
speech. In the case of sexual harassment, for example, the courts holding may be
useful, but in other cases the dissenting opinion may be just as persuasive.
Finally, specific examples of situations in which free speech ought be limited can be
invaluable for a debater responding to a case based around free speech. Discussions of
child pornography, racist insults, and pornographic posters hung in the workplace have
an extremely useful emotional appeal in terms of their ability to demonstrate the kind of
emotional damage that can be caused by an unrestricted use of free speech. While an
example may not, in itself, be enough to win the round, it enables the responding
debater to set up a framework that justifies the respondents argument that another
value ought be held paramount.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, David S., and Robert Jensen. FREEING THE FIRST AMENDMENT: CRITICAL
PERSPECTIVES ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. New York: New York University Press,
1995.
Bosmajian, Haig. THE FREEDOM NOT TO SPEAK. New York: New York University Press,
1999.
Dennis, Everette E., Donald M. Gillmore, and David L. Grey. JUSTICE HUGO BLACK AND
THE FIRST AMENDMENT. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1978.
Haiman, Franklyn S. FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Skokie: National Textbook Company, 1976
Hindman, Elizabeth Blanks. RIGHTS VS. RESPONSIBILITIES: THE SUPREME COURT AND
THE MEDIA. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997.
Shiell, Timothy C. CAMPUS HATE SPEECH ON TRIAL. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press
of Kansas, 1998.
Tedford, Thomas L. FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES. Carbondale: Southern

Illinois University Press, 1985.
Wright, R. George. THE FUTURE OF FREE SPEECH LAW. New York: Quorum Books, 1990.
Zingo, Martha T. SEX/GENDER OUTSIDERS, HATE SPEECH, AND FREEDOM OF

EXPRESSION: CAN THEY SAY THAT ABOUT ME? Westport Conneticut: Praeger, 1998.
COMMUNITY VALUES TRUMP FREE

SPEECH
1. COMMUNITARIAN FREE SPEECH REQUIRES THE SUPPRESSION OF HATE SPEECH
Michael L. Siegel, J.D. at Albany Law School of Union University, ALBANY LAW JOURNAL
OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, 1999, p. 378.
In the tradition of communitarian free speech theorists from William Brennan to Robert
Bork, Mr. Fiss argues that the [First] amendment was intended "to broaden the terms of
public discussion," rather than to protect individual self-expression; and he wants to
persuade us that in current free speech battles "the state might become the friend,
rather than the enemy, of freedom." By suppressing hate speech, pornography and
unlimited campaign contributions, Mr. Fiss maintains, the state may legitimately "silence
the voices of some in order to hear the voices of the others. Sometimes there is simply
no other way."
2. FREE SPEECH MUST BE BALANCED WITH OR TRUMPED BY COMMUNITARIANISM

Edward J. Eberle, Assistant Professor of Law at Oklahoma City University School of Law,
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, 1992, p. 435.
As in moral philosophy, the First Amendment contains many core values, but any one
core value does not predominate over another. It is incoherent in the realm of First
Amendment theory to insist upon the universality of any one value to the exclusion of
others, as in moral philosophy. A web of values is preferable to a single strand
representing one value. Therefore, First Amendment work should focus more on finding
reasonably reliable solutions than universal answers. Because free speech values do not
exist in a void but interact with society in complicated ways, free speech must yield in
certain limited circumstances to social regulation. In other words, while the First
Amendment comprises a set of first order principles which will almost always prevail in
core speech areas, free speech is nevertheless not absolute. Communitarian interests
may represent important social values too, and may occasionally outweigh free speech
values in certain limited circumstances.
3. EXCESSIVE FREE SPEECH RESULTS IN THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY

David A. J. Richards, JD Candidate, CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND LITERATURE,
Summer 2000, p. 93-94
De Tocqueville offered his penetrating analysis of the tyranny of the majority in America
as perhaps the greatest democratic threat to the underlying legitimacy of its
constitutional institutions, because such majoritarian factions undermine respect for the
basic liberties and rights of the person; Madison had, at the founding of the American
constitutional republic, lucidly stated the same threat as the heart of the republican
dilemma of constitutional design: namely, how, at once, to secure basic human rights to
all (in terms of which the legitimacy of constitutionalism was to be judged), yet also so
limit the factions (in particular, majority factions) to which the free exercise of such
rights would give rise, factions that would, if majority rule were accorded untrammeled
sway, undermine its legitimacy. On this view, mass society threatens the very legitimacy
of democratic constitutionalism. We can see the continuing cogency of this analysis in
the ways in which free speech is today uncritically associated with an illimitable public
sphere for the interests of mass society that cannot reasonably accommodate the right
to privacy. There is no good reason of principle why the right to privacy should have
been thus marginalized in the alleged service of free speech. Indeed, as I have argued,
such marginalization violates human rights conspicuously at threat in the modern world,
namely, those associated with the imperative moral needs of members of subordinated
groups to be accorded respect for their ethical individuality in protest of the
dehumanizing terms of unjust stereotypes imposed on them. The contemporary
American understanding of free speech, insensitive to the weight properly to be
accorded these rights, subverts its ethical basis, in effect, ratifying populist impulses of
mass society that free speech, properly understood, should resist. Such tyranny of the
majority is a threat to the legitimacy of constitutional democracy, and, in light of the
argument of this article, we may reasonably interpret this threat in contemporary
circumstances in terms of the marginalization of privacy as a protected interest and
right. Such callous disregard of the moral weight properly to be accorded privacy in turn
corrupts, indeed trivializes the principle of free speech that institutionalizes such
disregard.
FREE SPEECH HAS NO INTRINSIC

WORTH
1. FREE SPEECH FAILS TO ALLOW ACTUALIZATION OF AUTONOMY
O. Lee Reed, Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Georgia, American Business
Law Journal, Fall 1997, p. 11.
The weaknesses of existing individual speech value theories, including that of autonomy,
are that (1) they do not explain why free speech is more specific to self-fulfillment or
autonomy than is any other freedom of action, and (2) they do not adequately account
for the often-asserted value of speech in the public sphere. That free speech contributes
to self-fulfillment or autonomy is arguably clear. What is not clear is how existing
theories of individual speech value relate self-fulfillment or autonomy to free speech
more than to freedom of conduct generally. Does not the freedom to act, not just to
speak, realize most fully the unmanipulated individual? Professor Baker directly
confronts this difficulty in his theory of individual speech value. He acknowledges that
speech cannot easily be distinguished from conduct and proposes that the First
Amendment protect all nonviolent, noncoercive conduct. But however cleverly he
finesses the issue philosophically, it remains that there is little historical support in
jurisprudence for his position to constitutionalize all noncoercive conduct. Rather than
argue that free speech means freedom of noncoercive conduct, he should advocate that
freedom directly without bootstrapping speech to it. So far, the commentators have not
been persuasive in making speech ontologically important to the value of fulfilling the
autonomous self.
2. LOW-VALUE SPEECH JUSTIFIES ABRIDGEMENT OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Christopher M. Schultz, JD Candidate, ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, Summer 1999, p. 597-598.
Freedom of expression as protected by the First Amendment to the United States
Constitution is a central right afforded Americans. Accordingly, United States courts have
been quite reluctant to allow Congress or state legislatures to limit the free expression of
citizens. However, the courts have recognized certain exceptions to this overwhelming
prejudice in favor of protecting all forms of speech Content neutral restrictions on free
speech pass constitutional scrutiny more easily than content-based restrictions. In the
latter case, content-based restrictions are only allowed if (1) the speech in question falls
within the category of "low value" as opposed to "high value" speech and (2) the socalled low value speech occurs in a context narrowly defined by the courts as the type of
situation where restriction is appropriate.
3. THE FIRST AMENDMENT CANNOT BE ABSOLUTE

Michael L. Siegel, J.D., Albany Law School of Union University 1999, ALBANY LAW
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 1999, p. 385-386.
If the jurisdictional hurdle were overcome, the next step of the analysis is whether or not
the speech and content of a web site are protected under the First Amendment. The First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has never been construed to be an absolute
protection of all forms of speech. The exceptions to the rule include fighting words,
security breaches, and obscenities. Although Thomas Jefferson may have intended for
the First Amendment to be absolute in nature, the realization that hate speech can lead
to group tension suggests that the framers of the Constitution did not have an absolutist
stance on free speech. Instead, the freedom of speech should be seen as a means to an
end and not as an end in itself. The freedom of speech was to give citizens the ability to
determine their representatives for government. Speech cannot be analyzed in a
vacuum; it must be analyzed within a given context and with the accompanying content.
The Supreme Court has adopted an intermediate position between protecting speech
with political content and an absolutist reading of the First Amendment in which all
speech is protected. Although the tests the Supreme Court has devised over the years
may suggest that the Court has delineated specific areas of protected speech, the Court
has taken a result-oriented
PORNOGRAPHY AND HATE SPEECH

JUSTIFY RESTRICTING SPEECH
1. PORNOGRAPHY IS NOT PROTECTED SPEECH BECAUSE IT DESTROYS EQUALITY
Kent Greenfield , Law Clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit,
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, Spring 1994, p. 1214-1215.
MacKinnon analogizes pornography to speech made actionable as sexual harassment or
racial discrimination, speech which, she says, has only recently been considered to have
First Amendment implications. Discrimination law, she points out, considers racist or
sexist expression to be evidence of the mental intent necessary to make discrimination a
civil rights violation. "[B]ecause of their mental location and content, these words are
not only potentially discriminatory in themselves; they are part of the proof that other
acts are discriminatory." Indeed, "[u]nder discrimination law, such expression is not
political opinion; it is a smoking gun." MacKinnon argues that the oft-asserted reasons
why pornography is protected speech -- the autonomy of the speaker, the mental
intermediation, the nonneutrality of its regulation -- do not explain why pornography is
protected and words that constitute sexual and racial discrimination are not. Her best
explanation for the apparent inconsistency is that equality is "crucially guaranteed" in
the workplace and not elsewhere. MacKinnon would extend the influence of the equality
norm to speech issues in society at large because the harm of sexist and racist speech
does not stop at the office door or factory gate. "Racial and sexual harassment," she
says, "promote inequality, violate oppressed groups, work to destroy their social
standing and repute, and target them for discrimination from contempt to genocide."
2. PORNOGRAPHY IS NOT SOCIALLY VALUABLE SPEECH, IT SHOULDN'T BE PROTECTED

Christopher M. Schultz, JD Candidate, ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, Summer 1999, p. 578.
Given the Supreme Court's current high-low speech distinction framework, anyone
arguing that a given speech act should be limited based on its content must be prepared
to argue that the speech in question falls within one of the historically accepted
categories of low value speech or constitutes a new category of low value speech,
neither of which is an easy thing to do. Nonetheless, so-called "traditional"
antipornography arguments attempt to do just that by claiming that far from being high
value speech, pornography is qualitatively of low value and hence regulable. Feminist
approaches to pornography regulation, on the other hand, often avoid the traditional
approach in favor of other, more "novel" arguments. Such is the case with Catharine
MacKinnon's work in Only Words. According to MacKinnon, pornography can be restricted
if, traditional arguments notwithstanding, it really is not primarily an act of expression at
all, and hence neither falls into the category of high or low value speech.
3. PORNOGRAPHY OUGHT BE RESTRICTED IN FAVOR OF COMPETING SOCIAL VALUES
EveLyn Oldenkamp, J.D. 1997, University of Oregon School of Law, DUKE JOURNAL OF
GENDER LAW AND POLICY, Spring 1997, p. 178-179
The promotion of the free exchange of ideas and opinions is seen as essential to the
pursuit of truth. Unfortunately, certain forms of expression serve to lock out some
groups from the free market of ideas. The consequence of a university's blind devotion
to free speech as being essential to academic freedom is that it deprives groups often
already excluded from academic discourse of a meaningful response to "speech" that
makes their educational environment hostile or offensive. These groups are silenced and
consequently, the richness and diversity of the academic dialogue is decreased rather
than increased. What is created is only one version of the truth. If we continue to hold as
inviolable the free expression of all and any ideas in any setting in an academic context,
then "we see melancholy effects resulting from establishments which in theory promise
none but happy results." Pornography has been recognized to have an adverse impact
on women. It silences them, runs them out of jobs, and removes important
opportunities. As previously discussed, the First Amendment protects pornography as a
form of freedom of expression, however, the First Amendment status of pornography will
not create a barrier to the university grievance mechanisms proposed here. Free speech
would be only slightly limited in comparison to the harm that would be prevented. The
possibility that a student may be punished for viewing pornography in the university
computer center creates a minor limitation upon students' freedom of expression. This
cost is insignificant and the benefit is large: it removes barriers to many students'
freedom to learn.
HATE SPEECH DOES NOT DESERVE

PROTECTION
1. RACIST HATE SPEECH SILENCES, THEREFORE HURTING FREE SPEECH
Alice K. Ma, J.D. candidate at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley,
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, March 1995, p. 704-705.
They [college students] are especially vulnerable since they may be far from home and
in an environment much different from the inner cities, Asiatowns, and barrios where
they may have grown up. Many students are forging an identity, developing new ties,
and redefining their relationship with the world around them. When minority students
are faced with the shock and stress of hate speech - whether directed at them or at
others of their race, perhaps friends or relatives - passivity, reticence, and self-imposed
anonymity are too often the result. Hate speech silences both physically, through
intimidation and threats of further harassment or actual violence, and spiritually, by
demoralizing its victims. Charles Lawrence has perhaps best described the silencing
effects of hate speech. In arguing that face-to-face racial insults - "fighting words" - can
be constitutionally penalized, Lawrence notes that being called a "nigger" is like being
slapped in the face. The injury is instantaneous, allowing no time for either reflection on
the idea conveyed or responsive speech. He writes, "Assaultive racist speech functions
as a preemptive strike. The racial invective is experienced as a blow, not a proffered
idea, and once the blow is struck, it is unlikely that dialogue will follow."
2. HATE SPEECH PRECLUDES COUNTER-SPEECH AND IS COERCIVELY SILENCING

Alice K. Ma, J.D. candidate at Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley,
CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, March 1995, p. 705.
Lawrence argues that women and minorities often find themselves speechless in the
face of discriminatory insults for a number of reasons. First, the "visceral emotional
response to personal attack precludes speech.... Fear, rage, shock, and flight all interfere
with any reasoned response.... Many victims do not find words of response until well
after the assault when the cowardly assaulter has departed." Second, speech is often an
inadequate response given the preemptive nature of racial insults. "When one is
personally attacked with words that denote one's subhuman status and untouchability,
there is little (if anything) that can be said to redress either the emotional or reputational
injury." Third, "the fighting words doctrine presupposes an encounter between two
persons of relatively equal power who have been acculturated to respond to face-to-face
insults with violence." In many cases, however, a minority student will be confronted by
more than one attacker, and, by dint of sheer numbers, silence is the safer option.
3. HATE SPEECH HAS NO SOCIALLY REDEEMING VALUE
Nicholas Wolfson, Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut, UNIVERSITY OF

CINCINNATI LAW REVIEW, 1991, p. 1-2.
A considerable body of persuasive legal literature is supporting the thesis that racist or
sexist hate speech should receive reduced or even no protection under the First
Amendment. The arguments are coherent and powerful. The empirical premises for the
new First Amendment theory are first, the scientific falsity of explicit or implicit racial or
sexual stereotyping, and second, the harm such speech does to the victim. The person
who is called "kike," "nigger," or "fag," suffers emotional humiliation and personal loss of
dignity. The victim feels threatened, humiliated, and diminished. He or she may suffer
temporary or permanent psychological harm. Further, such expression tears the weave
of the community in which the speech is made, breaks down civil discourse and incites
weak-minded onlookers to similar thoughts and words. Finally, the ideational content of
the utterance is minimal. The traditional civil-libertarian response is predictable. The
First Amendment is designed to protect disgusting speech from the censorship of
government. The offensiveness of the speech in question is never a reason for removing
it from protection of the First Amendment. There are the usual exceptions -- e.g., fighting
words, obscenity, defamation, speech too closely "brigaded" with forbidden conduct -but otherwise the government must be viewpoint neutral. At this point, critics of the
traditional discourse ask the cogent question, why should racist speech, which all
enlightened men and women will admit is based upon false premises, be permitted? The
factual assumptions underlying hate speech are to the effect that blacks or Jews or
women are inferior, stupid, greedy, or inherently violent. Both critics and traditionalists
in the civil liberties community agree that the assumptions are false.
Marilyn French
Feminism
Marilyn French is known as one of this countrys leading feminist philosophers and
theorists. Her writings criticize the basic structures, or pillars, of society including: the
media, politics, the legal process, religion, medicine, organizational/corporate
dominance, etc. Her primary emphasis is on uncovering and critiquing the discrimination
and other injustices done to women. However, much of her philosophy also focuses on
the abuse and discrimination against ethnic minorities and children, as well as
identifying the
issues that divide the feminist movement.
While French is critical of how men treat women, she acknowledges that our current
social structures are bad for men as well. That is, French maintains that the male
emphasis on violence and destruction (e.g., of self, of humanity) is also bad for men. She
says that men have set a standard to live by that no human can
possibly meet. What will improve the current situation is the feminization, or the
acceptance and appreciation of female characteristics by society.
This biographical sketch will highlight some of the major focal points of Frenchs
criticism. In particular, this essay will explain Frenchs perspective on eco-feminism, her
argument that there is a war against women, the role of male supremacy in society,
the role of the Enlightenment period in male domination, and, finally, the primary areas
of Frenchs social criticism.
In her role as an ecofeminist, French writes about the poor treatment of nature and the
environment.
Feminist authors who write about these issues are typically called eco-feminists. Such
feminists generally
critique capitalist expansion and technological development because of the heavy toll
paid by the earths humans, animals, air, water, land, etc. Ecofeminists maintain that
women are those who generally have shown concern for nurturing the environment and
that our patriarchal society has done great damage to the earth. Ecofeminism claims
that nature (including women) and animals should be considered a higher value
in our society than they are currently. As an example of her critique of patriarchal views
of nature, French
condemns male supremacy backed by force, which indicts male aggression through
war and violence as a
major cause of the demise of our environment. Specifically, technological developments

such as nuclear weaponry and missiles have led to major problems with water and air
safety. French blames this type of
supremacy by force on maintaining a definite hierarchy in a society that continues to
oppress women and
ethnic minorities.
In what she calls the war on women, French maintains that, on the whole, the men of
the elite and working classes are deliberately seeking ways to destroy the gains of the
feminist movement by gnawing
away at its victories. She says that this war is occurring on a global, national and
individual level. Examples of this deterioration are seen in the continuing fight over
legalized abortion, the lack of upward
mobility for women in the workforce, and the social movements that strive to return
women to fully subordinate status (e.g., religious fundamentalism). French also
maintains that when we look at how individual men are treating women, we can see that
men are waging both an economic and physical war against women.
This brutal abuse physical, emotional, and financialof women, as well as children, in
our society is also caused by institutionalized male supremacy, which is a deeply
embedded sense of male superiority or dominance over women, according to French.
Because we continue to live in a patriarchal society, we are prevented from accepting
and using more typically feminine ways of doing and being. These so-called feminine
ways include behaviors such as connecting with others and cooperating in mutual trust
versus the generally typical male behavior of individualism. In Frenchs philosophy, a
more feminized society could reverse the trend of abuse caused by males.
French cites the Enlightenment period (modernism) as having a major impact on the
development of male domination in western society. It was during this period (circa
1500) that men began to justify their supremacy by declaring that God or nature made
women subordinate to men, endowing men but not women with certain traits (such as
the ability to use good reasoning, logic, intellect, having souls, etc.). Conversely, women
were attributed with undesirable traits (such as chaotic emotionality and unbridled
sexuality) that are subversive to good and proper social order. The era of Enlightenment,
then, led to the creation of a rationale for making male domination over women seem
reasonable.
Frenchs critique of society includes the mistreatment of women by corporations who

continue to undervalue womens contributions monetarily; the medical establishment,
which is generally unconcerned with womens medical problems; the legal profession,
which treats female lawyers with contempt and makes biased divorce and custody
judgments against women. She writes also about the obsession of men with womens
bodies, and fundamentalist religion and its oppression of women by concentrating
primarily on controlling womens bodies, and which place the burden of raising children
almost exclusively on women. Her critiques examine these issues on a worldwide basis
making comparisons between the U.S. and other countries.
Based on a review of Frenchs philosophy, it is not surprising that her vision for society
includes the freedom for women to choose what happens to their bodies as well as their
destinies, to become a political, social and economic force and to live in a world
environment which can be passed on to their children without safety or health concerns
(i.e., male supremacy has made our environment less safe). She maintains, however,
that we cannot accomplish these things within existing social and political structures and
that attempts to assimilate into those structures is dangerous. Rather, we must find a
way to change those very structures or create new ones. Changing the structures means
de-emphasizing hierarchy, establishing a broader acceptance and appreciation of
feminine qualities, as well as awakening to the damage done by the narrow perspective
that male supremacy provides.
Because of Frenchs emphasis in feminism, the debater could use her theory as part of a
critique of sexist practices and values. Initially, much of Frenchs theory is practical in
nature. That is, the debater will probably find it more useful to user her work to critique
the practices of contemporary society, rather than specific values. Any debate that
centers around the environment would also invite a discussion of Frenchs work. Her
argument that links capitalist expansion with ecological destruction could provide the
debater with an avenue to critique progress-oriented values.
Bibliography
Susan Faludi, BACKLASH. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1991.
Marilyn French, Women in Language. SOUNDINGS, 1976, 59, 329-344.
Marilyn French, SHAKESPEARES DIVISION OF EXPERIENCE. New York: Summit Books,

1981.
Marilyn French, BEYOND POWER. New York: Summit Books, 1985.
Marilyn French, HER MOTHERS DAUGHTER. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988.
Marilyn French, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN. New York: Summit Books, 1992.
Marilyn French, THE BOOK AS WORLD: JAMES JOYCES ULYSSES. New York: Paragon
Publishers, 1993
Marilyn French, THE WOMENS ROOM. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
Marilyn French, OUR FATHER. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1994.
ALL SOCIAL STRUCTURES ARE

OPPRESSIVE TO WOMEN
1. WOMEN FACE ECONOMIC OPPRESSION
Marilyn French, Feminist author, THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN, 1992, p. 30.
The statistics presented at the United Nations Conference on Women in Copenhagen in
1980 remain true today: women do between two-thirds and three-quarters of the work in
the world. They also produce 45 percent of the worlds food. But they are still granted
only 10 percent of the worlds income and 1 percent of the worlds propertyand part of
that 1 percent masks male ownership hidden for tax purposes.
2. WOMEN FACE POLITICAL OPPRESSION

As of 1990, two women sat in the 100-seat Senate and there were 29 women out of 435
Representatives (6 percent). Here in the heartland of feminism where, we are told,
women rule men, women have less voice in
government than in nonindustrial countries. In 1986, 151 women held posts in state
cabinets17.9
percent. In 1990, three women won governorships in the fifty states; they won 18
percent of state legislature seats; 54 hold state executive offices.
3. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM

Because many women cannot earn enough to support their children, they fall under the
power of courts or social-service agencies which assume the right to dictate their sexual
lives. Welfare agencies as a matter of policy used to deny financial assistance to a
mother with dependent children if a man was found in her dwelling. Now courts are
intruding on the lives even of women not dependent on welfare, imposing a sexual
morality men do not follow themselves but require of women.
4. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN BUSINESS

Men exclude women almost completely from managerial positions. In Bangladesh and
Indonesia, women hold 1 percent of such posts. In Norway and Australia, male managers
outnumber females by 3 to 1. In the United States, women hold less than one-half of 1
percent of jobs in the highest echelons of corporate managers and only 3 percent of the
top five jobs below CEO at all Fortune 1000 companies.
5. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN EDUCATION

Marilyn French, Feminist author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, p. 491.
Once they are admitted, female students in particular continue to experience
discrimination. They are slotted toward the humanities and away from hard science
(the most prestigious area); they are judged by appearance and behavior far more than
male students; they are subject to sexual harassment; and they must deal with a
general pressure (within as well as outside them) against distinction in their work.
6. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN ORGANIZED RELIGION

All major world religions are patriarchal. They were founded to spread or buttress male
supremacy -- which is why their gods are male. But there is nothing inherently
patriarchal about the religious impulse; religious people define god in their own way, and
under pressure from feminism, many churches are trying to eliminate the more
egregious patriarchal elements from their symbology. In response to this, other churches
have become more rigidly, even fanatically, patriarchal in a movement called
fundamentalism.
7. WOMEN FACE OPPRESSION IN MEDICINE

Women are the fastest-growing group infected with AIDS, but no research has been done
on the effects on women of AIDS therapies. Woman-specific diseases like breast and
ovarian cancer have not been studied nearly as thoroughly as male-specific diseases like
prostate cancer and are more likely to be fatal. Cases of breast cancer have doubled
since 1960; it now kills 44,000 women each year. Yet in 1990 NIH halted a major study of
the disease on economic grounds. Only 13 percent of the $7.7 million NIH budget is
spent on womens health issues.
REVOLUTIONARY FEMINIST ACTION IS

NECESSARY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
1. SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IS NECESSARY TO END PATRIARCHY
Feminism is a political movement demanding access to the rewards and responsibilities
of the male world, but it is more: it is a revolutionary moral movement, intending to
use political power to transform
society, to feminize it. For such a movement, assimilation is death. The assimilation of
women to society as it presently exists would lead simply to the inclusion of certain
women (not all, because society as it presently exists is highly stratified) along with
certain men in its higher echelons. It would mean continued stratification and continued
contempt for feminine values.
2. UNIFIED FEMINIST POLITICAL ACTION IS NECESSARY FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

This situation constitutes a quandary for feminists. Only by bringing great numbers of
women with
feminist values into the institutional structure of the nation can women achieve a voice
in the way this
country is run. Only by unified political action can women influence the course of the
future.
3. GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS ARE NECESSARY FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

Many revolutions have challenged ruling elites since patriarchy arose, but feminism is
the first ever to challenge patriarchy per se. In virtually every country in the world today,
women are organizing small grass roots or professional political action groups. They are
demanding to be treated as human beings with
rights: the right to keep their own wages, to keep their children after divorce, to own
property, to education, to paid work at a wage sufficient to ensure that they can live
independently, to a voice in public decisions, to marriage at choice, to bodily integrity.
They are demanding men not feel free to beat, rape, mutilate, and kill them.
FEMINISM IS DIVIDED BY RACIAL

ISSUES
1. ISSUES OF RACE DIVIDE WOMEN
Marilyn French, Feminist author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, P. 462.
The issue of race divides women for several reasons: women as well as men have been
infected with the racism that is a disease of our culture, and which thrives among people
of all colors. Since they themselves are similarly categorized, one might think that
women would be immune to a way of thought that categorizes people by a physical
attribute, and that ascribes to them qualities see as close to nature --animalism, lack of
rationality, lack of a moral sense. But women are not more immune than any other
underclass. It is a sad human fact that people diminished by a master culture reconcile
themselves to their inferior status by ascribing an even greater inferiority to other
groups.
2. WHITE FEMINIST THEORY DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR OTHER EXPERIENCES Marilyn
French, Feminist author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, P. 463.
Accounts by black feminists demonstrate the racism of some white feminists, who treat
blacks as tokens, who do not listen to black women to understand the problems
particular to feminists of color, yet who presume to speak for all feminists. White
feminists often assume postures of condescension toward Latino culture, which they
consider profoundly macho, as if their own were not. White feminists write books
analyzing patriarchal culture, attempting to establish feminist theory, or examining a
dimension of womens condition without mentioning women of color at all -- women of
color are as invisible in these works as women as a sex are in the work of many men.
And indeed it sometimes seems that the gap between colored culture and white culture
is as profound as the gap between white male and white female culture.
3. RACE SOLIDARITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SEX SOLIDARITY

Marilyn French, Feminist author, BEYOND POWER, 1985, P. 463.
Some women of color believe that race solidarity is more important than sex solidarity,
that the women and men of any particular group must place their interests together. In
practice, this means that the problems of men are seen as primary to those of women.
Many people believe that men of color, especially black men, have been castrated by
white culture -- that is, they have been treated like women, and denied that special
quality of male identity that is necessary for men to function within this society. As we
have seen, however, that special quality is an illusion of control: superiority at being
what women are not, or power to force women not to be whatever men think they
themselves are.
BETTY FRIEDAN
POLITICAL WRITER 1921 -
Life and Work

Betty Friedan, born and raised in Peoria, Illinois, is a product of classic episodes of the
American experience in the Twentieth Century. The Great Depression contributed to a
great deal of unhappiness between her mother and father. Her experiences of the
rampant anti-Semitism of the time shaped her perspective on oppression. And her
education made her aware of the noticeable absence of the womens perspective in
history, philosophy and politics. Fighting for inclusion, then, became her lifes work. It
would remain so even after her long feminist career; her most recent work is The
Fountain of Age, which extends her call for inclusion and nondiscrimination to the elderly
along with other marginalized groups.
Friedan began her career as a journalist writing for her junior and senior high school
newspapers. During her education at Smith College, she became the editor of the
campus newspaper, where her aggressive investigative reporting led to the papers
censoring by the school administration. Undaunted, Friedan did some graduate work at
Berkeley and then moved to New York to become a labor reporter. This was during the
Second World War, a time when women were encouraged to leave their homes and join
the workforce. Although this allowed women to show that their abilities were equal to
those of men, as soon as the war ended, women were largely forced back into their
homes to make room for the returning male workers, effectively pushing back womens
labor gains.
This experience was part of what Friedan began to call The Problem With No Name;
the unanswered desire of women for full participation in the American experience. She
interviewed hundreds of women beginning in 1957 and ended up with a body of data
which, along with her own observations and interpretations, became her master work,
The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963. The book would turn out to be one of the
many sounding calls for a new womens movement that would draw upon both the
Suffrage movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and the New Left activism
of the 1960s. From then on, Friedans career would be that of spokesperson for the
liberal feminist movement, demanding that women be granted full rights as American
citizens. Friedan went on to found the National Organization for Women, today the
largest political action group in the U.S.
A Practical Philosophy of Womens

Liberation
Friedans philosophy is neither radical nor conservative. Her concerns are (1) that
women be assimilated into traditional American life, (2) that they be allies with
enlightened men in the fight for full social liberation, (3) that women not fall into the
trap of radical, man-hating feminism, and (4) the struggle for reproductive rights, such
as the right to choose to have abortions.
The liberal feminist perspective is largely seen as the simple extension of traditional
liberal rights, such as those found in the Constitution, to women. This perspective
assumes that, in theory, the American experiment in individual rights is sufficient to
liberate citizens. The right of equal opportunity to compete in society, of education and
political participation, and freedom from brutality and discrimination are guaranteed to
all Americans, but in practice they are often denied to women because of archaic
attitudes of patriarchy. Friedan argues that women and men are essentially the same
type of beings with the same needs. This can be counterpoised to those radical
separatist feminists who emphasize differences between genders and call those
differences essential. Friedan and her fellow liberals believe that those differences,
even if natural, are ultimately social insofar as they have bearing on a womans political
and economic life. The politics of difference, about which more will be said later,
cannot liberate women if we accept Friedans definition of liberation as assimilation into
the male political realm.
Similarly, Friedan has always been careful not to alienate men, whom she sees as
important social allies. NOWs political platform and statement of purpose emphasize
that men as well as women can be in the organization. This is harshly opposed to the
separatism and essentialism of radical feminism, and is, again, based on the assumption
that men and women want largely the same things in life. The danger of alienating men
is obvious: A serious threat of male backlash would undermine most feminist gains,
since men still essentially control most political institutions. Moreover, liberal feminists
frequently point out that patriarchy hurts men as well as women, preventing both from
realizing their full capacities.
Some years after founding NOW, Friedan, while serving as the organizations president,
gave a series of speeches, quotations from which are found in the evidence here,
warning against the dogma and narrow-mindedness of radical feminist rhetoric. She
sees the goals of separatism as essentially unrealistic and as an invitation to the
backlash mentioned above. Her goal, like that of most liberals, is cooperation and
incremental change. Radical feminists, on the other hand, see patriarchy as embedded
in the very structure of society, implying that it can only be ended by a complete
overthrow of the system. This is the definitive difference between the liberal feminism of
Friedan and the radical alternative: Liberals like the status quo, even if some changes
need to be made, while radicals see the status quo as unreformable, inevitably poisoned
by patriarchy.
Finally, Friedan has argued strongly for a womans right to control her own reproductive
system, up to and including the right to choose abortion. This deserves some brief
philosophical analysis. For liberal feminists, as for all political liberals, society can be
divided into two parts, the public and the private. In the realm of public concern are laws
designed to prevent harm to each other, to the natural environment, etc. In the private
realm can be found the decision of what to do with ones body. Patriarchy often obscures
the distinction between the public and private realms in contradictory ways. For
example, patriarchy considers a husbands treatment of his wife a private matter,
meaning that spousal abuse, marital rape and the like should not be dealt with through
the legal system. But patriarchy also considers womens reproductivity a public
matter, warranting repressive legislation.
Friedan argues that, women must have control over their reproductivity as a necessary
precondition for their full participation in political and social life. Friedan points out that
historically womens pregnancy and childrearing has been the chief reason for their
noninvolvement in society. But biology is not destiny, and with the advent of technology
guaranteeing safe abortions and birth control, and with the growing participation in
parenting by progressive-minded men, women will be able, occasionally at least, to shed
their mother-role and take advantage of societys opportunities.
Criticism from Radical Feminism

The debate between the liberal and radical wings of feminism is often sharper and more
ruthless than the arguments between feminism and patriarchy. Radicals accuse liberals
of naivet and blind acceptance of an unjust social system. They point out that simply
giving women the opportunity to play the game along with men is really nothing more
than giving women the right to behave like men: competitively, ruthlessly, greedily. Real
feminism, they contend, is characterized by embracing truly feminine values such as
nurturing, cooperation, openness, and life-giving. They contend that women lifted into
executive positions or political leadership roles often forget their sisters they left
behind and devote their lives to perpetuating capitalist patriarchy. In doing so, such
women not only bury their feminine nature, but also stop others from becoming
liberated.
Liberals reply that to call women essentially nurturing, cooperative, and so on, is to
agree with patriarchys concept of the passive, motherly woman. In fact, they point out,
many women do not want to nurture or cooperate. Many women want to behave like
men, at least insofar as they value the social activities that men participate in. The label
feminine, they remind their radical counterparts, in fact the very distinction between
masculine and feminine, was an invention of patriarchy. Liberal feminist are insulted
when radicals require them to abandon any attractive qualities of the status quo. They
see the revolutionary attitude as infeasible, irresponsible, and elitist. Most women, they
point out, have no such lofty or idealistic aspirations, but rather simply want a chance to
succeed in life with their skills and merits.

The subjects discussed here should make it obvious that debaters can find in Friedan a
sensible and noncontroversial alternative to radical feminism. Many opponents will
appeal to patriarchy as the root cause of all problems and call for the peaceful
feminist alternative. Friedans ideas can help debaters show that, far from being truly
liberating, such feminism actually entrenches the very situation responsible for women s
oppression. Additionally, Friedans reasoning behind the demand for abortion rights
hinges on the larger question of social equality for women; since men cannot bear
children, they have no such hindrances to their public life. Perhaps, then, abortion
ceases to be a moral issue and becomes a pragmatic requirement for the larger goal
of liberation.
Most important for debaters, Friedan links womens liberation to Americas classical
liberal heritage rather
than to the often misunderstood politics of radical feminism. This will allow debaters who
want to advocate womens rights to do so without fear of alienating the conservative
judge.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, L. Susan. THE POLITICS OF INDIVIDUALISM: LIBERALISM, LIBERAL FEMINISM AND
ANARCHISM (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1993).
Esenstein, Zillah R. THE RADICAL FUTURE OF LIBERAL FEMINISM (Boston: Northeastern

Friedan, Betty. THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1963).
. IT CHANGED MY LIFE: WRITINGS ON THE WOMENS MOVEMENT (New York:

W.W. Norton and Company, 1985).
. THE SECOND STAGE (New York: Summit Books, 1986).
. THE FOUNTAIN OF AGE (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993).
Meltzer, Milton. BE1TY FRIEDAN: A VOICE FOR WOMENS RIGHTS (New York: Viking
Kestrel, 1985).
Voice of America Interviews With Eight American Women Of Achievement (Washington,

D.C.:
U.S. Information Agency, 1985).
LIBERATION MUST EMPHASIZE

POLITICAL ACTION OVER PHILOSOPHY
1. CONCRETE ACTION, NOT ABSTRACT THEORY, WILL LIBERATE WOMEN
Betty Friedan, Political Activist 11 CHANGED MY LIFE: WRITINGS ON THE WOMENS
MOVEMENT, 1985, p. 87
We believe the time has come to move beyond the abstract argument, discussion and
symposia over the status and special nature of women which has raged in America in
recent years; the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that
now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice
which is their right as individual Americans, and as human beings.
2. DIRECT ACTION IS THE BEST WAY TO ADVANCE FEMINIST CAUSES

Betty Friedan, Political Activist IT CHANGED MY LIFE: WRITINGS ON THE WOMENS
We believe that women will do most to create a new image of women by acting now,
and by speaking out in behalf of their own equality, freedom, and human dignity--not in
pleas for special privilege, nor in enmity toward men, who are also the victims of the
current half-equality between the sexes--but in an
active, self-respecting partnership with men. By doing so, women will develop
confidence in their own ability to determine actively, in partnership with men, the
conditions of their life, their choices, their future and their society.
3. WOMENS MOVEMENTS MUST JOIN WITH OTHER MOVEMENTS

Our movement is so radical a force for change that as we make our voices heard, as we
find our human strength in our own interests, we will inevitably create a new political
force with allies and a common humanistic frontier, with new effectiveness against the
enemies of war and repression that affect us all as human beings in America. Either that
energy so long buried as impotent rage in women will become a powerful force for
keeping our whole society human and free, or it will be manipulated in the interests of
fascism and death.
WE MUST MOVE BEYOND THE POLITICS

OF GENDER DIFFERENCE
1. EMPHASIZING GENDER DIFFERENCES OPPRESSES WOMEN
Betty Friedan, Political Activist. THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, 1963, p. 43
The feminine mystique says that the highest value and the only commitment for women
is the fulfillment of their own femininity. It says that the great mistake of Western
culture, through most of its history, has been the undervaluation of this femininity. It
says this femininity is so mysterious and intuitive and close to the creation and origin of
life that man-made science may never be able to understand it. But however special and
different, it is in no way inferior to the nature of man; it may even in certain respects be
superior. The mistake, says the mystique, the root of womens troubles in the past is that
women envied men, women tried to be like men, instead of accepting their own nature,
which can find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing
maternal love. But the new image this mystique gives to American women is the old
image: Occupation: housewife.
2. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN ARE IRRELEVANT TO LIBERATION Betty

Friedan, Political Activist. IT CHANGED MY LIFE: WRITINGS ON THE WOMENS
There are differences between men and women--I am not denying that. But we will not
know what these differences are until women have begun to spell out there own names
and define themselves in the human dimension more than theyve been able to do in
the past One of the reasons that women have not done this is that they have accepted
the denigrating image society has of them; they have kept it in the form of self
denigration. Above all, they havent had the actual active experiences that tell a human
being who he or she is. We wont know for quite a while how much of the difference
between men and women is culturally determined and how much of it is real. But lets at
least start with the assumption that men and women are human. Women are female, but
they are not cows--they are people. There is only one place you can be people and that
is in outer society, in human society.
TRADITIONAL FEMINISM IS NO LONGER

APPROPRIATE FOR LIBERATION
1. TRADITIONAL FEMINISM INVITES BACKLASH
Betty Friedan, Political Activist. THE SECOND STAGE, 1986, p. 39
But if we go on parroting or denouncing or defending the clichs of womens liberation in
the same old terms until they harden into a new mystique, denying the realities of our
personal experience and the new problems, then we are in real danger of going back.
Then we invite a real backlash of disillusioned, bitter women--and outraged, beleaguered
men, who could, in confusion, blame air necessary but incomplete movement toward
equality for the emotional scars of generations of pathology bred by inequality.
2. FEMINIST RHETORIC IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

Betty Friedan, Political Activist THE SECOND STAGE, 1986, pp. 39-40
There is a danger today in feminist rhetoric, rigidified in reaction against the past,
harping on the same old problems in the same old way, leaving unsaid whats really
bothering women and men m and beyond the urgencies of personal economic survival
For there is a real backlash against the equality and personhood of women--in America,
as in Islam and the Vatican. Dangerous reactionary forces are playing to those
unadmitted fears and yearnings with the aim of wiping out the gains of equality, turning
women back to the old dependence, silencing womens new voice and stifling womens
new active energy that threatens their own power in ways we do not yet clearly
understand.
3. FEMINISM WAS A NECESSARY STAGE THAT MUST GIVE WAY TO NEW THINKING Betty
Friedan, Political Activist. THE SECOND STAGE, 1986, p. 40
We have to break out of feminist rhetoric, go beyond the assumptions of the first stage
of the womens movement and test life again--with personal truth--to turn this new
corner, just as we had to break through the feminine mystique twenty years ago to
begin our modern movement toward equality. The energies whereby we live and love,
work and eat, which have been so subverted by power in the past, can truly be liberated
in the service of life for all of us--or diverted in fruitless impotent reaction.
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ARE KEY TO

WOMENS LIBERATION
1. CONFRONTING REPRODUCTIVITY IS NECESSARY FOR LIBERATION
To enable all women, not just the exceptional few, to participate in society we must
confront the fact of life--a temporary fact of most womens lives today--that women do
give birth to children. But we must challenge the idea that it is womans primary role to
rear children. Now, and equally, man and society have to be educated to accept their
responsibility for that role.
2. REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ARE KEY TO ALL WOMENS RIGHTS

The right of woman to control her reproductive process must be established as a basic,
inalienable civil right, not to be denied or abridged by the state--just as the right of
individual and religious conscience is considered an inalienable private right in both
American tradition and in the American Constitution.
3. REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM WILL GUARANTEE FULL PERSONHOOD FOR WOMEN Betty

Friedan, Political Activist IT CHANGED MY LIFE: WRITINGS ON THE WOMENS MOVEMENT,
1985, pp. 125-6
Am I saying that women must be liberated from motherhood? No. I am saying that
motherhood will only be a joyous and responsible human act when women are free to
make, with conscious choice and full human responsibility, the decisions to become
mothers. Then, and only then, will they be able to embrace motherhood without conflict,
when they will be able to define themselves not just as somebodys mother, not just as
servants of children, not just as breeding receptacles, but as people for whom
motherhood is a freely chosen part of life, freely celebrated while it lasts, but for whom
creativity as many more dimensions, as it has for men.
WOMENS LIBERATION DOES NOT

THREATEN MEN
1. MOST MEN WANT WOMEN TO BE LIBERATED
There is also resistance on the part of some men, but not as many as you think. I am
increasingly surprised at the numbers of men who really do have a full regard for their
wives as human beings, who want them to have full lives of their own, who are weary of
the burden and the guilt of having to make up to a woman for all the life she misses
beyond the home, for the world she has no part in.
2. MEN WILL WELCOME WOMENS LIBERATION

I think there are some men who may resist this massive, delayed revolution because
they have had too much smothering from mothers who need them for an identity, and
thus feel insecure in their own ability to move as human beings in the world. They may
think they need a woman as a doormat they may need someone whom they can think of
as inferior so that they can feel superior. But I doubt that it is really going to solve any
mans problem for his wife to beat herself down, to project a phony inferiority. Isnt it
pretty contemptuous of man to say that his ego is so weak that he needs her to pretend
to be something that she isnt, in order to make him feel like a big boy? I happen to think
men are stronger than that it might be better for both men and women if they could
accept each other for what they are. It might even free men from the binds of the
masculine mystique.
3. WOMEN AND MEN ARE MOTIVATED BY THE SAME LOVE OF FREEDOM

Whenever, wherever in the world there has been an upsurge of human freedom, women
have won a share of it for themselves. Sex did not fight the French Revolution, free the
slaves in America, overthrow the Russian Czar, drive the British out of India; but when
the idea of human freedom moves the minds of men, it also moves the minds of women.
4. PROGRESSIVE MEN THROUGHOUT HISTORY SUPPORTED WOMENS FREEDOM

It is hardly a coincidence that the struggle to free women began in America on the heels
of the Revolutionary war, and grew strong with the movement to free the slaves.
Thomas Paine, the spokesman for the Revolution, was among the first to condemn in
1775 the position of women even in countries where they may be esteemed the most
happy, constrained in their desires in the disposal of their goods, robbed of freedom and
will by the laws, Land] the slaves of opinion.
JONATHAN GLOVER
BIOGRAPHY OF JONATHAN GLOVER

Jonathan Glover was born in England in 1941. As a young man, Glover attend the elite
Tonbridge boarding school for boys in southern Britain. Following his education there,
Glover continued his studies in philosophy at Corpus Christi College at Oxford
throughout the 1960s. During his time at Oxford, Glover began to establish himself as a
leading student of ethics and philosophy. As a result, Glover served as a Fellow in
philosophy at the prestigious universitys New College. During this time, he earned a
reputation as an excellent lecture and tutor. Later, Glover also served as Editor of
Philosophy of Mind (1979) while continuing to make similar contributions to other
publications in the field. Jonathan Glover is currently a Professor of Ethics at Kings
College, University of London, and the director of the Centre for Medical Law and Ethics
at the college. Currently, he is examining the philosophy of mental illness, in particular
the nature of psychopathology. He resides in England with his wife, Vivette, a
neuroscientist and two children.
Beyond his academic life, Glover has also taken an active role in the political community.
In addition to much of his work analyzing political events from a philosophical or ethical
perspective, he has also been active within the forming European Community. In 1989,
he chaired a European Commission Working Party on Assisted Reproduction. One of the
final products of this commission, The Glover Report: The Ethics of New Reproductive
Technologies (1989), is a major treatise on what continues to be an important political
issue both in the EU and around the world. Likewise, Glovers interest in applied ethics
and philosophy contributed to his focus on questions raised by the Human Genome
Project.
Glover has written several books as well as presented dozens of articles at various
conferences on philosophy, ethics, bioethics, science/medicine and other topics. Many
of his writings are of social significance, as well as useful for Lincoln-Douglas and other
types of debate. Among these works are: Humanity: A Moral History of The 20th
Century (1999), Utilitarianism and Its Critics, editor (1990), I: The Philosophy and
Psychology of Personal Identity (1988), What Sort of People Should There Be? (1984),
Causing Death and Saving Lives (1977), Responsibility (1970).
GLOVER ON ETHICS
GLOVERS CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL ETHICAL THEORIES
In his most expansive work, Humanity, Glover attempts to develop an ethical theory by
offering a historical account of the moral lapses and victories of the twentieth century.
Through a series of case studies he attempts to articulate the reasons for the waning
authority or influence of moral law as understood at the beginning of the twentieth
century and attempts to shape it consciously to serve peoples needs and interests
while avoiding repetition of man-made disasters of the kind witnessed during the
Holocaust, My Lai, Apartheid and other events that reflect severe moral lapses.
To explain these atrocities, Glover begins with a treatment of the flaws in traditional
ethical theories such as utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and social contracts. Glover
argues, conceding many arguments made Friedrich Nietzsche (For more see entry on
Nietzsche) that the idea of a moral law external to us is in deep trouble. However,
rather than arriving at the same conclusions as Nietzsche, Glover suggests that the
erosion of an external authority doesnt prevent the possibility of identifying a basis of
morality that can still provide an ethical system that avoids the ends which Nietzsche
describes. As he notes, he [Nietzsche] believed in unrestrained self-creation, perhaps
thinking only an external authority could provide a basis for restraint. However, Glover
argues, the Nietzschean nightmare does not follow from Nietzschean premises.
Glover believes that despite the absence of an external basis for morality, i.e. g/God,
there is still the ability to identify values, as well as resources from which to establish a
moral, or ethical, system. Glover suggests that history and psychology reveal resources
that may guide individuals and societies toward ethical action. Similarly, he suggests
that, as a basis for morality, these hold the potential to avoid the shortcomings of an
external system of morality founded in religion, as well as the brittle foundations on
which Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, and others moral frameworks reside. As Glover
notes, many of these frameworks motivated by calculated self-interests do not always
support cooperation or ethical action when the relevant social penalties or rewards are
modified. For example, social contracts often fail to restrain those who participate in
them when the stakes are raised for one side or another.
GLOVERS ETHICAL THEORY: THE MORAL RESOURCES
Glover optimistically suggests that, fortunately, there are also the moral resources,
certain human needs and psychological tendencies which work against narrowly selfish
behavior. These tendencies make it natural for people to display self-restraint and to
respect and care for others. They make it unlikely that morality in a broad sense will
perish, despite the fading of belief in [external] moral law. These moral resources on
which Glover couches his ethical theory are three-fold. The first two he refers to as the
human responses which, under most circumstances, act as restraints on individuals
treatment of other human beings. Specifically, he describes these two resources as
respect and sympathy. The third element Glover labels ones moral identity. He
explains, we have different psychological responses to different things people do: acts
of cruelty may arouse our revulsion...courage or generosity may win our respect...these
responses are linked to our sense of our own moral identity...we have a conception of
what we are like, and of the kind of person we want to be, which may limit what we are
prepared to do to others. Before examining how this forms the basis for moral action
by which we may choose future, or judge past, actions, examining how Glover
operationalizes each of these concepts is useful.
Glover argues that there is a widespread disposition to (under normal circumstances)

show people respect. He explains this as an egalitarian kind of respects, which is
shown to all members of a community, and which is sometimes thought of as respect for
peoples dignity. He continues noting that, behavior showing respect for someones
dignity symbolizes that persons moral standing. Often this disposition is backed by
social convention, such as laws that attempt to protect individuals from physical or
psychological harm. In other instances, psychological responses provide backing to this
human disposition that Glover cites. For example, harming a helpless person may not
carry social sanction, but nonetheless most people are restrained from doing so.
However, Glover also suggests that this resource can be eroded. For example, in
Argentina soldiers under the junta called the machine they used to deliver massive
electric shocks Susan, and interrogation utilizing such means was referred to as a chat
with Susan. By utilizing these cold jokes, the disposition towards respect can be eroded
by effacing the mutual dignity of victims. Glover explains, the cold joke mocks the
victims. It is an added cruelty and it is also a display of power...it adds emphasis to the
difference between us and them. He believes this difference is central in limiting the
potential restraints offered by the resource.
The second resource, sympathy, operates similarly to respect in Glovers analysis of

ethical successes and failures of the twentieth century. He explains, our entanglements
with people close to us erode simple self-interest...there is a constant pull towards new
kinds of sympathy and commitment. Narrow self-interest is destabilized. Likewise,
sympathy can also be felt for people we dont know. Those we identify with also often
earn our sympathy, e.g. the refugees we learn about in news reports or the compassion
we feel for those who have lost loved ones in public tragedies. Thus, this recognition of
a commonality, or identification, with other human beings Glover argues can provide a
powerful restrain on immoral action. However, again like respect, this moral resource
can also be effaced. For example, public humiliation and other strategies used during
various episodes of the twentieth century ensured that torturers didnt identify with
victims and could rest easy believing those who suffered their acts did not belong.
Among many examples Glovers cites were both the practices utilized during the
Holocaust and the treatment of Indians during the British Occupation.
As both these discussions reveal, the first two moral resources may provide restraints,
but may also be eroded by particular situations or long-term strategies. Likewise, one
may feign respect and sympathy for fellow humans while only acting in accord with
those principles when it is necessary. However, the third moral resource Glover posits
narrows the possibility for these restraints to be overcome. He notes that, narrow selfinterests [and immoral action are] . . . limited by the way we care about being one sort
of person rather than another. This concept of moral identity can take many forms. For
example, you may think to yourself before an exam, I am not the type of person who
cheats. Likewise, you may consider yourself not the type of person that would commit
an act of violence (even in self-defense). Each of these considerations reflects a series
of moral commitments through which you shape your identity. Glover explains, this
sense of identity has a moral charge when it is not a matter of style or personality but is
of deeper character. He believes that the decisions and acts in which individuals
engage contribute to their character. As we repeat them, they sediment as part of our
personal character. Likewise, we may develop ways that we respond to other people
that shape our character. For example, you may detest gossip and value sincerity when
you witness it in others. As Glover summarizes, few people could easily give a list of
what their own commitments are. We may only recognize them when they are
challenged. But these, commitments, even if hardly conscious, are the core of moral
identity.
Given the centrality of these commitments to ones identity, Glover believes that they
provide an additional significant restraint on immoral, or unethical actions. As he
observes, the question of the sort of person you want to be is central to the argument
given by Socrates against the view that is in our interest to seem moral but not be
moral. . . [because] inner conflict is a threat to happiness . . . and to be at peace with
yourself depends on your anarchic and conflicting desires being subjected to the
discipline of morality. Glover explains how this in conjunction with the first two human
resources creates a powerful restraint against unethical action. He notes, on its own
the Socratic argument seems weak. But it does make more sense if we presuppose the
moral resources. Most of us have to some degree the human responses of respect and
sympathy. Most of us do care, at least a little, about what sort of person we are. These
dispositions all conflict with ruthless selfishness, greatly raising its psychological costs,
thus, restraining unethical acts.
From this ethical theory, two implications emerge which are important as a starting point
for understanding criticism of Glovers theory and for highlighting its implications for
debate (for the latter, see discussion below). First, Glover suggests that rather than
offering prescriptive ethical principles for judging actions or evaluating ideas, the moral
resources offer a way by which to judge alternatives and evaluate dispositions towards
events. He notes, the international machinery needs to be developed much further,
but it is only part of what is needed. A change in the climate of opinion is also
important. International intervention could be stronger if the attitude that war and
persecutions are utterly intolerable was more deeply rooted. Evaluating contemporary
wars and persecutions, like the Summer 2006 conflict in Lebanon, through the lens of
Glovers theory provides that opportunity. Once evaluated, this lens further helps
provide a mechanism by which to choose between action and inaction, as well as
evaluating what actions individuals or nations take.
The second implication articulates most clearly how Glovers moral resources avoid
the pitfalls of both religious, or otherwise externals moral codes, and brittle abstract
notions of Kantian ethics and social contracts. Glover believes that the moral resources
provide an ethical system that is part of human psychology. That is, one need not
consult an external source of morality, e.g. a religion, or attempt to apply an evaluative
tool kit, i.e. utilitarianism, but rather provides system that both fits the pitfalls of current
ethical systems and provides a mechanism by which to avoid tragedies wrought by that
system. As Glover explains, at the core of humanized ethics are the human responses
[of sympathy, respect, and consistency with ones moral identity].
CRITICISM OF THE MORAL RESOURCES

The first criticism of Glover can be found in the concessions he offers while making his
argument. While he believes the moral resources offer a criterion through which to
evaluate events and actions, he also concedes that its application across societies or
cultures may be limited. As suggested, in the discussion of the sympathy and respect,
the moral resources can be eroded by situational factors. He notes that often sympathy
and respect provide fewer restraints when a potential victim lacks standing within the
perpetrators social group, or another that is valued by the perpetrator. For example,
consider the choices made by governments as to which genocides receive attention
and which are ignored as atrocities occur. In the mid to late 1990s the international
response in the Bosnian conflicts stand in stark comparison to the inaction in Rwanda
and underscore how sympathy and respect as a resource can vary based on who is
competing for those responses. Most problematically, Glover concedes that in a hostile
climate or war, social pressures often support group hostility to the demise of moral
restraint. He defends this shortcoming and suggests that by adopting a lens that views
events through the moral resources, the rest of the international community more
decisively intervene in such failures of morality.
Others suggest that Glover offers an incomplete account of a moral history of the 20 th
century he attempts to provide. William Schweiker, professor of theological ethics at
the University of Chicago Divinity School, suggests that Glovers theory offers an
incomplete account. He notes, The moral history Glover presents is disturbing not only
for what it relates but also for what it fails to relate. Even as he seeks grounds for
reviving the moral imagination and provoking moral sensibilities, Glover pictures
humanity in its most depraved forms. No mention is made of the past century's great
movements of liberation, or the worldwide women's movement, or struggles for freedom
and human rights. Are these not also part of the moral history of the past century? This
point is especially consequential for Glover's argument, since many of the resistance
and liberation movements of the past century were inspired and championed by people
with deep religious convictions. As a result, they suggest that Glover both unfairly
attempts to dismiss alternative ethical systems and fails to account for how they may fit
into that ethical system. Critics suggest that this both limits the ability for Glovers
moral resources to arbitrate morals, but more importantly misinforms efforts to create
authentic accounts of moralitys successes and failures. Schweiker explains that if an
ethical history is attempting to offer guidance for avoiding past atrocities, then insofar
as any history is a complex act of remembering, how and what is remembered is of
utmost importance.
APPLICATION TO DEBATE
The moral resources theory of ethics that Glover offers provides extensive application
in Lincoln-Douglas Debate. In particular, for resolutions in which you are asked to
deduce what types of actions are morally justified, the theory provides multiple ways to
examine the topic. For example, a recent topic asked debaters to determine whether or
not the ends of military intelligence gathering justified the ends. In this instance,
Glovers theory provides an excellent criterion through which to evaluate those means to
determine if their ends could morally justify them. By applying the human responses of
sympathy and respect and our sense of moral identity, Glovers theory provides a way to
determine if and by what means such actions are justifiable.
Likewise, the moral resources provide an excellent criterion by which to choose between
alternatives offered by many resolutions. For example, a resolution asking you to decide
whether a democratic society should value equality of opportunity or equality of
condition provides another situation for an application of the moral resources. By
considering the implications of a society acting in one of those two ways, you may
evaluate the outcomes for individuals. Judging those effects in accord with Glovers
conceptualization of sympathy, respect and moral identity provides a basis on which to
make such a determination.
Additionally, many value resolutions ask you to consider empirical questions. For
example, a recent topic asked whether the death penalty is justified. In much the same
way that Glover interrogates the horrors of the 20th century to determine if, how, and
why the moral resources failed, they provide a criteria to determine whether a policy
articulated by the resolution is a moral or ethical policy. For instance, comparing the
psychological and physical horror of life on death row to the commitments of our human
responses and moral identity as articulated by Glover provides a basis for rejecting it as
a justified act. Countless other policies from parental consent for abortion to restrictions
on immigration provide policies whose empirical effects may be evaluated utilizing
Glovers theory.
Last, as you may have considered Glover makes several arguments that could facilitate
a critique or indictment of the moral framework adopted by your opponents. Glover
offers extensive reasons to be skeptical of authority-based morality, whether the state or
g/God be the authority. Similarly, Glover suggests that other systems provide brittle
foundations for a workable ethical theory. From Kantian ethics abstract basis to the
highly contingent cost-benefit analysis implicit in many utilitarian theories, Glover
provides extensive warrants interrogating the appropriateness of alternative ethical
systems and criteria.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Biographical Data. Retrieved from http://faculty.uccb.ns.ca/philosophy/arpa/glover.htm.
Last Accessed July 20, 2006.
Biographical Data. Retrieved from Kings College

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/175/biogs/glover.html. Last
accessed July 20, 2006.
Glover, Jonathan. Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. London:

Jonathan Cape,
1999.
---. (editor). Utilitarianism and its Critics. New York: MacMillan, 1990.
---. Causing Death and Saving Lives. New York: Penguin, 1977.
---. I: The Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity. London: Allen Lane, 1988.
---. Responsibility. New York: Humanities Press, 1970.
---. The Glover Report: The Ethics of New Reproductive Technologies. A Report for the
European
Commission, 1989.
---. What Sort of People Should There Be? Location Unknown: Pelican, 1984.
Pinker, Steven. All About Evil. New York Times Book Review. 10/29/2000. New York
Times
<http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_10_29_nytbookreview.html>.
Schweiker, William. Loose morals: the barbaric 20th century. - Humanity: A Moral
History of the
Twentieth Century, by Jonathan Glover Christian Century. May 17,
2003.
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_10_120/ai_102140730/pg_4>.
UTILITARIANISM IS A FLAWED MORAL

THEORY
1. UTILITARIANISM OFTEN CANNOT BE PRACTICALLY APPLIED
Jonathan Glover, Philosopher, 1990
UTILITARIANISM AND ITS CRITICS, 3
Some of the objections to utilitarianism are practical. It is said to be unworkable. We
can predict only some of the consequences of actions. We have no way of measureing
happiness. We cannot say, for instance, that the birth of a child gives the parents three
hundred and seven times the happiness they would get from a holiday in France. There
are further difficulties about comparing the happiness of different people. The weighing
of consequences seems more often a matter of vague intuition than of scientific
calculation.
2. UTILITARIANISM WARRANTS PROBLEMATIC CONSEQUENTIALIST ACTION

Other objections have been to the way utilitarians seem to accept that the end justifies
the means. It is a form of consequentialism: the view that acts are never right or wrong
in themselves, but only because of their consequences. But can it be right that whether
or not to torture a child should be decided by cool calculation of consequences? What
sort of people would we become if we adopted this attitude?
3. UTILITARIANISM REDUCES ALL VALUE TO HAPPINESS

Some object to the reduction of all value to happiness. Bentham said that happiness is
pleasure and the absence of pain. But is cheerful hedonism really the only way of life
that is valuable in itself? Others object that the largest total of happiness might be
compatible with unjust inequalities in its distribution, or with policies that trample on
peoples rights. And utilitarianism has problems over life and death. Can it avoid saying
that persistently unhappy people (or just people persistently below average happiness)
should be killed if they cannot be cheered up? Would a utilitarian have a duty to have
children if they were likely to be happy?
EXTERNAL, AUTHORITY-BASED ETHICAL

SYSTEMS ARE FLAWED
1. APPLICATION OF MORAL PRINCIPLES FAILS TO ACCOUNT FOR PRACTICAL DILEMMNAS
HUMANITY: A MORAL HISTORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY, pg. 6
It is possible to assume too readily that a set of moral principles simply needs to be
applied. The result can be the mechanical application of some form of utilitarianism, or
list of precepts about justice, autonomy, benevolence and so on. When this happens,
the direction of thought is all one way. The principles are taken for granted, or derived
in a perfunctory way, and practical conclusions are deduced from them. What is missing
is the sense of two-way interaction. The principles themselves may need modifying if
their practical conclusions are too Procustean, if they require us to ignore or deny things
we find we care about when faced with the practical dilemmas
2. EXTERNAL MORALITY COMMANDS OBEDIENCE; DENIES PROGRESS

Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, pp. 106-7
Since at all times, as long as there have been human beings, there have been human
herds (clan unions, communities, tribes, nation states, churches) and very many who
obeyed compared with very few who were in command; since, therefore, obedience was
the trait best and longest exercised and cultivated among men, one may be justified in
assuming that on the average it has become an innate need, a kind of formal conscience
that bids thou shalt do something or other, in other words, thou shalt. This need
seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on how strong,
impatient, and tense it is, it seizes upon all things with little discrimination, like a gross
appetite, and accepts whatever meets its ear, whatever any representative of authority
(parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, public opinion) declaims into it. The strange
limitation of human evolution, the factors that make for hesitation, protractedness,
retrogression, and circular paths, is due to the fact that the herd-instinct of obedience is
best inherited at the expense of knowing how to command.
DEONTOLOGY PROVIDES NO STABLE

BASIS FOR JUDGING ACTIONS
1. IN PRACTICE, DEONTOLOGY YIELDS TO CONSEQUENTALISTS THRESHOLD
DEONTOLOGY
Larry Alexander, 2000
SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW, accessed May 4, 2006, http://web.lexisnexis.com.mcc1.library.csulb.edu/universe/document?
_m=5c662443949a5d4459860d7ef558544e&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVb&_md5=6a21a932b6ac5484a610dc92c66b6bd3
In his 1989 law review article, Torture and the Balance of Evils, Michael Moore declares
himself to be a "threshold deontologist." What he means is this: There are some acts
that are morally wrong despite producing a net positive balance of consequences; but if
the positive balance of consequences becomes sufficiently great - especially if it does so
by averting horrible consequences as opposed to merely making people quite well off then one is morally permitted, and perhaps required, to engage in those acts that are
otherwise morally prohibited. Thus, one may not kill or torture an innocent person in
order to save two or three other innocent people from death or torture - even though
purely consequentialist considerations might dictate otherwise. However, if the number
of innocent people who can be saved from death or torture gets sufficiently large, then
what was morally proscribed - the killing or torture of an innocent person - becomes
morally permissible or mandatory
2. DEONTOLOGYS THRESHOLD DETERMINES THE BRIGHT LINE BETWEEN JUDGING BY

ENDS VERSUS MEANS
Larry Alexander, 2000
SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW, accessed May 4, 2006, http://web.lexisnexis.com.mcc1.library.csulb.edu/universe/document?
_m=5c662443949a5d4459860d7ef558544e&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVb&_md5=6a21a932b6ac5484a610dc92c66b6bd3
Moore acknowledges that threshold deontology might appear arbitrary and irrational. As
he puts it, "Why should goodness of consequences not count at all and then, at some
point, count enormously in the sense that it fully determines the rightness of action?"
Moore's answer to this question is that consequences always count, even below the
threshold, but until the threshold is reached, consequentialist principles are outweighed
by deontological ones. He analogizes the deontological norms to a dam, and the
consequentialist considerations to water building up behind it. Eventually, if enough
water builds up, it will reach and exceed the dam's height - which is analogous to the
threshold of threshold deontology.
3. ONCE MET, THE DEONTOLOGICAL THRESHOLD MANDATES OTHERWISE

IMPERMISSABLE, OR CONSEQUENTALIST, ACTIONS
Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, 2006
STANFORD LAW REVIEW, accessed May 4, 2006,
http://lawreview.stanford.edu/content/issue3/sunstein1.pdf
A more precise formulation would be permitted or obliged, because it is unclear which
moral modality holds, according to threshold deontology, once the baseline
deontological prohibition is waived. Without digressing too far into moral theory, we
suggest that, conditional on accepting threshold deontology, the agent is obliged (not
merely permitted) to promote the best overall consequences once the threshold has
been crossed. In our view, it would be distinctly odd to say that a moral agent is
permitted to infringe deontological constraints to save a large number of lives, but is not
obliged to do so.
THE MORAL RESOURCES PROVIDE A

PRACTICAL CRITERIA TO EVALUATE THE
MORALITY OF ACTIONS AND
ALTERNATIVES
1. LACK OF EXTERNAL AUTHORITY DOES NOT RESULT IN NIHILISM
HUMANITY: A MORAL HISTORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY, 17
He [Nietzsche] believed in unrestrained self-creation, perhaps thinking that only an
external authority could provide a basis for restraint, but this assumption is false. My
caring about the sort of person I am motivates the project of self-creation. Why should
not my caring about other people set limits to it? The Nietzschean nightmare does not
follow from Nietzschean premises, but a troubling question remains. Perhaps there are
people, either indivduals or whole groups, whose projects of self-creation are close to
that of Nietzsches noble soul. And perhaps they do not have countervailing values
which restrain their ruthless projects. Does the fading of the moral law mean that we
have nothing to say to a Nietzschean amoralist?
2. HUMAN RESPONSES ACT AS RESTRAINTS ON IMMORAL ACTS

HUMANITY: A MORAL HISTORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY, pg 22
Other moral resources, to be looked at first, are the human responses. Two of these
human responses, in particular, are important restraints. One is the tendency to
respond to people with certain kinds of respect. This may be bound up with ideas about
their dignity of about their having a certain status, either as members of our community
or just as fellow human beings. The other human response is sympathy: caring about
the miseries and the happiness of other, and perhaps feeling a degree of identification
with them.
3. MORAL IDENTITY RESTRAINS WHAT ACT WE FIND MORALLY PERMISSIBLE

HUMANITY: A MORAL HISTORY OF THE 20TH CENTURY pg. 22
We have distinctive psychological responses to different things people do: acts of cruelty
may arouse our revulsion; we may respond to some mean swindle with contempt;
courage or generosity may win our respect or admiration. These responses to others are
linked to our sense of our own moral identity. Many people have their own, often very
un-Nietzschean, projects of self creation. We have a conception of what we are like, and
of the kind of person we want to be, which may limit what we are prepared to do to
others.
4. REJECTING THE RESTRAINTS OF THE MORAL RESOURCES CREATES DISHARMONY

Most of us have to some degree the human responses of respect and sympathy. Most of
us do care, at least a little, about what sort of person we are. These dispositions all
conflict with ruthless selfishness, greatly raising its psychological cost. This is, of course
only an empirical point. People look to philosophy for the knockdown argument and
the decisive refutation, but ethics, being bound up with people, cannot escape softedged psychology, all dispositions and tendencies rather than hard universal laws. The
Socratic argument would have no force for a natural, ruthless amoralist, in whom moral
resources were non-existent, but for the rest of us it contains an important truth. The
psychological conflict generated by trampling on others will be often (though not always)
unacceptably great.
THE MORAL RESOURCES OFFER A

MORE HUMANIZED ETHICAL THEORY
1. MORALS WITHOUT EXTERNAL SUPPORT REQUIRE THE CREATION OF NEW
FOUNDATIONS
Not all skeptics about a non-human moral law see much to admire in Nietzschean
amoralism. The alternative is to keep ethics afloat without external support. If there is
not external moral law, morality needs to be humanized, to be rooted in human needs
and human values.
2. THE MORAL RESOURCES DEVELOP ETHICS BASED IN HUMAN PYSCHOLOGY

The moral resources give some hope of opposing atrocities with a strategy which fits
human psychology. The sense of moral identity and the human responses are parts of
our psychology, independent of any external metaphysics. The sense of moral identity
is important, but in the prevention of atrocities it is reliable only when it is rooted in the
human responses. At the core of humanized ethics are the human responses.
3. ETHICS BEST HOPE IS TO WORK WITH THE GRAIN OF HUMAN NATURE

There are features of our time which make it particularly important to build up moral
defenses against barbarism. Most obviously, there is the way technology hugely
increases the scale of atrocities. But there is the increasing awareness of the fading of
the moral law. As authority-based morality retreats, it can be replaced by a morality
which is deliberately created. The best hope of this is to work with the grain of human
nature, making use of the resources of moral identity and the human responses.
TRADITIONAL ETHICAL THEORIES

PROVIDE ADEQUATE RESTRAINTS
1. THE MORAL RESOURCES ARE EASILY ERODED
Self-interested calculation finds the structure of rewards and penalties very different in
dealings with members of a different community. There are far weaker social pressures
against hostile treatment of members of other groups. And in war the pressures often
support group hostility. The moral resources also have less power. Claims to be treated
with respect are often linked to standing within a group. The claim of an outsider may be
minimal. Sympathy has similar limitations. They sympathies which really engage us are
often stubbornly limited and local. I may move mountains for my child, but perhaps I
will not cross the street to be a good Samaritan to a stranger. Sympathy may hardly
extend to those outside a particular community.
2. DEONTOLOGY PROVIDES PRESCPRITIVE POTENTIAL FOR ETHICAL DECISION MAKING

Immanuel Kant, philosopher, 1993.
GROUNDING FOR THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS, p. 7
A good will is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes, nor because of its
fitness to attain some proposed end; it is good only through its willing, i.e., it is good in
itself. When it is considered in itself, then it is to be esteemed very much higher than
anything which it might ever bring about merely in order to favor some inclination, or
even the sum total of all inclinations. Even if, by some especially unfortunate fate or by
the niggardly provision of stepmotherly nature, this will should be wholly lacking in the
power to accomplish its purpose; if with the greatest effort it should yet achieve nothing,
and only the good will should remain (not, to be sure, as a mere wish but as the
summoning of all the means in our power), yet would it, like a jewel, still shine by its
own light as something which has its full value in itself.
3. THE DEONTOLOGICAL APPROACH ENSURES THE PROMOTION OF MORAL VALUES

Philip Pettit, Professor of Social and Political Theory at Australian National University,
1995.
A COMPANION TO CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, p. 31
Many will say that for someone who prizes liberty above all else, the right institutions
are not those that promote liberty, and are not therefore those that would ban the
minority group, but rather are the institutions that would testify suitably to the value of
liberty. They are the institutions that would promote liberty, but only by means that do
not themselves involve interference with liberty. They are the institutions, in a word,
that would honour liberty rather than promote it. To honour liberty under ideal
conditions under conditions where there are no recalcitrant agents like the minority
fanatics will be to promote it there. But in the real world where other agents and
agencies are bent on undermining liberty, honouring the value may mean failing to
promote it: heroically failing to promote it, as it were.
4. UTILITARIANISM PROVIDES A COHERENT BASIS FOR MORALITY

Part of the attraction of utilitarianism is that it claims to replace arbitrary-seeming rules
by a morality with a single coherent basis. Acts should be judged as right or wrong
according to their consequences. Happiness is the only thing that is good in itself.
Unhappiness is the only thing that is bad in itself. Everything else is only good or bad
according to its tendency to produce happiness or unhappiness.
5. UTILITARIANISM IS GROUNDED CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE; NOT BRITTLE CONJECTURE

Utilitarianism appeals to the value many of us place on conscious experience. Some of
us think that, in a universe without consciousness, it would not matter what happened.
Unseen sunsets, however beautiful, are of no value at all. Things only matter because of
their place in the lives of conscious beings.
EMMA GOLDMAN
FEMINIST AND ANARCHIST (18691940)
Life And Work

Emma Goldman, was a feminist and anarchist social critic who was born in Kovno,
Russia, a city which is now Kaunas, Lithuania. Immediately after the assassination of
Alexander II, Emma was 13, her family moved to St. Petersburg. The times were tough
politically and economically, so young Emma had to leave school for work in a factory.
Soon after, Emma obtained a copy of What Is To Be Done by Cherychevsky. This book
made a strong impact on Goldmans later passion for sexual equality and a cooperative
culture where men and women shared labor.
Her father was a notorious sexist who reportedly could not forgive his daughter for her
sex. Arguing that girls do not have to learn much, her father tried to marry her off at
the age of fifteen. Emma refused on two pounds that were to become seeds which would
germinate into her feminism: she wanted to continue her education and travel, believing
that women had as much right to these things as men. She also firmly believed in
romantic love, declaring she would never marry for anything but love. This was the
beginning of events which culminated in Goldman immigrating to the United States to
live with her older sister Helena, in Rochester, New York. She worked as a seamstress,
learning firsthand about the harsh working conditions and exploitation of labor she
would later decry.
Goldman, like many other burgeoning radicals, was drawn to anarchism by the
Haymarket Square tragedy in 1886 in Chicago. During a workers rally for an 8-hour
workday, a bomb was thrown into a crowd of police. For this crime, four anarchists were
convicted on questionable evidence. The judge at the trial stated that, were they not
anarchists, they would not have even been brought to trial. The four were eventually
hanged. Goldman was, at this time, 20 years old. She had been married for just under a
year to another native Russian, but the marriage ended in divorce. She decided on the
day of the verdict to become a revolutionary.
Goldman moved to New York, where she came into contact with Johann Most, who edited
an anarchist newspaper. However, as Goldmans anarchism developed, there emerged a
difference between the two:
Most argued that labor struggles such as the one which had culminated in Haymarket
square were inadequate to the task of social transformation. For Goldman, though,
reform efforts such as higher wages and shorter hours were steps on the road to social
transformation. As she distanced herself from Most, she was drawn to another German
anarchist journal called Die Autonomie, where she got her first exposure to the work of
Peter Kropotkin.
She agreed with Kropotkin that humans tend toward mutual aid, but added to his
theories the essentiality of sexual liberation in the struggle. Kropotkin glossed over
sexuality in his writings, believing gender issues, sexuality issues, and reproductive
issues were incidental to anarchism. Goldmans belief in personal freedom and the
necessity of sexual liberation became the icons that distinguished her from Kropotkin.
Her anarchist leanings were captured in her response to the argument that
revolutionaries should not dance. Goldman was approached at a dance by a young
revolutionary and told it was not appropriate for a revolutionary to dance. Goldman
insisted that our cause could not expect me to behave as a nun and that the movement
should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. I want freedom, the
right to self expression, everybodys right to beautiful, radiant things.
Goldman believed that the end could always justify the means. In 1892, she and
Alexander Berkinan planned the assassination of Henry Clay Frick. Frick had brutally
suppressed strikes in the Homestead Pennsylvania factory with armed guards who killed
ten of the striking workers. Goldman and Berkman considered Frick emblematic of a
harsh and cruel system. They hoped that through his death, the revolutionary fires of the
people would be fanned. However, Berkman only wounded Frick. After he was
sentenced to 22 years in prison Goldman explained the failed attempt on his life by
arguing that true morality deals with the motives, not the end-state of the actions.
Ironically, it was not her uncontestable role in the attempt on Fricks life that drove
Goldman underground. When Leon Czolgoz, a self-proclaimed anarchist who claimed to
have met Goldman at one of her lectures, assassinated President William McKinley in
1901, she was arrested as an accomplice. This occurred despite the fact that Goldman
had publicly condemned the assassination and even offered to nurse the dying McKinley.
Unfortunately, she also expressed sympathy for the defenseless Czolgosz, which caused
such a stir that she had to stay underground and operate under pseudonyms until 1906.
Then, she began publishing the influential journal Mother Earth.
One Of The Most Dangerous Women In

America
Goldman was also imprisoned for distributing birth control literature, which she insisted
on defending as a practice even though it was outlawed. Her longest sentence came
after she helped organize the No Conscription leagues, which helped protest World
War I and the draft Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years under these
charges. 1. Edgar Hoover himself helped strip them of their citizenship and directed
Goldmans deportation hearing, calling her one of the most dangerous women m
America. Goldman, for her part, considered it an honor to be the first political agitator
to be deported from the United States. She was sent to Russia.
Deportation found Goldman an eager observer of the Russian Revolution. To Goldman

and Berkmans dismay, though, Russia in 1919 was characterized by oppressive
bureaucracy, political repression, and none of the liberatory struggle they hoped to find.
In 1921, certain sailors and soldiers rebelled against the Bolsheviks, identifying
themselves with labor in the struggle: these forces were beaten mercilessly by the Red
Army under Leon Trotsky. Needless to say, the pro-labor, pro-freedom, anti-militarist
Goldman was shocked and dismayed. Goldman wrote about her experiences in Russia in
two books: My Disillusionment in Russia and My Further Disillusionment in Russia. This
experience cemented for Goldman the notion that the state could never be a
revolutionary force.
Another conclusion Goldman arrived at after these experiences was that her earlier
belief that the end justified the means was incorrect. Though she refused to reject
violence as a necessary evil in the process of revolution, what she had seen from the
Bolsheviks caused a reevaluation of when it was acceptable. Goldman mused that it is
one thing to employ violence in combat as a means of defense. It is quiet another thing
to make a principle of terrorism, to institutionalize it to assign it the most vital place in
the social struggle. Such terrorism begets counter-revolution and in turn itself becomes
counter-revolutionary. These views were unpopular among radicals as most still wanted
to believe that the Russian Revolution was a success.
When Goldman moved to Britain in 1921 she was virtually alone on the left in
condemning the Bolsheviks and her lectures were poorly attended. On hearing that she
might be deported in 1925, a Welsh miner offered to marry her in order to give her
British Nationality. With a British passport, she was the able to travel to France and
Canada. In 1934, she was even allowed to give a lecture tour in the States.
Goldman In Private And Public

Though she was committed to the notion of free love and sexual liberation, Goldmans
life was an expression of both the full realization of and a contradiction of that principle.
Though she was a free-love advocate and certainly had multiple sexual relations, many
with other anarchists, her relationship with her lover of ten years, Ben Reitman, is what
many biographers find fascinating when scrutinizing Goldmans life. In love with Reitman
to the point of maddening jealousy, Goldman acknowledged that the world would stand
aghast that I, Emma Goldman, strong revolutionist, the daredevil, the one who has
defied laws and convention, should have been as helpless as a ship on a rocking ocean.
Still, her love letters to
Reitman cast light on the passionate, lustful side of Goldman, and the fiery spirit with
which she committed herself to causes public and private.
Goldman was hurt when, in 1936, her lifelong companion Berkman committed suicide.
She was given little time to grieve. In a few months, the Spanish Revolution broke out,
and Goldman, then 67, was off to Spain to join in the struggle. She gave speeches and
encouraged the anarchist cause to fight on and show the world that anarchism stood for
more than mere chaos. Though she disagreed with the concessions the revolutionists
made to the communists for the sake of coalition-building, she refused to condemn the
anarchists for taking part in the government. She believed that the alternative was the
communist dictatorship she so loathed. Working almost up to the time of her death,
Goldman died in 1940 and was buried in Chicago close to the four who were banged
because of Haymarket.
Philosophy And Contributions To

Anarchist Thought
Emma Goldman contributed a great deal to anarchist philosophy. Specifically, she
incorporated sexual politics into the anarchist philosophy. While earlier anarchists had,
at best, hinted at the issue, Goldman called for sexuality as an essential emiancipatory
force. Goldman went to prison for the right of women to practice birth control during a
time when even the literature was outlawed. She argued that a state-based legislative
solution was not enough to eliminate sexism and adversarial relations between the
genders. Her brand of feminism argued for a radical shift in social relations to be brought
about by a change in the values of women themselves.
Goldman advised women to assert themselves as personalities and not as sexual

commodities to be had, won, or possessed. Second, she urged women to refuse
the right of anyone--humans or the state--to control their bodies. Thus, her staunch
defense of reproductive rights. Thus, also, her opposition to the church, which she
viewed as a patriarchal mass. She viewed the church as another servant of the state,
society, the husband, and the family which had oppressed women.
Goldman also refused to budge in her arguments for the individual as the basis for
morality. She argues that oppressive social structures that try to define morality for us
miss the point it has never been society that has caused invention or human selfdiscovery, but the individual. In this manner, Goldman presents a twofold analysis of
ethics. First, the individual is the prime concern. It is only a change in values that can
liberate us from the control mechanisms of the state, and only individuals can make that
change. Similarly, notions of morality that come from above stop that transition.
It is all too obvious for us to use Goldman as a critic of the state and of capitalist
economics. Goldmans primary application to debate can probably be found in her
sexual and gender-related theories. There are many potential uses for these ideas,
especially against cases that argue for puritanical treatment of the body and matters
sexual. Goldmans ideas hold that these kind of ideas are the kind that force women into
a catch-22: either they become the repressed, chaste virgin, or the undesirable dirty
woman. Moralizing value systems, especially those that espouse traditional family
values are subject to mounting criticism from Goldman.
Goldman can also be used to attack certain radical thinkers. Her ideas on the centrality
of sexual liberation indite the potential for anarchist/socialist theorists that gloss over
these issues. As Goldman says, any truly revolutionary system must note the primacy of
these issues.
Similarly, Goldman rejects the somewhat reformist notion of womens emancipation that
stops with the political sphere. An ultimate disbeliever in the power of the ballot box to
challenge social customs, Goldman would argue for many radical goals that some
theorists concerned with the emancipation of women would ignore--her criticism of
marriage, for example, or her ideas on operating outside traditional
political channels like voting. Her fusion of anarchism with feminism provides a
perspective that few other authors share, making her a valuable source.
Bibliography
Candace Falk, LOVE, ANARCHY, AND EMMA GOLDMAN, revised edition, Rutgers:
1990.
Emma Goldman, MENACE: ESSAYS BY EMMA GOLDMAN, Spunk: 1995.
Emma Goldman, RED EMMA SPEAKS: SELECTED WRITINGS AND SPEECHES BY EMMA
GOLDMAN, edited by Alix Kates Shulman, Vintage: 1972.
Emma Goldman, LIVING MY LIFE, Knopf: 1931.
Bonnie Haalnad, EMMA GOLDMAN: SEXUAUTY AND THE IMPURITY OF THE STATE, Black
Rose Books, 1995.
INDIVIDUALISM IS BETTER THAN

SOCIETY
1. THE INDIVIDUAL IS KEY TO ALL LIBERATORY STRUGGLE
Emma Goldman, anarchist philosopher, MENACE: ESSAYS BY EMMA GOLDMAN, 1995,
page np. Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of
liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move. The
truth of this is borne out in Russia with greater force than elsewhere. Thousands of lives
have already been consumed by that bloody regime, yet the monster on the throne is
not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture, literature, when the
deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron yoke? The majority, that compact,
immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of
untold misery, still believes that the rope which strangles the man with the white
hands brings luck. In the American struggle for liberty, the majority was no less of a
stumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Thomas
Paine, are denied and sold by their posterity. The mass wants none of them. The
greatness and courage worshipped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men who
created the background for the panorama of that time. The true patron saints of the
black men were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston, Lloyd Garrison,
Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, whose great courage
and sturdiness culminated in that somber giant John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their
eloquence and perseverance undermined the stronghold of the Southern lords. Lincoln
and his minions followed only when abolition had become a practical issue, recognized
as such by all. practical issue, recognized as such by all.
2. THE INDIVIDUAL HAS ALWAYS LED THE WAY TOWARDS REAL PROGRESS Emma
Goldman, anarchist philosopher, RED EMMA SPEAKS: SELECTED WRITINGS AND
SPEECHES BY EMMA GOLDMAN, edited by Alix Kates Shulman, 1972, page 87. What role
did authority or government play in human endeavor for betterment, in invention and in
discovery? None whatever, or at least none that was helpful. It has always been the
individual that has accomplished every miracle in that sphere, usually in spite of the
prohibition, persecution and interference by authority, human and divine. Similarly, in
the political sphere, the road of progress lay in getting away more and more from the
authority of the tribal chief or the clan, of prince and king, of government, of the State.
3. INDIVIDUALISM IS DOWNTRODDEN BY STATIST POLITICS, INCLUDING SOCIALISM

Emma Goldman, anarchist philosopher, MENACE: ESSAYS BY EMMA GOLDMAN, 1995,
page np. The oft repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the Socialists
included, that ours is an era of individualism, of the minority. Only those who do not
probe beneath the surface might be led to entertain this view. Have not the few
accumulated the wealth of the world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of
the situation? Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but to the inertia, the
cravenness, the utter submission of the mass. The latter wants but to be dominated, to
be led, to be coerced. As to individualism, at no time in human history did it have less
chance of expression, less opportunity to assert itself in a normal, healthy manner. The
individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or writer of original ideas,
the independent scientist or explorer, the non-compromising pioneers of social changes
are daily pushed to the wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become
decrepit with age.
4. INDIVIDUALITY IS THE ONLY EVOLVING, LIVING, REMAINING VALUE Emma Goldman,

anarchist philosopher, RED EMMA SPEAKS: SELECTED WRITINGS AND SPEECHES BY
EMMA GOLDMAN, edited by Alix Kates Shulman, 1972, page 88-9.
Individuality may be described as the consciousness of the individual as to what he is
and how he lives. It is inherent in every human being and is a thing of growth. The State
and social institutions come and go, but individuality remains and persists. The very
essence of individuality is expression; the sense of dignity and independence is the soil
wherein it thrives. Individuality is not the impersonal and mechanistic thing that the
State treats as an individual. The individual is not merely the result of heredity and
environment, of cause and effect. he is that and a great deal more, a great deal else.
The living man cannot be defined; he is the fountain-head of all life and all values; he is
not a part of this or of that; be is a whole, an individual whole, a growing, changing, yet
always constant whole.
DUALISM MUST BE STOPPED TO

LIBERATE WOMEN
1. POLITICAL GAINS NOT ENOUGH TO LIBERATE WOMEN: MUST STOP DUALISM
Emma Goldman, anarchist philosopher, RED EMMA SPEAKS: SELECTED WRITINGS AND
SPEECHES BY EMMA GOLDMAN, edited by Alix Kates Shulman, 1972, page 142. Salvation
lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need
of
unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for womans
emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hoped that it
will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good
demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in the courts. It begins in
womans soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberation from its
masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn that lesson, that she
realize that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve that freedom reaches.
It is, therefore, far more important for her to begin with her inner prejudices, traditions,
and customs. The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but,
after all, the most vital right to love and be loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to
become a complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the
ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonymous with
being slave or subordinate. It that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds.
2. ONLY BROAD VISION OF EMANCIPATION CAN FULFILL WOMEN

Emma Goldman, anarchist philosopher, RED EMMA SPEAKS: SELECTED WRITINGS AND
SPEECHES BY EMMA GOLDMAN, edited by Alix Kates Shulman, 1972, page 142. Pettiness
separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things
because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the
sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give
of ones self richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform the
tragedy of womens emancipation into joy, limitless joy.
3. MUST RADICALLY SHW~ ROLES OF BOTH MEN & WOMEN TO STOP DUALISM
Bonnie Halland, Professor of Sociology at Kwantien College, EMMA GOLDMAN:
SEXUALITY AND THE IMPURITY OF THE STATE, 1993, page 53-4.
Rejecting the dichotomy of reproduction and production, Goldman makes, given their
historical context, next-to-revolutionary claims. These claims are that womens freedom
is closely allied with mens freedom and that children need to be nurtured by both men
and women. Goldmans vision of gender relations, in which sexual relations, in which
sexual dualism is rejected, represents a radical and revolutionary potential for future
generations. Both men and women, according to her vision, would be responsible for the
care and nurturance of children. Goldman states: But womans freedom is closely allied
with mans freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to overlook
the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and devotion of each human being
about [her or] him, man as well as woman. Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of
gender relations [dualism of the sexes] that has brought about a great tragedy in the
lives of modern man and woman.
4. SHOULD SHIFT OUT OF PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC DUALISM AND UNIFY GENDER ROLES
Bonnie Halland, Professor of Sociology at Kwantien College, EMMA GOLDMAN:
SEXUALITY AND THE IMPURITY OF THE STATE, 1993, page 54.
Goldman envisioned a society in which men would be freed from the mind-numbing,
soul-destroying conditions found in the public sphere and be free to assume
responsibility as care-givers alongside women. Women, in turn, would not be burdened
with sole responsibility to care for the children; nor would they be compelled to
compete with men in the public realm. Thus, men and women would jointly inhabit
the realm which had previously been assigned exclusively to women. With this view,
Goldman seems to have anticipated the views of recent feminists, such as Gayle Rubin
who has suggested that if children were raised by parents of both sexes, human social
relationships would be richer and the Oedipus complex would disappear.
Paul Goodman
A free society cannot be the substitution of a new order for the old order, it is the
extension of spheres of free action until they make up the most of social life.
--Paul Goodman (9/9/1911-8/2/1972)
Activism, for Goodman, was a way of life, not for saints or heroes but for ordinary
people. To be effective as an activist, one must work through one's alienation toward
society, one must join it, care for it, and take people seriously (that is, listen to them
closely). Politics takes place in the real world, the world of experience, not ideology and
abstraction. (Jezer 1994) For Goodman, his activism was filtered through his writing.
He wrote five novels, over one hundred short stories, more than a dozen plays, and
numerous poems. He was a social critic, poet, novelist and playwright, utopian city
planner, educator, psychotherapist and psychological theorist.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PAUL

GOODMAN
Paul Goodman was the youngest of four and born in New York City to Barnett and
Augusta of German-Jewish and middle class origins. Barnett abandoned his family soon
after Pauls birth. He attended City College of New York and received a Ph.D. in
Literature from the University of Chicago in 1954. He married Virginia Miller, and they
had the child named Susan. In the 1940s, he was remarried to Susan and had Mathew
and Daisy. In 1951, along with Fritz Perls, Goodman founded the Gestalt Therapy
Institute, which blended existentialism with psychoanalysis. In addition to teaching at
Black Mountain College, Sarah Lawrence, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Urban
Affairs), San Francisco Sate, and the University of Hawaii, he toured and lectured on
many college campuses on social activism in the 1960s. However, he was fired from
every teaching job he ever had, because he insisted on his right to fall in love with his
students and he was open with his bisexuality. In 1967, Goodmans son Mathew died in
a mountain climbing accident. Soon thereafter, Goodmans health deteriorated and he
died of a heart attack at age 61. Paul Goodman's work has primarily been kept alive by
Taylor Stoehr, his friend and literary executor, a Professor of English at the University of
Massachusetts, Boston.
PSYCHOLOGY
Gestalt Therapy (1951) was written in collaboration with Fritz Perls and Robert Hefferline.
The ideas are largely based on Fritz Perls work. This book brought Gestalt Psychology
out of its academic and theoretical roots and into clinical and general practice.
Goodmans psychological writings reference Aristotle, Kant, Freud, Yeats, Federn,
Gandhi, Reich, and many other acclaimed experts. Beyond their boundaries, however,
Goodman insisted on the political implications of his psychological theories, which
decreased support for his theories. Even his most academic of writings utilized poetry to
fuse his ideas with personal revelation of feeling (Miller). All of his psychological writings
returned to an anarchist community vision of individual self-realization through love and
work against the dehumanizing pressures that bureaucracy and technology were
producing (Miller). He argued that decentralized communities could create a new
humanely decent reality out of the post-industrial wasteland. Gestalt Therapy looked
holistically and at the parts of the ailment.
Throughout his lifetime, his psychological views took in, reformed, and developed many
other peoples theories, from the Freudian unconscious to Reichian character-armor and
sex-economy to the phenomenology of the contact-boundary -- recapitulate the
development of Gestalt therapy itself (Miller). He critiqued the revisionist
psychoanalytic theories of Horney and Fromm, using the relationship among
psychotherapy, the social order, and human instinctual life (Miller). Although Perl
refused to support any of Freuds theories because of personality differences, Goodman
did not have a history of interaction with Freud and therefore felt comfortable utilizing
some of his work.
For instance, Goodman agreed with Freuds biological basis to psychology, thereby
opposing behaviorists, psychoanalytic revisionists, and most social psychologists (Miller).
Goodman argued that human nature constrains the nature of community. Therefore, a
failed society is one that does not respond to the natural needs of its people (Miller).
This is what links his psychological theories to his politics. Likewise, he used this to
answer back sociological Marxists who believed that nature is completely socialized and
that a new social order will completely dictate a change in the nature of the populace
(Miller). However, Goodman was a social psychologist, and therefore believed it
necessary to study what happens between the patient and the environment. His
research: that symptoms, character-formation, and growth all take place at the boundary
between self and other; was crucial to the development of Gestalt therapys approach of
working at that contact point (Miller).
Additionally, Goodman agreed with Freuds transference theory, that unfinished past
situations influence present psychological behaviors. Goodman used this to argue that
patients will continue to seek therapy because of the compulsion to repeat, but will try
to finish up the old situation in the same ineffectual way--by having neurotic symptoms
(Miller). He argued that Gestalt therapy provided the solution to this cycle. In the
second volume of Gestalt Therapy, Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality,
he wove together a comprehensive view of human nature, character development,
healthy human functioning, and psychopathology. He explains the processes of
personality growth and change, how they are resisted, and as such, what therapy can
accomplish.
Goodman adapted Reichs philosophies to connect psychotherapy with social revolution,

which contradicted much of Freuds politics. Freuds therapy sought liberation of
instincts, but his politics supported keeping those instincts repressed, so they would only
trickle out. However, Goodman did not believe a trickle was enough to change society.
Reich showed that the social order had colonized the psyches of the public through
family and school reinforcement of propaganda. This socialization called on students to
ignore their spontaneous animal needs. Once this rejection became permanent, a rigid
shell of personality forms, called character-armor, which leaves the populace passive
and inhibited, thereby preventing a revolutionary mentality.
Goodman and Reich believe that therapy could release these creative energies from the
bad character formation, enabling a liberated mentality. However, they recognized that
these liberated individuals would have to still be surrounded by institutions based on
repression and aggression. As such, these individuals would seek revolutionary social
change through the creation of new alternatives and a rejection of the current
institutions. This caused Goodman to warn individuals from undertaking psychotherapy,
which would inevitably cause its recipients to refuse to live in such a competitive, hostile
world. However, he did not recognize the cure to be the goal, but experience. Goodman
saw people as unfinished and capable of growing. He saw therapy as an open-ended
exercise that activates the mind, unleashes intelligence, encourages self-reliance, and
creates healthy citizens able to perceive things accurately and effectively take care of
life's business. Because politics impinge on life's business, a healthy citizen is, by
necessity, politically active (Jezer 1994). As such, he again linked his theories of
psychology to his politics.
ANARCHISM
As an anarchist, Goodman rejects all authority, coercion, control, top-down direction, and
centralization. Instead he supports bottom-up, community control of all affairs. He
contends that anarchism is not utopian, as anarchist mini-projects have been successful
in the US historically. He believes that anarchy is always changing and not static in its
solutions, like capitalism or socialist ideologies. He sought a society in which children
have bright eyes, nobody is pushed around, rivers are clean, and in which there is useful
work, tasty food, and occasionally satisfying nookie (Goodman, The Society I Live in is
Mine).
As an anti-structuralist, his starting point for social analysis was that society is a
fictitious abstraction that is socially constructed and enforced through state propaganda
of the media and educational system (Goodman, Crazy Hope and Finite Experiences,
1994, p.49-50). He argued that the US society was based on an over-developed
centralism with a military style created to offensively wage war, an economic style
dominated by profit instead of use and work-processes, and a style of industry based
around steam prime-movers, cash-cropping, and enclosures. These have produced
over-capitalized and often inappropriate technology, an inflexible and insecure tightly
interlocking economy, ignorant mass-consumption with a complicated standard of living
of inferior quality, the development of sprawling urban areas rather than towns and
cities, brain-washing mass communications, mass-democracy without real content, and
mass-education that is both wasteful and regimenting. (Goodman, Notes on
Decentralization, 1996) The society that has been constructed is under the illusion that
no other method of organization could be better or is possible. The possibilities around
decentralization are ignored. Instead, problems with the system are handled by
establishing new or different levels of control based on the same administrative style,
not by examining the system itself (Goodman, Notes on Decentralization, 1996).
Luckily, society is not unmovable, but an integrated network capable of changing (Jezer
1994). Goodmans politics filter through a psychological lens when he argues that the
problem is anomie, the helplessness of individuals resulting in a loss of citizenry. He
states that the governments means of solving anomie will never be successful
because it entails encouragement of the illusion of participation, in that it doesnt
involve any true community control (Goodman, Notes on Decentralization, 1996).
Goodman supported "good conservatism," meaning the willingness to give up

everything to conserve community bonds; whereas, phony conservatives are those
concerned with vested interests over that of the community. As such, he supported
Edmunde Burke who acted to preserve the American community and Coleridge who
argued that the property expropriated by Henry VIII should have been consigned to
other moral and cultural institutions, and because he argued that villages which did not
take part in national trade were still important. Other good conservatives included Lord
Acton, George Washington and the other chief leaders of the American Revolution, and
Danton and other early pre-Jacobin leaders of the French Revolution (Goodman 1970, p.
192-193, 195).
Goodmans anarchism is often said to be more of an attitude than an ideology (Jezer

1994). As such, Goodmans solution is a more pragmatic option of a mixed economy
of big and small capitalism, producers cooperatives, consumers cooperatives,
independent farming, municipal socialism, and pure communism for poverty (Goodman,
New Reformation, 1970, p. 149). This ran counter to many of the solutions of the
anarchists whose direct action methods toward revolution he agreed with, such as
Kropotkin, Malatesta, Bakunin, Ferrer, William Morris, and Thoreau (Goodman, New
Reformation, 1970, p. 145). For Goodman, the focus is on "a more elementary
humanity, wider, less structured, more variegated. The thing is to have a National
Liberation Front that does not end up in a Nation State, but abolishes the boundaries.
This was what Gandhi and Buber wanted, but they were shelved ... Some boundaries, of
course, are just the limits of our interests ... But as soon as we begin to notice a
boundary between us and others, we project our own unacceptable traits on those
across the boundary, and they are foreigners, heretics, untouchables, persons exploited
as things. By their very existence, they threaten or tempt us, and we must squelch
them, or with missionary zeal make them shape up" (Goodman 1970, p. 194).
Goodmans focus was on what people could do next, not in planning the revolution or life
post-revolution. His vision is more in line with the writings of Murray Bookchin (although
Bookchin critiques Goodman for his individualism), whose reformist anarchism supports
municipal libertarianism in which communities control themselves through direct
democracy and vote for representatives who meet with the representatives of other
communities. This method supposedly prevents top-down government hierarchy,
because the people are in control of the candidates and the leaders are constantly
being replaced. This solution offers a pre-revolutionary goal for anarchistic living, as
communities can begin to control themselves immediately, although the state may
prevent communities from having too much power. For Bookchin, the refusal of the
government to recognize community control is what may spur revolution through public
sentiment. Through community control in the interim, both Bookchin and Goodman
believe the revolution can be non-violent and just requires the public to decide to
withdraw its support of the state and its control, thereby remaking society.
As far as tactics toward revolution, Goodman understands why guerilla fighting is a

classical anarchist technique, but he regards himself as a non-violent activist. He
contends that violence is a reproduction of power relations and therefore is inherently
anti-anarchistic (Goodman, Black Flag of Anarchism). He called himself apolitical. He
argued that since he is an artist, he first has to imagine a simpler and more artistic way
to do it, neater, making use of available and cheap materials, less senseless, less
wasteful; whereas, a political person acts to make a difference. (Goodman, Politics
Within Limits, 1972). His art is said to have drawn attention to the connection
between his radicalism and to the humanistic tradition, particularly notable when doing
so to an audience of student activists, preparing them to be tear gassed at the

barricades. "I have found it delicious," he announced, "When I was being most
outrageous, to be quoting Aristotle or Spinoza and feeling that I was most orthodoxly
innocent." (Miller)
As far as social resistance as a tactic, Goodman supported piecemeal attacks, with

citizens working together, not as a mass. He argued that seeking small gains are best,
because it risks only small errors, not ruinous consequences (Goodman, The New
Reformation,). The aim is not utopia but a tolerable society with an active citizenry
able to make further gains (Jezer 1994). For instance, he agreed with the cultural
ecologist Robert Netting, who stated that, "freehold farming ... kept open the possibility
of anarchy ... a farmer ... can ... withdraw from the market, eat his own crops, and
prudently stay out of debt" (Goodman, Crazy Hope and Finite Experiences, 1994, p.6667).
MILITARISM
In War Spirit (1962), Goodman seeks to uncover why the North American public is so
susceptible to military propaganda, using Cold War militarization as the model. He
argues that the government is always prone to maintain the military mega machine for
economic interests and that the public should never believe the governments lies about
goals of disarmament until actual preparations have been undertaken in that direction.
He argues that the war spirit is promoted throughout the publics life, which ensures
discrimination, nationalism, and violence.
He believes there are several reasons why the public is susceptible to the war spirit
mindset. First, he argues that urbanism promotes competition not happiness.
Additionally, the criminalization of physical aggression prevents any outlet. Thus, since
one cannot be angry, one cannot be affectionate. (War Spirit, 1962)
Second, he states that the urban-technological-economical-political complex (i.e.

capitalism) results in people not being in control of their own lives. For instance, workers
do not make any decisions about the product, process, utility, or distribution of goods.
Everything is bureaucratized. Likewise, the American political system is not based on
true democracy and is very top-down with no community control. Voters decide not
issues or policies but the choice between equivalent Front personalities. Competition
for success destroys all spontaneity and results in people acting not for happiness but
for emulation of the social construction of success. All of this conformity is enforced
through police surveillance. This helplessness, from the lack of community selfsufficiency and control is manifested through the theory of masochism (which he bases
on Wilhelm Reich), resulting in violence and support for offensive military
destructiveness. (War Spirit, 1962)
Third, commercialized popular culture and advertising results in feelings of self-disgust

and powerlessness to end that way of life, since it is everywhere. As such, the war spirit
is a culturally created wish to commit suicide in mass. (War Spirit, 1962)
Also, he criticizes the media for its purification and sterilization of violence. Like Noam
Chomsky, he argues that the media constructs reality and that the US constructs
enemies to maintain a justification for military expansion and weapon development.
Goodman argues that the media is a major conduit for this military propaganda. For
instance, he discusses how movies make the public especially susceptible to military
propaganda, since the bright screen and dark theatre tend toward fascination and
hypnosis (Goodman, Liberation, 1961).
Brinkmanship and playing chicken and the testing of bigger firecrackers however
stupid and immediately rejectable by common reason are nevertheless taken as most
serious maneuvers. This is shown through the publics use of the inclusive rhetoric of
we to indicate military decisions of the US government. The sterilization of war and
war-games theory allows the public to have forbidden satisfaction in violence while
diminishing responsibility through air instead of ground war. Games-theory has the
mechanical innocence of a computer. (War Spirit, 1962)
The military mega-machine spurs machoism and hyper-masculinity, as all tenderness

and emotional attachment is regarded as weakness. Psychologically, our tough
warriors live by a conceit of themselves as strong, to ward off the anguish of their spirits
broken by authorities they could not face up to; and a conceit of themselves as hard, to
ward off loss of love and fear of impotence (Goodman, Liberation, 1961).
Goodman argues that the societal steps that must be taken to end the war spirit are as
follows: First, decentralization in all elements of society to increase community control
and diminish feelings of helplessness and hopelessness; second, promotion of individual
enterprises with less focus on work; third, ending sex and morality laws to allow for
discharge of energy; fourth, the promotion of useful not busy work, utilizing more of a
persons capabilities; fifth, education focusing on useful skills surrounding technology, to
enliven creativity and inventiveness; sixth, promotion of culture and a greater self to
give people meaning; seventh, support for confrontation and minimal violence, to
prevent built-up hostility resulting in explosive destructiveness. These changes, he
believed, would give more meaning to life and result in less public support for militarism
and collective suicide. (War Spirit, 1962)
On an individual or social movement level of analysis, Goodmans solution is to wage

peace, not war, since the war spirit is merely a societal construction that can be
changed. Factual exposure of the political and corporate operations of war society, and
psychological and social analysis of its war ideology and spirit ought to disattach and
release the energy that had been bound up in conventional symbols and habits of life
(Goodman, Liberation, 1961). War feeds on the inhibition of normal aggression, thus
social movements ought to find pacifist actions for this released energy (Goodman,
Liberation, 1961). For example, refusing is necessary, he argues, when people are
required to engage directly in some process of war-making. Additionally, he argues any
type of group should use nonviolent direct action. Any instance of this, even if it fails, is
proof of the feasibility of the pacifist position, for it shows that sensible and moral
individual and small-group action is possible, and thereby it diminishes our masochistic
paralysis in the face of an approaching doom too big for men to cope with. For the
resistance to modern warfare is natural and universal; the arguments against pacifism
are weak; and the spirit of war is reducible by analysis; but what is needed is stories,
examples, and opportunities for action concrete. (Goodman, Liberation, 1961)
ECOLOGY AND SCIENCE

Goodman was strongly concerned with ecology, and his main arguments about the
subject were already formulated by 1960 (Stoehr 1990), as a form of geo-piety (Knapp
1997). By 1970 Goodman was speaking of the environment in terms of "delicate
sequences and balances." Following Rachel Carson, Goodman criticized chemical pest
control. Goodman referred in 1970 to a "tribe in Yucatan" that "educates its children to
identify and pull up all weeds ... then what is left is a garden of useful plants that have
chosen to be there" (Knapp 1997). A simplified and modest technology would permit
"the environment to persist in its complexity, evolved for a billion years" (Goodman, New
Reformation, 1970, p. 12-13). This rhetoric causes some to call Goodman an
"ecosystemicist" (Knapp 1997). However, he saw through the rhetoric of sustainable
development, which, he argued, mortgaged the present to the future (Goodman, Crazy
Hope and Finite Experiences, 1994, p. 66-67). He also carried a strong adaptationist,
evolutionary perspective (Knapp 1997). The complexity makes nature unpredictable,
even to systems science; therefore decision-making involving the environment must be
decentralized, modest, and subject to continual adjustment. In this context, both
positivist experimental methods and natural history methods have validity in
appropriate situations (Goodman, New Reformation, 1970, p. 12-15).
Goodman argued that scientific advancement has value in its adventurousness, but that
scientists should follow certain ethical responsibilities: First, all research findings should
be made public and replicable. Second, there should be international cooperation on
scientific and technological advancements. Third, science should not be directed for
non-scientific purposes, such as military, national glory, or economic profits. Fourth,
scientists should refuse to cooperate on development of bad technology. Fifth, they
should evaluate and criticize the applications of their technology development. Sixth,
they should explore the potential effects of their technology application and make such
research public. Finally, they should engage in political activity intended to undo the
damage of the technology they have helped create. (Goodman, Responsibility of
Scientists, 1968)
EDUCATION, CULTURE, AND PRISONS

Goodman proposed a model of schooling in which the standard curriculum has no merit
and is replaced by field trips and opportunities in the community (Knapp 1997). He
argues that historically, in primitive societies, children learned incidentally from paying
attention to adults doing their work and other social tasks, instead of being lectured to in
a classroom (Goodman, The Present Moment in Education, 1969).
For Goodman, culture is the set of survivals of past thought, spiritual and scientific
insight, and wonder to be glimpsed in religious and civic occasions, music, art,
architecture, the practice of farming, cooking, child-rearing, and most other jobs and
crafts. However, for Goodman some cultural achievements are higher than others.
(Knapp 1997). He argues that culture must be continually re-appropriated by each
generation and change accordingly, a process which is not always successful. He states,
"if we envisage an animal moving, continually seeing new scenes and meeting new
problems to cope with, it will continually have to make a creative adjustment...And the
environment, for its part, must be amenable to appropriation and selection; it must be
plastic to be changed and meaningful to be known. Sometimes I state my program in
the form, 'How to take on Culture without losing Nature,' but that is already too
abstract." (Goodman, Crazy Hope and Finite Experiences, 1994, p. 51)
Goodman argues that prisons should be abolished, as they create more crime than they
prevent, they degrade the inmates, guards, and the community, and they are based on
racism. As such, he argues that all prisoners are political prisoners, since prison returns
people to Hobbes state of nature. (Goodman, Attica, 1971)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
* Paul Goodman wrote over forty books. A full bibliography of materials by and about
him would run well past one thousand entries (see "ADAM AND HIS WORK: a
Bibliography of Sources by and about Paul Goodman (1911-1972)" by Tom Nicely,
Scarecrow Press '79), including many books of poetry several plays and countless
stories.
Bookchin, Murray. "Theses on Libertarian Municipalism," in THE ANARCHIST PAPERS,

(ed.) Dimitros I. Roussopoulos. Montreal: Black Rose, 1986, p. 10.
Ellerby, J. "The World of Paul Goodman." ANARCHY, Vol 11. Jan, 1962: 1-19.
Epstein, J. "Paul Goodman in Retrospect." COMMENTARY. Vol 65:2.Feb, 1978: 70-3.
Goodman, Paul. The Black Flag of Anarchism. HIT AND RUN PAMPHLET SERIES, no. 1.
London: Kropotkins Lighthouse Publications, 1968.
Goodman, Paul. CRAZY HOPE AND FINITE EXPERIENCE: FINAL ESSAYS OF PAUL
GOODMAN. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1994
Goodman, Paul. Notes on Decentralization. DISSENT. Autumn, 1964.
Goodman, Paul. The Present Moment in Education. NYRB. April 10, 1969.
Goodman, Paul. Responsibility of Scientists. NYRB. April 11, 1968.
Goodman, Paul. Some Remarks on War Spirit. DRAWING THE LINE: A PAMPHLET.
Random House Edition. 1962.
Knapp, Gregory. THE STATE IS THE GREAT FORGETTER: REXROTH AND GOODMAN AS
ANTECEDENTS OF CULTURAL ECOLOGY, POLITICAL ECOLOGY, AND THE NEW CULTURAL
GEOGRAPHY. Paper presented at the 93d Annual Meeting of the Association of American
Geographers, Fort Worth. April 2, 1997.
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~gwk/general/publications/AAG97.html accessed 4/30/03.
Miller, Michael Vincent. Paul Goodman: The Poetics of Theory. in NATURE HEALS: THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ESSAYS OF PAUL GOODMAN. (ED) Taylor Stoehr.
http://www.gestalt.org/goodman.htm. accessed 4/30/03.
Stoehr, Taylor (ed.). CRAZY HORSE AND FINITE EXPERIENCE: FINAL ESSAYS OF PAUL
GOODMAN. Jossey-Bass Publishers, California, 1994.
Stoehr, Taylor (ed.). CREATOR SPIRIT COME! LITERARY ESSAYS OF PAUL GOODMAN.
1977.
Stoehr, Taylor (ed.). DRAWING THE LINE: THE POLITICAL ESSAYS OF PAUL GOODMAN. NY:
Free Life Editions, 1977; NY: E.P. Dutton, 1979.
Stoehr, Taylor. "Growing-Up Absurd Again: Re-Reading Paul Goodman in the Nineties."
DISSENT Vol. 37. Fall, 1990. pg. 486- 94.
Stoehr, Taylor. HERE NOW NEXT: PAUL GOODMAN AND THE ORIGINS OF GESTALT
THERAPY. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Ward, Colin. "Paul Goodman's Legacy." TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT. 30:14.Mar 2,

1973. pg.19.
ANARCHISM IS GOOD
1. AUTHORITY AND POWER IS ALWAYS BAD, ANARCHISTS SEEK TRUE FREEDOM
Paul Goodman, philosopher, The Black Flag of Anarchism. HIT AND RUN PAMPHLET
SERIES, no. 1, 1968. p-np.
Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite proposition: that valuable behavior occurs
only by the free and direct response of individuals or voluntary groups to the conditions
presented by the historical environment. It claims that in most human affairs, whether
political, economic, military, religious, moral, pedagogic, or cultural, more harm than
good results from coercion, top-down direction, central authority, bureaucracy, jails,
conscription, states, pre- ordained standardization, excessive planning, etc. Anarchists
want to increase intrinsic functioning and diminish extrinsic power.
2. VIOLENCE REINFORCES THE AUTHORITARIANISM THAT ANARCHISTS ARE SEEKING TO

END
Nevertheless, despite these differences, anarchists seldom fail to recognize one another,
and they do not consider the differences to be incompatibilities. Consider a crucial
modern problem, violence. Guerilla fighting has been a classical anarchist technique: yet
where, especially in modern conditions, and violent means tends to reinforce centralism
and authoritarianism, anarchists have tended to see the beauty of non-violence.
3. ANARCHISM IS NOT UTOPIAN

Now the anarchist principle is by and large true.' And far from being "utopian" or a
"glorious failure," it has proved itself and won out in many spectacular historical crises.
In the period of mercantilism and patents royal, free enterprise by joint stock companies
was anarchist. The Jeffersonian bill of rights and independent judiciary were anarchist.
Congregational churches were anarchist. Progressive education was anarchist. The free
cities and corporate law in the feudal system were anarchist. At present, the civil rights
movement in the United States has been almost classically decentralist and anarchist.
And so forth, down to details like free access in public libraries. Of course, to later
historians these things do not seem to be anarchist, but in their own time they were all
regarded as such and often literally called such, with the usual dire threats of chaos. But
this relativity of the anarchist principle to the actual situation is of the essence of
anarchism.
4. ANARCHISM IS NOT A STATIC PHILOSOPHY, ITS ADAPTABLE

There cannot be a history of anarchism in the sense of establishing a permanent state of
things called "anarchist." It is always a continual coping with the next situation, and a
vigilance to make sure that past freedoms are not lost and do not turn into the opposite,
as free enterprise turned into wage-slavery and monopoly capitalism, or the
independent judiciary turned into a monopoly of courts, cops, and lawyers, or free
education turned into School Systems.
5. TOP-DOWN AUTHORITY AND HIERARCHY ALWAYS IS BAD, ONLY TRUE ANARCHIST

FREEDOM OFFERS HOPE
Paul Goodman, philosopher, LIKE A CONQUERED PROVINCE, 1965. p-np.
By and large, let me say, this rhetoric has been true. Anarchism is grounded in a rather
definite social-psychological hypothesis: that forceful, graceful and intelligent behaviour
occurs only when there is an unforced and direct response to the physical and social
environment; that in most human affairs, more harm than good results from compulsion,
top-down direction, bureaucratic planning, pre-ordained curricula, jails, conscription,
states. (my emphasis) Sometimes it is necessary to limit freedom, as we keep a child
from running across the highway, but this is usually at the expense of force, grace, and
learning; and in the long run it is usually wiser to remove the danger and simplify the
rules than to hamper the activity.
MUNICIPAL LIBERTARIANISM IS KEY TO

COUNTER APATHY
1. FREE MARKET MANIPULATION MAKES PEOPLE APATHATIC AND DOCILE
Paul Goodman, philosopher, LIKE A CONQUERED PROVINCE, 1965. p-np.
Lack of meaning begins to occur when the immensely productive economy over matures
and lives by creating demand instead of meeting it: when the check of the free market
gives way to monopolies, subsidies, and captive consumers; when the sense of
community vanishes and public goods are neglected and resources despoiled; when
there is made-work (or war) to reduce unemployment; and when the measure of
economic health is not increasing well-being but abstractions like Gross National Product
and the rate of growth.""Human beings tend to be excluded when a logistic style
becomes universally pervasive, so that values and data that cannot be standardized and
programmed are disregarded; when function is adjusted to the technology rather than
technology to function; when technology is confused with autonomous science, which is
a good in itself, rather than being limited by political and moral prudence; when there
develops an establishment of managers and experts who license and allot resources,
and which deludes itself that it alone knows the right method and is omni competent.
Then common folk become docile clients, maintained by sufferance, or they are treated
as deviant.
2. LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM EMPOWERS THE PUBLIC AND REOPENS THE PUBLIC

SPHERE, WHICH IS DIRECTLY IN OPPOSITION TO STATISM
Murray Bookchin, social ecologist, LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM THE NEW MUNICIPAL
AGENDA. 1997. p-np.
The immediate goal of a libertarian municipalist agenda is not to exercise sudden and
massive control by representatives and their bureaucratic agents over the existing
economy; its immediate goal is to reopen a public sphere in flat opposition to statism,
one that allows for maximum democracy in the literal sense of the term, and to create in
embryonic form the institutions that can give power to a people generally. If this
perspective can be initially achieved only by morally empowered assemblies on a limited
scale, at least it will be a form of popular power that can, in time, expand locally and
grow over wide regions. That its future is unforeseeable does not alter the fact that it
development depends upon the growing consciousness of the people, not upon the
growing power of the state -- and how that consciousness, concretized in high
democratic institutions, will develop may be an open issue but it will surely be a political
adventure.
3. LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM PROMOTES CIVIC LIFE WHICH IS KEY TO TRUE

DEMOCRACY
Murray Bookchin, social ecologist, LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM THE NEW MUNICIPAL

AGENDA. 1997. p-np.
In short, it is through the municipality that people can reconstitute themselves from
isolated monads into an innovative body politic and create an existentially vital, indeed
protoplasmic civic life that has continuity and institutional form as well as civic content. I
refer here to the block organizations, neighborhood assemblies, town meetings, civic
confederations, and the public arenas for discourse that go beyond such episodic, singleissue demonstrations and campaigns, valuable as they may be to redress to redress
social injustices. But protest alone is not enough; indeed, it is usually defined by what
protestors oppose, not by the social changes they may wish to institute. To ignore the
irreducible civic unit of politics and democracy is to play chess without a chessboard, for
it is on this civic plane that the long-range endeavor of social renewal must eventually
be played out...
LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM
REINFORCES THE STATE
1. ARGUING IN SUPPORT OF THE GREEK POLIS AND LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM IS NOT
ANARCHIST OR IN FAVOR OF DEMOCRACY. THE CITY-STATE IS NOT AN ANTI-STATE
Bob Black, Anarchist academic theorist. ANARCHY AFTER LEFTISM. 1997. p-np.
Bookchin is a statist: a city-statist. A city-state is not an anti-state. Contemporary
Singapore, for instance, is a highly authoritarian city-state. The earliest states, in Sumer,
were city-states. The city is where the state originated. The ancient Greek cities were all
states, most of them not even democratic states in even the limited Athenian sense of
the word. Rome went from being a city-state to an empire without ever being a nationstate. The city-states of Renaissance Italy were states, and only a few of them, and not
for long, were in any sense democracies. Indeed republican Venice, whose independence
lasted the longest, startlingly anticipated the modern police-state (Andrieux 1972: 4555). Taking a worldwide comparative-historical perspective, the pre-industrial city,
unless it was the capital of an empire or a nation-state (in which case it was directly
subject to a resident monarch) was always subject to an oligarchy. There has never been
a city which was not, or which was not part of, a state. And there has never been a state
which was not a city or else didn't incorporate one or more cities. The pre-industrial city
(what Gideon Sjoberg calls --- a poor choice of words --- the "feudal city") was the
antithesis of democracy, not to mention anarchy: Central to the stratification system
that pervades all aspects of the feudal city's social structure --- the family, the economy,
religion, education, and so on --- is the pre-eminence of the political organization.... We
reiterate: the feudal, or preindustrial civilized, order is dominated by a small, privileged
upper stratum. The latter commands the key institutions of the society. Its higher
echelons are most often located in the capital, the lower ranks residing in the smaller
cities, usually the provincial capitals (Sjoberg 1960: 220).
2. DEMOCRATIC DECISION MAKING IS STILL AUTHORITARIAN

Even democratic decision-making is jettisoned as authoritarian. "Democratic rule is still
rule," [L. Susan] Brown warns.... Opponents of democracy as "rule" to the contrary
notwithstanding, it describes the democratic dimension of anarchism as a majoritarian
administration of the public sphere. Accordingly, Communalism seeks freedom rather
than autonomy in the sense that I have counterpoised them (17, 57).
Moving along from his mind-boggling deduction that democracy is democratic.
Bookchin further fusses that "pejorative words like dictate and rule properly refer to
the silencing of dissenters, not to the exercise of democracy" (18). Free speech is a fine
thing, but it's not democracy. You can have one without the other. The Athenian
democracy that the Dean venerates, for instance, democratically silenced the dissenter
Socrates by putting him to death. Anarchists "jettison" democratic decision-making, not
because it's authoritarian, but because it's statist. "Democracy" means "rule by the
people." "Anarchy" means "no rule." There are two different words because they refer to
(at least) two different things.
3. DEMOCRACY IS STATISMS LAST STAND

But another theme with at least as respectable an anarchist pedigree holds that
democracy is not an imperfect realization of anarchy but rather statism's last stand.
Many anarchists believe, and many anarchists have always believed, that democracy is
not just a grossly deficient version of anarchy, it's not anarchy at all. At any rate, no
"direct face-to-face democracy" (57) that I am aware of has delegated to comrade
Bookchin (mandated, revocable, and responsible to the base) the authority to pass or
fail anarchists which he enjoys to pass or fail college students.
4. LIBERTARIAN MUNICIPALISM IS NOT A DIRECT DEMOCRACY AND IS NOT IN OPPOSITION

TO STATISM
By some quirk of fate, Bookchin's minimal, believe-it-or-else anarchist creed just
happens to be his creed. It also happens to be deliriously incoherent. A "confederation
of decentralized municipalities" contradicts "direct democracy," as a confederation is at
best a representative, not a direct, democracy. It also contradicts "an unwavering
opposition to statism" because a city-state or a federal state is still a state. And by
requiring, not a "libertarian communist society," only a vision of one, the Dean clearly
implies that there is more to such a society than obedience to the first Three
Commandments --- but exactly what more, he isn't saying.
GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY IS BAD

1. GESTALT THEORYS FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS ARE VAGUE
Gaetano Kanzizsa, psychology professor in Milano Italy, PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY,
1994.
p. 149.
Gestalt theory has been the object of many misinterpretations and its theses have been
often oversimplified or trivialized. The largest part of these misinterpretations can be
attributed partly to superficial knowledge of the theory, often diffused only indirectly in
simplified works or in synthetic chapters of larger handbooks, and partly to preconceived
hostility, sometimes elicited by the aggressive self-presentation of the Gestaltists, who
defended ideas that contradicted widely-accepted theoretical and methodological
doctrines of those times. However, part of the responsibility must be attributed to the
Gestaltists themselves, who left vague some of their fundamental concepts. Consider
the notion of Pragnanz, never defined unambiguously by the Gestaltists. The Gestaltists
also took simple hypotheses for empirically-founded facts, as in the cases of the
tendency to singularity and of the primacy of the "law of the whole" in perceptual
organization. As I have discussed above, these hypotheses have been falsified
experimentally several times.
2. UNLIKE THE PSYCHOANALYTIC TECHNIQUE, GESTALT THERAPY DISEMPOWERS THE

PATIENT
Judy Robinson. Towards a State of Being Able to Play. BRITISH JOURNAL OF GUIDANCE
& COUNSELING. January 1991. p. 44.
An irony ensued. By his directiveness and charisma, Perls (and many Gestalt therapists
who followed him) tended to be extremely powerful people, and in this to create the
very aura of expertise he attacked in psychoanalysts. Furthermore, through the rule of
free association and the value allowed to silence in psychoanalytic technique, the
patient does in fact retain considerable power in psychodynamic work: the material she
or he brings effectively controls the session. Similarly, the value put on the secure frame
and boundaries do to a considerable extent protect the client within the `therapeutic
space' (Noonan, 1983). By the lack of secure frame, Gestalt clients can be left subject to
the moods and whims of the therapist, in relation to length of session, regularity of
meetings, etc. Gestaltists such as Yontev (1988) are now pleading the need for change
in this area.
3. GESTALT PSYCHOLOGISTS REJECT GOODMAN AND PERLS IDEAS

Janie Rhyne, therapist and prof of nonverbal communication and art therapy, AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF ART THERAPY, August 1990. p. 2.
The troublesome issue of either Gestalt psychology or Gestalt therapy originated in 1951
with the publication of Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human
Personality, co-authored by Frederick Perls, Ralph F. Hefferline, and Paul Goodman. None
of these men claimed to be experimental research psychologists; Perls was a

psychoanalyst, Hefferline was an experimental clinical psychologist, and Paul Goodman
was a writer. They did, however, claim the name of an established and illustrious school
of research psychology. In a recent interview (Rosenfeld, 1978a), Laura Perls says that
she had thought in 1950 when the book was in process that by using the word Gestalt
"we could get into difficulties. They (the Gestalt psychologists) felt that 'Gestalt' was in
their domain and that it was mainly confined to perceptual psychology" (p. 20). That
criticism was rejected by Peals, Hefferline, and Goodman, but Laura was right. Gestalt
psychologists completely rejected the Gestalt therapists on a number of counts. They
didn't consider the authors to be respectable academicians; they felt that Perls's and
Goodman's application of Gestalt psychology was a misuse of their concepts; they didn't
believe in psychoanalysis and Perls was an analyst, and, to top it off, Goodman wrote a
scathing critique of the Gestalt psychologists, was an anarchist, and both he and Perls
were in therapy with Wilhelm Reich.
ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA
MARXIST REVOLUTIONARY AND

ECONOMIST (1928- 1967)
If historys best leaders are often those who were reluctant at first to become leaders,
and who, as leaders, fought valiantly to close the gap between leaders and the led, Che
Guevara must stand as one of the Twentieth Centurys most impressive political figures.
Although the Cuban Revolution and its subsequent fruits are mired in controversy, even
those who despise Fidel Castro and question more recent Cuban policies have a silent
admiration for the man known most often as simply Che.
Guevaras short career as a statesman in Cuba was accompanied by volumes upon

volumes of writing on every subject relevant to a fledgling revolutionary government.
His philosophical views are filled with the honesty of a non-philosopher. His economic
observations reveal a calculated understanding of capitalism and the steps necessary to
move beyond that system. And in a school of thought, Marxism, often known for its
purposive ignorance of morality, Che Guevara maintained that morality is what socialism
is all about.
Life And Work

Not a Cuban by birth, Ernesto Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928. Little is known of
his upbringing or youth, and most written history about him begins upon his graduation
from medical school in 1953. Ches intelligence allowed him to get through rigorous
medical training, but his spirit of adventure would delay medical practice indefinitely as
he set out to travel the Americas.
Latin America after World War II was a hotbed of mass politics. Previously
disenfranchised masses, both urban working class and rural indigenous people, were
beginning to challenge the undemocratic and economically despotic regimes of the day.
While in school, Che probably learned radical politics from other students. After
graduation, Che would witness the most brutal of political battles first hand.
In 1954, Che was living in Guatemala. Pro-democracy forces had succeeded in electing
Jacobo Arbenz as Guatemalas first democratically elected president. But Arbenzs views
and the masses with which he chose to ally himself earned him the wrath not only of
totalitarians in that country, but also of the American Central Intelligence Agency. The
CIA engineered a coup which overthrew the democratic government. Involved in the
heat of that struggle, the young Che witnessed American democracy promotion in the
form of covert brutality. Himself a target, Che fled to Mexico. While in Mexico, he met a
small group of Cuban exiles led by Fidel Castro.
Castros band had been gathering support to re-enter the battle against the U.S-puppet
government in Cuba led by Fulgencio Batista, who had made the mistake of granting
amnesty to the Cuban revolutionaries, releasing them from prison in an effort to
demonstrate his good nature to the world. In December of 1956, on board the yacht
Granma, the Cubans returned to their homeland, this time with a troop doctor, Guevara.
He would eventually become a commander of the Rebel Army.
Batistas regime fell on January 1, 1959, and the first successful anti-capitalist revolution
in the Western Hemisphere had succeeded. Over the next seven years, Che Guevara
held whatever post he was asked by his friend Fidel Castro to fill, including president of
the National Bank, Minister of Industry, and United Nations representative. During this
time, he began to plan out an economic transition to socialism, which would eventually
become the official economic system of the island in 1965. As part of this transition, Che
wrote many pamphlets and books, and also made speeches across Cuba encouraging
adoption of his views on volunteer work, the replacement of material incentives with
work as a social duty, measures designed to decrease bureaucracy, and programs of
literacy and youth participation. These struggles made it possible for Cuba to achieve a
standard of living unparalleled in Latin America. They also made Che begin to feel the
old wanderlust, filling him with a desire to travel across the Americas again, promoting
democratic socialism. He resigned all his posts in 1965 and left Cuba to participate in
other struggles.
After first spending some time in Africa, in the Congo, Che went to Bolivia. There, fate
caught up with him, and in October of 1967, the same CIA hed witnessed usurping
democracy in Guatemala engineered his own capture, torture and execution by the
Bolivian Army. Fidel Castro once observed that the Bolivians hid Ches body after they
murdered him, so that people would not make journeys to his grave in order to pay
homage to his revolutionary legacy. So, said Castro, the people instead pay homage to
him everywhere.
Building Socialist Consciousness

Most arguments against socialism begin with the assumption that capitalism is human
nature, that humans are inherently greedy and that the best way for society to function
is in a way which reflects these realities. The experience of revolutionaries attempting to
build socialism after a revolution, in fact, often validates these assumptions: They find
that workers still respond to the promise of material rewards, or the threat of material
depravation, more readily than appeals to community responsibility.
Che Guevara took these realities head-on. From the beginning, he admitted that building
socialism was a moral and psychological project as much as it was a technical or
economic one. In fact, he argued that the moral case for socialism was a necessary
prerequisite to any kind of genuine structural changes. True, the structures had to be in
place, but without a new understanding of community, workers and citizens would not
understand the potential benefits of working together to create an economy based on
human needs rather than profits. Because of this, he argued that a new person must
be the ultimate objective of revolutions.
This position represents a slightly unorthodox modification of traditional Marxism. Marx

and Engels were dialectical materialists; dialectical materialism holds, among other
things, that human consciousness, the world of ideas and theories, is ultimately
secondary to the material arrangements of society. As long as the material base of
society is capitalist, in that it primarily features private and competitive ownership of
the means of production, the social relations of human cons3iousness will also be
individualist and competitive. But they reasoned that once the working class overthrew
capitalism and established public, common ownership, then consciousness would follow
suit, meaning that over time people would become more cooperative and work for the
benefit of society naturally.
Che did not disagree with dialectical materialism; he simply argued that the moral or
psychological transition would have to be explicit. And he saw no contradiction with
orthodox Marxism in this belief, since the consciousness which called for the mindset
shift itself was obviously a product of socialist revolutions opening up on the historical
horizon. In other words, he was neither violating the Marxist laws of history, nor placing
the cart before the horse by emphasizing the moral component of socialism. He was
simply emphasizing it in response to the specific material conditions faced by his people:
They had, after all, lived under several generations of capitalism.
Socialism had to be made to work quickly in Cuba, since the potential for a counterrevolution was high given the relative proximity of Cuba to the United States, and the
large number of Cubans who, having had their wealth confiscated by the Revolution, had
moved to the U.S. to wait for the chance to get it back. Thus, Che emphasized that
people needed to be taught a basic bargain they were making with the Cuban state: The
community will provide you with the means to meet your needs. We will educate you,
provide food, shelter and leisure, and protect you from exploitation, racism and counterrevolution. In return, we ask that you fulfill your social duty and work as hard as you can,
since the work you are doing will benefit you and all other Cubans.
Although this moral argument was made pragmatically in me face of real material
challenges, several general philosophical arguments emerge from it. First, humans are
not fixed and immutable, regardless of how selfish or greedy we appear to be. Over
time, and given the right conditions and leadership, a new consciousness can emerge
which emphasizes the more cooperative and self-sacrificing sides of human nature.
These tendencies must be cultivated in response to the temptations to be ruthless or
selfish when times become difficult.
Second, in order for this consciousness to become a political reality, we must, at every
opportunity, erase the distinctions between leaders and followers. Under capitalism,
those who do mental labor are treated better than those who do physical labor. Che
Guevara argued that all humans can benefit from an equal dose of both types of labor;
through such voluntary work, through worker-managed workplaces, and through
encouraging elected and appointed leaders themselves to participate in manual labor,
the distinction between mental and physical work will vanish, and with it the divisions
between the governors and the masses.
The third philosophical concept implicit in Che Guevaras vision of change is that rational
planning of society is both feasible and necessary. Supporters of capitalism call for
allowing the market to govern production and distribution. But Che saw such
arguments as mystifications; that is, to point to some metaphysical concept called the
market was to remove the basic relationship between humans and their world, and
between fellow humans themselves. He argued that when capitalists say the market is
good or the market is bad, they are masking the truth Marx himself pointed out in
~a~1IaI: That reality consists of human material interaction in the most basic sense,
good treatment or ill treatment. Che believed that society could be rationally and
democratically planned to reflect what humans wanted, not what the so-called market
wanted.
Che believed that revolutionaries who ignored these philosophical truths were doomed
to failure. Many was the revolution, he wrote, that failed because its adherents believed
material changes were sufficient, or that the people could be made into socialists at the
point of a gun or through some mystical brainwashing techniques. What was needed
was genuine education in the practices of economic democracy and self-management.
Without these things, humans would always revert back to their previous historical
selves--capitalistic, individualist, hostile and indifferent.
Are Ches Ideas Feasible?

Very little has been written specifically against the ideas of Che Guevara. One might
suppose the indifference reflects the general Western ignorance of Third World thinkers
and leaders, and one might also wonder if pro-capitalist writers have bothered to read
Che at all. But the same questions which haunt the theory of socialism in general can be
applied to Ches ideas specifically. To begin with, is it really possible to educate people
away from capitalism? Capitalists dont think so, and looking at Cuban society today,
many might agree they have a point: Cubans are increasingly turning to an underground
economy, or leaving Cuba altogether, or calling for the overthrow of Castros socialist
regime.
But, ironically, defenders of Che Guevara say the problems in Cuba actually result from a
turning away from Ches plans and suggestions since his untimely death. After Che left
Cuba, many governmental officials, relieved that their comrade would no longer be
bothering them about the seemingly reasonable privileges they acquired, began
collecting those privileges in droves. The idea of self-management was rejected in favor
of dependence upon the now-dead Soviet Union. Volunteerism, self-management and
community leadership gave way to a Stalinist despotism far more destructive to Cuban
society than the loud voices and occasional sabotage of anti-Castro Cubans in Miami.
Today, economists and activists who visit Cuba say that many of Ches ideas have been
resurrected by the considerable number of still-faithful socialists on the island. This,
combined with some limited economic liberalization, has resulted in increased growth
and decreased crime. Ultimately, the philosophical battle between capitalism and
socialism is still being played out on the world stage, although the spotlight is now on
Cuba alone.

Debaters who face opponents advocating socialism now have a new weapon in their
arsenal: They can read evidence written by Che Guevara saying that a consciousness
shift must explicitly occur alongside any economic changes made by socialism. Without
such changes, any revolution is doomed to fail.
But Che's real relevance for debate is still on the pro-socialism side. His indictment of
the metaphysicalization of the market and the hypocrisy of imperialism make good
rhetorical and analytical tools for critiques of modem society. Then, his vision of a
volunteristic, democratic, self-managed community provide the alternative. It is
important for debaters who are interested in these types of arguments to be prepared to
proudly defend utopian speculation. Debaters should point out that all visionaries seem
unrealistic at a certain point in history, but that history often vindicates the visionaries in
the final analysis.
Che Guevara would not accept being labeled utopian, since he was writing about what
he saw happening before his very eyes. But he willingly accepted the label of a visionary
romantic motivated chiefly by a compassion for humanity. Without such romantics,
debaters might suggest, the world will remain a gloomy place.
Bibliography
Guevara, Ernesto Che. THE BOLIVIAN DIARIES (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1995).
. and Fidel Castro. TO SPEAK THE TRUTH (New York, Pathfinder

Press, 1992). A
. NEW SOCIETY: REFLECTIONS FOR TODAYS WORLD (Melbourne,

Ocean
Press, 1991).
. CHE GUEVARA AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION: WRITINGS AND

SPEECHES OF ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA (Sydney: Pathfinder Press Asia/Oceans, 1987).
. CHE GUEVARA ON GUERRILLA WARFARE (New York: Praeger,

1961).
. CHE GUEVARA ON REVOLUTION (Coral Gables: University of

Miami Press,
1969).
. CHE GUEVARA SPEAKS: SELECTED SPEECHES AND WRITINGS

(New
York: Merit, 1967).
. EPISODES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR (New York: International

Publishers, 1968).
Tablada, Cabs. CHE GUEVARA: ECONOMICS AND POLITICS IN THE TRANSITION TO

SOCIALISM (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1990).
Prado Salmon, Gary. THE DEFEAT OF CHE GUEVARA: MILITARY RESPONSE TO GUERRILLA
CHALLENGE IN BOLIVIA (New York: Praeger, 1990).
Gonzalez, Luis J. THE GREAT REBEL (New York: Grove Press, 1969).
THE LEGACY OF CHE GUEVARA (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977).
Neimark, Anne E. CHE!: LATIN AMERICAS LEGENDARY GUERRILLA LEADER (New York: LB.
Lippincott, 1989).
A CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT TOWARDS

SOCIALISM IS NECESSARY
1. MUST BUILD A COMMUNAL CONSCIOUSNESS FOR SOCIALISM TO SUCCEED
Che Guevara, revolutionary economist. Socialism and Man in Cuba. A NEW SOCIETY,
1991, p. 216. The pipe dream that socialism can be achieved with the help of the dull
instruments left to us by capitalism (the commodity as the economic cell, profitability,
individual material interest as a lever, etc.) can lead into a blind alley. And you wind up
there after having traveled a long distance with many crossroads, and it is hard to figure
out just where you took the wrong turn. Meanwhile, the economic foundation that has
been laid has done its work of undermining the development of consciousness. To build
communism it is necessary, simultaneous with the new material foundations, to build
the new man.
2. FORGING NEW CONSCIOUSNESS IS ESSENTIAL FOR SOCIALISM

Carbos Tablada, Cuban economist. ECONOMICS AND POLITICS IN THE TRANSITION TO
SOCIALISM, 1990, p. 70.
Che thought the transformation of human consciousness should begin in the opening
phase of the period of transition from capitalism to communism. He thought creation of
the new social consciousness required as much effort as that devoted to developing
socialisms material base. He saw consciousness as an active element, a material force,
an engine for developing the material and technical base.
3. CONSCIOUSNESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MATERIAL INCENTIVES

The Guevara, revolutionary economist, in Carbos Tablada. CHE GUEVARA: ECONOMICS
AND POLITICS IN THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM, 1990, p. 92.
It is not a matter of how many kilograms of meat one has to eat, nor of how many times
a year someone can go to the beach, nor how many pretty things from abroad you might
be able to buy with present-day wages. It is a matter of making the individual feel more
complete, with much more internal richness and much more responsibility.
4. MUST ABANDON MATERIAL GREED FOR SOCIALIST CONSCIOUSNESS TO WORK

Che Guevara, revolutionary economist, in Carlos Tablada. ECONOMICS AND POLITICS IN
THE TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM, 1990, pp 192-3.
As for the presence of material interest in an individualized form, we recognize it
(although fighting it and attempting to speed up its elimination through education) and
apply it in our norms of hourly work plus bonuses, and wage penalties for nonfulfillment
of these norms. We believe that in economics this kind of lever quickly takes on an
existence of its own and then imposes its strength on the relations between men.
In our view, direct material incentives and consciousness are contradictory terms.
(ellipses in original)
5. SOCIALIST CONSCIOUSNESS SHIFT WILL BE GRADUAL BUT REAL

Che Guevara, revolutionary economist. A New Culture of Work. A NEW SOCIETY, 1991,
p. 123. But in social processes, changes in men that appear abrupt actually come about
little by little. At a given moment it appears that there may have been a great
commotion and a single great change. But that change has been gestating among men
day by day, and sometimes generation by generation.
CAPITALISM IMPEDES GLOBAL PEACE

AND HUMAN PROGRESS
1. CAPITALISM BLOCKS HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Che Guevara, revolutionary economist. TO SPEAK THE TRUTH, 1992, pp. 132-3.
Furthermore, we state once more that the scars left by colonialism that impede the
development of the
peoples are expressed not only in political relations. The so-called deterioration of the
terms of trade is nothing but the result of unequal exchange between countries
producing raw materials and industrial countries, which dominate markets and impose
the illusory justice of equal exchange of values. So long as the economically dependent
peoples do not free themselves from the capitalist markets and, in a firm bloc with the
socialist countries, impose new relations between the exploited and the exploiters, there
will be no solid economic development. In certain cases there will be retrogression, in
which the weak countries will fall under the political domination of the imperialists and
colonialists.
2. IMPERIALISM CAUSES RACISM AND OPPRESSION

Che Guevara, revolutionary economist. TO SPEAK THE TRUTH, 1992, p. 139.
Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the
color of their skin; those who let the murderers of Blacks remain free, protecting them,
and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate
rights as free men--how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of
freedom? We understand that today this assembly is not in a position to ask for
explanations of these acts. It must be clearly established, however, that the government
of the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetrator of
exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against a large part of
its own population.
3. EXPLOITATIVE CONDITIONS DESTROY TRUE JUSTICE

We are demanding justice; but not a justice subject to the fallacious interpretations we
have so often seen
prevail at international meetings. the people, oppressed by generations of exploitation.
4. WESTERN IMPERIALISM ENTRENCHES SLAVERY AND EXPLOITATION Che Guevara,

revolutionary economist. TO SPEAK THE TRUTH, 1992, p. 129.
Our free eyes open now on new horizons and can see what yesterday, in our condition
as colonial slaves, we could not observe: that Western civilization disguises behind its
showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals. That is the only name that can be applied
to those who have gone to fulfill such humanitarian tasks in the Congo. A carnivorous
animal that feeds on unarmed peoples. That is what imperialism does to men. That is
what distinguishes the imperial white
CAPITALISM DESTROYS INDIVIDUAL

WELL-BEING AND LIBERTY
1. CAPITALISM DESTROYS INDIVIDUALISM
1991, p. 215.
In capitalist society man is controlled by a pitiless law usually beyond his
comprehension. The alienated human specimen is tied to society as a whole by an
invisible umbilical cord: the law of value. This law acts upon all aspects of his life,
shaping his course and destiny.
2. CAPITALISM REQUIRES THAT MANY SUFFER FOR THE BENEFIT OF ONE

1991, p. 215. The laws of capitalism, which are blind and invisible to ordinary people, act
upon the individual without his being aware of it. He sees only the vastness of a
seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist
propagandists who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller--whether or
not it is true--about the possibilities of success. The amount of poverty and suffering
required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the
accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not
always possible for the popular forces to make these concepts clear.
3. EQUALITY IS MEANINGLESS UNDER CAPITALIST RELATIONS

This definition must provide for the elimination of all forms of discrimination and all
differences, even those arising from so-called equal treatment. Treatment must be fair,
and fairness, in this context, is not equality; fairness is the inequality needed to enable
the exploited peoples to attain an acceptable standard of living.
4. LEGAL RIGHTS ARE MEANINGLESS UNDER CAPITALISM

Because so long as this situation persists and justice remains the tool of a few powerful
interests, legal interpretations will continue to be tailored to the convenience of the
oppressor powers and it will be difficult to ease the prevailing tension: a situation that
entails real dangers for humanity.
5. LEGAL AGREEMENTS ARE MEANINGLESS TO SOLVE OPPRESSION

If all the peoples who live under precarious economic conditions and who depend on
foreign powers for some vital aspects of their economy and for their economic and social
structure are capable of resisting--coolly, although in the heat of the moment--the
temptations offered them and imposing a new type of relationship here, then humanity
will have taken a step forward. If, on the other hand, the groups of underdeveloped
countries, lured by the siren song of the interests of the developed powers who profit
from their backwardness, compete futility among themselves for crumbs from the tables
of the worlds mighty, and break the unity of numerically superior forces; or if they are
not capable of insisting on clear agreements, without escape clauses open to capricious
misinterpretations; or if they rest content with agreements that can simply be violated at
will by the powerful, then our efforts will have been to no avail and the lengthy
deliberations of this conference will result in nothing more than innocuous documents
and files for the international bureaucracy to guard zealously: tons of printed paper and
kilometers of magnetic tape recording the opinions expressed by the participants. And
the world will stay as it is.
LANI GUINIER
Lani Guinier was unjustly passed over in one of the most highly publicized confirmation
hearings ever. Thats not just me being partisan. Guinier was unjustly denied her rightful
post as Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights because, the right wing said, she
believed in quotas for minority hiring in order to make up for the problems caused by
systematic racism for the past 200 years in this country, including slavery. She was, they
claimed, a quota queen.
Just one problem: Guinier had never advocated quota-based hiring. In fact, she
OPPOSED quotas they went contrary to her notion of confirmative action, Guiniers
version of affirmative action. That didnt stop the hounds once they had been released,
though.
As the woman herself said in a subsequent interview on the topic: Because we are in a
sound-bite culture, we define you by no more than three or four words-in my case, two:
Quota Queen. It had nothing to do with what I had written, but it was a very useful,
alliterated metaphor that served partisan purposes at the time.
What do we learn from reading the work of Lani Guinier? What do we learn from the fact
that her nomination was torpedoed?
To answer the first question, we get to inspect the ideas of one of the most forwardlooking thinkers on race in America. We get to watch as one of the best legal minds in
America grapples with issues to which there are no easy solution: to what extent does
the pact inform today? What kind of remedies are effective for centuries-long
discrimination? How can we ensure those remedies dont inflame the problem, or create
new forms of discrimination?
These are questions without easy answers. As for the second proposition -- What do we
learn from the fact that her nomination was torpedoed? we learn that being an
insightful critical thinker instead of a partisan demagogue is a sure way to avoid public
service at a high level.
As Mark Tushnet has written:
Guinier's nomination to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division foundered
because she understood those tensions and her work makes them apparent. For
understandable political reasons, the politicians who control the nomination process
preferred to keep the tensions under wraps. For them, Guinier's intellectual honesty
made her politically unacceptable.
Guinier continues to teach law at Harvard Law School, write manifold articles on the
subject of race in the United States, and publish books.
GUINIERS THOUGHT
Guinier doesnt just talk about affirmative action far from it. She examines all kinds of
issues relevant to racial politics in this country. Lets start with what white citizens of this
country take as a given: voting rights. Voting rights are the essential element of a
democracy.
After all, if you cant vote, it isnt a true democracy to you, right? During and prior to the
Civil War, can it be said (really) that slaves were living in a functional democracy? How
about a non-member of the communist party under the Soviet Union, which also had
elections? Any democratic theory worth its salt has to acknowledge that an inability to
vote equals an inability to call ones government a legitimate and functioning
democracy.
Now, it wasnt until the mid-1960s that African Americans had the right to vote. And
even then and immediately thereafter, such a right was not truly meaningful.
In the South (and, to be fair, many places in the North), places dealt with the issue in a
straightforward manner: if you were black, you didnt get to vote. Period. So the first
wave of voting rights laws dealt with these formal exclusions from the franchise: they
FORCED states to allow Black Americans to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made
sure of that.
The thing is, if you go to vote, and some guy has a pit bull that snarls at you every time
you approach the polls do you REALLY have the right to vote? Or, alternatively, if
youre one of the 90 percent of African Americans that voted for Al Gore, and you
headed to the polls in Florida, and Jeb Bushs thuggish state troopers told you to turn
around and drive home do you really have the right to vote?
As you can see, this is far from an issue weve left behind. We had to deal with it in the
LAST presidential election. And depending on how old there are, your parents (and
certainly your grandparents) might remember a time when Black Americans didnt even
have the lip-service right to vote.
So, if the right to vote represents full citizenship, we ought to defend it for minorities.
Plus, it has another value: an instrumental value. You sue your vote to elect people who
will do the things that you want done. You vote for Jesse Ventura because he says hell
battle special interests. You vote for Ralph Nader because he says hell challenge
corporate rule. You vote for Jesse Helms because youre a psychotic racist (hey, it takes
all kinds).
Again, though, imagine you are a member of a minority group (and maybe you are): are
your interests being taken into account? Since white folks are the majority in many
places, the votes of minorities can be trumped by the White Folks Vote. Hence,
minorities often have a problem electing what voting rights law calls "representatives of
their choice. After all, white people keep electing the aforementioned Mr. Helms despite
the fact that the Black man who keeps running against him, Harvey Gantt, is an
excellent candidate who is notably NOT insane.
The Voting Rights Act Amendmnts of 1982 recognized that this was a problem, and
created a right to select representatives of choice. The only question was how to
actualize this? In the past, whites have gerrymandered districts so that minorities
couldnt overwhelm the white majority and elect candidates of choice. What is the
solution? Some suggested establishing "majority-minority" districts so that minorities
would be assured of candidates that reflected their interests.
As Tushnet notes, this turned out to be something between a very bad thing and a
disaster for racial minorities. Particularly as it became easy to use computer technology
to draw district lines, people -- mostly Republicans -- discovered techniques that would
guarantee the election of some members of racial minorities while actually reducing the
chances that the views of those representatives would prevail in the legislature. The
techniques are known in the voting rights field as packing, cracking, and stacking. For
example, you can guarantee the election of a minority representative by packing as
many members of that minority as possible into a single district. The problem is that in
other districts, racial minorities are so few in number that candidates can simply
disregard them. The result is that you get one minority representative, and a slew of
representatives who owe nothing to minority constituents. Cracking and stacking are
more complicated, but they have the same result: the legislature has the "right number"
of minority representatives, and they are regularly outvoted.
The other problem, of course, is that concentrating minorities in certain districts means
that OTHER districts can effectively IGNORE their interests altogether. Something
between a very bad thing and a disaster, indeed.
Enter Lani Guinier.
SOME OF GUINIERS SOLUTIONS

We started out discussing voting rights law not just because its an important subject
that often gets short shrift, but because its just as integral to the thinking of Lani
Guinier as anything else, and that includes affirmative action.
Guinier has many ideas for transformation of the current situation, not all of which
involve modifying affirmative action. Some involve changing the internal decisionmaking structure of state and local legislatures.
For example, a structural reform might be adopted where passing some policies might
require a greater margin than a simple majority it might take a two-thirds majority to
pass policies that could systematically have a negative effect on minorities. There would
be problems with identifying these policies, of course but even requiring a supermajority on all legislation might help minority constituencies. It could provide them a
valuable commodity (a small voting block) where they could trade votes in exchange for
other favorable legislation.
Sound radical? Ever heard of the filibuster in the Senate? Thats an example of how, by
merely threatening a filibuster on a certain bill or resolution, legislators can get
concessions on another. (Give us labor provisions in the FTAA bill, or well filibuster and
block the bill which brings the pork barrel project to your district.) After all, what is a
filibuster but a minority veto enacted by a minority of one, usually Ted Kennedy?
GUINIER AND THE TYRANNY OF THE

MAJORITY
Now, some might say there is nothing more democratic than majority rule. Total majority
rule. And nice as that sounds, it doesnt work that way.
There are a couple of reasons why, the first of which is just logical: if the majority votes
to legalize cannibalism or to legalize discrimination against homosexuals (as my
hometown of Canby, Oregon did in the 1990s) or to do other unconstitutional, stupid
things, there needs to be some check on that abuse. Thats why we have three branches
of government to stop excesses and abuses of power by those who reach past their
intended authority.
The second reason is that those are the principles the Republic was founded on. Guinier
borrows the title of her book from James Madison, whose theory of representative
democracy appealed to "the principle of reciprocity. This topic is covered in great detail
in the Madison essay, but lets review some of the high points here.
People are self-interested. That includes people living in a democracy. They will vote to
advance their own interests.
So, why dont poor people just vote to take all the money from rich people through
taxation? Well, theres the well-established propaganda system, for one thing, but
theres another reason, too: voters and politicians have to think about the long term. Just
because youre in the majority now doesnt guarantee that you will ALWAYS be.
This is one major reason both parties talk about bipartisanship: they want to appeal to
voters of the other political party. Reagan was re-elected primarily with the votes of
traditional Democrats, for example. When youre in power, you dont want to totally
ignore the minority (whether racial, economic, or political) because they may be the
MAJORITY in four years, and youll be in big trouble.
This is especially true in close races or districts where there is an even split in political
opinion. Since every vote counts, every interest group is up for schmoozing even
traditional enemies.
Hence, you see things like former Washington Senator Slade Gorton cozying up to Indian
tribes, even though he spent 30 years trying to screw them sideways in a close
election, every vote counts. Similarly, the tribes dont want to blast Gorton with both
barrels when hes in office, because he controls appropriations money for their
environmental restoration projects, health care projects, etc.
This doesnt always happen that way, though. More often, people like Gorton just ignore
their traditional enemies altogether or worse yet, try to actively undermine their
interests. There is a reason, after all, that Indian tribes hate him so much. (He tried to
take away their fishing rights, crush their economic infrastructure, and abrogate their
constitutionally guaranteed treaty rights).
Guinier recognizes this. Thats why shes so concerned with voting rights reform: if
minorities can be represented in fact, rather than just in name, their interests will be
better served by legislators.
GUINIER AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
As noted above, Guinier's political views in no way support her designation as a "quota
queen." Guinier's books and law review articles support only one conclusion -- she
believes a quota of minorities taken as representatives of the minority races as a whole
will not truly give minorities a fair chance. The best strategy lies in other means.
That means includes continually updating affirmative into new policies that Guinier calls
Confirmative Action. This includes modifying preference policies to consider class so
minorities that are truly disadvantaged get the most preferences, and so poor whites are
also considered in programs like jobs and university admissions.
What does confirmative action entail? It entails a merit-based approach that is

continually evolving. Guinier asks, for example, college administrators, to revamp their
admissions policies based on various factors:
Practicing confirmative action, each institution would, with its specific mission in mind,
regularly review and seek feedback on its admissions program. And it would ask several
important questions to guide such efforts:
Are admissions processes consistent with the institution's purposes? Do they award
opportunity broadly? Do they admit people who demonstrate competence and potential
under a range of relevant measures?
Are the relevant stakeholders involved in helping formulate, give feedback on, and carry
out the criteria that are adopted? Do their decisions support the institution as a public
place?
Are graduates contributing back to the institution and the society it serves?
This continual review process would involve, presumably, seeing what is working and
what is not. This is a flaw Guinier finds in traditional affirmative action.
Her rationale for these reforms is simple. If admissions policies and employment
opportunities are truly to be merit-based, we need to admit that those merit-based
criteria exclude certain people youre not going to get as good grades as other kids,
usually, if you need a 40-hour a week job and/or dont get enough to eat. Hence, Guinier
writes:
So a policy of confirmative action would include economics as a decision calculus, and

would include an assessment of what contributions society as a whole can expect from
the student or worker after the preference policy assists them.
CONCLUSION
Whether you agree or disagree with Lani Guiniers ideas -- and whether you disagree
with her from the left or the right you have to admit her ideas are provocative. People
that are interested in building a more racially just, economically viable future should
check out her work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Connerly, Ward. Chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, BOSTON REVIEW,
December 200/January 2001, http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR25.6/connerly.html,
Guinier, Lani. "Lessons and Challenges of Becoming Gentlemen." NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
REVIEW OF LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE 24, 1998, p. 1-16.
Guinier, Lani. LIFT EVERY VOICE: TURNING A CIVIL RIGHTS SETBACK INTO A NEW VISION
OF SOCIAL JUSTICE. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
Guinier, Lani. "President Clinton's Doubt; Lani Guinier's Certainty." In REBELS IN LAW:
VOICES IN HISTORY OF BLACK WOMEN LAWYERS, edited by J. C. Smith, Jr., Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1998.
Guinier, Lani. "Reframing the Affirmative Action Debate." KENTUCKY LAW JOURNAL 86,
1998, p. 505-525.
Guinier, Lani. Foreword to REFLECTING ALL OF US: THE CASE FOR PROPORTIONAL
REPRESENTATION, by Robert Richie and Steven Hill. Boston: Beacon, 1999.
Guinier, Lani. THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY: FUNDAMENTAL FAIRNESS IN

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY, New York: Free Press, 1994.
Guinier, Lani. "Don't Scapegoat the Gerrymander," THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE,
January 8, 1995, p. 36-37.
Guinier, Lani. "The Triumph of Tokenism: The Voting Rights Act and the Theory of Black
Electoral Success." MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW. Vol. 89, No. 5, March 1991, p. 1077-1154.
Steinberg, Stephen. author of The Ethnic Myth and Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial
Justice in American Thought and Policy BOSTON REVIEW, December 200/January 2001,
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR25.6/steinberg.html, accessed May 1, 2002.
Tushnet, Mark. Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown

University Law Center, BOSTON REVIEW June/September 1994,
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR19.3/tushnet.html, accessed May 1, 2002.
GUINIERS VIEWS ARENT BAD: THE

MEDIA LIES TO US ABOUT THEM
1. THE MEDIA DISTORTS GUINIERS VIEWS TO THE EXTREME
Rob Richie and Jim Naureckas , Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, EXTRA!, July/August
1993, p. 3.
In the media smear campaign against Lani Guinier, Clinton's nominee as assistant
attorney general for civil rights, her views were not only distorted, but in many cases
presented as the exact opposite of her actual beliefs. One of the most prominent themes
of the attack on Guinier was her supposed support for electoral districts shaped to
ensure a black majority -- a process known as "race-conscious districting." An entire oped in the New York Times -- which appeared on the day her nomination was withdrawn
(6/3/93) -- was based on the premise that Guinier was in favor of "segregating black
voters in black-majority districts." In reality, Guinier is the most prominent voice in the
civil rights community challenging such districting. In sharp contrast to her media
caricature as a racial isolationist, she has criticized race-conscious districting (Boston
Review, 9-10/92) because it "isolates blacks from potential white allies" and "suppresses
the potential development of issue-based campaigning and cross-racial coalitions."
2. GUINIER IS THE OPPOSITE OF A QUOTA QUEEN

1993, p. 3.
Another media tactic against Guinier was to dub her a "quota queen," a phrase first used
in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (4/30/93) by Clint Bolick, a Reagan-era Justice Department
official. The racially loaded term combines the "welfare queen" stereotype with the
dreaded "quota," a buzzword that almost killed the 1991 Civil Rights Act. The problem is
that Guinier is an opponent of quotas to ensure representation of minorities. In an article
in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (Spring/89), she stated that "the
enforcement of this representational right does not require legislative set-asides, colorcoded ballots, electoral quotas or 'one black, two votes' remedies." But once the
stereotype was affixed to her, there was seemingly no way she could dispel it:
"Unbelievably, the woman known as the 'quota queen' claimed she did not believe in
quotas," columnist Ray Kerrison wrote in the New York Post (6/4/93).
3. CONSERVATIVES ARE HYPOCRITICAL WHEN THEY CHALLENGE GUINIERS VIEWS

Lani Guinier, Professor of Law at Harvard University, EXTRA!, July/August 1993, p. 3.
No one who had done their homework seriously questioned the fundamentally
democratic nature of "my ideas." Indeed, two conservative columnists, George Will and
Lally Weymouth, both wrote separate columns on the same day in the Washington Post
(7/15/93), praising ideas remarkably similar to mine. Lally Weymouth wrote: "There can't
be democracy in South Africa without a measure of formal protection for minorities."

George Will wrote: "The Framers also understood that stable, tyrannical majorities can
best be prevented by the multiplication of minority interests, so the majority at any
moment will be just a transitory coalition of minorities." In my law review articles I had
expressed exactly the same reservations about unfettered majority rule, about the need
sometimes to disaggregate the majority to ensure fair and effective representation for
minority interests. The difference is that the minority that I used to illustrate my
academic point was not, as it was for Lally Weymouth, the white minority in South Africa.
Nor did I write, as George Will did, about the minority of wealthy landlords in New York
City. I wrote instead about the political exclusion of the black minority in local, county
and municipal governing bodies in America.Yet these same two journalists and many
others condemned me as anti-democratic. Apparently, some of us feel comfortable
providing special protections for wealthy landlords or white South Africans, but we brand
as "divisive" and "radical" the idea of providing similar remedies to include black
Americans, who after centuries of racial oppression are still excluded.
4. THE MEDIA ADMITS THEY ARE BIASED AGAINST GUINIER

1993, p. 3.
How could Guinier's positions be distorted so thoroughly? Part of the problem was simple
laziness: Rather than doing research into Guinier's record, many journalists preferred to
simply repeat the charges of ideologically motivated opponents. When the New York
Times finally devoted an article to her views, rather than to the political firestorm that
raged around them -- on June 4, after the nomination had already been killed -- there still
was not a single quote from any of her writings. "Almost everyone is relying on
reconstructions by journalists and partisans, injecting further distortions into the
process," reporter David Margolick wrote -- "everyone" including himself, he admitted in
an interview with Extra!.
LANI GUINIERS IDEAS ARE GOOD FOR

MULTIRACIAL DEMOCRACY
1. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AIDS DEMOCRACY, AND SHOULD INCLUDE POOR WHITES
Lani Guinier, Professor, Harvard Law School, ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUES STATE OF AMERICA 2000 CONFERENCE, June 14, 2000, p.
np, http://www.minerscanary.org/mainart/confirmative_action.shtml, accessed May 1,
2002.
If we are to move beyond the present polarization in a manner consistent with the
commitments to fairness and equality that both positions endorse, we must more
carefully explore how to measure and what to call merit, and what constitutes fairness
for all, in a multiracial democracy. A first step is to view merit as a functional rather
than generic concept, while keeping firmly in mind the democratic purposes of higher
education and the specific mission of most institutions of higher education. In other
words, we should seek to reconfirm the democratic role of higher education in a
multiracial society by re-connecting admissions processes to the public mission of both
public and private schools. In doing so, we confirm the benefits of affirmative action
but not simply to people of colorby re-casting merit as a practical term that is
intimately connected with each institutions specific mission. That focus, in turn, allows
us to reconsider the relationship between individual merit and operational fairness,
between claims of individual desert based on past opportunities and individual
contributions based on future societal needs. I tentatively call this a process of
confirmative action, because it takes lessons from both the testocracy as well as
affirmative action to confirm a set of experimental and pragmatic actions that begin to
link (ad)mission practices for all students to the broad mission and public character of
higher education in a multiracial democracy.
2. CONFIRMATIVE ACTION IS A COMMITMENT TO DEMOCRACY

Lani Guinier, Professor, Harvard Law School, ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUES STATE OF AMERICA 2000 CONFERENCE, June 14, 2000, p.
np, http://www.minerscanary.org/mainart/confirmative_action.shtml, accessed May 1,
2002.
Our commitment to democratic values benefits from studies like the one at the
University of Michigan, which showcase the experience of people of color and many
women, who carry a commitment to contributing back to those who are less fortunate.
In this fuller accounting of the democratic values of publicly supported institutions, each
of us is then obligated not only to succeed as individuals, but to lift as we climb. Merit
becomes a forward-looking function of what a democratic society needs and values
rather than a fixed, quantifiable and backwards-looking entity that, like ones family tree
or family assets, can be chronicled with the proper instruments. Merit, in other words,
becomes future-oriented and dynamic. Dynamic merit involves a commitment to
distribution of opportunity not only at birth but also through ones life. It is contextual
and resistant to standardized measurement. It is changing and manifests itself

differently depending on how you look at it. It requires modesty in our beliefs about what
we can measure in human beings, even as it demands clarifying and explicitly stating
our institutional objectives.
3. THE CHARGES OF REVERSE RACISM AGAINST GUINIER ARE LUDICROUS

1993, p. 3.
Many commentators painted Guinier as a racial polarizer who implies that "only blacks
can represent blacks," as George Will put it (Newsweek, 6/14/93). And she was
repeatedly charged with believing that only "authentic" blacks counted. But in a
Michigan Law Review article (3/91), Guinier stated that "authentic representatives need
not be black as long as the source of the authority, legitimacy and power base is the
black community." But more important, she was not endorsing the concept of authentic
representation; she was critiquing it, describing it as a "limited empowerment tool."
GUINIERS IDEAS WONT HELP SOLVE

RACISM OR PROMOTE DEMOCRACY
1. GUINIER IGNORES THAT RACISM IS TOO DEEPLY ROOTED FOR HER PROPOSALS
Mark Tushnet, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown
University Law Center, BOSTON REVIEW June/September 1994,
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR19.3/tushnet.html, accessed May 1, 2002.
What is most striking about Guinier's work, given these tensions, is how optimistic and
fundamentally conservative she is. For her, people -- perhaps most particularly whites -have mistakenly seen politics as a zero-sum game, in which what one group wins
necessarily comes at the expense of another group. Instead, she proposes, we ought to
believe -- apparently in the face of the failures of public policy -- that society is not so
racially polarized; public policy could generate gains for everyone. All we need to do,
according to Guinier's optimistic vision, is develop procedures which will allow all of us to
work together to find the policies which will do that. The substantive failures of policy
can be eliminated by following the indirect strategy of using the right procedures. Which
invites the pessimist to reply that the failures of policy show that the principle of
reciprocity really doesn't work on matters of importance to African Americans, and that
those failures must result from a more deeply-rooted racism than Guinier is willing to
acknowledge.
2. GUINIERS IDEAS WERE TRIED AND FAILED 30 YEARS AGO

Ward Connerly, Chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, BOSTON REVIEW,
Thus, it was surprising, and refreshing, to see Susan Sturm and Lani Guinier propose
"shift[ing] the terrain of the debate." Sturm and Guinier implicitly concede that
preference proponents cannot carry the day while traditional measures of merit prevail.
Thus, they mount a frontal assault on the "prevailing selection procedures" of American
society: academic standards measured by paper-and-pencil tests. Unfortunately, their
argument is not at all new. Nor do we lack for evidence about how their proposal would
work. In 1970, City College of New York embarked on precisely the same social
experiment advocated by Sturm and Guinier today: open admissions. While the City
College administration shared their concerns about racial equality and merit, the history
of City Colleges experiment highlights the inherent problems in sacrificing merit on the
altar of race.
3. EMPIRICALLY, GUINIERS IDEAS LEAD TO RACIAL POLARIZATION

City Colleges experiment has failed. Its efforts to create a student body with the right
mix of skin colors have polarized it into two schools. Students admitted based on their
prior academic performance continue to succeed. City Colleges School of Engineering
remains one of the best schools in the country, attracting top-flight students from
around the world. The English Department is also enjoying a renaissance. Both
departments alumni often proceed to top graduate programs in the country.
4. SORTING PEOPLE INTO CATEGORIES AS GUINIER DOES IS RACIST

Unfortunately, Sturm and Guinier ignore this fundamental reality. Their prescription of
emphasizing race anew merely resurrects the worst of our history. For its entire history,
American governments at all levels have sorted us into categories based on our skin
color: slave, Indian, free black, octoroon, Caucasian, Hispanic, etc. It is a long and sordid
history, one for which we should all be ashamed. The next step in fulfilling Americas
promise is to create a colorblind state.
GUINIERS IDEAS WILL NOT BE

EFFECTIVE
1. THE SOLUTION IS TO MEND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, NOT GIVE UP AS GUINIER DOES
Stephen Steinberg, author of The Ethnic Myth and Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial
The problem is that "for more than two decades, affirmative action has been under
sustained assault," as Sturm and Guinier write in their opening sentence. Though they
do not say so explicitly, they seem resigned to the fact that the Supreme Court, which
has already eviscerated affirmative action through a series of decisions, is now poised to
deliver the coup de grace. Against this background, Sturm and Guinier declare that "it is
time to shift the terrain of debate." The entire thrust of their argument is to explore
alternatives to affirmative action that will broaden access of minorities and women to
jobs and universities. At first blush, this strategy may appear to be a sensible concession
to political reality. However, two troubling questions arise. First, are Sturm and Guinier
capitulating to the anti-affirmative action backlash and prematurely throwing in the
towel for the sake of an illusory consensus? Second, would their proposed reforms of the
selection process, even if enacted, provide the access to jobs and opportunities that are
today secured by affirmative action? The logic of Sturm and Guiniers brief can be stated
as follows:
1. Affirmative action is assailed by critics as violating cherished principles of "merit."
2. On closer examination, the "testocracy" that is used to assess merit is neither fair nor
functional.
3. Thereforealas, here the syllogism runs into trouble. Sturm and Guinier could have
concluded that the case against affirmative action is specious and therefore affirmative
action should be upheld. As the saying goes, "if it aint broke, dont fix it."
2. GUINIERS IDEAS ARE IMPRACTICAL

Instead Sturm and Guinier make a case for overhauling the selection process that
evaluates candidates for jobs and college admissions. To be sure, there are compelling
arguments for abandoning standardized tests that favor privileged groups who, aside
from the advantages that derive from better schooling, have the resources to pay for
expensive prep courses. Sturm and Guinier also make a compelling case that it would be
fairer and more productive to judge applicants on the basis of performance criteria,
rather than scores on "paper-and-pencil" tests. The problem, though, is that they
implicitly advocate these reforms as a surrogate for affirmative action policy. They may
tell themselves that they are driven by realpolitik, but they end up acquiescing to the
reversal of hard-won gains and falling back on reforms that are unlikely to be enacted in
the foreseeable future. Their ideological enemies will revel in this retreat to a second line
of defense by two law professors who are identified with the cause of affirmative action.
Nor will Sturm and Guinier get the concessions they are bargaining for. Is this not the
lesson of Bill Clintons ill-fated proposal to "end welfare as we know it"?
3. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE GUINIERS PROPOSALS WOULD WORK

What evidence is there that overhauling the selection criteria would open up avenues for
women and minorities? In most large-scale organizationscorporations and universities
alikeemployees are routinely evaluated by superiors on an array of performance
criteria. Is so-and-so a "team player"? Does she do her job well? Does he have good
communication skills? Does she make the tough decisions? Does he demonstrate
leadership? Such judgments are easily tainted by personal prejudices, especially when
the people doing the evaluations are white and male and the people being evaluated
belong to stigmatized groups. Indeed, studies have consistently found that performance
appraisal ratings of women and people of color are prone to bias.
GUSTAVO ESTEVA
LIFE AND WORK

Gustavo Esteva was born in the mid-1900s in Oaxaca region of Mexico. As a child, his
mother seeking to free her children from their indigenous ancestry banished his
grandmother, a Zapotec Indian, from his home. Meanwhile, his father reminded his son
of their once elite status in Mexico under the dictatorship and presidency of Diaz. Of his
childhood, Esteva remarked, I was very confused with these two contradictory and
diverse traditions in my house. However, as Esteva notes, then came development.
Taken in by the promises of economic growth and the opportunity to give back to the
community, Esteva held lucrative positions with IBM, Proctor and Gamble and several
Mexican Companies. However, he soon quit his work because I refused to do what they
asked of me, to cheat the workers and the community.
Next, Esteva entered a more political life. First, he worked with guerilla movements
inspired by Guevara, Marxism, and the Cuban Revolution. Following his work with these
efforts, Esteva took a post with the populist presidency of Luis Echeverra Alvarez
(president: 1970-76). Utilizing the power he had garnered as a successful
businessperson, Esteva helped lead government administered aid and development
programs throughout Mexico. In 1976, on the brink of becoming a Minister in
government in the next administration, Esteva left his work with the government
because he was convinced of two problems with his work. First, he felt the programs
designed to help were doing significant harm to their supposed beneficiaries. Second,
he felt that that the interests of the people and those of government didnt coincide all
too often. As he explains, I had a very good balcony with Luis Echeverra. I was next to
the place where they were taking decisions and I saw very well that that logic of
decisions is not the logic of the people or in the interests of the people. So I quit.
In the time since, Esteva has embarked on an extensive and prolific grassroots
organizing and political action career in both Latin America and internationally. Esteva
has held posts at the UN, advised and negotiated in aid of the cause of the Zapatistas,
and served as Vice-President of the Inter-American Society for Planning. He has also
developed and aided in the creation of hundreds of NGOs designed to help improve the
quality of life of indigenous and other marginalized people. In addition to this political
action, Esteva has pursued the life of a de-professionalized intellectual giving lectures,
teaching classes, and writing prolifically on the topic of development. One of his most
noted works, Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Culture, with Madhu Suri
Prakash, offers one of the most pointed and cited critiques of the modern development
paradigm in the field. Additionally, his resume includes over a dozen other texts and a
litany of other articles that articulate his argument.
Grassroots Post-Modernism
Esteva has developed numerous indictments, interrogations, and discussions of
development and other issues related to the subject. This brief focuses most exclusively
on one of the most central as articulated in Grassroots Post-Modernism. His other works
are easily accessible on-line and may be consulted to add extended nuance to this
position. To develop his argument Esteva, along with Prakash, critique the development
paradigm before discussing their alternative perspective on the topic and applying it to
several contexts. This brief is organized in a similar manner.
The Global Projects Three Sacred Cows
Estevas project begins with an understanding of what he refers to as the Global

Project. He understands this project to be a process through which developed nations
of the global North attempt to economically integrate underdeveloped nations into a
world market and a global village. This pursuit is done in the name of progress and
development. No doubt informed by his experiences as a government official, Esteva
and Prakash argue that, almost universally, these efforts not only are ineffective, but as
will be discussed are counter productive. Indeed, as Esteva observes it is often corrupt
government officials in nations comprising the global South who aid in facilitating
projects that pursue globalized solutions to development and progress for little more
than their own personal gain.
Grassroots Postmodernism, the political project Esteva promotes, interrogates these

efforts waged by institutions like the World Bank, WTO, and sundry multinational
corporations. As Esteva and Prakash observe, the emerging epic of grassroots
initiatives for resisting the oppressiveness of modern minorities represents a clear
rupture with some of the most fundamental promises of the modern era. In doing so, it
leads the way in radically confronting some modern sacred cows. An examination of
how these confrontations are initiated is offered below, however first it is important to
identify the tenets of the Global Project and its many iterations that create the
detrimental effects Esteva outlines.
Esteva identifies the myth of global thinking as the first of the sacred cows of the Global
Project. He claims that global thinking is the intellectual counterpart to global
economy. He and Prakash argue that this thinking has led institutions and governments
to presume that global solutions are needed to solidify global human rights and solve
local problems. Esteva finds the notion of global thinking not only an oxymoron (see
below), but also that asserting its superiority generates solutions that efface the local,
cultural traditions of its supposed beneficiaries. For example, many contemporary
agricultural polices and practices promoted by MNCs and government aid projects
destroy traditional, sustainable methods in favor of high-gross, high-impact farming
techniques. Equally important to global thinking is the notion that local thinking is
limited parochial, and backward.
The second sacred cow is the universality of human rights which, Esteva and Prakash
argue, is used to constitute the moral justification for global thinking. Enshrined in the
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these universal human rights
generate significant tensions and ignore local differences. Likewise, Esteva explains that
in the morally progressive, egalitarian and just global economy of the post-modern era,
every individual will enjoy exercising his or her human rights. The western
recolonization inherent in the global declaration of these human rights remains as
imperceptible to postmodernists as to the modernists they accuse of cultural
imperialism.
Last, Esteva and Prakash identify the myth of the individual self. They argue that
development projects initiated within the framework of the Global Project attempt to
liberate the modern self from attachments that prevent easily fitting the individual self
into the global economy. Thus, becoming a member with full rights and privileges of
the club, joining the society and culture of Homo oeconomicus. Ultimately, this
separates individuals from their communities and replaces any community-based
connectedness with the loneliness and disease with development and the illusion of
interpersonal connectedness. This becomes particularly important later, as Esteva
believes that it is only on the local level through interconnected communities that global
forces of development may be resisted.
Global Thinking is Impossible

The problems that each of these sacred cows generate becomes more apparent
through Estevas and Prakashs discussion of the specific problems with global thinking
and the advantages of localized, grassroots action. Addressing further the problem with
contemporary development projects that think globally under the auspices of standards
of living, quality of life, or human rights, Esteva and Prakash contend that we can
only think about that which we actually know well. Thus, institutions and initiatives that
stem from the Global North to solve the problems of the Global South can be at best
only an illusion and at worst the ground for the kinds of destructive and dangerous
actions perpetrated by... the World Bank or the global environmental movement.
Litanies of examples reflect the failures to launch effective solutions at a global level.
The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s in Central and Latin America reflects such a
failure. Ostensibly initiated to revitalize and modernize the agricultural industry of those
nations, the project contributed to extensive problems. Improper training, failure to
account for local economic needs, and other missteps resulted in severe environmental
and economic losses for affected nations. More contemporary actions also illustrate the
problem. The effort for the U.S. to create democracies in the late 20th and early 21st
centuries, illustrates the tendency for global or imposed solutions to fail to account for
local needs and become not only ineffective, but also harmful.
The Wisdom of Thinking Locally
Presupposing that global thinking is ultimately doomed, Esteva and Prakash explain the
wisdom of thinking little. They argue that efforts to create gigantic transnational
movements to fight development and globalization are doomed. Likewise, they suggest
that local actions that are informed, shaped and determined by the global frame of
mind, become as uprooted as those of other globalists they explicitly criticize. Instead,
Esteva suggest that development, improved quality of life, sustainable economies, etc,
must begin with the basics. He offers food as an example. Rather, than waiting for
Ralph Nader or an international organization to change the way we eat, Esteva and
Prakash argue action should instead be devised and taken on the local level. They argue
that ultimately every global institution has to concretize operations in actions that are
necessarily local. Coke must sell its product, governments must borrow dollars to fund
development programs. Since global institutions must establish their power at the local
level, it is only there that it can be most effectively opposed.
Examples of this are available throughout many communities. For example, community
supported agriculture (CSAs) through which individuals buy foods that support local
farmers and local resources provides a way to resist the efforts to globalize the
economy, life, and standard of living of individuals. Similarly, the Zapatistas create their
own schools that provide an education that values local culture and avoid efforts to
recolonize and advance the global project under the auspices of human rights to
education. Esteva suggests that on the local level that by saying No! communities can
resist global institutions and corporations in the same voluntary ways they joined.
The Strength of Thinking and Acting

Locally
Esteva argues that often the impulse for those resisting colonization by development or
other forces is to form coalitions with outside allies and a global, equally sizeable
strategy. In fact, he and Prakash argue that local thinking is needed while forging
solidarities with other movements in opposition to global forces. Failing to continue to
focus on the local level moves resistance on to a global stage where it can only be a
minor player. That is, the global project includes, in Estevas estimation, a range of
institutions including governments, corporations, and NGOs. Relative to the power of
these projects, grassroots movements have little power. However, community-based
resistance offers a way to encounter globalization on the communitys ground. Esteva
explains this concept using the myth of David and Goliath. He explains that if the
Goliaths of global development are to be contested it has to be by battles with hundreds
of little Davids, or localized resistances. He believes that attempting to act globally will
only move the fight to ground on which only Goliaths can win. Individual consumers can
say no to Coke in their local markets and free themselves and their communities from its
control quite easily. Esteva believes that at the global level the actions available for
local opposition is less decisive and less effective. An example is the community-based
activism and social projects launched by the Black Panthers in the United States to
pressure the USFG. Rather than lobby the government for free school breakfast, the
Panthers created a program that provided it without the government. Soon, the
government conceded to the local pressure providing a similar system around the
country. Similarly, the Panthers forged solidarities with other resistance organizations
while retaining their roots in the community in which they emerged.
Challenging Universalism
Esteva also contends that human rights, which is representative of the type of actions
undertaken by the Global Project, reflects the need to challenge Universalism. Born of
a specific cultural context and the response to abuses of power, Esteva concedes that
the rights included in the notion of universal human rights may have been appropriate
for the overwhelming European interests that forged them. However, he and Prakash
suggest that they also institutionalize an individualistic ethic that dissolves the very
foundations of cultures which are organized around the notions of communal obligations,
commitment and service.
More importantly, what for some people is a right is for others a torture, Esteva
contends. For example, punishment by prison in the US is considered appropriate in
response to criminal acts. In some of Mexicos indigenous communities such a practice
is considered torturous and instead require individuals to repay the community by
providing some service. Thus, Esteva argues that global concepts like human rights risk
contaminating local, indigenous communities and contends that opposition to human

rights is consistent with resistance to abuses of the dignity of a community member by
someone or something else.
Escaping Parochialism
Esteva and Prakash contend that global solutions and the promise of global economic
integration is parochial and unfulfillable. Instead of improving the quality of life that
development and globalization promise to help, they observe, most people on Earth are
clearly marginalized from any global life. The economic practices of the global
economy, i.e. Eating at McDonalds, access to schools, a family car will never be
available to those marginalized. They note, Globalists will have depleted the worlds
resources long before that could ever happen. Thus such proposals are necessarily
parochial. Esteva explains that they inevitably express the interests of a small group,
the Global North, even when formulated in the name of humanity. Local solutions on the
other hand, grounded in the communities and specific places they affect can account for
the radical pluralism of peoples and their concomitant diverse needs. Likewise, Esteva
suggests these actions have wide scale implications. Local solutions allow diverse
groups to say No! to the project of global development while affirming one another in
the creation of ways of living grounded in their local communities. A contemporary
example is the food-not-lawns program through which individuals plant gardens in place
of their grass thus refusing the efforts by corporations to control the food that they eat.
In other places, communities establish community gardens or otherwise utilize their
common resources to oppose the same global interests. In this way local action both
resists development and creates the potential for solidarity with other activists.
Decentralization vs. Decentralism

In Grassroots Postmodernism, Esteva summarizes his argument by articulating two ways
of viewing development. He suggests that Global Projects pursue a decentralized
model of development. Through programs that promise to bring progress to
communities, this project creates outpost to serve the economic interests of those who
benefit from the globalization at the expense of its supposed beneficiaries. That is, a top
down distribution controls the development. On the other hand, decentralism refuses
altogether the authority of global institutions. Instead, decentralism posits a network of
communities each of which generates communal solutions through interactions with
members of their community. Likewise, these intiatives reclaim local autonomy. The
consequence is rather than having ones food supply subject to the development plan of
a MNC, local thinking and local action allows communities to reclaim that ability and
avoid its control by the economic whim of globalized economies. By reducing the size of
the political and economic bodies with which individuals interact, decentralism balances
the power between forces of development and individual persons in the community.
Application to Debate
A broad range of debates provides opportunities to apply Esteva. As should be clear,
many resolutions that address questions of development are great opportunities to
articulate the argument he makes. For example, one recent topic examined the
conditions under which the US should give aid to foreign nations. Estevas position
provides ample support to reject the aid altogether for debaters arguing on that side of
the debate.
However, while Esteva refers to global issues his argument may be equally applied to
conflicts within nation-states. For example, the struggle by the Zapatistas to free
themselves from the policies of Mexico illustrates an articulation of Estevas critique at
the level of nations. Another potential resolution on the 2006-2007 ballot questions
whether racial background should impact college admissions. An advocacy shaped by
Esteva would suggest that a question such as that is better answered on a local level.
One can easily imagine that some communities warrant special consideration due to
historically high levels of discrimination, whereas in other areas the lingering effects of
segregation and other policies may have more quickly faded.
Last, virtually any resolution that addresses an evaluation of the UN or another

international organization provides the opportunity to utilize Estevas arguments. The
UN through polices like the UNDHR and other international initiatives and agreements
often leads the way in attempting to initiate a Global Project of development.
Likewise, it has, in many cases, been both ineffective and counterproductive.
Interrogating these failures through the perspective offered by Estevas provides the
opportunity to critique the UN in debates that highlight the organization as well as to
interrogate the particular UN initiative on which the debate focuses.
Bibliography
Esteva, Gustavo and Madhu Suri Prakash. Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the
Soil of Cultures.
New York: Zed Books, 1998.
----. Escaping Education: Living As Learning Within Grassroots Cultures. New York: Peter
Lang, 1998.
Esteva, Gustavo and James E. Austin. Food Policy in Mexico: The Search for SelfSufficiency. New York:
Cornell UP, 1987
Esteva, Gustavo. The Struggle for Rural Mexico. New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1983.
Esteva, Gustavo, "Regenerating People's space" in: Saul H. Mendlovitz and R.B.J. Walker,
Towards a Just
World Peace. London: Butterworths, 1987; pp.271-298.
Esteva, Gustavo, "Tepito: No Thanks, First World", in: In Context, num. 30, Fall/Winter
1991
Esteva, Gustavo, "Re-embedding Food in Agriculture", in: Culture and Agriculture, 48,
Winter 1994
Esteva, Gustavo, "From 'Global Thinking' to 'Local Thinking': Reasons to Go beyond

Globalization
towards Localization", with M.S.Prakash, in: Osterreichische
Zeitschirift fr Politikwissenschatft,
2, 1995
Esteva, Gustavo, "Beyond Development, What?", with M.S. Prakash, in: Development in
Practice, Vol. 8,
No.3, Aug 1998.
Esteva, Gustavo, "The Zapatistas and People's Power", in Capital & Class, 68, Summer
1999.
Sachs, Wolfgang. The Need For The Home Perspective, in: The Post Development
Reader (Majid
Rahnema, ed). London: Zed, 2001.
Esteva, Gustavo. Basta! Mexican Indians Say Enough!, in: The Post Development
Reader (Majid
Rahnema, ed). London: Zed, 2001.
Interview with Gustavo Esteva: The Society of the Different. 4/8/2006. InMotion
Magazine. 7/21/2006.
InMotion Magazine
<http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/gest_int_1.html>.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS ARE

HARMFUL
1. GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AND MODERNIZATION CREATE A BIFURCATED ECONOMIC
WORLD
Gustavo Esteva, Academic/Activist, 1998
GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM, 16-17
The "social minorities" are those groups in both the North and the South that share
homogeneous ways of modern (western) life all over the world. Usually, they adopt as
their own the basic paradignis of modernity. They are also usually classified as the upper
classes of every society and are immersed in economic society: the so-called "formal
sector." The "social majorities" have no regular access to most of the goods and services
defining the average "standard of living" in the industrial countries. Their definitions of
"a good life," shaped by their local traditions, reflect their capacities to flourish outside
the "help" offered by "global forces." Implicitly or explicitly, they neither "need" nor are
dependent upon the bundle of "goods" promised by these forces. They, therefore, often
share a common freedom in their rejection of "global forces." The previous classification
of people and nations in North and South or First, Second and Third Worlds (and the
Fourth and the Fifth) is clearly outdated. Our ideal types can be associated with the
One-third World (the "social minorities" in both North and South) and the Two-thirds
World (the "social majorities"). For our present purposes, there is no need to give more
precision to these types. They can, of course, be empirically associated with economic
and social indicators, if due consideration is given to the difference in the "common
denominator" of both types: the "social minorities" share a "Yes," a way of life and the
myths and paradigms of modernity; the "social majorities" share a "No," by not having
access to most of the goods and services constituting that way of life, and by rejecting
the forces encroaching upon their lives and destroying their traditions.
2. GLOBALIZATION SHATTERS CULTURAL TRADITIONS; DEHUMANIZES

GRASSROOTS POSTMODERNISM, 4
For their part, with sheer guts and a creativity born out of their desperation, the "social
majorities" continue resisting the inroads of that modern world into their lives, in their
efforts to save their families and communities, their villages, ghettoes and barrios, from
the next fleet of bulldozers sent to make them orderly or clean. Daily, the blueprints of
modernization, conceived by conventional or alternative planners for their betterment,
leave "the people" less and less human. Forced out of their centuries-old traditional
communal spaces into the modern world, they suffer every imaginable indignity and
dehumanization by the minorities who inhabit it. The only hope of a human existence, of
survival and flourishing for the "social majorities," therefore, lies in the creation and
regeneration of post-modern spaces.
3. GLOBALIZATION ALLOW THE BUREACRATIZATION OF ALL ASPECT OF LIFE

Gustavo Esteva, Academic/Activists, 2006
THE SOCIETY OF THE DIFFERENT,
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/gest_int_1.html, 1
Perhaps this is not the interview for it, but perhaps we will talk about the dry latrine, the
ecological dry toilet. We have been working on this for 25 years. I cannot share with you
the kind of emotion that I perceive with the dry toilet when the people disconnect their
stomach from any centralized bureaucracy. If you have a flush toilet you are fully
dependent on a private or public bureaucracy that is taking your own shit out of your
house. It is using forty percent of the water available for domestic purposes for the
transportation of shit and creating every kind of public problem. But that is not the main
point. The main point I want to make is when you have a dry toilet you are really
autonomous and you are responsible for disposing of your own shit, and, the most
important point, for transforming your own shit into something positive, into a
magnificent compost.
GLOBAL THINKING IS IMPOSSIBLE

1. GLOBAL THINKING IS ILLUSIONARY; DESTRUCTIVE
The modern "gaze" can distinguish less and less between reality and the image
broadcast on the TV screen. It has shrunk the earth into a little blue bauble, a mere
Christmas tree ornament, an too often viewed on a TV set. Forgetting its mystery,
immensity and grandeur, modern men and women succumb to the arrogance of
"thinking globally" to manage planet Earth. We can only think wisely about what we
actually know well. And no person, however sophisticated, intelligent and overloaded
with the information age state-of-the-art technologies, can ever "know" the Earth except
by reducing it statistically, as all modern institutions tend to do today, supported by
reductionist scientists.5 Since none of us can ever really know more than a minuscule
part of the earth, "global thinking" is at its best only an illusion, and at its worst the
grounds for the kinds of destructive and dangerous actions perpetrated by global "think
tanks" like the World Bank, or their more benign counterparts - the watchdogs in the
global environmental and human rights movements.
2. GLOBAL THINKING IS REALLY THINKING THAT BENEFITS GLOBAL ECONOMIC ELITES

Global proposals are necessarily parochial: they inevitably express the specific vision
and interests of a small group of people, ever) when they are supposedly formulated in
the interest of humanity. In contrast, if they are conceived by communities well rooted in
specific places, local proposals reflect the unique "cosmovision" that defines, differentiates and distinguishes every culture: an awareness of the place and
responsibilities of humans in the cosmos. Those who think locally do not twist the
humble satisfaction of belonging to the cosmos into the arrogance of pretending to know
what is good for everyone and to attempt to control the world
3. THE LOGIC OF GLOBALISM CANNOT BE SUSTAINED

Wolfgang Sachs, Professor/Activist, 2001
THE NEED FOR THE HOME PERSPECTIVE, 291
This premise of superiority [assumed by developed nations] has been fully and finally
shattered by the ecological predicament. For instance, much of the glorious growth of
productivity is fuelled by a gigantic throughput of fossil energy which requires mining
the earth on the one side and covering her with waste on the other. By now, however,
the global economy has outgrown the capacity of the earth to serve as mine and
dumping ground.
4. TRADITIONAL DEVELOPMENT IS OBSOLETE

Wolfgang Sachs, Professor/Activist, 2001
THE NEED FOR THE HOME PERSPECTIVE, 294
Development, as a way of thinking, is on its way out. It has slowly become common
sense that the two founding assumptions of the development promise have lost their
validity. Fore the promise rested on the belief, first, that development could be
universalized in space, and, second, that it would be durable in time. In both senses,
however, development has revealed itself as finite.
THE WISDOM OF THINKING SMALL

1. LOCAL ACTIONS REJECT GLOBAL FORCES; AFFIRM A DIVERSITY OF ATTITUDES
How do we defeat the five Goliath companies now controlling 85 percent of the world
trade of grains and around half of its world production? Or the four controlling the
American consumption of chicken? Or those few that have cornered the beverage
market? The needed changes will wait for ever if they require forging equally gigantic
transnational consumers' coalitions, or a global consciousness about the right way to
eat. In accepting the illusory nature of the efforts to struggle against "global forces" in
their own territory, on a global scale, we are not suggesting the abandonment of
effective coalitions for specific purposes, like the Pesticides Action Network, trying to
exert political pressure to ban specific threats. Even less are we suggesting that people
give up their struggles to put a halt to the dangerous advances of those "global forces."
Quite the opposite. In putting our eggs in the local basket, we are simply emphasizing
the merits of the politics of "No" for dealing with global Goliaths: affirming a rich
diversity of attitudes and ideals, while sharing a common rejection of the same evils.
Such a common "No" does not need a "global conciousness."
2. ALL GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS MUST HOLD POWER AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

All global institutions, including the World Bank or Coca Cola, have to locate their
transnational operations in actions that are always necessarily local; they cannot exist
otherwise. Since "global forces" can only achieve concrete existence at some local level,
it is only there - at the local grassroots - that they can most effectively and wisely be
opposed. People at the grassroots are realizing that there is no need to "Think Big" in
order to begin releasing themselves from the clutches of the monopolistic food
economy; that they can, in fact, free themselves in the same voluntary ways as they
entered it. They are learning to simply say "No" to Coke and other industrial junk, while
looking for local alternatives that are healthy, ecologically sound, as well as decentralized in terms of social control.
3. LOCAL, COMMUNITY-BASED ACTION MAKES THE GLOBAL PROJECT HUMAN-SIZED

The time has come to recognize with the late Leopold Kohr that the true problem of the
modern age lies in the inhuman size or scale of many contemporary institutions and
technologies. Instead of trying to counteract such inherently unstable and damaging

global forces through government or civic controls that match their disproportionate and
destructive scale, the time has come "to reduce the size of the body politic which gives
them their devastating scale, until they become once again a match for the limited
talent available to the ordinary mortals of which even the most majestic governments
are composed"
4. THE ZAPATISTAS REVEALED THE WISDOM OF LOCAL THINKING FOR GLOBAL

PROBLEMS
No other call of the Zapatista movement was more successful than "Basta!" ("Enough!").
Millions of Mexicans were activated by it, shaping their generalized discontent and their
multiple affirmations into a common, dignified rejection. The movement was able to
encapsulate new aspirations in ways that affirm and regenerate their local spaces. They
show no interest in seizing power in order to impose their own regime on everyone.
Their struggle for a radically democratic governance attempts to take some of the
political procedures of formal democracies, while combining these with those prevailing
in their own traditions, in their communities. In their commons, the Zapatistas and other
Mexicans are trying to govern themselves autonomously, well rooted in the spaces to
which they belong and that belong to them. While affirming their dignity and their hope
of flourishing and enduring according to their own cultural patterns and their own
practices of the art of living and dying, they are joining in solidarity with all those
liberating themselves from the parochialism of the "Global Project."
LOCAL AUTONOMY AND SELFGOVERNANCE ARE KEY TO

SUSTAINABLE QUALITY OF LIFE
1. GLOBAL FORCES PUSH SOCIAL MAJORITIES INTO MODERN WASTELANDS
So-called "neoliberal" policies, the free trade catechisms, the proliferation of
"transnational" investments and communication networks, and all the other elements
that are used to describe the new era of "globalization," are pushing the "social
majorities" even further into the wastelands of the modern world. Relegated to its
margins, they are "human surpluses": making too many babies - an "overpopulation";
increasingly disposable and redundant for the dominant actors on the "global" scene.
They cannot be "competitive" in the world of the "social minorities," where
"competitiveness" is the key to survival and domination. The dismantlement of the
welfare state designed and conceived to protect the "benefits," dignity, income and
personal security of the world's "social minorities" means little to the "social majorities."
As "marginals," they have never had any real access to the "benefits" enjoyed by the
nonmarginals, the ones occupying the centers of the modern world. While some
"marginals" are still striving to join the ranks of those minorities struggling to retain their
jobs, their social security or their education, many more are not entering the trap of
modern expectations: to count upon the market or the state.
2. LOCAL AUTONOMY PROVIDES A WAY TO EXERT POWER AGAINST GLOBALISM ATTEMPT

TO GHETTO-IZE SOCIAL MAJORITIES
Local autonomy is the only available antidote for the "Global Project." just as locally
autonomous persons started bringing down the Berlin Wall brick by brick, similarly
locally autonomous communities can exert their powers to say "No" to all global
agendas that destroy their natural and cultural spaces. The current struggle for
autonomy in Mexico17 mainly looks for recognition and respect for what Indian peoples
already have. Autonomy is not something that we need to ask of someone or somebody
can give us, observed an Indian leader. We occupy a territory, in which we exercise
self-governance and justice in our own ways, he clarified, noting furthermore that his
peoples have capacities for self-defense. We now claim recognition and respect for what
we have already conquered, he stated firmly.
3. GLOBAL EFFORTS ONLY LEGITIMATE GLOBAL FORCES

Failing to take paths like Gandhi's in their own liberation, those resisting recolonization
today through GATT and other "global forces" are not overcoming the real threats these
pose for the "social majorities" across the world, including millions of farmers in India. By
concentrating their attacks on the institution, on the emblem of those arrangements,
they render even more opaque the technological system that maintains the myth of
global power. This opacity hides the nakedness of the Emperor. In this darkness, it is
easy to maintain the pretence that the Emperor is clothed. All the energy used for the
massive demonstrations organized by the prestigious activists of India has not only
proved to be sterile; it has further added bureaucrats to the heavy structure of GATT,
reinforcing the feeling of powerlessness "the people" experience before such Goliaths.
GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS ARE

EFFECTIVE
1. FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS SUSTAIN POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS
Dan Griswold, (associate director) Center for Trade Policy, 2002
FREE TRADE BULLETIN, http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/FTBs/FTB-001.html
For the United States, NAFTA was more about foreign policy than about the domestic
economy. Its biggest payoff for the United States has been to institutionalize our
southern neighbors turn away from centralized protectionism and toward decentralized,
democratic capitalism. By that measure, NAFTA has been a spectacular success. In the
decade since signing NAFTA, Mexico has continued along the road of economic and
political reform. It has successfully decoupled its economy from the old boom-and-bust,
high-inflation, debt-ridden model that characterized it and much of Latin America up
until the debt crisis of the 1980s. In 2000, Mexico avoided an election-cycle economic
crisis for the first time since the 1970s. Today Mexico and Chile are the two most stable
and dynamic economies in Latin Americaand the two that have reformed most
aggressively. Just as important, the economic competition and decentralization
embodied in NAFTA encouraged more political competition in Mexico. It broke the
economic grip in which the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held the
country for most of the last century. It is no coincidence that, within seven years of
NAFTAs implementation, Vicente Fox became the first opposition-party candidate
elected president after 71 years of the PRIs one-party rule.
2. GLOBALIZATION EMPIRICALLY QUADRUPLES ECONOMIC GROWTH RATES

Aaron Lukas, (policy analyst) Center for Trade Policy, 2000
WTO REPORT CARD III, http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-010.pdf
Developing countries embrace globalization for a variety of reasons. The removal of
trade barriers immediately expands the range of choices for consumers and places
downward pressure on prices, thus raising the real value of workers earnings. Foreign
investment provides more jobs, new production technologies, infrastructure
improvements, and a source of capital for local entrepreneurs. Domestic businesses gain
access to both cheaper inputs and vastly larger markets for their products. But for most
people, the many and varied benefits of a liberal trade and investment regime can be
boiled down to one very attractive proposition: globalization spurs economic growth, and
growth raises living standards. Empirical research supports the link
between the freedom to conduct international transactions and economic growth. A
wellknown
paper by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner of Harvard University, for example, found
that developing countries with open economies grew by an average of 4.5 percent per
year in the 1970s and 1980s while those with closed economies grew by only 0.7
percent.
3. GLOBALIZATION FACILITIATES COMPETIVENESS WITH US MARKETS, INCREASES WAGES

AND BENEFITS FOR WORKERS
Aaron Lukas, (policy analyst) Center for Trade Policy, 2000
WTO REPORT CARD III, http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-010.pdf
Both trade and investment affect the longterm production trend in developing
economies, which also reinforces the gains to workers. Specifically, poor countries tend
to move away from labor-intensive production as they scale the ladder of economic
development. The share of textiles and apparel in South
Koreas exports, for example, grew from 8 percent in 1960 to 40 percent in 1980 but
then shrank to 19 percent by 1993. Today South Korea is known more for its exports of
automobiles and electronics than its clothing, and average wages have increased
dramatically. The benefits of creating a dynamic, export-oriented manufacturing sector
are even more apparent when wages are compared with those in Western countries. In
1960 the average manufacturing job in a developing country paid just over 10 percent of
manufacturing wages received by workers in the United States. By 1992 wages in those
countries had risen to nearly 30 percent of U.S. manufacturing wages.26 In other words,
as manufactured exports of developing countries have grown, so have wages in those
countrieseven in relation to U.S. wages, which also have risen.
ALEXANDER HAMILTON
Alexander Hamilton is probably best known as one of the authors of THE FEDERALIST
PAPERS, an influential series of pamphlets arguing for a federal constitution to replace
the Articles of Confederation. Either that, or the fact that he was killed by political rival
Aaron Burr in a duel. Either way, he was an influential figure in the early days of this
country who is too often overlooked today.
THE FEDERALIST PAPERS, which Hamilton published (along with John Jay and James
Madison) under the name Publius, were extremely important during the early days of the
United States. In those papers, Hamilton first began to press the ideas that became
extremely important in the formulation of the union he believed in a strong central
government and a strong national bank, opinions that broke strongly from one notable
politician of the era Thomas Jefferson, an anti-federalist who would scrap mightily over
those issues with Hamilton throughout their lives.
But of all the political ideas and economic philosophy that Hamilton offered to the world,
he also offered a life of tragedy, rebuke and scandal. Much of this is forgotten today.
Lets start the process of remembrance with an exploration of his life, then his ideas.
THE LIFE OF HAMILTON

Hamilton started his career with military action during the revolt against British
colonialism. He served as a Lieutenant Colonel under George Washington for four years
during the Revolutionary War.
After Washington died, the leadership of the Federalist Party split between Hamilton and
John Adams. After Adams was elected President, Hamilton constantly rebuked him in
public, talked to cabinet members in attempts to undermine Adamss policy, and
generally made himself a pain. One of those actions was to inflame Hamiltons feud with
Aaron Burr as well.
Shortly before the presidential election of 1800, Hamilton wrote a scathing letter
attacking Adams. Due to Hamiltons inside connections, the letter contained some
confidential cabinet information. While Hamilton intended to closely control distribution
of his missive, his political rival Aaron Burr secured a copy for himself. Burr then
PUBLISHED a copy of it, making it available to the general public, blackening Hamtilons
eye and ratcheting up tension between Hamilton and Adams not to mention Hamilton
and Burr.
Hamilton was politically active throughout his life, famously serving as a delegate at the
Constitutional Convention and encouraging the advance of federal power. He was the
only delegate from New York to support the ratification of the constitution but he did so
vociferously, making one legendary speech where he attacked the states rights ideas of
William Paterson. Hamilton cited the British government as the best model for the new
government -- an aristocratic, coercive, centralized union that would be a representative
republic. This model would have devices that would protect class and property interests.
He would hold to this model in large measure for all his life.
When the Constitutional Convention was convened, Hamilton signed the new American
Constitution for his state.
HIS IDEAS
Hamilton, as an aristocrat, was vocally against states rights. He saw centralization of
authority as necessary to protect essential functions.
This is one of many issues that he and Thomas Jefferson would clash on. While Jefferson
was not necessarily a states rights proponent in the way we understand these terms
today, he did argue that the American government was being divided into a struggle
between the aristocrats who fear and mistrust the people and the democrats who
trust the people and consider them the most trustworthy repository of the national
interest.
As labels of the day went, Jefferson was considered a Democratic-Republican, shortened

to Republican. He wanted to protect the working classes against what he saw as the
onset of aristocracy and monarchy, the legacy of Britain.
Hamilton was the Federalists Federalist. As early as 1776, he suggested the direct
collection of federal taxes by federal agents a fairly radical stance in such an anti-tax
climate. In 1781 he promoted the idea that a non-excessive public debt would be a good
thing.
Because he advocated the constitutional doctrines of liberal construction, "implied

powers," and the "general welfare," one could think of him as one of the first big
government liberals. These ideas were later codified in the decisions of Supreme Court
Justice John Marshall.
These doctrines meant that even if a role for the federal government was not explicitly
stated, it could be interpreted under on of the more broad clauses of the constitution
such as the clause that says its the job of the national government to promote the
general welfare.
This kind of liberal constructionism is deeply at odds with what is called strict
constructionism, which argues that the federal government only gets to do what the
constitution EXPLICITLY says it gets to do. Hamiltons interpretation opens up the federal
governments role considerably, allowing it to do things that many of the anti-Federalists
opposed. They probably would not have agreed to the constitution if they had known
some of the things he had in mind.
One of Hamiltons lasting legacies is the creation of a national bank. This was also one of
the most controversial agendas he advanced.
Jefferson, who always mistrusted the financier set (and the federal government), was a
vocal opponent of the national bank. Madison (with strict constructionist logic) claimed
that the national bank was unconstitutional since the constitution did not explicitly
approve such an institution.
Even then-President George Washington, Hamiltons staunch ally, opposed the project
and intended to veto the bill. Hamilton had to work magic in the form of his now
famous Opinion on the Constitutionality of the Bank in order to convince his longtime
friend.
The Opinion sees Hamilton flesh out his view of the implied powers of the constitution.
Hamiltons logic: "[the government has] a right to employ all the means requisite, and
fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power; and which are not
precluded by restrictions & exceptions specified in the constitution; or not immoral, or
not contrary to the essential ends of political society."
Ironically, Hamiltons basic argument is a qualified version of one used by Madison

himself in the Federalist, (no. 44) that "wherever the end is required, the means are
authorized; wherever a general power to do a thing is given, every particular power
necessary for doing it is included."
Washington passed the Bank Bill in February of 1791. This is perhaps the most concrete
consequence of Hamiltons idea of implied powers.
HAMILTONS ECONOMIC IDEAS

His economic ideas were no less radical, impressive or important. His REPORT ON
MANUFACTURERS (1791) was the first major departure from Adam Smiths WEALTH OF
NATIONS (1776).
The document argued for a system of protective duties designed to promote the
interests of American businessmen and manufacturers. Today, we would call this
viewpoint protectionism.
Because Hamiltons economic ideas were so influential, they became relatively

widespread in the early days of the United States. The Swiss economic historian Paul
Bairoch (in his book ECONOMICS AND WORLD HISTORY) has argued that this shows
America does not have its roots in so-called free trade, as is often claimed. In fact, he
claims, America probably would not have successfully industrialized at all if not for
Hamiltonian policies of protective tariffs, duties and other legislation designed to shelter
fledgling industries.
Jefferson hated these economic ideas, confronting Washington with a list of 21

objections to Hamiltons proposed policies. Jefferson decried Hamiltons desire to
increase the public debt, disputed the geographical distribution of the benefits (Jefferson
thought farmers would get screwed, which the urban elite would benefit), and many
other things.
Perhaps his sternest rebuke to Hamilton came based on Jeffersons moral objections
investment speculation. Jefferson considered rich men who used their capital to invest in
enterprises not their own (who we might today call venture capitalists) to be the lowest
forms of life on earth, saying this behavior nourishes in our citizens vice & idleness
instead of industry & morality." Hamiltons ideas seemed to Jefferson to be a lot closer to
King George III than to any American thinker, accusing him of engaging in a monarchical
conspiracy.
Hamiltons response: "It is a strange perversion of ideas, and as novel as it is

extraordinary, that men should be deemed corrupt & criminal for becoming proprietors
in the funds of their Country." For those of you that dont speak Old Uptight American,
heres a translation: yeah, my friends and I are rich. And were just going to get richer as
the country grows, so get over it. If some farmers lose out on their land and enterprises
so that my friends and I can run the country, thats a price Im willing to pay.
There are a lot of Hamiltonians still around in American politics, as should be clear.
HAMILTONS OPPRESSIVE IDEAS

Hamiltons notion of a strong national government did err on the side of oppression at
times. This is best evidenced by his warm support for the final form of the Alien and
Sedition Laws of 1798.
These acts made illegal the publication of "any false, scandalous and malicious writing."
Such publications were made high misdemeanors, punishable by fine and imprisonment.
These laws were mostly used to silence dissent. Twenty-five men were arrested and their
newspapers forced to shut down as a result of this legislation including Benjamin
Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Philadelphia DemocratRepublican Aurora. (When Jefferson was elected, he pardoned all of those convicted, as
much due to his belief in free speech as to his desire to stick his thumb in Hamiltons
eye.)
Hamilton constantly disputed Jeffersons claim that the general public should control
government. "Men," he said, "are reasoning rather than reasonable animals." He
referred (in his last letter on politics) to democracy as a disease, saying that "a clear
sacrifice of great positive advantages, without any counterbalancing good; administering
no relief to our real disease, which is democracy, the poison of which, by a subdivision,
will only be more concentrated in each part, and consequently the more virulent." This
shows his opinion of the average American, compared to Jeffersons continued desire to
trust the public.
Even sometime allies recognized the elitist tendency in Hamilton. Perhaps the most
balanced view came from Madison, his customary colleague.
Madisons final assessment of Hamilton was written in 1831: "That he possessed

intellectual powers of the first order, and the moral qualities of integrity and honor in a
captivating degree, has been awarded him by a suffrage now universal. If his theory of
government deviated from the republican standard he had the candour to avow it, and
the greater merit of co-operating faithfully in maturing and supporting a system which
was not his choice."
Again, the translation from Old Uptight American: Hamilton preferred a more robust,
more centralized government. At least he admitted it and didn't overtly destabilize the
government. I know he was smart, and everyone else knew it too. His morals -- well, at
least he had SOME integrity and honor about him. Allegedly.
More on that in our final section.
DENOUMENT
We know about the scandal that ended up killing Hamilton. Aaron Burr had been a
political rival of Hamiltons since at least 1777, when Burr sent a contemptuous letter to
Washington about Hamilton, then his closest aide. That culminated in the elections
season of 1804, where Hamilton repeatedly ripped Burr in public speeches. But he
crossed the line when he said (at an event attended by a Burr supporter, and by the
press), that though he held "despicable" opinions of Burr, he had more dirt on him that
he wouldnt dish just yet. A journalist reported to the country that Hamilton "could
detail . . . a still more despicable opinion" of Burr.
And, in Sports Center parlance, it was on. Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel and killed
him. Some Hamilton apologists insist that, though he showed up to the duel and took a
pistol, he did not intend to fire at Burr.
But the Burr scandal wasnt the only hot water Hamilton found himself embroiled in. It
wasnt even the juiciest. That happened in 1792, when Hamilton headed up the Treasury
Department.
Three congressmen -- James Monroe, Abraham Venable, and Frederick Muhlenberg

thought they had found evidence that Hamilton was misappropriating government
funds. James Reynolds, a shady character currently in jail, was bragging that Hamilton
had given him money out of the treasury to play the stock market. Reynolds had
evidence, too. That money had changed hands. Monroe et. al. went to Hamilton's office
to confront him.
Thats when it got weird. Hamilton admitted he had given James Reynolds money -- but
he said it was his own money, not the government's. And the money wasnt for
speculation (though that is apparently how Reynolds used it proving Jeffersons maxim
about the moral character of speculators), but a BRIBE. Hamilton was having an affair
Hamilton with Reynolds' wife, Maria. When Reynolds found out he demanded
satisfaction -- money.
It gets better. Reynolds said that Hamilton could continue the affair so long as the
money kept coming. As historian Lisa Marie de Carolis noted, Mr. Reynolds was a clever
pimp who was now harboring some very destructive information on one of the highest
officials in the country.
Amazingly, the three congressmen were satisfied by Hamiltons explanation, and agreed
to keep it quiet. They apparently did, until July 1797, when a pamphlet was published
with the allegations. At that point, the public could be kept in the dark no longer.
CONCLUSION
When you learn about the so-called Founding Fathers in school, you get the impression
that they were these morally upstanding men of a bygone era where honor was
protected at all costs. As I hope this essay makes clear, it just aint so and its
somewhat comforting that the politicians of days past were just as sleazy, greedy, and
sexually predatory as the ones we see today.
One could make a strong case for Hamilton as the Bill Clinton of his day: both were
extremely intelligent, motivated, natural politicians; Hamilton was technically born
illegitimate, while Clinton was the child of a single mother; both saw their records
tarnished by stunning sex scandals; and while Clinton merely threatened to bash William
Safire in the nose, Hamilton actually followed through with physical violence against a
political rival.
Hamiltons note to his wife, written directly before the duel with Burr, is the final record
from his life:
"If it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview, my love for you and my
precious children would have been alone a decisive motive. But it was not possible,
without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem. ...Adieu best
of wives and best of Women."
No word on whether he penned a similar missive to James Reynolds wife.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beard, Charles. historian, FRAMING THE CONSTITUTION, 1912.
Brookhiser, Richard. senior editor, NATIONAL REVIEW, ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

AMERICAN, New York: The Free Press, 1999.
de Carolis, Lisa Marie, Department of Alfa-informatica, University of Groningen, A

Biography of Alexander Hamilton, 1997,
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/B/hamilton/hamil00.htm, accessed May 1,2002.
Chomsky, Noam. Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussets Institute of Technology,

Mellon Lecture, Loyola University, Chicago, October 19, 1994
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9410-education.html, accessed April 29, 2002.
Chomsky, Noam. Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, Z

MAGAZINE, January 1995, p. 13.
Cooke, Jacob E. ed., THE REPORTS OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, New York: Harper & Row,
1964.
Cooke, Jacob E. ALEXANDER HAMILTON, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982.
Elkins, Stanley and Eric McKitrick, THE AGE OF FEDERALISM, New York/Oxford: Oxford
Frisch, Morton J. ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND THE POLITICAL ORDER, Lanham/New

York/London: University Press of America, 1991.
Frisch, Morton J. ed. SELECTED WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON,

Washington/London: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1985.
Miller, John C. ALEXANDER HAMILTON: PORTRAIT IN PARADOX, New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1959.
Stourzh, Gerald. ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND THE IDEA OF REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT,

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970.
Syrett, Harold C. ed., THE PAPERS OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, New York and London:
Columbia University Press, 1961--79.
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION AND STRONG

CENTRAL GOVERNMENTS ARE NEEDED
1. STRONG NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS ARE NEEDED BECAUSE HUMANS ARE VINDICTIVE
Alexander Hamilton, FEDERALIST PAPER # 6, For the Independent Journal, November 14,
1787, p. np, http://federalistpapers.com/federalist6.html, accessed May 2, 2002.
A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that, if these
States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the
subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests
with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against
their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To
look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected
sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of
human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.
2. BECAUSE THE WORLD ISNT PERFECT, WE NEED A STRONG CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

From this summary of what has taken place in other countries, whose situations have
borne the nearest resemblance to our own, what reason can we have to confide in those
reveries which would seduce us into an expectation of peace and cordiality between the
members of the present confederacy, in a state of separation? Have we not already seen
enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us
with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses and evils incident to
society in every shape?
3. UNION IS THE ANTIDOTE TO HOSTILITY BETWEEN NATIONS

So far is the general sense of mankind from corresponding with the tenets of those who
endeavor to lull asleep our apprehensions of discord and hostility between the States, in
the event of disunion, that it has from long observation of the progress of society
become a sort of axiom in politics, that vicinity or nearness of situation, constitutes
nations natural enemies. An intelligent writer expresses himself on this subject to this
effect: "NEIGHBORING NATIONS (says he) are naturally enemies of each other unless
their common weakness forces them to league in a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC, and their
constitution prevents the differences that neighborhood occasions, extinguishing that
secret jealousy which disposes all states to aggrandize themselves at the expense of
their neighbors."
4. TERRITORIAL DISPUTES CAUSE STRIFE: STRONG NATIONAL GOVERNMENT IS NEEDED

1787, http://federalistpapers.com/federalist7.html, accessed May 2, 2002.
Territorial disputes have at all times been found one of the most fertile sources of
hostility among nations. Perhaps the greatest proportion of wars that have desolated the
earth have sprung from this origin. This cause would exist among us in full force. We
have a vast tract of unsettled territory within the boundaries of the United States. There
still are discordant and undecided claims between several of them, and the dissolution
of the Union would lay a foundation for similar claims between them all. It is well known
that they have heretofore had serious and animated discussion concerning the rights to
the lands which were ungranted at the time of the Revolution, and which usually went
under the name of crown lands. The States within the limits of whose colonial
governments they were comprised have claimed them as their property, the others have
contended that the rights of the crown in this article devolved upon the Union; especially
as to all that part of the Western territory which, either by actual possession, or through
the submission of the Indian proprietors, was subjected to the jurisdiction of the king of
Great Britain, till it was relinquished in the treaty of peace. This, it has been said, was at
all events an acquisition to the Confederacy by compact with a foreign power. It has
been the prudent policy of Congress to appease this controversy, by prevailing upon the
States to make cessions to the United States for the benefit of the whole. This has been
so far accomplished as, under a continuation of the Union, to afford a decided prospect
of an amicable termination of the dispute. A dismemberment of the Confederacy,
however, would revive this dispute, and would create others on the same subject.
HAMILTONS ECONOMIC IDEAS WERE

GOOD
1. HAMILTON BELIEVED IN EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY, NOT FORCED EQUITY
David Upham, Department of Politics, University of Dallas, "The Primacy of Property
Rights and the American Founding," Independent Institute Website, 1997, p. np,
http://www.independent.org/tii/students/GarveyEssay97Upham.html, accessed May 1,
2002.
The Founders attachment to economic freedom was in no way, in their understanding,
opposed to the principle of equality. As Lincoln repeatedly emphasized, the equality
proclaimed in the Declaration is not an equality in all respects. The "authors of that
notable instrument...did not mean to say all were equal in...intellect, moral
developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctiveness, in what
respects they did considered all men created equalequal in certain unalienable rights,
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This they said and this
meant." Moreover, not only did the Founders understanding of equality not include all
kinds of equality (such as the equality of economic condition championed by the
Progressives), their conception of human equality necessarily excluded equality of
condition. They believed that everyone had an equal right to exercise his individual
abilities to acquire property, abilities which were by nature unequal, and that the equal
right to employ unequal talents would necessarily lead to economic inequality. As
Alexander Hamilton stated in the constitutional convention: "It is certainly true that
nothing like an equality of property existed: that an inequality would exist as long as
liberty existed, and that it would unavoidably result from that very liberty itself."
2. HAMILTONS SUPPORT OF THE WEALTHY DIDNT INTEND TO CREATE ARISTOCRACY

Lisa Marie de Carolis, Department of Alfa-informatica, University of Groningen, A
This was Hamilton's most controversial position about which he was quite frank, and
which would incite fierce protest on the part of those who feared that Hamilton aimed to
create an aristocracy. Hamilton was, as usual, simply drawing on realities that he felt,
although not necessarily equitable, would benefit the nation as a whole in the long run.
Securing the support of the wealthy was only a first step in his complete economic
picture. The accumulation of wealth was not Hamilton's goal; he wanted to encourage
the use of private wealth for beneficial enterprises. Hamilton envisioned a strong
economy in which everyone could participate and profit. Landed wealth, represented by
the Virginia opposition, was limiting and limited; whereas paper wealth was fluid, and
opened up wider vistas in international trade and domestic industrialization. Industry
would diversify labor, thus creating more jobs and income sources for a burgeoning
population. Hamilton's vision was dynamic and made use of all the possibilities of a
young nation with unlimited resources and boundless potential.
3. HAMILTONS NATIONAL BANK WAS AN ENGINE OF PROSPERITY

The bank proposed by Hamilton would be a national institution run by a private board of
directors. Private ownership, Hamilton reasoned, would prevent the corruption which
might result if the bank were run by government officials as was the Bank of England. He
explained: "The keen, steady, and, as it were, magnetic sense, of their own interest, as
proprietors, in the Directors of a Bank, pointing invariably to its true pole, the prosperity
of the institution . . ." Hamilton explained that a national bank would provide a safe
depository for government funds, regulate banking practices around the country,
provide a uniform currency, provide capital for investments and industry, and loan the
government money in times of emergency. Hamilton saw it as no less than an engine of
national prosperity and a necessary ancillary to his overall plan.
HAMILTON WAS OPPOSED TO

DEMOCRACY
1. HAMILTON BELIEVED DEMOCRACY WAS A GREAT BEAST, COMMON PEOPLE A MENACE
Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussets Institute of Technology,
Mellon Lecture, Loyola University, Chicago, October 19, 1994, p. np,
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9410-education.html, accessed April 29, 2002.
Eighty years earlier Alexander Hamilton had put it clearly. He said there was the idea
that your people are a great beast and that the real disease is democracy. That's
Hamilton. These ideas have become ever more entrenched in educated circles, as
Jefferson's fears and Bakunin's predictions were increasingly realised. The basic attitudes
coming into this century were expressed very clearly by Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of
State, Robert Lansing, attitudes that led to Wilson's Red Scare, as it was called, which
destroyed labour and independent thought for a decade. Lansing warned of the danger
of allowing the "ignorant and incapable mass of humanity" to become "dominant in the
earth," or even influential, as he believed the Bolsheviks intended. That's the hysterical
and utterly erroneous reaction that's pretty standard among people who feel that their
power is threatened.
2. HAMILTON SOUGHT TO PRESERVE THE POWER OF THE RICH

Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, Z MAGAZINE, January 1995, p. 13.
Restating the Doctrine without equivocation, the masters have long sought to contain
popular struggles to expand the range of meaningful democracy and human rights, but
now perceive that they can do better. They feel, perhaps rightly, that they can dismantle
the social contract that has been in some measure achieved, rolling back the threat
posed by the "great beast" that keeps trying "to plunder the rich" (Alexander Hamilton
and John Foster Dulles, speaking for a host of others). The architects of policy can move
on to establish a utopia of the masters based on the values of greed and power, in which
privilege is enhanced by state power and the general population lack rights apart from
what they can salvage on a (highly flexible) labor market.
3. HAMILTON THOUGHT THE WELL BORN SHOULD RUN THE COUNTRY

Charles Beard, historian, FRAMING THE CONSTITUTION, 1912, p. 31.
Indeed, every page of the laconic record of the proceedings of the convention, preserved
to posterity by Mr. Madison, shows conclusively that the members of that assembly were
not seeking to realize any fine notions about democracy and equality, but were striving
with all the resources of political wisdom at their command to set up a system of
government that would be stable and efficient, safeguarded on the one hand against the
possibilities of despotism and on the other against the onslaught of majorities. In the
mind of Mr. Gerry, the evils they had experienced flowed "from the excess of
democracy," and he confessed that while he was still republican, he "had been taught by
experience the danger of the levelling spirit." Mr. Randolph, in offering to the
consideration of the convention his plan of government, observed "that the general
object was to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that, in
tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of
democracy; that some check therefore was to be sought for against this tendency of our
governments; and that a good Senate seemed most likely to answer the purpose." Mr.
Hamilton, in advocating a life term for Senators, urged that "all communities divide
themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born and the other
the mass of the people who seldom judge or determine right."
4. HAMILTON FEARED DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM

Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, Z
MAGAZINE, January 1995, p. 13.
It therefore became necessary to renew with much greater intensity the constant
campaign to tame and cage that "great beast," as Alexander Hamilton termed the
"people" with horror and indignation as he was laying the foundations for state-guided
industrial democracy. The beast may not yet be tamed, but it is being caged; sometimes
quite literally, sometimes in chains of dogma and deceit, an important victory. We may
recall, in passing, that fear of democracy and freedom has always been one of the
factors motivating the terror and sometimes outright aggression undertaken to eliminate
"rotten apples" that might "spoil the barrel" and "viruses" that might "infect others," in
the terminology favored by leading planners -- the main concern, of course, being
independence, whatever cast it takes.
HAMILTON WAS AN ECONOMIC ELITIST

1. HAMILTON IGNORED HUMES WARNINGS ABOUT THE SYSTEM HE FAVORED
Biography of Alexander Hamilton, 1997, p. np,
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/B/hamilton/hamil00.htm, accessed May 1, 2002.
Hume in particular was cautionary about the British system, but pointed out some
advantages to a credit-based economy. Securities, Hume observed, provide ready capital
with the value and function of specie, the availability of which enables merchants to
engage in more extensive trade enterprises, which in turn makes commodities cheaper
and easier to procure, and thus helps spread "arts and industry throughout the whole
society." Landed wealth, Hume contended, makes "country gentlemen" out of wealthy
merchants; whereas paper capital fosters a more international mentality, and a more
diverse economy. However, Hume emphasized the many evils of a credit-based
economy, warning that a funded debt necessitates oppressive taxes to pay the interest,
creates dangerous disparities in wealth, indebts the nation to foreign powers, and
renders the stock holders largely idle and useless for everything but playing the market.
Hume felt that the evils greatly outweighed the advantages. Hamilton dismissed Hume's
warnings and instead focused on the positive aspects of national credit; the continuing
vitality of the British economy was enough to prove the efficacy of their system.
Hamilton based his program primarily on the British model, with variations more suited
to the United States' unique characteristics. Public credit was to become the pillar of
Hamilton's fiscal reform package, the "invigorating principle" which would infuse the
United States with the energy and international respectability he had envisioned.
2. HAMILTONS GOVERNMENT IDEAS FOCUSED ON PROTECTING THE RICH

Nevertheless, by the system of checks and balances placed in the government, the
convention safeguarded the interests of property against attacks by majorities. The
House of Representatives, Mr. Hamilton pointed out, "was so formed as to render it
particularly the guardian of the poorer orders of citizens," while the Senate was to
preserve the rights of property and the interests of the minority against the demands of
the majority. In the tenth number of The Federalist, Mr. Madison argued in a philosophic
vein in support of the proposition that it was necessary to base the political system on
the actual conditions of "natural inequality." Uniformity of interests throughout the state,
he contended, was impossible on account of the diversity in the faculties of men, from
which the rights of property originated; the protection of these faculties was the first
object of government; from the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring
property the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately resulted;
from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors
ensued a division of society into different interests and parties; the unequal distribution
of wealth inevitably led to a clash of interests in which the majority was liable to carry
out its policies at the expense of the minority; hence, he added, in concluding this
splendid piece of logic, "the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must
be rendered by their number and local situation unable to concert and carry into effect
schemes of oppression"; and in his opinion, it was the great merit of the newly framed
Constitution that it secured the rights of the minority against "the superior force of an
interested and overbearing majority."
3. HAMILTON RELIED ON THE WEALTHY ALLYING THEMSELVES WITH STATE POWER

Biography of Alexander Hamilton, 1997, p. np,
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/B/hamilton/hamil00.htm, accessed May 1, 2002.
In order to stimulate the economy, Hamilton needed big investors. The support and
capital of the nation's wealthiest citizens would provide the foundation and security of
his system. He wrote in 1780: "The only plan that can preserve the currency is one that
will make it to the immediate interest of the monied men to cooperate with the
government in its support. ...No plan could succeed which does not unite the interest
and credit of rich individuals with that of the state."
Vaclav Havel
Dissident, playwright, president, poet, philosopher, politician. Vaclav Havel is a difficult
figure to classify. He is a philosophical thinker who acts out his political beliefs on the
stage of Czech politics. His opinions can be seen through examination of his life and the
numerous books, essays, plays, and speeches he has written. Havels early work focuses
on the dangers of totalitarian governments that quash the individual spirit by restricting
artistic and intellectual freedom. He was inspired by his own experience of repression
under Czechoslovakias communist regime to write plays and poetry that criticized and
ridiculed totalitarian bureaucracies. As a dissident, Havel voiced his opinions despite his
governments attempts to silence and jail him. Havels later work focuses on the
disconnectedness and irresponsibility that modern people feel in response to a lack of
faith in certain and universal truths and values. Although Havel was no believer in
communism, he also criticizes the consumeristic egotism of the Western world. Havels
work is an invaluable resource for L.D. debaters, who can use his arguments to appeal to
such values as human rights, freedom, and political responsibility.
WHO IS VACLAV HAVEL?

Vaclav Havel was born in 1937 in what was then Czechoslovakia. The son of a wealthy
businessman, he grew up in a building that had been constructed by his grandfather in
1905. After the Soviet backed communists took over the Czechoslovak republic in 1948
coup, Vaclav was denied access to the high schools and universities because his family
was formerly part of the bourgeois class. But this did not stop him from educating
himself. He enrolled in night school while working as a taxi driver during the days and
graduated from the Czech University of Technology in 1957. After his graduation, he
served in the army for two years.
Havel had a passion for the theatre. Although he was barred from attending
Czechoslovakias liberal arts colleges or performing arts academies, he found a job as a
stagehand at the ABC Theatre in Prague, Czechoslovakias capital. Also working there as
a cloakroom attendant was Olga Splichalova, who would later become his wife.
Splichalova read many of Havels plays and offered him support and encouragement.
Havel wrote about Olga, Im a child of the middle class and ever the diffident
intellectual. Olgas a working-class girl and very much her own person.In Olga, I found
exactly what I needed: Someone who could respond to my own mental instability, to
offer sober criticism of my wilder ideas [and to] provide private support for my public
adventures. Havel eventually became the theatres literary advisor, contributing scripts
and assisting the producer. His first play, The Garden Party, premiered in December of
1963.
Even as a teenager, Havel actively protested the repression of Czechoslovakias

communist government. At one conference of young writers and government officials
and argued for official recognition of dissident poets. Havels plays ridiculed the
bureaucracy and corruption of communist government and made fun of its attempts to
control the way people think. Havel was influenced by the 1960s counterculture of the
U.S., including its rock music, especially Frank Zappa and Lou Reed. The Theatre on the
Balustrade produced Havels plays until the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, rolling their
tanks down the streets of Prague, in 1968. At that time, a much more repressive
government came to power and Havels books were removed from libraries and his plays
were banned. In 1969, Havels passport was revoked and he discovered a bugging
device in his apartment that indicated the government was watching his every move.
But this did not stop him from writing. His plays became very popular outside of
Czechoslovakia and by the mid-1970s, he had become internationally famous. He drove
a Mercedes Benz he had bought with foreign money every day to his assigned job
loading barrels of beer at a brewery for $50 a week. Despite the risks to his personal
safety, Havel continued to publish materials that criticized the government, including
letters demanding the release of jailed political prisoners.
In 1977, Havel became outraged at the Czechoslovakian governments trials and arrests
of rock bands and artists. He joined other Czech dissidents in forming the Charter 77
human rights organization. The group was made up of intellectuals, musicians, and
church leaders. The Czechoslovakian government charged him with subversion for
leading the organization and sentenced him to hard labor. He was also punished for his
involvement in VONS, the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted.
Between 1977 and 1989, he was imprisoned four times. His longest imprisonment lasted
from 1979 until 1982. While in prison, he continued to write about his political opinions
to his wife Olga. The collection of those writings was published under the title Letters to
Olga.
In 1989, Soviet communism faltered, and the collapse spread to Czechoslovakia in what
has been called Czechoslovakias Velvet Revolution. The regime collapsed in 1989 and
Havel was directly and democratically elected as the Czech and Slovak Federal
Republics president. However, with the collapse of central Soviet authority, the glue
that bound Czechoslovakia together dissipated. Ethnic divisions emerged and
disagreements over the way state run industries were to be handled caused the breakup
of Czechoslovakia in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Havel resigned the presidency in
protest, but in 1992 he was elected to a five year term as the Czech Republics first
president. As the president, he serves as a moral leader, although he does not preside
over many of the day to day operations of the government. The prime minister is the
hands-on leader in the Czech political system.
In 1996, Havel lost his wife Olga to cancer. He continues to serve as the Czech president
and he remains a prolific writer and speaker. He has received many honorary degrees
from universities all over the world as well as several international awards for his literary
works and human rights activism.
HAVELS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY:

MELDING THEORY AND PRACTICE
Havels political philosophy is exemplified by his phrase Living in Truth. To gain an
understanding of this phrase, the 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless, published in
the book Living in Truth, is a good place to start. In The Power of the Powerless, Havel
analyzes the functioning of totalitarian power and the way it creates a society of
complacent individuals. He offers the alternative of a life in truth as a way to resist the
bureaucratic mechanisms of repression.
The essay, The Power of the Powerless, begins by asking questions about what power
and resistance are. Havel mentions the term dissident, a word often used to describe
him. Havel claims that when a political system becomes so ossified or hardened that
there is no room for individuals who live in the system to express nonconformity.
Dissidents are the people who choose not to conform anyway. They belong to a
category of sub-citizen outside the power establishment. Havel wonders how these
people, the powerless, can have any influence on the government and society. He asks,
Can they actually change anything? His essay is an examination of the potential of
the powerless that must begin with an examination of the nature of power in the
circumstances in which these powerless people operate.
THE NATURE OF POLITICAL POWER IN

POST-TOTALITARIAN SYSTEMS
In order to examine the nature of the sort of political power that renders many
powerless, Havel discusses the communist Czechoslovakian government at the time.
Havel argues that under a dictatorship, one small group wields power temporarily and
sustains power through armed might. However, the Czechoslovakia of the Cold War was
not a dictatorship. During the cold war, the power of the Soviet Union expanded beyond
the territory named for it on the map. The Soviet Union had influence over a number of
states described as satellites, including Czechoslovakia. The political world was
effectively divided into two power blocks, led by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The
power of the Soviet Union was not geographically limited as power in a traditional
dictatorship had been.
The Soviet bloc of nations had one single, unifying philosophical framework that it
insisted on in all the areas under its control. A network of manipulatory instruments were
used to transmit its power and suppress local resistance. Havel describes the hypnotic
charm of this unifying framework that was akin to a religion in that it offer[ed] a ready
answer to any question whatsoever; it [could] scarcely be accepted only in part, and
accepting it [had] profound implications for human life. In an era in which people were
losing their certainty in the meaning of the world, easy answers were offered to make
everything clear and simple. However, Havel warned that people paid dearly for this
certainty: the price is abdication of ones reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an
essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a
higher authority. This type of government required abdication of ones own reason
because it made power synonymous with truth. In this new type of government, the
center of power delivered the truth for the people; the people did not seek their own
truth or question the governments information.
The power of the system was compounded by the communist doctrine that the state
own and direct all the means of production. With the state in control of the economy,
including industry, buying, selling, and employment, it had unparalleled power to control
peoples day to day lives. In order to describe this system of government, Havel uses the
term post-totalitarian. He uses the pre-fix post not to say that the form of
government is something other than totalitarian. He merely wants to distinguish it from
the dictatorships of the past and indicate that it is totalitarian in a new way.
To describe how life under a totalitarian regime works, Havel uses the story of the
greengrocer. A greengrocer is a common vender of fruits and vegetables. At the time
Havel lived under the communist government of Czechoslovakia, it was common for
greengrocers to put up signs in their windows such as the slogan Workers of the world,
unite! This slogan is a famous refrain from the end of the classic Communist Manifesto,
by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. Havel asks why a greengrocer would put up a sign
such as this. Havel wonders, Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among
the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible
impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has really given more than a moments
thought to how such a unification might occur or what it would mean?
Havels questions point to the fact that the greengrocer most likely put up the sign
without thinking or questioning its meaning. The poster was probably given to the
greengrocer by government officials along with the daily shipment of food. Havel says,
He put them up into the window simply because it had been done that way for years,
because everyone does it, and because that it is the way it has to be. If he were to
refuse, there could be trouble. This is how totalitarian government works. The
greengrocers sign is one of the thousands of details that guarantee the smooth
functioning of the communist system and the greengrocers harmony with it. When the
greengrocer puts up the sign, he is not actually inviting the workers of the world to
unite, he is declaring that he is obedient to the communist government and wishes to be
left alone.
Havel uses the example of the greengrocer to describe the meaning of the term
ideology. Havel asks what it would have meant for the greengrocer to display a sign that
said I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient. Surely the greengrocer would
be too ashamed to put up a sign like this that declares his own degradation. In order to
suppress this feeling of shame, the sign must wear the mask of ideology. On its surface,
the greengrocers sign only seems to ask the workers of the world to unite. The
greengrocer can say to himself, Whats wrong with the workers of the world uniting?
But the deeper message of the sign, that the greengrocer is in submission to the power
of totalitarian government, is covered up under the high-minded ideals of communism.
The greengrocers relation to the ideology of communism is disinterested conviction.
He outwardly displays his loyalty through the ritualistic display of the sign without any
genuine belief.
Havel explains the dangers of ideology: Ideology is a specious way of relating to the
world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while
making it easier for them to part with them. Ideology allows people to believe that they
have dignity and respect when they are fully controlled by the power of the government.
In this way, ideology legitimizes totalitarian governments. Havel describes it as a
bridge between the regime and the people. He writes, that complex machinery of
units, hierarchies, transmission belts, and indirect instruments of manipulation which
ensure in countless ways the integrity of the regime, leaving nothing to chance, would
be quite simply unthinkable without ideology acting as its all-embracing excuse and as
the excuse for each of its parts.
Havel often writes about how dense and theoretical language can obscure clear thinking.
For example, in his play The Memorandum he describes a government that creates an
artificial language that is supposed to make all communications more efficient. The most
commonly used word in this language is whatever, and it is spelled with two letters to
improve speed. The result of this language is the absurd destruction of human
relationships. Bureaucratic languages and the desire to do everything efficiently and in
the same way are instruments of manipulation that ensure the functioning of the
regime. Under totalitarianism, there is no possibility of debate over the meanings of
ideology. The regime is enabled to become totally removed from reality. Soon, it is able
to create its own reality, and no one can challenge it.
Havel describes how the totalitarian system is driven by automatism. Automatism is a

sort of automatic functioning. No one person or group of people is behind the machine,
pulling the levers. Totalitarian government works on its own strange and diffuse energy.
Even the apparent rulers are made into automatons, or automatically functioning and
replaceable parts, like cogs in a machine. Havel says, No matter what position
individuals hold in the hierarchy of power, they are not considered by the system to be
worth anything in themselves, but only as things intended to fuel and serve this
automatism. The systems logic is utilitarian: people are only useful for the greater
good of the system. People do not have any intrinsic values or worth. Havel explains how
the totalitarian system degrades human life: Between the aims of the post-totalitarian
system and the aims of life there is a yawning abyss: while life, in its essence, moves
towards plurality, diversity, independent self-constitution and self-organization, in short,
towards the fulfillment of its own freedom, the post-totalitarian system demands
conformity, uniformity, and discipline. People are made to serve the system.
Because of the uncrossable gulf between life, with its diversity and freedom, and
totalitarian government, with its demands for sameness and comformity, ideology is
needed as the bridge to keep the totalitarian system legitimate. But the bridge is built
over a fundamental lie, and individuals in the system must act as though the lie were
true for the system to continue to function. Havel uses the fairy tale of the Emperors
New Clothes to describe how this type of lie can come to achieve social acceptance. He
says that people in the system, like those who knew the emperor was naked, can know
that totalitarian government is a lie. However, they must behave as if it were the truth.
In doing so, they are the system.
REFUSING TO PLAY: THE POSSIBILITY

OF RESISTANCE
How can people resist post-totalitarianism? Havel returns to the example of the
greengrocer and asks, Let us now imagine that one day something in our green-grocer
snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. This sort of
refusal to play by the rules of the totalitarian game is a way of living within the truth.
Other examples include speaking ones mind despite disapproval from the government,
refusing to participate in corrupt official rituals, such as rigged elections, and expressing
solidarity with others who similarly seek to live in the truth. The result of this sort of
resistance is a loss of security. The government may threaten or jail the greengrocer. He
will lose the privileges that come with conformity to the communist system. Living in
truth requires the courage to make this sacrifice. The system must repress all those who
refuse to play by the rules because in breaking the rules, dissidents expose the game as
nothing more than a game, and not the truth. They are like the child who cries out that
the emperor is naked.
The possibility for living in truth is inevitably contained in the totalitarian system.
Because everyone knows that totalitarianism is a lie, all that is needed is a spark to set
in motion a social movement that can take down the regime. Havel argues that the
spark that set people in motion against the regime in Czechoslovakia was the
governments arrest and trial of a rock band, The Plastic People of the Universe. This
act of censorship and repression led to the formation of the Charter 77 human rights
group.
Havels political thought came out of a tradition of Czech thinkers. He was extremely
influenced by his fellow Czech dissident and mentor, Jan Patocka. Patocka died while
under arrest for dissident activities. It may have been witnessing this sacrifice and his
own experience of imprisonment that lead Havel to emphasize the importance of
sacrifice to living in truth. Havels political philosophy was also strongly influenced by
existentialism and phenomenology. Existentialism, a philosophy associated with thinkers
such as Jean Paul Satre, posits that we are all radically free, hence radically responsible
for the world. Phenomenology is a philosophy associated with Edmund Husserl. Husserl
argued that the way we come to understand the world is based on our experience.
Phenomenology emphasizes the importance of examination of peoples lived
experiences in the common world to philosophical musings. This phenomenological
influence explains why Havel is suspicious of universal codes such as the utilitarianism
of totalitarian government. Havel is interested in systems of governance that reflect the
lived experiences of the people and make possible living in truth instead of the lies of
totalitarianism. Havel is also a humanist. This means he subscribes to core beliefs about
the nature of human beings as rights bearing subjects worthy of being treated with
dignity and respect.
Even though Havels discussion of post-totalitarian government focused on the Cold War,
a historical period now over, and Czechoslovakia, a state that no longer exists, it is
relevant today. Havel notes that his description is not just about communism, rather, it is
an inflated caricature of modern life in general. Post-totalitarianism is present
whenever anyone accepts the lies of the government and subjects to a trivialization of
humanity. Modern consumer societies of the West infect people with the same sort of
dehumanization. People live the lie that material goods will bring about spiritual or moral
fulfillment.
CRITICISMS AND RESPONSES

Havels work has been criticized by many commentators. Some argue that his view of
human nature, influenced by both phenomenology and existentialism, is contradictory.
Havel argues that humans are universally responsible, free, and endowed with dignity.
But at the same time, he rejects universal statements and argues that it is important to
focus on particular phenomenological experiences. Similarly, he argues for the
dissemination of the values of the West, such as the free market, human rights, and
political contestation, while he claims that the values of the West, such as consumerism,
are dangerous. He also argues that these values are universal while at the same time his
work suggests it is important to look at the diverse number of value systems of other
cultures. Havel is alternatively labeled a postmodernist for his criticism of modern
political institutions and doctrines and a modernist for his adherence to traditional
notions of human rights, truth, and dignity.
These seeming contradictions can be explained by the fact that Havels writings are
intended for a political audience and not for the philosophy departments of universities.
Hence, he does not provide extensive definitions of his terms nor does he engage in
debates that arent central to his political message. These criticisms also reflect the
desires of many commentators to box Havel into certain categories as a philosopher,
instead of exploring the ways contradictions are productive or can be worked out.
Havels thought is an example of the way postmodern skepticism about old ways of
thinking can be combined with adherence to values such as human dignity in order to
launch a powerful and politically potent resistance to totalitarian structures.
MODERN APPLICATIONS AND

RELEVANCE TO L.D. DEBATE
Havel argues that in the modern era, people no longer turn to religion to provide them
with answers to all of lifes questions. This is because religion has largely been replaced
with scientific and technological rationality. Unable to provide the scientific basis for
religion or spirituality, modern people have lost faith. Unfortunately, science and
technology cannot provide answers to the most enduring human questions. The more
we learn about our selves and our environment, the less we understand. Science cannot
tell us what things mean or why they are important. This has led to a sense of
uprootedness. People feel profoundly insecure. The value systems of liberal
governments tell them they are free individuals, but thinking of oneself as an individual,
radically separate from the rest of humanity and the cosmos, only breeds a sense of
alienation. This fear and alienation makes people susceptible to ideologies which appear
to provide easy answers. The dangers are new forms of totalitarianism.
Vaclav Havels works are relevant to many debates today. Although his critique of posttotalitarian government focused on Cold War Czechoslovakia, it should not be limited to
that particular place and time. Many aspects of post-totalitarianism can be seen
creeping into todays capitalist regimes, even in the United States. Havel delivered an
address to the US Congress in 1990 that inspired much interest in his political
philosophies. Havels story of the greengrocer could serve as a powerful allegory in
debates over the importance of patriotic symbols like the American flag or rituals of
obedience like the pledge of allegiance. Havels life story as a dissident and his
arguments for the value of a life in truth that includes free artistic expression are
relevant to American debates over censorship.
Havels writings deal with concepts that are frequently discussed in Lincoln-Douglas
debates. For example, freedom is often appealed to as a value. Havel provides a way to
re-examine the definition of freedom. The idea of freedom Havel promotes is not the
traditional sort of freedom defined as the absence of external impediments to motion.
Freedom does not belong to individuals. Rather, individuals are responsible for ensuring
a free society. Freedom is also ontological. Ontological means related to the way we
understand how things come to appear. It is about how we understand reality. In a posttotalitarian system where ideology defines reality, freedom is the ability to live in the
truth and call attention to lies. Freedom envisioned as the ability to live in the truth
could be a useful argument in many debates relating to the power of government or
society. Havels arguments in appeal to personal responsibility through sacrifice for the
truth, as well as his explanations of human dignity, defined as a life free from
depersonalization, could be interesting concepts to explore.
Havels life also provides an example of the merger of theory and practice. The concept
of living in truth requires that we live out the philosophical beliefs we espouse. Like
Gandhi, Jesus Christ, and Martin Luther King, Jr, Havels life story demonstrates his
commitment to political actions that match up with rhetoric. His focus on peoples actual
experiences and understandings demands that debaters step away from lofty
philosophical ramblings in order to consider their implications for real people and
struggles.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Findlay, Edward F, Classical Ethics and Postmodern Critique: Political Philosophy in
Vaclav Havel and Jan Potocka, THE REVIEW OF POLITICS, Summer, 1999, p. 403.
Goetz-Stankiewicz, Marketa and Phyllis Carey, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON VACLAV HAVEL, New
York: G.K. Hall: Twayne, 1999.
Havel, Vaclav, THE ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. Trans. Paul Wilson et al, New York: Alfred A.
Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1997.
Havel, Vaclav, "A Call for Sacrifice," FOREIGN AFFAIRS, March/April 1994.
Havel, Vaclav and Karel Hvizdala, DISTURBING THE PEACE, Trans. Paul Wilson, New York:
Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1990.
Havel, Vaclav, THE INCREASED DIFFICULTY OF CONCENTRATION, Trans. Vera Blackwell,

London: French, 1976.
Havel, Vaclav, LARGO DESOLATO, Trans. Tom Stoppard, New York: Grove Press, 1987.
Havel, Vaclav, LETTERS TO OLGA, Trans. Paul Wilson, New York: Knopf, 1988.
Havel, Vaclav, LIVING IN TRUTH, Ed. Jan Vladislav, London: Faber, 1989.
Havel, Vaclav, THE MEMORANDUM, Trans. Vera Blackwell, New York: Grove Press, 1967.
Havel, Vaclav, OPEN LETTERS, Trans. Paul Wilson, New York: A.A. Knopf, 1991.
Havel, Vaclav et al, THE POWER OF THE POWERLESS, Ed. John Keane, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E.
Sharpe, 1985.
Havel, Vaclav, SUMMER MEDITATIONS, Trans. Paul Wilson, New York: A.A. Knopf, 1992.
Havel, Vaclav, TEMPTATION. Trans. Marie Winn, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989.
Ickovic, Paul, SAFE CONDUCT, New York: International Center of Photography, 1991
Kriseova, Eda, VACLAV HAVEL: THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY, Trans. Caleb Crain, New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Lawler, Peter Augustine, Havel's postmodern view of man in the cosmos,

PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL SCIENCE, Winter 1997, p. 27-35.
Madigan, Timothy J, Transcending Havel, FREE INQUIRY, Fall 1998, p. 9-10.
Matustik, Martin Joseph, POSTNATIONAL IDENTITY, New York: Guilford Press, 1993.
Michelman, Irving S, THE MARCH TO CAPITALISM IN THE TRANSITION COUNTRIES,

Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998.
Whipple, Tim D, AFTER THE VELVET REVOLUTION, New York: Freedom House, 1991.
HAVELS LIVING IN TRUTH IS THE

ANTIDOTE TO POLITICAL REPRESSION
1. LIVING IN TRUTH IS A MORAL ACT THAT MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE:
Not standing up for the freedom of others surrenders ones own freedom
Edward F. Findlay, Doctoral Candidate, Louisiana State University, Visiting Researcher,
Center for Theoretical Study, Prague, THE REVIEW OF POLITICS, Summer, 1999, p. 403.
Following Patocka, Havel places his hope for a free and ethical politics in the dissident
attitude of the individual in the face of totalizing untruth. For Havel it is the question of
the individual, the "personal experience of human beings," that is decisive. A "life in
truth" begins with the individual, not in the sense of liberal political thought, but in an
ontological sense - as a being capable of truth, never as merely a role. The theme of the
life in truth, and of the social and personal "responsibility" that it presumes, is similarly
central to both Havel and Patocka. For Havel, the two concepts form a foundation for his
moral and "antipolitical" politics. "Living within the truth," he writes, "as humanity's
revolt against an enforced position, isan attempt to regain control over one's own
sense of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act. Havel's argument
contends that these considerations must take precedence in life, that they must be
superior to politics rather than subordinate to it. Both concepts are embodied nowhere
more than in the fight for and defense of freedom. Significantly, however, the concept
here is not the liberal notion of individual freedom. As Havel came to understand in his
defense of persecuted rock musicians preceding the formation of Charter 77, "not
standing up for the freedom of others ... meant surrendering one's own freedom." The
stress is consistently on the preservation of freedom in the society, rather than in the
lone individual.
2. LIVING IN TRUTH IS HUMANITYS REVOLT AGAINST REPRESSION

Vaclav Havel, Czech President, LIVING IN TRUTH, 1989, p. 62.
The profound crisis of human identity brought on by living within a lie, a crisis which in
turn makes such a life possible, certainly possesses a moral dimension as well; it
appears, among other things, as a deep moral crisis in society. A person who has been
seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of
the accoutrements of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no
sense of responsibility for anything higher than his or her own personal survival, is a
demoralized person. The system depends on that demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a
projection of it into society. Living within the truth, as humanitys revolt against an
enforced position, is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over ones own sense
of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay
so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving: the risk may bring rewards
in the form of a general amelioration in the situation, or it may not. In this regard, as I
stated previously, it is an all-or-nothing gamble, and it is difficult to imagine a reasonable
person embarking on such a course merely because he or she reckons that sacrifice
today will bring rewards tomorrow, be it only in the form of general gratitude. (By the
way, the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live within
the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them - a lust for power or
fame or wealth and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the
world of general demoralization.)
3. LIVING IN TRUTH CHALLENGES POST-TOTALITARIAN SYSTEMS

Vaclav Havel, Czech President, LIVING IN TRUTH, 1989, p. 61-62.
The more thoroughly the post-totalitarian system frustrates any rival alternative on the
level of real power, as well as any form of politics independent of the laws of its own
automatism, the more definitively the centre of gravity of any potential political threat
shifts to the area of the existential and the pre-political: usually without any conscious
effort, living within the truth becomes the one natural point of departure for all activities
that work against the automatism of the system. And even if such activities ultimately
grow beyond the area of living within the truth (which means they are transformed into
various parallel structures, movements, institutions, they begin to be regarded as
political activity, they bring real pressure to bear on the official structures and begin in
fact to have a certain influence on the level of real power), they always carry with them
the specific hallmark of their origins. Therefore it seems to me that not even the socalled dissident movements can be properly understood without constantly bearing in
mind this special background from which they emerge.
THE VALUE OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE

IS PARAMOUNT
1. SELF-TRANSCENDENCE IS NECESSARY TO RECOVER RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Vaclav Havel, Czech President, THE NEED FOR TRANSCENDENCE IN THE POSTMODERN
WORLD, July 4, 1994, accessed, May 24, 2000,
http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/havelspeech.html.
A modern philosopher once said: "Only a God can save us now." Yes, the only real hope
of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth
and, at the same time, in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for
self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times
that the basis of the new world order must be universal respects for human rights, but it
will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the
miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our
own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of
creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely
value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well. It logically follows
that, in today's multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful
coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures
and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion,
convictions, antipathies, or sympathies - it must be rooted in self-transcendence:
Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human
community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe. Transcendence as a deeply
and joyously experienced need to be in harmony even with what we ourselves are not,
what we do not understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with
which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with us, all this
constitutes a single world. Transcendence as the only real alternative to extinction. The
Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It
seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him
with it.
2. FREEDOM IS TRANSCENDENCE FROM THE DOMINANCE OF IDEOLOGY

Edward F. Findlay, Doctoral Candidate, Louisiana State University, Visiting Researcher,
Center for Theoretical Study, Prague, THE REVIEW OF POLITICS, Summer, 1999, p. 403.
This theme receives a more thorough and philosophical treatment in Patocka's work, in
which freedom is described explicitly as relating not merely to the individual but to the
society. The free individual "comes to understand this relation of his own actions to
society as a necessary assumption, and he experiences it as a feeling of responsibility."
Responsibility is defined in Patocka in terms of the relationship of man to freedom; he is
responsible only to the degree that he acts to protect, not simply his own freedom, but
that of all of society. This is a conception quite distinct from the liberal understanding of
freedom as an absence of constraints on the movement, thought, and action of the
individual. With both Havel and Patocka there is an additional, ontological sense to the
concept: freedom implicates the responsibility of man for the care of being. It is a
freedom of human being from the dominance of the objective, freedom from the pull of
the material world and from the pull of the ideological. In order to be lived freely and in
truth, human life must transcend its dependence on these elements.
HAVELS TRANSCENDENT MORALITY

FAILS
1. THE LACK OF METAPHYSICAL CERTAINTY IS BENEFICIAL, NOT DANGEROUS
Timothy J. Madigan, Editor, FREE INQUIRY, Fall 1998, p. 10.
These are all leading questions. First of all, it is demonstrably not the case that humanity
overall is lacking metaphysical certitude. It is the differing certainties of the various
world religions, particularly the monotheistic ones, that cause so much distress. If world
religious leaders would admit they might be wrong, that might help to alleviate a good
deal of tension. Hubris comes not from the assumption that humans are the crown of
creation, but rather from the feeling that we are specially created in the image of a
supreme being who favors us above all other living things. And a belief in an afterlife
makes it easier to postpone attempting to solve dilemmas in the here-and-now. A good
sense of evolutionary naturalism leads more to an acceptance that we are here by
chance rather than by design, and a realization of the precariousness and
interconnectedness of all beings. Many postmodernists, and premodernists as well, claim
that we now live in a post-secular society. Why, then, does Havel claim that this is the
first real atheistic civilization? Perhaps he is reflecting upon the official anti-religious
stance of the Soviet Union, under which he came of age. The communist regime that
Havel so heroically fought against misused atheism to perpetuate its own state power.
But it is important to point out that other heroic figures who helped to tumble the Soviet
empire, including Andrei Sakharov, Adam Michnik, Sidney Hook, and his own countryman
Alexander Dubcek, were forthright atheists themselves.
2. HAVELS SPIRITUALITY IS UNLIKELY TO CATCH ON

Timothy J. Madigan, Editor, FREE INQUIRY, Fall 1998, p. 10.
It is a mistake to equate "atheism" (living without a belief in a supernatural realm or
spiritual beings) with "meaninglessness." The loss of old certainties is a good thing, not
something to bemoan, and the sort of ill-defined "spirituality" Havel recommends seems
hardly likely to inspire the massive awakening he desires. Transcendence is another illdefined word. Certainly we need to overcome an unhealthy preoccupation with our own
selves, but in what way? A mutual project to save the species is indeed a worthy effort,
but in order to succeed, the species needs to transcend the divisive theistic belief
systems that have done so much to separate its members into warring factions. Far from
leading to a lack of responsibility, atheism holds - in the words of the Humanist
Manifesto II - that "No God will save us. We must save ourselves." The only real hope for
the word is if the various world religions can transcend their own parochialism and
exclusiveness. Havel calls for an "Existential Revolution" that would rival the Velvet
Revolution. This is a worthy goal, albeit an unlikely one, What truly unites all humans is
our own ignorance. If we can get the vast majority of humans to admit this, and then try
to jointly work together to solve the social problems besetting us, there may indeed be
workable solutions to the litany of potential disasters that loom on the horizon. It is
appropriate that the literary school that most influenced Havel was the Theater of the
Absurd.
3. HAVELS NOTION OF TRANSCENDENCE IS INCOHERENT

Peter Augustine Lawler, Professor of Political Science, Berry College, PERSPECTIVES ON
POLITICAL SCIENCE, Winter, 1997, p. 33.
After presenting the two examples of postmodern scientific ideas. Havel concludes that
we are recovering a "forgotten awareness" that "we are an integral part of higher,
mysterious entities against whom it is not advisable to blaspheme" (PM, 615). If this
conclusion inspires, It is because of its vagueness from beginning to end. Why is
"entities" plural, if the goal has been to root us in a single system? It seems we are
rooted in the earth one way, the cosmos another. The "one" is actually two. Havel leaves
unexplored the relationship between the two forms of anchoring. He wants to solve the
problems associated with the modern perception of anxious uncertainty, or
homelessness. But where are we at home? A being totally at home on earth would surely
not be open to the truth about the cosmos. What is the earth as such, after all, in light of
the cosmos?
LIVING IN TRUTH IS A BAD PHILOSOPHY

1. HAVELS FOCUS ON THE TRUTH AND CERTAINTY PREVENTS REAL RESPONSIBILITY
After discussing rights. Havel speaks of "transcendence ... deeply and joyously
experienced," a mysterious "harmony" with all that exists. Only such an experience
makes "peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation" possible. Maybe that is so. But is
that experience really one of the whole truth, or even the fundamental truth, known to
human beings? Can such joyous harmony be the foundation of the distinctions between
God and person, good and evil, and virtue and vice, which the dissident Havel said
constituted the "natural" or prescientific world? The persistent impression is that
peaceful coexistence with each other, the earth, and the cosmos demands that we
surrender the assertiveness that comes with the exercise of rights or even the exercise
of virtue. If we experience ourselves as too well anchored, then there is no longer any
need for or possibility of responsibility.
2. HIS REJECTION OF RELIGION IS HASTY: LIVING IN TRUTH IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT IT

Postmodernism properly understood, Havel used to know, is based primarily in
opposition to systemization and denial of differences. It fundamentally affirms the
disorder or plurality that characterizes the liberty of personal identity. showing that
human greatness is intertwined with human misery, the awareness of human alienation
from Being and the inevitability of death. Its aim is to restore meaning or weight to the
distinctions, beginning with the one between man and God, that constitute the "natural
world," the one undermined by the impersonal abstractions of science. So
postmodernism, acknowledging that human beings really have spiritual or religious
longings, is open to the possibility of religion's truth. Only biblical religion, in my view,
attempts to explain the greatness and misery of individual alienation or homelessness,
and nothing Havel has said provides an adequate replacement.
3. HAVELS LIFE DOESNT EXEMPLIFY LIVING IN TRUTH

Scott Tucker, Artist, Activist, Writer, THE HUMANIST, November-December 1994, p. 4041.
In my column "Capitalism with a Human Face?" (Humanist, May/June 1994), I ventured to
hope that Vaclav Havel, the playwright and human-rights activist who became
Czechoslovakia's first head of state after communism, would exert "at least a.
moderating influence upon his fellow politicians and capitalists' " Under communism,
Havel espoused democratic socialism. Today he is a multimillionaire content with "the
free market ... the only natural economy," which, in turn, reflects the free and multiform
"miracle of being." On July 4 of this year, Mayor Edward Rendell awarded the
Philadelphia Liberty Medal to Havel during a ceremony at Independence Hall. The
metaphysician and the politician in Havel joined together to deliver this message: The
relationship to the world that modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have
exhausted its potential.... It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a
source of integration and meaning.... Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably
a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the Earth and, at the same time, the
cosmos. In one of his essays, Havel quotes Heidegger with approval: "Only a God can
save us now." For a time, Heidegger found God in Hitler. I don't discount either writer
across the board, and I share Havel's concern with bridging ultimate and relative values,
but he would do more good if he would preach his current creed directly to the
Thatcherite faction directing the Czech economy. There is little justice or mercy in their
program, and they continue the degradation of earth, air, and water which was common
policy under the communist regime. In the abstract, Havel's message is often decent.
But if we dig a little to discover just how the current Czech regime is "rooted in the
earth," we find that Havel increasingly plays the role of moral fig leaf for nakedly
rapacious "free market" forces, both national and inter, national. No wonder he has
received an uncritical chorus of acclaim from our own rulers and pundits. Politics is not
only the art of compromise, and Havel will soon destroy even his integrity as a common
citizen and writer if he continues preaching cosmic banalities.
TOM HAYDEN
It says a great deal about American academic thinking that we are still arguing about
the 1960s, and whether some of the political movements of the time were benevolent or
detrimental.
One of those movements, Students for a Democratic Society, had a charismatic and
thoughtful leader named Tom Hayden who has continued (as an activist and as a
California state legislator) to work for change in the American political arena. And unlike
me, Hayden -- committed to the Socratic and Platonic tradition of logic and rhetoric -does not shy away from nor roll his eyes at debates on the impact of the 1960s. Far from
it: Hayden welcomes the dialogue, which he sees as necessary for a rich and stable
intellectual culture.
While its certainly impossible to sum up either the SDS or Hayden in just a few pages -the issues they tackled ranged from the war in Vietnam to racial injustice to anti-nuclear
politics to American economic inequity -- it is possible to sum up the academic debate
surrounding them.
Basically, there are two camps that feel strongly as regards Hayden and SDS. There are
those who consider them to be heroic protestors, challengers of the status quo and
defenders of the downtrodden -- and those who consider them to be troublemaking, antiAmerican louts who have frayed the fabric of the blue jeans of American life. Who is
right? Well, in order to answer that question, well have to take a look at Hayden, his life,
his ideas, and what he and those inspired by him did during the 1960s. It wouldnt hurt
to have a gander at what they have continued to do in the ensuing decades.
So, with that said, lets examine one of the most fascinating periods of recent American
history.
TOM HAYDENS LIFE

Regardless of your opinion of Hayden as an activist or as a person, youve gotta admit
hes led a pretty interesting life so far.
"Tom Hayden changed America", wrote the national correspondent of The Atlantic,
Nicholas Lemann. Born December 11, 1939, he has lived in Los Angeles since 1971.
As his own website (www.tomhayden.com) admits, though, he was best known for his
16-year marriage to actress Jane Fonda. Together, they participated in many
controversial events demonstrating their opposition to the Vietnam War.
In 1968, he was arrested as a member of the "Chicago Seven" for inciting a riot at the
Democratic National Convention. In 1969 and 1970, he was a prominent defendant in
the Chicago Seven trial. Along with four other defendants -- Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman,
Rennie Davis and David Dellinger -- Hayden was convicted of intent to riot at the
Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The other defendants, who were not
convicted, were John Froines and Lee Weiner. All the defendants, including Froines and
Weiner, were acquitted of additional conspiracy charges.
Later, even those intent to riot convictions were overturned by a federal appeals court,
the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court based its decision on procedural errors
by U.S. District Judge Julius Hoffman. Undaunted by his legal trouble, Hayden continued
with his activism.
He later served as a freedom rider. The freedom riders were a group of mostly white
students from the north who traveled to the American south in efforts to assist racial
desegregation the South.
As some former radicals did, Hayden decided to run for elected office. He was elected to
the state Assembly in 1982 -- and when he was elected as a state assemblyman 20
years ago, the Los Angeles Times reported, he was regarded warily as an invader and
outlaw by his fellow lawmakers, some of whom even tried to expel him from the
Legislature as a "traitor."
This didnt stop him, as he was elected to the state Senate in 1992, the culmination of
seven consecutive electoral victories representing the west side of Los Angeles and the
San Fernando Valley.
Until he was forced out by term limits, he was "the conscience of the (California State)
Senate", wrote Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters. While he didnt pass much
legislation -- his radical views often polarized even friendly legislators -- he sponsored
numerous bills, including legislation on behalf of women, African-Americans and Latinos
and Holocaust survivors. He backed pro-labor, anti-sweatshop legislation -- which you
might expect of a former 1960s radical.
But mainstream groups honored him, too. Hayden was called the "legislator of the year"
by the American Lung Association for taking on the tobacco industry. While a state
legislator, he was given kudos by the Sierra Club and the California League Conservation
Voters for backing protection of endangered species and pro-environment record, hailed
by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for his civil rights achievements,
praised by the Jewish National Fund for his support of Israel, and on and on. Hayden
fought against university tuition increases, fought for reform of the K-12 educational
system, and decried the prominence of special interest waste and abuse of power in
California politics. Hardly a single issue activist or politician.
Unlike many of his fellow radicals, Hayden never decried the existence of the political
system as such. Indeed, his tenure as a state senator was not the first time Hayden had
influenced legislative agendas. At least one prominent political figure, presidential
assistant Richard Goodwin, has said that Hayden created the blueprint for the Great
Society programs of Lyndon Baines Johnson during his tenure as an advocate for the
working poor.
He is currently married to the actress Barbara Williams. He has an infant son with
Williams. Hayden also has two grown children from his earlier marriage to Fonda.
Activist, convict, husband of actress; activist, convict with his sentence overturned,
former husband of actress; politician, author, again husband of different actress. Its
been a tumultuous ride for Hayden, even when he wasnt married to Barbarella. (Look it
up, kids).
IDEAS OF TOM HAYDEN

Perhaps the most important item to read in studying the ideology of this and other
radical organizations is the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of Students
for a Democratic Society, which was written by Tom Hayden in 1962.
Hayden wrote the Port Huron Statement while a student at The University of Wisconsin.
Then statement encouraged other students to research and understand the world at
large, and more, to take action.
What kind of action? Well, lots of different kinds, of course.
As one might expect given the racial intolerance prevalent in America at the time -remember, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was still two years away -- Hayden decried the
injustice of the discrepancy in material wealth and economic opportunity between the
white and black communities. In fact, he credits that issue as one of the factors inspiring
the SDS movement:
SDS moved from a mere problem identification mode to a serious institutional analysis
of American politics. Like many of the so-called New Left groups of the time, the SDS had
socialist leanings -- not necessarily the hard Marxist leaning of various communist
groups, but a general desire for leveling the economic playing field in the United States.
Recognizing that this would require revolutionary change, the SDS got its name from a
desire for what they termed true democracy, using rhetoric reminiscent of early
American rabble rousers such as Thomas Paine.
Even in his youth, Hayden recognized that power could not truly be challenged without
alliances between various progressive groups. That includes student groups, workers,
and other activists of various stripes. The conclusion of the Port Huron Declaration reads:
While Hayden has never focused on one issue to the exclusion of all others, it is certainly
possible to decide based on his activist priorities which are the most important to him.
Like many of his vintage, the Vietnam War provided his activist awakening. Especially
because of the nuclear age, pacifism and the avoidance of war were a pressing concern
for Hayden: as he wrote then, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the
presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and
millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might
die at any time... It seems, then, that Hayden and SDS defended a multidisciplinary
activism that recognized the need for progressive groups of all stripes to come together
toward overlapping goals.
Naturally, there was tension in this: many labor groups distrust environmentalists
because of perceived inattention to the cause of workers, for example. Thus, even
people that consider themselves progressive on one or more issues might not be given
to the kind of movement-building that SDS advocated. And, of course, if one is not
progressive at all, one would hardly be given to support any of the prevailing agendas
that Hayden or his allies would.
Let us turn to the latter group now, and some of the charges they have levied against
Hayden, the SDS, and indeed the 1960s in its entirety.
THE CHARGE OF MORAL AND CULTURAL

RELATIVISM
Conservative academics interesting in revising history have tried to give a black eye to
the 1960s student movements by accusing them of moral and cultural relativism -- of
turning a blind eye to oppression if it suits their political ends.
Quite the opposite is true, insists Hayden to this day. He responds to the charges of
people such as Allan Bloom and David Horowitz thusly:
What Bloom and others see as moral relativism -- they argue that the student
movements essentially defended the right of societies to choose communism -- Hayden
sees as merely a shift in morals. The 1960s radicals were not defending Vietnamese (or
Chinese, or Soviet) communism -- they were defending their own brand of moral claims,
that the United States should not engage in what the SDS felt were immoral activities.
Rather than moral relativism, this was actually the mirror image of the moral absolutism
that Bloom and his allies defended. Just because it isnt your morality, Hayden might
say, doesnt mean there isnt a moral system behind it.
When he was interviewed by the journal NEW PERSPECTIVES QUARTERLY, Hayden

expanded upon this defense of his philosophy:
NPQ: In Bloom's mind, when the current preoccupations of a democratic society become
the primary concerns of the university, the university loses the critical detachment
necessary to preserve and pass on the core values of Western civilization. Pursuit of
knowledge is then eclipsed by the needs of the moment and the opinion of the masses.
HAYDEN: Bloom has it backwards. This man who makes so much of being able to
distinguish between shadow and substance in Plato's cave becomes blind to the fact
that the anguished cry of the students in the 60s was not so very different from Bloom's
own lament. The editorials I wrote from 1957 to 1961 in the Michigan Daily were based
on Cardinal Newman's concept of the university as a community of scholars, on the
remoteness of the curriculum from the real dilemmas of life, on the failure of the
university to stand as a critical institution representing inquiry, on the cowardly silence
of the intellectual community in the 50s. Bloom continuously asserts that higher
education has failed democracy, but it seems difficult for him to comprehend that, at
least in the United States, higher education is not separate from democracy. It's an
institution that is a full participant in our democratic society. It is not Plato's cave. We
live in an economy and a culture where ideas are not separate from improving
productivity, improving cultural literacy or improving the quality of life. Higher education
is fully integrated into - or contaminated by, depending on how we view it American
society. As a result, as long as we have a US Constitution there will be the possibility of
strikes or other disruptive activity any time the component members of an institution are
treated like numbers or feel their point of view is not represented.
OTHER CRITICISMS OF HAYDEN

Even if individuals agreed with the goals of the SDS, they might be criticized for methods
-- such as a willingness to riot at the Democratic National Convention. Many say that the
riot was something the SDS planned all along -- certainly, that was the basis of the
governments case against the Chicago Seven. Because of the overturned conviction,
this is far from undisputed.
However, others maintain that Hayden and SDS were supporters of violent groups, even
if they werent violent themselves. Critics cite Haydens speech to the radical group The
Weathermen, who refused to rule out violence as a political tactic, at the Weathermens
Days of Rage gathering. According to observers, Hayden told the group: "Anything that
intensifies our resistanceis in the service of humanity. The Weathermen are setting the
terms for all of us now."
This would seem to be at least a tacit endorsement of the groups tactics.
The question of whether violence is justified as a political tactic -- and the vexing
corollarly question, whether it is justified in an advanced democracy which generally
protects freedom of speech -- is not something we will concern ourselves with here.
Nevertheless, it is worth reporting and considering that Hayden and SDS were certainly
on the edge of the debate.
CONCLUSION -- HAYDEN AND DEBATE
If there is one thing that we can say about Tom Hayden, its this: he isn't afraid to
change with the times. He is unafraid of a vigorous and public discussion on policies,
philosophies and ideas -- not unlike many members of the debate community.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aptheker, Herbert with prefaces by Staughton Lynd and Tom Hayden, MISSION TO
HANOI. New York: International Publishers, 1966.
Hayden, Tom. activist and former California state legislator, NEW PERSPECTIVES
QUARTERLY, Volume 4, #4, Fall 1987, p. 20.
Hayden, Tom. activist and former California state legislator, WASHINGTON POST,
December 5, 1999, p. B1.
Hayden, Tom. activist, Port Huron Statement, 1962,

http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/huron.html, accessed May 2, 2002.
Hayden, Tom. THE LOVE OF POSSESSION IS A DISEASE WITH THEM, Chicago: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1972.
Tom Hayden, REUNION: A MEMOIR, New York: Random House, 1988.
Horowitz, David. former radical, THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE, May/June 1997,

http://www.theamericanenterprise.org/taemj97s.htm, accessed May 1, 2002.
Lynd, Staughton & Thomas Hayden, The Other Side. New York: New American Library,
1966 (pb New York: Signet, 1967).
Radosh, Ronald. author of Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and
the Leftover Left, FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE, November 27, 2001,
http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/radosh/2001/rr11-27-01.htm, accessed May 2,
2002.
THE 1960s ACTIVISM OF SDS AND

HAYDEN WAS POSITIVE
1. THE 1960s WERE THE UNIVERSTIES FINEST MOMENT
Tom Hayden, activist and former California state legislator, NEW PERSPECTIVES
On the contrary, one can argue that the finest moment of the university was when
students and faculty stopped the university's business-as-usual during a time of national
crisis. We were spending $30 billion a year on death and destruction; hundreds of
Americans per week were coming home in body bags. Professors at Columbia and
Berkeley were among the intellectual architects of that war, and to this day I am
astounded by the fact that of nearly 1000 academic articles written for leading political
science journals during the 60s, only one was about Viet Nam. It was honorable to
protest that situation, and those who did so should be blessed in our history. They are
the exact opposite of Nazi storm troopers. They were, on the contrary, calling on us not
to be "good Germans." That's what Bloom doesn't understand.
2. THE NEW MOVEMENTS CONTINUE THE LEGACY OF THE 60s, AND HAVE MORE IMPACT
Tom Hayden, activist, WASHINGTON POST, December 5, 1999, p. B1.
Comparisons between the World Trade Organization protests here and the protest
movements of the '60s became a media micro-industry last week. One reporter even
asked me, is the pepper spray helping you relive your youth? My response was that it
beats taking Viagra. My serious take on the question might surprise you. Based on five
days of joining in protests, marching, being gassed myself, sitting on cold pavements
and hard floors, I have to say I am glad to have lived long enough to see a new
generation of rebels accomplish something bigger here in 1999 than we accomplished in
Chicago in 1968 with our disruptive protests at the Democratic National Convention.
3. WE MUST CONTINUE TO EXPERIMENT TOWARD TRUE DEMOCRACY

Tom Hayden, activist, Port Huron Statement, 1962, p. np,
Our world is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment
with living. But we are a minority - the vast majority of our people regard the temporary
equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-functional parts. In this is perhaps the
outstanding paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our
society is that there is no viable alternative to the present.... Some would have us
believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity - but might it not better be
called a glaze above deeply-felt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these
anxieties produce a developed influence to human affairs, do they not as well produce a
yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to
change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the
government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that
we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present,
and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human
enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today.
4. THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM ISNT REALLY DEMOCRACY

Tom Hayden, activist, Port Huron Statement, 1962, p. np,
The American political system is not the democratic model of which its glorifiers speak.
In actuality it frustrates democracy by confusing the individual citizen, paralyzing policy
discussion, and consolidating the irresponsible power of military and business interests.
5. THE NEW MOVEMENTS ARE LIKE THE NEW BOSTON TEA PARTY
Tom Hayden, activist, WASHINGTON POST, December 5, 1999, p. B1.
For the first time in memory, the patriotism of the corporate globalizers is in question,
not that of their opponents. Do the Clinton administration's investor-based trade
priorities benefit America's interest in high-wage jobs, environmental protection and
human rights? Are American democratic values and middle-class interests secondary to
those of transnational corporations? As a grass-roots movement seeking the overthrow
of what it sees as an oppressive system, Seattle '99 was more like the Boston Tea Party
than the days of rage we knew in the late '60s.
HAYDENS CRITICS ARE WRONG THE

60s WERENT ABOUT MORAL
RELATIVISM
1. ALLAN BLOOMS FOCUS IS CONFUSED: HE SELECTS THE WRONG ISSUES
I'll give another example. One week after the Kent State shootings, Kingman Brewster,
the president of Yale, led one thousand Yale students to Washington in protest. They
spent an entire week involved in the process of lobbying the government to terminate
the war. Was that a worthy undertaking by a university leader? Absolutely. Did that
damage Yale? Did it morally and intellectually cripple the thousand students who
participated? I think not. What would Bloom make of that situation? His focus is so
confused because he chooses his events so selectively.
2. THE 1960s WERENT ABOUT RELATIVISM: THEY INTRODUCED REAL MORALITY

If we accept Bloom's Platonic model - the legitimacy of questioning everything - then of
course one of the occasional consequences will be rebellious behavior. But far from
being a time which gave birth to moral relativism, the 60s introduced morality into an
amoral society and a materialistic university. To view the 60s as mindless because many
of us followed C. Wright Mills and Albert Camus rather than Allan Bloom's prescriptions is
wrong. The 60s were an intellectual and intensely introspective decade. If there has
been an erosion of general education, that erosion comes from turning the university to
the specialized uses of society, and Bloom knows that. That omission is another reason
why his book is so baffling. He complains that students become economics majors
prematurely and they all go to university with fantasies about becoming millionaires.
How was that caused by the 60s? Those attitudes obviously result from the drive of the
marketplace and the tendency of the university to provide for the immediate
professional needs of society.
3. BLOOM IS WRONG HIS IDEA OF THE UNIVERSITY HASNT EXISTED FOR CENTURIES
NPQ: Bloom argues that, in the 60s, thinking stopped with the moral indignation over the
Vietnam War and racial injustice. Does Bloom have a point? Hayden: Of course he has a
point, but it's confused because the cloistered community of scholars Bloom describes
has not existed for many centuries. At my university, to be much more accurate about
the 60s than Bloom, the Dean of Women was not encouraging reading in Greek tragedy.
She was deploying a network of informants who notified parents of the white girls who
were seen socializing with black men in the student union. That was the University of
Michigan in 1960. That administrative behavior deserved a revolt, and it's not antiintellectual to revolt against those attitudes.
4. HAYDENS CRITICS HAVE MANY MORE MORAL PROBLEMS THAN HE DOES

Speaking of mindlessness, how should we regard the official claim that the US was in
Viet Nam to stop Chinese communism? Speaking of moral relativism, how are we to
interpret Edward Teller's views on limited nuclear war? If academic leaders proclaim that
the university is doing the best it can, but it can't improve on a black admission rate of
5% or 6%, and they say those things loudly on the edge of the Oakland ghetto, or
Morningside Heights, the university will unfortunately reap a whirlwind. And it did.
Furthermore, let's also not forget the 60s are over. We have the most conservative
president we have ever had, the most traditional US Secretary of Education we have
ever had, the whitest universities elitists could want and the income base of the people
attending our universities is safely affluent.
HAYDENS POLITICAL AGENDA WAS

SECONDARY: HE JUST WANTED
TROUBLE
1. HAYDEN AND SDS ONLY WANTED TO STIR UP TROUBLE
David Horowitz, former radical, THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE, May/June 1997,
As principal architect of the Port Huron Statement in 1962, Tom Hayden had helped
launch Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which soon became the largest student
organization of the New Left. When he called for a demonstration at the 1968
Democratic national convention to protest the Vietnam War, everybody knew it meant a
confrontation with the Chicago police that could prove bloody. Ramparts editor-in-chief
Warren Hinckle decided to participate by publishing a "wall paper," as Maos Red Guards
had done during the cultural revolution in China. During the riots that followed the
assassination of Martin Luther King, Chicagos Mayor Daley had recently ordered his
police to shoot looters. A radical street protest would put peoples lives at risk. Because
of such considerations, Haydens plans attracted only two or three thousand people to
Lincoln Park. But that was enough to generate troubleHaydens real agenda.
2. HAYDEN LURED PEOPLE TO CHICAGO FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF RIOTING

When the dust cleared in Chicago, Hayden and seven other radicals, including the Black
Panthers Bobby Seale, were indicted for conspiring to create a riot. During the trial, the
defendants created a near-riot in the courtroom itself. Seale was so obstructive that the
judge ordered him bound and gagged. The picture of a black man in chains was a madeto-order script for the radical melodrama. One of the conspirators, Jerry Rubin, admitted
a decade later that the organizers had lured activists to Chicago hoping to create the riot
that eventually took place. This fit with the general strategy Hayden had laid out in
private discussions with me. When peoples heads are cracked by police, he said more
than once, it "radicalizes them." The trick was to maneuver the idealistic and
unsuspecting into situations that would achieve this result.
3. HAYDEN PROPELLED THE LEFT WING DEMOCRATS INTO POWER

The ensuing melee changed the shape of American politics. The now-famous pictures of
demonstrators being bloodied by police, and the chaos on the convention floor,
destroyed the presidential chances of Hubert Humphrey and moved the Democratic
party dramatically to the left. Four years later, Hayden and the protesters provided the
push and the party rule changes that pushed the antiwar candidacy of George McGovern
and propelled the partys left wing into power.
HAYDEN SAID HE WANTED PEACE, BUT

HE REALLY WANTED VIOLENCE
1. HAYDEN WAS A GUERILLA BOMBTHROWER
Sid Peck, a member of mobe, the pacifist group that issued the call to the Chicago
demonstration, later told me with somebitterness that Hayden had been "extremely
deceptive" in outlining his agenda for the gathering, assuring everyone that his
intentions were nonviolent. Haydens duplicity continued throughout the event, causing
the radical historian Staughton Lynd to comment that "on Monday, Wednesday, and
Friday [Hayden] was a National Liberation Front guerrilla, and on Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday, hewas on the left wing of the Democratic party." Anyone who knew Tom
knew that the bombthrower was the real Hayden.
3. PREACHING PACIFISM, HAYDEN REALLY ADVOCATED FIREBOMBING COP CARS

Having secured pacifist cover, Hayden then went to the most radical elements in the Left
those who actively advocated violence as a political tacticand proposed that they
provoke a conflict with the police who would be at the demonstration. According to
Haydens own retrospective account, he warned one group in New York that "they should
come to Chicago prepared to shed their blood," and he told his co-organizer, Rennie
Davis, that he expected 25 people to die. He recruited the Yippies, a group organized by
Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who alarmed Chicago officials by immediately
threatening to put lsd in the Chicago water supply. Hayden also met before the
convention with the Weatherman faction of sds, which had issued a call for "armed
struggle" in American cities. As one of the Weather leaders told me later, Hayden
proposed to them that "It might be useful if someone were to fire-bomb police cars."
4. HAYDEN ADVOCATED VIOLENCE

Ronald Radosh, author of Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and
the Leftover Left, FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE, November 27, 2001,
http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/radosh/2001/rr11-27-01.htm, accessed May 2,
2002.
Some would like to separate the rest of the so-called moderate New Left from the
Weatherman. Todd Gitlin, one of SDSs first leaders, has condemned Ayers as a "failed
terrorist," and accuses him of responsibility for destroying what he saw as becoming a
mass democratic Left. We are so often told by Gitlin and others that Tom Hayden, who
wrote the famed SDS Port Huron statement in the movements early days, showed the
possibility of a true democratic radicalism. Hayden gave the New Left the alternative of
entering into the nations democratic political structure and waging a serious political
fight for left-wing social policies within the two-party system. It is therefore good that
Ayers reminds us of Haydens speech to the Weatherman at their Days of Rage, when
Hayden told the rioters "Anything that intensifies our resistanceis in the service of
humanity. The Weathermen are setting the terms for all of us now." You wont find this in
Haydens own memoir, but it gives the lie to those who argue that there is simply no
connection between the early humanist New Left and the later Weathermen.
5. HAYDEN TRIED TO MAKE BLOOD FLOW ALL OVER THE CITY

At the event, Hayden gave Bobby Seale a platform in Lincoln Park, and Seale addressed
the crowd with the suggestive exhortation that "If a pig comes up to us and starts
swinging a billy club, and you check around and you got your piece, you got to down
that pig in defense of yourself. Were gonna barbecue us some pork!" Once the violence
started, Hayden defiantly incited the crowd to "make sure that if blood is going to flow, it
will flow all over the city."
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH

HEGEL
GERMAN PHILOSOPHER (1770-1831)

Life is a struggle. Often we say this without fully realizing what it means but its meaning
becomes clear both in individual episodes of struggle and later, when we have felt
ourselves grow through struggle. Part of the struggle is itself trying to comprehend the
meanings and reasons for the agony we might suffer. At some point, we become
conscious of the process itself; we see it as a whole rather than a collection of individual
episodes. At that point, we have a picture of the very thing we are experiencing, and
have experienced. The episodes lose their individuality and become the big picture.
While these comments sound simply like wise observations about everyday life, growth
and self-awareness, G.W.F. Hegel sees them as observations about the very nature of
philosophical truth. Until Hegel came along, most thinkers assumed truth was something
static and unchanging. Hegel, on the other hand believed change itself to be truth. And
integral to this change-truth is, for Hegel, the notion that struggle is part of growth, that
contrary opposites clash and become a higher reality. True to the nature of opposites
clashing, Hegels views are simultaneously conservative and radical. Nothing is as it
seems after Hegel gets done with it. For philosophy, Hegel issued a challenge which is
still being both fled and confronted.
Life And Work

Georg Hegel was born in 1770 to an upper middle class family in Stuttgart, Germany. He
began his mature education by studying at the Seminary at the University of Tubingen,
where he quickly developed a theological view of the world, but also came to realize his
belief that theology, as well as the world, must be governed by rational principles.
Upon graduation, he spent seven years as a private tutor before finding employment as
a lecturer at Jena in 1801. There, he probably began to develop the style that would
make him known as one of the greatest lecturers of his time; so unique and
unforgettable was his style that students took copious notes, many of which would later
be turned into books credited to him after his death.
Writing and editing for scholarly journals, Hegel finally received a full professorship in
1805. Although he would be happily married by 1811, the years in between these two
events were themselves eventful:
Napoleons adventures took his armies near Jena. Hegel fled Jena, edited a newspaper
and was principle of a school in Nuremberg. The closeness in proximity to Napoleon left
an indelible mark on the young philosopher-theologian; he began to believe that history
had a life of its own, and that historical figures seemed to follow a course which was, in
some way, terrifyingly more real than the moral and mundane life of most of humanity.
In 1818, Hegel received a respected post at the University of Berlin, where he would
remain until his death in 1831. During his life, he actually published only four books--the
rest were transcripts of his lectures. Phenomenology of Spirit his best known work, is a
puzzling philosophical epic which purports to trace the journey of consciousness from
individual awareness to absolute knowledge. The Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia
of the Philosophical Sciences were more understandable but no less stimulating or
groundbreaking; both were sweeping visions of philosophy which influenced German
idealism and introduced dialectical reason, more about which will be said later. Finally,
The Philosophy of Right expounded Hegels rather conservative political and ethical
theories, though in no less a revolutionary manner as his other works.
After Hegels death, scores of young philosophers poured over his work and found
visions which would shake the foundations of European thought. Hegels words
influenced both the right and the left politically. That he could do both was a testament
to both the confusing and awe-inspiring style and substance of his
work. If there had been no Hegel, for example, there would have been no Karl Marx, who
used Hegelian thinking, molded to metaphysical materialism and ethical egalitarianism,
to formulate dialectical materialism, the science of socialism. Hegel influenced rejections
from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and even into the 20th century his influence was felt;
Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas are all postmodern thinkers
who owe a huge debt to Hegel.
Dialectical Reason: The Struggle And

Synthesis Of Opposites
The main contribution that made Hegel the most influential of all 19th Century
philosophers was his dialectic. Originally, the word refers to the dialogues, such as
those written by Plato and attributed to Socrates, which attempt to both arrive at
philosophical conclusions and trace the steps, often confusing and side-tracked, used to
get there. Hegel turned this from a notion of conversation into a notion of logic. Now,
logic had been (and still is largely) held to be an absolute kind of thinking which
excludes middle ground and considers all statements potentially true or false. But
Hegels logic, the logic of dialectical progression, is different.
We begin with a thesis, that is, some piece of knowledge. Immediately, Hegel says, it
produces its own antithesis, or contradiction. Let us say, for example, that our thesis
is freedom. Its antithesis, its contradiction, would probably be slavery, or unfreedom. Now, normal logic would say these two ideas are irreconcilable. But dialectical
reason tells us that there are many instances in which humans live simultaneously in
freedom and slavery. That is, we are free in some senses and not free in others. At this
point, in conceptualizing this third way which incorporates the ideas of the thesis and
antithesis, we begin to produce a dialectical synthesis. It may be, for example, the
notion of responsibility: the realization that we freely choose to constrain ourselves in
appropriate situations. Or it may be the political entity which both guarantees freedom
and also asks us to limit our own freedom.
In any event, dialectical reason demonstrates that contradictory things can both be true,
given a higher, or more comprehensive, way of looking at them. As Monroe Beardsley
puts it, Hegels thinking was an attempt--sometimes heroic--to do justice to the reality
of partial truths, relative perspectives, one-sided insights, without losing track of truth
itself completely.
The new, synthesized truth will itself produce an antithesis, and then a still newer
synthesis, and the process goes on and on. In each case, elements of the one are
combined with the other, while undesirable traits of both are shed. Truth itself is simply
the progress of the synthesis of contradictions. Because of this, things which appear in
opposition to us in a given moment are not really opposed at all; on a higher level of
consciousness, sometimes arrived at over painfully long periods, they are the same.
Eventually, all will be synthesized in the absolute level of consciousness, a
consciousness completely aware of itself as a process and without any contradiction,
because there is nothing other than itself. Vaguely, Hegel hinted that this consciousness,
this absolute synthesis, would be called God. At other times he indicated it was simply
the sum total of everything. Hegel, naturally, didnt think these two designations were
really contradictory.
History: The Realm Of The Absolute

Once we have decided that truth is progressive rather than static, once we have
accepted that truth moves through various levels of painful struggle with itself, like a
spiral staircase that appears to go in circles but really does get higher and higher, it
becomes easy to see why Hegel sees history in the same way. There is possible, he says,
a birds-eye view of history which transcends day to day events and grasps the journey
itself. Although we cannot really be seeing it from such a perspective, the perspective
itself is there, to be reasoned by a retrospective glance across history thus far.
Struggles which seem to serve no purpose at the time of their occurrence (wars, political
intrigue and the like) make complete sense as far as their purposes are contemplated
later in history. This type of thinking is called teleological, meaning that it is endoriented, that it concerns itself with why things must happen
as they do. For Hegel, they happen that way because history, like dialectical truth,
follows a rational course. The Fall of Rome, which must have been a miserable event for
its guests, was necessary for the rise of Christianity, which was necessary for the birth
of the Enlightenment, and so on. It is useless to speak of these events, any of them, as
things that should not have happened that way, since once you accept the assertion
that history follows a rational path, you also see that things always happen as they
should. They could not possibly happen as they shouldnt.
Morally, this suggests two things: First, heroes or as Hegel calls them, world-historical
individuals, who are remembered as the key actors making history (Caesar, Moses,
Ghengis Khan, Peter the Great) are above the scope of conventional morality. They
may do things in the course of influencing history that are abhorrent, whether by the
standards of our time, or even theirs. But these transgressions are irrelevant, because
the trajectory of history must move as it should, and these individuals make it happen.
The will of rational history is manifest in their behavior, regardless of whether that
behavior can or cannot be called ethical.
Second, we often see states of affairs in our own present time spans (poverty, tyranny,
moral permissiveness, and so on) which make us outraged and which inspire us to fight
for justice. No problem, says Hegel; our outrage is simply a sign that history will
eventually change to embrace that which is moral. Soon, if it is rational that there be no
poverty, there will be no more poverty. Rather than using that outrage to fight against
poverty now (which by virtue of its existence is, in some way, necessary, whether we
see such reasons or not), we ought to accept that things are the way they are. This is
the philosophical basis of Hegels conservatism.
Its political manifestation goes a step further when Hegel gives more reasons why one
should not fight against the existing order: The state, Its political manifestation goes a
step further when Hegel gives more reasons why one should not fight against the
existing order: The state, says Hegel, is as perfect as it is possible for a state to at this
time be. It is the synthesis of the individual and the collective; it represents the highest
attainable stage of history. To fight against it is to fight history itself, and this makes
about as much sense to Hegel as trying to empty the oceans with a teaspoon.
Objections From Left To Right

These sweeping conclusions were bound to meet with considerable resistance, even
from those who respected Hegels genius of method. The conservatism he preaches is
seen by many as just about the most dangerous conservatism possible--dangerous
because it presents the existing state of affairs as inevitable rather than merely
desirable. The scary thing about Hegels conservatism, critics argue, is that you can give
all the reasons in the world why some existing state of affairs is wrong, repugnant,
useless, destructive, unjust, or unacceptable, and a Hegelian will simply reply: Maybe
so, but thats all weve got; its the best we can do. But dont worry, friend, things will
get better...eventually.
Such thinking, it is said, completely discourages any kind of improvements in the

present system, as horrible as it may be. But is this objection based on the only possible
understanding of Hegelian thinking? Probably not, since it is, to put it gently,
undialectical. The more dialectical approach to this question would be to stop
looking at human will as somehow subject to the whim of history and instead see it as a
manifestation of history itself. Karl Marx did just that; his solution to Hegelian
conservatism was to point out that throughout history, when the existing state of affairs
is proven to be enough of an insult to the needs and dignities of humanity, groups of
that humanity rise up, willfully but necessarily, to change things.
Slavery became feudalism, feudalism became capitalism, and, according to Marx,

capitalism will eventually become something else too. In each case, individuals thought
they simply had moral objections to the societies around them. What was actually
happening was the movement of history, the synthesis of individual will and the
teleology of progress. So it is not necessary that individuals stop struggling against what
they perceive to be unjust; what is, however, necessary is that enlightened individuals
see seemingly
undesirable states of affairs as containing the seeds of eventual change. Being patient is
not the same as being complacent.
Other thinkers, many of them more conservative in a traditionally intellectual sense

than Hegel (a political conservative but an intellectual radical), see another problem,
this one in the nature of dialectical logic itself. They argue that some contradictions have
no syntheses. One is, for example, dead or not dead. One exists or does not exist. One is
male or female, and so on. The logic of the dialectic is not true logic at all, they say,
but simply a phenomenon of finding more things about reality.
Hegel probably would agree. But be would answer that the dialectical process is just
that--a process, whereby things obtain meaning through a progressive interplay between
them. While it is true that abstract logic and certain scientific states of existence do not
lend themselves to synthesis, Hegel would say that the most important things do lend
themselves to a dialectical account: things like political questions, ethical questions,
historical struggles and the progress of philosophy itself all represent the overcoming of
absolute opposites. And more importantly, as we find that we can say more things about
particular phenomena, we also find that many seemingly irresolvable contradictions
work themselves out. In some way, one can be dead and not dead, perhaps through
sickness or through their apparition as a ghost. Perhaps death itself is existing and not
existing, or perhaps things which exist only in the imagination exist and do not exist.
In any event, one sees that only by thinking about things further than an initial cursory
glance does it become manifest that opposites can be, and are, overcome.

Lincoln-Douglas resolutions often begin with the words When in conflict... If Hegel is
understood correctly, an application of dialectical reason can either prove or disprove
such resolutions. If it can be shown that prioritizing one principle over another is a way
to synthesize these opposing perspectives, then dialectical reason itself proves such
resolutions true. Hegels view on the state, for example, is that governments exist to
synthesize freedom and order. But since the state warrants absolute respect, it can be
shown that order must, in this particular period of history, be prioritized above liberty.
But it is just as easy to envision dialectical reason as the ultimate negation of conflict
oriented resolutions. This negation occurs as a rejection of the antecedent of the
resolution itself; a rejection of the possibility that the two principles may really be in
conflict. This is because no two things are ever really in conflict from the point of view
of that birds eye view of history. Such an approach will be most effectively executed if
negatives can point out how the two ideas only seem to be in conflict, but are actually
not. Again, freedom and order only seem to conflict if we ignore the possibility of their
synthesis, responsibility, or whatever synthesis can be conceived of them. Such an
approach would best end with an appeal to let the ideas continue to clash, rather than
declaring a victor by saying that one should be prioritized over another. At that point,
the negative answer to the resolution is: When in conflict, let these principles remain in
conflict.
The progressive nature of history allows one other possibility, which can be applied even
to resolutions which do not presuppose conflict. Almost any affirmative (and most
negatives) will say some particular state of affairs is undesirable. But a certain
interpretation of Hegel argues that the problems which exist now are not really
problems. They are simply manifestations of the way things should presently be, and if
they are truly detrimental to the long view of historical progression, they will eventually
change. This seems, for example, to be Hegels view of patriarchy (see evidence), which,
according to feminists is the root of all evil, but according to Hegel, was (and perhaps
still is) historically necessary.
Hegel seems complicated, but his ideas are actually simple. Debaters wishing to use
these ideas are well advised to read secondary commentary on his works alongside
the original stuff, since his writing is at times cryptic and complex. But the principles
are easily spotted, and many illustrations and applications of his ideas are found in
others interpretations and commentaries. Although it will quickly be found that
almost every student of Hegel has a different view of his work, no Hegelian would
find those differences undesirable. After all, it will all eventually work itself out, and
well be part of the process.
Bibliography
Hegel, G.W.F. PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
. AESTHETICS (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
. FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE (Albany: State University of New York Press,

1977).
. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959).
. HEGEL: THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).
. LOGIC (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).
. PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).
. HEGELS POLITICAL WRITINGS (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).
. INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY (Indianapolis: Hacket

Publishing Company, 1988).
. NATURAL LAW (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975).
Elder, Crawford. APPROPRIATING HEGEL (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1980).
Heidegger, Martin. HEGELS CONCEPT OF EXPERIENCE (New York: Harper and Row,
1989).
Weiss, Frederick Gustav. BEYOND EPISTEMOLOGY: NEW STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF

HEGEL (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974).
THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO HEGEL (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Rosen, Michael. HEGELS DIALECTIC AND ITS CRITICISM (Cambridge: Cambridge

Steinberger, Peter J. LOGIC AND POLITICS: HEGELS PEIL3SOPHY OF RIGHT (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1988).
PHILOSOPHICAL TRUTH IS DIALECTICAL

1. THE DIALECTICAL PROCESS CAN SYNTHESIZE ALL CONTRADICTORY THINGS
G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher. The Science of Logic, in Monroe C. Beardsley, THE
EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE, 1960, p. 636
It is in this dialectic (as here understood) and in the comprehension of the unity of
opposites, or of the positive in the negative, that speculative knowledge consists. This is
the most important aspect of the dialectic, but for thought that is as yet practiced and
unfreeze, it is the most difficult. If thought is still in the process of cutting itself loose
from concrete sense-perception and from syllogizing, it must first practice abstract
thinking, and learn to hold fast concepts in their definiteness and to recognize by means
of them.
2. DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN PHILOSOPHIES IS PART OF A LARGER SYNTHESIS G.W.F.

Hegel, German philosopher. PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT, 1977, p. 2. These forms are
not just distinguished from one another, they also supplant one another as mutually
incompatible. Yet at the same time their fluid nature makes them moments of an organic
unity in which they not only do not conflict, but in which each is as necessary as the
other; and this mutual necessity alone constitutes the life of the whole. But he who
rejects a philosophical system (i.e., the new philosopher) does not usually comprehend
what he is doing in this way; and he who grasps the contradiction between them (i.e.,
the historian of philosophy) does not, as a general rule, know how to free it from its onesidedness, or maintain its freedom by recognizing the reciprocally necessary moments
that take shape as a conflict and seeming incompatibility.
3. TRUTH MUST BE CONSIDERED AS THE WHOLE RESULT INCLUDING CONTRADICTIONS

G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher. PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT, 1977, p. 11.
The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating
itself through its development. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a
result, that only in the end is it what it truly is; and that precisely in this consists its
nature, viz, to be actual, subject, the spontaneous becoming of itself.
4. GENUINE TRUTH TRANSCENDS THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN TRUE AND FALSE G.W.F.
Hegel, German philosopher. PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT, 1977, p. 22. True and false
belong among those determinate notions which are held to be inert and wholly separate
essences, one here and one there, each standing fixed and in isolation from the other,
with which it has nothing in common. Against this view it must be maintained that truth
is not a minted coin that can be given and pocketed ready-made.
5. PHILOSOPHICAL TRUTH DOES NOT GIVE SIMPLE OR FACTUAL ANSWERS G.W.F. Hegel,
German philosopher. PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT, 1977, p. 23. Dogmatism as a way of
thinking, whether in ordinary knowing or in the study of philosophy, is nothing else but
the opinion that the True consists in a proposition which is a fixed result, or which is
immediately known. To such questions as, When was Caesar born?, or, How many feet
were there in a stadium?, etc. a clear-cut answer ought to be given, just as it is definitely
true that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other
two sides of a right-angled triangle. But the nature of a so-called truth of that kind is
different from the nature of philosophical truths.
6. NO TRUTH SHOULD BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED OR HELD TO BE COMPLETE

G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher. PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT, 1977, p. 41.
The study of philosophy is as much hindered by the conceit that it will not argue, as it is
by the argumentative approach. This conceit relies on truths which are taken for granted
and to which it sees no need to re-examine; it just lays them down, and believes it is
entitled to assert them, as well as to judge and pass sentence by appealing to them. In
view of this, it is especially necessary that philosophizing should again be made a
serious business.
THE STATE IS THE HIGHEST POLITICAL

VALUE
1. DUTY TO THE STATE SHOULD TAKE PRIORITY OVER OBLIGATIONS TO INDIVIDUALS
G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher. Introduction to the Philosophy of History, in Monroe
C. Beardsley, THE EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE, 1960,
p.572.
For the morality of the state is not of that ethical reflective kind, in which ones own
conviction bears sway; this latter is rather the peculiarity of modern times, while the
true ancient morality is based on the principle of abiding by ones duty (to the state at
large). An Athenian citizen did what was required of him, as it were from instinct; but if I
reflect on the object of my activity, I must have the consciousness that my will has been
called into exercise. But morality is duty--substantial right--a second nature, as it has
been justly called; for the first nature of man is his merely animal existence.
2. THE STATE IS NECESSARY TO ACTUALIZE MORALITY IN HUMANS

p.571.
The laws of morality are not accidental, but are the essentially rational. It is the very
purpose of the state that what is essential in the practical activity of men, and in their
dispositions, should be duly recognized, that it should have a manifest existence, and
maintain its position. It is the absolute interest of reason that this moral whole should
exist; and herein lies the justification and merit of heroes who have founded states,
however rude these may have been.
3. INDIVIDUALS HAVE WORTH ONLY THROUGH THE STATE

p.571.
It must be further understood that all the worth a human being possesses, all spiritual
reality, be possesses only through the state. For his spiritual reality consists in this, that
his own essence--reason--is objectively present to him, that it possesses objective
immediate existence for him. Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a partaker
of morality, of a just and moral social and political life.
INDIVIDUALISM IS FLAWED
1. INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY REQUIRES THE IDENTITY OF OTHERS
G.W.F. Hegel, German philosopher. PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT, 1977, p. 111. Selfconsciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another;
that is, it exists only in being acknowledged. The notion of this unity in its duplication
embraces many and varied meanings. Its moments, then, must on the one hand be held
strictly apart, and on the other hand must in this differentiation at the same time also be
taken and known as not distinct, or in their opposite significance. The twofold
significance of the distinct moments has in the nature of self-consciousness to be
infinite, or directly the opposite of the determinateness in which it is posited.
2.. RECOGNITION OF OTHER BEING IS NECESSARY FOR SELF-RECOGNITION G.W.F. Hegel,

German philosopher. PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT, 1977, p. 112. Although, as
consciousness, it does indeed come out of itself, yet, though out of itself, it is at the
same time kept back within itself, is for itself, and the self outside it, is for it. It is aware
that it at once is, and is not, another consciousness, and equally that this other is for
itself only when it supersedes itself as being for itself, and is for itself only in the beingfor-self of the other. Each is for the other the middle term, through which each mediates
itself with itself, and for the other, an immediate being on its own account, which at the
same time is such only through this mediation. They recognize themselves as mutually
recognizing one another.
A STRONG STATE IS NECESSARY FOR

BOTH FREEDOM AND ORDER
1. ONLY THE STATE ENSURES PRESERVATION OF BOTH LIBERTY AND SOCIAL ORDER
C. Beardsley, THE EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE, 1960, p.
572.
When the state, our country, constitutes a community of existence, when the subjective
will of man submits to laws, the contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes.
The rational has necessary existence, as being the reality and substance of things, and
we are free in recognizing it as law, and following it as the substance of our own being.
The objective and the subjective will are reconciled, and present one identical
homogenous whole.
2. A STRONG STATE IS NECESSARY TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS

pp. 570-1.
But the subjective will has also a substantial life, a reality, in which it moves in the
region of essential being and has the essential itself as the object of its existence. This
essential being is the union of the subjective with the rational will: it is the moral whole,
the state, which is that form of reality in which the individual has and enjoys his
freedom, but on the condition of his recognizing, believing in, and willing what is
common to the whole.
3. LAW IS NECESSARY FOR FREEDOM

573.
To the ideal of freedom, law and morality are indispensibly requisite; and they are in and
for themselves universal existence, objects and aims, which are discovered only by the
activity of thought, separating itself from the merely sensuous, and developing itself in
opposition thereto, and which must on the other hand be introduced into and
incorporated with the originally sensuous will, contrary to its natural inclination.
4. SOCIETY AND THE STATE ARE NECESSARY FOR FREEDOM

573.
The perpetually recurring misapprehension of freedom consists in regarding that term
only in its formal, subjective sense, abstracted from its essential objects and aims; thus
a constraint put upon impulse, desire, passion--pertaining to the particular individual as
such--a limitation of caprice and self-will is regarded as a fettering of freedom. We
should, on the contrary, look upon such limitation as the indispensable proviso of
emancipation. Society and the state are the very conditions in which freedom is realized.
5. THE BEST STATE IS THE SYNTHESIS OF INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE

558.
From this comment on the second essential element in the historical embodiment of an
aim, we infer--glancing at the institution of the state in passing--that a state is then wellconstituted and internally powerful when the private interest of its citizens is one with
the common interest of the state, when the one finds its gratification and realization in
the other--a proposition in itself very important.
6. IT IS IN THE NATURE OF THE STATE TO SYNTHESIZE INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE

558.
The epoch when a state attains this harmonious condition marks the period of its
blossoming, its virtue, its vigor, and its prosperity. But the history of mankind does not
begin with a conscious aim of any kind, as it is the case with the particular circles into
which men form themselves of set purpose. The mere social instinct implies a conscious
purpose of security for life and property, and when society has been constituted this
purpose becomes more comprehensive.
PATRIARCHY IS NATURAL AND

BENEVOLENT
1. PATRIARCHY IS INHERENT IN THE HUMAN CONDITION
pp. 573-4.
The patriarchal condition is regarded--either in reference to the entire race of man or to
some branches of it--as exclusively that condition of things in which the legal element is
combined with a due recognition of the moral and emotional parts of our nature, and in
which justice, as united with these, truly and really influences the intercourse of the
social units.
2. PATRIARCHY IS AS NATURAL AS THE FAMILY UNIT IN SOCIETY

574.
The basis of the patriarchal condition is the family relation, which develops the primary
form of conscious morality, succeeded by that of the state as its second phase. The
patriarchal condition is one of transition, in which the family has already advanced to the
position of a race or people, where the union, therefore, has already ceased to be simply
a bond of love and confidence, and has become one of plighted service.
3. THE FAMILY AS THE PRINCIPLE SOCIAL UNIT IS NECESSARY FOR ETHICAL RELATIONS
574.
We must first examine the ethical principle of the family. The family may be reckoned as
virtually a single person, since its members have either mutually surrendered their
individual personality (and consequently their legal position towards each other, with the
rest of their particular interests and desires), as in the case of the parents, or have not
yet attained such an independent personality, as in the case of the children, who are at
first in that merely natural condition already mentioned. They live, therefore, in a unity
of feeling, love, confidence, and faith in each other. And in a relation of mutual love the
one individual has the consciousness of himself in the consciousness of the other; he
lives out of self, and in this mutual self-renunciation each regains the life that has been
virtually transferred to the other--gains, in fact, that others existence and his own as
involved with that other. The further interests connected with the necessities and
external concerns of life, as well as the development that has to take place within their
circle, i.e., of the children, constitute a common object for the members of the family.
4. THE STATE SHOULD RESPECT THE FAMILY

574.
The piety of the family relation should be respected in the highest degree by the state;
by its means the state obtains as its members individuals who are already moral (for as
mere persons they are not) and who in uniting to form a state bring with them a sound
basis of a political edifice--the capacity for feeling one with a whole.
Answering Hegel
The formulas of Hegel are an essential and crowning justification of New World
democracy in the creative realms of time and space. There is that about them which
only the vastness, the multiplicity and the vitality of America would seem able to
comprehend, to give scope and illustration to, or to be fit for, or even originate. It is
strange to me that they were born in Germany, or in the old world at all.
Walt Whitman 1892
INTRODUCTION
Throughout this edition of the Philosopher and Value Handbook we talk a lot about
philosophical systems. A good deal of our understanding of what a system is, and
certainly what a philosophical system is, comes from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, one
of the most well-known philosophers in Western History.
Hegel is the person to listen to about systems; he tried to invent the biggest one of all,
one which would encompass everything. When you read Hegel, listen for the silence
which whispers completeness over all the issues Hegel manages to wrap into his
dialectical scheme. To read Hegel, one philosopher remarked, is to undergo a constant
series of re-thinkings as his systems tentacles dig further and further back into the
origins of origins.
Hegel was a maker of systems, a crafter of inter-relatedness. He was a weaver of

connections; using the bits of knowledge he had spent his life reading of. As a
theological student in Eighteenth Century Germany he took advantage of that relatively
liberal time (for scholars) by applying a mind which nearly had perfect and unlimited
retention, to the study of how ideas work. How they relate to each other; when they
are found, lost, and found again across the expanse of Hegels Western civilization; how
they react to one another when they encounter one another.
Ideas, ihen, have a life of their own for Hegel and when he talks about them, as in the
encounter between Faith and Reason in his Phenomenology of Spirit, they seem like
characters in a very long play about knowledge itself.
Hegel saw reason as Reason, truth as Truth. The force that ran through these ideas and
made them alive is described in reference to its power and ability to commit itself to
itself. In almost religious fervor he writes:
Reason is not so powerless as to be incapable of producing anything but a mere ideal, a

mere intention--having its place outside reality, nobody knows where; something
separate and abstract, in the heads of certain human beings. It is the infinite complex of
things, their entire essence and truth. It is its own material which it commits to its own
active energy to work up; not needing, as finite action does, the conditions of an
external material of given means from which it may obtain its support and the objects of
its activity. It supplies its own nourishment, and is the object of its own operations. While
it is exclusively its own basis of existence, and absolute final aim, it is also the
energizing power realizing this aim; developing it not only in the phenomena of the
natural, but also of the spiritual, universe--the history of the world. That this idea or
reason is the true, the eternal, the absolutely powerful essence, that it reveals itself in
the world, and that in that world nothing else is revealed but this and its honor and
glory--is the thesis which, as we have said, has been proved in philosophy, and is here
regarded as demonstrated. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, (in
Monroe C. Beardsley, THE EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE,
1960, pp. 544-5).
More impressive than whatever finally resulted from Hegels thinking was the sheer
magnitude of his effort. Reading the passage cited above, one senses a mystical
optimism, a belief in the coherence of reason and life, so powerful that Hegel would
ultimately declare that ours was a world where nothing was ever really wrong.
The idea that nothing is wrong is, naturally, an excellent debate argument. Phenomena
which seem bad to us today will become resolved tomorrow. We often see states of
affairs in our own present time spans (poverty, tyranny, moral permissiveness, and so
on) which make us outraged and which inspire us to fight for justice. No problem, says
Hegel; our outrage is simply a sign that history will eventually change to embrace that
which is moral. Soon, if it is rational that there be no poverty, there will be no more
poverty. Rather than using that outrage to fight against poverty now (which by virtue of
its existence is, in some way, necessary, whether we see such reasons or not), we
ought to accept that things are the way they are. This is the philosophical basis of
Hegels conservatism.
Its political manifestation goes a step further when Hegel gives more reasons why one
should not fight against the existing order: The state, says Hegel, is as perfect as it is
possible for a state to at this time be. It is the synthesis of the individual and the
collective; it represents the highest attainable stage of history. To fight against it is to
fight history itself, and this makes about as much sense to Hegel as trying to empty the
oceans with a teaspoon.
This section will mainly be concerned with the implications of Hegels theories on
political thought. Hegels views make him an easy conservatizing element in value
debate; Hegel can explain, for example, why things like patriarchy and classism arent
going away as fast as some advocates think is necessary. Hegels views about personal
morality basically acquit you of any sin or crime, so long as you are a world-historical
figure and thus exempt from the moral codes that elsewhere Hegel says are vital to
societal good.
Politically, Hegel never met a government he didnt like. His Philosophy of Right which is
the inspiration for much of the evidence in this collection, purported to resolve the
contradiction between individual and society, long a troublesome political question. His
contention that the state was necessary for the realization of freedom might, at first
glance, seem cogent. But the necessity does not extend both ways, ~pd in fact if the
state is the mediator between individual and community, then how can it do anything
but err on the side of the community, constantly?
Ironically, the first brief in this sections evidence will argue that, because Hegel is so
awash in seeming contradictions, and because so many people think they have the
correct interpretation of Hegel, but in fact have simply one philosophers interpretation
versus that of some other Hegelian scholar, Hegel evidence is inappropriate for
debate. This, of course, means simply that no debater, or judge, should trust the claim
made about some particular piece of Hegelian evidence, unless it matches some
coherent story the judge and the debaters understand; in other words, dont just accept
the words of a Hegel expert: They dont know what theyre talking about either.
BASIC HEGEL
Hegel remains the most elusive and hard to read philosopher of the 19th Century, and
any basic summary of his philosophies is necessarily a shot in the dark. I have tried to
emphasize those simplest and most common Hegelian notions, dialectics and the state,
with special emphasis on their application to debating about values.
Hegels application to value debate is found in two areas of his thinking:
1. Dialectical reason, or dialectical logic, is a method of analysis designed to do justice to

the experience of ideas never being really absolute, of their clash and their eventual
reconciliation in some higher idea. Every time something is opposed to something
else, the resulting clash of those things never leaves the loser in the clash utterly
destroyed; instead, the victor in the struggle has been, in some way, affected by the
defeated.
2. Hegels political philosophy demands allegiance to the political and social order to
which the citizen belongs. This is for reasons much different than, say, Socrates
argument that a citizen must abide by the laws of the state. Such a claim as Socrates
makes is an ethical claim, a demand of moral responsibility. Hegel, on the other hand, is
making a metaphysical claim, a claim based on his understanding of the way the world
works. Since nothing can occur in history until its rational time, then the emergence of
the state in history proves its rationality. Additionally, Hegel saw his contemporary
govemments as being rational enough to at least attempt to give a voice to their
citizens, although ultimately Hegel believes the state reflects the will of those citizens
whether they are aware of this or not.
DIALECTICAL LOGIC
It is in this dialectic (as here understood) and in the comprehension of the unity of
opposites, or of the positive in the negative, that speculative knowledge consists. This is
the most important aspect of the dialectic, but for thought that is as yet practiced and
unfree, it is the most difficult. If thought is still in the process of cutting itself loose from
concrete sense-perception and from syllogizing, it must first practice abstract thinking,
and learn to hold fast concepts in their definiteness and to recognize by means of them.
Hegel, The Science of Logic, (in Beardsley, THE EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS FROM
DESCARTES TO NIETZSCHE, 1960, p. 636)
Hegels dialectical approach to ideas would ultimately yield the conclusion that truth, as
life, is itself in a constant state of change. Although Hegel would cling to the idea of a far
off Absolute, which would finally transcend the dialectical clash and suffer no further
contradictions to itself, until such a state was reached it made sense to find a method
which would get us somewhere in the meantime. Dialectical thinking is thinking which
seeks an understanding of balance, of struggle, and of change.
The dialectic approach to logic differs from the linear, if-then approach known as
Aristotlean logic. In a dialectical process, there is something beyond merely true and
false. Hegel attempted to find half-truths, as it were, those things which are both true
and false, or by extension, both good and bad, things he saw as true to both human
experience and the vision of history.
Take a simple idea. Freedom. If you wish, it may be a statement, freedom is... but it
makes more sense in the abstractions of Hegelian logic to simply take freedom as the
idea wholly.
Then, having taken that idea, proceed to imagine its total opposite: We might want to
say slavery, but in a more complex sense, the opposite of freedom is necessity, or
the compulsion to act. Placing them in a state of clash does not simply result in one idea
killing the other one. The surviving idea is of another sort entirely, for it has been
affected by the struggle, modified and changed.
The new idea might be something as simple as freedom is the recognition of

necessity, or as complex as an attempt to resolve the free will-determinism debate. In
any case, you have the following ingredients:
1. Thesis (Freedom)
2. Antithesis (Necessity)
3. Element of clash of ideas
4. Synthesis (Freedom is the recognition of necessity)
That idea in #4 will go on to be a thesis, until it too is challenged:
1. Recognition of necessity (thesis)
2. Possibility of transcendence (antithesis)
3. Possibility of understanding the necessary natural or social forces which allow

transcendence (synthesis).
Truth itself is simply the progress of the synthesis of contradictions. Because of this,
things which appear in opposition to us in a given moment are not really opposed at all;
on a higher level of consciousness, sometimes arrived at over painfully long periods,
they are the same. Eventually, all will be synthesized in the absolute level of
consciousness, a consciousness completely aware of itself as a process and without any
contradiction, because there is nothing other than itself. Vaguely, Hegel hinted that this
consciousness, this absolute synthesis, would be called God. At other times he
indicated it was simply the sum total of everything. Hegel, naturally, didnt think these
two designations were really contradictory.
Struggles which seem to serve no purpose at the time of their occurrence (wars, political
intrigue and the like) make complete sense as far as their purposes are contemplated
later in history. This type of thinking is called teleological, meaning that it is endoriented, that it concerns itself with why things must happen as they do. For Hegel, they
happen that way because history, like dialectical truth, follows a rational course. The Fall
of Rome, which must have been a miserable event for its guests, was necessary for
the rise of Christianity, which was necessary for the birth of the Enlightenment, and so
on. It is useless to speak of these events, any of them, as things that should not have
happened that way, since once you accept the assertion that history follows a rational
path, you also see that things always happen as they should. They could not possibly
happen as they shouldnt.
THE CASE FOR ALLEGIANCE TO THE

STATE
The laws of morality are not accidental, but are the essentially rational. It is the very
purpose of the state that what is essential in the practical activity of men, and in their
dispositions, should be duly recognized, that it should have a manifest existence, and
maintain its position. It is the absolute interest of reason that this moral whole should
exist; and herein lies the justification and merit of heroes who have founded states,
however rude these may have been.
Hegel, Philosophy of History (cited above)
What is the relationship between the dialectic and ones duty to ones state? The
dialectic ensures, however idealistically and artificially, that all things will become
synthesized in their due time. This includes the political state, which has come into
being for humans as a way to synthesize their contradictory natures.
Hegel believes that the state exists for the ultimate purpose of rationalizing individual
and collective life. The practical activity of men in an age where societies are as
sophisticated as they are, invariably means interaction with other people, and that
interaction must be mediated by a rational and powerful authority because each
individual person might not themselves be rational enough.
POINTS OF ATTACK
Debaters answering Hegelian philosophy should strive to keep their answers relevant to
that portion of Hegels thinking which is applicable to debate. There are several flaws in
Hegels thinking that render him an undesirable source of resolving value conflicts:
1. Hegels idealism, that is, the belief that ideas are fundamentally more real than
people, is a source of failure for his political philosophy, since it removes us from the real
focus of politics: human beings.
2. The logic of Hegels dialectic is not only unnecessary (traditional logic will suit our
needs just fine) but also rather sloppy, and almost never guarantees a genuine logical
result.
3. Hegel has an extremely conservative political bias that taints his overall logic.
4. The Marxist critique of Hegel demonstrates the necessity of abandoning idealism and
embracing materialism, something Hegelianism cannot do.
HEGELS IDEALISM
You may already be feeling excited about dialectical logic. You may think, hey, this Hegel
caught onto something. Life is more complicated than black and white. Sometimes both
sides are right. And so on. However, what works well in abstract logic will, as we see, fail
as a political philosophy, precisely because it tries so hard to accept everything (things
like torture, slavery, patriarchy) into its grand scheme.
The main reason for this is something articulated by Marx, and other German
philosophers influenced by Hegel but finding themselves on the more radical side of
German politics. That reason would become the entire basis of Marxs critique of Hegel,
and his re-adaptation of Hegels philosophy to suit dialectical materialism. The reason
Hegels philosophy, as such, was inevitably repressive, was that this dialectical process
involved ideas and ideas alone; these ideas are treated by the Hegelian as real entities,
existing somewhere removed from the comipting encounter with human beings.
Hegels dialectic works for phenomenal logic, the logic of the interpersonal, or existential
existence because ideas might be experienced and concretized individually in a quite
consistent manner. The dialectic fails politically because such interpretations of
individual ideas are invariably seen as applying to the whole of history, the Hegelian
Geist, or Spirit, moving through history.
This is bound to hurt somebody, because the actualization of such ideas in the real world
does not follow this neat, and only briefly violent, dialectical formula. As Marx would
argue later, history, even dialectical history, is long and bloody.
THE IRRELEVANCE OF THE DIALECTIC

Some people answer Hegel in a different light. The idea that there is more than one kind
of logic is a blasphemy to most non-Hegelian or non-Marxist scholars. These scholars
have a point, and the point is made in two ways.
First, it makes no sense to think we need a dialectical system of logic, a logical method
analogous to normal Aristotleian logic, to gain anything that traditional logic cannot
gain. Marxists, for example, cite the dialectic as necessary to liberate and progress
humanity into our collective self-actualization. But why cant normal logic give us the
same conclusion? Consider the following argument:
1. We should reject historically obsolete and oppressive systems

2. Capitalism is a historically obsolete and oppressive system
3. Therefore, capitalism should be rejected
In this case, traditional logic can easily convince us to reject capitalism. Most people can
be led to the conviction that historically obsolete and oppressive systems ought to be
rejected, socially or otherwise. Proving the second premise may be a bit harder, but
anti-capitalist authors have already written mountains of pretty impressive books on
why capitalism is both oppressive and historically unnecessary.
Perhaps a Marxist might reply that the use of the dialectic in Marxism is necessary not to
make the normative judgement that capitalism should be rejected, but that capitalism
will be rejected, as evidenced by the struggle of opposing, dialectical forces.
But if one of Marxisms major theses is true, this too is unnecessary. The argument is
that historically obsolete societies will be rejected, just as they always have in the past
(feudalism, slavery, primitive collectivism, etc.). Thus:
1. Historically obsolete systems will be overthrown

2. Capitalism is a historically obsolete system
3. Therefore, capitalism will be overthrown
Or perhaps another Marxist notion can illustrate:
1. Oppressive societies will be overthrown if their oppression becomes unbearable

2. Capitalism results in unbearable oppression
3. Therefore, capitalism will be overthrown
Again, no need to posit the clash of two identities, whether those identities are found in
ideas (Hegel) or in economic classes of human beings (Marx). Dialecticians might reply
that the form in which a victorious struggle carries with it some old elements is
important. While that might be true, there is no reason to assume that such
characteristics cannot be found in a conventionally logical manner.
Secondly, opponents of Hegelian logic point out that the actual method of logic in the
dialectic is quite loose, *nd that it may be an equivocation to call it logic at all.
Reading books in which the dialectic is employed to solve clashing disputes is like
listening to someone say, well, there is some good on this side, but theres also some
good on the other side. The supposed dialectician is really only picking out certain
characteristics of both ideas, with little justification more than her own conception of
which ones are important.
Once again, it may be important to see both sides of the issue, and it may be that a
great deal of the statements and declarations we make are somewhat absolutist and in
need of criticism. But it does not follow from any of this that normal logic should be
rejected in favor of dialectical logic.
In fact, another reason dialectics may be inappropriate, at least in their ultimate sense,
for debate itself, is that there is no point in dialectical logic where a definitive decision
must be made about a certain side, a certain idea. A truly dialectical debate round
would have the critic not deciding who is right and who is not, but in re-interpreting what
both sides would say in order to produce his or her conception of a higher truth. This
type ofjudge is not one we generally desire.
HEGELS POLITICAL BIAS CONTRADICTS

HIS DIALECTICAL APPROACH
Analyzing Hegels background, one of his critics has written:
Born in 1770 (a few months before Beethoven), Hegel grew up in Stuttgart, the
principal city of the duchy of Wurttemberg. His ancestors and relatives included state
officials, clergymen, and lawyers. According to his sister, Hegel expressed an early
interest in a legal career and was still interested in obtaining a legal rather than a
theological education in his late teens. But Hegel was trained as a theologian (and selftrained as a philosopher), not a lawyer, at the Protestant seminary at Tubingen (1788-
93). Even in later years when he regularly lectured on the philosophy of law, he never
studied law with the same care that he devoted to other subjects (Hoffheimer, cited
below, p. 834).
A career in theology certainly makes one qualified to discuss the relation between
religion and society. And it may include the philosophical background necessaly to
analyze moral issues. But Hegels privileged upbringing itself blocked a more clear
understanding about the roots of civil strife, and in his eagerness to find a philosophical
root under the growth of the civil and international strife around him, Hegel applied a
creative and somewhat mystical philosophical method to real political issues, and this
resulted in a Panglossian or Pollyanish view of the world as the best it could possibly be
at any given point in history.
In fact, this flaw makes Hegelian conservatism a failure even on its own criteria. This is
true for two reasons:
1. Hegelian conservatism makes a normative claim about states of affairs, that the state
is good now, even in moments of political crisis which are precisely the time that it
seems the state is becoming historically obsolete. The presence of protest against the
existing social order may not be, as Hegel believes, a mere anticipation of changes
which, incrementally, will eventually happen. It may instead be a sign of something that
is already happening, the sign of the obsolescence of Hegels state itself.
2. It favors the old and established over the new, which seems a pre-dialectical
judgment. Hegels final judgment, politically, is that the real is rational, that whatever
is happenmng now must be meant to happen. But being meant to happen might mean
that any number of threats to the state, even in their early and primordial stages, could
be real, and that it is not conservatism, but its opposite, radicalism, that is
appropriate.
Hegelian conservatism is the natural outgrowth of a philosophy written by a brilliant man

in the employment of a bad government. Democracy was not unheard of during his life;
there is little excuse for Hegel to have justified the German monarchy.
Thus far, we have seen that the dialectic, even if it is a useful analytical tool (and
according to strict logical rigors it can be little more), is inappropriate to judge history; it
gives a sense of inevitability to something which may be neither inevitable nor
desirable. Politicizing the dialectic of ideas is bound to result in a kind of absolutism, of
which Engels has much to say. Using it demand ones surrender to the state is not only a
hasty generalization, but is also dangerous to freedom.
USING MARX TO REFUTE HEGEL

Engels argues many things in this section, most notably that Hegel is a politicized
constructivist, a
philosopher who, with whatever good ideas and good intentions, manufactured a system
in order to meet a
political need. What, however, makes Hegelianism more susceptible to such
manipulation?
The obvious answer to a Marxist is that if we are only discussing ideas, then because
ideas are themselves constructs of particular dominant or dominated groups, they are
naturally made to be manipulated. Ideology, the clash of ideas that is the finishing point
for Hegel, is nothing more than one component in a larger system for Marx and Engels, a
system based on the material world, not the world of ideas.
Marx stood Hegel on his head, as the saying goes. Hegel saw the clash of ideas, Marx
saw the clash of flesh and blood, and the ideas only later. Hegel believed the state to be
the most rational of social agents; Marx avoided the conservatism of Hegel by invoking
the cynicism of class conflict.
We already know how idealism causes conservatism. For Marx and Engels, however,
there is an added conservatizing element. In class societies, those who have most of the
economic goods are less willing to see social problems as being the result of material
inequality. They are likely to invent and support ideological arguments, and then their
philosophers will, like Hegel, spend their time discussing the clash of the ideas, while
outside of their parlors and classrooms, real people are starving.
In this sense, Hegel makes us forget. Hegel robs us of our memory of true carnage, the
blood and fire Marx speaks of in Section Eight of Capital, the robbery and murder that
has constituted acquisition and enterprise in Western history. If Hegel can so easily make
us think that ideas fight wars with each other and rise from their own ashes like
ideological firebirds, then it is no wonder that Hitler found so much to inspire him in
Hegels confident statism. And so one wonders what Hegeliamsm might mean to a
terrorist somewhere with a weapon of mass destruction, having just read in Hegels
philosophy of history that certain people, the people who change history, are exempt
from moral accountability.
A materialist dialectic is necessary to understand real history and change. Hegel can
only give us a system which examines ideas in the abstract, which removes them from
their material context in order to examine them. History deserves better; Marxists
believe that every real war is a war over resources. Hegel might show us as much as the
ideas generated by the powerful in order to justify those wars, but nothing more. He
may have been correct about how to find the truth, but incorrect about where to look,
and who was to find it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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PUNISHMENT (Princeton, NJ. : Princeton University Press, 1992).
Burns, Tony. NATURAL LAW AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL
(Brookfield, Vt. : Avebury, 1996).
Pelczynski, Z. A. HEGELS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: PROBLEMS AND PERSPECTIVES

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
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N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1984).
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SUBJECTIVE FREEDOM (Washington: University Press of America, 1979).
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INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (New York: Fordham University Press,
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TRANSFORMATION OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY (New York: Cambridge University Press,
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(Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 1983).
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AND MARX (Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers, 1982).
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HEGEL (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1974).
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N.Y. : State University of New York Press, 1992).
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PHILOSOPHY (Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 1993).
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PHILOSOPHY (New York: Routledge, 1991).
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Press, 1987).
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Publishers 1996).
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SUBJECTIVITY (The Hague: Martinus Nijboff, 1976).
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ESSAY ON THE REAL AND IDEAL (Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, 1977).
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Norman, Richard. HEGELS PHENOMENOLOGY: A PHILOSOPHICAL INTRODUCTION

(Brighton:
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PHENOMENOLOGY OF SPIRIT (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).
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Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1969).
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1964).
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Press, 1982).
HEGELS WORK IS INAPPROPRIATE FOR

PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE
1. HEGELIAN LEGAL ANALYSIS IS SUBJECT TO MANY INTERPRETATIONS
Michael H. Hoffheimer, Associate Professor of Law, University of Mississippi Law School,
TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW, SUMMER 1995, pp. 829-30.
To complicate matters, important differences exist among the four systems. Hegels fluid
treatment of components of his system makes it difficult even to identify with certainty
what parts of the system constitute the philosophy of law -- even in the sense of
Rechtsphilosophie. The form of the systems aggravates their difficulty.
3. REPRESENTATIONS OF HEGEL CANNOT ACCURATELY REPRESENT HIS THINKING

Michael H. Hoffheimer, Associate Professor of Law, University of Mississippi Law School,
TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW, SUMMER 1995, But even his most expansive treatment was
not intended to be a complete statement of his views. For that
reason, the posthumous editions and most English translations add passages from his
lectures in order to amplify the text. In seeking to supplement and complete his views,
however, these texts avoid the fact that the author himself presented his system in an
incomplete form that deliberately imparts elliptical and aphoristic qualities to the text
that both invite and frustrate interpretation. The dilemma is more apparent to new
readers of Hegel than to seasoned scholars who assume that the entire contents of
Philosophy of Law must constitute the philosophy of law.
3. NO STATEMENT ATTRIBUTED TO HEGEL CAN BE CONSIDERED AUTHORITATIVE

Michael H. Hofflieimer, Associate Professor of Law, University of Mississippi Law School,
TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW, SUMMER 1995, p. 833.
Consequently, the treatment of specific laws and of law in general remains deeply
ambiguous, and Hegels attitude remains ambivalent. This ambivalence often renders
the text studiedly equivocal so that his writing resists authoritative interpretive
resolution. It adds both real difficulty to his ideasas well as a flexibility to their meanings
that helps account for their enduringappeal and for the divergent, conflicting schools
that they have inspired.
HEGELIANISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY
UNSOUND
I. HEGELIAN ANALYSIS IS CIRCULAR
Jeremy Waldron Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, Boalt Hall
School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, October,
1992, p. 1361
Indeed, Hegelian historical analysis has an element of circularity. Often the Hegelian
identifies the course of history and then culls the historical record (as well as
contemporary societies) for those facts and eventsthat fit his interpretation; the facts
that dont fit are relegated to the dust heap of history.
2. HEGEL IS ABSOLUTIST AND RIGID

Frederick Engels, socialist philosopher and economist, LUDWIG FEURBACH AND THE END
OF CLASSICAL GERMAN PHILOSOPHY, 1969, p.21
But that in no way prevents Hegel from drawing the further conclusion from his proof of
the identity of thinking and being that his philosophy, because it is correct for his
thinking, is therefore the only correct one, and that the identity of thinking and being
must prove its validity by mankind immediately translating his philosophy from theory
into practice and transforming the whole world according to Hegelian principles. This is
an illusion he shares with well-nigh all philosophers.
HEGEL IS ETHICALLY UNSOUND

1. HEGEL JUSTIFIES EVIL ACTIONS
OF CLASSICAL GERMAN PHILOSOPHY, 1969, P. 33.
One believes one is saying something great, Hegel remarks, if one says that man is
naturally good. But one forgets that one is saying something far greater when one says
man is naturally evil. With Hegel evil is the form in which the motive force of historical
development presents itself. This contains the twofold meaning that, on the one hand,
each new advance necessarily appears as a sacrilege against things hallowed, as a
rebellion against conditions, though old and moribund, yet sanctified by custom; and
that, on the other hand, it is precisely the wicked passions of man--greed and lust for
power--which, since the emergence of
class antagonisms, serve as levers of historical development--a fact of which the history
of feudalism and of the bourgeoisie, for example, constitutes a single continual proof.
2. TRUE ETHICS REJECTS HEGELIAN SYSTEMS OF MORALITY

Drucilla Cornell, Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva
University; CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, 1995, p. 729.
In Levinas, my responsibility to the Other demands that I guard her alterity against her
appropriation by any system of cognition including a system of morality when it is
established as moral law. As we will see, both Lacan and Levinas argue, if for very
different reasons, that the ontological elaboration of the
Sovereign Good attempted by classical ethics is philosophically unjustifiable, and even
unethical.
3. REAL ETHICS CANNOT BE SYSTEMATIZED; TO DO SO INVARIABLY HURTS PEOPLE

Drucilla Cornell, Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva
University;
CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, 1995, p. 731.
Levinas, on the other hand, rejects any identification of the ethical relationship and the
moral law, whether the latter is understood as the Ten Commandments or the Kantian
categorical imperative, two examples of the moral law that Lacan discusses in his
seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis. For Levinas, the Good which provides the
sanctity for the Other can never be reduced to a set of commandments because the
Other calls me only as herself.Since her call is unique to her, how to heed it cannot
be known in advance or
simply through her identification with me as another moral subject. To reduce her to a
set of definable categories would violate her alterity.
HEGELIANISM IS LITTLE MORE THAN A

POLITICAL TOOL
1. HEGELIANISM IS USED TO JUSTIFY WHATEVER CLASS IS IN POWER
OF CLASSICAL GERMAN PHILOSOPHY, 1969, p. 13
In this way, however, the whole dogmatic content of the Hegelian system is declared to
be absolute truth, in contradiction to his dialectical method, which dissolves all
dogmatism. Thus the revolutionary side is smothered beneath the overgrowth of the
conservative side. And what applies to philosophical cognition applies also to historical
practice. Mankind, which in the person of Hegel, has reached the point of working out
the absolute idea, must also in practice have gotten so far that it can carry out this
absolute idea in reality. Hence the practical political demands of the absolute idea on
contemporaries may not be stretched too far. And so we find at the conclusion of the
Philosophy of Right that the absolute idea is to be realized in that monarchy based on
social estates which Frederick William III so persistently but vainly promised to his
subjects, that is, in a limited, moderate, indirect rule of the possessing classes suited to
the petty-bourgeois German conditions of that time; and, moreover, the necessity of the
nobility is demonstrated to us in a speculative fashion.
2. HEGEL CAN BE USED TO JUSTIFY ANYTHING

It was precisely in this period that Hegelian views, consciously or unconsciously, most
extensively penetrated the most diversified sciences and leavened even popular
literature and the daily press, from which the average educated consciousness derives
its mental pabulum. But this victory along the whole front was only the prelude to an
internal struggle. As we have seen, the doctrine of Hegel, taken as a whole, left plenty of
room for giving shelter to the most diverse practical party views.
HEGELIANISM IS TOTALITARIAN
1. HEGEL SACRIFICES THE INDIVIDUAL FOR AN ABSTRACT STATE Drucilla Cornell,
Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University; CARDOZO LAW
REVIEW, 1995, p.
Hegel was the first to elaborate the logic of individualization as secondary, substitute
identification: if a subject is to assert himself as autonomous individual, he has to tear
himself away from his primordial organic community (family, ethnic group, etc.), to cut
off his links with it and as it were to shift his fundamental allegiance, to recognize the
substanceof his being in another, secondary community which is abstract,
artificial, no longer spontaneous, but mediated-constituted-sustained by the activity
of independent free subjects (nation versus local community; profession in the modern
sense - job in a large anonymous company, for example - versus personalized
relationship to a paternalist master artisan; academic community of knowledge versus
traditional wisdom passed on from generation to generation, etc., up to a mother who
relies more on child care manuals than on parental advice).
2. HEGELS INTELLE~UAL EVOLUTION MADE HIM SUBORDINATE TO THE STATE

Michael H. Hofflieimer, Associate Professor of Law, University of Mississippi Law School,
TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW, SUMMER 1995, pp. 836-7
It was crucial to Hegels intellectual evolution, however, that he watched the Revolution
from the seminary. While he privately viewed the political events in France with
sympathy and adhered to a rationalized faith, influenced heavily by Enlightenment
writings and Kant, he submitted outwardly to the Dukes authority and conformed
publicly to the religious orthodoxy. Hegel struggled for years with the conflict between
his public and private views, and this conflict shaped in important ways the ultimate
expression of his philosophy of law.
HEGELS PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE IS

INCORRECT
1. HEGEL HAS NO COHERENT PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
We have the less reason to reproach the philosophers of the eighteenth century on this
account since the same thing is found in Hegel, According to him, nature, as a mere
alienation of the idea, is incapable of development in time--capable only extending its
manifoldness in space, so that it displays simultaneously and alongside of one another
all the stages of development comprised in it.
2. HEGELS VIEW OF NATURE PROVES INCOHERENCE OF HIS THINKING Frederick Engels,

socialist philosopher and economist, LUDWIG FEURBACH AND THE END OF CLASSICAL
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY, 1969, p.25
This absurdity of development in space but outside of time--the fundamental condition
of all development-Hegel imposes upon nature just at the very time when geology,
embryology, the physiology of plants and animals, and organic chemistry were being
built up, and when everywhere the basis of these new sciences brilliant forshadowings of
the later theory of evolution were appearing. But the system demanded it; hence the
method, for the sake of the system, had to become unn~ue to itself.
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
GERMAN PHILOSOPHER (1889-1976)

Occasionally we are reminded that small questions can become big; we think of
political issues and then find ourselves thinking of human nature itself. An everyday
discussion about some ethical issue suddenly turns into an argument about the
existence of divine beings who issue moral commandments. Even a minor scientific
disagreement might evolve into a difference of opinion over the underlying,
metaphysical substances of time and space. We then see that each question involves
infinite questions of a deeper and deeper sort.
Martin Heidegger set out to show that all questions are offshoots of the Question, with a
capital Q, of Being, with a capital B, or of existence itself. Although some of the
personal paths of his life demonstrate that too much ponderance of big questions can
often blind us to small but important everyday details, Heidegger re-awakened the
Twentieth Century to concepts and wonders Western philosophy had ignored since
shortly after the decline of Ancient Greece. Underlying his investigation of Being was a
fear that humanity had lost itself in answers and had forgotten the sacred meaning of
how to question.
Life And Work

Martin Heidegger was born in Messkirch, near the Rhine, on September 26, 1889. He
never aspired to be anything but a thinker. Like many German philosophers, this path to
a career of thinking began through theology, and he began his theological studies at the
University of Freiburg. Two events altered the course of his studies. First, he read the
poet Holderlin, whose works reflected the Germans 19th Century obsession with
mystical self-definition and power. Second, in 1907 a local pastor gave seventeen yearold Heidegger a difficult but stimulating book by Franz Brentano entitled On the Manifold
Meaning of Being According to Aristotle
Aristotle had explored the various meanings of existence itself: being versus non-being,
the being of objects, the being of thinking subjects, the general existence of everything
and its relation to specific entities which exist. Heidegger realized that his fascination
with the book reflected the same emotions he held for Holderlins poetry: the image of
human beings looking out into infinity and questioning not only who they were, but what
sorts of beings they must be in order to question who they were. Although it would be
some years before he would have the opportunity to explore these questions fully, the
seeds of existential yearning had been planted.
Heidegger began teaching in 1916 and was married in 1917. In 1922, he received a post
at the University of Marburg and began lecturing in both philosophy and mathematics.
His lectures urged students to go deeper than their textbooks and their lists and their
logical games, to peer into the void where nothing was known. He argued that it was
always destructive to thinking when people became comfortable with their answers, and
that even the most self-confident systems of thought were often precarious.
In 1927, Heidegger published his masterpiece which had been forced into publication
in order to advance his career. But even though it was incomplete, Being and Time
changed the face of Western philosophy in the 20th Century. While Nietzsche had raised
vague questions about what humans were, Heidegger in Being and Time systematically
laid out every human possibility and traced the paths of consciousness in an eerily
intimate fashion, influenced by the radically personal philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard as
well as the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl.
Kierkegaard wrote about how the lone individual might rebel against the tyranny of
public opinion and average everyday-ness through Christian leaps of faith. Husserl had
developed phenomenology as a method of the philosophical investigation of data and
experience in themselves, without prior reference to broad-based theoretical constructs.
Heidegger combined these two ideas to develop an existential analytic
in ~ which took the lone individual as a starting point and investigated human attitudes
and how they were shaped by other people, the anticipation of death, the tension
between the private and public realms, and so on.
The book instantly made Heidegger the most famous and notorious European
philosopher of his time. A year after its publication, Heidegger replaced his teacher
Edmund Husserl as chair of philosophy at Freiburg. In 1933, he was appointed director of
the University. But this appointment would prove more costly than anyone imagined, for
it was accompanied by the consolidation of power in Germany by Hitlers Nazis, who
influenced the appointment of Heidegger because they saw him as pro-nationalist and
because, unlike many of his colleagues, he was not a Jew.
Perhaps innocently, perhaps pragmatically, Heidegger joined the Nazi Party. But a year
later, be resigned his directorship and within months he was criticizing the Nazis. While
the Second World War was winding down, the Nazis retaliated against Heideggers lack
of loyalty by sending him to the front to dig trenches (he was over fifty years old), and
after the Allied victory, Heideggers Nazi membership earned him a sanction against
teaching or publishing for a period of five years. He would never publicly discuss his
political life thereafter, and sought to distance himself as much as possible from political
issues. Although many people have criticized or defended his life, he himself saw silence
as the only appropriate response.
For the rest of his career, Heidegger devoted his thinking to thinking itself. Perhaps also
a hidden critique of Nazism and other forms of totalitarian thinking, he felt that the
obsession with systematic and technological thinking, which groups and categorizes
things according to various isms~~ and formulas, obscured more pure and
meditative forms of thought which opened the way to a clearer understanding of
existence. His post-war work was characterized by a gentle and provocative, openended style which increased his reputation as a founder of existentialism, which he
himself had sworn off as early as 1948.
On May 26, 1976, Martin Heidegger died, the most important thinker of the 20th
Century. He was buried in the graveyard he had passed every day as a schoolboy.
Philosophers with familiar and controversial names like Derrida, Levinas, Gadamer, Fish,
Sartre, and Marcuse all began their work in response to the issues raised by this rural
German gentleman whose questions were more important than his answers.
Being And The Human Being

At the end of the 19th Century, Friederich Nietzsche commented that philosophy had
always assumed the truth was out there to be discovered by human beings. Nietzsche
argued that truth was an invention rather than a discovery. This controversial
declaration would lead many to believe that truth is not, in fact, real. The common
response is usually to merely reassert the objectivity of truth. Heidegger, on the other
hand, did not deny the validity of truth, but he did seek to show that ultimately we
cannot speak of truth without first understanding that truth has no meaning outside of
the human beings which reveal it. Before a truth is revealed and elucidated by humans,
it has absolutely no meaning; this is not to imply that it is untrue, but only to point out
that we are the grounding of truth; it comes to us through us.
Those who ignore this basic existential fact will often conceal the most important
processes of philosophy, such as the linguistic importance of philosophical statements
and the way that what is conceived of as truth changes overtime. Statements are
always based in some kind of context, some kind of history. When we ignore this, when
we hold truths to be somehow outside of the same human history that we inherit upon
our placement in this world, then we close our minds to the further development of
knowledge and the manifold meaning of Being, existence itself. We become comfortable
with the systems weve invented and we cease to be amazed, like little children, at the
very fact of existence itself.
Heidegger was afraid that we would lose this sense of wonder about Being, so he
posited that the most important questions ought to be faced by thinking individuals
without deference to what everyone else believes, or what weve already been taught.
In beginning his examinations in Being and Time with the
lone individual, Heidegger emphasized his belief that we find ourselves alone in asking
many of the most important and personal philosophical questions.
But even our alone-ness is conditioned by the history weve inherited as well as the
presence of others, who help us become who we are. So Heideggers investigating
human walks a thin line: On the one hand, she knows that she must answer the most
important questions alone and must sometimes ignore public, majority opinion (because
of its leveling off of critical thinking and its tendency to become average and ignore
radical insights) but on the other hand, she also knows she cannot ever really be
alone. These sorts of paradoxes may seem strange, and even violate the laws of
philosophical rigor; but thats just the point: Real life is not the same as the logical
systems invented by philosophers. Life itself is a contradiction. Simple answers, the
positing of overarching values and eternal truths are ways of escaping, not
embracing, the paradox that is human existence.
One important explanation: Heidegger calls his thinking, investigating human Dasein,
German for there-being, or a being which is in the world, investigating the world, and
who is also herself the subject of Heideggers own investigation. (For the purposes of the
evidence presented in this section of the handbook, debaters are advised to interpret
Dasein simply as human being.)
Against Isms And Systems

If the realm of truth is the unseen which has not yet been revealed to thinking subjects,
then what happens when newly revealed truths are simply packed into already-existing
philosophical systems? The answer, according to Heidegger, is that these systems
destroy the uniqueness of what is revealed. Systems are self-referential; they are closed
and exist according to the purposes for which they are designed. But a revealed truth
itself has no purpose, until it is assimilated into that already-existing system. Hence, we
undermine the meaning of the truth-in-itself and instead simply make that revelation a
subset in a mental and linguistic machine.
For example, many religions are based on the visitations and revelations of other-worldly
beings, and these beings are seen as sacred by those who believe in them. But as
humans begin to collect the accounts of the visits and revelations of one such being, the
collection becomes a religious system which is expected to be consistent with itself,
and useful for practitioners of the religion. Let us suppose that religious system has
already been put in place, but then, the being whose visits and revelations inspired the
system makes another appearance to the faithful and says things which, taken in
themselves, are absolutely unique.
Now, after the deity has left this world, for a brief while, the faithful are blissful and
possess a sense of wonder about what has been said. But after a time, theologians get
together, analyze the revelations like data and then plug them into their religious
system where they fit. According to a Heideggerian analysis, the sacredness and
uniqueness of the deitys words has been lost in a technological placement of the words
into a human-invented system. The same, men, would hold true for the discovery of
scientific phenomena, or the modifications of political theory, or whatever: The
revelation itself has a unique meaning which is lost when it is turned into just another
piece of a larger system.
Systems, however, are inevitable, as are -isms, those systems of thought (such as
individualism, collectivism, Marxism, atheism) which are self-consistent lists of human
interpretation and belief. It is part of our nature to invent and sustain systems, and it
allows us to progress and to solve problems. But Heidegger wants us to at least take a
step back and re-examine the amount of trust we place in such thinking. If nothing else,
we need to save some room for thinking which does not have a systematic goal; we
need to contemplate things without having answers already in mind.

In Heideggers works debaters can find two levels of strategy: both straight-up
answers to various philosophical arguments, and a deeper contribution to the critique
strategy of questioning the underlying
assumptions of value-centered debate (a fuller treatment of this strategy is found in the
section on Friederich Nietzsche). Heideggers writing provides direct refutation to
assertions about both majoritarianism (the assumption that what the majority believes
must be accepted) and individualism. Heidegger points out that deference to majority
opinion, while not always wrong, does block us from more critical examinations of
questions, since the majority must always be concerned about accommodating the
beliefs of as many people as possible. Because of this, radical criticism is lost in the rush
to find what is acceptable to people. What finally results is average-ness rather than
truth.
In response to individualist philosophies (such as those of Ayn Rand or Robert Nozick)

Heidegger points out that true individualism is philosophically impossible, since from the
beginning human beings are defined in reference to other human beings and our overall
shared history. Language itself is necessary to elucidate an individualist philosophy, and
yet language, like all systems of thought, is communal in nature. We are always
concerned about others; while this concern is sometimes rejected, it still must be
acknowledged, and we cannot pretend we are alone in the sense that individualists
suggest we are.
But the deeper implication of Heideggerian thinking is a critical rejection of -isms and
values. A critique strategy calls for the rejection of these things in favor of a step
back into the primal and original thinking concerned with existence itself. As Heidegger
points out, when we posit something as a value, what we are really saying (without
admitting it) is that the thing we value is merely something which is useful to us at the
time.
While it may be frightening to reject values, Heidegger does not suggest we embrace
nihilism and live meaningless lives. He simply feels that, for the purpose of critical
examinations (such as, perhaps, debate rounds) we ought to re-question those truths
and values weve taken for granted. Negatives might therefore argue that cases built
upon singular value systems entrench a mindset which discourages more important
questions from being asked.
Heidegger was a careful thinker, and his writings encourage care in thinking itself.
Debaters wishing to introduce Heidegger into value debate should read his works not
only for content, but to familiarize themselves with his unique and gentle style. He
invites us to meditate upon ourselves.
Bibliography
Heidegger, Martin. BEING AND TIME (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).
. DISCOURSE ON THINKING (New York: Harper and Row, 1966). EARLY

GREEK THINKING (New York Harper and Row, 1975).
. THE END OF PHILOSOPHY (New York: Harper and Row, 1973).
. THE ESSENCE OF REASONS (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern

. EXISTENCE AND BEING (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1949).

AN
INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS (New York: Doubleday-Anchor Books, 1961).
. POETRY, LANGUAGE, THOUGHT (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).
. THE QUESTION CONCERNING TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER ESSAYS

(New
York: Harper and Row, 1977).
. WHAT IS A THING? (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1967).
WE MUST QUESTION AND CRITIQUE ALL

COMMONLY HELD TRUTHS
1. COMMONLY HELD TRUTHS CAN EASILY BECOME UNTRUE
Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher. WHAT IS A THING? 1979, p. 29.
For this purpose we take a scrap of paper and we write the truth down: Here is the
chalk. We lay this written statement beside the thing of which it is the truth. After the
lecture is finished and both doors are opened, the classroom is aired, there will be a
draft, and the scrap of paper, let us suppose, will flutter out into the corridor. A student
finds it on his way to the cafeteria, reads the sentence Here is the chalk, and
ascertains that this is not true at all. Through the draft the truth has become an untruth.
Strange that a
truth should depend on a gust of wind.
2. THERE IS NO CLOSURE TO CRITICAL EXAMINATION; WE MUST ASK AGAIN AND AGAIN

For this reason we must ask everyone and ask again and again, in order to know it, or at
least in order to know why and in what respects we do not know it. Have man and the
nations only stumbled into the
universe to be similarly slung out of it again, or is it otherwise? We must ask. For a long
time there is first something much more preliminary: we must first again learn how to
ask. That can only happen by asking questions--of course, not just any questions.
3. MUST BE WILLING TO WANDER FROM CERTAINTY IN ORDER TO FIND TRUTH

Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. EXISTENCE AND BEING, 1949, pp. 278-9.
Homecoming is the return into the proximity of the source. But such a return is only
possible for one who has previously, and perhaps for a long time now, borne on his
shoulders as the wanderer the burden of the
voyage, and has gone over into the source, so that he could there experience what the
nature of the Sought-For might be, and then be able to come back more experienced, as
the Seeker.
4. MUST GIVE UP PHILOSOPHICAL CERTAINTY TO UNDERSTAND PARADOXES

Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. EXISTENCE AND BEING, 1949, pp. 280-1.
To say that something is near and that at the same time it remains at a distance--this is
tantamount either to violating the fundamental law of ordinary though:, the principle of
contradiction, or on the other hand to
playing with empty words, or merely to making a presumptuous suggestion. That is why
the poet, almost as soon as he has spoken the line about the mystery of the reserving
proximity, has to descend to the
phrase: Foolish is my speech. But nevertheless he is speaking.
5. ABANDONING CERTAINTY HELPS US UNDERSTAND OTHERS

Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. EXISTENCE AND BEING, 1949, p. 289.
But because the word, once it has been spoken, slips out of the protection of the careworn poet, he cannot easily hold fast in all its truth to the spoken knowledge of the
reserved discovery and of the reserving
proximity. Therefore the poet turns to the others, so that their remembrance may help
towards an
understanding of the poetic word, with the result that in the process of understanding
each may have a homecoming in the manner appropriate for him.
VALUE THINKING MUST BE

CRITICALLY REJECTED
1. TO VALUE SOMETHING IS TO DEGRADE IT INTO A MERE OBJECT FOR HUMAN USAGE
Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. ~Letter on Humanism, in BASIC WRITINGS,
1977, p. 228. To think against values is not to maintain that everything interpreted as
a value--culture, art, science, human dignity, world, and God,--is valueless.
Rather, it is important to realize that precisely through the characterization of something
as a value what is so valued is robbed of its worth. That is to say, by the assessment
of something as a value what is valued is admitted only as an object for mans
estimation. But what a thing is in its Being is not exhausted by its being an object,
particularly when objectivity takes the form of a value. Every valuing, even where it
values positively, is a subjectivizing. It does not let beings: be. Rather, valuing lets
beings: be valid--solely as the objects of its doing. The bizarre effort to prove the
objectivity of values does not know what it is doing. When one proclaims God the
altogether highest value, this is a degradation of Gods essence. Here as elsewhere
thinking in values is the greatest blasphemy imaginable against Being.
2. THINKING AGAINST VALUES LETS THE TRUTH OF WHAT IS VALUED COME TO BE

Martin Heidegger, German philosopher. Letter on Humanism, in BASIC WRITINGS,
1977, p. 228. To think against values therefore does not mean to beat the drum for the
valuelessness and nullity of beings. It means rather to bring the lighting of the truth of
Being before thinking, as against subjectivizing beings into mere objects.
3. STEPPING BACK TO RE-EXAMINE VALUES AND BELIEFS DOES NOT ENTAIL NIHILISM
1977, p. 226. Because in all the respects mentioned we everywhere speak against all
that humanity deems high and holy our philosophy teaches an irresponsible and
destructive nihilism. For what is more logical than that whatever roundly denies
what is truly in being puts himself on the side of nonbeing and thus professes the pure
nothing as the meaning of reality? What is going on here? People hear talk about
humanism, logic, values, world, and God. They hear something about
opposition to these. They recognize and accept these things as positive. But with
hearsay--in a way that is not strictly deliberate--they immediately assume that what
speaks against something is automatically its negation, and that this is negative in the
sense of destructive.
4. FEARS OF NIHILISM AND RELATIVISM ARE AUTHORITARIAN AND NARROW-MINDED

Usually philosophers tell each other that the truth is something which is valid in itself,
which is beyond time and is eternal, and woe to him who says that truth is not eternal.
That means relativism, which teaches that everything is only relatively true, only partly
true, and that nothing is fixed any longer. Such doctrines are called nihilism. Nihilism,
nothingness, philosophy of anxiety, tragedy, unheroic, philosophy of care and woe--the
catalog of these cheap titles is inexhaustible. Contemporary man shudders at such titles,
and, with the help of the shudder thus evoked, the given philosophy is contradicted.
What wonderful times when even in philosophy one need no longer think, but where
someone somewhere, occasionally, on higher authority, cares to provide shuddering.
-ISMS (EG, SOCIALISM) MUST BE

CRITICALLY REJECTED
1. -ISMS ARE METAPHYSICAL CONSTRUCTS WHICH SIGNIFY THE END OF THINKING
1977, p. 197. By and by philosophy becomes a technique for explaining from highest
causes. One no longer thinks; one occupies himself with philosophy. In competition
with one another, such occupations publicly offer themselves as -isms and try to offer
more than the others. The dominance of such terms is not accidental. It rests above all
in the modern age on the peculiar dictatorship of the public realm.
2. ALL -ISMS MAKE APRIORI ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE AND HISTORY
1977, pp. 201-2. But if one understands humanism in general as a concern that man
become free for his humanity and find his worth in it, then humanism differs according
to ones conception of freedom and nature of man. So too are there various paths
toward the realization of such conceptions. The humanism of Marx does not need to
return to antiquity any more than the humanism which Sartre conceives existentialism
to be. In this broad sense Christianity too is a humanism, in that according to its
teaching everything depends on mans salvation the history of man appears in the
context of the history of redemption. However different these forms of humanism may
be in purpose and in principle, in the mode and means of their respective realizations,
and in the form of their teaching, they nonetheless all agree in this, that the humanitas
of homo humanitas is determined with regard to an already established interpretation of
history, world, and the ground of the world, that is, of beings as a whole.
3. -ISMS ARE CONSTRUCTS WHICH OBSCURE QUESTIONS OF EXISTENCE Martin

Heidegger, German philosopher. Letter on Humanism, in BASIC WRITINGS, 1977, p.
202. Every humanism is either grounded in a metaphysics or is itself made to be the
ground of one. Every determination of the essence of man that already presupposes an
interpretation of being without asking about the truth of Being, whether knowingly or
not, is metaphysical. The result is that what is peculiar to all metaphysics, specifically
with respect to the way the essence of man is determined, is that it is humanistic.
Accordingly, every humanism remains metaphysical. In defining the humanity of man
humanism not only does not ask about the relation of Being to the essence of man;
because of its metaphysical origin humanism even impedes the question by neither
recognizing nor understanding it.
4. METAPHYSICS CANNOT EVER GAIN AN UNDERSTANDING OF TRUE EXISTENCE Martin

Heidegger, German philosopher. Letter on Humanism, in BASIC WRITINGS, 1977, p.
221. No metaphysics, whether idealistic, materialistic, or Christian, can in accord with its
essence, and surely not in its own attempts to explicate itself, get a hold on this
destiny yet, and that means thoughtfully to reach and gather together what in the fullest
sense of Being now is.
INDIVIDUALISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY
FLAWED AND SHOULD BE REJECTED
1. UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD REQUIRES AN UNDERSTANDING OF OTHER PEOPLE
Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher. BEING AND TIME, 1962, p. 153.
If we are correct in saying that by the foregoing explication of the world, the remaining
structural items of Being-in-the-world have become visible, then this must also have
prepared us, in a way, for answering the question of the who. In our description of
that environment which is closest to us--the work-world of the craftsman, for example,
--the outcome was that along with the equipment to be found when one is at work, those
Others for whom the work is destined are encountered too.
2. OTHER PEOPLE ARE IMPUCIT IN OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THINGS

Martin Heidegger, German Philosopher. BEING AND TIME, 1962, pp. 153-4.
Similarly, when material is put to use, we encounter its producer or supplier as one
who serves well or badly. When, for example, we walk along the edge of a field but
outside it, the field shows itself as
belonging to such-and-such a person, and decently kept up by him; the book we have
used was bought at So-and-sos shop and given by such-and-such a person, and so
forth. The boat anchored at the shore is
assigned in its Being-in-itself to an acquaintance who undertakes voyages with it; but
even if it is a boat which is strange to us, it is still indicative of Others. The Others who
are thus encountered in a ready-to-hand, environmental context of equipment, are not
somehow added on in thought to some Thing which is proximally just present-at-hand;
such Things are encountered from out of the world in which they are ready-to-hand for
Others--a world which is always mine too in advance.
3. ITS SUPERIOR TO DEFINE OURSELVES IN RELATION TO OTHERS

Thus in characterizing the encountering of Others, one is again still oriented by that
Dasein which is in
each case ones own. But even in this characterization does one not start by marking out
and isolating the I so that one must then seek some way of getting over to the Others
from this isolated subject? To avoid this misunderstanding we must notice in what sense
we are talking about the Others. By Others we do not mean everyone else but me-those over against whom the I stands out. They are rather those from
whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself--those among whom one is
too.
4. WE DEFINE OURSELVES THROUGH AN ENVIRONMENT FULL OF OTHER PEOPLE

Theoretically concocted explanations of the Being-present-at-hand of Others urge
themselves upon us all too easily; but over against such explanations we must hold fast
to the phenomenal facts of the case which we have pointed out, namely, that Others are
encountered environmentally. This elemental worldly kind of encountering, which
belongs to Dasein and is closest to it, goes so far that even ones own Dasein becomes
something that can itself proximally come across only when it looks away from
Experiences and the
center of its actions, or does not as yet see them at all. Dasein finds itself
proximally in what it does, uses, expects, avoids--in those things environmentally readyto-hand with which it is proximally concerned.
5. CONCERN FOR OTHERS IS PART OF OUR AUTHENTIC BEING

Solicitude proves to be a state of Daseins Being--one which, in accordance with its
different possibilities, is bound up with its Being towards the world of concern, and
likewise with its authentic Being towards itself. Being with one another is based
proximally and often exclusively upon what is a matter of common concern in such
Being.
Answering Heidegger
Introduction
One of the most amazing, mystifying and repelling spectacles from my perspective is
that Martin Heidegger is still respected in American academia. That extends to academic
debate, where his views on technology are very popular, startlingly, among normally
progressive - even radical - debaters and thinkers.
This is true even though this "philosopher" was an active and enthusiastic member of
the Nazi Party from before the time Hitler took power, never forswore that membership,
and continued to defend the "inner truth and greatness" of National Socialism years
AFTER the war ended.
It scares the heck out of me that a lot of people in a movement I hold dear (the
environmental movement) still defend the guy's work. It scares me just as much that a
lot of people in an activity I love (debate) still defend, sometimes passionately, the guy's
views in rounds.
I'm disappointed in academia, too, but I've come to expect the unquestioning approval
of dead white racist philosophers out of academia -- as long as it will help get them
tenure. It's a shame for Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan, that he
didn't publish something with a title like "Deconstructing Ontological Hegemony":
somebody would probably be cranking out a doctor's thesis called "Forrest on
Hegemonic Discursive Practice: Transforming Our Structuralist Paradigm" as we speak.
Why is this? If I had to make a guess, I'd guess that it's for the same reason debaters
have become fascinated with Foucault: 1. He wrote and his acolytes write very strongly
worded evidence, evidence that is difficult to attack due to its use of mystifying
vocabulary; 2. The argument on its face seems radical and innovative; 3. He has a cool
foreign-sounding name. Ultimately, though, I think its a combination of these factors
which adds up to this: it helps them win debates.
To appeal to the better angels of your nature if you run this stuff, let me tell you that just
because its different doesn't mean its good, or right, or correct. But to appeal to all
facets of the debate community, its necessary to give out really good answers so that
the critique starts losing.
In the following few pages, I'll tell you how to whale on the Heidegger critique. It's one of
few arguments I'd happily see expunged from debate, and the best way to do that is for
it to start losing quickly. So strap in: we'll cover Heidegger's Nazism in depth, why that
Nazism matters in depth, and why his philosophy is bankrupt in other ways so you can
adapt to judges unwilling to confront his vile and insidious brand of racism.
But first, I'll teach you how to adapt to ME as a judge. I'll tell you what, to me, are the
four most persuasive arguments against the Heidegger critique of technology (or of
anything): 1. Heidegger. 2. Was. 3. A. 4. Nazi. Or, if you want just one succinct argument:
HeideggerWasANazi. But I prefer the four arguments: Heidegger was a Nazi.
Okay, you say, enough kidding. To which I say, who's kidding? Hitler wrote some pretty
flaming cards about vegetarianism being good. You're not reading those in your Ban
Beef counter plan or your veganism critique, are you?
Mussolini wrote FANTASTIC philosophical cards about how humans are only valuable
insofar as they serve the needs of the state. You aren't reading those, are you?
Ayn Rand wrote great cards about how people that can't feed themselves don't deserve
to live. You aren't reading cards from Rand, are you? (Sorry, Objectivists, it's true.)
As is my tradition, I've gotten ahead of myself. I can already hear some of you saying,
"Isn't that an ad hominem fallacy?" (Congratulations on knowing some Latin.) Others are
saying "Just because he did some bad things doesn't mean we shouldn't defend some of
his ideas." (Shame on you.) Still others will say that his philosophy isn't linked to his
Nazism: certainly not ALL of his philosophy.
We'll tackle all of these in due time, but let me short-order them here so you can skip to
the end of the smart-aleck comments at the end of the essay and tell your coach you
read the whole thing. 1. No, this isn't just an ad hom, but the Latin catchphrase is always
good to use in rounds. 2. He didn't break his mother's tea set, it's the darned' Holocaust,
maybe the defining human tragedy of our time. 3. I'll forgive you for this one, because
it's one of the most common misconceptions about the man and his writing. In fact,
Heidegger's philosophical work (as he confided to a student, and is apparent to anyone
with the eyes to read) helped to develop and justify his belief in Nazism.
Why Saying "Heidegger Was A Nazi"

Isn't (Just) An Ad Hominem Attack
So, ordinarily, I'd go into a section explaining the basics of Heidegger's "philosophy." And
we'll do that next. I think it's necessary, though, to address the concerns of those who
worry that this essay is going to degenerate into juvenile mudslinging. You needn't
worry. I will continue to call Heidegger names. But I should explain why those names
("Nazi"; "fascist"; "goose-stepping proto-cracker"; if you think of any others, please let
me know) have relevance to the argument at hand, and are not mere name-calling. We'll
get into these reasons in more depth in just a second, but basically, there are two of
them:
1. Continuing to push Heidegger as an important thinker promotes him; this is especially

pernicious when there are available alternative philosophers who made equally
important contributions and have much the same insights - without the baggage of
Nazism.
2. Heidegger's philosophical positions, including his notions of authenticity, historicity,

and "blood-and-soil" ideology are justifications for his Nazism. He admitted this to
students, and continued to push these views even after the Holocaust ended.
These arguments will not go unchallenged. Let's address some of those challenges, then
get in some depth about why these two are winning arguments.
Attacking The Defenders Of Heidegger

Defenders of Heidegger have taken one of two paths. Either they paint him as a naive
philosopher, drawn into the evil (read: real) world of politics where his work was
misinterpreted and his loyalties swayed for a short time; or they paint him as a brilliant
thinker whose philosophical work was unrelated to his political behavior. Sure, they say,
Heidegger made some mistakes -- but many great thinkers have behaved in a manner
contrary to their thought, such as Thomas Jefferson owning slaves while staunchly
defending ideas of human liberty.
This line of defense is demonstrably not true: Heidegger was a member of the National
Socialist movement before Hitler took power, remained such throughout the war
(despite his later claims, which turned out to be fabrications) and continued to defend
the ideal of National Socialism after the war.
Some of the things Heidegger defenders are likely to bring up are that he allegedly
resisted the Nazi regime while rector of Freiburg University, asserting the university's
independence from the Nazi state. This is an absolute falsehood, as direct quotations
from this speech of his prove:
"University study must again become a risk, not a refuge for the cowardly ... the battle
for the institutions where our leaders are educated will continue for a long time. It will be
fought out of the strengths of the new Reich that Chancellor Hitler will bring to reality. A
hard race with no thought of self must fight this battle, a race that lives from constant
testing and that remains directed toward the goal to which it has committed itself. It is a
battle to determine who shall be the teachers and leaders at the university."
Heidegger urged people to celebrate the Nazi dictatorship as "the march our people has
begun into its future history." Fascist ideology rears its head constantly in the speech, as
when he invokes "the power to preserve, in the deepest way, the strengths [of the Volk]
which are rooted in soil and blood."
Blood and soil being the Nazi racialist ideology which held that the pure blood of the
Aryan people entitled them to land and living space (lebensraum) that others were not
entitled to. It wasn't just the speech that proved his racist sympathies, though: it's his
whole tenure as university head, where he:
1. Issued an order applying the Nazi laws on racial cleansing to the student body of the
university. This ensured that "Jewish or Marxist students" (or anyone else thought to be
non-Aryan) would be prohibited from receiving financial aid.
2. Chose professors for the university based on "which of the candidates ... offers the
greatest assurance of carrying out the National Socialist will for education."
3. Drove out many Jewish students and colleagues, including former personal students
and colleagues of his.
All of this occurred in 1933 and early 1934. "But wait," the Heidegger apologists will
proclaim, "didn't he resign his post as head of the university?" Yes, he did - on June 30,
1934 - but not to protest Nazi policies. No, he resigned after the so-called "Night of the
Long Knives," where Hitler loyalists purged a faction led by Ernst Rhm, killing Rohm and
the Storm Troopers loyal to him. After the war, Heidegger claimed that this point caused
his break with the Nazis.
But it wasn't true: in Heidegger's mind, Rohm's faction represented the ideal Nazi
regime, one he was disappointed to see lose out. Over one year after he supposedly
broke with the fascists, Heidegger delivered a lecture where he touted the ideals of
National Socialism. This is what he said:
"The stuff which is now being bandied about as the philosophy of National Socialism-but
which has not the least to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement
(namely the encounter between global technology and modern man)-is casting its net in
these troubled waters of 'values' and 'totalities'.
So it wasn't that he opposed the Nazi regime: if anything, he thought that the Third
Reich wasn't adhering closely enough to the true vision he had for the movement - an
anti-technology regime composed of the German Aryan race.
Though friends and colleagues urged him to condemn the Nazis, he never did. Indeed,
he rarely referenced the Holocaust - and when he did, as in this 1949 speech, it was to
trivialize its impact:
"Agriculture is now a motorized food-industry-in essence, the same as the manufacturing

of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same as the blockade
and starvation of the countryside, the same as the production of the hydrogen bombs."
So the Nazi regime wasn't bad because it murdered millions of innocent people. It was
bad because it relied too much on technology (thus perverting what he thought were the
original anti-technology goals of National Socialism). If you aren't shuddering right now,
you oughtta be.
Why This Matters So Much

As you can see, the evidence against Heidegger is pretty convincing. But why does his
involvement with the Nazi Party matter?
Even if he was a hardcore Nazi, the advocates for Heidegger will claim, we must
separate his philosophical work from his personal actions -- as in the Jefferson example,
or in the case of John Locke, another slaveowner. To throw out his philosophy based on
his personal behavior throws the baby out with the bathwater, the argument goes.
Well, even if his philosophy is BRILLIANT, there's a lot to be said for refusing to endorse
the work of a racist. In responding to Heidegger, you can point out that there are a lot of
philosophers that make the same (or similar) claims -- to argue "The Heidegger Critique"
as such endorses the man himself.
Just as you wouldn't choose to read Hitler cards on vegetarianism (because it would
endorse a horrid human being, even if the ideas are good), you can make a persuasive
case that debaters should choose to forego reading Heidegger in rounds. It props up the
name and reputation of someone who was abhorrent, and held abhorrent beliefs.
The notion of authenticity, especially of authentic people, rang very true to the Nazis. It
played right into their ideas of authentic people (Aryans) versus non-authentic people
(everyone else). If you extrapolate that idea even a little bit, you see it's not very many
steps from "we should be authentic people" to "those who are not authentic people have
no worth."
Take his critique of technology for example. Heidegger claims that reliance on
technological solutions separates the people (volk) from the land.
Your opponent will no doubt respond that you can't prove Heidegger's views led to the
Holocaust. But you don't need to. You can claim that 1. That type of thinking reflects
racism and the genocidal mentality, even if it didn't lead to the Holocaust, and 2. Even if
Heidegger's views don't lead everyone to racism -- they give us no philosophical to
COUNTERACT racism. This last point is very important.
Even those people who are unconcerned with Heidegger's Nazism admit that his
philosophy is devoid of social context. That is, it addresses humans in the abstract
rather than dealing with real social situations. As such, it can never address real social
issues in real social situations. How can you address racism if you never consider race as
a factor? How can you address classism if your philosophy does not consider situations
where wealth is unevenly distributed?
Scholars differ on how seriously they take this argument. Heidegger's defenders
generally admit that it's true, but use it to argue that their boy was an innocent - if he
didn't know how the Nazis were going to take his philosophy, how can he be responsible
for it? If he never applied his work to the real world, how could he address the potential
implications?
The milder critics think this is a mere shortcoming of his work, an indicator that
Heideggerean thought might not apply in all situations. But the strongest critics of
Heidegger see it for what it is: a fatal liability.
Philosophical Problems With Heidegger

(Of The Non-Nazi Variety)
Heidegger is criticized by both Marxists and social anarchists from slightly different
perspectives, although they have at least two criticisms in common.
The first criticism is that Heidegger privileges the archaic in his thinking. Rather than
embrace Enlightenment rationality, Heidegger (and other deep ecologists) seek to return
to a sort of pre-rational era. Critics like Theodore Adorno and Murray Bookchin say that
this is far from the task of a philosopher - rather than being postmodern, this seems to
be pre-modern, or even pre-philosophy itself.
This lends itself well to the second criticism, a critique of Heidegger's notion of individual
freedom. In pressing for humans to return to "authenticity of being," his work seems to
push people into a fatalist stance. Instead of deciding for oneself how one's life must be
lived, humans ought to answer the call of fate, living life according to that ordainment.
The word for "being" Heidegger uses is "Dasein," and he says people must just accept
fate to achieve it.
Check out this part of Heidegger's Being and Time:
"Dasein [Heidegger's term for human being] can be reached by the blows of fate only
because in the depths of its Being Dasein is fate in the sense we have described.
Existing fatefully in the resoluteness which hands itself down, Dasein has been disclosed
as Being-in-the-world both for the 'fortunate' circumstances which 'comes its way' and
for the cruelty of accidents. Fate does not arise from the clashing together of events and
circumstances. Even one who is irresolute gets driven about by these-more so than one
who has chosen; and yet he can 'have' no fate."
Socialist critics like Johannes Fritsche and anarchist critics like Bookchin have noted that
this seems to be the OPPOSITE of individual freedom. If one is not free to determine
one's own destiny, than what meaning does freedom have? And who determined what
one's "fate" is, anyway? God? Heidegger? Hitler? Ernest Rohm?
Conclusion
Debate is a wonderful activity in that it teaches us to be skeptical. This should be true

even of people tagged with "great philosopher" labels. Just because someone has the
respect of academia and writes long, seemingly deep philosophical essays does not
mean that the person wasn't totally full of it. It also doesn't mean that the work that
person produced isn't dangerous. There's no more obvious example of that than the
work of Martin Heidegger, philosopher and Nazi. Don't be fooled: when we say "Never
forget the Holocaust," we should mean it. That includes remembering all those who
contributed, even those who are tagged with the label "philosopher" instead of "war
criminal."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Theodor W. Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, tr. K. Tarnowski & F. Will (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Yoko Arisaka, Philosophy Department, University of San Francisco, Spatiality,

Temporality, and the Problem of Foundation in Being and Time, PHILOSOPHY TODAY
40:1, Spring 1996, p. 36-46.
Murray Bookchin, Director of the Institute for Social Ecology, GREEN PERSPECTIVES No.
15, April 1989.
Hubert L. Dreyfus, BEING-IN-THE-WORLD: A COMMENTARY ON HEIDEGGER'S "BEING AND

TIME," Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1991.
Victor Farias, HEIDEGGER AND NAZISM, Temple University Press, 1989.
Andrew Feenberg and Alastair Hannay, editors, TECHNOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF
KNOWLEDGE, Indiana University Press, 1995.
Johannes Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger's Being and
Time, University of California Press, 1999.
Martin Heidegger, BEING AND TIME, Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson, New York, Harper & Row, 1962.
E.F. Kaelin, HEIDEGGER'S BEING & TIME, Tallahassee, Florida State University Press,
1988.
George Lukacs, THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON, Humanities Press, 1981.
George L. Mosse, THE CRISIS OF GERMAN IDEOLOGY: INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE

THIRD REICH, New York, Grosset and Dunlop, 1964.
Thomas Sheehan, "Heidegger and the Nazis," NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, June 16,
1988.
Hans Sluga, HEIDEGGER'S CRISIS: PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS IN NAZI GERMANY.

Cambridge: Harvard Univeristy Press. 1993.
Gerry Stahl, Research Professor at the University of Colorado's Institute of Cognitive

Science, MARXIAN HERMENEUTICS AND HEIDEGGERIAN SOCIAL THEORY: INTERPRETING
AND TRANSFORMING OUR WORLD, 1975,
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~gerry/publications/dissertations/philosophy/ch0.html,
Frank Tipler, professor of physics at Tulane University, THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY,

Tulane University Press, 1994.
HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY WAS

INTRINSICALLY A NAZI ONE
1. HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY CANNOT BE DIVORCED FROM HIS NAZISM
1994,
p. 83-4.
Heidegger can be considered the most influential Nazi philosopher of all. It is well known
that he was a member of the Nazi party before Hitler took power in Germany, but many
of Heidegger's later followers have attempted to argue that this was incidental to his
philosophy. This is false. When Heidegger's own student Karl Lowith (driven out of
German in the 1930s because he was half Jewish) told Heidegger that his philosophical
work was being damaged by his politics, Heidegger disagreed, claiming that in fact the
idea of 'historicity,' as outlined in Heidegger's most famous work, BEING AND TIME, was
the justification for his Nazism. And 'historicity' as understood by Heidegger was
repetition, Eternal Return.
2. HEIDEGGER'S CRITIQUE OF TECHNOLOGY IS ROOTED IN NAZI IDEOLOGY

1994,
p. 84.
Heidegger considered technology to be the greatest danger facing humankind, for it
threatened to change the very essence of personhood. The two nations with the greatest
admiration for technological progress, the United States and the Soviet Union, must
therefore be opposed. Since both capitalist democracy and Marxist totalitarianism
believed in technological progress without limit, they were equally suspect in
Heidegger's eyes. Heidegger hoped the Nazis could provide the necessary restrictions
on technology; indeed, he believed that the very essence of Nazism was to keep
technology in its proper bounds. As he put it in his INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS,
published after World War II, 'the inner truth and greatness of National Socialism must
be sought in the encounter between global technology and modern man.'
3. HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY IS PRIMITIVE, FATALISTIC

Murray Bookchin, Director of the Institute for Social Ecology, GREEN PERSPECTIVES, April
1989,
p. 1.
Not surprisingly, assorted environmental groups who have made biocentricity a focal
point in their philosophies tend toward a passive-receptive mysticism. Heidegger's
numbing "openness to Being," Spinoza's fatalism, and various Asian theologies that
enjoin us to yield to a mindless quietism have attained a trendy quality that beclouds
ecological issues with mystical overtones. We thus spin in an orbit of circular reasoning
that subordinates human action to a supernatural world of largely mythic activity. The
result is that action as such becomes suspect irrespective of the social conditions in
which it occurs. Exactly at a time when we need the greatest clarity of thought and
rational guidance to resolve the massive environmental dislocations that threaten the
very stability of the planet, we are asked to bend before a completely mysterious "will"
of "Gaia" that serves to paralyze human will and that darkens human perception with
theistic chimeras. The ability to clearly think out the contradictions this mentality
produces is blocked by theistic appeals to a mysticism that places a ban on logic and
reason.
HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY
ENTRENCHES POWER HIERARCHIES
1. HEIDEGGER'S THINKING STOPS A TRUE SOCIAL CRITIQUE, IS DESTRUCTIVE
Murray Bookchin, Director of the Institute for Social Ecology, SOCIAL ANARCHISM OR
LIFESTYLE ANARCHISM, 1995,
http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/bookchin/sp001512/Social6.html, accessed May 11,
2001.
As I have already suggested, this mythos of a 'falling from authenticity' has its roots in
reactionary romanticism, most recently in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, whose
v'lkisch 'spiritualism,' latent in Being and Time, later emerged in his explicitly fascist
works. This view now feeds on the quietistic mysticism that abounds in the
antidemocratic writings of Rudolf Bahro, with its barely disguised appeal for 'salvation'
by a 'Green Adolf,' and in the apolitical quest for ecological spiritualism and 'selffulfillment' propounded by deep ecologists. In the end, the individual ego becomes the
supreme temple of reality, excluding history and becoming, democracy and
responsibility. Indeed, lived contact with society as such is rendered tenuous by a
narcissism so all-embracing that it shrivels consociation to an infantilized ego that is
little more than a bundle of shrieking demands and claims for its own satisfactions.
Civilization merely obstructs the ecstatic self-realization of this ego's desires, reified as
the ultimate fulfillment of emancipation, as though ecstasy and desire were not products
of cultivation and historical development, but merely innate impulses that appear ab
novo in a desocialized world. Like the petty-bourgeois Stirnerite ego, primitivist lifestyle
anarchism allows no room for social institutions, political organizations, and radical
programs, still less a public sphere, which all the writers we have examined
automatically identify with statecraft. The sporadic, the unsystematic, the incoherent,
the discontinuous, and the intuitive supplant the consistent, purposive, organized, and
rational, indeed any form of sustained and focused activity apart from publishing a 'zine'
or pamphlet -- or burning a garbage can. Imagination is counterposed to reason and
desire to theoretical coherence, as though the two were in radical contradiction to each
other. Goya's admonition that imagination without reason produces monsters is altered
to leave the impression that imagination flourishes on an unmediated experience with
an unnuanced 'oneness.' Thus is social nature essentially dissolved into biological
nature; innovative humanity, into adaptive animality; temporality, into precivilizatory
eternality; history, into an archaic cyclicity.
2. HEIDEGGER IGNORES THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF HIS THOUGHT, ENTRENCHING POWER

Science, MARXIAN HERMENEUTICS AND HEIDEGGERIAN SOCIAL THEORY, 1975,
This theoretical point has practical consequences for Heidegger's philosophy insofar as
he fails to reflect on the relation of society to his language. Heidegger's failure to deal
adequately with the present social context of philosophy is perhaps Adorno's strongest
indictment of him: his ontology is an unfortunate response to social conditions in which
people feel powerless. In the guise of a critique of subjectivistic will, it fetishizes the
illusion of powerlessness and thereby serves those in power. Following a restorative
thrust, Heidegger's formulation of a real felt need merely assumes a solution and thus
serves to perpetuate the underlying problems according to Adorno's analysis.
Strengthening conservative ideology, Heidegger's approach avoids those issues which
point to the realm of society, an arena in which people could possibly exert some joint
control.
SERIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS

EXIST WITH HEIDEGGER
1. HEIDEGGER FALLS VICTIM TO HIS OWN CRITIQUE
Theodore W. Adorno, philosopher, THE JARGON OF AUTHENTICITY, 1973, p. 51.
But the triviality of the simple is not, as Heidegger would like it to be, attributable to the
value-blindness of thought that has lost being. Such triviality comes from thinking that is
supposedly in tune with being and reveals itself as something supremely noble. Such
triviality is the sign of that classifying thought, even in the simplest word, from which
Heidegger pretends that he has escaped: namely, abstraction.
2. HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY IS TOO SUBJECTIVE

Yoko Arisaka, Philosophy Department, University of San Francisco, PHILOSOPHY TODAY,
Spring 1996, p. 36.
Thus from the beginning Heidegger had a conception of spatial finitude, but this
fundamental insight was undeveloped because of his ambition to carry out the
foundational project which favored time. From the 1930's on, as Heidegger abandons the
foundational project focusing on temporality, the conception of authentic spatiality
comes to the fore. For example, in Discourse on Thinking Heidegger considers the
spatial character of Being as "that-which-regions (die Gegnet)". The peculiar expression
is a re-conceptualization of the notion of "region" as it appeared in Being and Time.
Region is given an active character and defined as the "openness that surrounds us"
which "comes to meet us". By giving it an active character, Heidegger wants to
emphasize that region is not brought into being by us, but rather exists in its own right,
as that which expresses our spatial existence. Heidegger states that "one needs to
understand 'resolve' (Entschlossenheit) as it is understood in Being and Time: as the
opening of man [Dasein] particularly undertaken by him for openness,...which we think
of as that-which-regions". Here Heidegger is asserting an authentic conception of
spatiality. The finitude expressed in the notion of Being-in-the-world is thus transformed
into an authentic recognition of our finite worldly existence in later writings. The return
to the conception of spatial finitude in the later period shows that Heidegger never
abandoned the original insight behind his conception of Being-in-the-world. But once
committed to this idea, it is hard to justify singling out an aspect of the self-temporality--as the foundation for the rest of the structure. All of the existentiale and
zuhanden modes, which constitute the whole of Being-in-the-world, are equiprimordial,
each mode articulating different aspects of a unified whole. The preference for
temporality as the privileged meaning of existence reflects the Kantian residue in
Heidegger's early doctrine which he later rejected as still excessively subjectivistic.
5. HEIDEGGER'S EFFORT AT A "FOUNDATIONAL" PROJECT FAILS
Yoko Arisaka, Philosophy Department, University of San Francisco, PHILOSOPHY TODAY,

Spring 1996, p. 36.
Heidegger's abandonment of his early "foundational" project after the Kehre has often
been attributed to a general shift in emphasis away from subjectivity toward a fuller
conception of Being. It has not yet been shown how that shift might be rooted in specific
problems within Being and Time itself. This paper is a critique of Heidegger's
"foundational" project in Being and Time. The problem will be discussed by examining a
representative case of a foundational relation--one between space and time. In
particular, I will evaluate the claim in Section 70 that Dasein's temporality founds
spatiality. I will show that his argument fails and that Heidegger cannot successfully
carry out his project within his phenomenological framework.
MARXIST CRITIQUE OF HEIDEGGER IS

SUPERIOR
1. HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY IS SELF-DEFEATING WITHOUT MARXIST INSIGHTS
Significantly, Adorno's social critique of Heidegger is not simply divorced from a
philosophical one. Rather, it underscores the philosophical failure of Heidegger's
thought: its lack of concern for the very social dimension in which it becomes selfdefeating. This particular failure necessitates the confrontation between Heidegger's and
Marxist critical theory of society. By determining the social limitations of Heidegger's
thought, Adorno does not discard Heidegger, but attunes the strivings of Heidegger's
philosophical concepts to their social content, measuring the distance between their
claims and their achievements. Only thereby can Marxism interpret Heidegger's insights
within the context of Marxism's own method and fruitfully comprehend both the
progressive and the reactionary force of Heidegger's socially-situated path of thought.
2. THE MARXIST CRITIQUE OF HEIDEGGER IS SUPERIOR TO HEIDEGGER'S IDEAS

For Heidegger, as for Hegel before him, the developmental process whereby Being,
which determines the form of presence of beings, is itself determined takes place solely
within the realm of Being-itself. In Marx's theory, on the contrary, the history of Being is
the consequence of concrete human history, and its apparent autonomy from human
control is an illusion resulting from the complexity of historical mediations within an
antagonistically structured society. Marx's ontological essences, above all that of
abstract value, are accordingly derived from concrete, historically-specific categories,
such as exchange value, comprehended as the form of appearance of the essence.
Actual beings are thus not simply objectifications or placeholders of a Being which
develops independently; the history of Being is not a mystical intergalactic happening or
even a process taking place primarily within the language of a people or the intellectual
history of a tradition. That beings are now present as calculable stock, abstracted from
their unique context and physical characteristics, is, according to Marx, primarily a result
of their being present in relations of exchange. It is these concrete relations of beings to
beings as they have developed in social, economic, material history, which equate the
forces used in the production of each commodity with all other forces of production,
equate each being with every other commodity, equate the human activity involved in
any task with labor as such, and thereby abstract from the mortality and situatedness of
people.
3. HEIDEGGER IGNORES IMPORTANT FACTS THAT MARXISM DOESN'T

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/
~gerry/publications/dissertations/philosophy/ch0.html, accessed May 10, 2001.
Marx thus understands the prevailing form of presence in relation to the social totality,
whose character is essentially conditioned by the prevalent mode of production. For
Marx, history progresses through a dialectic of whole and part, of social production and
its various products. Heidegger, however, investigating the preconditions of this process,
loses sight of the dialectical relationship in favor of a one-sided determination by Being
of the form of presence of beings. Where Marx understands the preconditions of one
epoch as the conditions of its predecessor, Heidegger accepts the character of an epoch
as fatefully given and beyond comprehension. The triviality of Heidegger's social
commentary in comparison to Marxian social analysis is thus neither accidental nor is it
to be enriched through the addition of concrete details. Being, which determines beings
as beings, must itself be shown to be conditioned by beings. The ontological selfinterpretation of the world is not divorced from the ontic self-transformation of the world;
thought which attempts to comprehend the former cannot ignore its unity with the
latter, as Heidegger does.
Richard Hildreth
BACKGROUND
Richard Hildreth was a journalist, philosopher, historian, and antislavery activist. He was
born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where his father, Hosea Hildreth, was the principal of
Deerfield Academy. Hildreths father had trained as a Congregational minister and
intended to teach only until he could be settled in a church. However, he was so
successful as a teacher that he remained in that profession for twenty years. During
most of Richard's boyhood, his father taught at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New
Hampshire, where Hildreth studied before attending Harvard at age 15.
After graduating from Harvard, Hildreth taught school for a year. Unlike his father,
however, he did not have a natural talent for it. Because of this he decided to pursue a
career in law and literature. He took up study with several attorneys in Boston and
surrounding cities, and was admitted to the bar in 1830. He also wrote prolifically
including fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays for magazines, articles about the Unitarian
controversy for Gloucester and Salem newspapers, and a school textbook, An Abridged
History of the United States, 1831.
In 1832, Hildreth received an offer which diverted him from the career he might have
envisioned. John Eastburn, a leading politician of the anti-Jacksonian party (then just
adopting the name Whig), invited him to help start a new Whig newspaper. The Atlas
was vigorous in its attacks on the imbecility, venality, and corruption of the Jackson
administration. A fellow journalist said of Hildreth's political writing, His pen was like
the sword of the Arab chieftain: ornament it carried none, but the notches on the
blade. After two years, Hildreth sold his share in the Atlas and left Boston for Florida,
the first of several trips he would make in search of a more healthful climate.
Hildreth suffered from tuberculosis, and recurring periods of depression. These problems
would haunt him for large periods of his life.
ACTIVISM AND CAREER

In 1836 Hildreth returned to Massachusetts and to the Atlas. Despite fragile health, he
was unsparing in his labors for political reform. To his friend and fellow abolitionist, Maria
Weston Chapman, he wrote, I am impelled by an irresistible impulse to actor rather to
writefor the sharpened point of a goose quill is the most potent instrument in my
power to employ. He added, saying, To perish in the breach in the assault against
tyranny and error is not the worst death a man might die.
Besides slavery, the issues he dealt most closely with were the dispossession of the
southeastern Indians, the movement to annex Texas, the economic crisis of 1837, and
the Massachusetts liquor license law of 1838. During the next four years, while serving
as a court reporter and Washington correspondent for the Atlas, Hildreth turned out
numerous articles and pamphlets on political issues, wrote two books on the banking
crisis, and founded a short-lived temperance newspaper.
In 1839, he ran for the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a Temperance Whig.

He went on to lose by just eight votes. However, Hildreth remained active in politics
despite this setback. He supported the presidential campaign of William Henry Harrison
with speeches, pamphlets and a campaign biography, The People's Presidential
Candidate, 1839. By Election Day, exhausted and ill, he had left Boston for British
Guiana.
Hildreth's three years in South America were among the happiest in his life. His health
improved so much that, he wrote in a letter home, he knew for the first time in his life
what it was to be well. Editing two newspapers and a local guidebook freed him from
financial worries and left time for an ambitious project he called the Science of Man. He
intended to apply to the philosophy of man's nature the same inductive method which
has proved so successful in advancing what is called natural philosophy.
In 1844, Hildreth married Caroline Gould Negus, a member of a distinguished family of

artists, well known in Boston for her work as a portrait painter. A reformer with an
interest in utopian communities, she was at one time a director of the Boston branch of
the American Union of Associationists. For eight years, Caroline supported the family so
Richard could spend his time in research and writing. After the revolutions of 1848, he
revised Theory of Politics, adding new material on the relationship between capitalism
and democracy and incorporating ideas from utopian socialism introduced by his wife.
This socialist question of the distribution of wealth, once raised, he warned, is not to
be blinked out of sight.
VIEWS ON SLAVERY
In Florida, Hildreth stayed on a plantation where he developed an intense hatred for
slavery. During eighteen months there he wrote two books: a novel, The Slave, or
Memoirs of a Fugitive, 1836; and Despotism in America, 1840, an analysis of the
harmful effects of slavery on the economic and political development of the southern
states.
Though "The Slave" was not the first American novel to express disapproval of slavery, it
was the first written specifically to present an antislavery argument. The story
illustrates the many ways slavery exerted a corrupting influence over the morals of
masters and slaves alike. Hildreth was one of the very few white people of his (or any)
era free enough from racism to truly imagine what it would be like to be a slave. The
slaves he portrays are neither brutes nor saints, but complex human beings doing their
limited best to survive in an impossible situation. The Slave is remarkably free from the
racist assumptions that marred many other anti-slavery works by white people, even
committed abolitionists.
In one of the most powerful moments in the book, the hero, Archy, who had felt superior
to his fellow slaves because of his white blood, realizes the extent to which he has
been complicit in the racism of his culture when he comes to admire the dark-skinned
slave who leads a band of runaways. The abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips remarked
that "The Slave," owed its want of success to no lack of genius, but only to the fact that
it was born out of due time.
Hildreth's philosophical views on slavery were best expressed through literature. He felt
that freedom was paramount, and taking the freedom of another was unethical. This,
however, moved people most when they could read those values in a story about slaves.
Therefore, by using fiction to express his views, Hildreth reached more people than he
could have otherwise hoped to. This is similar to other writers like Frantz Fannon and
Fredrick Douglass, the later of which used a narrative form of storytelling to try to
express the feeling and story of someone who has to undergo slavery and oppression.
THEORY OF MORALS
In Guiana, Hildreth wrote two of a projected six volumes: "Theory of Morals," 1844, and
"Theory of Politics," 1853. In "Theory of Morals," Hildreth attempts to identify the source
of morality and explain why different cultures have different moral codes. He argues in
this book that moral distinctions grow out of the desire to help others and spare them
pain.
He thought the most important part of the book was his analysis of why people fail to act
in accordance with the sentiment of benevolence. While men are tormented with
hunger, thirst, fatigues, bodily diseases . . . it is absurd to expect them to grow
virtuous. He concluded, To make men better, we must begin by making them happier.
This was an important consideration, as it implies that personal happiness and the way
you are treated can in turn effect the good that you may do for others. This is similar to
the behaviorist mode of though in that a person will make good and bad choices base on
how they have been rewarded for enacting those behaviors previously. It also creates
another justification for helping others: not only is it what you are supposed to do, but it
enables them to help the world they come in contact with.
Hildreth considered "Theory of Morals" a technical work of philosophy, and a deeply

religious undertaking. My idea of God is, the Cause of . . . those distinctions which we
call moral distinctions, and which may indeed in this sense be called the laws of God
just as the laws of chemistry may be called so. He was accused of recklessness and
atheism for locating the source of morality in the constitution of man rather than the
word of God. Much like Divine Command Theory, Hildreth considered morals to be
outside the realm of God. He may have provoked hostility by his harsh criticism of
churches for preaching morality without working to relieve human suffering. However,
his position was not anti-God no matter how it was misperceived, only critical of religious
institutions in their inability to help humanity while all the while preaching that we
should care for others.
The review which most distressed Hildreth was by Francis Bowen, a conservative
Unitarian who had taught philosophy and political economy at Harvard and had recently
published his own philosophical treatise, "Critical Essays", 1842. In a series of articles
and pamphlets, Bowen and Hildreth accused each other of atheism and immorality.
There are indeed among the Unitarians, two parties, the Channing party, and the
Norton, or Cambridge party, Hildreth wrote. It is utterly impossible for a person gifted
with the smallest power of thought . . . long to remain a Cambridge Unitarian. He must
go backward, or go forward. Hildreth was also deeply disappointed by Unitarians' lack
of zeal for reform, particularly in the matter of slavery. Hildreth's view on morality
necessitated action to right the wrongs that he saw in the world around him. He could
not understand why others did not feel a similar sense of urgency, and so quickly grew
disillusioned with some of his peers.
ON RELIGION
As a result of his father's experiences, Richard came to hate any hint of restriction on
freedom of expression, especially in matters of religion. In 1834, the year his father lost
his Gloucester pulpit, Richard wrote a pamphlet, Appeal to Common Sense and the
Constitution on behalf of Unlimited Freedom of Discussion, defending Abner Kneeland
against the charge of blasphemy. Later, he opposed as unbearable any attempt to set
limits on acceptable Unitarian beliefs. He denounced conservative Unitarian Andrews
Norton, who had insisted on his own right to hold unorthodox opinions, for condemning
the Transcendentalists. Hildreth follows in the vain of philosopher/theologian/reforms
like Martin Luther, who also found some of the church's policies lacking in morals and
was harshly criticized for it to the point of being excommunicated from the church
because of his reform minded attitude.
Free inquiry and implicit faith, he wrote, are two elements which cannot be
reconciled. Hildreth had fought against the restrictions on the freedom of slaves that
he saw around him. Similarly, restrictions on the freedom of individuals to express their
religious views frustrated him. He saw any such restrictions not only as against public
interest, but also as immoral and unethical.
Hildreth did not relish church attendance. He wrote, A Sunday walk or a ride into the
country, enlivened by the company of sympathizing friends, would inspire more of
gratitude, more of love . . . and of desire to do good, than all the sermons that were ever
preached. Nevertheless, the depth of his emotional attachment to Unitarianism can be
seen by how much he was hurt when Unitarians disappointed him.
Hildreth's closest associates and co-workers in literary and abolitionist endeavors were
all Unitarians. He worked for the antislavery cause with George Bradburn, Maria Weston
Chapman, Caroline Weston, and John Pierpont. He greatly admired Theodore Parker's
militant antislavery stance. He worked with Parker on legal challenges to the Fugitive
Slave Law, and was part of the Unitarian literary community clustered around the
Massachusetts Quarterly Review, edited by Parker. Hildreth was therefore not against
religion, as he associated with religious individuals.
HISTORY
Hildreth's major work was his six-volume History of the United States of America,
1849-1853. He was one of the first American historians to adopt the model of
scientific history, attempting to present the past exactly as it was rather than as an
enlightening story with a patriotic moral. Less popular in its day than the work of
romantic historians such as George Bancroft, it was greatly respected by the next
generation of historians. His reputation has declined during the late 20th century,
however, with the rejection of the idea of objective history.
Nevertheless, his modeling after scientific history was an important step forward from
the time. Although it can be argued that objective history does not exist, Hildreth at
least attempted to provide some objectivity. The popular writers before him had made
no pretenses about revising history to send the messages they felt were desirable.
Hildreth's ability to attempt to avoid that problem made him ahead of his time.
Most now believe, as Francis Bowen said in his 1851 review, that it is impossible to
write history without seeking, either avowedly or stealthily, or unawares, to verify some
hypothesis, or establish some theory, which furnishes a reason and guide for the
selection and arrangement of materials. Bowen claimed that Hildreth used his history
to express his dislike for the established church in Massachusetts. However, Theodore
Parker praised it for setting forth the good and evil qualities of the settlers of the United
States, with the same coolness and impartiality. A century later, the Oxford Companion
to American History, 1966, described it as notable for its accuracy and candor, and its
acute insights into the relationship between politics and economics.
The model that Hildreth set for historian/activist/philosophers would be modeled in

recent years, most notably by Howard Zinn. However unlike Hildreth, Zinn believed that
it was impossible to prevent an "objective" history, so instead focused on providing a
history from the perspective of the oppressed. However like Hildreth, Zinn is a big
believer on activism and working to change society as well as the idea that one should
act moral so other people will in turn act morally later.
His writing in the field of history won Hildreth enough respect to make him a candidate
for the professorship of history at Harvard in 1849. He was passed over in favor of his
old antagonist, Francis Bowen. He applied again when Bowen resigned in 1851, but his
never ending attacks against the "Cambridge party" precluded any real chance for his
appointment.
After completing "the History," Hildreth turned to various forms of "literary drudgery" to
earn money for his family, only to lose most of it in the financial crisis of 1857. He
returned to full-time journalism as a writer and editor for Horace Greeley's New York
Tribune, an influential opponent of slavery and voice of the emerging Republican Party.
In his last years, plagued by illness, discouragement, poverty, and deafness, Richard
Hildreth at last reached an audience interested in what he had to say. By 1860, Hildreth
was too ill to work. Hoping that a warmer climate would help, Caroline enlisted the aid
of Senator Charles Sumner and the governor of Massachusetts to get her husband
appointed to the largely honorary position of consul to Trieste. Hildreth's friend William
Dean Howells, visiting him in Italy, described him as a phantom of himself, but with a
scholarly serenity and dignity amidst the ruin. Richard Hildreth died in Florence in July,
1865, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery, near the grave of Theodore Parker.
Caroline remained in Italy, where she had long wanted to travel and study art. She died
of cholera in Naples in 1867.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clement, Ernest W., Hildreth's. JAPAN AS IT WAS AND IS; A HANDBOOK OF OLD JAPAN,
ed., with supplementary notes. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1906.
Emerson, Donald Eugene. RICHARD HILDRETH. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1946.
Hildreth, Richard, A report of the trial of the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery, before the Supreme
Judicial Court of Rhode Island, on an indictment for the murder of Sarah Maria Cornell
containing a full statement of the testimony, together with the arguments of counsel,
and the charge to the jury. Boston: Russell, Odiorne and Co., 1833.
---, THE SLAVE; OR, MEMOIRS OF ARCHY MOORE. Boston: 1836.
---, DESPOTISM IN AMERICA; or, AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND RESULTS OF THE
SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES. Boston: Whipple and Damrell, 1840.
---, A letter to His Excellency Marcus Morton, on banking and the currency. Boston:
Printed by Kidder & Wright, 1840.
---, THE CONTRAST: OR WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON VERSUS MARTIN VAN BUREN. Boston:
Weeks, Jordan & Company, 1840.
---, INDUCEMENTS TO THE COLORED PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES TO EMIGRATE TO

BRITISH GUINA. By a friend to the colored people. Boston: Kidder and Wright, 1840.
---, THE PEOPLE'S PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, OR, THE LIFE OF WILLIAM HENRY
HARRISON, OF OHIO. Boston: Weeks, Jordan and Co., 1840.
---, A letter to Andrews Norton on miracles as the foundation of religious faith. Boston:
Weeks, Jordan & Company, 1840.
---, A Letter to E. Washburn & others, dissentients from the Revolution touching political
action, adopted at the State Temperance Convention. Boston, 1840.
---, A joint letter to Orestes A. Brownson and the editor of the North American review: In
which the editor of the North American review is proved to be no Christian, and little
better than an atheist. Boston, 1844.
---, NATIVE-AMERICANISM DETECTED AND EXPOSED. by a native American. Boston:

Printed for the author, 1845.
---, THE HISTORYOF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE
CONTINENT TO THE ORGANIZATION OF GOVERNMENT UNDER THE FEDERAL
CONSTITUTION. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849.
---, THE "RUIN" OF JAMAICA. New York: American anti-slavery society, 1855.
---, ATROCIOUS LIVES: LIVES OF JUDGES INFAMOUS AS TOOLS OF TYRANTS AND

INSTRUMENTS OF OPPRESSION / COMPILED FROM THE JUDICIAL BIOGRAPHIES OF JOHN
LORD CAMPBELL. New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1856.
---, JAPAN AND THE JAPANESE. Boston: Bradley, Dayton, 1860.
---, THEORYOF LEGISLATION. Translated from the French of Etienne Dumont. London:
Trbner, 1871.
---, THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. New York: Harper & Brothers,
1880.
---, BANKS, BANKING, AND PAPER CURRENCY. New York, Greenwood Press, 1968.
---, THE HISTORY OF BANKS; TO WHICH IS ADDED A DEMONSTRATION OF ADVANTAGES

AND NECCESSITY OF FREE COMPETITION OF THE BUSINESS OF BANKING. New York: A.M.
Kelley, 1968.
---, THEORY OF POLITICS: AN INQUIRY INTO THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENTS AND

THE CAUSES AND PROGRESSES OF POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS. New York: A. M. Kelley,
1969.
---, DESPOTISM IN AMERICA: AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE, RESULTS, AND LEGAL BASIS
OF THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES. New York: A. M. Kelley, 1970.
---, ARCHIE MOORE, THE WHITE SLAVE: OR, MEMOIRS OF A FUGITIVE. New York: A. M.
Kelley, 1971.
---, THEORY OF MORALS, AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE LAW OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS

AND THE VARIATIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS OF ETHICAL CODES. New York: A. M.
Kelley, 1971.
---, JAPAN AS IT WAS AND IS. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1973.
Pingel, Martha M., AN AMERICAN UNITARIAN, RICHARD HILDRETH AS A PHILOSOPHER,

WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED WORK. New York: AMS
Press Inc., 1967.
ACTIVISM IS NECESSARY FOR THE

SURVIVAL OF HUMANITY
1. RESISTANCE TO ILLIGITAMETE AUTHORITY IS KEY
Howard Zinn , Professor of History at Boston College, THE ZINN READER: THE PROBLEM
IS CIVIL OBEDIENCE, 1970, p. 410-411.
What we are trying to do, I assume, is really to get back to the principles and aims and
spirit of the Declaration of Independence. This spirit is resistance to illegitimate authority
and to forces that deprive people of their life and liberty and right to pursue happiness,
and therefore under these conditions, it urges the right to alter or abolish their current
form of government-and the stress had been on abolish. But to establish the principles
of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop
obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done,
or that put people in jail for petty technical offenses and keep other people out of jail for
enormous crimes. My hope is that this kind of spirit will take place not just in this
country but in other countries because they all need it. People in all countries need the
spirit of disobedience to the state, which is not a metaphysical thing but a thing of force
and wealth. And we need a kind of declaration of interdependence among people in all
countries of the world who are striving for the same thing.
2. CITIZENS MUST ACT OUTSIDE ACCEPTED FRAMEWORK TO ENACT CHANGE

Howard Zinn , Professor of History at Boston College, THE ZINN READER: BEYOND
VOTING, 1976, p. 638.
But we will go a long way from spectator democracy to real democracy when we
understand that the future of this country doesn't depend, mainly, on who is our next
President. It depends on whether the American citizen, fed up with high taxes, high
prices, unemployment, waste, war and corruption, will organize all over the country a
clamor for change even greater than the labor uprisings of the '30s or the black rebellion
of the '60s and shake this country out of old paths into new ones.
3. ACTIVISM IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT TYRANNY

Howard Zinn , Professor of History at Boston College, HOWARD ZINN ON HISTORY, 2000,
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/NonViol_DirectAction_HZOH.html, Accessed June
1, 203, p-np.
There is little question any more that change in our social institutions must come. Never
before in history has there been such a consensus in objectives all over the world, nor
such a variance of method in trying to achieve these objectives. Most men everywhere
agree they want to end war, imperialism, racism, poverty, disease and tyranny. What
they disagree about is whether these expectations can be fulfilled within the old
frameworks of nationalism, representative government and the profit system. And
running through the tension between agreement and disagreement are these questions:
How much violence will be necessary to fulfill these expectations? What must we suffer
to get the world we all want?
CURRENT "OBJECTIVE" HISTORICAL

MODELS ARE FLAWED
1. "OBJECTIVE" HISTORY FOCUSES ON THE OPPRESSOR, IGNORING THE OPPRESSED
Howard Zinn , Professor of History at Boston College, UNSUNG HEROeS. The Progressive
Magazine. June 2000, http://www.progressive.org/zinn0600.htm, Accessed June 1, 2003.
p-np.
Granted, it is good to have historical figures we can admire and emulate. But why hold
up as models the fifty-five rich white men who drafted the Constitution as a way of
establishing a government that would protect the interests of their class-slaveholders,
merchants, bondholders, land speculators? Why not recall the humanitarianism of
William Penn, an early colonist who made peace with the Delaware Indians instead of
warring on them, as other colonial leaders were doing? Why not John Woolman, who, in
the years before the Revolution, refused to pay taxes to support the British wars, and
who spoke out against slavery? Why not Captain Daniel Shays, veteran of the
Revolutionary War, who led a revolt of poor farmers in Western Massachusetts against
the oppressive taxes levied by the rich who controlled the Massachusetts legislature?
2. MURDER'S SHOULDNT BE PORTRAYED IN A HISTORICALLY BENEVLOANT LIGHT

p-np.
In the year 1992, the quincentennial of the arrival of Columbus in this hemisphere, there
were meetings all over the country to celebrate him, but also, for the first time, to
challenge the customary exaltation of the Great Discoverer. I was at a symposium in
New Jersey where I pointed to the terrible crimes against the indigenous people of
Hispaniola committed by Columbus and his fellow Spaniards. Afterward, the other man
on the platform, who was chairman of the New Jersey Columbus Day celebration, said to
me: "You don't understand- we Italian Americans need our heroes." Yes, I understood the
desire for heroes, I said, but why choose a murderer and kidnapper for such an honor?
Why not choose Joe DiMaggio, or Toscanini, or Fiorello LaGuardia, or Sacco and Vanzetti?
(The man was not persuaded.)
3. NEED TO STOP HISTORICALLY SANITIZING WAR

p-np.
The same misguided values that have made slaveholders, Indian-killers, and militarists
the heroes of our history books still operate today. We have heard Senator John McCain,
Republican of Arizona, repeatedly referred to as a war hero. Yes, we must sympathize
with McCain's ordeal as a war prisoner in Vietnam, where he endured cruelties. But must
we call someone a hero who participated in the invasion of a far-off country and dropped
bombs on men, women, and children
THOMAS HOBBES
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHER 1588 - 1679
A seventeenth-century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes has been credited with creating
English language philosophy. 77 This was a unique accomplishment because up until that
time philosophy was the domain of ancient languages such as Latin and Greek, and the
new language, French. He is considered one of the great European philosophers of the
seventeenth century.
Hobbes was born to relatively poor parents in the town of Malmesbury, England, on April
5, 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. According to several biographical accounts,
when he referred to his birth he said that his mother went into labor when she heard
that the Spanish Armada was comingso that fear and I were born twins together. 78
Although it is believed that his parents were not well educated people, Hobbes was a
very good student and a master of the Renaissance curriculum. He was particularly
skilled at learning languages. He could speak and read Latin, Greek, French, and Italian.
He demonstrated this mastery by translating great Greek works such as works by
Thucydides and the Odysseyinto English.
This fluency in foreign languages allowed Hobbes to become a kind of political aide to
important figures of European politics. Because he could write letters and speeches as
well as reply to foreign correspondence, he became a valued staff member to the first
Earl of Devonshire, William Cavendish. Through this influential post, Hobbes had a front
row seat for many key political decisions of the day. According to one editor of a
translation of Hobbes Leviathan, His practical and personal knowledge of European
politics was unrivalled by any English thinker of his generation... 79
77 Richard Tuck. Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1989), p. vii.

78 Ibid., p. 2
79 Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan, edited by Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), pp. xii-xiii.
Philosophical Comparisons
The philosophical topics that Hobbes focused on can be divided into three issues which
form one system:
natural, moral and civil.80 He believed natural philosophy provided the foundation to
examine and advocate certain kinds of moral and civil philosophies. It is generally
accepted that his notion of natural philosophy is similar to physics, or scientific
reasoning.
When scholars and historians analyze Hobbes philosophyeither moral and civil-be is
often compared and contrasted with his other contemporary thinkers and writers, for
example Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Rene Descartes (both of whom are discussed in this
book). Such comparisons provide viable material by which to judge and better
understand Hobbes and his theories.
His political philosophy is often contrasted with Rousseaus. Mainly because both men
discussed strong sovereignties. However, in Rousseaus philosophy, a strong sovereignty
did not necessarily mean a strong monarchy. For Hobbes, sovereignty and monarchy
were synonymous ideas. He was a vocal advocate of monarchial government, which was
severely threatened during Hobbes life.
The civil unrest that took place in Europe in the 1600s, especially The Puritan Rebellion
in England (1639165 1) and the French Civil War (1649-52), were major events that shaped Hobbes
political philosophy.
And it is mainly for his political philosophy that Hobbes is best remembered.
80 J.W. N. Watkins. Hobbes System of Ideas. (London: Hutchinson, 1965), p. 1.
Hobbes Natural Philosophy Theory

In scientific reasoning, the essential question to be answered is usually How do we
know what we know? In Hobbes theory of natural philosophy, this question is slightly
altered. His fundamental question was
What do we know? His answer was that we only know what is in our minds. Because of
this limitation, people need more information than what is inside them to make
determinations about reality and truth. In Hobbes view, peoples senses color or distort
their understanding of objectiveness, thus presenting a kind of unreality about the
world.
Much of Hobbes writings on natural philosophy are found in his book De Corpore. Much
of the work is devoted to methodology in philosophical work, rather than true opinions
about philosophy. However, one issue that he does raise is the influence and purpose of
language in natural philosophy.
Because reality and truth lie in the minds of individuals, there are disputes about whose
reality and truth is to be believed and used. Therefore, a system or arbiter was
necessary to fairly settle disputes. Hobbes thought that language was an impartial tool
that could be used to resolve such disputes. He believed it was the only tool humans had
with which to reason and resolve conflicts together. 5
55 Tuck. Hobbes, p. 42.
Hobbes Moral Philosophy

Based on his theories of natural philosophy, Hobbes developed his moral philosophy. Just
as there are no true facts outside the mind in natural philosophy, Hobbes believed that
there were no facts in ethics. Thus, the only way for people to resolve disagreements
were to uncover some principle or set of principles on which all would spontaneously
agree as the basis for their moral judgments. The principle Hobbes suggested was that
everyone would accept that each of us has the right to preserve ourselves and that no
one can ever be blamed for doing what they must do in order to survive.
Hobbes believed that each persons fundamental right of nature is not simply to
preserve themselves, but to use their own power as they will themselves, for the
preservation of their own Nature. He emphasized the right of every person to make their
own decision about how to create their own security.
Critics of Hobbes label this theory irrational. A typical question of such critics is How
could the laws of nature allow people to protect themselves in any way they see fit while
not breaking the laws of nature to achieve this goal? Thus, according to his critics, the
laws of nature limit ones options for self-preservation and Hobbes theory is not
absolute.
Beyond survival, humans also strive for happiness, or pleasure. In Hobbes view it was
good, i.e., moral to pursue what one believed would bring him or her pleasure. This
reasoning made sense to Hobbes because just as true knowledge was found only in an
individuals mind, true happiness also found only within oneself.
Given these suppositions, Hobbes believed that political (often referred to as civil)
philosophy provided the best hope for resolving moral disputes. Politics provided the
framework he described in his theory on moral philosophy, which arose from his theory
on natural philosophy. Thus, all three elements are tied together as one system.
Leviathan and Other Political Writings

Life for kings and other monarchs in seventeenth-century Europe was not kind.
Revolutions and rebellions occurred in several kingdoms, including England and France.
For people who supported strong monarchial governmentslike Hobbessuch uprisings
were extremely disconcerting. Hobbes believed whole-heartedly that only a strong
sovereignty would save humanity.
Thus, in response to the tremendous political upheaval caused by the various civil wars,
Hobbes wrote Leviathan, a treatise which stands for a sovereign power of the kind
which is necessary to prevent rebellion and civil war. 6 In this book he presented his
ideas about the significance of a strong sovereignty. Ideas was a key word for Hobbes,
for he believed that the political chaos of his day were caused by a crisis of ideas.
The government Hobbes called for in Leviathan was consider unreligious by the Church
of England and Hobbes was branded a heretic. Basically, he believed that all citizens
should submit to one monarch as ruler of the people. That this monarch would be the
authority to settle political and social disputes, that his rulings were the final word over
all issues, even above God.
Hobbes justified this authority by demonstrating how unappealing life would be without
such an order. In
Hobbes s System of Ideas, Watkins provides a concise list of Hobbes belief of what
people would be like if a civil society provided by a strong sovereignty did not exist. 7 In
summary, it paints a gloomy picture of society as a group of people ill-equipped to cope
with the natural elements and constantly struggling to avoid violent death.
In other political writings produced by Hobbes he elaborated on his theories about free
will, tights, and liberty. For example in the Elements of Law, he discussed the natural
tights of man and justification for defending them. However, in almost all of his books
that address political issuessuch as De Cive and the Critique of Thomas White
Hobbes always presented his essential argument which was that individuals have the
right to protect themselves against attack by others.
66 Watkins. Hobbes System of Ideas, p. 2.

77 lbid., p. 119-20.
Criticism of Hobbes Theories

Even before Leviathan was published, it generated harsh criticism and rebuke, mainly
for its lack of support for the Church of England. Since then much of Hobbes writings
have been analyzed and criticized.
Watkins accuses Hobbes of not fully elaborating on the viability of the sovereign remedy
for government Instead, according to Watkins, Hobbes gives a blanket assurance that
however bad things might turn out under monarchy, they are far better than the
consequences of full scale civil war.8
Watkins further indicts the Hobbsian concept of gaining freedom by submitting to a

sovereign. If the freedoms granted under such a system are only less miserablenot
necessarily more desirablethan liberties under a non-sovereign government, the
results are still not pleasurable for people. 9
W.H. Greenleaf summarizes several critics of Hobbes. According to Greenleaf, it would be

difficult for Hobbes to defend the linear, or systematic, model of his theories. The
mechanics required for the outcomes described in moral philosophy do not logically
stem from Hobbes explanations of natural philosophy, for example. Additionally, there
are other instances when the theories do not logically flow together and other
inconsistencies are found when the different areas of philosophy are examined
together.10
Conclusion
Although there exists considerably more criticism of Hobbes work than there actually is
of his work, his contribution to the discipline of philosophy cannot be dismissed. It is
perhaps because of the abundance of criticism that one can justify Hobbess place
among the elite philosophers of seventeenth-century Europe.
His essays on political philosophy alone make he a contributor of invaluable measure to

discussions on the nature and purpose governments. Finally, because he was the first
great philosopher to publish m English, Hobbes should be essential reading for anyone
interested in learning more about modern political
philosophy.
88 lbid., p. 125.
99 lbid., p. 128.
1010 W.H. Greenleaf, Hobbes: The Problem of Interpretation, Hobbes and Rousseau: A
Collection of Critical Essays, 1972, p. 10.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Balz, Albert George Adam. Idea and Essence in the Philosophies of Hobbes and Spinoza
New York: AMS Press, 1967.
Bertman, Martin A. Body and Cause in Hobbes: Natural and Political. Wakefield, New
Hampshire:
Longwood Academic, 1981.
Bertman, Martin A. Hobbes. the Natural and the Artifacted Good. Las Vegas: P. Lang,
1981.
Brown, Keith C., Ed. Hobbes: Studies. by Leo Strauss (and others). Cambridge: Harvard
Erwin, R.E. Virtues and Rights The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 1991.
Goldsmith, M.M. Hobbess Science of Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.
Green, Arnold W. Hobbes and Human Nature. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction
Publishers, 1983.
Hobbes, Thomas. Behemoth: or The Long Parliament. Edited by Ferdinand Tonnies.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Hobbes, Thomas. The Elements of Law. Natural and Politic. Edited by Ferdinand Tonnies.
London: Cass, 1969.
Hobbes, Thomas. Man and Citizen. Thomass Hobbes De Homine. Translated by Charles
I. Wood, T.S.D. Scott-Craig and Bernard Gert. Edited by Bernard Bert. Garden City, New
York: Anchor Books, 1972.
Reik, Mariam M. The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1977.
Robertson, George Croom. Hobbes. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1978.
G.AJ. Rogers and Alan Ryan. Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes. New York: Oxford Press,
1988.
Shelton, George. Morality and Sovereignty in the Philosophy of Hobbes. New York: St.
Martins Press, 1992.
Thorpe, Clarence De Witt. The Aesthetic Theory of Thomas Hobbes. New York: Russell &
Russell, 1964.
Tuck, Richard, ed. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1991.
Tuck, Richard. Hobbes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Watkins, John W.N. Hobbess System of Ideas: a Study in the Political Significance of
Philosophical Theories. London: Hutchinson, 1965.
NATURAL LAW AND CIVIL LAW ARE

LINKED TOGETHER
1. THE LAW OF NATURE AND CIVIL LAW CONTAIN EACH OTHER
Thomas Hobbes, Philosopher, LEVIATHAN, 1991, p. 185.
The Law of Nature, and the Civil Law, contain each other, and are of equal extent. For
the Lawes of Nature, which consist in Equity, Justice, Gratitude, and other moral Vertues
on these depending in the
condition of meer Nature (as I have said before in the end of the 15~ Chapter,) are not
properly Lawes, but qualities that dispose men to each, and to obedience. When a
Common-wealth is once settled, then are they actually L.awes, and not before; as being
then the commands of the Common-wealth; and therefore also Civil Lawes.
2. THE LAW OF NATURE IS PART OF CIVIL LAW

Thomas Hobbes, Philosopher, LEVIATHAN, 1991, p. 185
For it is the Sovereign Power that obliges men to obey them. For in the differences of
private men, to
declare, what is Equity, what is Justice, and what is moral Vertue, and to make them
binding, there is need of the Ordinances of Sovereign Power, and punishments to be
ordained for such as shall break them; which
Ordinances are therefore part of the Civil Law. The Law of Nature therefore is a part of
the Civil Law is a part of the Dictates of Nature.
3. OBEDIENCE TO CIVIL LAW IS OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW OF NATURE

For Justice, that is to say, Performance of Covenant, and giving to every man his own, is
a Dictate of the Law of Nature. But every subject in a Common-wealth, hath covenented
to obey the Civil Law, (either one with another, as when they assemble to make a
common Representative, or with the promise obedience that they may receive life;) And
therefore Obedience to the Civil Law is part also of the Law of Nature.
CONFLICT IS INEVITABLE AMONG

PEOPLE IN THEIR NATURAL STATE
1. IN NATURAL LAW, THREE CAUSES EXIST FOR CONFLICT
So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First,
Competition; Secondly, Difference; Thirdly, Glory. The first maketh men invade for Gain;
the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation. The first use Violence, to make
themselves Masters of other mens persons, wives, children, and cattell; the second, to
defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other
signe of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflexion in their Kindred, their
Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name.
2. IN A STATE OF NATURE, OUR DESIRE IS TO HURT OTHERS

Thomas Hobbes, Philosopher, DE CIVE, 1982, p. 46.
All men in the State of nature have a desire, and will to hurt, but not proceeding from
the same cause, neither equally to be condemnd; for one man according to that naturall
equality which is among us, permits as much to others, as he assumes to himself (which
is an argument of a temperate man, and one that rightly values his power), another,
supposing himself above others, will have a License to doe what he lists, and challenges
Respect, and Honour, as due to him before others, (which is an Argument of a fiery
spirit:) Thus mans will to hurt ariseth from Vain glory, and the false esteeme he hath of
his owne strength; the others from the necessity of defending himself, his liberty, and
his goods against this mans violence.
3. IN NATURAL LAW, EVERY PERSON HAS A RIGHT TO ATTACK OTHERS

And because the condition of Man, (as hath been declared in the precedent Chapter) is a
condition of Wane of every one against every one; in which case every one is governed
by his own Reason; and there is nothing he can make use of, that may not be a help
unto him, in preserving his life against his enemyes; It followeth, that in such a
condition, every man has a Right to every thing; even to one anothers body. And
therefore, as long as this naturall Right of every man to every thing endureth, there can
be no security to any man, (how strong or wise soever he be,) of living out the time,
which Nature ordinarily alloweth men to live.
UNCIVIL STATES PRODUCE WAR

1. WAR EXISTS IN UNCIVIL STATES
Thomas Hobbes, Philosopher, LEVIATHAN, 1991, p. 88-9.
Hereby, it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep
them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre; as is
of every man, against every man. For Warre, consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of
fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battell is sufficiently
known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of Warre; as it
is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foule weather, lyeth not in a showre or
two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many dayes together: So the nature of War,
consisteth not in actuali fighting, but in the known disposition thereto, during all the
time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is Peace.
2. WAR DESTROYS EVERYTHING IN SOCIETY

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to
every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security,
than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such
condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and
consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that
may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and
removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no
account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual
feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish,
and short.
3. IN A STATE OF WAR INJUSTICE IS JUSTIFIED

To this warre of every man against every man, this also is consequent, that nothing can
be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place.
Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice. Force,
and Fraude, are in warre the two Caridnall vertues.
Justice, and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body, nor Mind.
SELF DEFENSE IS A LAW OF NATURE

1. THE FIRST FOUNDATION OF NATURAL RIGHTS IS SELF DEFENSE Thomas Hobbes,
Philosopher, DE CIVE, 1982, p. 47.
It is therefore neither absurd, nor reprehensible; neigher against the dictates of true
reason for a man to use
all his endeavours to preserve and defend his Body, and the Members thereof from
death and sorrowes; but that which is not contrary to right reason, that all men account
to be done justly, and with right; Neither by the word Right is any thing else signified,
then that liberty which every man bath to make use of his naturall faculties according to
right reason: Therefore the first foundation of naturall Right is this, That every man as
much as in him lies endeavour to protect his life and members.
2. SELF DEFENSE IS A LAW OF NATURE Thomas Hobbes, Philosopher, LEVIATHAN, 1991,

p. 92
From this Fundamentall Law of Nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour
Peace, is derived this second Law; That a man be willing, when others are so too,
asfarre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay
down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men,
as he would allow other men against him.selfe. For as long every man holdetb this Right,
of doing any thing he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of Warre. But if other
men will not lay down their Right, as well as he; then there is no Reason for any one, to
devest himselfe of this: For that were to expose himselfe to Prey, (which no man is
bound to) rather than to dispose himselfe to Peace.
3. SELF DEFENSE IS A JUSTIFIED LAW OF NATURE

Thomas Hobbes, Philosopher, DE CIVE, 1982, p. 47.
But because it is in vaine for a man to have a Right to the end, if the Right to the
necessary meanes be
denyd him; it followes; that since every man hath a Right to preserve himself, he must
also be allowed a
Right to use all the means, and do all the actions, without which he cannot preserve
himself.
RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE VIOLATES THE

LAW OF CIVIL SOCIETY
1. HOBBES CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR THEORY OF SELF DEFENSE AS NATURAL LAW
RE. Ewin, NQA, VIRTUES AND RIGHTS THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS HOBBES,
1991, p. 195.
Hobbes cannot adequately account for a natural right to self-defense within his system.
It is the natural right to self-defense, along with things that must accompany that right,
that lies at the base of the radical form of our natural condition: In that condition one
has the natural right to defend oneself, and, crucially, one is ones own judge with
respect to the exercise of that right.
2. RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE RESULTS IN CONFLICT

R.E. Ewin, NQA, VIRTUES AND RIGHTS THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS HOBBES,
1991, p. 195.
One may, therefore, with propriety, act preemptively to defend oneself. The only sin in
that condition (no crime exists there) is to act in a way that the agent thinks is in
contravention of the laws of nature, so there is no action that can be objectively ruled
out as prohibited. What is prohibited depends solely on the views of the agent, over
which the rest of us have no authority. Hence the natural right to defend oneself
becomes, practically, a right to all things, and if all men have a right to all things,
conflict follows.
3. RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE VIOLATES LAW OF CIVIL SOCIETY

R.E. Ewin, NQA, VIRTUES AND RIGHTS THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS HOBBES,
1991, p. 195-6.
One cannot, in any significant sense, retain the right to self-defense if one has given up
ones right to be ones own judge with respect to its exercise, as Hobbes clearly
recognized. One retained ones right to self-defense when threatened by the sovereign
(even if one was threatened by the sovereign as a punitive response to ones own
reprehensible behavior), and one was not expected to leave to the sovereign the
judgment of what one could do in defending oneself against the sovereign. That one is
ones own judge of what is necessary to ones preservation in the natural condition is
what turns the right to defend oneself into a right to all things; if one must still be ones
own judge of what is necessary to ones preservation in civil society, then the right to
defend oneself will become, in practice, a right to all things.
STRONG SOVEREIGNTY DESTROYS FREE

SOCIETY
1. STRONG SOVEREIGNTY RESULTS IN A STATE OF FEAR
J.W.N. Watkins, NQA, HOBBES SYSTEM OF IDEAS, 1973, p. 126.
The good of the sovereign and people, cannot be separated. It is a weak sovereign, that
has weak subjects; and a weak people, whose sovereign wanteth power to rule them at
his will. In time of war this may be approximately true. But in Hobbess own
psychological principles, one should rather expect a sovereign unconstrained by external
exigencies to reduce the people to a paralysed state of fear and insecurity, at least if he
enjoys the technological advantages of modem totalitarians.
2. HOBBESS DEFENSE OF SOVEREIGNTY IS UNSUPPORTED BY FACTS

Hobbes did not altogether ignore the possible unintended consequences of his sovereign
remedy; but he did not elaborate on them. Instead, he gave the blanket assurance that,
however bad they might turn out to be, they would be scarce sensible compared with
the miseries, and horrible calamities, that accompany a civil war.
3. A SOVEREIGN WILL DESTROY ANY OPPOSITION TO POWER

Thus, if his! the sovereigns] supreme ambition is to make himself as secure as possible
and to have, if not all the world, at least all his subjects to fear and obey him, he may
prepare to liquidate potential rivals and opposition leaders one by one, until he has
effectively destroyed the possibility of organized opposition.
bell hooks
bell hooks is the name chosen by Gloria Watkins as her pseudonym. She chooses to use
this particular name in honor of her great-grandmother who she sees as a powerful, selfactualized woman who survived harsh racism, sexism and classism. Hooks describes her
grandmother as:
bell hooks is a prolific author. In the period from 1980 to 1998 she produced sixteen
books as well as numerous articles and speeches. She has been extremely successful in
applying her personal experiences in feminism, academia and her southern upbringing
to a criticism of society that speaks to readers among a variety of audiences.
hooks was born in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. From the age of ten she was sure she
wanted to become a writer. She could often be found curled up on her bed on a mental
escape in a good book. This interest in books was not, as it might be today, perceived as
a productive activity for a young girl to be engaged in. Her father feared, correctly it
turned out, that too much reading would change her life. Growing up hooks was taught
that men did not like to be with smart girls and if she ever wanted to marry, which was
supposed to be the primary goal in every girls mind, she would have to avoid excessive
involvement in books.
The desire to marry was not something bell hooks chose to focus on. She knew there
was something else out there for her. She earned her bachelors degree from Stanford
University where she expected to find a more enlightened view on the role of reading
and education in a womans life. At the university she found herself further away from
individuals expecting girls to seek out married life but the sex discrimination was not
gone, it was simply recreated in new ways. In her classes, generally taught by white
males, she found a hostile reaction toward discussions of feminism. Determined to
overcome these notions, hooks continued writing and went on to Yale after graduating.
She later returned to California to obtain her Ph.D. from the University of California in
Santa Cruz.
In her reading hooks found one author who she had a particular connection with, Paulo
Friere. Despite the fact the many feminist critics, including hooks, have indicted Friere as
"partially blinded by sexism"(Women Writing Culture 106), there are many aspects of his
work that have nurturing qualities for hooks and she feels justified in overlooking the
sexist tendency. For her, Friere's work has served as a model of critical consciousness.
She follows his model because it is participatory and employs the notion of praxis, which
allows the author to combine reflex and action. This is accomplished in most of hooks'
work through the contribution of her own life experience. She uses her own experience
to help others understand the hierarchy that exists in American society, and the
destructive effects of sexism, racism and classism.
WRITING STYLE
bell hooks is a scholar, highly knowledgeable in a variety of areas including literature,
politics, race and gender studies but she more often chooses to write from her
experiences and to adopt a more narrative style regardless of the type of work she is
composing. Though hooks will make reference in her works to scholars who have
influenced her work, especially Friere, she does not generally conform to rules of source
citation or footnoting. This is part of her attempt to decolonize her mind and the minds
of other colonized people. Like everything hooks does, her writing style functions as a
critical tool that breaks down accepted notions of proper and improper in academic
scholarship.
hooks argues that her choice to avoid particular citation formatting of her work is not
careless writing but rather a conscious choice to make her writing more accessible.
Unfortunately she realizes that it is this choice that often causes her work to be passed
over for use in institutions of higher learning. She points out that,
Despite this realization hooks continues her practice because she feels the accessibility
of her work to those outside of the scholarly community is more important.
She often feels free to alter the structure or grammar of her writing depending on the
audience. Vernacular is another tool she uses to maintain connection with her roots as
well as connections to her audience. Even the smallest elements of bell hooks work are
purposeful. The letters at the beginning of her first and last name are lower case to how
that the person is not as important as the message and in hopes that people would
become more connected to her words than simply attaching themselves to a name. The
lower case letters were an attempt to avoid the status of icon but the name remains one
regardless. hooks has written so much and had such an effect on so many lives that her
name is highly noted but she hope that the lower case letters at least cause people to
consider what it is they have attached themselves to.
hooks deals with issues that are important in the lives of everyday people. She indicts
institutions and promotes a multitude of values, which seek to create a more open
society free of oppression on the basis of race, sex or class. No matter your debate topic
hooks has probably written something that applies, this essay will deal with her general
theoretical arguments and the literature on those subjects, after gaining a better
understanding of bell hooks thoughts on society it would be beneficial for debaters to
examine the literature in her books or online dealing with any variety of issues in society
from education to politics and medicine.
RACISM
Growing up hooks attended segregated elementary schools. No one ever informed her
that she was living in a white-supremacist nation, which was obvious to her as she took
the long bus ride to her all-black school. She remembers getting up in the earliest hours
of the morning so that she could make the long bus ride she always noticed as they
passed the white school those student appeared well rested because they lived in the
area where their school was located, no bussing, they just got up in the morning and
went. The bus riding process seems minor but it was one major example of the racist
dehumanization young black children like bell hooks were forced to endure. It is
experiences like these that cause her to point out that the world is more a home for
white folks than it is for anyone else (BONE BLACK 31). She argues white supremacist
values continue to develop in society even today.
hooks explains that the mass media plays an enormous role in the construction of
images that construct Americas social reality. Mass media is generally seen as a
mechanism for entertainment but with the frequency that it is viewed in American
society there is a tendency for individuals to accept those things consistently seen on
television as normal. Because of this values conveyed by television play themselves out
in everyday life. The prominent group controlling American mass media are white males,
representations of their value structures and a devaluing of non-white people further
marginalizes those groups. Frequently the media represents black people in subordinate
roles to whites and fails to represent their reality or daily concerns, hooks argues that
this acts as a barrier to self actualization by creating a false consciousness. (KILLING
RAGE)
There are five major angles from which hooks chooses to analyze white supremacist
tendencies in society: American nationalism, legitimating standard English, racism within
feminism, social movements and educational biases. hooks articulates the impact of
white supremacist media influence as socialization and colonization of the mind. This
process, she argues, also occurs in the classroom where students are presented with
white heritage and values but not called upon to consider the history of any other
cultures and when those cultures are presented they are generally shown as they are
perceived by the white historians. hooks discusses pictures in her all-black school that
portrayed black people as primitive savages in loin cloths, not very different from
anything the students could relate to. Her argument is that we live in a patriarchal, white
supremacist, capitalist culture that uses racist, sexist, and classist educational policies.
There are a few terms that are frequently used in criticisms of the structure hooks
describes. Racism privileges one group of people over another based on racial
classification, in a white supremacist society white individuals have the highest
concentration of power thus white people are seen as superior to any other racial group.
Patriarchy is the privileging of males over females. Classism creates an elite group, in a
capitalist society it is those with the most money, and it privileges that group over
disenfranchised peoples.
FEMINISM
"Feminist politics is losing momentum because feminist movement has lost clear
definitions. We have those definitions. Let's reclaim them. Let's share them. Let's start
over. Let's have T-shirts and bumper stickers and postcards and hip hop music, television
and radio commercials, ads everywhere and billboards, and all manner of printed
material that tells the world about feminism. We can share the simple yet powerful
message that feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression. Let's start there. Let the
movement begin again."(FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY 6)
Often people will refer to the feminist movement as a collective whole and while they do
tend to come together on many issues each major feminist thinker in American society
has their own take on the definition and qualities of feminism. Occasionally an author, or
their critics, may even create a new type of feminism for the ideas presented in their
work. When talking about a particular feminist position it is important to clarify what the
author's point of view is on the subject so that everyone is functioning in the same
conceptual framework.
bell hooks sees feminism as, "a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and
oppression,"(FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY 1). She believes that this is a good definition
of the feminism because it does not imply that men are an enemy of the movement.
Sexism, she argues, is the heart of the matter. Issues of who perpetuates sexism or
whom it is directed toward are irrelevant. It is broad and able to include institutionalized
sexism.
In her book, FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY, hooks argues against the impression that
feminism is only, and always, about women becoming equal to men and she indicts the
notion that feminism is anti-male. She argues that feminists are made, not born, and
that individuals who choose to advocate feminist ideals do so as a result of a conscious
choice that comes from consciousness raising. bell hooks is in the business of
consciousness raising, not only on feminist issues but a variety of social concerns.
hooks version of feminism is one that goes beyond traditional notions of a feminist
movement that only deals with womens issues to include race. At the core of her
feminist theory is the assumption that racism and sexism are intimately intertwined
forms of oppression. These structures are mutually reinforcing and dependent. The goal
of her writing is consciousness raising in order to overturn the white supremacist
patriarchal system. She argues that most women became involved in womens rights
movements as a result of their efforts to create change in a cultural setting. In FEMINISM
IS FOR EVERYBODY she points out:
This is the reason many early feminists lashed out at men, they perceived them as the
problem and the reason for the perpetuation of a sexist structure that allowed them to
be dominant. However, men are not the sole reason there is sexism in society and
feminists had to eventually learn to fight the oppressive structures through sisterhood.
As women identified structures that were hindering their self-actualization they looked to
their own lives and realized that nearly all structures in American society were part of
hooks white supremacist patriarchal system. This lead women to begin working on
things that most affected them.
Work on personal issues have caused feminists to group together based on their
lifestyle. hooks identifies this as the most destructive force in current feminist ideology.
The womens movement has fractured into multiple movements based on the area
certain women are most concerned with. While it is important that feminism address all
of the structures that support oppression they have decreased some of their power by
dividing on particular issues. hooks argument is that these groups need to come to this
realization and reunite to regain power for social change. She points out that when
feminist politics can be divided and connected only to equality with elite white males it
prevents society from recognizing the need for revolutionary change and allows small
gestures toward equality to pacify people. She argues that in order to rectify the
problem we must, acknowledge the ways politics of difference have created
exploitative and oppressive power relations between women that must be contested and
changed(SKIN DEEP 272). Because of this a more beneficial definition of the feminist
movement is the one used above by hooks that provides cohesion, not division in the
movement.
RACISM DIVIDING FEMINISM

Earlier it was said that there are a variety of definitions of feminism. Though hooks
advocates unity among feminists she realizes that the prevalence of racism even in the
roots of the movement itself create a problem. The white supremacist culture has less
difficulty recognizing upper class white womens experience then the experience of
those generally excluded from this grouping. Feminists who are recognized by the media
and the American culture are generally white women and black women in the
movement, like hooks, have often felt marginalized.
White women often speak for black women without fully understanding their experience
and thus complicating the problem with increased racist assumptions under the guise of
positive social change. White feminists also have been known to express connection
with black womens experiences while completely missing their point of view all
together. Having the dominant culture speak for black women in the movement is not
only damaging because it creates misunderstanding but, even worse, it silences their
voices out of the movement further denying self actualization to this group of people.
Manifestations of this racism can be seen in schools as well as in the workforce, media
and the academy. While white supremacist sexist society guarantees a devaluing of
womens experiences and their bodies white women will always be better off on this
structure than black women because of their race.
hooks in LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE

bell hooks is a wonderful resource for debaters because of her application to a wide
variety of concerns. Her criticisms apply to every conceivable area of American life
because she critiques the fundamental structures in which we live. This critical approach
may seem most accessible for a debater on the negative who wants to critique the
dominant stance of the affirmative case. Her theories work well to indict any affirmative
case that does not question its own underlying assumptions. When faced with a case
that advocates a particular ideology, hooks will generally have something to criticize
because even when someone is conscious to avoid racism and sexism they often dont
recognize the critical role class plays in the assumptions we make about the way society
functions. Whatever the flaw, using hooks work debaters should be able to uncover the
problems with assumptions made in the case construction process.
The wonderful thing about hooks for debaters is that she does not simply critique. She
provides a unique perspective for creating practical approaches to societal issues. That
makes her a good person to refer to when constructing cases as well. She may criticize
the educational process in America but her books also discuss what can be done to
alleviate detrimental effects of a problematic educational system. She looks at issues of
poverty and class and discusses the ways that a feminist perspective addresses those
issues. Freedom of expression is another great area to use hooks work, in this area she
not only has a vast array of works dealing with expression but also mass media and she
attempts to come to grips with what society can do to move away from destructive
expression without censoring out groups who are already marginalized by the dominant
culture. These are only a few of the many areas bell hooks has chosen to write about.
The next great thing about bell hooks is her accessibility. Not only is her work easy to
locate but it is simple to read. Type her name into any library data base and you are
bound to find something written by this author, she even writes interesting childrens
books! Bookstores often carry a sampling of hooks major works as well. Lets face it
though, debaters tend to want the information accessible on the computer as well. Type
the name bell hooks into internet search engines and you will find tons of information.
Because she is so interesting people want to provide information on her, even her
publishing company has made parts of the book FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY available
on their website for free. Not only can you find her work but when you sit down to read it
you will not be lost. One of the most important issues for hooks as an author is a
students ability to read. She wants to make her work something that everyone can
understand the issues that are important to her.
Finally, one of the most important parts of winning a debate is the ability to persuade
your audience that the stance you have taken is correct. A careful deployment of hooks
work can bring audiences to your side. Her use of personal experience allows her work o
be passionate and compelling. Combined with knowledge of social realities and
academic subjects hooks is an author many audiences can relate to. The key is finding
the appropriate discussions to have with particular audiences in order to raise
consciousness.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Florence, Namulundah, BELL HOOKS ENGAGED PEDAGOGY: A TRANSGRESSIVE
EDUCATION FOR CRITICAL CONCIOUSNESS, Westport: Bergin & Garvey, 1998.
Golden, Marita and Susan Richards Shreeve, SKIN DEEP: BLACK WOMEN & WHITE
WOMEN WRITE ABOUT RACE, New York: Doubleday, 1995.
hooks, bell, YEARNING: RACE GENDER AND CULTURAL POLITICS, Boston: South End
Press, 1990.
hooks, bell, Black Woman Artist Becoming, LIFE NOTES (ed. Patricia Bell-Scott), New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.
hooks, bell, KILLING RAGE: ENDING RACISM, New York: Henry Holt, 1995
hooks, bell, BONE BLACK:MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD, New York: Henry Holt, 1996.
hooks, bell, WOUNDS OF PASSION: A WRITING LIFE, New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1999.
hooks, bell, FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY, Cambridge: South End Press, 2000.
Olsen, Gary A. and Elizabeth Hirsh, WOMEN WRITING CULTURE, Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1995.
RACISM PERMEATES US CULTURE

1. AMERICAN SOCIETY HAS A WHITE SUPREMACIST CULTURE.
Namulundah Florence, adjunct faculty member in Fordham Univeristys Graduate School
of Education and College of Bussiness, BELL HOOKS ENGAGED PEDAGOGY: A
TRANSGRESSIVE EDUCATION FOR CRITICAL CONCIOUSNESS, Westport: Bergin & Garvey,
1998, p. 11.
Critical, feminist and multicultural critics highlight the fallacy behind mainstream norms
and practices. It is argued that a pervasive false consciousness is reinforced in society
due to the sanctioning of exclusive ways of being, feeling and knowing as the norm.
Essentially, these values and traditions are racial, gender, and class specific. Students
from marginalized cultures find their primary cultural values and traditions inadequately
represented and/or denied. The subordination of one groups cultural traits and
characteristics has significant impact in marginalized students experiences of schools
and/or incorporation of official curricula. In a white supremacist society, White peoples
values, traditions, and practices are engrained in social policies and norms serving as
basic criteria for social and economic mobility. hooks succinctly states: In the beginning
black folks were most effectively colonized via the structure of ownership. Once slavery
ended, white supremacy could be effectively maintained by the institutionalization of
social apartheid and by creating a philosophy of racial inferiority that would be taught
for everyone. This strategy of colonialism needed no country, for the space it sought to
own and conquer was the minds of blacks (1995, p.109).
2. AMERICAN CULTURAL BIAS IS ROOTED IN COLONIZATION

Namulundah Florence, adjunct faculty member in Fordham Univeristys Graduate School
of Education and College of Bussiness, BELL HOOKS ENGAGED PEDAGOGY: A
TRANSGRESSIVE EDUCATION FOR CRITICAL CONCIOUSNESS, Westport: Bergin & Garvey,
1998, p. 14.
In the United States, colonization of the continent led to the institution of economic,
educational, and political structures that primarily served the interests of the colonizers ,
currently policy makers(Banks, 1988; hooks, 1992, 1994, 1995; McNaught, 1996).
Historically, in America, Anglo-Saxon sociocultural traditions functioned as a
prerequsite to social acceptability and access to the political structure (Banks 1988,
p.58). However, unlike Northern and Western European immigrants, groups such as
African Americans, Chinese Americans, and Mexican Americans faced greater challenges
in trying to assimilate as a result of possessing different cultural traits and
characteristics from the mainstream (Banks, 1988; Nelson et al., 1996). Insisting on the
primacy of racial discrimination, hooks contends: Racism took precedence over sexual
alliances in both the white worlds interaction with Native Americans and African
Americans, just as racism overshadowed any bonding between black women and white
women on the basis of sex. (1981, p.122)
3. ASSIMILATION HAS A DESTRUCTIVE EFFECT ON BLACK STUDENTS

bell hooks, TALKING BACK: THINKING FEMINIST, THINKING BLACK, Boston: South End
Press, 1989,
p. 67.
While assimilation is seen as an approach that ensures the successful entry of black
people into the mainstream, at its very core it is dehumanizing. Embedded in the logic of
assimilation is the white-supremacist assumption that blackness must be eradicated so
that a new self, in this case, a white self, can come into being. Of course, since we who
are black can never be white, this very effort promotes and fosters serious psychological
stress and even severe mental illness. My concern about the process of assimilation has
deepened as I hear black students express pain and hurt, as I observe them suffer in
ways that not only inhibit their ability t perform academically, but threaten their very
existence.
THE INTERSECTIONAL APPROACH IS

BEST
1. CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE INTERSECTIONS OF RACE AND SEX IS KEY
bell hooks, social critic, author, professor, KILLING RAGE: ENDING RACISM, New York:
Henry Holt, 1995,
p. np.
Surely it is patriarchal condescension that leads black folks, particularly sexist black
men, to assume that black folks, particularly sexist black men, to assume that black
females are incapable of embracing revolutionary feminism in ways that would enhance
rather than diminish black liberation, despite the continued overt racism and racist
agendas of those groups of white women who can most easily lay claim to the term
feminism and project their conservative and reactionary agendas. Often this
condescension merely masks the allegiance to sexism and patriarchal thinking in black
life. Certainly, the labeling of black women who engage in feminist thinking as race
traitors is meant to prevent us From embracing feminist politics as surely as white power
feminism acts to exclude our voices and silence our critiques. In this case both groups
are acting to protect and maintain the privileges, however relative, that they receive in
the existing social structure.
2. INCORPORATION OF FEMINISM IS NECESSARY FOR BLACK LIBERATION

bell hooks, social critic, author, professor, KILLING RAGE: ENDING RACISM, New York:
Henry Holt, 1995,
p. 69.
If we start with the premise that black liberation struggle, and all our efforts at selfdetermination, a strengthened when black males and females participate as equals in
daily life and struggle, it is clear that we cannot create a cultural climate where these
conditions exist without first committing ourselves to a feminist agenda that is specific
to black life, that concerns itself with ending sexism and sexist oppression in our diverse
communities. To advance this agenda we would need to rethink our notions of manhood
and womanhood. Rather than continuing to see them as opposites, with different
inherent characteristics, we would need to recognize biological differences without
seeing them as markers of specific gender traits. This would mean no longer thinking
that it is natural for boys to be strong and girls to be weak, for boys to be active and
girls to be passive. Ours task in parenting and in education would be to encourage in
both females and males the capacity to be holistic, to be capable of being both strong
and weak, active and passive, etc., in response to specific contexts. Rather than defining
manhood in relation to sexuality, we would acknowledge it in relation to biology: boys
become men, girls women, with the understanding that both categories are synonymous
with selfhood.
3. FEMINISM ALLOWS THE BREAKDOWN THE RACIAL DIVISIONS AMONG WOMEN

bell hooks, Associate Professor of English and Womens Studies at Oberlin College, and
Mary Childers, A Conversation About Race and Class, CONFLICTS IN FEMINISM, New
York: Routledge, 1990, p.75.
Women seem to be particularly threatened when our differences are marked by class
privilege. What do you do when you are not privileged and have contact with a
privileged woman of any race? Or when there is race and class difference? What gives us
a space to bond? These are questions we have had trouble answering. I want to privilege
political commitment because in this culture we do not emphasize enough that you can
choose to be politically committed in ways that change your behavior and action. We
need to do more work examining the reasons white women and black women of all
classes view one another with suspicion, thinking we are trying to take something from
each other (whether it is the privileged white woman who thinking that a black woman is
trying to take some of her power from her or to make herself more powerful or it is black
women feeling like thee are these white women who have everything and want more). I
dont think we really understand either historically or in terms of contemporary
circumstances why we view each other in such incredibly negative terms. Certainly as a
group white males have been more oppressive to black women, yet black women dont
unequivocally view white males in the hostile, suspicious ways that we often view white
women. And I would say vice versa as well. Feminist theory needs to study historically,
sociologically, and anthropologically how we see one another and why it has been so
hard or us to change how we see one another.
HOOKS' CRITICISM IS INEFFECTIVE

1. HOOKS FAILS TO PROVIDE AN ADEQUATE ALTERNATIVE VISION
Maggie Gallagher, co-author (with Linda Waite) of The Case for Marriage: Why Married
People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, NATIONAL REVIEW vol. 53,
1/22/2001, p. 50.
Which is exactly bell hooks complaint. An unreconstructed black radical feminist, hooks
(who insists on the lowercase letters) has nothing but disdain for "reformists" like Estrich
who sought only to claim the "class privilege" their brothers enjoyed. "While it was in the
interest of mainstream white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to suppress visionary
feminist thinking reformist feminists were also eager to silence these forces. Reformist
feminism became their route to class mobility." hooks is equally disdainful of what she
calls "lifestyle feminism," in which "the politics was slowly removed from feminism." I
wish I could tell you in more detail what hooks revolution might look like, but in 123
pages she never gets around to explaining what "ending sexist oppression" means,
aside from abortion on demand and contraceptives for all. Equally hard to explain is her
naive idea that all that prevents the triumph of radical feminism is bad marketing: "Let's
start over. Let's have T-shirts and bumper stickers and postcards and hip-hop music,
television and radio commercials, ads everywhere and billboards, and all manner of
printed material that tells the world that feminism is a movement to end sexist
oppression."
2. HOOKS' FASCINATION WITH POP CULTURE WEAKENS HER CRITIQUE

Catharine R. Kelly, staff writer, For bell, love goes the way of BMW's, Buppiedom and
Big Houses, MICHIGAN CITIZEN, 3/14/98, p. B1.
Bell Hooks and her BMW have disappointed me for the last time. Posing as a "feminist
author" Bell Hooks' interview with Jada Pinkett in the March issue of Essence magazine
falls short of her used-to-be scathing critiques of dominant culture. I was initially excited
by the cover story - Bell Hooks interviewing Jada Pinkett for Essence - a potentially
informing, empowering article for Black women. I was surprised by what I read. Hook's
interview actually reinforces white-male-dominated patriarchal ideas she built her career
fighting. Like Jada, I read Hooks' first book as a young women in college. I was impressed
with her passion in telling the historical oppression of Black women in America. Her
follow-up works equally impressed me. However, in recent year Hooks' work seems to
have gone the direction of pop culture rather than a critique of dominant culture. In the
past hooks has defended this move by arguing she should be allowed to "grow" and
should not be pigeonholed. Yes, Black people and especially artists are often
pigeonholed, yet at one point, Hooks was an important player in developing Black
feminist theory. She began Ain't I a Woman in college. Maybe, like the older civil rights
generation, she has gone mainstream - her passion lost, lulled into a more "comfortable"
and "middle class" existence. It is clear from her Essence interview the "rage of youth"
in Ain't I a Woman is gone.
MULTIDIMENSIONALITY IS SUPERIOR TO
INTERSECTIONALITY
1. OPPOSITIONAL STRUCTURES OF RACE AND SEX BECOME BARRIERS TO COALITIONS
Lennard Hutchinson, Assistant Professor, Southern Methodist University School of Law.
B.A., University of Pennsylvania; J.D., Yale Law School, Symposium Article: Identity
Crisis: Intersectionality, Multidimensionality, and the Development of an Adequate
Theory of Subordination. MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF RACE & LAW, Spring 2001, p. 288-290.
The HRC endorsement controversy reflects broader, structural problems in
antisubordination theory: the embrace of essentialist politics, the positioning of
progressive movements as oppositional and conflicting forces, rather than as potential
alliances and coalitions, and the failure to recognize the multidimensional and complex
nature of subordination. While essentialism remains a prominent feature of progressive
social movements, critical scholars have offered persuasive arguments against
traditional, single-issue politics and have proposed reforms in a variety of doctrinal and
policy contexts. The feminist of color critiques of feminism and antiracism provided the
earliest framework for analyzing oppression in complex terms. Feminists of color and
other critical scholars have examined racism and patriarchy as "intersecting"
phenomena, rather than as separate and mutually exclusive systems of domination.
Their work on the intersectionality of subordination has encouraged some judges and
progressive scholars to discard the "separate spheres" analysis of race and gender. The
powerful intersectionality model has also inspired many other avenues of critical
engagement. Lesbian-feminist theorists, for example, have challenged the patriarchy
and heterosexism of law and sexuality and feminist theorists, respectively, and, recently,
a growing intellectual movement has emerged that responds to racism within gay and
lesbian circles and heterosexism within antiracist activism. These "post-intersectionality"
scholars are collectively pushing jurists and progressive theorists to examine forms of
subordination as interrelated, rather than conflicting, phenomena.
2. MULTIDIMENSIONALITY ALLOWS THE EXAMINATION OF MULTIPLE INTERSECTIONS
Lennard Hutchinson, Assistant Professor, Southern Methodist University School of Law.
B.A., University of Pennsylvania; J.D., Yale Law School, Symposium Article: Identity
Crisis: Intersectionality, Multidimensionality, and the Development of an Adequate
Theory of Subordination. MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF RACE & LAW, Spring 2001, p. 309-310.
The intersectionality scholarship has inspired helpful analyses in areas outside of the
contexts of feminism and antiracism. Lesbian feminists, gays and lesbians of color, and
other scholars have utilized the intersectional model in order to counter essentialism in
feminism, law and sexuality, critical race theory, and poverty studies. These scholars,
like the intersectionality theorists, have also examined the experiences of persons who
suffer from intersecting forms of marginalization and have proposed policies to address
the reality of complex subordination. Although heavily influenced by intersectional
analysis, the "post-intersectionality" theorists have offered several improvements to the
intersectionality model. In particular, race-sexuality critics, whose work examines the

relationships among racism, patriarchy, class domination, and heterosexism, are
currently developing a sizeable body of scholarship that extends intersectionality theory
into new substantive and conceptual terrains. In a series of articles, I have examined the
relationships among racism, heterosexism, patriarchy, and class oppression utilizing a
model I refer to as "multidimensionality." Multidimensionality "recognizes the inherent
complexity of systems of oppression ... and the social identity categories around which
social power and disempowerment are distributed." Multidimensionality posits that the
various forms of identity and oppression are "inextricably and forever intertwined" and
that essentialist equality theories "invariably reflect the experiences of class-and raceprivileged" individuals. Multidimensionality, therefore, arises out of and is informed by
intersectionality theory.
Ivan Illich
BIOGRAPHY
Illich was born in Vienna in 1926. His father, Ivan Peter, was a civil engineer. He
enjoyed a comfortable childhood, along with his younger twin brothers, and attended
good schools. Illich was a student at the Piaristengymnasium in Vienna from 1936 to
1941, when he was expelled by the occupying Nazis because his mother was of Jewish
ancestry. He traveled extensively before studying histology and crystallography at the
University of Florence.
He then decided to prepare for priesthood, entering the Gregorian University in Rome
(1943-1946) to study theology and philosophy. In 195,1 he completed his PhD on the
nature of historical knowledge at the University of Salzburg. The understanding he
gained during this time period on the institutionalization of the church in the 13 th century
would later help to inform his critique.
After completing his PhD, Illich became a priest in Washington Heights, New York. His
congregation was predominantly Irish and Puerto Rican. He became fluent in Spanish
and advocated for preserving Puerto Rican culture and against cultural ignorance. From
New York, he became the vice-rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce
from 1956 to 1960. He was eventually forced out of the university because of his
opposition to the then Bishop of Ponces forbidding of Catholics to vote for Governor Luis
Munoz Marin, who advocated state-sponsored birth control.
Illich then founded the Centre for Intercultural Formation, which would later become the
Centre of Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC), to train American missionaries for work
in Latin America. The Centre was located in Cuernavaca, Mexico. At the CIDOC, Illich
wanted missionaries to question their activities, learn Spanish and appreciate the
limitations of their own experiences. After mounting pressure from Pope John XIII, he
eventually resigned and left the priesthood in 1969.
Illichs interest in pedagogy and criticisms of educational institutions began in 1956,

stemming from conversations with Everett Reimer, the executive secretary of the
Committee on Human Resources of the Commonwealth. They worked together to
assess Puerto Ricos needs for trained man-power and designing an educational program
to fit these needs. After extensive incubation, Illich first began publishing his works on
the negative impacts of schooling in the early 1970s, the most famous of which,
Deschooling Society, was published in 1970. In the 1980s, his focus ranged from
economic scarcity to gender to literacy practices. In the 1990s, Illich spent his time in
Mexico, the United States and Germany as a Visiting Professor at Penn State and the
University of Bremen. In the early 1990s he was diagnosed with cancer and died on
December 2, 2002.
PHILOSOPHY
Illichs philosophy was rooted in the recognition that societal organization was unsuited
for the optimal realization of human potential. His writings draw from the intellectual
traditions of Marx and existentialism, and contemporaries like Pablo Friere and Paul
Goodman. His most renowned work regarding deschooling was done in conjunction with
Everett Reimer, whom he met in Puerto Rico in 1956. However, Illich also offers
criticisms of the medical establishment, development projects, gender inequality,
industrialization, authority, and institutions in general.
Illichs guiding ethical principle dictates that the primary social value should be that of
conviviality. For Illich, this notion of conviviality would be embodied in a communitarian
state where individuals enjoy a maximum knowledge of the range of options afforded to
them and a maximum amount of freedom to exercise those choices, with the ultimate
goal of self-actualization. In balancing autonomy with community, conviviality is
individual freedom realized in mutual personal interdependence. (Tools for
Conviviality)
As opposed to the liberal tradition of Mill and Locke in which personal freedom is
balanced by some social contract or market economy in an effort to check back the
dangers of autonomy, the society that Illich envisions requires radical changes in social
thought so that individuals would make moral decisions in terms of optimal outcome for
all. The principle guiding those moral decisions, he terms austerity. For Illich,
austerity is the social virtue by which individuals would recognize and decide limits on
the maximum amount of instrumented power that anyone may claim, both for his own
satisfaction and in the service of others. (Tools for Conviviality) This is analogous, but
should not be confused with Marxs socialist utopia in which individuals produce and
distribute the products of labor equitably. The goal of Illichs criticisms, then, is help
move society towards this convivial mode of existence.
Illich holds that institutions such as schools, the church, mental hospitals, etc., seek to
maintain the static society in which they exist. Rather than making things better, they
perpetuate the status quo through the manipulation of the individual subjects within the
institution. In our society, Illich argues, institutions have the ability to limit the available
autonomy of individuals, selectively determine who should hold autonomy and to what
degree, as well as distort the interconnectedness of society.
Illichs primary institution of interest is the school, which he defines as the age specific,
teacher-related process requiring full-time attendance at an obligatory curriculum.
(Tools for Conviviality) Schools are a particularly significant institution for this type of
analysis for three major reasons. First, there is the shear amount of time that nearly all
individuals spend attending school, specifically in countries where attendance is
mandatory. However, just as importantly, school constitutes an individuals first

entrance into public sphere/life without their parents. Finally, society uses graduation
from an educational institution to mark an individuals arrival at adulthood. Thus we
conceptualize schools as an integral part of bringing individuals from intellectual infancy
to maturity. Consequently, Illich contends that, in light of this context, schools have
assumed a place of obvious influence over how individuals come to understand both
their society and their position within it.
Recognizing the potential to impact the functioning of a society, Illich outlines several
fatal flaws that make schools ill equipped to reach the end goal of conviviality. He
recognizes that schools are only able to function because they claim and maintain
authority over knowledge. As a result, schools view knowledge as a commodity, rather
than an internalized process. In order to maintain the value of their commodity, schools
create false standards that measure obedience rather than intelligence. All of the flaws
that Illich identifies within educational institutions are inherent to their existence as
institutions.
The hidden curriculum is the framework of the system, within which all changes in the
curriculum are made (Tools for Conviviality) or, in other words, those elements of the
institution that mold students apart from the overt curriculum learned in the classroom.
Illich argues that the structures of the school, in terms of the teacher-student
relationship and disciplinary structures, groom students to later be controlled by other
institutions such as work, environments, and their government. Each time the institution
successfully indoctrinates a student into one particular mode of thinking or routine, the
next indoctrination will meet with less resistance from the student. Additionally, Illich
argues that the focus of school is not merely on the education/indoctrination of students,
but rather that as an institution, school is focused on its own perpetuation. In order to
guarantee its continuation, school implicitly constructs the value of school learning. At
the same time, the school actively undermines the importance and success of other
forms of knowledge. This functions to maintain the status quo and keep individuals from
looking outside the box. Unlike curriculum, the hidden curriculum transcends the
particulars of the specific ideology being taught because it lays in the manner in which
schools operate as institutions. Thus, it doesnt matter whether the curriculum is
designed to teach the principles of Fascism, liberalism, Catholicism, socialism or
liberation, as long as the institution claims to define which activities are legitimate
education. (Tools for Conviviality)
Illich remarks that the widespread industrialization of western liberal economics has also
had a significant effect on the nature of education. Knowledge is now being regarded as
a type of commodity or capital, just as money, natural resources and time.
Consequently, the school is viewed as an institution that enables individuals and the
society to gain capital and power, and using itself as a vehicle, schools promote this
conceptualization. How many times have you been told that you must go to college to
have a decent future? In reality, Illich contends, knowledge exists not as an independent
object, but rather as an internalized aspect of people who know. For example, in the
common metaphor, I see what you mean the thinker and the object are clearly
spatially differentiated. There is the mind, and there is the evidence. This model of
conceptualizing knowledge results in what Illich calls the banking concept. In this
framework, education is seen as the process by which an object, knowledge, is
transferred from the teacher to the student in little pieces. It does not become
integrated into the individual's worldview, but rather owned like any other commodity.
This objectification and commodification of knowledge gives primacy to types of
knowledge that can be exchanged within a dualistic relationship.
Consequently, Illich argues, the school system is less concerned with the usefulness of
knowing, thinking, and understanding, than it is with the usefulness of knowledge as a
tool. As he suggests, the survival of a society in which technocracies can constantly redefine human happiness as the consumption of their latest product depends on
educational institutions which translate education into social control. (Tools for
Conviviality) In the same way that consumer culture reconstitutes self-actualization in
terms of material possessions, the school system relegates the inherent goal of being
the best thinker one can be to ones ability to best learn sellable information that can
be commodified. These two factors are mutually reinforcing. Capitalist economics
provide the underpinnings of the pedagogy and the model for commodification, while
the hidden curriculum endows students with a commodity-based model of human
existence. Moreover, when this objectification is internalized at an early age, it will
necessarily carry over into other aspects of one's worldview, preventing an individual
from reaching the holistic conceptualization Illich values.
The commodification of knowledge can only function by controlling access to the capital
of knowing. Just as gold functions as a marker of value because of its limited supply,
societal standards must be set to maintain the value of school learning. To do this, first,
requires the undermining of self-learning, which is accomplished easily enough through
institutional backing and social stigmatization of the available alternatives. Related to
this is the concept of selection, the notion that performance in school is an indication of
future economic viability. This notion is, both, partially rooted in the assumed value of a
school education, and also a justification for social hierarchy. The valuation of
institutionalized education consequently seeks to explain the economic
disenfranchisement of the majority as a result of scholastic underachievement. Illich
explains that, the number of satisfied clients who graduate from school every year is
much smaller than the number of frustrated dropouts who are conveniently graded by
their failure for use in a marginal labor pool citizens are schooled into their places.
(Tools for Conviviality) The flaw with this mode of valuation, according to Illich, is that it
confuses process with substance. As a society, we are apt to favor an individual who
has attended 12 years of school over one who has not. However, merely attending
school, or receiving good grades is not representative of actually knowing. Thus, Illich
criticizes a society that takes from granted that a diploma must necessarily indicate
superior intellect. Rather than actually valuing achievement in practice, we turn to
achievement in complying with rules and procedures, or giving the answer that is
expected of you.
Illichs conception of the transition away from schools and his vision of the post-school
environment is complicated. To spell out a particular educational model would
contradict his argument that defining what is and is not proper education has
detrimental effects. He does outline a few standards though; alternatives must be made
available to all without any kind of qualification on age, socio-economic status, gender,
creed, or ethnicity. Additionally, these alternatives must teach what people want to
know, when they want to learn it, and avoid the institutionalization of either subject
material or methods of instruction. Illich points out that there are a plethora of natural
resources for educational use, which far outnumber those currently utilized by schools.
Thus, Illich claims we would be able to overcome the decreased efficiency of selfdirected learning by increasing the efficiency of its process. For example, although it
might not be a convenient for me to consult with a banker about accounting, as it would
be for me to talk to my math teacher, the quality of an unforced interaction with a
knowledgeable individual more than compensates. Subsequently, the question becomes
not what learning should happen, but rather, what methods are there for bringing
students into contact with these resources. Such resources can be objects that exist in
the world, persons who already have skills and values that a person would like to model
him or herself after, people who can challenge them, compete with them, help them, or
just to be friends with. In all of these exchanges, Illich contends, that a superior natural
learning occurs. With this in mind, Illich suggests four possible ways of facilitating such
interactions: reference services to educational objects, skill exchanges, peer-matching,
reference services to educators-at-large.
The reference services to educational objects would provide access to things needed for
learning in much the same way that libraries and museums do in the present. These
services would clearly need to be expanded and more accessible to the larger society.
The skill exchange would place all persons wishing to learn and those willing to teach in
contact with one another. Similarly, peer-matching would place individuals in contact
with others interested in exploring similar areas of inquiry. References to educators at
large would provide information on quasi-professional teachers and the conditions of
their services. (Tools for Conviviality) New advancements in information-communication
technologies such as the internet make these types of free form webs of educational
resources much easier than Illich ever could have imagined. In theory, these
alternatives would both reflect and perpetuate the goal of the convivial society.
ILLICH IN DEBATE
At various points in his life, Ivan Illich has written about most of the significant
components of society. His philosophic process is twofold: he criticizes the existing
structures and he establishes a new, somewhat utopian, social ethic of conviviality.
Thus, he can be applied to debate in two major ways, in supporting values of autonomy
and conviviality or as the basis for a critique of institutions and reform, particularly
schools.
With regards to autonomy, Illich uses an existentially based explanation for the
importance of autonomy. Unlike the nasty, brutish and short depiction of a state in
which individuals enjoyed autonomy, Illich conceives of it from an intellectual
perspective. He argues that individuals require both the awareness of the vast number
of choices available and the freedom to make decisions for themselves in order to gain
any level of fulfillment from life. But what about that nasty, brutish and short thing?
Illich maintained a corollary value of austerity, which is the recognition of our
interconnectedness. In this sense, Illich becomes more of a post-modern social contract
theorist. Individuals have internalized the compassion for others and the desire for all to
succeed. As a result, in Illichs convivial society, each individual would have autonomy,
but they would choose to use it in a positive manner.
If you do not wish to embrace Illichs Utopic vision, it may also be helpful to note that he
sees autonomy as the only means of effecting change in society. He recognizes the risk
involved with granting heightened autonomy, but argues that the benefits are greater.
Freedom to learn is freedom to learn prejudice but it is also freedom to overcome
prejudice. The scholastics saw this same point clearly when they argued that if man is to
do good he must be able to sin. Compulsion to learn may be compulsion to avoid
prejudiced behavior but only a free act will overcome prejudice itself and we cannot
compel a free act. (Tools for Conviviality) This type of argument can also be applied to
the question of censorship. Because of Illichs existential foundation, he would favor the
greatest possible access to all information.
As a critique of institutions, Illichs analysis occurs on multiple levels; he argues against

authority, credentials, routines, really the foundation of what any institution is. In terms
of authority, Illich recognizes that the goal of any institution is survival, and thus they
strive to promote their legitimacy. Just as school claim a monopoly on knowledge, stores
claim to be the only way to get food, or courts justice.
The problem with this is two-fold. First, in order to get and maintain authority,
institutions have to commodify their service to sell you something. Second, they have to
delegitimize any alternative, possibly more natural, means of obtaining their function.
The tactic to do this is indoctrination, which also is used to unite the parts of the
institution. Even if the goal of the institution is a good one, like justice or charity, Illich
claims that in reality such things cannot truly come to exist except through the exercise
of free will. Moreover, brainwashing by an institution with good intentions makes it
easier for other institutions to indoctrinate. Institutions also fabricate standards in order
to prove their authority. Schools hand out diplomas, nurses are certified, etc Illich
contends that these credentials are not accurate reflections of achievement, but rather
measures of adhesion to the mode of the institution. Moreover, the societal valuation of
these standards causes them to pushed on people, until finally they are internalized and
people want to conform (i.e. anorexia).
Additionally, it may be interesting to note, that Illich does not believe that reform within
the system is possible. Given the fundamental flaws of institutions, any reform
conducted would be subject to those same procedural flaws. On the other hand, Illich
did believe that institutions were once helpful, but over time they go too far, until the
process of institutionalization reaches a certain threshold and becomes
counterproductive. For example, the automobile: Cars initially made travel faster and
easier, but then it also made cities spread out so there was no time saved, and finally,
traffic jams may actually make walking preferable. According to Illich there is no way to
go back to a time when institutions were utile and stay there. Consequently, he
advocates for a mindset shift, a mass awaking of the convivial.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barrow, Robin. RADICAL EDUCATION: A CRITIQUE OF FREESCHOOLING AND
DESCHOOLING. New York: Wiley, 1978.
Carnoy, Martin. SCHOOLING IN A CORPORATE SOCIETY; THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF

EDUCATION IN AMERICA New York: McKay, 1972.
Elias, John L. CONSCIENTIZATION AND DESCHOOLING : FREIRE'S AND ILLICH'S

PROPOSALS FOR RESHAPING SOCIETY Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976.
Gabbard, David A. SILENCING IVAN ILLICH : A FOUCAULDIAN ANALYSIS OF

INTELLECTUAL EXCLUSION SAN FRANCISCO: Austin & Winfield, 1998.
Hern, Matt, Ed. DESCHOOLING OUR LIVES. Ivan Illich & Aaron Falbel, Foreword.
Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1996.
Havighurst, Robert and Daniel Levine. FAREWELL TO SCHOOLS??? Worthington, Ohio:

Charles A. Jones Publishing, 1971.
Hoinacki, Lee and Carl Mitcham, eds. THE CHALLENGES OF IVAN ILLICH : A COLLECTIVE
REFLECTION ALBANY: State University of New York Press, 2002
Ivan Illich TOOLS FOR CONVIVIALITY (New York: Harper & Row, 1973) 11.
Illich, Ivan and Barry Sanders. A B C : THE ALPHABETIZATION OF THE POPULAR MIND
SAN FRANCISCO : North Point Press, 1988.
Illich, Ivan et al. AFTER DESCHOOLING, WHAT? Alan Gartner, Colin Greer, and Frank
Riessman, Eds. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Illich, Ivan. CELEBRATION OF AWARENESS: A CALL FOR INSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970.
Illich, Ivan. DESCHOOLING SOCIETY New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
Illich, Ivan et al. DISABLING PROFESSIONS London: M. Boyars, 1977.
Illich, Ivan. ENERGY AND EQUITY New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
Illich, Ivan. GENDER New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
Illich, Ivan and Etienne Verne. IMPRISONED IN THE GLOBAL CLASSROOM London: Writers
and Readers Publishing Cooperative, 1976.
Illich, Ivan. IN THE VINEYARD OF THE TEXT : A COMMENTARY TO HUGH'S DIDASCALICON

Illich, Ivan. MEDICAL NEMESIS : THE EXPROPRIATION OF HEALTH New York: Pantheon
Books, 1976.
Illich, Ivan. THE RIGHT TO USEFUL UNEMPLOYMENT AND ITS PROFESSIONAL ENEMIES
London: Boyars, 1978.
Illich, Ivan. SHADOW-WORK CAPE TOWN: University of Cape Town, 1980.
Illich, Ivan. TOOLS FOR CONVIVIALITY New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Illich, Ivan. TOWARD A HISTORY OF NEEDS New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Illich, Ivan et al. TRADITION AND REVOLUTION Lionel Rubinoff, Ed. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1971.
Macklin, Charles. WHEN SCHOOLS ARE GONE : A PROJECTION OF THE THOUGHT OF IVAN
ILLICH St. Lucia, Q.: University of Queensland Press, 1976.
Marin, Peter, Vincent Stanley, & Kathryn Marin. THE LIMITS OF SCHOOLING Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975.
Ohliger, John and Colleen McCarthy. LIFELONG LEARNING OR LIFELONG SCHOOLING? A

TENTATIVE VIEW OF THE IDEAS OF IVAN ILLICH WITH A QUOTATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University, Publications in Continuing Education, 1971.
Pattanayak, D.P. MULTILINGUALISM AND MOTHER-TONGUE EDUCATION OF IVAN ILLICH,

Forward. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981
Rist, Ray C., Ed. RESTRUCTURING AMERICAN EDUCATION New Brunswick, N.J.:
Transaction Books, 1972.
Troost, Cornelius J., Ed. RADICAL SCHOOL REFORM; CRITIQUE AND ALTERNATIVES Boston:
Little, Brown, 1973.
MORALITY IS DEPENDENT ON
INDIVIDUAL CHOICE
1. MORALITY MUST BE AN INDIVIDUALS CHOICE, INDOCTRINATION IS A SLIPPERY SLOPE
Michael Macklin, Professor, University of New England, WHEN SCHOOLS ARE GONE,
1976. p. 44.
Prejudice must be overcome but the moral aspect of this problem cannot be solved by
the schools since a moral decision can only be made by an autonomous person, by
someone free to make such a decision. All too often, success in overcoming prejudice is
attributed to schools when all that has happened is that the children have been
indoctrinated I the opposite attitude. Each time a person submits to indoctrination, even
indoctrination in what may currently been seen as a laudable attitude, his resistance to
further indoctrination is lessened.
2. MEASUREING VALUES CREATES A MIND SET OF HIERARCHIZING

Ivan Illich, philosopher, DESCHOOLING SOCIETY, 1970. p. 40.
Once people have the idea schooled into them that values can be produced and
measured, they tend to accept all kinds of rankings. There is a scale for the
development of nations, another for the intelligence of babies, and even progress toward
peace can be calculated according to body count. In a schooled world the road to
happiness is paved with a consumers index.
3. GOOD CAN ONLY BE VOLUNTARY

Michael Macklin, Professor, University of New England, WHEN SCHOOLS ARE GONE,
1976. p. 44.
Freedom to learn is freedom to learn prejudice but it is also freedom to overcome
prejudice. The scholastics saw this same point clearly when they argued that if man is to
do good he must be able to sin. Compulsion to learn may be compulsion to avoid
prejudiced behavior but only a free act will overcome prejudice itself and we cannot
compel a free act.
4. AUSTERITY WOULD GUIDE THE EXERCISE OF AUTONOMY

Ivan Illich, philosopher, TOWARD A HISTORY OF NEEDS, 1978. p. 15.
[Austerity is the] social virtue by which individuals would recognize and decide limits on
the maximum amount of instrumented power that anyone may claim, both for his own
satisfaction and in the service of others. This convivial austerity inspires a society to
protect personal use-value against disabling enrichment.
INSTITUTIONS ARE OPPRESSIVE

1. INSTITUTIONS CONFUSE PROCESS WITH SUBSTANCE
They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new
logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation
leads to success. The pupil is thereby schooled to confuse teaching with learning,
grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the
ability to say something new. His imagination is schooled to accept service in place of
value.
2. INSTITUTIONS BREED DEPENDENCE, ESPECIALLY FOR THE POOR

The poor have always been socially powerless. The increasing reliance on institutional
care adds a new dimension to their helplessness: psychological impotence, the inability
to fend for themselves.
3. SCHOOLS ARE INSTITUTIONS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

Ivan Illich, philosopher, DESCHOOLING SOCIETY, 1970. p. 11-12.
Instruction is the choice of circumstances which facilitate learning. Roles are assigned by
setting a curriculum of conditions which the candidate must meet if he is to make the
grade. School links instruction but not learning to these roles. This is neither
reasonable nor liberating. It is not reasonable because it does not link relevant qualities
or competences to roles, but rather the process by which such qualities are supposed to
be acquired. It is not liberating or educational because school reserves instruction to
those whose every step in learning fits previously approved measures of social control.
4. CONFORMITY BECOMS INTERNALIZED, THEN ENTRENCHES ITSELF

People who submit to the standard of others for the measure of their own personal
growth soon apply the same ruler to themselves. They no longer have to be put in their
place, but put themselves into their assigned slots, squeeze themselves into the niche
which they have been taught to seek, and, in the very process, put their fellows into
their places, too, until everybody and everything fits.
5. INSTITUTIONS CLOSE INDIVIDUALS MINDS

School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be
taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence;
they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises
which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition.
6. SCHOOLS ERODE INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM

The claim that a liberal society can be founded on the modern school is paradoxical. The
safeguards of individual freedom are all canceled in the dealings of a teacher with his
pupil. When the schoolteacher fuses in his person the functions of judge, ideologue, and
doctor, the fundamental style of society is perverted by the very process which should
prepare for life. A teacher who combines these three powers contributes to the warping
of the child much more than the laws which establish his legal or economic minority, or
restrict his right to free assembly or abode.
7. SCHOOLS LEAD THE WAY FOR OTHER INSTITUTUIONS

Once a man or a woman has accepted the need for school, he or she is easy prey for
other institutions. Once young people have allowed their imaginations to be formed by
curricular instruction, they are conditioned to institutional planning of every sort.
DESCHOOLING IS PHILOSOPHICALLY
BANKRUPT
1. EVEN ILLICH RECOGNIZES THAT POOR DESCHOOLING COULD DO MORE HARM THEN
GOOD
Ivan Illich, philosopher, 1973, AFTER DESCHOOLING WHAT? 1973. p. 116-117.
The rash and uncritical disestablishment of school could lead to a free-for all in the
production and consumption of more vulgar learning, acquired for immediate utility or
eventual prestige. The discrediting of school-produced, complex, curricular packages
would be an empty victory if there were no simultaneous disavowal of the very idea that
knowledge is more valuable because it comes in certified packages and is acquired from
some mythological knowledge-stock controlled by professional guardians.
2. DESCHOOLING WOULD ONLY INCREASE THE INEQUALITIES IN THE CURRENT SYSTEM

Philip W. Jackson, Author, FAREWELL TO SCHOOLS??? Ed. Levine and Havighurst chpt. 5
A View From Within. 1971. p. 64
Doubtlessly, there are children who, freed from the formal demands of schools and with
a minimum of adult guidance, would set about the laborious task of educating
themselves. But whether all or most children, if pressed to do so, would turn out to be
such self-motivated learners is indeed doubtful. Moreover, there is at least some reason
to believe that those who would suffer most from the absence of classroom constraints
and teacher guidance would be those children who already exhibit signs of educational
impoverishment. Thus, left largely to their own devices, our out-of-school learners would
likely behave in ways that would result in exaggerating the cleavages that already
separate social class groups within our society
3. THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESCHOOLING DENIES HUMAN POTENTIAL

Maxine Greene, teacher, FAREWELL TO SCHOOLS??? Ed. Levine and Havighurst To the
Deschoolers, 1971 p.103
Not only is there an implicit elitism in the arguments of the deschoolers; there is, as well,
a fearsome (and paradoxical) lack of confidence in the individuals ability to work within
the system, to choose himself as anything but a functionary, a Kafkaesque clerk. The
assumption that the teacher can do nothing within the institutions to arouse students to
critical thinking or creative endeavor implies a determinist view with respect to the
nature of man. Aware of the weakness and injustices in our society, concerned to
develop strategies to correct them, we need not, indeed we cannot- give up pure faith in
the human beings capacity to rebel. To say, as Bereiter does, that the average teacher
is simply not talented enough to live up to the humanist ideal is to express a kind of
contempt for the individual. To assume that the individual teacher can do nothing but
indoctrinate, manipulate, and enforce an alien reality upon the young is to reject human
possibility. Also, it is to ignore the theoretical and practical work which has clarified the
nature of human development, concept-learning, sense-making in general.
4. DESCHOOLING CAN'T WORK UNTIL AFTER SOCIETY HAS BEEN RADICALLY
TRANSFORMED
Amitai Etzioni, Author, FAREWELL TO SCHOOLS??? Ed. Levine and Havighurst. The
Educational Mission, 1971. p 96-97
To eradicate educational institutions is to turn children over to other non-free
institutions, for example from the authoritarian family to the exploitive labor market. To
provide children with educational resources and teachers who rather than guide is to
assume that children are already liberated, while in fact they must yet be set free. And
to assume that there will be an easy transformation of the modern society to a good
society is to underestimate greatly the tenacity of modernity and hence the magnitude
of the educational and revolutionary mission.
INSTITUTIONS ARE NECESSARY

1. ELIMINATING SCHOOLS MAKES THE MEDIA THE TEACHER
Arthur Pearle, Chairmen for committee on education, University of California, AFTER
DESCHOOLING WHAT? Alan Gartner ed. 1973. p. 116-117
Try to deinstitutionalize education as a symbol and the beginning of the
deinstitutionalization of everything and you quickly reinstitute the law of the junglewhich quickly breaks down into a new set of oppressive institutions. The same
unfortunate situations holds true for attaining any of the other goals of a desirable
society. Politics learned at the hands of Richard Daley, culture picked up at the feet of
Johnny Carson, and interpersonal relations gleaned from groupings in the street are the
alternatives to school. That these alternatives are already to characteristic of
contemporary American Society in not a reason for removing schools, but for reforming
them.
2. QUALITY INSTITUTIONAL EDUCATION IS NECESSARY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE

DISENFRANCHISED
Pamela J. Smith, Assistant Professor, Boston College Law School. HOWARD LAW
JOURNAL, 1999,
p 42.
While education is not the only resulting Hydratic head, it is one of the most vicious.
After all, education allows the populace to best take advantage of the more perfect
Union formed by the Framers. Further, subeducation immediately and primarily affects
children- when Blacks are most vulnerable and in need of protection. Moreover, it is
access to quality education that will primarily determine whether a Black person will
prosper in this country and obtain (1) opportunity-providing employment; (2) enough
information and knowledge to use and access healthcare; (3) sufficient economics to
purchase a home and property; and (4) enough information to intelligently seek and
access basic civil and human rights.
3. THE HIDDEN CURRICUA OF SOCIETY ARE BEST ADDRESSED FROM WITHIN SCHOOLS,
WE MUST IMPROVE OUR SCHOOLS, NOT ELIMINATE THEM.
Robin Barrow, Visiting Professor of the Philosophy of education at the University of
Western Ontario, RADICAL EDUCATION: A CRITIQUE OF FREESCHOOLING AND
DESCHOOLILNG, 1978. p. 139.
It seems indisputable that schools have a hidden curriculum. As Freire puts it,
education cannot be neutral, and its values come out in both the overt and hidden
curricula. Consequently Lister is correct to suggest that full-scale curriculum reform must
also involve a change in the hidden curriculum. But the idea of some change that would
do away with a hidden curriculum altogether is inconceivable, so deschooling cannot be
defended on these grounds. All that can be done to combat the dangers of a hidden
curriculum is, first, to take steps to control its content so that the messages it transmits
are desirable, and second to take steps to offset the surreptitious nature of the transmit
ion by bringing the values and beliefs imparted into the open and subjecting them to
examination. One defeats insidious influence, as one does all forms of indoctrination, be
enabling and encouraging people to examine and reflect. Deschooling, by contrast,
would not remove all signs of hidden curriculum it would merely place it beyond
immediate control and allow of no calculated steps to offset its effects.
Immanuel Kant
Political Philosopher (1724- 1804)

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724, the son of a saddler. In 1740, Kant entered upon his
university studies in his hometown and attended lectures in a wide variety of subjects.
The salient trait in Kants character was probably his moral earnestness and his devotion
to the idea of duty. Some have broken down Kants life
into two phases. First, the pre-critical period, when he was under the influence of the
Leibniz-Wolffian
system, and the critical period, when he was thinking out and expressing his own
philosophy. These time frames are important to understand because they provide
explanations for how and when is positions shifted. To understand the many issues Kant
discusses requires an examination of: (1) political orientation, (2) knowledge, (3)
knowledge, (4) categorical imperative and (5) application to debate.
Kant was inclined to support limited constitutional monarchy. He sympathized with the
Americans in the War of Independence, and later with the ideals of the French
Revolution. In fact, his political ideas were intimately associated with his conception of
the value of the free moral personality. Kant spends
considerable time discussing the notion of intellectual knowledge. Kant argues that
intellectual or rational knowledge is knowledge of objects which do not affect the
senses: that is to say, it is knowledge, not of sense, but of intelligence. Sensitive
knowledge is knowledge of objects as they appear, that is, as subjected to what Kant
calls the laws of sensibility, namely the a priori conditions of space and time, whereas
intellectual knowledge is knowledge of things as they are. The empirical sciences come
under the heading of sensitive knowledge, while metaphysics is the prime example of
intellectual knowledge.
Kant argues that the human mind does not constitute or create the object in its totality.
That is to say, things perceived and known are relative, in the sense that we perceive
and know them only through the a priori forms embedded in the structure of the human
subject. To put the matter crudely, we no more create things according to their existence
than the human who wears red-tinted spectacles creates the things which he/she sees. If
we assume that the spectacles can never be detached, the human will never see things
except as red, and their appearance will be due to a factor in the perceiving subject.
Essentially Kant was arguing that the perception lens that each of us examines the world
through has an overpowering effect on our orientation.
Finally, Kant believed that there was a pure rational element in moral judgments. That is,
morality comes from reason, and rigorous thought. Kant called his axiom the categorical
imperative. To varying degrees, in Kants view, all humans possess a sense of right and
wrong; universal moral law as apprehended by conscience must be obeyed by all
rational beings. Moral imperatives inherent in human nature are categorical--without

conditions, exceptions, or extenuating circumstances. A lie, for example, always is
unethical. Moral imperatives are right in themselves, not because of their consequences.
As touchstones to guide ethical behavior, Kant presented two forms of his Categorical
Imperative. First: Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will to become
a universal law. We must ask ourselves, is the ethical principle which I am using to justify
my choice a principle that I would want everyone to follow in similar situations? Is the
ethical standard that I am following in a particular case one which I would agree should
apply to everyone? Second: Always act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own
person or in another, as an end, and never merely as a means. Humans must not be
treated simply or solely as things (means to an end), but always also as persons worthy
of dignity and respect in themselves
There are a multitude of ways that a debater could use Kants philosophy in a round. For
example, the debater could set up a criteria using Kants categorical imperative as the
test for a particular value. The decision-rule would: (1) set up the standards for
assessing value controversies--universally acceptable, and (2) separate the discussion of
values and action. The second point may be extremely useful for debaters who seek to
avoid discussing the actions inherent in values. Although Kant sees action and values as
interconnected, he does argue that we should view values before we examine the
actions caused by a particular value. The debater could also challenge certain values as
being insufficient because they are contingent and not universal. Finally, one could use
Kants notion of intelligent vs. sensible knowledge as a way to distinguish between fact
and value. Especially important would be a discussion of the role of perception in
determining facts. As suggested previously, perceptions have a profound impact on the
elements of any given controversy. A debater could attack various conclusions based on
the perceptive lens of the author.
Bibliography
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New York: Longmans, Green, 1950.
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Cambridge, MS: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969.
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AND MARX. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1982.
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UNITY AND IDENTITY OF THOUGHT AND SOUL FROM THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS TO
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MORALITY IS EMBEDDED IN TILE

HUMAN MIND
1. MORALITY IS EMBEDDED IN HUMAN CAPACITY
Robert Johnaesen, Communication Professor-Northern Illinois University, ETHICS IN
HUMAN COMMUNICATION, 3rd ed., 1990, p. 47.
An eighteenth century German philosopher, Kant believed that the uniquely human
capacity was a sense of
conscience (moral will, moral reason). To varying degrees, in Kants view, all humans
possess a sense of right and wrong; universal moral law as apprehended by conscience
must be obeyed by all rational beings. Moral imperatives inherent in human nature are
categorical.
2. MORAL LAWS ARE FOLLOWED BECAUSE OF BELIEF IN A SUPREME BEING

Immanuel Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, 1929, p. 639.
Hence also everyone regards the moral laws as commands; and this the moral laws
could not be if they did not connect a priori suitable consequences with their rules, and
thus carry with them promises and threats.
But this again they could not do, if they did not reside in a necessary being, as the
supreme good, which alone can make such a purposive unity possible.
3. MORAL JUDGMENTS LIES IN THE HUMAN HEART

Immanuel Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1963, p. 36-7.
The supreme principle of all moral judgment lies in the understanding: that of the moral
incentive to action lies in the heart. This motive is moral feeling. We must guard against
confusing the principle of the judgment with the principle of the motive. The first is the
norm; the second the incentive. The motive cannot take the place of the rule. Where the
motive is wanting, the error is practical; but when the judgment fails the error is
theoretical.
VALUES MUST BE RATIONAL AND

REASONABLE
1. RULES OF CONDUCT ARE DETERMINED BY REASON
Whether reason is not in the actions through which it prescribes laws, itself again
determined by other influences and whether that which, in relation to sensuous
impulses, is entitled freedom may not, in relation to higher and more remote operating
causes, be nature again, is a question which in the practical field does not concern us,
since we are demanding of reason nothing but the rule of conduct; it is a merely
speculative question, which we can leave aside so long as we are considering what
ought or ought not be done.
2. REASONING LEAD TO LAWS AND REGULATIONS

But these considerations, as to what is desirable in respect of our whole state, that is, as
to what is good and useful, are based on reason. Reason therefore provides laws which
are imperatives, that is, objective laws of freedom, which tell us what ought to happen-although perhaps it never does happen--therein differing from laws of nature, which
relate only to that which happens. These laws are therefore to be entitled practical laws.
3. PHILOSOPHY IS THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Immanuel Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1963, p. 1.
Philosophy is either theoretical or practical. The one concerns itself with knowledge, the
other with the conduct of beings possessed of a free will. The one has Theory, the other
Practice for its object--and it is the object that differentiates them. There is another
distinction of philosophy into speculative and practical. In general, we call sciences
theoretical and practical, without reference to their objects. They are theoretical if they
are the ground of the conception of the object; practical, if they are the ground of the
exercise of our knowledge of the object.
4. PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY BASED IN ACTION

Immanuel Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1963, p. 1-2.
The object of practical philosophy is conduct; that of theoretical philosophy cognition.
Practical philosophy, being the philosophy of action, is thus the philosophy which
provides rules for the proper use of our freedom, irrespective of particular applications of
it. Just as logic deals with the use of understanding in general and not in particular
conditions, so does practical philosophy deal with the use of the free will not in specific
circumstances, but independently of the particular. Logic provides rules concerning the
use of the will.
ACTION MUST BE REGULATED BY THE

GOOD
1. WE ARE OBLIGED TO BE MORAL BY GOODNESS
W are obliged to be moral. Morality implies a natural promise: otherwise it could not
impost any obligation upon us. We owe obedience only to those who can protect us.
Morality alone cannot protect us. Blessedness is an obligation is an identical proposition
because all our moral actions secure through religion completudo. Without religion
obligation is motivelessness. Religion supplies the condition under which the binding
force of the laws can be thought. But how then are we to explain that there exist men
who do good though they have no religion? They do so not from principle but for sensual
reasons.
2. GOOD ACTION SHOULD NOT LIE IN REWARD BUT BECAUSE IT IS GOOD. Immanuel
Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1963, p. 56.
The ground for doing a good action should not lie in the reward but the action should be
rewarded because it is good; the ground for not doing an evil action should not lie in the
punishment but the action should be done, because it is evil. Reward and punishment
are merely subjective incentives, to be used only when the objective ones are no longer
effective, and they serve merely to make up for the lack of morality.
3. ACTS ARE JUST IF THEY DO NOT INFRINGE ON OTHERS

Furthermore, all acts and duties which follow from the rights of others are the most
important of the duties we have towards others. An act of generosity is permissible only
if it does not violate anybodys right; if it does, it is morally wrong. It is wrong, for
instance, to help, to help a man in financial distress and thereby incur heavy debts to
others. There is nothing in the world so sacred as the right of others. Generosity is a
superfluity. A man who is never generous but never trespasses on the right of his fellow
is still an honest man and if everyone were like him there would be no poor in the world.
But let a man be kind and generous all his life and commit but one of injustice to an
individual, and all his acts of generosity cannot wipe out that one injustice. At the same
time the duties dictated by right or by generosity are inferior to the duties we owe to
ourselves.
MORALITY IS/SHOULD BE UNIVERSAL

1. MORAL IMPERATIVES ARE UNIVERSAL
It is characteristic of the moral imperative that it does not determine an end, and the
action is not governed by an end, but flows from the free will and has no regard to ends.
The dictates of moral imperatives are absolute and regardless of the end. Our free doing
and refraining has an inner goodness, irrespective of its end. Thus, moral goodness
endues man with an immediate inner, absolute moral worth. For example, the man who
keeps his word has always an immediate inner worth of the free will, apart altogether
from the end in view.
2. HIGHEST MORAL GOOD IS UNIVERSAL

When the Schools have been brought to recognize that they can lay no claim to higher
and fuller insight in a matter of universal human concern than that which is equally
within the reach of the great mass of men (ever to be held by us in the highest esteem),
and that, as Schools of philosophy, they should limit themselves to the study of those
universally comprehensible, and, for moral purposes, sufficient grounds of proof, then
not only to these latter possessions remain undisturbed, but through this very fact they
acquire yet greater authority.
3. HIGHEST IMPERATIVES ARE UNIVERSAL

Robert Johnaesen, Communication Professor-Northern Illinois University, ETHICS IN
HUMAN COMMUNICATION, 3rd ed., 1990, p. 47.
As touchstones to guide ethical behavior, Kant presented two forms of his Categorical
Imperative. First:
Act only on the maxim which you can at the same time will to become a universal law.
We must ask ourselves, is the ethical principle which I am using to justify my choice a
principle that I would want everyone to follow in similar situations? Is the ethical
standard that I am following in a particular case one which I would agree should apply to
everyone?
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is hailed as one of the predominant leaders of the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. While he is best known for his "I Have a Dream"
speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the August 28, 1993 March on
Washington, King spoke and wrote on issues ranging from the role of the church in the
Civil Rights Movement, to the importance of non-violent civil disobedience, and the
necessity of coalitions between the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, and
Anti-Vietnam protesters.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT, LIFE, AND WORK

King was born January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Reverend and Mrs. Martin Luther
King, Sr. In 1948, King Jr. followed his father by being ordained into the Baptist ministry
as he was simultaneously getting his B.A. in sociology from Morehouse College.
Following his graduation from Morehouse, he attended and graduated from Crozer
Theological Seminary, focusing his studies on the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi,
who activism in India greatly effected his writings on civil disobedience later.
King grew up amid segregation in the South, shaped by the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme
Court decision in 1896, in which the court ruled that public institutions for black and
white people can be "separate but equal." When King was 25 years old, the Supreme
Court reversed that in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that segregation of public
schools created inherently unequal educational opportunities. The Brown decision, while
appearing to signal a fundamental change in the government's position on segregation,
had little real effect in the South. Lacking an effective enforcement mechanism, schools
remained segregated until years later. This discrepancy between official government
policy and the reality for black people in the South caused frustration in black
communities that legal action would not change racist policies, inspiring a desire for
direct action.
On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her bus seat to a white man, and
was subsequently arrested. Four days later King was unanimously elected president of a
group named the Montgomery Improvement Association; the Montgomery Bus Boycott
began, with over 90% of the black community refusing to ride the busses. 381 days
later, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public carriers was unconstitutional.
King emerged from the Boycott a national leader.
A decisive date in Kings career as a Civil Rights leader was August 28, 1963, the date of
the March on Washington, the first large integrated protest march, held in Washington
D.C. After meeting with President John F. Kennedy, King and other leaders delivered
speeches on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King delivered his "I Have a Dream"
speech, which along with his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is considered his definitive
statement of purpose. The march was the greatest example of his abilities as an
organizer, a leader, and an orator. Later in his career, King became outspoken about the
need to form coalitions between the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement,
but due in part to how powerful his "I Have a Dream" speech was, that aspect of his
advocacy is seldom discussed.
In the years leading up to his assassination on April 4, 1968, King survived being
stabbed in the chest, multiple bombing attempts, and many jailings. He was elected
president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), graced the cover of
Time magazine, led sit-ins, marches, voter registration drives and freedom rides, wrote
multiple books, and won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. Throughout his life, and in all of the
protests he led, he maintained consistent advocacy of and philosophy he read. His
reading of Reinhold Neibuhrs work Moral Man and Immoral Society led him to reject the
philosophy of liberalism, believing that it was too optimistic in its description of human
nature, ignoring the power of reason to rationalize sin and bigotry. After reading
Kierkegaard, Neitzche, Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre, King developed a new respect for
existentialism. He particularly valued the concept of "finite freedom," and came to the
realization that the world is fragmented, and peoples existence often seems to lack
meaning, and that recognition of these facts of human life is critical to discover why
people act in certain ways.
One of the most important literary influences on King was Christianity and the Social
Crisis, by Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the founders of the Social Gospel Movement.
While he believed Rauschenbusch to be too idealistic about human nature and the
inevitability of positive progress, King did adopt many aspects of Rauschenbuschs
theory. Rauschenbusch advocated that the Church take on some sense of social
responsibility; religion must not only address peoples spiritual well-being, but their
material well-being as well. He wrote that spiritual self-actualization is impossible when
people are in poverty. Furthermore, Rauschenbuschs praise of Jesus forgiving approach,
epitomized by such statements as "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemies" was
cohesive with Kings approach to reconciliation and nonviolence.
RACIAL EQUALITY
Little of Kings writing with the exception of his "I Have a Dream" speech discuss in great
length his goal of racial equality. One of the main reasons for this is that he assumed
equality to be a universal value, one which could be assumed. What he saw as an issue
involving conflict was the means to achieve racial equality.
The one aspect of racial equality that King felt was necessary to address was the conflict
that developed between those who advocated integration and those who advocated
separatism. King was wholeheartedly in favor of integration of races, not only in places
like schools and restaurants, but in a more general sense, the integration of races in
society.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF KINGS

PHILOSOPHY OF NONVIOLENCE
Malcolm X, and other radical Civil Rights activists, argued that segregation and racism
were problems of structural violence. The level of hatred they witnessed, from Southern
whites in particular, in lynchings, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the willingness of the
police to use violence against and jail black children, and in other ways, justified the use
of violence as a response. They saw the problem as so deeply ingrained that absent
violence, blacks would never attain real change.
King, conversely, believed that responding to violence with violence would never be
effective, for multiple reasons. First, it would justify, legally, the use of greater force
against the demonstrators, increasing the chances they would be injured. Second, it
would create legal justification to imprison them. While King believed that any
nonviolent protester needed to be willing to go to jail for their cause, but going to jail for
assault would drain the resources both in manpower and in bail money of the
movement. Third, and most importantly, King believed that only through a nonviolent
approach could you change the mind of the oppressor. Since the goal of his movement
was the creation of the "beloved community" in which whites and blacks lived
harmoniously, spurring greater conflict through escalating violence was contradictory to
the end he sought.
RECONCILIATION
One of the goals of nonviolence that King argued made it superior to any other tactic
was its ability to compel reconciliation between the oppressor and the oppressed. King
believed that rather than blaming individuals for their racist acts, the protester should
try to see them as caught up in a system that fostered hatred and prejudice, and that it
was the role of the protester to help that person see the error of their bigotry. This would
have the effect not only of solving the racism that the protests were geared towards, but
is the only way to change the mindsets of the people perpetrating that racism.
King frequently spoke and wrote about agape. Agape is one of three Greek words for
love; it is distinct from eros romantic or aesthetic love or philia-the reciprocal love
between friends. It means a creative, redemptive feeling of good will for all people. It
means to love people without expecting their love in return, simply because they are
human. Agape is at the center of the philosophy of nonviolence. King would say that you
must love white Southerners as you fight against their racism. Without this feeling of
open good-will towards the people you are engaging in nonviolent protest, there is no
chance of reconciliation, because if you harbor anger about past injustices, even if you
convince the oppressors to stop, you will be unable to become their friend and equal.
PREREQUISITES OF A NONVIOLENT
CAMPAIGN
There were many factors that King believed needed to exist before a nonviolent
campaign could be effective. First, individuals in the movement had to recognize the
need to speed up the inevitable. He believed that racial equality would inevitably come,
but unless people were willing to actively seek it in the short term, the movement would
accomplish nothing. Second, the leaders of the movement needed to collect the facts
about the injustice they were protesting; ignorance would prevent any intelligent
discussion of solutions. Third, the protesters had to be ready to negotiate, even as they
held on to the lofty long-term goals of the movement. Fourth, in order to be ready to
follow through with their pledge to be nonviolent, individuals needed to go through a
process of self-purification, in which they examine whether or not they would actually be
able to not strike back, if struck by angry whites or the police. The final step is direct
action. That involves developing an understanding of agape, a willingness to endure
suffering, sacrifice, or even death for the goals of the movement, the willingness to
accept the legal penalties for breaking the law, and extraordinary levels of courage and
self-respect.
THE PURPOSE OF NONVIOLENCE

The goal of nonviolence is not merely to persuade the oppressor to stop, and create a
unified community. There are many other facets to nonviolence as a specific technique.
King believed that nonviolence would cause a "creative tension," so that a community
that is unwilling to negotiate is forced to confront the issue brought to their attention.
Nonviolence would dramatize and emphasize the issue so that it could not be ignored by
moderates, and would appeal to the conscience of the "great decent majority."
At the same time, it would awaken a sense of shame in the perpetrators of false. Finally,
it would awaken a new sense of self respect in the people involved in the nonviolent
campaign. King called them the "New Negroes," a group with courage and self esteem
unheard of before their involvement in the movement.
JUSTIFICATIONS FOR NONVIOLENCE

Direct action, according to King, was necessary, because individuals in power are
unwilling to give up their power and privilege voluntarily. However, there were many
reasons why nonviolence, specifically, was a superior tool than those other movements
had used. The influence of Niebuhr convinced him that individuals are less immoral than
groups, and society as a whole. Nonviolence is superior, therefore, because it attacks
the system, not individuals within the system. Second, complacency and a willingness to
wait are merely a perpetuation of injustice; King believed that the action taken needed
to be immediate. A balance needs to be found between inaction and violence, and
nonviolence fills that role. Third, nonviolence shows a respect for the law that transcends
the brutal reactions of the police, because nonviolent protesters would be willing to
endure the penalties for the laws they break, while the police were never held
accountable for their abuses of their power. Finally, King saw nonviolence as rooted in
biblical morality, as reflected in Rauschenbuschs writing.
JUSTICE
In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," one of his most famous pieces of writing, King
outlined a complex definition of a "just law." He did so in order to justify why he
encouraged his fellow protesters to break the law, when it was necessary to conduct
their nonviolent protest. He felt that the protesters must be willing to take full legal
responsibility for the laws they broke by spending time in jail, as he did when he wrote
this letter in the margins of a newspaper, but he argued that it is always just to break a
law if it is done in the spirit of nonviolence, and if the law is unjust.
The first definition of a just law in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is a human-created law
that is cohesive with what he termed the "moral law or the law of God." His religious
background caused his moral framework to be mired in religious justification. He would
argue that a law prohibiting murder or theft, for example, is justified because it reflects a
moral law outlined in the Bible.
Second, King said that a just law "uplifts the human personality." Segregation, because it
degrades the personality of blacks, is was not a just law. A corollary to this definition is
that just laws are those which overcome the tragic separation between people.
Returning to the example of segregation, that law creates divisions in society, rather
than creating a cohesive social whole, and is thus an unjust law.
The third definition he uses is a law that the majority makes reflecting his belief in the
superiority of democracy that they are willing to impose upon itself. It cannot target the
minority with negative consequences that the majority would be unwilling to impose
upon themselves. If black children are only allowed to go to certain schools, white
parents must be willing to have their children go to schools of a similar caliber.
Finally, a just law must be one which the minority had some part or contribution to the
enactment or creation of. The standard for this contribution is that they must be allowed
the unhampered right to vote. King developed this definition for two primary reasons.
First, his anger at laws that had been passed in the past, before black suffrage, which
blacks consequently had no part in forming. Second, poll taxes, designed to prevent
blacks from being able to vote, were legal until the Supreme Court ruled them
unconstitutional in 1966. King believed that any sort of a poll tax, voting competence
test, or other tools that had been used to stop blacks from voting, made the laws passed
during that period fundamentally unjust.
CRITIQUES OF KING'S METHOD

King was criticized by other Civil Rights leaders of his era for not being sufficiently
radical in his pursuit of racial equality. His reliance on non-violent tactics, and his
strategy of appealing to white moderates, led others to accuse him of selling out, or as
Malcolm X put it, of being a "house-Negro," meaning that he had been domesticated by
white culture and was reliant upon them. Much of King's success, however, can be
attributed to his moderate strategy. Unlike Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, and other
more radical groups, King did not argue for a radical reconstruction of the United States
government. There are many arguments made in favor of more confrontational
responses to such severe injustices as King faced in the 1950s and 1960s.
King's argument was that the ideals the United States was founded upon are valuable
liberty, democracy, equality, etc. but that those principles have not always been
followed. Thus, he argued, all that needs to be done is to realign the legally sanctioned
inequalities with the principles our government is based on. This strategy gave
legitimacy to the government as being fundamentally just, and emphasized white
values. While this opened his method up to criticism by more radical factions of the Civil
Rights Movement, it was effective for persuading the white, male politicians in power
that Civil Rights were not a threat to the system, engendering their support for structural
changes like the creation of the Civil Rights Commission and the Civil Rights Division of
the Department of Justice by the Congress and President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957.
Another method of attacking Kings arguments is that he relies on race-conscious policymaking. Many scholars argue that race-conscious policies for example, bussing students
to forcibly diversify schools are counterproductive, and only entrench race stereotypes.
Other negative effects of these policies, some argue, are to stigmatize the recipients of
the benefits of race-conscious policies, stir up resentment against them by those who
are not eligible for the same benefits, cause tokenism, and other problems.
Bibliography
Baldwin, Lewis V. THER IS A BALM IN GILEAD: THE CULTURAL ROOTS OF MARTIN LUTHER
KING, JR. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991)
Branch, Taylor. PARTING THE WATERS: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS, 1954-63. (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1988)
Branch, Taylor. PILAR OF FIRE: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS, 1963-65. (New York: Simon
and
Schuster, 1998)
Erskine, Noel Leo. KING AMONG THE THEOLOGIANS. (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1994)
Fairclough, Adam. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995)
Friedly, Michael. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: THE FBI FILE. (New York: Carroll and Graf,
1993)
Harding, Vincent. MARTIN LUTHER KING: THE INCONVENIENT HERO. (Maryknoll: Orbis
Books,
1996)
Haskins, James. I HAVE A DREAM: THE LIFE AND WORDS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
(Brookfield: Millbrook Press, 1992)
King, Coretta Scott. MY LIFE WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (New York: H. Holt, 1993)
King, Jr, Martin Luther. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. ed. Clayborne
Carson. (New York: Warner Books, 1998)
King, Jr, Martin Luther. I HAVE A DREAM: WRITINGS AND SPEECHES THAT CHANGED THE
WORLD, ed. James M. Washington. (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992)
Ralph, James. NORTHERN PROTEST: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., CHICAGO, AND THE CIVIL
RIGHTS MOVEMENT. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993)
Lischer, Richard. THE PREACHER KING: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. AND THE WORD THAT
MOVED AMERICA. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)
Rowland, Della. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: THE DREAM OF PEACEFUL REVOLUTION.
(Englewood Cliffs: Silver Burdett Press, 1990)
Smith, Sande. A MAN WITH A DREAM: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (New York: Smithmark
Publishers, 1994)
Ward, Brian and Tony Badger eds. THE MAKING OF MARTIN LUTHER KING AND THE CIVIL
RIGHTS MOVEMENT. (New York: New York University Press, 1996)
NONVIOLENCE IS A SUPERIOR TACTIC

FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
1. THE GOAL OF NONVIOLENCE IS RECONCILIATION WITH THE OPPRESSOR
Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobel peace prize recipient, I HAVE A DREAM: WRITINGS AND
SPEECHES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, 1992, p, 30.
Another thing that we had to get over was the fact that the nonviolent resister does not
seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding.
This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the
white community, not to humiliate the white community, but to win the friendship of all
the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past. The end of violence or the
aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and
the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely
a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation,
the end is redemption. Then we had to make it clear also that the nonviolent resister
seeks to attack the evil system rather than individuals who happen to be caught up in
the system. And this is why I say from time to time that he struggle in the South is not
so much the tension between white people and Negro people. The struggle is rather
between justice and injustice, between the forces of light an the forces of darkness. And
if there is a victory it will not be a victory merely for fifty thousand Negroes. But it will be
a victory for justice, a victory for good will, a victory for democracy.
2. NONVIOLENCE IS NOT IMMEDIATE, BUT IT CHANGES THE HEARTS OF THE OPPRESSOR

I do not want to give the impression that nonviolence will work miracles overnight. Men
are not easily moved from their mental ruts or purged of their prejudiced and irrational
feelings. When the underprivileged demand freedom, the privileged first react with
bitterness and resistance. Even when the demands are couched in nonviolent terms, the
initial response is the same. I am sure that many of our white brothers in Montgomery
and across the South are still bitter toward Negro leaders, even though these leaders
have sought to follow a way of love and nonviolence. So the nonviolent approach does
not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts
and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources
of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it reaches the
opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.
3. NONVIOLENCE DEMANDS DIRECT ACTION IN PURSUIT OF JUSTICE

I feel that this way of nonviolence is vital because it is the only way to reestablish the
broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing
to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, or
irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep. The nonviolent resisters can
summarize their message in the following simple terms: we will take direct action
against injustice without waiting for other agencies to act. We will not obey unjust laws
or submit to unjust practices. We will do this peacefully, openly, and cheerfully because
our aim is to persuade. We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a
community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but, if our words
fail, we will try to persuade with our acts. We will always be willing to talk and seek fair
compromise, but we are ready to suffer when necessary and even risk our lives to
become witnesses to the truth as we see it.
WE MUST TAKE DIRECT ACTION TO

CONFRONT INJUSTICE
1. THE MOVEMENT MUST ACT NOW, JUSTICE TOO LONG DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the
oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in
a direct action movement that was "well-timed," according to m timetable of those who
have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard
the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "Wait"
has almost always meant "Never." It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the
emotional stress for a moment, only too give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration.
WE must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long
delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional
and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed
toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace
toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who
have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait."
2. WE MUST QUESTION THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR OPPRESSIVE SOCIETY

SPEECHES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, 1992 p, 176.
I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from
here," that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the
question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor
people here. And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor
people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions
about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that
question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And Im simply saying that
more and more, weve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society.
3. BOTH LEGISLATION AND EDUCATION ARE NECESSARY FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

We must continue to struggle through legalism and legislation. There are those who
contend that integration can come only through education, for no other reason than
morals cannot be legislated. I choose, however, to be dialectical at this point. It is
neither education nor legislation; it is both legislation and education. I quite agree that it
is impossible to change a mans internal feelings merely through law. But this really is not
the intention of the law. The law does not seek to change ones internal feelings; it seeks
rather to control the external effects of those internal feelings. For instance, the law
cannot make a man love religion and education must do that but it can control his
efforts to lynch. So in order to control the external effects of prejudiced internal feelings,
we must continue to struggle through legislation.
KINGS DISCOURSE ONLY REENTRENCHES OPPRESSION

1. INTEGRATION DISEMPOWERS AFRICAN AMERICANS
Malcolm X. A HISTORY OF OUR TIME: READINGS ON A POSTWAR AMERICA, 1999, p. 182.
Its just like when youve got some coffee thats too black, which means its too strong.
What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too
much cream in it, you wont even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes
cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to
sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didnt
integrate it, they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part o fit, took it over. And as
they took it over, it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased
to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus.
Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all. . . . No, it was a sellout. It was a takeover.
2. RIGHTS TALK FRAGMENTS SOCIETY INTO SUB-CULTURES, DESTROYING COMMUNITY

David Abraham, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami, UNIVERSITY
CONNECTICUT LAW REVIEW, Spring 1993, p. 962-63.
Because we have almost no enforceable collective values to generate community, rights
talk can generate and build subcommunities in a manner its opponents, including
Glendon, fail to appreciate fully. Over the past thirty years especially, rights have been
advocated by social movements pursuing causes whose goal is to validate various
specific identities or group cultures--race, gender, sexual orientation, age, handicap,
family status, and reproductive/fetal status, for example--mostly in the private sphere,
rather than common interests or collective solidarities in the political arena. In this
sense, rights talk reflects and encourages the liberal tendency to individualize, separate
and isolate issues, groups, and their members from each other. From the perspective of
core social change, rights talk stymies overarching interconnectedness, while advancing
pluralism and even fragmentation.
3. RIGHTS ONLY MASK RACIAL OPPRESSION BY GIVING AN ILLUSION OF PROGRESS

Eric K. Yamamoto, Professor of Law, University of Hawai'i, MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW,
February, 1997, p. 846.
The first is that even the Court's "progressive" antidiscrimination rulings reflect
majoritarian interests. From this view, law and legal process tend primarily to preserve
the social and political status quo, n119 and thus antidiscrimination law generates
illusions of systemic reordering and long-term racial justice. Society perceives the
declaration and occasional enforcement of intentionalist antidiscrimination laws as
justice done. n120 This perception enables society's majority to believe in equality while
ignoring the limitations of legal justice and the persistence of institutional racism.
KINGS FOCUS ON BLACK/WHITE

RACISM IS INSUFFICIENT
1. A BLACK/WHITE DISCURSIVE PARADIGM MARGINALIZES OTHER PEOPLE OF COLOR
Juan F. Perea, Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law, CALIFORNIA LAW
REVIEW, October 1997, p. 1219-20.
Given the Black/White paradigm, we would expect to find that much research on race is
concerned with understanding the dynamics of the Black and White races and
attempting to solve the problems between Blacks and Whites. Within the paradigm, the
relevant material facts are facts about Blacks and Whites. In addition, the paradigm
dictates that all other racial identities and groups in the United States are best
understood through the Black/White binary paradigm. Only a few writers even recognize
that they use a Black/White paradigm as the frame of reference through which to
understand racial relations. Most writers simply assume the importance and correctness
of the paradigm, and leave the reader grasping for whatever significance descriptions of
the Black/White relationship have for other people of color. As I shall discuss, because
the Black/White binary paradigm is so widely accepted, other racialized groups like
Latinos/as, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are often marginalized or ignored
altogether. As Kuhn writes, "those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all."
2. BLACK/WHITE RACIAL MOVEMENTS HURT UNDERSTANDING OF NON-BLACK

MINORITIES
REVIEW, October 1997, p. 1239-40.
After three decades of books on White Racism focusing only on racism against Blacks,
one can fairly ask how much anyone understands about racism against Latinos/as and
the particular forms that such racism takes? The obvious answer is "not very much." For
example, one could study the American Black/White relationship forever and never
understand the language and accent discrimination faced by many Latinos/as and Asian
Americans. Today Latinos/as can be fired from their jobs merely for speaking Spanish in
the workplace, and Asian Americans can be passed over for hire because their accent is
not quite right. n117 Despite nominal statutory protection from such discrimination
under the "national origin" provisions of Title VII, the courts remain almost uniformly
indifferent and find no actionable discrimination in such cases. The reason for this
indifference is that such discrimination does not fit the Black/White binary paradigm of
race discrimination.
3. WE MUST UNDERSTAND ALL RACIALIZED GROUPS TO STOP ALL RACISM

REVIEW, October 1997, p. 1240.
Redressing the particular forms of discrimination experienced by Latinos/as, Asian

Americans, Native Americans and other racialized groups requires very careful inquiry
into the particular histories of these groups and the forms of discrimination they have
experienced. But recognition of the importance and particularity of groups other than
Blacks and Whites requires inquiry well beyond the paradigm, inquiry beyond the current
bounds of "normal science" and research. From the point of view of LatCrit studies, then,
the issue becomes why there is such a rigid and unyielding commitment to an
exclusively Black-White understanding of race that is clearly underinclusive and
inaccurate.
4. FOCUS ON BLACK/WHITE DYNAMICS HURTS LEGAL ANALYSIS AND MOVEMENTS

Adrienne D. Davis, Associate Professor of Law at American University, AMERICAN
UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, February, 1996, p. 696.
A focus on the politics of local contests invites an archaeological exploration of historic
sites where a black/white paradigm of race was in crisis and vulnerable to correction. In
each of these crises, however, the force of the paradigm itself prevailed, reinscribing
itself with yet more force in law and the lives of all three groups implicated: African
Americans, other groups of color, and whites. An historical assessment of the
relationship of other groups of color to a black/white paradigm reveals the paradigm as
not only undescriptive and inaccurate, but debilitating for legal analysis, as well as civil
rights oriented organizing.
Answering King
Introduction
If there is such a thing as a universally recognized and respected civil rights icon, it has
to be Martin Luther King, Jr. Aside from racist neo-confederate types, King is generally
admitted to that hallowed pantheon of admiration reserved for true American heroes. In
fact, he just received the highest honor this bastion of international capitalism can
bestow having his image exploited for use in an advertisement.
What makes the adulation so strange is that King was a quite radical individual. He
condemned capitalism, preached peace at home and abroad (including stinging
criticisms of the Vietnam War, a very controversial position at the time), and was far
ahead of his time in terms of understanding racism and its interplay with class analysis.
Today, though, we get a sanitized version of Dr. King. He just wanted everyone to be
equal, were told. While true, it misses a lot of the steps he thought were necessary to
achieve that goal a significantly restructured economic system, more opportunities for
the disadvantaged, and a fundamental shift in the way Americans think about race.
Why do we get the sanitized version of Dr. King? Well, if you ask me, its because most
people recognize horror only in retrospect. It took Americans a long time (and a bloody
war) to purge the evil of slavery. It took us a long time (and a lot of people dead in riots,
from bombings, from police beatings and, like King, from assassins bullets) to get basic
rights like voting for African Americans. Thats horror.
Its a lot easier to believe that the horror is behind us than to admit that many of its
underlying causes still persist. By promoting the image of a King that would be
SATISFIED with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we are saying that weve gone as far as we
can and weve got this great leader (conveniently dead, so he cant contradict us) to
prove it. This kind of thinking allows privileged folks to think that weve solved all of this
countrys problems with race and class something King wouldnt support at all.
The secret to answering Martin Luther King (and really, philosophers in general) is to
read the original works. Know more about the philosopher than your opponent does.
Because chances are, theyll leave something out that you can use to your advantage.
OK, so its not a secret on the order of the allied plans to invade Normandy. Come to
think of it, its not a secret at all work harder, know more, and youll be successful. But
its true.
So in order to answer Martin Luther King, we'll need to examine exactly what he said.
Let's start by exploding a pernicious and pervasive distortion of what he said about
affirmative action, then move on to his thoughts on other matters.
How Kings Philosophy Is (Mis) Used

I really did have a reason for explaining why I think Kings philosophy gets watered
down. The reason is that its a small step from watered down to fundamentally
misrepresented for political purposes. This last happens all too often in America. Lately,
the right has been using King as a spokesperson AGAINST AFFIRMATIVE ACTION (!) By
taking one line from one speech (his famous I Have A Dream speech) and trying to
make it seem like he would oppose pro-active measures to promote equality.
The truth, of course, is that King was calling for Affirmative Action long before the
program even had the name, calling for "preferential treatment" programs in
employment and education. Ahead of his time, King also called for boosting educational
and job opportunity programs for the poor regardless of skin color.
Nashville-based activist Tim Wise of the Association for White Anti-Racist Education
(AWARE) has written the definitive response to this argument, documenting some of the
more high-profile instances where King himself directly anticipated and refuted that
claim. These should be readily apparent to even the most casual reader of Dr. Kings
work, and I highly encourage you to tackle the original material that Wise suggests.
This knowledge will be key on topics about race. It will also help you understand when
someone is trying to slip the sanitized version of King past you. At this point, I can hear
the heads start scratching: "Won't I debate the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. ONLY on
race topics?," I hear you ask. Au contraire, mes freres et mes souers. Thats another
misconception that needs exploding about the good doctor. So who's got the dynamite?
Additional Important Things King Said:

Economics
Another casualty of the sound bite culture is that King's thought is often reduced to "he
wanted white people and black people to be equal." Well, again, that's true -- but he also
had forward-thinking view on economics, both at home and internationally.
Again, when you think of King, you usually think of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But after
that was accomplished, King kept fighting. He insisted that the very notion of civil rights
was bankrupt without "human rights," which included certain economic rights. Its
great to win non-discrimination laws which allow black families to eat at the same
restaurants and stay at the same hotels as white families but what good is that to
those many black AND white families who cant afford to eat out or stay in hotels at all?
What about the homeless populations of black and white America, where there exists an
equal right to live on the street?
He actually called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute
wealth, saying that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes
to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." This wasnt limited
to the West. Though King was extremely concerned with poverty and misery in America,
he also was a harsh critic of investment speculation in Third World nations, decrying the
capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America,
only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.
This was a huge priority to King. In fact, when he was assassinated, King was in the
process of organizing a Poor People's March on Washington, D.C.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a fine media watch organization at www.fair.org, has
compiled a host of these types of remarks. You can check them out in the work of Jeff
Cohen and Norman Solomon, who have written about the King you dont get from the
evening news.
Depending on your judges political affiliation, you will want to take one of two different
tacks in answering Kings economic views.
The first way (from the left) is arguing that your opponent fails to take into account the
full richness of Kings philosophy, Clearly, he would say that certain measures are
needed to truly achieve racial and economic justice. If your opponent does not provide
for those measures, then theres no way she or he can lay claim to the advocacy (or
solvency) of King.
If your judge is a right-wing type, theres always red-baiting. Hey, J. Edgar Hoover did it.
Seriously: many judges dont know how radical King was. He defended a democratic
socialism in certain speeches. In more speeches than you can count, he railed against
capitalism with a fiery fervor. To a conservative person, this type of rhetoric is scary: you
can utilize that in refuting King.
Of course, youll have to look at yourself in the mirror knowing that this same tactic
justified FBI surveillance on King and just about every other progressive figure of that
era.
Moving right along, its much more likely that youll have to debate another branch of his
philosophy like race or, of course, nonviolence.
King And Pacifism

King was famous for his Christian pacifism, his commitment to nonviolent civil
disobedience (exemplified by his willingness to serve time in prison) and his supposed
difference of opinion with Malcolm X over strategy. This last fact is often overblown by
media and scholars.
As a reverend, King preached peace and lived it. "Violence as a means of social change
is both impractical and immoral," he said, "... because it stems from hatred rather than
love." King's civil rights movement was inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi's satyagraha
movement, which freed India from British imperialism and colonialism. This tactic of
converting your opponent with love and non-violent resistance drew admiration from
many in white America who might otherwise not have supported the movement King
led.
Given that this man has achieved the status of near-sainthood, what is the best way to
answer these views? Sometimes, on certain topics, you can try to be more-non-violentthan-thou outflanking your opponent from the left, effectively. This is often a good
strategy.
On some topics, though like the 2001 NFL Nationals topic this is impossible. You are
left with the options of either 1. Defending violence, at least to the extent of refuting
pacifism; or 2. Losing. Im assuming most debaters are going to choose option one.
Onward, then!
Answering King's Nonviolence Views

This years NFL Nationals LD topic is only one of many that are concerned with issues of
violence and pacifism. You can list a host of others that are concerned with these issues
just from the last few years even including the nuclear weapons topic from earlier this
year.
King and Gandhi run neck-and-neck as the most oft-cited philosophers of nonviolence,
with the Dalai Lama running a distant third, paying only to show. Given the penchant for
recycling topics and timeless nature of the violence-vs.-nonviolence debate it pays off
to know how to answer these thinkers view on pacifism.
Now, a lot of folks will immediately rush to the Malcolm X to get their answers to Martin
Luther Kings view on peace. While certainly not a bad idea Ill never discourage
someone from reading X theres one source I would suggest getting before you rush
out and pore through the Autobiography.
The best single source for historical analysis and outstanding evidence refuting the
pacifist claims of King can be found in Ward Churchills 1998 tract Pacifism As Pathology.
Not only does Churchill offer a stirring rebuke of pacifisms means and goals, he also
covers in-depth the two cases which pacifists usually cite as empirical examples of their
tactics working.
Those two examples, of course, are Kings Civil Rights Movement and Gandhis antiimperialist crusade to decolonize India. The reason I suggest reading Churchill before
reading X is that Churchill and his cohort, Canadian activist Mike Ryan, who contributes
a responding essay at the end of the tome offers a nuanced portrayal of how King and
X really related to each other, and how their philosophies of doing things were actually
complementary.
What? I hear you ask. Arent we taught in school (when were even TAUGHT about
Malcolm X, or even King, in some places) that these two men were the quintessential
opposites of one another, the one being the peace-loving Christian teddy bear, the other
a frightening Muslim with an assault rifle? Well, at least thats what we were taught in
my school.
But, like many of the things youre taught in school, its either an oversimplification or a
flat-out fabrication. Basically, King and X were two men who had similar goals
smashing Jim Crow, bringing about some level of equality in the country, and generally
stopping racist assaults on the human dignity of people of color. Both were deeply
committed to this. And, as King found, it made it a heck of a lot easier to deal with the
(white) power structure when there was a threat of militant unrest coming from nearby.
Churchill and Ryan make the case that the Civil Rights Movements most publicized
gains came after black militancy became more visible, with Malcolm X and the Black
Panther Party being the most apparent examples. While many in the power structure
werent anxious to negotiate with King, his demands didnt look altogether unreasonable
compared with the apparent alternative.
Its a classic good cop vs. bad cop strategy. Suddenly, King and his bunch were the
reasonable ones, the just movement struggling peacefully against oppression. This
interpretation, increasingly favored by the media, portrayed the Civil Rights Movement
in an ever-more favorable light.
The organizers on the ground were aware of this. Churchill quotes one of Martin Luther
Kings allies as saying in the late 1960s: "There are a lot of reasons why I can't get
behind fomenting violent actions like riots, and none of 'em are religious. It's all
pragmatic politics. But I'll tell you what: I never let a riot slide by. I'm always the first one
down at City Hall and testifying before Congress, telling 'em, "See? If you guys'd been
dealing with us all along, this never would have happened." It gets results, man. Like
nothing else. The thing is that Rap Brown and the Black Panthers are the best things that
ever happened to the Civil Rights Movement."
Presumably, that would apply to Malcolm X as well as it applied to militants like H. Rap
Brown and Stokely Carmichael. The analysis is certainly there.
Thats not to say King overtly condoned violence certainly, he never did, and likely
would not if he were alive today. But theres strong evidence that he tacitly accepted the
tactics of Malcolm X, given the fact that those tactics brought white America to the Civil
Rights negotiating table.
All of these things are facts about Kings thought that arent as widely known as they
should be. You can use them to gain a credibility foothold against your opponent if you
know the stuff better than the debater who initiated the discussion, it looks good for you
as well as win on the flow.
But there are other arguments that you can make that are grounded simply in logic and
history rather than in evidence. Lets go over those now.
Some Logical Problems With Pacifism

The first thing people usually think of when refuting pacifism is that it doesnt always
work. Theres always a reason something is the first argument people think of.
Sometimes, it means that the argument is very simple. Sometimes, it means that the
argument is very true. This is a case of both of the above.
The simplest and most non-controversial example is the Nazi regime. Would nonviolence alone have stopped Hitler? Likely not. Pacifists would claim that non-compliance
should have started early, which might have taken out the need for violence but
hindsight is always 20-20, and this is the real world were talking about: there are always
going to be lunatic leaders. Would you really condemn on a moral level the actions of
revolutionary Jews who killed a bunch of Nazis, trying to overthrow that regime? I hope
not.
World War II examples are overused, though, and I know at least two judges who roll
their eyes automatically whenever an debater invokes the name Hitler. History is
replete with other examples, sad to say. Its easy to be a pacifist in America. Its hard to
be a pacifist in Burma, where thousands of peaceful student protesters were shot on
August 8, 1988. Its equally tough to be a peaceful protester in East Timor, where the
Indonesian dictatorship has slaughtered about 1/3 of the population.
Some pacifists might claim that this is because the movement wasnt an organized and
massive movement. That may be true but this is still the real world, where not
everyone is going to be recruited into a mass movement where pacifism is the rule of
the day. It also didnt work for Ibrahim Rugova, who tried to organize a Gandhian
resistance to genocide in the former Yugoslavia.
In the best case scenario, the pacifist resistance solves problems without violence. In the
worst case scenario, the pacifists just go down without a fight. Thats particularly true in
a repressive regime.
This leads into another argument: pacifism is often the tactic of the privileged. Well-off
white people are the most likely pacifists. Some say thats because they arent in as
much physical danger as people of color are (and were during the civil rights era). Its
easy to say that no violence should happen when you know you arent going to get
beaten up at a traffic stop, for example. And continuing to preach peace means you
dont risk any violence being done to you.
Pacifists claim that their way is morally superior because no one gets hurt as a result of
their actions. Two thoughts on that: 1. If a more effective tactic might stop oppression
including innocents being hurt then isnt the pacifist morally culpable for that? 2.
Peaceful protesters being beaten or even killed without a fight definitely seems like a
negative consequence that the pacifists should answer for.
Conclusion
Its always a good idea to read up on philosophers. Thats more true than ever in the
case of Martin Luther King, a complex thinker whose stirring commentaries are reduced
to simple aphorisms more often than not. If you read the original works, you will be
better prepared to answer his philosophy than 90 percent of debaters are to argue in
favor of it in the first place.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ansbro, John. Martin Luther King, Jr.: the making of a mind. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Bks.,
1982
Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepard, editors, THE LANDMARK SPEECHES OF DR. MARTIN
LUTHER KING, JR., Warner Books, 2001.
Clayborne Carson, et. al., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. : Symbol of the
Movement, January 1957-December 1958 (Papers of Martin Luther King, Vol. 4),
University of California Press, 2000.
Ward Churchill with Mike Ryan, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 1998, Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring
Press.
Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, "The Martin Luther King You Don't See On TV,"
FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN REPORTING MEDIA BEAT, January 4,
1995,http://www.fair.org/media-beat/950104.html, accessed May 10, 2001.
David Garrow, THE FBI AND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: FROM "SOLO" TO MEMPHIS. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1981.
Colman McCarthy, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, January 17, 2000, p. A2.
J.M. Washington, editor, A TESTAMENT OF HOPE: THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS OF MARTIN

LUTHER KING, JR., San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986.
KINGS LEGACY IS PERVERTED TO

ATTACK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
1. KINGS WORDS ARE TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT TO ATTACK PROGRESSIVE PROGRAMS
Tim Wise, antiracist author and organizer, Brittanica.com, January 17, 2000,
http://www.britannica.com/original/print?article_id=3159, accessed May 10, 2001.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that someone as oft-quoted as Martin Luther King,
Jr., might occasionally have his words misinterpreted, misunderstood, or taken out of
context. King's status as something of a secular saint only magnifies the willingness and
desire of writers, academics, political commentators, and elected officials to expropriate
King's words to advance one or another agenda. After all, claiming the ideological
support of a bona fide national hero like King never hurts. Nowhere is the tendency to
"play the King card" more apparent than in the claim by dozens of contemporary writers
and theorists that King's principal goal was "color-blindness" and that he viewed the
development of such a legally codified visual disability as the avenue by which racism
would best be attacked.
2. MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS NOT A COLOR-BLIND THINKER

Perhaps the most extensive articulation of the notion that the modern civil rights
movement has betrayed King by supporting affirmative action comes from Dinesh
D'Souza in his 1995 book The End of Racism. D'Souza says affirmative action "seems to
be a repudiation of King's vision, in that it involves a celebration and affirmation of group
identity." He then claims "black leaders are the strongest opponents of King's principles,"
which he defines as the doctrine that "race should be ignored and we should be judged
on our merits as persons." Oddly enough, despite the faint praise for King's "vision," as
he understands it, D'Souza then calls for the repeal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, arguably
the crowning legislative achievement of the movement King led. Yet, despite the wealth
of literature claiming that Dr. King principally sought color-blindness and would have
opposed affirmative action, an examination of his writings makes such a position difficult
to maintain. From the beginning, King placed responsibility for the nation's racial
inequality squarely on whites. In a 1956 article, collected in James Washington's
superbly edited collection, Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of
Martin Luther King, Jr., King said that whites had "rejected the very center of their own
ethical professions...and so they rationalized" the conditions under which they had
forced blacks to live. And in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963) , King
specifically criticized white ministers and white moderates, who he faulted for being
"more devoted to 'order' than to justice," and whom he said were perhaps more of a
barrier to true freedom for blacks than the Klan. In short, King was hardly color-blind. He
was clear as to who the victims, and who the chief perpetrators of racism were, and he
said so forcefully.
3. KING DIRECTLY STATED HIS DESIRE FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PROGRAMS

King was even more clear on so-called "preferential treatment"--what we now typically
refer to as affirmative action. Although it is true that King called for universal programs
of economic and educational opportunity for all the poor, regardless of race, he also saw
the need for programs targeted at the victims of American racial apartheid. In 1961,
after visiting India, King praised that nation's "preferential" policies that had been put in
place to provide opportunity to those at the bottom of the caste system, and in a 1963
article in Newsweek, published the very month of the "I Have a Dream" speech, King
actually suggested it might be necessary to have something akin to "discrimination in
reverse" as a form of national "atonement" for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow
segregation.
KING'S NONVIOLENCE FAILS IN

ISOLATION
1. THE SUCCESS OF KING'S CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ISN'T DUE TO PACIFISM
Ward Churchill, professor American Indian studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder,
PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 1998, p. 42.
Similarly, the limited success attained by Martin Luther King and his disciples in the
United states during the 1960s, using a strategy consciously guided by Gandhian
principles of nonviolence, owes a considerable debt to the existence of less pacifist
circumstances. King's movement had attacked considerable celebrity, but precious little
in the way of tangible political gains prior to the emergence of a trend signaled in 1967
by the redesignation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC; more or
less the campus arm of King's civil rights movement) as the Student National
coordinating Committee.
2. ONLY VIOLENT RESISTANCE FORCED THE GOVERNMENT TO LISTEN TO KING

PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 1998, p. 42-3.
The SNCC's action (precipitated by such non-pacifists as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap
Brown) occurred in the context of armed self-defense tactics being employed for the first
time by rural black leaders such as Robert Williams, and the eruption of black urban
enclaves in Detroit, Newark, Watts, Harlem and elsewhere. It also coincided with the
increasing need of the American state for internal stability due to the unexpectedly
intense and effective armed resistance campaign mounted by the Vietnamese against
U.S. aggression in Southeast Asia. Suddenly King, previously stonewalled and redbaited
by the establishment, his roster of civil rights demands evaded or dismissed as being
"too radical" or "premature," found himself the lesser of evils by the state. He was duly
anointed the "responsible black leader" in the media, and his cherished civil rights
agenda was largely incorporated into law during 1968 (along with appropriate riders
designed to neutralize "Black Power Militants" such as Carmichael, Brown and Williams).
Without the spectre, real or perceived, of a violent black revolution at large in America
during a time of war, King's nonviolent strategy was basically impotent in concrete
terms.
3. KING TACITLY GAVE HIS APPROVAL TO VIOLENCE

As one of [Martin Luther King's] Northern organizers, William Jackson, told me in 1969:
"There are a lot of reasons why I can't get behind fomenting nonviolent actions like riots,
and none of 'em are religious. It's all pragmatic politics. But I'll tell you what: I never let
a riot slide by. I'm always the first one down at City Hall and testifying before Congress,
telling 'em, "See? If you guys'd been dealing with us all along, this never would have
happened." It gets results, man. Like nothing else. The thing is that Rap Brown and the
Black Panthers are the best things that ever happened to the Civil Rights Movement."
Jackson's exceedingly honest, if more than passingly cynical, outlook, was tacitly shared
by King.
4. VIOLENCE IS AN INTEGRAL REQUIREMENT OF TRANSFORMATION: KING KNEW THIS

Violent intervention by others divides itself naturally into the two parts represented by
Gandhi's unsolicited "windfall" of massive violence directed against his opponents and
King's rather more conscious and deliberate utilization of incipient antistate violence as
a means of advancing his own pacifist agenda. History is replete with variations on these
two subthemes, but variations do little to alter the crux of the situation: there simply
never has been a revolution, or even a substantial social reorganization, brought into
being on the basis of the principles of pacifism. In every instance, violence has been an
integral requirement of the process of transforming the state.
PACIFISM GENERALLY FAILS

1. PACIFISM IS ABSOLUTELY INCAPABLE OF WORKING ANY REAL CHANGE
Pacifist praxis, (or, more appropriately, pseudo-praxis) if followed to its logical
conclusions, leaves its adherents with but two possible outcomes to their line of action:
1. To render themselves perpetually ineffectual (and consequently unthreatening) in the
face of state power, in which case they will likely be largely ignored by the status quo
and self-eliminating in terms of revolutionary potential; or, 2. To make themselves a
clear and apparent danger to the state, in which case they are subject to physical
liquidation by the status quo and are self-limiting in terms of revolutionary potential. In
either event -- mere ineffectuality or suicide -- the objective conditions leading to the
necessity for social revolution remain unlikely to be fulfilled by pacifist strategies.
2. PACIFISM IS ACTUALLY RACIST

Pacifism is racist. In displacing massive state violence onto people of colour both outside
and inside the mother country, rather than absorbing any real measure of it themselves
(even when their physical intervention might undercut the state's ability to inflict
violence on nonwhites), pacifism can only be viewed as being objectively racist.
3. THE STATE USES VIOLENCE: ONLY VIOLENCE CAN COUNTER THAT EFFECTIVELY
Mike Ryan, Canadian activist and teacher, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 1998, p. 161.
I would only add that we must also recognize that the reason such a movement can win
is because it has the capacity to meet the violence of the state with a counter violence
of sufficient strength to dismember the heartland of the empire, liberating the oppressed
nations within it. Further, we must acknowledge the absolute right of women to respond
to the violence of patriarchy with the force necessary to protect themselves. In sum, we
must recognize the validity of violence as a necessary step in self-defense and toward
liberation when the violence of the system leaves the victim(s) with no other viable
option. And it is here the logical inconsistency lies.
4. PACIFISM LEADS TO GLOBAL OMNICIDE

Mike Ryan, Canadian activist and teacher, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 1998, p. 161-2.
We recognize the right of oppressed peoples to respond to their oppression with
violence, but we abstain from engaging in violence ourselves. Thus we recognize our
own participation in the oppression of other peoples while we also attempt to deny the
critical situation in which we ourselves are found today, a circumstance described by
Rosalie Bertell in an earlier quote. If, as Bertell suggests, we are sitting upon a dying
earth, and conseuquently dying as a species solely as a result of the nature of our
society, if the technology we have developed is indeed depleting the earth, destroying
the air and water, wiping out entire species daily, and steadily weakening us to the point
of extinction, if phenomena such as Chernobyl are not aberrations, but are (as I insist
they are) mere reflections of our daily reality projected at a level where we can at last
recognize its true meaning, then is it not time -- long past time -- when we should do
anything, indeed everything, necessary to put an end to such madness? Is it not in fact
an act of unadulterated self-defense to do so? Our adamant refusal to look reality in its
face, to step outside our white skin privilege long enough to see that it is killing us, not
only tangibly reinforces the oppression of people of colour the world over, it may well be
the single most important contributor to an incipient omnicide, the death of all life as we
know it. In this sense, it may well be that our self-imposed inability to act decisively, far
from having anything at all to do with the reduction of violence, is instead perpetuating
the greatest process of violence in history. It might well be that out moral position is the
most mammoth case of moral bankruptcy of all time.
MARTIN LUTHER KING AND MALCOLM X

WERE NOT OPPOSITES
1. KING AND MALCOLM WERE NOT IDEOLOGICAL COMPETITORS
A particularly good example of this can be found in the Spring 1987 issue of Kick It Over
when Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik el Shabazz) is described in a footnote as having been a
competitor to Martin Luther King, presumably on the basis of Malcolm's belief that
decolonization of black people in America would be a process involving violence. White
often elect to protray these two men as ideological competitors, a matter reflecting the
splits in consciousness of our own movement rather than theirs. In actuality, both
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King shared a single long term goal -- the liberation of
black people in America. The could each be found at the same mass actions, and they
both ultimately died at the hands of assassins as a result of their lifelong struggles.
2. THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN KING AND X OVER VIOLENCE WERE EXAGGERATED

Mike Ryan, Canadian activist and teacher, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, 1998, p. 152-3.
We have already looked at what Dr. King had to say regarding violence. A similar look at
what Malcolm X had to say on violence reveals that, while there are differences in
outlook between the two men, they are not as great as we have been led to believe. In a
1964 speech, Malcolm X said, "Now, I'm not criticizing those here who are nonviolent. I
think everyone should do it the way they feel is best, and I congratulate anyone who can
remain nonviolent in the face of all [that confronts us].
3. NONVIOLENCE WAS FINE WITH BOTH KING AND X, BUT RACIST VIOLENCE WAS THE
PROBLEM
In a 1965 interview [Malcolm X] goes on: "I don't favor violence. If we could bring about
recognition and respect for our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody
would like to reach [our] objectives peacefully. But I am also a realist. The only people in
this country who are asked to be nonviolent are [the oppressed]. I've never heard
anyone go to the Ku Klux Klan and teach them nonviolence, or the [John] Birch Society,
or other right-wing elements. Nonviolence is only preached to black Americans and I
don't go along with anybody who wants to teach our people nonviolence until someone
at the same time is teaching our enemy to be nonviolent. I believe we should protect
ourselves by any means necessary when we are attacked by racists."
Alexandra Kollontai
Russian Socialist (1873-1952)
Feminism
The most prominent woman in Russias Communist Party during the Bolshevik
Revolution was Alexandra Kollontai. As a member of Lenins Central Committee, she was
part of the group that carried out the Revolution in 1917. She is known today as a
historic contributor to the international womens movement, and as one of the first
Bolshevik leaders to oppose the growth of bureaucracy in the young socialist state.
The womens movement in the West has shown considerable interest in Kollontai and
her leadership of the womens section of the Communist Party. Much of her analysis of
feminism in early twentieth century Russia still applies today and can be used to
uncover some of the mistreatment of women in contemporary society.
This biography will explain Kollontai s entrance into the international feminist
movement, what she addressed in her writings, her influence on the international
womens movement, her work in Russias social democracy. Finally, it will highlight her
views on female liberation.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Kollontai became a socialist. She explained
her entry into revolutionary ranks quite simply: Women, their fate, occupied me all my
life; womens lot pushed me to socialism (Farnsworth, 1980). According to Kollontai,
there was one instance which made her decide to become a socialist. She was on a tour
of a textile plant which employed 12,000 men and women workers.
Kollontai decided to inspect the workers housing. In dingy barracks, the air unbearably
stale and heavy, cots were lined up for the workers, married and single. Amid the cots
children milled about, some playing, some crying. An old woman sat, supposedly in
charge. Kollontais attention was drawn to one little boy, about the age of her own son,
who lay very still. He was dead. No one had noticed. When told about it, the old woman
replied that such deaths were not unusual and that someone would come later and take
him away. Based on this incident, she decided that the entire economic system had to
change (Farnsworth, 1980).
Kollontais writings encompassed a wide range of social issues relevant during her lifetime.
For example, she wrote about the social democratic movement before World War I, the
history of the Russian womens movement, and the debate between feminist and
socialist women. Additionally, she also addressed the scarcity of key female figures in
the revolutionary events of that time and wrote about the early manifestations of
bureaucracy in Russia. Other issues Kollontai addressed were morality, sexual politics, the
family, and prostitution. Kollontais most significant writings, however, dealt with the
problems of women, their exploitation and oppression under capitalism, and the struggle
for the freedoms that socialism provided. She highlighted the gap between Soviet reality
and socialism, and the extent to which ideas about the family and equality had been
distorted by the government. She was also interested in exploring new ways of achieving
more meaningful relationships between the sexes and of a new era of human
understanding, love and trust. From her own experiences, Kollontai came to recognize that
economic independence and a determination to choose partners freely did not
automatically enable women to achieve perfect relationships with men. This sensitivity led
her to conclude that the feelings of men and women toward each other were shaped by
the society in which they lived.
As a leader in the Russian Community Party, Kollontai worked within Russias social
democratic movement for womens issues to be taken more seriously, and she tried to
expand the concept of womens issues to include the family and personal politics.
Kollontai believed that the liberation of women was only possible with the achievement
of a socialist society. Therefore, she remained committed to social democracy and
fought for a greater understanding of womens issues. This decision required a great
deal of courage because it meant fighting deeply rooted prejudices and it often meant
fighting on her own. She viewed this isolation as an opportunity to grasp issues and
draw her own conclusions.
Kollontais contributions to female liberation are often misunderstood. Because she was
the only Bolshevik who saw sexuality as a valid revolutionary theme, there has been a
tendency among historians to emphasize her writings on sexual relationships and
romantic love, which were only a small part of her writings. Her conceptualization of
feminism rested on her own assumptions that women should be able to decide their own
destiny, to express their thoughts fully and to convert those thoughts into actions. She
also wanted women to be free of sex-determined roles and stereotypes. She believed
that women could participate in society and in humanity and that the way to achieve
these freedoms was through socialism, which would give women their legitimate
beginning in this process (Farnsworth, 1980). While there was a feminist movement
underway in Russia, Kollontai criticized the movement because it did not include women
of the proletariat or working class. So, Kollontai began her own movement that included
working class women, even though she was from an aristocratic family. She did not see a
way for the women of the upper classes to join with women of the lower classes because
the elites would always work according to their own needs and desires. In her later
years, however, she revised this position and she embraced a united feminist
movement.
Alexandra Kollontai provides a unique source for debaters. There are numerous avenues
in which the debater could use Kollontai. Initially, the debater could incorporate her
theories in a critique of bureaucracy. That is, the debater could argue that bureaucracy
perpetuates state domination and oppression. Moreover, the debater could incorporate
her theories when advocating a socialist agenda. Consistent with her work on socialism,
Kollontais work on the exploitation and oppression of women in a capitalist system may
be useful. The debater could critique any capitalist value as inherently oppressing
women.
Bibliography
Alexandra Kollontai, Around workers Europe. In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED
WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 88-98.
Alexandra Kollontai, Communism and the family. In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED

WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 250-260.
Alexandra Kollontai, Marriage and everyday life. In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED

WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 300-311.
Alexandra Kollontai, Prostitution and ways of fighting it. In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI:

SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977,
pp. 261-275.
Alexandra Kollontai, Sexual relations and the class struggle. In ALEXANDRA

KOLLONTAI:
pp. 237-249.
Alexandra Kollontai, Sisters. In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans.

Alex Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 216-224.
Alexandra, Kollontai, Soviet woman: Citizeness with equal rights. In ALEXANDRA

KOLLONTAI:
pp. 316-317.
Alexandra, Kollontai, The labour of women in the evolution of the economy. In

ALEXANDRA
KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Mix Holt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 1977, pp. 142-150.
Alexandra Kollontai, The social basis of the woman question. In ALEXANDRA

KOLLONTAI:
pp. 58-74.
Alexandra Kollontai, Theses on communist morality in the sphere of marital relations.

In ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Alex Holt. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 225-231.
Alexandra Kollontai, Towards a history of the working womens movement in Russia. In

ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS. Trans. Mix Holt. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1977, pp. 39-57.
SOCIALISM IS GOOD FOR WOMEN

1. SOCIALISM LEADS TO EQUALITY FOR WOMEN
Alexandra Kollontai, Russian-socialist feminist author, ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI:
SELECTED
WRITINGS, 1977, p. 52.
The more politically conscious of the working women are aware that neither political nor
legal equality can finally settle the woman question. As long as a women has to sell
her labour power and suffer capitalist
slavery, she will not be a free and independent person, she cannot be a wife who
chooses her husband only as her heart dictates, a mother who does not need to fear for
the future of her children. Women will only
become free and equal in a world where labour has been socialized and where
communism has been victorious
2. ONLY SOCIALISM CAN PROVIDE WOMEN WITH ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE

Beatrice Farnsworth, author, ALEKSANDRA KOLLONTAI: SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND THE
BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, 1980, p. 36-37.
Society must pride a means of survival and self-expression for women of average
abilities with few economic advantages. Kollontai put the issue politically. Did the
feminists believe that the contemporary
class state, however democratically structured, could make free love possible? Would it
take on itself the obligations relating to maternity and the upbringing of children that
were fulfilled now by the individual family? Only socialism could create the conditions
that would enable women to be economically independent and that would at the same
time protect them from the negative consequences of love free of
economic considerations.
3. ONLY SOCIALISM DEFENDS WOMENS RIGHTS

SELECTED WRITINGS, 1977, p. 63.
There is not one party in the world that has taken up the defense of women as social
democracy has done. The working woman is first and foremost a member of the working
class, and the more satisfactory the position and the general welfare of each member of
the proletarian family, the greater the benefit in the long run to the whole of the working
class.
THERE IS A LACK OF UNITY WITHIN THE

FEMINIST MOVEMENT
1. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN RICH AND POOR WOMEN PREVENT A UNITED MOVEMENT
The womens world is divided, just as is the world of men, into two camps; the interests
and aspirations of one group of women bring it close to the bourgeois class, while the
other group has close connections with the proletariat, and its claims for liberation
encompass a full solution to the women question. Thus although both camps follow the
general Slogan of the liberation of women, their aims and interests are different. Each
of the groups unconsciously takes its starting point from the interests of its own class,
which gives a specific class colouring to the targets and tasks it sets itself.
2. WOMEN OF THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT ARE NOT A HOMOGENEOUS GROUP Beatrice

Farnsworth, author, ALEKSANDRA KOLLONTAI: SOCIALISM, FEMINISM AND THE
BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, 1980, p. 18.
Kollontai could not have been satisfied with Russian feminism as it was defined in the
late nineteenth century. As she grew in political awareness, probing political and
economic theory, she came to recognize that the bourgeois feminists could do little for
women of the working class. They could not affect the lives of the factory women whose
children were perishing in the workers barracks. Nor -- and more to the point
-- could they really do anything for her.
3. THERE IS NO UNITY AMONG FEMINISTS

BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, 1980, p. 32.
Kollontai denied that the feminists fought for similar demands, despite their talk about
the unity of womens interests and the necessity for a general womens movement, she
insisted that the world of women, like the world of men, was divided into two camps: the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The feminists sought to make life better or women of a
particular social category within the exploitative capitalist system.
INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPATION IS LIMITED

IN BUREAUCRACIES
1. BUREAUCRACY LIMITS INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPATION
SELECTED WRITINGS, 1977, p. 190-191.
Bureaucracy is a direct negation of mass self-activity. Whoever therefore accepts the
principle of involving
the masses in active participation as a basis for the new system of the workers republic,
cannot look for
good or bad sides in bureaucracy. He must openly and resolutely reject this useless
system.
2. BUREAUCRACY LIMITS INPUT INTO DECISION MAKING

The harm in bureaucracy does not lie in the red tape, as some comrades would want us
to believethey narrow the whole controversy to the animation of Soviet institutions.
The harm lies in the solution of all
problems, not by means of an open exchange of opinions or by the immediate efforts of
all concerned, but
by means of formal decisions handed down from the central institutions. These decisions
are arrived at either by one person or by an extremely limited collective, wherein the
interested people are often entirely absent.
Some third person decides your fate: this is the whole essence of bureaucracy.
3. BUREAUCRACY LIMITS WORKER CREATIVITY

Finally, the Workers Opposition has raised its voice against bureaucracy. It has dared to
say that bureaucracy binds the wings of self-activity and creativeness of the working
class that it deadens thought, hinders initiative and experimenting in the sphere of
finding new approaches to production; in a word that it
hinders the development of new forms for production and life. Instead of a system of
bureaucracy, the Workers Opposition proposes a system of self-activity for the masses.
GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUPPORT

WORKING MOTHERS
1. THE LAW MUST HELP WOMEN COMBINE WORK AND MATERNITY Alexandra Kollontai,
Russian-socialist feminist author, ALEXANDRA KOLLONTAI: SELECTED WRITINGS, 1977, p.
135.
The first thing that can be done and the first thing that working men and women are
doing in every country is to see that the law defends the working mother. Since poverty
and insecurity are forcing her to take up work, and since the number of women out
working is increasing every year, the very least that can be done is to make sure that
hired labour does not become the grave of maternity. The law must intervene to help
women to combine work and maternity.
2. THE STATE SHOULD PROVIDE MATERNITY BENEFITS

It is essential that society guarantees the material well-being of the woman during
pregnancy. It would not be much of a rest for the woman if she were simply prevented
from earning her daily bread for sixteen weeks. That would be dooming the woman to
certain death. The law must therefore not only protect the woman at work but must also
initiate, at state expense, a scheme of maternity benefits.
3. LAWS SHOULD PROVIDE BASIC RIGHTS FOR WORKING MOTHERS

BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION, 1980, p.32.
She argued that women can be fully liberated only through radical change. This meant
abolishing all laws subordinating women to men; providing women with the right to be
elected to all institutions of self-government on the basis of a direct, equal, and secret
vote; providing legal protection of all areas of womens work; forbidding night work,
overtime, and all work under conditions damaging to women or their future off-spring;
and guaranteeing enforcement of these rules by means of female factory inspectors to
be chosen by the workers from among themselves.
Cberis Kramarae
Feminism
Cheris Kramarae is a modem-day philosopher who specializes in the study of gender,
communication, society and feminism. She has published a significant number of
scholarly articles and served as editor for several books. Her writings tend to focus on
issues related to language, feminist methodology, power, and women and technology.
Kramarae teaches courses on language and gender, and language and power in the
Department of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
This essay will explain Kramarae s unique feminist perspective which focuses primarily
on gender and language. In particular, this biography discusses her central philosophy,
provides some examples of the kinds of issues she critiques, highlights her perspective
on women and technology, and explains her role as
an ecofeminist.
Like Marilyn French, the primary purpose of Kramaraes work is to uncover and critique
the sources of
discrimination against women in our society. Kramaraes main thrust, however, is the
attempt to uncover and change our language in order to provide women with equal
footing in their communication with others.
Kramarae believes that language is the predominant vehicle for change in the liberation
of women. She
maintains that the womens movement and womens experiences have raised questions
not only about sex
differences in language and speech, but also about the ways language aids the
construction of a male
dominant, or patriarchal, society. Kramaraes work illustrates how language actually aids
in the defining, deprecating, and excluding of women. For example, men have
traditionally labeled women as parts of the body, fruit, or animals -- labels that,
Kramarae argues, have no real parallels for men. Additionally, she cites studies
indicating that there are 220 terms for a sexually promiscuous woman and only 22 terms
for a sexually promiscuous man (c.f., Language, Gender and Society, 1983). She insists
that it is this kind of language use that reflects mens contempt for women and helps to
maintain gender hierarchy and control in our society. What is most bothersome about
the ways in which language is used is that men can make remarks on parts of womens
bodies, call them honey, and yet fail to recognize how offensive these remarks are to
women. This is the crux of her research and writing.
Some specific examples of her efforts in this area include her critiques of male-produced
dictionaries and her own publication of a womens dictionary. Kramarae believes that
there is a significant void in traditional (male-written and edited) dictionaries that
ignores the contributions of women to language, particularly English. Additionally, such
dictionaries contain sexist definitions and examples, which serve to lessen the role of
women in our society. According to Kramarae, such dictionaries need to be scrutinized
and questioned as the only authorities on language. Critiquing dictionaries is central to
Kramarae s philosophy in that dictionaries tend to be the last word on meaning. That is,
people turn to dictionaries as the source for uncovering meanings to words and those
meanings tend to be adhered to religiously. For example, some dictionaries attach
pejorative meanings to words traditionally associated with females, such as the word
effeminate, which implies a sense of weakness in men.
Consistent with the emphasis on communication as the focal point of her research,
Kramarae has also examined and critiqued the relationship between women and
technology. She maintains that all technological developments can usefully be studied
with a focus on womens social interactions, even those which seem to have little to do
with womens lives (e.g., Technology and Womens Voices, 1988).
Kramarae maintains that technology should not be thought of as machines, but as
social relations --communication systems which facilitate or hinder various kinds of
communication. The specific type of technology she focuses on is the sewing machine,
an icon for all technology. She maintains that the sewing machine was advertised as
something that would revolutionize womens sewing. Unfortunately, while it did
revolutionize womens work, it disbanded womens social time together in sewing circles
and moved women into sweatshops, where their interaction was virtually nonexistent.
Therefore, to the extent that the sewing machine lessened the quality of the social lives
of the users of that technology, it was bad. She criticizes technological development
because it has historically excluded women. That is, when we think about technology,
we tend to think of science and, therefore, men.
Like Marilyn French, Kramarae is, in part, an ecofeminist seeking ways to make new
and positive links
with the environment. For scholars such as French and Kramarae, humans are intimately
linked with nature, and therefore, we must incorporate the needs of both humans and
nature into our policy making decisions. In contrast to French however, Kramarae thinks
of language as a way to help us make connections with the environment. She envisions
language as the way to establish a peaceful coexistence on earth.
There are a number of ways that the debater could incorporate Kramaraes work into a
debate round. The clearest avenue would be as a critique of sexist language. For
example, the debater could critique evidence that uses sexist language. In addition, the
debater could argue that the language assumed in certain values is inherently sexist The
debater can also use Kramaraes perspective to evaluate societal discrimination.
Because Kramarae focuses on both explicit and implicit forms of discrimination, the
debater may be able to reveal how the oppositions value(s) implicitly perpetuate
sexism. An additional avenue available to debaters is her critique of technology and
progress. Any value or debate that advocated technology and/or progress could be
critiqued by the debater as inherently sexist.
Bibliography
Mary F. Belenky, Blythe M. Clinchy, Mancy R. Goldberger & Jill M. Tarule, WOMENS WAYS
OF
KNOWING: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELF, VOICE, AND MIND. New York: Basic Books.
Cheris Kramarae, Womens Speech: Separate But Unequal? QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF

SPEECH, 60, p. 14, 1974.
Cheris Kramarae, WOMEN AND MEN SPEAKING: FRAMEWORKS FOR ANALYSIS. Rowley,
MA:
Newbury, 1981.
Cheris Kramarae, Muriel Schulz, & William M. OBarr, Eds., LANGUAGE AND POWER.
Beverly
Hills: Sage, 1984.
Cheris Kramarae, Paula Treichler, & Ann Russo, A FEMINIST DICTIONARY. London: Pandora
Press, 1985.
Cheris Kramarae, Ed., FOR ALMA MATER: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN FEMINIST
SCHOLARSHIP. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985. (with P.A. Treichler & B.
Stafford).
Cheris Kramarae, Talk of Sewing Circles and Sweatshops. In C. Kramarae Ed.,

TECHNOLOGY AND WOMENS VOICES: KEEPING IN TOUCH. New York: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1988, pp.
147- 160.
Cheris Kramarae, Feminist Theories of Communication, In E. Barnouw Ed.,

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMMUNICATION, (2nd ed.) New York: Oxford
Cheris Kramarae, Punctuating the Dictionary. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE

SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, 94, 1992, pp. 135-154.
Cheris Kramarae & Paula Treichler, Words on a feminist dictionary. In D. Cameron Ed.,
THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF LANGUAGE: A READER. London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 148159.
(reprinted from A Feminist Dictionary, 1985).
Barrie Thorne, Cheris Kramarae & Nancy Henley, Eds., LANGUAGE, GENDER AND
SOCIETY. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983.
P. Treichler & C. Kraniarae, Womens talk in the ivory tower. COMMUNICATION

QUARTERLY, 1983, 31, pp. 118-132.
TECHNOLOGY IS A MALE-DOMINATED
PROCESS
1. WOMEN DO NOT CREATE TECHNOLOGY
Cheris Kramarae, Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois,
TECHNOLOGY AND WOMENS VOICES: KEEPING IN TOUCH, 1988, p.3.
Many others have declared that women have not been very technological or inventive;
that is, we have not created many of the items called technology. Women have not, it is
true, designed the majority of devices which are used in homes (supposedly womens
most natural place) or in offices and factories where many women spend many hours.
Rather than dismissing women as non-inventors, [that scholar] could be asking why men
have considered women the mere users, but not appropriate creators, shapers and
producers, of technology.
2. TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS ADDRESS MALE NEEDS EXCLUSIVELY

Western history of technology has been basically mens history. In fact, one way of
describing what has been traditionally considered as technology is to say it consists of
the devices, machinery and processes which men are interested in. This is a reason why
we do not find discussions of child care devices in mens books on technology.
3. DEVELOPERS OF TECHNOLOGY ARE IGNORANT OF WOMENS NEEDS

Technology, like all aspects of progress, is usually thought of as a masculine invention
and activity. In actuality we are all intensely involved in and affected by technology
practices. Official and professional development and evaluation of technology has been
done by men who have limited knowledge about womens daily lives and problems, and
very limited interest in expanding womens economic and social freedom.
TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT IMPROVE

WOMENS QUALITY OF LIFE
1. TECHNOLOGY HAS REDUCED FEMALE AUTONOMY
Cheris Kraniarae, Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois,
TECHNOLOGY AND
WOMENS VOICES: KEEPING IN TOUCH, 1988, p.5.
New technological processes are usually considered a part of modernization which many
think inevitably leads to the improvement of the status and well-being of the people
involved. Actually, modernization has resulted in women losing traditional roles in
agriculture and handicrafts production, and thus losing some of their autonomy,
influence, and access to resources (Tiano, 1984). This erosion has not, however, freed
them to become full-time homemakers and child rearers; women typically have double
work loads of familial and other, income-generating responsibilities. Because their
domestic tasks are stressed and are considered to be insular activities, men do not
consider women to be part of any important communication networks.
2. TECHNOLOGY RESULTS IN INACCURATE FEMALE STEREOTYPES

But sexual divisions of labor in every institution established different contexts for the
uses of the telephone by men and by women. New occupationse.g. Switchboard
operators, telephone repairerswere differentiated by gender. Stereotypes emerged of
girls gabbing endlessly on the phone. As we have discovered through our 1970s and
1980s studies of gender and language, the stereotypes and jokes are misleading,
making identification of actual gender-related differences more difficult.
3. WOMEN ARE JUDGED BY TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY AND WOMENS VOICES: KEEPING IN TOUCH, 1988, p. 11.
All women are judged by the processes and products of the middle-class machinery. For
example, once washing machines are in middle-class homes, standards of cleanliness
based on use of those machines are applied to everyone, whatever their access to
washing machines. Further, once washing machines are in middle-class homes,
developers are not likely to improve the more communal washing facilities. At this point
almost any woman responsible for clothes washing will want a home machine -regardless of whether home washing machines make for the best overall economic and
social system.
MENS WORDS AND DICTIONARIES

EXCLUDE THE FEMALE VOICE
1. DICTIONARIES SUBJUGATE WOMENS VOICES
Cheris Kraniarae, Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois,
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, 1992, p. 137-38.
The dictionary is not designed by women or for womens exercise of imagination. It is a
basic laugh at
women, a book which sets forth a category system, a way of knowing ourselves and our
relationships with the rest of the earth. Its not only a hostile system for women, but it is
constantly referred to as the only system. It does not encourage ideas or new
connections and relationships, or imagination about how we
could write and talk our past and future.
2. WOMEN ARE RIDICULED FOR A7LTEMPTING TO CHANGE LANGUAGE

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, 1992, p. 138.
Women are not to corn words or to muck about with the language. Etymologies are often
cited as the final word as to what can be said or done with a word. Many speakers are
made to believe that knowing the original meaning of a word is vital to knowing what it
means today. Experts often ridicule feminists who suggest alternatives to the spellings,
pronunciations and meanings of dictionaries; they are told that if they knew the roots
of words they wouldnt be so foolish.
3. DICTIONARIES DO NOT INCLUDE WOMEN/MINORITY PERSPECTIVES Cheris Kramarae,

Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF
THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, 1992, p. 141.
In the US, its white, middle-class men who determine who is allowed into The Circle.
Women and minority men are generally not candidates for admission to the enclosure
unless they have a male mentor who is already part of The Circle and who has found
their expressions acceptable. In the case of dictionary making, the editors quote from
each others work extensively, they use each other as consultants, they listen to radio
and television announcers who have themselves consulted dictionaries to guide their
speech.
4. PEOPLE WHO DO NOT SPEAK DICTIONARY-PROPER ENGLISH ARE OPPRESSED Cheris

Kramarae, Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois, INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, 1992, p. 144.
The oppression of those people who do not speak dictionary-proper English may be
increasing. The supporters of the national organization US English have supported a
proposed English Language Amendment to the US Constitution which would make
English the official language of the US. Some of the organizations criticism is directed at
bilingual education programs. The proponents seem to be particularly upset by the
increasing number of Spanish speakers. The organization is a spurt in a long-flowing
stream of white linguistic conservatism in the US that ebbs and flows with the perceived
threat to the status of dictionary-correct English.
5. DICTIONARIES PERPETUATE CLASS STRUCTURE AND MALE SUPREMACY Cheris

Kramarae, Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois, INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE, 1992, p. 146.
By using a literary standard based in large part on literature which conforms to
traditional dictionaries, editors help maintain class structure and the supremacy of the
male educated class. Far from being accurate and representational records of the
language usage of most of us, dictionaries are handbooks sanctioned by every level of
schooling. They are instruments of social control which disguise and depress the
linguistic confidence and creativity of most speakers and writers.
6. TODAYS DICTIONARIES PROMOTE SEXIST STEREOTYPES

Cheris Kramarae, Professor of Speech Communication, University of Illinois, THE
FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF LANGUAGE: A READER, 1990, p. 149.
Sexism is also at work. H. Lee Gershuny (1973), examining sentences in the Random
House Dictionary that illustrated word usage, argued that a dictionary not merely
reflects sexist social attitudes but acts in a variety of ways to preserve and recreate
stereotypes as well -- thus perpetuating notions of women as particular kinds of
speakers (to illustrate usage for the word nerves, the RHD used Women with shrill
voices get on his nerves.
PETER KROPOTKIN
ANARCHIST (1842-192 1)
Life And Work

Though Peter Kropotkin was born a prince on December 9, 1842, in Moscow, it was not a
life of privilege that he chose. He grew up in the midst of a revolutionary struggle
against the Russian Czars, and saw thousands of people in privilege risk their status,
their careers, and their lives to disseminate revolutionary propaganda and aid the cause.
He saw hundreds of these people executed or exiled, until the revolution finally toppled
the Czar. He also saw his father, a wealthy landowner and cruel autocrat, exemplify the
evils of the feudal system. The serfs under his father were punished, often cruelly
beaten.
Kropotkins experiences probably contributed to his commitment to liberty and equality,

the principles which saw him jailed and exiled. Born a prince, he renounced the title at
the age of twelve and refused to let anyone refer to him as such. After being trained as a
page in the Emperors court, he became an officer in the army at twenty. At this time, he
went to Siberia in service to the Governor-General, where he tried to reform the
conditions of prisoners and exiles being kept there. Peter devoted his time to studying
the scientific geography he had a gift for, and continued that research until he and his
brother Alexander resigned their commissions in disgust after seeing the cruel treatment
of the Polish exiles kept in Siberia.
Though Peters Siberian research was brilliant and no doubt set the stage for his
scientific research into anarchism, he refused the secretaryship of the Russian
Geographical Society because he felt too close to the causes of peasants. This was not
the first nor the last action to show Kropotkins deep commitment to principle. For
instance, at age thirty he joined the International Working Mens Association while on a
trip to Europe to study labor movements. However, he resigned after being revolted
when he saw workers rights being sold out for the interests of a friendly lawyer. Instead,
he joined the Swiss Jura Federation, composed mostly of watchmakers, an organization
which had no distinction between the leaders and the rank-and-file.
It is impossible to overstate how this must have influenced Kropotkins blossoming

anarchism. The Swiss Jura Federation deeply criticized not only elitism and capitalism,
but also state socialism, on the grounds that economic authority increased political
authority. After a weeks stay with the Jura Federation, he declared my views on
socialism were settled. I was an anarchist. Though he never met the influential
anarchist Michael Bakunin, he expressed great admiration for both his teachings and his
status as a moral personality. In fact, it was Karl Marxs disrespect of Bakunin that
augmented Kropotkins mistrust of Marx and Marxism.
After returning to Russia, he joined the revolutionary Circle of Tchaykovsky, and for two
years studied geography and went to meetings under an assumed name. Although he
tried to escape arrest, a spy in the Circle of Tchaykovsky told authorities that Peter was
engaged in revolutionary activities in St. Petersburg. As a result, he was arrested and
held for almost two years awaiting trial, until he was nearly thirty-four. His brother was
also arrested, sent to Siberia, and committed suicide after twelve years of imprisonment.
Peter, though, escaped in broad daylight after a daily exercise session, upon which he
fled to Sweden and then England. Though he intended to stay only briefly, he ended up
living in exile for forty-two years.
The Struggle Between Anarchism And

Socialism
He joined the Jura Federation--Bakunin had just died, so the struggle between anarchism
and socialism was at a key moment. However, he was expelled from Switzerland after
five years, following a series of anarchist assassinations in Europe in which the Jura
Federation played no role. He then went to England, where he was offered membership
in the British Royal Geographers Association--he declined
because he did not want to be a part of a royal organization. Later, Kropotkin was
arrested because of a demonstration in Lyons, France, over an anarchist demonstration
where bombs were thrown. Though Kropotkin had no relation to the affair, he was
charged with membership in the International Working Mens Association, and was
sent to prison for three years. The conditions there inspired him to write Prisons And
Their Moral Influence On Prisoners, and solidified his hatred of the punishment
paradigm. Upon his release and expulsion from France, he went to England and started
the anarchist journal Freedom which is still published today, and was inspired to
compose the work he had been preparing his whole life, Mutual Aid, a study of evolution.
Mutual Aid refutes the notion that evolution is a competitive, dog-eat-dog process--in
humans or in animals.
As the 1905 Russian Revolution advanced, Kropotkin helped as much as he could in

exile, publishing pamphlets and position papers. He opened up his home as a center to
Russian refugees, though he was not a rich man--he refused to take a penny for his
services to the anarchist movement. Finally, when the Czar was overthrown in 1917,
Kropotkin returned to Russia. At the age of 75, he continued to work for the
advancement of progressive causes. The Bolsheviks seized control in October of that
year, however, which put an end to his activism. He moved out of Moscow and refused
any aid from the Government.
Though he vehemently opposed the state socialism of the Bolsheviks, he also fought
against counterrevolutionary groups. He refused to listen when friends made angry
speeches against the government, and advised anarchists to take up reconstruction,
instead of destruction. He encouraged labor organizing and continued to write on the
anarchist goal, including Ethics which was published after his death on February 8, 1921,
in the small town of Dmitrov, Russia, at the age of 78.
The Noblest Man And His Basic

Philosophy
The principled acts described above are only a few examples of Kropotkins rigid
adherence to principle. Though he mistrusted all government, he is almost universally
described as a kind, generous, and thoroughly ethical individual. Romain Rolland stated
that while Tolstoy advocated anarchist principles, Kropotkin lived them: he is referred to
by many as the noblest man they ever encountered. Though Kropotkin was very
critical of Kantian ethics as well as other established moral systems, he defended the
golden rule and lived by it. Even if the ends to a tactic seemed beneficial, he often
criticized the means: he criticized comrades who skipped town on bail because they had
breached the faith of the bondsmen. He steadfastly opposed the Russian revolutionists
accepting aid from the Japanese government during the Russo-Japanese war because of
his fundamental opposition to receiving aid from government.
Kropotkin, besides his hostility towards government, had a deep belief in the scientific
method. His brand of anarchism is basically a set of applied ethics that he developed
from his observations of the natural world and of human society. His scientific basis for
anarchism is that mutual aid and free cooperation of independent associations is a law
of nature. Kropotkin, through his studies of nature, proved that cooperation rather than
competition is the way of survival. He showed that even predatory animals, such as
eagles, combine their efforts to mutually acquire food. He showed that many primitive
cultures, uncorrupted by the notion of capitalism and private property, are altogether
unfamiliar with killing each other, with lies, theft, and hurtfulness. He points to the
pygmies of Africa, the Kalahari bushmen, and other tribal peoples for evidence. He also
noted that indigenous tribal peoples of the Americas had no words for murder or
theft except in such cases where they have come into contact with non-native culture.
Kropotkin sees such traits as the natural order of things: Since sentient beings desire
pleasure and dislike pain, and since everyone has an interest in preserving the race,
Kropotkin reasoned that it is our fundamental tendency to help each other willingly. The
state, in Kropotkins view, is the opponent of this. He argues that the state--and also the
family, which he critiques as well--is a relatively recent development in human culture,
and that it is a parasite to humans fundamental good nature. Since the state itself
needs to survive, it has an interest in keeping workers disorganized and crushing their
tendencies toward mutual
aid. Although the state seeks to eliminate mutual aid, Kropotkin cites various mutual aid
societies--trade unions, community organizations for social betterment, etc. --as proof
that the mutual aid tendency survives and fights against the states evil influence. He
points out that every day, millions of people make millions of actions and transactions
that have nothing to do with government. Kropotkin says that this demonstrates how our
natural state is to be without government.
Critical Of Socialism And Other Schools

Of Anarchism
Kropotkins hatred for the state made him a bitter opponent of state-run socialism. He
felt that capital and the state were mutually supporting, and that it was impossible to
demolish one without demolishing the other. He also was suspicious of Marxs view of
the economy as the primary social force--though Kropotkin was a materialist, he thought
that other factors such as mutual aid drove class struggle. Kropotkin thought true
revolutionary progress came from infusing the masses with revolutionary thinking and
feelings rather than economic necessity. To anarchist-communism, the Bakuninist school
of thought, he was loyal. He diverged from the anarcho-pacifists, such as Tolstoy, in his
refusal to condemn revolutionary violence. Indeed, he thought that most revolutions
would necessitate civil war, though this was obviously to be minimized. Further, he
thought political assassination was sometimes justified to avoid tyranny.
Though he admired the French anarchist Pierre Proudhon, he felt that his mutualism
was impractical He thought Proudhons ideas on restructuring the economy through
reorganizing the banks were thoroughly impractical. Other individualist anarchists,
such as Benjamin Tucker and Max Stirner, he viewed as short-sighted conservatives who
valued liberty in some senses, but ignored economic liberty. Without a revolutionary
change in the economic system, Kropotkin could not see how political freedom could be
maintained.
Kropotkins thought has so many debate applications it is impossible to list them all, and
difficult to conceive of them without reading the masterworks. The critiques of the state
and religious ideology are readily apparent, and the dismantling of socialism is also fairly
obvious. Perhaps the most underutilized part of Kropotkins philosophy, though, is his
scathing attack on the notion of moral obligation, whether Kantian or utilitarian. For
Kropotkin, such notions were simply means of controlling the passionate masses. In his
essay Anarchist Morality, he argues that pushing obligations prevents the development
of true morality. This is especially helpful in arguing against any Kantian ethics/utilitarian
ethics position, or any case that values moral obligations.
It is also important to note that Kropotkin believed strongly in humanitys good nature.
He even offers scientific and historical evidence for this claim in Mutual Aid. This stance
is useful in attacking most any social contract philosopher, as these philosophers
generally claim we need to be protected from ourselves. Kropotkin argues that we will
treat each other with respect in general without any social threat over our heads.
Hobbes is certainly one philosopher that the above applies to. Kropotkin claims that the
family, like the state, is a new (and not beneficial) development. This attacks the base of
Hobbes philosophy. Kropotkin also defends vehemently certain fundamental human
values, notably freedom and equality. He attacks any conceptions that these values
might somehow impede progress. He staunchly defends these values, and writes
evidence useful in defending them. Beyond these ideas, Kropotkins original works are
very readable, and are no doubt useful in many other capacities to debaters. Reading
the original works will be invaluable for developing strategies and positions on virtually
any topic.
Bibliography
C. Cahm, KROPOTKIN AND THE RISE OF REVOLUTIONARY ANARCHISM, 1872-1886,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Peter Kropotkin, KROPOTKINS REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS, edited by Roger N. Baldwin,

1970, Dover.
Peter Kropotkin, MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST, 1899, New York: Houghton, Mifflin.
Peter Kropotkin, MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION, 1902, reprinted by Freedom

Press, 1987.
G. Woodcock, THE ANARCHIST PRINCE: A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY OF PETER KROPOTKIN,

1971, New York: Schocken Books.
MORAL OBLIGATION NOTIONS ARE

HARMFUL
1. WE MUST REJECT OBLIGATIONS TO MORALITY: THEY DO US NO GOOD
Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist philosopher, KROPOTKINS REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS, 1970,
edited by Roger N. Baldwin, page 102-3
But we are not afraid to forego judges and their sentences. We forego sanctions of all
kinds, even obligations to morality. We are not afraid to say: Do what you will; act as
you will; because we are persuaded that the great majority of mankind, in proportion to
their degree of enlightenment and the completeness with which they free themselves
from existing fetters will behave and act always in a direction useful to society just as we
are persuaded beforehand that a child will one day walk on its two feet and not on all
fours simply because it is born of parents belonging to the genus Homo.
2. MORAL SENSIBILITIES WILL FLOURISH ONLY WHEN OBLIGATIONS ARE GONE

Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist philosopher, KROPOTKINS REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS,
1970, edited by Roger N. Baldwin, page 104-5.
In our daily life we do already give free scope to our feelings of sympathy or antipathy;
we are doing so every moment. We all love moral strength we all despise moral
weakness and cowardice. Every moment our words, looks, smiles express our joy in
seeing actions useful to the human race, those which we think good. Every moment our
looks and words show the repugnance we feel towards cowardice, deceit, intrigue, want
of moral courage. We betray our disgust, even when under the influence of a worldly
education we try to hide our contempt beneath those lying appearances which will
vanish as equal relations are established among us. This alone is enough to keep the
conception of good and ill at a certain level and to communicate it one to another. It will
be still more efficient when there is no longer judge or priest in society, when moral
principles have lost their obligatory character and are considered merely as relations
between equals. Moreover, in proportion to the establishment of these relations, a loftier
moral conception will arise in society.
3. MUST REJECT MORAL OBLIGATIONS TO GET A HIGHER MORALITY

Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist philosopher, MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION, 1899,
page 112-113.
There are epochs in which the moral conception changes entirely. A man perceives that
what he had considered moral is the deepest immorality. In some instances it is a
custom, a venerated tradition, that is fundamentally immoral. In others we find a moral
system framed in the interests of a single class. We cast them overboard and raise the
cry Down with morality! It becomes a duty to act immorally. Let us welcome such
epochs for they are epochs of criticism. They are an infallible sign that thought is
working in society. A higher morality has begun to be wrought out. What this morality
will be we have sought to formulate, taking as our basis the study of man and animal.
We have seen the kind of morality which is even now shaping itself in the ideas of the
masses and of the thinkers. This morality will issue no commands. It will refuse once and
for all to model individuals according to an abstract idea, as it will refuse to mutilate
them by religion, law or government. It will leave to the individual man full and perfect
liberty. It will be but a simple record of facts, a science. And this science will say to man:
If you are not conscious of strength within you, if your energies are only just sufficient
to maintain a colorless, monotonous life, without strong impressions, without deep joys,
but also without deep sorrows, well then, keep to the simple principles of a just equality.
In relations of equality you will find probably the maximum of happiness possible to your
feeble energies.
4. AS CONVENTIONAL NOTIONS OF MORALITY DIE, REAL MORALITY INCREASES

edited by Roger N. Baldwin, page 82.
And, if we may venture to say so, the more the basis of conventional morality, or rather
of the hypocrisy that fills its place is sapped, the more the moral plane of society is
raised. It is above all at such times precisely when folks are criticizing and denying it,
that moral sentiment makes the most progress. It is then that it grows, that it is raised
and refined.
MUTUAL AID IS THE BASIS FOR ALL

LIFE
1. THE NUCLEUS OF MUTUAL AID KEEPS US ALL TOGETHER
Peter Kropatkin, Anarchist philosopher, MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION, 1899,
p206-7 The same applies to our civilized world. The natural and social calamities pass
away. Whole populations are periodically reduced to misery or starvation; the very
springs of life are crushed out of millions of men, reduced to city pauperism; the
understanding and the feelings of the millions are vitiated by teachings worked out in
the interest of the few. All this is certainly a part of our existence. But the nucleus of
mutual-support institutions, habits, and customs remains alive with the millions; it keeps
them together; and they prefer to cling to their customs, beliefs, and traditions rather
than to accept the teachings of a war of each against all, which are offered to them
under the title of science, but are no science at all.
2. MUTUAL AID FEELING HAS BEEN NURTURED FOR 1OOs of l000s OF YEARS
Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist philosopher, MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION, 1899, p
218. There is the gist of human psychology. Unless men are maddened in the battlefield,
they cannot stand it to hear appeals for help, and not to respond to them. The hero
goes; and what the hero does, all feel that they ought to have done as well. The
sophisms of the brain cannot resist the mutual-aid feeling, because this feeling has been
nurtured by thousands of years of human social life and hundreds of thousands of years
of pre-human life in societies.
3. MUTUAL AID THAT PROVIDES SALVATION FOR OUR RACE

Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist philosopher, MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION, 1899, p
234. Each time, however, that an attempt to return to this old principle was made, its
fundamental idea itself was widened. From the clan it was extended to the stem, to the
federation of stems, to the nation, and finally -- in ideal, at least -- to the whole of
mankind. It was also refined at the same time. In primitive Buddhism, in primitive
Christianity, in the writings of some of the Mussulman teachers, in the early movements
of the Reform, and especially in the ethical and philosophical movements of the last
century and of our own times, the total abandonment of the idea of revenge, or of due
reward -- of good for good and evil for evil -- is affirmed more and more vigorously. The
higher conception of no revenge for wrongs, and of freely giving more than one
expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real principle of
morality -- a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more
conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by
love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness
with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the
earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our
ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual
support not mutual struggle -- has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at
the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.
4. ALL NATURE VALUES MUTUAL AID, WHICH DISPROVES UTILITARIANISM

1970, edited by Roger N. Baldwin, page 91.
The ant, the bird, the marmot, the savage have read neither Kant nor the fathers of the
Church nor even Moses. And yet all have the same idea of good and evil. And if you
reflect for a moment on what lies at the bottom of this idea, you will see directly that
what is considered good among ants, mannots, and Christian or atheist moralists is that
which is useful for the preservation of the race; and that which is considered evil is that
which is hurtful for race preservation. Not for the individual, as Benthaxn and Mill put it,
but fair and good for the whole race.
THE STATE TRIES TO CRUSH THE

HUMAN SPIRIT
1. THE STATE WILL ALWAYS TRY TO SAP HUMAN INDEPENDENCE AND SPIRIT Peter
Kropotkin, Anarchist philosopher, KROPOTKINS REVOLUTIONARY PAMPHLETS, 1970,
edited by Roger N. Baldwin, p. 81.
All that was good, great, generous or independent in man, little by little becomes mossgrown; rusts like a disused knife. A lie becomes a virtue, a platitude a duty. To enrich
oneself, to seize ones opportunities, to exhaust ones intelligence, zeal and energy, no
matter how, become the watchwords of the comfortable classes, as well as of the crowd
of poor folk whose ideal is to appear bourgeois. Then the degradation of the ruler and of
the judge, of the clergy and of the more or less comfortable classes becomes so
revoking that the pendulum begins to swing the other way. Little by little, youth frees
itself. It flings overboard its prejudices, and it begins to criticize. Thought reawakens, at
first among the few; but insensibly the awakening reaches the majority. The impulse is
given, the revolution follows.
2. THE STATE TRIES TO CRUSH HUMANS POSITIVE NATURE

Peter Kropotkin, Anarchist philosopher, MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION, 1899,
page
229.
In short, neither the crushing powers of the centralized State nor the teachings of
mutual hatred and pitiless struggle which came, adorned with the attributes of science,
from obliging philosophers and sociologists, could weed out the feeling of human
solidarity, deeply lodged in mens understanding and heart, because it has been
nurtured by all our preceding evolution. What was the outcome of evolution since its
earliest stages cannot be overpowered by one of the aspects of that same evolution.
And the need of mutual aid and support which had lately taken refuge in the narrow
circle of the family, or the slum neighbours, in the village, or the secret union of workers,
re-asserts itself again, even in our modem society, and claims its rights to be, as it
always has been, the chief leader towards further progress. Such are the conclusions
which we are necessarily brought to when we carefully ponder over each of the groups
of facts briefly enumerated in the last two chapters.
EQUALITY ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL

1. EQUALITY IS THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON FOR SURVIVAL
Besides this principle of treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself, what is it
but the very same principle as equality, the fundamental principle of anarchism? And
how can any one manage to believe himself an anarchist unless he practices it? We do
not wish to be ruled. And by this very fact, do we not declare that we ourselves wish to
rule nobody? We do not wish to be deceived, we wish always to be told nothing but the
truth. And by this very fact, do we not declare that we ourselves do not wish to deceive
anybody, that we promise to always tell the truth, nothing but the truth, the whole
truth? We do not wish to have the fruits of our labor stolen from us. And by that very
fact, do we not declare that we respect the fruits of others labor? By what right indeed
can we demand that we should be treated in one fashion, reserving it to ourselves to
treat others in a fashion entirely different? Our sense of equality revolts at such an idea.
Equality in mutual relations with the solidarity arising from it, this is the most powerful
weapon of the animal world in the struggle for existence. And equality is equity.
2. VALUING EQUALITY WONT HURT THE INDIVIDUAL

edited by Roger N. Baldwin, page 105.
The principle of equality sums up the teachings of moralists. But it also contains
something more. This something more is respect for the individual. By proclaiming our
morality of equality, or anarchism, we refuse to assume a right which moralists have
always taken upon themselves to claim, that of mutilating the individual in the name of
some ideal. We do not recognize this right at all, for ourselves or anyone else.
HUMANS SEEK PLEASURE AND TRY TO

AVOID PAIN
1. TO SEEK PLEASURE AND AVOID PAIN IS HUMAN INSTINCT
1970, edited by Roger N. Baldwin, page 84-5.
it is easy to understand the astonishment of our great-grandfathers when the English
philosophers, and later the Encyclopedists, began to affirm in opposition to these
primitive ideas that the devil and the angel had nothing to do with human action, but
that all acts of man, good or bad, useful or baneful, arise from a single motive: the lust
for pleasure. The whole religious confraternity, and, above all, the numerous sects of the
Pharisees shouted immorality. They covered the thinkers with insult, they
excommunicated them. And when later on in the course of the century the same ideas
were again taken up by Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Tchernischevsky, and a host of others,
and when these thinkers began to affirm and prove that egoism, or the lust for pleasure,
is the true motive of all our actions, the maledictions redoubled. The books were banned
by a conspiracy of silence; the authors were treated as dunces. And yet what can be
more true than the assertion they made? Here is a man who snatches its last mouthful
of bread from a child. Every one agrees in saying that he is a horrible egoist, that he is
guided solely by self-love. But now here is another man, whom every one agrees to
recognize as virtuous. He shares his last bit of bread with the hungry, and strips off his
coat to clothe the naked. And the moralists, sticking to their religious jargon, hasten to
say that this man carries the love of his neighbor to the point of self~ abnegation, that
he obeys a wholly different passion from that of the egoist. And yet with a little reflection
we soon discover that however great the difference between the two actions in their
result for humanity, the motive has still been the same. It is the quest of pleasure.
2. ALL THE ORGANIC WORLD SEEKS PLEASURE TO THE AVOIDANCE OF PAIN

To seek pleasure, to avoid pain, is the general line of action (some would say law) of the
organic world. Without this quest of the agreeable, life itself would be impossible.
Organisms would disintegrate, life cease. Thus whatever a mans actions and line of
conduct may be, he does what he does in obedience to a craving of his nature. The most
repulsive actions, no less than actions which are indifferent or most attractive, are all
equally dictated by a need of the individual who performs them. Let him act as he may,
the individual acts as he does because he finds a pleasure in it, or avoids, or thinks he
avoids, a pain. Here we have a well-established fact. Here we have the essence of what
has been called the egoistic theory.
HOBBES PHILOSOPHY RESTS ON FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS
HOBBES PHILOSOPHY BASED ON FLAWED ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE FAMILY Peter

Kropotkin, Anarchist philosopher, MUTUAL AID: A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION, 1902, p 75-6.
It has been remarked more than once that the chief error of Hobbes, and the eighteenthcentury philosophers as well, was to imagine that mankind began its life in the shape of
small straggling families, something like the limited and temporary families of the
bigger carnivores, while in reality it is now positively known that such was not the case.
Of course, we have no direct evidence as to the modes of life of the first man-like
beings. We are not yet settled even as to the time of their first appearance, geologists
being inclined at present to see their traces in the Pliocene, or even the Miocene,
deposits of the Tertiary period. But we have the indirect method which permits us to
throw some light even upon that remote antiquity. A most careful investigation into the
social institutions of the lowest races has been carried on during the last forty years, and
it has revealed among the present institutions of primitive folk some traces of still older
institutions which have long disappeared, but nevertheless left unmistakable traces of
their previous existence.
Legal Neutrality Responses

Introduction
Western conceptions of law are rooted in a mythical objectivity that requires that the law
stand a great distance from the hearts of those entering its courts. To be perceived as
neutral, the law cannot directly involve itself in contextual details that would create an
identification between those deciding legal issues and those seeking protection from the
law. In fact, this occurs by design according to Critical Race Theory (CRT), a movement
of legal scholars who attack the laws tendency to prop up the interests of the
historically powerful, especially white-men.
Humanization of the other is crucial to their respectful treatment. People cannot kill in
war without dehumanizing the enemy. People cannot enslave others without viewing
them as sub-human. Racial discrimination is an example of the dehumanizing process. It
would seem that the most effective means of combating racial discrimination, therefore,
would be to find ways of humanizing blacks and whites to each other. But law cannot do
this.
Using CRTs criticisms of the law, I will argue that the myth of laws neutrality and
objectivity may slow, and even prevent entirely, realizations of Black empowerment. I
will support this argument by showing, first, that legal neutrality actually supports White
viewpoints and privilege. Second, I will argue that Black empowerment happens in
congruence with realization of the goals of Whites, and that those movements in Black
rights are not necessarily sustainable gains. Third, I will recommend CRTs victimbased perspective as a corrective to the problem of legal bias in favor of white
privilege. Finally, I will suggest ways that CRTs contesting of legal neutrality undermines
the legitimacy of the rule of law.
Legal neutrality and White privilege

The major proponents of CRT claim that it, rejects the notion that law is objective, or
value-neutral, and argues instead that, the law legitimizes the perpetrators or
insiders perspective and is constructed by the dominant group to serve its own
purpose (Brooks n62). In order to show how this is the case, we must examine the laws
claim to neutrality via blindness. The goddess of justice wears a blindfold as she weighs
the scales of justice, implying that the truth will sort itself out on the scales free from her
interference. Brooks writes that this blindness means that, our judicial system does
little (and sometimes nothing) to level the playing field of its litigants. In the context of
federal pleading this is problematic because even though procedural rules are crafted in
neutral and universal language, their applications are decidedly not neutral given the
social and political context in which they are invoked. Indeed, our so called objective
procedural rules end up favoring the socially stronger party because the latter is able to
carry his economical and political advantage into the halls of justice (n209).
We all know that ones chances of getting cleared by a judicial system are increased
substantially by the quality of ones lawyer. Whites on balance are more often rich than
Black Americans and are, not surprisingly, found innocent of crimes much more often.
Thus, it shouldnt come as a surprise that most Blacks and Whites have different
perspectives on the law and justice. Litowitz writes that, whites tend to favor an
absolute position on freedom of speech because they see free speech as a safeguard for
the maximum flow of information, whereas blacks are dubious of absolute freedom of
speech because they bear the brunt of offensive speech. Similarly, Peggy Davis points
out that black jurors are more likely to see the criminal justice system as biased
according to race and class, and Sheri Lynn Johnson shows that this perception of bias is
rooted in a legacy of racism at the hands of white judges and juries. It stands to reason
that if judges and lawyers see minorities in stereotypical and distorted ways (for
example, that blacks are violent and overly sexual), then they will misjudge, for
example, the degree of force that is reasonable when the police arrest a black male
(n20). It is easy for Whites to not object to law because
they are so often not touched by it coercively, as Blacks may be. There is clearly little
grounds for thinking that there is racial agreement on the neutrality of the law. Blacks,
more often condemned by the law than Whites, are thus more likely to take the
perspective that our legal system privileges Whites.
Our legal system, which brought us Dred Scot and Plessy, is still propping up White
privilege. Some suggest that minority law students have a higher dropout rate than
Whites because minorities were less up to the task, or that they had less merit. McGinley
refutes this directly, pointing out a sort of good ol boy system still at work in which,
One can see how the privilege operates in law school hiring. White males who have had
special access to relationships with other white males at prestigious universities and law
schools are promoted by their mentors to white male judges, who hire them to serve as
law clerks. Both the judges and the law school professors recommend their mentees to
hiring committees who are composed mostly of white males who have the same
attributes as the persons applying for the job. The hiring committee tends to define the
candidate as meritorious because the candidate has conformed to the societal norm.
Privilege, as Wildman demonstrates, is often mistaken for individual merit (n298). One
legal scholar complains about how difficult it was for her as a Black woman to find
mentors in legal institutions filled with White men. It is clear that neither the law, nor the
scholars that create it, could possibly be neutral given their historically privileged status
as Whites.
The American legal systems attempt to veil itself in neutrality and stay out of the lives
of its citizens sanctions types of oppression that occur outside the scope of the law. Law
often reflects dominant interests and fosters structural oppression less by coercion
than by offering people identities contingent upon their acceptance of oppression as
defining characteristics of their very selves. Law is experienced in this fashion by racial
minorities as injustice, not because of any particular hostile legislative enactment or
court ruling, but because of the systemic oppression it legitimates (Yamamoto 843).
This principle was especially clear in a situation where some Black Americans opposed
the desegregation of schools on the grounds that states would just shut the schools
down entirely, leaving Black students without education and Black teachers out of work.
The laws blind eye toward systemic forms of oppression, such as through economics,
allows racism to continue to damage its victims. Derrick Bell goes so far as to argue
that, History not only teaches, but also warns that in periods of severe economic
distress, the rights of Black people are eroded and their lives endangered. A century
ago, American Blacks were already hated by large segments of White society,
particularly hard-pressed farmers in the South, and factory workers- many of them
recent immigrants in the North. Black people were made a target for the wrath and
frustration of the millions of White Americans being squeezed by that change in job
patterns (Bell Rutgers 348). Bell thinks that these setbacks are not things only of the
past, and that they will recur again and again in our future due to failures to turn back
inequalities in socioeconomics and status. He writes that, Black people will never gain
full equality in this country. Even those Herculean efforts we hail as successful will
produce no more than temporary peaks of progress, short-lived victories that slide into
irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance (Bell
Howard 79). The major reason Bell can be so pessimistic is that the laws neutrality on
issues of oppression always leaves open a new door for racial patterns to shift into.
One of the most modern manifestations of racial oppression through legal neutrality is
colorblindness, part of the rallying cry of White males claiming to be victimized by such
oppression correctives as affirmative action programs. The trouble with the
colorblindness argument is that legal neutrality is effectually biased against the
unprivileged, or, as Hernandez puts it, Colorblindness puts the burden on blacks to
change; to receive equal treatment, they must be seen by whites as white. Hence, the
compliment that some whites pay to blacks: I dont think of you as black.
Colorblindness is, in essence, not the absence of color, but rather monochromatism:
whites can be colorblind when there is only one race- when blacks become white
(n300). Just as Bell predicts, programs for Black equality such as affirmative action are
threatened just as the economic privilege of Whites begins to slip, like during the early
90s recession. Hernandez tells us that, At the same time that Whites wanted to become
color-blind, Blacks were demanding separate admission standards to schools and jobs.
Thus, the ideology of universalism must be viewed in the proper context. It is mostly an
attempt by Whites to maintain institutional arrangements which embody the residual
results of past overt racism (305). The neutrality claims are usually bolstered by White
men with references to correctives as reverse-discrimination. When White men
complain that they werent responsible for racial oppression and should not be victims
of its correctives, they are missing the point entirely. The point is that White men are still
benefiting from systems of oppression in place for over 400 years, and they continue to
benefit from systems, like slavery, long since dead.
Interest-Convergence Theory: Blacks

progress only when Whites benefit
Even today, after the 90s recession is long gone, Critical Race Theorists see the law
taking steps backward in time. Bell writes that, A color-blind Constitution has become
the battle cry for those on the Court who, in the very face of its devastation, maintain
that discrimination is a thing of the past. The spirit of Plessys separate but equal
standard is revived in the Courts willingness to employ disingenuous terms to disguise
its continued willingness to sacrifice Black rights to further White interests (Bell Rutgers
353). To Bell, the most significant example of the pasts return is in the Supreme Courts
return to the use of Plessy-esque rhetoric, painting Blacks as non-citizens. Delgado and
Stefancic, for example, write that, As a culture, and as a legal profession, we are rapidly
returning to the regime of Plessy v. Fergusons separate but equal doctrine and the Civil
Rights Cases view of blacks as imposers and whiners because they desire to live in
American society on the same terms as whites (n112). The idea of so-called special
rights, implying a desire by Blacks to gain unfair status over Whites, flies in the face of
the neutral, but tacitly White legal system.
None of the reactionary legal shifts surprise Bell, who sees them as foreshadowed by a
long history of temporary gains in Black empowerment. A key tenet of CRTs outlook on
legal structure, called interest-convergence theory, argues dominant white culture can
tolerate minority successes only when these successes also serve the larger interests of
whites (Litowitz 18). A radical view of history, the interest-convergence theory casts a
shadow over Black empowerments highest achievements, from Emancipation to Brown.
Bell writes that, The Brown decision, though, was less the long-sought remedy for
Plessy than a reinforcement of a more basic, two-part principle of this countrys racial
policies. Part One: society is always willing to sacrifice the rights of Black people in order
to protect important economic or political interests of Whites. The Plessy v. Ferguson
decision represents a prime example of Part One, less because it gave segregation the
status of constitutional law, than because it sacrificed Black rights in order to gain the
support of Whites for policies that harmed a great many White people. Part Two: the law
recognizes the rights of Black people only when such recognition serves some economic
or political interests of greater importance to Whites. Lincolns reluctant issuance of the
Emancipation Proclamation to help the faltering effort to save the Union was an example
of Part Two in action. Similarly, after World War II, the United States, the world leader in
efforts to win allegiance of mostly non-White, third-world nations, discovered that
practicing Jim Crow at home made it tough to advocate democracy abroad. The Brown
decision, by promising to close the gap between the countrys ideals and its practices,
provided an immediate boost to Americas foreign policy efforts (Bell Rutgers 352). The
convergence of Black and White interests was not simply a coincidence. Both the
Truman and Eisenhower administrations used the Civil Rights movements in America in
their foreign propaganda programs, and the Eisenhower administration referred
specifically to the Brown decision in its propaganda despite the administrations weak
role in supporting the judicial move. However, that doesnt mean that foreign policy
analysts in either administration were not pressing for more Black civil rights. Dudziak
writes that, Concerns on the part of the State Department and others about how Soviet
propaganda on American racism affected US foreign policy interests informed the
Truman Administrations pro-civil rights posture. The foreign policy problem was
considered to be sufficiently important that the Justice Department sought out
documentation from the State Department to use in its civil rights amicus briefs. The
Justice Department devoted a considerable amount of space to these arguments, and
stressed to the Supreme Court that a decision upholding segregation would have
demonstrable, negative effects on international relations (117). Protecting Americas
image in the global community is probably one of the worst, or least important, reasons
for granting civil rights to Blacks, but the Justice Department made the argument to the
Supreme Court anyway because it benefited the foreign policy outreach efforts of
Americas White elites.
Given our earlier examinations of the unequal applications of the law between races,
this aspect of the CRT argument may not come as a great surprise to Blacks, but for me
it is thoroughly disturbing. I have grown up surrounded by racism, and yet oblivious to
most of it because I had been convinced that things were always getting better, as
Blacks in America had moved from slavery to segregation to, supposedly, full and equal
citizenship. But Bell summarizes the shock CRT makes me feel when he writes, My
thesis is jarring, I think, because for too long we have comforted and consoled ourselves
with the myth of slow but steady racial progress. In fact, our racial status in this
country has been a cyclical phenomenon in which legal rights are gained, then lost, then
gained again in response to economic and political developments in a country over
which blacks exercise little or no control. Civil rights law has always been a part of rather
than an exception to this cyclical phenomenon (Bell Howard 79).
Neutrality is most easily damned as a legal philosophy because it begins with the
assumption that true equality has already been achieved or is coming anytime soon on
its own. We cannot legislate morality lawmakers say, because discrimination can only
end when the people themselves stop discriminating. That may be true, but it probably
doesnt help that the laws neutrality tacitly allows racism to continue instead of being
condemned. The perspective of the victim is missing from legal analysis because law
cannot be neutral if it takes on this perspective.
Victim-based perspectives as
correctives
Given that the law is already biased in favor of historically built White privilege, it would
seem ridiculous to argue that victim-based perspective taking would be illegitimate
based on bias. We are always already situated, and CRT draws on this to argue, Racism
is normal in our society. Racist assumptions about minorities pervade our mind-set and
are reinforced in the media and popular culture. Race is encoded not merely in our laws,
but in our cultural symbols such as movies, clothes, language, and music. Our
commonsense assumptions about people of color are biased- we are all racists
(Litowitz n6). If this is the case, it is clear that legal perspectives must adopt a
consciousness of race, not a blindness to it. The impossibility of blindness is the very
thing that makes victim-based perspective taking a necessity.
Moreover, the use of victim-based perspective taking has the effect of reducing overall
racism throughout society by humanizing racial others from which we are separated.
Frankenbergs study of white womens reactions to racism noted it is far easier for
persons from oppressed communities to recognize the privilege that is invisible to
whites. The white women tended to describe racism as something distant. It was
something evil happening to others and perpetrated by others. It was not part of their
daily experience, nor were they generally responsible for it (McGinley n269). But when
we are exposed to people of different races, we humanize them and can empathize with
their struggles. The major differences between races, entrenched specifically in the
privilege of Whites, become clear. Lopez notes that, Southerners are more likely to live
in integrated neighborhoods than people in other parts of the country, and racial
attitudes are changing for the better. In 1970, according to a survey by the National
Opinion Research Center, 55% of white Southerners agreed strongly that blacks
shouldnt push for inclusion where they are not wanted; 26.5% agreed slightly. Last year
19% agreed strongly, and 30% slightly. Most of the progress, social scientists say, has
come in metropolitan areas (Time, May 6). Given that close integration and contact with
people of other races appears to reduce racial tension and promote understanding
between groups of people, it would seem that the best way to change the highly
stratified white elites of law would be to change their approach to law in a way that
would offer them community with Blacks.
The victim-based perspective opens law to the possibility that it is always marginalizing
someones voice, not just Blacks. Looking for the perspectives of the most oppressed
creates new visions of legal justice that cannot be considered by Whites situated in the
privilege that blinds them. Brooks tells us that, Because the existing legal order,
including traditional legal analysis, has a built-in bias in favor of whites, CRT consciously
looks at the law from the perspective of non-whites. It relocates the source of truth and
knowledge from the perpetrator to the victim, from the insider to the outsider. We
should focus on these insights because those who have experienced discrimination
speak with a special voice to which we should listen,the victims of racial oppression
have distinct normative insights, [t]hose who are oppressed in the present world can
speak most eloquently of a better one (96). We might even say that those who
experience oppression seem the most qualified to speak about it. It seems that White
male lawyers and judges, so distant from the problems of racial discrimination as were
the White women in the Frankenberg study, are hardly qualified to represent and correct
such problems. However, they can greatly improve the legitimacy of their decisions and
legal analysis by seeking to be informed by the perspectives of Blacks, and other
historically oppressed groups. Increasing the numbers of Black judges and lawyers
wouldnt hurt either.
The laws claim to legal objectivity and neutrality is not valid, and probably not believed
by most people. However, those Whites who are distant from the problems and tensions
of racial oppression are unlikely to believe that the law oppresses Blacks, even indirectly.
Reconnecting Whites, especially those in legal power, with the views of the oppressed is
the best we can do to combat the effects of the racism that Bell thinks we can never
really end. The goal must not be to end racial oppression, because race will now and
forever inform our understandings of ourselves and others. We must hope that we can
contextualize our beliefs about race in ways that serve the cause of justice, and only by
creating situations of empathy with others can this be accomplished.
Answering Legal Neutrality with

Critical Race Theory
The fundamental component of liberalisms theory of legal legitimacy is consent, but
that consent only is given in exchange for the laws protection and aid via social
contracts. Contractual consent is not applicable to those that are not served by the law,
and CRT clearly demonstrates that some are served unequally while others are not
served at all. Locke even authorizes the total rejection of law that fails to serve its
people.
Rather than simply asserting that the law empirically fails everyone but white males with
statistics on the death penalty and crime convictions, Critical Race Theory offers an
explanation for the failure of legal objectivity. This explanation and the solutions offered
by CRT can function well as a debate case designed to challenge legal validity. As a
value, I think that the obvious choice is justice or some variation on it (such as social
justice, etc). The criteria should narrow the focus of your take on justice, perhaps by
adopting CRTs call for a victim-centered approach toward law, or a legal process that
emphasized the telling of narratives more.
The more difficult part of proving your case will be convincing a judge that true
objectivity is impossible from the point of view of law. It shouldnt be hard to win the
argument that all perspectives are biased, but you might have trouble showing that
legal perspectives are biased enough to warrant the changes recommended by CRT.
Melding this argument with Rawls veil of ignorance might be most effective, since the
victim-centered approach would then make the judge consider what it would be like to
try to live from an underprivileged legal vantage point.
You are also likely to face the argument that equality exists under the law now, meaning
that legal objectivity is possible. The warrant for this argument would likely base itself in
some reflection on how opportunities are open to all of those in society. This argument is
fallacious because it places the burden of change on minorities, instead of making
whites change the racist social structures that they created and imposed upon
minorities. An opportunity implies that the door is open if minorities work hard, but
whites do not have to work hard to move through the door that already privileges them.
Legal structures are biased in favor of whites insofar as they do not consider a whites
lack of need of opportunities as privileged.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Derrick, HOWARD LAW JOURNAL, Rev. 79, 1991
Bell, Derrick, RUTGERS RACE & THE LAW REVIEW, Rev. 347, 1999
Brooks, HARVARD BLACKLETTER JOURNAL, Rev. 85, 1994
Delgado, Richard, and Stefancic, Jean, WILLIAM AND MARY LAW REVIEW, Rev. 547,
Winter, 1995
Dudziak, Mary L., STANFORD LAW REVIEW, Rev. 61, November, 1988
Hernandez, Tanya Kateri, MARYLAND LAW REVIEW, 1998
Litowitz, Douglas E., NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW, Rev. 503, 1997
Lopez, Steve, TIME.COM, Sunday, May 6, 2001, downloaded 5/5/01
McGinley, ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, Rev. 1003, Fall, 1997
Yamamoto, Eric K., MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, Rev. 821, February, 1997
THE LAW IS INHERENTLY RACIST

1. AMERICAN LAW IS MOVING BACK TO DRED SCOT AND PLESSY
Richard Delgado, Charles Inglis Thomson Professor of Law, University of Colorado, and
Jean Stefancic Research Associate, University of Colorado School of Law, WILLIAM &
MARY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1995, p. 182
As a culture, and as a legal profession, we are rapidly returning to the regime of Plessy v.
Ferguson's separate but equal doctrine and the Civil Rights Cases view of blacks as
imposers and whiners because they desire to live in American society on the same terms
as whites. Moreover, we find some frightening straws in the wind--indications that ought
to give pause to any defender of freedom and minority rights. We have reviewed
evidence that society generally, and the legal system in particular, are beginning to
regress in one final, decisive quantum jump. American society, without the spur of Cold
War competition or the need for minority labor or soldiers, is in serious danger of quietly,
implicitly readopting a familiar standard from another era: Dred Scott v. Sandford, in
which blacks and other minorities of color have no rights that white Americans are
bound to respect.
2. LEGAL STRUCTURES REFLECT THE INTERESTS OF THE DOMINANT IN SOCIETY

Eric K. Yamamoto, Professor of Law, William S. Richardson School of Law, University of
Hawaii, MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, February, 1997, p.842
What Krupat and others describe is the oppressive way law sometimes operates as a
discursive strategy backed by force. It starts with the assessments of cultural difference
and the marking of inferiority upon the racialized minority. It then inscribes an inferior
identity into a legal text - defining Indians as wards of the government - that then
legitimates paternalism - requiring Indian acceptance of the subordinated identity of
"dependent sovereign" - or negation - removal. In this manner, law operates as a
"cultural system that structures relationships throughout society, not just those that
come before courts." As a cultural system, law sometimes inscribes and reproduces
liberatory ideas and group images. Often, however, it reflects dominant interests and
fosters structural "oppression less by coercion than by offering people identities
contingent upon their acceptance of oppression as defining characteristics of their very
selves." Law is experienced in this fashion by racial minorities as injustice, not because
of any particular hostile legislative enactment or court ruling, but because of the
systemic oppression it legitimates.
3. LAW HAS SANCTIONED GENOCIDE

Law's inscription and reproduction of cultural images, which create meaning that
"radiates throughout social life," are captured in Arnold Krupat's description of the role of
law in the racialization and then "removal" of Indians from eastern America. Indian
removal, and the destruction of Indian societies, "could finally be written into law and
enforced ... because by that time, a certain story about America and about 'civilization'
had become sufficiently acceptable [through journalism and literature] that it could be
used as ideological justification for 'certain sequences of causes and effects,' for
expansion with honor." Dominant white government and business powers took prevalent
narratives about Indian cultural difference, racial inferiority, and the righteousness of
American expansion and inscribed them in a legal text, the Indian Removal Act. Those
narratives legitimated not only the creation of the text but also its coercive enforcement.
As if by cloning, the Reagan-appointed Presidential Commission on Indian Reservation
Economies later employed nearly identical racialized rhetoric and issued a culturally
derogatory report justifying the harsh consequences of decreasing "tribal dependence
on federal monies." Like the cultural derogation of African Americans, which was used to
justify Jim Crow laws, and the similar denigration of Japanese Americans, which was used
to justify mass internment during World War Two, the negation of Native Americans
conjoined dehumanizing cultural representations of the racial "other" with legal
sanctions. I am talking not about ... cold-blooded atrocities but about law and the ways
in which [cultural] genocidal objectives have been carried out under color of law ...
"legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without violating a single great
principle of morality in the eyes of the world." These were legally enacted policies
whereby a way of life, a culture, was deliberately obliterated.
RACISM IS USUALLY UNINTENTIONAL

1. RACISM IS OFTEN UNINTENTIONAL
Roy L. Brooks, Professor of Law, University of San Diego; HARVARD BLACKLETTER
JOURNAL, 1994, p.320
In a statement presented to the United States Civil Rights Commission a generation ago,
Anthony Downs explained that racism functions operationally and institutionally: "[it]
exhibits itself in hundreds of ways in American society, and acts in hundreds of other
ways that are not recognized by most citizens." Anthony Downs, Racism in America and
How to Combat It, UNITED STATES COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS 6 (1970). According to
Downs, "[r]acism can occur even if the people causing it have no intention of
subordinating others because of color, or are totally unaware of doing so." Id.
Significantly, Downs reasons, "[t]he separation of races is not racism unless it leads to or
involves subordination of one group by anotherTherefore, favoring the voluntary
separation of races is not necessarily a form of racism.". It only becomes racism "if
members of one group who wanted to cluster together tried to restrict the locational
choices of members of some other group in order to achieve such clustering; for
example, if whites tried to discourage Mexican Americans from moving into all-white
neighborhoods." Id. In contrast, Professor Joe Feagin, a preeminent scholar on race
relations, has explained that it is useful to distinguish between "discriminatory actions"
and "motivation," as well as other dimensions of discrimination which include:
discrimination's "effects"; the relations among motivation, actions and effects; and the
contexts of discrimination both immediate (within the institution) and broad (impacting
society at large).
2. MINORITIES SUFFER FROM UNCONSCIOUS RACISM INHERENT IN SOCIAL STRUCTURES

Frank I. Michelman, Robert Walmsley Univ. Prof. of Law, Harvard University, MICHIGAN
LAW REVIEW, February, 1997, p.62
"Societal" and "structural" and "unconscious" racism are perfectly intelligible notions,
and claims of their applicability to the United States now are not, I daresay, honestly
dismissible out of hand as unreasonable or disingenuous: If you were to hear today at
the water cooler about some ambiguously pigmented fellow, not of your acquaintance,
who has been "passing" at your firm or faculty or company, would it occur to you to ask
"as which race?" or to say that you simply couldn't fathom his motives? For all his
disparagement, as trans-factual, of CRT's "central premise" that nonwhite lives suffer
widespread harm from a denigratory race-consciousness that is "institutional and
endemic," not confined to discrete "acts of intentional discrimination," Jeffrey Rosen
offers not the slightest rebuttal to the premise that I can see, beyond a ringing and
risible declaration that the life of Judge Leon Higginbotham "refutes" it. He offers instead
the form of response that lawyers know as demur-and-avoid and others know as
changing the subject: The premise of institutional racism carries normative and
prescriptive implications at odds with liberal ideals of colorblindness and individual
responsibility, and for that reason cannot be entertained in legal argument. And there,
after all, is the point: I am myself right here and now entertaining the premise as a
sociological theory.
3. RACISM IS UNCONSCIOUSLY MASKED BY PRAGMATIC CONCERNS

Thomas Ross, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh, BUFFALO LAW REVIEW, Winter,
1998, p.90
Yet, I would not imagine that White racists, past or present, typically engage in a
conscious calculation of the utility of their own racism. If it were this simple, racism
might have been displaced by the many appeals to conscience, so eloquently and
passionately articulated by the opponents of racial subordination in every generation.
Racism remains embedded in the White consciousness because it has never been so
simple as a material cost/benefit analysis. Racists, of each generation, cannot set aside
the narratives that allow them to make sense out of their collaboration in a system that
first enslaved, and then subordinated innocent human beings. To give up those
narratives would entail a loss of the coherence of their normative world. Yes, the slave
owner presumably enslaved blacks because it made him richer than he would be if he
set them free. But the various normative understandings of that choice, that slavery was
as morally acceptable as his use of livestock, or that slavery was an unfortunate social
structure that he had to manage, and that his slaves were better off enslaved than
turned loose, or whatever his moral justification, were not, at least in his mind, the
product of a conscious, self-interested choice to embrace a particular set of narratives
about blacks.
LAW PRESERVES THE PRIVILEGES

CURRENTLY ENJOYED BY WHITES
1. LEGAL PROCESSES PRESERVE THE STATUS QUO
While political lawyers struggle to cope with the practical ramifications of this
dissociation - constricted substantive claims, inhospitable procedures, impatient judges,
frustrated clients - progressive race scholars critically search for explanations. Five
explanations developed by theorists warrant brief mention. The first is that even the
Court's "progressive" antidiscrimination rulings reflect majoritarian interests. From this
view, law and legal process tend primarily to preserve the social and political status quo,
and thus antidiscrimination law generates illusions of systemic reordering and long-term
racial justice. Society perceives the declaration and occasional enforcement of
intentionalist antidiscrimination laws as justice done. This perception enables society's
majority to believe in equality while ignoring the limitations of legal justice and the
persistence of institutional racism. See Delgado & Stefancic, Failed Revolutions, supra
note 57 (describing how the methods and structure of legal justice operate to preserve
unequal status quo social arrangements while persuading society, including traditional
civil rights lawyers, of continuing social progress). Related critiques of law and legal
process have been made since the turn of the last century. Those critiques in varying
ways challenge the presumed neutrality and objectivity of legal rules in their
formulation, interpretation, and application; interrogate legal methods in terms of power;
and value and examine the operation and social effects of the legal system.
2. LAW STACKS THE DECK AGAINST JUSTICE FOR MINORITIES

A fourth explanation involves a procedural realism attentive to questions of power and
value. I have written elsewhere about how recent efficiency reforms in the law's
adjudicatory procedures and the narrowing of remedial options tend to diminish court
access for those already at society's margins, especially racial and other minorities
asserting novel claims or theories that challenge existing social and political
arrangements. Critical sociological proceduralists observe ways in which procedural
rules and systems, in formulation, interpretation, and application, often reflect so-called
substantive value choices. The collapse of the clean substance-procedure dichotomy
implicates power allocation and political value judgments in the framing and handling of
adjudicatory process. These theoretical observations are buttressed by 849 empirical
studies of court access for disadvantaged groups seeking social structural change
through law. The studies identify the ways in which dominant interests exclude from
government [justice] agenda issues that threaten the status quo [by the use of] ... "a set
of predominant values, beliefs, rituals, and institutional procedures ('rules of the game')
that operate systematically and consistently to the benefit of certain persons and groups
at the expense of others." As procedural justice research confirms, these kinds of racial
minority experiences with legal process, the system's procedures and methods, are
likely to influence strongly minorities' overall perceptions of the limitations of legal
justice.
WHITES WILL NOT END THEIR OWN

LEGAL PRIVILEGE
1. WHITES WILL NOT DISMANTLE WHITENESS
1998, p.79
Thus, many reasons exist to be pessimistic about Haney Lopez's strategy of Whites
dismantling Whiteness. First, some Whites are unabashed racists--neo-Nazis, Klan,
skinheads, or whatever. Such Whites seek to bolster, not tear down, the edifice of
Whiteness. Many more are "race conscious" Whites. The narratives of racism, by
whatever name, are a part of their normative universe and provide an essential
coherence to their choices and lives. Dismantling Whiteness, for them, means losing that
normative coherence, as well as the loss of that psychic comfort of knowing that there is
an "other" to whom you are superior. Finally, even for those Whites who reject at the
conscious level the narratives of racism, the prospect of confronting and dismantling
Whiteness is daunting. First, the strategy of dismantling Whiteness entails loss and the
coming of a new, unfamiliar world. Second, the full confrontation of the implications of
Whiteness as we look back across the story of our lives has the potential to shatter our
sense of self-worth and accomplishment. It is no wonder that Whites fall into a
transparent sense of their race. We can't bear to look too closely at our Whiteness. And,
I fear, we can't bear to give it up.
2. WHITES ARE UNLIKELY TO CHALLENGE THEIR OWN PRIVILEGE

1998, p.79
The point is that what Haney Lopez calls the "purely social construction of race,"
understood as the narratives of a nomos, however evil its nature, may be the last thing
Whites would be willing to give up. There's just too much at stake. Haney Lopez
understands the basic problem. He in fact projects a deep pessimism about the chances
for his agenda of White renunciation and explains this pessimism in the concluding
chapter of his book, entitled The Value to Whites of Whiteness. Haney Lopez takes the
example of the Supreme Court in the Thind case. Those Justices faced the breakdown of
any scientific basis or objective reality against which race might be measured. But
instead of questioning the very idea of Whiteness and the underlying logic of the
statute's exclusion of non-Whites, the Court instead preserved Whiteness. Haney Lopez
explains the Court's response in Thind in the following terms: While the Court's decision
is intelligible on a number of levels, it is perhaps best understood as an expression of the
value of Whiteness to Whites. White identity provides material and spiritual assurances
of superiority in a crowded society. We should thus not be too surprised that the
prerequisite courts clung to the notion of a fixed White race, even when confronted by
its falsity. He concludes his book with the image of contemporary Whites as persons,
like the judges of the prerequisite cases, "unwilling to relinquish the privileges of
Whiteness."
3. BACKLASHING AGAINST CIVIL RIGHTS PROVE LAW WILL NOT CHANGE SOCIETY
Richard Delgado, Charles Inglis Thomson Professor of Law, University of Colorado, and
Jean Stefancic, Research Associate, University of Colorado School of Law, WILLIAM &
MARY LAW REVIEW, WINTER, 1995, p.182
Reform through law alone, as we mentioned, is apt to have little effect, because legal
decrees succumb silently and painlessly to interpretation and other forms of cultural
weight. Even when, as happened with the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, legal
reform operates in concert with broader social forces to produce undeniable and muchneeded gains, resistance is apt to set in at some point. Consider how today we no longer
talk in terms of separateness as an inherent injury, of black schoolchildren as victims, or
of racism as a harm whose injury "is unlikely ever to be undone." Instead, we speak of
the need for formal neutrality, of the dangers affirmative action poses for innocent
whites, and of the need for black Americans to look to their own resources. Moderates
and conservatives alike have rolled back affirmative action and challenged university
and college theme houses, special curricula, and ethnic studies departments, which they
see as violations of the merit principle and fair and equal treatment policies. Courts are
quick to strike down set-aside programs and affirmative action plans as "quota systems"
likely to discriminate against "innocent whites." The narrative of Plessy v. Ferguson more
aptly characterizes our attitudes with respect to race than do the stirring words of
Brown.
Emmanuel Levinas
"Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are
not duped by morality."
--Emmanuel Levinas, TOTALITY AND INFINITY, p. 21
Debate about philosophy and values has for too long been confined to particular
dichotomies, which force participants into an "either-or" mentality: individualism versus
collectivism; freedom versus order; egoism versus altruism; the list goes on. The job of
philosophy, however, is to question the very underpinnings of those choices forced upon
us. Why is the individual constantly pitted against society? Why is freedom inherently
opposed to attempts to order society? Why must selfishness be the natural and
inevitable outcome of individualism?
If the job of philosophy is to explode these binary oppositions, then Emmanuel Levinas
ought to receive the employee of the century award. Levinas offers a radical departure
from Western philosophy by shifting the starting point of all conceptual thought from the
Self to the Other. He argues that our very being, and all the philosophical systems we
produce, comes from our encounters with other people, rather than our own selfreferential reflections. In so arguing, Levinas is not a collectivist, nor is he an
individualist. He is not a communitarian (although he is concerned about communities);
he is not an egoist (though he believes in individual freedom). His argument should turn
value debate completely around, for he argues that there is an inviolable relationship
between the Self and the Other that cannot be captured or controlled by any set of
systematized ethics or politics. In short, he invites us back, from speculations about
systems and metaphysics and rights and universals, to the most basic of human
relationships. The results are revolutionary, staggering, inspiring.
This essay traces the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas and its impact on
value debate, particularly in the realm of ethics. After a brief biography, this essay
explores the fundamental contribution of Levinas: a shift from Self-based philosophy to
Other-based philosophy.
BIOGRAPHY
Emmanuel Levinas was born in Lithuania in 1906. The timing and placement of his birth,
along with the path of his life travels, would place him at the center of the most
significant and cataclysmic events of the 20th century. To begin with, he witnessed the
Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rapid Bolshevik takeovers of Lithuania and
surrounding countries. After the Revolution, which did not eliminate anti-Semitism and
hence could not protect the safety of Jews like Levinas, he went to France.
For some years afterward, Levinas traveled between France and Germany to study both
Talmudic religion (which he had really began studying as a boy in Lithuania) and the very
important philosophical changes going on in Europe at the time. These changes are
worth mentioning in some detail. In 1927, Martin Heidegger published Being and Time,
perhaps the most important philosophical work of the 20th century. Heidegger argued
that humans have an essentially subjective and relative relationship to the world around
them, that they engage in projects, alone and with others, veering between authenticity
and inauthenticity, fearing death, and falling into alienation. Heidegger's work
profoundly touched Levinas, although Levinas felt the work did not tell the whole story.
Levinas would argue that we are far more influenced by other people than Heidegger
suspected.
While in Germany, Levinas was captured by the Nazis and spent six years in a
concentration camp. Here, he began to see the "others" that Heidegger wrote of, but in
a profoundly different light. Instead of trying to avoid their travails, Levinas was drawn to
their suffering, and deeply frustrated by his inability to stop it.
Levinas would spend the rest of his life meditating on the question of "the Other." He
wrote several books and essays detailing his belief that all philosophy, and many other
human projects, represent an attempt to escape the inescapable: the obvious fact that
people need one another, and are capable of profound cruelty to each other even as
they try to fulfill that need. Along the way, Levinas befriended philosophers such as JeanPaul Sartre and Jacques Derrida. However, he kept his distance from them
philosophically, stubbornly reminding his audience that before there is text (Derrida) or
absolute freedom (Sartre), there is the starting point of it all: the encounter with the
Other.
Emmanuel Levinas died on Christmas day, 1995. Derrida gave his funeral eulogy,
humbly admitting that his friend Emmanuel had raised questions none of the other
philosophers could answer. By the time of his death, Levinas was already becoming
deeply influential in the United States as well as Europe. Today, there are law review
articles analyzing the impact of Levinasian thought on legal codes; religious books
speculating on whether God is the Ultimate Other, and volumes of ethics essays
acknowledging that we may have come a long way on the wrong track, thinking that we
can invent ethical systems to bring us closer to each other, when, in fact, they may force
us even further apart than we were in the first place.
LEVINAS'S PHILOSOPHY: THE OTHER AS

PRIOR TO THE SELF
In the history of philosophy, we find a longing to establish universals. Philosophical
thought longs to be able to say "everything is X," and then place that X at the center of
a comprehensive system. Plato declared all things to be reflections of the perfect and
ideal forms. Before that, Heraclitus announced that everything was constantly changing;
and the very first philosopher, Thales, naively posited all to consist of water.
The moderns, and even the so-called postmoderns, continued this trend. Marx declared
everything to be material and all human activity reducible to labor. Freud reduced all
human endeavor to ego and libido. Nietzsche announced that all was the will to power.
Heidegger, supposedly breaking away from modernism, laid out a description of human
endeavor, "Dasein," which was supposedly applicable to all people. Derrida, perhaps the
most popular postmodern thinker, did little more than reduce everything to "text."
In Levinasian language, all these philosophical projects were simply a reduction of the
Other to the Same. When faced with a plethora of phenomena, philosophers long to
make it all into one understandable system. Levinas sees the history of Western
philosophy as a conspiracy to make everything the same, for the intellectual Self to
assimilate all Others. As philosopher Nick Smith explains: Several philosophers became
acutely self-aware that their discipline had sought, since its pre-Socratic beginnings in
Parmenides and others, and through Hegel and Heidegger, to render existence as a
singular unified phenomenon. Philosophers and scientists of the Western tradition
craved a final theory that could neatly systematize the world into an organized
framework that could logically explain away all the aberrations and anomalies of
existence. For these thinkers, nothing could exist outside of their understanding of the
world and all "otherness" could somehow be related to and harmonized with their
conception of the world. (Nick Smith, "Incommensurability and Alterity in Contemporary
Jurisprudence," BUFFALO LAW REVIEW, Spring/Summer 1997, p. 510)
Levinas's answer to this conspiracy is to remind us that all these systems place the Self,
and the concept of same-ness and universality, as the starting point for all philosophical
projects. If we put the Self first, it is natural to assume that everything must be made to
be like the Self. However, Levinas sees the Other as actually prior to the Self. Alterity, or
otherness, rather than being a far-away alien, is actually our very foundation. I would not
even begin to know myself, as self, without first having my dormant consciousness
interrupted by that which I am not. The very preconditions of realizing my self-ness rely
upon a distinction between the self and this interruption of the self. To think--at all--is to
think about the Other first.
Since the Other appears to the Self before any philosophy, metaphysics, or any rational
system can define it at all, all thinking is subsequently a response to this alterity. For
Levinas, to know the Other one must know it in the realm of basic human relationships,
not philosophy. In fact "knowledge" of the Other is a contradiction in terms, since
rationalism constructs the Other rather than allowing its Other-ness to go unopposed.
This basic relationship, what we could call an ethical relationship, is pre-philosophical.
Moreover, the relationship between Self and Other is mutually dependent, since I would
not exist in consciousness without others. This is why Levinas believes people are more
important than ideas, and that our responsibility to others is unavoidable, simply given
their existence, and the demands placed upon our very being by that existence.
INCOMMENSURABILITY
If we cannot reduce the Other to simply being an extension of the Self, it follows that we
cannot always bring others into agreement with our own ethical and philosophical
systems. Levinasian scholar Nick Smith writes: How can we, or should we, assess value
within a pluralistic community composed of institutions and individuals who possess
incommensurable systems of valuation? How can we decide on the value of something
such as clean air, a fetus, a professional reputation, or a body part if members of the
community have different interpretations and understandings of not only how much that
thing is worth, but also of how it should be appropriately and respectfully valued? If an
injury is suffered to one's reproductive capabilities, for example, how should a court
determine a remedy that will both compensate for such a loss and honor the belief that
the human body should not be equated with a cash value? Or, in another example, how
should a legislature or administrative agency mediate between animal rights advocates,
steadfast in their belief that animals should live free from torture, and a research lab
that performs experimental surgeries on live animals? (Nick Smith, "Incommensurability
and Alterity in Contemporary Jurisprudence," BUFFALO LAW REVIEW, Spring/Summer
1997, p. 504)
It is not always the case that, in a debate between two fundamentally opposed systems
of thought, one side is simply right and the other side is simply wrong. For Levinasian
ethics, it is sometimes immoral to try to convince others that their fundamental beliefs
are wrong, for those beliefs form a part of their very being, an inviolable part of their
thinking which is as important to them as food, shelter, labor, or anything else that we
should not steal from them.
Apart from its ethical problems, it is pragmatically impossible to hope for agreement on
issues upon which we are fundamentally divided. The alternative, for a Levinasian ethic,
is to concentrate on those things which we do have in common: our universal need to be
loved, accepted, sheltered, and fed. It is more important that we feed the hungry than
debate about the systemic causes of hunger. It is more important that we listen to the
stories of mothers and children than try to determine whether there is some sweeping
"patriarchy" which harms them. Systems are merely inventions designed to alienate us
from one another. Basic ethical politics respects incommensurability and treats people
as more important than politics.
Nick Smith believes that a certain working formula can explain incommensurability in
value debates: For a problem of incommensurable valuation to arise, the following three
conditions must exist: (1) a belief is held regarding the value of something (the right of
animals to be free from torture); (2) this belief comes into conflict or is incompatible with
another belief regarding the value of that thing (the right to sacrifice animals in
furtherance of promising medical research); and (3) a choice must be made between the
competing beliefs. Also, incommensurability can occur in two forms: (1)
intersubjectively, such as between one party who believes people should have freedom
to contract for sexual services and another party who believes prostitution should be
outlawed because it degrades the value of sexual relations; and (2) intrasubjectively,
such as in a decision between leaving your toddlers with a day care provider so that you
can pursue a fulfilling career, on the one hand, and placing your professional life on hold
to spend all of your time with your children, on the other. (Smith, 505)
These real world examples suggest that, even though we depend on one another for our
very existence, a pre-occupation with forcing people into universal agreement is a
doomed project.
THE FUTILITY OF SYSTEMIC ETHICS

To systematize ethics is to believe that we can establish universal rules for human
behavior. The search for systems, we recall, is really an attempt to turn all others into
the same as we are. If this applies to metaphysical pronouncements, it applies even
more to ethical pronouncements, for it is in the realm of ethics that we establish norms
of behavior. Utilitarianism, for example, says we should "always" act to increase the
greatest good for the greatest number. Not only does this assume there is a universal
"good" which will be good for everyone, but it also assumes that everyone should follow
that principle. Deontology is no different: It defines certain universal duties and requires
all actors to disregard consequences.
Sometimes "rules of ethics" denote the boundaries outside of which we are free to hurt
one another. It is as if, as long as I follow the rules, I can claim that I am not responsible
for those whom I hurt in doing so. Their pain is simply an unfortunate side effect of my
morally right actions. Examples of this include war, capital punishment, and
imprisonment. But it doesn't only apply to acts that explicitly cause harm. Suppose I
claim I have an ethical duty to save someone who is drowning, but I don't know how to
swim very well. I might actually increase the chances that the victim drowns, because I
proceeded to save him or her with no regard to the consequences. If I think more about
the "rules" than I do about the well-being of the person, I am guilty of placing principles
above people. Sometimes we can do the right thing "ethically" and still cause harm to
others. In such cases, Levinas reminds us that we should not forgive ourselves simply for
"following the rules."
If systemic ethics is futile, and even un-ethical, then attempts to say "utilitarianism is
best," "deontology is best," or otherwise, fundamentally undermine our relations with
other people. Applying a universal value criteria to everyone is both coercive and
potentially harmful.
AGAINST INDIVIDUALISM
The duty to others is unavoidable. We are always responsible for others because our
very existence, our very thought processes, and the very foundations of our human
projects are acts of response. In spite of the fact that this seems at odds with Levinas's
eschewment of systemic ethics, it really isn't a contradiction. My duty to help others who
are in need may actually contradict, or hyper-intensify, my ethical system. I cannot
appeal to that system as a justification for helping people, and likewise, I cannot use the
system to justify not helping people.
Instead, the ethical relationship which questions individualism begins with what Levinas
refers to as "the face of the Other." It is the face-to-face encounter with another person
that not only obliges me to respond to their needs, but also places my own freedom in
question. The very presence of another person reminds me, at a deeply fundamental
level, that I cannot simply do whatever I want. I do not "choose" to be responsible to
other people. Instead, "Levinas insists that ethics is all about responsibility: that
responsibility as ethical is unchosen and prior to dialogue..." (Arne Johan Vetlesen,
"Worlds Apart? Habermas and Levinas," PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM 23: 1
(1997): 2)
For Levinas, freedom is meaningless if it is simply treated as individualism. Recall that

our very identities, our thought-processes, and most certainly our values, all come from
our processing of our encounters with others. "One is not aware of his or her
individuality until one enters a relationship with an Other and so calls the subjectivity of
freedom itself into question." (Vetlesen, 8) A being who had no others to remind her that
she was, in fact, an existing being, would have no thoughts at all.
This has several implications, all of which undermine individualistic philosophies. First,
the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand is deeply flawed because it assumes both a
singular identity of the person, and the absolute duty of that person to do only that
which is best for herself. Levinas would reply that this is impossible: We are never doing
anything only for ourselves, because everything we think, do, say, or desire is done in
response to others.
Second, the libertarians such as Robert Nozick assume that an individual's labor is hers
alone. This is the reason why taxes, wealth redistribution, and the like, are discouraged
by libertarians. But one cannot enter into any project all alone. The very nature of labor
requires collective effort, even if one thinks one is working alone. One works as one has
been taughtby others. One sells one's laborto others. One uses tools developedby
others.
Even if separation from others were possible, Levinasian ethicists believe it would be
undesirable, because of the enjoyment and satisfaction the healthy human gets from
helping others or working alongside them. Human solidarity is as close to a natural state
of affairs as any condition on earth. "Freedom would be empty, futile, vain if left to itself
and its respective human I only. The Other is the greatest gift to the freedom of the I,
and precisely not what threatens to annul it. Since there is for each human I also a
human Other, the freedom proudly commanded by the I is given a task, and thus
sustained not threatened in its raison d'etre." (Vetlesen, 7)
PROBLEMS WITH LEVINAS

It would be silly to assume that such a radical departure from traditional philosophy and
ethics can come easily. Instead, it seems that Levinas asks too much of us: Not only does
he demand that we abandon the search for systemic and absolute truth (or at least
subordinate that search to everyday encounters with other people, a project that seems
somewhat oppressive and limiting), but in so demanding, he may be guilty of the same
totalizations he opposes in philosophy. After all, doesn't he really say we are always in
the service of other people? Isn't he making his own sweeping universal gesture when
he says that all metaphysical, philosophical and ethical projects are guilty of the same
other-erasing sin?
Some have argues that the philosophy of Levinas is too absolute, claiming that one
cannot always be enslaved to other people, whether that enslavement be our absolute
phenomenological condition ("one cannot exist without the Other") or our ethical
imperative ("one must always put the Other's needs before one's own"). Isn't there any
room for me to just "be me?" Isn't it possible that the Self must be as sacred as the
Other?
Consider the fact that, in order to help others, I must myself be in good condition
mentally, emotionally and physically. If that is true, then even if Levinas's intent is not
that we sacrifice ourselves absolutely, it is easy to imagine that some overly zealous
altruists will do just that: place others' needs so high on their agenda that their own
needs will be neglected. If this happens, then nobody will be better off.
Likewise, it seems absurd that there is no identity for myself other than that gained from
other people. I may get my name, my vocation, and most of my thoughts from others,
and I may not be able to separate myself from them completely (although this is an
arguable point). But there is some level of self-reflection necessary in the formation of a
mature human being. Once again, even if Levinas concedes this, it is still possible to see
in his work a call for hatred of the Self rather than extension of love toward the Other.
The second main objection to Levinas has to do with his concept of incommensurability.
It is simply too absolute to suggest that humans cannot reach a consensus on critical
value questions. Even if it is true that some humans will disagree with certain sensible
principles (for example, the fact that a small minority of racists still exist, despite
society's rejection of racism), it does not follow that we should abandon the effort to
collectively decide and establish social values.
Consider the issue of slavery. At one time, it certainly seemed like people would "always"
be divided on the issue. But through activism, laws, and struggle, a consensus emerged
that it was wrong. Levinasian interpretations of the abortion question, for example, treat
the abortion issue much like the slavery issue must have been treated long ago. But
there is no reason to believe that society cannot eventually come to a basic agreement
about it.
Moreover, there seem to be serious ethical problems with abandoning the search for this
consensus. Once the concept of consensus is given up, society will become even more
balkanized. Everyone will group themselves into some enclave and ignore the
statements and desires of other people. Isn't ignoring the Other a violation of Levinas's
prime principle?
CONCLUSION
The objections listed above may challenge Levinas's thought, but they do not defeat it.
For even if consensus is possible, coercion is all too often used as a means to achieve
consensus. Levinas forces us to question both the motives and the means of achieving
such consensus. Likewise, even if it seems to be asking to much of me to require that I
recognize my dependence on and responsibility for others, Levinas believes such
absolutism is the only hope we have of survival in a complex and violent world.
Debaters who understand even a small part of Levinasian ethics can turn the debate
world upside down by questioning the ability and ethical implications of the search for
absolute truth. Levinas will make value debaters more wary of carelessly throwing out
criteria and universal values. His thoughts will serve as a powerful rejoinder to the "me
first" rhetoric of Ayn Rand, a thinker notoriously overutilized in value debate. Most of all,
Levinas can remind us that debate, like all other endeavors, is about people. Real,
suffering, struggling people.
Richard Cohen explains:the responsibility Levinas has in mind is paradoxically a

greater responsibility that the already infinite responsibilities set by ratio in its quest for
the truth of being, in its call for sufficient reasons and historical authenticity. The
responsibility Levinas discerns in thinking, then, is not just another more rigorous
attention to method and evidence, another epistemological duty added to the
responsibilities which guide and give the reasons for reason, the autonomy of the
measured life. Rather, there is an other responsibility, an unmeasured and
unmeasurable responsibility, one directed from and toward the outside of thought, from
and toward the irreducible alterity of the other person. There are obligations greater
than the infinite responsibility to think and be on one's own, greater, then, than all the
traditional philosophic responsibilities, greater because better. (Richard Cohen,
"Introduction" in Emmanuel Levinas, TIME AND THE OTHER, 1987, pp. 25-26) Who can
say what the impact will be, to a thinker who calls debaters themselves to consider the
very foundations and purposes of debate itself?
Bibliography
Awerkamp, Don, EMMANUEL LEVINAS: ETHICS AND POLITICS, New York: Revisionist
Press, 1977.
Bernasconi, Robert, "The Violence of the Face: Peace and Language in the Thought of
Emmanuel Levinas," PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM 23: 6, 1997, p. 81-93.
Chanter, Tina, "The Betrayal of Philosophy: Emmanuel Levinas's Otherwise than Being."
PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM 23: 6, 1997, p. 65-79.
Haar, Michael, "The Obsession of the Other: Ethics as Traumatization." PHILOSOPHY AND
SOCIAL CRITICISM 23: 6, 1997, p. 95-107.
Levinas, Emmanuel, TIME AND THE OTHER, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987.
Levinas, Emmanuel, COLLECTED PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS, Boston: Nijhoff, 1987.
Levinas, Emmanuel, TOTALITY AND INFINITY, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,

1988.
WE SHOULD REJECT SYSTEMIC VIEWS

OF PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS
1. PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS DECLARE WAR ON OTHER-NESS
Emmanuel Levinas, Philosopher, TOTALITY AND INFINITY, 1969, p. 21
The state of war suspends morality; it divests the eternal institutions and obligations of
their eternity and rescinds ad interim the unconditional imperatives. In advance its
shadow falls over the actions of men. War is not only one of the ordeals--the greatest--of
which morality lives; it renders morality derisory. The art of foreseeing war and of
winning it by every means--politics--is henceforth enjoined as the very exercise of
reason. Politics is opposed to morality, as philosophy to naivete.
2. THE ATTEMPT TO DEFINE ALL OTHERNESS INTO A SYSTEM IS THE ROOT OF VIOLENCE
But violence does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating persons as in
interrupting their continuity, making them play roles in which they no longer recognize
themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance,
making them carry out actions that will destroy every possibility for action. Not only
modern war but every war employs arms that turn against those who wield them. It
establishes an order from which no one can keep his distance; nothing henceforth is
exterior. War does not manifest exteriority and the other as other; it destroys the
identity of the same.
3. PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS REDUCE INDIVIDUALS TO COMPONENTS OF THOSE

SYSTEMS
Emmanuel Levinas, Philosopher, TOTALITY AND INFINITY, 1969, pp. 21-22
The visage of being that shows itself in war is fixed in the concept of totality, which
dominates Western philosophy. Individuals are reduced to being bearers of forces that
command them unbeknown to themselves. The meaning of individuals (invisible outside
of this totality) is derived from the totality. The unicity of each present is incessantly
sacrificed to a future appealed to bring forth its objective meaning.
4. SYSTEMS REDUCE OTHERS TO SAME-NESS

Western philosophy has most often been an ontology: a reduction of the other to the
same by interposition of a middle and neutral term that ensures the comprehension of
being. The primacy of the same was Socrates's teaching: to receive nothing of the Other
but what is in me, as though from all eternity I was in possession of what comes to me
from the outside--to receive nothing, or to be free.
5. SYSTEMS DE-PERSONALIZE OUR RELATIONS WITH OTHER PEOPLE

Emmanuel Levinas, Philosopher, TOTALITY AND INFINITY, 1969, pp. 87-88
For the philosophical tradition of the West every relation between the same and the
other, when it is no longer an affirmation of the supremacy of the same, reduces itself to
an impersonal relation within a universal order. Philosophy itself is identified with the
substitution of ideas for persons, the theme for the interlocutor, the interiority of the
logical relation for the exteriority of interpellation. Existents are reduced to the neuter
state of the idea, Being, the concept.
LEVINASIAN PHILOSOPHY IS GOOD FOR

SOCIETY
1. JUST SOCIAL RELATIONS CANNOT BE FOUND IN PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS
Social relations do not simply present us with a superior empirical matter, to be treated
in terms of the logic of genus and species. They are the original deployment of the
relationship that is no longer open to the gaze that would encompass its terms, but is
accomplished from me to the other in the face to face.
2. SOCIAL PLURALISM REQUIRES RESPECT FOR THE FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS BETWEEN

THE SELF AND OTHERS
The face to face is a final and irreducible relation which no concept could cover without
the thinker who thinks that concept finding himself forthwith before a new interlocutor; it
makes possible the pluralism of society.
VALUES ARE INCOMMENSURATE
1. INCOMMENSURABILITY OCCURS WHEN PARTIES CANNOT AGREE ON FUNDAMENTALS

Nick Smith, Vanderbilt University Department of Philosophy , BUFFALO LAW REVIEW,
Spring/Summer 1997, p. 505
For a problem of incommensurable valuation to arise, the following three conditions
must exist: (1) a belief is held regarding the value of something (the right of animals to
be free from torture); (2) this belief comes into conflict or is incompatible with another
belief regarding the value of that thing (the right to sacrifice animals in furtherance of
promising medical research); and (3) a choice must be made between the competing
beliefs. Also, incommensurability can occur in two forms: (1) intersubjectively, such as
between one party who believes people should have freedom to contract for sexual
services and another party who believes prostitution should be outlawed because it
degrades the value of sexual relations; and (2) intrasubjectively, such as in a decision
between leaving your toddlers with a day care provider so that you can pursue a
fulfilling career, on the one hand, and placing your professional life on hold to spend all
of your time with your children, on the other.
2. THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE SCALE TO WEIGH VALUES AGAINST ONE ANOTHER
Nick Smith, Vanderbilt University Department of Philosophy , BUFFALO LAW REVIEW,

Spring/Summer 1997, p. 505-506
Generally speaking, incommensurability theorists believe that human valuation flows
from particular institutional or personal beliefs about what each actor considers and
interprets to be meaningful and important, and thus value cannot be reduced to a single
quantifiable calculus that would be appropriate in all circumstances. Thus,
incommensurability theorists assert that it is crucial for us to evaluate certain goods,
such as love, profit, talent, or friendship according to separate scales and within distinct
"spheres," in Michael Walzer's terms, so as to properly understand the nature of that
good as qualitatively distinct from other goods. In Margaret Jane Radin's words, a belief
in the incommensurability of values "means that there is no scale along which all values
can be arrayed in order so that for any value or package of values we can say
definitively that it has more or less value than some other."
LEVINAS'S LACK OF CLARITY DOOMS

HIS PHILOSOPHY
1. LEVINAS LACKS A CLEAR DEFINITION OF HIS MOST IMPORTANT CONCEPT: THE OTHER
Michael Haar, Philosopher, University of Paris, PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM, Vol.
23 number 6, 1997, p. 95
What or who is Levinas's Other? Can this question even be asked? Is such a question not
already ruled out because it belongs to the realm of conceptuality or to the coercive
order of the Same which, for Levinas, equals Being? What is the philosophical status of
the verb to be, for Levinas, when it is used in a seemingly naive way (for instance, in a
definition)? If the Other (or rather others, as he would say) is before or beyond being,'
does this anteriority or transcendence change, suppress, or leave untouched the very
precondition of every definition, i.e. the implicit pre-understanding of the verb to be?
This preliminary questioning of method is never put. Nonetheless, Levinas's concept' of
Other, in its own way, tried to force into a strange kind of sameness several different
and apparently contradictory senses of otherness.
2. LEVINASIAN ETHICS PLACES NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN TORTURER AND TORTURED

23 number 6, 1997, p. 101
The strange logic of the Other, deeper within the self than the self, would be obliged to
admit that the torturer and the tortured are one and the same, as in Schopenhauer, and,
moreover, that the highest good, the ethical demand and the greatest evil (to be
persecuted to death) are one and the same principle. For to be obsessed by the Other
means, for Levinas, having to respond personally to and for him or her.
LEVINAS'S PHILOSOPHY CANNOT SOLVE

FOR THE INJUSTICE HE DESCRIBES
1. LEVINAS ASSUMES THAT PERSECUTION IS OUR NATURAL CONDITION:
This prevents any meaningful discussion of injustice and how to solve it
23 number 6, 1997, p. 100-101
For Levinas, both conscience and consciousness are purely egoistic: Ethics is the
egoistic spontaneity of the Same always already put into question by the Other.' Can
ethics be conceived or simply understood by a purely passive pre-understanding
implying no truly external relationship or reciprocity? Such a unilaterally passive,
preontological ethics which is only suffered seems necessarily to lead to a kind of
monadism. In effect, Levinas writes: Obsession means to suffer, to be'; Altruism is
antinatural, nonvoluntary, inseparable from possible persecution'; and Persecution
brings the ego back to the self'. But which persecution? It is unbelievable that an
immemorial or a priori form of persecution precedes all historical and, moreover,
contemporary images and aspects of percecution.
2. LEVINASIAN ETHICS PROVIDES NO WAY OUT OF INJUSTICE OR TOTALITARIANISM

23 number 6, 1997, pp. 103-104
The Levinasian atmosphere is even more gloomy than the Sartrean. The words which
constantly recur in the latter half of Otherwise Than Being are characteristic:
persecution, accusation, being hostage (to the Other), anxiety and loneliness. The
terrifying ambience is that of a trial before a totalitarian court of justice, one imagining
oneself obliged to appear before the court without any hope of self-justification.
LEVINAS IS UNREASONABLE AND

ABSOLUTIST
1. THE LEVINASIAN CONCEPT OF RESPONSIBILITY IS TOO ABSOLUTE
23 number 6, 1997, p. 104
If I am responsible for everything and everyone without or before any will or knowledge,
it seems that responsibility places itself outside any relation, or, at least, that no real'
relation is required. It is not surprising to read that the Other escapes every relation'; or
that The obsessed ego obsessed by all the others is not the inversion of the ecstatic
intentionality'. No liberty can bear a responsibility which is so tremendously heavy that it
declares and defines the true me (me as in the Same) as being only guilty of what the
others are, do, or suffer. The abysmal wound of the Other empties the subject and
deprives him or her of any self-sufficient ground. The restless subjectivity must roam the
world endlessly, without home or land; it is primordially extradited, originally banished,
its substance and attributes radically contaminated, demanded, skinned alive, deprived
even of its own poverty.
2. LEVINASIAN ETHICS IS TOTALITARIAN:

It turns the self into a slave to the other.
23 number 6, 1997, p. 106
At this point, must we not rehabilitate the Same against the literally unbearable excess
of the Other, against what Levinas himself calls the enormity' and incommensurability'
of the absolutely Other', and defend some kind of norm and measure or come back to
the primacy and privacy of myself and yourself? Without the balance of the Same, the
Other could become highly dangerous, even terroristic and totalitarian; that is to say, it
could be more domineering than any totality ever instituted by the Same.
UNIVERSAL VALUES EXIST: THE

INCOMMENSURABILITY THESIS IS
WRONG
1. COMMON GOODS ARE POSSIBLE TO FIND
Ronald R. Garet, Assistant Professor of Law and Religion, University of Southern
California, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, July, 1983, p. 1001
For while it is indeed true that the intrinsic group good differs from the intrinsic
individual good and the intrinsic social good, all three of these goods nonetheless have a
common foundation. They must have a common foundation if they are to be recognized
as intrinsic goods. That is, there must be some utterly primitive goodmaking element
that is common to all three goods. Moreover, the three units -- individuals, groups, and
society -- are related by the manner in which good gives rise to right in each case.
2. EXISTENCE ITSELF IS A COMMON GOOD

Ronald R. Garet, Assistant Professor of Law and Religion, University of Southern
California, " SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW, July, 1983, p. 1002
Existence, as the human mode of being, comprises the self-formative struggle that
distinguishes the human world both ontologically and ethically. As I shall explain at
greater length in section III, existence both carries its own moral value (i.e., the intrinsic
good) and insists upon that value in the form of the right. Communality is the ground of
a right -- the right of groups to maintain themselves and to pursue their distinctive
courses -- because communality is one of the characteristic structures of existence and,
in that sense, of the intrinsic human good. To rob existence of communality, of the
communal celebratory process which forms the substance of much of our experience,
would be to deny one ethical constituent of our humanity.
Robert Jay Lifton

I'll never forget that December day. Preparing for the two-tournament California swing,
I'd been up all night cutting and briefing evidence. Weary from lack of sleep, I stumbled
out of the Lewis and Clark debate squad room to get some fresh air.
I'd been reading tons of evidence about nuclear weapons, the risk of accidental launch
and potential for massive retaliation before anyone knew what was happening. For some
reason, as I looked off in the distance, I visualized what it would be like to see a
mushroom cloud going off over the horizon. The weird thing, however, was that I didn't
feel particularly moved by the image.
Now that's scary, imagining the ultimate human holocaust and not freaking out. But
that's what most of us do subconsciously every day through a series of psychological
phenomena examined by noted psychologist Robert Jay Lifton. Lifton, the Distinguished
Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the City University of New York and Director of
the Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is
interested in how living with the bomb on a day-to-day basis affects peoples' minds and
mental health.
I had read one of Lifton's books - THE GENOCIDAL MENTALITY: NAZI HOLOCAUST AND
NUCLEAR THREAT - prior to the escapade I just described, but didn't put together his
description of the phenomenon until about a year later. As one of his intellectual
successors, Ashis Nandy, describes the procedure, the fear of nuclear conflict "seeps
into public consciousness (and) creates a new awareness of the transience of life. It
forces people to live with the constant fear that, one day, a sudden war or accident
might kill not only them, but also their children and grandchildren, and everybody they
love. This awareness gradually creates a sense of the hollowness of life. For many, life is
denuded of substantive meaning."
I apologize for starting the essay off with such a heavy trip, but hey, it's not like we're
talking about Teletubbies here. We're talking about weapons that quite literally have the
potential to end all life on earth, weapons that most human beings are aware of.
You may be saying to yourself, "But wait! I don't think about the nuclear threat every
day, or even every month. Sure, I'm aware of it on some level - but it's not as if it haunts
my thoughts." The first part of that sentence is true for most people, and generally,
people would agree with the second part of the statement as well. But doesn't it seem
odd to you that you wouldn't think about the ever-present danger around? Lifton
purports to explain why we don't - consciously - think about the nuclear arsenals which
surround us every day, and poses a challenging explanation for why people don't think
they are haunted by the weapons. They are, he says - but the kind of "psychic numbing"
which the threat engenders tends to dull the pain.
ROOTS OF THE THEORY

Lifton has always been interested in human wrongdoing and the dangers we present to
each other. Like most people of his generation, the Nazi Holocaust of World War II was an
omnipresent backdrop to the psychology work he was doing.
Few would dispute that the German national Socialist regime were right up there with
the most evil people ever to live. After all, they slaughtered millions in gruesome
manners, invading countries to impose their will on other races.
But what struck many intellectual observers of the age was what Hannah Arendt called
"the banality of evil" during her writings on the Nuremberg trial of Nazi leader Adolph
Eichmann. When you go to a capital trial for genocide, you probably expect to see the
equivalent of a fire-breathing monster, or a Hannibal Lecter-esque serial killer seated in
the defendants chair. That's not what Arendt saw: she saw a harmless enough looking
old man.
Lifton, too, had his equivalent encounters. For his book THE NAZI DOCTORS, he
interviewed a series of the men who performed horrifying medial experiments upon their
prisoners. Their crimes have been exhaustively documented, and I won't repeat them
here - though I suggest reading histories of the event and Lifton's book, if you don't mind
a nightmare or two.
What struck him, as Arendt, was the essential averageness of these people. For the most
part, they were men who loved their families; came home after eight hours of
unspeakable violence and horror to walk the dog and ask the wife and kids how their day
was. I first read this book eight years ago, and my jaw still drops open at this prospect as I hope some of yours are dropping right now. How, I wondered, could everyday people
be so persuaded to commit genocide - not just unseen genocide committed by soldiers
far away, but clear and present genocide with their own two hands?
The human mind is an amazing thing, as we all innately know. It is capable of performing
remarkable feats of wonder and mystery. And sadly, it can make us capable of feats of
terror and murder.
I don't know any of you reading this personally. (Or maybe I do. If so, hello, please call or
write.) But I feel confident that most of you are saying, "I am not capable of doing
anything like the Nazi doctors did. No way, no how." I hope you're right. But Lifton's
study of how these men's brains betrayed them suggests that we are all capable of more
than we'd like to admit.
Through a series of psychological coping mechanisms, the Nazi war criminals were able
to mentally disassociate themselves with the crimes the committed. For some, wartime
propaganda was a factor. For others, a cultural obedience to authority. For none is there
any excuse.
There is, however, an opportunity to learn from this horrific chapter of history so that it
never happens again.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE

Here are some of the mental phenomena Lifton noticed in his subjects: first, he noticed a
"splitting" technique, where people tended to disassociate what they did at work with
the men they were. That is, you go to work, and you're one man; you go home, and
you're another. This should not be confused with schizophrenia or multiple personality
disorder - it's a different thing, where people simply don't talk about work at home and
rarely talk about the work they're doing at all, except in coded terms.
That hints at another aspect of the genocidal mentality, which is not only exhibited by
the Nazi doctors, but by ordinary Germans living during the Holocaust.
People became numb to the presence of the deadliness around them. This occurred of
necessity - no one can deal with an avalanche of suffering and pain on that level - and
was achieved through a variety of mechanisms: the uses of coded language to refer to
the projects they were working on, the dehumanization of the people they were
slaughtering, etc.
Besides creating the necessary preconditions for genocide, these mental processes
cause negative psychological consequences in the people who are affected by them.
Generally, these can be described as loss of hope, depression, a sense of resignation
and inevitability. These, too, have psychological functions: it is easier to roll over in the
face of adversity and terror than it is to fight that adversity or terror. If the mind
convinces you that the adversity and terror is inevitable, then you are relieved of your
obligation to rail against it.
Of course, that has other mental troubles which come with it - cynicism and depression
being just the foremost among them.
NAZI HOLOCAUST AND NUCLEAR

THREAT
Some of you may be confused as to why I started this piece with an anecdote about my
own reaction to the presence of nuclear weapons in my community. Well, it's because
Lifton started noticing serious similarities between the psychology of Nazi doctors,
German citizens and others of that era and the psychology of people who work on
nuclear weapons and people who live in the shadow of them.
People who work on these weapons exhibit the same sort of splitting that Nazi doctors
did, Lifton posits. They even use some of the same psychological tools - naming the
bombs things like "boomers," to sort of disguise what they do. According to Lifton, the
similarities are quite striking.
That's true not just of the people working on military bases or working on the bombs,
but of the average person growing up in the nuclear age. Lifton says that it is almost
impossible for anyone to grow up truly unaware of the danger - which seems true,
particularly of his generation, which grew up during the height of the Cold War tensions.
Events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, and countless near nuclear accidents
made it fairly impossible to forget the presence of the bombs - not to mention the
Mutually Assured Destruction deterrence strategy that the Pentagon assumed would
make us safe.
It will be interesting to see how his psychological theories and observations change as
the current generation grows up. Some wonder whether it will make a difference to have
no superpower rival like the former Soviet Union. Others think that it might be a worse
type of nuclear fear, given the risk of backpack bombs and nuclear terrorism against
American cities.
Again, though, there is the question: why don't people feel this overwhelming danger
that Lifton says they do? His answer is that it would be mentally shattering for us to do
so, and we must accept some level of nuclear numbing just in order to get through the
day.
He emphasizes that this nuclear numbing comes with psychological consequences - but
is, on some level, inevitable. That is not to say that there is nothing to be done. We'll
discuss his notion of "species consciousness" in a moment.
DEBATE APPLICATION OF THESE

THEORIES
For now, though, let's turn to the practical debate application of these arguments.
Undoubtedly, the best way to present these theories for policy debaters is in the form of
a critique. Value debaters can also use the arguments in that manner - let's see how.
One of the links to the argument is nuclear rhetoric. Words such as "nuclear exchange,"
which sounds more like friendly gift-giving, tend to numb use to the danger of nuclear
weapons. The ultimate outcome of that, Lifton says, is that we are resigned to the
inevitability of a nuclear conflict - which stops us from working to counteract it. Now
that's an in-round impact for policy debaters. LD debaters can use the same principles to
argue that the bad values associated with the nuclearist position should be rejected.
These types of words are often called "nukespeak," also the title of a book which argues
similarly.
There's another nice link to the argument which applies equally well to policy and
Lincoln-Douglas. Extinction imagery - such as talking about end-of-the-world
disadvantages in policy debate, or presenting the possibility of extinction in LD debate
presents a "controlling image" that is not only not positive, but as horrific as anything
around.
Our "larger psychic ecology," according to Lifton, is at risk when we are continually
exposed to "images of extinction."
Especially you policy debaters out there, give this some thought. How many end-of-theworld disadvantages have you run now? Nuclear war disadvantages? Do you even blink
an eye anymore when your opponent claims that your case will result in a disadvantage
that causes a nuclear war?
Now, nuclear war is a huge thing - look at the effect it had on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and those bombs were nothing compared to the bombs we have today in terms of
nuclear payload. What does hearing someone say "nuclear war is about to happen" six
or eight or ten times every tournament do to you mentally?
Well, Lifton would say - and I say, given my personal experience- that it makes you think
it's not such a big deal. You become numb to the notion of it, and sweep it under the
mental rug we all have. That's not good for people mentally, and Lifton even claims it
can lead to a "self-fulfilling prophecy of doom."
This affords you an opportunity to debate not just about policy and value issues, but
about how the process of debating itself affects you, your opponent and the audience
psychologically. I think that's very intellectually exciting, not to mention a good way to
catch an opponent off-guard, eh?
"(T)here is every reason to believe that we are affected by this imagery in ways that are
both ambiguous and profound," Lifton writes. Certainly, that is a topic for debate that
should be pursued by both LD and cross-examination competitors.
Specifically for policy debaters, another link level presents itself: scenario debates. Lifton
is very critical of nuclear planners, who discuss the prospects of nuclear annihilation as
casually as if they were discussing, say a basketball pick-and-roll play. "Stoudamire
comes off a screen from Wallace, then receives the pass for the jumper." "Russia is
distressed by troop movement into Serbia, then delivers its payload upon the United
States." See the similarity?
Now, think about a disadvantage impact story. Subpoint C: Impacts. 1. United States
intervention in Serbia causes Russian retaliation. 2. Russian retaliation would be
nuclear." How is this any different from a Pentagon military planner, other than the fact
that the Pentagon planner is dealing in real nuclear weapons?
Some would say that the difference is substantial, but from a psychological perspective
it probably isn't. It still forces people to deal with nuclear explosions in a clinical, precise
way that allows numbing to remain intact and the work to still get done.
This also feeds the genocidal mentality, Lifton argues. When we see nuclearism in a
clinical, numb way, it blinds us to the human consequences of nuclear war. The burned
bodies. The radiation sickness. The Cubs finally winning the pennant. Okay, I made up
that last part, but this essay was just getting too heavy for me.
Humor isn't going to break anybody out of the mentality, though, says Lifton. In order to
do that - and in order to finish off the discussion of the debate application this argument
has - we have to look at another element of psychology.
HOW TO GET AROUND THE GENOCIDAL

MENTALITY
We've already established that some level of nuclear numbing is necessary for humans
to function. But is the kind of numbing that reduces the victims of a nuclear war to
statistics inevitable? Lifton says no. He says that the advancement of what he calls a
"species consciousness" is the best way to counteract the advancing tide of the
genocidal mentality. That means it's a tragedy when people die, even if we don't know
them, see them or share a national identity with them. We see people on earth as
people, not some "other" to be demonized at will.
For the real world, this means a really long-term consciousness shift - but one that Lifton
says is advancing at a grassroots level. Citing opinion polls on nuclear disarmament, the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and other matters, he declares the people to be ahead
of their leaders. Not that it's any great surprise, because that's usually the case.
For debaters, this means something very significant as well: it means alternative
advocacy which can help people conquer the genocidal mindset. For example, one of the
main arguments often made about philosophical critiques is that they have no practical
alternative. But by touting the species mentality, debaters can come equipped with just
such an alternative.
Moreover, the alternative is the most practical thing in the world from an in-round
perspective. What could be more practical than we in the debate community altering our
patterns of rhetoric, or ways of thinking about argument and politics, to better our
psychological health?
TO SUM UP
As you've no doubt gathered, I am strongly biased in favor of this critique argument.

That doesn't mean I'm strongly predisposed to vote for it, so don't panic if you see me in
the back of the room with the ballot and the other teams runs it. It does mean, however,
that I think important truths can be gleaned from the argument, and from Lifton's work
in general. It helped me to understand some of the thoughts and feelings I had while I
was in debate, and that was even more beneficial than the ballots we picked up running
the argument. Of course, the ballots were nice too. And hey, how often do you have the
chance to run an argument which actually says that the opposing team are mentally
unhealthy? I'd seize that chance if I were you.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Robert Jay Lifton, with Erik Markusen, THE GENOCIDAL MENTALITY: NAZI HOLOCAUST
AND NUCLEAR THREAT, New York: Basic Books, 1990.
Robert Jay Lifton, with Richard Falk, INDEFENSIBLE WEAPONS: THE POLITICAL AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE AGAINST NUCLEARISM, updated edition, New York: Basic Books,
1991.
Robert Jay Lifton, DEATH IN LIFE: SURVIVORS OF HIROSHIMA, reprint edition, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Robert Jay Lifton, HIROSHIMA IN AMERICA: A HALF CENTURY OF DENIAL, Avon Books,
1996.
Robert Jay Lifton, THE NAZI DOCTORS: MEDICAL KILLING AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
GENOCIDE, reprint edition, Basic Books 2000.
Zia Mian, HIMAL MAGAZINE, July 1998, p. 9.
Ashis Nandy, "The Epidemic of Nuclearism: A Clinical Profile of the Genocidal Mentality,"
HIMAL MAGAZINE, July 1998, p. 1.
NUCLEARIST PSYCHOLOGY LEADS US

TO THE NUCLEAR PRECIPICE
1. NUCLEAR NUMBING LEADS TO CYNICISM
Robert Jay Lifton, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, The City
University of New York and Director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival, John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, with Richard Falk, INDEFENSIBLE WEAPONS: THE
POLITICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CASE AGAINST NUCLEARISM, 1991, p. 10.
We can now identify a certain psychological combination taking shape in many people,
in something like the following sequence: Fear and a sense of threat break through prior
numbing; these uncomfortable (potentially shattering) feelings in turn raise the personal
question of whether one should take some form of action to counter the danger; that
question becomes an additional form of conflict, associated as it is with feelings of
helplessness and doubts about efficacy; and one seeks a psychological safe haven of
resignation ("Well, if it happens, it happen - and it will happen to all of us") and cynicism
(They'll drop it all right and it will be the end of all of us - that's the way people are, and
that will be that!"). That stance prevents one from feeling too fearful, and equally
important, it protects one from conflict and anxiety about doing something about the
situation. If the situation is hopeless, one need do nothing.
2. CYNICISM CAUSES SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES OF UNIVERSAL DOOM

There is a particularly sophisticated version of resignation-cynicism that one encounters
these days mainly at universities, which go something like this: "Well, what is so special
about man? Other species have come and gone, so perhaps this is our turn to go
extinct." This is perhaps the ultimate "above the battle" position. Again nothing is to be
done, one is philosophically - cosmically - detached from it all. All of these add up to a
stance of waiting for the bomb and contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy of universal
doom.
3. NUCLEAR ILLUSIONS FORMED BY PSYCHOLOGY ARE PERILOUS

In this stance of waiting for the bomb, then, we encounter various combinations of
resignation, cynicism, and yearning - along with large numbers of people, some of them
very talented, going about tasks that contribute to this potential holocaust. And here I
confess that my perception of the dangers of our situation has been intensified by recent
research on Nazi doctors. There one could observe (in a very different kind of situation,
to be sure) how very ordinary men and women who were in no way inherently demonic
could engage in demonic pursuits; how professionals with pride in their professions
could lend themselves to mass murder; how in fact the killing process itself depended on
an alliance between political leaders putting forward particular policies and professionals
making available not only technical skills but intellectual and "moral" justifications. In
the case of nuclear weapons, policies and justifications that might contribute to the
killing process are products of specific illusions.
4. EXTINCTION IMAGERY MAKES EXTINCTION MORE LIKELY

Here we do well to recognize one of the many ways in which a need created, or at least
identified, by imagery of extinction can in turn make that actual process of extinction
more likely. So "flexible" is the human mind that it can, in this way, contemplate
annihilation as a joyous event, more joyous than living with the sense of being
meaninglessly doomed, that is, with the various impairments to human continuity that
have been described.
NUCLEARISM, the LANGUAGE OF

NUKES, HAS TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES
1. OUR WAY OF SPEAKING ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS NUMBS US TO THE THREAT
Quite simply, these words provide a way of talking about nuclear weapons without really
talking about them. In them we find nothing about billions of human beings incinerated
or literally melted, nothing about millions of corpses. Rather, the weapons come to seem
ordinary and manageable or even mildly pleasant (i.e., a "nuclear exchange" sounds
more like mutual gift-giving). Now, much of this domesticated language is intentionally
orchestrated by military or political bomb managers who are concerned that we stay
numbed in relation to the weapons. But it is a process in which others collude, so that
we may speak of a more or less spontaneous conspiracy of linguistic detoxification that
contributes to the comfort of just about everyone.
2. LANGUAGE ABOUT NUKES CAUSES FEELING AND MORALITY TO DIE

Zia Mian, Lecturer, Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, HIMAL
MAGAZINE, July 1998, p. 9.
When it comes to nuclear weapons, however, the moral response has been dulled. What
is at issue is whether it is right or wrong to want to have, and to want to use, the power
to kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people in the blink of an eye, to maim
many more and to poison them so they die slowly and painfully over years from cancers
and other illnesses induced by radiation. The experience of Hiroshima should have been
enough to convince anyone that nuclear weapons were an affront to humanity. Despite
this there has been a world-wide debate about nuclear weapons for over fifty years. This
has happened in large part because nuclear weapons are usually not discussed in moral
terms. From the very beginning of the nuclear age there has been a tendency to use
language that hides the reality of what is being considered. But it is more than simple
disguise. Language is used as an anaesthetic, as a way to kill feelings. Without feelings,
morality dies. These are the first casualties of nuclear weapons.
3. NUCLEAR NUMBING IS FINAL STEP IN GENOCIDAL MENTALITY

Ashis Nandy, Center for the Study of Developing Societies, HIMAL MAGAZINE, July 1998,
p. 1.
Nuclearism is framed by the genocidal mentality. Eric Markusen and Robert J. Lifton have
systematically studied the links. In their book, The Genocidal Mentality, Markusen and
Lifton make a comparative study of the psychology of mass murderers, in Nazi Germany,
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and among the ideologues of nuclearism today and find
remarkable continuities. In the genocidal person there is, first of all, a state of mind
called "psychic numbing"-a "diminished capacity or inclination to feel - and a general
sense of meaninglessness". One so numbs one's sensitivities that normal emotions and
moral considerations cannot penetrate one any more. Numbing "closes off" a person and
leads to a "constriction of self process". To him or her, the death or the possibility of the
death of millions begins to look like an abstract, bureaucratic detail, involving the
calculation of military gains or losses, geopolitics or mere statistics. Such numbing can
be considered to be the final culmination of the separation of affect and cognition-that
is, feelings and thinking that the European Enlightenment sanctioned and celebrated as
the first step towards greater objectivity and scientific rationality.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE ABSOLUTELY

NECESSARY
1. DETERRENCE IS NECESSARY TO STOP PROLIFERATION
Baker Spring, policy analyst, "PROLIFERATION AND ARMS CONTROL: BALANCING
DEFENSE, DETERRENCE, AND OFFENSE, ISSUES 2000: HERITAGE FOUNDATION
CANDIDATES BRIEFING BOOK NO. 16, 2000, Accessed May 29, 2000,
http://www.heritage.org/issues/chap16.html.
Moreover, in October 1998, the White House released a national security strategy
statement warning that the "Proliferation of advanced weapons and technologies
threatens to provide rogue states, terrorists and international crime organizations the
means to inflict terrible damage on the United States, its allies and U.S. citizens and
troops abroad." Yet the Administration's actions to counter the proliferation threat have
not matched this sobering rhetoric. Ambitious but often ineffective arms control
measures have been implemented at the expense of other policy tools that are
necessary to deter proliferation--most especially defense, deterrence, and preemption.
2. ARMS CONTROL IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR DETERRENCE

Equating arms control treaties, such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), with
national security is potentially disastrous. The Clinton Administration has demonstrated
excessive faith in arms control treaties. These agreements effectively promote
proliferation by increasing the perceived value of nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons, especially among rogue states. The Administration's policies assume that
vulnerability promotes strategic stability, a policy embodied in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty with the former Soviet Union. The Administration continues to
adhere to the restrictions in the ABM Treaty even though the treaty effectively died with
the Soviet Union, and despite the fact that doing so limits America from mounting a
defense to counter the proliferation threat. Arms control should never be pursued at the
expense of deterrence.
3. DETERRENCE IS THE CORNERSTONE OF STRATEGIC STABILITY

Deterrence is the cornerstone of strategic stability. Deterrence is an essential component

of America's non-proliferation policy. An effective deterrent enables Washington to
convince hostile leaders that any attack on America with powerful weapons would be
met with overwhelming force. But such a deterrent requires both a robust military
arsenal that is survivable and a demonstrated willingness to use it if necessary.
4. GOOD DEFENSE REQUIRES STRONG OFFENSE

A good defense requires a strong offense. Not only must Washington support deterrence
and defense, but it must also be willing to fund adequate offensive capabilities. For
example, the United States must be prepared to make preemptive strikes to destroy
weapons of mass destruction in the hands of hostile regimes that threaten U.S. interests,
America's friends and allies, and U.S. troops overseas, as well as Americans at home.
Israel demonstrated the virtue of this approach in 1981 when it destroyed an Iraqi
nuclear plant before Baghdad could obtain its fissile material and fabricate a nuclear
device.
LIFTON'S VIEWS ARE WRONG

1. LIFTON'S VIEWS CAN JUSTIFY ANYTHING, EVEN ALIEN ABDUCTION
Martin Kottmeyer, Writer, REALL NEWS, July 1995, Accessed May 29, 2000,
http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v03/n07/lifton.html.
"With all due respect, doctor. Everyone knows there are people who gravitate to this kind
of thing. They read about it, see it on TV, in the movies. This is the pathology of a spaceage psychosis. People don't see the Virgin Mary anymore -- now they see alien baby
snatchers." The psychiatrist is prepared. "Robert Lifton's work on survivors -- we've all
studied Lifton -- the people that he writes about -- the survivors of Hiroshima, the
Holocaust, Vietnam -- they all have the exact same symptoms as the people I've told
you about; fear, anxiety, nightmares, suspicion -- suspicion especially of the mental
health community who consistently misdiagnose them. These are reactions to real
trauma. There's no fantasy here." The exchange is from the 1992 mini-series Intruders.
The visionary and skeptic are fictional, but the argument is familiar enough. John Mack,
the Harvard psychiatry professor who authored the controversial book Abduction was
not the inspiration for the Richard Crenna character, but the writer admitted it "ends up
being more like John Mack than anybody." Mack said it was kind of spooky how things in
it happened to him, notably the credibility questions. People in the production had sat in
on his therapy groups. One can find Lifton's name in the acknowledgments of Mack's
book.
2. DEFENDERS OF ALIEN ABDUCTION USE LIFTON'S VIEWS

Martin Kottmeyer, Writer, REALL NEWS, July 1995, Accessed May 29, 2000,
http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v03/n07/lifton.html.
This was not the first time that Lifton's name had been invoked by defenders of the
abduction phenomenon. Editorializing in the January/February 1987 International UFO
Reporter Jerome Clark observed, "A milestone of sorts may have been reached on April
10, 1987, when Dr. Robert J. Lifton, one of this country's most prominent psychiatrists,
acknowledged on NBC's Today Show that the UFO abduction phenomenon has yet to be
explained and merits serious investigation." In the October 1988 Fate, he regarded
Lifton's statement as emblematic evidence of "a quiet revolution" that had taken place
as scientific, medical-health professionals displayed a growing involvement, believing
the evidence pointed toward "an extraordinary cause" and "a potentially explosive
payoff." Elsewhere, he also thought it indicated abductions constituted now "a subject
that could be discussed seriously outside the pages of tabloids."
3. "MORAL AUTHORITY" NOT NECESSARY TO STOP NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Baker Spring, policy analyst, "PROLIFERATION AND ARMS CONTROL: Balancing Defense,
Deterrence, and Offense, ISSUES 2000: HERITAGE FOUNDATION CANDIDATES BRIEFING
BOOK NO. 16, 2000, http://www.heritage.org/issues/chap16.html, accessed May 29,

2000.
Q. The United States today possesses nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, military
satellites, advanced computers, and other advanced military technology. What moral
authority does the United States have to say that other countries should not possess the
same kind of weapons? A. This question assumes that in the conduct of its foreign and
security policies, the United States is the moral equivalent of rogue states like Libya and
North Korea. The assumption is flawed. The United States has a track record of using its
military power to maintain international security and stability, not to subjugate other
people. The United States has a well-earned reputation for being a responsible actor on
the international stage.
John Locke
British Philosopher (1632-1704)

John Locke was born near Bristol, England, in 1632. His father was a country attorney
and he was educated at home until he went in 1646 to Westminster School, where he
remained until 1652. In that year he entered the University of Oxford as a junior student
of Christ Church. After taking in due course the B .A. and M.A. degrees, he was elected in
1659 to a senior studentship at Christ Church. In the following year he was made a
lecturer in Greek, and later was appointed Reader in rhetoric and Censor of Moral
philosophy. In an attempt to uncover the works of Locke, this essay will examine Lockes
notion of: (1) mind, (2) government, (3) moral law, (4) property, and (5) application to
debate
Lockes principal work is his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke argued that
one could not make progress in philosophical discussion unless one had examined the
minds capacities and seen what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to
deal with. He disagreed with Platos theory of universals, and denied any unlearned
ideas. For Locke, the mind of the new-born child is like a blank sheet of paper. All ideas
are acquired from experience and are two kinds: 1. Ideas of Sensation--seeing, hearing,
etc., (2) Ideas of Reflection--thinking, believing, etc. That is, the first ideas are simple
ones of sensation, where the mind is essentially passive. Later, the mind in an active
way forms complex ideas by combining, or comparing, or abstracting the simple ideas.
For Locke the relationship between an idea and the object itself is that objects have
qualities which produce an idea in the mind. Locke challenges the notion that values are
innate, instead he assumes that values are created, sustained, and changed through
learned interactions.
His two Treatises on Government were published in 1689 and 1690, the years after the
Glorious Revolution in England. In his first Ii~a1i~ Locke argued that there was no divine
right for monarchs to rule, since God did not put some men above others. In his second
Treatise he attacks Hobbes and puts forward a liberal interpretation of the State of
Nature. Lockes basic theory is that humans are free and in this condition all individuals
are equal. Locke argues that although the state of nature is a condition of affairs in
which humans have no common authority, humans put a great deal of power in the
hands of God. We cannot say, therefore that society is unnatural to people. The family,
the primary form of human society, is natural to individuals, and civil or political society
is natural in the sense that it fulfills human needs. For although humans, considered in
the state of nature, are independent of one another, it is difficult for them to preserve
their liberties and rights in actual practice. In the state of nature all are bound in
conscience to obey a common moral law even though does not follow that all actually
obey the law. it is in humans interest, therefore, to form an organized society for the
preservation of their liberties and rights.
According to Locke humans know moral law even in the State of Nature. Locke contends
that reason, which is that law, teaches all humankind who will but consult it, that, being
all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his/her life, health, liberty,
or profession. These suggestions of Locke may seem to imply that for humans, ethics is
no more than an analysis of ideas. Out of our ideas come a set of rules guiding our
conduct but this was not at all Lockes view of the matter. At least it is certainly not the
view which finds expression in society. Instead, Locke defined good and evil with
reference to pleasure and pain. Good is that which is apt to cause or increase pleasure in
mind or body, or to diminish pain, while evil is that which is apt to cause or increase any
pain or to diminish pleasure. Moral good, however, is the conformity of our voluntary
actions to some law, whereby good accrues to us according to the will of the law-giver,
and moral evil consists in the disagreement of our voluntary actions with some law.
Locke thought the right to private property was particularly implied by natural law. He
argued that the justification of private ownership lay in labor, and was therefore natural.
This important idea was based on the notion that since humans labor was their own,
anything they transformed by their labor should become and remain, his/her as well.
Property gave humans rights too, such as the right to kill anyone who tried to take
his/her property. Indeed property, for Locke, is the main reason humans leave the state
of nature and set up civil government.
Integrating Locke into contemporary debate practice can take a number of form.
Because Locke tends to support some type of constitutional democracy, he may be
useful in answering philosophers with Marxist tendencies. In addition, Locke provides
useful information in terms of social structures and its impact on rights and values. The
debater might be able to integrate Lockes notion into a criteria or counter-criteria.
Bibliography
Richard Ithamar Aaron. JOHN LOCKE, 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
Peter Alexander. IDEAS, QUALITIES AND CORPUSCLES: LOCKE AND BOYLE ON THE
EXTERNAL WORLD. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
Kenneth Dewhurst. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704, PHYSICIAN AND PHILOSOPHER. New York:
Garland, 1984.
Julian H. Franklin. JOHN LOCKE AND THE THEORY OF SOVEREIGNTY: MIXED MONARCHY
AND THE RIGHT OF RESISTANCE IN THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE ENGLISH
REVOLUTION. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
John Wiedhofft Gough. JOHN LOCKES POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: EIGHT STUDIES. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1950.
David Gwilym James. THE LIFE OF REASON: HOBBES, LOCKE, BOLINGBROKE. New York:
Longmans, Green, 1949. Montagu Vaughan Castelman Jeffreys. JOHN LOCKE: PROPHET
OF COMMON SENSE. London: Methuen, 1967.
Willmoore Kendall. JOHN LOCKE AND THE DOCTRINE OF MAJORITY-RULE. Urbana, IL,
1959. John L. Kraus. JOHN LOCKE: EMPIRICIST, ATOMIST, CONCEPTUALIST AND
AGNOSTIC. New
York: Philosophical Library, 1969.
Jean Le Clerc. AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MR. JOHN LOCKE, AUTHOR
OF THE ESSAY CONCERNING HUMANE UNDERSTANDING. 2nd ed. London: John Clarke &
E. Currl, 1713.
John Locke. THE CONDUCT OF UNDERSTANDING. New York: Alden, 1891.
John Locke. AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDINGS. Oxford: Clarendon

press, 1924.
John Locke. ESSAYS ON THE LAW OF NATURE. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
John Locke. OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT; TWO TREATISES. New York: E.P. Dutton & Cc, 1924.
John Locke. ON POLITICS AND EDUCATION. New York: W.J. Black, 1947.
John Locke. THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY, AS DELIVERED IN THE

SCRIPTURES. Chicago: Regnery, 1965.
John Locke. SEVERAL PAPERS RELATING TO MONEY, INTEREST AND TRADE, &C. New
York: A.M. Kelley, 1968.
John Locke. SOME THOUGHTS CONCERNING EDUCATION. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.
John Locke. TWO TRACTS ON GOVERNMENT. Philip Abrams, trans. London: Cambridge
LAWS OF NATURE REGULATE HUMAN

VALUING
1. NATURAL LAW REGULATES ALL HUMAN ACTION
John Locke, British Philosopher, ESSAYS ON THE LAW OF NATURE, 1954, p. 95.
On the assumption that some divine being presides over the world as a whole--a fact
proved by the argument from design, since nature and the world of living beings are
seen to be governed by divine laws--certain fixed rules of conduct must apply to the life
of man in particular. These rules are the law of nature, and such a law, whether referred
to as moral good by the Stoics, or as the right reason, or as the rule of living according
to nature, is on the one hand to be distinguished from natural right and on the other
should not be called the dictate of reason for (a) it is the decree of the divine will issuing
commands and prohibitions, and (b) it is implanted in mens hearts by God so that
reason can only discover and interpret it.
2. NATURAL LAW IS UNIVERSAL

For anyone who is willing to look back and trace a tradition to its very source must
necessarily come to a stand somewhere and in the end recognize someone as the
original author of this tradition, who either will have founded the law of nature inscribed
within his heart or come to know it by reasoning from the facts perceived by the senses.
These way so knowing, however, are equally open to the rest of mankind also, and there
is no need of traditions long as everyone has within himself the same basic principles of
knowledge.
But if that first author of the tradition in question has laid down a law to the world,
because he was instructed by some oracle or inspired by a divine message, then a law
of this kind promulgated in this manner is by no means a law of nature, but a positive
law. Therefore we conclude that, if there is a law of nature (and this nobody has denied,
it cannot be known in so far as it is a law by means of tradition)
3. NATURAL LAW REGULATES MORAL OBLIGATION

It would seem, then, that the perception of moral obligation is concerned with a system
of natural relations rather than with the will of a superior law-maker. Finally, Lockes
notion that the law of nature is immutable implies that the binding force of it does not
lapse even at Gods own command. For him, this law is so much part of the nature of
things that, in order to revoke it, God would have to undo mankind.
MORALITY AND VALUES ARE NOT

UNIVERSAL
1. VIRTUE IS DEPENDENT ON STATES OPINION
John Locke, British Philosopher, ESSAYS ON THE LAW OF NATURE, 1954, p. 123. Since
some principle of good and evil is acknowledged by all men, and since there is no nation
so savage and so far removed from any humane feelings that it does not have some
notion of virtue and vice, some consciousness of praise and blame, it seems we must
next inquire in what ways men come to know that law of nature to which they pay
deference by so general a consistent, and of which they cannot eradicate all feeling
without at the same time eradicating humanity itself; for nature must be altogether
negated before one can claim for himself absolute liberty.
2. HUMAN NATURE AND INTERPRETATION OF MORALITY IS DIVERSE John Locke, British

Philosopher, ESSAYS ON THE LAW OF NATURE, 1954, p. 191.
The only thing, perhaps, about which all morals think alike is that mens opinions about
the law of nature and the pound of their duty are diverse and manifold--a fact which,
even if tongues were silent, moral behavior, which differs so widely, would show pretty
well. Men are everywhere met with, not only a select few and those in a private station,
but whole nations, in whom no sense of law, no moral rectitude, can be observed. There
are also other nations, and they are many, which with no guilty feeling disregard some
at least of the pre-praiseworthy to commit and to approve of, such crimes as are utterly
loathsome to those who think rightly and live according to nature.
3. DIVERSITY OF EXPERIENCE CIRCUMVENTS CONSISTENT MORAL THEORY

John Locke, British Philosopher, ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 1954, p.
121-122.
Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters,
without any ideas: How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store
which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless
variety. Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?
To this I answer, in one word, from Experience.
VALUE OF LIBERTY DEMANDS FREEDOM

OF THOUGHT AND WILL
1. LIBERTY AND FREEDOM DEMAND POWER TO THINK
315. All the actions that we have any idea of reducing themselves, as has been said, to
these two, viz, thinking and motion; so far as a man has power to think or not to think,
to move or not to move, according the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is
a man free. Whenever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a mans power,
wherever doing to not doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind
directing it, there he is not free, though perhaps the action may be voluntary.
2. LIBERTY DEPENDS ON HUMAN VOLITION AND WILL

316. So that the idea of liberty is, the idea of a power in any agent to do or for bear any
particular action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either
of them is preferred to the other:
where either of them is not in the power of the agent to be produced by him according
to his volition, there he is not at liberty; that agent is under necessity. So that liberty
cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be thought,
there may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty. A little consideration
of an obvious instance or two may make this clear.
3. LIBERTY DEMANDS THAT HUMANS HAVE THE ABILITY TO FREELY THINK

316. A tennis-ball, whether in motion by the stroke of a racket, or lying still at rest, is not
by any one taken to be a free agent. If we inquire into the reason, we shall find it is
because we conceive not a tennis-ball to think, and consequently not to have any
volition, or preference of motion to rest or vice versa; and therefore has not liberty, is
not a free agent; but all its both motion and rest come under our idea of necessary, and
are so called. Likewise a man falling into the water, (a bridge breaking under him,) has
not herein liberty, is not a free agent.
4. LIBERTY BELONG TO INDIVIDUAL HUMAN WILL

John Locke, British Philosopher, ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 1954,
p.323. The attributing to faculties that which belonged not to them, has given occasion to
this way of talking: but the introducing into discourses concerning the mind, with the
name of faculties, a notion of their operating, has, I suppose, as little advanced our
knowledge in that part of ourselves as the great use and mention of the like invention of
faculties, in the operations of the body, has helped us in the knowledge of physic. Not
that I deny there are faculties, both in the body and mind: they both of them have their
powers of operating, else neither the one nor the other could operate. For nothing can
operate that is not able to operate; and that is not able to operate that has no power to
operate.
5. LIBERTY ASKS WHETHER A HUMAN IS FREE TO THINK ABOUT STATE OF BEING John
Locke, British Philosopher, ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 1954, p. 324.
To return, then, to the inquiry about liberty, I think the question is not proper, whether
the will be free, but whether a man be free. Thus, I think, that so far as any one can by
[the direction or choice of his mind, preferring] the existence of any action to the nonexistence of that action and vice versa make it to exist or not exist, so far he is free. For
if I can by [a thought directing] the motion of my finger, make it move when it was at
rest, or vice versa, it is evident, that in respect of that I am free: and if I can, by a like
thought of my mind, preferring one to the other, produce either words or silence, I am at
liberty to speak or hold my peace: and as far as this power reaches, of acting or not
acting, by the determination of his own thought preferring either, so far is a man free.
6. LIBERTY DEMANDS FREEDOM TO ACT AND THINK

John Locke, British Philosopher, ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 1954,
p.317.
I think nobody will doubt it: and yet, being locked fast in, it is evident he is not at liberty
not to stay, he has not freedom to be gone. So that liberty is not an idea belonging to
volition, or preferring; but to the person having the power of doing or forbearing to do,
according as the mind shall choose or direct. Our idea of liberty reaches as far as that
power, and no farther. For wherever restraint comes to check that power, or compulsion
takes away that indifference of ability to act, or to forbear acting, there liberty, and our
notion of it, presently ceases.
Jean-Franois Lyotard
Post-Modern Philosopher
For the past decade the term postmodern has been used in so many different ways and
with so many different senses as to render precise specification of its meaning
impossible. Frequently coupled with such other fashionable post- terms as
postempiricist, postmetaphysical, poststructuralist, and postindustrialist, it expresses a
consciousness of fundamental changes in culture and society. The extent of this shift
seem clearest in literature and the arts. Discussing Lyotard will require an examination
of: (1) knowledge, (2)
postmodernism, (3) legitimacy, (4) justice, and (5) application to debate
Lyotard contends that matters are less clear when one turns from modernity to
postmodern thought in philosophy and social theory. Here the points of contrast between
modernity and postmodernity are different: basic categories, principles, and institutions
of the modern West. For Lyotard, it is the
specification of modem Western culture as fundamentally rationalist and subjectivist
that provides the key point of contrast; for postmodernism in philosophy typically
centers on a critique of the modern ideas of reason and the rational subject. It is the
project of Enlightenment that needs to be critiqued, the separate knowing and moral
subject that has to be decentered; the drive for unity and foundations, and the tyranny
of
universal truth that has to be defeated. In addition, for Lyotard the object of
postmodernism is to study the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed
societies. Post-modernism designates the state of our
culture following the transformations that, since the end of the nineteenth century, have
altered the game
rules for science, literature, and the arts.
Lyotard integrated the term postmodern into philosophy, politics, sociology and
society. The goal of postmodernism is the deconstruction of the concepts developed in
and from the period of the Enlightenment For Lyotard the term modern refers to any
form of knowledge that legitimates itself through discourse about discourse. Modernity is
marked by scientific knowledge at the expense of narrative knowledge. Lyotard is
adamant that the legitimation of knowledge relates to more practical questions of justice
as well as questions of truth. For Lyotard, the term modem can be applied in this sense
to any form of knowledge that legitimates itself through a metadiscourse of this kind,
that is through the appeal to some grand metanarrative such as the progress of Reason
and Freedom, the unfolding of Spirit, the emancipation of Humanity. By contrast, a
discourse is postmodern if it challenges preaccepted values, beliefs, attitudes, and
stories.
Lyotard chooses as the focus of his analysis not the will to power or instrumental reason
but the principle of legitimacy. In this perspective, modernity is marked by a breakdown
of narrative knowledge in the wake of the advance of scientific knowledge. At the center
of Lyotards writing is that science falls into two distinctly difficult positions. Initially,
science must rely on stories to justify its existence. The problem is that scientific
standards of knowledge relegate stories to opinion. Second, the reliance on stories
challenges the scientific mindset. The result, for Lyotard, is that science can no longer
justify itself in the modern world view. The result is that we must understand a
different type of legitimacy: One that is inherent in local language games. For Lyotard,
language games are a form of moves and counter-moves where individuals interact in
an attempt to understand. Important in this notion is that these rules are negotiated by
the individual participants, not a priori imposed by society.
Lyotard is insistent that the legitimation of knowledge involves questions of justice as

well as questions of truth; accordingly, he draws practical conclusions from his shift in
perspective and points however vaguely, toward a new conception of politics. The
principles are not based in the universality of reason and the need for consensus.
Instead, principles must focus on the local character of all language, argumentation and
legitimation and the need to undermine established agreements;. The intellectual forms
are not the unifying and grounding metadiscourse and the grand met narrative but a
multiplicity of small narratives and local meta-arguments; its underlying notion of justice
appeals not to consensus but to the recognition of the specificity and autonomy of
language games.
Postmodernism has become an important issue in contemporary philosophy. As such,

debaters can expect more of the theories of Lyotard and others to make there way into
debate practice. The debater should be forewarned that integrating postmodernism is
difficult. One of the many reasons for this is that debate practice itself is inherently
modern and self-constraining. The debater will be able to integrate postmodernism into
a critique of any criteria or model to assess values. In addition, a priori societal
agreement on any matters of action or values must be abandoned.
Bibliography
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Seyla Benhabib. Epistemologies of Postmodernism: A Rejoinder to Jean-Franois

Lyotard. NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE 33 (1985): 103-126.
Marshall Berman. EVERYTHING THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1982.
Pierre Bourdieu, & J.C. Passeron. Sociology and Philosophy in France Since 1945: Death
and Resurrection of a Philosophy without a Subject. SOCIAL RESEARCH 34(1983): 166212.
Peter Burger. THEORY OF THE AVANT-GARDE. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1984.
Vincent Descombes. MODERN FRENCH PHILOSOPHY. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1980.
Hal Foster. (Post)modern Polemics. NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE. 33 (1984): 67-78.
Hal Foster, ed. THE ANTI-AESTHETIC. Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983.
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Frederick Jameson. The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the Postmodernism

Debate. NEW GERMANCRITIQUE 33 (1984): 53-67.
Jean-Franois Lyotard. Analyzing Speculative Discourse as Language Game. OXFORD

LITERARY REVIEW 4 (1981): 59-67.
Jean-Francois Lyotard. THE DIFFEREND: PHRASES IN DISPUTE. Trans. Georges Van Den
Abbeele.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Jean-Francois Lyotard. LIBIDINAL ECONOMY. Paris: Editions Minuit. 1974.
Jean-Francois Lyotard. THE INHUMAN, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1991.
Jean-Franois Lyotard. THE POSTMODERN CONDITION. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1984.
Jean-Franois Lyotard & Jean-Loup Thebaud. JUST GAMING. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1985.
John ONeill. Postmodernism and (Post)Marxism. In POSTMODERNISM--PHILOSOPHY

AND THE ARTS. ed. Hugh Silverman. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Paolo Portoghesi. AFTER MODERN ARCHITECTURE. New York: Rizzoli International, 1982.
Richard Rorty. Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity. IN HABERMAS ON MODERNITY.

ed. R.
Bernstein. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985, 161-176.
Calvin 0. Schrag. THE RESOURCES OF RATIONALITY: A RESPONSE TO THE POSTMODERN

CHALLENGE. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992.
HUMAN VALUING DOES NOT FOLLOW

OBJECTIVE/LINEAR PROGRESSION
1. HUMAN THOUGHT DOES NOT WORK IN A BINARY, DIGITAL MODE
Jean-Franois Lyotard. professor emeritus at the University of Paris, THE INHUMAN, 1991.
p. 15. But as Dreyfus argues, human thought doesnt think in a binary mode. It doesnt
work with units of information (bits), but with intuitive, hypothetical configurations. It
accepts imprecise, ambiguous data that dont seem to be selected according to
preestablished codes or readability. It doesnt neglect side effects or marginal aspects of
a situation. It isnt just focused, but lateral too. Human thought can distinguish the
important from the unimportant without doing exhaustive inventories of data and
without testing the importance of data with respect to the goal pursued by a series of
trials and errors.
2. DEFINITION OF POST-MODERN SUPPORTS DIVERSE HETEROGENEOUS VALUES

Jean-Francois Lyotard. professor emeritus at the University of Paris, THE POSTMODERN
CONDITION within AFTER PHILOSOPHY, END OR TRANSFORMATION?, 1989. p. 74.
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.
This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in
turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation
corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university
institution that in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its
great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in
clouds of narrative language elements -- narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive,
descriptive, and so
on.
3. POST-MODERNISM REINFORCES OUR ABILITY TO TOLERATE DIFFERENCES

Jean-Franois Lyotard. professor emeritus at the University of Paris, THE POSTMODERN
Still, the postmodern condition is as much a stranger to disenchantment as it is to the
blind positivity of delegitimation. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy
reside? The operativity criterion is technological; it has no relevance for judging what is
true or just. Is legitimacy to be found in consensus obtained through discussion, as
Jurgen Habermas thinks? Such consensus does violence to die heterogeneity of
language games. An invention is always born of dissension.
4. HUMAN INTERACTION IS A LOCAL AND DISCONTINUOUS EVENT
Jean-Franois Lyotard. professor emeritus at the University of Paris, THE POSTMODERN

CONDITION within AFTER PHILOSOPHY, END OR TRANSFORMATION?, 1989. p. 89. A
recognition of the heteromorphous nature of language games is a first step in that
direction. This obviously implies a renunciation of terror, which assumes that they are
isomorphic and tries to make them so. The second step is the principle that any
consensus on the rules defining a game and the moves playable within it must [sic] be
local, in other words, agreed on by its present players and subject to eventual
cancellation. The orientation then favors a multiplicity of finite meta-arguments, by
which I mean argumentation that concerns metaprescriptives and is limited in space and
time.
5. POSTMODERNISM DENIES OBJECTIVE VALUES AND REALITY

Jean-Franois Lyotard. Professor emeritus at the University of Paris, THE POSTMODERN
EXPLAINED, 1992, p. 15.
Finally, it should be made clear that it is not up to us to provide reality, but to invent
allusions to what is conceivable, but not presentable. And this task should not lead us to
expect the slightest reconciliation between language games. Kant, in naming them the
faculties, knew that they are separated by an abyss and that only a transcendental
illusion (Hegels) can hope to totalize them into a real unity. But he also knew that the
price of this illusion is terror. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us our
fill of terror.
6. POSTMODERNISM REJECTS PLATONIC NOTIONS OF ABSOLUTE VALUES

Wilad Godzich. Professor of Literatures-University of Geneva, THE POSTMODERN
As far as the ontological, or Platonic, theory of justice is concerned, Lyotard shows, in a
deft admixture of Kant and Wittgenstein, that a prescriptive discourse cannot be derived
from a descriptive one: from an is one cannot derive an ought. It is a logical falsehood to
pretend that the true and the just are not dissociated.
MUST UNDERSTAND LANGUAGE TO

UNDERSTAND VALUES
1. LANGUAGE IS CENTRAL TO OUR SOCIETY
Jean-Franois Lyotard. Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris, THE POSTMODERN
In a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day,
both as a reality
and as an issue, it is clear that language assumes a new importance. It would be
superficial to reduce its
significance to the traditional alternative between manipulatory speech and the
unilateral transmission of
messages on the one hand, and free expression and dialogue on the other. A word on
this last point. If the problem is described simply in terms of communication theory, two
things are overlooked: first, messages have quite different forms and effects depending
on whether they are, for example, denotatives, prescriptives, evaluative, performatives,
etc. It is clear that what is important is not simply the fact that they communicate
information.
2. LANGUAGE IS AT THE CENTER OF VALUES

Wilad Godzich. Professor of Literatures--University of Geneva, THE POSTMODERN
EXPLAINED, 1992, p. 126-127.
Just Gaming grants absolute primacy to language games and to their
incommensurability. Lyotard is insistent, however, on a feature of language games that
the Anglo American tradition has not been particularly attentive to, namely the fact that
one cannot logically derive a subject independently of a
language game. In the Anglo-American tradition, language games tend to be thought of
as regulated forms
of language use, and therefore presuppose the prior existence of a user.
3. NOTIONS OF JUSTICE ARE DEPENDENT ON LANGUAGE

Wilad Godzich. Professor of Literatures--University of Geneva, THE POSTMODERN
But in what language game could the solution be formulated? The only thing that can be
done is to appeal to the Kantian notion of an Idea of Reason that will serve as the
regulatory mechanism that will ensure that the incommensurability of language games
is preserved, for ultimately, in Just Gaming, justice comes to be understood as being
charged with the preservation of the purity of each language game and the prevention
of the subservience of one language game to another.
OBJECTIVE TRUTHS DO NOT EXIST

1. POSTMODERNISM IS EMBEDDED IN DISSENSUS
Calvin 0. Schrag, Professor of Philosophy-Purdue, THE RESOURCES OF RATIONALITY: A
RESPONSE TO THE POSTMODERN CONDITION, 1992, p. 14.
Postmodern politics finds its teleos in dissensus rather than consensus, intervention
rather than litigation. Postmodern culture-studies problematize the distinctions between
elite and popular culture. Postmodern science is viewed as an effort to manage
instabilities in a milieu of incommensurability and shifting paradigms. Postmodern
philosophy is anti-foundationalist, suspicious of theory, and distrustful of any universal
claims of reason.
2. MUST CHALLENGE OBJECTIVE EPISTEMOLOGIES

One of the dominant features of the postmodern philosophical challenge resides in its
reaction against the epistemological paradigm of modernity. The knowledge claims
issuing from a Cartesian ego-cogito, the reflections of a Kantian transcendental ego, and
the perceptions of the sensorial subject of British empiricism have all become
problematized. The quest for epistemic certainty and the search for impeachable
foundations of knowledge fall under indictment.
3. MUST REJECT OBJECTIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF AN OBJECT

That which is represented is no longer the object in its ordinary presence but rather an
idealized object, which stands in wait for an infinite recall within a multiplicity of
changing perspectives. Likewise, the self-presence of the epistemological subject is
displaced, no longer determined vis--vis its relationship with an object, but now
postulated as a peculiar presence to itself within an inferiority of transcendental
subjectivity.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
Niccolo Machiavellis infamous reputation as an advocate for ruthless and cunning
government ignores many of the positive contributions he actually made in the field of
political philosophy. It is true that his most well-known book, The Prince, discusses ruling
by absolute control. However, he was much more prolific in discussing ways
government could be useful and helpful to society.
As the son of a wealthy Florence lawyer, Machiavelli received a quality Renaissance

education. He was well grounded in the humanities which led to prestigious positions
within the Florentine government. Not much else is known about Machiavellis early life
beyond this brief sketch.
History picks up the story of Machiavellis life in the early part of the 16th century. At this
time he was a secretary to the Chancellor of the Florentine government. In this capacity,
he traveled throughout Europe on various diplomatic missions. It is believed that it was
from this experience that Machiavelli developed the foundation for much of his political
beliefs. According to biographer Lawrence Hundersmarck, Machiavelli had opportunities
to observe first-hand some of the leading powers of the day, King Louis XII of France,
Pope Alexander VI, Cesare Borgia, Pope Julius II, and Maximilian I, the Holy Roman
Emperor.1
He served the republican government of Florence until the Medici caine to power in
1512. As a member of the overthrown government, Machiavelli was immediately
removed from office. However, he was anxious to continue working for the government
and attempted to influence the new monarchy by writing The Prince.2
11 Lawrence F. Hundersmarck. Great Thinkers of the Western World. (New York:

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 133.
22 Bruce Penman, Translator. The Prince and Other Political Writings. (London: J.M. Dent
& Sons Ltd.,1981), p. 4.
Contributions to Political Science

In some ways, it is a disservice to the philosophy of Machiavelli that he is generally
remembered only as a proponent of underhanded ruling. He actually offered several
other remarkable and progressive political theories such as the separation of church and
state and a governmental system that included checks and balances.
Ultimately, Machiavelli was a pragmatist. He believed that whatever tactics served to

ensure a successful and strong government were justified. Understanding this practical
philosophy, it is easy to see why he would urge rulers to maintain their control by
cunning, shrewdness, and force. Machiavelli was one of the first political theorists to
remove the issue of morality from political thought. As Hundersmarck remarked, He
does not let traditional questions of morality deter the ruler from proper action. 3
While he may not have created the notion that politics could be an instrument for the
public good, Machiavelli was the first to place it on a scientific basis. His concept of a
political society as a collective body possessing its own laws of existence was new.
Previously, the methods by which people were ruled in a country were decided by the
divine right of Kings. Machiavellis philosophy contradicted this type of government. He
believed the best form of government was an administration in which the great mass of
people held the controlling power, a concept which has come to be accepted by
practically all modern nations, but was revolutionary during his day.
33 Hundersmarck, Great Thinkers of the Western World. p. 135.
Themes in Machiavelli s Philosophy

An underlying theme in Machiavellis political philosophy can be characterized as
patriotism. In all his
writings, he always supported Italy and believed that preserving the country justified the
use of force.
Ultimately, he supported whatever means were necessary to maintain the government.
In Machiavellis opinion, the preferable form of government was republicanism. 4 He

believed this type of system served the needs of the people best. Thus, much of his
writing supports government of the people. However, as was noted earlier, he was a
pragmatist Therefore, he realized that he must support whatever regime was in power.
Thus, in The Prince, he offered practical advice to the Medici about how to stay in power.
As an advisor and aid to government officials, Machiavelli was in a position to observe

several world leaders. It was from this perspective that another of his philosophical
themes is developed: successful leaders must possess power. From this realization, he
understood how leaders maintained power, by adjusting their actions to constantly
shifting situations.5 Thus, it was from this point of view that he advocated that
monarchs should use any means necessary to maintain power.
Along with power, Machiavelli also believed that successful leaders also possessed virt ,
or virtue.
Scholars believe that in this sense, Machiavelli uses the term to refer to activity, rather
than qualities. In other words, virt is activity that brings honor and glory to the leader. 6
It should be noted, that although Machiavelli offered strong and specific advice to rulers
about how to maintain power, he never intended leaders to use such means to advance
their own causes. On the contrary, Machiavelli, believed that such actions should benefit
the State, not the leader personally. According to scholar Dorothy Muir, Machiavelli held
that force and fraud could be employed in the service of the State, because he believed
the State was necessary to the development of mankind. 7
44 Penman, The Prince and Other Political Writings, p. 7.
55 Hundersmarck, Great Thinkers of the Western World p. 133.
66 Ibid., p. 137.
77 Dorothy Erskine Sheepshanks Muir. Machiavelli and His Times. (New York: E.P. Dutton
& Co,Inc., 1936), p. 258.
While Machiavelli devoted much of his writing to leaders and heads of government, he
also wrote extensively about the condition of society. Despite his reputation as an
advocate of ruthless leaders, he was a firm believer in self-determination and liberty for
all people. A closer look at his writings shows that his love of freedom is consistent, not
contradictory to his philosophy. Because he favored self-determination, he thought that
republicanism was the form of government that would ensure such freedom.
Criticism and analysis

First and foremost, Machiavelli is accused of supporting morally reprehensible acts:
shrewdness, deceit, cunningness, violence. His critics can easily point out passages in
his writing that indeed describe these actions. However, in Machiavellis defense, he
provided explanations and justifications for using despicable vices.
Beyond the typical criticism associated with Machiavellianism7 there are those
especially during the Renaissance periodwho have loudly criticized his opposition to
Christianity. For example the German philosopher Fichte was a staunch opponent to
Machiavellis opinions on religion. Penman notes that two of Machiavellis works, The
Discourses and the Art of War, include harsh commentary on the corruption of the
Catholic Church and the overall weakness of the Christian religion as a source of
weakness to the state. 8 Ironically, even though Machiavelli was critical of the Catholic
Church, he was actually a devoted Christian, and is believed to have received the last
rites upon his death.9
Conclusion
When the political contributions of Niccol Machiavelli are unbiasedly examined, it is
apparent that he has influenced many modem governments. Yet, despite these positive
aspects of his philosophy, it is a shame he is remembered only for a small portion of his
political thought As noted by historian Dorothy Muir, he
was a steady honourable civil servant of Florence, a man with years of public service to
his credit, a citizen whose whole life was inspired by patriotism, and who scarified his
worldly prospects for his beliefs.10
Because he lived during a time when kings ruled without reason and Church teachings
were accepted without question, Machiavelli endured much criticism. But as evidenced
by the overwhelming number of democratic countries in the world today, his philosophy
has withstood the test of time.
Machiavelli was able to write so succinctly about affairs of government and society
because he was a keen observer of human nature. Penman noted that, Machiavelli has
a profound understanding of the way human nature and human society work. 11 This
understanding is obvious in the political philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli.
88 .lbid., p. 12.
99 lbid., p. 253.
1010 Muir, Machiavelli and His Times p. 1.
1111 Penman, The Prince and Other Political Writings p. 16.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AIker, Hayward R., Jr. The Humanistic Moment in International Studies: Reflections on
Machiavelli and Las Casas, International Studies Quarterly. 36 (December 1992): 347.
Bonadeo, Alfredo. Corruption. Conflict and Power in the Works and Times of Niccol
Machiavelli. Berkely, California: University of California Press, 1973.
Brezziini, Guiseppe. Machiavelli. Translated by Gioconde Gavine. New York: Farrar,

Strauss & Giroux, 1967.
Buskirk, Richard Hobart. Modern Management and Machiavelli. Boston: Cahners Books,
1974.
Butterfield, Herbert. The Statecraft of Machiavelli. New York: Macmillan, 1956.
Cantor, Norman F. Renaissance Thought: Dante and Machiavelli. Waltham,

Massachusetts: Blaisdell Publishing Company, 1969.
Chabad, Federico. Machiavelli and the Renaissance. Translated by David Moore. London:
Bowes & Bowes, 1958.
Gilbert, F. Machiavelli and Guicciardim: Politics and History in Sixteenth Century

Florence. New York:
Norton, 1984.
Kahn, Victoria. Revising the History of Machiavellism: English Machiavellism and the
Doctrine of the Things Indifferent, Renaissance Quarterly 46 (Autumn 1993): 526.
Machiavelli, Niccol. The Portable Machiavelli. Translated and edited by Peter Bondenella
and Mark Muse. New York: Penguin Books, 1978.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. Chief Works and Others. Translated by Allan Gilbert. Durham, North
Carolina: Duke University Press, 1965.
Machiavelli, Niccol. The Prince and the Discourses. Introduction by Max Lamer. New
York: The Modern Library, 1940.
Meineche, Friedrich. Machiavellianism: The Doctrine of Raison dEtat and Its Place in
Modem History.
Translated by D. Scott. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.
Raab, Felix. The English Face of Machiavelli. a Changing Interpretation. London:

Routledge & K. Paul, 1964.
Parcel, A.J. The Question of Machiavellis Modernity, The Review of Politics 53 (Spring
1991): 320.
Pitkin, Hana. Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thoughts of Niccolo
Machiavelli. Berkely, California: University of California Press, 1984.
Skinner, Quentin. Machiavelli.. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981.
Strauss, Leo. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1958.
Tariton, Charles D. Fortunes Circle: A Biographical Interpretation of Niccolo Machiavelli.

Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1976.
Whitfield, John Humphreys. Machiavelli. New York: Russell & Russell, 1965.
LACK OF FREEDOM CREATES MISERIES

FOR A CITY
1. MISERIES ARISE WHEN FREEDOM IS LOST
Niccolo Machiavelli, Political Philosopher, THE PRINCE AND OTHER POLITICAL WRITINGS,
1981, p. 228.
The greatest obstacle which the Romans had to overcome in their conquest of
neighboring states and certain more distant countries was the great love of liberty which
many peoples showed in those days; for they defended their freedom so obstinately that
extraordinary prowess was needed to subdue them. There are many instances of the
great dangers they were prepared to encounter in order to defend or recover their
liberty and of the savage revenge which they took on those who had deprived them of it.
History also shows us what miseries nations and cities have to endure when they lose
their freedom.
2. FREEDOM IS NECESSARY FOR A CITY TO INCREASE ITS WEALTH

Niccol Machiavelli, Political Philosopher, THE PRINCE AND OTHER POLITICAL WRITINGS,
1981, p. 229.
It is easy to see how this love of freedom arises: for experience shows that no city ever
extended its dominions or increased its wealth except at a time when it enjoyed civil
liberty. And it is truly wonderful to consider how great the state of Athens became in the
space of one hundred years, after it had freed itself from the tyranny of Pisistratus. But
most wonderful of all is the greatness achieved by Rome after she freed herself from her
kings. The reason for this is simple enough: for it is not a regard for the good of one
particular man which makes a city great, but regard for the good of the people as a
whole.
3. LACK OF FREEDOM PUTS A CITY INTO DECLINE

1981, p. 229-30.
It is very different under the government of a prince, where it often happens that what is
good for him is bad for the state, and what is good for the state is bad for him. And so
when a free city falls under tyranny, the best it can hope for is to make no further
progress in power or in wealth; but more oftenalmost always in factit will go into a
decline.
A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT IS A
PREFERABLE FORM OF GOVERNMENT
1. REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENTS SECURE THE PUBLIC GOOD
1981,
p. 229.
And there can be no doubt that proper attention to the public good is to be found only in
republics: for there every measure which favours the general advantage is carried
through; and even if it should turn out to the prejudice of one or more individuals, there
are so many who stand to gain by it that they can ensure it will be put into effect,
despite the opposition of the few who suffer by it.
2. REPUBLICS ARE LESS INCLINED TO BREAK TREATIES

1981, p. 222.
Taking everything into consideration, I think that in such cases, where the danger is
serious and imminent, more steadiness and loyalty is to be found in republics than in
princes. For even if a republic has the same intentions, and wishes as a prince, it is
always slower to act, and will take longer than a prince before it comes to any decision,
and consequently before it decides to break its word. Treaties are generally broken for
the sake of some advantage: but republics are much less apt to do so than princes.
3. REPUBLICANISM IS A MORE TRUSTWORTHY FORM OF GOVERNMENT

1981, p. 223.
I am not speaking here of minor infractions of treaties, through failure to observe every
detail, which may be regarded as normal, but of flagrant breaches of faith. For the
reasons already stated, I believe that republics are less given to the latter than princes,
and are therefore more to be trusted.
RELIGION IS NECESSARY FOR A

STRONG SOCIETY
1. UNCORRUPTED COUNTRIES VALUE ROLE OF RELIGION
1981,
p. 174.
If a principality or a republic is to be kept uncorrupted, it is important above all else to
prevent corruption of its religious ceremonies, which must be held in the highest
veneration. For there can be no clearer sign of the ruin of a country than to see divine
worship despised. This can easily be demonstrated by examining the foundation upon
which the religion of any country is built.
2. GOOD RULERS MAINTAIN PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION

1981, p. 175.
All rulers of kingdoms or republics, therefore, ought to maintain the principles of the
religion of their country. For if they do this, they can easily maintain devotion, and
consequently good order and unity, among their subjects. and they must give their
support to all accounts of events which tend to strengthen religious faith, even if they do
not believe in them themselves.
3. STRONG RELIGION IS NECESSARY FOR STRONG SOCIETY

1981, p. 176.
Many people indeed hold that the Church of Rome is the only source of well-being for the
cities of Italy; but I shall now bring forward the available evidence against that opinion,
and especially two very powerful arguments, which I consider unanswerable. In the first
place, the corrupt example of the Roman court has extinguished all sense of religion and
piety in Italy; which has been the cause of countless evils and disorders. For just as
everything may be expected to go well where religion is strong, everything may be
expected to go badly where it is lacking.
IT IS BETTER TO TEMPORIZE AN EVIL

FORCE THAN TO OPPOSE IT
1. GOVERNMENTS SHOULD TRY TO TEMPORIZE AN EVIL FORCE
1981, p. 187.
From this story it should first of all be noted that when some evil or inconvenience
threatens the state, either at home or from abroad, and the danger grows to the point
where everyone begins to be alarmed, it is much safer to temporize and come to terms
with it, than try to extinguish it by force. For those who attempt the latter policy nearly
always increase the strength of their enemy and hasten the disasters they fear.
2. IT IS BE1TER TO TEMPORIZE AN EVIL FORCE THAN TO OPPOSE IT

1981, p. 187.
These evils are difficult to recognize when they first arise, since the beginnings of things
are often deceitful at a later stage, when the dangers become clearly visible, it is better
to temporize, rather than actually oppose them. For if we temporize, they may die a
natural death; or at least the damage that results may be postponed.
3. REMOVAL OF EVIL FORCE SHOULD BE CONSIDERED CAREFULLY

1981, p. 187-8.
And when a ruler decides to oppose the advance of some such development or to undo
its effects, he should be very careful not to reinforce what he is trying to weaken. He
should carefully consider the nature of the malady, and if he finds himself able to effect
a cure, he should set about it without any hesitation; otherwise be should leave it alone
and not try any form of treatment. For otherwise the same thing will happen to him as
we have already seen happening to the neighbours of Rome; who would have done
better once the Roman had acquired so much power, to try to placate them and restrain
them by peaceful means, rather than to make war upon them and so compel them to
invent new institutions and new means of defence.
Alasdair Maclntyre
Moral Philosopher
Alasdair Maclntyre has taught philosophy at the University College, Oxford University. He
has also been a visiting professor of philosophy at Princeton University. He has written
extensively in the area of ethics, moral theory and justice. In 1981, he published the first
edition of After Virtue. In that book, he concluded that we still, in spite of the efforts of
three centuries of moral philosophy and one of sociology, lack any coherent rationally
defensible statement of a liberal individualist point of view. Moreover, Maclntyre argues
that the Aristotelian tradition can be restated in a way that restores rationality and
intelligibility to our own moral and social attitudes and commitments. This essay will
examine: (1) notions of rationality, (2) the link between values and society, (3) role of
philosopher, (4) modern political theory, and (5) application to debate.
Maclntyre challenges the assumption that values can be evaluated by a priori

assumptions. Although he suggests that we seek to rationally discuss morality, that
rationality is essentially subjective. That is when we make claims to support our values,
we are left with an inherently local and subjective interpretation of our value criteria.
Maclntyres work is complete with a more holistic view of our values. In 1982, Maclntyre
delivered the Carlyle Lectures in the University of Oxford on Some Transformations of
Justice. In preparing the material from those lectures for publication, he came to
recognize that different and incompatible conceptions of justice are linked to different and
incompatible conceptions of practical rationality. Maclntyre supports the interrelationship
between justice and practical rationality by examining the views of justice taken by
Aristotle, Gregory VII, and Hume. Maclntyre posits that their views of justice turned out to
be inseparable from that of explaining the beliefs about practical rationality presupposed
by or expressed in those views of justice. What had been originally conceived of as two
distinct tasks [understanding justice or rationality] had become one. This is important for
our understanding of Maclntyres notions of values and ethics. Indeed, Maclntyre sees a
clear link between history, society, and values. To evaluate one requires an examination of
the others.
Maclntyre argued that a philosopher should attempt to write for academe and the
everyday audience. There is indeed in philosophy a large and legitimate place for
technicality, he argues, but only insofar as it serves the ends of a type of inquiry in
which what is at stake is of crucial importance to everyone and not only to academic
philosophers. The attempted professionalization of serious and systematic thinking has
had a disastrous effect upon our culture. Obviously, it is extremely difficult to write for
both audiences when dealing with complex issues such as values, rationality and
knowledge. What Maclntyre wants philosophy to accomplish is to write a history of
philosophy that is essentially practical. That is, the theories and postulates of philosophy
are able to be applied and understood by everyday individuals participating in everyday
events. To accomplish this task, Maclntyre argues, requires the philosopher to
reconceptualize his/her audience. This new audience is one that is composed of scholars
and lay people.
Maclntyre further contends that modern academic philosophy turns out to provide
means for a more accurate and informed definition of disagreement rather than for
progress toward resolution of conflict. Professors of philosophy who concern themselves
with question of justice and of practical rationality turn out to disagree with each other
as sharply, as variously, and so it seems, as irremediably upon how such questions are
to be answered as anyone else. They do indeed succeed in articulating the rival
standpoints with greater clarity, greater fluency, and a wider range of arguments than
do most others, but apparently little more than this. In the end we are left with a diverse,
contradictory view of values such as justice. The diversity of claims requires philosophy
to begin to develop some conclusions about how we conceptualize moral theory.
Maclntyre posits that one of the most striking facts about modern political orders is that
they lack institutionalized forums within which these fundamental value disagreements
can be systematically explored. The facts of disagreement themselves frequently go
unacknowledged, disguised by a rhetoric of consensus. Furthermore, in a discussion of
both simple and complex issues, there is an illusion of consensus, even thought there is
widespread disagreement. Moreover, the political institutions express disagreement is
such a way as to avoid extending the debate to the fundamental principles which inform
those beliefs.
The debater interested in Maclntyre will find much to support a broad range view of
values. Especially useful would be Maclntyres discussion of value relativity, and the
inability to debate values as a priori assumptions. In addition, the debater can use
Maclntyre to justify the inclusion of more pragmatic discussions, such as the effects of
values and the social action that is supported by embracing certain value hierarchies.
Bibliography
Alasdair Maclntyre. AFTER VIRTUE: A STUDY IN MORAL THEORY. Notre Dame, ID:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
Alasdair Maclntyre. AGAINST THE SELF-IMAGES OF THE AGE: ESSAYS ON IDEOLOGY AND
PHILOSOPHY. Notre Dame, ID: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978.
Alasdair Maclntyre. Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of

Science. THE MONIST 60(1977): 433-472.
Alasdair Maclntyre. HEGEL: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS. Notre Dame, ID:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1976.
Alasdair Maclntyre. HERBERT MARCUSE: AN EXPOSITION AND A POLEMIC. New York:

Viking, 1970.
Alasdair Maclntyre. MARXISM: AN INTERPRETATION. London: Humanities Press, 1953.

Alasdair Maclntyre. MARXISM AND CHRISTIANITY. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.
Alasdair Maclntyre. Moral Rationality, Tradition, and Aristotle: A Reply. INQUIRY 26

(1984):
447-466.
Alasdair Maclntyre. Philosophy, Other Disciplines and their Histories: A Rejoinder to

Richard Rorty. SOUNDINGS 45 (1982): 127-145.
Alasdair Maclntyre. The Relationship of Philosophy to Its Past. in PHILOSOPHY IN

HISTORY, ed. R. Rorty, J.B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner. New York: Cambridge University
Ness, 1984, 31-48.
Alasdair Maclntyre. A SHORT HISTORY OF ETHICS, New York, Collier Books, 1966.
Alasdair Maclntyre. THREE RIVAL VERSIONS OF MORAL ENQUIRY: ENCYCLOPEDIA,

GENEALOGY AND TRADITION. Notre Dame, ID: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.
Alasdair Maclntyre. THE UNCONSCIOUS: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS. New York: Routledge

and Kegan Paul, 1958.
Alasdair Maclntyre. WHOSE JUSTICE? WHICH RATIONALITY? Notre Dame, ID: University of
Notre Dame Ness, 1988.
Alasdair Maclntyre & Paul Ricoeur. THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF ATHEISM. New York:
Columbia University Ness, 1967.
Alasdair Maclntyre, & Dorothy Emmet, Eds. SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL
ANALYSIS. New York: Macmillan, 1970.
J.R. SCHNEEW1ND. Moral Crisis And The History Of Ethics. MIDWEST STUDIES IN
PHILOSOPHY 8 (1983): 525-539.
1
UNIVERSAL MORAL PRINCIPLES DO

NOT EXIST
1. MORALITY IS DEPENDENT ON SOCIAL LIFE CHANGES
Alasdair Maclntyre. Professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, A SHORT
HISTORY OF ETHICS, 1966. p. 1.
In fact, of course, moral concepts change as social life changes. I deliberately do not
write because social
life changes, for this might suggest that social life is one thing, morality another, and
that there is merely an external, contingent causal relationship between them. This is
obviously false. Moral concepts are
embodied in and are partially constitutive of forms of social life. One key way in which
we may identify
one form of social life as distinct from another is by identifying differences in moral
concepts.
2. VALUES ARE INEXTRICABLY TIED TO HISTORY

Alasdair Maclntyre. professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, A SHORT
HISTORY OF
ETHICS, 1966. p. 3.
My quarrel with this view will emerge from time to time in these essays. But what I hope
will emerge even more clearly is the function of history in relation to conceptual
analysis, for it is the function of history in relation to conceptual analysis, for it is here
that Santayanas epigram that he who is ignorant of the history of philosophy is doomed
to repeat it finds its point. It is all too easy for philosophical analysis, divorced from
historical inquiry, to insulate itself from correction. In ethics it can happen in the
following way. A certain unsystematically selected class of moral concepts and
judgments is made the subject of attention. From the study of these it is concluded that
specifically moral discourse possesses certain characteristics.
When counterexamples are adduced to show that this is not always so, these counter
examples are dismissed as irrelevant, because not examples of moral discourse; and
they are shown to be nonmoral by exhibiting their lack of the necessary characteristics.
3. VALUES ARE TIED TO SOCIAL ACTION

I have tried to delineate in the argument so far an ideal historical sequence. Such a
sequence is useful for two different types of reason. It brings out the connection
between historical intelligibility and logical relationships. I cannot understand the logical
structure of a given philosophical theory, for example, unless I understand the problems
to which it is intended to be a solution.
4. THERE IS NO DISCUSSION OF VALUES DEVOID OF HUMAN MOVEMENTS

Ethics is concerned with human actions. Human actions are not simply bodily
movements. We can identify as instances of the same human action deeds which are
executed by means of quite different bodily movements--as the movements involved in
shaking a hand and those involved in putting out a flag may both be examples of
welcoming somebody.
5. DEFINITION OF JUSTICE IS CULTURALLY DEPENDENT

Alasdair Maclntyre. Professor of social philosophy at the University of Essex, WHOSE
JUSTICE? WHOSE RATIONALITY? 1988, p.1.
Attention to the reasons which are adduced for offering different and rival answers to
such questions makes it clear that underlying this wide diversity of judgments upon
particular types of issue are a set of conflicting conceptions of justice, conceptions which
are strikingly at odds with one another in a number of ways. Some conceptions of justice
make the concept of desert central, while others deny it any relevance at all. Some
conceptions appeal to inalienable human rights, others to some notion of social contract,
and others again to a standard of utility.
6. THE HISTORY OF ETHICS LIBERATES US FROM ABSOLUTE CLAIMS

They ascribe it to the nature of moral concepts as such. And in so doing, like Sartre, they
try to absolutize their own moralities by means of an appeal to conceptual
considerations. But these attempts could only succeed if moral concepts were indeed
timeless and unhistorical and if there were only one available set of moral concepts. One
virtue of the history of moral philosophy is that it shows us that this is not true and that
moral concepts themselves have a history. To understand this is to be liberated from any
false absolutist claims.
PHILOSOPHY CAN CHANGE THE HUMAN

COND1T ION
1. PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY CHANGES MORALITY
HISTORY OF ETHICS, 1966. p.2.
The complexity is increased because philosophical inquiry itself plays a part in changing
moral concepts. It is not that we have first a straightforward history of moral concepts
and then a separate and secondary
history of philosophical comment. For to analyze a concept philosophically may often be
to assist in its trans formation by suggesting that it needs revision, or that it is
discredited in some way, or that it has a certain kind of prestige. Philosophy leaves
everything as it is--except concepts.
2. MORAL PHILOSOPHY CAN CHALLENGE CURRENT HIERARCHIES

HISTORY OF ETHICS, 1966. p.3.
So the Athenians who condemned Socrates to death, the English parliament which
condemned Hobbes
Leviathan in 1666, and the Nazis who burned philosophical books were correct at least in
their apprehension that philosophy can be subversive of established ways of behaving.
Understanding the world of morality and changing it are far from incompatible tasks. The
moral concepts which are objects for analysis to the philosophers of one age may
sometimes be what they are partly because of the discussions by philosophers of a
previous age.
3. PHILOSOPHICAL CRITERIA CAN ALTER MORALITY

Thus the question of the criteria which are to be employed in moral evaluation cannot be
clearly demarcated as moral but not philosophical, or as philosophical but not moral. Of
course, to clear up the conceptual problems is not of itself to determine completely how
we ought to act or to judge, but it does determine the limits of moral possibility in part.
The task of the moralist and the task of the philosopher are not identical; but they are
not entirely distinct either.
UNDERSTANDING HISTORY IS CRITICAL

FOR INTERPRETING OUR VALUES
1. HISTORICAL STORIES PROVIDES A WAY TO UNDERSTAND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman & Thomas McCarthy, Professors of Philosophy, AFTER
PHILOSOPHY:
END OR TRANSFORMATION, 1989, p. 381.
Shakespeares HAMLET is a striking literary example of the interweaving of moral and
epistemological crises; Galileos and Newtons synthesis of the natural sciences is one of
the best examples of how epistemological crises may be resolved; and our present
moral situation is a clear case of an unresolved crisis that goes to the very foundations
of our social existence. The outstanding task of philosophy today is to understand the
sources of the epistemological and moral crisis of contemporary culture and of the
incommensurable values that it involves. On Maclntyres view, the construction of
historical narratives plays a central role in accomplishing this task.
2. HISTORY PROVIDES AVENUE FOR EVALUATIONS

Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman & Thomas McCarthy, Professors of Philosophy, AFTER
PHILOSOPHY:
END OR TRANSFORMATION, 1989, p. 381-2.
Above all, he(Maclntyre) is opposed to the consideration of arguments as objects of
investigation in abstraction from the social and historical contexts of activity and inquiry
in which they axe or were at home and from which they derive their particular import;
in place of decontextualized argumentation he proposes a particular genre of historical
writing. This kind of philosophical history is required not only for an adequate
understanding of what a particular point of view is--making intelligible how it came to be
advanced and in what type of situation--but also for an evaluation of its claim of rational
justification.
3. VALUES AND MORALS ARE JUSTIFIABLE AT A PARTICULAR HISTORICAL MOMENT

Kenneth Baynes, James Bohinan & Thomas McCarthy, Professors of Philosophy, AFTER
PHILOSOPHY:
END OR TRANSFORMATION, 1989, p. 382.
When such claims involve alternative or incompatible conceptual schemes, they can be
evaluated only historically, that is, in terms of the predecessors and rivals whom [a
scheme] challenged and displaced.
More specifically, the case for the rational superiority of a scientific, moral or
epistemological theory is made by showing that it is the best so far--that it transcends
the limitations of its competitors (avoiding their defects while explaining them) and has
successfully resisted all attempts similarly to transcend it (defeating all potential rivals
while incorporating their strengths).
CATHARINE A. MacKINNON
LEGAL THEORIST 1946 -
Catharine MacKinnon is a noted law professor who has become a lightening rod for
controversy. As an adamant crusader against any and all pornography, MacKinnon has
become a controversial legal scholar.
Known as Kitty to her family and friends, MacKinnon is the child of conservative
parents; her father was a federal judge and deeply involved in the Republican Party in
Minnesota. She was the third generation of women in her family to attend Smith College.
She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelors degree in government.
She went to Yale Law School in the 70s where she worked with the Black Panthers and
also supported anti-Vietnam War efforts. In addition to her law degree, she also earned a
Ph.D. in political science from Yale.
All Pornography Must Be Banned

For many people, the issue of pornography is a complex topic. No one can easily define
it, describe it, or defend it. However, in 1983, MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin developed
their simple, yet controversial definition of pornography. In sum, they describe
pornography as the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures
and/or words.1 Under such a sweeping definition, MacKinnon believes any materials
such as films, books, and magazinesthat contain these depictions should be banned.
While the majority of people are confused about what is or is not pornography,
MacKinnon is steadfast in holding to this definition.
One reason so runny people are uneasy with MacKinnons approach to pornography is
that she advocates censorship by calling for a ban on all materials which fit under her
definition. Many claim such a narrow definition violates the first amendment. MacKinnon
defends her approach by pointing out that the harms caused by pornography do not
justify protecting the free speech rights of its creators. As MacKinnon
explained in a 1993 interview, she believes pornography should not be viewed as free
speech but as an act of discrimination against women, and therefore punishable. 2 In
essence, MacKinnon argues against pornography from a civil rights perspective.
Those who support MacKinnons perspective on pornography believe she truly

understands the effects it has on society. As Charlotte Allen of The Washington Post put
it, MacKinnon sees the real harm of pornography: that it expresses and encourages the
11 Catharine A. MacKinnon, Only Words, 1993, p. 22.
22 Janny Scott, Los Angeles Times Interview; Catharine MacKinnon; Pursuing a Different
Approach to Sexual Inequality, Las Angeles Times October 24, 1993, part M, cal. 1, p. 3.
breakdown of the customary restraints on the libido that make up the social fabric in
general and regulate relations between men and women in particular. 3
It would seem to be a logical extension of her years at Yale that MacKinnon would
become involved in the anti-pornography crusade. While she was at Yale, she became
active in feminist activities and actually created the first course to be included in their
womens studies program.4 Given her devotion to the womens movement, it is
somewhat disheartening to her that she now is the target of attack by many feminists,
including Betty Friedan, Adrienne Rich, and Kate Milett, for her views on pornography.
Since the mid 1980s, MacKinnon has been working with Dworkin to enact pornography
laws that are based on their theory. In the United States, most attempts have been
struck down by the courts (or rejected by local governments) including an ordinance
they helped to draft for the city of Minneapolis. However, their policy has been adopted
in Canada.
What is unique about their definition of pornography is that it excludes any references to
morality, or
prurient interests, which are standard in todays obscenity laws. And even though
most courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court still hold to the obscenity standard when
analyzing questions of pornography, MacKinnon and Dworkin have introduced a new
dimension to the debate.
33 Charlotte Allen, Penthouse Pest; Why Porn Crusader MacKinnon Is Right, The
Washington Post. November 28, 1993, sec. Outlook, p. C1.
44 Judith Graham, ed. Current Biography Yearbook 1994. (New York: The H.W. Wilson
Company,1994), p. 364.
Male-Female Relations
MacKinnon is not a one-topic legal philosopher. She is a prolific writer about issues other
than pornography which affect women such as abortion, comparable worth, and sexual
harassment. In fact, it was in the area of sexual harassment case law that she first
gained notoriety.
In the mid 1970s, MacKinnon broke new legal ground when she began litigating sexual
harassment lawsuits. Up until that time, claims of sexual harassment in the workplace
were viewed legally as private harms and thus, not illegal. MacKinnon argued that
indeed, it was a form of sexual discrimination, and therefore, illegal under Federal law. At
that time, the law considered an act to be discriminatory if it occurred between two
people who were equivalent. However, MacKinnon developed a new approach that has
become pivotal in feminist legal theory. She argued that a practice should be considered
discriminatory if it participates in the systematic social deprivation of one sex because
of sex.5 In 1979, MacKinnon expanded this theory into her book Sexual Harassment of
Working Women, which immediately became the definitive work on the subject 6 Many
sexual harassment lawsuits today are based on MacKinnons legal theory.
Sexual harassment and pornography are linked, according to MacKinnon. In many cases,
harassment of women is an outcome of mens viewing of pornography, in MacKinnons
opinion. And she believes both offenses illustrate the inherent inequality of women in
todays society.
Ultimately, she synthesizes her analysis of most issuessuch as sexual harassment,

pornography, and abortion to a question of equality between men and women. She
believes that most conflicts and controversies between men and women come down to a
lack of equality. Time and time again she points out the inequality of women in society
and especially in the law. According to writer Pete Hanirnill, it is a power issue for
MacKinnon: .... [sic] she goes on to insist that the law is not neutral but male, conceived
by men to serve the interests of male supremacy. 7
Whether she is talking about pornography or comparable worth, MacKinnon reduces the
issue to the pervasive inequality of women to men in society. As she told reporter Janny
55 Fred Strebeigh, The Words They Cant Say, The New York Times Magazine October
6, 1991, p.31.
66 Ibid., p. 52.
77 Pete Hammill, Woman on the Verge of a Legal Breakdown Feminist Catharine
MacKinnon,Playboy. (January, 1993) 40, p. 138.
Scott of the Los Angeles Times, So, again, when youve got the deepest inequality,
which is when youve got segregation of jobs on the basis of sex, and you say you cant
do anything if the sexes are differently situated, then you cant address those problems.
But those are the problems that most pervasively affect the most women. It is crucial
that they be addressed.8
88 Scott, Los Angeles Times Interview; Catharine MacKinnon; Pursuing a Different

Approach to Sexual Inequality, p.3.
Criticism and Critique

As discussed in an earlier section, MacKinnon has come under attack in recent years for
her views on pornography. Few writers have received as much criticism for their views
about pornography as Catharine MacKinnon. Perhaps feminist writer Andrea Dworkin has
received as much critical review. Since they have collaborated together for more than a
decade, this is no surprise. One of their staunchest critics is Nadine Strosser, who has
called those who agree with MacKinnon and Dworkin MacDworkinites. 9
In an ironic twist on MacKinnons constant call for equality, she seems to attract equal
disdain from the political left and the right As reporter Charlotte Allen wrote in The
Washington Post, Liberals detest MacKinnon because she advocates censorshipor
something like censorship: court awards against pornographers whose works inspire
sexual abuse. Conservatives detest MacKinnon because she despises all traditional
arrangements between the sexes, which she insists on calling gender discrimination and
also, by the way, advocates censorship.10
One group has organized to fight MacKinnon. The Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force
(FACT), formed when MacKinnon was trying to enact the pornography ordinance in
Minneapolis. They denounced the ordinance because they felt it was vague and could be
misinterpreted to criminalize the most traditional of heterosexual act because the man
would be in a physical position of superiority to the woman. 11 FACT submitted a legal
brief that included the names of more than 50 prominent feminists, including Friedan,
Millett, and Rich.
In keeping with her dramatic and extroverted style, MacKinnon dismissed FACTs
relevance by claiming that they were puppets of male supremacists and characterized
them as the Uncle Toms and Oreo Cookies of the womens movement. 12
Summary and Conclusion

Since the 1970s, when she began representing women in sexual harassment lawsuits,
Catharine MacKinnon has attracted considerable attention. Fortunately for her, she is
able to endure the intense scrutiny of her controversial views. From legal scholars to
feminists to mainstream media, MacKinnon has been harshly criticized from both
spectrums of the political continuum.
99 Nadine Strosser, In Defense of Pornography, USA Today., January 12, 1995, sec.
News, p. 9A.
1010 Allen, Penthouse Pest; Why Porn Crusader MacKinnon Is Right, p. C 1.
1111 Strebeigh, The Words They Cant Say, p. 56.
1212 Ibid., p. 56.
Because we are still in the midst of many of the battles she has foughtabortion tights,
anti-pornography laws, etc.it is difficult to attach concrete assessments to the results
of her labors. However, there can be no denying she has impacted the debate on these
issues and has perhaps even changed the course of the discussions. Given the volatile
nature of these topics, that is enough proof that MacKinnon will go down in history as an
influential legal scholar in the areas of law which affect women.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Charlotte, Penthouse Pest; Why Porn Crusader MacKinnon Is Right, The
Washington Post. November 28, 1993, sec. Outlook, p. C 1.
DeLauretis, Teresa. Eccentric Subjects: Feminist Theory and Historical Consciousness,

Feminist Studies 16 (Spring 1990): 115-51.
Carter, Terry. MacKinnon Leaves Yale Grads With Tough Talk on Sex Abuse, The National
Law Journal, July 17, 1989, p. 4, cal. 2.
Gates, David. Free Speech - of a Hostile Act (Controversy Over Critique of Catharine
MacKinnons Anti-pornography book Only Words), Newsweek. January 17, 1994, p.
53.
Graham, Judith, Ed. Current Biography Yearbook. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company,
1994, pp. 364-367.
Hanimill, Pete. Woman on the Verge of a Legal Breakdown; Feminist Catharine

MacKinnon, Playboy January, 1993, p. 138.
Iannone, Carol. Sex & the Feminists, Commentary. September 1993, pp. 5 1-5.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge,

Massachusetts:
. Only Words, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993.
. Turning Rape in Pornography, MS. Magazine, July-August 1993, pp. 24-3

1.
. Does Sexuality Have a History? (The Female Body Part 2), Michigan
Quarterly Review 30 (Winter 1991): 1-12.
. Reflections on Sex Equality Under Law, Yale Law Journal. 100 (March
1991): 1281-1328.
. Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: Pleasure Under Patriarchy,

(Symposium on Feminism and Political Theory), Ethics. 99 (January 1989): 314-346.
Parent, W.A. A Second Look at Pornography and the Subordination of Women, The
Journal of Philosophy 87 (April 1990): 205-12.
Rhodenbaugh, Suzanne. Catharine MacKinnon, May I speak?, Michigan Quarterly

Review 30 (Summer 1991): 415-23.
Ring, Jennifer. Saving Objectivity for Feminism: MacKinnon, Marx, and Other
Possibilities, The Review of Politics 49 (Fall 1987): 467 (23).
Scott, Janny. Los Angeles Times Interview; Catharine MacKinnon; Pursuing a Different
Approach to Sexual Inequality, Los Angeles Times October 24, 1993, part M, cal. 1, p.3.
Strebeigh, Fred. The Words They Cant Say, The New York Times Magazine. October
6,1991, p29 (7).
Strosser, Nadine. In Defense of Pornography, USA Today, January 12, 1995, sec. News,
p. 9A.
Toobin, Jeffrey. X-Rated. Feminists Against Pornography, ~ October 3, 1994, p. 70(9).
PORNOGRAPHY IS ABUSE AGAINST

WOMEN
1. PORNOGRAPHY IS A FORM OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, ONLY
WORDS, 1993,
p. 9.
Protecting pornography means protecting sexual abuse as speech, at the same time that
both pornography and its protection have deprived women of speech, especially speech
against sexual abuse. There is a connection between the silence enforced on women, in
which we are seen to love and choose our chains because they have been sexualized,
and the noise of pornography that surrounds us, passing for discourse (ours, even) and
parading under constitutional protection. The operative definition of censorship
accordingly shifts from government silencing what powerless people say, to powerful
people violating powerless people into silence and hiding behind the state power to do
it.
2. PORNOGRAPHY HURTS WOMEN AS A GROUP

Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, TOWARD A
FEMINIST THEORY OF THE STATE, 1989, p. 207-8.
The dominant view is that pornography must cause harm just as car accidents cause
harm, or its effects are not cognizable as harm. The trouble with this individuated,
atomistic, linear, exclusive, isolated narrowly tortlikein a word, positivisticconcept of
injust is that the way pornography targets and defines women for abuse and
discrimination does not work like this. It does hurt individuals, just not as individuals in a
one-at-a-time sense, but as members of the group women.
3. ABUSE IS PERPETRATED AGAINST WOMEN FOR PORNOGRAPHY

Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, ONLY
WORDS, 1993, p. 15.
It is for pornography, and not by the ideas in it that women are hurt and penetrated, tied
and gagged, undressed and gentially spread and sprayed with lacquer and water so sex
pictures can be made. Only for pornography are women killed to make a sex movie, and
it is not the idea of a sex killing that kills them. It is unnecessary to do any of these
things to express, as ideas, the ideas pornography expresses. It is essential to do them
to make pornography.
GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND LAWS ARE

MALE-ORIENTED
1. THE STATE IS CREATED FROM A MALE PERSPECTIVE
Catharine A. MacKinnon, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, , TOWARD
A FEMINIST THEORY OF THE STATE, 1989, p. 16 1-2.
The state is male in the feminist sense: the law sees and treats women the way men see
and treat women. The liberal state coercively and authoritatively constitutes the social
order in the interest of men as a genderthrough its legitimating norms, forms, relation
to society, and substantive policies. The states formal norms recapitulate the male point
of view on the level of design.
2. LAWS ARE BIASED AGAINST WOMEN

A FEMINIST THEORY OF THE STATE, 1989, p. 163.
The state is male jurisprudentially, meaning that it adopts the standpoint of male power
on the relation between law and society. This stance is especially vivid in constitutional
adjudication, though legitimate to the degree it is neutral on the policy content of
legislation. The foundation for its neutrality is the pervasive assumption that conditions
that pertain among men on the basis of gender apply to women as wellthat is, the
assumption that sex inequality does not really exist in society.
3. MALE POINT OF VIEW FRAMES STATE POLICY

The way the male point of view frames an experience is the way it is framed by state
policy. Over and over again, the state protects male power through embodying and
ensuring existing male control over women at every levelcushioning, qualifying, or de
jure appearing to prohibit its excesses when necessary to its normalization. De jure
relations stabilize de facto relations.
ABORTION LAWS MAINTAIN MANS

CONTROL OVER WOMEN
1. ABORTION POLICIES EXIST TO MAINTAIN MANS CONTROL OVER WOMEN
To the extent that abortion exists to control the reproductive consequences of
intercourse, hence to facilitate male sexual access to women, access to abortion will be
controlled by a man or The Man. So long as this is effectively done socially, it is
unnecessary to do it by law. Law need merely stand passively by, reflecting the passing
scene. The law of sex equality stays as far away as possible from issues of sexuality.
2. LEGALIZED ABORTIONS ENSURES AVAILABIUTY OF INTERCOURSE TO MEN

A
FEMINIST THEORY OF THE STATE, 1989, p. 188.
So why was abortion legalized? Why were women given even that much control? It is not
an accusation of
bad faith to answer that the interests of men as a social group converge with the
definition of justice embodied in law through the male point of view. The abortion right
frames the ways men arrange among
themselves to control the reproductive consequences of intercourse. The availability of
abortion enhances
the availability to intercourse.
3. ABORTION RIGHTS ARE DEVELOPED TO ENHANCE CONTROL OF MEN OVER WOMEN

But if ones concern is not how more people can get more sex, but who defines sexuality
both pleasure and violationand therefore who defines women, the abortion right is
situated within a very different problematic: the social and political inequality of the
sexes. This repositioning of the issue requires reformulating the problem of sexuality
from the repression of drives by civilization to the oppression of women by men.
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT HAS BEEN

SACRIFICED TO FIRST AMENDMENT
1. FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS HAVE BEEN SACRIFICED TO FIRST AMENDMENT
Catharine A. MacKinnon, Prof of Law, Univ. of Michigan Law School, ONLY WORDS, 1993,
p. 72. The subprovince of the First Amendment that resonates in equal protection is
simply an unbiased extension of precedent and the rule of lawa narrow equality
supporting a shallow speech. Fourteenth Amendment equality, for its part, has grown as
if equality could be achieved while the First Amendment protected the speech of
inequality, meaning whenever inequality takes an expressive form, and without
considering equal access to speech as central to any equality agenda.
2. FIRST AMENDMENT MUST BE BALANCED WITH FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS

Catharine A. MacKinnon, Prof of Law, Univ of Michigan Law School, ONLY WORDS, 1993,
p. 63. One way to think about issues of expressive freedom here is to ask whether
something works through thought or not through thought. An argument that some races
or genders or sexual persuasions are inferior to others is an argumentan
antiegalitarian argument, a false argument, a pernicious argument, an argument for
hate and for hierarchy, but an argument nonetheless. It is an act of inequality of a
particular kind, whose consequences for social inequality need to be confronted on
constitutional terrain where equality and speech converge, in a context as sensitive to
the need for equality guarantees in the law of speech as for speech guarantees m the
law of equality.
3. FIRST AMENDMENT HAS OUTWEIGHED FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT CLAIMS Catharine

A. MacKinnon, Prof of Law, Univ of Michigan Law School, ONLY WORDS, 1993, p. 71.
The law of equality and the law of freedom of speech are on a collision course in this
country. Until this moment, the constitutional doctrine of free speech has developed
without taking equality seriouslyeither the problem of social inequality or the mandate
of substantive legal equality. Originally, of course, the Constitution contained no equality
guarantee to serve as context, expansion joint, handmaiden, counterbalance or coequal
goal to the speech guarantee. Yet the modern doctrine of speech dates from
considerably after the entrenchment of equality in the Fourteenth Amendment, and still
the First Amendment has been interpreted, with a few exceptions, as if it were not there.
MACKINNONS CENSORSHIP WILL NOT

IMPROVE WOMENS LIVES
1. MACKINNONS CALL FOR CENSORSHIP HURTS THE FIGHT FOR WOMENS EQUAUTY
Nadine Strossen, NQA, USA TODAY, January 12, 1995, p. np.
The pro-censorship feminists have tried to distance themselves from traditional
conservatives like Jesse Helms, who are less interested in protecting women than in
preserving male dominance. But both groups are united by their common hatred of
sexual expression and a fondness for censorship. This mutually reinforcing relationship
does a serious disservice to the fight for womens equality.
2. BANNING PORNOGRAPHY WILL NOT CREATE EQUALITY BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
Pete Hammill, NQA, PLAYBOY, January 1993, p. np.
But to think that banning pornography will bring about the political goal of eliminating
human inequalities or hierarchies is absurd. The world has always been composed of
hierarchies: the strong over the weak, the smart above the dumb, the talented above
the ordinary. MacKinnon may not like the existence of those hierarchies (nor the liberal
project of protecting the weak, the dumb and the ordinary), but they are unlikely to be
changed by a municipal ordinance banning Three-Way Girls.
3. MACKINNONS POLICY ON PORNOGRAPHY ACTUALLY HARMS WOMEN

There is mounting evidence, however, that MacDworkinite-type laws will hurt the very
women they are supposed to protect. In 1992, the Canadian Supreme Court
incorporated the MacKinnon-Dworkin concept of pornography into Canadian obscenity
law. Since that ruling, well over half of all feminist bookstores in Canada have had
materials confiscated or detained by customs.
4. MACKINNONS APPROACH TO PORNOGRAPHY DOES NOT PROTECT WOMEN

The pornophobia that grips MacKinnon, Dworkin and their followers has also led to a
wasteful diversion
from the real causes of and solutions to discrimination and violence against women.
And, the porn-made-me-do-it defense, whereby convicted rapists cite MacKinnon and
Dworkin in seeking to reduce their sentences, impedes the enforcement of laws against
sexual violence.
PORNOGRAPHY DOES NOT LEAD TO

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
1. NO PROOF EXISTS THAT PORNOGRAPHY CAUSES HARM
But there is one effect that it may have that the New Victorians cant admit. Rather than
inspire men to loathsome acts, pornography may actually prevent them. For every rapist
who is discovered to have pornography at home, there may be a thousand men who are
content to look at the pictures, read the text, whack off and go to sleep. Nobody can
prove this, but MacKinnon cant prove that pornography creates monsters, either.
2. NO LINK EXISTS BETWEEN PORNOGRAPHY AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

The pro-censorship feminists base their efforts on the largely unexamined assumption
that ridding society of pornography would reduce sexism and violence against women.
But a casual connection between exposure to pornography and the commission of
sexual violence has never been established. The National Research Councils Panel on
Understanding and Preventing Violence concluded that demonstrated empirical links
between pornography and sex crimes in general are weak or absent.
3. NO EVIDENCE EXISTS TO LINK PORNOGRAPHY TO VIOLENCE

But there is no proof that pornographyeven as defined by MacKinnon and Dworkin
causes all human beings to act upon the bodies of women. As MacKinnon herself points
out, pornography is essentially an aid to masturbation. And as Gore Vidal once wrote,
masturbation is normal sex, in the sense that it is surely the most frequent practice
among all the worlds billions.
MACKINNONS APPROACH TO
PORNOGRAPHY IS FLAWED
1. MACKINNONS DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY IS TOO RESTRICTIVE
Nadine Strossen, NQA, USA TODAY, January 12, 1995, up.
The MacDworkinites have fashioned a definition of pornography that would suppress
far more expression than does the law of obscenity. As defined in their model law,
pornography is the sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or
words. Subordination includes scenes in which
women are presented in postures or positions of sexual submission, servility, or
display, or women are presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, injury,
torture.. . [sic] in a context that makes these conditions sexual. This endangers
everything from religious imagery and documentation of the Balkan rapes to self-help
books about womens health and sexuality.
2. MACKINNONS DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY BANS MAINSTREAM MATERIALS

Pete Hammill, NQA, PLAYBOY, January 1993, up.
But her [MacKinnons] definition of pornography outlined in Pornography and Civil Rights
could cover everything from the latest Madonna video to the novels of Henty Miller, Al
Capps Moonbeam McSwine and Gustave Flauberts Salaxnmbo, acres of surrealist
paintings, the Koran and James Cagney hitting Mae Clarke with that grapefruit We would
see the last of Black Bun Busters, but we could also lose Don Giovanni. The great flaw in
the antiporn agitation is that its based on a mystery: the elusive nature of sexuality.
3. MACKINNONS APPROACH TO PORNOGRAPHY IS PATERNALISTIC

Pete Hammill, NQA, PLAYBOY, January 1993, up.
Today, absolutely certain of their rectitude, totally free of doubt, equipped with an
understanding of human beings that has eluded all previous generations, MacKinnon,
Dworkin and their allies have been shaping a Victorian solution to their Victorian
nightmares. That solution is, pardon the expression, paternalistic. As
MacKinnon writes: Some of the same reasons children are granted some specific legal
avenues for redress. [sic] also hold true for the social position of women compared to
men. Since women are, in the MacKinnon view, essentially children, they must be
shielded from harm, corruption and filthy thoughts. The savage impulses of the male
must be caged. And women must be alerted to the true nature of the beast.
4. MACKINNON USES A PATERNALISTIC APPROACH IN DEFINING PORNOGRAPHY
Nadine Strossen, NQA, USA TODAY, January 12, 1995, up.

MacKinnon, for example, writes: Compare victims reports of rape with womens reports
of sex. They look a lot alike. . . [sic] (T)he major distinction between intercourse (normal)
and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot... [sic] see
anything wrong with it. These ideas are hardly radical. They are a reincarnation of
puritanical, Victorian notions that feminists have long tried to consign to the dustbin of
history: woman as sexual victim; man as voracious satyr. These archaic stereotypes
formed the basis for 1 9th-century laws prohibiting vulgar language from being used in
the presence of women and girls. Such paternalism always leads to exclusion,
discrimination and the loss of freedom and autonomy.
JAMES MADISON
Every academic field has its schemes of classification, and scholarship on the American
founding is no different. As a result, James Madison, like the other leading figures of his
generation, is often placed into one or another ideological box. It is said that he is a
liberal or a republican, a nationalist or an advocate of states rights, a follower of the
"court" party or of its "country" rival. There is no denying the usefulness of these labels,
and I have gladly availed myself of them on many occasions. But taxonomies seldom do
justice to individuals, and this is especially true when dealing with a thinker of Madisons
depth.
James Madison was a unique member of the group known as the Founding Fathers. Not
easily categorizable, Madison was original thinker given to philosophy.
Madison didnt adhere devoutly to the party line of any of the three major factions
(Federalist, anti-Federalist, or Democratic-Republican) of the time. Though he was a coauthor of THE FEDERALIST PAPERS, he often split with co-author Alexander Hamilton on
the issues of the day, showing his freedom from dogmatism.
As COMMENTARY MAGAZINEs Gary Rosen put it:
Every academic field has its schemes of classification, and scholarship on the American
founding is no different. As a result, James Madison, like the other leading figures of his
generation, is often placed into one or another ideological box. It is said that he is a
liberal or a republican, a nationalist or an advocate of states rights, a follower of the
"court" party or of its "country" rival. There is no denying the usefulness of these labels,
and I have gladly availed myself of them on many occasions. But taxonomies seldom do
justice to individuals, and this is especially true when dealing with a thinker of Madisons
depth.
Most importantly, though: Madison was the smallest U.S. president, standing 5" 4" and
weighing about 100 pounds. Interestingly enough, both of his vice presidents passed on
in office, including George Clinton, who died in office in 1812. Reports that Madison and
Clinton invented The Funk Bomb to contribute to the national defense are unverified.
Seriously, though, Madison was an important figure in the early political life of the
country. His idea on the separation of church and state, the avoidance of oppression,
and the structure of representative government remain influential.
Well begin by examining the manner in which Madison busted onto the nation scene in
1780, and then discuss the ideas he brought to the table.
THE LIFE OF MADISON

It is with this problem that James Madison enters the picture. Madison was much
younger than many of the other founders, one of the youngest, in fact. He stepped onto
the political scene in 1780, when he served on the Virginia delegation in the Continental
Congress.
When the Articles of Confederation began to fail, Madison wondered how a more
effective national government might take shape. The problem as he saw it was too great
a regional identification, which he identified in THE FEDERALIST PAPERS as factionalism.
Without a predominant concern for the nation as a whole, as opposed to a myopic
concern for individual states and localities, Madison feared no effective national
government could be formed.
A Constitutional Convention was necessary but not for the reasons you might suspect,
reasons of enlightened men crafting a document in the best interests of all. No, Madison
scholars agree today what Madison and the boys wanted to do was (in Rosens words)
to circumvent the people, even if just temporarily. Indeed, Madison eventually
concluded that constitutional conventions were a necessary device for allowing those
like himself--those whom he called 'the most enlightened and influential patriots'--to
escape from the hold of democratic institutions." The example to follow, he suggests in
Federalist 38, was that of ancient lawgivers like Solon and Lycurgus, men of "preeminent
wisdom and approved integrity" who nonetheless were compelled to act outside the
bounds of regular authority.
Paradoxical as it may sound, Madison seems to have concluded that America would get
a sound, republican Constitution only by means of an aristocratic coup of sorts writes
Rosen a charge that Madisons critics then and now would jump all over.
Lets not belabor the point. Lets just say it worked and move on. Well examine the
criticisms of Madison below.
MADISON ON THE POLITICAL SYSTEM

As an author of THE FEDERALIST PAPERS, Madison is famous for his advocacy of a
federal system with checks and balances to provide stability and satisfy most all interest
groups. As a philosophically inclined individual, he had ideas about what the ideal state
would look like. As a skillful politician, he was able to get what he wanted for that state.
Madison is famous for having sought to avoid "the tyranny of the majority." He did so
through placing both substantive and procedural limits on democratic majority rule of
the country. This includes the existence of the electoral college and the bicameral
legislature system, where the House of Representatives is thought to represent the
masses and the Senate the landed elite.
While he was hardly alone in this viewpoint Hamilton was another who worried about
the majority of people rallying against the few who were elected to govern them
Madison put the most effort into thinking about the philosophical implications.
Madison's theory of representative democracy appealed to "the principle of reciprocity

as a means of dealing with the unwashed heathen masses pillaging the rich. (Sorry,
getting ahead of myself but I couldnt help it.)
What does the principle of reciprocity say? Lets get into that when we discuss the
notion of majority tyranny itself before getting into what Madison thought that this
condition might cause.
MADISON ON THE TYRANNY OF THE

MAJORITY
Madison worried about the overarching power of a powerful mass of people, especially if
that mass had coincident interests. The idea is that they might use their power to stifle
the rights of others. In organizing a republican democracy, one must take care to build in
safeguards against this.
The safeguards are based on what Madison termed the principle of reciprocity.
Reciprocity is the notion that what one group does to another is reciprocal what goes
around comes around. What might that mean? Well, the majority is inherently selfinterested. People will vote to actualize their own wants, needs and desires.
This might cause problems where the majority runs roughshod over the rights of the
minority hence, Tyranny of the Majority.
But heres where Madisons principle of reciprocity comes in: the majority might be selfinterested, but they arent blind. The majority voting bloc is probably not going to be
together in unanimity until the end of time.
Thus, the self-interested majority worries that the minority may attract defectors from
the majority and become the next governing majority itself.
Hence, the majority will look to the long-term. Majority group members will worry that
the minority may attract defectors from the majority group. Either they will become the
next majority, and hence have the power to govern, or will merely have the power to
make life miserable for the people who made their lives miserable over the past
however many years.
This does happen in politics all the time, after all. You often see a good soldier get
rewarded with a plum position when his or her party takes power, even though that
person is unqualified and unworthy of the job, like John Ashcroft.
So winning candidates dont have to ONLY pay attention to the majority. Theyll be voting
on tons of issues (road building bills, organic food labeling laws, minority preference
laws) that may either alienate their political support base or attract minority members.
The politician always has to be on the lookout just ask Bill Clinton, who betrayed his
core constituency with Republican style policies to the tune of sweet re-election.
Again, this is part of the logic of the federal system. Power is to be kept as separated as
possible among interest groups and even elected officials. If power is temporary and
fluid, then the potential for abuse is minimized.
Speaking of potential for abuse, a prominent issue in public life then as now was the role
of religion. Was the church a positive or a pernicious influence? How best to adapt to its
power? The answers to these questions led to the modern notion of two separate
spheres for church and state, and Madison had a key role to play in it all.
MADISON ON RELIGION
Madison had serious doubts about the role religion played in public life. While his father
was an Episcopalian, he kept his religious beliefs largely private.
In a memorandum entitled "Vices of the Political System" (1787) he express skepticism

that religion could prevent oppression under a system of republican governance. Could
it "be a sufficient restraint? It is not pretended to be such on men individually
considered. Will its effects be greater on them considered in an aggregate view? Quite
the reverse." Madison wrote. He consistently repeated these views in speeches of the
time, including one given at the Federal Convention on June 6, 1787, where he argued
that there was "little to be expected" from religion in a positive way.
Indeed, he warned that it might become "a motive to persecution and oppression." In
the most famous of THE FEDERALIST PAPERS, Number 10, published November 22,
1787, he wrote "that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate
control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals and
lose their efficiency in proportion to the number combined together." Even Jefferson,
who warned of the deadly nature of a priest-ridden culture, wasnt as pessimistic
about the social utility of the church.
This helps to explain his support for what we today call the separation of church and
state. In fact, he believed that separating the two institutions served religion best as
well. The church, Madison reasoned, did best when it was unencumbered from the
mandates of a state apparatus.
This viewpoint manifested itself in 1784-85, as Madison consistently rejected tax support
for religious institutions.
He wrote in a pamphlet called MEMORIAL AND REMONSTRANCE a defense of these

decisions. The document, written in June 1785, is celebrated by Madisons acolytes as
"the most powerful defense of religious liberty ever written in America."
The debate raged on, with Jefferson and Madison on one side (though they split on many
other issues, with Jefferson considering Madison an aristocrat) and men like Patrick
Henry and his supporters on the other. The struggle continues to this day.
CRITICS OF MADISON
People who criticize Madison (and generally Hamilton) do so on one basis: that he was
an elitist who was interested in preserving the rights of wealthy white landowners and
not much of anybody else. Their charges have serious merit.
Even Madisons own words at the time provide a pretty damning indictment. Knowing
that most Americans didnt support granting the delegates to the Constitutional
Convention the power to make a new government, he had this to say:
We ought to consider what [is] right & necessary in itself for the attainment of a proper
Government. A plan adjusted to this idea will recommend itself. . . . All the most
enlightened and respectable citizens will be its advocates. Should we fall short of the
necessary and proper point, this influential class of citizens will be turned against the
plan, and little support in opposition to them can be gained to it from the unreflecting
multitude.
This "unreflecting multitude was, in Madisons view, the mass of American people.
When Madison said tyranny of the majority, he meant that the majority of Americans
(still rural farmers, not particularly wealthy) might gang up and plunder the rich.
Madison wanted to deliver power into the hands of a better sort of people the rich,
the powerful, the people Jefferson feared and mistrusted. Perhaps the defining quotation
from this period and this viewpoint comes from John Jay, the third author of THE
FEDERALIST PAPERS: the people who own the country ought to govern it.
Jefferson was a staunch critic of this viewpoint, and attacked both Madison and Hamilton
for it. Jeffersons first principles included the idea that government was only just with the
consent of the governed, and that bypassing that consent was unjust.
Jefferson wrote a letter to Madison in 1789 as Jefferson was preparing to return to the
United States after four years as ambassador to France. Jefferson asked his colleague
"Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another?" He concluded, having
witnessed the first events of the French Revolution, that "no such obligation can be so
transmitted."
Jefferson would fight Madison on many policies over which they differed based on these
principles, including the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which Jefferson (and every sane
person) thought were unconstitutional. Jefferson said that if the federal government was
to violate its own laws, the people possessed a "natural right" to reject the acts, which
should be declared "void and of no force.
Jefferson also battled with Madison and Hamilton over the implied powers doctrine,
which John Marshalls Supreme Court seemed destined to enforce. Jefferson believed
that the federal government ought only have the powers expressly granted by the
people, while this doctrine effectively gave the governing bodies power to do whatever
they thought was best.
Madison replies? In order to promote stability of government, the people must not be
allowed or required to challenge every decision made by the better class of men ruling
them.
His final shot at Jefferson, and the summation of his argument, is contained in
FEDERALIST PAPER NUMBER 49:
As every appeal to the people would carry an implication of some defect in the
government, frequent appeals would in great measure deprive the government of that
veneration, which time bestows on everything, and without which perhaps the wisest
and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability. If it be true that all
governments rest on opinion, it is no less true that the strength of opinion in each
individual, and its practical influence on his conduct, depend much on the number which
he supposes to have entertained the same opinion. The reason of man, like man himself
is timid and cautious, when left alone; and acquires firmness and confidence, in
proportion to the number with which it is associated. When the examples, which fortify
opinion, are antient as well as numerous, they are known to have a double effect. In a
nation of philosophers, this consideration ought to be disregarded. A reverence for the
laws, would be sufficiently inculcated by the voice of an enlightened reason. But a nation
of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by
Plato. And in every other nation, the most rational government will not find it a
superfluous advantage, to have the prejudices of the community on its side.
In order to stay away from factionalism and prevent the people from losing faith in
government, Madison reasoned, the government must continue to go about its business
as usual.
IN CONCLUSION
James Madison should be known for a lot more than being a short guy who had a wife
named Dolley. The youngest of the founding fathers, he had more influence than most
any of them even Jefferson, whose populist ideas lost out in the long run to Madisons
aristocratic notions.
His FEDERALIST PAPERS are the most philosophical, the most based in a sense of ethics,
and the most passionately argued. Even if you disagree with their ultimate conclusions,
theyre worth checking out.
We ought to consider what [is] right & necessary in itself for the attainment of a proper
Government. A plan adjusted to this idea will recommend itself. . . . All the most
enlightened and respectable citizens will be its advocates. Should we fall short of the
necessary and proper point, this influential class of citizens will be turned against the
plan, and little support in opposition to them can be gained to it from the unreflecting
multitude.
As every appeal to the people would carry an implication of some defect in the
government, frequent appeals would in great measure deprive the government of that
veneration, which time bestows on everything, and without which perhaps the wisest
and freest governments would not possess the requisite stability. If it be true that all
governments rest on opinion, it is no less true that the strength of opinion in each
individual, and its practical influence on his conduct, depend much on the number which
he supposes to have entertained the same opinion. The reason of man, like man himself
is timid and cautious, when left alone; and acquires firmness and confidence, in
proportion to the number with which it is associated. When the examples, which fortify
opinion, are antient as well as numerous, they are known to have a double effect. In a
nation of philosophers, this consideration ought to be disregarded. A reverence for the
laws, would be sufficiently inculcated by the voice of an enlightened reason. But a nation
of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by
Plato. And in every other nation, the most rational government will not find it a
superfluous advantage, to have the prejudices of the community on its side.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Banning, Lance. University of Kentucky, James Madison: Federalist, LIBRARY OF
CONGRESS JAMES MADISON COMMEMORATION SYMPOSIUM, March 16, 2001,
http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/symposium.html and
http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/banning-paper.html.
Banning, Lancej. THE SACRED FIRE OF LIBERTY: JAMES MADISON AND THE CREATION OF
THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC, 1780-l792: Ithaca, N.Y., 1995.
Beard, Charles historian, FRAMING THE CONSTITUTION, 1912.
Brant, Irving. THE LIFE OF JAMES MADISON: Indianapolis, 1941-61.
Chomsky, Noam. Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Z

MAGAZINE, June 1997.
Hutson, James. Library of Congress, "James Madison and the Social Utility of Religion:
Risks vs. Rewards," LIBRARY OF CONGRESS JAMES MADISON COMMEMORATION
SYMPOSIUM, March 16, 2001, http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/symposium.html and
http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/hutson-paper.html.
Madison, James, under the name Publius, FEDERALIST PAPER No. 10, November 22,
1787, http://federalistpapers.com/federalist10.html. All of Madisons FEDERALIST PAPERS
are available at http://federalistpapers.com.
Mattern, David. James Madison's "Advice to My Country" (Charlottesville, Va., 1997).
Matthews, Richard K. IF MEN WERE ANGELS: JAMES MADISON AND THE HEARTLESS
EMPIRE OF REASON: Lawrence, Kans., 1995.
Meyers, Marvin, ed., THE MIND OF THE FOUNDER: SOURCES OF THE POLITICAL
THOUGHT OF JAMES MADISON, Hanover, N.H., 1981.
Rosen, Gary. COMMENTARY MAGAZINE, Was James Madison an Original Thinker?

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS JAMES MADISON COMMEMORATION SYMPOSIUM, March 16,
2001, http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/symposium.html and
http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/hutson-paper.html and
http://www.loc.gov/loc/madison/rosen-paper.html.
Samples, John. director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato
Institute, CATO DAILY COMMENTARY, November 15, 2000, http://www.cato.org/dailys/1115-00.html, accessed April 22, 2002.
Smith, James Morton, ed., THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS: THE CORRESPONDENCE

BETWEEN JEFFERSON AND MADISON, 1776-1826: New York, 1995.
MADISONS IDEA OF A FEDERAL

REPUBLIC MAKES FOR GOOD
GOVERNANCE
1. MADISONS IDEA OF A FEDERAL REPUBLIC IS THE BEST GOVERNMENTAL POLICY
John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato
Institute, CATO DAILY COMMENTARY, November 15, 2000, p. np,
http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-15-00.html, accessed April 22, 2002.
However the election turns out, proponents of pure democracy will call for the abolition
of the Electoral College. Washington's newest celebrity, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, is
the latest convert to this cause. Some will say Ms. Clinton opposes the Electoral College
only because Al Gore might lose the presidency despite getting a plurality of the popular
vote. I give Ms. Clinton more credit than that. Her opposition to the Electoral College is
entirely in step with her underlying philosophy of government: centralizing liberalism.
But that philosophy contravenes the spirit of our Constitution as expressed by its
primary author, James Madison. We should stick with Madison's idea of a federal republic
and preserve the Electoral College.
2. A FEDERAL REPUBLIC CONTROLS FACTIONALISM AND VIOLENCE

James Madison, FEDERALIST PAPER No. 10, November 22, 1787, p. np,
http://federalistpapers.com/federalist10.html, accessed April 22, 2002.
Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves
to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of
faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their
character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He
will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the
principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice,
and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal
diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue
to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their
most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American
constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too
much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as
effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints
are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the
friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our
governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival
parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice
and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and
overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no
foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some
degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of
the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of
our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone
account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and
increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are
echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly,
effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our
public administrations. By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether
amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by
some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens,
or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
3. THE FEDERAL WILL IS MANIFESTED BY THE AMERICAN ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Institute, CATO DAILY COMMENTARY, November 15, 2000, http://www.cato.org/dailys/1115-00.html, accessed April 22, 2002.
What about the Electoral College? Madison thought it embodied the "federal will" of the
nation. By that he meant that the Electoral College included both the will of the nation
as expressed in the popular vote and the will of the states in a federal system (every
state large or small gets two electors). As Madison knew, this amalgamation gave small
and medium-sized states more leverage in presidential elections than they would have
in a popular vote. He found that fair given the influence of large states in other areas.
FEDERALISM IS KEY TO STABLE AND

PROSPEROUS GOVERNMENT
1. MADISONIAN FEDERALISM SOLVES FOR BETTER DEMOCRACY
Institute, CATO DAILY COMMENTARY, November 15, 2000, p. np,
http://www.cato.org/dailys/11-15-00.html, accessed April 22, 2002.
Madison's point about federalism is also well taken. The Founders feared the arbitrary
exercise of political power, and they hoped strong states would limit an expansive
central government. If we abolish the Electoral College, we will make it harder for the
states to provide this essential defense of liberty. And we will do so just as bold policy
successes in the states have shown the value of these "laboratories of democracy."
2. BECAUSE THE ENLIGHTENED WONT ALWAYS RULE, FEDERALISM IS BEST

It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing
interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will
not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all
without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail
over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of
another or the good of the whole. The inference to which we are brought is, that the
CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means
of controlling its EFFECTS.
3. PURE DEMOCRACY WOULD BE DIVISIVE AND FRACTIOUS: FEDERALISM IS BETTER

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I
mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer
the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common
passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a
communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is
nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious
individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence
and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights
of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in
their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government,
have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their
political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in
their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
4. A FEDERAL REPUBLIC IS MUCH BETTER THAN A DEMOCRACY

Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a
democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small
republic, -- is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage
consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous
sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not
be denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these
requisite endowments. Does it consist in the greater security afforded by a greater
variety of parties, against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and
oppress the rest? In an equal degree does the increased variety of parties comprised
within the Union, increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles
opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and
interested majority? Here, again, the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable
advantage. In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a
republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And
according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be
our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.
MADISONIAN FEDERALISM IS JUST AN

EXCUSE TO CURB REAL DEMOCRACY
1. MADISON WANTED ARISTOCRACY, NOT DEMOCRACY
Governor Morris wanted to check the "precipitancy, changeableness, and excess" of the
representatives of the people by the ability and virtue of men" of great and established
property -- aristocracy; men who from pride will support consistency and
permanency...Such an aristocratic body will keep down the turbulence of democracy."
While these extreme doctrines were somewhat counterbalanced by the democratic
principles of Mr. Wilson, who urged that "the government ought to possess, not only first,
the force, but second, the mind or sense of the people at large," Madison doubtless
summed up in a brief sentence the general opinion of the convention when he said that
to secure private rights against minority factions, and at the same time to preserve the
spirit and form of popular government, was the great object to which their inquiries had
been directed.
2. MADISONS VIEW PROTECTED PROPERTY, NOT PEOPLE

They were anxious above everything else to safeguard the rights of private property
against any leveling tendencies on the part of the propertyless masses. Governor Morris,
in speaking on the problem of apportioning representatives, correctly stated the sound
historical fact when he declared: "Life and liberty were generally said to be of more
value than property. An accurate view of the matter, nevertheless, would prove that
property was the main object of society...If property, then was the main object of
government, certainly it ought to be one measure of the influence due to those who
were to be affected by the government." Mr. King also agreed that "property was the
primary object of society," and Mr. Madison warned the convention that in framing a
system which they wished to last for ages they must not lose sight of the changes which
the ages would produce in the forms and distribution of property. In advocating a long
term in order to give independence and firmness to the Senate, he described these
impending changes: "An increase in the population will of necessity increase the
proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life and secretly sigh for a
more equitable distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are
placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the
power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made
in this country, but symptoms of a levelling spirit, as we have understood have
sufficiently appeared, in a certain quarter, to give notice of the future danger." And
again, in support of the argument for a property qualification on voters, Madison urged:
"In future times, a great majority of the people will not only be without land, but without
any other sort of property. These will either combine, under the influence of their
common situation, -- in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not
be secure in their hands, -- or, what is more probable, they will become the tools of
opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side."
3. MADISON ADMITTED FAVORING INEQUALITY

In the tenth number of The Federalist, Mr. Madison argued in a philosophic vein in
support of the proposition that it was necessary to base the political system on the
actual conditions of "natural inequality." Uniformity of interests throughout the state, he
contended, was impossible on account of the diversity in the faculties of men, from
which the rights of property originated; the protection of these faculties was the first
object of government; from the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring
property the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately resulted;
from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors
ensued a division of society into different interests and parties; the unequal distribution
of wealth inevitably led to a clash of interests in which the majority was liable to carry
out its policies at the expense of the minority; hence, he added, in concluding this
splendid piece of logic, "the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must
be rendered by their number and local situation unable to concert and carry into effect
schemes of oppression"; and in his opinion, it was the great merit of the newly framed
Constitution that it secured the rights of the minority against "the superior force of an
interested and overbearing majority."
MADISON WAS AN ELITIST WHOSE

THEORIES FAVORED ONLY RICH
LANDOWNERS
1. MADISON WANTED TO PROTECT THE RICH MINORITY AGAINST THE MAJORITY
MAGAZINE, June 1997, p. 8.
Furthermore, the leading Framer of the constitutional system was an astute and lucid
political thinker, James Madison, whose views largely prevailed. In the debates on the
Constitution, Madison pointed out that in England, if elections ``were open to all classes
of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would
soon take place,'' giving land to the landless. The system that he and his associates
were designing must prevent such injustice, he urged, and ``secure the permanent
interests of the country,'' which are property rights. It is the responsibility of
government, Madison declared, ``to protect the minority of the opulent against the
majority.'' To achieve this goal, political power must rest in the hands of ``the wealth of
the nation,'' men who would ``sympathize sufficiently'' with property rights and ``be
safe depositories of power over them,'' while the rest are marginalized and fragmented,
offered only limited public participation in the political arena.
2. A CONSENSUS OF MADISONIAN SCHOLARS AGREES HE WAS AN ELITIST

Among Madisonian scholars, there is a consensus that ``The Constitution was
intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of
the period,'' delivering power to a ``better sort'' of people and excluding ``those who
were not rich, well born, or prominent from exercising political power.'' These
conclusions are often qualified by the observation that Madison, and the constitutional
system generally, sought to balance the rights of persons against the rights of property.
But the formulation is misleading. Property has no rights. In both principle and practice,
the phrase ``rights of property'' means the right to property, typically material property,
a personal right which must be privileged above all others, and is crucially different from
others in that one person's possession of such rights deprives another of them. When
the facts are stated clearly, we can appreciate the force of the doctrine that ``the people
who own the country ought to govern it,'' `òne of [the] favorite maxims'' of Madison's
influential colleague John Jay, his biographer observes.
3. CAPITALISM HAS SIGNIFICANTLY ALTERED THE WAY WE SHOULD SEE MADISON

One may argue, as some historians do, that these principles lost their force as the
national territory was conquered and settled, the native population driven out or
exterminated. Whatever one's assessment of those years, by the late 19th century the
founding doctrines took on a new and much more oppressive form. When Madison spoke
of ``rights of persons,'' he meant humans. But the growth of the industrial economy, and
the rise of corporate forms of economic enterprise, led to a completely new meaning of
the term. In a current official document, ```Person' is broadly defined to include any
individual, branch, partnership, associated group, association, estate, trust, corporation
or other organization (whether or not organized under the laws of any State), or any
government entity,'' a concept that doubtless would have shocked Madison and others
with intellectual roots in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism -- pre-capitalist, and
anti-capitalist in spirit.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. He died El-Hajj
Malik al-Shabazz on February 21, 1965 when he was assassinated in New York City. At
age 15 he dropped out of school, and shortly thereafter jumped a train to New York City.
After several years of criminal activity, Malcolm was sent to prison for burglary, where
he stayed from 1946-1952.
During his time in prison, Malcolm formulated many of his critical thoughts on racism,
civil disobedience, and human rights. Malcolm also engaged in several debates about
race relations between blacks and whites in the United States while in prison. His
positions in these debates were influenced remarkably by the beliefs of Elijah
Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam.
Shortly after leaving prison in 1952, Malcolm dedicated his life to the Nation and
changed his name to Malcolm X. Malcolm married Betty X, another member of the
Nation of Islam in 1958, and was suspended from the Nation in December 1963 for
allegedly usurping Elijah Muhammads role as spiritual leader.
In 1964, Malcolm converted to true Islam and founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc. in the
United States. April 22 of that same year, Malcolm traveled to Mecca to make his hajj
(pilgrimage), completing his conversion. Malcolms hajj experience encouraged him to
make several journeys to Africa and found the Organization of Afro-American Unity on
June 28, 1964. Malcolm devoted the rest of his life to promoting ties between the black
plight in the United States and the colonized peoples of Africa, until his death in 1965.
MALCOLM X IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS

MOVEMENT
Malcolm X taught many important values through the Nation of Islam and the Moslem
Mosque, Inc. which can be useful in Lincoln-Douglas debate. In particular, Malcolms
beliefs human rights and civil disobedience in the context of racism in the United States
provide diverse options for criteria and values on a plethora of topics. Malcolm
developed these beliefs during the United States Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s.
The Civil Rights Movement was a series of protests by blacks living in the United States
designed to eliminate their inferior status before the law throughout the country. Signs
such as Whites Only were only the most visible manifestations of the Jim Crow laws
they protested. Malcolm, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of the foremost
advocates for black equality. Unlike MLK, though, Malcolm believed that equality through
integration was impossible due to the long history of slavery in the United States.
Instead, Malcolm fought for a return to Africa subsidized by the oppressor (the U.S.
government). Barring this fantastical feat, Malcolm thought that black America should
live separate from white society, advocating the establishment of a new country for
blacks currently living in the United States of America. These views placed him
fundamentally at odds with other Civil Rights Movement leaders.
WHY MALCOLM REJECTS CIVIL RIGHTS

AS A VALUE/CRITERIA
The reasons for Malcolms rejection of a civil rights based strategy (including attempts to
desegregate schools and protect equal opportunity at the workplace, etc.) are severalfold. First, civil rights originate from the value system of those in power the oppressors.
In contrast, human rights stem from the inherent dignity of people all around the world.
According to Malcolm, endorsing civil rights was to endorse the value system of the
oppressor which is, in essence, to endorse the value of oppression. Thus rights grounded
in the U.S. Constitution or other bodies of laws are inherently oppressive.
Second, civil rights are administered within the jurisdiction of a particular nation state.
The judiciary, legislature, and various enforcement agencies are free to diminish, distort,
and in any other way tamper with the rules to further the oppression of minorities.
Endorsing these rights is therefore not only futile, it is inherently degrading as it
supports the ability of the oppressor to remain in control of the minorities future.
Human rights are enforced internationally, where the oppressor cannot manipulate the
rules and perpetuate dominance.
Third, the civil rights strategy absolves oppressors of any wrongdoing. By granting civil
rights to the black minority, Malcolm believed the United States government was able to
assert its own moral virtuousness, thus washing its hands of any guilt. In contrast,
human rights claims taken to the United Nations could expose the wrong-doing of the
U.S. before the entire world, forcing it to change its policies in some meaningful fashion.
The bottom line for Malcolm was finding a way to expose the U.S. governments racism
in order to achieve a just and lasting way of life for himself and black America that would
eliminate perceived and real inequalities.
Fourth, as opposed to civil rights, human rights claims recognize the criminal nature of
the U.S.s oppression of blacks in America. Malcolm firmly believed that slavery and its
aftermath (Jim Crow laws, segregation, etc.) were profound crimes against humanity
which must be dealt with as such. Civil Rights laws functionally remove any possibility of
criminal recognition or prosecution, not just against the government, but against private
enterprises as well. Business can, if they so desire, simply pay fines when found in
violation of various civil rights laws, unless the government is willing to throw them in
jailwhich seems unlikely.
Fifth, civil rights strategies, according to Malcolm, divide oppressed groups artificially
along national sovereignty lines. Oppression of blacks, for example, was not limited
solely to the United States. Slavery began at the hands of several European nations, and
continued in the form of colonization of the African continent. In order to combat this
oppression, then, Malcolm believed blacks in America must find allies in the colonial
world. This belief was particularly powerful during Malcolms time since the newly
emerging African nations were throwing off the chains of colonization in the 1940s and
1950s.
Finally, Malcolm believed that the choice between civil rights and human rights,
including the choice of the appropriate forum in which to challenge oppression, was
fundamentally a moral choice which could taint or enhance the ultimate goal of equality.
If the battle was waged through civil rights, black Americans suppressed their inherent
dignity by supplicating themselves to the white men running the country. To do so
involved such self-degradation that Malcolm was unwilling to make the slightest
concession in this regard.
MALCOLM X ON REVOLUTION (CIVIL

DISOBEDIENCE)
Since Malcolm eschewed civil rights tactics in the United States, he strongly supported
acts of civil disobedience and revolution, including, if necessary, violence against those
in power. Malcolms views on this matter were quite clear, and changed very little
throughout his lifetime. This stance on revolution has caused many commentators to
depict Malcolm as a violent activist who taught hatred and violence to blacks living in
America during the Civil Rights Era. This conception of Malcolms work, however,
obscures his many important points regarding civil disobedience, violence and revolution
in the U.S.
First, whether or not he advocated revolution is somewhat irrelevant since Malcolm

believed revolution was an inevitable result of the long history of black oppression at the
hands of whites in the United States society and government. Given two hundred years
of slavery and another eighty years of Jim Crow and segregation laws in the United
States, Malcolm believed that some form of revolution designed to reclaim dignity and
humanity for blacks in America would come no matter how hard those in control might
fight it. Malcolm characterized black power and revolution as chickens coming home to
roost do evil unto others, and evil shall be don unto you.
Second, Malcolm frequently argued for equality on the basis that it was the only avenue
through which the United States could avoid a violent revolution. For instance, in his
famous The Ballot or The Bullet speech, Malcolm argues that unless the whites in
power give negroes the power to vote, a revolution is inevitable. The government has a
choice: the ballot or the bullet.
Third, Malcolm thought revolution was the only realistic way that blacks could achieve
equality. If civil rights are a rigged game, as Malcolm argued they were, then playing by
the masters rules could never achieve true equality. Instead, a separate nation, a return
to Africa, or a revolution to remove power from the hands of the oppressors were the
only viable options for achieving a racially just society.
Fourth, since human rights ought to be valued above those rights granted (or denied) by
the ones own oppressive government. Civil disobedience in order to achieve human
rights was not only justified in Malcolms view, it was necessary to achieve the equality
and inherent dignity that every child, woman, and man deserves. For Malcolm, one must
keep in mind the end goalhuman rightson every action or moral decision and opt for
the path or means which best promotes that end.
MALCOLM X AND THE QUESTION OF

VIOLENCE
Malcolms support for civil disobedience, violence, and revolution makes his approach
toward the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s distinctly different than that of Martin
Luther King, Jr.s who encouraged blacks to love everyone and turn the other cheek to
their common oppressors. Like Gandhi before him (in the struggle to liberate India), MLK
taught his followers/congregations to accept and love all who would do harm to her/him
as one of Gods children. Only by loving their oppressors could blacks melt hatred.
Martin Luther King, Jr.s pacifistic beliefs did not, however, rule out civil disobedience in
the struggle for equality. Rather, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his followers whole-heartedly
supported Rosa Parks decision to refuse to move to the back of the bus and formulated
a Montgomery Bus Boycott to force integration. The differences between Martin Luther
King, Jr.s style of civil disobedience and Malcolm Xs style is Malcolms support for
violent means and his rejection of working through the system.
While the Montgomery Bus Boycott constitutes civil disobedience, it still falls within the
legal channels established by the majority in power. In Malcolms understanding, this is
not civil disobedience so much as an affirmation of the white majoritys power structure
and rules of engagement. Malcolm fundamentally believed oppressed minorities like
blacks in America must challenge both the majority power structure and their selfdefined modes of correct and legal courses of action. Boycotts and other means of
legal protest must be eschewed in order to highlight the criminally unjust nature of the
ruling government.
To the charge of violent trouble-maker, Malcolm responds that human dignity and
equality are the most important goal that we can achieve and the struggle to attain
them warrants any means necessary. While he may endorse violence, it is not
necessarily his mechanism of choice. In an ideal world, racism and segregation would be
eliminated by those in power because they are inherently immoral and evil. Malcolm
believed, however, that whites would only eliminate racism if it threatened their lives
and lifestyles. Violence or the threat of violence was the only way to force whites into
that decision.
Furthermore, Malcolm argues that depictions of himself as a violent revolutionary

underscore the white attempts to divide and placate those fighting in the Civil Rights
Movement through efforts of tokenism. Malcolm characterized leaders such as Martin
Luther King and A. Philip Randolph as Uncle Tom Negroes in his autobiographyblack
leaders of the Civil Rights Movement who had been coopted by the government in order
to stop continued protests like the Birmingham, Alabama store boycott which ended in
open confrontation with the Mayor and police in that city.
Malcolm believed black nationalism was the only way possible to force whites in power
to forgo that power in favor of equal opportunity for everyone in the United States.
Whether black nationalism meant a return to Africa or a separate state or union for
blacks in the U.S., Malcolm believed it was the necessary vehicle to achieve equality,
human rights, and dignity. If utilizing and advocating black nationalism and violence
meant he would be ostracized by the dominant powers and whites, Malcolm thought
that he was on the right track to challenging the power structure.
Finally, Malcolm endorsed violence because whites had been using violence to oppress
blacks and remove them of their dignity. Violence, in addition to being a necessary
means toward achieving human rights, was also a just response to the violence being
inflicted upon blacks. Although turn the other cheek is a way to refuse fighting fire
with fire, Malcolm argued that whites only understood violence as a threat to their way
of life, as evidenced by their use of violence to oppress. Furthermore, Malcolm he
thought turning the other cheek was unjust in its refusal to use the best means
possible toward gaining equality.
HOW TO EMPLOY MALCOLM XS VALUES

OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND IN L-D DEBATE
Malcolms views on civil rights and civil disobedience (or revolution) can easily be
utilized to support or refute a particular contention, criteria or value. Many of your
opponents values, for instance, can be criticized from the stand point of human rights,
just as Malcolm criticized the Civil Rights Movement for its choice of a civil rights
strategy kow-towing to whites in power. In addition, Malcolms beliefs may serve as a
powerful value in numerous debates.
For instance, human rights may be the foremost value one attempts to achieve or
uphold in a debate. In this regard, Malcolms teachings are most helpful, providing
clearly articulated warrants for the primacy of human rights as a value. Not only are
human rights the best way to secure human dignity, they also promote allies and
cooperation throughout the planet, rather than dividing people along national
sovereignty lines. As noted previously, Malcolm also provides several worthwhile
comparisons between human rights and national values such as civil rights: they
promote alliances, global equality, justice (by holding national governments responsible
for their actions), and fairness among others.
Human rights may also be paramount as a value which subsumes all others. Consider
this argument: human rights are the fundamental building block of human dignity,
liberty and freedom. Without human rights, not only can these values not exist, they
become meaningless concepts. What good is freedom when you have to sit at the back
of the bus, eat at separate restaurants, use separate bathrooms, receive separate
educations, and generally perceive yourself as an inferior?
Malcolms belief in civil disobedience or revolution as a necessary means for achieving

human rights is a useful tool for criticizing your opponents values or establishing a
counter-value. First, civil disobedience, as Malcolm understood and taught it, would
undermine several of the foremost values utilized in Lincoln-Douglas debates today. The
concepts of freedom, justice, and equality, according to Malcolm, are useless unless they
are part of a human rights perspective. Endorsing freedom or justice for any one
particular group is necessarily an exclusive exercise in Malcolms mind, undermining the
struggle for human rights. For example, by fighting for black Americans freedom alone,
the Civil Rights Movement inherently endorsed white control over the matter, making it
a domestic issue, rather than an international, human rights issue which demanded
global attention.
Second, Malcolms support for human rights may seriously undermine the preeminence
of the value of life, as is so often argued in Lincoln-Douglas debates. Malcolm argues
that violence is justified in order to achieve human rights given the U.S. governments
refusal to grant these rights to black Americans and other minorities. In the quest to
achieve human rights, Malcolm also believed that life was not worth living without
human rights. Time and time again he made the decision to put is life on the line in
order to fight for human rights for all of humanity. Thus, human rights may be of greater
value than even life.
HOW TO REFUTE THE USE OF MALCOLM

XS PHILOSOPHIES IN L-D DEBATE
There are many different ways to refute Malcolms philosophies regarding human rights
and revolution. First, as suggested earlier, pacifists may refute Malcolm for his
endorsement of violent means of achieving equality. Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Gandhi, for instance, would object to Malcolms use of violence because, in their view,
violence can only beget violence, whereas love could melt hatred and encourage their
respective oppressors to recognize and dignify their humanity. Thus, Malcolms slogan
any means necessary is unjustified as a means for gaining equality because it
undermines the value of human life.
Second, human rights may be less valuable than civil rights (or nationalistic values)
because they lack any sense of enforcement. Even if human rights are more valuable
theoretically, that value is undermined by the unwillingness of nation-states to comply
with international human rights norms. One can not value human rights above civil
rights if there is no possibility of achieving those rights. Furthermore, internal national
laws like due process protections make civil rights and nationalistic values imminently
enforceable.
Third, the distinction between civil rights and human rights that Malcolms arguments
rigidly enforce is highly questionable in terms of L-D debates. Values such as freedom,
justice, individualism or communitarianism are supposedly universal, not national or
civil, values. Freedom and these other values are human rights, which Malcolm would
not object to if he were around to do so today. Endorsing freedom, due process, or civil
rights for one group does not constitute support for oppression or oppressive value
systems; rather it constitutes support for human rights. Thus, an opponents attempts to
utilize human rights as a counter value or reason to criticize your value may fall well
short.
Fourth, Malcolms human rights stance is limited primarily to policy/implementation

differences between civil rights and human rights, not a comparison of the moral value
or worth of human rights to many other values. In an abstract comparison of values,
Malcolm provides little reason to believe that human rights would always trump other
concerns or values. Certainly in comparison to civil rights this is true. However, it is
questionable whether values which have little or not relation to civil rights are also
subject to the same moral hierarchy. One might argue quite convincingly that freedom
(or another value) ought to take precedence over Malcolms conception of human rights
or that a particular value encompasses Malcolms human rights.
MALCOLM X IN RELATION TO SEVERAL

COMMON VALUES AND/OR CRITERIA
FREEDOM: Malcolm fights for freedom in a certain sense, but be wary of your definition
of freedom. If the definition is not universal, i.e. it does not include everyone or comes
solely from Western conceptions of freedom, then Malcolms conception of human rights
stands in marked opposition to this version of freedom. If, however, freedom is defined
universally, then Malcolms defense of human rights preeminence serves as a useful
rationale for the paramount importance of freedom above other values.
JUSTICE: Malcolms beliefs may or may not support justice, depending on how this value
is defined as well. Justice, according to Malcolm, must be achieved utilizing any means
necessary. Thus, if an opponents value is justice, but their criteria limits the pursuit of
justice in some way (for example safety, democracy, etc.) then Malcolms defense of
any means necessary would suggest that the value wither cannot be achieved through
that particular criteria, or that the value in question is not worthwhile since it will be a
necessarily stunted, skewed version of human rights. On the other hand, Malcolms
struggle for equality for blacks in America does suggest that, argued correctly, justice is
a paramount value which should be pursued.
EGALITARIANISM: Malcolm teaches that egalitarianism is one of the highest values

possible. Not only should one possess human rights, but all humans should possess
them equal to any other person. Equality was the ultimate goal in Malcolms struggle to
end the oppression of black America, even though he sought a return to Africa or a
sovereign nation for all blacks in America. He perceived that the power structure in the
United States would never truly eliminate racism, no matter how hard he and others
might try. Jim Crow laws seemed to be stark evidence confirming this belief. Malcolm
thought, oddly enough, that everyone deserved equal status as humans, afforded
human rights no matter where they might live. Malcolms fight against racism and for
human rights through any means necessary is thus strong support for the value of
egalitarianism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aleinikoff, T. Alexander. A Case for Race-Consciousness. COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW. June
(1991):
1060-1125.
Clarke, John Henrik. MALCOLM X: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES. (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World
Press,
1990).
Coombe, Rosemary. Interdisciplinary approaches to international economic law: the

cultural life of things:
Anthropological approaches to law and society in conditions of globalization. THE
AMERICAN
UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW & POLICY. Winter (1995): 791-835.
Khan, Ali. Lessons From Malcolm X: Freedom by Any Means Necessary. HOWARD LAW
JOURNAL.
(1994): 74-133.
Feldman, Steven. Whose Common Good? Racism in the Political Community.

GEORGETOWN LAW
JOURNAL. June (1992): 1835-1877.
Gallen, David. MALCOLM X: AS THEY KNEW HIM. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992).
Goldman, Peter. THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MALCOLM X. (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1979).
Nier III, Charles Lewis. Guilty as Charged: Malcolm X and His Vision of Racial Justice for
African
Americans Through Utilization of the United Nations International Human Rights
Provisions and
Institutions. DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. Fall (1997): 149-189.
Paris, Peter. BLACK LEADERS IN CONFLICT: JOSEPH H. JACKSON, MARTIN LUTHER KING,
JR.,
MALCOLM X, ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, JR. (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1975).
Peller, Gary. Frontier in Legal Thought III: Race Consciousness. DUKE LAW JOURNAL.
September
(1990): 758-847.
Purcell, Will and Weaver, Chris. The Prison Industrial Complex: A Modern Justification for
African
Enslavement? HOWARD LAW JOURNAL. Winter (1998): 349-381.
Roberts, Dorothy. Symposium: Fidelity in Constitutional Theory: Does The Constitution

Deserve Our
Fidelity: The Meaning of Blacks' Fidelity to The Constitution. FORDHAM LAW REVIEW.
March (1997): 1761-1771.
Strickland, William. MALCOLM X: MAKE IT PLAIN. (New York: Viking, 1994).
Wood, Joe. MALCOLM X: IN OUR OWN IMAGE. (New York: St. Martins Press, 1992).
X, Malcolm and Haley, Alex. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X. (New York: Grove
Press,
1965).
-----. A MALCOLM X READER. Ed. Gallen. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994).
-----. MALCOLM X SPEAKS OUT. Ed. Richardson, Chermayeff, and White. (Kansas City:
Andrews and
McMeel, 1992).
-----. MALCOLM X SPEAKS: SELECTED SPEECHES AND STATEMENTS. Ed. Breitman. (New
York: Pathfinder, 1989).
CIVIL RIGHTS ARE A POOR VALUE

1. THE CIVIL RIGHTS, STATE CENTERED PARADIGM DISTORTS EQUALITY
Malcolm X, MALCOLM X: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES, 1990, p. 319
So the point that I make is that it has never just been on our own initiative that you and I
have made any steps forward. And the day that you and I recognize this, then we see
the thing in its proper perspective because we cease looking just to Uncle Sam and
Washington, D.C., to have the problems solved and we cease looking just within America
for allies in our struggle against the injustices. When you find people outside America
who look like you getting power, my suggestion is that you turn to them and make them
your allies. Let them know that we all have the same problem, that racism is not an
internal American problem, but an international problem. Racism is a human problem
and a crime that is absolutely so ghastly that a person who is fighting racism is well
within his rights to fight against it by any means necessary until it is eliminated. When
you and I can start thinking like that and we get involved in some kind of activity with
that kind of liberty, I think well get some ends to some of our problems almost
overnight.
2. CIVIL RIGHTS IS PSYCHOLOGICAL OPPRESSION

Ali Khan, Professor of Law, Washburn University, HOWARD LAW JOURNAL, 1994, p. 125.
In fact, Malcolm went further and asserted that oppressors use subtle, deceptive, and
deceitful methods to create an impression that things are getting better. This
observation is accurate to the extent the oppressors may enact laws that appear to
imply to the rest of the world that everyone receives equal respect and treatment in
their system. In reality, however, the system remains the same or sometimes even gets
worse. The amendments in the law may remove the physical chains from the ankles of
the oppressed. Malcolm warned, however, that there is no need to celebrate this change
in law if the oppressors have already chained the minds of the oppressed. To free the
subjugated minds of the oppressed, Malcolm proposed a massive psychological
transformation. He attempted to restore their confidence in themselves and to sharpen
their sense of responsibility. Malcolm directly attacked the psychology of subordination,
which portrays the oppressed as a helpless crowd waiting for a savior from the ranks of
the oppressors. Thus, the illusion that the oppressor is the ultimate messiah was finally
shattered. By taking their destiny in their own hands, the oppressed would embrace selfhelp as the ultimate principle of durable freedom.
3. CIVIL RIGHTS LEGITIMATE OPPRESION BY THE GOVERNMENT

These were token moves, designed to make you and me cool down just a little while
longer by making us think that an honest effort was being made to get a solution to the
problem. And then as they began to appear as if they were for the black man in this
country, abroad they were blown up. Especially the United States Information Service. Its
job abroad, especially in the African continent, is to make the Africans think that you and
I are living in paradise, that our problems have been solved, that the Supreme Court
desegregation decision put all of us in school, that the passage of the Civil Rights Bill
last year solved all of our problems, and that now that Martin Luther King, Jr., has gotten
the peace prize, we are on our way to the promised land of integration.
4. CIVIL RIGHTS INEVITABLY BACKFIRE

The reality is that the oppressor in control of the legal means is also in charge of the civil
rights. There are many ways in which the oppressor may recognize civil rights in law but
deny them in practice. If the system is under the command of the oppressor, the
legislature may distort the rights recognized in the constitution; the judge may diminish
the rights granted in the statutes; and the police may simply breach with impunity even
the most basic rights entrenched in law. "This is the trickery" by which the oppressor
grants rights with one hand and takes them away with the other. Malcolm characterizes
the civil rights movement as "a hopeless battle." The problem with a civil rights struggle
is that the oppressed can only go forward to the degree that the oppressors will allow.
Seeking civil rights as a relief from oppression may be a tragic admission by the
oppressed that the oppressor alone has the authority to come to their rescue and lift the
siege of oppression.
HUMAN RIGHTS OUTWEIGH CIVIL

RIGHTS
1. CIVIL RIGHTS DISCOURSE PUTS CONTROL IN THE HANDS OF THE OPPRESSORS
It diverts focus from human rights, masking and perpetuating degradation.
The oppressed should change the nature of moral discourse and "take it away from the
civil rights label, and put in the human rights label." The two types of rights have
distinctive normative assumptions. Civil rights flow from the values of those in power;
human rights originate in the universal values of the peoples of the world. Civil rights are
derived from a national statute or a constitution over which the oppressors might have
full control; human rights are rooted in the inherent dignity of all members of the human
family. Civil rights are administered within the jurisdiction of a nation-state; human rights
are monitored in global forums. Those in power may manipulate the interpretation and
enforcement of civil rights, but violations of human rights will expose the oppressors. By
granting civil rights, those in power assert their own moral virtuousness as if they were
under no prior obligation to extend these rights to all; by recognizing human rights,
those in power must acknowledge their legal and moral duty to have respect for every
human being. The oppressors must further admit that "disregard and contempt for
human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of
mankind," and that they have been morally insincere and uncivilized in their treatment
of other human beings.
2. HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL UNITY SHOULD BE PARAMOUNT

The key to our success lies in united action. Lack of unity among the various
Afro-American groups involved in our struggle has always been the reason we have
failed to win concrete gains in our war against America's oppression, exploitation,
discrimination, segregation, degradation, and humiliation. Before the miserable
condition of the 22 million "second-class citizens" can be corrected, all the groups in the
Afro-American community must form a united front. Only through united efforts can our
problems there be solved. How can we get the unity of the Afro-American community?
Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore we
need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding,
understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we
have more knowledge (light) about each other we will stop condemning each other and
a united front will be brought about. All 22 million Afro-Americans have the same basic
goal, the same basic objective. We want freedom, justice, and equality, we want
recognition and respect as human beings. We are not divided over objectives, but we
have allowed our racist enemies to divide us over the methods of attaining these
common objectives. Our enemy has magnified our minor points of difference, then
maneuvered us into wasting our time debating and fighting each other over insignificant
and irrelevant issues.
3. ANY MEANS NECESSARY IS JUSTIFIED TO ACHIEVE HUMAN RIGHTS

Any means necessary is not a theory of aggression. It is a framework that Malcolm
intended to be used as a tool in confronting various forms of oppression. A key question
in the complex equation of any means necessary is the definition of oppression. Violence
will replace social order if denial of every right and liberty is a legitimate cause for
rebellion. Malcolm refuses to define oppression as a mere negation of civil rights.
Instead, he invokes universally recognized human rights as the basis to identify the
oppressed of the world. This shift from civil rights to human rights gives a new meaning
to the concept of any means necessary.
CIVIL/HUMAN RIGHTS DISTINCTIONS IS

FLAWED; CIVIL RIGHTS ARE HUMAN
RIGHTS
1. CIVIL RIGHTS DONT UNDERMINE HUMAN RIGHTS
Henry Richardson, III, Professor of Law at Temple Law School, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL
INTERNAITONAL LAW, January, 1993, p. 73-74.
As a result, a longstanding interest of black America in the United Nations is the
confirmation of the human rights provisions of the Charter as a source of legal rights
concurrent with or wider than those in American law. This objective produces a
concomitant interest in more flexible procedures for invoking and applying those rights
through the Human Rights Commission and various subcommissions and working
groups, and then back into U.S. courts. Amounting to a civil rights strategy under
international law, this strategy has been periodically attempted in American courts with
only limited success. Nonetheless, it remains important insofar as international human
rights continues to develop into the "new natural law."
2. HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNATTAINABLE; CIVIL RIGHTS ARE BETTER

Frances Lee Ansley, Associate Professor of Law, University of Tennessee Law School,
CORNELL LAW REVIEW, September 1989, p. 1074.
An approach that would move "beyond civil rights toward a human rights agenda,"
beyond a struggle for minority rights and toward a multiracial struggle for guarantees of
basic human needs, faces many obstacles. Two of the greatest obstacles are anticommunism and white racism. White racism has proved its staying power, its ability to
thwart coalitions and to breed distrust. Throughout American history blacks have been
repeatedly on the front lines and on the move; very seldom have they rejected white
allies. Whites are the ones who have blindly failed to see that common cause was
possible, and that racial justice helps them too. Although Jesse Jackson's victories in the
North and the South were impressive and heartening, the number of white people voting
for him remained disappointing. Devising political and legal strategies that will build
unity without pandering to white racism presents a sharp dilemma.
3. CIVIL RIGHTS ADVANCE HUMAN RIGHTS

Anna Fagan Ginger, Professor of Peace Law, San Francisco State University, DEPAUL LAW
REVIEW, Summer 1993, p. 1342-1344.
Starting with some initial assumptions about law and some little known facts about the
enforcement powers of the United Nations, we will look at the obstacles and
responsibilities attaching to a treaty and what we know in 1993 that must be applied to
the task of enforcing the ICCPR. We will consider the commitments in the Covenant to
publicize and report on the rights spelled out in Articles 1 through 27 and Article 47,
looking specifically at the rights of children, economic rights, and human rights that are
not easily reported, including effective remedies for police misconduct, minimizing
racism in jury trials, and the right to self-determination. In addition, we will discuss the
responsibilities of federal government officials, lawyers, independent experts, local
government officials, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to enforce the
Covenant, and will describe an innovative Civil Rights Accountability Project to advance
the ICCPR. All of these strands lead to the rope of conviction that words do matter;
signing a treaty does matter; and enforcing the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights will be a step toward the realization of all human rights for all people in
this country, which, in turn, will be a step toward peace and development throughout the
world.
4. CIVIL RIGHTS EMPIRICALLY ADVANCE HUMAN RIGHTS

Anna Fagan Ginger, Professor of Peace Law, San Francisco State University, DEPAUL LAW
REVIEW, Summer 1993, p. 1359-1360
Carrying out these five treaty-based responsibilities provides an excellent opportunity to
give effect to human rights in the United States today, as collection and publication of
reports on the discrimination and segregation in the public schools in the South, North,
and West led to the beginning of the end to "separate but equal" education forty years
ago, first de jure, then de facto. The campaign for equal, integrated, public education
sparked the whole civil rights movement, opening the way for the succession of human
rights movements of the 1970s and 1980s: for peace, women's rights, the environment,
disability rights, the rights of the child, gay and lesbian rights, Native American and
immigrant rights -- for peace, jobs, and justice.
HUMAN RIGHTS ARE NOT PARAMOUNT

1. HUMAN RIGHTS ARE FUTILE; DOCUMENTS ARENT ENFORCED
Dorothy Q. Thomas, Director, Human Rights Watch Womens Project, HARVARD HUMAN
RIGHTS JOURNAL, Spring 1996, p. 16.
Yet, despite predictions that the United States' 1992 ratification of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) could "prove useful in the protection of
civil liberties and civil rights in the United States," the treaty has yet to make a
significant domestic impact. The failure of this and other human rights treaties to serve
as effective tools for domestic change is due, in part, to legal obstacles erected by the
U.S. government that stand in the way of full implementation of these instruments. More
significantly, however, this failure reflects the entrenched perception among domestic
rights advocates that international law has little to add to the rights protections
enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, and that international pressure has scant influence
over the domestic political climate. To a certain extent, this perception is accurate. The
struggle to secure fundamental human rights is ultimately a local struggle, and no
amount of international outcry can substitute for domestic activism.
2. HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNDERMINED BY SOVEREIGNTY

Dorothy Q. Thomas, Director, Human Rights Watch Womens Project, HARVARD HUMAN
RIGHTS JOURNAL, Spring 1996, p. 17.
Although neither petition resulted in formal denunciation of, or charges against the
United States, the appeal to international law proved powerful. The civil rights groups'
submissions to the United Nations contained factual records that exposed to the
international community the extent and nature of race-based human rights violations in
the United States. This publicity underscored the hypocrisy of the United States in
advocating rights abroad that it did not guarantee at home. As a result, civil rights
groups were able to exploit international political relations and rivalries in order to
pressure the United States to get its own house in order. This essentially political
strategy worked to great, if somewhat contradictory, legal effect. On the one hand, the
United States reacted by refusing to participate in the United Nations human rights
treaty system for roughly thirty years.
3. UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS ARE A MYTH; SHOULD NOT BE PARAMOUNT

Berta Esperanza Hernandez-Truyol, Professor of Law, St. John's University School of Law,
ALBANY LAW REVIEW, 1997, p. 620.
Indeed, international human rights theory supports the concept of universality of rights.
My position insists on the protection of culture as an independently protected right, this
Article advocates a cultural pluralist perspective within human rights discourse. This
pluralist perspective rejects the use of culture as a pretext to subordinate or marginalize
women, or relegate women to second-class citizenship. Ethnocentric, culturally biased

notions of right and wrong, however, must be rejected.
4. HUMAN RIGHTS ARE CIRCUMVENTED, THEIR VALUE IS LIMITED

Donna Young, Assistant Professor, Albany Law School of Union University, ALBANY LAW
REVIEW, 1997, p. 909-910.
International human rights standards are often circumvented with the claim that
domestic laws reflect cultural practices, and that to the extent that international norms
conflict with cultural practice, they are to be given little or no weight in regulating
domestic matters. The stories outlined above illustrate important considerations about
the role of international law in regulating domestic laws and practices that violate
international human rights norms. Several interesting questions arise from attempts by
nation states to justify, (as being part of domestic law or custom), practices otherwise
illegal under international law. What are the consequences to international legal norms
when countries ignore international law and rely instead on religious or cultural practice
to institute harsh [*910] and frequently violent treatment of its peoples? What is the
international legal response to such violence when inflicted on the basis of sexual
orientation, race, gender, ethnicity or religion? How can international law be used to
change domestic law and practice? The articles set out in this issue survey national and
international legal developments with respect to these complex issues. What
distinguishes these articles from others dealing with violence in international law is their
focus on the violence committed against individuals by private citizens, not by state
actors.
Mao Tse-Tung
Chinese-Political Philosopher (18931976)

Independent of Maos shortcomings as a philosopher, the reader must remember that he
helped mobilize the Chinese people, and helped shape the Red Army without which the
1949 revolution would not have
transpired. He pushed out the Kuomintang, defeated the Japanese in various encounters
and got rid of the imperialists. He helped the people get rice and cooking oil, shelter,
clothing, fuel, vastly improved hygiene and medicine, and began the long struggle to
wipe out illiteracy. In an attempt to explain Maos work, this
biography will examine: (1) History and Background of Mao, (2) his notion of the power
of the masses, (3) strategy for revolution, (4) value practicality, and (5) usefulness to
debate.
Maos father was a poor peasant which forced Mao to join the army because of heavy
debts. After his
tenure in the army, Mao was able to save and buy back his land. Traditionally, the people
of Hunan were known as rebels and bandits. Uprisings were savagely repressed by the
local bureaucrats. For example, when he was at school, Mao saw the decapitated heads
of peasant rebels stuck up on the city gates as a warning. They had led starving
peasants to find food. This experience impacted Mao who deeply resented
the injustice of the treatment given to them. Derived from his interest in issues of justice
and morality, Mao read Adam Smith, Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Rousseau, ancient Greek
Philosophy, Spinoza, Kant and Goethe. Moreover, his reading of socialists was limited to
Karl Kantskys Class Struggle and Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto.
China was, even in the 20th century, a feudal-bureaucratic country. At the top of the
power pyramid sat the emperor, served by thousands of local officials who extorted
grain tax from the starving peasants. Peasants were at the bottom of the pyramid,
oppressed both by the landlord and bureaucrats. The ideology of this ruling class was
Confucianism, whose classics were used to justify the workings of society. Landlords
bought an education and official positions for their sons. Bureaucrats bought land as an
economic bolster to their government positions.
What separated Mao from so many others was his faith in the power of the masses. Mao
believed that the
Chinese people possessed great intrinsic energy. The more profound the oppression, the
greater the resistance. Moreover, out of oppression will come a rapid and violent
revolution. This was evident during early meetings with the Chinese Communist Party.
Party leaders argued that the revolution should be centered in the cities and led by the
elite. Mao disagreed with the Russian model and argued that it should center in the
country by the masses. The reliance on the masses is the crucial difference between
Soviet Marxism and Maoism. For Mao, the power was and should be in the individual
peasant. In addition, Mao believed that Marxism-Leninism was religious dogma that was
too abstract, providing no insight into how to feed and clothe the populace.
Maos Red Army used Guerrilla tactics summed up by five requirements: (1) Support
from the masses; (2) Party organization; (3) Strong guerrilla army; (4) Favorable region
for military moves; and (5) Economic Self-Sufficiency. Mao further argued that if the
Chinese wanted socialism, they would have to fight for it. Socialism does not come
naturally. There must be revolution on the political, ideological, and cultural fronts--not
just the economic. Revolution must be uninterrupted. Mao noted that Marxism consists
of thousand of truths, but they all boil down to the one sentence, it is right to rebel.
Mao contended that Chinese rulers had been given the power to oppress for thousands
of years. For Mao theory was inferior to practice. He is most enthusiastic about the
practice of Lenin and Stalin. Moreover, the end of all knowledge and perception was
practice. That is, Mao saw cognition as a series of separate steps. First there was
perceptual knowledge, then a leap into rational knowledge, followed by a leap into
practice.
Probably Maos greatest usefulness for the debater lies in his integration of Marxism. The
debater can use Mao to support socialism and communism. However, there is one
crucial difference the debater must realize: Mao sees communism at the grass-roots
level. Instead of a strong central government, Mao embraces a peoples government.
Hence, the debater could use Mao to develop a unique communist perspective.
Moreover, Maoism provides an interesting avenue to support the value of freedom.
Because Mao believes in a complete revolution that embraces freedom, his perspective
will provide much support for a comprehensive and thorough conception of freedom.
Finally, Maoism assumes that values are/should be concerned with action. Hence, a
debater will he able to use Maoism to challenge any position that suggests values can
be discussed independent of action.
Overall, Mao Tse-tungs influence on the political, ideological and cultural aspects of
China cannot he overemphasized. As suggested previously, Maos philosophy is an
intensely practical model that focuses on emancipating the peasants from oppression.
Bibliography
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Yung-Ping Chen. CHINESE POLITICAL THOUGHT: MAO TSE-TUNG AND LIU SHAO-CHI. The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1971.
Arthur A. Cohen. THE COMMUNISM OF MAO TSE-TUNG. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press. 1964.
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II. New York: Columbia, 1964.
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CHINESE
MIND. Honolulu: East-West Center, 1967.
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Review Press. 1976.
Maurice J. Mcisner. MARXISM, MAOISM 7 UTOPIANISM: EIGHT ESSAYS, Madison. WI:

University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.
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E. Snow. RED STAR OVER CHINA. New York: Grove, 1961.
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Mao Tse-Tung. MORE POEMS OF MAO TSE-TUNG. trans. Wong Man. Hong Kong: Eastern
Horizon, 1967.
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International Publishers, 1954.
DEMOCRATIC VALUES AND STRONG

ECONOMY ARE INTERDEPENDENT
1. FREEDOM IS NECESSARY FOR SOUND ECONOMY
Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairperson-Chinese Communist Party. ON COALITION
GOVERNMENT, 1967, p. 70.
Without independence, freedom, democracy and unity it is impossible to build industry
on a really large scale without industry there can be no solid national defense, no wellbeing for the people, no prosperity or strength for the nation. This history of the 105
years since the Opium War of 1840, and especially of the eighteen years since the
Kuomintang came to power, has brought this important point home to the Chinese
people.
2. STRONG ECONOMIC BASE NECESSARY FOR DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM

When the political system of new democracy is won, the Chinese people and their
government will have to adopt practical measures in order to build heavy and light
industry step by step over a number of years and transform China from an agricultural
into an industrial country. The new democratic state cannot be consolidated unless it has
a solid economy as its base, a much more advanced agriculture than at present, and a
large-scale industry occupying a predominant position in the national economy, with
communications, trade and finance to match.
3. CANNOT SEPARATE CULTURAL VALUES AND POLITICS AND ECONOMY

Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairperson-Chinese Communist Party. ON NEW DEMOCRACY,
1954, p. 3-4.
Any given culture (culture as an ideological form) is a reflection of the politics and
economy of a given society, while it has in turn a tremendous influence and effect upon
the politics and economy of the given society; economy is the basis, and politics are the
concentrated expression of economy. This is our fundamental view on the relation of
culture to politics and economy and the relation between politics and economy. Hence,
in the first place given forms of politics and economy determine a given form of culture,
and only then does the given form of culture have any influence and effect upon the
given forms of politics and economy.
VALUE SYSTEM MUST SOLVE

OPPRESSION
1. VALUE SYSTEM MUST PROVIDE OPPORTUNITY TO SOLVE OPPRESSION
The universal truth of Marxism-Leninism, which reflects the practice of proletarian
struggle throughout the world, becomes an invincible weapon for the Chinese people
when it is integrated with the concrete practice of the revolutionary struggle of the
Chinese proletariat and people. This the Communist Party of China has achieved. Our
Party has grown and advanced through staunch struggle against every manifestation of
dogmatism and empiricism which runs counter to this principle.
2. WORKING CLASS CAN USE DEMOCRACY TO SOLVE OPPRESSION

Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairperson-Chinese Communist Party. FOUR ESSAYS ON
PHILOSOPHY, 1968, p. 84.
Our socialist democracy is democracy in the broadest sense such as is not to be found in
any capitalist country. Our dictatorship is the peoples democratic dictatorship led by the
working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance. That is to say democracy
operates within the ranks of the people, while the working class, uniting with all others
enjoying civil rights, and in the first place with the peasantry, enforces dictatorship over
the reactionary classes and elements and all those who resist socialist transformation
and oppose socialist construction. By civil rights, we mean politically the rights of
freedom and democracy.
MAJORITARIANISM SHOULD BE THE

CORE GUIDE FOR SOCIAL ACTION
1. VALUE SYSTEM MUST EMANATE FROM THE MASSES
GOVERNMENT, 1967, p. 88-9.
Our point of departure is to serve the people whole-heartedly and never for a moment
divorce ourselves from the masses to proceed in all cases from the interests of the
people and not from the interests of individuals or groups, and to understand the
identity of our responsibility to the people and our responsibility to the leading organs of
the party. Communists must be ready at all times to stand up for the truth, because
truth is in the interests of the people; Communists must be ready at all times to correct
their mistakes, because mistakes are against the interests of the people. Twenty-four
years of experience tell us that the right task, policy and style of work invariably
conform with the demands of the masses at a given time and place and invariably
strengthen our ties with the masses, and the wrong task, policy and style of work
invariably disagree with the demands of the masses at a given time and place and
invariably alienate us from the masses.
2. ALL VALUES AND BELIEFS MUST BENEFIT THE MASSES

The reason why such evils as dogmatism, empiricism, commandism, tailism,
sectarianism, bureaucracy and an arrogant attitude in work are definitely harmful and
intolerable, and why anyone suffering from these maladies must overcome them, is that
they alienate us from the masses.
3. MAJORITY RULE SHOULD GUIDE POLITICAL SYSTEMS

In a word, every comrade must be brought to understand that the supreme test of the
words and deeds of a Communist is whether they conform with the highest interests and
enjoy the support of the overwhelming majority of the people. Every comrade must be
helped to understand that as long as we rely on the people, believe firmly in the
inexhaustible creative power of the masses and hence trust and identify ourselves with
them, no economy can crush us while we can crush every enemy and overcome every
difficulty.
4. MUST CARE FOR THE RIGHTS OF EVERYONE

Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairperson-Chinese Communist Party. SELECTED WORKS OF MAO
TSE-TUNG, VOLUME ONE: 1926-1936, 1954, p. 113.
To care only about the interests of ones own small group and ignore general interests-although apparently not concerned with personal interests, this contains in reality
individualism of an extremely narrow kind and likewise has an exceedingly corrosive and
centrifugal effect. In the Red Army, cliquism has all along been rampant; although it has
now become less serious as a result of criticism, its remnants still exist and further
efforts is needed to overcome it.
5. MUST AWAKEN AND UNDERSTAND THAT PEOPLES VALUES COME FIRST

Mao Tse-Tung, Former Chairperson-Chinese Communist Party. ON NEW DEMOCRACY,
1954, p. 22-23.
These classes (proletariat, peasantry, intelligentsia) some already awakened and others
on the point of awakening, will necessarily become the basic component parts of the
state structure and of the structure of political power of the democratic republic of China
with the proletariat as the leading force. The democratic republic of China which we now
want to establish can only be a democratic republic under the joint dictatorship of all
anti-imperialist and anti-feudal people led by the proletariat, that is, a new democratic
republic, or a republic of the genuinely revolutionary new Three Peoples Principles with
three cardinal policies.
6. MAOISM CELEBRATES THE VALUES OF THE PEOPLE

A WORLD TO WIN, April, 1991, p. 26.
The only correct solution for the liberation of the masses of the oppressed countries is to
wage a protracted peoples war, relying upon the masses and based mainly in the
countryside, to go from weak to strong while destroying the enemy bit by bit, applying
the principle of self-reliance and hard struggle. These are lessons summed up by Mao
Tse Tung.
Herbert Marcuse
Social Philosopher
Herbert Marcuse was born in Berlin in 1898. He studied at the University of Berlin and
the University of Freiburg, where he worked with Heidegger. He received his Ph.D. for a
dissertation on Hegels ontology and its relation to his philosophy of history. He left
Germany for Switzerland and taught at Geneva for a year. He then went to the United
States, and from 1934 to 1940 was the colleague of Max Horkheimer at the Institute for
Social Research. At Columbia he pursued the research which led to the writing of Soviet
Marxism. A study of Marcuse will examine: (1) function of philosophy, (2) the role of
Marxism, (3) technology, and (4) application to debate.
As a critic, Marcuse has been an influential guide to the political left. Marcuse as a young
academic was very much a product of the German academic and philosophical tradition.
Marcuse disliked Nazism and his explanation was that systems like Nazism grew out of
certain societies. Specifically, Marcuse believed that Nazism represented a culminating
stage in the development of a bourgeois society based on a capitalist economy. In
addition, he argued that in the philosophy and theory of Nazism one found the
culmination of tendencies present throughout the bourgeois epoch.
Marcuse argued that the essential function of philosophy was the criticism of what
exists. Philosophy was able to provide us with an account of the structure of thought in
particular times and places. Moreover, philosophy provided us with a standpoint which
transcended the limitations of particular times and places and of particular structures of
thought. Marcuse has never denied that the practice of philosophy was historically
conditioned. Instead, he argued that the distortions imposed by that conditioning were
less at some periods than at others; one therefore found in the history of philosophy
periods in which philosophical thought had the power to transcend its immediate
environment.
In contrast to other positions at the time (phenomenology and positivism), Marcuse

praised Marxist materialism. Precisely because Marxist materialism both envisaged a
contrast between what a human happens to be at the moment and what a human could
become. Marcuse also distinguished between bow things really are in a capitalist society
and the false consciousness that humans in such a society possess. This notion also
restored the concept of essence to a central place. We are thus not limited to things as
they are; in the light of Marxist materialism given facts are understood as appearances
whose essence can be comprehended only in the context of particular historical
tendencies aiming at a different form of reality. Furthermore, this knowledge of historical
structures is what gives us a basis for the criticism of existing reality.
Moreover, Marcuses study of Soviet Marxism was necessarily a study of Stalinist and
post-Stalinist Marxism. Both Marcuse and Soviet Marxists agree with Marx that at the
point at which the transition from capitalism to socialism takes place the relationships
that have held between different social institutions are also transformed. It becomes
possible to direct social change in ways that have before been impossible. Marcuse
argues that this means, that even if Soviet Marxists can be indicted for their view of the
function of the state in this transition, it is common ground that impersonal economic
forces lose their dominant place in the chains of history.
Finally, in One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse argues that technology of advanced industrial

societies has enabled them to eliminate conflict by assimilating all those who in earlier
forms of social order provided either voices or forces of dissent. Technology does this
partly by creating affluence. Freedom from material want, which Marx and Marcuse
himself took and take to be the precondition of other freedoms has been transformed
into an agency for producing servitude. When humans needs are satisfied, their reasons
for dissent and protest are removed and they become the passive instruments of the
dominating system.
Moreover, Marcuse argues that the human nature of those who inhabit advanced
industrial societies has been molded so that their very wants, needs and aspirations
have become conformist. The majority cannot voice their true needs, for they cannot
perceive or feel them. The minority must therefore voice their needs, and this active
minority must rescue the necessarily passive majority.
Debaters should be able to find Marcuse useful for almost any resolution. Because
Marcuse is interested in government structure, values, policies, and violence, his work
should be integrated into most debate rounds. Marcuse can also be used with other
Marxist-centered scholars, who critique current government forms and the plight of the
minority. Finally, the debater should recognize that Marcuse is essentially practical. His
primary interest is not to discuss value hierarchies, but to reveal how those values lead
to oppression and/or liberation.
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MARCUSE. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
Morton Schoolman. THE IMAGINARY WITNESS: THE CRITICAL THEORY OF HERBERT

MARCUSE. New York: Free Press, 1980.
VALUES ARE INSEPARABLE FROM

ACTION
1. MORAL VALUES EQUIVALENT TO POLITICAL ACTION
Herbert Marcuse, Former Professor of Philosophy-University of California at San Diego,
AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. 10.
Prior to all ethical behavior in accordance with specific social standards, prior to all
ideological expression, morality is a disposition of the organism, perhaps rooted in the
erotic drive to counter aggressiveness, to create and preserve ever greater unites of
life. We would then have, this side of all values, an instinctual foundation for solidarity
among human beings--a solidarity which has been effectively repressed in line with the
requirements of class society but which now appears as a precondition for liberation.
2. MORALITY IS INFUSED INTO ORGANIC BEHAVIOR

Once a specific morality is firmly established as a norm of social behavior, it is not only
interjected--it also operates as a norm of organic behavior: the organism receives and
reacts to certain stimuli and ignores and repels others in accord with the interjected
morality, which is thus promoting or impeding the function of the organism as a living
cell in the respective society. In this way, a society constantly re-creates, this side of
consciousness and ideology, patterns of behavior and aspiration as part of the nature
of its people and unless the revolt reaches into this second nature into these ingrown
patterns, social change will remain incomplete, even self-defeating.
3. MORALS AND SOCIETY ARE INSEPARABLE

To the degree to which the rebellion is directed against a functioning, prosperous,
democratic society, it is a moral rebellion, against the hypocritical, aggressive values
and goals, against the blasphemous religion of this society, against everything it takes
seriously, everything it professes while violating what it professes.
OBJECTIVITY AND RATIONALITY ARE UNDESIRABLE
1. VALUES OF OBJECTIVITY AND RATIONALITY SHOULD BE ABANDONED

ONE
DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. 144.
In the social reality, despite all change, the domination of man by man is still the
historical continuum that links pre-technological and technological Reason. However, the
society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters
the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence (of the slave on the
master, the serf on the lord of the manor, the lord on the donor of the fief, etc.) with
dependence on the objective order of things (on economic laws, the market etc.).
2. VALUE OF OBJECTIVITY IS THE RESULT OF DOMINATION

ONE
DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p.144.
To be sure, the objective order of things is itself the result of domination, but it is
nevertheless true that domination now generates a higher rationality--that of a society
which sustains its hierarchic structure while exploiting ever more efficiently the natural
and mental resources, and distributing the benefits of this exploitation on an ever-larger
scale.
3. VALUES ARE NOT OBJECTIVE

ONE
DIMENSIONAL MAN, 1964, p. 147.
Outside this rationality, one lives in a world of values, and values separated out from the
objective reality become subjective. The only way to rescue some abstract and harmless
validity for them seems to be a metaphysical sanction (divine and natural law). But such
sanction is not verifiable and thus not really objective. Values my have a higher dignity
(morally and spiritually), but they are not real and thus count less in the real business of
life--the less so the higher they are elevated above reality.
VALUE OF FREEDOM IS IMPORTANT TO

AN ADVANCED SOCIETY
1. INSTITUTIONS MUST EMBRACE VALUE OF FREEDOM
AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p.4.
The advent of a free society would be characterized by the fact that the grown of wellbeing turns into an essentially new quality of life. This qualitative change must occur in
the needs in the infrastructure of man (itself a dimension of the infrastructure of
society): the new direction, the new institutions and relationships
of production, must express the ascent of needs and satisfactions very different from
and even antagonistic to those prevalent in the exploitative societies. Such a change
would constitute the instinctual basis for freedom.
2. VALUE OF FREEDOM IS EMBEDDED IN SOCIETY

AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p. 27-28.
By virtue of these qualities, the aesthetic dimension can serve as a sort of gauge for a
free society. A
universe of human relationships no longer mediated by the market, no longer based on
competitive exploitation or tenor, demands a sensitivity freed from the repressive
satisfactions of the unfree societies; a sensitivity receptive to forms and modes of reality
which thus far have been projected by the aesthetic imagination. For the aesthetic
needs have their own social content: they are the claims of the human organism mind
and body, for a dimension of fulfillment which can be created only in the struggle
against the institutions which, by their very Functioning deny and violate these claims.
3. HUMAN FREEDOM IS BASED IN INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTIVITY

STUDIES IN CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1972, p. 217.
I suggested that the essence of human freedom is in the theoretical and practical
syntheses which constitute and reconstitute the universe of experience. These
syntheses are never merely individual activities (acts) but the work of a supra individual
historical Subjectivity in the individual--just as the Kantian categories are the syntheses
of a transcendental Ego in the empirical Ego. I have intentionally used the Kantian
construction of experience, that is to say his epistemology rather than his moral
philosophy, in order to elucidate the concept of freedom as historical imperative:
freedom originates indeed in the mind of man, in his ability (or rather in his need and
desire) to comprehend his world, and this comprehension is praxis in as much as it

establishes a specific order of facts, a specific organization of the data of experience.
4. VALUE OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IMPORTANT FOR LIBERTY AND LIBERATION

AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION, 1969, p.9.
The relaxation of taboos alleviates the sense of guilt and binds (though with
considerable ambivalence) the free individuals libidinally to the institutionalized
fathers. They are powerful but also tolerant fathers, whose management of the nation
and its economy delivers and protects the liberties of the citizens. On the other hand, if
the violation of taboos transcends the sexual sphere and leads to refusal and rebellion,
the sense of guilt is not alleviated and repressed but rather transferred: not we, but the
fathers are guilty; they are not tolerant but false; they want to redeem their own guilt by
making us, the sons, guilty; they have created a world of hypocrisy and violence in
which we do not wish to live. Instinctual revolt turns into political rebellion, and against
this union, the Establishment mobilizes its full force.
5. VALUE OF FREEDOM NOT SEPARATED FROM TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS

For freedom indeed depends largely on technical progress, on the advancement of
science. But this fact easily obscures the essential precondition: in order to become
vehicles of freedom, science and technology would have to change their present
direction and goals; they would have to be reconstructed in accord with a new
sensibility--the demands of the life instincts. Then one could speak of a technology of
liberation, product of a scientific imagination free to project and design the forms of a
human universe without exploitation and toil. But this GAYA SCIENZA is conceivable only
after the historical break in the continuum of domination--as expressive of the needs of a
new type of man.
Karl Marx
Communist-Political Philosopher (18181883)

Marxism is a general theory of the world in which we live, and of human society as a
part of that world. It takes its name from Karl Marx, who, together with Fredrick Engels
(1820-1895), worked out the theory during the middle and latter part of last century. In
an attempt to uncover the theories of Marxism, this essay will examine: (1) role of
capitalism and work, (2) role of science, (3) freedom, (4) morality, and (5) application to
debate.
Marx applied the general idea of alienation to the society in which he lived--mainly
capitalist Britain--and worked out the economic theory of capitalism by which he is most
widely known. But he always insisted that his economic theories could not be separated
from his historical and social theories. Profits and wages can be studied up to a certain
point as purely economic problems but the student who sets out to study real life and
not abstractions soon realizes that profits and wages can only be fully understood when
employers and workers are brought into the picture. The essence of bourgeois society is
technical innovation in the interests of capital accumulation. The bonds of feudal society
are destroyed, a spirit of enterprise is unleashed, and the power of humans over nature
is indefinitely extended. Hence in bourgeois social life the concept of the freedom of the
individual, liberated into a free-market economy, is central. Marx argues that the social
and economic forms of that same society imprison the free individual in a set of
relationships which nullify his/her civil and legal freedom and stunt his/her growth.
Humans see themselves in the grip of impersonal powers and forces, which are in fact
their own forms of social life, the fruits of their own actions falsely objectified and
alienated.
The key for Marx is what constitutes a social order, what constitutes both its possibilities
and its limitations, is the dominant form of work and by which material sustenance is
produced. The forms of work vary with the forms of technology; and both the division of
labor and the consequent division of masters and laborers are divisive of human society,
producing classes and conflicts between them. The conceptual schemes through which
humans grasp their own society have a dual role; they both partly reveal the nature of
that activity and partly conceal its true character. So the critique of the concept of work
and the corresponding struggle to transform society necessarily go hand in hand.
The scientific approach to the development of society is based, like all science, on
experience, on the facts of history and of the world round us. Therefore Marxism is not a
completed, finished theory. As history unfolds, as the human being gathers more
experience, Marxism is constantly being developed and applied to the new facts that
have come to light. The result of the scientific approach to the study of society is
knowledge that can be used to change society, just as all scientific knowledge can be
used to change the external world. But Marxism also makes clear that the general laws
which govern the movement of society are of the same patterns as the laws of the
external world. These laws which hold good universally, make up what may be called the
Marxist philosophy or view of the world.
Marxs central concept is that of freedom, and the idea that this very idea is itself at the
center of human existence. That is, freedom is not something that humans have, it is
something humans are. Marx wrote that freedom is so much the essence of humans that
even its opponents realize it. No human fights freedom; he or she fights at most the
freedom of others. In addition, Marx views freedom in terms of the overcoming of the
limitations and constraints of one social order by bringing another, less limited social
order into being. In addition, Marx argues that one may nonetheless use morally
evaluative language in at least two ways. One may use it simply in the course of
describing actions and institutions; no language adequately descriptive of slavery could
fail to be condemnatory to anyone with certain attitudes and aims. Or one may use it
less explicitly to condemn, appealing not to some independent classless tribunal, but to
the terms in which ones opponents have themselves chosen to be judged.
Numerous philosophers have been impacted by Marx and his followers. Those debaters
interested in incorporating Marxism will find his theories intertwined with many others.
Any debate that either implicitly or explicitly articulates the values of capitalism will find
Marxs theory useful in critique. In addition, Marx argues that all of our values in
capitalism are driven by the capitalist system. Hence, the debater can critique current
values within a Marxist framework.
Bibliography
Kostas Axelos. ALIENATION, PRAXIS AND TECHNE IN THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX.
Ronald Bnizina, trans. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976.
Terence Ball & James Farr, ed. AFTER MARX. Cambridge: Cambridge University Ness,
1984.
William James Blake. AN AMERICAN LOOKS AT KARL MARX. New York: Cordon Company,
1939.
Emile Burns. AN INTRODUCTION TO MARXISM. New York: International Publishers, 1966.
Terrell Carver, ed. THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO MARX. New York: Cambridge
Erich Fromm. MARXS CONCEPT OF MAN. New York: Continuum, 1988.
J.L.S. Giling. CAPITAL AND POWER: POLITICAL ECONOMY AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION.
New York: Croom Helm, 1987.
Alvin Ward Gouldner. AGAINST FRAGMENTATION: THE ORIGINS OF MARXISM AND THE
SOCIOLOGY OF INTELLECTUALS. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Richard F. Hamilton. THE BOURGEOIS EPOCH: MARX AND ENGELS ON BRITAIN, FRANCE,
AND GERMANY. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
F. R. Hansen. THE BREAKDOWN OF CAPITALISM: A HISTORY OF THE IDEA IN WESTERN

MARXISM, 1883-1983. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
Piotr Hoffman. THE ANATOMY OF IDEALISM: PASSIVITY AND ACTIVITY IN KANT, HEGEL
AND MARX. Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers, 1982.
Ian Hung. ANALYTICAL AND DIALECTICAL MARXISM. Aldershot: Avebury, 1993.
Richard W. Miller. ANALYZING MARX: MORALITY, POWER AND HISTORY. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984.
Karl Marx. THE CLASS STRUGGLES IN FRANCE (1840-1850). New York: International
Publishers, 1935.
Karl Marx. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. New York: The Modern Library, 1932.
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels. THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, PARTS III & I. London: Lawrence &
Wishart, 1938.
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels. KAPITAL. New York: International Publishers, 1967.
Karl Marx. MATHEMATICHESKI RUKOPISI. London: New Park, 1983.
Karl Marx. ON RELIGION. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1964.
Karl Marx. ON SOCIETY AND SOCIAL CHANGE. Chicago: University of Chicago Ness, 1973.
Bertell Oilman. ALIENATION: MARXS CONCEPTION OF MAN IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY.

Cambridge University Ness, 1971.
Fritz Pappenheim. THE ALIENATION OF MODERN MAN: AN INTERPRETATION BASED ON

MARX AND TONNIES. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1959.
MUST EMBRACE A COMMUNIST VISION

OF VALUES
1. HUMAN VALUES MUST CELEBRATE COMMUNITY
Karl Marx & Frederich Engels, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, 1948, p. 40.
The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes
Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They
want to improve their condition of every member of society, even that of the most
favored. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class;
nay by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand
their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society.
2. MARXISM CELEBRATES FREEDOM FROM MARKET CONTROL Paul Craig Roberts and
Matthew A. Stephenson, NQA, MARXS THEORY OF EXCHANGE, ALIENATION, AND CRISIS,
1973, p. 27.
In the West, political and economic freedom generally mean the absence of coercion or
limitations on individual choice. The Soviet view of freedom, originating in Marx and
Engels, means freedom from autonomous forces and is a freedom that comes with the
ability to control societys destiny. In the Marxian scheme, once mens lives are no longer
subject to control by the market, society is no longer subject to the drift of history. It is
mans control over things that signifies the end of prehistory.
3. MARXISM CELEBRATES FREEDOM

For Marx in his early systematic writings the key contrast in bourgeois society is between
what bourgeois philosophy and political economy reveal about human possibility and
what the empirical study of bourgeois society reveals about the contemporary human
activity. The freedom is destroyed by bourgeois economy, and the human needs which
bourgeois industry fails to meet stand in judgment on that economy and industry; but
this is not merely an appeal to the ideal against the real. For the goals of freedom and
human need are the goals implicit in the struggle of the working class in bourgeois
society. Both the goals have to be specified in terms of the achievement of a new form
of society in which class division--and with it, bourgeois society--would be abolished.
MUST REJECT VALUES THAT ARE BASED

IN CAPITALIST ECONOMIES
1. VALUES MUST EXCLUDE BUYING AND SELLING
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk
about free selling and buying, and all the other brave words or our bourgeoisie about
freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and
buying with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed
to the Communist abolition of buying and selling of the bourgeois conditions of
production and of the bourgeoisie itself.
2. VALUES MUST REJECT PRIVATE PROPERTY

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or
principles that have been invented, or discovered by this or that would-be universal
reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an
existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The
abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change
consequent upon the change in historical conditions. The French Revolution, for
example, abolished feudal property in favor of bourgeois property. The distinguishing
feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of
bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most
complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is
based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
3. COMMUNISM REJECTS PRIVATE PROPERTY

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of
personally acquiring property as the fruit of a mans own labor, which property is alleged
to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity, and independence. Hard-won,
self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of
the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no
need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already
destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
CAPITALISM AND MARKET FORCES

PERPETUATE ALIENATION
1. MARKET FORCES PERPETUATE ALIENATION
Paul Craig Roberts and Matthew A. Stephenson, NQA, MARXS THEORY OF EXCHANGE,
ALIENATION, AND CRISIS, 1973, p. 72-73.
In both works alienation is said to occur when men are mutually independent and
engage in market exchange, and when men are subject to the market--something over
which they have no control--as to an alien force. The lengthy discussion of the nature of
commodities and the commodity mode of production in CAPITAL is prefigured in the
1844 Manuscripts, in which Marx says that he has considered the act of estranging
practical human activity, labor, in the two of its aspects. (1) The relation of the worker to
the product of labor as an alien object exercising power over him.. .[sic](2) The relation
of labor to the act of production within the labor process.
2. ALIENATION IS SYSTEMIC
ALIENATION, AND CRISIS, 1973, p. 93.
Marxs concept of alienation serves as a weapon in his battle against capitalism; it is
used in keeping with his dictum that criticism is a weapon whose object is to destroy an
enemy. In Marxs scheme, alienation is not overcome until capitalism is destroyed and
planned production for direct use takes the place of production for the market. When
exchange ceases, so does alienation.
3. RISE OF CAPITALISM PERPETUATES ALIENATION THROUGH GENERATIONS Karl Marx &

Frederich Engels, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, 1948, p. 10.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America
paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to
navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the
extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways
extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and
pushed into the background every class handed down from the middle ages.
WORK IS THE CORE HUMAN INSTINCT

OR VALUE
1. HUMANS BASIC FUNCTION IS WORK
ALIENATION, AND CRISIS, 1973, p.2.
For Marx, mans human function is work. Man realizes himself in labor. In economies
organized for production for direct use, the relations between men are convivial rather
than commercial, and society has control over the allocation and employment of labor.
This follows from producing use-values for direct consumption by the community rather
than commodities which find their way into consumption indirectly by being sold in a
market.
2. WORK IS AT CENTER OF INDIVIDUAL VALUES

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the
proletariat, the modem working class, developed--a class of laborers, who live only so
long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.
These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other
article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition
to all the fluctuations of the market.
3. WORK IS AT CENTER OF CAPITALISM

ALIENATION, AND CRISIS, 1973, p. 45.
This makes it clear that Marxs condemnation of capitalism is not based solely on the
intensity of exploitation and the fact that extracted surplus value becomes the private
property of the exploiter. Rather, his condemnation is based on the social form of labor,
and therefore on the form of social organization that results when the purpose of
production is exchange. The capitalist may increase his extraction of surplus value by
lengthening the working day or by forcing the worker to work harder, but his attempts
will be limited by the lessened efficiency of the labor force, and the wise capitalist knows
that he must husband his machinery, land and labor resources because they are
necessary for continuing production.
Abraham H. Maslow
Human Motivation (1908-1970)

Psychologist Abraham Maslows classic work Motivation and Personality (1954) formed
the foundation for most of his later research. In his classic text, he maintains that all
human needs may be grouped into five major categories. Commonly referred to as
Maslows hierarchy of needs, these categories are arranged into a pyramid-like
structure of importance so that the needs at one level must be minimally met before one
is motivated by higher level needs. In other words, according to Maslow, only unsatisfied
needs are motivators of behavior. His theory continues to be used in a wide variety of
contexts including psychology, education, business, and cultural studies. Some of the
central ideas of Maslows theory include: humans have an innate tendency to move
toward higher levels of health, creativity, and self-fulfillment; neurosis may be regarded
as a blockage of the tendency toward self-actualization; and business efficiency and
personal growth are not incompatible. Indeed, Maslow argued, self-actualization leads
individuals to the highest levels of efficiency (Motivation and Personality, 1987).
This biographical sketch will further define and explain Maslows hierarchy of basic
needs. It will also expand on the hierarchy by explaining what happens when these basic
needs go unmet. Finally, it will explain the pervasive nature of the basic needs, which
span cultures.
In his hierarchy, Maslows first, and most important type of needs include the
physiological ones. These needs include food, water, sex, sleep, etc. The desire to
satisfy the physiological needs is most pronounced in people who are poverty stricken
(i.e., the hungry, the homeless). For such individuals, their greatest motivator is to meet
their physiological needs. For example, in a person who is lacking food, the need to
satisfy hunger is a stronger force than fulfilling other needs such as finding safety, love,
or esteem. It is only when hunger and other first level needs are satisfied that other
higher order needs emerge.
The safety needs are the second category of needs, according to Maslow. Children, in
particular, demonstrate the need for safety in their preference for routine or organization
in their lives. Within Maslows second level, behaviors such as parental arguing, physical
assault, separation, divorce, or death within the family may be particularly threatening
to a child. This need for safety can also be seen in adults who desire to live in a safe
residence or in those who avoid unfamiliar situations.
Third in Maslows hierarchy are the love needs. Generally, these emerge only when the
safety needs are met. Examples of unfulfilled needs at this level include people who
desire children, a spouse, or friends. Such individuals seek affection and belonging
within a group in order to meet these needs. According to Maslow, these love needs are
so significant that the lack of satisfying these needs is a major cause of psychological
maladjustment.
The esteem needs are the fourth category of importance for Maslow. He maintains
that all people have a need for a stable high evaluation of themselves, for self-respect or
self-esteem. These needs may be classified into two subsets. First there is the desire for
strength, achievement, adequacy, independence, and freedom. Second is the desire for
reputation or prestige, recognition, attention, importance, and appreciation. When the
esteem needs are satisfied, an individual has a greater potential for self-confidence,
worth, strength, capability and adequacy. Maslow s studies indicate that such needs are
present in all healthy adults.
Self-actualization is the fifth and final set of needs identified by Maslow. Achieving selfactualization rests on the prior satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love, and esteem
needs. Even if all the needs below self actualization are met, we may still experience
discontent and restlessness. In healthy people, there is a drive to become more or better
than what one is. Maslow identifies this as an inherent drive in people when he suggests
that What a man can be, he must be (Maslow, 1954). This illustrates the need for selfactualization. It refers to the desire for achieving what one is capable of becoming.
While the idea of a hierarchy gives the impression that the needs are fixed in order,
Maslow argues that that may not necessarily be the case. Some people, for example,
have a greater need for love, creativity, etc., in which case those needs would take
precedence over some of the others.
While it is true, according to Maslow, that individuals have differing levels of desire for a
particular need, he also asserts that when the psychological needs (i.e., esteem, love,
self-actualization) are thwarted in ones development, it can lead to some significant
psychological problems. Maslow maintains that individual psychological health is based
largely on whether our love needs in particular are satisfied. Effects such as
maladjustment, inability to maintain relationships, neuroses, etc., result when our basic
psychological needs go unmet. This is where the true significance of Maslows theory
lies.
What is also remarkable about Maslows theory of motivation is that, while researchers
have maintained that our needs or drives are determined culturally, Maslow maintains
that the basic needs may indeed cross cultural lines. Particularly relevant to the selfactualization needs, Maslow asserts that while the ways in which we self-actualize are
culture-bound, the need to do so is not. For example, in some cultures hunting may be
prized by society, in others, becoming educated may be valued. Despite the specific
ways that healthy individuals self-actualize, what they have in common is that they
desire and strive to do it.
Maslow s theory is often criticized for its simplicity and its lack of empirical support.
Indeed, Maslow maintains in his writing that such theory is difficult to support. Instead,
he suggests that researchers continue to try and disprove his theory. Most of his theory
is based on clinical research on psychotherapists and their patients. While the theory
has its shortcomings, it is still widely used as a theory of motivation in psychology and
related fields.
The simplest integration of Maslow into debate revolves around his hierarchy of needs.
The debater could use Maslow to set up a criteria. The debater could argue that the
most important values are physiological, while the least important values are selfactualization. For example, in a debate where self-actualization values and physiological
values are being advocated, the debater could integrate Maslow to argue that
physiological values are more important.
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OF PERSONALITY. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937.
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REVIEW, 1937,44,
404-429.
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1987.
BASIC HUMAN NEEDS ARE

HIERARCHICAL
1. HUMAN NEEDS ARE HIERARCHICAL
Abraham H. Maslow, Psychologist, PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW, 1943, p 370.
Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of prepotency. That is to say, the
appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more
important need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also, no need or drive can be
treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction
or dissatisfaction of other drives.
2. THE MOST BASIC HUMAN NEEDS ARE PHYSIOLOGICAL

Abraham H. Maslow, Psychologist, MOTIVATION AND PERSONALITY, 1954, p. 82.
Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most prepotent of all needs. What this
means specifically is that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an
extreme fashion, it is most likely that the major motivation would be the physiological
needs rather than any others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love, and esteem
would most probably hunger for food more strongly than for anything else.
3. SATISFACTION IS BASED ON FULFILLMENT OF SELF-ACTUALIZATION NEEDS

The clear emergence of these [self-actualization] needs rests upon prior satisfaction of
the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs. We shall call people who are satisfied
in these needs, basically satisfied people, and it is from these that we may expect the
fullest (and healthiest) creativeness.
4. SELF ACTUALIZATION IS BASED ON FULFILLMENT OF HIGHER-LEVEL NEEDS

Abraham H. Maslow, Psychologist, NEW KNOWLEDGE IN HUMAN VALUES, 1959, p. 122.
But these needs or values are related to each other in a hierarchical and developmental
way, in an order of strength and of priority. Safety is a more prepotent, or stronger, more
pressing, earlier appearing, more vital need than love, for instance, and the need for
food is usually stronger than either. Furthermore all these basic needs may be
considered to be simply steps along the time path to general self-actualization, under
which all basic needs can be subsumed.
NEEDS ARE CONSISTENT ACROSS

CULTURES
1. BASIC NEEDS ARE COMMON ACROSS CULTURES
Certainly in any particular culture an individuals conscious motivational content will
usually be extremely different from the conscious motivational content of an individual
in another society. However, it is the common experience of anthropologists that people,
even in different societies, are much more alike than we would think from our first
contact with them, and that as we know them better we seem to find more and more of
this commonness. We then recognize the most startling differences to be superficial
rather than basic, e.g., differences in style of hairdress, clothes, tastes in food, etc. Our
classification of basic needs is in part an attempt to account for this unity behind the
apparent diversity from culture to culture.
2. BASIC NEEDS ARE COMMON TO ALL PEOPLE

Some values are common to all (healthy) mankind, but also some other values will not
be common to all mankind, but only to some types of people, or to specific individuals.
What I have called the basic needs are probably common to all mankind and are
therefore shared values. But idiosyncratic needs generate idiosyncratic values.
3. SELF-ACTUALIZATION IS THE HIGHEST VALUE FOR HUMANKIND

For one thing, it looks as if there were a single ultimate value for mankind, a far goal
toward which all men strive. This is called variously by different authors selfactualization, self-realization, integration, psychological health, individuation, autonomy,
creativity, productivity, but they all agree that this amounts to realizing the potentialities
of the person, that is to say, becoming fully human, everything that the person can
become.
UNMET NEEDS NEGATIVELY IMPACT

PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
1. UNMET BASIC NEEDS CREATE PATHOGENIC RESULTS
Thwarting of unimportant desires produces no psychopathological results, thwarting of a
basically
important need does produce such results. Any theory of psycho pathogenesis must
then be based on a sound theory of motivation. A conflict or a frustration is not
necessarily pathogenic. It becomes so only when it threatens or thwarts the basic needs,
or partial needs that are closely related to the basic needs.
2. THWARTED BASIC NEEDS RESULT IN PSYCHOLOGICAL HARM

Any thwarting or possibility of thwarting of these basic human goals, or danger to the
defenses which protect them, or to the conditions upon which they rest, is considered to
be a psychological threat. With a few exceptions, all psychopathology may be partially
traced to such threats. A basically thwarted [man] may actually be defined as a sick
man, if we wish.
3. THE UNHEALTHY PERSON IS NOT MOTIVATED TO SELF-ACTUALIZE

I should then say simply that a healthy man is primarily motivated by his needs to
develop and actualize his fullest potentialities and capacities. If a man has any other
basic needs in any active, chronic sense then he is simply an unhealthy man. He is as
surely sick as if he had suddenly developed a strong salt hunger or calcium hunger.
4. THWARTED LOVE NEEDS CAUSE PATHOGENIC RESULTS

In our society the thwarting of these [love] needs is the most commonly found core in
cases of maladjustment and more severe psychopathology. Love and affection, as well
as their possible expression in sexuality, are generally looked upon with ambivalence
and are customarily hedged about with many restrictions and inhibitions. Practically all
theorists of psychopathology have stressed thwarting of the love needs as basic in the
picture of ma]adjustment.
5. THWARTED ESTEEM NEEDS LEAD TO NEUROTICISM

Satisfaction of the self-esteem need leads to feelings of self-confidence, worth, strength,
capability and
adequacy of being useful and necessary in the world. But thwarting of these needs
produces feelings of inferiority, of weakness and of helplessness. These feelings in turn
give rise to either basic discouragement or else compensatory or neurotic trends.
6. THWARTED ACTUALIZATION NEEDS LEAD TO BAD PSYCHO-SOCIAL RESULTS

In addition, there are subjective confirmations or reinforcements of self-actualization or
of good growth toward it. These are the feelings of zest in living, of happiness or
euphoria, or serenity, of joy, of calmness, of responsibility, of confidence in ones ability
to handle stresses, anxieties, and problems. The subjective signs of self betrayal, of
fixation, of regression, and of living by fear rather than by growth are such feelings as
anxiety, despair, boredom, inability to enjoy, intrinsic guilt, intrinsic shame, aimlessness,
feelings of emptiness, of lack of identity, etc.
7. SATISFACTION OF BASIC NEEDS IS LINKED TO PSYCHOLOGY

An act is psychologically important if it contributes directly to satisfaction of basic needs.
The less directly it so contributes, or the weaker this contribution is, the less important
this act must be conceived to be from the point of view of dynamic psychology.
John Stuart Mill
British-Political Philosopher (18061873)

Mills early life is sketched out in his Autobiography. His education, initially at the hands
of his father, later largely on his own, has received a significant amount of attention.
Mills father led him to formulate opinions which brought together ideas and facts. He
was also taught to express those opinions in a persuasive way. He was educated in
isolation, except from his younger sisters and brothers, until he went to France at the
age of fourteen. To understand Mill requires an examination of: (1) truth, (2) a priori
knowledge, (3) democratic government, (4) utilitarianism, (5) science, and (6)
application to debate.
At the center of Mills philosophy is the search for truth. Mills philosophy was heavily
influenced by his main teachers, his father and Jeremy Bentham. Mill was one of the few
who found it easy to sympathize with the hopes and plans of those younger than
himself. So, while he borrowed and assimilated much from James Mill and Bentham, his
was not the age of the philosophies and the French Revolution, but of Romanticism and
Reform. Mill wrote on numerous topics in philosophy. For example, he is remembered for
his System Of Logic, where he outlines the limits and nature of meaningful discussion.
His On Liberty is even more famous. Here he related individual liberties to those of the
state and argued that civil restrictions on individual liberties were only permissible if
they were absolutely necessary to prevent harm in others.
Mill argues that the people who exercise power are not the same as those over whom it
is exercised. Mill argues that he self-government is not an individualistic government,
but that of the collective. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of
the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the people, consequently, may
desire to oppress a part of their number: and precautions are as much needed against
this, as against any other abuse of power. Democratic government is not immune to
tyranny of the majority.
Mill inherited the ideas of Utilitarianism from his father James Mill, an ardent disciple of
Bentham.
Utilitarianism is defined as: The greatest good for the greatest number in the long term.
Mill abandons the view that the comparison between pleasures is or can be purely
quantitative. He introduces a qualitative distinction between the higher and lower
pleasures. The higher pleasures are to be preferred: better Socrates dissatisfied than a
fool satisfied. He meant that pleasure is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different.
For example, Mill argued that freedom of speech and freedom of political thought, and
the emancipation of women and equality before the law are all good utilitarian
principles. Mill attempts to answer some of the criticisms of utilitarianism in that it
doesnt work in practice; One does not know what creates happiness and that it ignores
the questions of Motives.
Mill argued that problems not strictly scientific must be solved before practice can
begin. The means must be tested against the readiness of the people (can the young
man drive?), against the practical difficulties, and against the end. Whether or not the
means are put into practice at all depends--and Mill is clear about this--on a successful
passing of these tests, and it makes no difference whether the human who imposes
them is called Scientist or Artist. If, when Mill denied himself practical competence, he
was referring to practical testing, he was certainly under-estimating his powers, for one
of the strongest marks of his thought is his constant awareness that schemes must be in
accord with peoples capabilities, must be feasible, and must be consonant with their
ends--that is, in most cases, must be moral.
There is much that Mill may add to the debater interested in discussing values. Initially,
the debater could integrate utilitarianism into the criteria. The assumption would be that
the value/action that promotes the greatest good for the greatest number of people
would be beneficial. In addition, utilitarianism could be a counter-criteria if the
affirmative is providing a less acceptable lens. Moreover, the debater could use Mill to
discuss the notion of justice. Mill argues that at the center of our current world is the
conception of justice. That is, political, social, and individual institutions need to be
concerned with how justice is implemented and how the value of justice influences
everyday life. Mill argues that justice should be at the center of our institutions.
Therefore, the debater could support the value of justice as the primary value.
Bibliography
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John B. Ellery. JOHN STUART MILL. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1964.
Peter 1. Glassman. J.S. MILL: THE EVOLUTION OF A GENIUS. Gainesville: University of

Florida Press, 1985.
Joseph Hamburger. INTELLECTUALS IN POLITICS: JOHN STUART MILL AND THE

PHILOSOPHIC RADICALS. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.
Samuel Hollander. THE ECONOMICS OF JOHN STUART MILL. Toronto: University of Toronto
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ROB SON. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
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FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH. New York: R. Carter, 1866.
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CENTURY. New York: Basic Books, 1975.
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Press, 1961.
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& Co., 1873.
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HISTORICAL. London: John W. Parker, 1859.
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John Stuart Mill. ESSAYS ON SOME UNSETI1ED QUESTIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

London: Aldwych, 1948.
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PRINCIPAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS DISCUSSED IN HIS WRITINGS. London:
Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1865.
John Stuart Mill. ON LIBERTY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863.
John M. Robson. JOHN STUART MILL: A SELECTION OF HIS WORKS. New York: Odyssey
Press, 1966.
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OF JOHN STUART MILL. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968.
CANNOT SILENCE INDIVIDUAL VOICES

1. CANNOT SILENCE INDIVIDUAL VOICES
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in John M. Robson (Ed.). JOHN STUART MILL: A SELECTION
OF HIS WORKS, 1966, p. 23.
But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by
their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title
to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with
public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one
opinion and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be more
justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in
silencing mankind.
2. INDIVIDUAL VOICES ARE KEY TO OBTAINING TRUTH AND JUSTICE

In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by
studied moderation if language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary
offense, from which they hardly ever deviate even m a slight degree without losing
ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion,
really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those
who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more
important to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other; and, for
example if it were necessary to choose, there would be much mare need to discourage
offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion.
3. INDIVIDUAL KNOWLEDGE CAN ONLY INCREASE IN A FREE SOCIETY

OF HIS WORKS, 1966, p. 83-84.
Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom. Persons of genius are, ex vi
termini, more individual than any other people--less capable, consequently, of fitting
themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of molds which
society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character.
4. SOCIETY CAN NOT RESTRICT THE RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered
by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, everyone who
receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in
society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of
conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists, first, in not injuring the interests of one
another; or rather certain interests, which either by express legal provision or by tacit
understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each persons bearing
his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labours and sacrifices incurred
for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation.
5. IT IS UNJUST TO TAKE AWAY MORAL RIGHTS

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, in John M. Robson (Ed.). JOHN STUART MILL: A
SELECTION OF HIS WORKS, 1966, p. 203.
When, however, a law is thought to be unjust, it seems always to be regarded as being
so in the same way in which a breach of law is unjust, namely by infringing somebodys
right; which, as it cannot in this case be a legal right, receives a different appellation,
and is called a moral right, receives a different appellation, and is called a moral right.
We may say, therefore, that a second case of injustice consists in taking or withholding
from any person that to which he has a moral right.
JUSTICE IS THE HIGHEST VALUE

1. JUSTICE IS THE PREEMINENT VALUE
Justice is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern the essentials of human
well-being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation, than any other rules
for the guidance of life; and the notion which we have found to be of the essence of the
idea of justice, that of a right residing in an individual, implies and testifies to this more
binding obligation.
2. MUST ATTEMPT TO BE OBJECTIVE FOR JUSTICE

Fifthly, it is, by universal admission, inconsistent with justice to be partial; to show favor
or preference to one person over another, in matters to which favor and preference to
not properly apply. Impartiality, however, does not seem to be regarded as a duty in
itself, but rather as instrumental to some other duty; for it is admitted that favor and
preference are not always censurable, and indeed the cases in which they are
condemned are rather the exception than the nile.
3. VALUE OF JUSTICE IS ITS OWN METHOD OF ENFORCEMENT

To recapitulate: the idea of justice supposes two things; a rule of conduct, and a
sentiment which sanctions the rule. The first must be supposed common to all mankind,
and intended for their good. The other (the sentiment) is a desire that punishment may
be suffered by those who enforce the rule.
JUST SOCIETIES CAN REGULATE

BEHAVIOR
1. JUST SOCIETIES CAN RESTRAIN ACTIONS THAT HARM OTHERS
OF HIS WORKS, 1966, p. 72-73.
Acts, of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be and in
the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavorable
sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind. The liberty of the
individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
But if he refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts according
to his own inclination and judgment in things which concern himself, the same reasons
which show that opinion should be free, prove also that he should be allowed without
molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost.
2. SOCIETY HAS THE RIGHT TO LIMIT INDIVIDUALS IF BEHAVIOR EFFECTS OTHERS

As soon as any part of a persons conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others,
society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not
be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room far
entertaining any such question when a persons conduct affects the interests of no persons
besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being
of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding).
3. JUSTICE ALLOWS FOR INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTIVITY

SELECTION OF HIS WORKS, 1966, p. 224-225.
Most of the maxims of justice current in the world, and commonly appealed to in its
transactions, are simply instrumental to carrying into effect the principles of justice
which we have now spoken of. That a person is only responsible for what he has done
voluntarily, or could voluntarily have avoided; that it is unjust to condemn any person
unheard; that the punishment ought to be proportioned to the offense and the like, are
maxims intended to prevent the just principle of evil for evil from being perverted to the
infliction of evil without that justification. The greater part of these common maxims
have come into use from the practice of courts of justice, which have been naturally led
to a more complete recognition and elaboration than was likely to suggest itself to
others, of the rules necessary to enable them to fulfill their double function, of inflicting
punishment when due, and of awarding to each person his right.
RALPH NADER
Great societies must have public policies that declare which rights, assets and conditions
are never for sale. Such policies strengthen noncommercial values, which, nourished by
public enlightenment and civic participation, can provide wondrous opportunities to
improve our country. Guided by such values, we can better use our wealth and power to
benefit all Americans. Applied beyond our borders, these values can help us astutely
wage peace and address the extreme poverty, illiteracy, oppression, environmental
perils, and infectious diseases that threaten to jeopardize directly our own national
security as well as that of the rest of the world.
Ralph Nader, from the preface to Crashing the Party
Among contemporary political figures, Ralph Nader is one of a kind, but wishes he were
not. He has been a thorn in the side of corporate power and governmental corruption
for nearly forty years, but wishes there were others like him; in fact, he wishes that
contemporary American politics was full of Ralph Naders, people who devote their lives
to working for reforms and exposing corruption within all power centers.
This essay will explore both the philosophical foundations and the practical political
implications of Ralph Naders work and thought. Nader radicalizes the Jeffersonian
tradition of democratic participation, and simultaneously brings other radical thought
into the mainstream. After exploring his life, from his student activist days to his two
presidential runs, I will try to explain his philosophy, and then his political project. I will
conclude with some thoughts on using Ralph Naders writings in debate rounds.
Naders Life and Work

Ralph Nader was born in 1934 to Rose and Nathra Nader, Lebanese immigrants who
owned a restaurant in the small town of Winstead, Connecticut. Nathra, Ralph Nader
recalls, would encourage patrons at his restaurant to participate in informal political
debates. Nathra and Rose had strong opinions about democracy, and like most
immigrants they experienced some dissonance upon coming into the country and
witnessing both great acts of public good and objectionable acts of elitist exploitation.
By age 14, Ralph Nader had closely read the classic journalistic muckrakers of his day as
well as several years of the Congressional Record. At age 17, he entered Princeton
University, where he would have the opportunity to test his father's enthusiasm for
public protest. He attempted to get the administration to ban the spraying of DDT on
campus trees, came to the defense of small business owners being abused by larger
businesses, and, finding these endeavors unsuccessful, resigned himself to studying
Chinese and preparing for law school.
An excellent student, Nader entered Harvard Law School in 1955. He immediately

developed an aversion to the corporate orientation of both the courses and the
professors' ideologies. Nader wanted to study the legal issues involving food production
and automobile safety. He had to do most of this on his own, as Harvard Law School
didn't offer such courses and the professors were enthusiastically uninterested.
He researched automobile safety anyway, and in 1959 published his first article, "The
Safe Car You Can't Buy," in THE NATION. At the time, there were nearly 50,000
automobile deaths every year in America, and more than twice that amount of
permanent disabilities incurred in automobile accidents. Nader believed--and would
continue to believe--that car companies simply didn't believe safety was worth the cost.
By 1965, he had expanded the article into a devastating book, UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED:
THE DESIGNED-IN DANGERS OF THE AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE.
The book contained a theme that, in a larger sense, is almost uniquely attributable to
Nader in American politics: corporations habitually blame consumers for defects in their
products, just as all perpetrators tend to blame the victims, just as the rich blame the
poor for being poor, and so on. The automobile industry spent millions in "public
service" propaganda blaming "the nut behind the wheel" for auto fatalities. Nader, of
course, took issue with the assumption, and justified his position with painstaking
research and eloquent prose.
The book launched the consumer rights movement, and General Motors' attempt to
discredit Nader assured his fame, which he exploited in order to launch a career of
public service and anti-corporate activism. Because of UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED, Congress
enacted tougher automobile safety laws (eventually culminating, some decades later, in
mandatory seat belts and air bags). While other activists dedicated themselves to
ending the Vietnam War, Nader spent the rest of the 1960s expanding his project to
include the creation of various task forces and groups of young advocates dedicated to
consumer safety and rights. In 1969 he and his comrades formed the Center for Study
of Responsive Law. Throughout the next thirty years, Nader's "Raiders," as they came to
be called, fought for increased water quality, reforms in the Food and Drug
Administration, and a plethora of other causes.
Of course, most contemporary followers of politics identify Nader with his 1996 and 2000
Presidential runs on the Green Party ticket. Many hold him uniquely responsible for
Democratic candidate Al Gore's loss to George W. Bush in 2000. By campaigning to the
"left" of Gore politically, it is argued, Nader took voters away who would have voted for
the centrist Democrat Gore, albeit reluctantly. Since the 2000 campaign, Nader has
continued to organize grass roots activists against corporate power and irresponsibility.
A statement Nader made in 1993 sums up his political perspective:
What neither Clinton...nor most other Democratic Party proponents of change seem to
realize is that significant, enduring change will require an institutionalized shift of power
from corporations and government to ordinary Americans. While politicians have now
made an art of populist symbolism, virtually none have a serious agenda to strengthen
Americans in their key roles as voters, taxpayers, consumers, workers, and shareholders.
(http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR18.2/nader.html)
The Philosophical Basis of Naders

Politics
"In a democracy, the highest office is the office of citizen."
Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
Ralph Nader is not a philosopher. In fact, he seems to have an inherent distrust of

academic intellectuals (not a hostility, simply a distrust), based on their tendency
towards theory at the expense of action. He is also not a radical revolutionary, despite
the best efforts of conservatives and moderates to paint him as such. Naders
philosophy can be summed up as citizen empowerment, and as such, draws upon the
American political tradition in much the same way as any social movement.
There are two basic philosophical premises behind Naders politics. First, in a
democracy, the people are the ultimate authorities. This is Jeffersonian democracy at its
most extreme, but, as the quotation below explains, it is also a contemporary application
of Jeffersonian democracy to conditions he and the other founders could not necessarily
have foreseen:
The inspiration came directly from Thomas Jefferson, who had written, "I know of no
safer depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves." But
Jefferson, of course, could not have envisioned how moneyed special interests, official
secrecy, procedural complexities and the brute size of the nation would erode the sinews
of government accountability. Nor could James Madison, author of the famous Federalist
No. 10 essay, have predicted how competing special-interest factions might not yield the
public good, contrary to his predictions. The creation of a citizens' lobby to represent the
people as a whole -- "the public interest" -- was a bold, innovative development in
American politics at the time. It represented a creative attempt to reclaim Jefferson's
faith in "the people themselves." John Gardner, a former Secretary of the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, would have a similar idea in 1970, when he founded
Common Cause, a good government lobby that focused primarily on procedural reforms
such as campaign finance reform and government ethics.
(http://www.nader.org/history/bollier_chapter_3.html)
Naders second philosophical premise is that power tends to corrupt unless it is checked by a
wide array of citizens. This is why it is grossly over simplistic to view Nader as merely a
proponent of greater government control, indistinguishable from typical liberal

democrats. Nader believes that ordinary people must make both corporations and
governments more accountable.
Why, then, should corporations be held to the same standard as politicians? There are
several sensible reasons for this. First and most importantly, the democratic
"experiment" is about checking excessive power. Corporations have as much power as,
and frequently more power than, any elected or appointed political leader. They can
control resources and make large-scale decisions about production and distribution.
They can make decisions that have far-reaching environmental and economic effects,
sometimes stretching centuries into the future. And, most recently, the multinational
status of many corporations makes them, literally, "above" the laws of most nations.
Second, the kinds of "checks" which defenders of corporate power claim exist are not
really effective. The classic argument is that citizens "vote with their dollars." Aside
from the fact that this means people with a million dollars get a million votes, Such an
argument assumes what many capitalist apologists assume without proof: that citizens
possess near-perfect information about public and private transactions and the effects of
corporate decisions. Since most corporate decisions are made behind closed doors, and
since advertising does not normally reveal the truth about the production process,
citizens do not have the kind of information that voters in political elections possess.
Finally, checks must exist on corporate power because the classic individualist
metaphors of entrepreneurship and hard work hardly do justice to the corporate
juggernauts. Wealth is not generated through the individual actions of individual
innovators; rather, wealth is a social creation: capitalists need laborers, sellers need
consumers, and the resources extracted from the earth do not belong to any one
individual in some a priori sense. So corporations need to be accountable because
corporations could, literally, not exist without the collective masses that sustain them.
All of these reasons provide sound philosophical justification for an increased watchdog
role on the part of concerned citizens. Some less-than-eloquent critics have, over the
past few decades, referred to Nader as an anti-capitalist, a communist, a socialist, even
a Stalinist. Nader is none of these. He does not call for the end of corporations or
market economies. In fact, many on the anti-capitalist left see Nader as wanting to
"save" corporations and capitalism by forcing reforms that smart corporate executives
would favor as a way to make themselves look better.
Naders Political Principles

When I was in law school, we had a joke that at Harvard they teach you how to distort
the law of contracts and contract the law of torts. Little did I know then that in 1999 this
very thing would be occurring. We are losing the two great pillars of American law, torts
and contracts, to institutionalized, giant corporations. Corporate law firms are composed
of lawyers who have forgotten what it means to be a professional and who are
themselves losing their independence. They are not heeding the warnings of Justice
Louis Brandis and Henry Stimpson and Ella Herue, who warned about corporate law
firms losing their independence to corporate clients by becoming mere adjuncts to the
corporation's priorities.
Nader, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY, 1999, p. 56
Over the past two presidential races, Ralph Nader has tended to stress the following
points as a political program:
1. Facilitate voter initiatives: Nader wants to make it easier to vote, and also increase
the number of things people vote for and against. He is in favor of more accessible
voter registration, and the use of referendums and initiatives to increase public control
over the lawmaking process.
2. Reform our corrupt campaign finance system: Nader is a strong proponent of viable
campaign finance reform, limiting the amount of money people can spend on political
campaigns, and increasing public financing of elections. He sees the democratic process
as little more than a joke if elections come down to who has the most money.
3. Set term limits for Members of Congress: Term limits allow the system to constantly
rejuvenate and re-invent itself, and discourage career politicians who tend to become
cynical and greedy. Term limits would increase opportunity for ordinary citizens to
participate in government.
4. Reclaim the public airwaves: Nader is very concerned that radio and television
waves, which should belong to everyone, are available to the highest bidder. He was
instrumental in encouraging public access laws requiring cable companies to devote
some of their stations to public use. He would like to see much more of this.
5. Create shareholder democracy: Nader wants shareholders in corporations to have

greater power over corporate decision-making. At present, shareholders possess
minimal power compared to the day-to-day power of corporate executives.
Most of these platforms stem from the overarching desire on Ralph Naders part to
increase citizen empowerment. He believes that ordinary people are not stupid,
especially when they are given a chance to participate in the large-scale affairs that
determine so much in their lives.
Objections to Nader
To answer Ralph Nader's underlying political philosophy is difficult. One must assert and
prove not only that capitalism is desirable, but also that elitism is desirable. It is much
more fruitful to concentrate on the pragmatic implications of Naders beliefs than to
question whether democracy and citizen empowerment are good things.
To begin with, many people are angry that Naders dogmatic and purist run for the
presidency in 2000 supposedly cost the Democrats the White House. This is because
those people believe that, while Gore and the Democrats may not have been as faithful
to Naders ideals as the Greens were, they were still comparatively closer to those ideals
than were the Republicans and George W. Bush. This is an ongoing argument, as recent
events demonstrate:
The Capital Times (5/21, Steverman) reports, " Ralph Nader's 2000 Green Party
presidential run angered many Democrats, but the Green Party's current plans, if
successful, could frustrate Democrats in Wisconsin and around the country even more.
Green Party activists say they have learned a lot since 2000, and they are planning to
run a candidate for every statewide office in Wisconsin, including candidate Jim Young
for governor. Democrats, especially liberal Democrats, say Greens end up hurting the
very causes that they support by playing the spoiler in many races." In Wisconsin, "the
Green Party has a dozen chapters around the state, only four of which existed before the
2000 election." (THE BULLETIN'S FRONTRUNNER, May 21, 2002)
The argument is that we must be willing to compromise, to accept some of what we

want; if we hold out for everything, we end up with nothing (or, as some would say in
reference to Bush, worse than nothing!). The problem here is not merely one election.
It places in question Naders whole philosophy of stubborn and dogmatic insistence that
only his platform is viable and democratic. Democrats respond that, at a time when
many citizens seem to be drifting to the right, we should settle for checks on that drift
rather than try to get everything.
Of course, Nader supporters responded that the Democrats had themselves to blame for
the election loss, since they alienated the voters who ended up either not voting at all,
or voting for Nader:
Sam Smith is right when he points out that the liberal establishment in the Democratic
Party--which includes the current congressional leaders of the party--''yawned as the
Clintons disassembled their own cause and became incensed when Ralph Nader dared
to defend it.'' (VILLAGE VOICE, May 7, 2002)
Another source of objection to Naders ideas is found in libertarian philosophies.

Libertarians generally believe that regulation of the market never yields the results
intended, and often makes things considerably worse. Although Nader is not simply a
pro-government liberal, his ideas clearly include tougher regulations, higher taxes for
corporations, and more restrictions on what people can do with their money.
Regulations fail, libertarians claim, because people respond better to self-management

than hierarchical management. Even many non-libertarians favor measures such as tax
incentives rather than regulatory schemes to make corporations behave better. Along
the same lines, many people advocate pollution trading permits rather than strong
regulations against pollution. The idea is that people respond favorably to carrots
(rewards), but if they are threatened with punishment, they simply find ways around the
tough regulations rather than ways to comply with them.
Overall, most of the objections to Naders ideas work well within the general framework
of libertarianism and belief in a minimal state. However, it remains to be seen whether
advocates of Naders ideas can articulate the sense in which citizen empowerment
differs from traditional advocacy of government intervention.

In my mind, Ralph Nader inspires three main ideas with immediate and far-reaching
implications on value debate:
Capitalism can exist with checks and balances: Traditional value debates about
capitalism and its alternatives tend to be very black-and-white, either-or. One side
argues that capitalism is necessary because it maximizes individual freedom, while the
other side emphasizes the problems of selfishness, exploitation and imperialism. Nader
is no fan of capitalism, but he argues that, since its what we have, we should keep it in
check. Debaters may even be able to argue that the ideas of people like Nader are
essential to capitalisms survival, since such ideas prevent the excesses that fuel the
anti-capitalism movement.
Alternatives to capitalism and globalization can be explored through a widening of the

political arena: Conversely, debaters might argue that political and economic
alternatives exist, and that we should explore those alternatives by broadening the
political arena. Greater participation by third parties and citizens movements can help
this happen.
Democracy must be participatory: More than any other idea, Ralph Nader advocates the
notion of citizen participation and a breaking down of the distinctions between
government and people. After all, in the strongest democratic traditions, government is
the people. Nader eschews elitism, not merely philosophically, but with many historical
examples of the disasterous effects of unchecked power among governments and
corporations.
CONCLUSION
Ralph Nader is currently Americas loudest and most passionate advocate of citizen
participation and greater corporate accountability. He might also open the door to more
radical alternatives to the kind of politics and economics we seem destined to accept in
the status quo. At the same time, his stubborn insistence that the people not
compromise with those in power cost him a great deal of credibility in 2000, and that
lesson might itself serve as a reminder that alternatives must be pragmatic, and not just
theoretically attractive.
Writing about a living person is a lot different than writing about a long-dead
philosopher. Debaters wishing to explore more about Ralph Nader can do many things:
read his books, read commentary about him, and even update their files with the daily
news reports about Nader and his movement. Unlike so many of our sources, Ralph
Nader continues to make news every day. Were it up to him, it would be citizens making
the news instead of corporate news agencies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buckhorn, Robert F. NADER: THE PEOPLES LAWYER (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall
1972).
Burt, Dan M. ABUSE OF TRUST: A REPORT ON RALPH NADERS NETWORK (Chicago:

Regnery Gateway, 1982).
Chu, Franklin D. THE MADNESS ESTABLISHMENT: RALPH NADERS STUDY GROUP

REPORT ON THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH (New York: Grossman
Publishers, 1974).
Gorey, Hays. NADER AND THE POWER OF EVERYMAN (New York: Grosset & Dunlap,
1975).
Isaac, Katherine. RALPH NADERS PRACTICING DEMOCRACY 1997: A GUIDE TO STUDENT

ACTION (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997).
McCarry, Charles. CITIZEN NADER (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972).
Nader, Ralph. CORPORATE POWER IN AMERICA (New York: Grossman, 1973).
Nader, Ralph. CRASHING THE PARTY: TAKING ON THE CORPORATE GOVERNMENT IN AN

AGE OF SURRENDER (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2002).
Nader, Ralph. NO CONTEST: CORPORATE LAWYERS AND THE PERVERSION OF JUSTICE IN

AMERICA (New York: Random House, 1996).
Nader, Ralph. TAMING THE GIANT CORPORATION (New York: Norton, 1976).
Nader, Ralph. THE BIG BOYS: POWER AND POSITION IN AMERICAN BUSINESS (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1986).
Nader, Ralph. THE CONSUMER AND CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1973).
Nader, Ralph. THE MENACE OF ATOMIC ENERGY (New York: Norton, 1977).
Nader, Ralph. THE RALPH NADER READER (foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich (New York:
Seven Stories Press, 2000).
Nader, Ralph. UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED: THE DESIGNED-IN DANGERS OF THE AMERICAN
AUTOMOBILE [Expanded ed.] (New York: Grossman, 1972).
Ralph Nader Congress Project. RULING CONGRESS: A STUDY OF HOW THE HOUSE AND
SENATE RULES GOVERN THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS (New York: Grossman Publishers,
1975).
EGALITARIAN CRITERIA OF JUSTICE IS

BEST
1. THE CRITERIA FOR JUSTICE SHOULD BE THE CONDITION OF THE POOR AND
OPPRESSED
Ralph Nader, political activist, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY,
1999, p. 56.
If someone were to ask how much injustice exists in society, how would you respond?
The criteria for analyzing a just society is very primitive and unclear. The data one would
use is arguably nonexistent. We are then at a point where such a question cannot be
answered without a firm understanding of our past. I think that the level of injustice in
our society is partly a reflection of expectation levels. Poor or oppressed persons are
often downtrodden - having accepted their condition and resigned. If the larger society
has a higher expectation level, then we become very uneasy with the state of affairs.
2. ELITE CONTROL OF THE CRITERIA FOR JUSTICE ENSURES FURTHER INJUSTICE

Ralph Nader, political activist, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY,
1999, p. 56.
If the oligarchy controls the yardsticks by which we measure progress and justice, then
they also control agendas and that is what is happening. When Alan Greenspan reports
to Congress every few weeks on the state of the economy, he uses oligarchic indicators
that imply the economy could hardly be better - profits are up, the stock market is up,
inflation is down, and unemployment is down. If we were to use the people's yardsticks
to report on the state of the economy, we would begin to see that twenty-five percent of
children grow up in poverty and that this is the highest in the western world. Eighty
percent of the workers in the bottom eighty percent of the job force have seen their
wages decrease since 1973 when adjusted for inflation. There are a record number of
consumers filing bankruptcies and living beyond their means in order to subsist, totaling
record amounts of consumer debt. Homelessness and poverty are affecting large
numbers of families and people than ever before; clinics, schools, and public utilities are
in extreme disrepair. Yet, what Congress hears is that our economy could not be better.
CORPORATE POWER THREATENS THE

PUBLIC GOOD
1. CORPORATE WELFARE SIPHONS FUNDS FROM OTHER PRIORITIES
Ralph Nader, political activist, CUTTING CORPORATE WELFARE, 2000, p. 13
Corporate welfarethe enormous and myriad subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, tax
loopholes, debt revocations, loan guarantees, discounted insurance and other benefits
conferred by government on businessis a function of political corruption. Corporate
welfare programs siphon funds from appropriate public investments, subsidize
companies ripping minerals from federal lands, enable pharmaceutical companies to
gouge consumers, perpetuate anti-competitive oligopolistic markets, injure our national
security, and weaken our democracy.
2. CAPITALISM REQUIRES CHECKS AND BALANCES

Ralph Nader and William Taylor, political activists, THE BIG BOYS, 1986, p. 521.
Adam Smith knew that the ideology of the invisible hand was an idealization quite
removed from market reality. This is very far from the way modern corporations plan to
reduce risks through market power and to get the public to help pay their costs through
tax breaks and other subsidies. Smiths invisible hand of 1776 has been joined two
centuries later by the invisible atom, the invisible gene, the invisible currency, the
invisible pollutant, and the invisible bureaucrat. Working at high levels of
abstraction, pampered executives can distance themselves from everyday life, limiting
their ability to deal with reality. The need for distance grows more insistent every day
the mounting challenges of doomsday weapons, mass famines, artificial intelligence,
and genetic engineering are added to the stresses of conventional chemical, production,
and marketing technologies. To introduce more managerial foresight and honesty, those
at the peaks of corporate power need to have their thoughts and actions better known
to the public. If people think more about how major business executives work, then
those executives may think harder about how their work affects people.
GLOBAL FREE TRADE HAS HORRIBLE

IMPACTS
1. GLOBALIZATION UNDERMINES HEALTH, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND WORKERS RIGHTS
Ralph Nader, political activist, THE CASE AGAINST FREE TRADE, 1993, p. 1
Citizens beware. An unprecedented corporate power grab is underway in global
negotiations over international trade. Operating under the deceptive banner of free
trade, multinational corporations are working hard to expand their control over the
international economy and to undo vital health, safety, and environmental protections
won by citizen movements across the globe in recent decades. The megacorporations
are not expecting these victories to be gained in town halls, state offices, the U.S.
Capitol, or even at the United Nations. They are looking to circumvent the democratic
process altogether, in a bold and brazen drive to achieve an autocratic far-reaching
agenda through two trade agreements, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade deal (formally
known as NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement) and an expansion of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), called the Uruguay Round. The Fortune
200s GATT and NAFTA agenda would make the air you breathe dirtier and the water you
drink more polluted. It would cost jobs, depress wage levels, and make workplaces less
safe. It would destroy family farms and undermine consumer protections such as those
ensuring that the food you eat is not compromised by unsanitary conditions or higher
levels of pesticides and preservatives.
2. GLOBALIZATION HURTS DEMOCRACY AND PROMOTES AUTOCRATIC SECRECY

Ralph Nader, political activist, THE CASE AGAINST FREE TRADE, 1993, p. 3.
Secrecy, abstruseness, and unaccountability: these are the watchwords of global trade
policy-making. Every element of the negotiation, adoption, and implementation of the
trade agreements is designed to foreclose citizen participation or even awareness. The
process by which a policy is developed and enacted often yields insights into who stands
to benefit from its enactment. Narrow, private interests inevitably prefer secrecy; in the
halls of the U.S. Congress, for example, corporate lobbyists roam the corridors before a
budget or tax package is to be voted on, hoping to insert a special tax exemption or
subsidy in the dark of night and have it voted on before the public (or even most
Congressional representatives) know it exists. By contrast, citizen-based initiatives
generally succeed only if they generate public debate and receive widespread support.
3. GLOBAL FREE TRADE UNDERMINES LOCAL, STATE, AND NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

Ralph Nader, political activist, THE CASE AGAINST FREE TRADE, 1993, p. 6.
Enactment of the free trade deals virtually ensures that any local, state, or even national
effort in the United States to demand that corporations pay their fair share of taxes,
provide a decent standard of living to their employees, or limit their pollution of the air,
water, and land, will be met with the refrain, You cant burden us like that. If you do,
we wont be able to compete. Well have to close down and move to a country that
offers us a more hospitable business climate. This sort of threat is extremely powerful
communities already devastated by plant closures and a declining manufacturing base
are desperate not to lose more jobs, and they know all to well from experience that
threats of this sort are often carried out.
NADERS PHILOSOPHY HURTS

DEMOCRACY
1. PUBLIC INTEREST ADVOCACY UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY
Dan M. Burt, President of Capital Legal Foundation, ABUSE OF TRUST: A REPORT ON
RALPH NADERS NETWORK, 1982, p. 8.
Public interest advocacy has become one of the signs of our times. It embodies an
inherent distrust of traditional political and social organizations to represent the public
adequately and to wage the fight for the common good. Public interest groups seek
an alternative means of influencing decision-making in both government and industry.
This most often takes the form of intervention in the regulatory processes of the federal,
state, and local governments. Testimony is often given on behalf of the public interest
before congressional committees and federal regulatory panels. In some cases, the
groups elect to fight the issues out before the courts.
2. NADERS ADVOCACY DESTROYS INDIVIDUAL CHOICE AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS

RALPH NADERS NETWORK, 1982, p. 20
What is clear is that Mr. Nader and his network distrust the current political and
economic system in the United States, and seek to change it. They do not put much
faith in the democratic process that has been Americas unique tradition for the past 200
yearsthat is, the political votes we cast regularly at the ballot box, and the economic
votes we make every day with our money at the cash register, at the bank, or in the
investment markets. Our diverse, de-centralized political, economic, and social system,
with its heavy reliance on individual choice, is not considered adequate to achieve the
public interest or the common good.
NADER IS ELITIST AND TOTALITARIAN

1. NADERS ADVOCACY TRANSFERS POWER FROM INDIVIDUALS TO ELITES CLAIMING TO
SPEAK IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Instead, Mr. Nader and his groups seek a greater politicization of life in America, where
more decisions will be made by a few to affect the many. Government would have an
especially large influence on the functioning of the economy and, in turn, on our daily
lives. In this regard, a new elite of un-elected, professional public interest advocates
would acquire a substantial amount of power to make decisions in both the private and
public sectors. In sum, America would become a more centrally governed and less free,
individualistic nation. Public interest advocates would become new power-brokers,
and their ideology would have immense impact on political and economic activities and
society as a whole. Ralph Nader seeks nothing less than a transfer of power in America,
away from the individual and into the hands of the government and public interest
groups.
2. NADERS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY WOULD CULMINATE IN TOTALITARIANISM

In place of our system of modified and limited individual choice and private enterprise
we certainly recognize and welcome much of what FDA, SEC, EPA and similar agencies
dothe public interest groups would appear to want more politicization of life in
America. In other words, government would probably become more authoritarian or
even totalitarian by encroaching more on our private lives as workers, employers, and
consumers. And it has been and would be a government they run. This is a distinct
political ideology, which has been and remains in vogue in Western thought. But it is a
radical departure from U.S. political tradition of the last 200 years, and it does not
square with the common view of the nature of the public interest.
NADERS ANTI-CORPORATE AGENDA IS

UNDESIRABLE
1. NADERS OPPOSITION TO TRADE AGREEMENTS HURTS DEVELOPING NATIONS
Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at MIT, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, July 25,
2000, p. A-19.
Everyone knows about Nader's furious opposition to global trade agreements. But it is
less well known that he was equally adamant in opposing a bill removing barriers to
Africa's exports -- a move that Africans themselves welcomed, but which Nader
denounced because of his fear that African companies would be "run into the ground by
multinational corporations moving into local economies." (Most African countries would
be delighted to attract a bit of foreign investment.) Similar fears led Nader to condemn
South Africa's new constitution, the one that ended apartheid, because -- like the laws of
every market economy -- it grants corporations some legal status as individuals.
2. NADER IGNORES THE CONTRIBUTIONS CORPORATIONS MAKE TO OUR PROSPERITY
Laurence D. Cohen, columnist, THE HARTFORD COURANT, October 22, 2000, p. C3.
That's the problem with Ralph. He isn't like you and me. Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate,
had it right when he characterized the Nader reason-for-being as "irritating others for the
public good." But you
can't create a public good until you recognize the reality of a private good, the product
of freedom to acquire and strive and create for personal gain. Because multinational
corporations go their amoral way, because chemical companies have to put their gunk
somewhere, because insurance companies have to say no to some doctors sometimes,
we are the happiest, healthiest, most prosperous nation in the world.
NADER PRACTICES A RHETORIC OF

FEAR AND OVERSIMPLIFICATION
1. NADERS ANTI-CORPORATE RHETORIC OVERSIMPLIFIES THE ISSUES
Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at MIT, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, July 25,
2000, p. A-19.
If you look for a unifying theme in all these causes, it seems to be not consumer
protection but general hostility toward corporations. Nader now apparently believes
that whatever is good for General Motors, or Pfizer, or any corporation, must be bad for
the world. To block opportunities for corporate profit he is quite willing to prevent
desperately poor nations from selling their goods in U.S. markets, prevent patients from
getting drugs that might give them a decent life and prevent a moderate who gets along
with business from becoming president. At times Nader's hostility to corporations goes
completely over the edge. Newt Gingrich disgusted many people when, in his first major
speech after leaving Congress, he blamed liberalism for the Columbine school shootings.
But several days before Gingrich spoke, Ralph Nader published an article attributing
those same shootings to -- I'm serious -- corporate influence.
2. NADER IS A NATIONALIST WHO EXPLOITS AMERICANS FEAR OF IMMIGRANTS
Patrick ONeill, columnist, THE MILITANT, March 6, 2000, p. 3.
Nader's 1996 campaign was marked by nationalist themes. The North American Free
Trade Association treaty means "we're exporting jobs--probably about 350,000 to
400,000" to Mexico, he said. He complimented rightist politician Patrick Buchanan, now
vying for the Reform Party presidential nomination, saying he has "learned a lot in the
last few years about corporate power." At the same time, Nader presented his campaign
as a "pull to the left" for the Democratic Party. According to the February 21 Green Party
news release announcing Nader's bid, in 1996 he "received nearly 700,000 votes and
finished in fourth place, although limiting his campaign spending to under $5,000. In
2000, the Nader campaign intends to raise $5 million dollars." The campaign will have
similar themes to the effort of four years ago. Nader says he will concentrate on
"democracy, concentrated corporate power and the excessive disparities of wealth." The
Green Party's press release states that "Nader's advisors claim that his campaign will
help turn out the vote and could assist the Democrats in taking back Congress." Nader
will invoke "the message of last year's Seattle demonstrations against the WTO," reads
the statement. Those demonstrations were led by union officials and liberal and
environmental activists, who put forward economic nationalist slogans that drew
favorable comment from Buchanan.
Arne Naess
Arne Naess is the Norwegian philosopher whose writings provide the foundations and
inspiration for the environmental movement known as Deep Ecology. His writings
provide the basis for a coherent system of environmental ethics and challenge many
cherished tenets of modern thought, for example, utilitarianism, the idea that humanity
should be considered paramount over its natural environment and other species, and
the conception of economic growth as inherently progressive. Deep Ecology could be a
useful philosophy for Lincoln-Douglas debaters who encounter these assumptions or
must affirm and negate environmental resolutions.
WHO IS ARNE NAESS?

Arne Naess is the Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Oslo, in
Norway. He is a prolific writer, publishing many books on modern thinkers such as
Spinoza and Gandhi. His name has been nearly synonymous with philosophy in Norway
for over 50 years.81 Naess was born in 1912 and he became a professor at the age of
27. He lives in a small cabin called Tvergastein in an arctic environment high on the
side of a mountain between Oslo and Bergen that he has identified as his homehis
placeever since.82 His life there is an exemplar of combining theory and
practice in that he attempts to make minimal impact on the natural environment, only
infringing to fulfill vital needs such as eating. His interest in environmental philosophy
began in the 1960s. In 1972, Naess originated the term Deep Ecology, and he has
published numerous books and articles describing the term and the movement.
81 Sessions, George. Deep ecology for the twenty-first century. (Boston: Shambhala,
1995). p. xii.
82 Sessions. p. 187.
WHAT IS DEEP ECOLOGY?

Deep ecology is a loosely described as a movement that unites environmentalists who
criticize the dominant liberal tradition of anthropocentrism and seek, through their
writings, philosophies, pedagogies, and lives, to maintain a commitment to
environmental activism. Deep ecology seeks establish itself as an alternative to
shallow ecology, which is the mainstream, anthropocentric, governmentally oriented
environmental movement that now dominates contemporary discourse on the
environment.
A paradigmatic example of a shallow environmental thinker is Al Gore. Shallow

environmentalism usually justifies the project of ecological preservation with reference
to the special role humanity has as a caretaker species of the natural environment. It
is focused on the survival of the human species, with the natural environment as a
means to that end. Shallow environmentalism analyzes the environmental crisis in
terms of scientific surveys, data, and experiments, and it seeks to solve the crisis in
much the same way.
Deep ecology, by contrast, finds the notion of a caretaker to remove humans from
their contexts as always and at all times engaged in the natural environment. The notion
of a caretaker puts humans in the roles of parents, who make decisions for and about
the environment, when the nature is precisely that which is beyond the control of
science and technology. Deep ecologists analyze the environmental crisis not only
through the lens of science, but also by critiquing cultural practices and assumptions
that undermine the hope for sustainable living.
Naess warns that one should not expect too much from definitions of movements;
think, for example of terms like conservatism, liberalism, or the feminist
movement.83 He argues that the deep ecology movement should remain flexible and
alterable, although he does lay out a platform of eight principles which he believes most
deep ecologists generally agree with.
The platform is:

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in
themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent worth). These values are independent of
the usefulness of the non-human or for human purposes.
83 Naess, Arne. The Deep Ecological Movement. Deep ecology for the twenty-first
century. Ed. George Sessions. (Boston: Shambhala, 1995). p. 67.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of the values and are
also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantially smaller
human population. The flourishing of non-human life requires a smaller human
population.
5. Present human interference with the non-human world, is excessive, and the situation
is rapidly worsening.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic economic,
technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply
different from the present.
7. The ideological change will be mainly that of appreciating life quality, (dwelling in
situations of inherent value) rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of
living. There will be a profound awareness of the difference between bigness and
greatness.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to
try to implement the necessary changes. 84
Naess argues that the platform is the heart of deep ecology, and individuals who believe
in the platform can do so through a wide array of philosophical, personal, poetic, or
other justifications. Naess calls his own justification of the platform Ecosophy T. The
T is for Naess home, Tvergastein. What is important to Naess is not that everyone
who claims to be a deep ecologist agree with the platform in the same way, rather, that
everyone think and question deeply in order to derive their personal ecosophy.
84 Naess. The Deep Ecological Movement. Deep ecology for the twenty-first century.
Ed. George Sessions. (Boston: Shambhala, 1995).p. 68
ANTHROPOCENTRISM, BIOCENTRISM,
ECOCENTRISM
Deep ecologists such as Naess are highly critical of the anthropocentric assumptions
that foreground modern cultural and society. They are skeptical of the attitude that
humans were created to dominate nature. The structure of the argument against
anthropocentrism parallels arguments made against racism and sexism. To begin with,
deep ecologists are skeptical of the notion that there are relevant differences between
humanity and nature. Humanity is always embedded in nature. The dichotomy is
artificial.
Additionally, they see anthropocentrism as a sort of species imperialism. Even if

humanity can be divorced from the natural environment and other species, there are no
differences between humans and other species that justify preferential treatment for
humans. To justify anthropocentrism, some thinkers mention characteristics such as
intelligence, mentality, and evolutionary advancement. However, some humans (the
comatose, infants) are less intelligent and mentally able than other species, such as
chimpanzees. Even if these characteristics belonged to all humans and no other species,
it would not be clear why mentality or advanced evolution justifies differential
treatment. The pinnacle of evolution is not humanity, rather, it is the richness and
diversity of life.
Another problem with anthropocentrism is that it justifies total use of the environment. If
humans are the crowning achievements of evolution, above and beyond all other
species, there is no reason for humans not to use all other parts of the natural
environment for human ends. The assumption that humans are and atomistic,
individualized, independent units, and not ingrained in a social and natural fabric, leads
to a relationship with nature and others that is colonizing, territorial, and dominating.
As an alternative to anthropocentrism, some environmental philosophers propose

biocentrism, a theory that gives primacy to all embodied forms of life. Deep ecologists,
however, take issue with even this term, which tends to enforce a conception of the
world as individualized units of life that exist in competition. Many deep ecologists, such
as Naess, prefer the term ecocentrism, which implies concern for the ecosphere, all
those interconnected and interdependent aspects of the planet that give rise to life,
natural systems, humanity, and species in a web of relations.
GESTALT ONTOLOGY
Ecospheric thinking is derived from Naess idea of Gestalt Ontology. An ontology is a
way of asking and answering the philosophical question What is? Ontology is the study
of being and existence. An ontology provides a lens or a framework through which
we make sense out of the world. Naess is highly critical of the dominant ontology, which
conceives of the world as though it were a supermarket. Through dominant
supermarket ontology, we are all shoppers, roaming the aisles of the world, picking up
items out of nature that can be bought or sold.
This supermarket ontology creates a view of the world as made up of compartmental,

machine-like units to be controlled and manipulated 85 Naess describes the way people
see a forest through the dominant ontology, The atomistic view helps to value the
forest in terms of market prices, of extrinsic parts, and tourism. A tree is a tree. How
many do you have to see? With a solely atomistic conception of nature, a person can
never gain a sense of wonder for the ecosystem of the forest as a complex,
interdependent web of life and beauty, because the forest is reduced to its use value for
the human species. The supermarket concept is dangerous because it makes life
progressively less rich, narrowing it down to a mass of externally connected details. 86
Unfortunately, this is the ontology that is dominant for modern culture.
As an alternative, Naess argues that humans need to reconnect with an ontology that
views the world as a gestalt. A gestalt is best explained with the phrase, the whole
is more than the sum of its parts.87 When you view a forest as a gestalt, you see it as a
whole ecosystem, not a mass of parts. You cannot master it by taking it apart into its
components, or classify every interaction and piece of the system. This is why gestalts
provoke a sense of wonder. Naess argues that we inevitably see things as gestalts,
because it is impossible to see the world all the time in every detail. We inevitably take
many details of daily life for granted. However, gestalt ontology is delearned through
indoctrination to consumer culture in the media and education.
85 Shepard, Paul. Ecology and Man. Deep ecology for the twenty-first century. Ed.
George Sessions. (Boston: Shambhala, 1995). p. 140.
86 Naess. Ecosophy and Gestalt Ontology. p. 245.
87 Naess. p. 241.
THE PROBLEMS WITH TECHNOLOGY

AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
Deep ecology, following Marxism, critiques technological, consumeristic lifestyles.
Technology creates worlds of artifice that separate people from nature. Nature becomes
something to be set aside on wilderness preserves instead of the environment we
come from and are encased in. This relationship with nature, if unstopped, will lead to
its destruction as well as our own. For Naess, nature is not what stocks the shelves at
the supermarket, it is home.
The consumer culture, which pursues more and more economic growth, can never be
satisfied in its relentless pursuit of bigger and better things. This culture leaves people
unsatisfied, with no sense of wonder and appreciation for nature, tradition, or culture, no
connection to the past or the world. Development is based on the anthropocentric
assumption that nature is insufficient in itself and needs humans in order for it to
develop its fullest potential as consumable goods to meet human needs. The
consumer culture will also one day find that there is nothing left to develop. Deep
ecologists worry that calamities may result, such as the rise of totalitarian governmental
policies to ration the remaining resources, or ecological disasters.
TO REFORM OR NOT TO REFORM?

As a response to this modern crisis, deep ecologists suggest that people change their
ways of conceptualizing the earth and consequently, their ways of living will change.
From a gestalt ontology, it follows that you would not want to harm the earths
ecosystems on which all life depends. Flowing from a sense of wonder, people would
realize they cannot harness, control, and master all of the earth, and would cease their
attempts to make use of the earth as a supermarket of resources. Deep ecologists are
reluctant to embrace shallow reform proposals that leave humans as agents of control
over nature, are technologically oriented, and are based on anthropocentric
assumptions. Naess believes that the reforms necessary for sustainable living will be farreaching and drastic.
MAINSTREAM CRITICISMS
Mainstream environmental critics, who would be labeled shallow by the deep
ecologists, often criticize deep ecologists for being nostalgic for primitive times. They
argue that a return to the past, even if desirable, would not be possible, because
humanity enjoys such technological advances as indoor plumbing, modern medicine,
and the Internet. Critics also point out that primitive ways of farming or hunting were
often destructive to the environment, and that primitive societies were repressive to
women and often violent.
Mainstream critics, such as Martin Lewis, also accuse deep ecology and other radical
forms of environmentalism as alienating to the general public and producing a backlash
from the right wing and the powerful. This backlash to environmentalism is ultimately
destructive of the mainstream reform movements that have the best chance of
producing actual change. They accuse deep ecology of being too academic and too far
removed from the lives of real people to have any impact.
Naess responds with reference to the eight principles of deep ecology. He claims that the
goal of deep ecology is not a return to the past, although we can learn from the study of
so-called primitive cultures that achieved better balance with the environment and
were sustainable for tens of thousands of years. The goal is to change the way people
envision their relationship to the environment. The resulting state of affairs will be
drastically different.
Another common criticism is that deep ecology is contradictory, because even deep
ecologists must use the environment to provide for their own subsistence. Naess
response to this criticism is that humans should only use the environment and
interfere with the well-being of the ecosystem if it is to fulfill a vital need.
CRITICISMS FROM SOCIAL ECOLOGISTS

Social ecologists, such as Murray Bookchin, take issue with Naess approach to solving
the environmental crisis. These thinkers view the root of the crisis not as
anthropocentrism, but rather, as inequitable relations between humans, for example,
the colonialism and imperialism of the first world over the third world that leads to
destruction of the rain forests in order to supply the first world with cheeseburgers from
the cows who are grazed on the land. Bookchin and others argue that humans must first
learn to treat one another equitably before they can find equitable relations with nature.
Deep ecology is often accused of misanthropy or human-hating. This is because some

deep ecologists have made statements that denigrate humanity, for example, likening
humans to a virus that will destroy its host, the earth. Others have taken violent action
against humans in environmental protest. Arne Naess disavows these actions and
adamantly supports non-violent protest, following the examples of Gandhi and Martin
Luther King, Jr. Most deep ecologists claim not to hate humans, but rather, they reject
the view that humans are more intrinsically valuable than other living creatures and the
ecosystem.
CRITICISMS FROM ECOFEMINISTS

Ecofeminists, like social ecologists, see the roots of environmental domination in
oppressive relationships between humans. They argue that the structure of
anthropocentrism, in which nature is dominated by men, parallels the structure of
sexism, in which women are dominated by men. Women are often associated with
nature due to their social roles in caring for the maintenance of life and child rearing.
Women are referred to as more in touch with nature and more prone to natural
uncontrollable, irrational behaviors. This association of women with the natural has
justified the oppression of women by men in politics, economic life, and personal
relations for centuries. Ecofeminists argue that the dichotomies of woman/man,
emotional/rational, care/management, humans/nature, and other manifestations of
dualistic thinking need to be broken down in order for humanity to abandon
anthropocentric assumptions. Ecofeminists charge deep ecologists with being ignorant
or insensitive to the role that sexism and dichotomous thinking play in the
environmental crisis.
Deep ecologists respond that ecofeminism and social ecology are not incompatible with
the eight principles of the deep ecology movement, that in fact, they can be
ecosophies used to support the platform. Naess attempts to make the deep ecology
movement all inclusive, and he rejects classism, racism, and sexism. Quarrels continue,
however, between ecologists who locate the ideological roots of the crisis in different
places.
NAESS IN LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE

Naess calls into question arguments premised on utilitarianism, anthropocentrism, or the
value of development. Utilitarianism is an often-used criterion in Lincoln-Douglas debate.
Naess gestalt ontology, provides a critique of the concept of use-value. The idea of
use-value underpins utilitarianism, in which objects, ideas, or nature have value
insofar as they have utility in achieving a particular end. Use-value makes no sense of
the world is understood as a gestalt. The dominant philosophical tradition conceives of
things as externally related to one another; gestalt ontology views relations as internal.
Use-value makes no sense if things are internally related. Utilitarianism cannot
account for the experience of something for which the whole is greater than the sum of
its parts. Hence, utilitarianism is inadequate for describing, contemplating, and
evaluating humans, nature, and the world.
Naess deep ecology also calls into question the assumption that economic growth is
always a positive force. In debates where debaters affirm the value of progress, deep
ecology can answer the idea that progress always leads in the direction of fulfillment
and happiness. The modern myth of continual human progression ignores the
damaging aspects of technology. Unchecked economic growth leads to unfulfilled living
and ecospheric destruction. Using the work of Naess, debaters can challenge the notion
that economic growth is a good thing in debates over the relative merit of economic
systems, such as capitalism versus socialism. Deep ecological theories can be used to
compliment Marxism, or as a counterpoint to the anthropocentric assumptions that
undergird Marxist thought.
Deep ecology questions who is included in the notion of the common good. The idea
that the common good is what is best for man or humanity is suspect when the
flourishing and diversity of the ecosphere is also considered to have intrinsic worth.
Cases that ignore the non-human world in pursuit of the common good of humanity
can be attacked for anthropocentrism.
Deep ecology is obviously an invaluable perspective to be familiar with when debating

resolutions about the environment. Mainstream environmental reform proposals, insofar
as they reflect an anthropocentric, technological worldview, can do more harm than
good in addressing the problems of species loss, rain forest depletion, global warming,
overpopulation, and consumption. Debates over environmental ethics that only involve
the conflicts between the desires of individuals to pursue economic needs versus the
desire of society to maintain a healthy environment for posterity and current
generations are lacking in depth of analysis, in that they only consider the perspectives
of humans as atomistic actors.
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DEEP ECOLOGY IS THE BEST FORM OF

ENVIRONMENTALISM
1. DEEP ECOLOGY IS THE ONLY WAY TO PREVENT ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION.
George Sessions, Chair, Philosophy Department, Sierra College, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE
21ST CENTURY, p. xxi.
The major reform environmental organizations have in some cases performed brilliantly,
and in other cases they have compromised miserably, in their piecemeal
political/economic/legal/technologicaI approaches to protecting the environment. By
failing to take an ecocentric integrated long-range perspective, by failing to be guided
by realistic visions of ecological sustainable societies, and by failing to adequately
address the root causes of the ecocrisis, they have managed only to delay some of the
worst of the environmental degradation. Overall their strategies and efforts are failing to
stem the tide of global environmental destruction. The crucial paradigm shift the Deep
Ecology movement envisions as necessary to protect the planet from ecological
destruction involves the move from an anthropocentric to a spiritual/ecocentric value
orientation. The wild ecosystems and species on the earth have intrinsic value and the
right to exist and flourish, and are also necessary for the ecological health of the planet
and the ultimate well-being of humans. Humanity must drastically scale down its
industrial activities on Earth, change its consumption lifestyles, stabilize and then reduce
the size of the human population by humane means, and protect and restore wild
ecosystems and the remaining wildlife on the planet. This is a program that will last far
into the twenty-first century. The crucial question is how much irreversible global
ecological destruction humanity will continue to cause before existing trends can be
significantly reversed.
2. IT IS WRONG TO SERVE THE SHALLOW MOVEMENT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE DEEP.

Arne Naess, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Chair of Philosophy Department,
University of Oslo, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, p. 153
5. Fight against pollution and resource depletion. In this fight ecologists have found
powerful supporters, but sometimes to the detriment of their total stand. This happens
when attention is focused on pollution and resource depletion rather than on the other
points, or when projects are implemented which reduce pollution but increase evils of
other kinds. Thus, if prices of life necessities increase because of the installation of
anti-pollution devices, class differences increase too. An ethics of responsibility implies
that ecologists do not serve the shallow, but the deep ecological movement. That is, not
only point five, but all seven points must be considered together. Ecologists are
irreplaceable informants in any society, whatever their political color. If well organized,
they have the power to reject jobs in which they submit themselves to institutions or to
planners with limited ecological objectives. As it is now, ecologists sometimes serve
masters who deliberately ignore the wider perspectives.
3. THE ALTERNATIVE TO DEEP ECOLOGY IS INEVITABLE CHAOS AND DICTATORIAL RULE.

Arne Naess, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Chair of Philosophy Department,
University of Oslo, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, p. 464-465
So the big open question is: How far down are we going to sink before we start heading
back up in the twenty-second century? How far must we fall before there is a clear trend
toward decreasing regional and global ecological unsustainability? It may be useful, in
this connection, to consider some possible scenarios: 1. There is no major change in
ecological policies and in the extent of worldwide poverty. Major ecological catastrophies
occur as the result of the steadily accumulating effects of a century of ecological folly.
This drastic situation forces new ecologically strict policies, perhaps through
undemocratic and even brutal, dictatorial military means used by the rich countries. 2..
The same development continues except for a major change in the poor countries: there
is considerable economic growth of the Western kind. Now there are five times as many
people living unsustainably. A breakdown occurs very soon, and harsh measures are
taken to fight chaos, and to begin a decrease in unsustainability. 3. and 4. Several
similar developments ending in catastrophic and chaotic conditions, and subsequent
harsh brutal policies implemented by the most powerful states. A turn towards
sustainability, but only after enormous ecological devastation. 5. Ecological
enlightenment, a realistic appreciation of the drastic reduction in the quality of life,
increasing influence of the Deep Ecological attitude, and a slow decrease of the sum
total of unsustainability. A trend toward decreasing unsustainability discernable by the
year 2101. Our hope: the realization of the rational scenario: least strenuous path
toward sustainability by the year 2101.
OBJECTIONS TO DEEP ECOLOGY ARE

MISTAKEN
1. DEEP ECOLOGY IS CRITICAL OF HUMAN-CENTEREDNESS, NOT HUMANITY
Warwick Fox, National Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Studies, University of
Tasmania, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, p. 280
The extent to which people in general are ready to equate opposition to
human-centeredness with opposition to humans per se can be viewed as a function of
the dominance of the anthropocentric frame of reference in our society. Just as those
who criticize capitalism, for example, are often labeled as "Communists" and, by
implication, "the enemy," when, in reality, they may be concerned with such things as a
more equitable distribution of wealth in society, so those who criticize anthropocentrism
are liable to be labeled as misanthropists when, in reality, they may be (and, in the
context of environmentalism, generally are) concerned with encouraging a more
egalitarian attitude on the part of humans toward all entities in the ecosphere. In failing
to notice the fact that being opposed to humans-centeredness (deep ecology's critical
task) is logically distinct from being opposed to humans per se (or, in other words, that
being opposed to anthropocentrism is logically distinct from being misanthropic), and in
equating the former with the latter, Bookchin and Skolimowski commit what I refer to as
thefallacy of misplaced misanthropy." Committing this fallacy in the context of criticizing
deep ecology involves not just a crucial misreading of deep ecology's critical task, but
also the oversight of two other considerations that contradict such a misreading. The
first is that deep ecology's constructive task is to encourage an egalitarian attitude on
the part of humans toward all entities in the ecosphere-including humans. The second is
that deep ecologists are among the first to highlight and draw inspiration from the fact
that not all humans have been human-centered either within the Western tradition or
outside it. Far from being misanthropic, deep ecologists celebrate the existence of these
human beings.
2. ECOCENTRISM SUBSUMES OTHER MOVEMENTS EGALITARIAN CONCERNS

Warwick Fox, National Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Studies, University of
Tasmania, DEEP ECOLOGY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, p. 271
Second, the term ecocentric seems closer to the spirit of deep ecology than the term
biocentric, because, notwithstanding their broad usage of the term life, the motivation of
deep ecologists depends more upon a profound sense that the Earth or ecosphere is
home than it does upon a sense that the Earth or ecosphere is necessarily alive (you
don't have to subscribe to some ecological form of hylozoism to be a supporter of deep
ecology). In accordance with this extremely broad, ecocentric egalitarianism, supporters
of deep ecology hold that their concerns well and truly subsume the concerns of those
movements that have restricted their focus to the attainment of a more egalitarian
human society. Deep ecologists, in other words, consider their concerns to subsume the
egalitarian concerns associated, for example, with feminism (as distinct from
ecofeminism), Marxism, antiracism, and anti-imperialism.' In the eyes of deep ecologists,

the emergence of a distinct ecofeminism, a distinct "green" socialism, and so on, are-at
least in their best forms-attempts by feminists, Marxists-cum-socialists, and so on, to
redress the human-centeredness of their respective perspectives .6 Needless to say,
deep ecologists welcome these developments and they recognize that ecofeminism,
green socialism, and so on have their own distinctive theoretical flavors and emphases
because of the different theoretical histories that inform them. Nevertheless, they see no
essential disagreement between deep ecology and these perspectives, providing that
the latter are genuinely able to overcome their anthropocentric legacies.
DEEP ECOLOGY IS NOT THE BEST WAY

TO PRESERVE THE ENVIRONMENT
1. DEEP ECOLOGY WOULD NOT PRESERVE THE ENVIRONMENT
Martin Lewis, Professor of Environmental Studies, Duke University, GREEN DELUSIONS,
1992, p. 73.
As the preceding discussion shows, small-scale societies practicing swidden and other
forms of extensive cultivation do not necessarily exist in the social and ecological idyll
imagined for them by deep ecologists. it remains true, however, that most of these
groups cause relatively little environmental degradation. Yet such benign interactions
with nature are often a function more of their low population densities rather than of
their special affinity with the natural world. As population density increases, tribal
cultivation usually begins to extract a more substantial environmental toll. Intensive
Agriculture in Small-Scale Societies: Many small-scale societies, it must be said, do
maintain low population densities over long periods, thereby presenting modest
environmental threats. Others grow steadily but avoid degrading their farmlands by
devising more intensive cultivation systems that obviate the need for long term fallow
(Boserup 196 5). Permanent cropping, however, almost invariably demands fertilization,
hence heavy applications of labor. Whatever primal affluence certain swidden cultivators
may have enjoyed vanishes once their populations grow too large for forest farming to
support. But even if they have successfully intensified production, tribal and peasant
societies characterized by permanent-field agriculture detract from nature in other ways.
True, many do devise sophisticated farming techniques that maintain high productivity
levels over many generations. But often a creeping level of deterioration is still evident.
As nutrients are slowly extracted from forests and meadows, in the form of ash, leaf
mulch, and "green manure," in order to subsidize fields, uncropped areas may be
gradually impoverished. The stunted forestlands of Korea and much of southern China,
for example, may owe their degraded state in part to an imperceptibly slow leakage of
nutrients to the cultivated fields. As Peter Perdue (1987:35, 247) shows, peasants in
south central China burned entire forests in order to sell the fertilizing ash in
downstream areas, a process that contributed directly to what he aptly calls the
"exhausting" of the earth.
2. DEEP ECOLOGY IS CONTRADICTORY.

Jerry A. Stark Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Director, University
Scholars Program and University Learning Community, Ecological Resistance
Movements, 1995, p. 269
The deep ecology platform presented above is, essentially, a series of claims about what
is right and what is wrong, from the first proposition about the intrinsic value of nature to
the last statement about the obligations of those who accept this platform. However, a
painfully obvious problem emerges. Having rejected the rational foundations of
philosophical reasoning, how is it possible that advocates of deep ecology presume to
formulate an ethic for environmentally acceptable conduct? If all knowledge is based

upon intuitions derived from a reimmersion of humans in nature, who is to say that
two or more people will share the same intuitions? Who can argue reasonably that the
equal right to live and blossom is an intuitively obvious value axiom when someone
else simply disagrees? Rather than reviewing the troublesome notion that nature has
intrinsic value, I will simply ask the question: How would we know? Intuitionism cannot
reasonably address this question. It can only reformulate it as a condition of belief
either we believe in the platform of deep ecology, or we do not.
3. DEEP ECOLOGY OFFERS NO GUIDANCE TO POLITICAL PRACTICE

Finally, there remains the question of political practices derivable from deep ecology.
Dobson is essentially correct that one problem of deep ecology is that it is so vague and
spiritually oriented that it offers no guidance to political practice. Another way of saying
this is that there is no political strategy that deep ecology excludes. This accounts for
the confusing array of political recommendations from Naess's insistence upon a
Gandhian nonviolent strategy, to calls for ecotage, to quests for personal empowerment
through "right action ... words, acts and feelings true to our intuitions and principles". A
philosophy that includes all political strategies excludes nothing and necessarily
provides no guidance to activists engaged in the development of alternative
communities and political action.
DEEP ECOLOGY OPPRESSES HUMANS

1. DEEP ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITIES DENY HUMAN RIGHTS
The only guarantee that individual interests will be honored in this type of community
lies in an unquestioned acceptance of one person's definition of everyone's interests,
which Implies a rather extensive control over the process of socialization and
interaction . This type of community cannot be based on any conceptions of rights or
responsibilities, for both require a framework of law and institutions in which those rights
can be defined, delineated, and defended both against the encroachment of others and
against unintended effects of community practices and policies. As one author correctly
observes, "Moral persuasion per se lacks any spontaneous, decentralized coordinating
device. If elements of other decentralized social choice mechanisms cannot be trusted
to perform the coordinating function, then the burden falls ineluctably upon centralized
devices. Such devices may be imposed from above or, developed spontaneously' from
below". This institutional arrangement is what we call "government," and it is precisely
what postmodern environmentalists reject, at the level of philosophical reasoning, as an
illegitimate and unsustainable form of political structure. Deep ecologists prefer natural,
spiritual communities which are as decentralized and autonomous is possible. However,
a spiritual community, apart from any legal or. constitutional guarantees, is " unlikely to
protect the so-called rights or values of nature as it is -to protect the rights of
individuals. As Bookchin and Bradford make clear, deep ecologists tend to assume that
human rights have already been fully established and that the only rights remaining are
those of nature itself. Thus it is easier to disregard the human impact of community
organization in their philosophy.
2. DEEP ECOLOGY LEADS STATUS BASED, CASTE-LIKE SOCIAL FORMATIONS

Aside from deep ecological assertions to the contrary, there is no reason whatsoever in
deep ecosophy that two or more people should share the same intuitions of nature. Yet
this is necessary to the formation of a community based upon common spiritual vision.
Even if a group of people did share a common spiritual vision, there is little in the history
of politics or religion to assure one that a community united around a spiritual vision
would necessarily be a community based upon egalitarianism.' Far from it, utopian
spiritual communities tend to be based upon a clear spiritual hierarchy between a
dominant charismatic leader and a group of adherents 'who subordinate their thoughts
and conduct to that leader. duBois argues that a postmodern philosophy based in "deep
ethical concern" and an ontological identification with nature lends itself ,very nicely to
the purposes of a status-based, caste-like social formation in which there is a rigid
distinction between those who know truth as a matter of spiritual reflection

[self-realization] and the rest of the community who can only act out revealed truths.
Romantic appeals to native American tribalism exacerbate this problem.
3. DEEP ECOLOGY IS ANTI-HUMAN.

Murray Bookchin, Founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, REMAKING SOCIETY, 1990,
p. 11-12.
What renders this new biocentrism, with its antihumanistic image of human beings as
interchangeable with rodents or ants, so insidious is that it now forms the premise of a
growing movement called deep ecology. Deep ecology was spawned among well-todo people who have been raised on a spiritual diet of Eastern cults mixed with
Hollywood and Disneyland fantasies. The American mind is formless enough without
burdening it with biocentric myths of a Buddhist and Taoist belief in a universal
oneness so cosmic that human beings with all their distinctiveness dissolve into an allencompassing form of biocentric equality. Reduced to merely one life-form among
many, the poor and the impoverished either become fair game for outright
extermination if they are socially expendable, or they become objects of brutal
exploitation if they can be used to aggrandize the corporate world. Accordingly, terms
like oneness and a biocentric democracy go hand-in-hand with a pious formula for
human oppression, misery, and even extermination.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
PHILOSOPHER (1844-1900)
For the last hundred years or so, Western philosophy has been troubled by moral
paradoxes. The civilization that produced democracy has also produced totalitarianism.
The praise heaped upon technological advances has been called into question by
capitalist exploitation and environmental degradation. Even contemporary political
questions such as abortion end in frustrating contradictions. These dilemmas suggest
that both moral absolutism and moral relativism are equally dangerous. When, if ever,
can we be right?
Friederich Nietzsche was the first European philosopher to address the paradox of values
in itself, rather than take sides, rather than try to resolve various moral questions one
way or another. He has been labeled dangerous and crazy by some, and brilliant and
poetic by others. His provocative appeal, especially to young people, has been
unparalleled in Western philosophy.
Life And Work

Nietzsches own life is indicative of paradox itself, proving the reality of contradictions.
Though he had theologians on bath sides of his family, he rejected religion early on.
Though his works exhorted the virtues of strength and ruthless abandon, he himself was
weak and sickly, and hardly a rogue adventurer. And though some see him as the chief
spokesperson for strict totalitarianism, he was eventually launched into madness
through the relatively Christian act of trying to prevent a man from beating a home.
Born in Rocken, Prussia on October 15, 1844, Friedrich Nietzsche was destined to be a
scholar, although his family assumed, and encouraged, that his scholarship would be
theological. Ironically, after they sent him to the University of Bonn, he gave up
Christianity, instead becoming enchanted with the myths of the ancient world, and the
heroism and ruthlessness o~ Greek and Roman deities. Transferring thereafter to the
University of Leipzig, Nietzsche developed an interest in politics, philosophy and
philology. It was philology, a long-since abandoned philosophical study of ancient
writings, which he was to teach at Bale after being rejected from military service. While
teaching, the twenty-four year old Friedrich also suffered from the after-effects of
dysentery and diphtheria, and his health would deteriorate even further throughout his
life.
It wasnt until after his health forced his resignation from teaching that Nietzsche began
to write at a maddening pace, composing essays and books which were, by his own
admission, designed to shock the morality and comfortable assumptions of his day by
raising questions he earnestly believed everyone wondered about, but that no one was
willing to ask. During this time he wrote Beyond Good and Evil, a book calling moral
absolutes into question, The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsches attempt to trace the
history of moralizing itself, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, an allegorical and poetic work
urging humanity to reject conventional truth-seeking in favor of a higher level of
consciousness which would glorify madness and power. Other works along the same
themes appeared: The Joyful Wisdom, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo and Human. all too
Human.
His work was filled with purposive inconclusiveness; he often ended his conclusions with
question marks or ellipses, indicating he was more concerned with raising the issues
than answering the questions. This was true because Nietzsche was chiefly concerned
with why humanity felt the need to answer so many questions. He believed that the socalled will to truth which characterized philosophys self-image was in reality simply a
reflection of the will to power, that tendency of all living beings to seek life, advantage
and security. The problem, as he saw it, was that humans had forgotten that they
possessed this desire for power and hid it behind various delusions concerning
metaphysical truths.
But whether these ideas would stand up to scrutiny was something Nietzsche would
never realize, for during his lifetime few people were exposed to, or acknowledged, his
thinking, and during the last years of his life he went insane, eventually dying, a virtual
idiot, in August of 1900. The initial breakdown was caused by his rushing into the public
street to prevent a man from beating a horse, although his poor health certainly
contributed to the outcome. In the end, Friedrich Nietzsche was unaware that anyone
had read his work, and equally unsure he had even written it. The life-force and power
he had glorified always eluded him personally.
The Attack On Values

Why is it that good ideas often turn bad? Love, an emotion and value so often embraced
and praised by poets and philosophers, can become jealousy and smothering
overprotection when taken to the extreme. Pride in ones nation can turn into
destructive nationalism and even racism. Extremes creep upon us before we realize
theyre there. And the opposite is also the case: Things which we condemn in our moral
systems can become good if viewed from another angle; selfishness becomes selfrespect, dishonesty can be called creativity, and so on. All in all, it seems as if values
slip out of our control, constantly subject to mismanagement and misinterpretation.
Nietzsche believed this was because we place values on a pedestal too far above us. He
reasoned that we value ideas and ideological systems as if they are in command of us,
when in reality we have invented them. And he firmly believed that, far from revealing
truths about ourselves, values actually, and by design, hide the most important insights
about human nature. In short, values are noble lies designed to achieve particular,
cynical ends.
It was not that Nietzsche wanted humanity to believe in nothing. Although he is

labeled a nihilist, and even the father of nihilism, it was never his intention to have
humanity think life was completely without meaning. In fact, he wanted nothing more
than for us to stop lying about the things we believe to be important. The lies come in
the form of exalting goodness when one only sees weakness, of calling courage and
the adventurous spirit evil, of all the dishonesty and hypocrisy practiced by the priests
and political leaders of his time. It was sincerity Nietzsche preached, and he did so by, at
least as far as he was concerned, calling things what they were. His solution to the
dishonesty of value-making was twofold, one part critical in the philosophical sense, and
one part vaguely political. On the philosophical end, he called for and himself practiced a
genealogy, or historical analysis, of human moral systems. Concerning the latter part
of the solution, he demanded a transvaluation of values that would be embraced by
the new human being, the Superman he saw coming in the Twentieth Century.
Critical History Of Values

History, for Nietzsche, teaches us more than simple philosophical analysis ever can.
Through tracing the history of how words have fanned ideas, and how words and ideas
have been used, we can note their gradual distortion and concealment in what many
thinkers believe is the progress of humanity. Take, for example, the concept of
goodness. Although now we associate being good with ones consistent adherence
to a particular value system, originally, good denoted the activities of the most
powerful actors in society: A warrior was good if he was ruthless and without pity for
his enemies; the aristocracy defined goodness through their actions which were held up
as the most noble of activities.
But gradually, the weaker members of societies, who had always resented the more
fortunate and more powerful, began to systematize their resentment through philosophy
and religion. It was for this reason alone that Christianity, for example, found its quickest
success among the slaves and the poor, here was a religion telling them it was goad to
be meek, peaceful, and even harmed by more powerful people. Soon, goodness
became associated with doing exactly the opposite of what the most powerful people
did. Whereas the pride and perfection of the powerful was once the most emulated
virtue, this virtue soon became the vice called vanity.
Relying on a historical trajectory, Nietzsche argued, allows us to see that what happened
was a fall from genuine human nature, indeed the genuine nature of all living things,
who by the very essence of life itself should conquer weaker living things. It is only
through seeing how things were and how they changed that one can see where we are
now. Humans talk of being meek only when trying to hide their dangerous strengths, or
in order to give excuses for not being strong when it is warranted. Humans talk of
love,
whether for another person, or activity, or thing, when we really mean that we enjoy
those people or activities or things and want to use them for our own enjoyment and
personal fulfillment.
Why, Nietzsche asks, are we so afraid to face our selfishness? Because, he answers,
facing such a nature we would also be forced to confront the fact that not everyone is
equally powerful; not everyone can succeed, and that the natural order of things
demands that one persons well-being often comes at the expense of someone elses.
Even though this is a brute and indisputable fact of life, Nietzsche argued that it has
become covered up because so many people fear being placed on the bottom of the
natural hierarchy, and so they invent lies to hide the hierarchy itself, or call it evil.
So an understanding of the history of ideas forces us to be honest with ourselves about

how we use those ideas. But more is needed. Nietzsche is not prescribing that we give
up our values; instead, he sees this happening naturally as the hypocrisy of modern
institutions is increasingly revealed and exposed. At the end of the Nineteenth Century,
European civilization, as Nietzsche saw it, was poised to give up its values entirely. The
question was now: What will we put in their place?
The Transvaluation Of Values

Perhaps only metaphorically (since he was not a social scientist), Nietzsche saw a new
human on the horizon: A human whose honesty matched his power, whose authenticity
would guide the way into a rejection of the weaknesses of democracy, utilitarianism,
egalitarianism, and other values which went against the natural, will-to-power processes
of life. In short, Nietzsche issued a challenge, and while he offered no comprehensive
answer or instructions for meeting the challenge, he clearly had in mind a return to the
values of the Greeks and Romans. Heroes need not apologize for their behavior, they
can be excused in their excesses precisely because those excesses are honest and
authentic. Again, no prescription is necessary; rather, Nietzsche asks: Where will an
authentic and honest life lead us? Let us experiment, he asks, and see where we end up.
Does this require that we abandon the decency and just treatment that we have hitherto
considered important? Not exactly, for Nietzsche believes that love and justice do have a
purpose, provided they are not held up as metaphysical ideals. In fact, Nietzsche
believes that genuine love and compassion, which naturally occur between equals, are
goad in themselves and would only be enhanced by restraining from transposing them
into metaphysical absolutes. Similarly, justice between equals is authentic, but holding
justice against natural differences between people is dishonest.
So there are two ways to read Nietzsches call for rejecting metaphysical values. The
more incomplete interpretation would have us randomly committing acts of violence for
their own sake, oppressing the weak simply because they are weak, and so on. The more
charitable and deeper interpretation simply challenges us to face up to the fact that
we are organisms who invent things to maximize power and experience the pleasures
life has to offer. In either case, Nietzsche never believed his ideas would themselves
influence history. He was merely a philosophical reporter.
How Accurate Is Nietzsches

Assessment?
Critics have pointed out a few problems in Nietzsches diagnosis and subsequent
suggestions. To begin with, it is not altogether clear whether his pronouncement that all
conscious activity is merely a manifestation of the will to power is not merely itself a
metaphysical assertion of the type that he holds in contempt. It is certainly possible that
Nietzsche merely chose to interpret the data of human history with his conclusion
already in mind, and this is a questionable way to do philosophy. But it isnt merely a
methodological flaw which disturbs people about Nietzsches assertion. His conclusion
carries with it obvious ethical implications.
Most obviously, feminist thinkers have major qualms with Nietzsche. His views on
women were explicitly negative: He called them inferior almost as a matter of habit. But
more dangerous than his dismissal of womens intellect is his extremely male-centered
concept of true virtue: Nietzsches world of muscle-bound heroes hacking their way
through humanity reads like an adolescent pipe dream, feminists say. Do all humans
really want to take over the world, to exploit, to forge new paths of adventure and
wallow in bloody glory? Or is this simply testosterone?
Christian ethicists have more trouble with Nietzsche. On the one hand, they respect his
exposure of institutional religious hypocrisy and fully admit that the ethics of
compassion have often been distorted by power-hungry priests and complacent clerics.
But does this, in itself, prove that the virtue of compassion, and the belief in a higher
power, are weak or simple-minded? These ethicists dont think so. Rather, they see
compassion, albeit a compassion informed by an awareness of humanitys tendency to
transgress, as an essential response to the condition in which we find ourselves. Instead
of saying it is natural to make war, why not try to change human tendencies? Instead of
ridiculing the practice of turning the other cheek, why not point out how it results in
more peaceful resolution of disputes? Christian ethicists appreciate being challenged,
but they wish people would not be so quick to dismiss virtues such as humility and
peacemaking.
Finally, progressive thinkers of all stripes frequently answer Nietzsche by pointing out
that humanity as a species will be stronger through the building of communal,
democratic values than through authoritarianism. They accurately point out that Hitler
used many of Nietzsches ideas, albeit in a distorted fashion, to build the ideology of
German National Socialism. Since Nazism was both morally outrageous and politically
self-destructive, progressives believe that some of the values Nietzsche supposedly
despised may actually be signs of strength rather than weakness.
But through all this criticism, most of Nietzsches core project remains unchallenged:
Why not be more honest with ourselves about our motives and concerns? Why do we
hold values up, often at the expense of the very human beings who invented such
values? And is it possible that abandoning metaphysics might actually lead us to think
more clearly? In a way, Nietzsche did nothing but ask questions and issue challenges;
the history of the Twentieth Century seems to validate most, if not all, of his queries.
Critiquing Values: Implications For

Debate
Nietzsche is the starting point for a radical and appealing approach to Lincoln-Douglas
debate. Since virtually all affirmatives begin their case by placing forth some value to
uphold, a philosopher who calls for the categorical rejection of values could be used to
question the very underlying structure of all affirmatives who do so. Debaters can issue
a critique which, rather than refuting the various claims made by affirmative cases,
would instead urge a negative ballot simply because the whole approach of the
affirmative is flawed.
The critique of valuing in general must include the reasons why holding values up prior
to other considerations of cases is bad in itself. In its most basic manifestation, those
advocating the critique might ask why the case claims do not merely stand on their own.
If those claims are valid, it is unnecessary to glue them together with some underlying
value. But it is not only unnecessary; it is also destructive, for reasons which Nietzsche
outlines in the evidence collected here. Finally, those values will not withstand
philosophical examination, so a rational critic would reject them, and with them, the
cases which are built upon them.
In response, value-advocates will ask: What is your alternative? If we reject values,

arent you yourself implying that something is of value in order to warrant a negative
ballot? To this, Nietzschean critics might reply that what is necessary before
alternatives are developed is to take a conscientious step backward and re-examine the
act of valuing itself. It is through this step backward, this initial rejection of values, that a
negative ballot is warranted. The affirmative has failed, in the most fundamental way
possible, to justify itself.
While such a strategy is risky in front of traditional panels of judges, it is one which
neither compromises the articulation and philosophical discourse called for by LincolnDouglas debate, nor requires one to advocate immorality. The latter is true because
Nietzsche advocates neither morality nor its antithesis, immorality. Rather, he wants us
to stop thinking about things in such either-or terms. The possibilities opened up by
such a critique should make debates just a little more interesting.
Bibliography
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Press, 1989).
. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL (South Bend, Indiana: Gateway, 1978).
. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984).
Vattimo, Gianni. THE ADVENTURE OF DIFFERENCE: PHILOSOPHY AFTER NIETZSCHE AND

HEIDEGGER (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
Cooper, David Edward. AUTHENTICITY AND LEARNING: NIETZSCHES EDUCATIONAL

PHILOSOPHY (London; Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1983).
EXCEEDINGLY NIETZSCHE: ASPECTS OF CONTEMPORARY NIETZSCHE INTERPRETATION

(London; New York: Routledge, 1988).
Copleston, Frederick Charles. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: PHILOSOPHER OF CULTURE

(London:
Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1942).
Houlgate, Stephen. HEGEL, NIETZSCHE AND THE CRITICISM OF METAPHYSICS

(Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Wilcox, John T. TRUTH AND VALUE IN NIETZSCHE: A STUDY OF HIS METAPHYSICS AND
EPISTEMOLOGY (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974).
Krell , David Farrell. INFECTIOUS NIETZSCHE (Bloomington : Indiana University Press,

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de Gruyter, 1977).
THERE IS NO NATURAL BASIS FOR

MORALITY
1. NATURE IS RANDOM AND PROGRESS AN ILLUSION
Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, 1984, p. 42
Science, however, takes as little consideration of final purposes as does nature; just as
nature sometimes brings about the most useful things without having wanted to, so too
true science, which is the imitation of nature in concepts, will sometimes, nay often,
further mans benefit and welfare and achieve what is useful--but likewise without
having wanted to.
2. RANDOMNESS OF NATURE MAKES MORALITY IMPOSSIBLE

Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, 1984, p. 43
So we make man responsible in turn for the effects of his actions, then for his actions,
then for his motives and finally for his nature. Ultimately we discover that his nature
cannot be responsible either, in that it is itself an inevitable consequence, an outgrowth
of the elements and influences of past and present things; that is, man cannot be made
responsible for anything, neither for his nature, nor his motives, nor his actions, nor the
effects of his actions. And thus we come to understand that the history of moral feelings
is the history of an error, an error called responsibility, which in turn rests on an error
called freedom of the will.
3. RANDOMNESS OF NATURE ABSOLVES US OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY Friedrich

Nietzsche, German Philosopher. HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN, 1984, p. 74
Mans complete lack of responsibility, for his behavior and for his nature, is the bitterest
drop which the man of knowledge must swallow, if he had been in the habit of seeing
responsibility and duty as humanitys claim to nobility. All his judgments, distinctions,
dislikes have thereby become worthless and wrong: the deepest feeling he had offered a
victim or a hero was misdirected; he may no longer praise, no longer blame, for it is
nonsensical to praise and blame nature and necessity.
4. VALUES ARE MERELY THE GLORIFICATION OF BASIC HUMAN NEEDS Friedrich

Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 217
The value-estimates of a human being reveal something of the structure of his psyche,
something of the way in which the psyche sees its basic conditions for life, its essential
needs. Assuming now that need has always brought only those people together who
could express similar needs and similar experiences with similar symbols, then we shall
find, all things considered, that easy communicability of need, which means ultimately
the experiencing of merely average and common experience, must have been the most
powerful of all the forces that have ever ruled mankind.
5. EXPLOITATION IS NATURAL AND INEVITABLE

Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 202
Exploitation is not part of a vicious or imperfect or primitive society: it belongs to the
nature of living things, it is a basic organic function, a consequence of the will to power
which is the will to life. Admitted that this is a novelty as a theory--as a reality it is the
basic fact underlying all history. Let us be honest with ourselves at least this far!
6. IT IS NATURAL TO HARM OTHERS FOR ONES OWN PURPOSES

Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 201 Life
itself is essential assimilation, injury, violation of the foreign and the weaker,
suppression, hardness, the forcing of ones own forms upon something else, ingestion
and --at least in its mildest form-exploitation.
UNIVERSAL MORAL SYSTEMS SHOULD

BE REJECTED
1. UNIVERSALIZING MORAL COMPASSION IS DISHONEST AND DECEPTIVE
Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 145 Every
unselfish morality which takes itself as an absolute and seeks to apply itself to Everyman
sins not
only against taste, but does worse: it is an incentive to sins of omission; it is one more
seduction under the guise of philanthropy; it seduces and harms precisely the superior,
rare, privileged natures. One must force the moralities to subordinate themselves first of
all to the principle of rank; one must make their conscience conscious of their
arrogance--until they can finally understand and agree that it is immoral to say What is
right for one is right for the other.
2. UNIVERSAL MORALIZING VIOLATES ITS OWN PRINCIPLES

Is a moralist not the counterpart of a puritan? A man, that is, who takes morality as
something
questionable, questionmark-worthy, in short, problematic? Isnt moralizing--immoral?
3. GOOD VERSUS EVIL VALUE SYSTEMS EMERGE FROM THE SLAVE MORALITY
Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 206 Slavemorality is essentially a utility-morality. Here is the cornerstone for the origin of that
famous Antithesis good vs. evil. Power and dangerousness, a certain frightfulness,
subtlety and strength which do not permit of despisal, are felt to belong to evil. Hence
according to slave morality, the evil man inspires fear, according to master morality,
the good man does and wants to, whereas the bad man is felt to be despicable.
4. MORALIZATION IS A SIGN OF WEAKNESS AND RESENTMENT

The making of moral judgments and condemnations is the favorite revenge of those of
limited mind on those whose mind is less so; it is also a sort of compensation for having
been ill-favored by nature; but ultimately it is an opportunity to get a mind and to
become more subtle. For malice spiritualizes people. It does them good at the bottom of
their hearts to know there is a standard by which they and those who seem to them
over-endowed with intellectual goods and privileges are measured alike.
5. MORALIZATION ONLY A TOOL TO BUILD POLITICAL SUPERIORITY

Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. The Genealogy of Morals. THE PHILOSOPHY
OF NIETZSCHE, 1954, p. 640
Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for exceptions) to this
rule, that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of
psychological superiority, in those cases where the highest caste is at the same time the
priestly caste, and in accordance with its general characteristics confers upon itself the
privilege of a title which alludes specifically to its priestly function. It is in these cases,
for instances, that clean and unclean confront each other for the first time as badges
of class distinction; here again there develops a good and a bad, in a sense which
has ceased to be merely social.
MORAL SYSTEMS ARE BAD FOR

HUMANITY
1. PERSONAL ETHICS OF EQUALITY AND COMPASSION ARE DESTROYED IF ONE TRIES TO
MAKE THEM BASIC OR UNIVERSAL VALUES
To refrain from wounding, violating, and exploiting one another, to acknowledge
anothers will as equal to one s own: this can become proper behavior, in a certain
coarse sense, between individuals when the conditions for making it possible obtain
(namely the factual similarity of the individuals as to power and standards of value, and
their co-existence in one greater body). But as soon as one wants to extend this
principle, to make it the basic principle of society, it shows itself for what it is: the will to
negate life, the principle of dissolution and decay.
2. UNIVERSALIZED AND MANDATED MORALITY PREVENT US FROM GENUINE LOVE

Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, 1978, p. 109 As long
as the principle of utility that rules moral value judgments is only utility for the herd, as
long as the outlook is directed solely at the preservation of the social community and
immorality is sought exactly and exclusively in whatever seems dangerous to the status
quo--there can be no morality of neighborly love.
3. COMPASSION FOR THE WEAK BLOCKS OUR CREATIVE AND NOBLE IMPULSES
In man there is united both creature and creator; in man there is material, fragment,
excess, clay, filth, nonsense, and chaos. But in man there is also creator, image-maker,
hammer-hardness, spectator-divinity, and day of rest: do you understand this antithesis?
And do you understand that your compassion is spent on the creature in man, on that
which must be formed, broken, forged, torn, burnt, brought to white heat, purified, on all
that which must necessarily suffer and ought to suffer!
4. EMBRACING ANY VALUE BLOCKS HUMAN PROGRESS

Since at all times, as long as there have been human beings, there have been human
herds (clan unions, communities, tribes, nation states, churches) and very many who
obeyed compared with very few who were in command; since, therefore, obedience was
the trait best and longest exercised and cultivated among men, one may be justified in
assuming that on the average it has become an innate need, a kind of formal conscience
that bids thou shalt do something or other, in other words, thou shalt. This need
seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on how strong,
impatient, and tense it is, it seizes upon all things with little discrimination, like a gross
appetite, and accepts whatever meets its ear, whatever any representative of authority
(parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, public opinion) declaims into it. The strange
limitation of human evolution, the factors that make for hesitation, protractedness,
retrogression, and circular paths, is due to the fact that the herd-instinct of obedience is
best inherited at the expense of knowing how to command.
UTILITARIANISM SHOULD BE REJECTED

1. MORALS BASED ON MAXIMIZING PLEASURE AND MINIMIZING PAIN ARE NAIVE
Whether it is hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, or eudemonism--all these ways of
thinking which measure the value of things according to pleasure and pain, i.e.
according to subsidiary circumstances and secondary considerations, are superficial
ways of thinking. They are naivets upon which anyone who is conscious of formative
powers and of an artists conscience will look with scorn and not without some
compassion.
2. UTILITARIANISM VIOLATES HISTORICALLY VERIFIED HUMAN NATURE

The standpoint of utility is as alien and inapplicable as it could possibly be, when we
have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of supreme values, creating and
demarcating as they do a hierarchy within themselves: it is at this juncture that one
arrives at an appreciation of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the
presupposition on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of
practical expediency is always based--and not for one occasional, not for one
exceptional instance, but chronically.
3. EGOISM IS A BASIC AND DESIRABLE HUMAN TRAIT

At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I propose the following: Egoism belongs to the
nature of a distinguished soul. I mean that immovable faith that other human beings are
by nature subordinate to a being such as we are; that they should sacrifice themselves
to us. The distinguished soul accepts this fact of its egoism without any question mark,
and also without any feeling that it is hard or oppressive or arbitrary; rather as
something which may be founded in the basic law of all things.
SUFFERING IS GOOD AND WE

SHOULDNT TRY TO ELIMINATE IT
1. SUFFERING BREEDS CREATIVITY AND NOBILITY
The discipline of suffering, of suffering in the great sense: dont you know that all the
heightening of mans powers has been created by only this discipline? That tension of
the soul in misfortune which trains it to strength, its shudders at the sight of great
perdition, its inventiveness and courageousness in enduring, maintaining itself in,
interpreting, and utilizing, misfortune--whatever was given to the soul by way of depth,
mystery, mask, mind, guile, and greatness: was it not given through suffering, through
the discipline of great suffering?
2. REMOVAL OF SUFFERING RESULTS IN THE LOSS OF INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY

What they would like to strive for with all their power is the universal green pasturehappiness of the herd:
security, lack of danger, comfort and alleviation of life for everyone. Their most
frequently repeated songs and doctrines are equal rights and compassion for all that
suffers. Suffering is taken by them to be something that must be abolished.
3. THE VIRTUE OF ALTRUISM IS A PRODUCT OF HERDED CONFORMITY

On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the decay of aristocratic values, that the
antitheses between egoistic and altruistic press more and more heavily on the
human conscience--it is, to use my own language, the herd instinct which finds in this
antithesis an expression in many ways.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche may be the most misunderstood, re-understood, and mal-understood
philosopher in Western history. Based on a hasty interpretation of his writings, students
have created justifications for amorality, chaos, and a very over-literal interpretation of
nihilism, or the transcendence of values and the rejection of conventional morality.
Darker forces, such as proto-Nazis of both modern and contemporary stripes, have
interpreted Nietzsches glorification of power as an excuse to commit genocide and
practice racial selection. And now, at the turn of the Century, Nietzsche has found favor
with groups we might find surprising.
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote contemptuously of women. But he also wrote: Supposing

truth were a woman. What then? So it might not really be surprising that more careful
feminist thinkers might find in Nietzsches apparent misogyny a kind of ironic affirmation
of womens power. Likewise, one might not be shocked that, in an age where sincere
seekers of truth know that they must wade through a variety of ideological illusions,
Nietzsches deconstruction of conventional morality has found new adherents who do
not accept the old philosophers concomitant nihilism. There are Nietzscheans who
uphold democratic ideals even though their figurehead did not.
At the turn of the Century, as we look back on a hundred years of absolutist disaster,
every horrific war a testament to the inflexibility of the powerful, the ideas of Friedrich
Nietzsche, a philosopher committed to exposing hypocrisy and crying for authenticity,
have more relevance than ever. This essay explores the relevance of Nietzsches
writingsand contemporary interpretations of themto current value debate. I will
begin by summarizing the differences between the old Nietzsche and the new. After
touching next on some criticisms of Nietzsche that have retained their importance over
time, the essay concludes by discussing the application of these ideas to contemporary
value debate.
THE "OLD" NIETZSCHE

Friedrich Nietzsches traditional contribution to philosophy is radical enough. Having
witnessed his own century of modernist attempts to improve society and redefine the
human, Nietzsche came to reject the idea that humans can or should become more
compassionate, more moral, more spiritual, more democratic, more utilitarian, and more
progressive. Nietzsche longed for a return to the values which pre-dated not only
modernism, but Christianity and the entire project of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment began in the Eighteenth Century as the project of moral

philosophers, those devoted to a systemic account of human nature. Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, and their contemporaries began to see human beings as equal both in the
sense that citizens ought to have some say in their affairs, and that kings were not the
ultimate arbiters of political and moral authority. Nietzsche felt that such sentiments
were essentially untrue to our nature; that they were inventions of a slave mentality to
cover up the resentment of the subjected.
Based on this fundamental critique, three themes emerge from the classic interpretation
of Nietzsche. First, Nietzsche is fundamentally advocating interpretation of human action
and thought based on the will to power. The will to power is the essential drive in all
living things to thrive and become more powerful. This is especially manifest in humans,
as we have a way of rendering our powers permanent, through language and culture. All
our thoughts, formulae, and endeavors, collective or individual, are really just ways of
trying to become more powerful: whether by philosophically arguing that the stronger
are really the weaker (e.g., for Nietzsche, Christianity or Marxism), or by engaging in the
kind of struggles which once served to distinguish the strong and noble from the weak.
The Nietzschean critique of values is that they are fundamentally attempts to capture all
worldly phenomena and systematize it to promote ones own agenda.
Second, Nietzsche glorified masculine values, and although he didnt call them that,
there was clearly a strain of competitive and aggressive masculinity in Nietzsches
thought. He was ambivalent, at best, toward women. On the one hand, he respected
their mysteriousness and their connection to the world which philosophy cannot
apprehend. On the other hand, this was largely due to his belief that women were
incapable of philosophy, just as they were incapable of participation in political life. By
emphasizing power, a masculine value, and by relegating women to the corner of his
own value system, Nietzsche remained an enemy of feminism and feminists for most of
the 20th Century.
Finally, the classic Nietzsche was against democracy, at least insofar as democracy
meant that the masses were capable of self-rule. If he was ambivalent about women,
Nietzsche was downright contemptuous of utilitarianism, the slave moralities of
Christianity and its offspring, and any sense that the weak should be lifted above the
strong by inventing rights that are not found in nature.
In summary, the old Nietzsche is pretty much the philosopher he is given popular credit
for being. Except for the misconception concerning racism, a misconception driven by
Nietzsches sister Elizabeths dubious and questionable publication of a bunch of
Nietzsches notes (in a volume now called THE WILL TO POWER), his reputation as being
anti-democratic and misogynistic is justified. True, the classic Nietzsche called for
authenticity and honesty even as he said everything, every statement, was essentially
self-serving fiction. But his outlook on life was bleak and seemed to justify violence,
sexism, and authoritarianism.
THE NEW NIETZSCHE

During the second half of the Twentieth Century, Nietzsches readers started to become
more sophisticated in their approach to his admittedly complex style and ideas. Having
had the benefit of seeing the fruits of Nietzsches work, they began to wonder whether
he was really as absolutist as he claimed to be, or whether that absolutism, that blind
adherence to the power paradigm, was not in fact another of Nietzsches tricks of irony
and hyperbole.
Nazism was definitely not Nietzsches fault. Nor was Nietzsches famous God is dead
utterance best read as literal. Nietzsche had pointed out that humans kill God by turning
God into an object of human worship, and in turn, making God an excuse to do what I
want if I can theologically prove that a deity would approve of my actions and
disapprove of yours. In fact, Christianity absorbed Nietzsches proclamation of the death
of God into a larger emphasis on activism and personal connection, rendering his claim
absurd if taken literally.
Several areas of Nietzsches philosophy thus demanded rethinking. These areas included
authenticity, which had become a concern of the existentialists, as well as Nietzsches
view of women, which was obviously more sophisticated than a simple reassertion of
patriarchal dominance.
AUTHENTICITY
Being true to ourselves means being aware of our connection to classical values. Michael
Pantazakos suggests in his recent article on Nietzsche and legal literature that classicism
includes an appreciation of the forms of excellence in cultural and intellectual
expression:
The idea of the direct association of the Good and the Beautiful with the Harmony and
Order of diverse relations both human and celestial, typified in the "balanced" individual
as a mikrokosmos, has been traditionally considered perfected during the so-called
Classical era of Athenian hegemony, when the maxims "nothing in excess" and "all in
good measure" were considered the models of a virtuous life. Thus, the general scope of
the term "classicism" denotes in any context -- musical, historical, or personal -- an
aesthetic principle of formal perfection, purity of design, and simple elegance, of
restraint, proportion, and dignity. (Michael Pantazakos, "The Form of Ambiguity: Law,
Literature, and the Meaning of Meaning," CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND LITERATURE,
Winter 1998, pp. 229-230.)
Authenticity, however, requires that we recognize our limits as well as our strengths, and
Pantazakos suggests that pretending to be virtuous when we are not capable of such
virtue can only lead to the duplicity of an inauthentic society:
The idea of the fundamental liberty of the individual soul, the inalienable value of but
one man's life, this peculiar conceptual gift of the West to the progress of the human
endeavor, enshrined in our laws in the noblest words imaginable, we have in our actions
betrayed again and again -- indeed, so often and with such murderous consequence,
that the origin of this recurrent ethical duplicity, played out essentially as a hermeneutic
process, demands investigation. (Michael Pantazakos, "The Form of Ambiguity: Law,
Literature, and the Meaning of Meaning," CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND LITERATURE,
Winter 1998, p. 206.)
For those wishing to apply Nietzschean philosophy to current questions of society, the
problem of authenticity means the problem of being politically correct in a world where
people naturally resist being told how to think and feel. It means the problem of calling
for inclusion as a device to increase ones political viability, when one really doesnt
want inclusion in their own lives. Nietzsches critique of authenticity would ask why Bill
Clinton belonged to an all-white country club prior to being elected president, or why
Newt Gingrich calls for family values after walking out on his own family. The point is, we
publicly make virtuous pronouncements, then turn around and violate those ethics in
private. Why? For Nietzsche, it doesnt represent a failure of our own will; it represents
the absurdity of pronouncing those values in the first place. Instead of pretending to
respect such moral codes, we ought to celebrate our own excellence, truth, and beauty,
and stop pretending to be who we are not.
Because the alternative to immorality, for Nietzsche, is not a moral life, but an honest
life. Although he is accused of fostering totalitarianism, Nietzsche actually fights against
it, by arguing that any moral code that is supposed to apply to everyone can only be a
totalitarian gesture. As John Wild points out, supposing that one can rationalize universal
morality is really an attempt to absorb all otherness into sameness:
Totalitarian thinking accepts vision rather than language as its model. It aims to gain an
all-inclusive, panoramic view of all things, including the other, in a neutral, impersonal
light like the Hegelian Geist (Spirit), or the Heideggerian Being. It sees the dangers of an
uncontrolled, individual freedom, and puts itself forth as the only rational answer to
anarchy. To be free is the same as to be rational, and to be rational is to give oneself
over to the total system that is developing in world history. Since the essential self is
also rational, the development of this system will coincide with the interests of the self.
All otherness will be absorbed in this total system of harmony and order. (John Wild,
Introduction, in Emmanuel Levinas, TOTALITY AND INFINITY, 1969, p. 15.)
As we will see below when we discuss Nietzsches relation to the feminine, respect for
otherness may be the real reason why his philosophy is important to contemporary
democracy. In any event, authenticity cannot exist without a respect for otherness.
FEMINISM
Nobody is seriously arguing that Friedrich Nietzsche was a feminist. But many of his
seemingly notorious statements about women may hide larger truths. The main truth is
that a split has occurred in humanity, between nature and culture, and women have
been placed more closely to nature than have men.
The impacts of the split between nature and culture are mainly centered around the
weakening of human spirit by making everything political, economic, or social. Since
men control all those realms, and since those realms actually serve to remove us from
nature, women are closer to nature than men, and hence are closer to the life force of all
existence. Culture is death, nature is life.
While these distinctions may be too absolute, they can tell us a great deal about how
humanity has become weaker as it has attempted to gain strength through such
unnatural activities as philosophy and morality. Katrin Froese interprets Nietzsches
analysis by drawing a parallel between the split between nature and culture and the split
between male and female:
Nietzsche's analysis of resentment and the master-slave dynamic can be a fruitful

starting point for explaining why man engineered this split between nature and culture
and relegated the sexes to separate realms. The master-slave scenario is used by
Nietzsche to explain the shift towards moral behavior. He maintains that it was human
weakness and the inability to act that prompted slaves to invent moral values which
would curtail the actions of the physically overpowering master. Yet, because the slave
shared the natural inclinations of the master, the restrictive moral codes would gnaw at
his own natural impulses, creating a soul that was divided against itself. It is the fact that
the slave used his perceived weakness to create another world in which he himself could
become master that proves to be significant when examining the relationship between
man and woman. (Katrin Froese, "Bodies and Eternity: Nietzsche's Relation to the
Feminine," PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM, Vol. 26: 1, 2000, p. 30.)
Remember: there is no morality in nature, so far as Nietzsche is concerned. Thus,

being closer to nature, abandoning ones cultural constraints in favor of the life force,
means being closer to what women are than what men are.
True, one must disregard a great deal of Nietzsches rhetoric in order to appreciate his
respect for the feminine. But it is undeniably there. Women represent, for Nietzsche, a
transcendence of philosophys totalizing gaze. The feminine represents a demand that
one respect the other-ness of others, including the way in which people think outside of
philosophy. A Nietzschean feminism, if it is possible, could be a feminism which neither
elevates womens roles to that of a goddess, nor demands that women act like and be
treated as men. Instead, two concepts emerge as forerunners of a Nietzschean
feminism: First, respect for bodies, and second, a respect for other-ness.
Nietzsche reminds us that bodies exist. This is important because most of philosophy is
concerned with the mind. But for Nietzsche, the mind is simply an extension of the body,
with all of the bodys passions. A Nietzschean feminism reminds us that passions are a
large part of peoples physical relationships with one another. Liberal feminism assumes
women can act like men because they think like men. Nietzsches view of the feminine is
that it is other-than-male, and hence is worthy of respect as such. The female body is
different, thus the female is different.
This overwhelming reminder of difference ought to affect the relations between people.
As Katrin Froese writes: Sexual difference can become an important reminder of the
importance of difference itself. Men and women cannot be reduced to each other, and
the continuity of the species depends on the irreconcilable differences between them. At
the same time, the differences between them can also impel them to see contradictions
within. The woman sees the man in herself, while the man sees the woman in himself.
(Katrin Froese, "Bodies and Eternity: Nietzsche's Relation to the Feminine," PHILOSOPHY
AND SOCIAL CRITICISM, Vol. 26: 1, 2000, p. 40.)
CRITICISM OF NIETZSCHE
These new perspectives on Nietzsche were greeted with contempt both by traditional
critics of Nietzsche, who saw the perspectives as old Nietzsche in new clothes; and by
traditional defenders of Nietzsche, who believed his thoughts were being diluted and
sanitized by postmodern thinkers who wanted to appropriate his reputation by twisting
his philosophies. The traditionalists remind us that Nietzsche is still arguing that women
are subordinate, regardless of his seeming respect for gender differences. They argue
that he is still an elitist, regardless of his seeming concern for the excesses of
democracy. And they point to his confrontational style as evidence not or irony, but of
the arrogance that he thought was justified by the greatness of his ideas.
To begin with, Nietzsche is still anti-woman. The best way to prove this is simply to
acknowledge that Nietzsche never intends to allow women participation in public life.
Why is this important? Because in privileging the classic Greek and Roman values,
Nietzsche sees participation in the shaping of history as being more important than
personal vanity. Nietzsche assigned women into this realm of vanity. He argues that they
are little more than ornaments and cooks.
It may be argued, as Froese attempts above, that one can derive a feminist respect for
difference from Nietzsches conceptual separation of the masculine and feminine. But
one must ask at what price one can afford such extraction. The feminine, for
Nietzsche, is not simply a mysterious power. It is fundamentally an other-worldly power,
not merely an other demanding respect. Because it is other-worldly, this implies that it
has no place in our world. Our world, of course, is the world of public discourse and
participation, in Nietzschean terms power and leadership. By excluding women from that
realm, even due to their special or privileged nature, a Nietzschean philosophy
silences women.
Second, regardless of the new attention Nietzsche has been receiving by philosophers of
democracy, he is still anti-democratic. His philosophical project is fundamentally devoted
to promoting elitism. He believes the weak should know their place and the strong
should rule. Now it is true that this hierarchy is found in nature, and it is equally true
that 20th Century regimes attempts to enforce an order of equality have failed and
have often made things worse for common people. But Nietzsche would not stop at
criticizing the social experiments of enforced egalitarianism. He fundamentally believes
that people are not created equal; that they are not endowed with natural rights, and
that neither governments nor collectives of any kind can or should protect those rights.
It is difficult to see what contribution Nietzsche could make to a philosophy of
democratic empowerment. He is simply uninterested in providing any kind of fair
access to political power.
Finally, Nietzsches style may open itself up to misinterpretation because of its

disconcerting emphasis on confrontation and power. As Michael Pantazakos writes,
Nietzsche shamelessly admires brutal heroes. This may rub us, or influence us, the
wrong way:
Nonetheless, perhaps the apparent "danger" of Nietzsche's vocative locutions, for these
misinterpreters and even for his sympathetic readers, lies not so much in his content as
in his style. Perhaps it is his over-wrought manner, his Teutonic bluntness, his
unabashedly naked contempt that is troubling. Or perhaps the fault is ours. Perhaps it is
the heroic mode of the clarion itself that we are no longer turned to hear as a clear and
noble invitation to action but as a muddled ominous clamor Nietzsche's dynamic call
to arms is so essentially disconcerting. (Michael Pantazakos, "The Form of Ambiguity:
Law, Literature, and the Meaning of Meaning," CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND
LITERATURE, Winter 1998, pp. 203-204.)

First, by emphasizing Nietzsches claim that we do not and cannot live the values we
purport to possess, value debaters can dismiss claims of deontology or utilitarianism.
Nietzsches writings are almost universally rejoinders to the existence of moral codes.
The idea of deontology, that we must be motivated by a selfless sense of duty, strikes
the Nietzschean as extremely inauthentic. People couldnt and shouldnt be expected to
adhere to such a duty if they have any sense of self-worth. Instead, we can enter into
mutually beneficial arrangements and stop obsessing with whether our actions are true
in their intentions.
Utilitarianism receives equal criticism from Nietzsche. The philosopher doesnt

necessarily mean that there is a rigorous or unchangeable hierarchy among human
beings, but he certainly implies that there are differences which ought not be
suppressed by legalistic equality. And even if some collective organization should act in
the best interest of all of its members, or as many as possible, it doesnt follow that I am
bound to take the needs of the majority into account when I make personal moral
decisions.
Second, the current interest in feminist philosophies can receive a vital dose of
Nietzschean exposition, as debaters raise questions about what, exactly, constitutes the
feminine other.
Finally, Nietzsches critique of democracy deserves attention, even if it seems unpopular

or politically incorrect to question the notion of popular self-rule. Democracy is great if
you genuinely trust all citizens to make informed decisions, participate sincerely and
selflessly in the political process, and learn from their mistakes. Nietzsche points out that
people do none of these things. Our obsession with the correctness of democracy masks
our ignorance of its fundamental impossibility. The more we cry out that humans have
rights, the more blind we become to the powers we have to enact such rights. Debaters
can question whether it is always good to have more democracy. If Nietzsche is correct,
we may have some democracy, but may also want to avoid too much of a good thing.
CONCLUSION
Friedrich Nietzsche used to be synonymous with the black-clad nihilist across the hall in
the dorms. He read Nietzsche, listened to gothic music, and may have been found
saying depressing things about life, politics, and art. In more dangerous instances,
Nietzsches BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL sounded responsible for violence and amoral
behavior. He was a convenient philosophical scapegoat for the breakdown in traditional
values.
But here at the turn of the century, we have discovered that discarding values is not
enough. In discovering this, we have re-read Nietzsche and have discovered that
transcending values requires the positive affirmation of life, of difference, and of vitality.
Whether we choose to be strong or weak democrats, fight wars or wage peace, and
whatever the status of womens rights, concepts such as nobility, hierarchy and
difference are an important part of what is happening around us.
These new perspectives on Nietzsche retain the original radical break with tradition, and
are no less subversive or even dangerous if read in a certain way. But they do not end
in the mindless violence of Columbine or the systemic evil of Nazism. Instead, they
represent a voice in the wilderness, crying out to urge us not to lie to ourselves or one
another about who we are.
Debaters employing Nietzsches critique of values have a powerful weapon at their

disposal. It is bound to generate controversy, and every debater will be find themselves
wondering if judges and opponents will be morally offended if Nietzsches name is even
invoked. But imagine debates about whether utilitarianism is really an attempt to cover
up inequalities that cannot be eradicated. Imagine debates about how people may
subjugate themselves instead of being victimized by others. Such debates can only take
us to a higher level of moral analysis. Debate has become obsolete in many of its
treatments of value questions. Every round becomes a new war between old enemies:
freedom/order, deontology/utilitarianism, or justice/mercy. Transcend all of this,
Nietzsche seems to say: figure out who we are, and where we are, before we start telling
other people how to live.
Bibliography
Appel, Fredrick, NIETZSCHE CONTRA DEMOCRACY, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1999.
Belliotti, Raymond A, STALKING NIETZSCHE, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Conway, Daniel W., NIETZSCHE AND THE POLITICAL, New York: Routledge, 1996.
White, Richard J., NIETZSCHE AND THE PROBLEM OF SOVEREIGNTY, Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1997.
THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO NIETZSCHE, Edited by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M.

Higgins, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
NIETZSCHE, FEMINISM AND POLITICAL THEORY, Ed by Paul Patton, New York : Routledge,
1993.
NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY IS
RELEVANT TO CURRENT VALUE
QUESTIONS
1. CURRENT EVENTS PROVE NIETZSCHE'S CRITIQUE OF MORALITY
Karen Armstrong, Author of A HISTORY OF GOD, NEWSWEEK, July 12, 1999, p. 54.
But it is also true that fundamentalism has endorsed Nietzsche's prophecy.
Fundamentalism can be seen as a desperate attempt to resuscitate God.
Fundamentalists certainly believe that modern society has tried to kill God. Every single
radical religious movement that I have studied has been inspired by a profound fear of
annihilation. Rightly or wrongly, fundamentalists in all three of the Abrahamic faiths are
convinced that the secularist establishment wants to wipe them out; and they have
decided to fight back.
2. WE OUGHT TO EXAMINE OUR BIAS IN FAVOR OF LIBERTY AND INDIVIDUALITY

Michael Pantazakos, Assistant Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law,
CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND LITERATURE, Winter 1998, p. 206
The idea of the fundamental liberty of the individual soul, the inalienable value of but
one man's life, this peculiar conceptual gift of the West to the progress of the human
endeavor, enshrined in our laws in the noblest words imaginable, we have in our actions
betrayed again and again -- indeed, so often and with such murderous consequence,
that the origin of this recurrent ethical duplicity, played out essentially as a hermeneutic
process, demands investigation.
3. NIETZSCHE ARGUES THAT HUMANS "KILL GOD" THROUGH OBJECTIVE MORALITY:

CURRENT EFFORTS TO INSTITUTIONALIZE MORALITY FAIL
Nietzsche was right to say that human beings had killed God. Even fundamentalists
(whose faith is essentially modern and innovative) bear witness to the fact that men and
women can no longer be religious in the same way as their ancestors. In the premodern
world, it was generally understood that while reason was indispensable for mathematics,
science or politics, it could not, by itself, give human beings access to the divine. But the
extraordinary success of scientific rationalism in the modern world has made reason the
only path to truth. We assume that God is an objective fact, like the atom, whose
existence can be proved empirically. When we find the demonstration unconvincing, we
lose faith. Our neglect of the esthetic of prayer, liturgy and mythology has indeed killed
our sense of the divine.
NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY FOSTERS

FEMINIST VALUES
1. NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY OF WOMEN TRANSCENDS THE MIND-BODY SEPARATION
Katrin Froese, University of Calgary, PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL CRITICISM, Vol. 26: 1,
2000, p. 25
Nietzsche tries to infuse life back into philosophy by resuscitating a body that has been
ravaged in traditional thought. Rather than simply repeating the mind/body and
nature/culture dichotomy upon which much of traditional thought is predicated, he
insists that in part we reenact what appear to be physical phenomena at the level of
culture. The body, like the mind, is an agent of interpretation that must shape "external"
stimuli in order to facilitate its growth. Since our first experience of the body is through
and in relation to a woman, Nietzsche cannot turn a blind eye to the importance of the
feminine in philosophy. Because of her reproductive role, woman had traditionally been
associated with a body that was considered inferior to the mind, and so Nietzsche could
not resurrect the body without reassessing the role of woman.
2. THE NIETZSCHEAN WOMEN'S STANDPOINT OVERCOMES THE DESIRE TO CAPTURE ALL

2000, p. 35
Nietzsche claims that woman uses the rational language of philosophers at a distance,
recognizing that it can neither represent nor embrace her entire reality. This realization
accounts for her calm pose. Ironically, it is because she is aware of the complexity of the
relationship between nature and culture that she is not engulfed by it. Man, on the other
hand, is in the "midst of a hubbub" because he tries to capture nature through his
cultural interventions. He assumes that the "impurity" of his concepts amounts to the
victory of nature over him. He refuses to accept his limitations, whereas she does not,
and hence while the two of them are on the same ocean, he is in a hubbub, while she
glides off in the distance. She remains in the distance for him, because she refuses
either to capture or to be captured.
3. HIS EMPHASIS ON SEXUAL DIFFERENCE IS BASED ON A RESPECT FOR DIFFERENCE

2000, p. 40
Sexual difference can become an important reminder of the importance of difference
itself. Men and women cannot be reduced to each other, and the continuity of the
species depends on the irreconcilable differences between them. At the same time, the
differences between them can also impel them to see contradictions within. The woman
sees the man in herself, while the man sees the woman in himself.
4. MALE/FEMALE DIFFERENCE REVEALS RECOGNITION OF OTHERNESS IN OURSELVES

2000, p. 41
Only by reflecting on each other's differences, can they begin to discover the elements
of the other within themselves. The battle between man and woman occurs not only
between them but also within them. However, these differences do not simply exist,
they are created. To accentuate them, we impose a form on ourselves that muffles
internal contradictions. Knowing cannot take place without exclusion. At the same time,
without recognizing that the differences between each other are also internal
differences, we would not recognize the other. Nietzsche could not recognize woman if
she did not represent a part of himself. We recognize the other, because s/he is the self,
and because s/he is not the self.
NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY IS SEXIST

1. NIETZSCHE THOUGHT WOMEN WERE WEAK AND SHOULD STAY OUT OF PUBLIC LIFE
Keith Ansell-Pearson, Lecturer, Modern European Philosophy, University of Warwick,
NIETZSCHE, FEMINISM AND POLITICAL THEORY, 1993, p. 29-30.
In his own time Nietzsche wrote as a critic of European feminism, speaking out against
what he saw as the emasculation of social life and the rise of a sentimental politics
based on altruistic values. He attacked the idea that women would be emancipated once
they had secured equal rights. Certain passages in his work show quite unequivocally
that he regarded the whole issue of women's emancipation as a misguided one. The
great danger of the women's movement in attempting to enlighten women about
womanhood is that it teaches women to unlearn their fear of men. When this happens,
he argues, woman--"the weaker sex"--abandons her most womanly instincts.
2. NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY OF WOMEN IS SEXIST

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Lecturer, Modern European Philosophy, University of Warwick,
NIETZSCHE, FEMINISM AND POLITICAL THEORY, 1993, p. 31
Nietzsche's thought is "sexist" in that, like most traditional aristocratic thinking (Plato
being the obvious exception), it excludes women from engaging in the public agon, and
restricts her role to the private or domestic sphere. Woman's primary role for Nietzsche
is one of adornment.
NIETZSCHE'S PHILOSOPHY IS ELITIST

1. NIETZSCHE IS MOST CONCERNED WITH FOSTERING ELITISM
Fredrick Appel, Canadian Philosopher, NIETZSCHE CONTRA DEMOCRACY, 1999, p. 1
Friedrich Nietzsche's great concern is for the flourishing of those few whom he considers
exemplary of the human species. He believes that we can--and should--make qualitative
distinctions between higher, admirable modes of human existence and lower,
contemptible ones, and that these distinctions should compel his target readership to
foster higher forms of human life at whatever cost to the many who cannot aspire
thereto.
2. NIETZSCHE'S GOAL IS AN ELITIST ORDER WHICH COMPLETELY DISREGARDS THE

MAJORITY
By attempting to help them wean themselves from values that are manifestly bad for
them, Nietzsche sees himself as laying the foundation of a new, aristocratic political
order in Europe in which the herdlike majority and its preferred values are put in their
proper place: under the control of a self-absorbed master caste whose only concern is
for the cultivation of its own excellence.
3. DISMISSALS OF NIETZSCHE'S ELITISM ARE ASSUME TOO MUCH

With the infinite malleability of Nietzsche's writings conveniently assumed as a point of
departure, postmodern theorists of democracy approach Nietzsche with the following
question in mind: to what purpose can and should we use (or abuse) his work in the
pursuit of our ends? Since we happen to be interested in radicalizing democratic theory
and making a more pluralistic democratic practice conceivable (so their reasoning goes),
we should focus on those elements of his opus that seem especially conducive to radical
democracy and jettison the rest as retrograde and unusable.
NIETZSCHE'S VIEW OF RELIGION IS

FLAWED
1. NIETZSCHE OVERSIMPLIFIES JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY
Michael Pantazakos, Assistant Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law,
CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND LITERATURE, Winter 1998, p. 208
Whether Nietzsche's understanding of Christianity is in any way correct or complete,
whether it truly contemplates the full range of the Christian experience not as he knew it
only but as it was and is lived in ways and in places with which he was unfamiliar, I
cannot fully address here. Nonetheless, while I consider Nietzsche the nonpareil social
critic of Western culture and affirm outright many aspects of his assault on Western
spirituality, I will say that I believe his overall view was regrettably narrow in several
respects, especially in his disregard of Christianity and Judaism both as essentially
variegated religious phenomena.
2. NIETZSCHE'S ASSAULT AGAINST JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY ENCOURAGES RACISM

Michael Pantazakos, Assistant Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law,
CARDOZO STUDIES IN LAW AND LITERATURE, Winter 1998, p.209
Nietzsche often reserved his most opprobrious verbal assault for the Jewish founders of
Christianity and, although no reader of good conscience in even the worst invective
could discern anything therein genuinely anti-Semitic, his attacks unfairly banish from
the realm of the spiritually sound ideas that are part and parcel not only of the Jewish
religion but of other faith systems around the world, from deepest antiquity to the
present, not excluding Christianity. Here, unfortunately, his anti-Christian zeal
outstripped his objectivity, a fact not lost on those who would later pervert, however
preposterously, the anti-Judaic content of both his general and ad hominem obloquies
into racist propaganda.
3. NIETZSCHE UNDERESTIMATED RELIGION'S IMPORTANCE IN SOCIAL CHANGE

In one sense, the 20th century has proved Nietzsche wrong. Since the 1970s, religion
has once again become a factor in public life in a way that would have once seemed
inconceivable. The Iranian revolution was succeeded by an eruption of Islamic revivalist
movements in the Middle East. At about the same time, the Moral Majority and the new
Christian right tried to bring God back into political life in the United States, while ultraOrthodox Jews and radical religious Zionists have done the same in Israel. Now no
government can safely ignore religion. The assassination of Anwar Sadat in Egypt and of
Yitzhak Rabin in Israel are sober reminders of the lethal danger of some forms of modern
faith.
ROBERT NOZICK
LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHER (b. 1938)

The distribution of goods, economic and otherwise, has been the key problem of political
philosophy in the last hundred years. Libertarianism emerged in the 20th Century as a
vaguely unpopular protest against the perceived shared agreement between capitalist
and socialist nations concerning distribution. Following the Great Depression, even those
societies associated with market economies began to see the threat of widespread
poverty as an inspiration for limited and calculated redistribution of wealth. Libertarians
such as Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Robert Nozick rose up with moral arguments to
counter pragmatic politics.
For libertarian ethics to succeed, they must answer a few basic arguments whose
bottom line assumption is (1) that there is a shared responsibility among people to look
out for the less fortunate and to sacrifice material goods in order to do so, and (2) that
the state has the right and responsibility to implement and enforce this. Nozick makes a
bold move; he will grant the first argument and fight with all his strength against the
second. Because of this, he is seen as the most rational and ethical-minded libertarian,
certainly more of a moralist than the ruthless Ayn Rand or the morally ignorant Milton
Friedman. He envisions a world that respects the individual rights associated with the
acquisition of wealth, and also holds to the hope that people will, left to their own
devices, look out for those less fortunate.
Life And Work

Robert Nozick was born November 16, 1938, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended
Columbia, where he received a BA in 1959, and Princeton, where he received his Ph.D. in
1963. Both of these schools were, at the time of Nozicks education, hotbeds of debate
about such issues as communism, racism, and the failure of market economies to deliver
an equitable distribution of goods and political power to all citizens. It must have been
just a bit unpopular for the young doctoral candidate to present a dissertation which
revived long-abandoned classical notions of capitalist ethics. But Robert Nozick did just
that: His dissertation was entitled The Normative Theory of Individual Choice, and thus
from the beginning of his career, Nozick would champion individual rights and eschew or
reject any statist intervention against them.
Nozick now teaches political philosophy at Harvard, ironically in the same department as
John Rawls, whose A Theory of Justice came out around the same time as Nozicks
masterpiece of libertarian thinking, Anarchy. State and Utopia. The two books, and the
two philosophers, are as far apart politically as Rawls and Nozick are near in distance in
Cambridge. Rawls believes that justice demands equal rights, even when the state must
intervene economically to ensure such equality. Nozick believes economic equality is
not, by any means, more important than individual rights. Rawls believes that social
principles should be decided based on what individuals would decide behind a veil of
ignorance, with no knowledge of how they would fare in that society. Nozick, on the
other hand, attacks that criteria at its root, saying individuals simply do not have the
right to decide a societys principles for other individuals, veil of ignorance or none. Both
A Theory of Justice and Anarchy. State and Utopia endure as classic texts of 20th
Century political philosophy. The battle continues to rage.
Nozick has published two more major works in recent years, both of which are mostly
unrelated to the question of libertarian distributive theory. Philosophical Explanations is
largely an epistemological work concerned with theories of knowledge and
understanding (although it contains a useful section on the origin and operations of
ethics and values). And The Examined Life is a collection of short, open-ended miniessays devoted to an eclectic blend of topics found in the everyday life of those who
think about life. More recently, Nozicks dissertation on individual choice was published
as a general work, and Nozick continues to teach and write.
Moral Libertarianism
Nozick supports a minimal state to ensure the protection of individual rights, but his
leeway for state action stops there, just as it did for Locke. Nozick believes that a
minimal state, that is, a state with very little power to do anything (especially with no
power to acquire material goods beyond that which is needed for light maintenance) will
dissuade machiavellian politicians from flying to gain a disproportionate share of power.
After all, what is to be gained from being at the head of a state which can do nothing but
enforce individual rights?
So what ethical system does this minimal state enforce? The principle, Nozicks
acquisition principle, is simple: Goods are legitimately owned if they are legitimately
acquired. If I work to earn money, that is my money. The state can no more take that
money from me (even in order to give it to someone less fortunate) than can some
individual. To those who argue that the state should have greater rights to tax or capture
acquisitions than individuals, Nozick replies that the state is merely a collection of
individuals, and that it should be of no moral consequence that particular groups of
individuals have the title government written on their badges. The moral principle is
the same: Just as no individual may take what rightfully belongs to me, no group of
individuals, representatives of the state or not, may do it either.
Nozick compares taxation to forced labor; he points out that a person who is forced to
work without pay can be metaphorically (and somewhat literally) equated with a person
who is taxed for the benefit of others; in the first case, the labor is for the satisfaction of
someone besides the worker. In the second case, the pay for the labor which is taxed
amounts to a portion of labor done for the satisfaction of someone besides the worker.
Now, at this point, many will raise moral arguments about how those less fortunate are
entitled to some compassion and charity. Nozick, however, agrees with this. He argues
that it is absolutely moral, even to the point of being morally obligatory, for those with
more than they need to share with those who have less than they need. But the moral
duty of charity does not equate to the compulsion or power of the state to enforce this
obligation, any more than a moral duty to help an old person across the street should
land a young person in jail if he or she fails to do so. it is simply unjust to take things
from one person and give them to another. Moreover, the moral obligation of charity, in
fact, can only be fulfilled voluntarily. Again, if I help an elderly person across the street
because I want to, I have committed a moral act; if I do it because someone has a gun to
my back and will shoot me if I fail, then my act cannot be considered moral, only
pragmatic.
Some Objections
Although critics place Nozick squarely in the camp of anti-government libertarians, one
of the two main criticisms of the theory put forward in Anarchy. State and Utopia comes
from an even more liberty-minded camp: Anarchists wonder why Nozick even supports a
minimal state. Anarchism holds that any government, any hierarchy, is responsible for a
disproportionate share of repression and should be rejected. Anarchists reason that if
Nozick believes in completely free association and free exchange, then Nozick should
himself be an anarchist
Nozick, however, feels he has good reasons for supporting a minimal state. He points out
that Lockes theory of minimal but effective government has never really been refuted.
Absent the ability to prevent things like theft and murder, peoples hard work may be for
nothing, as groups with greater power might simply destroy or steal the works of those
with lesser power. While it might be possible for wealthy folks to buy security, say, by
hiring armed guards or building secure fortresses, Nozicks libertarianism prides itself on
the opportunity for the less fortunate to work harder to become more fortunate. Without
a state apparatus to secure property and prevent criminal intimidation, a free society
might become just as oppressed as a society encumbered by a heavy-handed state.
The second major objection comes from camps more closely associated with statist
liberalism (pro-welfare liberals) and socialists. The argument is that any individual rights
must be subordinate to the general welfare of society. If this is true, then property rights,
especially the right to keep the wealth one earns, must be subordinated to the social
needs created by the existence of poverty. Because the amelioration of poverty is a
social need, and because an individuals right to keep his or her wealth is only an
individual need, the social need trumps the individual need. This seems so obvious to
utilitarian-minded social philosophers that for a long time the argument was simply
asserted rather than reasoned through.
Nozick, however, does not believe in social entities. That is to say, a group of people
might exist, but they have no more moral standing as a group than any one of them has
individually, especially when it comes to acquisition. Only individuals count; this means
that saying there is a social entity is only tantamount to saying there are several
individuals, each of whom might want or need more wealth than they have. But since no
one individuals need can trump another individuals right to keep what they legitimately
acquire, it makes no difference to the acquisition principle that there are many or few
individuals in need. In every case of the government taking and redistributing wealth,
what happens is one individual, who has legitimately acquired his or her wealth, has it
taken away from them to satisfy the needs of another individual. Unless it can be proven
that this type of action is permissible (and Nozick goes to painful lengths to show that it
cannot), it does no good to paint redistribution in utilitarian colors.

Nozicks usefulness for debaters is obvious. He is an articulate and comprehensive
proponent of libertarianism and minimal government. The most important feature of his
philosophy is that it does not call for ruthless treatment of the less fortunate. In fact, he
seems to suggest that more good will come to the disadvantaged if people have the
government off their backs and are able to help in the ways they see fit. Moreover,
Nozick gives good reasons for why the individual ought to stand as the basic unit of
value analysis. In this way, he is an effective critic of utilitarianism and collectivism in
general. By not sacrificing individuals responsibility to help one another, he shows that
a moral society can result from minimal state intervention and a deference to individual
conscience.
Finally, many debaters quote and advocate the value system of John Rawls, who calls for
redistribution to favor the less-fortunate members of society. Nozick answers Rawls
head-on, and the availability of this refutation should deepen and improve debates
about Rawlsian justice. Debaters are encouraged to read one or more of the excellent
anthologies devoted to criticism and defense of Robert Nozicks libertarianism. Books
such as Equality and Liberty: Analyzing Rawls and Nozick and Reading Nozick: Essays on
Anarchy, State and Utopia are full of a wide range of ideas and advocates concerning the
most important political question of our time: distribution of goods.
Bibliography
Nozick, Robert. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974).
________ . PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLANATIONS (Oxford: Oxford University Ness, 1981).
________. HE EXAMINED LIFE (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989).
. THE NORMATIVE THEORY OF INDIVIDUAL CHOICE (New York: Garland Press,

1990).
________. THE NATURE OF RATIONALITY (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Corlett, J.A., editor. EQUALITY AND LIBERTY: ANALYZING RAWLS AND NOZICK (New York:
St. Martins Press, 1991).
Machan, T.R. INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR RIGHTS (La Salle, Indiana: Open Court Press,
1989).
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IS THE BEST

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC OPTION
1. ALL PERSONS MUST HAVE THE RIGHT TO PLAN THEIR OWN LIVES
Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 50.
A persons shaping his life in accordance with some overall plan is his way of giving
meaning to his life;
only a being with the capacity to so shape his life can have or strive for a meaningful
life.
2. INDIVIDUAL CHOICE SHOULD BE THE HIGHEST VALUE IN QUESTIONS OF DISTRIBUTION

Ignoring acquisition and rectification, we might say: From each according to what he
chooses to do, to each according to what he makes for himself (perhaps with the
contracted aid of others) and what others choose to do for him and choose to give him
of what theyve been given previously (under this maxim) and havent yet expended or
transferred. This, the discerning reader will have noticed, has its defects as a slogan. So
as a summary and great simplification (and not as a maxim with any independent
meaning) we have: From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.
3. SOCIAL PLANNING SHOULD NEVER VIOLATE INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

If entitlements to holdings are rights to dispose of them, then social choice must take
place within the constraints of how people choose to exercise these rights. If any
patterning is legitimate, it falls within the domain of social choice, and hence is
constrained by peoples rights.
4. HUMAN POTENTIAL IS MAXIMIZED THROUGH VOLUNTARY, NOT FORCED, MORALITY

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. PHILOSOPHICAL EXAMINATIONS, 1981, p. 421. Is
the most valuable society a tightly organized centrally controlled hierarchical society of
fixed hereditary status, termed by some theorists an organic society? Although it
would have a high degree of unity, it would not encompass the same vast diversity as a
free and open society. A far-flung system of voluntary cooperation unifies diverse parts
in an intricate structure of changing equilibria, and also unifies these parts in a way that
takes account of their degree of organic unity. Enlisting a persons voluntary cooperation
or participation takes account of his degree of organic unity to a greater extent than
commanding him.
SOCIAL CONCERNS SHOULD NOT TAKE

PRIORITY OVER INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
1. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SOCIAL GOOD, SINCE THERE ARE ONLY INDIVIDUALS
Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, pp. 32-3. But
there is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good.
There are only individuals, different individual people, with their own individual lives.
Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others.
Nothing more. What happens is that something is done for the sake of others. Talk of an
overall social good covers this up.
2. MORAL CONSTRAINTS APPLY TO INDIVIDUALS, NOT A SOCIAL GOOD

The moral side constraints upon what we may do, I claim, reflect the fact of our separate
existences. They reflect the fact that no moral balancing act can take place among us;
there is no moral outweighing of one of our lives by others so as to lead to a greater
overall social good. There is no justified sacrifice of some of us for others. This root idea,
namely, that there are different individuals with separate lives and so no one may be
sacrificed for others, underlies the existence of moral side constraints, but it also, I
believe, leads to a libertarian side constraint that prohibits aggression against another.
MINIMAL STATES BEST GUARANTEE

FREEDOM FOR EVERYONE
1. ECONOMIC FREEDOM CHECKS UNEQUAL POLITICAL POWER
Economically well-off persons desire greater political power, in a nonminimal state,
because they can use this power to give themselves differential economic benefits.
Where such a locus of power exists, it is not surprising that people attempt to use it for
their own ends. The illegitimate use of a state by economic interests for their own ends
is based upon a preexisting illegitimate power of the state to enrich some persons at the
expense of others. Eliminate that illegitimate power of giving differential economic
benefits and you eliminate or drastically restrict the motive for wanting political
influence.
2. A MINIMAL STATE DECREASES POLITICAL INEQUALITY

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 272. The
minimal state best reduces the chances of such takeover or manipulation of the state by
persons
desiring power or economic benefits, especially if combined with a reasonably alert
citizenry, since it is the minimally desirable target for such takeover or manipulation.
Nothing much is to be gained by doing so, and the cost to citizens if it occurs is
minimized.
3. UNEQUAL POLITICAL POWER RESULTS FROM A STRONG STATE

To strengthen the state and extend the range of its functions as a way of preventing it
from being used by some portion of the population makes it a more valuable prize and a
more alluring target for corrupting by anyone able to offer an officeholder something
desirable; it is, to put it gently, a poor strategy.
CAPITALISM IS A JUST AND FAIR

SYSTEM
1. MATERIAL DISTRIBUTION IS JUST IF IT MEETS CONDITIONS OF ENTITLEMENT
Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 151. If the
world were wholly just, the following inductive definition would exhaustively cover the
subject of justice in holdings. 1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the
principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding. 2. A person who acquires a
holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled
to the holding. 3. No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1
and 2. The complete principle of distributive justice would say simply that a distribution
is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution.
2. OWNERSHIP IS JUST IF OWNERS ACQUIRED THOSE THINGS LEGITIMATELY

A distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means. The
legitimate means of moving from one distribution to another are specified by the
principle of justice in transfer. The legitimate first moves are specified by the principle
of justice in acquisition. Whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just.
3. CAPITALISM GUARANTEES JUST AND SENSIBLE DISTRIBUTION

Since in a capitalist society people often transfer holdings to others in accordance with
how much they perceive these others benefiting them, the fabric constituted by the
individual transactions and transfers is largely reasonable and intelligible. (Gifts to loved
ones, bequests to children, charity to the needy also are nonarbitrary components of die
fubric.)
RAWLSIAN JUSTICE SHOULD BE

REJECTED
1. RAWLS VEIL OF IGNORANCE IS PHILOSOPHICALLY FLAWED
Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, pp. 198-9. A
procedure that founds principles of distributive justice on what rational persons who
know nothing about themselves or their histories would agree to guarantees that endstate principles of justice will be taken as fundamental. Perhaps some historical
principles of justice are derivable from end-state principles, as the utilitarian tries to
derive individual rights, prohibitions on punishing the innocent, and so forth, from his
end-state principle; perhaps such arguments can be constructed even for the
entitlement principle. But no historical principle, it seems, could be agreed to in the first
instance by the participants in Rawls original position. For people meeting together
behind a veil of ignorance to decide who gets what, knowing nothing about any special
entitlements people may have, will treat anything to be distributed as manna from
heaven.
2. RAWLS ASSUMES SOME PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE FOR ALL OTHERS
Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 199. Do
the people in the original position ever wonder why they have the right to decide how
everything is to be divided up? Perhaps they reason that since they are deciding this
question, they must assume they are entitled to do so; and so particular people cant
have particular entitlements to holdings (for then they wouldnt have the right to decide
together how all holdings are to be divided); and hence everything legitimately may be
treated like manna from heaven.
3. RAWLSIAN CRITERIA INEVITABLY RESULTS IN INCREASED SOCIAL CONTROL

People in the original position either directly agree to an end-state distribution or they
agree to a principle; if they agree to a principle, they do it solely on the basis of
considerations about end-state distributions. The fundamental principles they agree to,
the ones they can all converge in agreeing upon, must be end-state principles. Rawls
construction is incapable of yielding an entitlement or historical conception of
distributive justice.
4. RAWLSIAN JUSTICE DENIES INDIVIDUAL CHOICE AND HUMAN DIGNITY

So denigrating a persons autonomy and prime responsibility for his actions is a risky
line to take for a theory that otherwise wishes to buttress the dignity and self-respect of
autonomous beings; especially for a theory that founds so much (including a theory of
the good) upon persons choices. One doubts that the unexalted picture of human
beings Rawls theory presupposes and rests upon can be made to fit together with the
view of human dignity it is designed to lead and to embody.
ECONOMIC REDISTRIBUTION IS
IMMORAL AND INFEASIBLE
1. ALL FORCED DISTRIBUTION VIOLATES PEOPLES RIGHTS
The general point illustrated by the Wilt Chamberlain example and the example of the
entrepreneur in a socialist society is that no end-state principle or distributional
patterned principle of justice can be continuously realized without continuous
interference with peoples lives. Any favored pattern would be transformed into one
unfavored by the principle, by people choosing to act in various ways; for example, by
people exchanging goods and services with other people, or giving things to other
people, things the transferors are entitled to under the favored distributional pattern. To
maintain a pattern one must either continuously interfere to stop people from
transferring resources as they wish to, or continually (or periodically) interfere to take
from some persons resources that others for some reason choose to transfer to them.
2. PLANNED ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTION IS INFEASIBLE

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, pp. 149-50.
So it is an open question, at least, whether redistribution should take place; whether we
should go against what has already been done once, though poorly. However, we are not
in the position of children who have been given portions of pie by someone who now
makes last minute adjustments to rectify careless cutting. There is no central
distribution, no person or group entitled to control all the resources, jointly deciding how
they are to be doled out. What each person gets, he gets from others who give to him in
exchange for something, or as a gift. In a free society, diverse persons control different
resources, and new holdings arise out of voluntary exchanges and actions of persons.
There is no more a distributing or distribution of shares than there is a distributing of
mates in a society in which persons choose whom they shall many. The total result is the
product of many individual decisions which the different individuals involved are entitled
to make.
3. REDISTRIBUTION OF INCOME IS THE SAME AS FORCED LABOR

Robert Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, pp. 168-9.
From the point of view of an entitlement theory, redistribution is a serious matter
indeed, involving, as it does, the violation of peoples rights. (An exception is those
takings that fall under the principle of the rectification of injustices). From other points of
view, it is also serious. Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor.
4. REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IS TANTAMOUNT TO OTHER PEOPLE OWNING YOU Robert

Nozick, libertarian philosopher. ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA, 1974, p. 172. Seizing the
results of someones labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to
carry on various activities. If people force you to do certain work, or unrewarded work,
for a certain period of time, they decide what you are to do and what purposes your
work is to serve apart from your decisions. This process whereby they take this decision
from you makes them a part-owner of you; it gives them a property right in you. Just as
having such partial control and power of decision, by right, over an animal or inanimate
object would be to have a property right in it. End-state and most patterned principles of
distributive justice institute (partial) ownership of others by people and their actions and
labor. These principles involve a shift from the classical liberals notion of self-ownership
to a notion of (partial) property rights in other people.
JOSEPH NYE, JR.

Joseph Nye, Jr. is one of the most influential modern voices in American governance and
political science. Well versed in foreign policy, he is also an influential thinker on the
domestic scene.
Name a qualification that holds weight in the policy wonk world, and Nyes likely got it.
Written for the heavy-hitter journals? Check. Longtime professor? Check. Intellectual
chops that are unquestioned? Check. Nye is currently Dean of Harvard Universitys
Kennedy School of Government.
You might think that Nye is merely another old, bald white guy that has worked in the
government and worked with universities. And, well, youd sort of be right. But the guy is
a pretty sharp old, bald white establishment guy, and his viewpoints are refreshing in
their lack of ideological predisposition.
Just look at the wide variety of sources that have praised his work: from Machiavellian
realists like Henry Kissinger to loose cannons like George Soros, from the Democratic
establishment sources like Strobe Talbott and Madeleine Albright to academics of all
kinds. If we are to think of American politics in terms of the left wing and the right wing,
and imagine the wings praising Nye as belonging to some giant bird, those are some big
outstretched wings. I wouldnt want to wash my car while that seagull is flying overhead.
Thats not to say there is something in Nye for everyone. Its hard to imagine the left
cozying up to him very much. The further right wont like his reluctance to use American
power in every situation.
However, to the extent that Nye is reluctant to adopt the ideological fabric of any
particular pigeonhole, he is an intriguing thinker who appears to approach each problem
as a fresh challenge. While he is certainly a product of his upbringing and intellectual
culture, he is at least apparently willing to try to step outside that rigid intellectual
framework as he explores the issues of today.
Speaking of his upbringing and intellectual culture, lets look at where Nye has come
from in order to understand where he is today.
THE LIFE OF JOSEPH NYE, JR.

Joseph Nye, Jr. was born in 1937. Nye grew up on a farm in Northwest New Jersey, and
received his bachelors degree in an interdisciplinary major from the Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1958. He is a Rhodes
Scholar, doing his post-graduate work at Oxford University, and a graduate of the Ph.D
program in government at Harvard.
After Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election, Nye was recruited to join his
transition team as a consultant on nuclear proliferation. When Cyrus Vance was
appointed secretary of state, he asked Nye to serve as deputy undersecretary in charge
of Carter's nonproliferation initiatives. He stayed on in that capacity from 1977-1979,
after which he returned to Harvards Kennedy School of Government to teach. He
fluttered between governmental work and university work over the next several years.
All the while, Nye kept up his prolific writing on international security issues, serving as
an editorial board member of Foreign Policy and International Security magazines. He
has written more than one hundred articles in professional journals.
The fact that Nye is neither a lifelong government official nor a lifelong academic may
have some influence on his thinking. He seems decidedly less dogmatic than a great
deal of his contemporaries who have spent their entire careers in the Beltway or the
Ivory Tower.
As Nye himself has observed
This lack of a fixed plan mirrors his thinking -- always reacting to emerging situations
rather than viewing emerging phenomena through a fixed lens.
NYE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

While technically Nye falls under the school of realism in international relations, his
views of power and global politics is much more nuanced than the big-stick diplomats
that dominate the scene today.
Nye coined the marvelously efficient phrase soft power to refer to those non-military
forms of exerting influence -- cultural, economic, etc. He meditates on the differences
between soft and hard power in his book THE PARADOX OF AMERICAN POWER: WHY THE
WORLD'S ONLY SUPERPOWER CAN'T GO IT ALONE.
"Soft Power is your ability to attract others to get the outcomes you want," Nye has said.
"Hard power is when I coerce you--if I the use a carrot or a stick to get you to do
something you otherwise wouldn't do, that's hard power. But if I get you to want what I
want, and I don't have to use a carrot or a stick, that's the ultimate because it costs me
almost nothing but I get the outcomes I want."
This has not changed since September 11, despite the United States so-called war on
terrorism. Nye wrote an insightful article with a global focus in the Guardian on March
31, 2002, which included the following:
Soft power is an important concept to understand, particularly in the post Cold War
world. If we disagree with Japans trade policy, for example, we arent going to invade
them. Were going to either negotiate with them or flex our own economic muscles (as
George W. Bush did by imposing steel tariffs recently) in response.
Thats true of most adversaries in addition to traditional allies like Japan. While Bush has
been threatening to invade Iraq almost constantly for the last year, other measures
(such as the multilateral United Nations oil embargo and other sanctions) are really more
effective with less of an opportunity cost. Its only for a truly dramatic event (like the
terrorist tragedy on September 11, 2001) that will of necessity engender a military
response. Nye is a believer in war as a last resort, considering it a solution that is often
actually creates worse problems.
Nye is not, as should be clear, a hawk per se. War is an impractical and problematic
means of enforcing American interests and desires. That said, Nye is a realist who does
seek to advance American interests through the policies he advocates.
How, then, does one secure American interests, especially in the face of competing and
potentially adversarial powers? The answer is a question of containment vs.
engagement.
Containment is a more hawkish strategy, where one uses foreign policy tools to isolate
an adversarial power. Engagement is where a nation continues to interact with the
adversarial power through trade, diplomacy and other channels in an attempt to exert
influence over the other state.
Nye is usually an advocate of engagement. Take, for example, the case of China. An
emerging power with one billion citizens and a growing economy, China will be a force in
the new century. Nyes idea is that a strong China is better for the world community than
a weak China, given that a weak China would be more given to lash out to shore up its
power -- especially against American allies like Taiwan (an island nation that China
considers a part of its country, though the Taiwanese dont agree) or Japan.
If that is true, Nye reasons, then the United States must not isolate china. An attempt to
treat China as a threat, in fact, might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If China can be brought into a network of rule-based relations, such an evolution may
continue. Will this strategy work? No one can be certain, but it is clearly better than the
containment strategy ... It would be one of history's tragic ironies if domestic politics
leads to an unnecessary Cold War in Asia that will be costly for this and future
generations of Americans, he wrote.
As an intellectual who lived through the darkest moments of the Cold War, Nye knows
what kind of policies led to increased tensions during that period in history. He is keen on
avoiding that kind of situation with other powers, such as China.
It should be noted that this falls right in line with his idea of soft power: the big stick
approach is a counterproductive one. Rather than isolating other nations, in his view, we
should be using our influence in a positive manner.
NYE ON GLOBALIZATION
Neither a demagogue nor a radical, Nye takes the line on globalization that you might
expect from an establishment centrist.
While himself an advocate of a globalized economy and free trade believing that the
rising tide of economic growth lifts all boats, even the poor he is one of the few
mainstream analysts who has attempted to seek out ways to assuage the concerns of
protesters. While he surely agrees with virtually none of their prescribed solutions
(calling anti-free trade protesters demagogues in the street), he at least has
attempted to address the flaws in the system some have identified.
In an article for FOREIGN AFFAIRS, an establishment journal that some call the most
influential in the world, Nye wrote on Globalization's Democratic Deficit: How to Make
International Institutions More Accountable. He sets out a program of action for
increasing transparency and democratic accountability for actions at organizations such
as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.
He reasons that if decisions are made out in the open, and that citizens might have
better opportunities to influence those decisions, that might satisfy the majority of the
populace and confer a legitimacy on those institutions they havent seen yet.
While Nye recognizes this probably wont satisfy everyone, especially the radical left, it
will help allay the fears of most Americans and other world citizens.
CRITICS OF NYE
Critics of Nye fall into several different categories. The mainstream left criticizes Nyes
optimism about the positive influence of American soft power and the stabilizing
character of the American military presence overseas. For example, Nye is a staunch
defender of the Japan-U.S. security relationship.
This entails both the United States maintaining a military presence in Asia
(predominantly on the island of Okinawa) and the United States continuing to exert
influence over Japan in international relations. Critics of this policy, including the Japan
Policy Research Institute (headed by the noted Asian scholar Chalmers Johnson) argue
that the American military presence is more destabilizing than anything, and that Nye
misanalyses available data from polls and opinion surveys.
Instead, the JPRI and Johnson claim that the American military presence overseas, and in
Japan particularly, is engendering a blowback -- unintended and unpredictable
consequences which threaten security instead of enhancing it. There is no better
example of this blowback, Johnson argued in his 2000 book of the same name, than the
U.S.-Japan relationship.
Just look at Okinawa. The American military bases on the island are the subjects of
constant protests from the locals; America keeps itself in the news in a negative manner
due to the annual rapes of young Okinawan girls committed by American servicemen;
and any military utility of these bases is speculative at best. even if the soft power
phenomenon is true, Johnson argues, American credibility is diminished, not enhanced,
by this unwieldy and counterproductive arrangement.
It is more likely, according to Johnson, that the arrangement is contributing to imperial

overstretch rather than soft power. Imperial overstretch is where an empire (like the
United States) tries to project power into too many places, on too many fronts. Nyes
defense of the U.S.-Japan arrangement might be just such an example of overstretch.
Further left, many take issue with Nyes notion of the American national interest -- and
his assumption that advancing the American national interest is in the interest of the
world at large.
Take, for example, the distinction between soft power and hard power. They have a
common denominator -- the term power. No matter how you slice it, the United States
is going to be extending its influence on the world in a manner designed to advance its
interests. No great radical thought here: everyone from the establishment to Noam
Chomsky agrees on that.
The difference between Nye and his critics is that Nye believes American influence is
generally benign or positive.
Even open-minded, liberal internationalist thinkers like Nye -- who take a broader view of
the American national interest -- are still trapped by the paradigm of American
imperialism in the view of these critics. While Nye might say that the United States
should continue to maintain a forward presence in Asia in order to prevent a power
vacuum in the region, thus preventing a war that is damaging to American (and world)
interests, critics would say that the lens he uses to evaluate such phenomena is
fundamentally corrupted.
This lens seeks threats in the world for the United States to solve. As the old Chinese
proverb goes, if you go looking for enemies, you will probably find them. Similarly, critics
say, people looking for a role for the American military (or even soft power) will
probably find an indispensable role for it.
This type of self-justifying behavior, critics say, serves to perpetuate the hegemonic
imperialism of the United States just as much as the more realpolitik theorists. Perhaps
there is a reason that Henry Kissinger has praised Nye despite their differences?
IN CONCLUSION
Its always difficult to analyze a scholars impact while that scholar is still producing
materials especially when that scholar is as prolific as Nye continues to be. His most
recent book was just published this year, and he continues to write for the most
influential periodicals in print and on-line. However, it is possible to sketch out the
general precepts that Nye values and to watch as his thinking continues to evolve.
Where there is a foreign policy crisis that affects the United States, you can be sure this
scholar will have something to say about it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Japan Policy Research Institute, JPRI CRITIQUE, Volume V, Number 1, January 1998,
http://www.jpri.org/jpri/public/crit5.1.html, accessed May 5, 2002.
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. THE PARADOX OF AMERICAN POWER: WHY THE WORLD'S ONLY
SUPERPOWER CAN'T GO IT ALONE (New York: Oxford University Press, January 2002)
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS: AN INTRODUCTION TO

THEORY AND HISTORY, 3d ed. (New York: Longman, 2000).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. Bound to Lead: THE CHANGING NATURE OF AMERICAN POWER, (New
York: Basic Books, 1990).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. NUCLEAR ETHICS, (New York: The Free Press, 1986).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. HAWKS, DOVES AND OWLS: AN AGENDA FOR AVOIDING NUCLEAR
WAR, co-authored with Graham Allison and Albert Carnesale (New York: Norton, 1985).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. GOVERNANCE AMID BIGGER, BETTER MARKETS (Brookings Institution
Press, August 2001)
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. GOVERNANCE IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD, co-edited with John D.

Donahue (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000.
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. democracy.com? Governance in A Networked World, co-edited with

Elaine Ciulla Kamarck (Hollis Publishing, 1999)
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. WHY PEOPLE DONT TRUST GOVERNMENT, co-edited with Philip D.
Zelikow and Davic C. King (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. Military Deglobalization? FoREIGN POLICY (Jan.-Feb. 2001).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. Globalization: What's New? What's Not? (And So What?) [coauthored with Robert O. Keohane], FOREIGN POLICY (spring 2000).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. The US and Europe: Continental Drift? INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
(January 2000).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. Redefining America's National Interest: The Complexity of Values,
CURRENT (September 1999).
Nye, Jr., Joseph S. Dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, THE
OBSERVER, March 31, 2002, http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4384507,00.html,
SOFT POWER AND DEMOCRACY

PROMOTION ARE INCREASINGLY KEY
1. SOFT POWER IS MORE IMPORTANT NOW THAN EVER
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, THE
Power in the global information age is becoming less coercive among advanced
countries. But most of the world does not consist of post-industrial societies, and that
limits the transformation of power. Much of Africa and the Middle East remains locked in
pre-industrial agricultural societies with weak institutions and authoritarian rulers. Other
countries, such as China, India, and Brazil, are industrial economies analogous to parts
of the West in the mid-twentieth century. In such a variegated world, all three sources of
power - military, economic, and soft - remain relevant. However, if current economic and
social trends continue, leadership in the information revolution and soft power will
become more important in the mix.
2. LIBERALISM, PLURALISM AND AUTONOMY INCREASE SOFT POWER

The countries that are likely to gain soft power are those closest to global norms of
liberalism, pluralism, and autonomy; those with the most access to multiple channels of
communication; and those whose credibility is enhanced by their domestic and
international performance. These dimensions of power give a strong advantage to the
United States and Europe.
3. SOFT POWER DOESN'T DEPEND ON HARD POWER

Soft power is not simply the reflection of hard power. The Vatican did not lose its soft
power when it lost the Papal States in Italy in the nineteenth century. Conversely, the
Soviet Union lost much of its soft power after it invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia,
even though its economic and military resources continued to grow. Imperious policies
that utilised Soviet hard power actually undercut its soft power. And countries like the
Canada, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian states have political clout that is greater
than their military and economic weight because of their support for international aid
and peace-keeping.
4. GLOBALIZATION SHOULD BE MORE DEMOCRATIC

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, FOREIGN
AFFAIRS, July/August 2001, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/articles/Nye0701.html,
Seattle; Washington, D.C.; Prague; Quebec City. It is becoming difficult for international
economic organizations to meet without attracting crowds of protesters decrying
globalization. These protesters are a diverse lot, coming mainly from rich countries, and
their coalition has not always been internally consistent. They have included trade
unionists worried about losing jobs and students who want to help the underdeveloped
world gain them, environmentalists concerned about ecological degradation and
anarchists who object to all forms of international regulation. Some protesters claim to
represent poor countries but simultaneously defend agricultural protectionism in wealthy
countries. Some reject corporate capitalism, whereas others accept the benefits of
international markets but worry that globalization is destroying democracy. Of all their
complaints, this last concern is key. Protest organizers such as Lori Wallach attributed
half the success of the Seattle coalition to "the notion that the democracy deficit in the
global economy is neither necessary nor acceptable." For globalization's supporters,
accordingly, finding some way to address its perceived democratic deficit should
become a high priority.
ISOLATION AND CONTAINMENT DONT

WORK IN POLICY-MAKING
1. ISOLATING OTHER COUNTRIES IS BAD POLICY
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Dean of Harvards Kennedy School of Government, The Case Against
Containment: Treat China Like an Enemy and That's What It Will Be, June 22, 1998, p.
np, http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/asia/china/06221998nye.html, accessed May 3,
2002.
Isolating other countries is bad policy. Washington's current hysteria about China is
largely driven by domestic politics. Three times in two weeks, the House of
Representatives rebuked the president over China. In an election year, Republicans seize
on allegations of campaign finance scandals, and illegal technology transfers to build
campaign issues. Democrats looking forward to the year 2000, split over how to handle
human rights during Clinton's trip. It would be a pity if domestic politics caused
Americans to lose sight of our long-term strategic interest in East Asia. Clinton defended
his trip in a recent speech. Disagreeing with those who want to isolate China, he argued
that such a course would make the world more dangerous. I agree.
2. EVEN IF CHINA RISES AS A GREAT POWER, WE CAN ACCOMODATE THEM

2002.
Ever since Thucydides and the ancient Greeks, historians have known that great wars
are often caused by the rise of new powers and the fears such change creates in
established powers. But it is not true in every case. New powers can be accommodated
if they can be persuaded to define their interests in responsible ways. That is the
overarching question the United States faces in its relations with China.
3. A POLICY OF CONTAINMENT SIMPLY WILL NOT WORK

2002.
Pessimists about China's future and about America's continuing strength argue for a
policy of containment analogous to our response to the Soviet Union after World War II.
But the current debate between containment and engagement is too simple. For one
thing, a crude policy of containment would not work.
4. CONTAINMENT HAS THREE FATAL FLAWS

2002.
Containment has three fatal flaws. First, it exaggerates current and future Chinese
strength. Unlike the Soviet Union, which had an expansionist ideology and conventional
military superiority in Europe, China lacks the capacity to project military power much
beyond its borders. Moreover, in the new dimensions of military strength in the
information age, America's edge will continue to persist. Second, as a quick survey of
Asian capitals makes clear, the United States could not now develop a coalition to
contain China even if we tried. China's neighbors do not see it as a current threat in the
way the Soviet Union's neighbors did during the Cold War. Only if China's future behavior
becomes more aggressive could such a coalition be formed. In that sense, only China
can produce an effective containment policy. Third, containment is mistaken because it
discounts the possibility that China can evolve to define its interests as a responsible
power. If we treat China as an enemy now, we are guaranteeing ourselves an enemy,
particularly given the fact that nationalism is rapidly replacing communism as the
dominant ideology among the Chinese people. No one knows for certain what China's
future will be, but it makes no sense to throw away the more benign possibilities at this
point. Containment is likely to be irreversible, while engagement can be reversed if
China changes for the worse.
NYES NOTION OF SOFT POWER IS

WRONG
1. NYES VIEW OF SOFT POWER IGNORES HISTORY
Wayne Hunt, Mount Allison University, JANUS HEAD Vol. 2, No. 2., Fall 1999, p. np,
http://www.janushead.org/2-2/whunt.cfm, accessed May 1, 2002.
In the study of transnational relations, the strategic balance between hard and soft
power has been much commented upon. The terms originate with Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
According to Nye, the state-sanctioned application of force comes under the definition of
hard power, as do the requisite material conditions necessary to sustain this force.
Soft power, by contrast, relies on the force of ideas rather than the force of arms.
Included in this first definition are the ethical values which have been injected into the
international arena by a number of mediating institutions. Mainstream Hollywood movies
as well as sophisticated advertising techniques came into this category, as did advances
in communications technology. In this context, hard power was about ends and the
bottom-line criteria necessary to achieve those ends while soft power was about
process and the means to an end. Hard power was objective, quantifiable and direct
while soft power was subjective, unquantifiable and indirect. The first was readily
understandable because it spoke to the traditional role of the state which was to provide
for security of the person as well as the security of property. The second seemed to
indicate a larger transformation, a paradigm shift as some enthusiasts would have it.
But on closer inspection these categories seemed to take on an older dimension. On the
one hand there were those who engaged with the world as it is, and on the other there
were those who looked to what ought to be. This was observed in the tension between
realpolitik and idealism which analysts have long detected in Americas relations with
other powers. Involved as well were competing conceptions of political community. Allied
to this was a bifurcated view of the nature of public action, with coercive measures on
one side of the divide and co-operative ones on the other. More ancient still, and at a
greater philosophic remove, was the contrast between authority and liberty. In Nyes
writings this longer scholarly tradition goes unremarked upon.
2. NYES SOFT POWER JUST SEEKS TO PROJECT CAPITALISM

Wayne Hunt, Mount Allison University, JANUS HEAD Vol. 2, No. 2., Fall, 1999, p. np,
His concern is with the present and the way in which the future can be brought to the
present. In his view of the world there is a subtle but implicit business orientation in
which the notion of soft power takes on entrepreneurial boldness. The comparative
dimension was critically important. Soft power was associated with the relative
strength of the American economy in relation to its competitors. Entrepreneurial
dynamism, it was further assumed, was tied to the ability to innovate. Nye clearly sees
soft power as the way of the future. He implies that it is superior to hard power
because it relies on uncommanded loyalties. As such it allows for the free play of
creative instincts. In short, it approximates an anglo-American form of capitalism, or to

be more precise, an idealized version of what this form of capitalism represents.
4. SOFT POWER STILL DEFENDS AMERICAN TECHNOSTRATEGIC INTERVENTION

Wayne Hunt, Mount Allison University, JANUS HEAD Vol. 2, No. 2., Fall, 1999, p. np,
Nye and Owens (1996) examine this from a geopolitical perspective, insisting that it can
be a force for good throughout the world. Thus soft power can work in tandem with
hard power, as, in his phrase, "a force multiplier in American diplomacy." Space-based
surveillance, direct broadcasting and a high speed system of systems, he argued, had
given the United States a "dominant battlespace knowledge"-- as Operation Desert
Storm and Operation Desert Fox presumably demonstrated. This assertion rested on the
strategic argument that Americas capacity for accurate, real-time, situational
awareness of military field operations exceeds that of all other nations combined.
(Operation Allied Force, by contrast, put many of the beliefs about surgical
intervention, in areas where there is not an obvious national interest at stake, to the
test.) Assumed here was a technologically-driven view of American intervention.
NYES FOREIGN POLICY THINKING IS

FLAWED
1. NYES EFFORTS AT EXPLAINING THE POST-SEPTEMBER 11 WORLD ARE FEEBLE
Joseph Losos, investment adviser, ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, Feb. 27, 2002, p. B1.
That may not have been how it seemed at the time, but commentators are notorious
hindsight experts. Today, so they say, matters are much harder to figure out, and this is
especially so now that we have entered the Age of Terror and anti-terror. Confusing
situations produce squadrons of deconfusers, of course, and professors Joseph Nye and
Walter Mead have come forward to explicate our condition and prescribe programs of
policy. In some respects, these books are similar. Both make the same basic assumption:
The United States is the world's only superpower, perhaps even a superduper power, but
despite the immense might that that implies, our freedom to do just what we want is
limited. Moreover, in a world with such diverse developments -- Muslim hostility,
increased Chinese potency, uncertain economic trends and many other crosscurrents -there are more options for our country to follow and more spokespeople to advocate
them. Yet we must choose, for failing to make up our mind, or simply drifting from one
crisis to the next, is in itself a choice, and a rather bad one. Both authors argue that we
cannot retreat from most or all of our present involvements, so that this should be taken
as the basis for decision. But in working out our strategy, these books definitely differ.
The chief difference, to put the matter bluntly, is that Mead has written a valuable book
while Nye's effort is feeble. The latter's little treatise is long on cliches and short on
substance. Thus, he argues that it is not just hard power (guns, planes, money) but also
soft power (what anybody else calls influence) that counts. So we get nuggets such as
"countries that are well-placed in terms of soft power do better." Throughout the book
there are tables that propose desirable projects, aspirations that would not surprise any
reasonably studious 15-year-old.
2. NYE IS WRONG ABOUT COMMON INTERESTS BETWEEN U.S. AND JAPAN

Last November 30, the Yomiuri published the results of an opinion poll it had
commissioned from the Gallup organization concerning Japanese and American attitudes
toward the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. In Japan, 1,952 people were interviewed; in the
U.S., 982 responded. In an accompanying article, Joseph Nye, one of the principal
architects of last year's revised Security Treaty, tried to put a positive spin on the poll's
results. While he acknowledged "some perception gaps between the two countries on
military cooperation, mainly over details for implementing new defense cooperation
guidelines," he professed to believe that the poll reveals "Japan and the United States
share common interests in the Asia-Pacific region." JPRI's reading of the same statistics
is far less sanguine. When respondents were asked which nations or regions they
believed might pose a military threat to their own country, 69% of the Japanese named
the Korean Peninsula, whereas 58% of U.S. respondents gave the Middle East top billing.
Only 26% of the U.S. respondents believed that the Korean Peninsula posed a military
threat. So much for some of those shared common interests.
3. NYE SEVERELY MISANALYZES THE DATA U.S.-JAPAN RELATIONSHIP IS FLAWED

There is a further statistic that should give both sides pause. While approximately half of
both Japanese and U.S. respondents think that the U.S. military presence in Asia should
be maintained-which Joseph Nye cites as evidence of "the broad public support in both
countries for the reaffirmation of the Japan-U.S. Security relationship"-40.9% of the
Japanese and 20.4% of the Americans want the U.S. military presence reduced. These
are sizeable percentages, and the fact that the 'hosts,' the Japanese, outvote their
'guests' by two to one in calling for a reduction of troops must tell us something. Most
likely, it should tell us that we have become an unwelcome army of occupation rather
than of liberation, and that if security is the air we breathe (to use Professor Nye's tired
analogy), the air surrounding Japan's American bases is decidedly unhealthy.
THOMAS PAINE
POLITICAL PROPAGANDIST 1737 - 1809
When listing the great writers of the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas
Jefferson, and John Adams immediately come to mind. However, Thomas Paine was
actually more influential. According to historian Gregory Claeys, Paines writings were
read by more men and women than any other political author in history. 1
As the author of Common Sense, The Rights of Man, and The Age of Reason, Paine
expressed much of the discontent of citizens on both sides of the Atlantic during the 18th
century. However, he is often overlooked as a major contributor to the field of political
philosophy. Some scholars believe this lack of recognition is due to Nines modest
upbringing and education. Unlike most propagandists of the era, Paine was not an
educated or wealthy man. Despite this social handicap, he was able to passionately and
accurately express the political sentiments of the vast majority of people. According to
Claeys, He was not a trained political philosopher, but a common man with an
uncommonly sharp mind who was profoundly angered by the oppression and arrogance
of Britains upper classes as well as by hereditary rule generally. 2
Paines father was a British corsetmaker who was too poor to afford a formal education
for young Thomas. Thus, he learned his fathers trade. 3 However, while living in London,
Paine met Benjamin Franklin who urged him to move to America. During his lifetime,
Paine also lived in France. As a trans-Atlantic traveler, be had a profound influence on
the revolutionary movements in all three countries.
Because of his impoverished upbringing, Paine understood from first-hand experience

the personal pain of the underprivileged and translated that pain into eloquent books
about fundamental change in government and society. Among the hardships he endured
during his life was the death of his first wife and ridicule as an exciseman (otherwise
known as a tax collector). His modest early life as well as Quaker background are
believed to have instilled in Paine an egalitarian philosophy that emphasized the natural
rights of all individuals.4
11 Gregory Claeys Thomas Paine Social and Political Thought. (Boston: Unwin Hyman.
19891. n. xv.
22 Ibid., p.2.
33 Marjean D. Puriton. Great Thinkers of the Western World. edited by Ian P. McGreal
(New York:HarperCollins Publishers. Inc.. 19921. p. 286.
44 Jerome D. Wilson and William F Ricketson Thomas Paine. (Boston: Twayne Publishers.
19891. p.12
Some might consider Paine a kind of 18th century Renaissance man because of his
diverse interests. Those interests spanned more than the purely political but also
covered other issues related to humanity in general. He was an advocate for freeing all
slaves as well as a pioneer in the field of international arbitration. Additionally, he
opposed British colonial policies in India and Africa. 5 However, it was as a political critic
that established Paine as a great thinker.
55 Claeys. Thomas Paine Social and Political Thought. n. 1-2
Political and Social Philosophy

Thomas Paine was an outspoken critic of monarchial governments and an advocate of
republican government. He was also a vocal critic of religious interference in affairs of
government. As an advocate of the separation of church and state he often stood alone
in his secular beliefs. At the time, it was an accepted
practice for religious officialsparticularly Catholic Church clergyto be actively
involved in affairs of
government. Paine opposed such involvement and was often attacked for his opposition.
As an egalitarian, he strongly believed that the purpose of government was to serve and
help people. He based his philosophy on his firm belief in the sovereignty of the
individual and governments responsibility to individuals, not vice versa. In other words,
he did not believe it was the role of people to serve royalty or government. Paine held
firm to the concept that each individual has natural rights which society has a duty
to protect.6 Thus, he called for radical programs such as a progressive income tax to
provide for the helpless and the aged. Among the more modern reforms he advocated
were for an international organization that would ensure world peace, and equal rights
for women.
A review of one of his last works, Agrarian Justice suggests that he had socialist
leanings. He used this book to lay out a comprehensive plan for bringing about socialism
in France, England, and America. Unlike other plans developed by previous philosophers,
Paine does not suggest collective ownership of property, but rather, a fund created by
and contributed to all property owners which would support the less fortunate. 7
Because Paine often wrote about the duty of individuals in relationship to society, he is
compared to other social contract theorists like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. However,
a key concept that sets Paine apart of
these other philosophers is the purpose of the social contract. Unlike Locke and Hobbes,
Paine viewed the beginning of government as having a positive purpose, not a defensive
measure against anarchy.8
66 Wilson and Ricketson. Thomas Paine. n. viii.

77 Ibid., p. 102.
88 Ibid., p. 130.
Religious Beliefs
Paine is often accused of being an atheist. However, although he had a strong Christian
faith, he did not believe the church had any place in government. Instead he sought to
secularize religion in revolutionary terms.
His was a unique and solitary view of religion. On the one hand, he expressed most
completely the ideals of the Enlightenmentfaith in the immutable law and order of
nature as a divine revelation. He also believed in the omnipotence of reason where there
is freedom to debate all questions. However, his tolerance of all people, coupled with the
belief of the equal rights and dignity of the individual differed from the mainstream of
religious beliefs of his era. Much of his religious philosophy and bitter criticism of
organized religion, namely the Catholic Church are found in The Age of Reason.
Summary of Writings and Publications

Even though he was a relatively uneducated man, Thomas Paine was a prolific and
proficient writer. As previously mentioned, he was an enormously popular writer during
his day and widely read in the colonies as well as in Europe. The following are among his
best known works.
Common Sense (1776)

This was perhaps his most influential book in America. In 1776 almost 100,000 copies
were sold in the colonies. Written anonymously, Paine used Common Sense to call on
Americans to declare their independence from Britain. 9 It is divided into four parts. The
first part sets out to discuss society and government and the difference between the
two. Part two focuses on monarchy and succession while incorporating Biblical
references. After these parameters have been laid out, part three proceeds to denounce
government by hereditary succession, in other words, successions of kings to
governance. Finally, a new plan for independence is offered in the form of a continental
government.
Vie Crisis (1776-83)

These were a series of 16 essays that were intended to boost the morale of
revolutionary soldiers as well as promote the colonial cause in Europe. Paine used these
essays to emphasize the positive aspects of American society such as a pioneering spirit
and zeal for independence. In one of the essays, Paine compares Englands dominance
over America to slavery.10 The most lasting line of prose from Paines work comes from
these tracts: These are the times that try mens souls.
The Rights of Man (1791-2)

Paine used this treatise to call for a French revolution and challenge England to
revolutionize its aristocratic institutions. He discussed a system of individual talent,
production and merit as the rightful way to lead and govern society, not rule by
aristocracy or hereditary.
The Age of Reason (1794-6)

This book became Paines most controversial publication. Moving away from political
discourse, be used this publication to attack institutionalized religion, namely
Christianity. Paine rejected the reliance of the church on the Bible as the word of God. He
believed that the only way to truly know God and his will was to rely on reason, which he
believed to be Gods gift to humans. All other sources for discovering God were corrupt
99 Puriton. Great Thinkers of the Western World. p 286.
1010 Ibid., p. 288.
and lacked validation. Further, he viewed organized religion as a powerful weapon of

control which restricts individual discoveries about God. 11
Agrarian Justice (1795)

Paines last significant book Agrarian Justice presents a case for social and economic
reform that closely resembles many socialist plans such as a redistribution of property
and wealth.
Criticism and Conclusion

Because many of his views were contradictory to the prevailing thought of society, Paine
was harshly criticized. Indeed, he was arrested and imprisoned in France for advocating
policies not popular to the government. Ironically, he had fled to France because he was
about to be arrested in England for sedition and treason.
Perhaps one of the reasons Paine is not grouped with the great leaders of the American
revolution was because he was a critic of some of the heroes of that war including
George Washington. Most vocal among Paines critics during that time was John Adams.
However, it is difficult to dismiss Paines impact on the creation of the United States. As
biographers Jerome Wilson and William Ricketson wrote, Paine was a rebel, a
revolutionist, but he was also a propagandist par excellence, a mover of mindsand
perhaps the most effective writer of persuasive literature in the history of the English
language. 12 Thus, a study of his writings is useful to understand the basic structure of
the beginning of democracy in America.
1111 Ibid., p.291.

1212 Wilson and Ricketson. Thomas Paine. n. vii.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aldridge, Alfred Owen. An Answer to Paines Right's of Man. Louisville, Kentucky: Lost
Cause Press, 1978
. Thomas Paines American Ideology. Newark: University of Delaware Press,
1984.
Ayer, A.J. Thomas Paines American Ideology. New York: University of Delaware Press,
1984.
Caute, David. Man of Rights, New Statesman and Society. 2 (July 7, 1989) 12-3.
Citizen of the World: Essays on Thomas Paine. Edited by Ian Dyck. New York: St. Martins
Press, 1988.
Claeys, Gregory. Thomas Paine: Social and Political Thought. Boston: Unwin Hyman,
1989.
Davidson Edward H. Paine. Scripture. and Authority: The Age of Reason as Religious and
Political Ideal. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Lehigh University Press, 1984.
Edwards, Samuel. Rebel! A Biography of Tom Paine. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974.
Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. New York: Oxford University Press,
1976.
Hawke, David Freeman. ~ New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
Malcolm, Andrew H. This Now-Forgotten Hero Lived a Memorable Life, The New York
Times 141 (January 14, 1992), p. B14, col 5.
Naraghi, Ehsan. The Republics Citizens of Honor, UNESCO Courier (June 1989): 12-16.
Paine, Thomas. Common Sense. and Other Political Writings. Edited with an introduction
by Nelson F. Adkins. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1953.
Paine, Thomas. Political Writings. Edited by Bruce Kuklick. Cambridge: Cambridge

Paine, Thomas. Rights of Man.. New York: Penguin Book, 1984.
Paine, Thomas. The Selected Works of Tom Paine & Citizen Tom Paine. New York: Modem
Library, 1945.
Paine, Thomas. Thomas Paine Reader. Edited by Michael Foot and Isaac Kraninick. New
York: Penguin Books, 1987.
Paine, Thomas. The Writings of Thomas Paine. Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway. New
York: B.
Franklin, 1968.
Roditi, Edouard. Tom Paine, Radical Democrat, Dissent. 35 (Spring 1988): 23 1-2.
Thompson, Tommy R. The Resurrection of Thomas Paine in American Popular

Magazines, ]7. The Midwest Quarterly 33 (Autumn 1991): 75-8.
Williamson, Audrey. Thomas Paine: His Life. Work. and Times. New York: St. Martins
Press, 1973. Wilson, Jerome D., and William F. Ricketson. Thomas Paine. Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1989.
GOVERNMENT EXISTS TO SERVE

SOCIETY
1. GOVERNMENT EXISTS AS A COMPACT BETWEEN PEOPLE
Thomas Paine, Political Propagandist, COMMON SENSE AND OTHER POLITICAL WRITINGS,
1953, p. 86-7.
The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and
sovereign tight, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government; and
this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise and the only principle
on which they have a right to exist.
2. GOVERNMENT PROMOTES HAPPINESS BY RESTRAINING OUR VICES

1953,
p.4.
Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former
promotes our happiness positively by uniting air affections, the latter negatively by
restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.
The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
3. FORMATION OF GOVERNMENT IS NECESSARY FOR FREEDOM AND SECURITY Thomas

Paine, Political Propagandist, COMMON SENSE AND OTHER POLITICAL WRITINGS, 1953,
p.6.
Here then is the origin and rise of government, namely, a mode rendered necessary by
the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of
government, viz., freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with
show or our ears deceived by sound, however prejudice may warp our wills or interest
darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say it is right.
PURPOSE OF SOCIETY IS TO SECURE

RIGHTS OF PEOPLE
1. PEOPLE ENTER INTO SOCIETY TO HAVE RIGHTS SECURED
1953, p. 84.
We have now to consider the civil rights of man and to show how the one originates from
the other. Man did not enter into society to become worse than we was before, nor to
have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His
natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights.
2. CIVIL RIGHTS ARE GRANTED IN SOCIETY

1953, p. 84.
Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are
all the intellectual tights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an
individual for his own comfort and happiness which are not injurious to the natural rights
of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of
society.
3. PEOPLE JOIN SOCIETY TO STRENGTHEN THEIR RIGHTS

1953, p. 84.
The natural rights which are not retained are all those in which, though the right is
perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is defective. They answer not his
purpose. A man, by natural tight, has a right to judge in his own cause, and so far as the
right of the mind is concerned he never surrenders it; but what avails of the mind is
concerned he never surrenders it; but what avails it him to judge if he has no power to
redress? He therefore deposits his right in the common stock of society and takes the
arm of society, of which is a part, in preference and in addition to his own.
PRESENT LAWS CANNOT CONTROL

FUTURE GENERATIONS
1. PRESENT LAWS CANNOT BIND FUTURE GENERATIONS FROM EXERCISING FREEDOM
1953, p. 76.
There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a Parliament, or any
description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or
the power of binding and controlling posterity to the end of time, or of commanding
forever how the world shall be governed or who shall govern it, and therefore all such
clauses, acts, or declarations, by which the makers of them attempt to do what they
have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves
null and voice. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as
the ages and generation which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing
beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
2. GOVERNMENT CANNOT SEEK TO CONTROL FUTURE GENERATIONS

1953, p. 77.
Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations
which are to follow. The Parliament or the people of 1688, or of any other period, had no
more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to bind or to control them in
any shape whatever, than the Parliament or the people of the present day have to
dispose of, bind, or control those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence.
3. PRESENT GOVERNMENT CANNOT HOLD AUTHORITY OVER FUTURE GOVERNMENTS

1953,
p. 77.
Every generation is and must be competent to all the purposes which its occasions
require. It is the living, and not the dead that are to be accommodated. When man
ceases to be, his power and his wants cease with him; and having no longer any
participation in the concerns of this world, he has no longer any authority in directing
who shall be its governors, or bow its government shall be organized or how
administered.
RIGHTS OF MAN EXISTED AT TIME OF

CREATION
1. RIGHTS OF MAN WERE ESTABLISHED AT TIME OF CREATION
1953,
p. 81.
The fact is that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is
authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of
man at the creation. Here our inquiries find a resting place and our reason finds a home.
2. ANTIQUITY DOES NOT PROVIDE PRECEDENT FOR RIGHTS OF MAN

1953,
p. 81.
The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights
of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go me whole way.
They stop in some of the intermediate stags of a hundred or a thousand years and
produce what was then done as a rule for the present day. This is no authority at all.
3. RIGHTS OF MAN SHOULD BE TRACED TO CREATION OF MAN

1953,
p. 82.
Though I mean not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion, yet, it may be worth
observing that the genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam. Why they not trace the tights
of man to the creation of man? I will answer the question. Because there have been
upstart governments thrusting themselves between the presumptuously working to
unmake man.
H.A. PRICHARD
BACKGROUND
H. A. Prichard was part of a group of British philosophers known as Moral Intuitionists.
This group also included G.E. Moore, W.D. Ross, H.W.B Joseph, E.F. Carritt, R.G.
Collingwood, and John Cook Wilson. Prichard spent most of his life teaching at Oxford
University, and was most famous for his general rejection of moral theory altogether,
something he derived from a lack of feasible answers to the moral question proposed
by contemporary theorists.
For a long time, Prichard was heavily involved in active discussion of ethical theory with
his colleagues at the so called Philosophers Teas. As Jim MacAdam notes, Prichards
conclusions were largely rejected by both his colleagues and critics alike. However, he
was nonetheless celebrated as, the ablest philosopher of his generation and
representative of what it is to live philosophy as a profession. Controversial as his
theories were, Prichard was well respected and has made many contributions to
philosophy.
Another important fact to take into account is the effect Prichard had on the students
that he lectured to during his tenure at Oxford. These included some of the 20 th
centuries most noted thinkers, including Urmson, Hart, A.J. Ayer, Mabbott, Ryle, Raphael,
Austin, Berlin, Hart, Hampshire, and Nowell-Smith.
Jim MacAdam continues to point out that although the students largely disagreed with
Prichards opinions, they enjoyed his teaching. The structure and dynamic additions that
made his philosophy unique was his ability to set himself apart. His students had a large
impact on the development of his theory, and were therefore invaluable to his
development as a thinker.
In addition to his general seat at Oxford, Prichard also held fellowships at Hertford
College and Trinity. He was elected Whites Professor of Moral Philosophy, was a fellow
of Corpus Christi College, and was even given an honorary degree by the University of
Aberdeen. His initial studies were done at New College and Clifton in Oxford, but he
branched out from there in order to expand his experiences and influence his thinking.
Throughout his tenures in the various positions, Prichard was often referred to as the
personification of philosophy.
PRICHARD AND PUBLISHING

The relatively limited publication of Prichards writing is largely due to his personal
reluctance to have his work published. His daughter Marjorie explains that, He was
always so reluctant to publish, never feeling satisfied he had really found the truth about
his problems. So much of what he wrote, specially in letters, was an attempt to sort out
the ideas in his mind.
To Prichard, therefore, publishing his work would be sharing personal thoughts with the
public. Prichard also believed that publication led to a deadening of the actual theory.
He felt it was in his best creative interest to not publish his work. For these reasons,
there is minimal published material to be found.
Much of Prichards work was published after he had done his teaching, and was
organized by others. Although Prichard has spoken negatively about publishing,
students of philosophy are lucky that someone took Prichards work and published it.
His contributions to the establishing of morals, and a process for determining what is
moral would be sorely missed had he never been published.
THEORY
A large foundation of Prichards thinking is best outlined in his most famous essay, Does
Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? It is in this paper that Prichard contends in his
thesis that if individuals act because of a feeling of obligation, then there is essentially
no purpose. He explains that obligation is always trumped by desire. That is, at a base
level virtually all moral action is only due to some desire, rather than by the sense that
it should be done for an obligatory reason.
The bottom line is that if a person is obligated to take an action, that action can never
be moral. In order for the action to be regarded by Prichard as moral, it must be taken
out of a desire felt by the actor.
That is, Prichard believes that people, at a subconscious level, pervert moral right to
justify desires, and that something feels like it is intrinsically good if it serves pleasure,
even in the larger sense. And while this perspective may seem radical at first, it is upon
consideration of the distinctions Prichard makes that the argument appears increasingly
legitimate.
DOES MORAL PHILOSOPHY REST ON A

MISTAKE?
Prichard writes in Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?
The thesis, however, that, so far as we act from a sense of obligation, we have no
purpose must not be misunderstood. It must not be taken either to mean or to imply
that so far as we so act we have no motive. No doubt in ordinary speech the words
motive and purpose are usually treated as correlatives, motive standing for the
desire which induces us to act, and purpose standing for the object of this desire. But
this is only because, when we are looking for the motive of the action, say of some
crime, we are usually presupposing that the act in question is prompted by a desire and
not by the sense of obligation.
At bottom, however we mean by a motive what moves us to act; a sense of obligation

does sometimes move us to act; and in our ordinary consciousness we should not
hesitate to allow that the action we were considering might have had as its motive a
sense of obligation. Desire and the sense of obligation are co-ordinate forms or species
of motive.(pp. 15)
MOTIVE AND PURPOSE DISTINCTION

The distinction Prichard draws between motive and purpose is extremely important in
that (according to most contemporary readings of Kant, at least) motive is essential in
evaluating whether or not someone acted morally. Prichard admits that the distinctions
between motive and purpose are blurred in everyday speech and conceptions.
However, in order to advance his arguments, he discusses the differences so that his
readers will have a common understanding of what the terms mean. It is important to
move beyond traditional interpretations of the terms, and understand them as separate.
Likewise, it should be noted that while certain ends may have countless motives in
achieving them, the purpose remains constant: to achieve the end. This, however, is
infinitely superficial because it fails to account for the more pertinent aspect associated
with the action: the why, as it is specific to the individual undertaking the action.
It is thus that the theories Prichard advocated were labeled intuitionism, intuition
being specific to the individual motive for each person, and thus leading to the
consideration of people exclusively, instead of the general purpose that Prichard is trying
to discredit. In that sense, Prichards focus is on what drives individuals to take the
actions that they do. He is less concerned with some general purpose that drives all of
humanity.
TYPES OF INTUITIONISM
Before getting far into a discussion of Intuitionism, however, it seems vital to distinguish
between the various wings of the theory.
J.H. Sobel does an excellent job of elucidating the difference between the differing
viewpoints:
Intuitionism is in this book, as it is usually today, the name of a cluster of views

concerning the language, concepts, and realities of ethics. It is the name of one of the
three major metaethical positions. The main difference among our Intuitionists is in their
normative, broadly substantive, views concerning duty and right and wrong. Moore is a
utilitarian. He holds that what makes an action a duty is that, among the alternatives
before an agent, this action would, taking into consideration not only it in itself but also
all of its consequences, result in the greatest good. Moore considers goodness to be the
fundamental property in morality, and explains duties in terms of it duties are actions
that best promote the good. In this he is like Plato.
Our other Intuitionists are not utilitarian. They are not only metaethical intuitionists,
that is, in this book, simply Intuitionists, in this book, but also what are sometimes
termed normative intuitionists. They think that there are duties prima facie or 'other
things equal' duties to produce good. Ross, for example, endorses "duties of
beneficence" to promote virtue, intelligence, and pleasure But these philosophers hold
that there are many other duties other things equal. For example, Ross says there is a
prima facie duty to keep promises that meet certain conditions such as that of not
having been procured by misrepresentations of fact. These philosophers consider duty
and right and wrong to be the fundamental properties of morality. They consider that if
promise-keeping, for example, is a good to be promoted along with other goods such as
happiness and well-being by ones actions, it is additionally an object of a demand that,
unless outweighed by other demands, is to be honored in ones actions. Similarly for
truth-telling, making amends, displaying gratitude, respecting rights, and the like.
Moore can agree that these actions of good are of intrinsic value, but will not say that
they are additionally other things equal duties. In his utilitarian-view there is only one
duty, namely, to do what would taken together with its consequences be best.
NORMATIVE INTUITIONISM
One of the most important things to note is that Prichard advocated the more normative
form of Intuitionism. That is, he believed that certain duties were prima facie and thus
had to be considered ahead of the general comparative advantage. That is, while in one
set of circumstances there may be a lesser net-benefit than in another, if the lesser one
maintained a certain issue such as truth, or trust, than that would be the more moral
group of circumstances.
It is important to consider the way in which these prima facie duties were defined. While
individual motivations can vary drastically from one person to another, prima facie
duties allow us to compare acting on duties. They give us a mechanism to draw
distinctions between actions and weigh which ones were more moral.
It must also be pointed out, however, that Prichard is not contradicting his previous
contention that morality cannot be evaluated. Instead, Prichard is saying that while the
concept of moral evaluation is not universal, that doesnt mean that there cant be
created a method of distinguishing which acts are morally good or bad. That is, though
a comparative advantage criterion may not be inherent to our moral thought patterns,
that does not mean that we cannot choose to use such a weighing mechanism in
conscious evaluation. We just dont use something universal in subconscious evaluation.
When the weighting of actions becomes conscious, however, we can also make
conscious the way to consider the action. The decision to adopt a weighing calculus of
morality must be conscious. It cannot be universal, it is not natural, and individuals
must choose to use it.
The other form of Intuitionism claims that the net-benefit is intrinsically prima facie
itself, because it affords the greatest good. Moore, for example, argues that breaking
trust in order to save a greater number of lives is, of course, more moral, and that the
net-advantage is superior in order of precedence. This, as opposed to Prichard, would
believe that the universal weighing of values does not have to be a conscious choice.
Prichard discredits this by arguing that a moral precedent must hold a high position on
the order of precedence. That is, trust has itself a net-benefit, if intangible, which can
ideally be given a value if we look at the harm associated with setting or breaking a
precedent when it comes to truth. This means that if we assume that truth has no
inherent value, than all net-beneficial scenarios would trump it and it would no longer
be considered moral to tell the truth. Therefore, a moral precedent has to be afforded a
very large benefit if it is to compete with the more tangible concepts. Truth as a concept
will never outweigh tangible concepts and impacts that people can visualize in their
lives. It is, however, necessary for society to continue to value truth. This means
adapting a decision-making paradigm so that the mere telling of the truth is given such
a high value that it is able to outweigh other impacts. That is one reason why it is a
conscious decision to use the weighing calculus of morality, to enable such value to be
placed on the telling of truth.
NO STANDARD SUBCONCIOUS
CRITERION
What Prichard vehemently points out in several of his essays, however, is that the
subconscious does not use a standard mechanism in evaluating which acts feel right.
In Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? Prichard points out that while we do not
have such a standard mechanism, we do have an intuitive sense of what is right and
what is wrong.
He writes again in Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?
The sense that we ought to do certain things arises in our unreflective consciousness,
being an activity of moral thinking occasioned by the various situations in which we find
ourselves. At this stage our attitude to these obligations is one of unquestioning
confidence.
But inevitably, the appreciation of the degree to which the execution of these obligations
are really obligatory, i.e. whether our sense that we ought not to do certain things is not
illusion. We then want to have it proved to us that we ought to do so, i.e. to be
convinced of this by a process which, as an argument, is different in kind from our
original and unreflective appreciation of it. This demand is illegitimate.
It is on this argument that Prichard bases his theory that moral philosophy is likewise an
illegitimate entity. Attempting to create a tangible system of evaluation for something
that is inherently intangible doesnt work, he claims, and thus trying to figure out what it
is that causes individuals to believe one thing to be correct and another to be wrong is a
contradiction in and of itself.
MORAL REALISM
The concept that good is something intrinsic, perceived by intuition, can be labeled
Moral Realism, and is largely the basis for several branches of applied philosophy that
have the same name. Prichard believed that in order for something to be morally good,
human intuition had to perceive it to be such, otherwise labeling it good would be
artificial. The label is meaningless unless the mind and intuition are convinced that the
item being discussed is actually good. In this sense, morality is defined by whether or
not we consider it to be good intuitively instead of defined by some actual goodness that
is measurable.
Thus, goodness is something real, not something simply perceived, and it can only be
perceived by another real phenomenon - intuition. The very concept of creating a
standard system for evaluating whether or not something was good would undermine
the very point that is being stressed: that the goodness comes before the process, and
that it must be found, not that the process is the end-all.
That is, something is intrinsically good if it is so. That goodness is not dependant on a
process finding it to be good, instead, a process that doesnt find it to be so is simply
flawed. The evaluation we should engage in is of the process and not of our calling
things good.
For example, Prichard believed that truth held intrinsic goodness. Should moral theorists
contrive a process that indicates truth to be good, then that process should be given
validity and is great. If, however, that process doesnt find truth to be good then that
doesnt change the fact that truth is good. Instead, the process is flawed. By knowing
that truth is always good, we can test all of our processes to see if they also find truth to
be good.
MORAL APPLICATION TO EVALUATION

The application of this to moral evaluation is important, as Prichard continues in Does
Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?:
Now it is easy to show that the doubt whether A is B, based on this speculative or
general ground, could, if genuine, never be set at rest. For if, in order really to know
that A is B, we must first know that we knew it, then really, to know that we knew it, we
must first know that we knew that we knew it. But-what is more important-it is also easy
to show that this doubt is not a genuine doubt but rests on a confusion the exposure of
which removes the doubt. For when we say we doubt whether our previous condition
was one of knowledge, what we mean, if we mean anything at all, is that we doubt
whether our previous belief was true, a belief which we should express as the thinking
that A is B. For in order to doubt whether our previous condition was one of knowledge,
we have to think of it not as knowledge but as only belief, and our only question can be
was this belief true?
But as soon as we see that we are thinking of our previous condition as only one of
belief, we see that what we are now doubting is not what we first said we were doubting,
viz. whether a previous condition of knowledge was really knowledge. Hence, to remove
the doubt, it is only necessary to appreciate the real nature of our consciousness
apprehending, e.g. that 7 x 4 = 28, and thereby see that it was no mere condition of
believing but a condition of knowing, and then to notice that in our subsequent doubt
what we are really doubting is not whether this consciousness was really knowledge, but
whether a consciousness of another kind, viz. a belief that 7 x 4 = 28, was true. We
thereby see that though a doubt based on speculative grounds is possible, it is not a
doubt concerning what we believed the doubt concerned, and that a doubt concerning
this latter is impossible.1
The most important applications are in the general philosophy of realism, which
contends that things are what they are. Other applications are especially in the field of
international relations, where the nature of the political system is unchanging. Realism
would still maintain that in this system, only certain things are inherently good.
LINCOLN DOUGLAS DEBATE

APPLICATIONS
The most effective means of using Prichard in a debate round would be as a counterwarrant to Kant or Berkeley, or to undermine claims to moral high ground. Inevitably,
your opponent will claim that some action is warranted because it is based on a moral
principle that must be upheld, be it justice, truth, or fairness. In order to question
the interpretation of that principle and call into question what it means, a utilization of
Prichard would be helpful.
In terms of Kant and Berkeley, Prichard serves as a warrant to the general realist
mindset, something that is fundamentally contrary to the beliefs of commonly cited
liberals. The application is useful in defining ideal state foreign policy, by following a
Thucydian or Machiavellian system of politicking. That is, Prichard could be cited as
proof that there exists a single set system of values when it comes to foreign policies,
and thus that states should work towards promoting their own interests since other
states will not agree to a cooperative effort, or will, at least, betray one if it does exist.
In terms of other applications, it seems especially useful to undermine the general claim
by many debaters to the moral high ground. This can be achieved by using Prichards
argument that moral theory in general is illegitimate, and thus that there is no effective
means of proving one thing to hold moral superiority over another. Moral theory
assumes that morality can be debated, or can have differing explanations by various
philosophers. Prichard rejects this, and uses a set standard.
In addition, Prichard offers a unique avenue of criterion argumentation, because his

theory requires the consideration of prima facie variables that many weighing
mechanisms to not take into account. Prichard would be a perfect counter-warrant to a
utilitarianism criterion, whether its Mill or Moore.
Prichard could also helpful in value and criterion argumentation in another way. His
process of evaluating definitions opens the door to criticizing an opponents
interpretation of a concept based on what it excludes.
That is to say, if in the context of a round an opponent claims that your argument does
not fall within the realm of her value as defined. You could then argue that the exclusion
of your argument or example constitutes a reason to reject your opponents definition.
The evaluation, however, is applied to the process of defining instead of to the object
being excluded.
Clearly, there exist a number of ways that Prichard would be useful in LD debate rounds,
especially since his concepts are sufficiently non-unique to allow their application to a
variety of issues.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MacAdam, Jim. MORAL WRITINGS. Editors Introduction. New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
2002.
Prichard, H.A. Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? MORAL WRITINGS, Ed. Jim
MacAdam.
New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.
Prichard, H.A. Duty and Interest MORA LWRITINGS, Ed. Jim MacAdam. New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 2002.
Prichard, H.A. Green: Political Obligation MORAL WRITINGS, Ed. Jim MacAdam. New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.
Prichard, H.A. Kants Fundamental Principles of Metaphysic of Morals MORAL WRITINGS

, Ed. Jim
MacAdam. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.
Prichard, H.A. KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION: ESSAYS AND LECTURES. London: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1950.
Prichard, H.A. Moral Obligation MORAL WRITINGS, Ed. Jim MacAdam. New York: Oxford
Univ. Press,
2002.
Prichard, H.A. What is the Basis of Moral Obligation? MORAL WRITINGS, Ed. Jim
MacAdam.
New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002.
Sobel, J.H. GOOD AND GOLD: METAETHICS FROM G. E. MOORE THROUGH J. L. MACKIE-- A
JUDGEMENTAL HISTORY. Univ. of Toronto, Feb 2003.
ESTABLISHMENT OF ETHICAL OR
MORAL TRUTHS IS IMPOSSIBLE
1. MORALS ARE INTUITIVE
Quentin Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, ETHICAL AND
RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, 1986,
http://www.qsmithwmu.com/ethical_and_religious_thought_in_analytic_philosophy_of_lan
guage_contents_page.htm , Accessed June 1, 2003 p-np.
Perhaps a suggestion by H. A. Prichard might solve this problem and provide us with the
absolute justifications that are needed. Prichard is the second most influential ethical
philosopher among the logical realists (after Moore), primarily owing to his classic article
Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? published in 1912. Prichard argues that
moral philosophy rests on a mistake because it assumes that there needs to be a proof
that we ought to do what in our nonreflective ethical consciousness we immediately
apprehend as our obligations. There needs to be no proof, Prichard contends, because
our nonreflective ethical consciousness is an intuitive knowledge of self-evident
obligations.
2. NORMATIVE VALUES ARE BASED ON FLAWED LOGIC

Prichard responds to the objection that obligation cannot be self-evident, since many
actions regarded as obligations by some are not so regarded by others, by asserting
that the appreciation of an obligation is, of course, only possible for a developed moral
being, and ... different degrees of development are possible. [19] But this brief response
wont do because it involves a vicious circularity. How do we know which persons are
more morally developed than others? Is the person who intuits capital punishment to be
immoral more morally developed than the person who intuits it to be morally
permissible in some cases? How can we decide without knowing which intuitions are
true? It seems we have a vicious circle: the criterion for determining which of two
conflicting moral intuitions is true is that the intuition held by the more morally
developed person is true, but the criterion for determining which of the two persons is
morally developed is that the more morally developed one is the person with the true
intuition. It does not appear, then, that Prichard has offered us a means of solving the
problem of conflicting intuitions.
3. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH THE TRUTH OF VALUES

The above considerations about the unknowability of ethical truths suggest that human
life is objectively meaningful but absurd. Human life is objectively meaningful because
there is a good in itself, and some of our beliefs about the good in itself are true, but
human life is absurd because we cannot know which of our beliefs are true. This
conclusion hinges in part upon the definition of absurdity. Generally speaking,
something is absurd if it is grossly disproportionate with what it is supposed to be, such
that this disproportionateness renders the thing or activity clearly contrary to reason.
The notion of absurdity as applied to human life implies that human life is grossly
disproportionate (in a way that is clearly contrary to reason) to what it is supposed to be.
There are at least two ways that human life can be absurd, namely, through being
objectively meaningless and absurd or through being objectively meaningful and absurd.
In the philosophical literature, only the first sort of absurdity has been discussed, for
example, by Albert Camus and Thomas Nagel. I shall illustrate the first sort of absurdity
in terms of Nagels theory because he discusses a specifically ethical sort of absurdity,
and this is directly relevant to our present concerns (Camuss theory is of a religious
absurdity). I shall then explore the meaningful absurdity that is arguably implied by the
logical realist ethical philosophy.
GOOD MOTIVE DOESNT IMPLY GOOD

MORALITY
1. IMPOSSIBLE TO DETERMINE MOTIVE
Hans J. Morgenthau, Political Scientist, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS: THE STRUGGLE FOR
POWER AND PEACE, 1978, p. 4.
To search for the clue to foreign policy exclusively in the motives of statesmen is both
futile and deceptive. It is futile because motives are the most illusive of psychological
data, distorted as they are, frequently beyond recognition, by the interests and emotions
of actor and observer alike. Do we really know what our own motives are? And what do
we know of the motives of others?
2. MOTIVE DOSEN'T PROVIDE ANY ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND ACTIONS

Hans J. Morgenthau, Political Scientist, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS: THE STRUGGLE FOR
POWER AND PEACE, 1978, p. 12.
Yet even if we had access to the real motives of statesmen, that knowledge would help
us little in understanding foreign policies, and might well lead us astray. It is true that
the knowledge of the statesman's motives may give us one among many clues as to
what the direction of his foreign policy might be. It cannot give us, however, the one
clue by which to predict his foreign policies. History shows no exact and necessary
correlation between the quality of motives and the quality of foreign policy. This is true
in both moral and political terms. We cannot conclude from the good intentions of a
statesman that his foreign policies will be either morally praiseworthy or politically
successful. Judging his motives, we can say that he will not intentionally pursue policies
that are morally wrong, but we can say nothing about the probability of their success. If
we want to know the moral and political qualities of his actions, we must know them, not
his motives. How often have statesmen been motivated by the desire to improve the
world, and ended by making it worse? And how often have they sought one goal, and
ended by achieving something they neither expected nor desired?
MORALITY IS NECESSARY
1. MORAL CERTAINTY IS NECESSARY FOR EFFECTIVE FOREIGN POLICY
Michael Duffy, Analyst, CNN, MARCHING ALONE, September 2, 2002.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/02/time.marching/index.html. Accessed May
23, 2003.
p-np.
There is a deeper worry within the party too: that after 20 months in office, Bush relies too
heavily on moral certainty to make decisions overseas and not enough on the same kind of
forceful, black-and-white distinctions when making decisions at home. Bush's experience
as a businessman should give him a persuasive voice on economic problems, but thus far
it hasn't. Yet overseas, where Bush's experience is more limited and his advisers are
divided, he is running greater risks and relying on a moral code that almost everyone
believes will be difficult to maintain. The Republican stalwarts who spoke to Time were
quick to say they did not want Bush to abandon his preference for the stark choice; they
just argued that he should do less of it abroad and more of it at home. Failing to do so,
they warned, could endanger his chances at a second term. More than most presidential
candidates, Bush promised during his campaign to look heavenward for guidance if
elected. In nearly every speech he talked about putting his hand on the Bible and told
voters he didn't need polls to know what to do, so help him God. And yet campaign
promises are not the only reason--nor the most important reason--that moral certitude
plays such a crucial role in Bush's decisions overseas. He came to office largely ignorant of
foreign affairs. His team split immediately--and deeply--after his Inauguration into two
fiercely divided camps, and is already scarred by the pitched battles between the
conservative wing, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, and the pragmatists under
Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lacking his father's deep reservoir of experience to draw
upon, how does Bush resolve his advisers' titanic disagreements? He goes with his gut. He
relies on an instinctive sense of who is good and who is bad overseas--and then he sticks
at all costs with the call he has made. His confidence in this process has grown with his
success in Afghanistan. He took to heart the lesson that he should trust his moral sense
and have faith in what a former Clinton aide, not without admiration, calls "rising
dominoes"--the sense that if Bush unfurls a big bright flag and marches toward the
mountains, the world will follow.
2. COMMON MORAL FOUNDATION STRENGTHENS OBLIGATION

Rittberger Volker, University of Tbingen, CONSTRUCTIVIST FOREIGN POLICY, Foreign
Policy Theory, 1999, p 35.
The strength of obligation attached to a norm depends on the extent to which it is
shared by the units within a social system. [ 7 ] We can speak of a high degree of
commonality if all the actors in a social system, for example the member states of an
international organization, share a certain value-based expectation of behavior. If a
certain expectation is shared "only" by a majority of actors, then it possesses a medium
degree of commonality. Low commonality prevails when only a minority of actors shares
a certain expectation of behavior. In the last case, it is impossible to formulate a
constructivist prediction for a states foreign policy because constructivists hold that a
norm can only be ascribed influence on a states behavior if it can claim at least a
medium degree of commonality (see Legro 1997).
EXCLUDING MORALS FROM LEGITIMATE

TRUTHS JUSTIFIES WAR
1. LACK OF MORALS IN REALISM JUSTIFIES WAR
Timothy Lomperis, Department of Political Science, St. Louis University, FLAWED
REALISM: HANS MORGENTHAU AND KENNETH WALTZ ON VIETNAM, 1999,
http://www.townhall.com/phillysoc/lomperisflawed%20realism.htm, Accessed June 1,
2003, p-np.
Some of Morgenthaus most basic tenets on Vietnam were consistent with his balance of
power theory. Unlike Waltz, he did understand the importance of China and of an Asian
balance of power. He insisted that China is, even in her present underdeveloped state,
the predominant power in Asia; and that, as a great power, is potentially the greatest in
the world. 13 With this acknowledgement, he readily conceded that China was a direct
threat to the global balance of power as well: since the expansion of Chinese power and
influence, threatening the Asian and world balance of power, proceeds by political rather
than military means, it must be contained by political means. 14 Here Morgenthaus
predisposition towards multipolarity readily accommodated China to his multipolar
structure and to Chinas integral role in this global balance of power. His insistence in
his writings on the unique role of national character, however, permitted him to relegate
Chinese expansionism to the political and cultural spheres rather than to the military. As
a balance of power theorist in which all great powers are central actors to the system,
he also argued that a U.S. policy of isolating China was both undesirable and impractical.
Influence is something, he observed, that could not be walled off. 15 This also applied
to his concern about the excessively ideological cast to the justification of the Vietnam
War. Such universalistic crusades tended to overwhelm more prudent calculations of
national interest; and, as a realist, he believed no state should formulate foreign policies
on behalf of universal moral principles. In this, he was joined by Kenneth Waltz. 16
Interestingly, Waltz also joined Morgenthau in seeing Vietnam as a potentially fatal
seduction to the temptation of excessive power. Waltz saw this as inherent to the
inordinate concentration of power in any bipolar system. The saving grace was that
both superpowers would be equally prone to this temptation, and their follies of
intervention would tend to offset each other. Morgenthau agreed that such hubris
emanated from a bipolar system, and this was one of the many reasons why he
preached the superior virtues of a multipolar system. Such irrational acts as Vietnam
would be less likely with several other great power players and adversaries to worry
about. 17 Indeed, although Morgenthau never detailed any concrete regional balances
of power as a discrete level-of-analysis, his multipolar global perspective permitted him
to come close in that he understood the global balance of power to result from a
combination of a dominant balance of power and local systems. His lament, however,
was that the bipolar system of the Cold War had stripped local balances of all autonomy
and made them subservient to the new world-wide balance of which the United States
and the Soviet Union are the main weights. 18 In this, with respect to Vietnam, he was
nearly wrong.
AYN RAND
LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHER 1905 1982
Life and Work

Ayn Rand was born Alyssa Rosenbaum to a wealthy family in St. Petersburg, Russia. The
Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917 resulted in the forced expropriation of the Rosenbaum family
business and reduced the family from riches to normalcy. Alienated by communism, the
young Alyssa left the Soviet Union after graduating from college, changed her name, and
settled in Hollywood, California. After learning English, she worked as a screenwriter for
motion pictures and tried, initially unsuccessfully, to publish her fiction. Upon the
successful publication of her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Rand
continued to write prolifically, both fiction and philosophy, until seven years before her
death in 1982.
Rand was responsible for the renewal of libertarian thinking in the United States during a
time otherwise dominated by liberal-left thought. As a political and moral philosopher,
her importance lies in her
development of Objectivism, both an epistemological and moral/political movement
which embraced radical individualism, a disdain for any governmental limits on
capitalism, and thorough disgust for the liberal-lefts welfare policies. This philosophy,
while never embraced by the scholarly philosophical
community, became very popular in the 1960s and 70s as an alternative to the
egalitarian New Left quasi-socialism of Herbert Marcuse and others.
Objectivism
Metaphysically, Objectivism holds that certain absolute truths exist, that truth is not
relative or contextdependent. Rand always identified relativism with liberal-left thinking, believing that the
same metaphysical dodging that led thinkers away from objective truths was also
responsible for their failure to see the poor and downtrodden for what they really were
failures, humans of lesser ability than those who were more successful in the game of
life. If, Rand reasoned, there were certain correct absolute truths, it followed that there
were certain sure paths to success--hard work, ruthlessness and unashamed
competitiveness--which if denied would lead to an inauthentic, unsuccessful life.
Socially and politically, Rands philosophy embraced an individualism more radical than
even early capitalist and individualist thinkers such as Adam Smith. Whereas Smith
grudgingly acknowledged that government intervention was sometimes necessary to
ameliorate the misery of the poor, Rand saw no such obligation. In the human world, like
the natural world, only the strong should survive. Capitalism is the most authentic,
objective system because it divides the strong, wise and successful people from those
lacking in ability or drive. Absent any government interference, a natural process will
separate the best individuals from those with nothing to contribute.
But even if society was not better off for this ruthless and competitive individualism,
capitalism was still ethically superior to socialism because it is the individual, not the
collective, that receives the highest moral consideration in Rands view. Not only did she
believe that the state has an obligation to ignore the poor; she also held that individual
acts of charity were futile and unethical. Charity for Rand was motivated by a
pathological guilt over being successful. The authentic individual feels no such guilt and
knows that welfare handouts, whatever the source, only perpetuate the delusion of
equality and social responsibility.
The best political order, therefore, is one which recognizes the absolute sanctity of
private property and individual rights. Any attempt by governments to limit these things
was doomed to fail and immiserate civil society. This was true not only because of the
logistical failure of communism or the welfare state; it was true by the very nature of
reality. Since Rands ontological view presumed that the individual was the absolute
starting point of philosophical analysis, the notions of collective rights or common
property were self-contradictory. Only individuals can have rights or property. At times,
Rand even went so far as to deny the reality of concepts such as culture and race,
claiming that these were intellectually lazy abstractions. A collective, a culture, a race;
these were nothing more than large groups of individuals and should be analyzed as
such.
As noted, Rands diatribic ideas never caught on in academic circles. They did, however,
influence many other political thinkers. The current Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Board, Alan Greenspan, was a student of Rand and still considers himself an Objectivist.
And Rand herself was a guest of honor in 1981 at the swearing in of President Ronald
Reagan.
Problems of Radical Individualism

Naturally, Rands ideas met with considerable indignation from those who did not share
her vision of ruthless Darwinian individualism. Professional scholars saw her
metaphysical Objectivism as too simplistic; the irrevocable law of thought just did not
correspond to the often contradictory and vague working of genuine experience. Even if
some objective truth did exist, they reasoned, this did not automatically allow for its
philosophical cataloguing, and since Rand was not trained as a philosopher, she usually
had no patience for the long and complicated work involved in justifying universal
principles. Indeed, academic philosophy has long since written off her epistemological
writings.
Her moral and political writings, while enjoying more success than her hard philosophy,
have also been
met with attitudes ranging from shrugging dismissal to outrage. Since Rand boldly took
to the individual as her ontological starting point, using this principle to justify moral and
social individualism, an obvious objection has been that atomistic individualism does not
correspond to real human experience. Socialism and Liberal thinkers give more attention
to the reality of the community. They reason that human identity is largely the product
of social interaction. For example, if I were to write twenty five or so phrases that
described me, they would likely include things like my name, my profession,
organizations to which I belong, activities, and the like. But most of these so-called selfdescriptions are really descriptions of my social world. In fact, as communitarians argue,
an individual stripped of all her social attributes would be extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to describe. Rands atomistic individual may make sense in a world
populated by Robinson Crusoes, each living on their own little (well-resourced) islands,
but that is not the way we live.
Finally, Rands belief in the perfectibility of capitalism strikes many as naive and selfserving. Socialists have not only argued that capitalism results in undesirable
consequences; they have also argued that capitalism is intrinsically flawed, that it
contains contradictions within itself that make consequences like recessions,
depressions and wars inevitable. Although Rand believed that rational capitalists would
never go to war, socialist thinkers note that the expansion of markets and the imperative
of profit-seeking often compromise otherwise irrational people.

Ayn Rand was one of the most prolific writers of our time, and debaters will find a myriad
of her writings useful in philosophical and political debates. Obviously, she is a key
source on the value of individualism.
Additionally, her arguments against moral relativism, group rights and egalitarianism will
probably get a great deal of use on any topic. Debaters interested in using her work
ought to read one or two of her novels as well, since those stories are fully congruent
with her philosophical work. Debaters should be aware, however, that few informed
people are neutral about Ayn Rand. Most people either adore or despise her ideas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, James Thomas. AYN RAND (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987).
Bmnden, Barbara. THE PASSION OF AYN RAND (Garden City, New York: Doubleday,
1986).
Branden, Nathaniel. JUDGMENT DAY: MY YEARS WITH AYN RANN (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1989).
_________ WHO IS AYN RAND? (New York: Random House, 1962)
Harry Binswanger, ed. THE AYN RAND LEXICON OBJECTIVISM FROM A TO Z (New York:
Meridian, 1988).
Douglas J. Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen, eds. THE PHILOSOPHIC THOUGHT OF AYN
RAND (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984).
Ellis, Albert. IS OBJECTIVISM A REUGION? (New York: L. Stewart, 1968).
Gladstein, Mimi Riesel THE AYN RAND COMPANION (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1984).
Merrill, Ronald E. THE IDEAS OF AYN RAND (La Salle: Open Court, 1991).
Peikoff, Leonard. OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND (New York: Random
House, 1961).
Rand, Ayn. FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL (New York: Random House, 1961).
_____. CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL (New York: New American Library, 1967).
_____. THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS (New York: New American Library, 1974).
_____._PHILOSOPHY: WHO NEEDS IT (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982).
. INTRODUCTION TO OBJECTIVIST EPISTEMOLOGY (Second Edition)(New York: NAL

Books, 1990).
MORAL ABSOLUTES EXIST

1. RELATIVISM IGNORES REALITY
Ayn Rand, Philosopher, The Cult of Moral Grayness, in Harry Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN
RAND
LEXICON, 1988, p. 3.
Just as, in epistemology, the cult of uncertainty is a revolt against reason--so, in ethics,
the cult of moral
grayness is a revolt against moral values. Both are a revolt against the absolutism or
reality.
2. IGNORING MORAL ABSOLUTES LEADS TO COWARDICE AND FEAR

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Altruism as Appeasement, in Harry Binswanger (E&). THE AYN
RAND LEXICON, 1988, p. 309.
Moral cowardice is the necessary consequence of discarding morality as inconsequential.
It is the common symptom of all intellectual appeasers. The image of the brute is the
symbol of an appeasers belief in the supremacy of evil, which means--not in conscious
terms, but in terms of his quaking, cringing, blinding panic--that when his mind judges a
thing to be evil, his emotions proclaim its power, and the more evil, the more powerful.
3. MORAL RELATIVISM DESTROYS CULTURE AND CHARACTER

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, How Does One Lead a Rational Life in an Irrational Society, in
Harry Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN RAND LEXICON, 1988, p.309.
Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a mans character as thoroughly as
does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral
judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good
consists of never distinguishing good from evil.
HUMAN NEEDS ARE MORE IMPORTANT

THAN ECOLOGY
1. HUMANS MUST DOMINATE NATURE IN ORDER TO SURVIVE
Ayn Rand, Philosopher, THE NEW LEFT: THE ANTI-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, 1971, p.
136. In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which
means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not
equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. from the
most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture
things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe
cannot survive without the alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that
fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are
the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire.
2. SCIENCE AND LAWS CAN SOLVE POLLUTION WITHOUT SACRIFICING INDUSTRY Ayn
Rand, Philosopher, THE NEW LEFT: THE ANTI-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, 1971, p. 89. As
far as the issue of actual pollution is concerned, it is primarily a scientific, not a political,
problem. In regard to the political principle involved: if a man creates a physical danger
or harm to others, which extends beyond the line of his own property, such as
unsanitary conditions or even loud noise, and if this is proved, the law can and does hold
him responsible. If the condition is collective, such as in an overcrowded city,
appropriate and objective laws can be defined, protecting the rights of all those
involved--as was done in the case of oil rights, air-space rights, etc. But such laws cannot
demand the impossible, must not be aimed at a single scapegoat, i.e., the industrialists,
and must take into consideration the whole context of the problem, i.e., the absolute
necessity of the continued existence of industry--if the preservation of human life is the
standard.
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS TAKE PRECEDENCE

OVER COLLECTIVE NEEDS
1. INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS ARE THE KEY TO ALL CIVIUZATION
Ayn Rand, Philosopher, A Nations Unity, in Harry Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN RAND
LEXICON, 1988, p. 214.
Individual rights is the only proper principle of human coexistence, because it rests on
mans nature, i.e., the nature and requirements of a conceptual consciousness. Man
gains enormous values from dealing with other men; living in a human society is his
proper way of life--but only on certain conditions. Man is not a lone wolf and he is not a
social animal. He is a contractual animal. He has top~ his life long-range, make his own
choices, and deal with other men by voluntary agreement (and he has to be able to rely
on their observance of the agreements they entered.)
2. NO SUCH THING AS COLLECTIVE RIGHTS

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Collectivized Rights, in Harry Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN
Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression individual rights is a
redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in todays intellectual
chaos.) But the expression collective
rights is a contradiction in terms. Any group or collective, large or small, is only a
number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the tights of its individual
members.
3. ANY COLLECTIVE MUST BE BASED ON INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Collectivized Rights, in Harry Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN RAND
LEXICON, 1988, p. 108.
The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations. Any
group that does
not recognize this principle is not an association, but a gang or a mob.
4. COLLECTIVISM ENSLAVES AND SUBJUGATES THE INDIVIDUAL

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, The Only Path to Tomorrow, READERS DIGEST, Jan. 1944, p. 8.
Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group--whether to a race, class
or state does not matter. collectivism hods that man must be chained to collective action
and collective thought for the sake of what is called the common good.
5. EGALITARIANISM VIOLATES NATURE

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, THE NEW LEFT: THE ANTI-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, 1971, p.
164. Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and
the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to
abolish the unfairness of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in
fact--in defiance of facts. Since the Law of Identity is impervious to human manipulation,
it is the Law of Causality that they struggle to abrogate. Since personal attributes or
virtues cannot be redistributed, they seek to deprive men of the consequences--of the
rewards, the benefits, the achievements created by personal attributes.
6. INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MAJORITY RULE

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Textbook of Americanism, in Harry Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN
If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist Doctrine of unlimited majority
rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything
done by a majority is right because its done by a majority (this being the only standard
of right and wrong)--how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is
the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of
that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and
all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and
murder first, before he is robbed and murdered.
CAPITALISM IS SUPERIOR TO
SOCIALISM
1. THERE SHOULD BE NO LIMITS TO CAPITALISM
Ayn Rand, Philosopher, The Objectivist Ethics, in Harry Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN
When I say capitalism, I mean a full pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire
capitalism--with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same
reasons as the separation of state and church.
2. TRUE CAPITALISM IS THE ONLY WAY TO AVOID WAR

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, 1966, p. 38. Laissez-faire
capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual tights and,
therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. By the nature of its
basic principles and interests, it is the only system fundamentally opposed to war.
3. DESPITE PROBLEMS, CAPITALISM IMPROVES LIFE

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, PHILOSOPHY: WHO NEEDS IT, 1982, p. 66.
Never mind the low wages and the harsh living conditions of the early years of
capitalism. They were all that the national economies of the time could afford.
Capitalism did not create poverty--it inherited it.
Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in
the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive. As
proof--the enormous growth of the European population during the nineteenth century, a
growth of over 300 per cent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 per
cent per century.
4. SOCIALISM REQUIRES TYRANNY

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, The Monument Builders, in Harry Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN
There is no difference between the principles, policies and practical results of socialism-and those of any historical or prehistorical tyranny. Socialism is merely democratic
absolute monarchy--that is, a system of absolutism without a fixed head, open to seizure
of power by all comers, by nay ruthless climber, opportunist, adventurer, demagogue or
thug. When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that
there is no such dichotomy as human rights versus property rights. No human rights
can exist without property tights. Since material goods are produced by the mind and
effort of individual men, and are needed to sustain their lives, if the producer does not
own the result of his effort, he does not own his life. To deny property rights means to
turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the tight to redistribute
the wealth produced by others is claiming the tight to treat human beings as chattel.
5. SOCIALISM IS IRRATIONAL AND IMPRACTICAL

Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World, in Harry
Binswanger (Ed.). THE AYN RAND LEXICON, 1988, p.465.
The fallacies and contradictions in the economic theories of socialism were exposed and
refuted time and time again, in the Nineteenth Century as well as today. This did not and
does not stop anyone: it is not an issue of economics, but of morality. The intellectuals
and the so-called idealists were determined to make socialism work. How? By that magic
means of all irrationalists: somehow.
Answering Objectivism
Introduction
Its a pleasure to be writing on the philosophical errors of one of the weakest ideological
movements ever. Objectivism, a perverse melting pot of conservative laissez-faire
economics, radical anarchist individualism, and heterosexist hedonism, is Ayn Rands
vision of what reason concludes must be the universal truth about metaphysics,
epistemology, ethics, and politics. John W. Robbins book long critique of Ayn Rand offers
a quotation by Benjamin Franklin: So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable
creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to
do. Ayn Rand was certainly a master of rationalizing what her egotism demanded for
satisfaction. Objectivism makes claims to individuality while historically being a greater
force for close-mindedness and collectivism.
Rands objectivism tends to be big among the youth and some big time capitalists, but
its reach stops there. Academically, Rands work and the work of self-proclaimed
objectivists after her is not respected enough to be looked at. As a philosophical thinker,
especially one who claimed to be devoted to logical argument, Rands work is filled with
holes and contradictions made especially apparent in the work of John W. Robbins
Answer to Ayn Rand. The objectivist movement has been hampered by closemindedness and even sexism, classism, and homophobia brought out especially well by
Jeff Walkers The Ayn Rand Cult. Rands fiction, commonly found on lists of the top 100
books of the 20th century, is condemned with great hostility by the most heavily
schooled of literary critics and literature professors for its weak themes, singledimensioned and unbelievable characters, and its romance novel tenor. Even with all of
her devotees, she has yet to influence a single mind that has achieved publicly
acclaimed success, with the possible exception of Alan Greenspan (who works at a job
that objectivism technically thinks is immoral since it controls the markets). Despite all
of this, her fiction sells millions of copies, even so many years after her death. Anthem
and The Fountainhead are read in high school English classes across America, pushed by
a scholarship contest held annually. If you attend NFL nationals you will even be sure to
see a representative from the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) at a booth hoping to recruit
people for the movement.
First, let us identify the object of our refutation. Objectivism is a theodocy of

capitalism, replacing the cross with the dollar sign. Incidentally, objectivists would find
that offensive because they claim not to believe in religion or god, although they might
admit to worshiping their own egos. Individuals are their own deities in Rands world.
Objectivism argues that selfishness is a virtue and that the focal point of all creative
action and progress comes from a persons rational calculations about their own
potential. It isnt entirely clear what objectivism means by rational or reason, but
these words are common in objectivist philosophy and are thought to be objectively
obvious to people who are worthy of the philosophy. Common sense and logic dominate
objectivist epistemology, and Rand will even claim that philosophies of reason and
rationality should be used to dominate ones own feelings about everything. Objectivists
love Aristotle in particular for his use of logic in argument (the same guy who thought
objects fell twice as fast if they were twice as heavy).
Political And Ethical Implications

These philosophical ideas have some interesting implications for ethics and politics.
Ethically, objectivists are very hedonistic, despite all of the self-control. Reason tends to
rationalize desire in objectivism instead of desire being created by reason. Respect for
others is explicitly against the tenets of objectivism if it means sacrifice, and
Christianity, Kant and Marx are reviled as the movements great Satans because their
perspectives involve collectivism. Rands objectivism hates nothing more than living for
others because it means that ones own creative potential is going to waste. She likens
the condition to slavery, and condemns altruisms of all kinds no matter what their
intentions. The influence by Nietzsche and his superman here is obvious, although
Rand herself denied it.
Objectivist politics are very libertarian. Objectivists want to actualize their own potential
in a selfish free market economy, so the goal of any good government is to facilitate that
and to avoid restricting it. Despite the parallels in her beliefs with libertarians, Rand and
her objectivists rejected any connections with them because they would not adhere to
objectivist tenets on egotism and rationality. Objectivists claim not to be anarchists, but
the philosophy tends to be pretty vague on what sort of government exists and how it
should be constituted. Some descriptions by Rand mirror Robert Nozicks protective
associations (see his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia) where a person could potentially
be protected by several governments that were not restricted by geopolitical borders.
On the other hand, the primacy of the individual in objectivism makes it entirely possible
that such governments would not having binding authority upon individuals except
through threat of force (which Rand does not believe would be necessary in an
objectivist nation because all of the citizens would be objectively rational and therefore
would not disobey the rational decisions made by a government).
Attacking Objectivism
You might already see that there are some things about objectivism that will make it
difficult to answer. Although objectivism is seriously flawed as a persuasive argument
against societal rights, and despite how extremist objectivism is as a whole philosophy,
you are unlikely to debate against someone advocating it in its entirety. In fact, it is
highly unlikely that your opponent will acknowledge many of the flaws we will go over
here since objectivism tends to be obscure on its own details. Also, some of the ideas
are highly appealing to mainstream Americans who are centrists or right-wingers.
Individual rights and their protection are staples of American identity. Free market
capitalism is the rage of the last decade, following increases in globalized trade and
increased individual investments in the stock market. While communism is dead,
capitalism dominates the world.
The best place to begin an attack on objectivism is its zealous love of selfishness.
Objectivism shamelessly claims that selfishness is the highest virtue and the most basic
value from which all others come. They simultaneously attack altruism as an evil to be
guarded against because it means slavery to others. Simply stating that this is what
objectivism means should be helpful to you for three reasons. First, it gives you some
great rhetorical moral high ground to work from. It will be easy to paint your opponents
case as insensitive, even to the most obvious moral wrongs, because individuals would
be too selfish to acknowledge the needs or feelings of others. Civic duty is not
necessarily recognized by objectivists, and an objectivist government would probably
not think of civic duty at all. Second, it is highly likely that your opponent will grant that
you are correct about objectivisms love of selfishness. Objectivists fall in love with the
doctrine and tend to repeat it straight out of The Fountainhead. If they know anything
about objectivism, they should agree that it advocates selfishness prior to altruism. They
should also be especially adverse to the idea of sacrifice, which Rand condemns
unconditionally. Objectivists expect complete reciprocity in all exchanges. Only robbers
expect something for nothing. Finally, your judges should be easily moved by your
attack no matter how much they love free market capitalism. Most judges have families,
friends, religious communities, or other things that they care about for altruistic reasons.
The will very likely agree with your position that objectivism carries individualism too far,
especially if you can trap your opponent by implying that there is no mechanism for
ensuring that individual objectivists do not ignore their communitys needs and dictates
altogether.
It is possible that your objectivist opponent will argue that the only reason that we ever
care about other people is because they add something to our lives. This line of
reasoning appears to prove that the root of our care for others is still only our selfish
care for our selves. Kantian arguments effectively refute that tactic. Objectivists appear
to be using people as means to an objectivists ends. That proves beyond any doubt
that objectivists will harm people, because people are only valuable to the objectivist
insofar as they benefit the objectivists life. We might even hypothesize that objectivists
will harm other people if they wish to gain benefit from such harm. Your opponent would
respond that objectivists never harm others because that is a form of slavery to them,
but this claim is ridiculous. If doing wrong to others is slavery, why is gaining from their
friendship not slavery? Your opponent cannot have cake and eat it too.
Rand's Fiction
It is also possible that your opponent will draw heavily from Ayn Rands fiction for
arguments. Anthem is Rands vision of a post-apocalyptic world where people have
forgotten their individuality. The narrator moves from a state of slavery, where he
appears unable to refer to himself in individual terms using words only like we as selfreferences, to a state of enlightened self-empowerment when he rediscovers the word
I. While Rand is probably correct that most people in our society shouldnt devote
themselves entirely to others, she fails to consider that most people in society dont care
for the reverse either. The Fountainhead follows the difficult career of an architect with a
gift for beautiful designs, but hated by the whole world for his unapologetic selfishness.
Perhaps most bizarre among Rands fiction is Atlas Shrugged, the story of a group of
corporate CEOs who answer the unfair demands of their employees by going on strike,
causing a global collapse into anarchy and chaos. Bill Gates, Rupert Murdock, and
Donald Trump all disappear and the world is so lost without their inspiring leadership and
economic brilliance that civilization dies out.
There are some important things to know about these books. First of all, the main
characters are totally unrealistic. The protagonists are unrealistically cold, logical, and
stoic to the point of being programmed. Apparently, objectivists have no character flaws,
as though following reason alone were possible all of the time. Antagonists are always
unbelievably low, cowardly, and obtuse. Rands narrative does not count as argument
and you should not let your opponent refer to characters in these books as realistic
examples of how people behave.
Second, objectivisms ideals as portrayed by Rand are white men. In the three books I
have mentioned, the ideal characters are always white men. Atlas Shrugged is told from
the perspective of a woman, Dagny, but Rand downplayed her powerful status in the
novel, and most of it surrounds Dagnys calculation over which of the men to surrender
herself to. Walkers critique points out that Rand claims the diamond band Dagny wears
on her wrist, gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained
(116). Female protagonists in Rands novels are frequently raped, but they all are
portrayed as really wanting to be. On a talk show, Rand openly denounced feminism and
claimed that women holding positions of responsibility such as President of the United
States was ridiculous. Walker tops off his review of Rands sexism quoting her from a
letter that, an ideal woman is a man-worshiper (116).
Racial minorities are non-existent. One wonders if Rand even knew that they existed. No
one in Rands fiction is presented as a racial or ethnic minority. In fact, Rand pays no
attention at all to employment barriers, discrimination, hate speech, or harassment.
These things are all irrelevant to an objectivist because he will always succeed at his
task no matter what is thrown at him. In The Fountainhead, the main character is
repeatedly thrown out of jobs, but doesnt seem to care. One cannot be certain that
Rand was aware that segregation happened in the South during the very time she was
writing her works. She probably opposed civil rights legislation because it offered special
treatment or protection to people who should have been able, according to Rand, to
succeed in any circumstances if they just believed in their own egocentric powers. Rand
very likely thought that Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and all others were simply
whining about their mistreatment and should get a job. Poverty, by the way, was nothing
to speak of for Rand since all individuals are completely responsible for their own fates.
Objectivism unapologetically blames people for their own social status.
Rationality
In addition to believing that people are never oppressed (except for capitalist CEOs),
Rand doesnt appear to acknowledge the power of emotions on people. Objectivists
unrealistically believe in the power of their rationality to control their feelings, even
choosing relationships with other objectivists out of rational choice rather than
emotional attraction. Nathaniel Brandon, a psychologist in the objectivist movement and
a number two to Rand for many years, admits to messing up many of his patients by
insisting on their need to repress feelings with rationality. Objectivism has no respect for
irrationality or irrational people, and Robbins goes so far as to suggest that objectivists
might not even respect the rights of such people, subjecting them to oppression or even
genocide.
That suggestion would fit in well with the Kantian view that objectivists simply use all of
the people in their lives, never really caring about them. It is also consistent with what
Rand has to say about politics. Rand argues at some points that the source of a persons
rights is a persons choice to use reason. The implication of this might be that people
who do not use whatever objectivists think is reason would not have any rights that an
objectivist was bound to respect. Differences in culture, health, ability, gender, and most
anything else were totally irrelevant.
Objectivity itself would not appear to be a culturally sensitive or vaguely tolerant point
of view since it refers to a universal truth that Rand claims can be known and should be
obvious to everyone who isnt insane. It seems to be a massive contradiction that
individualism should be so celebrated by a movement while the movement is
simultaneously claiming that there is only one truth and anything that deviates from it is
too irrational to respect. Any claim to common sense is simply an attempt to avoid
thinking critically about a subject. Do not let your opponent get away with failure to
explain what reason is. They cannot define it, and they are only hiding behind the
phrase common sense so that they can gloss over the weak logic of objectivist theory.
Homosexuality, according to objectivists and especially Rand, was irrational and

therefore unacceptable. While some critics of objectivism, such as Robbins, attack
objectivism for its apparent hedonism, Walker portrays objectivisms cult-like control
over its members as prescribing certain types of behavior through its subjective
definitions of what was rational. Objectivist psychologists were clearly not in favor of a
hedonism that sacrifices rationality, and since homosexuality was irrational (for reasons
that are not specified by objectivists) then it is also wrong. It is an interesting doublestandard considering Rands own approval of open-marriages and multiple sexual
partners, examples of obvious hedonism, while homosexual relationships would not
appear to necessarily involve greater personal pleasure than any other monogamous
relationship.
This brings us to a necessary warning. Be careful not to claim that objectivists were
totally hedonistic while attacking objectivists for oppressively controlling their emotions.
While it is probably the case that these two things exist in objectivism to certain degrees
that are attackable, it is also probably true that you do not have enough time to explain
your way out of an apparent contradiction if your opponent calls you on it.
Perspectives Critiquing Rand

It is also unlikely that you will be able to prepare an entire case in response to an
objectivism argument, but if somehow you do there are three good options: Marxism,
Kants Deontology, and libertarianism. Marx is the least likely to be persuasive since
most Americans arent too keen on communism, but a couple of Marxist arguments have
some rhetorical value that you might consider making use of in the debate. Marx
complained that capitalism reduced workers to dehumanized labor, a point that Rand
gleefully grants and prides herself in displaying as a virtue. The idea that money isnt
everything should be persuasive to many people. Post-Marxist and anti-globalization
critiques of capitalism could also go very far against objectivism. Free market capitalism
might be great to the individual, but it also lets those individuals damage the lives of
many others by moving plants to find the cheapest labor, the fewest environmental
restrictions, and the greatest wealth of resources for exploitation. Sweatshops, pollution,
and massive development debts are all products of the victory of capitalism. Claiming
unapologetically that individual economic gain is the highest value allows you to beat
them over the head with these great examples of collective duties that are ignored.
Immanuel Kants deontological ethical theory is probably my favorite answer to

objectivism. Kant might let Nazis in his home to get Jewish friends of his just so that he
can avoid lying, but Ayn Rand doesnt advocate lying to them either. Two useful things
go with Kants categorical imperative: First, the imperative treats all human beings as
ends in themselves, while Rand claims that the only people with rights are the ones who
have claimed them by asserting reason. We dont really know what reason is, even while
both Kant and Rand claim to know what it is, but only Rand denies humanity to those
that do not agree with her vision of reason. Second, Kants categorical imperative is a
clearer and more objective test of universal law than Rand gives us. Kant tells us not to
act in a way that we would not like to be treated, while Rand just says that we must be
stupid if we dont already know what is rational. Kant is a great strategy to use if you
believe that your judge will vote on the flow because all of the good arguments against
Kant apply just as well to objectivism.
Libertarianism would be an ugly, dirty way of dealing with objectivism. It would claim all
of the beneficial values of objectivism without the selfish rhetoric and anti-social
egotism. Claiming the central ground and arguing that your opponent is too extreme is a
classic strategy that keeps on working. Probably the only flaw with this strategy is that it
undercuts your ability to attack objectivisms love for the free market. On the other
hand, what is objectivism going to say against you?
Conclusion
Objectivism takes the worst parts of capitalism, individualism, and utilitarianism and
claims them as virtues. Arguing for objectivism is very daring, but not very strategic. It
makes grandiose claims about truth, humanity, rights, and justice without anything to
justify such claims except that they are self-serving for capitalists. Why should the
individuals selfishness be the source of all rights and values? Objectivism cannot
answer this question because the individuals selfishness is the first premise of the
movement. Without having faith that selfishness should be the center of ones
existence, there is no justification for anything else claimed by objectivists.
You should expect to have to answer values like individualism, autonomy, or rights. I
think that it is a stretch for your opponents to try to argue objectivism with any other
sort of value since it flies in the face of what Rand called the very source of objective
reason and purpose for living. Justice is a plausible value, but the sort of justice they
have to advocate with objectivism leaves them open to attacks that the philosophy is
entirely self-serving, defining justice according to Wall Street. Objectivists have a hard
time demonstrating that their philosophy does not nullify principles surrounding just
action because they attempt to base both justice and lifes purpose in personal gain.
Why should a person act just if they can gain from injustice? Objectivism tries to say that
objectivists do not want to steal from others because it is better for ones own ego to
earn things, to avoid a vulture-like slavery to others. I do not think that objectivism is
very clear about why the desire to avoid being a vulture will be enough to deter
objectivists from acting unjust toward others.
The philosophy of objectivism really lacks big sticks. There do not appear to be any
consequences for acting immoral or unjust since the governments job is to stay out of
the way and the individual is the final arbiter of objective reason. The only reason the
government exists, according to Rand, is to settle disputes over property between
objectivist citizens, but we must wonder how objectivists could be objectively reasonable
and still have disputes. Either they know what is objectively right or they do not. The
utopian state of CEOs imagined by Rand in Atlas Shrugged does include a judge for
settling disputes, but the characters in the book report that they have never had need of
him. Perhaps Rand is interested in government because she thinks that not all people
will have objective reason and so objective capitalists will need protection from the
ignorant masses.
A debate round against an objectivist is likely to be muddled in a ships passing in the

night contest if you simply assert what objectivism is and they disagree. Use your crossexamination to flush out exactly what your opponent means by objectivism and they use
whatever attacks apply. No matter what, you should be able to make use of
objectivisms selfishness and its ignorance of the oppression of racial and gender
minorities. It should also be implicit that your opponent is not interested in social justice
or improving the lives of others altruistically. Painting the philosophy of objectivism as
more greedy than selfish, more self-centered than is necessary for happiness should be
more than enough to win you the ballot. Grant out that individualism is great, but argue
that a moderate take on it is much better for everyone, not just Bill Gates.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AYN RAND LETTER, THE. Volumes 1-4, 1971-1976. New Milford: Second Renaissance,
1990.
Branden, Barbara. THE PASSION OF AYN RAND: A BIOGRAPHY. New York: Doubleday,
1986.
Branden, Nathaniel. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-ESTEEM: A NEW CONCEPT OF MANS

PSYCHOLOGICAL NATURE. New York: Bantam, 1969.
Branden, Nathaniel. JUDGMENT DAY: MY YEARS WITH AYN RAND. Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
Collier, James Lincoln. THE RISE OF SELFISHNESS IN AMERICA. New York: Oxford
Den Uyl, Douglas J., and Douglas B. Rasmussen, eds. THE PHILOSOPHIC THOUGHT OF
AYN RAND. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
Ellis, Albert. IS OBJECTIVISM A RELIGION? New York: Institute for Rational Living, 1968.
Erickson, Peter. THE STANCE OF ATLAS: AN EXAMINATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN

RAND. Portland: Herakles Press, 1997.
Gladstein, Mimi Reisel. THE AYN RAND COMPANION. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Press, 1984.
Greenberg, Sid. AYN RAND AND ALIENATION: THE PLATONIC IDEALISM OF THE
OBJECTIVIST ETHICS. San Francisco: Sid Greenberg, 1977.
Mayhew, Robert, ed. AYN RANDS MARGINALIA. New Milford: Second Renaissance, 1995.
Merrill, Ronald E. THE IDEAS OF AYN RAND. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1991.
Peikoff, Leonard. THE OMINOUS PARALLELS: THE END OF FREEDOM IN AMERICA. New
York: New American University, 1882.
Peikoff, Leonard. OBJECTIVISM: THE PHILOSOPHY OF AYN RAND. New York: Dutton, 1991.
Rand, Ayn. FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL. New York: Random House, 1961.
Rand, Ayn. THE NEW LEFT: THE ANTI-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. Revised 2nd edition. New
York: Signet, 1963.
Rand, Ayn and Nathaniel Branden. THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS. New York: New
American Library, 1964.
Robbins, John W. ANSWER TO AYN RAND. Washington D.C.: Mount Vernon Publishing,
1974.
Walker, Jeff. THE AYN RAND CULT. Chicago: Open Court, 1999.
A special thank you to Jeff Walker for answering questions related to the writing of this
article.
OBJECTIVIST REASON IS FLAWED AND

DANGEROUS
1. OBJECTIVIST CLAIMS TO REASON ARE AS DANGEROUS AS THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONS
John W. Robbins, Ph.D in political philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, ANSWER TO
AYN RAND, 1974, p.4
Humanism is the heart of the ideological underpinnings of both the French Revolution
and of Objectivism, and there is reason to fear that the practical results of the latter will
be similar to those of the former, if no coherent criticism is made of Objectivism. It is
ironical that the greatest danger to human beings is humanist thought. The main
presupposition of all humanist thought is the autonomy of reason, that is, all humanist
philosophers claim that their philosophies are independent of religious presuppositions.'
This claim is quite explicit in Rand, for throughout her work, she draws a hard and fast
line between "reason" and faith," maintaining that her philosophy, and hers alone is
based upon "reason," ("Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies, and integrates
the material provided by his senses.")" while all others (with the possible exception of
Aristotle to the degree that he agrees with Rand) are based upon "faith." ("Faith is the
commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs, for which one has no sensory evidence or
rational proof.")" Objectivism is the only rational philosophy; all others are irrational.
Indeed, "rational philosophy" is redundant: only philosophy can be rational; if a system
of thought is not based upon and governed by "reason" it is irrational, mystical and
religious. It follows logically from this that the label philosophy may be assigned only to
Objectivism, while all other systems are religious, i.e., mystical.
2. OBJECTIVISM IS AS DOGMATIC AS THE HUMANISTS IT ATTACKS

AYN RAND, 1974, p.7
In her philosophy of Objectivism, Rand is compelled to insist upon the autonomy of
"reason," i.e., its independence of religious ideas, more vigorously than any other
contemporary or recent philosopher. She has even requested that the term "reason" be
engraved on her tombstone." Other philosophers have been influenced or overwhelmed
by the depth psychologies, by radical historicism, or by existentialism and have
questioned the traditional certitudes of secular thought, including the presupposition of
theoretical autonomy. Prior to this modern skepticism, this dogma of autonomy was
accepted uncritically, and it has been Rand's goal to reaffirm the autonomy of "reason"
". . . as the ultimate judge in matters of truth and falsehood" " on pain of skepticism.
Rand is the modern champion of "reason" against the modern philosophical skeptics. But
"reason" is simply a cue word that has been used by all varieties of humanists since the
world began. Its derivatives, "reasonable," "unreasonable," "rational" and "irrational" are
the necessary verbiage of all socialist legal systems, which are established to eliminate
"unreasonable risks" to citizens or establish "reasonable standards" for their behavior.
The word "reason" is a great empty vessel into which any and all meanings may be and
have been poured; without it or its equivalent it is inconceivable that humanist thought
and society could exist." Her position, and the position of all secular thinkers, is made
problematic, not only by modern skepticism, but also by the lack of one definite meaning
for the word "reason." As Dooyeweerd points out, the traditional dogmatic view of
philosophical thought . . . implies that the ultimate starting point of philosophy should be
found in this thought itself. But due to the lack of a univocal sense, the pretended
autonomy cannot guarantee a common basis to the different philosophical trends. On
the contrary, it appears again and again that this dogma impedes a real contact
between philosophical schools and trends that prove to differ in their deepest, supratheoretical presuppositions.
OBJECTIVISM CANNOT LEGITIMIZE

POLITICAL ACTIONS
1. RAND'S PHILOSOPHY LEADS TO SKEPTICISM, HEDONISM, AND ANARCHY
AYN RAND, 1974, p. np
Her epistemology, sensation plus abstraction, leads only to skepticism, not to
knowledge. Chapter two is a digest of the many ambiguities and difficulties in Rand's
epistemological theory which concludes with Branden's admission that even though all
the evidence might point to a specific conclusion, one can never be sure. This, of course,
is skepticism. Rand's ethics, being founded on an amoral choice, not on the "facts of
reality," result in hedonism. Then her entire ethical edifice collapses because she has
built it on a non-existent bridge across Hume's gap. Her politics, deriving from her theory
of the sovereign individual, leads straightway to anarchism, not to a society or state, but
to a "voluntary association of men acting only in their individual self-interest."
2. OBJECTIVISM IS ONLY AN UNMITIGATED HEDONISM

AYN RAND, 1974, p.97
If, then, pleasure and pain are trustworthy guides to morality, we have here a
formulation of unmitigated hedonism. Infallible guides to right and wrong courses of
action are not to be disobeyed, particularly when such infallible guides are the unique
source of moral knowledge. Whatever would overrule these infallible guidespleasure
and painmust be suspect, for on what basis, aside from sense experience, are contrary
judgments to be made? Identification of the good with pleasure and of the evil with pain
is properly called hedonism. Rand writes that, Sensations are an automatic response,
an automatic form of knowledge, which a consciousness can neither seek nor evade. An
organism that possesses only the faculty of sensation is guided by the pleasure-pain
mechanism of its body, that is: by an automatic knowledge and an automatic code of
values."
3. OBJECTIVISM IS CONTRADICTORY ON WHY GOVERNMENT IS NECESSARY

AYN RAND, 1974, p.123
Our first question must be, if government be the right of self-defense externalized and
objectified, why should men "delegate" their prior rights to the state? Unlike Plato and
Aristotle, who taught that the state is prior to man, the individual, Rand teaches that
man, the individual, is prior to the state. The priority may not be temporal, but it is
logical and moral. Why, then, should individuals surrender their rights to an "objective"
agency? The answer given by Rand appears to be: because men are evil. Such, in
essence, is the proper purpose of a government, to make social existence possible to

men, by protecting the benefits and combating the evils which men can cause to one
another. Lest the argument be misunderstood, the question is not whether some (or all)
men commit specific evil actions, for Rand is quite willing to admit that some men do
and thereby deserve to be called evil men. The question is whether or not all men are
ethically evil by nature, whether or not there is a one hundred percent chance of a man
doing evil at some time. It is this idea of Original Sin that Rand castigates as "this
monstrous absurdity." " For Rand, as for the Enlightenment thinkers. Nature is
normative: "To hold man's nature as his sin is, a mockery of nature." " It must be
concluded then that Rand believes man to be naturally good, or at least morally neutral.
Now these two beliefs, namely that government is necessary, and that man is naturally
neutral or good are in conflict. The conflict erupts into view in Rand's essay:
"Conservatism: an Obituary." Rand attacks the view that government is necessary
because man is depraved: This argument runs as follows: since men are weak, fallible,
non-omniscient and innately depraved, no man may be entrusted with the responsibility
of being a dictator and of ruling everybody else; therefore, a free society is the proper
way of life for imperfect creatures. Please grasp fully the implications of this argument:
since men are depraved, they are not good enough for a dictatorship; freedom is all that
they deserve; if they were perfect, they would be worthy of a totalitarian state. As the
author has pointed out before,'''" the argument is persuasive only because Rand
juxtaposes two contradictory concepts: perfect man and totalitarian state. This is a
variant of the fallacy of the stolen concept: "totalitarian state" presupposes evil men.
The argument is forceful only because Rand contradicts herself.
OBJECTIVISM IS OPPRESSIVE
1. RANDS CALCULUS IS SUBJECTIVE AND DENIES THE HUMANITY OF OUTSIDERS
AYN RAND, 1974, p.109
How did the argument move from physical survival as the ethical standard to "man qua
man," i.e., to a "standard" already bristling with value judgments? By this substitution
Rand may attack an action which leads to survival as "evil" because it does not lead to
the kind of survival she has implicitly selected as proper for man." Rand smuggles ethics
into her system by the backdoor: she switches the standard from survival to a certain
kind of survival. (Perhaps it is best to emphasize here that the physical survival of man is
the survival of man qua man. After all, man has not become a plant or an animal simply
because he wants to survive at any price: he has merely become a coward, or a
dictator.) Rand's subtle substitution points up the centrality of what might be called the
doctrine of forfeiture in her ethics and politics: the doctrine consists in the notion that
men who act in a certain way or ways forfeit their humanity.
2. OBJECTIVISM PRESCRIBES CORRECT USE OF RIGHTS, ENSLAVING US ALL

AYN RAND, 1974, p.119
If the proper function of government is "to secure these rights then does it not follow
that it is the proper function of government to see that every man uses his mind, his free
judgment, and forces him to work and to keep the product of his work, i.e., to do those
things that Objectivism says are right? If one finds these consequences distasteful, one
should re-read the argument and find where the train of thought has derailed. Petulance
is not an argument. In short, if the source of man's "rights" is himself, then he also
becomes the source of violations of those "rights." "Rights" may 'then be violated by a
Robinson Crusoehis ownsimply because he may act against his own best interests.
3. OBJECTIVISM INEVITABLY LEADS TO ANARCHY

AYN RAND, 1974, p.125
Objectivism leads logically to anarchy, because if the individual is sovereign, he may not
properly be forced to "delegate" his rights to the state or government. The Sovereign
Individual has every right to refuse to pay taxes, ignore subpoenas, refuse to serve in
the armed forces, ignore courts of law, avoid jury duty, retaliate against the police force,
and take all measures necessary to the preservation of his rights, including, one
supposes, since government is entirely derivative, issuing subpoenas, forming his own
armies, and establishing his own courts and judicial procedures.
4. RAND LEGITIMIZES GENOCIDE AGAINST THOSE WHO DONT EXERCISE REASON

AYN RAND, 1974, p. np.
Since infants, as well as unborn children are not human by Rand's definition, there would
be no immorality in infanticide. To my knowledge Rand has not publicly endorsed that
position, but on pain of inconsistency, she must. For the same reason, her philosophy
leads logically to the approbation of euthanasia. In fact, because men make themselves,
some are better made than others, who are rather poorly made. Logically, then, Rand
will be forced to approve the liquidation of imbeciles, morons, idiots, the retarded, and
mediocre who don't think, the men who . . . do not choose to think, but survive by
imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they
learned from others, never making an effort to understand their own work, . . . mental
parasites. . . etc., until the small group known as Objectivists is all that is left. By that
time, however, her following will have increased greatly, as people seek to prove their
humanity to that most human animal of all, Ayn Rand. To those of you who recoil in
disgust, horror, or petulance from such a conclusion, I say: that is where the argument
leads; if you do not like the conclusion, check the premises'" Do not substitute rhetoric
for logic and harangues for argumentation. If Aristotle and Rand are wrong in drawing
conclusions' from their premises, demonstrate it; but do not refuse the conclusions and
accept the premises.
OBJECTIVISM IS HOMOPHOBIC AND

SEXIST
1. OBJECTIVISM CONDEMNS HOMOSEXUALITY
Jeff Walker, Carleton University, THE AYN RAND CULT, 1999, p.118
Are homosexual feelingsas Branden implies in The Psychology of Self-Esteem (1969)
neurotic, unhealthy, and so non-integral to anyone experiencing them that one should
be able to put some distance between those feelings and the core self, as a first step
toward identifying and eradicating the thoughts that generated them? He implies that
adolescents flee into homosexuality because they are taught that sex is evil. Here,
changing ones sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual is just another
psychological problem to target and resolve. It is likely that Branden's view of
homosexuality had repercussions. Former colleagues recall Branden's policy during his
New York City days of changing his seat in a restaurant if an evidently gay man sat down
at the next table. That aversion was unfortunate given the disproportionate number of
gays among political libertarians, many out-of-the-closet, and within the Objectivist
movement, all very much closeted. Gay libertarian Roy Childs went to Branden as a
client in 1971. By that time, recalled Childs, Branden was no longer blatantly
homophobic, but was still of the opinion that homosexuality resulted from some sort of
neurotic turn in the personality and could be corrected. In 1971 Branden told the
libertarian magazine Reason that it remained his view that homosexuality was not a
valid option. This would have been a source of distress for homosexual Objectivists. As
Branden himself wrote in 1994, "When we behave in ways that conflict with our
judgment of what is appropriate, we lose face in our own eyes." At her Ford Hall
appearance in 1971 Rand was asked whether she considered homosexuality immoral
and if so, why. She blurted, "Because it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors,
or unfortunate premises, but there is a psychological immorality at the root of
homosexuality. Therefore I regard it as immoral. . . . Its proper among consenting
adults, . . legally. Morally, it is immoral. And more than that, if you want my really
sincere opinion, its disgusting." In Rand's view then, five percent of U.S. males should
dis-esteem themselves for having engaged in at least one such disgusting, inhuman,
immoral, and irrational behavior. Whereas Rand regarded homosexuality as consciously
chosen behavior contrary to man's nature, New Zealand's leading neo-Objectivist
Lindsay Perigo, himself gay, offers: "From introspection and observation, I don't believe
volition plays a part in sexual orientation at all."
2. OBJECTIVISM IS SEXIST AND CHARACTERIZES WOMEN AS WANTING RAPE

Jeff Walker, Carleton University, THE AYN RAND CULT, 1999, p.115
The American popular culture which greeted Rand on her arrival in 1926 offered a
'modern' and 'emancipated' model for women. Henceforth women were to wear pants,
smoke cigarettes, look like men, and think like men. The chain-smoking, cape-swirling
Rand, with her independent females as fictional heroines, may seem at first to fit this
picture. Rand announced that women were the equals of men and, in general, she said
she was all for women pursuing the same careers as men. But as so often with Rand, on
this issue she seems to have been overwhelmed by her own blind emotions, and then to
have rationalized these as the voice of Reason. The movie Female, which Rand, at that
time a passionate movie fan, may well have watched shortly after its release in 1933,
has a Dagny-type heroine successfully running the car factory she had inherited from
her father (but unable to find a man who will dominate her romantically, while letting her
dominate in business). All of Rand's major fictional heroines are eager to be possessed
and treated roughly by their ideal man. They are all sexually submissive borderline
masochists. They all experience rapes or near-rapes, which, naturally, they really want
all along. When Rand was in her mid-thirties, she depicted Roarks quasi-rape of actress
Vesta Dunning in a chapter of The Fountainhead later deleted: "What she saw in his face
terrified her: it was cold, bare, raw cruelty. . . . When he threw her down on the bed, she
thought that the sole thing existing, the substance of all reality for her and for everyone,
was only to do what he wanted." And even thereafter, Roarks love for Dominique, Rand
wrote in the planning stages of the novel, will be "merely the pride of a possessor." In
Atlas Shrugged Rand tells us that the diamond band on Dagnys naked wrist "gave her
the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained."
John Rawls
Political Philosopher
John Rawls, a philosophy professor at Harvard University, interest surrounds the issue of
justice as Fairness. Rawls early work assumes a well-ordered society, one that is
stable, relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad
agreement about what constitutes the good life. However, in modern democratic society
a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines--religious, philosophical, and
moral--coexist within the framework of democratic institutions. In an attempt to explain
Rawls theory, this essay will examine his notions of: (1) society, (2) Justice as Fairness,
(3) political power and action, (4) values, and (5) application to debate
Indeed, free institutions themselves encourage this plurality of doctrines as the normal
outgrowth of freedom over time. Recognizing institutions as a permanent condition of
democracy, Rawls asks how can a stable and just society of free and equal citizens live
in concord when deeply divided by reasonable though incompatible doctrines? His
answer is based on a redefinition of a well-ordered society. It is no longer a society
united in its basic moral beliefs, but in its political conception of justice, and this justice
is the focus of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines. That is,
to say that a society is well-ordered conveys three things: first it is a society in which
everyone accepts and knows that everyone else accepts, the very same principles of
justice, and second, its basic structure--that is, its main political and social institutions
and how they fit together as one system of cooperation--is publicly known, or with good
reason believed to satisfy these principles. Finally, its citizens have a normally effective
sense of justice and so they generally comply with societys basic institutions, which
they regard as just. In such a society the publicly recognized conception of justice
establishes a shared point of view from which citizens
claim on society can be judged.
As an answer to contemporary views of justice, justice as fairness is now presented as

an example of such political conception; that it can be the focus of an overlapping
consensus means that, understood as a political conception, it can be endorsed by the
main religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines that endure over time in a wellordered society. Such an overlapping consensus of reasonable doctrines, Rawls believes
represents the most likely basis of social unity available in a constitutional democratic
regime. Were it achieved, it would extend and complete the movement of thought that
began three centuries ago with the gradual if reluctant acceptance of the principle of
toleration. This process would end with the full acceptance and understanding of modern
liberties. In sum, Rawls argues that the evaluation of values of liberty and equality have
long been controversial. Rawls contends that the aim of justice as fairness is to resolve
the controversy in which the fair terms of cooperation are agreed upon by citizens so
conceived.
In presenting a theory of justice Rawls has tried to bring together into one coherent view
the ideas expressed throughout his writings. Rawls assumes that a diversity of
reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines found in democratic societies is
a permanent feature of the public culture and not a mere historical condition soon to
pass away. Granted all this we ask: When may citizens by their vote properly exercise
their coercive political power over one another when fundamental questions are at
stake? To this question political liberalism replies: Our exercise of political power is
proper and hence justifiable only when it is exercised in accordance to our constitution.
Rawls argues that the constitution provides citizens with reasonable and justifiable
principles that guide our action. The reliance on the constitution and other documents,
Rawls labels, as the liberal principle of legitimacy. Rawls notion of legitimacy is that
public reasoning and value should be found in common sense and the methods of
science.
Rawls contends that there are two kinds of political values. The first are the values of
political justice. These values fall under the principles of justice for the basic structure:
the values of equal political and civil liberty; equality of opportunity; the values of social
equality and economic reciprocity; and let us add also values of the common good as
well as the various necessary conditions for all these values. Second, are the values of
public reason. These values fall under the guidelines for public inquiry, which make the
inquiry free and public. Also included here are such political virtues as reasonableness
and a readiness to honor the moral duty of civility, which as virtues of citizens help to
make possible reasoned public discussion of political questions.
The integration of Rawls theory into academic debate can take a number of forms.
Initially, any debate that focuses around the value of justice, liberty or fairness should
invite a discussion of Rawls. In addition, the debater could use Rawls to justify the value
of justice and provide the criteria of fairness to evaluate the value. In addition, Rawls has
much to say about political practice insofar as justice is concerned. For example, the
debater could use Rawls work on civil disobedience, or moral authority to respond to a
number of value claims.
Bibliography
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DEMOCRACY IS A DESIRABLE VALUE

1. LIBERALISM ASSUMES A DEMOCRATIC IDEOLOGY
John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. xvi.
Political liberalism assumes that, for political purposes, a plurality of reasonable yet
incompatible comprehensive doctrines is the normal result of the exercise of human
reason within the framework of the free institutions of a constitutional democratic
regime. Political liberalism also supposes that a reasonable comprehensive doctrine does
not reject the essential of a democratic regime.
2. TRUE LIBERTY REQUIRES FREEDOM

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 202-3.
Thus persons are at liberty to do something when they are free from certain constraints
either to do it or not to do it and when their doing it or not doing it protected from
interference by other persons. If, for example, we consider liberty of conscience as
defined by law, then individuals have this liberty when they are free to pursue their
moral, philosophical, or religious interests without legal restrictions requiring them to
engage or not to engage in any particular form of religious or other practice, and when
other men have a legal duty not to interfere. A rather intricate complex of tights and
duties characterizes any particular liberty. Not only must it be permissible for individuals
to do or not to do something but government and other persons must have a legal duty
not to obstruct I shall not delineate these rights and duties in any detail, but shall
suppose that we understand their nature well enough for our purposes.
3. DEMOCRACY EFFECTIVELY ALLOCATES RESOURCES John Rawls, Professor-Harvard,

POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 176-177.
The first idea--that of goodness as rationality--is, in some variant, taken for granted by
almost any political
conception of justice. This idea supposes that the members of a democratic society
have, at least in an intuitive way, a rational plan of life in the light of which they
schedule their more important endeavors and allocate their various resources (including
those of mind, body, time and energy) so as to pursue their conceptions of the least in a
sensible (or satisfactory), way.
VALUES ARE DEFINED BY SOCIAL

INSTITUTIONS AND ACTIONS
1. DUTIES AND RIGHTS ARE DEFINED BY INSTITUTIONS John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A
THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 7.
Taken together as one scheme, the major institutions define mens rights and duties and
influence their life-prospects, what they can expect to be and how well they can hope to
do. The basic structure is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so
profound and present from the start. The intuitive notion here is that this structure
contain various social positions and that men born into different positions have different
expectations of lie determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic
and social circumstances. In this way the institutions of society favor certain starting
places over others.
2. GOODNESS IS DETERMINED BY ACTION

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 59.
One kind of injustice is the failure of judges and others in authority to adhere to the
appropriate rules or interpretations theory in deciding claims. A person is unjust to the
extent that from character and inclination he is disposed to such actions. Moreover,
even where laws and institutions are unjust, it is often better that they should be
consistently applied. In this way those subject to them at least know what is demanded
and they can try to protect themselves accordingly; whereas there is even greater
injustice if those already disadvantaged are also arbitrarily treated in particular cases
when the rules would give them some security.
3. VALID LAWS MUST BE COMPLIED WITH

The real question is under which circumstances and to what extent we are bound to
comply with unjust arrangements. Now it is sometimes said that we are never required
to comply in these cases. But this is a mistake. The injustice of a law is not, in general, a
sufficient reason for not adhering to it any more than the legal validity of legislation (as
defined by the existing constitution) is a sufficient reason for going along with it.
VALUES SHOULD BE ASSESSED BY

JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS
1. JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS ASSUMES INDEPENDENCE FROM PRIOR IDEOLOGIES
John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993, p. 9.
The aim of justice as fairness, then, is practical: it presents itself as a conception of
justice that may be shared by citizens as a basis of a reasoned, informed, and willing
political agreement It expresses their shared and public political reason. But to attain
such a shared reason, the conception of justice should be, as far as possible,
independent of the opposing and conflicting philosophical and religious doctrines that
citizens affirm.
2. FAIRNESS IS APPLICABLE TO POLITICAL SYSTEMS

John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, POLITICAL LIBERALISM, 1993p. 223.
In saying a conception of justice is political I also mean three things: that it is framed to
apply solely to the basic structure of society, its main political, social, and economic
institutions as a unified scheme of social cooperation; that it is presented independently
of any wider comprehensive religious or philosophical
doctrine; and that it is elaborated in terms of fundamental political ideas viewed as
implicit in the public political culture of a democratic society.
3. MUST REJECT VALUES THAT ARE UNFAIR

A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue;
likewise laws and
institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if
they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the
welfare of society as a whole cannot
override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right
by a greater good shared by others.
4. SOCIETY IS WELL-ORDERED WHEN MEETS RULES OF JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS John Rawls,

Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 5.
A society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its
members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. That
is, it is a society in which (1) everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the
same principles of justice and (2) the basic social institutions generally satisfy and are
generally known to satisfy these principles.
VALUES SHOULD BE ASSESSED BY

JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS Part 2
1. JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS IS A BE1TER CRITERION THAN UTILITARIAN PRINCIPLES
Justice as fairness is a deontological theory in the second way. For it is assumed that the
persons in the original position would choose a principle of equal liberty and restrict
economic and social inequalities to those in everyones interests, there is no reason to
think that just institutions will maximize the good. (Here I suppose with utilitarianism
that the good is defined as the satisfaction of rational desire). Of course, it is not
impossible that the most good is produced but it would be coincidence.
2. JUSTNESS OF SOCIETAL STRUCTURE MOST IMPORTANT

When the basic structure of society is reasonably just, as estimated by what the current
state of things allows, we are to recognize unjust laws a binding provided that they do
not exceed certain limits of injustice. In trying to discern these limits we approach the
deeper problem of political duty and obligation. The difficulty here lies in part in the fact
that there is a conflict of principles in these cases. Some principles counsel compliance
while others direct us the other way. Thus the claims of political duty and obligation
must be balanced by a conception of the appropriate priorities.
3. WEALTH AND INCOME MUST BE TO EVERYONES ADVANTAGE

The second principle applies in the first approximation, to the distribution of income and
wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and
responsibility, or chains of command. While the distribution of wealth and income need
not be equal, it must be to everyones advantage, and at the same time, positions of
authority and offices of command must be accessible to all. One applies the second
principle by holding positions open, and then, subject to this constraint, arranges social
and economic inequalities so that everyone benefits.
Answering Rawls
Introduction
Few American philosophers have had the public political impact of John Rawls. A Harvard
philosopher concerned with questions of distribution and participation, Rawls has
influenced politicians as well as academics ever since the 1971 publication of his treatise
A Theory of Justice . That work provided the foundation for long-held liberal welfare
statism, the view that the government has a responsibility founded in both morality and
practicality to take care of the poor. The work questioned long-held assumptions that the
poor were poor due to some fault of their own, and vindicated the previous decades
War on Poverty by raising the possibility that, indeed, any one of us could be poor.
In fact, Rawls veil of ignorance, wherein we ought to choose public policies and social
philosophies as if we had no idea of our particular stations in life, has served to question
many deeply held prejudices regarding economic marginalization, discrimination,
educational elitism, and public morality. It is safe to say that no twentieth century
American philosopher save John Dewey has had the kind of impact John Rawls has had.
In this essay I shall examine Rawls two major works: A Theory of Justice and Rawls
1993 sequel, Political Liberalism. Rawls modified his views considerably between the
first book and the second, and it is important to note exactly how his philosophy
changed. But the main thrust of this essay is that, as a liberal welfare statist, Rawls is
really an idealist, markedly ignorant of the material antecedents of poverty and
oppression. Because of this ignorance, Rawls works are at best unrealizable ideas, and
at worst prescriptions for a kind of elitist reformism which obscures these causes of
poverty and oppression, and risks undermining the potential for genuine social change.
This essay, therefore, is less a flat-out rejection of Rawlsian justice, and more a
lamentation that such ideas are considered before and without considering those
genuine structural changes, which absolutely must take place before we can live in the
kind of world we might wish to create from behind a genuine (and fair) veil of ignorance.
In essence, my argument is: Good idea, impossible to implement in a world of
capitalism, elitism, discrimination, and ideological hegemony.
Rawls Theory of Justice

Rawls initial theory provides both a normative view of the desirable world and the
criteria to justify the kinds of decisions that will result in such a world. Rawls normative
vision in A Theory of Justice is clearly one where there are not huge differences, and
huge tensions, between the haves and the have-nots. The reason these inequalities
should not exist is, essentially, that people do not deserve their economic fate in the
same way that they deserve other kinds of rewards and punishments. Rawls believes
that people are poor as a matter of fortune, not choice. In order to prove this, and to
provide a test through which we can come to the conclusion that a welfare system would
be desirable, Rawls posits a hypothetical veil of ignorance, in an original position.
Rawls argues that if a group of us were sitting around deciding how society should be
planned out, and if we had no awareness of where we, as individuals, would end up in
such a society, we would agree on two basic principles: that there be equality of
opportunity and rights; and that whatever inequalities actually existed ought not to
disadvantage the poor too much. These two principles form the core of Rawls initial
theory:
The first principle guarantees the right of each person to have the most extensive basic
liberty compatible with the liberty of others. The second principle states that social and
economic positions are to be (a) to everyone's advantage and (b) open to all. A key
problem for Rawls is to show how such principles would be universally adopted, and here
the work borders on general ethical issues. He introduces a theoretical veil of ignorance
in which all the players in the social game would be placed in a situation which is called
the "original position." Having only a general knowledge about the facts of life and
society, each player is to make a rationally prudential choice concerning the kind of
social institution they would enter into contract with. By denying the players any specific
information about themselves it forces them to adopt a generalized point of view that
bears a strong resemblance to the moral point of view. Moral conclusions can be
reached without abandoning the prudential standpoint and positing a moral outlook
merely by pursuing one's own prudential reasoning under certain procedural bargaining
and knowledge constraints
(http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Forum/meta/background/Rawls.html).
One ought to immediately notice that the basis of Rawlsian society and Rawlsian social
justice is intellectual, not moral or emotional. Rawls is arguing that we would rationally
(and, probably, through our own self-interest) choose a society where the poor would be
provided for, since none of the people in the original position know where they will end
up.
For two decades after the publication of A Theory of Justice, philosophers debated the
merits of the Rawlsian formula. Although there were some disagreements about the
feasibility of such a formula, and people sometimes objected to the rationalistic (rather
than moral) basis of the formula, philosophers generally agreed that Rawls had made a
powerful case for a social system that did not let the poor slip through the cracks.
Eventually, however, Rawls would modify his theory, because he felt that it was a little
too absolutist. In place of maxims requiring adherence to two principles, Rawls later
work would emphasize pluralism and cooperation. He would come to believe that there
was a more important question than distributive justice; namely, how diverse people
with differing beliefs could co-exist in a pluralist society.
Rawls Political Liberalism

The result of Rawls reconsideration was a step back from his concern with economic
justice. Although still concerned with poverty and inequality, by 1993 Rawls was more
concerned with getting along. Like Richard Rorty, Rawls had perhaps come to accept
the inevitability of economic inequality, and had been sobered by the supposed failure of
planned economies. For whatever reason, Rawls Political Liberalism represented a
retreat from the absolutist rationalism of A Theory of Justice .
The thesis of Political Liberalism was that people living in a pluralist democracy ought to
participate in public deliberation (he called it deliberative democracy) in a reasonable
and non-doctrinaire way. Rawls did not see this thesis as a complete abandonment of his
earlier concern for justice; instead, he modified his two principles of justice in this way:
In addition to the changes in the process of justifying justice as fairness, there are some
significant changes in Rawls's views of the two principles of justice. Here is how they are
stated in Political Liberalism:
1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and
liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme
the equal basic liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be
attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of
opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged
members of society
(http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Forum/meta/background/Rawls_pl.html).
While Rawls still believed that these principles were important, he was willing to
subordinate them to public discussion, because his new enemy was the tendency of
people in diverse groups to bring their comprehensive doctrines into public discussion.
He was troubled, for example, by people debating about abortion and holding to moral
absolutes, which guaranteed people would always talk past each other. He objected to
religious extremism, believing instead that people ought to take whatever parts of their
religion were amenable to public deliberation, and cooperate with the moral beliefs of
others. Writing a few years after the publication of Political Liberalism, Rawls explained:
Central to the idea of public reason is that it neither criticizes nor attacks any
comprehensive doctrine, religious or nonreligious, except insofar as that doctrine is
incompatible with the essentials of public reason and a democratic polity. The basic
requirement is that a reasonable doctrine accepts a constitutional democratic regime
and its companion idea of legitimate law. While democratic societies will differ in the
specific doctrines that are influential and active within them - as they differ in the
western democracies of Europe and the United States, Israel, and India - finding a
suitable idea of public reason is a concern that faces them all (Rawls 97 (John,
Philosopher at Harvard, University of Chicago Law Review Summer, 1997).
Indeed, Rawls had come a long way from A Theory of Justice . In that earlier work, he
seemed to believe that the chief impediment to justice was the gap between the rich
and the poor. Now, he saw those differences as simply more of the kind of differences
people should talk about. The Rawls of Political Liberalism believed that conversation
was the answer to all injustice and oppression:
The definitive idea for deliberative democracy is the idea of deliberation itself. When
citizens deliberate, they exchange views and debate their supporting reasons
concerning public political questions. They suppose that their political opinions may be
revised by discussion with other citizens; and therefore these opinions are not simply a
fixed outcome of their existing private or nonpolitical interests. It is at this point that
public reason is crucial, for it characterizes such citizens' reasoning concerning
constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice (Rawls 97 (John, Philosopher at
Harvard, University of Chicago Law Review Summer, 1997).
The Problem of Material Distribution

My argument against the Rawls of A Theory of Justice can be summarized as follows:
Rawls makes a strong case for helping the poor, but he makes this case at the expense
of empowering the poor, or ending poverty altogether. Indeed, the implementation of
Rawlsian justice in our current, materially unequal world, is mutually exclusive with
either empowerment or the end of poverty.
First, Rawls appeals to self-interest rather than morality or equality in his maxim that
inequalities ought to benefit the most disadvantaged members of society. Because of
this, he is constantly held hostage to the notion that, were we ever to realize that the
oppression or impoverishment of a few people would be to the benefit of many others,
then rationally we ought to allow that. This makes Rawls a rather crude utilitarian,
although he would never admit this.
Second, Rawlsian justice amounts to little more than a buying off of the poor.
Remember, A Theory of Justice does not propose that we ever eliminate poverty. In fact,
the elimination of poverty would probably require a substantial modification of Rawls
first principle of freedom. Instead, Rawls argues that it is rational (not necessarily
morally just) for the rich to give the poor enough assistance to avoid backlash. As Robert
Alejandro argues in the evidence section below, this distributive scheme does not even
see poverty as an evil to be eliminated. At best, the poor are an inconvenient reminder
of the second principle.
Finally, Rawls gives no material, economic, or even political mechanism for any
redistributive scheme that would help the poor even in his limited sense. One of the
more controversial questions following Rawls original theory was whether it required
socialism as a means of achieving the second principle. Although Rawls remained
officially agnostic on the question, it is clear that he is no socialist, since (as I argued
above) the elimination of poverty is simply not on his agenda. This, of course, begs the
question of how the wealthy are to help the poor. In its most unimaginative sense, the
help takes the form of social programs, welfare, free education and perhaps a few other
handouts. But given the way in which these programs have been undercut and
discredited by recent administrations, one wonders if Rawls sold his system of justice
short by leaving so little unsaid about how inequalities were to work to the benefit of the
least advantaged.
The Problem of the Public Forum

The main idea of Political Liberalism is that democracy is possible through a public forum
which includes all members of society, gives them all a chance to speak, and asks that
they all adhere to the principles of public reason. Like his German counterpart, Jurgen
Habermas, Rawls believes that public discourse, rather than private elitism, will ensure
good decision making and public participation.
While these are good ideas, ideas that ring true to those concerned with participatory
democracy, my argument is that Rawls ignores the material conditions that currently
prevent such a public forum from becoming actualized. Because he ignores the current
reality of unequal access to public discourse, Rawls is forced to look to institutions like
the Supreme Court as harbingers of public reason, when in fact these institutions lack
the fairness and equality that are true prerequisites to democracy.
To begin with, only a few elite institutions control current public discourse, and ordinary
citizens really have no access to speech OR the kind of information required to make
sound public decisions. To demonstrate this, I turn to the work of Edward Herman and
Noam Chomsky, who, in their Propaganda Model, lay out the current state of public
discourse.
Herman and Chomsky argue that there are currently five filters which prevent genuine
democratic discussion of ideas. First, there is the size, ownership, and profit orientation
of the mass media. Very few (perhaps nine or ten) multinational firms control the vast
majority of the worlds news media, music, television, radio, internet, etc. Those
corporations have virtually identical value systems, reflected in the news and views they
choose to disseminate. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of information we receive
regarding politics is chosen and represented by only a few people, with basically elitist
values.
The second filter is advertising. Since advertising is the primary source of income for the
mass media, reporters, editors, and publishers do not want to do anything that would
upset their advertisers. They will not run stories critical of corporations. They will seldom
report on economic issues from any point of view except that of the corporation (for
proof of this, check and see how major newspapers cover strikes and labor disputes).
The idea of a press acting as a watchdog against the powerful is really a myth according
to Herman and Chomsky. News organizations cannot go against their sources of income.
The third filter is known as sourcing. This refers to the reliance of the media on
information provided by government, business, and èxperts' funded and approved by
these primary sources and agents of power. It also refers to the dominance of private
public relations firms in making news. Most of the news we receive is not dug up by
reporters. Skilled public relations experts inside and outside of the government
manufacture it.
Herman and Chomsky refer to the fourth filter as flak and enforcers. If news
organizations actually work up the courage to criticize public officials or powerful
corporations, those officials and corporations retaliate by criticizing the press.
Essentially, the media is disciplined through lawsuits, public criticism, labels such as
liberal and so forth. This, in turn, hurts advertising and other sources of income, which
makes the media think twice about criticizing public figures in the future.
Finally, the fifth filter of control used to be called anticommunism, but can now be
referred to merely as enemy creation. If the media criticizes policy decisions,
politicians can accuse the media of being sympathetic towards whatever enemy we
are fighting today, whether it be communists, terrorists, or whatever. Again, those
few elite corporations which control the news will think twice about running stories that
are in any way critical, if they are punished for it by being accused of giving aid and
comfort to the enemy.
(http://www.utexas.edu/coc/journalism/SOURCE/j363/chomsky.html).
Remember that these filters are ideological, but all have a material context. The main
argument against current faith in democratic public forums is that these forums are
controlled, economically and politically, by elites whose interests do not coincide with
ordinary working people. Once again, material reality trumps
Rawls philosophical ideal
The second major problem with Rawls idea of a public forum concerns his insistence
that participants cast aside their comprehensive doctrines and instead debate the
within the inclusive, agreed-upon values which will not offend any other participants or
marginalize groups of society who wish to participate in the public forum. My argument
is that the idea of a public forum casting aside comprehensive doctrines can only favor
the ideologies and beliefs which are already so dominant in society as to seem
reasonable when compared to other, more radical ideals. In other words, the idea of
public reason merely privileges the values of those classes of people who are already
dominant members of society.
Two examples should suffice to illustrate my argument that people cannot reasonably be
expected to cast aside their comprehensive doctrines in public discourse. First, take the
example of feminism. Feminists, by and large, believe that there are ideological harms in
the private thoughts and attitudes of patriarchy. The Rawlsian public forum, however,
cannot entertain such a critique, because it is too comprehensive and unwilling to
compromise with those participants in the public forum who see no problem with
patriarchy.
The second example of a comprehensive doctrine that would be excluded by Rawls is,
of course, Marxism. For Marxists, there are many reasons why any genuine critique of
social evils requires us to be comprehensive. For Marxists, capitalism itself is
responsible for the kinds of inequality and alienation that contextualize many of the
social problems presumably discussed in the public forum. But Rawls would not allow the
Marxist to make that argument, because it involves the embrace of an absolutist
worldview, contrary to the more reasonable discourse in the public forum. It seems
that, the more we think about who is and is not welcome in the public forum, the more
clearly the picture emerges: To be welcome, one should not believe anything
controversial.
Moreover, the second objection to the Rawlsian public forum becomes even more lethal
when augmented by the first objection. For those comprehensive doctrines which
actually question the inequality of the public forum itself (lets go ahead and use
feminism and Marxism again, since these are the most articulate critiques of the public
forum) will naturally be rejected by liberals who believe their own political positions are
more reasonable and less comprehensive. In other words, the feminist who argues that
the idea of a public forum rests on a public/private dichotomy which favors patriarchy
will be dismissed by the Rawlsian liberal as unreasonable because feminism is a
comprehensive doctrine which questions the underlying ideological structures of
liberalism. Similarly, the Rawlsian liberal will ignore the Marxist who argues that
deliberative democracy is impossible without economic democracy because it is
unreasonable to expect us to reformulate the material foundations of society.
This leaves us with a very odd and scary public forum. While clinging to the concept of
deliberative democracy rhetorically, the Rawlsian liberal will brook no criticism on the
part of feminists, Marxists, or others who dare question the very notion of accessibility
that is supposed to be the basis of the public forum. One is left with the impression that
the Rawlsian cares less about genuine access than apparent access. Just as A Theory of
Justice paid lip service to economic justice without actually accounting for the material
causes of injustice, Political Liberalism raves about the idea of political participation,
while systemically discouraging any attempts to achieve the kind of society where
people could truly participate.
Conclusion
I hope I have shown that the philosophy of John Rawls is an idea whose time has not yet
come. My intention was not to refute the ideal promise of his philosophy. Instead, my
point throughout the essay has been that Rawls ideas require different material
arrangements than those that presently exist. Moreover, Rawlsian justice absent the
material arrangements which make it possible may even be dangerous, because it falls
into the same liberal traps as most present reforms: satisfying the charitable sentiment
of academics while actually diverting attention from the material changes which need to
take place before true social justice is possible. Until that time, people ought to read
Rawls as a dream unfulfilled.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abdel-Nour, Farid. From arm's length to intrusion: Rawls's law of peoples and the
challenge of stability. JOURNAL OF POLITICS, May, 1999, pp. 313-30.
Alejandro, Roberto. THE LIMITS OF RAWLSIAN JUSTICE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

Daniels, Norman, ed. READING RAWLS: CRITICAL STUDIES OF A THEORY OF JUSTICE

(New York: Basil Blackwell, 1975).
Davion, Victoria, and Clark Wolf, editors. THE IDEA OF POLITICAL LIBERALISM: ESSAYS ON
RAWLS (Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000).
George, Robert P. and Christopher Wolfe, editors. NATURAL LAW AND PUBLIC REASON
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000).
Graham, Kevin M. The political significance of social identity: A critique of Rawls's

theory of agency. SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, Summer, 2000, pp. 201-22.
Hill, Ronald Paul; Peterson, Robert M; Dhanda, Kanwalroop Kathy. Global consumption
and distributive justice: A Rawlsian perspective. HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY, February
2001, pp. 171-187
Krasnoff, Larry. Consensus, stability, and normativity in Rawls's political liberalism.

JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, June, 1998, pp. 269-92.
Kukathas, Chandran. RAWLS: A THEORY OF JUSTICE AND ITS CRITICS (Stanford: Stanford
Martin, Rex. RAWLS AND RIGHTS (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985).
Naticchia, Chris. Human rights, liberalism, and Rawl's Law of Peoples. SOCIAL THEORY
AND PRACTICE, Fall, 1998, pp. 345-74.
Pogge, Thomas W. REALIZING RAWLS (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
Rawls, John. LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 2000).
Rawls, John. THE LAW OF PEOPLES (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Rawls, John. A THEORY OF JUSTICE (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard

Rawls, John. POLITICAL LIBERALISM (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
Rao, A.P. DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: A THIRD WORLD RESPONSE TO RAWLS AND NOZICK
(San Francisco : International Scholars Publications, 1998).
Smith, Paul. Incentives and justice: G.A. Cohen's egalitarian critique of Rawls. SOCIAL
THEORY AND PRACTICE, Summer, 1998, pp. 205-35.
Zaino, Jeanne. Self-respect and Rawlsian justice. JOURNAL OF POLITICS, August, 1998,
pp. 737-53.
RAWLSIAN JUSTICE IS IMMORAL

1. THE ORIGINAL POSITION ENTRENCHES SELFISH INDIVIDUALISM
Robert Alejandro, professor of philosophy at Smith College, THE LIMITS OF RAWLSIAN
JUSTICE, 1998, p. 73.
In Rousseaus state of nature, there is a genuine bond cemented by the feeling of
compassion between the individual and the other, between the stranger and the
sufferer. There is no compassion in the Rawlsian original position. When the Rawlsian
parties look at the most disadvantaged they do not see others; they see themselves,
and they try to ameliorate their potential predicament as far as possible. It could not be
otherwise since, in the original position, they are choosing principles of justice in a
situation of great uncertainty; they are trying to acknowledge principles which
advance their system of ends as far as possible; and they are allowed only enough
knowledge to make a rational choice to protect their interest.
2. RAWLS GIVES NO WAY TO JUDGE THE MORALITY OF ACTIONS

JUSTICE, 1998, p. 73.
In other words, the parties are committed to advancing their interests, but since they do
not know the specific content of those interests, they are unable to assess their moral
character. They know that they have a capacity for a conception of the good, but since
they lack knowledge of that conception, they are unable to judge the moral character or
lack of it which their ideas of the good may have. They possess general knowledge of
the facts of life, but they do not know their psychological propensities, so they are
unable to determine whether they will care, and in what degree, about moral ends.
3. RAWLS IS GROSSLY UTILITARIAN

JUSTICE, 1998, p. 74.
The difference principle, then, does not rely on identification with the interests of others
expressed in sympathy or benevolence. Neither does it depend on altruism. It hinges on
reciprocal advantages. The principle of utility, Rawls says, seems to require a greater
identification with the interests of others than the two principles of justice. Thus the
latter will be a more stable conception to the extent that this identification is difficult to
achieve. Rawls argues, however, that in the original position the parties are forced to
take into account the good of others. But one is hard pressed to find how could this be
the case.
4. RAWLS IGNORES ALTRUISM AND ENTRENCHES SELFISHNESS

JUSTICE, 1998, pp. 74-5.
To sum up: in the original position, there is no place for sympathy; no need for
benevolence; no role for altruism; and, Rawlss claim to the contrary notwithstanding,
there is no space for a concern for others. The parties are trying to advance their
conception of the good as best they can, and in attempting to do this they are not
bound by prior moral ties to each other. Nor are they bound by extensive ties of
natural sentiments, something that a conception of justice should not presuppose.
The principles of justice are supported because each party is concerned with his own
good and wants to advance his own interests, and those interests are bereft of any
moral content.
RAWLSIAN JUSTICE DOES NOT

EMANCIPATE THE POOR AND
DISADVANTAGED
1. RAWLSS SOCIAL PRINCIPLES ARE AN EXCUSE FOR THE RICH TO BUY OFF THE POOR
JUSTICE, 1998, p. 78.
The better-off benefit from inequalities, and, to justify those inequalities and still have
social cooperation, they must provide the greatest benefits to the most disadvantaged.
They have to buy the compliance of the least fortunate members of society by providing
them with the greatest benefits. We have seen that Rawls explicitly rejects sympathy as
a ground of justice, and he eschews altruism in favor of the more realistic idea of
mutual advantages. If this is so, the willingness of the better-off to pay for the greatest
benefits arises not from a sense of morality which leads them to identify with the
interests of others, but from their own very real interest in gaining the collaboration of
the most disadvantaged and preserving an unequal status from which they derive
benefits.
2. RAWLSS SECOND PRINCIPLE IS LETS THE PRIVILEGED BENEFIT FROM INEQUALITY

JUSTICE, 1998, p. 79
The privileged status of the better-off is compounded by the Rawlsian requirement of
universal improvement, which appears predominantly in the first chapter of Theory and
then seems to be replaced by the long-term expectations of the most disadvantaged.
The general conception of justice, Rawls writes, imposes no restrictions on what sort
of inequalities are permissible; it only requires that everyones position be improved.
This formulation can be interpreted in two different ways: 1) The advantages the betteroff already have will constitute the improvements they should expect from Rawlsian
justice, or 2) the advantaged position they already hold should improve even further.
Rawlss argument is problematic on both counts but is particularly striking on the
second. Members of the better-off might see the financial contributions Rawlsian justice
demands as a denial of what they understand as improvement. The possible reply that
improvement is defined by the public system of rulesby public functionariesis hardly
a consolation. The second interpretation might strike many citizens as unreasonable. If
the better-off already have social and economic advantages, why must their situation be
enhanced even further? Of course, it improves in the sense of obtaining legitimacy and
the benefits of cooperation: this is what Rawls probably intends, but it is not what his
text necessarily states.
3. RAWLS DOES NOT PROMOTE EQUALITY

JUSTICE, 1998, p. 81.
The better-off have no moral reason to support the greatest benefits to the most
disadvantaged. Neither do the most disadvantaged have moral ground to demand the
greatest benefits from the better-off. Those greatest benefits are the price tag they put
on their acceptance of inequalities. It is also the price society pays through its public
institutions to retain the cooperation and support of the least fortunate members, who
are willing to accept that their worth of liberty is unequal and to accept their status as
the most disadvantaged as long as society gives them the greatest benefits. Rawlsian
justice becomes a prudential assessment of the costs required to maintain legitimacy for
the better-off and stability for the social order. It is worth emphasizing, however, that the
greatest benefits do not necessarily lift the worse-off up from their status, nor are they
meant to.
4. RAWLSIAN THEORY IS ONLY A PALLIATIVE FOR THE DISADVANTAGED

JUSTICE, 1998, p. 85.
In Rawlsian theory, by contrast, even though the just character of society is determined
by the status of the most disadvantaged (whether their expectations are rising and
whether they are receiving the greatest benefits), this group is not responsible for
improving their own condition or changing it altogether. That is the exclusive task of the
Rawlsian state. The Marxist paradigm seeks to abolish the status of the workers; the
Rawlsian paradigm seeks to render more palatable the status of the most
disadvantaged.
POLITICAL LIBERALISM IS FLAWED

1. POLITICAL LIBERALISM CANNOT ACHIEVE POLITICAL CONSENSUS
Douglas G. Smith, Lawyer, J.D. Northwestern School of Law, SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW,
Fall, 1997, p. 1594
Similarly, Steven Smith has articulated the following criticism of a criterion of neutrality:
The common denominator argument is fraudulent. Suppose Dad and Daughter are
discussing what to have for dinner. Daughter proposes: "Let's just have dessert." Dad
suggests that it would be better to have a full meal, with salad, meat, fruit, cooked
vegetables, and then dessert. Daughter responds: "Obviously, Dad, we disagree about a
lot of things. But there is one thing we agree on; we both want dessert. Clearly the fair
and democratic solution is to accept what we agree on. So let's just have dessert."
Although he might admire Daughter's cleverness, Dad is not likely to be taken in by this
common denominator ploy. The argument that secular public discourse provides a
common denominator that all citizens share is comparably clever - and equally
unpersuasive.
2. POLITICAL LIBERALISM CANNOT SOLVE COMPETING POLITICAL CONFLICTS

Fall, 1997, pp. 1594-5.
Furthermore, other commentators have observed that the fact that certain grounds of
belief are not "publicly accessible" or are "incommensurable" with other individuals'
beliefs is not enough to necessitate a criterion of neutrality in public justification and
choice. As Professor Gardbaum has noted: Incommensurability does not generally
appear to require political neutrality.... Conflicts between competing values often arise
that have no one rational outcome, and yet the state is not required to remain neutral
among them. For example, the following pairs all represent political and economic
values or goals about whose priority reasonable people can disagree: economic growth
and conservation of natural resources, specialization and self-sufficiency, current and
future consumption, expenditure on space exploration and welfare programs. Yet
incommensurability does not compel state neutrality in these instances. To the contrary,
the competition between these values and goals constitutes the very substance of
politics.
3. RAWLSS POLITICAL LIBERALISM PRIVILEGES SOME COMPREHENSIVE BELIEFS

Fall, 1997, pp. 1595-6.
According to Rawls, his version of political liberalism is not neutral in the sense that it
does not result in encouraging certain ways of life while discouraging others. The
framework of society is such that no particular comprehensive doctrine is privileged.
According to Rawls, this difference distinguishes his version of political liberalism from
what he terms "comprehensive liberalism." However, Rawls's own theory is open to the
charge that it represents just another comprehensive doctrine - that his political values
merely constitute some overarching view of political good - or that his theory at least
privileges certain comprehensive doctrines that significantly overlap with his set of
political values. The problem is that Rawls does not flesh out the difference between his
political values and the comprehensive moral, religious, and philosophical values that he
would exclude from public justification and choice. How can Rawls claim that the set of
political values does not form just another comprehensive doctrine, or at least privilege
certain comprehensive doctrines? Because it tends to privilege certain comprehensive
doctrines, Rawls's theory may be vulnerable to the attacks on neutrality to which
comprehensive liberalism is subject.
RAWLSIAN LIBERALISM IS BAD FOR

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. RAWLSS LIBERALISM PRECLUDES CONDEMNATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Thomas W. Pogge, professor of philosophy at Columbia University, THE PHILOSOPHICAL
QUARTERLY, April 2001, p. 247.
Is this liberalism for liberals, cannibalism for cannibals, as Martin Hollis famously
quipped? Why should we liberals accord equal respect to those who run a decent
hierarchical regime abroad, if we do not accord equal respect to those who want to run
such a regime in the USA or UK? Conversely, if liberal and decent hierarchical societies
really are morally on an equal footing, then should not our move from a liberal to a
decent regime be just as acceptable as our previous opposite move was, or as Irans
now would be? These questions raise the deeper issue of whether Rawls moral
accommodation of decent societies is contingent on historical facts. This issue is
important, because such an accommodation also has moral costs. By accepting an
account that makes the interests of peoples morally fundamental, liberals compromise
their conviction that social institutions should be assessed by appeal to the interests of
individuals (normative individualism), and by appeal to their freedom and fundamental
equality in particular.
3. RAWLSS INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHY RESTS ON COLONIALISM

The latter answer is problematic too, because Rawls makes no effort to show that his
concept of a people reflects general and entrenched facts in the contemporary world.
Many borders in Africa, Latin America and Asia are colonial constructs which lump
diverse communities together (Indonesia) while splitting others over two or more states
(Kurds). In Europe, borders are rapidly losing practical significance, so that the notion of
a people seems increasingly ill fitted to the old groups (the Dutch and the Danes) and ill
fitted also to the new and still expanding population of the European Union. In the midst
of globalization, we can easily imagine a broadening of this trend, leading to a world in
which most borders have little political and practical significance or do not correlate with
separate languages, religions and cultures.
4. RAWLSS THOUGHT IGNORES THE INJUSTICES OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM

Rawls utopia is flawed, then, by excluding the concern to maintain global background
justice, and by excluding any preference for structuring the global economy so that it
moderates inequalities and enables especially the economically weakest societies to
grow. This flaw also mars the books implicit judgment of our world, where, in the midst
of plenty, a third of all human deaths are due to malnutrition and preventable diseases.
Rawls account misleads us into perceiving our present moral failure as a case of
insufficient assistance to the poor, when it really consists in the imposition upon them of
a skewed global order that obstructs and hampers their development.
Realism Responses
Introduction
Suppose I meet a student. She is bright, attractive, and talented. She has a good life
ahead of her, and people like her. True, she has dealt with some hard things in her life:
Her parents have divorced, she has faced poverty, perhaps childhood trauma of some
sort or another. But all in all, as an independent observer, I see her as a good person
with a bright future. But she doesnt see herself that way. She thinks she is a bad
person. Her low self-esteem prevents her from entering into relationships with other
people that could be mutually beneficial: jobs, business arrangements, creative projects;
all of these seem scary to her because she doesnt think the world is the kind of place
where such relationships will be in her interest. She doesnt trust other people. Where I
point out to her that many people care about her and they are good people, she
responds that they only act friendly because they want something from her. Their
friendliness will end when she no longer serves their interests.
Most of us have been in this situation. We see someone who is depressed, who doesnt
trust other people. We point out to them that the people around them are good. They
dont believe us. Moreover (and this is where this story actually becomes relevant to the
topic at hand), they interpret the actions of those around them in a primarily negative
way. In the case of my friend, she sees other people doing good things and she says,
They are just doing those things to seem good. Theyre trying to fool me. Of course,
any time those people slip up and do something bad, she can say, See! I told you they
were bad people.
In a nutshell, this frustrating situation describes the philosophy of Realism, a school of

thought among elites in International Relations which holds that nation-states are
basically warlike, self-serving, and Machiavellian. Realism has been the ruling paradigm
in American International Relations for several generations. Armies and navies are built
up and maintained around the world because Realism tells us that the military, and war,
are necessary conditions of humanity. Nuclear weapons are built and put on alert,
pointed at various nations, because Realism says that we must prepare for the worst,
and that only by scaring our potential adversaries can they be made to cooperate.
Domestic problems are ignored in favor of spending money on the power to threaten
other nations. And like the case of the depressed student, Realisms grim view of
humanity rests, essentially, on a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In this essay I will lay out the conceptual foundations of Realism, describing its major
points. I will then list the numerous problems with the philosophy. My major objection to
Realism is that it is based on a selective and self-serving interpretation of empirical data,

leading to conclusions that are palatable to elites, but quite undesirable for the majority
of humanity.
Realism in international relations

The ghost of Nietzsche: Realism begins with the premise that elites seek to gain and
maintain power. I say begins with this premise, because it is not justified except by
turning to various historical examples, and as I shall argue below, those examples are
selectively employed. Setting that objection aside, recall that Nietzsche saw the Will to
Power as a pervasive, unavoidable life-force which was more honestly manifest in elites
than in underlings. If Nietzsche is correct, then those who lead nation states are driven
primarily by the Will to Power: the drive to make their nations, their legacies, and
themselves more powerful.
Moreover, power in international relations is a zero-sum game. Because we live in a kind

of global anarchy, and because resources are scarce, then anything my leader gains is
something somebody elses leader loses. If this second premise is combined with the
first, we have a picture of the world of international politics that resembles the one
described in the main points laid out by University of Hawaii political scientist Richard W.
Chadwick:
1. Conflict is an effort to attain one's goals in a manner that interferes with other's
attaining their goals.
2. Latent vs. Manifest conflict: sometimes conflict is not apparent to people; they are in
fact interfering with each other's goal attainment, but one or the other does not know it.
We call this "latent" or "hidden" conflict. When it's one sided, it's sabotage or espionage.
When it's overt, it's "manifest" or "open" conflict.
3. Conflict exists at many levels. Examples: from within a person to interpersonal
relations, to relations between persons and organizations, between organizations,
states, and alliances.
4. Conflict becomes increasingly important as the stress leaders experience from not
attaining their goals becomes increasingly unbearable, threatening to those values they
hold most dear.
5. As conflict becomes more unbearable, more costly means are used to attain goals.
6. Estimating costs relative to the progress made by alternative strategies is one of key
abilities of leadership.
7. What are leaders' goals? Succinctly: to survive, as leaders (that is, in position, with
power).
8. Conflict will be with us as long as people have values and goals that can be achieved
only at each other's expense. Since people have values and goals that are incompatible,
conflict is inevitable. (source: http://www.hawaii.edu/intlrel/pols320/Text/Theory/realismlecture.htm)
The reader first notices the Realists obsession with conflict. Conflict is inevitable,
because leaders want to gain and keep power, and because International Relations is a
zero-sum game. Each of the eight points above has particular historical antecedents: As
conflict becomes more unbearable, more costly means are used to obtain goals, as in
the case of the United States escalation in the Vietnam War. Likewise, the stress
leaders experience from not attaining their goalsthreatening to those values they hold
most dear, could be the United States shifting from isolationism to aggression in the
Second World War.
The alleged epistemology of realism

Before going on with the problems of Realism, I want to tell another story. During the
1991 Persian Gulf War, it was common to hear people on the pro-war side (those in
agreement with President George Bushs decision to use military force to get Iraq out of
Kuwait) say, We have to stop Saddam Hussein; otherwise, hell invade more countries.
He might even invade the United States. Setting aside the obvious absurdity of an
attack by Iraq on the United States, these comments demonstrated the tendency of
Realist philosophy to make its way, in a watered down version, to ordinary Americans.
To them, I would reply: Who is we? My question was designed to provoke some
thought about whether the interests of our administration and our elites in going to war
against Iraq coincided with the interests of us ordinary Americans. I contended, and still
contend, two things: First, the interests of ordinary working Americans, as is the case
with working people the world over, are in finding ways to avoid war at nearly all costs,
to promote an ethic of solidarity and cooperation, and to defy our warlike leaders,
whether they be George Bush or Saddam Hussein. In other words, working people in
America have more in common with working people in Iraq than either set of working
people have in common with their respective leaders.
My second contention was and is that the data used to vilify Iraq and justify military
action was selective. It painted only one picture: of an evil country with an evil leader
who would not listen to reason. Scholars and activists such as Edward Said and Noam
Chomsky have contended that there were several alternatives to war, but that the Bush
administration was not interested in exploring any of those alternatives. In what follows,
I will argue that Realisms epistemology is deeply flawed, because it encourages
international elites to look only for reasons to be aggressive, mistrustful, and deceitful.
All evidences of cooperation, peace, and reasonable behavior are filtered out by
Realist epistemology. All that is left is bad stuff, and that bad stuff epistemology is
what allows elites to justify preparing for, and executing, aggression and war.
Selectivity of data
The real becomes what the elites want it to be. It is useful here to distinguish between
two types of claims. Normative claims are those that advocate particular beliefs or
behavior. We ought to prepare for war is a normative claim. Descriptive claims are
claims that, as the word implies, describe the world in a certain way. Enemies and
potential enemies of the United States abound everywhere is a descriptive claim.
However, philosophical study has long shown that there is a kind of conflation always
occurring between normative and descriptive claims. In order to make normative claims,
one must assume a particular kind of descriptive reality. This is obvious enough: Saying
We ought to prepare for war against our potential enemies certainly implies that we
have already accepted a description of the world that essentially says, Enemies and
potential enemies abound. Thus, in order to prescribe action, one assumes a set of
reality-conditions that justifies that normative claim.
The reverse, however, is no less true. Making descriptive claims assumes particular
normative judgments about how to view the world. The statement that there are
potential enemies everywhere rests on the normative assumption that we ought to
interpret the data at hand a certain way. In other words, leaders of the United States see
other nations, other leaders, and interpret their actions in a manner that justifies calling
them enemies. This construction of reality can sometimes be quite reasonable. Other
times, however, it is a blatant (if subtle) description of a selected type of reality. It is my
belief that Realism conflates normative and descriptive statements by selectively
interpreting the data of International Relations in a manner that constructs enemies, as
a way of justifying the very prescriptions and descriptions that lead to that kind of
interpretation. In the sections below, I will explain how this interpretation, and
subsequent prescription, blocks out alternative interpretations, and makes the conflict
predicted by Realists inevitable.
The problem of elites

My first objection to realist epistemology concerns its elitist norms. In other words, the
selectivity of data I mention above is primarily a selectivity of the elites in particular
nations, rather than the non-elites. Recall my example of the Gulf War. Ordinary people
allowed the construction, in their minds and their discourse, of Iraq as a threat. While
this interpretation may seem reasonable, it should be pointed out that all of the data
used to construct that interpretation came solely from elitesthe government and the
corporate news media.
One can only speculate the counterfactual that would exist if we had been able, as
ordinary people, to approach the Iraq question the same way we would approach
questions in our local communities. Our own perspectives, untainted by elite
interpretation of data, lead us to seek cooperation in many of our local affairs. If
someones tree is growing too far over my side of the fence, I ought not threaten my
neighbor, but instead I ought to approach and communicate, with the goal of avoiding
conflict.
Realists, however, claim that those ethical standards, which work in our personal lives,
are always inapplicable to our political livesespecially in International Relations.
Reinhold Neibuhr, whose 1932 book Moral Man and Immoral Society remains a classic
realist text, went so far as to systematically divide personal and political ethics along
those very lines. Matthew Berke writes of Neibuhrs vision:
In Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr broke decisively with this "social gospel"
outlook, insisting that power is the principal ingredient in arbitrating the competing
claims of nations, races, and social classes. According to Niebuhr, conflict and tension
are permanent features of history. While social improvement is possible, the justice of
this world is born in strife and is always provisional, fragmentary, and insecure
(http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft0003/articles/niebuhr.html).
While Neibuhr was neither an elite nor a supporter of the elites, and was in fact socially
progressive, his distinction between personal and political morality further justified the
elitist vision that I ought to treat my neighbor with utmost respect, but that it is
acceptable and even required that (if I am a political leader) I treat other nations with
threats, fear-mongering, and intimidation.
The problem of patriarchy

My second objection concerns the way in which world leaderswho are often wealthy
menselect data along lines which can accurately be called masculinist. While it may
seem obvious, almost shallowly so, that war is patriarchal, there are more
ontological and ethical reasons which must be laid out to fully understand why a Realist
approach promotes patriarchy.
First, there is the modernist, or Enlightenment-era underpinning of Realism. As an

epistemic/normative philosophy whichby its very title Realismclaims absolute
predictability of human events, Realism glorifies the kind of predict-and-control
mentality characteristic of modernist and Enlightenment science. Many feminist
philosophers have noted that such a scientific or over-rational view of the world reflect
the masculine drive to control nature and other people.
Second, and more importantly, there is the very practical implication for women of a
society devoted to military preparedness. In such a society, women enjoy a special
role: As mothers, their job is to reproduce, to make more little soldiers, and
furthermore, to socialize those children into being good citizens who will work to
reproduce the same structures of power as those into which they were born. According
to this argument, the role of the mother is a unique focal point in the perpetuation of a
population accustomed to preparing for, and fighting, wars.
Obviously, the implication of both modernism and patriarchal reproduction is a

perpetuation of woman as second-class citizen and slave to the state. It is instructive to
note that Josef Stalin promoted a family values agenda when he led the Soviet Union.
Stalin was concerned that women were having fewer children. They were: Under Lenin,
women received free contraception and abortion on-demand, which the first generation
of Bolsheviks saw as essential to womens emancipation from patriarchy. Stalin worried
that there would be too few young Soviet males to send to the inevitable wars to come.
His response was to encourage Soviet women (who for years had enjoyed near-equal
footing with their male comrades) to go back to home and kitchen.
The situation was not much different in the United States immediately following the
Second World War. Women had been encouraged to go out and work during the war, to
keep production levels up while men were away fighting. Images in the media such as
Rosy the Riveter told women that they could work just as well as men. When the war
ended and the boys came home, politicians stepped up their family values rhetoric, to
encourage women to go back home and have more childrenpresumably, for the next
Great War. In this, as in other manifestations of Realism, women exist to drive the war
effort, while men exist to make the key decisions.
Finally, it can be argued that in so interpreting and recommending a world full of

militaristic competition, Realism encourages the wholesale exploitation of natural
resources, as well as a metaphysical view of humans being apart from nature. As the
evidence in that section demonstrates, the values of production and efficiency,
anthropocentric as well as masculine, encourage subordination of the planet and nature
just as easily as they encourage the subordination of women.
Ignoring the history of cooperation

My final objection to realist epistemology is that it is biased in its data selection against
those instances when groups of people, even nations, cooperate rather than fight. If
realists claim to base their assumptions on the entire history of international relations,
they are incorrect. International events often feature war and competition, but there are
just as many instances of cooperation and solidarity.
The first instance of cooperation can be found in international law. The idea behind
international law is that, although some laws are unenforceable and purely symbolic,
they still do a good job of promoting norms that let leaders know it is in their best
interest to follow. Leaders do not follow international law simply because they fear
retaliation from other nations. Often, they follow such norms because they see
adherence to peaceful norms as more conducive to an enduring legacy as leaders. To
say that they are motivated from self-interest is rather unenlightening. The more
important question is what they are self-interested in, and the answer seems to be that
leaders are just as interested in being remembered as good leaders as they are in
promoting their power. Neither one side nor the other can lay exclusive claim to
interpretation of available historical data.
The second instance of cooperation can be found in the altruistic acts of nations.
Countries frequently send aid, personnel, and relief to other countries for moral, rather
than immediately pragmatic, reasons. This is empirically true of nations of every
conceivable political leaning: Capitalist America sends famine relief to Africa
communist Cuba sends medical personnel to hurricane-ravaged Nicaragua. Realists,
again, will claim both countries do this in order to promote their influence over other
countries. Even if that were true, it is a far cry from saying that influence is the sole
motive. It is more likely that a complex combination of motives for action exists in every
government. But complexity is something Realists refuse to acknowledgethat is the
problem with any philosophy which begins its exposition by saying: Nations ALWAYS do
XNations NEVER do Y
What is frustrating about this is that the Realist argument (Leaders who adhere to
international law do so simply to promote their power, Countries aid other countries to
promote their agenda overseas, etc.) resembles the reductionist arguments used by
psychological egoists, who argue that selfishness motivates all actions. The problem
with making such arguments is that they have no conditions of falsifiability. If I say I
want to help someone for nothing, the psychological egoist will reply that I am seeking
to be altruistic simply because I seek the satisfaction of being altruistic. The obvious
answer to this is: If I am satisfied helping others, this is not because I am selfishit is
precisely because I am unselfish.
Conclusion
Realism in international relations is the ultimate self-fulfilling prophesy. It is the classic

example of how elites conflate normative and epistemic observations, arguing that
because things are sometimes a certain way, they ought to always be that way, or at
least always be seen that way. Realism is a self-fulfilling prophesy for the same reason
that the depressed student will remain depressed: because she has come not only to
view the world in that way, but also to arrange her interpretations, choices, and
interactions that way.
The most objectionable part of realism, however, may be the way in which elite
discourse is transposed into value assumptions in the media, in political science
education, and into everyday conversations. News viewers are shown stories of conflicts
abroad and are then told that these conflicts are the inevitable result of other peoples
warlike nature. Students in international relations classes are taught that the world is
anarchic and that U.S. hegemony is absolutely necessary. In everyday conversations,
people talk about international conflicts in an us and them vocabulary. Nobody stops
to question whether it is in ordinary peoples interest to urge their leaders to cooperate
rather than threaten one another. Those few visionaries who speak up and say, We
ought to cooperate are, of course, accused of being unrealistic.
Realism is, therefore, the wrong word to attach to the international philosophy it
describes. Pessimism may be a better word, and combating that pessimism requires
digging deeper into the epistemological data. It also requires an ethical gesture that
precedes any epistemology: believing in, and struggling for, peace and cooperation.
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REALISM CAUSES WAR

1. REALISMS SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES DRIVE THE WAR MACHINE
Harvey Starr, professor of international relations at the University of South Carolina,
ANARCHY, ORDER, AND INTEGRATION, p. 95.
Never knowing how much is enough, Realists conclude that states should seek to
maximize their military power. The inevitable consequence of each state increasing
capabilities to deal with international anarchy is the well known security dilemma, where
any one states security increases the insecurity of the others. The drive for more
capability derives in part from the inability to distinguish intentions from capabilities;
one must protect against capabilities because intentions are unknown. However, given
that humans are evil, it would be best to prepare for the worst. The worst means that
other states will be tempted to violate existing rules and will fail to comply with them
when compliance compromises national interests. That is, states will choose to defect
to give in to the rational temptation to pursue short-term individual interestsrather
than cooperate in the Prisoners Dilemma situations that encourage noncompliance with
agreements. Large numbers of such situations have been generated by the metaPrisoners Dilemma of the anarchic international structure.
2. THE ASSUMPTION THAT POWER DRIVES ARE NATURAL GUARANTEES ANTAGONISMS

Eric Laferriere, professor of humanities at John Abbott College, and Peter J. Stoett,
professor of international relations at Concordia University, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
THEORY AND ECOLOGICAL THOUGHT, 1999, p. 90.
As a whole, then, realists believe that power drives are natural, that political
associations (states or similar finite groups or entities) are natural, and that power drives
are served by political associations. In this conception of nature, the strong pursues the
weak, the weak is fearful of the strong, and both weak and strong use physical resources
to (alternatively) survive or fulfill their natural mission. In fact, survival also animates the
strong, who know not only that their life essence is in fighting, but that the weak may
grow to be strong and pose a serious challenge.
3. GLORIFICATION OF STRENGTH PERPETUATES WAR, PATRIARCHY, AND EXPLOITATION

Realisms conservative orientation suggests that the traditional pillars of strength
(men of power) should continue to dominate in society, at the expense of women and all
other marginals (including non-rational beings) who cannot legitimately contribute
independently to a disciplined war effort. By extension, this policy of the status quo
supports capitalism as the most powerful means of production known in human history.
Similarly, realist homogeneity is geared towards an ironing of differences to the benefit

of established, powerful classes and cultures.
4. REALISM GUARANTEES INEQUALITY AND DESTROYS INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM

Once the analyst (or the activist) accepts a law of nature based on the preeminence of
physical strength, then both a conflictual reading of history and the ontological
assumption of supremacy of violence-organizing forms of association are likewise
accepted (or praised, in some cases). This, in turn, condones or vindicates the
supremacy of the political association and its elite (knowledgeable, productive, warring)
over the individual. In fact, this is performed in two ways: by granting largely
unpublicized privileges to the elite (a resource distribution from poor to rich), and by
elevating the myth and the glory of the particular abstraction (nation-state, religion,
ideology) which already commands legal and moral authority and which can now elicit
devotion of the (useful, troublesome) individual.
NATIONS CAN AND SHOULD ABANDON

REALISM IN FAVOR OF COOPERATION
1. STATES HAVE GOOD REASONS TO COOPERATE AND ADHERE TO LEGAL NORMS
As noted earlier, rules or norms may serve as boundaries and trip wires. They alert
others to behavior considered unacceptable and permit others in the international
society to respond. It is in the self-interest of states not to cross lines that will bring
about sanctions from others. Obeying international law is also in the self-interest of
states because compliance brings with it a reputation as being a law-abiding member
of the international society that others can trust and treat as dependable.
2. EMPIRICALLY, COOPERATION IS BETTER FOR NATIONS THAN AGGRESSION

ANARCHY, ORDER, AND INTEGRATION, pp. 100-1.
Thus, with an informal sanctioning system, a states reputation is of central importance,
inasmuch as a state that regularly flouts international law can expect to fail to benefit
from the support of the society of states when it faces another rule breaker. Indeed, that
happened to Iran in its decade-long war with Iraq. The lack of support for Iran in its war
against Iraq (which was initiated by Iraqi armed forces) and on other issues was due in
part to Irans clear disregard for the norms of international law regarding diplomats,
internal interference, and shipping rights, among other offenses: an example of what
some observers have called renegade states.
3. LACK OF COOPERATION CAUSES DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL HOSTILITIES

Bruce Cronin, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, COMMUNITY
UNDER ANARCHY, 1999, p. 132.
In the absence of mitigating factors, anarchy can lead to a climate of uncertainty, and in
security affairs the states are too high to allow for miscalculation. Moreover, the
institution of sovereignty reinforces a strong parochialism in domestic politics, which in
turn exercises a strong force against transnational cohesion. Thus, even if anarchy does
not constitute a single form with relatively fixed features, this does not mean that states
can easily overcome their fears and parochialisms. In fact, even forward-looking and
idealistic political leaders inevitably have conflicts between their international
commitments and their domestic pressures. To the extent that domestic constituents
believe that international politics is a zero-sum game, they are disinclined to extend
their communities to include other societies.
4. REALISMS CLAIMS ARE UNFOUNDED: COOPERATION EMPIRICALLY WORKS

Bruce Cronin, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, COMMUNITY
UNDER ANARCHY, 1999, p. 132.
Realist and neorealist approaches, however, see structural constraints as a universal
condition and cannot conceive of circumstances under which the barriers can be
overcome to any significant degree. Constructivists try to articulate such circumstances,
and the preceding pages justify this attempt. Both the theoretical and empirical chapters
demonstrate how reflection and interaction among political actors can lead to a change
in traditional roles.
REALISM IS PHILOSOPHICALLY
UNSOUND
1. REALISM IGNORES INTERDEPENDENCE AND NON-STATE ACTORS
ANARCHY, ORDER, AND INTEGRATION, pp. 105-6.
Realism does not do a very good job of dealing with interdependence in areas where the
statecentric system must deal with the nonstate actors of the multicentric system. For
example, recent activity in regard to human rights represents an expansion of the
domain of international law and a real erosion of state sovereignty. Concepts of universal
human rights, embodied in international declarations and treaties, deny states the
prerogative to withhold those rights from their own citizens. In what is a rather radical
departure from the state-centered nature of traditional international law, in the
international law of human rights, individuals are considered legal entities separate from
their state of national origin. Individuals are thus removed from important areas of state
control. Human rights norms have increasingly because the basis for intrusion by IGOs
and NGOs into the domestic affairs of states. This development strikes at the
relationship between the state and its citizens, and thus at fundamental principles of
legitimacy and sovereigntyespecially the internal supremacy of states and the
principle of nonintervention into the domestic affairs of states.
2. REALISM IGNORES THE BENEFITS OF DEMOCRATIC COOPERATION

Research has demonstrated that pairs of democracies do not go to war against one
another. Thus, it is in groups of democracies that form Deutchian security communities
that the Realist perspective, and its approach to managing interdependence, is the most
irrelevant in terms of conceptualization and explanation.
3. SO CALLED REALIST CLAIMS ARE ACTUALLY SELF-INTERESTED CONSTRUCTS

Realists seemingly foreclose the future (and deny social freedom) by postulating an
historical recurrence of violent conflict and studying human behavior through an
epistemology of control. Radical appraisals, within and beyond ecological thought,
pointedly demonstrate how such philosophical straightjackets are destined to deny the
autonomy of subjects and to dissuade alternative thinking. Radical thought is holistic
thought and maintains that historical reality is repeatedly constructed by the politically
powerful.
REALISM DESTROYS THE NATURAL

ENVIRONMENT
1. REALISM PERPETUATES MATERIAL ACQUISITION, WAR, AND DEATH
But as the strong must remain strong, it must devise a system of accumulation and
control which ensures that energies are channeled to a focal point, at the top, so as to
protect the vertically integrated entity (the nation-state) against a hostile environment
of functional equals. The necessary state, the good state, will not survive without
entrenched hierarchiesthis is where realist description becomes policy prescription. In
its mildest expression, realism merely warns against the omnipresence of power
exertion. But the realist logic effortlessly and understandably extends a theory of
omnipresent war and death, which legitimizes the power apparatus.
2. REALISM TREATS NATURE AS AN UNENDING RESOURCE

Certain ecological worldviews presumably cultivate the flowering of differences in a
community, as an essential guarantee for stability and renewal. Realism, however,
dictated by its own approach to peace and stability, is forced to uphold the reverse. As
history and nature are fundamentally conflictual, the constant threat of war demands a
high level of discipline which, as discussed above, hierarchy provides, and which is
necessarily accompanied by an ironing out of differencesfor obvious purposes of
efficiency, predictability, and control.
REALISM HURTS WOMEN

1. REALISM ENSURES WOMENS OPPRESSION
D. S. L. Jarvis, lecturer in Government and International Relations at the University of
Sydney, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE CHALLENGE OF POSTMODERNISM, 1999,
p. 157.
Despite the tacit pluralism in such ambitions, however, the focal point of feminist
International Relations scholars remains an expose of male violence as a global war
against women. Realist theory, positivism, the conventional research agendas of
security studies, the Enlightenment, modernity and rationality, or the precepts of state
security, and all really the encoded masculine ethos of multiple strategies to coerce,
control, dominate and subjugate women. This is not just male egocentrism manifest as
chauvinism, but a functional element of class, state, international political, and capitalist
reproduction that requires the domestic indenture of women.
2. THE ADVERSARIAL INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORK TRAPS WOMEN IN INFERIOR ROLES

D. S. L. Jarvis, lecturer in Government and International Relations at the University of
Sydney, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE CHALLENGE OF POSTMODERNISM, 1999,
p. 157.
As Cynthia Enloe observes in the case of the diplomatic class, Government men depend
on womens unpaid labor to carry on relations with their political counterparts. So long
as the conventional politics of marriage prevailed, no government needed either to
acknowledge or to accommodate diplomatic wives and women careerists. They could
use marriage both to grease the wheels of man-to-man negotiations and to ensure that
no women reached positions of influence.
Relativism Responses
Introduction
How very liberating is the idea that we should not judge others! In a time when the past
century has seen every conceivable eviltotalitarianism, racism, imperialismand seen
those evils justified through the use of absolutes and the marginalization that occurs
as a result of those judgments and absolutes, the idea that everyone, or every culture,
has their own moral standards, promises to deliver us to a more tolerant and democratic
way of thinking.
However, in this essay I will try to demonstrate that the call to abandon judgments and
universals is both immature and premature. It is so because it ignores the inevitability
and importance of judging human action. Human action, if it is to be improved upon,
requires some standard of judgment; and even if that judgment comes from our
collective deliberation rather than some metaphysical well of truth, it is still judgment,
and will still be seen by some as intolerant.
Types of relativism
Relativism is the philosophical orientation that argues, There are no absolutes. For
relativists, there is no logical, metaphysical, or ethical basis for judging the actions of
others to be desirable or undesirable. Although such judgments seem natural and form
the basis of entire communities of law and ethics, relativists argue that these
communities never really achieve the aim of improving the human condition.
Relativists point to the changing nature of norms and standards of human conduct as
evidence that absolutism is untenable. For example, most of the laws of the Old
Testamenthow to bathe, which crimes are punishable by death, who may enter cities
or temples, and even the types of punishment assigned to particular crimeshave been
abandoned even by those religious communities and individuals who claim to uphold the
Old Testament. They have been abandoned because they served a particular historical
and contingent purpose, but no longer do so.
Moreover, relativists argue that the attempt to impose standards on others is itself a
kind of imperialism, an unethical behavior because it breeds intolerance and violence.
The standard relativist argument against religion, for example, is that religion breeds
conflict, as unbelievers are seen as a threat. For relativists, even purportedly nonreligious moral absolutes are a form of residual religion, a holdover from a time when it
was believed people had to be fooled or scared into doing what was right.
Finally, relativism has both moral and epistemological components. I have already
spoken of the moral component of relativism: Intolerance is wrong. The epistemological
component works something like this: In order for me to judge your action right or
wrong, I must be standing at a vantage point where I can see the totality of differences
between right and wrong actions. Since there is no such vantage point, I cannot possibly
judge your actions to be right or wrong.
True, I may be able to judge whether your actions cause others pain and suffering, or joy
and happiness. The problem is that these particular wordsjoy, happiness, pain,
sufferingare emotive words that lack any kind of meaning apart from their
observational value. I can see that someone is suffering, but that does not give me the
metaphysical authority to say that such suffering is morally unacceptable.
Now I will explain the two most common manifestations of relativism in value debates:
Cultural relativism holds that societies determine which actions within them are right or
wrong. A common example of cultural relativism is the observation that some
indigenous cultures once engaged in a practice known as infant exposure, where a
newborn baby was placed out in the cold for a night. If the baby survived, the village
knew it would be a strong and healthy child, and eventually become a productive
member of the group. If the baby died, this helped to control population, and was also a
sign that the baby probably would not have been healthy, and would thus be a drain on
the resources of the village. Cultural relativists note that modern society would be
disgusted with this practice, but that it made perfect sense to those who practiced it.
Similarly, some cultures engage in polygamy; ancient Greek culture engaged in

homosexuality, and some cultures leave their elderly members to die. Relativists claim
that all of these practices made sense to those who engaged in them, and that it would
be meaningless and intolerant to say that such practices were wrong.
Ethical relativism holds that individuals in societies each have their own moral code.
What is right for me may be wrong for you, and what is right for you may be wrong for
me. Given such a state of affairs, ethical relativists argue that the best society is one
with minimal laws and regulations. While some rule making may be inevitable in order to
protect a few basic standards of rights, ethical relativists want as few moral rules as
possible.
Problems with relativism

To restate an important point, systems of belief such as cultural and ethical relativism
are commonly seen as huge advances in moral thinking. To be sure, it is refreshing that
we no longer stone adulterers to death. Gay and Lesbian activists no doubt welcome the
slow move to tolerance for their orientation. And religious groups are well served by the
increasing pluralism of our times: Nobody wants to be burned at the stake, or denied the
rights to liberty and property because their beliefs are outside the norm.
However, in the sections to follow, I will argue that we should not confuse tolerance with
relativism, that tolerance itself is a kind of absolute that seems to contradict the very
foundations of relativism, and finally that judgments about human behaviorboth
epistemic and eventually normativeare inevitable and desirable if we must act in
any way at all, and especially if we must act to make the world better.
Before I do this, however, I want to pre-empt the argument that advocating or enforcing
particular moral norms is a remnant of totalitarianism, stone-age intolerance, or just
plain fussiness. My argument is that the belief that certain things are morally right or
wrong, desirable or undesirable need not cause us to behave in ways that are violent or
unjust. True, some conflict is inevitable, and sometimes the majority can justifiably
enforce its will on a minority, particularly when the minority is engaged in actions which
cause direct harm to the majority (It works the other way as well: The majority cannot
cause undue harm to the minority in a society containing a genuine rule of law.) But by
and large, there is a demonstrable difference between advocating a moral view and
violently enforcing that view.
For example: Many people in the elections of 2000 thought Ralph Nader a moralizing,
absolutist stick-in-the-mud. Nader spoke in absolutes; he called corporate practices
evil and clearly advanced an agenda that he thought to be both pragmatically, and
morally, correct. In fact, accusations of his absolutism were the most effective forms of
attack against Nader. He is too absolutist, people would say. He could never be a
good leader.
However, the fact of Naders moral absolutism, even granting the possibility that such
absolutism precluded him from being an effective leader in Americas political system,
did not make him somehow evil or unethical. It is in such cases that the relativist
conflates the discursive violence of moralizing with the physical or material violence,
which comes when I strike you, shoot you, or slap you because I disagree with you.
There is a clear difference between rhetorical or discursive violence (You are a bad
person. I hate you) and material violence. Those who engage in absolutism in the public
forum, but do not threaten people with force or the loss of freedom, are not violent
totalitarians, and so neednt scare those concerned with peaceful pluralism. In sum, it is
possible, I think, to believe in moral absolutes and not be intolerant or totalitarian.
The inevitability of judgment

Having pre-empted the usual relativist appeal to fear, now I will explain why judgments
are inevitable. By inevitable, I really mean two different things: First, judgments are
inevitable in that our very linguistic, cognitive, and structural underpinnings require us
to judge. The second sense of inevitable is more ethical in nature; I will argue that if
humans are to act collectively to improve their world, then judging our actions, and the
actions of other communities and individuals, is unavoidable, andgiven that we can do
so nonviolentlydesirable.
Cognitively, I cannot help but make judgmental pronouncements. This is where the
illogical nature of the relativist argument comes into play. Consider the following formula
in favor of relativism:
All statements which judge the desirability or undesirability of particular actions are
incoherent.
Premise (1) above is such a statement.
Thus, premise (1) is incoherent.
The obvious contradiction extends beyond the epistemic nature of the above formula. It
also applies to the ethical assumptions of relativism. Consider:
All statements which judge the desirability or undesirability of particular actions are
unethical statements.
Unethical statements ought to be rejected.
Premise (1) above is such a statement.
Thus, premise (1) ought to be rejected.
It is, therefore, cognitively impossible to sustain the notion that we can never judge.
The relativist, however, will reply that such formulas do not really do justice to the
relativist position. Instead, it will be argued that the relativist doesnt even make either
of the first premises above.
The simple and indisputable fact of the matter is that it is impossible for us not to
judgeif by judgment we mean the cognitive act of assigning meaning to the things
around us. If judgment (including judgment of the desirability or undesirability of a
particular act) is inevitable, then the question is not whether or not we should judge. The
question becomes: HOW should we judge? What criteria should we use? Should our
judgments be collective or individual? Should they be charitable or tough-minded?
None of those questions preclude tolerance. But they do require us to admit that we will
always, individually or collectively, see certain acts as desirable or undesirable, and
whether we choose to call them good, evil, smart, stupid, or whatever, we ought
to be fully aware of their inevitable role in our personal and political lives.
The inevitability of universals

Relativists argue that values cannot be universal, since they vary according to history,
culture, or individual preference. Relativists see universalization as the greatest
conceivable evil, as an act of philosophical imperialism.
But just as it is impossible not to judge at some level, it is similarly impossible not to
universalize. This is both cognitively and pragmatically true. It is cognitively true
because humans share too many cognitive similarities not to universalize in their very
linguistic and logical constructions of reality. It is pragmatically true because humans are
not solitary actors: We form communities in order to solve problems or improve our lives,
and in so doing, we universalize our goals and objectives, even our values. I will
address both the cognitive and the practical inevitability of universalization presently.
Cognitively, our very linguistic and thought structures demand that we universalize
our concepts. Linguistic philosophers such as Noam Chomsky have shown that we have
faculties which are, for all practical purposes, innate, in that we all learn the same way.
If this is true, then it seems that, insofar as we agree about more than we disagree
about, or insofar as we see the world in much the same way (for all practical purposes),
the very act of sharing knowledge is an act of universalizing
(http://www.britannica.com/seo/n/noam-chomsky/).
But it is in the pragmatic sphere that we see the act of universalizing values. In order to
overcome world hunger, people must first agree that hunger and malnutrition are bad
things. Although there may be some disagreement, say, from people who believe in the
Malthusian thesis that we ought to let people die now to prevent greater death in the
future, even these objections assume the same value judgments and vocabulary as
those who reject starvation at the outset.
Similarly, anthropologists agree that every culture has prohibitions against various
transgressions. As philosopher Joseph Grcic writes, these core beliefs might vary in
some local manifestations, but it contains more similarities than differences. He writes:
This core consists of: 1) prohibition of murder or the killing of in-group members except
within parameters specified in the group (e.g. as punishment, self-defense, or other
socially accepted rituals); 2) prohibition of random bodily violence, harm or insults (harm
to prestige or self-esteem); 3) rules requiring some degree of work from the able bodied
to meet survival needs; 4) a prohibition of theft and establishment of some level of
private property; 5) rules requiring some level of care for others, especially infants, the
old and infirm; 6) knowledge is valued at least insofar as assisting in the provision of
food, shelter and healing illness; 7) truth telling and promise keeping are generally
valued except in specific cases; 8) the encouragement of some form of marriage and
mating where sexual needs are met, reproduction and nurture of children take place; 9)
some restrictions on sexual intercourse with the rule against incest most universal
(Joseph Grcic, DIALOGOS 74, 1999, pp. 125-6).
There are, as I said, pragmatic reasons for these universals: Societies that reject
prohibitions against murder will eventually no longer be societies. Societies that contain
no provisions for helping their weakest members will not, in some Nietzschian fashion,
become stronger, but will in fact die out as more and more members fall through the
cracks, and as the diversity and strength necessary to face unexpected social challenges
dissolves.
I hope that this section has especially shown that moral universals do not require us to
believe in those very different and absolutist moral codes which usually form the
foundational justification for moral doctrine. Instead, whatever their various
metaphysical underpinnings, societies universalize their values because they need to in
order to survive.
Finally, none of this suggests that differences do not exist, or should be swept under the
rug of public discourse. People agree, disagree, and agree to disagree, but in those very
acts of public discourse which define and refine social values, the inevitable fact of
universalization remains.
The problem of manipulation

The final problem with relativism is perhaps its most serious shortcoming, namely that
those who invoke tolerance for other practices or cultures are often apologists for
horrible things which are unacceptable even by the standards of the cultures that
relativists purport to defend. I want to give an example, which, while seemingly extreme,
is nevertheless a real example of where relativism was invoked in the defense of
practices unacceptable even within the cultures in question.
The example involves female genital surgery. In certain Islamic African cultures, young
women are subject to female circumcision, a painful and medically unnecessary
procedure that seems unacceptable to most of the rest of the world. Outsiders view the
practice as repugnant and patriarchal, since its goal seems to be the sexual control of
women by men. Defenders of the practice, however, reply that it is integral to the
cultures in question. These defenders are often critical of Western attempts to criticize
or prevent female genital surgery.
In response, legal scholar Mary M. Sheridan points out that cultural relativism has
become a kind of shield to guard tyrants and chauvinists. She writes: Those who
support the continuance of female circumcisionhide behind the shield of cultural
relativism by arguing that others should not pass judgment and condemn the traditions
and practices of cultures different from their own (Sheridan, 71 St. Johns University
Law Review 433). Similarly, Catherine Annis holds that the young girls subject to
mutilation are not given the choice to live under a certain culture, but they suffer just
the same. She writes: The young girls who are at risk of female genital mutilation have
the right to experience an adolescence and adulthood free of physical and psychological
brutality. When the effects of female genital mutilation are honestly faced, nothing can
justify it. Not culture. Not tradition. Not parental rights. Nothing (Annas, 12 Journal of
Contemporary Health Law and Policy 325).
Anti-FGS activists similarly point out that many women in the very cultures described are
so opposed to the practice that they flee their countries, send their daughters away, or
take more extreme measures to avoid it. Is this a clear cut case of universal rights
trumping cultural sovereignty? Is it a case of western notions of rights
misunderstanding cultural uniqueness? I believe it is neither, but I also think that the
relativists have more questions to answer than the feminists. If the victims of this
practice so frequently oppose it, then there seems to be a weak basis at best for
relegating it to the realm of cultural uniqueness.
This does not mean that western notions of rightness are always right. It does not mean
that cultures should not check their notions of universality against obvious differences. It
does mean, however, that there is no real monolithic culture anywhere that can claim
authority over its members. And if that is true, cultural relativism cannot be the basis of
a sound ethic of rights or duties. This fact should not make us unreasonable absolutists,
but it should make us suspicious of claims that each culture is entitled to their own
practices, particularly when those pronouncements come from the elites in that culture,
who have the most to gain from having their own human rights practices ignored or
excused.
Conclusion
Relativism began as an effort to ethically admonish us to stop killing each other with
absolutes. Because of this, relativism seems like a beautiful, liberating, democratic
project. It is not. Tolerance, on the other hand, is a value which ought to be universal,
and which can check the excesses of absolutism. But tolerance does not require the
abandonment of the collective project to make the world a better place.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arrington, Robert L. RATIONALISM, REALISM, AND RELATIVISM: PERSPECTIVES IN
CONTEMPORARY MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
Brown, Donald E. HUMAN UNIVERSALS (Philadelphia: Temple University, 1991).
Cook, John W. MORALITY AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999).
Dilley, Roy. THE PROBLEM OF CONTEXT (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999).
Donnelly, Jack. UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE (Ithaca: Cornell
Fishkin, James S. BEYOND SUBJECTIVE MORALITY: ETHICAL REASONING AND POLITICAL

PHILOSOPHY (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
Fleischacker, Samuel. INTEGRITY AND MORAL RELATIVISM (New York: E.J. Brill, 1992).
Harman, Gilbert and Thomson, Judith Jarvis. MORAL RELATIVISM AND MORAL
OBJECTIVITY (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996).
Harvey, David. JUSTICE, NATURE, AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF DIFFERENCE (Cambridge,

Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996).
Hurd, Heidi M. MORAL COMBAT (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Krausz, Michael. RELATIVISM: INTERPRETATION AND CONFRONTATION (Notre Dame:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).
Moser, Paul K., and Carson, Thomas L. MORAL RELATIVISM: A READER (New York: Oxford
Regal, Philip J. THE ANATOMY OF JUDGMENT (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1990).
Washburn, Wilcomb E. AGAINST THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL GRAIN (New Brunswick, N.J.:

Transaction Publishers, 1998).
Wong, David B. MORAL RELATIVITY (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
RELATIVISM IS EPISTEMOLOGICALLY
FLAWED
1. RELATIVISM IS OUTDATED: ALL SOCIETIES HAVE NOW BEEN EXPOSED TO JUSTICE
Martha C. Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics, University of Chicago School of Law,
IDAHO LAW REVIEW, vol. 36, 2000, pp. 392-3.
As a normative thesis about how we should make moral judgments, relativism has
several problems. First, it has no bite in the modern world, where the ideas of every
culture turn up inside every other, through the Internet and the media. The ideas of
feminism, of democracy, of egalitarian welfarism, are now "inside" every known society.
Many forms of moral relativism, especially those deriving from the cultural anthropology
of a previous era, use an unrealistic notion of culture. They imagine homogeneity where
there is really diversity, agreement or submission where there is really contestation.
2. MORAL JUDGMENTS ARE INEVITABLE: RELATIVISM IS AN ILLUSION

Harry M. Clor, legal scholar, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE, vol. 45, 2000,
p. 48.
I am calling complacency the view that this way of life is viable and good enough for
liberal America. At the root of this complacency is the assumption that a relatively
respectable ethical existence can be maintained without any public morality or, indeed,
without any serious attention to moral questions and the prerequisites of a good life.
One just believes what one believes and others do, too, and it all works out
harmoniously and nicely without a need for moral reflection or collective evaluation. If
this is what tolerance means, then it is inseparable from shallow ethical self-satisfaction.
("Judge not that ye be not judged" becomes "Live and let live" or "different strokes,"
which becomes "I'm OK; you're OK.") Morally serious persons cannot avoid making
judgments-about themselves and others too, because they care about good and bad,
better and worse in social as well as personal life.
3. SOCIAL EVOLUTION PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF MORAL NORMS

Joseph Grcic, professor of philosophy at Indiana State University, DIALOGOS 74, 1999, p.
128.
One must still explain why there are moral values at all and why do they have the
similarities they have. Is this just a coincidence? No, the existence of moral norms and
similarities can best be explained as the solution to the problem of human co-existence
in a socially enduring manner. Morality is the answer to the problem of maintaining
social order among members of a species which both need others and at the same time
are not genetically programmed (as, say, bees are) to cooperate. Moral norms channel
human impulses and actions into ordered relations with the actions of others. They
constitute a structure of instrumental rules or guidelines which define appropriate
means for the achievement of human ends in a social environment. In other words,
moral norms correspond to necessary social structures wherein a group of individuals
with some anti-social tendencies continue to exist as a society with minimal conflict and
inefficiency in meeting the needs of its members.
UNIVERSAL VALUES EXIST

1. CROSS-CULTURAL MORAL AGREEMENTS PROVE UNIVERSAL VALUES EXIST
Joseph Grcic, professor of philosophy at Indiana State University, DIALOGOS 74, 1999,
pp. 122-3.
The position defended here is that there are significant uniformities and less significant
differences in moral systems which can be explained as follows: Similarities in core
values are a function of the universality of certain human needs, tendencies and the
common problems persons must solve to meet their survival needs. The differences
arise due to the fact that moral systems emerge in different social and historical
contexts and exist as part of larger belief systems which give them their particular
character. It will be argued that these differences are secondary when compared to the
larger common foundation of core values.
2. SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY PROVE MANY UNIVERSAL VALUES EXIST

Joseph Grcic, professor of philosophy at Indiana State University, DIALOGOS 74, 1999,
pp. 125-6.
If relativism is an inadequate theory, what reasons are there for absolutism, the view
that there are universal values? Sociological and anthropological evidence reveals that
all societies have a common core of moral values. This core consists of: 1) prohibition of
murder or the killing of in-group members except within parameters specified in the
group (e.g. as punishment, self-defense, or other socially accepted rituals); 2) prohibition
of random bodily violence, harm or insults (harm to prestige or self-esteem); 3) rules
requiring some degree of work from the able bodied to meet survival needs; 4) a
prohibition of theft and establishment of some level of private property; 5) rules
requiring some level of care for others, especially infants, the old and infirm; 6)
knowledge is valued at least insofar as assisting in the provision of food, shelter and
healing illness; 7) truth telling and promise keeping are generally valued except in
specific cases; 8) the encouragement of some form of marriage and mating where
sexual needs are met, reproduction and nurture of children take place; 9) some
restrictions on sexual intercourse with the rule against incest most universal.
DISAGREEMENTS AND DIFFERING CULTURES DONT JUSTIFY RELATIVISM
1. CULTURAL AND INDIVIDUAL DISAGREEMENTS DONT DISPROVE UNIVERSAL VALUES

124.
First, the factual claim of cultural relativism and moral disagreements does not establish
the normative claim of moral relativism just as past disagreements between the
heliocentric and geocentric beliefs establishes that there is no objectively correct view.
Second, many of the disagreements about moral issues come from disagreements about
the facts, not values. For example, some Eskimo tribe had the custom of abandoning
its aged parents to die. Our society would probably condemn this as probably murder.
However, the reason this tribe did this is their belief that the quality of the after life of
their aged parents is related to the quality of their lives when they died. So if they died
senile and seriously infirm, they would have the same weaknesses in the after life. The
abandonment of their parents before this happened was their way of promoting a good
after life. Here, there is no difference in respect for parents but a difference about
whether there is an after life or how one assures that the after life is good.
2. BASIC MORAL AGREEMENTS OUTWEIGH DISAGREEMENTS

124.
Relativists are also wrong because the facts show that although there are disagreements
in morality, there are also basic agreements about universal values as will be shown.
The matter of the lack of an agreed upon foundation is also unwarranted as argued here.
The foundation argued for here is that moral values are the necessary conditions for
human survival, social co-existence and order.
RELATIVISM IS UNNECESSARY FOR

TOLERANCE
1. THE TOLERANCE ARGUMENT FOR RELATIVISM IS SELF-CONTRADICTORY
125.
The question of tolerance and respect for other cultures is an important one. The
problem here is that relativists contradict themselves if they hold tolerance as an
absolute. Secondly, respect does not require absolute tolerance. Can we tolerate a
society that is itself not tolerant of other societies? Should we tolerate a racist and slave
practicing society? Should the British have tolerated the custom of sati? Respect means
to value the lives of people, not necessarily every practice and belief they happen to
have at a time. Indeed, respect would imply a reasoned attempt to convince another
society to give up cruel and irrational practices, difficult as this may be.
2. RELATIVISM IS UNNECESSARY FOR TOLERANCE

IDAHO LAW REVIEW, vol. 36, 2000, p. 393.
Many people, in particular students, confuse relativism with the toleration of diversity,
and find relativism attractive on the ground that it shows respect for the ways of others.
But of course it does no such thing. Most cultures have exhibited considerable
intolerance of diversity over the ages, as well as at least some respect for diversity. By
making each tradition the last word, we deprive ourselves of any more general norm of
toleration or respect that could help us limit the intolerance of cultures. Once we see
this, our interest in being relativists should rapidly diminish.
3. FAIRNESS IS NOT AN ARGUMENT FOR RELATIVISM

125.
The issue of fairness is not relevant to the issue of relativism. Fairness is concerned with
judging another persons behavior, not the truth of the moral code they were socialized
into believing. Fairness requires we judge another based on their knowledge at the time
of the action, just as we do not judge children and the insane with the same standard as
the sane adult.
4. COMPLACENCY IN THE FACE OF EVIL IS ALWAYS WORSE THAN BEING JUDGMENTAL

Harry M. Clor, legal scholar, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE, vol. 45, 2000,
p. 48.
The fourth and the last contemporary assumption I shall deal with is significantly related
to the preceding one. This is the idea that you ought not to be morally "judgmental," it is
imperative to be a "nonjudgmental" person. Of course, this outlook rests upon a moral
premise-the premise of personal autonomy; in other words, it seems to favor an ethic of
rights and it (implicitly at least) condemns an ethic of decency. That a moral judgment
has been made when one condemns the "judgmental" is something which should be
called to the attention of believers from time to time. But I want to concentrate here on
something elsethe ethical complacency and lack of public-spiritedness that this
outlook entails. The society envisioned by proponents (or sympathetic observers) is a
multitude of private individuals or families most of whom happen to prefer living
relatively decent personal lives-but not on the basis of any principle by which they could
justify their option for decency or criticize alternative ways of life. What binds them
together, it would seem, is only their conception that one doesn't have the right to
evaluate others, which they call tolerance.
RELATIVISM HURTS WOMENS RIGHTS

1. REJECT RELATIVISM TO LIBERATE WOMEN
IDAHO LAW REVIEW, vol. 36, 2000, pp. 382-3.
But when feminists appeal to notions of equality and liberty - even when those notions
are actually included in the constitutions of the nations in which they live, as they are,
for example, in the Indian Constitution - they are frequently accused of Westernizing and
of insufficient respect for their own cultures, as if there had been no human suffering, no
reasons for discontent, and no criticism before aliens invaded the peaceful landscape.
We should ask whose interests are served by this nostalgic image of a happy
harmonious culture, and whose resistance and misery are being effaced. Describing her
mother's difficult life, Indian feminist philosopher Uma Narayan writes, "One thing I want
to say to all who would dismiss my feminist criticisms of my culture, using my
'Westernization' as a lash, is that my mother's pain too has rustled among the pages of
all those books I have read that partly constitute my 'Westernization,' and has crept into
all the suitcases I have ever packed for my several exiles." This same pain is evident in
the united voice of protest that has emerged from international women's meetings such
as those in Vienna and Beijing, where a remarkable degree of agreement has been found
across cultures concerning fundamental rights for women.
2. RELATIVISM ARGUMENTS ARE USED TO KEEP WOMEN DOWN

Even when women appear to be satisfied with such customs, we should probe more
deeply. If someone who has no property rights under the law, who has had no formal
education, who has no legal right of divorce, who will very likely be beaten if she seeks
employment outside the home, says that she endorses traditions of modesty, purity, and
self-abnegation, it is not clear that we should consider this the last word on the matter
(as Chapter 2 will argue). Women's development groups typically encounter resistance
initially, because women are afraid that change will make things worse. A group of
women I met in a desert area of Andhra Pradesh, about ninety minutes by jeep from
Mahabubnagar, told me that they had initially resisted participating in the government
project, called Mahila Samakhya, aimed at the construction of women's collectives. They
thought that it would be a waste of time, changing nothing; and they were afraid that
their husbands would react harshly, because the husbands initially told them that the
collectives were just an excuse to spend time talking and not working. But over time
they began to see that many advantages could be gained by collective discussion and
action: now they get the health visitor to come more regularly, they demand that the
teacher show up. Men welcome these changes too, and they gain new respect for their
wives, seeing them articulating their demands with clarity and winning concessions from
local government. Traditions of deference that once seemed good have quickly ceased
to seem so.
3. RELATIVISM ENTRENCHES IMPERIALISM AND CHAUVINISM

We should also remember that the equation of the entirety of a culture with old or
change-resistant elements is frequently a ploy of imperialism and chauvinism. The
British in India harped continually on elements of Indian culture that they could easily
portray as retrograde; they sought to identify these as "Indian culture," and critical
values (especially those favoring women's progress) as British importations. Historically
this was untrue; but it served in the minds of many to justify domination. At the same
time, the British actively promoted antiscientific elements in Indian culture in order to
prevent a development of science and technology in India that would threaten their
continued hegemony. As Nehru was later to put it, the British encouraged "the
disruptive, obscurantist, reactionary, sectarian, and opportunist elements in the
country." It would be a grave mistake on the part of the foreign observer to endorse this
British construction as the way things are concerning what is "Indian."
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT
Of all the former presidents the United States has seen leave office in the past 100
years, perhaps none (even including Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton) has inspired such
virulent criticism and simultaneously vociferous defense as Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
popularly known as FDR. The architect of the New Deal, the charming and affable voice
behind the Fireside Chats, the first president to truly take his case directly to the people,
FDR is feted by liberals and reviled by conservatives to this day -- not a bad record for a
man who left office nearly 70 years ago.
Why the hatred from the right wing? After all, Roosevelt isnt just the man who pulled
the country out of the Great Depression, he was perhaps the living embodiment of that
rugged individualism and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps stuff that
conservatives like to bluster about. Debilitated by a youthful bout with polio, FDR
nevertheless rose to great heights as a statesman. He was elected to an unprecedented
four terms. He passed important legislation, and was generally beloved by the public. So
whats up with the bitterness?
Well, the majority of it is due to the success of FDRs liberal social programs. The New
Deal included massive government spending to create jobs and the creation of the
Civilian Conservation Corps, which proved that private industry isnt the only way to
create jobs. Theres no way to anger a political opponent than by passing popular and
effective legislation.
Another element is that most American of traits, anti-Semitism. (But I didnt know FDR
was Jewish! you say. He wasnt -- but no one accused the far right of being rocket
scientists, except Werner von Braun, anyway.) Well discuss how that applies in a bit.
Whatever the roots of the anti-FDR sentiment, though, it is certainly remarkable that the
enmity exists more than two generations later in this country. Even today, youll see
conspiracy theorist websites devoted to decrying Roosevelts influence on the country -and academic articles from scholars and think tank employees slathering over why the
New Deal was unconstitutional. It wasnt, and it happened 70 years ago, but the threat
of a good example of liberalism is still pretty threatening to these people.
Thats not to say the left doesnt have problems with FDR. Many saw the New Deal as a
cop-out, a bone thrown to the masses who demanded an alternative to the capitalism
that was starving them in droves (in their view). In fact, neither the left nor the right felt
they had to restrain themselves when criticizing FDR: FDR was "carrying out more
thoroughly and brutally than even Hoover the capitalist attack against the masses,"
according to Communist leader Earl Browder, while American fascist William Dudley
Pelley called him the "lowest form of human worm - according to Gentile standards."
(Told you so about the anti-Semitism).
This isnt to say that there arent legitimate criticisms of FDR. What is legitimate
depends on what side of the political discourse you come down on, of course -- but there
are certainly things we can all now (hopefully) agree on as grievous acts on FDRs part.
The best example: the massive internment of Japanese Americans in concentration
camps, a horrific violation of civil liberties and a betrayal of what would appear to be
FDRs own principles. Only recently has there been mass outcry about this mass
violation of human rights, which tells you we have a ways to go yet in this country. It
also says something about the limits of mainstream liberalism, but well get to that
below.
All this should tell you that Roosevelt had a monumental impact on American life. If one
can inspire vitriol of this nature from both sides of the American political spectrum, I say
with a smirk, one has doubtless done something right.
ROOSEVELTS IMPORTANCE
As I said above, even people that hate Roosevelt acknowledge his importance.
Historians, from right to left to centrist, agree on this. William E. Leuchtenburg, at the
Conference on Leadership in the Modern Presidency at the Woodrow Wilson School of
Princeton University, said that The presidency as we know it today begins with Franklin
Delano Roosevelt.
There are many reasons for this, Leuchtenberg continued, from his leadership in World
War II to his economic ideas to his intangible inspirational qualities. He noted so
powerful an impression did FDR leave on the office that in the most recent survey of
historians he was ranked as the second greatest president in our history, surpassed only
by the legendary Abraham Lincoln.
This did not stop some of his contemporaries from referring to FDR as "that
megalomaniac cripple in the White House." But believe it or not, some of that sentiment
stems from the same root. Many believe that todays so-called imperial presidency -where significantly more power rests in the hands of the executive branch -- began with
FDR and his legislative ideas.
ROOSEVELTS IDEAS
Much is made of Roosevelts social and economic reforms. In order to understand these,
it is important to understand the ideology behind them.
Perhaps the best manifestation of these ideas came from the man himself. In his famour
Four Freedoms speech, FDR laid out exactly to what he thought humans ought to be
entitled:
Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic
problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme
factor in the world. For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy
and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and
economic systems are simple. They are:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising
standard of living.
These are the simple, the basic things that must never be lost sight of in the turmoil and
unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner and abiding straight of our
economic and political systems is dependent upon the degree to which they fulfill these
expectations.
This is why the left sees Roosevelt as a betrayer of social revolution, and perhaps they
are right. This is also why the right sees him as a betrayer of unfettered capitalism -- and
perhaps they are right, too. FDR saw the economic system of the early 20th century as
too harsh, as failing to meet the needs of the public. If youre starving, and you have to
put your 10-year-old to work in a factory, sewing clothes for 16 hours a day for pennies a
day (due to no child labor laws and no minimum wage), youre a lot more susceptible to
someone preaching overthrow of the existing system than, say, someone making a
union-won family wage who can provide for his or her family and even be a little bit
comfortable.
FDR recognized this. He figured if America as we knew it was to survive intact, someone
had to do something fast to preserve the positive aspects of the old order.
He also thought there were certain fundamental rights to which humans were entitled.
Unlike most every other president, he included economic rights in that list. The four
freedoms which give the famous speech its name are listed here:
One would think that this made FDR a pacifist, or at the very least an advocate of
disarmament. This is not quite true, as we will see later.
ECONOMIC POLICY: THE DEFENDERS

The left saw FDR as a sellout who saved capitalism as we know it when it was on the
brink of collapse, foregoing more revolutionary change for institutional reform. The right
see him as having betrayed capitalism for a more socialist model. The thing they both
agree on is that a fundamental shift occurred during his time in office. Before, the
government had no rhetorical or actual commitment to the average working person.
In January 1935, FDR emphasized his commitment to social security this way: "I see no
reason why every child, from the day he is born, shouldn't be a member of the social
security system. Cradle to the grave - from the cradle to the grave they ought to be in a
social insurance system." You may have heard this cradle to the grave rhetoric before,
but no one heard it from the President before then.
The FDR years, wrote William Barber in his book DESIGN WITHOUT DISORDER, were "a
watershed in economic policy and in economic thinking" (p. 3). The reason was not that
Roosevelt was revolutionary economic thinker himself -- instead, he was a man with
certain values (expressed above) that was willing to listen to professional economists
about how to achieve those values.
He had his own ideas -- Barber says he was "an uncompromising champion of consumer
sovereignty" -- but he was more a "laboratory affording economists an opportunity to
make hands-on contact with the world of events" (p. 2). Specifically, the FDR
experimentation resulted in an "Americanized version of Keynesian macroeconomics"
which relied on government stimulation of private industry. He also promoted expanded
federal regulation of agriculture, industry, finance, and labor relations to prevent market
failures and offer governmental support of certain businesses in danger of failure.
Aside from the governmental influx of capital to boost the economy, FDR is best known
for promoting what is known as the welfare state. This imprecise term covers a variety
of reforms that constitute a safety net for the poor and otherwise disadvantaged. Things
we take for granted today include: relief programs for the unemployed; the
establishment of a legal minimum wage; Social Security; pensions for the elderly;
unemployment insurance and aid to families with dependent children, the aged poor,
the physically handicapped, and the blind. All of these were first established under
Franklin Roosevelt.
He explained his rationale in the Four Freedoms speech:
ECONOMIC POLICY: THE CRITICS

As I mentioned, there are lots of people that wont let 70-year-old policies go.
One of them is Robert Higgs, the conservative economic theorist, who admits that In
the construction of the American regulatory and welfare state, no one looms larger than
FDR.
He does not say this as a compliment.
Sure, Higgs writes, with few exceptions, historians have taken a positive view of the
New Deal -- but, to him, such programs as massive relief programs for the unemployed;
the expanded federal regulation of agriculture, industry, finance, and labor relations; the
establishment of a legal minimum wage; and the creation of Social Security with its oldage pensions, unemployment insurance, and income supplements for dependent
children in single-parent families, the aged poor, the physically handicapped, and the
blind are not beneficent ideas designed to make the functioning of government and
economy more humane. Nope, these policies are a power grab by liberal economists!
Of course, he doesnt mention that Kershner was a paranoid, pathological anticommunist who saw such things as laws against child labor as a sign of the creeping red
tide, and was arguing in the 1950s and 1960s along with Joe McCarthy that Communists
were infiltrating the American government. Its also pretty interesting how he skips over
free-market conservative Herbert Hoover, who was president when the Great Depression
started in 1929, and who continued to adopt laissez-faire policies that deepened the
depression until 1932, when voters unceremoniously dumped him in favor of FDR. Higgs
and the like paint FDR as a big-government liberal who created federal agencies for their
own sake and no other.
As evidence, Higgs breaks out the organizational chart of the federal government. He
points to such agencies as the Export-Import Bank, the Farm Credit Administration, the
Rural Development Administration (formerly the Farmers Home Administration), the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, the National
Labor Relations Board, the Rural Utility Service (formerly the Rural Electrification
Administration), the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Social Security
Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority as the offspring of the New Deal
and argues that they are pernicious in their effects. Each in its own fashion, he writes,
interferes with the effective operation of the free market. By subsidizing, financing,
insuring, regulating, and thereby diverting resources from the uses most valued by
consumers, each renders the economy less productive than it could be-and all in the
service of one special interest or another.
Regardless of how one feels about each of these individual agencies, and one can
certainly debate about the impacts of some of them, it seems the argument here is that
NO federal agency is EVER justified in helping to stimulate the economy or to ameliorate
the effects on a market collapse on average people. Even if youve got a problem with,
say, the Export-Import Bank, isnt it a good rather than a bad thing that farmers get
subsidies that help family farms stay afloat; that students have their college loans
federally provided, so even (gasp!) the middle class and below can attend universities;
that old people with no family can rely on Social Security checks rather than cat food in
order to eat?
WAR POLICY
Its unfortunate that we have to sum up FDRs World War II actions in so short a space,
but thats the way it is. To his credit, William J. vanden Heuvel has noted, FDR was the
first (and, vanden Heuvel argues, the ONLY) political leader to stand against Hitler from
the very beginning.
Considering that this made him alone not only among the political leaders of the world,
but virtually alone among prominent Americans (many of whom, including Henry Ford,
who praised Hitler and continued to trade with Nazi Germany AFTER World War II began),
it certainly serves as a major mark in Roosevelts favor.
It also helps to explain the hatred of FDR by the anti-Semitic right, who didnt see the
murder of European Jews as any of out business, and didnt think Roosevelt should be
sticking his nose in Hitlers business as the German leader committed the most horrific
act of the 20th century. The nutty right spread rumors that Roosevelts real name was
Rosenfeld, and called his policies the Jew Deal, playing to racist notions of wealthy
Jews running the government. Charming. This nonsense about Roosevelt and about Jews
continues to this day among the racist right, by the way, including Holocaust deniers like
David Irving and his ilk.
One would think, being a victim of race-baiting himself, FDR would have seen the folly in
his most shameful act of the war. Sadly, this was not the case. Famously, FDR signed
Executive Order 9066, which consigned over 100,000 loyal Americans of Japanese
descent to prison camps for years. Their property was seized. The vast majority of it was
never returned. The legal precedent that justified this vile act, Korematsu v. United
States, was upheld by the Supreme Court and stands a valid legal precedent to this day.
No similar policies were enacted for Americans of German or Italian descent, though the
U.S. was at war with them, too. No act of espionage by any Japanese American was ever
proven.
CONCLUSION
FDR might be the most important president of the 20th century. Love him or give in to
insane and illogical hatred of him, this much is undeniable. And what about all those that
got their jollies in hating Roosevelt? My favorite story is this one, told by William E.
Leuchtenberg: In Kansas a man went down into his cyclone cellar and announced he
would not emerge until Roosevelt was out of office. (Which he was there, his wife ran off
with a traveling salesman.)
Sometimes, only sometimes, narratives end with perfect poetic justice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burns, James MacGregor. ROOSEVELT: THE SOLDIER OF FREEDOM, New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1970.
Chomsky, Noam. DETERRING DEMOCRACY, 1992, Boston: South End Press.
Dallek, Robert. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, 1932-1945,

Oxford University Press, 1979.
Davis, Kenneth S. FDR: THE NEW DEAL YEARS 1933-1937, New York: Random House
Publishing, 1986.
Gallagher, Hugh Gregory. FDR'S SPLENDID DECEPTION, New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company Publishers, 1985.
Higgs, Robert. Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute and editor
of The Independent Review, THE FREEMAN, September 1998,
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/x980900Higgs.html, accessed May 02, 2002.
Kimball, Warren F. THE JUGGLER: FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT AS WARTIME STATESMAN,

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
Leuchtenburg, William E. The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy, Conference on
Leadership in the Modern Presidency at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton
University on April 3,1987, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/style/longterm/books/chap1/fdryears.htm, accessed May 5, 2002.
Namorato, Michael V. Department of History, University of Mississippi ,ECONOMIC

HISTORY, EH.NET BOOK REVIEW , July 1997,
http://www.eh.net/bookreviews/library/0024.shtml, accessed May 1, 2002.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. A Message to the Congress on Social Security, Jan. 17,
1935,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/nf/resource/fdr/primdocs/socsecspeech.html,
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery (Fireside Chat),
July 24, 1933, http://newdeal.feri.org/chat/chat03.htm, accessed May 10, 2002.
Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. THE COMING OF THE NEW DEAL, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1959.
FDRS ECONOMIC LEGACY IS CRUCIALLY

IMPORTANT
1. FDR REPRESENTED A WATERSHED IN ECONOMIC THINKING
Michael V. Namorato, Department of History, University of Mississippi ,ECONOMIC
HISTORY, EH.NET BOOK REVIEW , July 1997, p. np,
Similar to his earlier study, Designs Within Disorder concentrates on what economists
were saying during the New Deal, how Franklin D. Roosevelt listened to and responded
to their suggestions, and the ultimate impact these economic thinkers had on long-term
federal economic policy. In the case of Franklin Roosevelt, Barber believes that
professional economists had a president who was willing to listen to them and who was
a "consumer" of what they had to offer. Although not a great economic thinker,
Roosevelt himself, in Barber's opinion, was "an uncompromising champion of consumer
sovereignty" (p. 1). He provided those with more learning and understanding of
economic matters an opportunity to develop their ideas. Roosevelt's Washington, in
short, was a "laboratory affording economists an opportunity to make hands-on contact
with the world of events" (p. 2). After much experimentation, the end result was an
"Americanized version of Keynesian macroeconomics" which became part and parcel of
governmental policy by the end of the 1930s. In this sense, the Rooseveltian years were
"a watershed in economic policy and in economic thinking" (p. 3).
2. IN JUST A FEW WEEKS, FDR TRANSFORMED THE NATIONS ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

William E. Leuchtenburg, The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy, Conference on
University on April 3,1987, p. np, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/style/longterm/books/chap1/fdryears.htm, accessed May 5, 2002.
Only a few weeks after Roosevelt took office, the spirit of the country seemed markedly
changed. Gone was the torpor of the Hoover years; gone, too, the political paralysis.
"The people aren't sure...just where they are going," noted one business journal, "but
anywhere seems better than where they have been. In the homes on the streets, in the
offices there is a feeling of hope reborn." Again and again, observers resorted to the
imagery of darkness and light to characterize the transformation from the Stygian gloom
of Hoover's final winter to the bright springtime of the First Hundred Days. Overnight,
one eyewitness later remembered, Washington seemed like Cambridge on the morning
of the Harvard-Yale game: "All the shops were on display, everyone was joyous, crowds
moved excitedly. There was something in the air that had not been there before, and in
the New Deal that continued throughout. It was not just for the day as it was in
Cambridge." On the New York Curb Exchange, where trading resumed on March 15, the
stock ticker ended the day with the merry message: "Goodnite. ...Happy days are here
again."
3. FDR WAS KEY TO SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR THE DISADVANTAGED

Roosevelt rested his legislative program on the assumption that government should
actively seek social justice for all Americans, not least those who are disadvantaged.
Starting in the spectacular First Hundred Days, Roosevelt brought the Welfare State to
America, years after it had become a fixture in other lands. Although European theorists
had been talking about der Staat for decades, the notion of the State got little attention
in America before FDR. The historian James T. Patterson, responding to left-wing critiques
of FDR, has written: Roosevelt was no hard-eyed merchandiser; his opportunism was
grounded in social concern and conscience, without which the New Deal would indeed
have been mindless and devious.
FDRS OVERSEAS POLICY WAS

EXCELLENT
1. FDR HELPED PROMOTE SOVEREIGNTY FOR COLONIZED PEOPLES
Korwa G. Adar, professor of International Relations at the International Studies Unit,
Political Studies Department, Rhodes University, South Africa, AFRICAN STUDIES
QUARTERLY, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1998, p. np, http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i2a3.htm,
accessed April 22, 2002.
President Wilson's global campaign as the champion for the silent majority also set the
stage for a United States democracy and human rights foreign policy in the twentieth
century. Wilsonian precepts resonated clearly in the messsage of the Atlantic Charter
which, although promulgated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wilson's intellectual heir,
manifestly indicated US dissatisfaction with the lack of sovereignty for colonised
peoples.
2. FDRS LEGACY IS THE ABOLITION OF INTERNATIONAL ISOLATIONISM

Roosevelt's high place rests also on his role in leading the nation to accept the farranging responsibilities of world power. When he took office, the United States was firmly
committed to isolationism; it had refused to participate in either the League of Nations
or the World Court. Denied by Congress the discretionary authority he sought, Roosevelt
made full use of his executive power in recognizing the USSR, crafting the Good
Neighbor Policy, and, late in his second term, providing aid to the Allies and leading the
nation toward active involvement in World War II. So far had America come by the end of
the Roosevelt era that Henry Stimson was to say that the United States could never
again "be an island to herself. No private program and no public policy, in any sector of
our national life, can now escape from the compelling fact that if it is not framed with
reference to the world, it is framed with perfect futility."
3. FDRS INTERNATIONAL ROLE WAS FIRST-RATE

As a wartime president, Roosevelt had wide latitude to demonstrate his executive
leadership by guiding the country through a victorious struggle against the fascist
powers. Never before had a president been given the opportunity to lead his people to a
triumph of these global dimensions, and it seems improbable, given the nature of
nuclear weapons, that such a circumstance will ever arise again. As commander-in-chief,
a position he was said to prefer to all others, Roosevelt not only supervised the
mobilization of men and resources against the Axis but also made a significant
contribution to fashioning a postwar settlement and creating the structure of the United
Nations. "He overcame both his own and the nation's isolationist inclination to bring a
united America into the coalition that saved the world from the danger of totalitarian
conquest," Robert Divine has concluded. "His role in insuring the downfall of Adolf Hitler
is alone enough to earn him a respected place in history."
THE NEW DEAL WAS BAD FOR THE

ECONOMY, PROLONGING THE
DEPRESSION
1. FDRS POLICIES ACTUALLY PROLONGED THE DEPRESSION
Robert Higgs, Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute and editor
of The Independent Review, THE FREEMAN, September 1998, p. np,
The irony is that even if Roosevelt did help to lift the spirits of the American people in
the depths of the depression-an uplift for which no compelling documentation exists-this
achievement only led the public to labor under an illusion. After all, the root cause of the
prevailing malaise was the continuation of the depression.
2. THE NEW DEAL PROLONGED THE DEPRESSION
In fact, as many observers claimed at the time, the New Deal did prolong the
depression. Had Roosevelt only kept his inoffensive campaign promises of 1932cut
federal spending, balance the budget, maintain a sound currency, stop bureaucratic
centralization in Washingtonthe depression might have passed into history before his
next campaign in 1936. But instead, FDR and Congress, especially during the
congressional sessions of 1933 and 1935, embraced interventionist policies on a wide
front. With its bewildering, incoherent mass of new expenditures, taxes, subsidies,
regulations, and direct government participation in productive activities, the New Deal
created so much confusion, fear, uncertainty, and hostility among businessmen and
investors that private investment, and hence overall private economic activity, never
recovered enough to restore the high levels of production and employment enjoyed in
the 1920s. In the face of the interventionist onslaught, the American economy between
1930 and 1940 failed to add anything to its capital stock: net private investment for that
eleven-year period totaled minus $3.1 billion.2 Without capital accumulation, no
economy can grow. Between 1929 and 1939 the economy sacrificed an entire decade of
normal economic growth, which would have increased the national income 30 to 40
percent. The governments own greatly enlarged economic activity did not compensate
for the private shortfall.
3. THE NEW DEAL WAS A MASSIVE VOTE-BUYING SCHEME

In this madness, the New Dealers had a method. Despite its economic illogic and
incoherence, the New Deal served as a massive vote-buying scheme. Coming into power
at a time of widespread destitution, high unemployment, and business failures, the
Roosevelt administration recognized that the president and his Democratic allies in
Congress could appropriate unprecedented sums of money and channel them into the
hands of recipients who would respond by giving political support to their benefactors.
As John T. Flynn said of FDR, it was always easy to interest him in a plan which would
confer some special benefit upon some special class in the population in exchange for
their votes, and eventually no political boss could compete with him in any county in
America in the distribution of money and jobs.
4. ROOSEVELTS LEGACY IS TO TRAMPLE ON LIBERTY

But however significant his legacies, Roosevelt deserves no reverence. He was no hero.
Rather, he was an exceptionally resourceful political opportunist who harnessed the
extraordinary potential for personal and party aggrandizement inherent in a uniquely
troubled and turbulent period of American history. By wheeling and dealing, by taxing
and spending, by ranting against "economic royalists" and posturing as the friend of the
common man, he got himself elected time after time. But for all his undeniable political
prowess, he prolonged the depression and fastened on the country a bloated, intrusive
government that has been trampling on the peoples liberties ever since.
FDRS ECONOMIC POLICIES WERE NOT

TRULY EFFECTIVE
1. FDR, DESPITE ESTABLISHMENT HISTORIANS, DIDNT ADDRESS INEQUITY
Noam Chomsky, DETERRING DEMOCRACY, 1992, Chapter 2,
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c02-s03.html, accessed May 1, 2002.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt attained similar heights among large sectors of the
population, including many of the poor and working class, who placed their trust in him.
The aura of sanctity remains among intellectuals who worship at the shrine. Reviewing a
laudatory book on FDR by Joseph Alsop in the New York Review of Books, left-liberal
social critic Murray Kempton describes the "majesty" of Roosevelt's smile as "he beamed
from those great heights that lie beyond the taking of offense... Those of us who were
born to circumstances less assured tend to think of, indeed revere, this demeanor as the
aristocratic style... [We are] as homesick as Alsop for a time when America was ruled by
gentlemen and ladies." Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer "were persons even grander on the
domestic stage than they would end up being on the cosmic one," and met the great
crisis in their lives, a secret love affair, "in the grandest style." "That Roosevelt was the
democrat that great gentlemen always are in no way abated his grandeur... [His blend of
elegance with compassion] adds up to true majesty." He left us with "nostalgia" that is
"aching." His "enormous bulk" stands between us "and all prior history...endearingly
exalted...splendidly eternal for romance," etc., etc. Roosevelt took such complete
command that he "left social inquiry...a wasteland," so much so that "ten years went by
before a Commerce Department economist grew curious about the distribution of
income and was surprised to discover that its inequality had persisted almost
unchanged from Hoover, through Roosevelt and Truman..." But that is only the carping
of trivial minds. The important fact is that Roosevelt brought us "comfort...owing to his
engraving upon the public consciousness the sense that men were indeed equal,"
whatever the record of economic reform and civil rights may show. There was one
published reaction, by Noel Annan, who praised "the encomium that Murray Kempton
justly bestowed on Roosevelt." Try as they might, the spinners of fantasy could not even
approach such heights in the Reagan era.
2. FDR SHOULD NOT GET CREDIT FOR KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS

Finally, in his last chapters, Barber takes his argument through the later 1930s, World
War II, and the immediate post-war era. Seeing Harry Hopkins' appointment as Secretary
of Commerce as a turning point towards official acceptance of Keynesianism, Barber
details how Hopkins brought in young academics sympathetic to this approach, how the
president barely tolerated Thurman Arnold and his anti-trust movement, and how people
like John K. Galbraith in the Office of Price Administration helped to mobilize America's
wartime economy. In the end, however, individuals like Galbraith left the New Deal. In
fact, Barber concluded that the Full Employment Act was more of a victory for the
opponents of the Keynesian approach than one would have suspected. Still,
Keynesianism took hold after 1945 only after it had infiltrated the universities (p. 171).
3. THE ECONOMISTS SHOULD GET THE CREDIT, NOT FDR

Finally, Barber credits Roosevelt with so much in terms of providing economists with an
opportunity to influence policy, but the president himself is seldom even mentioned, no
less analyzed in terms of his own thinking on what these economists were telling him
and his close advisors. Somehow, Roosevelt is lost amidst the intellectual environment
that Barber has created.
Richard Rorty
Linguistic-Epistemological Philosopher
Richard Rorty suggests that Western philosophy is and has been motivated by the
assumption that the mind mirrors the world. This notion has inspired the view that
philosophers, as those who investigate the structure of mind or the conditions of
knowledge, stand in a privileged position. Philosophers are able to assess the accuracy
of our mental representations. In addition, Rorty argues that philosophers need to be
aware of the way in which individual differences are impacted by their respective
cultural and social importance. This biography will examine Rortys assumptions of: (1)
The role of the philosopher, (2) pragmatism and discourse, (3) criteria, (4) critics, and (5)
application to debate.
The task of the philosopher is not only to determine whether our theories or discourses
are true, but also to define the proper relation between discourses about the True, the
Good, and the Beautiful. Rorty also argued that this conception continues to underlie not
only transcendental philosophy, but also rational psychology, and naturalized
epistemology. In one way or another the aforementioned projects all attempt to identify
unchanging rules governing any recognized scientific (normal) discourse or to single
out one form of discourse as paradigmatic.
Rorty's rejection of the conception of philosophy involves both internal criticisms of its
failure to fulfill its own claims and an attempt to evoke an alternative model that he
refers to variously as pragmatism, hermeneutics, and edifying discourse. Out of his
theory, Rorty calls for the proliferation of new forms of discourse, instead of accurate
representation. In the quest for Truth, Rorty regards the search for new forms of selfdescription as our most important task. These concepts are at the center of
understanding Rorty.
Philosophers tend to see the Platonic tradition as having outlived its usefulness. Rorty
argues that philosophers realize that no appeal to intuition or reference is going to get
us off the literary-historical-anthropological-political merry-go-round. Thus philosophers
are aware that any new vocabulary that might arise from their activity is not the result
of rigorous arguments--for there are no invariant criteria according to which such
arguments might proceed: Criteria are temporary resting places constructed for
utilitarian ends. Furthermore, Rorty no longer see philosophers as a secular priesthood
or community of super scientists. Rorty contends that philosophers operate in areas
where the absence of a neutral/objective vocabulary and of an agreement on criteria
makes argument impossible. Moreover, Rorty notes that where reflective rather than
determinate judgment is called for, they are a species of literary intellectuals who seek
not agreement in propositions but the creation of new vocabularies. Thus, the vision
Rorty holds out for a culture is one of creative inquiry freed from the bad faith evidenced
in the search for ultimate foundations or final justification, a belief from which no one is
excluded and in which no one, especially not the philosopher, holds a privileged position.
Rorty divides his critics into two groups: (1) technical realists, and (2) intuitive realists.
Technical realists are those who believe that recent developments in the philosophy of
language can be used to resolve traditional philosophical disputes. Intuitive realists,
however, defend an equally unacceptable position Intuitive Realists see the human as
having various deep-seated intuitions about the world. The questions for Rorty, however,
is whether we should regard such intuitions as insights into the mystery of the world or
as products of our social conventions and practices. Rorty sees in this question the still
more basic question of what philosophy is (or should be): Should philosophy attempt to
clarify and reserve some of our deep intuitions even when they come into conflict with
each other, or should it seek to engender new self-descriptions freed from the
metaphysical impasses of our past? Rortys answer to this question is complicated and
confusing. Rorty does not support either position, instead he takes a middle ground that
attempts to understand intuitions within self-description.
Rortys greatest application to contemporary debate practice is his discussion of

philosophy, in general, and criteria, in particular. The debater should be essentially
interested in his argument that their am no objective criteria in which to judge
arguments. These positions may benefit the debater who is interested in making deepseated criteria attacks against their opponents.
78
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Richard Bernstein. BEYOND OBJECTIVISM AND RELATIVISM. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
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PEIRCE SOCIETY 18 (1982): 3 11-337.
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Heidegger and
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VALUES AND CRITERIA DEFY PRECISE

OBJECTIVE MEASURES
1. MORAL BELIEFS ARE FLEXIBLE AND CONTINGENT
Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities-Virginia, OBJECTIVITY, RELATIVISM, AND TRUTH,
1991, p. 181-2.
For the notion of basis is not in point. It is not that we know, on antecedent philosophical
grounds, that it is of the essence of human beings to have rights, and then proceed to
ask how a society might preserve and protect these rights. On the question of priority,
as on the question of the relativity of justice to historical situations, Rawls is closer to
Walzer than to Dworkin. Since Rawls does not believe that for purposes of political
theory, we need think of ourselves as having an essence that precedes and antedates
history, he would not agree with Sandel that for these purposes, we need have an
account of the nature of the moral subject, which is in some sense necessary, noncontingent and prior to any particular experience.
2. RATIONALITY OF MORALITY IS A MYTH

Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities-Virginia, PHILOSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF
NATURE, 1979, p. 190-91
Rationality, when viewed as the formation of syllogisms based on discovery of the facts
and the application of such principles as Pain should be minimized or Intelligent life is
always more valuable than beautiful unintelligent beings is a myth. Only the Platonic
urge to say that every moral sentiment and indeed every emotion of any sort, should be
based on the recognition of an objective quality in the recipient makes us think that our
treatment of koalas or rights of Martians is a matter of moral principle. For the facts
which must be discovered to apply the principles are, in the case of the koalas or the
whites feelings not discoverable independently of sentiment.
3. CANNOT DEFINE CRITERION FOR VALUES

NATURE, 1979, p. 307.
There is also, however, an ordinary sense of good, the sense the word has when used
to commend--to remark that something answers to some interest. In this sense, too, one
is not going to find a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for goodness which will
enable one to find the Good Life, resolve moral dilemmas, grade apples, or whatever.
There are too many different sorts of interests to answer to, too many kinds of things to
commend and too many different reasons for commending them, for such a set of
necessary and sufficient conditions to be found. But this is a quite different reason for
the indefinabilty of good than the one I just gave for the in definability of the
philosophical sense of good.
4. CANNOT DEFINE VALUES BECAUSE TOO MANY APPLICATIONS

NATURE, 1979, p. 307.
In its homely and shopworn sense, the reason why good is indefinable is not that we
might be altogether wrong about what good men or good apples are, but simply that no
interesting descriptive term has any interesting necessary and sufficient conditions. In
the first, philosophical sense of good, the term is indefinable because anything we say
about what is good may logically be quite irrelevant to what goodness is.
5. CANNOT UNDERSTAND SINGULAR VALUE CRITERIA

NATURE, 1979, p. 374-75.
Philosophers thus condemn themselves to a Sisyphean task, for no sooner has an
account of a transcendental term been perfected than it is labeled a naturalistic
fallacy, a confusion between essence and accident. I think we get a clue to the cause of
this self-defeating obsession from the fact that even philosophers who take the intuitive
impossibility of finding conditions for the one right thing to do, as a reason for
repudiating objective values am loath to take the impossibility of finding individuating
conditions for the one true theory of the world as a reason for denying objective
physical reality. Yet they should, for formally the two notions are on a par. The reasons
for and against adopting a correspondence approach to moral truth are the same as
those regarding truth about the physical world. The giveaway comes I think, when we
find that the usual excuse for invidious treatment is that we are shoved around by
physical reality but not by values.
MUST REJECT CURRENT PHILOSOPHY

1. PHILOSOPHY CREATES BIASED MORAL BELIEFS
Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities-Virginia, OBJECTIVITY, RELATIVISM, AND TRUTH,
1991, p. 175.
The Enlightenment idea of reason embodies such a theory: the theory that there is a
relation between the ahistorical essence of the human soul and moral truth, a relation
which ensures that free and open discussion will produce one right answer to moral as
well as to scientific questions. Such a theory guarantees that a moral belief that cannot
be justified to the mass of mankind is irrational, and thus is not really a product of our
moral faculty at all. Rather it is a prejudice, a belief that comes from some other part
of the soul than reason. It does not share in the sanctity of conscience, for it is the
product of a sort of pseudoconscience--something whose loss is no sacrifice, but a
purgation.
2. PHILOSOPHY IS AMBIGUOUS
Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities-Virginia, Pragmatism and Philosophy in AFTER
PHILOSOPHY: END OR TRANSFORMATION, 1989, p. 27-8.
All this is complicated by the fact that philosophy, like truth and goodness, is
ambiguous. Uncapitalized, truth and goodness is ambiguous. Uncapitalized, truth
and goodness name properties of sentences, or of actions and situations. Capitalized,
they are the proper names of objects--goals or standards that can be loved with all ones
heart and soul and mind, objects of ultimate concern. Similarly, philosophy can mean
simply what Sellars calls an attempt to see how things, in the broadest possible sense
of the term.
3. PHILOSOPHYS DEFENSE CANNOT BE SCIENCE

Richard Rorty, Professor of Humanities-Virginia, Pragmatism and Philosophy in AFTER
PHILOSOPHY: END OR TRANSFORMATION, 1989, p. 55.
This hope is a correlate of the fear that if there is nothing quasi-scientific for philosophy
as an academic discipline to do, if there is no properly professional Fach that
distinguishes the philosophy professor from the historian or the literary critic, then
something will have been lost that has been central to Western intellectual life. This fear
is, to be sure, justified. If Philosophy disappears, something will have been lost that was
central to Western intellectual life--just as something central was lost when religious
intuitions were weeded out from among the intellectually respectable candidates for
Philosophical articulation.
4. PHILOSOPHYS INTERPRETATION OF KNOWLEDGE IS BANKRUPT

Among those commonly consigned to the postmodernist camp, Richard Rorty has been
the most ardent spokesperson for the poverty of epistemology. He finds it difficult to
imagine what a rational reconstruction of knowledge would look like, purporting as it
does to provide us with a species of knowledge about knowledge. Rorty links the
epistemological project with a search for foundations that seeks to underwrite the
knowledge claims in science, morality and art--the three culture-spheres of modernity.
Such a project, however, is doomed to fail according to Rorty, principally because it
succumbs to the aporias of representationalism.
MUST REJECT CURRENT PHILOSOPHY

Part 2
1. WE ARE AT THE END OF PHILOSOPHY
RESPONSE TO THE POSTMODERN CONDITION, 1992, p.5.
Rorty responds to the discourse of modernity not via a Habermasian critical
reconstruction of its philosophical platform, geared to a discourse of modernity and
proclaims that we are now at the end of philosophy. The accepted givens and
paradigmatic constructs of modernity are brought under indictment.
2. CURRENT ATTEMPTS TO SAVE PHILOSOPHY ARE NOT WORKING

RESPONSE TO THE POSTMODERN CONDITION, 1992, p.5.
Rortys central point is that things got off rather badly when Kant differentiated and
congealed the three culture-sphere under the aegis of the telos of a unifying rationality.
Hegel simply continued to make purchases on the received problematic of cultural
differentiation and the requirement for unification. But to continue a preoccupation with
this problematic in search of the correct solution is for Rorty to continue to scratch where
it doesnt itch. Efforts to respond to this problematic via an epistemological
reconstruction have outworn their usefulness. Such efforts are simply vestiges of an
inclination to do philosophy, i.e., foundationalist and epistemological reflection that
yearns for a reconstruction of knowledge. Philosophy thusly conceived, according to
Rorty, has mercifully come to its end.
Answering Rorty
"In my utopia, human solidarity would be seen not as a fact to be recognized by clearing
away "prejudice" or burrowing down to previously hidden depths but, rather, as a goal to
be achieved. It is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative
ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers. Solidarity is not discovered by reflection
but created. It is created by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain
and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people"
--Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity
Introduction
Richard Rorty burst on the American philosophical scene in the 1970s with a message
that combined the best of American analytic philosophy with the strong tendency of
American philosophers to comment on social issues. Always a little bit left of center,
Rortys message was nevertheless balanced. He has argued that things like imperialism,
racism, and capitalism are undesirable, but he has also been cautious about rhetoric like
overthrow and revolution.
The key to Rortys appeal is this balance, this self-proclaimed revival of the pragmatism
of American philosophers such as Charles Saunders Peirce, William James, and John
Dewey. Rorty, in fact, fancies himself the true heir of Dewey, although many of his critics
take issue with that. The balance that is the key to pragmatism is similar in some ways
to the philosophy labeled nihilism in Europe. Rorty believes that we are living not
simply in a postmodern age, but in an age where all philosophical systems have been
proven, to the greatest degree, unsatisfactory.
In place of systemic metaphysics, though, Rorty does not recommend that we believe in
nothing. Instead, he suggests that we can take what works from any particular system
and use it precisely because it works. Moreover, Rorty believes that philosophers cannot
change the world. He rejects Karl Marxs imperative that it is the job of philosophers to
do just that. Instead, he argues, activists, writers of fiction, and business owners change
the world. Philosophers, at best, are reporters, trying to chronicle these changes in a
sensible way.
In an age when philosophy seems to have run into its own limits, Richard Rortys
philosophy of pragmatism seems refreshing, healthy, and humble. This essay argues
that those conclusions are premature. I believe that, rather than helping progressive
change along, Rortys philosophy is an invitation to the kinds of values and policies that
end up in futility: reforms which, as humane as they might seem, only serve to
perpetuate the very systems responsible for the kinds of evils Rorty hates.
After explaining a little more about Rortys pragmatism, I will argue the following: First,
Rortys political philosophy, which calls for an abandonment of public revolutionary
criticism, actually perpetuates an undesirable dichotomy between the public and private
spheres of life; a dichotomy which has been responsible for much misery throughout
history. Second, Rortys philosophy actually reduces the possibility of change by stifling
the creative, critical, utopian thinking that has been the cornerstone of most progressive
changes in history. Finally, I argue that in entrusting social justice to elites (which he
blatantly does), Rorty becomes a weak apologist for inequality. In essence, he must bow
to elitism as a precondition for fighting against bad elitism, and this renders his social
philosophy either incoherent or undesirable.
I have met Richard Rorty, heard him lecture, and even shared my frustrations about
injustice with him. During one of our conversations, I remarked that in the presence of
hardcore Marxists I often become an apologist for Rortys kind of liberalism, but when
listening to capitalists and radical individualists, I often feel like a true red revolutionary.
Professor Rorty indicated that he agreed with and understood this dilemma. As the years
have passed, however, I have seen Rortys writings turn more towards apology for
capitalism, even as he claims to be concerned about issues of social justice. I wonder if
he still understands the dilemma. His writings do not indicate that he understands
anything about the hatred of capitalism, and the necessity of systemic and unrelenting
criticism.
Rortys Pragmatism
Born October 4, 1931 in New York City, Rorty grew up among leftists, served in the army,
got his PhD in philosophy, and went on to win several awards, accolades, and academic
posts while writing a corpus of work that would eventually be labeled new
pragmatism.
His philosophy rests on several methods and assumptions. He rejects absolutism and
relativism equally, saying they are two sides of the same representationalist coin. In
other words, absolutism assumes that human thinking is capable of representing
absolute truth, which is impossible. Relativism, on the other hand, assumes that human
thinking is utterly incapable of representing truth, which assumes the same kind of
truth as absolutism does:
Rorty is able to back up his rejection of any philosophical position or project which
attempts to draw a general line between what is made and what is found, what is
subjective and what is objective, what is mere appearance and what is real. Rortys
position is not that these conceptual contrasts never have application, but that such
application is always context and interest bound and that there is, as in the case of the
related notion of truth, nothing to be said about them in general. Rortys commitment to
the conversationalist view of knowledge must therefore be distinguished from
subjectivism or relativism, which, Rorty argues, presuppose the very distinctions he
seeks to reject (http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/rorty/).
This rejection of systemic and absolutist thought in epistemology and metaphysics

makes it easy for Rorty to be a self-proclaimed bourgeois liberal, who distrusts
radicalism and eschews the possibility of revolutionary change. Obviously, to criticize
something systemically is to be an absolutist, to be able to tie all relevant social
phenomena into a particular system, like capitalism or patriarchy. Rorty believes that
preoccupation with systems only makes activists into social theorists, when instead,
they ought to work within the system to achieve those localized changes which are
really possible, which do not hurt others (there are no bloodless revolutions), and which
are not co-opted by Stalinist absolutists.
Liberal ironists are the heroes of Rortys universe. Liberal ironists are those who are
committed to change, but are also aware of the non-absolute nature of their moral
sentiments. In other words, if I believe that capitalism causes poverty, I should act to
ameliorate that poverty, but remain ironic and philosophically non-committal about
whether this entity called capitalism actually causes poverty.
In summary, Richard Rorty believes that we ought to reject any attempt to make our
social projects systemic, because all attempts to systematically represent or understand
the universe fail. We ought to oppose suffering simply because we find suffering
undesirable. We ought to cure symptoms, which we can see, rather than addressing
systemic causes, which we cannot see. Change will be slow and often frustrating, but
liberal ironists will tolerate that frustration, just as we ought to tolerate our inability to
truly understand or represent the universe in some truthful way.
The Problem of Public and Private

Spheres
The first problem with Rortys philosophy is that he relies on a distinction between the
private, subjective, sentimental thinking which is able to call capitalism evil, and the
public life, wherein we ought only to act on small changes and should not demand
revolutionary upheaval. In other words, I can privately reject capitalism but publicly I
should simply try to make the conditions of poverty more bearable. I can privately
reject patriarchy but publicly I should simply attempt to improve the state of womens
rights. Systemic criticism, for Rorty, is indistinguishable from religion. Just as I can be
Catholic, Muslim or Mormon in my private mind, but should not impose those
beliefs on others in public, so can I be anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist in my private
mind while not insisting that others publicly reject capitalism or imperialism. His
distinction has as much to do with how we talk about that distinction and those
philosophies as how we act on them:
Rortys romantic version of liberalism is expressed also in the distinction he draws

between the private and the public. This distinction is often misinterpreted to imply that
certain domains of interaction or behaviour should be exempted from evaluation in
moral or political or social terms. The distinction Rorty draws, however, has little to do
with traditional attempts to draw lines of demarcation of this sort between a private and
a public domainto determine which aspects of our lives we do and which we dont
have to answer for publicly. Rortys distinction, rather, goes to the purposes of
theoretical vocabularies. We should, Rorty urges, be "content to treat the demands of
self-creation and of human solidarity as equally valid, yet forever incommensurable."
Rortys view is that we should treat vocabularies for deliberation about public goods and
social and political arrangements, on the one hand, and vocabularies developed or
created in pursuit of personal fulfillment, self-creation, and self-realization, on the other,
as distinct tools (http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/rorty/).
At first glance, the distinction seems either harmless or desirable. After all, it is just as
well that we dont force our comprehensive beliefs onto others, and we ought to
participate in projects where people of varying beliefs can come together to do some
good. However, there are several problems with the distinction.
First, as much as Rorty would like to avoid admitting this, his values are just as
transcendent, just as metaphysical, and just as idealistic as any ideas that he would
relegate to the private realm. Rorty believes poverty is wrong. Why? It just is,
because we cannot rely on any comprehensive moral principles to say why. But this is
impossible and incoherent. If Rorty himself cannot draw on his own metaphysics, his own
comprehensive views of right and wrong, to justify his statements that we ought to try
to (incrementally) make the world a better place, then it is difficult to say where those
ideas come from at all. As conservative writer Jenny Teichman points out:
Everyone is a foundationalist. Everyone has to take some propositions as bedrock.

Rorty himself is a foundationalist in that he takes it completely for granted that the
universalization of liberalism and democracy and human well-being is not to be
questioned. But because he supposes himself to be an anti-foundationalist he cannot
openly say that his values are self-evident or undeniable. Neo-pragmatism has no room
for the idea of the undeniable. Yet although he cannot say his moral beliefs are
foundational, he nevertheless treats them as such. Well, meaning is use, as Wittgenstein
almost suggested. Belief is behavior, as old-style pragmatists used to teach
(http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/17/sept98/teichman.htm).
Second, the dichotomy between public and private has exacerbated injustice throughout
history. In the guise of the private realm, men have abused women, bosses have
abused their workers, and so on. Rorty might reply that he believes exploitation and
abuse are obviously wrong, and ought to be confronted as such. But in encouraging
citizens to keep their comprehensive thoughts to themselves, Rorty cannot help but
endorse the idea that undesirable thoughts, comprehensive views of the world that
really do place men above women or capitalists above workers, should remain
unchecked by interaction and confrontation with the liberation of others thoughts.
Finally, his distinction between private thoughts and public actions is philosophically
unsound. It rests on a distinction between self and other that, however vindicated by
modernist thinking, really begs the question of where the self ends and others begin.
Our concepts of ourselves are largely determined and influenced by the interactions we
have with others; by the histories and contexts we inherit; even by the language we use
to describe ourselves, languages which are collective in nature. To say that we should
keep our thoughts about the world private is really impossible, since those thoughts are
the product of our interactions with society.
How Rorty Kills the Possibility of

Change
Here I argue that, although Rortys pragmatism holds that genuine progressive change
can only happen incrementally, such a dismissal of revolutionary change actually
undermines the most healthy perspectives which inspire that change: utopian thinking,
systematic critique, and revolutionary perspectives. It is as if Rorty places himself in a
position to say: Make the world a better place, but dont go to farespecially, dont go
any further than I deem acceptable. I have already argued that Rorty has (well-hidden)
metaphysical beliefs of his own which, whether he likes it or not, influence his ethical
maxims. I want to argue further that, insofar as these metaphysics make Rorty
discourage utopian thinking, the possibility of real human progression is undermined.
Let me give an example: Suppose Richard Rorty is a famous American pragmatist, with
the same ideas he has today, only he is alive one hundred and fifty years ago. Imagine
that Rorty confronts the evil of slavery the same way he presently confronts the evils of
economic exploitation. Judging by what he presently says about the latter, I would
venture that his recommendations for the former would go something like this: Yes,
slavery is a great evil. But it is not evil because of some metaphysical truth that says all
persons should be equal. Instead, it is evil because, as any good liberal ironist would
know, it makes us feel bad. That is all we have the right to say. Therefore, John Brown
should not conduct a violent raid on Harpers Ferry. Abolitionists should not try to change
the entire system of slavery. Instead, they ought to do whatever they can to make the
lives of individual slaves better than they currently are. Perhaps abolitionists should
even purchase the freedom of a few slaves, whatever they can individually afford. But
they should not base their strategies on any comprehensive doctrine that slavery is
wrong.
Similar examples abound. How would Rorty have behaved during the period leading up
to the American or French Revolutions? How would he have handled the challenges of
Galileo and Copernicus? It is easy for liberals to be non-utopian now, because things
seem better than they were a hundred and fifty, or two hundred, years ago. But one
can only guess what sorts of everyday practices today will seem barbaric in a hundred
and fifty years. Those concerned with social justice today ought to look at labor
exploitation or womens subordination, or latent racism, or capital punishment, and so
on, with the same utopian critical perspective that John Brown looked at slavery, or
that Jefferson and Madison looked at colonialism. In Rortys universe, this is undesirable.
In my view, that demonstrates that Rorty is too trapped in his own historical niche to
realize his own contingencies.
How Rorty Becomes an Apologist for

Inequality
In this final section, I wish to take issue with Rortys explicit and moralizing trust in the
elites, the ruling class, those who, for reasons of historical advantage, currently control
the productive and ideological apparatus of society. Essentially, Rorty argues that the
only way to alleviate the poverty, inequality, and oppression that exists today is to
appeal to the sentimentalism of the powerful. This makes little sense given the reality
that the powerful have every reason to perpetuate the very arrangements responsible
for those evils.
First, Rorty sees no alternative to the present material arrangements in society. Like so
many other privileged academics, Rorty has accepted that capitalism, the exploitation of
labor, and the technologization of nature are the final and only possible state of affairs
in the world. I am troubled not only by Rortys lack of revolutionary vision, but also by his
ignorance of history in this regard. For there is no reason to think that capitalism will
always be the dominant economic system, any more than someone living under
feudalism should have thought that feudalism would always be around, or any more
than a slave-owner should have thought that slavery would always be the basis of the
economy. The End of History thesis advanced by conservatives like Francis Fukayama
is understandable, but Rorty, who claims to understand both philosophy and history,
should know better.
Second, Rorty discourages attempts to criticize the systemic nature of those

arrangements. I have already discussed this. By discouraging utopian thinking, systemic
criticism, and revolutionary action, Rorty is stacking the deck in favor of a perpetual
status quo.
Finally, Rorty believes that feeling and sentiment are harbingers of social justice. He
believes that the reason we have Brown v. Board of Education is that the elites on the
Supreme Court were, primarily, emotionally moved by the arguments of then-lawyer for
the plaintiffs, Thurgood Marshall. He believes that the 19th Amendment to the
Constitution resulted from the hearts of powerful men somehow melting for the good of
women. The problem with those beliefs, aside from their historical shakiness, is that
huge protests, acts of civil disobedience, and the urgency of structural revolutions had
as much, if not more to do, with the positive changes that followed these periods of
unrest, as did any acts of rhetorical persuasion on the part of the activists. It is not that
people, even powerful people, cannot change their minds, cannot repent of their
previous evils. It is that there are sociological, historical, and power-based explanations
for all of these transformations that Rorty is forced to ignore because those factors
assume too many metaphysical structures.
Based on Rortys pragmatic appeal to sentimentality as an agent of social justice, we

ended slavery because we turned the hearts of the slaveowners. In fact, we had to kill
many of them. Based on Rortys view, Hitler was just a twisted, unsentimental leader,
and the Jews and Gypsies he killed just didnt do a good enough job persuading the
Nazis not to kill them. I guess they should have been liberal ironiststhen the Holocaust
never would have happened
Conclusion
I am not arguing that there is no place for reforms, or that utopianism is always right, or
that violent revolution is always justified. Certain factors of social life make
incrementalism desirable in some circumstances. Nor am I claiming that human beings
are always capable of providing the kind of systemic, comprehensive social criticism that
brought slavery to an end, or democracy to birth. These movements were largely
incremental to begin with. They became comprehensive and revolutionary, however,
when it was made obvious to their agents that small changes were ineffective at best
and counterproductive at worst.
The problem with Rortys abandonment of revolutionary thought is that many people are
increasingly finding that the present injustices in society are a lot like the injustices of
slavery and tyranny. The question for intellectuals, I suppose, is: What do we tell those
people? If we are like Richard Rorty, we tell them that there is nothing they can do but
hurt inside and try to solve some of the effects of these injustices in public life. A glance
at the results of such a strategy today yields tremendous dissatisfaction. Protesters
against the WTO, the Gulf War, and other large-scale systematic phenomena were met
with ridicule and rage. These protesters were not (as some have accused them) trying to
change the world. They were demanding democratic dialogue over these issues. They
were answered with dismissive rhetoric, an increased level of secrecy in public
policymaking, and tear gas. Ironically, more people became revolutionaries than
became incrementalist liberals as a result of those encounters.
The problem with Rortys abandonment of systemic thinking is that he doesnt really
abandon it. At most, he hides it behind an artificial and dangerous public-private
dichotomy, in the confines of which he fails to admit that his own values are just as
metaphysical as those which he attacks.
Advocates in contemporary debates have made much of Rortys pragmatism, arguing,

often with citations from Rorty, that we ought to do what we can, rather than re-think
notions of what we can and cannot do. My arguments in this essay have fallen directly
on the other side: While it is true that we ought to do what we can to solve immediate
problems and relieve immediate and local suffering, I believe there has never been a
more important time to reevaluate our systems, and be proud, defiant utopians.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Farrell, Frank B. SUBJECTIVITY, REALISM, AND POSTMODERNISM: THE RECOVERY OF THE
WORLD (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Malachowski, Alan R. READING RORTY: CRITICAL RESPONSES TO PHILOSOPHY AND THE

MIRROR OF NATURE (Cambridge: B. Blackwell, 1990).
Melkonian, Markar. RICHARD RORTYS POLITICS: LIBERALISM AT THE END OF THE

AMERICAN CENTURY (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 1999).
Mounce, H.O. THE TWO PRAGMATISMS: FROM PEIRCE TO RORTY (London: Routledge,
1997).
Nielsen, Kai. Taking Rorty seriously. DIALOGUE, Summer 1999, pp. 503-18.
Palumbo-Liu, David. Awful patriotism: Richard Rorty and the politics of knowing.
DIACRITICS, Spring 1999, pp. 37-56.
Peerenboom, Randall. The limits of irony: Rorty and the China challenge. PHILOSOPHY
EAST AND WEST, January 2000, pp. 56-91.
Peerenboom, Randall. Beyond apologia: respecting legitimate differences of opinion

while not
toadying to dictators--a reply to Richard Rorty. PHILOSOPHY EAST AND WEST, January
2000, pp. 92-6.
Rorty, Richard. ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: LEFTIST THOUGHT IN TWENTIETH CENTURY

AMERICA (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
Rorty, Richard. CONSEQUENCES OF PRAGMATISM (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1982).
Rorty, Richard. PHILOSOPHY AND THE MIRROR OF NATURE (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
Rorty, Richard. PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
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Steinoff, Uwe. Truth vs. Rorty. THE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, July 1997, pp. 358-60.
RORTYS PRAGMATISM UNDERMINES

POSITIVE SOCIAL CHANGE
1. RORTYS PHILOSOPHY LACKS ANY HOPE OF SOCIAL CHANGE
John Dunn, professor of political theory, University of Cambridge, THE TIMES HIGHER
EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT, October 6, 2000, p. 24.
Whether or not this is the best way in which to see philosophy, it is certainly a little
under-specified as a means of envisaging social hope. What it omits is most of the nonphilosophical obstacles that lie in the same path. Some of these, the more Augustinian,
the endless human capacity for cruelty, cowardice and sheer stupidity, for tawdriness
and inanity, may be excluded in Rorty's case by imaginative will in the first instance,
although scarcely to the advantage of anyone's political judgment. (It would not be good
for it to turn out that this is what social hope means: pretending what we well know not
to be true.) Others (economic, ecological, military) are noted en passant by Rorty
himself, but treated as essentially extrinsic to the utopian imagining.
2. RORTY IS TOO INCREMENTAL: TRUE SOCIAL CHANGE REQUIRES THINKING BIGGER

John Dunn, professor of political theory, University of Cambridge, THE TIMES HIGHER
EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT, October 6, 2000, p. 24.
But some of the most fundamental derive from politics itself. It was largely these
obstacles the animosities arising from the irremediable partiality of human judgment,
from the deep conflicts in our material interests, and the special problems of
cooperating with one another in face of these divisions which the utopian genre, along perhaps with philosophy itself, was largely invented to
clarify and resolve. For Rorty, social hope is just the bare hope that these problems can
somehow be resolved. But should a pragmatist approve of this way of seeing or
describing the matter? Does it not threaten the contrast between cheerfulness and plain
giddy irresponsibility? Judging how, and how not, to hope has always been one of the
central tasks of politics. Must we not try to do better than this?
RORTY MISUNDERSTANDS PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY
1. RORTYS PRAGMATISM IGNORES THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Scott Roulier, professor of political science at Dowling College, JOURNAL OF
INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES, Vol. 9, 1997, p. 19.
Rorty's pragmatist account of liberalism's rise to fame and its continued popularity is
Darwinian: liberalism is the "fittest." What is true about liberalism is that it seems to be
an incredibly successful and resilient form of government for many societies. The
battlelines are clearly drawn. Rorty, under the authority of his own pragmatist-conjured
"takings clause," has severed the concepts of equality, freedom, and human dignity from
their philosophical and religious foundations and appropriated them for public use. This
action ignores the enduring and vital connection that exists between these traditions
and values. It also disregards the stubborn resistance of these private (objectivist)
parties whose counter-claims for (joint) custody tarnish Rorty's dream of a pure, antifoundational liberal public.
2. RORTY MISUNDERSTANDS HISTORY

Alan Johnson, lecturer in social sciences at Edge Hill College, NEW POLITICS, Summer
2000,
pp. 106-7.
Rejecting the idea that we can assess, or at least approximate, reality by enquiry, a
reality against which we can assess our claims, Rorty thinks that rational and
nonrational methods of changing peoples minds are equivalent. Anyone who thinks
that sentimental manipulation may be the best weapon we have should be read with
great caution when he is writing history for a political purpose. That history writing is
likely to beif it is judged this will gain the desired sentimental effectprosthetic, false,
sad and sentimental, employing the looser rules of the literary mode. And boy, can Rorty
write poor history; glib, superficial and sentimental, full of little heroes and villains.
RORTY EMBRACES A DESTRUCTIVE

PRIVATE-PUBLIC DICHOTOMY
1. RORTYS DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC IS UNTENABLE
Contrary to the goal Rorty sets for his liberal utopia, this essay suggests that the public
Rorty describes is not separate from, but instead is corrupted, by the private, that is,
suffused with highly personal concerns. Specifically: (1) The tenets of liberalism which
Rorty appropriates for the erection of his public edifice are not easily wrested from nonpublic and non-political discourses like philosophy and religion; and (2) Rorty's own
peculiar preferences and prejudices pervade his purportedly neutral, "public" vision.
2. RORTYS PUBLIC/PRIVATE DICHOTOMY IS CIRCULAR

Yet Rorty's public is contaminated by the presence of very private convictions. First, one
might clarify exactly how Rorty uses the terms "public" and "private," to ensure that
there is conceptual symmetry. In order to define Rorty's view of the public, one must
identify the principles of justice he believes should guide our "togetherness" in a liberal
democracy. Rorty proposes that a liberal conception of justice requires public neutrality
toward competing life projects, so long as these private visions injure no one else.
Indispensable to this liberal utopia is the notion that the public arena does not rest on
metaphysical supports. There is no verifiable resemblance between soul and city,
cosmos and constitutionalism. Rather, the justification for a liberal political culture is
self-consciously circular, taking its own historical experience as reliable and worthy of
veneration.
3. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH BOUNDS BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PHILOSOPHY

Rorty seems to invoke the theoretical equivalent of a right of eminent domain,
appropriating for his liberal idyll concepts like equality and individual rights from longstanding objectivist traditions such as Lockean liberalism, Christianity, and Kantian
transcendental idealism, without compensation. Contending that he and his liberal
ironists are the only worthy proprietors, Rorty revokes objectivists' entitlement to these
concepts. In fact, the ownership or guardianship of key liberal ideas is disputed. Rorty's
public and its authority are tainted by the many private claims brought against it by the
heirs of philosophy and religion. In brief, delineating the boundary separating the public
and private is more problematic than Rorty allows.
4. RORTYS PUBLIC/PRIVATE DISTINCTION IS STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND

The dike Rorty builds between the public and private is structurally unsound. What Rorty
treats as exclusively "public" tenets of liberal justice are suffused by the "personal" and
non-political character of their paternity. Having problematized this rigid, binary
opposition in Rorty's own vocabulary, one is left to ponder why such an undertaking was
required in the first place. Why is Rorty unwilling to take advantage of philosophy or
religion in his liberal utopia, even to employ them as "noble lies"? It would make more
pragmatic sense to embrace the porous border that presently divides public and private
realms. But, Rorty stubbornly resists this option.
RORTYS DISMISSAL OF TRUTH IS

UNTENABLE AND HYPOCRITICAL
1. RORTY ATTACKS ABSOLUTISM BY BEING ABSOLUTIST HIMSELF
It would be impossible to completely deconstruct the Rortyian offensive against
representationalism or objectivism, dealing solely with his public/private distinction. Yet,
Rorty's plea to completely drop the objectivist game is unconvincing. One particularly
odd thing about the attack on "representationalism" is the unmistakable
representational form it takes itself. After upbraiding his philosophical forebears for their
allegedly naive metaphysical views, Rorty replaces obsolete metanarratives with ones
more to his liking. Indeed, for all his lexical maneuvering, it appears that Rorty has
barely moved beyond one of his arch-enemies--Immanuel Kant. In place of the rather
prosaic Kantian viewpoint that we cannot know the "thing-in-itself"--the
appearance/reality dichotomy--Rorty substitutes his novel idea that no historical
vocabulary can accurately describe the dense, opaque dust blobs that are "out there."
On the internal front, the noumenal self is discarded in favor of a preferred "centerless
web of beliefs and desires" (Rorty 1988: 270). These Rortyian, pictorial backdrops push
all others to the side and provide the framework on which he hangs all the elements of
his liberal utopia (1991b: 113-25). While Rorty beseeches us to view our beliefs as
"adaptions to the environment rather than as quasi-pictures," or as "habits of acting
rather than as parts of a 'model of the world," his own writings, infused with
representations, betray his aim, proving how difficult it is for vision-centered beings to
grow out of their pictorial-perceptions (1991b: 10).
2. RORTY MUST BE ABSOLUTIST IN ORDER TO REJECT ABSOLUTISM

There is another dilemma associated with Rorty's claims about the radical contingency
of language and the incommensurability of vocabularies. Quoting Joshua Cohen, Will
Kymlicka points out that, for Rorty, "the notions of community and shared values mark
the limits of practical reason" (1988: 202). But, continues Kymlicka, Rorty and Walzer are
not just "predicting that there are such limits to practical reasoning. They claim to know
such limits exist--they claim to know this in advance of the arguments. They claim to
know that reasons will only be compelling to particular historical communities, before
these reasons have been advanced" (1988: 202). This, concludes Kymlicka, is nothing
short of dogmatism (1988: 202).
3. CLAIMS THAT THERE IS NO TRUTH ARE THEMSELVES TRUTH-CLAIMS

Rorty has, putatively, not discovered that "there is no truth out there," and he cannot,
without lapsing into dogmatism, claim to know the limits of practical reason. Hence, the
argument that Rorty's dismantling of all forms of foundationalism is a fait accompli fails
to persuade. Even if one is inclined to accept the contention that the pursuit of
objectivism is fruitless, that we are simply stuck with a plethora of competing
vocabularies which cannot be marketed via rational argument, the same person will
likely reject, on aesthetic or emotive grounds, Rorty's own peculiar mapping of the
boundaries of public and private.
RORTYS DEFENSE OF CAPITALISM

PREVENTS LIBERATION
1. RORTYS EMBRACE OF CAPITALISM DESTROYS HIS LIBERAL IDEALS
2000,
pp. 109-10.
The free market was as fatal to the realization of liberty for all as it is to the realization
of equality. Liberalism, Dewey concluded, must become radical to save itself and his
prescription went far beyond anything Rorty has so far proposed. While Rorty thinks
liberal values can be realized within the free market Dewey thought the free market the
chief obstacle to liberal values, reducing people to hands and breeding
authoritarianism and alienation in equal measure. While Mills On Liberty remains the
name of Rortys utopia Dewey thought liberty was meaningless as mere negative
liberty and was really a demand for power.
2. RORTYS REFORMISM IGNORES THE NEED FOR DEEP STRUCTURAL CHANGES

2000, p. 110.
Finally, while Rorty calls for piecemeal reforms to realize social justice Dewey warned
precisely that piecemeal policies taken ad hoc would not be enough to challenge the
might of corporate and state power. Only thoroughgoing changes in the set-up of
institutions would be enough. Rorty has regressed from Deweys positions at a time
when global capitalism offers daily confirmations of their accuracy.
3. FAILURE TO EMBRACE ALTERNATIVES TO CAPITALISM DOOMS HIS POLITICAL PROJECT

2000, p. 112.
But there is a wild oscillation in Rortys politics between proscriptive caution and
descriptive radicalism. This oscillation is caused by two pressures on Rorty. On the one
hand, the polarization of U.S. society as global capitalism sends inequality soaring, eats
the environment, and swallows the political process. On the other hand, since 1989,
Rorty has concluded that there is no alternative to the market; Stalinism is what you get
when you try an alternative. Rortys political thought bounces between these two
pressures, unstable and unsettled. Its future direction will likely be to follow the logic of
one or the other.
4. RORTY IGNORES THE EVIL DONE TO THE POOR BY THE POWERFUL
2000, p. 115.
Rorty is the philosopher for the Nike age. Just Do It! is his message. He tells us that the
only human needs not defined by imagination are calories per day. For everything else
we only feel constrained by some past act of imagination. The post-Nietzschean
philosophical themes of anti-foundationalism, anti-representationalism, and antiessentialism do lend support to his utopian reformist project. For if nothing has an in
itself nature, not human beings nor capitalism nor the Democratic Party, nor anything,
then there are no limits to whether or not a reformist left can be created nor what it
can achieve. Just Do It! In this Nikean mood Rorty thinks it easy to avoid the Orwellian
future his despairing side frets over. All that is needed is for all classes to confront the
new global economy togetherin the name of our common citizenship. This,
remember, includes a super-rich class which he has already told us operates without
any thought of any interests save [its] own. Presumably after the super-rich have
listened to enough sentimental stories their little piggy eyes will turn to our common
citizenship.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

As the author of The Social Contact, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is considered one of the
world s greatest political philosophers. During his early life he lived in Geneva, France
with his father. His mother died when Jean-Jacques was quite young. Many of his
biographers believe her death played a major role in formulating Rousseaus philosophy
and thinking. Her death also led Rousseau to live with relatives and other non-family
acquaintances prior to adulthood. It was while living with these people that he first
began to develop his renaissance life.1
Rousseau was a man of considerable interests and talents. In addition to his widely read
publications on politics and government, Rousseau was also an accomplished writer on
other topics such as education. For example, he wrote La Nouvelle HeLoise a best selling
novel about illicit passion and spiritual redemption. 2 During his lifetime, his treatise on
education, Emile, was much better known and read than The Social Contract.
Additionally, Rousseau wrote poems, plays, and several volumes about the social impact
of music. It is ironic that he was a man who wrote and published extensively during his
76 years yet, it is reported that he regretted the day he ever began to write and hated
the notoriety it brought him.3
Rousseaus Philosophical Foundations

To understand the significance of Rousseaus writings, it is important to be aware of his
philosophical foundation. He had deep-seated feelings about issues like existence,
purpose, and life which affected his point-of-view. In his book A Rousseau Dictionary,
N.I.H. Dent offers one of the most comprehensive explanations of Rousseaus relevance
as an important contributor to philosophy: My own view is that it is in Rousseaus work
in social and political theory, with its underpinning in his views on psychological
development, that should be seen as the basis for his position as a thinker of the first
rank. 4 Dent and several other scholars believe that three of Rousseaus books,
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Emile and The Social Contract provide the
necessary proof for the contention that Rousseau is one of the most important
philosophers of his era.
11 Matthew Josephson, The Essential Rousseau, trans. Lowell Bair (New York: The New
American Library, Inc., 1974), pp. vii-x.
22 N.J.H. Dent, A Rousseau Dictionary (Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishers,
1992), p. 21.
33 Ibid.
44 Ibid., p. 22.
There are three themes in these three books that support this claim. Dent offers a
succinct analysis of each. First, according to Dent, Rousseau presents a precise and
cutting diagnosis of the roots and nature of the inequalities of power and privilege in
society.5 In this context, Rousseau reveals a deep hatred for oppression and
dehumanization suffered by people in a society which focuses on a relentless pursuit for
power and domination.
Once it is established that oppression and domination rule society, Rousseaus second
theme is presented:
liberty and equality for each person in society. Dent writes that Rousseau finally believed
that liberty and equality were the inalienable titles that belong to each and every
human being, the full enjoyment of which is his or her absolute tight. 6
Dent believes the third theme is seen in his attempt to account for the psychological
development of humans. According to Dent, Rousseau tries to reveal a way of life that
will enable the individual to remain in touch with his own capacities for full selfdevelopment and expression, in a fashion that will give rise to a life as creative and
fulfilling for that individual as for others.7
55 Ibid., p.22.
66 Ibid., p. 23.
77 Ibid., p. 23.
With this three-pronged philosophical foundation in mind, summaries and criticisms of

The Social Contract and Emile are offered below.
The Social Contract

If the average college library is any indication of the significance of Rousseaus social
contract theory, there have been literally hundreds of books, articles, dissertations, and
theses on the topic. Yet, in all of these analyzes, it is difficult to find a comprehensive,
universally agreed-upon description of Rousseaus theory. What one scholar calls liberty,
another calls enslavement What one describes as authority, another derides as state
control. However, the following is offered as an over-simplified explanation for purposes
of understanding the essence of Rousseaus theory.
Rousseau believed that all people begin life virtually free, with complete liberty.
However, in order to protect themselves and their property, they need to give up this
absolute freedom and enter into society. In turn, society grants liberty to all while
protecting individuals from hurting each other. As one scholar put it, What Rousseau is
saying is that instead of surrendering their liberty by the Social Contract the people
convert their liberty from independence into political and moral freedom, and this is part
of their transformation from creatures living brutishly according to impulse, into men
living humanly according to reason and conscience. 8
What Rousseau argued for was a form of civil authority in which every member of the
community would stand as equal members of the sovereign body, such that the
common laws regulating society would have no legitimacy without the willing assent of
every member. In other words, government authority would stem from the general will
of all citizens and extend to all citizens. Without such a contract between people,
Rousseau believed it was impossible to enjoy a fulfilling life, because one would
constantly be struggling to survive and protect oneself from the invasion of others.
The outline for Rousseaus political philosophy was put forth in Du Contrat Social,
published in April 1962. In an interesting aside, it was published one month before
Emile. Because Enule was a very controversial book, especially for the Catholic Church,
both books were burned in Rousseaus hometown of Geneva. There is still some
confusion today about which book eventually led to Rousseaus condemnation and
censure by the Church. Some scholars believe it was the combination of both books
the criticisms they contained of then-modern society and implicitly the Churchthat led
to Rousseaus downfall.
The Social Contract is divided into four books. Book I identifies the rightful basis for a
civil society and some of the principle characteristics of such a society. The conditions
necessary for the establishment of a civil society are presented in Book II. In Book III,
various issues related to government are discussed, such as its place in the state, forms
88 J.H. Huizinga, Rousseau the Self-Made Saint, (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976),
p. 230.
of government, and its powers and limits. Book IV extends the discussion further to treat
issues about the form and organization of a just society.
One of the most frequent criticisms raised when the book was published was that it was
difficult to read. Rousseau was not concise in his arguments, or particularly well
organized.9 Thus, the English translations of the original French version are even more
difficult to read.
Substantive criticisms of Rousseaus theory focus on the apparent contradictions in his

writing. For example, I. H. Huizinga claims that Rousseau preached for a collectivism so
extreme as to demand the
dissolution of the individual into the community, 10 while simultaneously insisting on the
uniqueness of the self. To Huizinga and other scholars with similar criticism, Du
Cozurat Social is filled with such inconsistencies.
Other criticisms center on the use and definitionsor lackof key phrases and ideas.
For instance, G.D.H. Cole said that Rousseaus concept of the General Will, so
fundamental to his political philosophy, is practically incomprehensible. He wrote, No
critic of The Social Contract has found it easy to say either what precisely its author
meant by it or what is its final value for political philosophy. 11 Such criticism
notwithstanding, The Social Contract remains one of the greatest political texts ever
written.
99 Ibid., p. 234.
1010 Ibid., p. 230.
1111 Ibid., p. 234.
Theories on Education
Emile was written as a narrative in which Rousseau describes the development of Emile,
a typical young person. Under the guidance of a tutorviewed by some as Rousseau
himselfEmile moves from earliest infancy, through youth and adolescence, and into
maturity. The book is divided into five books that roughly mirror Emiles maturation.
Books I and II cover birth to age 12. Book m addresses 12 through 15. The remainder of
the teenage years are revealed in Book IV, and Book V spans the years 20 to 25.
According to some researchers of this book, Rousseau arranged it in these groupings
because he believed significant life altering events occurred in each of the age groups.
Within Emile, Rousseau laid out his beliefs about issues like alienation and human
nature. He believed that there was a constant conflict within individuals between the
needs and goods of a person and the demands that social and civil existence place on
that person. Although Rousseau never fully resolved this conflict, Emile puts forth a
comprehensive treatment of this struggle. As Dent wrote, Fundamental to the whole
work is Rousseaus belief that humans have an intact nature which, if allowed proper
scope for development, will allow them to be useful, happy and good, for themselves
and for others. It is mans interference with the normal course of nature that makes
people corrupt, miserable and damaging to themselves and to others. 12 Basically, the
position Rousseau takes in Emile is that man is by nature a good person, but he is
corrupted by society. Therefore, life becomes an endless battle to balance the two
competing forces.
To some readers, this theory seems logical and reasonable. However, this theory has
raised harsh criticism among scholars and historians. John Charvet, a well-known
Rousseau scholar, has called this theory absurd. He believes that if it is within society
that individuals learn to live and value each others individuality, it is absurd to think
such society is corrupt.13 However, it is under this belief of the corrupt nature of society
that Rousseau offered his plan for how to achieve a good education. Rousseau was an
advocate of education as a tool for more than just learning. He believed it should form
the heart, judgment and spirit of an individual. 14 He thought that a person should
constantly be in a state of education, not necessarily a formal one.
He favored the notion of negative education. In other words, according to Dent,

instead of controlling, directing, admonishing or cramming a child at every turn, we
should realize that there is a naturally healthy and ordered course in the development of
1212 Dent, A Rousseau Dictionary, p. 107.
1313 John Charvet, The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau, (Cambridge,
England:Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 146.
a childs body, understanding and feelings, and it is in the educators role to respect the
integrity of the development, to give space and opportunity for it to take place in its due
way and time, and to adjust the childs lessons so that they engage in an immediate and
straightforward way with his current level of interest and abilities. 15 In such a nurturing
environment, Rousseau thought fables and stories were better suited to instill learning,
rather than abstract reasoning.
By todays standards, it might be difficult to understand how such a seemingly benign

theory on education could cause Rousseau to become a criminal in France and spend the
rest of his life as a fugitive. But, the incriminating writing was in Book IV of Emile. There,
Rousseau attacked the Catholic Church and presented views that were deemed
unacceptable as they related to the idea of natural religion. At that time, it was unheard
of to criticize the Church or contradict accepted religious beliefs. Therefore, he was
branded a heretic and ordered to be arrested.
Conclusion
Today, Rousseau remains a much-studied, admired, and criticized philosopher. It is
documented that he himself was confused about some of his writings. For example, he
wrote of the Du Contract Social::
Those who boast of understanding all of it are cleverer than me, it is a book that should
be rewritten but I no longer have either the time or the energy. 16 One overarching
criticism that has been leveled against many of his works generally, especially at the
time he wrote them, was that readers were left with the impression that he denied the
value of science or formal learning. However, regardless of the particular criticisms
about Rousseau, it cannot be denied that he was among the great philosophers of all
time.
Because the formation of many state governments have been influenced in the past 200
yearsincluding present day countriesby Rousseaus social contract, it is helpful to
understand his doctrine and see how it is applied to modem political structures.
Moreover, his considerable writings on other topics like education, equality, and
alienation also offer keen insights to issues and problems we face today. As
Dent wrote, Rousseau had a great deal to do with the gradual emergence of the moral
and political impossibility of supposing that subordination is the natural lot of any man
or womanwith the consequences of which, it might be added, we are still contending
today. That alone makes him a significant shaping genius in the history of Western,
indeed of world. thought.17
1515 Ibid., p. 102.
1616 Huizinga, Rousseau the Self-Made Saint. p. 229.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Charvet, John. The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau. Cambridge, England:
Cranston, Maurice William. Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays. Garden
City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972.
Cranston, Maurice William. The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1754-1762.

Crocker, Lester G. Rousseau. New York: Macmillan, 1968-73.
Dent, N.I.H. A Rousseau Dictionary. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992.
Eihaudi, Mario. The Early Rousseau. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1967.
Gay, Peter. The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. New Haven, New Jersey: Yale
Green, Frederick Charles. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Critical Study of His Life and
Writings. Cambridge:
Grimsley, Ronald. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Iotowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Nobel Books,
1983.
Havens, George Remington. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Boston, Twayne, 1978.
Huizinga, J.H. Rousseau the Self-Made Saint. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
Josephson, Matthew. Jean Jacques Rousseau. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1961.
Morley, John. Rousseau. New York: Macmillan, 1905.
Perkins, Merle L. Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the Individual and Society. Lexington:

University Press of Kentucky, 1974.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Collected Writings of Rousseau. Edited by Roger D. Masters

and Christopher Kelly. Hanover University Press of New England, 1990.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Confessions. London: Aldus Society, 1903.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. A Discourse on Inequality. Translated by Maurice Cranston. New

York: Penguin Books, 1984.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile: Or On Education. Translated by Allan Bloom. New York:

Basic Books, 1979.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The First and Second Discourses. Edited, translated and
annotated by Victor Gourevitch. New York: Perennial Library, 1986.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. On the Social Contract. Translated by Judith R. Masters. New

York: St. Martins Press, 1978.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Political Writings. Edited by C.E. Vaughan. New York: Wiley,
1962.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Essential Rousseau. Translated by Lowell Bair. New York:
The New American Library, Inc., 1974.
SOCIAL CONTRACT PROVIDES

PROTECTION OF THE COMMON GOOD
1. SOCIAL CONTRACT PROTECTS PROPERTY
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Philosopher, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1947, p. 14.
Where shall we find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole
common force the person and the property of each associate, and by which every
person, while uniting himself with all, shall obey only himself and remain as free as
before? Such is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract gives the solution.
2. SOCIAL CONTRACT PROTECTS RIGHTS

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Philosopher, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND DISCOURSES, 1973, p.
181.
If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from ~t, I should say: As long as
a people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well; as soon as it can shake off the
yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better; for, regaining its liberty by the same rights as
took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for those
who took it away. But the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other
rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be
founded on conventions.
3. SOCIAL CONTRACT PROTECTS COMMON GOOD

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Philosopher, THE ESSENTIAL ROUSSEAU, 1974, p. 84.
As long as a number of men, having joined together, consider themselves a single body,
they have only one will, which is directed toward the common security and well-being.
The forces that move the state are then simple and vigorous; its principles are clear and
illuminating; there are not tangled, conflicting interests; the common good is always so
obvious that it can be seen by anyone with common sense.
4. ALL IN SOCIETY MUST SUBMIT TO SOCIAL CONTRACT TO RECEIVE ITS PROTECTION

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Philosopher, THE ESSENTIAL ROUSSEAU, 1974, p. 19-20.
In order, therefore, that the social pact shall not be to an empty formality, it tacitly
includes one stipulation without which all the others would be ineffectual: that anyone
who refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This
means nothing else than that he shall be forced to be free, for such is the condition
which gives each citizen to his country and thus secures him against all personal
dependence This condition is essential to the functioning of the political machine, and it
alone legitimizes civil obligations, which would otherwise be absurd, tyrannical, and
subject to the most outrageous abuses.
SEPARATION OF LEGISLATIVE AND

EXECUTIVE BRANCHES MUST EXIST
1. LEGISLATIVE CONTROL MUST BE SEPARATED FROM EXECUTIVE ROLE Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Philosopher, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND DISCOURSES, 1973, p. 239. He who
makes the law knows better than any one else how it should be executed and
interpreted. It seems then impossible to have a better constitution than that in which the
executive and legislative powers are united; but this very fact renders the government in
certain respects inadequate, because things which should be distinguished are
confounded ,and the prince and the Sovereign, being the same person, form, so to
speak, no more than a government without a government.
2. IT IS DANGEROUS TO NOT SEPARATE LEGISLATIVE FROM EXECUTIVE DUTIES JeanJacques Rousseau, Philosopher, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND DISCOURSES, 1973, p. 239.
It is not good for him who makes the laws to execute them , or for the body of the
people to turn its attention away from a general standpoint and devote to it particular
objects. Nothing is more dangerous than the influence of private interests in public
affairs, and the abuse of the laws by the government is a less evil than the corruption of
the legislator, which is the inevitable sequel to private points of view. In such a case, the
State being altered in substance, all reformation becomes impossible.
USE OF STRENGTH DOES NOT PRODUCE

CIVIL SOCIETY
1. MORALITY CANNOT BE DERIVED FROM PHYSICAL FORCE Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Philosopher, THE ESSENTIAL ROUSSEAU, 1974, p. 11.
The strongest man is never strong enough to maintain his mastery at all times unless he
transforms his strength into right and obedience into a duty. Hence the right of the
strongest, a right that is taken ironically in appearance and established as a principle m
reality. But will anyone ever explain what the term means? I do not see what morality
can be derived from physical force.
2. MIGHT DOES NOT MAKE RIGHT

For if might makes right, the effect changes with the cause: Any might greater than the
first will take over its right. As soon as one can disobey with impunity, one can disobey
legitimately, and since the strongest is always in the right, one has only to act in such a
way as to be the strongest.
3. FORCE MAKES INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS MEANINGLESS

But what kind of right is it that ceases to exist when strength perishes? If a man is forced
to obey, he no longer has any obligation to do so. It is clear that the word right adds
nothing to force; in that connection, it means nothing at all.
SOVEREIGNTY IS A FALLIBLE FORM OF

GOVERNMENT
1. SOVEREIGNTY CANNOT GUARANTEE EXISTENCE OF SOCIAL CONTRACT Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Philosopher, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1947, p. 123.
It is even more impossible to guarantee the continuance of this agreement, even if we
were to see it always exist; because that existence must be owing not to art but to
chance. The Sovereign may indeed say: My will at present actually agrees with the will
of such and such a man, or at least with what he declares to be his will; but it cannot
say, Our will shall likewise agree tomorrow; since it does not belong to any consent to
what might be injurious to the being from whom the will proceeds.
2. SOVEREIGNTY IS INDIVISIBLE
For the same reason that sovereignty is inalienable, it is indivisible. For the will is
general or it is not; it is either the will of the whole body of the people, or only of a part.
In the first case, the declared will is an act of sovereignty and constitutes law; in the
second, it is but a private will or an act of magistracy, and it is at most but a decree.
3. AUTHORITY OF SOVEREIGNTY IS NOT ABSOLUTE

This error arises from our not having formed exact ideas of the sovereign authority, and
from our taking for parts of that authority what are only its emanations. For example, the
acts of declaring war and making peace are considered as acts of sovereignty, when in
fact they are not so, because neither of these acts is a law, but only the application of
the law, a particular act which determines the application of the law, as we shall clearly
perceive when the idea attached to the word law is fixed.
ROUSSEAU S CONCEPT OF THE

GENERAL WILL IS FLAWED
1. MEANING OF GENERAL WILL IS UNCLEAR
J.H. Huizinga, NQA, ROUSSEAU THE SELF-MADE SAINT, 1976, p. 234.
If you want us to get on, he [Rousseau] said to Madame dEpinay when she objected to
his boorish remark about not being for sale, I advise you to learn my dictionary; believe
me, my words rarely have the ordinary meaning. In fact, so obscure are they that even
renowned political scientists, like the late G.D.H. Cole, have felt bound to admit that the
General Will, the most fundamental of all Rousseaus Social Contract has found it easy to
say either what precisely its author meant by it or what is its final value for political
philosophy.
2. EXPLANATION OF GENERAL WILL IS NONSENSICAL

But who can make head or tail of what follows? When a law is proposed in the popular
assembly what the people is asked is not exactly whether it approves or rejects it but
whether it is in conformity with the general will. In other words, faced with a proposal to
ban the theatre or disenfranchise over-age bachelors, the citizenry must decide whether
it violates their constitutional obligation to respect majority rule, which seems about as
sensible as consulting the Ten Commandments to decide whether or not to have ham
and eggs for breakfast.
3. DEFINITION OF GENERAL WILL IS FALLACIOUS

But if one assumes that the General Will must, therefore, be less limited in scope than
Jean-Jacques has just given one to understand, his further observations throw an even
eerier light on the workings of his mind. Those who are out-voted, he tells us, are
thereby shown to have been mistaken about what was the general will: When the
opinion that is contrary to own prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was
mistaken and that what I thought to be the general will was not so. In his dream-world
which, it is only fair to say, he himself knew to be just that and nothing more-minorities
only vote the way they do because they do not realize they really want the same as
everybody else; only in the moment of proving a minority do its members make this
comforting discovery.
RULE BY GENERAL WILL IS

TOTALITARIAN
1. ROUSSEAU ADVOCATES A TOTALITARIAN STATE
Peter Gay, NQA, THE QUESTION OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, 1989, p.8.
Paine gave a new twist to Rousseau criticism. Rousseaus political theory, he argued,
had been designed as the supreme assault on law and the state and had resulted,
paradoxically but inevitably, in tyranny: The doctrine of popular sovereignty, interpreted
by the masses, will produce perfect anarchy until the moment when interpreted by the
rulers, it will produce perfect despotism. Rousseaus state, as he put it in an epigram to
which Cassirer refers, is a lawmans monastery, and in this democratic monastery
which Rousseau establishes on the model of Sparta and Rome, the individual is nothing
and the state everything.
2. ROUSSEAU DOCTRINE IS A FORM OF TOTALITARIANISM

Peter Gay, NQA, THE QUESTION OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, 1989, p. 8.
This and similar views have now become predominant in the literature. We can hear
echoes of it in Karl Poppers description of Rousseaus thought as romantic collectivism
and in Sir Ernest Barkers in effect, and in the last resort, Rousseau is a totalitarian...
Imagine Rousseau a perfect democrat: his perfect democracy is still a multiple
autocracy.
3. ENFORCING GENERAL WILL CREATES A TOTALITARIAN STATE

Peter Gay, NQA, THE QUESTION OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, 1989, p.8.
Many, although certainly not all, present-day readers of Rousseau, remembering the
supremacy of the general will, the forcing men to be free, the civil religion, and
forgetting the rest of his writings, will agree with Tame and Barker. The fashion in fact is
to consider Rousseau a totalitariana democratic totalitarian perhaps, but a
totalitarian nevertheless.
Bertrand Russell
INTRODUCTION
Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, skeptic, logician, essayist, and renowned
peace advocate. Perhaps the Economist gives the best introduction:
"A great deal of work has come upon me, neglect of some of which might jeopardize the
continuation of the human race, wrote Bertrand Russell in a letter in 1967, explaining
why he did not have time to comment in detail on a philosophical manuscript. Few dons
could carry off such an excuse. Russell was, in his final decade, concentrating on three
large campaigns: helping Soviet Jews, opposing the Vietnam War, and crusading for
nuclear disarmament. The excuse might at first seem to be evidence of lunatic selfimportance, or maybe senility (he was 95 at the time). But those who knew him would
recognize its characteristic mix of a melodramatic, gently ironic style together with a
profound commitment to public benevolence and political action.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Russell was born in 1872 in Ravenscroft, Wales. After the death of his parents, Russells
grandfather (and former Prime Minister), Lord John Russell took custody of him. Russell
was raised by his grandparents until he entered Trinity College at Cambridge, where he
earned a B.A. in Mathematics with a top rank in 1893. He was elected a fellow at Trinity
in 1895 after spending time with his wife, Miss Alys Pearsall Smith, in Berlin studying
social democracy. In 1901, he wrote The Principles of Mathematics, his first major book.
The same year, he discovered the infamous Russells Paradox, a seminal finding in the
world of logic. He took up a lectureship at Trinity College in 1910 and began to dabble
more into politics. During World War I, Russell became a vociferous opponent of Britains
conscription policy.
After he was found to be the author of a leaflet criticizing the two year sentence of
conscientious objectors, he was fined one hundred pounds and stripped of his Trinity
post, the first of many problems he encountered with the British government. After his
dismissal, he attempted to take a job offer at Harvard but was refused a passport. Not
long after that, the military prevented him from delivering a set of lectures that is now
published as Political Ideals. Finally, in 1918, he was sentenced to six months in prison
for a pacifist article he wrote in the Tribunal. While in prison, he wrote Introduction to
Mathematical Philosophy. In 1920, he traveled to Russia to study the Bolshevik
revolution, and then traveled to China to teach philosophy at Peking University.
In 1938 Russell arrived at the United States and began to teach philosophy at a number
of top universities. In 1940 he was elected to a lectureship at the City College of New
York, but the offer was revoked following public protests regarding his views on morality
and pacifism. In 1949 he was award the Order of Merit and was also awarded the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1950. In 1955, he released the Russell-Einstein manifesto, and
followed that work up by becoming the founding president of the Campaign to End
Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. In 1961, at the age of 89, he was imprisoned for a week
in connection with anti-nuclear protests. Russell continued to be an avid letter writer
and political activist until his death in 1970.
RUSSELL ON LOGIC AND ANALYTIC

PHILOSOPHY
Russells most seminal discovery in logic was Russells Paradox, which arises in
connection with the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Such a set, if it
exists, will be a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself. Thus, all
sentences are contradictions. Andrew Irvine explains that:
Russell's own response to the paradox came with the development of his theory of
types in 1903. It was clear to Russell that some restrictions needed to be placed upon
the original comprehension (or abstraction) axiom of naive set theory, the axiom that
formalizes the intuition that any coherent condition may be used to determine a set (or
class). Russell's basic idea was that reference to sets such as the set of all sets that are
not members of themselves could be avoided by arranging all sentences into a
hierarchy, beginning with sentences about individuals at the lowest level, sentences
about sets of individuals at the next lowest level, sentences about sets of sets of
individuals at the next lowest level, and so on.
Using a vicious circle principle similar to that adopted by the mathematician Henri
Poincar, and his own so-called "no class" theory of classes, Russell was able to explain
why the unrestricted comprehension axiom fails: propositional functions, such as the
function "x is a set," may not be applied to themselves since self-application would
involve a vicious circle. On Russell's view, all objects for which a given condition (or
predicate) holds must be at the same level or of the same."
Russell also was famous for his belief that all mathematical truths could be recast as
logical proofs. Just as Russell used logic to color his approach to mathematics, he
attempted to use logic as a tool to clarify issues in philosophy as he sought to discover
whether humans really could possess knowledge. Irvine continues:
Russell's conception of philosophy arose in part from his idealist origins. This is so, even
though he believed that his one, true revolution in philosophy came about as a result of
his break from idealism. Russell saw that the idealist doctrine of internal relations led to
a series of contradictions regarding asymmetrical (and other) relations necessary for
mathematics. Thus, in 1898, he abandoned the idealism that he had encountered as a
student at Cambridge, together with his Kantian methodology, in favour of a pluralistic
realism. As a result, he soon became famous as an advocate of the new realism and for
his new philosophy of logic, emphasizing as it did the importance of modern logic for
philosophical analysis. The underlying themes of this revolution, including his belief in
pluralism, his emphasis upon anti-psychologism, and the importance of science,
remained central to Russell's philosophy for the remainder of his life.
RUSSELL ON KNOWLEDGE OF THE

EXTERNAL WORLD
Over the course of historical thought on truth and the attainment of knowledge, Russell
has earned his place as the rightful and direct heir of the British empiricists. In his work,
The Problems of Philosophy Russell explains how we can attain knowledge. He explains
that empirical knowledge is based on direct acquaintance with sense data. Basically, this
means that the way that we know and can explain a specific situation or item or thing is
through the senses. We can never describe other sensations to other people, or tell how
we feel about a specific situation. Instead, the way to achieve knowledge about different
things is through our senses.
RUSSELL ON MORALITY
Russell received his Nobel Prize for a work of literature that he wrote in the field on
mortality. His book was entitled Marriage and Morals. It covered the area of discussing
the role of morality throughout our society in an observant manner that many
newspapers felt reflected the sense that Russell was ahead of his time in this field of
discourse. He cites specific examples within our daily lives that cause us to be confused.
In one essay, he wrote of the dilemma facing children. If a child points to a person in the
park referring to them as a funny old man, the parents reaction to be quiet makes the
child realize several important things. The child realizes that he or she has done
something wrong, but is not clear exactly what the problem is. He explains that we walk
a very fine line between being tactful and hypocritical.
In his book Marriage and Morals, Russell delves deeper into this discussion of morality in
the family construct. He highlights the issue of sexuality and the principles of sexuality
in the family structure. In Russells opinion, the two principal sources of sexual morality
are mens desire to be sure that they are truly the fathers of the children that their wives
give birth, and the religious based belief that sex is sinful. While Russell establishes that
these are the two core beliefs and roles of sexuality in our society, he does not
necessarily agree with the fact that these two values and statements are good. In
response to the first, Russell agrees that the protection of two parent families is
absolutely necessary to raising a family. He explains that if a family is not responsible
for the up bringing of children it is left to the role of the state. Russell has problems with
this because it results in too much uniformity of belief.
Russell does not, however, agree with the second tenet about sexuality being sinful in
nature. Instead, Russell explains that this belief is what has lead to untold harms within
our society. He remarks that we are taught to be afraid of sex as children. He further
explains that these fears express themselves later in life in the form of inhibitions and
the stresses that they cause. Russell goes even further on speaking about this topic by
explaining how it relates to the discussion of morality. He explains that the repression of
sexuality causes individuals within society to be more distant and makes people less
generous.
RUSSELL ON EDUCATION
Russell was an agnostic, which may come as a surprise to some people who would
assume from his writings that he was an atheist. Russell felt that the pathway to
understanding some of the difficult questions of life was not through religion. Instead,
Russell felt that the chief of those pathways to the heavens was through education.
Russell did not focus on the administrative aspect of how the education process should
work. He did not find an interest in exactly how schools should be set up or how teachers
should be trained. Instead of speaking in terms of the practical implementation of an
education system, he focused on the vague spiritual essence of the goals of education.
The goal of education, according to Russell, is to form character. Education is the
process of making us as individuals who we are and ensuring that we develop the best
kind of character. The best kind of character for Russell is vital, courageous, sensitive,
and intelligent. The best character would take all of these characteristics to the highest
degree.
RUSSELL ON METAPHYSICS
Russell explained several concepts on the idea of metaphysics. His ideas on this subject
are focused on mathematical concepts and then translate into how we can make
decisions about truth and the sensory information that we gain through society. Russell
gave the name logical atomism to the views he developed from OKEW onwards. Logical
atomism is principally a method, and Russell hoped that it would resolve questions about
the nature of perception and its relation to physics. Russells views on metaphysics were
that straightforward interpretation of physics but rather also included the representation
of it as a logical structure.
Russell uses this concept of establishing metaphysics to extend deeper into the
establishment of his logical atomism. His discussion on logical atomism revolves around
the structure of responses and our use of language. Basically, he evaluates the
constructs in language of referring to particular subjects. In referring to these objects,
the proposition has the effect of denoting a different expression than the object itself.
RUSSELL ON THE THEORY OF

INCOMPLETE SYMBOLS
Perhaps Russells greatest contribution to logic was his theory of definite descriptions
and the more broad concept of incomplete symbols. It is in this first area that Russell
explains how there is a respective difference between statements that are made. He
uses the example of I met Quine. For Russell, this statement is a different proposition
than I met the author of Quiddities. Even though Quide is the author of Quiddities, it is
a new and different statement when the words and symbols differ. The difference
between the two statements is simple. In the first statement, the statement differs
because the words refer directly to the object. However, the second statement is not
about the concept, but rather what the concept denotes.
RUSSELL ON PACIFISM
Russell was a major pacifist who actively opposed his countrys participation in the WWI
and was horrified for the support it received from his country. He urged the end of
colonialism early in his life and traced the use of non-cooperation to best achieve his
ends. Citing the horrors of war, including economic devastation, psychological torture,
military casualties, civilian casualties, and the spiritual evils of hatred and deception,
Russell believed that non-cooperation was the best of all possible defenses. This
included defense against foreign aggressors (what could the Germans do if everybody in
England refused to follow their orders? Certainly they couldnt kill them all) and also
resistance to the actions of ones own country. Russell was not an absolute pacifist, and
like Einstein, he did not oppose WWII with the same vehemence as WWI.
Crucial to Russells pacifism, was his belief that capitalism promotes warfare, as he
argued in Roads to Freedom. Capitalism, he argued, fuels the desire of imperial powers
to forcefully exploit the resources of other countries. Also, capitalism is a quest for
power, and thus as an inherent result there is a constant battle between those seeking
power and those wishing to keep it. While Russell does not necessarily suggest the
abolishment of capitalism as a means to peace, he certainly argues for the abolishment
for private property and capital as necessary precursor to world peace.
Russell was a huge believer in world government. In 1918 he supported the League of
Nations and proclaimed that a world government was fundamental in order to for
humanity to survive another hundred years and proclaimed that the rights of a nation
against humanity are no more absolute than the rights of an individual against the
community. In Political Ideals Russell discusses the need for an international
government to secure peace in the world by means of effective international law. Just as
police are needed to protect private citizens from the use of force, so an international
police can prevent the lawless use of force by states. The benefit of having law rather
than international anarchy will give the international government a respected authority
so that states will no longer feel free to use aggression. Then a large international force
will become unnecessary.
The last 20 years of Russells life were devoted mainly to non-proliferation. As the
founder of the Center of Nuclear Disarmament, Russell devoted his time to stopping the
nuclear proliferation of the British and the expulsion of US bases from British land.
Russell addressed an open letter to Eisenhower and Khrushchev in November 1957,
entreating them to recognize human life as a paramount value and asking them to stop
the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world. This, he argued, would cost a lot
less than continuing to escalate a growing conflict, and would also stand to give the
globe hope that they would not die in a nuclear holocaust. By the age of 88, however,
Russell began to move to a more radical role. Sanderson explains:
Russell came to believe that a more radical strategy was needed, and he resigned from
the CND to begin to plan actions of civil disobedience through the Committee of 100. A
sit-down demonstration took place at a U.S. Polaris Base in which 20,000 people
attended a rally and 5,000 sat down and risked arrest. On August 6, 1961 (Hiroshima
Day) they met at Hyde Park, and Russell illegally used a microphone. He was arrested
and convicted of inciting the public to civil disobedience; his sentence was commuted to
one week. Russell wrote eloquent leaflets and gave speeches for these and other
demonstrations urging that the seriousness of nuclear peril justified non-violent civil
disobedience against the offending governments which are organizing the massacre of
the whole of mankind."
RUSSELL ON DIVERSITY
Russell believed that philosophers and citizens throughout society should not be limited
by tradition or other limiting societal constructs. In this respect, Russell wanted to make
sure that people were not judged based on assumptions that are made in society
without any basis. One reason that Russell may have advocated for this perspective was
because he was shunned during his day. Because Russell was so vocal about his beliefs
about international politics, he was limited in his actions and credibility. Because he was
outspoken about his opposition to the Vietnam War, he was ridiculed. Throughout his
career he did not receive jobs, lost international respect, and was publicly shunned for
his beliefs.
Regardless of his motives for wanting diversity of viewpoints, Russell had good reasons
to support his viewpoint. But unlike post-modernist philosophers who believe in
questioning everything without end, Russell believed that it was possible and required to
make decisions with all of the information that is available to you at a given time. He
also made sure that the description and objective of any philosophy also had to be clear.
While diverse and differing opinions were important, equally important was a clear and
precise manner of explaining it.
RUSSELL ON FREEDOM
In constructing his ideals of the role of government, Bertrand Russell presented his own
ideals of what government should be. Russell believed that the most common sense and
basic principle was that of freedom. With this tenet as the supreme value, his ideal form
of government not surprisingly was an anarchists approach to government. Russell felt
that it was the ultimate ideal to which society should approximate." Governments that
are hierarchies of domination were fundamentally illegitimate for Russell. This belief was
what led him to be critical of the Communist regime under Stalin. Stalin was a brutal and
oppressive dictator who dominated and slaughtered his own people. It was for this
reason that Russell publicly criticized the Communist regime under Joseph Stalin. That
does not necessarily mean that he opposed Communism as an ideology because he
lessened his disgust for Communism post-Stalins death.
Freedoms were vital for societies to function properly. Russell felt that for the
government needed reasons to justify why their citizens needed to abandon their rights
and give them to the government. Reasons that governments have given in the past,
Russell felt were counter product to the discussion and did not adequately provide
evidence to support the abolition of freedoms.
USING BERTRAND RUSSELL IN

LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE
There are many ways that Russell can be useful in value-style debate. Possible values
consistent with Bertrands philosophy include: equality, pacifism, resistance, humanism,
globalism, and of course the ever banal value of justice. If you wished to be creative,
Russell could also be used to uphold a value of resistance, civil disobedience, or
socialism.
Russells rejection of private property gives fertile ground for arguments against
capitalism and governments that support it. Thus, Russell comes into conflict with
liberal values such as those espoused by Locke or the Founders, the thinkers who
normally provide the basis for the LD values of liberty and natural and/or personal
rights. Russells argument, that capitalism provides the seeds for international warfare,
is an indictment of the way those values are understood. Debaters wishing to utilize
Russell could argue that the right to private property is not a right at all. In fact, private
property is inherently damaging, because it draws people into competition with each
other for more and more power. This, one could argue, is a root cause of all wars. Thus,
the right of private property is turned against itself because it only leads to destruction
and discord.
Furthermore, Russells arguments in favor of a world government come into conflict with
the values such as sovereignty. Russell does not believe that governments should be
free to do whatever they please within their borders and argued that an international
police force was crucial to maintaining world safety. This creates many arenas for
contention. Russell is in favor of organizations such as the United Nations to such a
degree that he believes the UN should just as sovereign over states and states are over
individuals.
Therefore, the role of international law is elevated to that of a global standard. Thus,
debaters could use this argument to refute the idea that national sovereignty is crucial,
by using Russell to demonstrate that international law has to be justified or otherwise
there is merely world anarchy in which totalitarian governments have just as much
moral legitimacy as more fair governments.
On other hand, debaters could attempt to refute Russell by demonstrating that

international government cannot fulfill the role that Russell thought it should. Many
people believe that international law is really an agreed upon law from a few countries
that is imposed upon the rest. Russell seems to be saying that sovereignty is
unimportant, meaning that peace keeping missions against countries are ok so long as
they are done by an international body. Thus, Russell has a particularly interesting
stance on sovereignty that may help or hurt someone who tries to use him.
Finally, Russells philosophy and life all point to the argument that people need to react
against their government if they believe that the government is doing something wrong.
Thus, values such as resistance and civil disobedience, may have some support from
Russells analysis. Russell believed that non-violent civil disobedience was not only
justified in the light of nuclear proliferation and the Vietnam War, but also required of
political participants of conscience. Russell can therefore be used to refute the
numerous social contract arguments of Lincoln-Douglas debate. Individuals did not
sign away their consciences when they entered society, according to Russell, and
therefore when any government commits actions which are repugnant to human dignity,
human beings have the duty to break laws in order to end those actions.
Russell emerges as a devout believer in humanism. He believes in a moral code that

transcends individual communities or national laws, and he further believes that if
human can unite together globally than peace can be achieved.
_____________________________
The Economist, July, 2001
Irvin, Andrew. Bertrand Russell. Downloaded from
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/ on 5/24/03
Cited in Sanderson, Beck. The Pacifism of Bertrand Russell. Downloaded from
http://www.san.beck.org/WP24-Russell.html on 5/24/03
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Russell, Bertrand. OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD. Chicago and London:
The Open Court Publishing Company. 1914.
Russell, Bertrand. INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY. London: George

Allen and Unwin; New York: The Macmillan Company. 1919.
Russell, Bertrand. THE ANALYSIS OF MATTER. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner; New
York: Harcourt, Brace. 1927.
Russell, Bertrand. SKEPTICAL ESSAYS. New York: Norton. 1928.
Russell, Bertrand. AN INQUIRY INTO MEANING AND TRUTH. London: George Allen and
Unwin; New York: W.W. Norton. 1940.
Russell, Bertrand. THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ATOMISM. Minneapolis, Minnesota:

Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota. Repr. as RUSSELLS LOGICAL
ATOMISM. Oxford: Fontana/Collins, 1972.
Russell, Bertrand. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BERTRAND RUSSELL. 3 vols, London:

George Allen and Unwin; Boston and Toronto: Little Brown and Company (Vols 1 and 2),
New York: Simon and Schuster (Vol. 3). 1967, 1968, 1969.
Chomsky, Noam. PROBLEMS OF KNOWLEDGE AND FREEDOM: THE RUSSELL LECTURES.

New York: Vintage. 1971.
Griffin, Nicholas. RUSSELLS IDEALIST APPRENTICESHIP. Oxford: Clarendon. 1991.
Hardy, Godfrey H. BERTRAND RUSSELL AND TRINITY. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1970.
Klemke, E.D. (ed.) ESSAYS ON BERTRAND RUSSELL. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
1970.
Monk, Ray. BERTRAND RUSSELL: THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. London: Jonathan Cape.
1996.
Nakhnikian, George (ed.). BERTRAND RUSSELLS PHILOSOPHY. London: Duckworth.

1974.
Patterson, Wayne. BERTRAND RUSSELLS PHILOSOPHY OF LOGICAL ATOMISM. New York:

Lang. 1993.
Quine, W.V. WAYS OF PARADOX. New York: Random House. 1966.
Roberts, George W. (ed.). BERTRAND RUSSELL MEMORIAL VOLUME. London: Allen and
Unwin. 1979.
Schoenman, Ralph (ed.). BERTRAND RUSSELL: PHILOSOPHER OF THE CENTURY. London:

Allen and Unwin. 1967.
Slater, John G. BERTRAND RUSSELL. Bristol: Thoemmes. 1994.
Vellacott, Jo. BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE PACIFISTS IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR.
Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press. 1980.
RUSSELL'S PHILOSOPHY IS KEY TO

INCREASED HUMAN FREEDOM
1. RUSSELLS REVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY KEY TO HUMAN FREEDOM
Noam Chomsky, Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MELLON LECTURE,
Loyola University, Chicago, October 19, 1994. http://www.zmag.org/chomsky Accessed
May 23, 2003, p-np.
Dewey and Russell also shared the understanding that these leading ideas of the
Enlightenment and classical liberalism had a revolutionary character, and they retained
it right at the time they were writing, in the early half of this century. If implemented,
these ideas could produce free human beings whose values were not accumulation and
domination but rather free association on terms of equality and sharing and cooperation,
participating on equal terms to achieve common goals which were democratically
conceived. There was only contempt for what Adam Smith called the "vile maxim of the
masters of mankind, all for ourselves, and nothing for other people." The guiding
principle that nowadays we're taught to admire and revere as traditional values have
eroded under unremitting attack, the so-called conservatives leading the onslaught in
recent decades.
2. RUSSELLS PHILOSOPHY WORKS TOWARDS THE UTOPIAN VISION OF TRUE FREEDOM

Noam Chomskey, Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology, DETERRING
DEMOCRACY, 1992, p-np.
Those who adopt the common sense principle that freedom is our natural right and
essential need will agree with Bertrand Russell that anarchism is "the ultimate ideal to
which society should approximate." Structures of hierarchy and domination are
fundamentally illegitimate. They can be defended only on grounds of contingent need,
an argument that rarely stands up to analysis. As Russell went on to observe 70 years
ago, "the old bonds of authority" have little intrinsic merit. Reasons are needed for
people to abandon their rights, "and the reasons offered are counterfeit reasons,
convincing only to those who have a selfish interest in being convinced." "The condition
of revolt," he went on, "exists in women towards men, in oppressed nations towards
their oppressors, and above all in labor towards capital. It is a state full of danger, as all
past history shows, yet also full of hope."
3. RUSSELLIAN THINKING PREVENTS INDOCTRINATION, PROMOTES TRUE EDUCATION

William Hare, Professor Mt. Vincent University. BERTRAND RUSSELL ON EDUCATION,
1998, http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Educ/EducHare.htm, Accessed May 22, 2003, p-np.
Russell's conception of critical thinking involves reference to a wide range of skills,
dispositions and attitudes which together characterize a virtue which has both
intellectual and moral aspects, and which serves to prevent the emergence of numerous
vices, including dogmatism and prejudice. Believing that one central purpose of
education is to prepare students to be able to form "a reasonable judgment on
controversial questions in regard to which they are likely to have to act", Russell
maintains that in addition to having "access to impartial supplies of knowledge,"
education needs to offer "training in judicial habits of thought." (4) Beyond access to
such knowledge, students need to develop certain skills if the knowledge acquired is not
to produce individuals who passively accept the teacher's wisdom or the creed which is
dominant in their own society. Sometimes, Russell simply uses the notion of intelligence,
by contrast with information alone, to indicate the whole set of critical abilities he has in
mind.
SKEPTICISM IS THE BEST WAY TO

AVOID PROBLEMS OF "TRUTH'S"
1. RUSSELL RECOGNIZES PROBLEMS IN DISCOVERING TRUTH
William Hare, Professor Mt. Vincent University, BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE IDEAL OF
CRITICAL RECEPTIVENESS, Skeptical Inquirer, May 2001, p. 40.
It is sometimes maintained that philosophers have traditionally regarded ideals such as
truth, rationality, and impartiality, especially in the context of science, as relatively
unproblematic notions; and that this simplistic view has only recently been discredited
by postmodernist thinking (Keller 1995, 11). Contrary to these suggestions, however,
contemporary awareness of the deeply problematic nature of such ideas, and of related
intellectual virtues such as open-mindedness and love of truth, is greatly indebted to
philosophers of an earlier generation, such as Russell, who were under no illusions about
the complexities in such ideals and who helped to reveal the dubiousness of naive
confidence in them. Unlike many critics today, however, Russell sees clearly that truth,
rationality, and impartiality--suitably qualified--remain centrally important in science,
education, and elsewhere. [3] We find in his work a valuable account and defense of
those intellectual virtues that sustain and promote Enlightenment ideals, [4] and are
central to any serious understanding of what it means to be an educated person.
2. RUSSELL MAKES SPEPTICISM AN IDEAL APPROACH

William Hare, Professor Mt. Vincent University, BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE IDEAL OF
CRITICAL RECEPTIVENESS, Skeptical Inquirer, May 2001, p. 40.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) enjoys a well-deserved place among the outstanding
skeptics of the twentieth century. [1] His work not only sets a powerful example of
skepticism in practice, but also helps to clarify the nature and value of skepticism.
Russell explicitly rejects what he calls a lazy skepticism and dogmatic doubt, where all
inquiry is regarded as pointless and doomed to failure, arguing instead for a constructive
skepticism which seeks approximate truth even though certainty is unattainable. He is
anxious that his own position be seen as a form of rational doubt, which requires that
beliefs be held with the degree of conviction warranted by the evidence. Tentative truth
replaces cocksure certainty.
Russell identifies two dispositions at the heart of the inquiring spirit, dispositions that to
some extent tend in different directions but which need to co-exist in a dynamic tension
and delicate equilibrium if either one is to serve its purpose in promoting the pursuit of
truth. He strongly endorses a welcoming attitude toward new and controversial ideas,
albeit infused with a definite reluctance and disinclination to give full assent to any idea
before it has passed careful scrutiny. This is the complex, almost paradoxical, stance of
critical receptiveness.
THE IDEA OF A WORLD GOVERNMENT

IS FLAWED
1. RUSSELL SUPPORTED GLOBAL HEGENOMY
Edward Skidelsky, writer, The impossibility of love. Edward Skidelsky on the failure and
despair of Bertrand Russell. NEW STATESMAN, October 9, 2000, p. 55.
Russell changed his mind frequently on political questions, without ever acknowledging
that he had done so. Still, a consistent theme emerges. Although he was famous as an
advocate of pacifism - during the First World War, during the Thirties, and as a founder of
CND in the Sixties - he was not, in truth, a pacifist. His pacifism was simply the local
application of a more fundamental belief in world government. This is confirmed by a
curious episode in 1945-48. In order to prevent the Soviet Union from developing the
bomb, Russell advocated a policy of threatening - or actually waging - atomic war,
writing: 'Communism must be wiped out and world government must be established.'
Later on, after the Cuban missile crisis had convinced him that America, not Russia, was
the greatest danger to world peace, he switched to the 'better red than dead' line of
argument. He seems not to have cared much about the particular identity of the global
hegemon, so long as one existed.
2. RUSSELS BELIEF IN WORLD GOVERNMENT WAS FOUNDED IN MISTRUST OF HUMANS

Edward Skidelsky, writer, The impossibility of love. Edward Skidelsky on the failure and
despair of Bertrand Russell. NEW STATESMAN, October 9, 2000, p. 56.
A profound misanthropy underlay Russell's support for world government. He had a fixed
belief that human beings were incapable of managing conflict in a civilized way, and that
therefore peace could be established only through force. And while he often accused
Kennedy, Khrushchev and Macmillan of desiring 'the massacre of the whole of mankind',
his writings occasionally reveal a similar desire. 'Sometimes, in moments of horror, I
have been tempted to doubt whether there is any reason to wish that such a creature as
man should continue to exist.' The cataclysmic urges that Russell attributed to
politicians and generals were his own.
3. RUSSELLS IDEAL WORLD GOVERNMENT WAS HOPELESSLY VAGUE AND IMRACTICAL

Alan Ryan, fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at
Stanford, BERTRAND RUSSELL: A POLITICAL LIFE, 1988. p. 79
The other obvious target for complaint is Russells extreme vagueness about the form of
world government that he imagines we may set up. This vagueness persisted all his life;
the only thing he was every clear about was that the likely first stage of the process of
creating it would have to be the despotism of the United States over the rest of the
world. What Russell never explains is why the powers that were willing to fight to the
last drop of their soldiers blood during the first war would be able to reconcile
themselves to the existence of this despotism or the subsequent world authority. G.D.H.
Cole complained to Russell that he was too Platonic, too much the philosopher-king
inventing solutions for the average man, and it is perfectly true that Russell was prone to
the Platonic temptation to push all practical difficulties aside by mere fiat as if to say,
Let there be an omnipotent world authority, what the first step in the argument, when
its possibility was really what was at stake. And even if Russell may be excused the
sketchiness if his account of what it would be like, he surely cannot be excused his
optimism about how it would work.
PASSIVE RESISTANCE DOES NOT WORK

1. RUSSEL OVERESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE
Alan Ryan, fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at
Stanford, BERTRAND RUSSELL: A POLITICAL LIFE, 1988. p. 68.
[Russell] undoubtedly overestimated the readiness with which most people would
passively resist their oppressors at the cost of death and injury to themselves or, more
importantly, to their family and friends. In 1915 he underestimated the ingenuity with
which invaders would set about the task of making people cooperate against their will;
justified skepticism about the tales of German atrocities in Belgium and an unjustified
faith in the civilized character of European nations even when they were at war hid from
him the possibilities which Hitlers rise to power belatedly revealed.
2. RUSSELL WAS NOT A PACIFIST BUT A POLITICAL OPPURTUNIST

Andrew Brink, writer and philosopher, BERTRAND RUSSELL: THE PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY OR
A MORALIST, 1989, p. 112-113.
So far historians lack the concepts to describe Russells attitude to war. In her study of
Russells Part in the No Conscription Fellowship during the Great War, Jo Vellacott find
insufficient evidence of a positively pacifist outlook developing between his conversion
in 1901 and the outbreak of war in 1914. She recognizes Russells own violent streak,
and notes the tendency through experience of war towards an integration of the
different sides of personality; but there is no theory to explain what occurred. Thomas
C. Kenny writes more bluntly that Russell never a pacifist, because his political stance
was less due to personal faith than it was to a political strategy.
3. RUSSELL CONTRIBUTIONS INSIGNIFICANT, HIS VIEWS PERPETUATED WAR

Dennis OBrien, President emeritus of the University of Rochester, He Didnt Add Up.
COMMONWEAL, September 28, 2001, p. 22.
Having noted intensive and extensive activity, one has to say that Russell's contributions
to political or moral thought are minimal. No serious moral philosopher is likely to spend
time with any of his writings on the subject. On political issues he was from time to time
on the side of the angels--his advocacy of peace--but he missed the threat of Hitler and
did not come to support the British war effort until some six months after the outbreak
of hostilities. In the last two decades of his life a residual anti-Americanism, exacerbated
by a sensational court case in 1940 when he was denied a teaching position at CCNY
because of his "immoral" philosophy, he became virtually paranoid.
Edward Said
Said is a University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University, but is known just as well for his cultural and political commentary as his
literary writings. Said is considered by many one of the most prominent intellectuals in
the United States. His writing appears regularly in dozens of publications internationally,
and has published more than twelve books translated into over 14 languages. His
writings range in subject from music and literature to culture to politics, particularly the
conflicts between the First and Third Worlds, and between Jews and Arabs. Said 's
decade-long battle with leukemia did not prevent him from recently completing his
memoirs.
Born in 1935 in Jerusalem to a Palestinian Christian family, Said 's background that
region had had a major affect on the focus of his writing. Said and his family were
dispossessed from Palestine in 1948, and after living in Cairo with them, he moved to
the United States to be educated at Princeton and Harvard. Because of his passionate
advocacy for the right to self-determination of Palestinians, he was not allowed to visit
Palestine for decades, and he has received death threats throughout his life. Several of
his books and many articles concern the Peace process and the history of discrimination
and oppression against Palestinians in the region. In particular, the book Orientalism and
its semi-sequel Culture and Imperialism have served several important functions: they
introduced to the American public the previously unknown concept of Palestinian
nationalism (apart from the images of a towel-headed terrorist invoked by the media and
pop culture), they challenged us to look at the Middle East in a new and more balanced
way.
One tension in his work concerns his advocacy of Palestinian statehood. On the one
hand, he has remained committed to Palestinian liberation for decades. It is an issue
that because of his personal connection, he is the most passionately political about. On
the other hand, he recognizes the limits of nationalism, and believes that when groups
strive for statehood merely for the sake of having a state of their own, emancipation
loses its meaning and human relationships are degraded. Thus he, just as he asks the
readers of his books to do, continues with his daily activism while consistently keeping in
the back of his mind the potential problems with the goal he seeks. Much of his critical
writings can be taken that very way. They may not make a substantial change in the way
we act overtly, but they should always be kept in mind so as to subtly affect the way we
treat other people.
Despite his support for Palestinian self-determination, he has won over many members
of the Jewish community because of his even-handed approach. When he speaks to
Palestinians, he repeatedly insists that in order to create a successful peace accord, it is
necessary to be able to empathize with the Jews. To that end, he educates Palestinians
about the history of Judaism, particularly the Holocaust, in order to justify their desire for
an intact state of Israel. He was also one of the first Palestinian intellectuals to meet with
Israelis and American Zionists. Said has been committed, throughout his life, to
engaging both sides of every argument in self-reflexive critique.
Questions of Said 's legitimacy often rest on the issue of his ethnic identity. Praised as
one of the United State 's most respected writers, he is also considered the Arab world 's
prominent intellectual. Whether he ought be considered a member of the Western world,
the Arab world, or both, is hotly contested. In 1999, Said was criticized in the publication
Commentary as having overstated his family 's connections to Palestine, and therefore
describing him as an inadequate spokesperson for the Palestinian cause. However,
looking merely at his writings and political stance, that position seems unsupportable.
After disproving those charges, he pointed out that his loyal devotion to the Palestinian
cause should be enough to qualify him to speak on the issue; moreover, he rejects the
notion of an authentic ethnic identity. One remarkable quality of Said 's is the
faithfulness with which he replicates the theory he espouses into his daily life.
The common thread in all of Said 's writings (including his literary works) is that he is,
above all, a critical scholar. He draws from the writings of Michel Foucault, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Karl Marx, as well as authors as
diverse as Joseph Conrad, James Joyce William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift and Oscar
Wilde. However, his writing focuses on several themes. He has a "preoccupation with
memory; with the narrative of the oppressed; and with the commitment to never let a
dominant myth or viewpoint become history without its counterpoint"(Ahmad The Pen
and the Sword 11).
ORIENTALISM
Said defines Orientalism in three primary ways. First, it is the study of the area
commonly called the Orient. In academia, this would refer most directly to Area Studies
programs, but also those disciplines which study Eastern religion, culture, history, etc.
The second definition, potentially more applicable to specific debate resolutions, is that
Orientalism is "a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological
distinction between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident"" (Orientalism 2).
This division can be easily translated to any discussion of East versus West, global South
versus North, and also to any artificial distinction between the self and a group branded
"the other". The final, more normative, definition of Orientalism addresses the way that
it, by defining the Orient, exercises a power over it. Said adapts Foucault 's to argue that
Orientalism is not merely a field of study, but a discourse. And a discourse always
reproduces that which it comments upon. The result is that Orientalism exercises a
hegemonic through which it reproduces the concept of an other and simultaneously
dominates it.
It is important, when using Said 's writing, not to get caught up on the word Orientalism
itself. While Said 's research for the book was specifically on the ways the Orient was
constructed by the discourse of Orientalism, it is perfectly applicable to any situation
where a philosopher or debater constructs the identity of a group of people. For
example, on a resolution which stated that Native American Indians ought to be given
back land stolen from them when the United States broke its treaties, many debaters
(and the authors they cite) will make broad claims about what "Indians" want and need.
Obviously, there is no monolithic group described by the term "Indian." An appropriate
use of the theory of Orientalism would be to explain how the study of Indians oppresses
(or Orientalizes) them, so to speak. In a later book, Culture and Imperialism, Said
addressed the way the West perceives other areas beyond the Middle East. These
include: India, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, etc. It is, therefore, appropriate to apply
Said 's theory to all sorts of colonized peoples, not just those from the Middle East. He
writes that even if there is no longer a clear division between the Orient and the
Occident, there is still "the North/South one, the have/have-not one, the imperialist/antiimperialist one, the white/colored one"(Said Orientalism 327)
Perhaps the central point we can draw from Orientalism is that the creation of the self
and, resultantly, of others, is a false one. Said argues that "the Orient" does not exist in
any real way. There is no monolithic body "whether geographical, cultural, or human" to
which that term refers. Rather, the Orient is a construction of Western thought. Similarly,
the way that we construct ourselves, in terms of any aspect of our identity, in contrast to
an other, is an illusion. The other we define ourselves in opposition to only exists insofar
as we define it into existence. Thus, Said 's critique undermines the whole notion of a
stable identity," Far from a static thing then, identity of self or of "other" is a much
worked-over historical, social, intellectual, and political process that takes place as a
contest involving institutions and individuals in all societies"(Said Orientalism 332).

These identities are fluid and constructed.
One criticism of Said 's writing might be that it is too historically grounded, and does not
comment sufficiently on the present. This is untrue for several reasons. First, one of the
primary purposes of the book Orientalism is to provide a genealogical critique of how,
historically, the Orient has been constructed. However, the purpose of a genealogical
critique is often to explain a modern phenomenon. Said wishes to explain modern
Orientalism by examining its historical roots.
Second, Said does examine the modern ramifications of Orientalism. For one thing, he
writes, it results in a proliferation of stereotypes about Arabs in modern media," One
aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of the
stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed"(Said ORIENTALISM 26). Arabs are oilmongers, camel driving, money-grubbing, often holding large knifes or scantily dressed
women. In many films in the last decade, the image of the Arab as the generic terrorist
has taken hold. Ironically, Said notes that in these films, they are unable to get Arab
actresses and actors to play the Muslim and Arab roles. As a result, they are most
commonly played by Israeli actresses and actors. This indicates the way that our beliefs
regarding what an Oriental person should look like are constructed entirely apart from
reality.
Third, he describes how the educational systems in Arab countries are modeled after
Western education, but while universities and other institutions in the United States
often have programs for studying the Orient, that there are not the reciprocal institutions
in the Arab world for the purpose of studying the West. This indicates the imbalance of
power the whole book is critiquing.
Finally, one of the most recent examples of Orientalism in practice that Said examines is
the treatment of Palestinians in the Peace process. He argues that the demonization of
Arabs in those negotiations indicate the powerful and long-ranging affect of stereotypes
propagated for centuries. There are a whole new class of Orientalists whose job is to
advise policymakers and the American media based on their expertise of what the Arabs
need and want and how much of a threat they are, etc. These Orientalists are
considered an integral component of the Peace process, because without them, the West
might be forced to ask the Arabs themselves. These "experts" are the ones who
perpetuate the new stereotypes of Orientalism, most notably the image of all Arabs as
terrorists.
SOLUTIONS?
What might the solution to Orientalism be? Said does not give us a clear answer to what
the solution is, but he gives us many clues as to what the solution is not. To begin with,
he draws some authority for his writing because of his own personal relationship to the
issue, as a Palestinian. However, he writes, "I certainly do not believe the limited
proposition that only a black can write about blacks, a Muslim about Muslims, and so
forth"(Said Orientalism 322). On the contrary, he does not believe that we can begin to
eradicate the vestiges of Orientalism from our current news-media, educational
textbooks, etc. until Western people can critically self-reflect on the manifestations of
Orientalism in our own writing.
Should Orientalism be taken, then, as a universal condemnation of all things Western?

Said is frequently accused of being blindly anti-Western. However, in his 1994 afterword
to Orientalism, Said explained that he is not advocating the rejection of all of Western
culture and tradition. The solution is not, he clarifies, to privilege the Eastern over the
Western in some sort of an inverted hierarchy. He specifies that he is inditing only one
aspect of the West, not the entire West, and although it pervades much of Western
culture, that does not warrant a blind demonization of the West as a response. The
solution is not to stop Western academics from writing about the Orient, but to make
them more open to the voices of the people they are writing about
Said has clear political beliefs and advocacy, as is natural since he is one of the primary
spokespeople for advocates of Palestinian statehood. However, those policies do not
directly address the criticisms he brings up in Orientalism. We are left, in Orientalism,
with only the most fleeting and insubstantial solution: to take the philosophy he
espouses into account, to critically examine our own behavior, and to keep his writings
in mind when we read, see or hear descriptions of Arabs in our daily lives, and realize
that those images are constructions distinct from reality. This is a common, although
unsatisfying, alternative proposed by many critical theorists.
APPLICATIONS OF ORIENTALISM TO
DEBATE
There are many of ways that Said 's critique could be used in a Lincoln-Douglas debate. I
will name only a few. It is important to remember that because of his grounding in
critical and postmodern theory, Said 's writing can be used to respond to any
philosophies grounded in modernism, realism, etc. Rather than focusing on the name he
gives his theory, "Orientalism," debaters can use it to address diverse topics and groups
of people.
The most obvious use of Said would be to critique debaters who assert an identity for a
group of people. I gave the example earlier of debaters who argue that Native American
Indians have a monolithic common interest. That argument is ripe for a Saidian critique.
However, many of the other uses of his philosophy are more complex.
There is a unfortunate tendency, in Lincoln-Douglas debate, to rely on European

philosophy, like John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and Jean Jacques Rousseau,
to justify or dejustify the resolution. These philosophers are valuable, and their use is
often justified. However, there are many non-Western philosophies (from all regions of
the world) that could also be useful. In addition to their applicability to debate, they
have added utility. Because of their under-use by debaters, they are less well know
about, so they are also a strategic choice.
Said 's writing could be used to justify the use of those philosophies. He would argue
that it is absurd to take one ethical or moral standard "developed in the West" and
assume it applies to all people. For example, the use of natural law theory presumes that
there is a universally correct standard of behavior. By assuming a more relativist
approach, and arguing that Western natural law philosophies don 't apply to all people
(using Said), you undermine the fundamental premise of a natural law, thus inditing the
entire philosophy. Moreover, many of the Western philosophers that are commonly used
in Lincoln-Douglas debate held views that were very Orientalist.
One example of this will suffice. John Locke referred to the Native American Indians as
"noble savages," and argued that it was justified to take their land. Because of his
intense focus on the right to property "the pursuit of which he saw as a law of nature" he
believed that if the Indians were not properly cultivating their land (as Western settlers
believed it should be used), they had no right to the land. A Saidian analysis would begin
by criticizing the language and imagery Locke used to describe the Indians. Then, it
would justify criticizing the way values were universalized across cultures. Finally, it
could be used to criticize the way Locke characterizes the proper behavior as per the
laws of nature (in this case regarding property) and the way those beliefs were used to
justify violent expansion, robbing the Indians of land, and paternalistic treatment of an
autonomous people.
Said can also be used to challenge values based on individual identity. Because Said
argues that identity (whether in ourselves or others) is a construction, to base an ethical
system on the assumption that one 's identity is stable would be nonsensical. Said
explains that "human identity is not only not natural and stable, but constructed and
occasionally even invented outright"(Said Orientalism 322). Values like "individualism",
or even philosophies like the social contract which assume that there are stable,
autonomous individual agents, could be attacked using Said. This follows directly from
his challenge to the reality of geographical borders. Just as there is no truth to a division
between East and West, there is no real division between the self and the other. We can
only define ourselves as individuals in opposition to what is not "I", but he criticizes this
process as causing racism.
He also adds an interesting twist to this argument. Not only does the division between
self and other foster racist mindsets (because there is always a hierarchy implicit in that
division, with the self on top and the otherized people beneath), but it actually
constructs the other in the way we want to see them. Using an example from before,
one can only define what an Arab is by describing and Arab in contrast to one 's self.
Therefore, not only to they get assigned all of the negative characteristics that
reciprocate all the virtues we assign ourselves e.g., "I am generous, so Arabs are stingy;
I am hygienic, so Arabs are dirty" but that in turn constructs them in that way. The next
time we meet someone who appears Arab (based on our preconceived stereotypes) we
will treat them as stingy and will feel that they are being stingy. It thus becomes a selffulfilling prophecy.
ANSWERING SAID
There are a variety of criticisms that could be used to respond to the use of Said 's
philosophy. Some of them indite Said directly, and others focus more on his writing.
However, it is important to, when criticizing Said, lumping him into one of any number of
categories that he might appear to fall into. This is a violation of the precise arguments
he sets out, so be advised to avoid blanket criticism of a generic kind of writing (for
example), and assume that it will apply to him. Also, because of his grounding in critical
theory as well as his extensive research it is difficult to respond to his arguments by
merely stating their opposite. For example, it would not be persuasive to argue against
Said 's description of the stereotypes of Arab people by saying, "But Arabs really are all
oil tycoons and terrorists." On the contrary, it is more effective to attempt to beat Said at
his own game, by showing how he, or the debater using his writing, violates the very
same criticisms that he makes.
Beginning with indites of Said himself, his controversial stances are a good beginning
point for critique. One of the most prominent examples is that Said openly and avidly
opposed the Oslo Accords in the Israeli/Palestinian peace process. He took this position
because of his dislike for Arafat and because the accords did not ensure a Palestinian
state. However, the common belief is that that sort of compromise was inevitable, and
was the only way to ensure any sort of autonomy for Palestinians. In this way, Said
advocates radical change without being willing to compromise.
A second personal criticism of Said has to do with his critique of academia. He indites
those people who call themselves experts, because he sees the exercise of knowledge
as a use of power over the people of whom you claim knowledge. However, he is himself
an academic and an intellectual. He was educated at Harvard and Princeton, is a
professor, and writes in an extremely dense, highbrow academic style that is completely
inaccessible to many readers. The intended audience of his books is clearly not the
common person, who would not be able to read it, even though they are the people
most influenced by Orientalist images shown in mass media today. He writes books from
an elite intellectual position for other academics to read, thus falling into the same
indictment he makes of Orientalist intellectuals.
Addressing Said 's writing and theory more directly, there are several important
criticisms. For the most part, these consist of arguments debaters could make regarding
why Said is not applicable to debate rounds. First of all, the majority of the research Said
did and documentation he provides are is from European (nearly entirely French and
British) history. His examination of the United States, in terms of its relation to the
Orient, is minimal. Moreover, he acknowledges that Orientalism is a much less common
concept to Americans than to Europeans, both because American scholars, unlike their
European counterparts, have never called themselves Orientalists (so the
reappropriation of the word makes little sense) and because they do not have the same
history of colonization in the Orient as do the Europeans.
A second issue of importance is that Said 's writings may be somewhat dated. Although
he is still writing on similar subjects today, and despite the afterword to Orientalism he
wrote in 1994, many of the examples he gives of images of Arabs constructed by
academia seem old fashioned. This is not to say that there are no stereotypes of Arabs,
perhaps the most common one is still the "towel-headed terrorist", but they have
certainly changed since 1978 when he wrote the book originally. Moreover, the book
does not take into account many recent factors which may have significantly changed
the way images of the East are constructed.
One of these factors is the internet. Said stresses that the use of imaginative geography
is critical to the construction of the Orient, but the rules of geography that bound people
in the 1970s simply don 't apply anymore. As the cliche goes, the world is getting
smaller. Internet technology enables people to communicate rapidly and regularly with
people around the world. It is also having a major effect on the way news media is
distributed. Even if these changes haven 't ended Orientalism, they have certainly
changed the way it is reproduced.
A second important factor is the last decade 's movement towards political correctness.
While one may still see the occasional racist cartoon in the newspaper, and some
movies may still use a dark-skinned, turbaned man as the generic bad-guy, many people
in all forums have attempted to make their language as uncontroversial as possible. The
effect of this may have been to decrease Orientalist discourse, or perhaps merely to
have made it more covert, but regardless, it has had a significant impact that Said has
not addressed.
One final way that Said 's philosophy can be undermined in debate rounds is merely by
questioning the appropriateness of its application to the issues brought up by the
resolution. How has your opponent applied Said 's writing? It is likely that debaters will
often use his writing while simultaneously using the writings of another theorist that Said
would abhor. Have they tried to use Said along with Kant 's categorical imperative, or
Locke 's concept of natural law? Said wrote that "philosophers will conduct their
discussions of Locke, Hume, and empiricism without ever taking into account that there
is an explicit connection in those classic writers between their "philosophic" doctrines
and racial theory, justifications of slavery, or arguments for colonial expansion"(Said
Orientalism 13). Tease out those contradictions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE EDWARD SAID ARCHIVE (TESA), http://leb.net/tesa/, accessed May 24, 2000.
Said, Edward W., BEGINNINGS: INTENTION AND METHOD, New York: Basic Books, 1975.
Said, Edward W., COVERING ISLAM; HOW THE MEDIA AND THE EXPERTS DETERMINE
HOW
WE SEE THE REST OF THE WORLD, New York: Pantheon Books, 1981.
Said, Edward W., CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM, New York: Knopf, 1993.
Said, Edward W., THE END OF THE PEACE PROCESS: OSLO AND AFTER, New York:
Pantheon
Books, 2000.
Said, Edward W., ORIENTALISM, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Said, Edward W., OUT OF PLACE: A MEMOIR, New York: Knopf, 1999.
Said, Edward W., PEACE AND ITS DISCONTENTS: ESSAYS ON PALESTINE IN THE MIDDLE
EAST PEACE PROCESS, New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
Said, Edward W., THE PEN AND THE SWORD: CONVERSATIONS WITH DAVID BARSAMIAN,
Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press, 1994.
Said, Edward W., THE POLITICS OF DISPOSSESSION: THE STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINIAN
SELFDETERMINATION, 1969-1994, New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.
Said, Edward W., THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE, New York: Times Books, 1979.
Said, Edward W., REPRESENTATIONS OF THE INTELLECTUAL: THE 1993 REITH LECTURES,
New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.
Said, Edward W., THE WORLD, THE TEXT, AND THE CRITIC, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University
Press, 1983.
ORIENTALISM OPPRESSES AND

CONTROLS THE "ORIENT"
1. ORIENTALISM IS A HEGEMONIC CULTURAL PRACTICE
Edward Said, University Professor, Columbia University, ORIENTALISM, 1978, p.7
Culture, of course, is to be found operating within civil society, where the influence of
ideas, of institutions, and of other persons works not through domination but by what
Gramsci calls consent. In any society not totalitarian, then, certain cultural forms
predominate over others, just as certain ideas are more influential than others; the form
of this cultural leadership is what Gramsci has identified as hegemony, an indispensable
concept for any understanding of cultural life in the industrial West. It is hegemony, or
rather the result of cultural hegemony at work, that gives Orientalism the durability and
the strength I have been speaking about so far. Orientalism is never far from what Denys
Hay has called the idea of Europe.' a collective notion identifying "us" Europeans as
against all "those" non-Europeans, and indeed it can be argued that the major
component in European culture is precisely what made that culture hegemonic both in
and outside Europe: the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with
all the non-European peoples and cultures. There is in addition the hegemony of
European ideas about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over
Oriental backwardness, usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or
more skeptical, thinker might have had different views on the matter.
2. CREATING ARTIFICIAL DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN PEOPLE IS IMPERIALISTIC

Edward Said, University Professor, Columbia University, ORIENTALISM, 1978, p.45-46
Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems to be genuinely divided,
into clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the
consequences humanly'? By surviving the consequences humanly, I mean to ask
whether there is any way of avoiding the hostility expressed by the division, say, of men
into "us" (Westerners) and "they" (Orientals). For such divisions are generalities whose
use historically and actually has been to press the importance of the distinction between
some men and some other men, usually towards not especially admirable ends. When
one uses categories like Oriental and Western as both the starting and the end points of
analysis, research, public policy (as the categories were used by Balfour and Cromer),
the result is usually to polarize the distinction-the Oriental becomes more Oriental, the
Westerner more Western-and limit the human encounter between different cultures,
traditions, and societies. In short, from its earliest modem history to the present,
Orientalism as a form of thought for dealing with the foreign has typically shown the
altogether regrettable tendency of any knowledge based on such hard-and-fast
distinctions as "East' and "West": to channel thought into a West or-an East
compartment. Because this tendency is right at the center of Orientalist theory, practice
and values found in the West, the sense of Western power over the Orient is taken for
granted as having the status of scientific truth.
3. MODERN ORIENTALISM IS RACIST, CONSTRUCTING ARABS AS EVIL

One aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of
the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed. Television, the films, and all the media's
resources have forced information into more and more standardized molds. So far as the
Orient is concerned, standardization and cultural stereotyping have intensified the hold
of the nineteenth-century academic and imaginative demonology of "the mysterious
Orient." This is nowhere more true than in the ways by which the Near East is grasped.
Three things have contributed to making even the simplest perception of the Arabs and
Islam into a highly, politicized, almost raucous matter: one, the history of popular antiArab and anti-Islamic prejudice in the West, which is immediately reflected in the history
of Orientalism; two, the struggle between the Arabs and Israeli Zionism, and its effects
upon American Jews as well as upon both the liberal culture and the population at large;
three, the almost total absence of any cultural position making it possible either to
identify with or dispassionately to discuss the Arabs or Islam. Furthermore, it hardly
needs saying that because the Middle East is now so identified with Great Power politics,
oil economics, and the simple-minded dichotomy of freedom-loving, democratic Israeland evil, totalitarian, and terroristic Arabs, the chances of anything like a clear view of
what one talks about in talking about the Near East are depressingly small.
ORIENTALISM IS WIDESPREAD
1. EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY IS UNIVERSALLY RACIST
For any European during the nineteenth century--and I think one can say this almost
without qualification-- Orientalism was such a system of truths, truths in Nietzsche's
sense of the word. It is therefore correct that every European, in what he could say
about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally
ethnocentric. Some of the immediate sting will be taken out of these labels if we recall
additionally that human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely
offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing
with "other" cultures.
2. ONCE ESTABLISHED, ORIENTALISM DOMINATES ALL THOUGHT ABOUT THE ORIENT

My contention is that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly
understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to
manage-and even produce-the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically,
scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period. Moreover, so
authoritative a position did Orientalism have that I believe no one writing, thinking, or
acting on the Orient could do, so without taking account of the limitations on thought
and action imposed by Orientalism. In brief, because of Orientalism. the Orient was not
(and is not) a free subject of thought or action. This is not to say that Orientalism
unilaterally determines what can be said about the Orient, but that it is the whole
network of interests inevitably brought to bear on (and therefore always involved in) any
occasion when that peculiar entity "the Orient" is in question.
STUDYING OTHERS IS OPPRESSIVE

1. CLAIMS OF EXPERTISE OF OTHER PEOPLE ARE INHERENTLY HIERARCHICAL
Knowledge to Balfour means surveying a civilization from its origins to its prime to its
decline-and of course, it means being able to do that. Knowledge: means rising above
immediacy, beyond self, into the foreign and distant. The object of such knowledge is
inherently vulnerable to scrutiny; this object is a "fact" which, if it develops, changes, or
otherwise transforms itself in the way that civilizations frequently do, nevertheless is
fundamentally, even ontologically stable. To have such knowledge of such a thing is to
dominate it, to have authority over it. And authority here means for "us" to deny
autonomy to "it"-the Oriental country-since we know it and it exists, in a sense, as we
know it.
2. ORIENTALISM IS THE PROCESS OF STUDYING AND MANAGING THE ORIENT

The interchange between the academic and the more or less imaginative meanings of
Orientalism is a constant one, and since the late eighteenth century there has been a
considerable, quite disciplined-perhaps even regulated-traffic between the two. Here I
come to the third meaning of Orientalism, which is something more historically and
materially defined than either of the other two. Taking the late eighteenth century as a
very roughly defined starting point Orientalism. can be discussed and analyzed as the
corporate institution for dealing with the Orient--dealing with it by making statements
about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in
short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority
over the Orient.
NOTIONS OF IDENTITY AND ORIENT

ARE CONSTRUCTIONS
1. THERE IS NO AUTHENTIC INDIVIDUAL
Edward Said, University Professor, Columbia University, THE PEN AND THE SWORD:
CONVERSATIONS WITH DAVID BARSMIAN, 1994, p.169-170
DB: The whole issue of authentic voices and who gets to speak, for example, seems to
be central to this particular debate. ES: I think it 's become almost too central. The idea
is that we have to have a representative from X community and Y community. I think at
some point it can be useful. It was certainly useful to me. At a certain moment there was
a felt need for an authentic Palestinian or an authentic Arab to say things, and then one
could say it. But I think one has to always go beyond that, not simply accept the role but
constantly challenge the format, challenge the setting, challenge the context, to expand
it, to the larger issues that lurk behind these. It 's not just a question of simple
representation and an authentic voice. Like having a tenor, a soprano, an alto and a bass
in a chorus. But a much larger issue which has to do with social change. That 's what 's
lacking at the present moment.
2. THERE IS NO REALITY BEHIND THE GEOGRAPHIC DISTINCTION EAST VERSUS WEST

What we must reckon with is a long and slow process of appropriation by which Europe,
or the European awareness of the Orient, transformed itself from being textual and
contemplative into being administrative, economic, and even military. The fundamental
change was a spatial and geographical one, or rather it was a change in the quality of
geographical and spatial apprehension so far as the Orient was concerned. The
centuries-old designation of geographical space to the east of Europe as "Oriental" was
partly political, partly doctrinal, and partly imaginative; it implied no necessary
connection between actual experience of the orient an knowledge of what is Oriental,
and certainly Dante and d 'Herbelot made no claims about their oriental ideas except
that they were corroborated by a long learned (and not existential) tradition.
3. ASSERTING KNOWLEDGE OF A GROUP CREATES THAT GROUP

The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, "different"; thus the European is
rational, virtuous, mature, "normal." But the way of enlivening the relationship was
everywhere to stress the fact that the Oriental lived in a different but thoroughly
organized world of his own, a world with its own national, cultural, and epistemological
boundaries and principles of internal coherence. Yet what gave the Oriental's world its
intelligibility and identity was not the result of his own efforts but rather the whole
complex series of knowledgeable manipulations by which the Orient was identified by
the West. Thus the two features of cultural relationship I have been discussing come
together. Knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense
creates the Orient, the Oriental, and his world. In Cromer's and Balfour's language the
Oriental is depicted as something one judges (as in a court of law), something one
studies and depicts (as in a curriculum), something one disciplines (as in a school or
prison), something one illustrates (as in a zoological manual). The point is that in each of
these cases the Oriental is contained and represented by dominating frameworks.
4. THERE IS NO REALITY BEHIND THE GEOGRAPHIC DISTINCTION EAST VERSUS WEST

It is not the thesis of this book to suggest that there is such a thing as a real or true
Orient (Islam, Arab, or whatever); nor is it to make an assertion about the necessary
privilege of an "insider" perspective over an "outsider" one, to use Robert K. Merton 's
useful distinction. On the contrary, I have been arguing that "the Orient" is itself a
constituted entity, and that the notion that there are geographical spaces with
indigenous, radically "different" inhabitants who can be defined on the basis of some
religion, culture, or racial essence proper to that geographical space is equally a highly
debatable idea. I certainly do not believe the limited proposition that only a black can
write about blacks, a Muslim about Muslims, and so forth.
SAID 'S PHILOSOPHY DOES NOT

SUGGEST SOLUTIONS
1. FOCUSING ON SOLUTIONS TO IMPERIALISM IS SUPERIOR TO JUST CRITIQUING
Snke Zehle, Department of Comparative Literature, SUNY Binghamton, "Review of
Arturo Escobar. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third
World", May 1997, Accessed May 23, 2000,
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9905/escobar.html
Ultimately, however, I think that Escobar's text leaves much room for more optimistic
projections and accounts of successful negotiations, while insisting that accommodation
within existing practices of development cannot address the fundamental questions of
growth-orientation, with its consequences of both increasing and feminizing poverty and
a further commodification of natural "resources." Following Foucault's critique of the
"repressive hypothesis," he frequently repeats that critique is not so much a matter of
identifying mechanisms of "repression" which associates liberation with freedom from
such influences, but a concern with the production, institutionalization, and
professionalization of knowledges and their "obvious" intelligibility in conjunction with
practices that (often violently) stabilize their truth-value at the expense of alternative
knowledges and practices. This approach must not reinscribe a cultural purity (and a
nostalgia for "lost knowledges") into the analysis of "vernacular" culture. On the
contrary, Escobar insists, "the question arises...how to understand the ways in which
cultural actors...transform their practices in the face of modernity's contradictions.
Needless to say, inequalities in access to forms of cultural production continue, yet these
inequalities can no longer be confined within the simple polar terms of tradition and
modernity, dominators and dominated".
2. TOLERANCE FOR OTHER CULTURES REQUIRES RECOGNITION OF DIFFERENCE

Kevin Robins, Professor of Geography, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. & David
Morley, Professor of Media Studies, Goldsmiths' College at the University of London,
CARDOZO ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT LAW JOURNAL, 1993, p.408-409
A point, perhaps, to begin with is the experience of exile and immigration. If the
objective is genuinely to open frontiers - cultural as well as geographical - then migrant
experience could be an important resource. "Exiles cross borders, break barriers of
thought and experience." Although exile is a brutalizing experience, there are, indeed,
things to be learned from some of its conditions: Seeing "the entire world as a foreign
land" makes possible originality of vision. Most people are principally aware of one
culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of
vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that - to
borrow a phrase from music - is contrapuntal. The point about this kind of experience is
that it could serve to decenter a hegemonic and self-assured Euroculture. Any
meaningful European identity must be created out of the recognition of difference, the
acceptance of different ethnicities.
3. SAID 'S WRITING CANNOT HELP US IN POLICYMAKING, IT IS INFINITELY REGRESSIVE

Edward Said, University Professor Columbia University, ORIENTALISM, 1978, p.331
One scarcely knows what to make of these caricatured permutations of a book that to its
author and in its arguments is explicitly anti-essentialist, radically skeptical about all
categorical designations such as Orient and Occident, and painstakingly careful about
not "defending" or even discussing the Orient and Islam. Yet Orientalism has in fact been
read and written about in the Arab world as a systematic defense of Islam and the
Arabs, even though I say explicitly in the book that I have no interest in, much less
capacity for, showing what the true Orient and Islam really are. Actually I go a great deal
further when, very early in the book, I say that words such as "Orient" and "Occident"
correspond to no stable reality that exists as a natural fact. Moreover, all such
geographical designations are an odd combination of the empirical and imaginative. In
the case of the Orient as a notion in currency in Britain, France, and America, the idea
derives to a great extent from the impulse not simply to describe, but also to dominate
and somehow defend against it.
KIRKPATRICK SALE
BIO-REGIONALIST AND LUDDITE
Life And Work

Kirkpatrick Sale is an author, activist, and thinker whose work has spanned a wide
variety of subjects. Sale has, throughout his career, authored several definitive histories
of progressive movements. Involved with many leftist causes in the sixties, he wrote
SDS., an authoritative study of the Students for a Democratic Society. He has also
written histories of the American Environmental Movement and the Luddite movement,
called The Green Revolution and The Luddites And Their War On The Industrial
Revolution.
He has been involved for some time with the North American Bioregional Congress, a
group which attempts to assist in establishing intentional communities--communal
living spaces for those who wish to resist the onset of a market economy and industrial
society. To this end, he has also contributed many articles to publications as wideranging as The Nation and the New York Times. As a board member of the E.F.
Schumacher Society for the last fifteen years, he has concerned himself with ways to
combat big government, big business, and the growth of high technology.
Sale has been in the news as a social commentator recently because of two
developments. First, he has received much attention by playing up his status as a NeoLuddite critic of technology --though he has always been critical of technological
developments, only recently has Sale started destroying computers on stage during
lectures in front of live audiences. These, together with a series of debates with
technology-advocate Kevin Kelly, have served to call attention to Sales views.
Second, his profile has increased with his opinions on the Unabomber. Though Sale
acknowledges the mental problems which may be prevalent in the bomber, he considers
his anti-technology view to be perfectly reasonable, and such opinions have certainly
opened his name up for criticism and vigorous public discussion.
Basic Ideas And Issues

First and foremost, Sale is a critic of industrial society. This means a variety of things, but
it is important to recognize that he begins with the assumption that the Enlightenment
and the philosophies that spawned it was one of the great dark turns that European
society took. But it was absolutely predictable, this dark turn, because it was one which
enabled a greater control over nature to take place and a greater power for the
individual as against the community.
Sale is a proponent of the community. This is not to say that be is unconcerned with
individual rights, but that when those rights trample the needs of the many, they should
be curtailed. He calls himself a communitarian, though he is certainly not of the Amitai
Etzioni school of thought. Before we outline just what school of communitarian thought
Sale does belong to, it is important to establish the fundamental principle of Sales life,
which might be stated like this: Bigger is never better. Just a glance at the titles of
books he has written or contributed to reflects his idyllic vision of the small, the local, as
opposed to the large, the bureaucratized. Sale is an equally harsh critic of big
government as he is of big business, choosing to diverge from colleagues like Jeremy
Rifkin in adopting an even greater mistrust of the Federal Government. In Sales eyes, it
is this kind of centralized, disconnected mass that separates human from each other.
The kind of community Sale advocates in his most reasoned analyses is the
Bioregional community. Defined as an ecologically bounded, decentralized system of
local governance, a bioregion might best by illustrated by example: Cascadia in the
Northwest and Ozarkia in the Appalachians. Regions where there are similar landscapes,
similar livelihoods to be had, and, according to Sale, similar concerns and similar values.
From Sales perspective, any problem among the local dwellers in a bioregion can be
solved by those same dwellers working together, whereas outside, bureaucratized
influence would only complicate matters.
Then there is his Luddism. Sale proudly identifies himself as a Luddite, alongside a
basic core of intellectuall activist writers who will call themselves Neo-Luddites. He
includes among this group of maybe one hundred or two hundred such people as
Jeremy Rifkin, Wendell Berry, Jerry Mander, Helena Norberg-Hodge, a lot of people in
Green politics in Europe and some in California as well. People who are not afraid to say
they are Luddites. However, the word takes on meanings greater than simply antitechnology when Sale uses it.
In his latest book, Rebels Against The Future--The Luddites And Their War On The
Industrial Revolution, Sale argues that the Luddites were not simply people in fear of
losing their jobs through automation, but people who were concerned with resisting the
broader picture of social transformation, such as the rising tide of industrialization and
the crowding out of local communities. Sale does not shy away from the antitechnology label, but is quick to point out that his views and his Luddism extend
beyond that.
it is important to note that Sales check on abuses of technology is also his tool of social
change--the intentional community. Unlike some anti-technology thinkers, Sale accounts
for productive uses of technology.. He says--and his series of discussions with Kevin Kelly
make this abundantly clear--that the community, the group, ideally the bioregion, should
have the final say on what does or does not get produced. This is his answer to people
like Kelly who protest that without civilization we couldnt have advances like musical
instruments, or artistic expressions through technology. Sales response is that if the
community determines such advances are mutually beneficial and environmentally
benign, then there would be no problem with their production.
Given the above view, it goes without saying that Sale is an environmentalist. Looking
deeper, we can say that Sale is an environmental thinker very suspicious of mainstream
environmentalism and its propensity to be co-opted by the dominant culture. For Sale,
action taken to protect the earth must come from a group of like-minded individuals who
form a community to resist the onslaught of technology, capitalism, and, of course, the
industrial mindset.
Sale has manifold application to debate, particularly on the level of values. Though he
insists--as do most--that his views are practical, non-utopian expressions of human life, it
is not necessary to assume an advocacy stance of these views in order to find his ideas
on such subjects as the environment, technology, and society useful.
Sale writes excellent, passionate essays on the evils of centralization and the merits of
decentralization. Not only is this useful as an argument against any case which chooses
to defend the role of big government or big business but also proves ideal against a
value stance defending efficiency.
As is probably evident from Sales sympathy with the Luddites, he portrays early, preEnlightenment thinking as unconcerned with the efficiency of an economy or a society,
but nevertheless vastly superior to what we have in the post-Enlightenment era. He
argues that, though humans are inefficient, an efficient society is vastly inferior to one
which respects the intrinsic value of human life and worth--on what he would call a
human scale.
Also, Sale vehemently contradicts the value of progress, especially as it relates to

technology. Noting that progress is supposed to imply that which makes life better,
Sale argues that to progress, we must, in many ways, regress. He states, for instance,
that I dont see how objectively you could look around at
whats been happening in the last 25 years in this society and say that the computer
technology we have has produced anything but increasing social tensions and misery. A
more rational society--a bioregional society--would challenge these values.
Sale savagely attacks the primacy of the individual in human morality. How, he asks, can
the individual be the end-all-be-all of existence if organization is the only way to get
anything done? And how can we only consider the notions of freedom if those
unrestrained notions cause such pernicious evils as ecodevastation, centralization, and
the disconnection of one individual from another? This is helpful in providing an ethical
framework which places the community at the center of the value stance.
Finally, Sale provides an alternative to the statist communitarianism offered up by

Etzioni and his ilk. Though Sale might agree with some of Etzionis views--the morally
bankrupt nature of rugged individualism for example-- he would agree with many of
Etzionis critics that his ideology represents little more than authoritarian moralism.
Sale, by contrast, offers an approach that is more radical, thus avoiding many of the
leftist criticisms to which Etzioni is subject.
Bibliography
Barry Commoner, MAKING PEACE WITH THE PLANET, revised edition, 1992.
Kirkpatrick Sale, interviewed by Kevin Kelly, WIRED, Jure, 1995.
Kirkpatrick Sale, THE NATION, September 25, 1995.
Kirkpatrick Sale, HUMAN SCALE, New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1980.
Kirkpatrick Sale, THE GREEN REVOLUTION: THE AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT
1962-1992, New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.
Kirkpatrick Sale, TURTLE TALK: VOICES FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE, edited by Judith
and Christopher Plant, New Society Publishers, 1990.
Kirkpatrick Sale, PUTFING POWER IN ITS PLACE: CREATE COMMUNITY CONTROL, edited
by Judith and Christopher Plant, New Society Publishers, 1992.
HIGH TECHNOLOGY IS IMMORAL AND

WRONG
1. TWO MORAL PROBLEMS EXIST WITH HIGH-TECHNOLOGY
Kirkpatrick Sale, author, Secretary of the E.F. Schumacher Society, interviewed by Kevin
Kelly, WIRED, June 1995, page 167.
Quite apart from the environmental and medical evils associated with them being
produced and used, there are two moral judgments against computers. One is that
computerization enables the large forces of our civilization to operate more swiftly and
efficiently in their pernicious goals of making money and producing things. And, however
much individuals may feel that there are industrial benefits in their lives from the use of
the computer (that is to say, things are easier, swifter), these are industrial virtues that
may not be virtues in another morality. And secondly, in the course of using these, these
forces are destroying nature with more speed and efficiency than ever before.
2. TECHNOLOGY ITSELF CAUSES EXPLOITATION OF WORKERS

There is no question that jobs are created, so long as an economy can keep growing. But
its not the technology, or its only indirectly and accidentally the technology, that
creates them. Its warlike, empire, government expansion, resources exploitation,
ecological exhaustion, consumption, and the manufacture of needs. Today, in the second
Industrial Revolution, its just as it was back in the first. The technology itself simply
does put people out of jobs.
3. WE MUST OPPOSE EVER-ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY

Those of us who oppose may be easily accommodated by this society, since society has
no fear that were going to have the effect that we desire to have. But it is possible for
individuals to act out, either alone or with colleagues and neighbors, their opposition to
certain technologies. This has been done in many instances - from nuclear power to the
Dalkon shield. We can as individuals say, This technology is wrong and harmful and we
ought to act against it. That technology over there seems at the moment not to be
wrong and harmful, so we can either use it or not as we wish. I urge people to take a
clear-headed look at what is in front of them, and not to feel guilty if they reject
something, and to be able to say, with a rational explanation, This is wrong, I will not
myself buy into it, and I would urge others not to buy into it for the following reasons.
4. A HUMAN-SCALE ALTERNATIVE COULD USE CURRENT BENIGN TECHNOLOGIES

Kirkpatrick Sale, author, Secretary of the E.F. Schumacher Society, HUMAN SCALE, 1980,
page 39. Moreover, the human-scale future can take advantage of current technology,
which for the first time in human development permits the creation of smaller units
without sacrificing any of the clear benefits of modern living--in fact with healthier and
more congenial settings, one could reasonably expect, and with greater access to
material comforts for more people. Provided it was kept on a small scale and made
simple, safe, and controllable, modern technology could be used without the all the
perils that accompany it on a large scale; though both are the products of contemporary
advances, there is a qualitative difference between a desktop calculator and the space
shuttle, or between solar collectors and nuclear plants. This allows for the first time an
answer to the nagging question that has been thrown up to proponents of egalitarian
societies since the time of Plato--But who will collect the garbage?--the implication being
that the trash removers are always accorded the lowest ranks of any society. Simple.
Putting already developed technology to appropriate use, it is now possible to have
community garbage-collection systems that channel wastes from homes and shops on
pipelines feeding into a community recycling center, where they may be automatically
sorted to type and sent to separate compartments to be processed by simple machines
and to be made available again in the form of usable raw materials. And not only is that
an egalitarian solution, it is a communitarian and ecological one as well.
PEOPLE INHERENTLY WILL TRY TO

DECENTRALIZE
1. HUMANS INNATELY CRAVE DECENTRALIZATION
Kirkpatrick Sale, author, Secretary of the E.F. Schumacher Society, PUTTING POWER IN
ITS PLACE, edited by Judith and Christopher Plant, 1992, page 22.
A similar kind of decentralism, a recurrent urge toward separatism, independence, and
local autonomy rather than agglomeration and concentration, exists in human patterns
as well. Throughout all human history, even in the past several hundred years, people
have tended to live in separate and independent small groups, a fragmentation of
human society that Harold Isaacs, the venerated professor of international affairs at
MIT, has described as something akin to a pervasive force in human affairs. Even when
nations and empires have arisen, he notes, they have no staying power against the
innate human drive toward decentralism. The record shows that there could be all kinds
of lags, that declines could take a long time and falls run long overdue, but that these
conditions could never be indefinitely maintained. Under external or internal pressures-usually both--authority was eroded, legitimacy challenged, and in wars, collapse, and
revolution, the system of power redrawn.
2. EVIDENCE THAT HUMANS TEND TOWARD DECENTRALIZATION IS EVERYWHERE

ITS PLACE, edited by Judith and Christopher Plant, 1992, page 22-3.
Propaganda of the nation-state to the contrary, once you begin to re-read history with an
attention to this persistence of the decentralist impetus you begin to see everywhere
that the existence of the anti-authoritarian, independent, self-regulating, local
community is every bit as basic to the human record as the existence of the centralized,
imperial, hierarchical state--and far more ancient, more durable, and more widespread~
MUST HAVE BIOREGIONS TO SAVE

HUMAN CULTURE
1. ONLY A VALUE CHANGE CAN SAVE HUMAN CULTURE
page 16.
Its tragedy suggests at least four hard truths. That the crisis of the contemporary world
is real, not some temporary aberration or media contrivance, and as palpable and
perceptible as the sulfur dioxide on the Parthenon. That it cannot be solved, though it
may for some time be ameliorated, by the devices of modern technology, by some
combination of plastics and chemicals that will somehow emerge if enough laboratories
are endowed with enough grants. That it can be dealt with only by a reordering of
priorities, a rethinking of values, a reorganization of our systems and institutions so that
we can begin to remove the pollutants from the economic and political environments as
well as from the natural one. And that if we do not perform some such reordering and
reworking we will almost certainly find our cities, our cultures, our ecologies, and
perhaps our very lives eroding and disintegrating just as surely and as irretrievably as
the Parthenon.
2. BIOREGIONALISM IS OUR ONLY HOPE

The visioning and formulation of a bioregional polity does nothing in itself, however, to
assure that such a future evolves. But I think there is real and pertinent wisdom in E.F.
Schumachers remarks that only if we know that we have actually descended into
infernal regions --and who would want to deny that that is the present condition of the
industrial world?-- can we summon the courage and imagination needed for a turning
around, a melanoma. Once knowing that--knowing that--we may then see the world in
a new light, namely, as a place where the things modern man continuously talks about
and always fails to accomplish can actually be done. That, at any rate, is our only hope.
What other choice, after all, do we have?
CENTRALIZED, LARGE SYSTEMS ARE

BAD: DECENTRALIZATION IS BETTER
1. BIOREGIONS PROVIDE THE BEST OF ALL HUMAN VALUES, LIKE FREEDOM & EQUALITY
If, as the scholars suggest, the goal of government as we have now come to understand
it in the 20th century is to provide liberty, equality, efficiency, welfare, and security in
some reasonable balance, a strong argument can be made that it is the spatial division
of power, divided and subdivided again as in bioregional governance, that provides them
best. It promotes liberty by diminishing the chances of arbitrary government action and
providing more points of access for the citizens, more points of pressure for affected
minorities. It enhances equality by assuring more participation by individuals and less
concentration of power in a few remote and unresponsive bodies and offices. It increases
efficiency by allowing government to be more sensitive and flexible, recognizing and
adjusting to the new conditions, new demands from the populace it serves. It advances
welfare because at the smaller scales it is able to measure peoples needs best and to
provide for them quickly, more cheaply, and more accurately. And, because of all that, it
actually improves security because unlike the big and bumbling megastates vulnerable
to instability and alienation, it fosters the sort of cohesiveness and allegiance that
discourages crime and disruption within and discourages aggression and attack from
without.
2. BIOREGIONAUSTS RECOGNIZE THE NEED FOR LOCALISM AND DECENTRALIZATION

ITS PLACE, edited by Judith and Christopher Plant, 1992, page 25-6.
The lessons, then, from the natural world as from human history, seem to be clear
enough. Bioregional polities as they evolve would seek the maximum diffusion of power
and decentralization of institutions, with nothing done at a level higher than necessary,
and all authority flowing upward incrementally from the smallest political unit to the
largest. The primary location of decision-making, therefore, and of political and
economic control, should be the community, the more-or-less intimate grouping either at
the close-knit village scale of 1,000 people or so, or probably more often at the closeknit village scale of 1,000 people or so, or probably more often at the extended
community scale of 5,000 to 10,000 so often found as the fundamental political unit
whether formal or informal. Here, where people know one another and the essentials of
the environment they share, where at least the most basic information for problemsolving is known or readily available, here is where governance should begin. Decisions
made at this level, as countless eons testify, stand at least a fair chance of being correct
and a reasonable likelihood of being carried out competently; and even if the choice is
misguided or the implementation faulty, the damage to either the society or the
ecosphere is likely to be insignificant. This is the sort of government established by
preliterate peoples all over the globe, evolving over the years toward a kind of bedrock
efficiency in problem-solving simply because it was necessary for survival. In the tribal
councils, the folkmotes, the ecclesia, the village assemblies, the town meetings, we find
the human institution proven through time to have shown the scope and competence for
the most basic kind of self-rule.
3. ANY LARGER POLITICAL FORMS CAUSE MANY HAZARDS AND RISKS

The forms for such confederate bodies are myriad and their experiences rich and welldocumented, so presumably working out the working out the Various systems would not
be intractably difficult. A confederation within bioregional limits has the logic, the force,
of coherence and commonality; a confederation beyond those limits does not. Any larger
political form is not only superfluous, it stands every chance of being downright
dangerous, particularly since it is no longer organically grounded in an ecological
identity or limited by the constraints of homogenous communities.
HUMAN-SCALE BIOREGIONS ARE NOT

UTOPIAN SOLUTIONS
1. HUMAN-SCALE SOCIETIES ARE PROVEN ALTERNATIVES
page 40-1. Finally, the evidence continues to mount that such a human-scale future is,
at least in its major aspects, proven. Models for almost every part of such a future
already exists now, or have existed in the very recent past, in many different nations of
the world, including our own: the worker-owned plywood companies of the Pacific
Northwest; the ecologically-sound and solar-powered community of Davis, California; the
consensual democracy practiced by Quaker meetings across the county; the worker selfmanagement schemes of Yugoslavian factories; the non-hierarchical societies of Eastern
Africa; the self-sufficient intentional communities, from Twin Oaks, Virginia, to Cerro
Gordo, Oregon; the generations-old communes of the Jews in Israel, the Amana colonies
in Iowa, the Bruderhof in New York, and others; the direct democracy of various New
England communities; the non-authoritarian work programs of many American
corporations; the cooperative movements of the United States, Canada, and Britain; and
countless other pieces of evidence that we shall be exploring in later sections. None of
these models is perfect, by any means; some are deeply flawed, and none of them
exhibits all the elements of a human-scale life as it might be in optimum form. Yet taken
together, the successful innovation of this one with the most durable practice of that,
they show that all the elements of such a life, far from being utopian, are practical and
possible, should we wish to pursue them.
2. HUMAN-SCALE IS THE FARTHEST THING FROM UTOPIAN

page 39-40.
The alternative future is somewhat less likely than the technofix one, I should think,
since it calls for somewhat broader changes over time, and for the dislocation of powers
that, despite being caught in recurrent double-binds, retain considerable momentum.
But it is by no means a utopian pipe-dream, and there are many reasons to imagine its
coming about. It accords with some of the deepest instincts of the human animal,
possibly encoded in our DNA, such as the drive for individual expression, for tribal and
community sustenance, for harmony with the natural world of stars and trees and
songbirds, for companionship and cooperation. It accords with the experience of by far
the greatest part of human history, from the earliest settlements right down to many
parts of the world today, during which people lived in compact villages and selfcontained towns and cities, crafting and farming for themselves, knit to other
settlements through travel and trade without any sacrifice of sovereignty. And it accords
with much that is rooted in the American experience, such as the anti-authoritarian
beliefs of the Pilgrim settlers, the traditions of cooperation and self-sufficiency that grew
up in the early towns, the town meeting democracies that extended at one time from
New England to Virginia, the rural and agrarian values among the Founding Fathers,
their suspicion of authority and centralism, and the tenets of individualism that for
generations drove people from the cities to the frontier.
GEORGE SAND
WRITER 1804 - 1876

Life and Work
Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, who later changed her name to George Sand, was born
into a family of decadence and wealth (her rich father had openly sired several
illegitimate children) and spent most of her life based at Nohant, her Grandmothers
pastoral home in Berry, France. Nohant would always be her home, but she frequently
traveled to and worked in Paris, which, during the Nineteenth Century, was the center of
European intellectual and political radicalism. Sometimes inspired by these intellectual
and political currents, other times consciously uninspired by them, she wrote prolifically
until her death. She is remembered as a passionate humanist, romanticist, and mystic;
her writings span subjects including marriage, socialism, feminism, gothic romance,
pastoral peasantry, and inner subjective soul-searching. Unlike so many writers, she
fought with a vengeance against being labeled.
Sand gained notoriety with her first novel, Indiana, published in 1832. It was the story of
an unhappy wife struggling to free herself from an oppressive marriage. While she
continued to publish equally successful novels, Sand also worked as a journalist,
covering the events leading up to the 1848 Revolution and its bloody, chaotic aftermath.
Her writings also addressed gender, music and theater, and she seemed adept at most
any intellectual subject While she defied categorization, two certain themes ran across
the majority of her work: (1) Liberation and Social Reform, and (2) Gender Distinctions.
Liberation of the Spirit

Sand had an involved interest in the philosophy and practice of social liberation. The
corrupt French Government was replaced by a provisional body in 1848, which claimed
to speak for the interests of the masses. This appealed to Sand, who wrote propaganda
for the government until she became disillusioned by the mob violence in Paris that
followed, as well as by the corrupt government of Louis Bonaparte (also called Napoleon
III), who had wormed his way into public confidence. This inspired Sand to withdraw from
political causes, but not before she had come out, both politically and in her novels, as a
supporter of utopian socialism. Her model of the ideal citizen was the peasant farmer,
hardworking, dedicated to his community, at peace with himself. Since Sand was not
interested in the economics or mechanics of capitalism and socialism, her idealistic
images were limited to the interpersonal and aesthetic (or artistic) aspects of such
revolutionary reform.
But for her, liberation was not simply a political act, and one need not only be liberated
from unjust laws or oppressive economic conditions. Anticipating Twentieth Century
Postmodernism, Sand longed for liberation from the very structuralist thinking behind
such laws or economic conditions. Being a Romantic, she saw true human freedom in
spontaneity and play rather than in conforming to the structures of thinking or action
that even progressive revolutionaries seemed unable to escape.
For this, she was labeled a mystic, a designation she did not dispute, although her
attitude that a change in consciousness is necessary for positive social change does not
sound nearly as controversial today as it did a hundred years ago. 1848, after all, was
the year that Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels published The Communist Manifesto, a
document their followers hailed as the triumph of a scientific socialism which declared
not only capitalism, but also utopian (or mystical, or religious) socialism as its mortal
enemies. For Marxists, true communism had to recognize that individuals were products
of society in the same sense as non-human nature or commodities objects, with the
possible exception that humans can change their material circumstances. And since
Marxists believe that this change can only come through the actions of macro social
forces, for them, Sands Romantic individualism was good for little more than poetic
inspiration.
But Sand would remain convinced that individual consciousness does matter. This belief
would be validated by her experiences of the mob violence and corruption that she
witnessed. In the name of liberation, and using the dogma of democracy or socialism to
validate most any violent action, people around her became as corrupt as the regime
they opposed. True liberationists, she held, must stand above such oppression and
refuse to be pulled down to the enemys level.
A Feminist Critic of Feminism

Concerning gender issues, Sand certainly believed that women should be liberated. But
she made an
important qualification: All humanity must be liberated before the more subtle issues of
sexism could be addressed. Her qualification was inspired by her disgust of the petty
complaints of privileged women who compared, say, marriage to slavery, or domestic
housework to servitude. After witnessing the real effects of economic oppression on the
masses, she concluded that such overstatement by bourgeois women was not only
absurd, but detrimental to the total human liberation that is a precondition for
everyones growth. A wealthy housewife who says I am a slave obviously does not
know much about slavery. Even if these women were speaking metaphorically, the
metaphor trivialized the genuine slavery that did exist in the Nineteenth Century. All
social inequality was wrong in Sands eyes, and women who prioritized their personal
liberation above that of other, more oppressed groups were hypocrites of the worst kind.
Sand could not have been aware at the time that truly radical feminism would see
patriarchy as the universal source of the very general oppression she opposed. Radical
feminists would contend, for example, that racial slavery, war, capitalism, and economic
inequality are all manifestations of hierarchy, aggression, and dehumanization, all of
which find a common source, or at the very least a common source of exacerbation, in
patriarchy. For Sand, patriarchy was one among many sources of oppression. For her
radical counterparts, it was the source.
The fact that Sand embraced neither an absolutist view of patriarchy nor a belief in the
infallibility of socialism points to a quirk in her thinking that, depending on who you ask,
may be a strength or a weakness: Sand was not a social philosopher. Her thoughts,
political or otherwise, were defiantly and proudly unsystematic. She could live with the
often contradictory and inconsistent conclusions that followed, but those who searched
for underlying, consistent patterns in social analysis would be unsatisfied, for Sand never
embraced the systematic assumptions of absolute truth that afflicted her
contemporaries. This, too, places her more in league with Twentieth Century
Postmodernists and Pragmatists than with Nineteenth Century scientists of liberation.

For these reasons, debaters may be a bit confused if, while researching George Sand,
they find her at times cursing feminists and at other times embracing them, or
displaying the same inconsistencies with socialists. But once debaters accept her
dismissal of consistency, her real value can be seen: More than most other thinkers, she
can describe the human, inner subjective side of ideas. Her argumentative strength is
found in her poetic language and her appeal to a certain, elusive magic in the passion of
human beings, especially those who seek liberation. She is a valuable and colorful
supplement to the well-developed but often dry language of other valuable debate
sources.
I
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barry, Joseph. INFAMOUS WOMAN: THE LIFE OF GEORGE SAND (Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, 1977).
Cats, Curtis. GEORGE SAND (New York: Avon, 1975).
Crecelius, Kathryn 1. FAMILY ROMANCES: GEORGE SANDS EARLY NOVELS (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1987).
Dickenson, Donna. GEORGE SAND: A BRAVE MAN-THE MOST WOMANLY WOMAN (Oxford:
Berg, 1988).
Marx, Karl. CLASS STRUGGLES IN FRANCE 1848-1850 (New York: International Publishers,
1986).
Naginski, Isabelle Hoog. GEORGE SAND: WRITING FOR HER LIFE (London: Rutgers
Powell, David A. (Ed.). GEORGE SAND TODAY (Landham: University Press of America,
1989).
Sand, George. THE BAGPIPERS (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1977).
_______ CONSUELO (Jersey City, New Jersey: DaCapo, 1979).
_______ THE COUNTRY WAIF (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977).
________ INDIANA (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1978).
Schor, Naomi. GEORGE SAND AND IDEALISM (New York: Columbia University Press,
1993).
Thompson, Patricia. GEORGE SAND AND THE VICTORIANS (New York: Columbia
University Press,
1977).
THE GEORGE SAND PAPERS (New York: AMS Press, 1976).
LIBERATION IS THE HIGHEST VALUE

1. MORAL BEINGS MUST TRY TO MAKE SOCIETY BE1TER
George Sand, Writer, in Isabelle Hoog Nagtnski, GEORGE SAND: WRITING FOR HER LIFE,
1991, p. 175
Is it really seeking a remedy merely to avert ones eyes with horror and hold ones nose,
while saying that there is only corruption and infection in the sick ward? What would you
think of a medical student who could not set eyes on a gangrened limb without fainting
in disgust? Dare to descend into the leper colonies of moral humanity. Do not waste time
saying that this is horrible to look at; think of finding a remedy.
2. WE SHOULD WORK FOR LIBERATION EVEN IF IT SEEMS UTOPIAN Marylou Graham,

The Politics of George Sands Pastoral Novels, in David A. Powell (Ed.), GEORGE SAND
TODAY, 1989, p. 179
Art, Sand tells us, est une oeuvre de transformation. Her pastoral novels depict a
vision of the transformation of peasant society, while aiming to transform readers in
order to engage them to work toward that utopian vision, so inviting to read about, and
so formidable to achieve. The first step in allowing Sand to transform us from readers to
reformers is to recognize the political agenda rooted so deeply in her depiction of the
Berry countryside.
3. BENEFITS OF FREEDOM OUTWEIGH ANY IMAGINED RISKS

George Sand, Writer, in Isabelle Hoog Naginski, GEORGE SAND: WRITING FOR HER LIFE,
1991,
p.76
Freedom of thought, freedom to write and speak, sacred conquest of the human spirit!
The small sufferings and the ephemeral worries engendered by your mistakes or your
excesses are meaningless, when compared to the infinite benefits that you bestow upon
the world.
4. COMPLICITY IN OTHERS OPPRESSION IS MORALLY WRONG

George Sand, Writer, in Isabelle Hoog Naginski, GEORGE SAND: WRITING FOR HER LIFE,
1991,
p. 175
Resignation in and of itself is a virtue one must have. But to resign oneself to the
unhappiness of others, to tolerate the yoke weighing down on innocent heads, to calmly
watch the course of events without trying to discover another truth, another order,
another moral system! oh! that is impossible!
5. VIOLENCE IS UNJUSTIFIED AS A MEANS OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

George Sand, Writer, in Joseph Barry, INFAMOUS WOMAN: THE LIFE OF GEORGE SAND,
1978, pp. 374-5
Ill have no more bloodshed, no more evil means to bring about good ends, no more
killing in order to create. No, no! My age protests against the tolerance of my youth.
That which has just taken place should make us take a great step forward. We must rid
ourselves of the theories of 1793. A curse on all those who dig charnel houses. No life
ever comes out of them. Let us learn to be stubborn, patient revolutionaries, but never
terrorists. We will not be heard for a long time, but what does it matter! The poet should
live on a height above his contemporaries and see beyond his own life. Humanity will
progress only when it learns to despise the lie in men and respect mankind despite the
lie.
LIBERATION OF HUMANITY IS MORE

IMPORTANT THAN FEMINIST CAUSES
1. WE MUST FIRST LIBERATE EVERYONE BEFORE ADDRESSING WOMENS OPPRESSION
George Sand, Writer, in Dennis OBrian, George Sand and Feminism, THE GEORGE
SAND PAPERS, 1976, pp. 80-1
The people are hungry; let our leading lights allow us to think of providing bread for the
people before thinking of building temples for them. Women cry out against slavery; let
them wait till man is free, for slavery cannot engender liberty.
2. GENDER DISTINCTIONS SHOULD BE IGNORED

George Sand, Writer, in Naomi Schor, GEORGE SAND AND IDEALISM, 1993, p. 196
And still further, there is this for those strong in anatomy: there is only one sex. A man
and a woman are so entirely the same thing, that one hardly understands the mass of
distinctions and of subtle reasons with which society is nourished concerning this
subject. I have observed the infancy and development of my son and my daughter. My
son was myself, therefore much more woman, than my daughter, who was an imperfect
man.
3. TRADITIONAL DOMESTIC WORK DOES NOT OPPRESS WOMEN

SAND PAPERS,
1976, pp. 76-7
I have often heard women of talent say that household work, and needlework
particularly, were mindnumbing and insipid and part of the slavery to which our sex has been condemned. I
have no taste for the
theory of slavery, but I deny that these chores are its consequence. They have always
seemed to me to have
a natural, invincible attraction for us, for I have felt it in all periods of my life and they
have sometimes
calmed great agitations of the mind. Their influence is mind-numbing only for those who
spurn them and
who dont know how to look for what can be found in everything--skillful work, well done.
4. FEMINISM IS NARROW-MINDED AND SHOULD BE REJECTED
SAND PAPERS, 1976, pp. 78-9
Too proud of their recently acquired education, certain women have shown signs of
personal ambition. The smug daydreams of modem philosophies have encouraged
them, and these women have given sad proof of the powerlessness of their reasoning. It
is much to be feared that vain attempts of this kind and these ill-founded claims will do
much harm to what is today called the cause of women. If women were rightly guided
and possessed of the same ideas, they would be better placed to complain of the rigidity
of certain laws and the barbarism of certain prejudices. But let them enlarge their souls
and elevate their minds before hoping to bend the iron shackles of custom. In vain do
they gather in clubs, in vain do they engage in polemics, if the expression of their
discontent proves that they are incapable of properly managing their affairs and of
governing their affections.
THE LIBERATION OF WORKING PEOPLE

IS VITAL
1. LIBERATION OF COMMON WORKERS IS IMPORTANT
Marylou Graham, The Politics of George Sands Pastoral Novels, in David A. Powell (Ed.),
GEORGE
SAND TODAY, 1989, p. 174
In representing peasant history, Sand both praises and protests on behalf of the laborer,
valuing his skill
and, at the same time, denouncing the injustice of his toil and unemployment.
2. OPPONENTS USE THE FEAR OF COMMUNISM TO SCARE US

George Sand, Writer, in Joseph Barry, INFAMOUS WOMAN: THE LIFE OF GEORGE SAND,
1978,
p. 288
The great fear--or pretext--of the aristocracy at this hour is communism. By the word
communism they really mean the people, their needs, their hopes. Let us not be
confused--the people are the people, communism is the calumniated, misunderstood
future of the people. The ruse is useless: it is the people who upset and worry you.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
PHILOSOPHER 1905 - 1980

Life and Work
Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris. He graduated from Frances most distinguished
university, the Ecole Normale Supeneure, with a doctorate in philosophy in 1929. From
then until the end of his life he was to write with an almost superhuman proliferation on
subjects such as literature, ethics, politics, and aesthetics, at the same time earning a
reputation as a writer of superb fiction and drama. In novels such as Nausea and plays
such as The Flies and No Exit, Sartre found the freedom to create worlds and characters
that reflected his philosophical judgments found in books such as Being and
Nothingness and Existentialism and Human Emotions. In 1964, Sartre won the Nobel
Prize for Literature but rejected it for political reasons.
A vital facet of understanding Sartre is to address the changes in his perspective over
the long span of his career. Many people misunderstand him for precisely this reason.
This is understandable; philosophers do not usually change their views, or at least
seldom admit to it But Sartre did just that. He began as a radical individualist and ended
up as a faithful collectivist, even selling communist newspapers on street corners toward
the end of his life. He freely admitted that these changes came as a result of the
changes in the world around him, and as his career wore on he had fewer and fewer
answers, but more and more enlightened admissions of ignorance. In short, he was
confusing because he was honest.
Existentialism and the Priority of the

Individual
He began his philosophical journey by following the works of Soren Kierkegaard, Edmund
Husserl and Martin Heidegger, synthesizing their views into a system called
existentialism. It was a radically individualistic philosophy which prioritized
consciousness and choice over any other internal or external factors. More individualistic
than even classical individualism, existentialism held that we are completely free and
wholly responsible, regardless of social conditions or history. However, after World War II,
Sartre
discovered that his notion of responsibility was equally applicable to collective
conditions. In short, he discovered Marxism. His odd, uncomfortable dialogue with the
Marxists would last the rest of his life.
Existentialism proceeds from certain assumptions about human nature and the world.
Whereas classical philosophy saw human nature as fixed and universal, existentialism
held that we make our nature through our choices and rejections. I may be a thief, but
prior to my choice of stealing there was nothing essential about me that made me a
thief. And if I choose to stop stealing, then I am no longer a thief. Similarly, Sartre, who
lived in Nazi-occupied France and spent some time as a prisoner of war in Germany,
could not forgive those Nazis who, after the war, claimed they were forced to commit
atrocities by their superiors. To the SS guard who said I was only following orders,
Sartre replied: You chose to follow those orders. You could have said no. This simple
revelation was a philosophical revolution. It refuted psychoanalysis, sociology and
history. All that mattered was my own conscience. I was condemned to make choices,
and moreover, none of those choices could be proven to be the right one.
Sarure coined the phrase bad faith to describe people who denied the reality of their
freedom. The SS guard who says he was only following orders, the religious fanatic who
claims God told her to kill people, even the revolutionary who kills for the sake of some
distant utopian objective, all have committed a double crime: not only have they hurt
other people, but they have denied that they willingly chose to do so.
Naturally, this view of freedom as absolute and limitless met with considerable criticism
from those who believed that our relationship to our external environment is more
complicated. In particular, Marxists criticized Sartres thinking as something that could
only come from a privileged, upper-class scholar who unwittingly applied his own
situation of relative comfort and freedom to the rest of humanity, even though most of
humanity had neither comfort nor freedom. Moreover, to take the lone individual as the
starting point of a philosophy is to ignore the constant, dialectical shaping of ones
consciousness by the people and structures around him or her. The very fact that Satire
claims its wrong to have bad faith implies, of course, that he has a sense of right and
wrong; but this sense could only come from the world he inherited.
The Shift to Collective Responsibility

Faced with these criticisms, Sartre did the unthinkable, at least for a famous philosopher.
He changed his
mind. In one essay he writes: I had written, Whatever the circumstances, and whatever
the site, a man is always free to choose to be a traitor or not.. . When I read this, I said
to myself: its incredible, I actually believed that!. What Satire realized was that his
main points of Being and Nothingness, the major text on
existentialism, did not specifically require this complete subjectivism. Instead, they laid
down a foundation which, when combined with elements of Marxist and other European
thought, could give a coherent account of the tension between individual and collective
responsibility.
For example, one of the tenants of existentialism is that in making my individual choice,
I am affecting the conditions of the rest of humanity. In choosing the person I want to be,
I am also choosing the type of humanity I want. In another instance Satire writes that my
freedom is largely due to the recognition of that freedom by others. This is not a
departure from existentialism; in fact, it is more true to the phenomenological principle
that conscious awareness is intentional--that is, awareness must always be an
awareness of some specific object. Since human awareness is to a large degree social,
then our intentional consciousness is largely made up of encounters with other human
beings. If this is true, then it is still possible that we have a great deal of freedom to
choose and responsibility for what we choose, as existentialism holds. But it also means
that there are collective as well as individual choices, and that not all people who allow
collectivist philosophies to influence and justify their choices are acting in bad faith.
Those who see a contradiction in saying that one is completely responsible and that the
external world influences ones choices suffer from a failure to think dialectically, or
wholistically. In fact, it is true that my choices shape the world around me, and that
the world shapes those possible choices as well. At one point in history I did not have the
freedom to fly up in the air. But the Wright Brothers made certain particular choices
which resulted in changing those conditions. Now I do have the freedom to fly. The
relationship between individual choice and the external world is a circular or
dialectical relationship which gives and takes over time. The choices influence the
world, which conditions the choices, which influence the world, and so on. Recognizing
this is crucial, according to Satire, to avoid falling into the trap of either absolute
determinism or absolute subjectivism. A notion of collective responsibility which
recognizes the dialectical relationship between person, group and world is necessary for
the ongoing fight for liberation from colonialism, racism, class inequalities and so on.

Jean-Paul Satires works have a great deal to offer to value debate precisely because his
career was spent synthesizing such opposing viewpoints. Debaters ought to read
commentaries about his work alongside reading the primary texts, since his translated
writings are rather obscure and complicated. His fiction and personal essays, on the
other hand, are very accessible and can help readers understand even the more
complicated points of his philosophy.
One aspect of Satires philosophy especially appealing to debaters is his ideas about
decision-making. Arguing that one individual choice is a choice for all of humanity is
particularly compelling in a debate round. Essentially it means that the judges ballot
has more than just passing importance; it reflects a commitment to one or another way
of being for the human race.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Satire, Jean Paul. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. Hazel E. Barnes, trans. (New York:
Gramercy, 1994).
________ CRITIQUE OF DIALECTICAL REASON. Alan Sheridan-Smith, trans. (London:

NLB, 1976).
________ BETWEEN EXISTENTIALISM AND MARXISM. John Matthews, trans. (New

York: William Morrow and Company, 1974).
________ LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS. Annette Michelson, trans. (New York:
Crowell-Collier, 1962).
________ SEARCH FOR A METHOD. Hazel E. Barnes, trans. (New York: Random House,
1968).
Barnes, Hazel E. SARTRE (New York: Lippincott, 1973).
Bernstein, Richard. PRAXIS AND ACTION (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

1971).
Cumming, Robert Denoon, ed. THE PHILOSOPHY OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (New York:
Random House, 1965).
DeBeavoir, Simone. ALL SAID AND DONE. Patrick OBrian, trans. (New York: G.P.
Putnams Sons, 1974).
Heidegger, Martin. BEING AND TIME. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, tans. (New
York:
Harper and Row, 1962).
La Capra, Dominick. A PREFACE TO SARTRE (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978).

Poster, Mark. SARTRES MARXISM (London: Pluto Press, 1979).
Sheridan, James F. SARTRE: THE RADICAL CONVERSION (Athens: Ohio University Press,
1973).
Stack, George 1. SARTRES PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE (St. Louis: Warren H.

Green, 1978).
Suhl, Benjamin. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE: THE PHILOSOPHER AS LITERARY CRITIC (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1970).
Warnock, Mary. EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS (London: Macmillan, 1967).
A Commemorative Issue: Jean Paul Satire, 1905-1980. EROS 8:1 (1981).
JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 1:2 (May 1970).
INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM IS ABSOLUTE

1. FREEDOM IS INEVITABLE--HUMANS CANNOT AVOID MAKING CHOICES
Thomas R. Flynn. SARTRE AND MARXIST EXISTENTIALISM, 1986, p. 8
Saitre argues that original choice is not arbitrary; every action is intentional and so has a
meaning-direction.
Original choice is not a random, purposeless event like the clinamen of Epicurus. To be
sure, it is criterion-constituting and hence is without antecedent reason or necessity. But
Satires claim is that any appeal to prior reasons or motives conceals a more basic
choice of such standards beforehand. The decision to deliberate upon a proposed
course of action rather than simply rushing into the breach, for example, presupposes
the prior choice of being rational in the first place. When I deliberate, he summarizes
in a well-known remark, the chips are down. When the will intervenes, it is merely for
the purpose of making the announcement.
2. FREEDOM IS NOT OPPOSED TO DETERMINISM

Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, 1994, p. 436
Thus at the outset we can see what is lacking in those tedious discussions between
determinists and proponents of free will. The latter are concerned to find cases of
decision for which there exists no prior cause, or deliberations concerning two opposed
acts which are equally possible and possess causes (motives) of exactly the same
weight To which the determinists may easily reply that there is no action without a cause
and that the most insignificant gesture (raising the right hand rather than the left hand,
etc.) refers to causes and motives which confer its meaning upon it. Indeed the case
could not be otherwise since every action must be intentional; each action must, in fact,
have an end, and the end in turn is referred to a cause. Such indeed is the unity of the
three temporal ekstases; the end or temporalization of my future implies a cause (or
motive); that is, it points toward my past, and the present is the upsurge of the act To
speak of an act without a cause is to speak of an act which would lack the intentional
structure of every act, and the proponents of free will by searching for it on the level of
the act which is in the process of being performed can only end up by rendering the act
absurd. But the determinists in turn are weighing the scale by stopping their
investigation with the mere designation of the cause and motive. The essential question
in fact lies beyond the complex organization cause-intention-act-end; indeed we ought
to ask how a cause (or motive) can be constituted as such.
3. MUST CHOOSE FREEDOM TO SOLVE PROBLEMS

jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, 1994, pp. 444-5
Actually it is not enough to will; it is necessary to will to will. Take, for example, a given
situation: I can react to it emotionally. We have shown elsewhere that emotion is not a
physiological tempest; it is a reply adapted to the situation; it is a type of conduct, the

meaning and form of which are the object of an intention of consciousness which aims at
attaining a particular end by particular means. In contrast to this conduct voluntary and
rational conduct will consider the situation scientifically, will reject the magical, and will
apply itself to realizing determined series and instrumental complexes which will enable
us to resolve the problems.
4. OUR VERY IDENTITIES ARE DETERMINED BY OUR CHOICES

Jean-Paul Satire, philosopher. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, 1994, p. 462
And as our being is precisely our original choice, the consciousness (of) the choice is
identical with the self-consciousness which we have. One must be conscious in order to
choose, and one must choose in order to be conscious. Choice and consciousness are
one and the same thing.
INDIVIDUAL CHOICE OF VALUES IS

CRITICAL FOR EVERYONE
1. DEONTOLOGY IS INCORRECT--WE CANNOT SEPARATE INTENTION AND ACTION JeanPaul Sartre, philosopher. BEING AND NOTHINGNESS, 1994, p. 484
Our description of freedom, since it does not distinguish between choosing and doing,
compels us to abandon at once the distinction between the intention and the act. The
intention can no more be separated from the act than thought can be separated from
the language which expresses it; and as it happens that our speech informs us of our
thought, so our acts will inform us of our intentions.
2. OUR CHOICES SET VALUES FOR ALL SOCIETY

Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher, in George Novack. EXISTENTIALISM VERSUS MARXISM,
1966, pp. 74-5
When we say that man chooses his own self, we mean that every one of us does
likewise; but we also mean that in making this choice he chooses for all men. In fact, in
creating the man we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at
the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be. To choose to be this
or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose...
3. WE CREATE THE WORLD WITH OUR CHOICES

Since the intention is the choice of the end and since the world reveals itself across our
conduct, it is the intentional choice of the end which reveals the world, and the world is
revealed as this or that (in this or that order) according to the end chosen. The end,
illuminating the world, is a state of the world to be obtained and not yet existing.
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY ARE

WHOLISTICALLY CONNECTED
1. HUMAN IDENTITY IS SHAPED BY ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher.
CRITIQUE OF DIALECTICAL REASON, 1976, p. 54
I totalize myself on the basis of centuries of history, an in accordance with my culture, I
totalize this experience. This means that my life itself is centuries old, since the
schemata which permit me to understand, to modify and totalize my practical
undertakings (and the set of determinations which go with them) have entered the
present (present in their effects and past in their completed history). In this sense,
diachronic evolution is present (as past--and, as we shall see later, as future) in
synchronic totalisation; their relations are bonds of interiority and, to the extent that
critical investigation is possible, the temporal depth of the totalising process becomes
evident as soon as I reflexively interpret the operations of my individual life.
2. MUST SEE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN PEOPLE AND STRUCTURES Jean-Paul Sartre,
philosopher. CRITIQUE OF DIALECTICAL REASON, 1976, p. 79.
It should be realized that the crucial discovery of dialectical investigation is that man is
mediated by things to the same extent as things are mediated by man. This truth
must be born in mind in its entirety if we are to develop all its consequences. This is
what is called dialectical circularity and, as we shall see, it must be established by
dialectical investigation. But if we were not already dialectical beings we would not even
be able to comprehend this circularity.
3. VIEWING INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY WHOLISTICALLY SOLVES MANY CONTRADICTIONS

Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher, in Thomas R. Flynn. SARTRE AND MARXIST
EXISTENTIALISM, 1986, p. 139
Contemporary consciousness seems torn by an antinomy. Those who hold above all for
the dignity of the human person, his freedom, his inalienable rights, by that very fact
lean toward the spirit of analysis, which conceives of persons outside of their real
conditions of existence, which confers on them an immutable, abstract nature that
isolates them and blinds them to their solidarity. Those who have forcefully understood
that man is rooted in collectivity and who wish to affirm the importance of economic,
technical, and historical factors, rush toward the spirit of synthesis that, blind to persons,
has eyes only for groups. This antinomy is observable, for example, in the widespread
belief that socialism is the polar opposite of freedom.
RESPONSIBILITY TO OTHERS IS
IMPORTANT
1. RECOGNIZING FREEDOM OF OTHERS IS NECESSARY FOR MY OWN FREEDOM Thomas
R. Flynn. SARTRE AND MARXIST EXISTENTIALISM, 1986, p.40
Freedom in the purely formal sense, that is freedom as the definition of man, Sartre
allows, does not depend on the other. But as soon as there is commitment, i.e., once my
particular project and its attendant situation enter the picture, I am obliged to will the
others freedom as well as my own. I cannot take my freedom as an end unless I equally
take that of others for an end. Again, his critics challenge: It may be true that I cannot
consciously choose unfreedom, but why cant I simply choose freedom for myself
alone? In response, we must recall, first, that this universal freedom conditional is
limited to the plane of free commitment. So it requires as a precondition that I admit
the factual truth of my own presence-to-self and presence-to-the-world as well as that of
every other.
2. COMPLACENCY FOR INJUSTICE IS THE SAME AS OPPRESSION

Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher, in Thomas R. Flynn. SARTRE AND MARXIST
EXISTENTIALISM, 1986, p. 64
Try to understand this at any rate: if violence began this very evening and oppression
had never existed on the earth, perhaps some slogans of nonviolence might end the
quarrel. But if the whole regime, even your nonviolent ideas, are conditioned by a
thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the
oppressors.
3. PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EACH OTHERS EXISTENCE

By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on
myself as on an
object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other. Yet this object which has
appeared to the Other is not an empty image in the mind of another. Such an image in
fact, would be imputable wholly to the
Other and so could not touch me. I could feel irritation, or anger before it as before a
bad portrait of myself which gives to my expression an ugliness or baseness which I do
not have, but I could not be touched to the quick. Shame is by nature recognition. I
recognize that I am as the Other sees me.
4. CANNOT AVOID ACCOUNTABILITY TO OTHER PEOPLE

The Others existence is so far from being placed in doubt that this false alarm can very
well result in
making me give up my enterprise. If, on the other hand, I persevere in it, I shall feel my
heart beat fast, and I shall detect the slightest noise, the slightest creaking of the stairs.
Far from disappearing with my
first alarm, the Other is present everywhere, below me, above me, in the neighboring
rooms, and I continue to feel profoundly my being-for-others.
Answering Schlag
Introduction
Pierre Schlag is a law professor at the University of Colorado. If you track down a picture
of him, you'll find out that he looks like you would expect a guy named "Pierre Schlag" to
look -- nattily groomed, goatee, etc.
He also writes like you would expect a guy named "Pierre Schlag" to write: he's a
poststructuralist, of course, uses colorful language like "hungry ghosts," and has
reached that pantheon of debate authors referred to by their last name alone as if that
last name were the name of a position. ("What's my next-round opponent running?" "Oh,
he/she is running Schlag.")
Stereotyping aside, Pierre Schlag is a scholar that draws on the work of others in the
critical legal tradition and extends their critique in a variety of areas. His work has to do
with the nature of the law, whether it can ever be relied upon to protect peoples' rights
and freedoms - and whether the discourse of the law is itself productive.
Schlag also challenges people who find solutions to problems in the law, saying that
"normative" or "prescriptive" discourse - ("we should do this to protect rights"; "we
should do that to eliminate threats to freedoms";) - should be minimized or even
eliminated. Rather than jump immediately to the solution step, we should spend more
time analyzing the problems we wish to attack. Rather than just getting in the car and
driving, Schlag claims, we should orient ourselves to see where the car ought to go first.
This has a variety of implications for debaters. Aside from the fact that most debate
topics at least imply a relationship with the law, much of debater discourse is
prescriptive. After all, of what use is social criticism if there is no action step attached to
it? Though Schlag is writing predominantly for his colleagues in academia - professors of
law, judges, lawyers, and the like - reading his work from a debate perspective makes it
seem as if it were written purely for debate.
Some of the value from reading Schlag is simply to soak up his perspective on how
legalistic discourse can affect people engaged in it. Some of the value comes from
enjoying his hyperbolic and overblown prose.
But most of the value comes from learning how to dismantle his type of pseudointellectual psychobabble when your opponents read evidence from him. Not that I'm
BIASED or anything like that.
Explanation Of Schlag's Arguments

Schlag's most famous argument is the Critique of Normativity, first advanced in his
seminal essay "Normative and Nowhere to Go." Where other Critical Legal Studies
authors merely indicted the system of law, Schlag pushed his chess-piece a square
further: not only is the law at fault, our entire way of thinking, arguing and discussion is
at fault for the problems of the modern age. That way of thinking he slapped a word on:
"Normative." That's normative as opposed to descriptive: descriptive language being
that which describes (duh) the conditions we face in an "is" statement as opposed to an
"ought" statement or a "should" statement.
Some Initial Problems With Schlag

As is true with most positions, understanding Schlag's argument is key to defeating it.
The internal consistency of positions as well as the context of their advocacy is one of
the most fertile grounds for attack.
An example: Schlag saves his harshest criticism for courts and the decisions of judges.
Debaters can argue persuasively that their cases/the resolution have little if anything to
do with court action, and that making the analogy between court action and academic
debate is fatally flawed. This can be a good starting point to attack the argument.
Something else to consider: a risk or probability analysis. Much of Schlag's claims center
around the system's lack of efficacy. Specifically, Schlag derides the legal system's
ability to protect rights and human freedoms.
An intuitive response, though, is that this presumes total bankruptcy of the system. Even
if the system has only a .001 percent chance of protecting rights, isn't that preferable to
just giving up? In the absence of some reason not to attempt action (i.e., a disadvantage
to acting), isn't the mere propensity of change enough?
Schlag's response to this argument would be to reject the game of power altogether,
saying that it is better to reject an unjust system than to delude oneself by believing
that system to be solvent. This is an alternative that we will deal with below.
One of the other ways to attack Schlag as internally inconsistent is the fact that he,
himself, is within the legal system he purports to critique. If he feels that legal discourse
is so wrong and corrupt, why doesn't he stop writing articles for law journals and quit his
lucrative tenured job teaching impressionable young students the law?
There is an offshoot to this argument that is also popular. It is to this offshoot to which
we now turn.
Ways To Answer Schlag, Starting With

Contradictions
The most obvious way to attack Schlag's critique of normativity is the way most
debaters end up doing so. By making the (implicit or explicit) statement, "Don't be
normative," Schlag (and the debater advocating his work) is hypocritical. The fancy
debate term we sometimes hear for this is "performative contradiction," a term which
has crawled out of the work of Jurgen Habermas and one which we'll address in a
second.
Initially, let's make sure we understand the thrust of this response. Schlag's work
admonishes and urges people "Don't be normative." Yet this statement is itself just as
normative as the resolution or as the affirmative advocacy. If the statement "Resolved:
violent revolution is a just response to oppression" is normative, or if the affirmative's
policy implication is normative, then surely a course of action which advises the judge
"You should vote negative" is just as normative as the affirmative, if not more so.
In fact, the affirmative can say, the sin the negative commits is worse -- they KNEW that
normative thinking and statements were bad, and yet made them anyway. This is worse
than the poor beleaguered affirmative, who wandered in unawares. (This is often called
the "premeditated murder" argument -- that knowing you're going to do something bad
and doing it anyway is worse than doing something bad in ignorance.)
This argument is bolstered by the fact that Schlag and his colleague Richard Delgado are
at least somewhat on the record as saying "Yeah, you got us: we contradict ourselves.
But whaddayagunnado? (Shrug of shoulders)" Just kidding. Being law professors, they of
course have to dress it up in pretentious language like "contradictions allow us to
question our deepest held assumptions." Yeah, and if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump
its deepest held assumptions on the ground.
In one of the most ironic twists you'll find, this most obvious (and truest) argument
against Schlag's critique has been the one least likely to defeat the critique in a debate
round. This is due to two factors: the first is that Schlag (and the debaters who advocate
his work) are most prepared to attack this argument.
The second reason, though, is that too few people think out the second line of analysis
on the contradiction argument. I believe this is the real reason the
hypocrisy/performative contradiction argument against Schlag has not been successful
in the past.
I'll give you an example, but before that, let's examine the term "performative
contradiction" means. It's understood none-too-well, and it's thrown around as a generic
term for "my opponent advocated two arguments that contradict each other." While this
is also a bad thing to do, and a good thing to argue against, it's not precisely what
communication theorist and philosopher Habermas means when he says "performative
contradiction."
Habermas is concerned with the truth value of statements and the ideal speech
situations. He painstakingly constructs arguments for what constitute effective
communicative utterances and what do not. Once these arguments are constructed, he
applies them to what the ideal speech situation might be to utilize those utterances.
A "performative" is a speech statement that actually does something: i.e. an action or a

plan of action. He defines a performative contradiction as when someone says one thing,
and then does something else -- i.e., contradicting that they've said in their speech act
with a contrary action in their performance.
The impact of this is that such an action destroys the potential truth value of any claim
the speaker might make, corrupting the power of any utterance they might make. This is
the opposite of the ideal speech situation, according to Habermas.
This long-winded explanation of why performative contradictions are bad serves two
purposes: first, I hope it will inspire people to read and cut Habermas' communication
theory, because that evidence serves to answer the "contradictions are good" tripe that
is all-too-prevalent these days; second, it gives an impact to the argument that is often
lacking -- as lacking as good second line responses on the "Schlag contradicts himself"
argument.
My example of a poor second line of analysis is when the affirmative simply restates
their argument. The negative says "Contradictions are good," and attempts to weasel
their way out of the contradiction. The affirmative often replies (words to the effect of)
"Oh, come on."
So after the negative - who I will refer to hereafter as the "Schlagging Debaters" or "The
Schlaggers" - has read their answers, that's where the second line of analysis comes in.
Don't make it be "yeah, but this is still lame," even though it is.
Instead, use your second lines to say why contradictions are specifically bad in academic
debates: not only do they undermine the truth value of all statements as Habermas
says, but they destroy all ground. If debaters can just shift their positions at will, no one
knows what anyone will argue in the next speech.
The affirmative might point out to The Schlaggers that, if contradicting yourself is OK,
then the affirmative could (and just might) stand up in the last speech and say "They're
right; Schlag rules. The critique is true. By the way, this means you should vote
affirmative, because I'm the last one to advocate the critique. Oh, and this is the last
speech, isn't it? That means that they can't answer my 'you should vote affirmative'
point. And if they're right that contradictions are good, then our contradicting ourselves
in the last speech isn't any better or worse than their doing so in the preceding
speeches. Thank you, drive through."
Just to expose my own bias further, I used to do janitorial work with another guy who
served as my supervisor. Our worst job was to clean the fryer hoods of Burger King(tm)
restaurants. The fryer hoods are where all the animal fat solidifies, chunks up, rots, etc.
You have to climb up in a tiny tube with a pressure washer to clean it, and invariably it
gets all over in your hair, your eyes, etc. As the rookie, I had to do most of this at first.
But after a while, my supervisor started to do it. I asked him why. Quoth my janitorial
compadre: "I'd be a pretty poor human being if I asked you to do something that I wasn't
prepared to do myself, wouldn't I?"
Indeed. And if I ever meet Pierre Schlag, the first thing I'm going to do to him is shout:
"Clean my fast food fryer hoods!" Because that will confuse him as much as his writing
does me. I'll tell you the SECOND thing I'd do to him at the end of this essay.
Social Implications Of Schlag

That hero to LD Debaters everywhere, Immanuel Kant, once said something about how
we should act in such a way that we would want to be universalized. I can't really
remember, but I think it rhymes with "allegorical diptherative."
Anyhoo, the old dead German said it for a reason. What we do and say has social
implications larger than just you or I doing it. Kant's thought lives on every time your
parents sneer at you and say "How would you like it if EVERYBODY did that?" as you litter
or curse in front of them. So ol' Immanuel isn't the only person to think so.
That can also be applied to the Schlag critique. What would happen if every person in
the world obeyed Schlag's instructions not to do, well, anything? Check that for a
second: what would happen if ONLY THE PEOPLE SCHLAG ADDRESSES (judges, lawyers)
stopped "being normative" for a day, or a week? What would happen? Who would
benefit? Who would suffer?
On the up side, some very harsh legislation wouldn't pass. On the down side, NO
legislation at all would pass. No one would get any of the benefits from positive social
change programs. This is particularly applicable to debate: debate cuts the middle
person out of the legislative process, allowing the most forward thinking and idealistic
"legislation" or advocacy to "pass" via the judges magical ballot. This is something to be
considered in answering the link: debate ideas are uniquely different than the kind of
legal action Schlag is critiquing.
So, who would benefit from the stated alternative of rejection? Well, the poor that
depend on job programs and public assistance sure wouldn't. Working people with
children (mostly women) that depend on day care programs and the Family Leave Act
(the lone good deed done by the Clinton administration) sure wouldn't. Students hoping
to go to college would have to look elsewhere for their student loans.
People of color could kiss affirmative action goodbye at an even greater rate than it's
already disappearing. Gays and lesbians wouldn't get any legislation protecting them
from discrimination, nor protecting them from hate crimes.
But don't worry: rich, white heterosexual male college professors WOULD DO JUST FINE.
And really, isn't that all of us?
Oh, wait, sorry, it isn't. In fact, it's just you, Pierre, and the small faction of those like you
who enjoy criticizing everything to death rather than building a realistic alternative
vision. I'll tell you who benefits from rejection of change. The STATUS QUO benefits from
rejection of change, which is by definition the maintenance of the status quo. And who
benefits the most from maintenance of the status quo? The powerful, of course.
At this point, someone is likely to point out that no social action by government is pretty
darn close to anarchy. The problem is, almost no one - only hardcore anarchists, and
VERY, VERY few of them (the rich white heterosexual male ones) - advocates that. The
reason they don't is that anyone sane realizes the damage it could do.
Why, then, would someone like Schlag advocate this? By all accounts, he's a very bright
individual. Some of his critics even call him brilliant.
Those same critics, though, point out that these arguments are at their core untenable.
In one of the best refutations of Schlag that I've seen, David Gray Carlson surmises that
his colleague might just be spoiling for a good fight. Carlson refers to Schlag as a
modern-day "duelist" - someone who wants to pick a fight that seems almost impossible
just to prove what a quick wit he has.
There seems to be some merit for that, and it's at the very least food for thought. Plus,
there's a lot to be said for reading a card that says: "Even your own author doesn't
believe this: he's just bored and wants to amuse himself by arguing about something."
I'll conclude this portion by pointing out how similar that would make Schlag to, well,
your average competitive debater.
And, Finally, A Reference To Wiffle Ball

Bats
Hope I haven't been overly cynical in this essay. I really believe that a lot of the Critical
Legal Scholars have good things to say and for people to think about, even if they don't
agree with all of the conclusions. The Schlag argument, though, takes things a bit too far
for me and I really hope to see it ruthlessly beaten down by all of you.
Anyway, I encourage everyone to take a read of Schlag's articles if only for the
aforementioned three reasons. Can't beat the position down if you don't Know Your
Enemy, as the late and lamented Rage Against the Machine might say. And DEFINITELY
check out the uncut form of that Columbia Law Review article by David Gray Carlson
answering ol' Pierre.
Oh, and I promised I'd spill the second thing I'd do to Schlag if I ever met him. (One
caveat: I'm a pacifist. I would not actually do this.) Steve Pointer and I used to sit around
fantasizing about going to the University of Colorado with two Wiffle Ball Bats, busting
into Schlag's office, and proceeding to beat him about the kidneys with them. When he
begged us to stop, we'd shout "Prescriptive discourse is bad! 'Should' statements are
bad! Can't tell me to stop! That would be NORMATIVE! I don't wanna be a HUNGRY
GHOST, do I? Say chowdah, Frenchy! Chowdah!"
West Coast Publishing does not endorse the contests of that last paragraph. Kids, don't
try this at home - or on your opponents.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
David Gray Carlson, Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, COLUMBIA
LAW REVIEW, November, 1999.
Steve Chilton, Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota, GROUNDING

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT, 1991,
http://www.d.umn.edu/~schilton/Articles/GPD3.html#SectionV, acquired May 1, 2001.
Anthony D'Amato, Judd & Mary Morris Leighton Professor of Law, Northwestern
University, "Counterintuitive Consequences of "Plain Meaning," ARIZONA LAW REVIEW,
1991.
Richard Delgado, "Reply: Moves," UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, April

1991.
Richard Delgado, "Norms and Normal Science: Toward a Critique of Normativity in Legal
Thought," UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, April 1991.
Margaret Jane Radin and Frank Michelman, "Symposium: the Critique of Normativity:
Commentary: Pragmatist and Poststructuralist Critical Legal Practice," UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1991.
Pierre Schlag, Hiding the Ball, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, 1996.
Pierre Schlag, LAYING DOWN THE LAW: MYSTICISM, FETISHISM AND THE AMERICAN
LEGAL MIND New York: NYU Press, 1996.
Pierre Schlag, Anti-Intellectualism, CARDOZO LAW REVIEW, 1995.
Pierre Schlag, "Politics of Form," UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, April 1991.
Pierre Schlag, Normative and Nowhere to Go, STANFORD LAW REVIEW, 1990.
Pierre Schlag, "Contradiction and Denial," MICHIGAN LAW REVIEW, May, 1989.
SCHLAG'S PHILOSOPHY IS FLAWED

1. SCHLAG PROPS UP BAD IDEAS BASED ON ELEMENTARY ERRORS
LAW REVIEW, November, 1999, p. 1908.
I began by suggesting that Pierre Schlag assumes the position of a duelist. He thinks
legal academics are either fools or knaves. But he mistakes his opponent. The villain is
language itself. Language is what causes the split in the subject, and Professor Schlag
has made the classic error of assuming that legal academics are deliberately withholding
l'objet petit a. They hold surplus enjoyment and are to blame for the pain and the lack
that always accompanies the presence of the subject in the symbolic order. If this
psychoanalytic suggestion explains the angry tone of Schlag's work, it also explains the
basic errors into which he falls. When one considers this work as a whole, most of these
errors are obvious and patent. Indeed, most of these errors have been laid by Schlag
himself at the doorstep of others. But, in surrendering to feeling or, as perhaps Schlag
would put it, to context (i.e., the pre-theoretical state), Schlag cannot help but make
these very same errors. Some examples: (1) Schlag's program, induced from his
critiques, is that we should rely on feeling to tell us what to do. Yet Schlag denounces in
others any reliance on a pre-theoretical self. (2) Schlag warns that, by definition, theory
abstracts from context. He warns that assuming the right answer will arise from context
unmediated by theory is "feeble." Yet, he rigorously and repetitively denounces any
departure from context, as if any such attempt is a castration--a wrenching of the
subject from the natural realm. He usually implies that context alone can provide the
right answer--that moral geniuses like Sophocles or Earl Warren can find the answer by
consulting context. (3) Schlag complains that common law judges are "vacuous fellows"
when they erase themselves so that law can speak. Yet, Schlag, a natural lawyer,
likewise erases himself so that context can speak without distortion. (4) Schlag warns
that merely reversing the valences of polarities only reinstates what was criticized. Yet
he does the same in his own work. In attacking the sovereignty of the liberal self, he
merely asserts the sovereignty of the romantic self. Neither, psychoanalytically, is a
valid vision. One polarity is substituted for another. (5) Schlag scorns the postulation of
ontological entities such as free will, but makes moral arguments to his readers that
depend entirely on such postulation. (6) Schlag denounces normativity in others, but
fails to see that he himself is normative when he advises his readers to stop being
normative. The pretense is that Schlag is an invisible mediator between his reader and
context. As such, Schlag, the anti-Kantian, is more Kantian than Kant himself. Thus,
context supposedly announces, "Stop doing normative work." Yet context says nothing
of the sort. It is Schlag's own normative theory that calls for the work slowdown. (7)
Schlag urges an end to legal scholarship when he himself continues to do legal
scholarship. He may wish to deny that his work is scholarship, but his denial must be
overruled. We have before us a legal scholar, like any other.
2. SCHLAG'S OPPOSITION TO SOLUTIONS IS BASED ON FLAWED PHILOSOPHY
Schlag thinks himself opposed to such solutions. For Schlag, any attempt to end the
infinite regress in a cosmological proposition creates new contradictions and hence new
propositions. But Hegelians are capable of criticizing such easy surrender to bad
infinities. According to Paul Redding: We should not think of "reasoning" without an
absolute starting point as stretching back infinitely along a chain of presupposition of
presupposition of presupposition: such an idea still rests on the image of some absolute
distinction between a premise and a conclusion. The traditional image of the linear
infinite regress still depends on the intelligibility of that which it cannot achieve, an
absolutely immediate starting point, and so its intelligibility collapses with that of its
unreachable ideal. Thus, hostility to cosmology cannot be privileged over cosmology. A
cosmological solution can be postulated to put an end to the infinite regress between
coherence and dissolution. All of this is implicitly admitted by Schlag, when he presumes
to criticize the non-existent thing he calls law. Most of the time, this term seems to refer
to what law schools teach and what lawyers do--a reference to customary legal practice.
Yet by referring to law in such a way, Schlag has, in fact, "totalized" law as a coherent
thing that endures over time. This is precisely the cosmological solution he claims to
oppose.
NORMATIVE DISCOURSE IS GOOD

1. ONLY ACCEPTING NORMATIVE DISCOURSE MAKES SENSE
http://www.d.umn.edu/~schilton/Articles/GPD3.html#SectionV, accessed May 1, 2001.
In essence, then, social scientists must choose one of two visions of their project: on the
one hand, a social science that disempowers people by denying the possibility they can
change anything (or, to cast this as this project's adherents might, that liberates people
from the dashed hopes attendant on a misguided faith in moral agency); and on the
other hand, a social science that recognizes the possibility of moral change and
ultimately of human emancipation (at the cost of the frustrations and conflicts of
normative discourse). Two considerations argue that only the latter choice makes sense.
First and most direct, people already make, and know deep down they can always
already make, moral choices-that they are not victims. A complete social science must
recognize that. Even in the face of the first argument one could continue to maintain
that the role of moral choice is so slight, and its threat to our self-conception as
scientists so immediate, that we are justified and even obligated to neglect it. We are
comfortable with our long-established role as "scientists" and all too aware of the hubris
tinging the role of prophet, visionary, or moralist. And yet this argument seems to
depend at heart on our willed ignorance of the role of moral choice, not on a realistic
assessment of the dangers of the different paths. We can choose to remain "scientists"
in the narrow sense only if we are sure that moral choice is really of little consequence;
but this is not at all certain. Each side sees what it wants to see: "scientists," ignoring
the role of moral choice, devise experiments showing less and less role for it;
"emancipators" discover, by contrast, that the more scope they provide for recognizing
and making possible moral choice, the more important it seems to become. My second
argument is cast in the face of this uncertainty: that when one cannot choose between
two alternatives on the basis of clear evidence or logic, then one should choose the
alternative with the more interesting consequences. If one ultimately decides that the
consequences are not really very interesting, or if the evidence really does mount up in
the opposite direction, one has lost no more than time and has by recompense acquired
a firmer understanding of why the other alternative is superior. But to foreclose options
without looking at them seems to me to be a grave crime, a crime only made worse by
the excuse that we are afraid of ourselves.
2. EVEN IF NORMATIVITY CAUSES PROBLEMS, IT SHOULDN'T BE REJECTED

http://www.d.umn.edu/~schilton/Articles/GPD3.html#SectionV, acquired May 1, 2001.
Our reluctance to define development in normative terms stems not from our settled
conviction that development is not normative but rather from our reluctance to deal with
the thorny issues that normative discourse inevitably raises. Our experience in Vietnam
(and the underlying imperialistic moralism from which adventures like that continue to
flow) gave us good reason to fear normatively involved theory and to suspect its
impartiality. But once we agree that any complete theory of social change must deal
with the problem of normative grounding, the major objection to defining "development"
in normative terms disappears. To understand society we have to grasp normative issues
- or so I will argue below - and thus we can give renewed credence to our intuitive sense
of development as normative improvement.
3. SCHLAG ALSO USES NORMATIVE ARGUMENT TO BACK HIS CLAIMS.

Margaret Jane Radin and Frank Michelman, "Symposium: the Critique of Normativity:
Commentary: Pragmatist and Poststructuralist Critical Legal Practice," UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW, April, 1991, p. 1019.
It seems that saying that cannot (coherently) be an argument about whether or how we
should (or should not) talk. How can one argue that what makes an utterance (or a
genre) unworthy of attention or respect is that it is normative talk? To argue is to invoke
the practice of argument, and that practice consists of normative talk. (Maybe you could
try by some other means to remove that practice from society's repertoire, but you can't
well do that by arguing about it.) But if this utterance of Schlag's is not argument, then
what is it?
SCHLAG'S ADVOCACY STEP IS WRONG

1. SCHLAG'S ACTION STEP IS NEITHER ACHIEVABLE NOR DESIRABLE
Professor Schlag terminates one of his books with this memorable passage, in which he
suggests that the entire project of legal scholarship be abandoned: "The genres of legal
thought associated with legal process and Warren Court normativity are intellectually
exhausted . . . Some legal thinkers are rendered quite anxious in the present moment.
"What comes next-" they want to know. "What will be next-" they wonder. "What
admirable vision of law will next capture the legal imagination-" Maybe nothing. Maybe
what comes next is that we stop treating "law" as something to celebrate, expand, and
worship. Maybe, we learn to lay down the law." Should normative legal scholarship be
abolished, as Professor Schlag suggests- Some of Professor Schlag's points about legal
scholarship are undoubtedly well taken. But it doesn't follow that it should or even could
be abolished. In truth, whether he admits it or not, Professor Schlag himself does legal
scholarship. He does not follow his own advice about not doing it. Nor could he. If legal
scholarship stands for participation in the realm of the symbolic, then legal scholarship-i.e., culture--is the very medium that perpetuates self-consciousness.
2. MUST KEEP RATIONALITY TO DEAL WITH NON-MORAL ACTORS

In contrast to this view, Professor Schlag wants to say that freedom means the concrete
self can do what it feels like. But he should know better than to exalt the authenticity of
the pre-legal natural self, and he has on occasion chastised others for doing just that. To
exalt the sovereignty of such a self (that may be in the thrall of criminal passion) instead
of the liberal self is to permit the contingent side of the self to govern in its moral
arbitrariness. In other words, the essence of personality is the rationality of the liberal
self. Negative freedom denies the essence of personality and therefore ends up
destroying its own self. To summarize, Schlag's work is based on a romantic psychology.
If only the concrete self were freed from law, Schlag implies, it would know what to do.
Law offers mere "norms" and presents the subject with empty choices. Such a theory of
the self ignores the fact that human nature has two sides--the natural and the moral.
One side cannot be privileged at the expense of the other. To be sure, many of Schlag's
criticisms of liberal psychology are well taken. Liberal psychology absolutely denies a
place for the unconscious and irrational. His accusation that liberal philosophy does not
consider the challenge of deconstruction to liberal psychology is an excellent
contribution. Liberal philosophy in recent times deserves criticism for not peering very
deeply into the soul of the legal subject. But liberal philosophy is also on to something:
The moral dimension of personality is constitutive and cannot be abolished without
destroying personality entirely.
3. REJECTION WOULD MAKE IT WORSE: MORE HIERARCHIES WOULD POP UP

The legal academy refuses to duel with Pierre Schlag. But why should it- It lives well
enough without defending itself from angry reproaches generated from abstract
romanticism. Shall legal academics give up their jobs and their vocation at the mere
invocation of deconstruction- Why should they, especially when Professor Schlag has not
given up the Byron White professorship at his own university- The legal academy
declines to duel, but this is not to say that postmodernism is a failure. It is only a failure
if we accept that its task is to destroy in its entirety the existing hierarchy. This is not a
valid task. If we destroyed the existing hierarchy, another would spring up in its place,
and it too would have to be destroyed on the logic of romanticism. Destruction is a bad
infinity. It never ends because desire itself does not end.
LAW IS NOT THE PROBLEM: LANGUAGE

IS, WHICH SCHLAG MISUNDERSTANDS
1. LANGUAGE IS THE PROBLEM, NOT LAW, WHICH SCHLAG MISSES
Schlag blames law, conceived here as a historically situated, vaguely defined American
linguistic practice, for its want of a "robust referent." Instead of delivering any such
referent, as it promises to do, law tenders an endless set of signifiers (which Schlag likes
to call "ontological entities"), each of which disappointingly refers only to other
signifiers. In the end, law signifies nothing. It literally does not exist. Law engages in the
petty pace of an infinite regress--a bad infinity--without ever reaching the ultimate
signified. Law, in Schlag's opinion, is pseudoscience; nonsense rendered plausible;
madness; deficient in its authority and ontology; "faked, bluffed, or simulated;" mere
belief and not knowledge of a Real Thing; a Mobius strip; a language game circling
around nothing at all. In Austinian terms, it pretends to be constative (i.e., reporting a
pre-existing reality), but is merely performative. It illegitimately reifies (i.e., "thingifies")
imaginary concepts.
2. THE FAULT ISN'T WITH LAW

Schlag excoriates legal practice for its want of a "robust referent," but never quite
defines what he means by this. What would count as a "robust referent" - We can only
infer his meaning by studying what he thinks law is not. Thus, we learn from Schlag that
natural things have robust referents. Hence, one may infer that the absent robust
referent is some "natural" thing beyond language. Law cannot signify the thing-beyondlanguage. This is a good Lacanian insight. But does this fault differentiate law from any
other linguistic practice that we might identify- Is law different from politics or
mathematics or geology- No. These practices likewise do nothing but refer to other
signifiers in the same infinite regress that law does. One must conclude that law is not
and never was the culprit. Language is.
3. THE REASON LAW CAN'T DELIVER JUSTICE IS ROOTED IN LANGUAGE

If language always reduces to a chain of signifiers without end, why single law out for
abuse- Because law promises justice. Justice is law's Master Signifier--its "exceptional
element." Yet just because justice is exceptional, law cannot deliver it. The inability of
law to deliver what it promises can best be appreciated in the context of Lacanian
theory. According to Lacan, the human subject is angry at language itself. This anger is
inscribed in a false autobiography, according to which there once was a time in which
the human subject felt no pain or desire; but something bad intervened to harm, maim
or reduce our integrity. This story has been told a thousand times in myth, in the
doctrine of Original Sin, in romantic nostalgia, in conservative or radical politics, even in
Hegelian philosophy, where the human subject is portrayed as the diremption of Spirit
into the world. In Lacanian theory, a subject who enters the symbolic realm of language
can speak words recognized by other subjects who can speak back. The very idea of
speaking presupposes some other subject who can listen and understand. Hence, our
ability to differentiate (and thus identify) ourselves in language can only be bestowed on
us by other speaking subjects. On this dialectical view of human subjectivity, we are, by
definition, not whole--not entirely present to ourselves. A basic part of ourselves is
beyond us. We are alienated in language. We suffer from "being-for-other."
Henry Sidgwick
The study of religious history, ethics, and economics offers many different viewpoints
and perspectives. Different philosophers are often categorized according to the
ideologies that they stand for. Henry Sidgwick has been placed in several categories for
his ideological beliefs. In politics he was a Liberal, and would eventually become a
Liberal Unionist. In political economy, he was a Utilitarian on the lines of Mill and
Bentham. However, Sidgwicks own philosophy had some important deviations from the
views of Mill and Bentham.
One of the things that Sidgwick is remembered most for is the way in which he was a
promoter of womens education. Initially, Sidgwick found Mills views on womens rights
as violently radical; but he was gradually won over. By 1867, he had joined Josephine
Butler and Ann Jemina Clough in their struggle to obtain special university examinations
for women. In 1871, he would go on to establish Newnham, a residence for women who
were attending lectures at Cambridge University, which would eventually become
Newnham College. Such educational resources for women were incredibly rare at the
time. Unlike many people of his time, he actively took steps in order to promote the
education of women, if not quite outright equality. He campaigned, with success, for the
admission of women to examinations at Cambridge University. However, he later
resigned from the University Council in protest at their refusal to grant degrees to
women. Putting his personal career on the line shows the immense dedication Sidgwick
showed to womens rights.
LIFE AND WORKS

Henry Sidgwick was born in 1838 at Skipton in Yorkshire. He was educated at Rugby and
at Trinity Cambridge. In 1859, he was senior classic, 33 rd wrangler, chancellors
medalist, and Craven scholar. He was also elected to a fellowship at Trinity. Afterwards,
he was appointed to a classical lectureship there. He held this position for ten years,
and in 1869 exchanged his lectureship for one in moral philosophy.
In 1875, he was appointed praelector on moral and political philosophy at Trinity. In
1883, he was elected Knightbridge professor of moral philosophy. In 1885, the religious
test having been removed, he was once again elected to a fellowship. These honors
only begin to describe the immense work Sidgwick participated in and received
recognition for.
Sidwicks reputation as a philosophical writer was made by his first book, THE METHODS
OF ETHICS, which was written in 1864. In the book, Sidgwick defines ethics as any
rational procedure by which we determine what individual human beings oughtor
what it is right for them- to do. He states that ethics is the study of what is right and
what ought to be, and it depends on the voluntary action of individuals. He argues that
enquiries into the origin of the notion of ought or duty in our consciousness do not
affect its validity. Sidgwick is therefore less focused on pragmatism and more on the
ideal. He also says that having the knowledge that there is something right or rational
to be done depends on an intuition, or immediate view of what is right or reasonable.
His own utilitarianism is based on intuitionism and empiricism. The methods
corresponding to these different principles reduce themselves to three main ones:
Egoism, Intuitionism, and Utilitarianism.
EGOISM
The principle of Egoistic Hedonism is the widely accepted notion that the rational end of
conduct for each individual is the Maximum of his/her own Happiness or Pleasure.
Sidgwick rejects the idea of Empirical Hedonism, which assumes that all pleasures
sought and pains shunned can be arranged in a scale of preferableness. Sidgwick
defines pleasure as, feeling apprehended as desired by the individual at the time of
feeling it. Therefore, the actual definition of pleasure not only varies from one
individual to another, but also from moment to moment for every person.
Sidgwick states that the habit of introspectively comparing pleasures is unfavorable to

pleasure. Any quantitative comparison of pleasures and pains is vague and uncertain.
Even in the case of our own past experiences, such comparisons would fail. This also
applies to the fact that people are different at different times. Therefore, the supposed
definite measurability of pleasures is an unverifiable assumption. This vague notion of
evaluating pleasure is one aspect of egoistic hedonism that bothered Sidgwick and
caused him to reject the philosophy.
Sidgwick continues by saying that although there are still fundamental defects of using
judgments of common sense, we still derive from them a certain amount of practical
guidance. Ones greatest happiness is always attained by the performance of duty. In
other words, people enjoy fulfilling their duties. No such complete coincidence seems to
result from a consideration either of the legal sanction of duty, or of the social sanctions,
or of the internal sanctions. Regardless of where a duty is derived from, there is still
pleasure gained by fulfilling that duty.
Sidgwick states that the Hedonistic Method must ultimately rest on facts of empirical
observation. This process becomes largely deductive, through scientific knowledge of
the causes of pleasure and pain. However, we have no practically available theory of
these causes. Causes of pleasure and pain are different for everyone, so ultimately this
theory is vague. Additionally, quantifying pleasure or pain is impossible; and so it is
impossible also to have a conversation comparing those feelings at one time to the
same feelings at another time.
Lastly, the Principle of increasing life, or that of aiming at self development, is

defined as to afford us any practical guidance to the end of Egoism. Reason being, we
must always fall back on having to provide an empirical comparison of pleasures and
pains.
INTUITIONISM
Intuitionism is based on the assumption that we have the power of seeing clearly what
actions are in themselves right and reasonable. Sidgwick applies the term intuitional
to distinguish a method in which the rightness of some kinds of actions is assumed to be
known without relying on other consequences. In other words, we can know what is
right and wrong based on a feeling, without having to rely on proof or consequences.
He continues with the idea that though many actions are commonly judged to be made
better or worse with motives, our common judgments of right and wrong are related to
intentions. One motive, the desire to do what is right, has been thought to be an
essential condition to right conduct. However, the intuitional method should be treated
without this assumption. Humans are more comfortable assigning the correctness of an
action if they know the motivation behind it.
Sidgwick also explains that it is an essential condition that we should not believe an act
to be wrong. Basically, we should not believe something to be wrong for any similar
person in similar circumstances. The implication shows that there is not a complete
criterion of right conduct. In other words, intuitions differ from person to person. The
presence of these intuitions, however, is a constant according to Sidgwick.
Additionally, the existence of apparent thoughts of right conduct intuitively obtained as

distinct from their validity will scarcely be questioned. That is to say, even though there
is no way to prove our intuition, it will not be questioned because of the idea of common
sense. It is not necessary to establish their [intuitions] validity in order to prove their
originality.
Finally, Sidgwick concludes his explanation of intuitionism by saying that we must focus
on universal intuitions through the use of our common sense.
UTILITARIANISM
The ethical theory of utilitarianism, or Universalistic Hedonism, must be carefully
distinguished from Egoistic Hedonism. One involves the greatest good for the greatest
amount of people, happiness for everyone, while the other involves the greatest good,
happiness, for oneself. That is why the primary focus of egoistic hedonism is individual
balance of pleasure and pain. The focus of universalistic hedonism, however, is focused
on that balance for society as a whole.
Common sense demands a proof of the first capital principle of this method more clearly
than in the case of Egoism and Intuitionism. Such a proof is exhibited in the essence of
the Utilitarian Principle as a clear and certain moral intuition. However, it is also
important to examine its relation to other received maxims. That is, it is key to
understand what creates societal pleasure in order to maximize that for the greatest
number of people.
Sidgwick traces a complex coincidence between utilitarianism and common sense, but it
is not necessary to show that this coincidence is perfect and exact. Dispositions may
often be admired when the special acts that have resulted from them are in felicific. The
maxims of many virtues are found to contain an explicit or implicit reference to duty
conceived as already determinant. Both types of hedonism can take into account duty,
pleasure, pain, etc., but do so at different levels. The way in which those values are
measured varies in each philosophy.
The rules that prescribe the distribution of kindness in accordance with normal
promptings of family affections, friendship, gratitude, and pity have a firm utilitarian
basis. Utilitarianism is naturally referred to as an explanation of the difficulties that arise
in attempting to define these rules. A similar result is reached by an examination into
the common notion of justice.
Purity has been thought an exception, but through careful examination or common
opinions as to the regulation of sexual relations, a peculiarly complex correspondence
between moral sentiments and social utilities is exhibited. The hypothesis that the
moral sense is unconsciously Utilitarian also accounts for the actual differences in
different codes of duty and estimates of virtue. It is not maintained that perception of
rightness has always been consciously derived from perception of utility. All values are
defined in society, making it difficult to escape those definitions in acting in society.
Sidgwick begins his method of utilitarianism by questioning whether a utilitarian should

accept the morality of common sense provisionally as a body of utilitarian doctrine. His
answer is no, because even accepting the theory that the moral sense is derived from
sympathy causes us to discern several causes that must have operated to produce a
divergence between common sense and a perfectly utilitarian code of morality. At the
same time, it seems idle to try to construct such a code in any other way than by taking
positive morality as our basis. If general happiness is the ultimate end, it is not
reasonable to adopt social health or efficiency as the practically ultimate criterion of
morality. The decision about what criterion will be used, therefore, is of the utmost
importance in determining how to measure the pleasure of a society.
He continues by saying that it is the utilitarians duty to rectify the morality of common
sense and the method of pure empirical hedonism. This seems to be the only one that
he can present for use in the reasoning that finally determines the nature and extent of
this rectification.
The Utilitarians innovations may be either negative and destructive or positive and
supplementary. There are certain important general reasons against an innovation of a
former kind, which may easily outweigh the special arguments in its favor.
Generally, a utilitarian in recommending a deviation from an established rule of conduct

desires his innovation to be generally imitated. In some cases, he may neither expect
nor desire such imitation, but these cases are rare and difficult to determine.
SIDGWICKS THREE PRINCIPLES

It is well known that Henry Sidwicks version of utilitarianism is based on the three selfevident principles and the hedonistic theory of the ultimate good.
The first principle is the principle of justice. This constrains the judgment of right or
ought as follows: whatever action any of us judges to be right for himself, he implicitly
judges to be right for all similar persons in similar circumstances (Sidgwick 1907, 379).
This means that when a person is making a decision, he/she is thinking about how this
decision would affect other people if they were in similar situations. One takes action
based not only if they think it is right at the time, but if it would be the right action for
anyone to take at any time in the same situation.
The second principle is the principle of prudence. This is related to the notion of the
good on the whole of a single individual, and is stated as follows: Hereafter as such is
to be regarded neither less nor more than Now; the mere difference of priority and
posteriority in time is not a reasonable ground for having more regard to the
consciousness of one moment than to that of another (381). This means that timing
does not change the importance of situations. One can never justify their actions by
saying that it was no big deal, or that the situation was of little importance.
The third principle is the principle of rational benevolence. This is about the universal
good. It says that the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the
view of the Universe, than the good of any other; so that as a rational being I am
bound to aim at good generallyso far as it is attainable by my efforts, ---not merely a
particular part of it (382). This means that each person is of equal importance, and
people should always help one person in the same way that they would help another.
This also gives people equal value regardless of their identity, class, age, sex, race, or
position given by society. None of these distinctions matter in determining a persons
worth in the decision-making calculus of Sidgwick.
Sidgwick states that these three principles are all non-tautological. This means that they
are not provable on logical grounds alone and have some substantive content. They are
best examined by the way they would play out in actions.
SIDGWICK ON KANT
Sidgwicks principle of justice owes at least a part of its content to Immanuel Kants
categorical imperative. The categorical imperative states that we as humans should,
Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.
Your actions should be not only good for you, but good if everyone adopted the same
action in the same situation. However, Sidgwick criticized Kants categorical imperative
while simultaneously learning from it.
Sidgwick begins by critiquing Kants derivation of duties from the categorical imperative.
He says that there is a question that will often disburse the false appearance of
rightness, which our strong inclination has given to it. There may be times that we
should not think it right for another, and therefore it cannot be right for us. To Sidgwick,
this error lies in the fact of supposing that formal logic supplies a complete criterion of
truth. Sidgwick is disturbed by the lack of variety or individualism allowed by the
categorical imperative.
Sidgwick goes on to criticize Kants deduction from the categorical imperative of the
duty of promoting happiness of others. According to Kant, the maxim that each should
be left to take care of himself without either aid or interference can be a universal law,
since it does not contain a contradiction. However, Kant argues that it would be
impossible for us to will it to be a universal law.
Thus, Sidgwick quotes from Kant, a will that resolved this would be inconsistent with
itself for many cases may arise in which the individual thus willing needs the
benevolence and sympathy of others. Therefore, according to Kant, we regard
ourselves as the end for others and claim that they should contribute to our own
happiness. Sidgwick questions why we wouldnt be able to recognize, according to the
categorical imperative, the duty of making their happiness our end. Either the principle
is to help others, or it is to define ourselves as needing the help of others. Sidgwick
criticizes Kants effort to combine these two seemingly contradictory positions in one
theory.
Sidgwick argues that the idea that every man in need wishes for aid of others is an
empirical proposition, which Kant cannot know a priori. It is possible that a person would
choose to help others rather than receive aid from others in a time of need. Even if
everyone who was in a time of need chose to help others rather than aid him or herself,
they may have more troubles than profit because of the general adoption of the egoistic
maxim. Therefore, this general principle which is supposed to bring the greatest good to
the greatest number actually hurts those who use it as a decision-making tool. The
decision to help others or ask for help cannot be predicted.
Sidgwick also criticizes Kants perception of free will. Sidgwick distinguishes between
three conceptions of freedom. The first is the idea of good or rational freedom. This
means that a man is free in proportion as he acts in accordance of reason. The second
conception is the idea of neutral or moral freedom, which means that a man is free to
choose between good and evil. The third is the idea of capricious freedom, which means
that a man is free in so far as he has a power of acting without a motive. Freedom as a
holistic term is too vague, and needs to be broken down into these three conceptions in
order to be conceptualized and discussed.
Sidgwicks main contention is that while Kant expressly repudiated capricious freedom
and adopted rational freedom, he actually uses neutral freedom as well as rational
freedom. Sidgwick says that in some cases, the two conceptions are incompatible, If we
say that a man is a free agent in proportion as he acts rationally, we cannot also say, in
the same sense of the term, that it is by this free choice that he acts irrationally when he
does so act. Thus there are inconsistencies. These are problematic only if you are not
distinguishing between the different types of freedoms.
Furthermore, according to Sidgwick, Kant uses the conception of neutral freedom

wherever he has to connect the notion of freedom with that of moral responsibility. If a
free man makes a wrong choice, that is choice against a moral law or a dictate of capital
reason, we wish to ask his responsibility, and we also wish to prevent him from shifting
his responsibility onto causes beyond his control. Free in the context clearly
presupposes neutral freedom. Moreover, Kants appeal to neutral freedom is a very
essential part of his ethical ideas. Kant distinguishes between a noumenon and a
phenomenon. According to him, every action regarded as a phenomenon determined in
time must be regarded as a necessary result of determining causes in antecedent time.
It may also be regarded in relation to the agent considered as a thing in itself as the
noumenon or which the action is the phenomenon.
Sidgwick concludes this point by saying that if we accept this view of freedom at all, it
must obviously be neutral freedom. It must express the relation of a noumenon that
manifests itself as a scoundrel to a series of bad actions in which the moral law is
violated. Thus, the relation of a noumenon that manifests itself as a saint to good or
rational actions in which moral law or categorical imperative is obeyed.
DUALISM
Sidgwicks ethical theory terminates in a doctrine of the dualism of the practical
reason. His absolute ethical principle has to do with the reduction of goodness to
terms of pleasure, that is carried out by analyzing conscious life into its elements and
showing that each in its turn (except pleasure), when taken alone, cannot be regarded
as ultimate good. This analytic method is characteristic of Sidgwicks thinking, as it was
of that of most of his predecessors-intuitionist as well as empirical. It rests on the
assumption that the nature of a thing can be completely ascertained by examination of
the separate elements into it which it can be distinguished by reflection-an assumption
which was definitely discarded by the contemporary schools.
It has been said that Sidgwick did not produce a system of philosophy. He made many
suggestions towards construction, but his work was mainly critical.
SIDGWICK IN DEBATE
Perhaps the best use of Sidgwick would be to specify and then attack the opponents
construction of freedom as a value. The distinctions that Sidgwick makes between the
three types of freedom can be useful in determining what freedom should be upheld.
When an opponent clarifies which type of freedom they endorse, Sidgwicks critique of
Kant provides a useful resource in attacking their particular conception of freedom.
Additionally, it can be used to point out that freedom as a vague principle is often full of
contradictions, making it a poor value to base decisions on without clarification. This
would not only undermine your opponents value, but allow you to build the case for
valuing one of the specific views of freedom.
The fact that Sidgwick focused on criticism of traditional philosophy makes him an
excellent resource for LD debate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sidgwick, Henry. PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY: BOOK III. (London, 1901).
Sidgwick, Henry. THE ELEMENTS OF POLITICS. (London, 1891).
Sidgwick, Henry. METHODS OF ETHICS. (London, 1874).
Sidgwick, Henry. BENTHAM AND BENTHAMISM IN POLITICS AND ETHICS: The Fortnightly
Review, (1877).
Sidgwick, Henry. ECONOMIC SOCIALISM. The Contemporary Review. (1886).
Sidgwick, Henry. IMPRESSIONS OF MADAME BLAYATSKI. Excerpted from Sidgwicks

journal.
Sidgwick, Henry. THE WAGES FUND THEORY. The Fortnightly Review. (1879).
Sidgwick, Henry. WHAT IS MONEY? The Fortnightly Review. (1879).
Sidgwick, Henry. REPLY TO MR.. SINNET LETTER. Journal of the Society For Psychical
Research. (1885).
Sidgwick, Henry. METHODS OF ETHICS. London, 1874, 7th ed. 1907.
PROVISONS AND REGULATIONS ARE

NECESSARY FOR A BENIFICIAL SOCIETY.
1. NEED PROTECTIONS TO INCREASE QUALITY OF LIFE
David Braybrooke, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, AGAINST: A
CRITIQUE OF ROBERT BOZICKS WORK, 2000, p. 1.
in particular of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). His point again and again is that
without some provisions of the sort life in society would be much less agreeable to
everyone. Without, for example, some protection against slander, everyone would be
worse off; so everyone would be without bridges and streets in towns, most efficiently
built as governmental projects.
2. SIDGWICKS PROTECTIONS ARE BASED ON A FUNCTIONING SOCIETY

CRITIQUE OF ROBERT BOZICKS WORK, 2000, p. 1. In the second place, and even more
fundamentally, Sidgwick is more realistic just in having some going society to refer to in
mounting his arguments. As it happened, it was his own society, 19th Century England.
But this can be taken to represent any of a number of societies, real or possible, that
stand in an historical relation to the arguments. Nozick has no such society to appeal to.
He goes back to Locke; and characteristically takes as the basis for his own thinking the
unhistorical side of Locke: unhistorical, in the sense that the state of nature as Locke
thinks of it was never historical. If you go back to the beginnings of human society, you
are not going to find Locke's solitary gatherers of acorns, or his independent subsistence
farmers; you are going to find hunter gatherer societies living in families or small bands
and sharing the day's catch.
3. LAISSEZ FAIRE ECONOMICS LACK OF PROTECTIONS FAVORS THE RICH

Laissez faire---``the system of natural liberty''---invites the attachment of individualists.
However, for a variety of reasons, including excessive value ascribed to goods
consumed by the rich, the special requirements of dealing with public goods, and the
need to make special provisions for training the poor in useful skills, an economy run
entirely under the banner of laissez faire will not achieve optimal production, even if
everyone involved is a well-informed judge of her own interest. Nor is the system
optimal for distribution, since, among other things, it does not distribute enough to the
poor to enable them to improve their productive skills, and it allows landowners to
appropriate unearned increments to the value of their land. (This, characteristically, is a
point that Nozick does not mention; it is not a benefit that reduces simply to acquisition
or the exchange of acquired goods, but one that supervenes on the interactions of a
concentrated population.)
WE CAN DISCUSS THE TRUTH OF

VALUES OUTSIDE OF LOGIC
1. VALUE STATEMENTS CAN BE UNIVERSAL AND PROVABLE
The existence of a criterion for a descriptive or evaluative word does imply the weak
universalizability, but not the strong universalizability, because the criterion may contain
a reference to an individual. The strong universalizability, because the reason may
contain a reference to an individual. Thus, if we wish to assert the strong
universalizability of a value-judgment, we need more logic of a reason. Thus, although
Sidgwick may not have known the modern logic, his intuition was quite acute. When he
asserted his Principle of Justice is not tautologies, he was basically right. The strong
universalizability of ought or right has some substantive content, not provable by
logic alone.
2. TRUTH IN UNIVERSAL VALUES IS A SUBSTANTIAL ETHICAL PRINCIPLE

Some may wish to appeal to the concept of morality (e.g., by asserting that at least
moral ought is universalizable), and others may admit that the strong universalizability
(with respect to evaluative words) is itself a substantive ethical principle, despite its
formal and abstract character. But in either case, its justification is needed. Notice that,
even if we made the substantive question, why should we be moral? Thus, although
many of us are, unlike Sidgwick, unhappy with an appeal to self-evidence, Sidgwicks
claim that the (strong) universalizability of ought is non-tautologies seems still correct.
3. SIDGWICKS VIEWS ARE REAL WORLD

Nozick's views, like Locke's, fit best a society of independent subsistence farmers and
independent artisans; but it is doubtful whether any current society originated in such a
society. This is a problem that social contract thinking in the style of Locke creates for
itself; and Nozick, taking the side of Locke---one side of Locke---arrays himself against
philosophers like Aristotle, or Saint Thomas, or Sidgwick, who continually had in mind
some current society, indeed the society current in each case with themselves.
Sidgwick never got so far from current society as to commit himself like Nozick to a
thoroughly idle appeal to history---not really to history, at best to a sort of history-inprinciple, history as it might have been, dream history. Nor does Sidgwick get so far from
current society as to contemplate anything like Nozick's Utopia, of people (most likely,
again, independent subsistence farmers and independent artisans with their own small
holdings of capital) freely emigrating between associations that foster different lifestyles. Nozick acknowledges barriers to such mobility in the real world, but does he
understand how formidable the barriers are, or how disinclined people may be to
emigrate even when the barriers are relatively easy to surmount? Why should people
leave Sweden or The Netherlands? There may be nowadays a trickle of people leaving
who in accordance with Nozick's beliefs are moving to the United States to try their
chances as entrepreneurs; but even they would not be leaving because they found the
public provisions in those countries, for medical care, education, unemployment
insurance, and pensions in old age, directly oppressive; or the comparatively honorable
record of those countries in international aid an intolerable drain on their pocket-books.
UNIVERSAL CLAIMS TO MORALS AND

ETHICS ARE INVALID
1. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS UNIVERSAL THEORY
Robert Nozick, Philosopher, ANARCHY, STATE, AND UTOPIA, 1977, p 77.
Perhaps it is best to view some patterned principles of distributive justice as rough rules
of thumb meant to approximate the general results of applying the principle of
rectification of injustice. For example, lacking much historical information, and assuming
(i) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that
those from the least well-off group in the society have the highest probabilities of being
the (descendants of) victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by
those who benefited from the injustices (assumed to be those better off, though
sometimes the perpetrators will be others in the worst-off group), then a rough rule of
thumb for rectifying injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to
maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society. This
particular example may well be implausible, but an important question for each society
will be the following: given its particular history, what operable rule of thumb best
approximates the results of a detailed application in that society of the principle of
rectification? These issues are very complex and are best left to a full treatment of the
principle of rectification. In the absence of such a treatment applied to a particular
society, one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any
particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no considerations of
rectification of injustice could apply to justify it. Although to introduce socialism as the
punishment for our sins would be to go too far, past injustices might be so great as to
make necessary in the short run a more extensive state in order to rectify them.
2. MUST FOCUS ON THE REAL WORLD AND IGNORE RIGHTS

In the next stage of his argument, Sidgwick goes beyond even the margin of
individualism. ``There is no reason to suppose that a purely individualistic organization
of industry would be the most effective and economical'' (Politics, Ch. 10 3;). Socialism,
he holds, meaning in its most intrusive instances, not just regulation, but production
carried on by the government, is in order for education, managing forests, building
bridges and streets in towns, providing roads, parks, and waterways elsewhere, making
banking and insurance available to the poor. He thinks that there are drawbacks to
government production, in particular in respect to motivation. It is not easy to make up
for the acute interest that individual entrepreneurs, proprietors of their own businesses,
bring to production. However, Sidgwick does not regard this as an insuperable
disadvantage. In time, motivations may change, for example, toward public spiritedness,
in ways favorable to extending socialism, even to the extent of having government
production become predominant. He contemplates with equanimity the eventuality of
having land come under national ownership (though this would be brought in with due
compensation). In every one of these connections, it is a practical comparison between

individualistic methods and socialist ones that will decide whether to go forward to more
socialism. It is not the restrictions of an abstract doctrine of rights that govern the
comparison, furthermore, but a comparison of benefits, in the simplest cases a
comparison of the quantities produced with given amounts of resources
REGULATIONS DECREASE INDIVIDUAL

LIBERTY
1. REGULATIONS HURT THE POWERLESS THE MOST
Sidgwick mentions monopoly, but does not give it special prominence or recognize the
ubiquity that according to the 20th Century theory of monopolistic competition must be
ascribed to it, though it is radically questionable how much of the ideal either on the
production side or the distribution side will be left standing when the ubiquity is
appreciated. More striking and more important is Sidgwick's omission to say how
business cycles affect production and distribution. If full production under the laissezfaire ideal is realized only intermittently, and the economy is periodically depressed,
with effects on income and happiness falling with much greater impact on workers---who
lose their jobs and livelihoods, and may fall into destitution---than on capitalists, must
not these effects be taken into account?
2. REGULATIONS DESTROY INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY

On other points, the amendments will have to correct some shortcomings. Sidgwick did
not appreciate how weak the bargaining position of a worker is vis-a-vis an employer,
even when the employer is a small manufacturer. Hence he objected to establishing
minimum hours for work as an infringement of personal liberty. Nor did he appreciate
the scope for petty oppression on the employer's part that is opened up by the worker's
immobility, given among other things family attachments and the fixed location of some
of his few assets (like a house partly paid for). These differences between workers and
employers have not gone away as huge bureaucratic organizations have supplanted
small employers in the economy private and public.
PETER SINGER
Peter Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia on July 6, 1946. At age 30, he began his
teaching career and has been teaching and writing since. In 1998, he was given a
professorship at Princeton University amid much controversy. His writings include
discussion of issues like animal rights, what makes an individual or creature a person,
and democracy.
Peter Singers educational experiences include a BA with honors from the University of
Melbourne in 1967, an MA from the University of Melbourne in 1969, and a BA in
philosophy from the University of Oxford in 1971. He has lectured at Radcliff, New York
University, La Trobe University, Monash University, and Princeton University (where he
currently is a professor). While at Monash University, Singer was a professor at the
Center for Human Bioethics, the Director of the Center for Human Bioethics, and codirector of the Institute for Ethics and Public Policy. He was awarded a fellowship by the
Academy of Humanities and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. He was a
senior scholar in the Fullbright Program, and was awarded the National Book Council of
Australia Banjo Award for non-fiction in 1995.
His works include DEMOCRACY AND DISOBEDIENCE in 1973, ANIMAL LIBERATION: A NEW
ETHICS FOR OUR TREATMENT OF ANIMALS in 1975, ANIMAL RIGHTS AND HUMAN
OBLIGATIONS: AN ANTHOLOGY in 1976, PRACTICAL ETHICS in 1979, MARX in 1980,
ANIMAL FACTORIES (co-author with James Mason) in 1980, HEGEL in 1982, TEST-TUBE
BABIES: A GUIDE TO MORAL QUESTIONS, PRESENT TECHNIQUES, AND FUTURE
POSSIBILITIES in 1982, THE REPRODUCTION REVOLUTION: NEW WAYS OF MAKING
BABIES (co-author with Deane Wells) in 1984, SHOULD THE BABY LIVE? THE PROBLEM
OF HANDICAPPED INFANTS (co-author with Helga Kuhse) in 1985, IN DEFENCE OF
ANIMALS in 1985, ETHICAL AND LEGAL ISSUES IN GUARDIANSHIP OPTIONS FOR
INTELLECTUALLY DISADVANTAGED PEOPLE (co-author with Terry Carney) in 1986,
EMBRYO EXPERIMENTATION in 1990, A COMPANION TO ETHICS in 1991, HOW ARE WE TO
LIVE? ETHICS IN AN AGE OF SELF-INTEREST in 1995, INDIVIDUALS, HUMANS AND
PERSONS: QUESTIONS OF LIFE AND DEATH (Co-author with Helga Kuhse) in 1994,
RETHINKING LIFE AND DEATH: THE COLLAPSE OF OUR TRADITIONAL ETHICS in 1994, and
ETHICS INTO ACTION: HENRY SPIRA AND THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT in 1998. His
works have appeared in nineteen languages. He is the author of the major article on
ethics in the current edition of the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. 1
When he was hired at Princeton University, the decision was met with much enthusiasm
and controversy. As the President of the University noted, But some of the controversy
arises from the fact that he works on difficult and provocative topics and in many cases
challenges long-established ways of thinking -- or ways of avoiding thinking -- about
them. Even careful readers of his works will disagree, sometimes quite vehemently, with
what he has to say or will reject some of the premises upon which he bases his
arguments. 2
SINGER AND HISTORICAL OPPRESSION

Singer uses a comparison of speciesism to the historical concepts of racism and
sexism. He believes that society has become far too complacent, and thinks that they
have gotten rid of the last form of discrimination. Now, instead of classifying those of
other races or women as less deserving of rights, we classify members of other species
as undeserving.
Singer understands that extending rights to animals seems a bit far-fetched. He also
reminds us that for a long period of time, liberation movements for minorities and
women seemed far-fetched; but that society has since realized its mistake. When Mary
Wollstonecraft published her VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN in 1792, it was
widely criticized as absurd. 3 The barrier that causes society to not extend rights to
animals is their view that these species are fundamentally different. But Singer explains
that equality can be extended with attention paid to detail, and again turns to the
womens rights movement as an example.
He explains that conceding the differences in beings does not mean they are unworthy
of equality. Instead, they merely need different considerations. For example, a woman
can claim that she has a right to an abortion; whereas a man cannot physically require
an abortion and so does not have this right. Women were given the right to vote
because they are capable of rational decision making just like men are. Dogs, however,
do not have that same capability and should not be allowed the right to vote. 4 Singer
concedes that there exist important differences between animals and people, but that
does not mean that the basic principle of extending equality to non-human animals is
invalid.
THE DEFINITION OF EQUALITY

Before we can explore the ways in which Singer believes equality should be extended,
we must first have a clear understanding of how he defines equality. In his All Animals
are Equal, Singer offers the following definition: The basic principle of equality, I shall
argue, is equality of consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment
and different rights. 5 This helps to further clarify the notion that equality does not mean
an extension of the exact same rights.
Fundamentally, Singers notion of equality is that it is a moral ideal, and not merely an
assertion of fact. A difference in ability documented in fact does not justify any
difference in the consideration we give them. Equality, according to Singer, is not
descriptive of they way beings are; rather, it is a prescription of the way beings should
be treated. 6 This consideration is based on two things. The first is the ability of a being
to suffer, and the second is if they have interests. If a creature cannot suffer, then they
cannot have interests. But if a creature can suffer, and a decision can cause that
suffering; their interests must be given equal consideration to human interests or any
other animals interest.
CRITERIA FOR EXTENSION OF EQUALITY

Critics of Peter Singer often offer criteria that attempts to include all of humanity and
exclude non-human animals. The proposed criterion are ways to determine who is worth
of having equality extended to them. Singer, however, points out that all of the
proposed criterion exclude some of humanity while including some non-human animals.
Singers ideas here begin with the notion that not all human beings are the same.
Singer notes that, Humans come in different in different shapes and sizes; they come
with differing moral capacities, differing intellectual abilities, differing amounts of
benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others, differing abilities to
communicate effectively, and differing capacities to experience pleasure and pain. 7
These differences make it nearly impossible to create a criteria that encompasses all of
humanity. Furthermore, factual equality comes with no guarantee that the abilities and
capacities that humans have are distributed evenly throughout the population. Because
the notion of basing equality on a fact; like intelligence, moral capacity, strength, or
other matters; creates divisions between humanity, a new criteria becomes necessary.
The criteria agreed upon by Singer, as noted above, is sentience. That is, the
determining factor is the capacity to suffer or experience happiness.
Others have proposed differing criterion that Singer responds to. The first idea that
Singer deconstructs is the notion that equal consideration should hold until there is a
clash between the interests of humans and non-human animals. After noting the
similarity this principle holds with the racist and sexist policies of the past, Singer
explains that if fails since our interests are constructed to always be in conflict with
other species. We eat them, wear them, and use them to do our labor. Perhaps the
conflict of interests is not real. Singer notes how much money and resources it requires
to raise animals for food, and explains how it is not necessary for a healthy diet. But
because we believe our interests are always in conflict, we will never give equal
consideration. Thus, a criteria based on equality only in certain circumstances fails.
Another proposed criterion to decide upon the extension of equality is intelligence or the
capability to reason. Singer is quick to explain the problem with this criterion: it
necessarily excludes humans who are infants and those who have mental defects. He
poses the hypothetical situation of an experiment that needs testing. His critics often
ask, if harming one animal in tests could save thousands, would that be ok? Singer
responds with another hypothetical situation: would the experimenter be prepared to
conduct the study using a human infant? If he is not, then it is simple discrimination. 8
There are a few other arguments that Singer answers. His critics claim that the reason
why infants should be included in the criteria of intelligence and reasoning is because
they have the potential to develop those things. This would mean that individuals with
mental defects still would not be included. It would also mean that sperm and eggs
would also have to garner equal treatment as a full-grown being. Again, critics of Singer
argue that those with mental defects should still be extended equality; but cannot
articulate why their criteria of intelligence and reasoning apply.
The final argument Singer addresses is that humans have an intrinsic dignity. Singer
notes that this is couched in many elegant phrasings, such as the intrinsic dignity of the
human individual, or that humans are ends in themselves. 9 This dates back to the
ideals of the Renaissance and humanists, and runs through Judeo-Christian doctrines.
Singer maintains that this idea only holds up when it goes unquestioned and assumed.
After all, fellow humans are not eager to disagree with the view that they are members
of the highest order. Once we ask the question as to why all humans have this worth we
are only taken back to the previous issue. It leaves us searching for the characteristic
that all humans possess and other animals dont that would qualify them for intrinsic
dignity. Those who advocate this position, therefore, find themselves in a precarious
situation without the ability to distinguish a defining characteristic.
INTERPRETATIONS OF SINGERS
CRITERIA
While Singer does frequently make reference to the fact that most proposed criterion
would include some animals but exclude infants and those with mental defects;
interpretations of these references is varied and controversial.
Critics of Singer say that his criteria for declaring someone a person are rationality and
self awareness over time.10 This leads many beings to not get classified as persons, and
therefore be seen as unworthy of equality. This would include brain-damaged people,
those with significant mental retardation, those with some forms of psychosis, human
embryos, human fetuses, chickens, and fish. However, many animals, like dogs and
bears, would be considered persons.
Here Singer enters territory that offends many and has helped to create a feeling of
hatred towards him. In PRACTICAL ETHICS, Singer writes, "When the death of a
disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy
life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss
of the happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the
second. Therefore, if the killing of the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others
it would . . . be right to kill him." 11 While many people disagree with Singers position,
few are able to articulate a standard that includes all types of humanity and excludes all
non-human animals.
SINGER AND BIOCENTRISM

Holmes Rolston III and some green philosophers argue that Singers position is
detrimental to biocentrism, and more specifically, to plants. Rolston concedes that our
views regarding ethics prior to Singer were too humanist, too focused on people. He
also explains, however, that Singer has proven himself blind to the still larger effort in
environmental ethics to value life at all its ranges and levels, indeed to care for a
biospheric Earth.12 The implications of this view outlined by Rolston are those of an
anthropocentric society. Singer argues that you would conduct environmental policy
with regards to the interest of those who are granted the status of person. Since those
persons depend on the environment, policy decisions would be made to protect the
environment in the interest of persons. However, an environmental ethic that is based
on human needs does not often differ in policy recommendations from an environmental
ethic based on the biosphere as its center.
Singer questions this criticism by pondering how we assign value if not based on
sentience. Rolston says value comes from having a respect for life. He supports his idea
with the thoughts of Paul Taylor, who details that every living organism has a will to live;
and that even plants are pursuing their own good. Singer dismantles this position by
noting that a plant doesnt have a choice as to whether or not it grows toward the light
for its own interest, rather it is just what the plant does and cannot be anything else.
Singer goes on to add that by the logic of those who advocate looking to plants
interests; the good of a missile is to blow up and should be considered, and a river is
seeking its own good to reach the sea. 13
THE GOOD OF THE ANIMAL

Some have argued (and attempted to use Singers utilitarian framework to do so) that
raising animals to eat is not causing them to suffer. This position is initially weakened by
the fact that it ignores the entire premise that killing animals in any way could be simply
wrong. However, engaging the argument still yields some debate. From a utilitarian
perspective, in order for an action against an animal to be wrong, it must cause
suffering; that is, whether is causes more benefit than harm. The question then
becomes, does raising animals for food cause more benefit than harm? R.M. Hare takes
the position that it is not. He says, For it is better for an animal to live a happy life,
even if it is a short one, than no life at all. 14
Singer answers this claim on several levels. First, he notes that mere existence is not in
itself a benefit. The creature would be allowed to live without human interference, so
breeding a new existence is not some sort of net gain for the animal. Second, even if
the benefit that this existence creates is good, the absence of a benefit is not harm. We
cannot compare what an animal would have in nature to what they would have in a
farm. Most importantly, however, Singer notes that the way animal production works
within the system does not take into account animal suffering. The confinement that
these animals endure, the disease and filthy living conditions, the painful ways in which
they are killed; all suggest a lack of concern for the animals.
Singer argues that allowing death is as bad as causing death. If humans simply took
advantage of the fact that animals died, it would still not justify the use of the creatures
as a means to an end. The implications of the distinction between causing a death and
allowing a death carry over from the realm of non-human animals into the world of
humanity as well. Here, Singer discusses the ideas of our responsibility in world famine.
Singer claims that proximity, or the distance between an individual and a famine, is no
justification for a lack of action. Complacently allowing death to happen is just as
morally and ethically wrong as dong the killing yourself.
PRACTICAL ETHICS
The philosophy of Singer is based on the idea of practical ethics. He first alludes to the
notion that philosophy and ethics should entail action in the introduction to a book that
developed from his thesis project at Oxford. In Democracy and Disobedience, Singer
explains how philosophy should be accessible to everyone by noting, As the subject of
this book is one that concerns not only those studying or teaching political philosophy in
universities but also any citizens, especially citizens of a democracy, who find
themselves faced with a law they oppose, I have tried to write throughout to write in a
way that can easily be understood by those who have never studied philosophy. 15
Singers view of accessibility extends to the way people use philosophy.
Practical ethics have three primary characteristics. The first is that it is revisionary; that
is, its purpose is to not merely explain the world and the way it works, but to change it.
The second is that in Singers work, facts matter. An understanding of the way things
are is necessary to determine the way things should be, the way we should strive to
make things. A third is that there is an assumption that individual action can make a
difference. This is why Singer discusses action as well as right and wrong, why he tries
to make his work easy to read and applicable to individuals. 16 Singer feels that a
discussion of an argument, an understanding of a position, is irrelevant and
uninteresting unless it calls for an action in a way that individuals can have power. This
perception that philosophy is not just for the academically inclined and is not to be
merely kept in books and the classroom helps to distinguish Singer from not only his
contemporaries but philosophers throughout history. Many philosophers and their
positions seem to invite action, but few have gone so far as Singer in making it a
primary goal explicitly explained to his readers and audiences.
SINGER IN DEBATE
Singers framework is particularly useful for calling into question the underlying
assumptions of your opponent. Any advocacy of valuing progress, growth, humanity,
etc. will most likely rest on the assumption that humans are inherently more valuable
than non-human animals. Unless your opponent can identify why that belief is justified,
a counter-advocacy of a value that encompasses all those considered persons would
be more beneficial.
Singers advocacy also has implications to any topics that particularly deal with science,
medicine, and academics. These lines of study all rely heavily on the superiority of
humanity, and use animals to further human aims. Counter values that rely on inclusive
values of animals and all life are much more preferable.
Singer also offers a critique of modern philosophy that can be applied in many ways. It
calls for a justification of the superiority of human beings that does not rely on rhetoric
such as, intrinsic worth of humanity. It also calls for a questioning of the basic
assumptions of the age. It is the significant problem of equality, in moral and political
philosophy, is invariably formulated in terms of human equality. The effect of this is that
the question of the equality of other animals does not confront the philosopher, or
student, as an issue itself- and this is already an indication of the failure of philosophy to
challenge accepted beliefs. 17 A critical discussion of what makes beings equal must
escape the normalcy of an assumption that humans are and animals arent.
________________________________________________________________________________
1 http://www.princeton.edu/~uchv/index.html
2 Princeton Weekly Bulletin. December 7, 1998
3 Peter Singer. All Animals are Equal.
10 Smith, Wesley J. Peter Singer Gets a Chair. http://www.frontpagemag.com/
11 Smith, Wesley J. Peter Singer Gets a Chair. http://www.frontpagemag.com/
12 Holmes Rolston. Respect for Life: Counting what Singer Finds of no Account. 1999.
13 Holmes Rolston. Respect for Life: Counting what Singer Finds of no Account. 1999.
14 R.M. Hare. Essays on Bioethics. 1993.
15 Peter Singer. Democracy and Disobedience. 1973.
16 Dale Jamieson. Singer and the Practical Ethics Movement. 1993.
17 Peter Singer. All Animals are Equal
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ball, Terrence and Richard Dagger. IDEALS AND IDEOLOGIES, (New York: Longman,
2002).
Hare, R.M. ESSAYS ON BIOETHICS, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Jamieson, Dale. SINGER AND HIS CRITICS, (Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers Ltd,
1999).
Pojman, Louis J., ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS: READINGS IN THEORY AND APPLICATION,

(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997).
Singer, Peter. ANIMAL LIBERATION: A NEW ETHICS FOR OUR TREATMENT OF ANIMALS,
(New York:
Review/Random House, 1975).
Singer, Peter. DEMOCRACY AND DISOBEDIENCE, (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1973).
Singer, Peter. ETHICS, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Singer, Peter. ETHICS INTO ACTION: HENRY SPIRA AND THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT,
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998).
Singer, Peter. PRACTICAL ETHICS, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993).
SPECIESISM IS THE NEW RACISM

1. REALIZATION OF THE FAULT OF RACISM IS LIKE REALIZING THE FAULT OF SPECIESISM
Jeremy Bentham, Philosopher and Jurist, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, 1789, ch. XVII.
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which
never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French
have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being
should be abandoned without a redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day
come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the
termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive
being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the
faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty or discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is
beyond comparison a more rational, as well a more conversable animal, than an infant
of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would
it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
2. SPECIESISM ATTEMPTS TO LOWER GROUPS JUST AS RACISM DID

Colin, McGinn, Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, SINGER AND HIS CRITICS,
1999, p. 152-153.
The point is that we should not think of animal pain as intrinsically ownerless. Animal
minds are not just bundles of subjectless sensations gathered around a single body. If
we conceive of animal pain in this subjectless way, thus refusing to grant genuine
selfhood to animals, then we will not see why it is morally significant, since pain matters
only because it is pain for someone. Putatively ownerless pain sensations have no moral
weight, since the alleged pain is not painful to a subject of awareness. In other words,
animals need to be granted selves if their sensations are to matter morally. This may
seem like a major provision, and one that threatens to exclude animal experience from
the moral realm; but in fact it is simply a point about the very concept of
experience....An experience always comes with an owner built into it. It is not that you
bundle some inherently ownerless experiences together and get a self, as Hume was
(partially) inclined to suppose; rather, to speak of experiences at all is already to assume
bearers for them- subjects of experience. (This is so whether or not the experiences are
conceived to be embodied in an organism.) So, since animals have experiences, they
necessarily have selves- by Freges point. Thus it is wrong to cause them pain, because
this will necessarily be pain for a subject of consciousness.
3. TOO MUCH FOCUS ON RATIONALITY DESTROYS DIVERSITY AS AN IDEAL

Robert C. Solomon, Quincy Lee Centennial and Distinguished Teaching Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, SINGER AND HIS CRITICS, 1999, p.69.
The danger is that reason, instead of building on our natural impulses, may instead
undermine them. If the basis of ethics is personal feeling for those we care about, there
is the very real danger that, in over-enlarging the circle to include everyone and
everything or in turning from the personal to the impersonality of reason , we will lose
precisely that dimension of the personal that produces ethics in the first place. But I
want to be equally cautious about premature enthusiasm for those universal feelings of
love, called agape, which have been defended by some of the great (and not-so-great)
religious thinkers of the world. There is the very familiar danger that such feelings,
however noble their object or intent, will degenerate into a diffuse and ultimately
pointless sentimentality, or worse, that form of hypocrisy that 9as has often been said of
such lovers of humanity as Rousseau and Marx) adores the species but deplores
almost every individual of it. The natural sensibility that is at issue here is nothing so
lofty as love or even universal care, but rather a kind of kinship or fellow-feeling, which
may well produce much caring and many kindnesses but will also provoke rivalry and
competition. The basic biological sense we seek, in other words, is not so much a
particular attitude or emotion as it is a sense of belonging, the social sense as such.
REJECTING THE CRITERIA OF

RATIONALITY IS BENEFICIAL
1. EUTHENASIA ALLOWS GREATER HAPPINESS FOR ALL
Jeff Sharlet, WHY ARE WE AFRAID OF PETER SINGER?, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
10 March 2000.
Critics often accuse Mr. Singer of being cold-hearted, a man who measures happiness in
numbers and considers love a replaceable resource. But to him the symbol of the "tragic
farce" brought on by an inhumane adherence to the sanctity-of-life principle is "Rudy
Linares, a twenty-three-year-old Chicago housepainter, standing in a hospital ward,
keeping nurses at bay with a gun while he disconnects the respirator that for eight
months has kept his comatose infant son Samuel alive. When Samuel is free of the
respirator at last, Linares cradles him in his arms until, half an hour later, the child dies.
Then Linares puts down the gun and, weeping, gives himself up."
That was April 26, 1989. Cook County charged Mr. Linares with first-degree murder, but
the criminal case was over by May, when a grand jury refused to indict him.
2. FOCUSING ON RATIONALITY DESTROYS INTUITION AND DEVALUES IT

Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, SINGER AND HIS CRITICS, 1999, p.73.
It is not necessarily thinking or negotiating that are essential here. Successful traders
and businessmen often claim (truthfully) that they dont think about what they are
doing. They just know what to do. So, too, animals display a remarkable array of
strategic behaviors- mother birds pretending to have broken wings to lead predators
away from the nest, monkeys fooling one another by uttering a misleading cry to
distract the others- without any need on our part to postulate Pentagon-like tactical
mentality behind their behavior. In such cases, even Darwin himself seems to have
erred in giving too much credit here to the role of reason and not enough to heredity,
but to attribute strategic skill to heredity is not to relegate it to merely automatic
behavior. Good game players usually describe their own skill in non-intellectual terms.
A good billiards or pool player simply sees the shot, she doesnt calculate it. A good
poker player doesnt sit skimming a mathematical odds book on the one hand and a
psychology of facial expressions text on the other. Of course, one must (to some extent)
acquire such skills but it doesnt follow that such skills are not also (or may not
alternatively be) genetically engineered or that the general capacity for strategic
behavior- the tit-for-tat attitude as such- must not be so engineered.
3. SINGER MAKES STRONG ARGUMENTS, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE COUNTER-INTUITIVE

Michael Specter, writer, The New Yorker, THE DANGEROUS PHILOSOPHER, September 6,
1999,
p. np.
When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better
prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled
infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a
happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse
effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him. Few people will
ever consider infants replaceable in the way that they consider free-range chickens
replaceable, and Singer knows that. Yet many of those who would never act on his
conclusions still agree that if an infant really had no hope of happiness, death would be
more merciful than a life governed by misery.
RATIONALITY IS BEST STANDARD

1. RATIONALITY IS THE HUMAN NORM AND ALLOWS FOR EXCEPTIONS
Stanley Benn, Senior Fellow in Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences in
Australia, NOMOS IX: EQUALITY, 1967, p. 62ff.
We respect the interests of men and give them priority over dogs not insofar as they are
rational, but because rationality is the human norm. We say it is unfair to exploit the
deficiencies of the imbecile who falls short of the norm, just as it would be unfair, and
not just ordinarily dishonest, to steal from a blind man. If we do not think in this way
about dogs, it is because we do not see the irrationality of the dog as a deficiency or a
handicap, but as normal for the species. The characteristics, therefore, that distinguish
the normal man from the normal dog make it intelligible for us to talk of other man
having interests and capacities, and therefore claims, of precisely the same kind as we
make on our own behalf. But although these characteristics may provide the point of
the distinction between men and other species, they are not in fact the qualifying
conditions for membership, or the distinguishing criteria of the class of morally
considerable persons; and this is precisely because a man does not become a member
of a different species, with its own standards of normality, by reason of not possessing
these characteristics.
2. RATIONALITY DISTINGUISHES SPECIES AND IS ACCEPTED STANDARD

Stanley Benn, Senior Fellow in Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences in
Australia, NOMOS IX: EQUALITY, 1967, p. 62ff.
Not to possess human shape is a disqualifying condition. However faithful or intelligent
a dog maybe, it would be a monstrous sentimentality to attribute to him interests that
could be weighed in an equal balance with those of human beings...if, for instance, one
had to decide between feeding a hungry baby or a hungy dog, anyone who chose the
dog would generally be reckoned morally defective, unable to recognize a fundamental
inequality of claims.
This is what distinguishes our attitude to animals from our attitude to imbeciles. It
would be odd to say that we ought to respect equally the dignity or personality of the
imbecile and of the rational man...but there is nothing odd about saying that we should
respect their interests equally, that is, that we should give to the interests of each the
same serious consideration as claims to considerations necessary for some standard of
well-being that we can recognize and endorse.
3. RATIONALITY DEFINES A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HUMANITY AND ANIMALS

Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, SINGER AND HIS CRITICS, 1999, p. 69.
As intelligent and sensitive human beings, we can acknowledge the harshness of the
world, and yet not accept it at all. We are not merely at the top of the food chain. We
are, in an important sense, above the food chain. We, as opposed to all the other
creatures in nature, are rational. We have what is uncritically called free will. We are
able to reflect and choose our food, our habits, our breeding patterns. As for the
saccharine quality of those Christmas greetings and that biblical fantasy, we can
understand that, too, as an expression of a certain sentimentality as well as a Christian
allegory. Our strange compassion for other species is a natural projection of our more
immediate concerns but something learned and cultivated, part of culture rather than
nature, the result of so many cuddly teddy bears and puppies when we were children, ad
aggressive campaigns on the behalf of sensitivity when we become adults. But
compassion, too, involves a certain distance. It too, one could argue, is not opposed to
but a consequence of reason.
THE INCLUSION OF ANIMALS AS

WORTHY OF EQUALITY IS BAD
1. GRANTING ANIMALS EQUALITY HARMS POLITICALLY DISADVANTAGED PEOPLE
Lori Gruen, Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, SINGER AND HIS CRITICS,
1999,
p. 134-135.
As Singer discusses the principle, it prohibits granting any weight to particular features
of a situation...According to Singer, that some people have a different skin color, are
from a different country, are of a different gender, or have different abilities than the
person engaging in moral deliberation are not considerations that in themselves justify
differential treatment. In most cases, such differences do not provide a rational basis for
differences in our ethical considerations or treatment. For example, a theory which
justifies the distribution of goods under which men receive greater benefits and thus
have more of their preferences satisfied than women do, simply because they are men,
is a theory that violates the principle of equal consideration of interests. According to
this principle, all that is considered in deciding the morally correct course of action is the
strength of the interests or preferences and the degree to which the interests and
preferences of those affected will be thwarted or advanced....Just as Singers substantive
impartiality condemns granting additional consideration to the interests or preferences
of ones racial or ethic group, so does it condemn granting additional consideration to
the interests or preferences of humans over non-humans, simply because they are
humans.
2. AN EMPHASIS ON REASON BY SINGER DESTROYS THE NATURE OF COMPASSION

Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, SINGER AND HIS CRITICS, 1999, p. 75.
My argument, in a sentence, is that Singer, in his emphasis on reason (and
consequently, on the role of normative ethical theory) underestimates the power of
compassion. An adequate sense of ethics requires not only reason but concern and
curiosity, a need to know about the state of the world and plight of people outside of
ones own limited domain. Reason, according to Singer, adds universal principles to the
promptings of our biologically inherited feelings. The danger, however, is that reason
will also leave those feelings behind, as evidenced by any number of philosophers who
simply talk a good game. Thus, I want to argue that what allows the circle to expand is
not reason (in the technical sense of calculation on the basis of abstract principles) but
rather knowledge and understanding in the sense of coming to appreciate the situations
and the circumstances in which other people and creatures find themselves. This
requires what many theorists now call empathy or feeling with (which Hume and
Adam Smith call sympathy and which might more accurately be called fellow-
feeling), and it requires care and concern, the emotional sense that what happens to
other matters.
3. WE HAVE NO NEED TO GO FURTHER; WE ALREADY GIVE CONSIDERATION TO ANIMALS

Bob Corbett, Professor at Webster University, COMMENTS ON PETER SINGER'S ANALYSIS
THAT LEADS TO SPECIESISM, 1999, p. np.
Let me begin with the easiest one, my number three. Singer rightly points out that most
of us are living examples of speciesism in the same sense that radical Ku Klux Klan's
people are racist. However, on the other hand, most of us are familiar with antispeciesist sentiments. Suppose one were all the things Singer attacks: a meat eater,
unconcerned with the processes of producing meat for the table, a zoo goer, a pet owner
and so on. Nonetheless, one might have an experience that is contrary to this position,
and most people seem to. Suppose one were drinking a large glass of milk and had
drunk one's fill. At the same time one noticed a small kitten, seemingly hungry and
crying. Many people would be enough moved by the "interests" of the kitten to look for
some container to pour the remaining milk into so the kitten might drink it. We would
not be absolutely immune to the "interests" of the kitten, even though our lives as a
whole might suggest we were speciesists of the worst sort. The point here is that many
of us have some intuitions toward the interests of animals. They may not be dominant,
and they might not be sentiments of equality, and they many not compete well with
contrary interests toward humans. At the same time, we still often have some positive
sentiments and intuitions toward the interests of animals. The notion that Singer will
develop in ways that may well be strange and new to us, are not 100% novel. If we have
a hard time grasping his view, perhaps returning to some of those personal sentiments
or intuitions might be a good place to go.
B.F. Skinner
BIOGRAPHY OF BURHUS FREDERIC

SKINNER
B.F. Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in the Pennsylvania town of Susquehanna.
Skinner received his bachelors degree in English from Hamilton College in New York.
After spending some time outside of school, Skinner decided to attend graduate school
at Harvard University. It was there that he got his masters in psychology in 1930, and his
doctorate in 1931. He continued to stay on at Harvard doing research until 1936.
After leaving Harvard, Skinner attended the University of Minnesota to pursue teaching.
Skinner married Yvvone Blue and they had two daughters, their second daughter
attained notoriety as the first infant to be raised in a one of Skinners air cribs. In 1945,
he went to Indiana University to chair their psychology department. In 1948, he went
back to Harvard where he taught until he died of leukemia on August 18, 1990. Many
say Skinner is the most important psychologist since Sigmund Freud.
SKINNER AND THE SCIENCE OF

BEHAVIOR
Skinner founded the theory of behaviorism. It's basic premise is that all human action
and decisions are based on how your previous behaviors were reinforced. Many
psychologists went on to work in the field of behaviorism, but Skinner was the first. His
theory assumes that when a person commits an action, they either receive positive or
negative feedback. The behavior is reinforced, and the person takes that into account
the next time they make a decision.
Skinner believed that his theories of behaviorism could be used to control the behavior
of not just individuals, but all of society. He also felt they could be employed to create a
better environment in which to live. Skinner is quite clear that his theories should be
used to alter human behavior in order to create the perfect society. Skinner discussed
this point of view in several of his published works including "Walden 2," which used
positive reinforcements to create a utopian society.
Thomas Szasz, a psychologist who believes that there is no such thing as mental illness,
wrote a review heavily critical of Skinner's behaviorism for robbing individuals of the
ability to make their own decisions. Since Skinner argues that every decision individuals
make is a product of their behavior, it is their behavior which causes them to act instead
of their own volition. Many are uncomfortable with this explanation of behavior, since it
not only robs individuals of agency but seemingly of responsibility. However, Skinner
would argue that it is unwise and impractical not to consider the way our past decisions
effect our future decisions.
Every decision made is training for future decisions. A person naturally takes in
information on the way others react to their decisions. Positive reinforcers are good
things that take place as a result of your decision. For instance, if you decide to show up
to work on time, positive reinforcers would include accolades from your boss, an
available parking spot, and getting more work done. Negative reinforcers are bad things
that take place as a result of the decision a person makes. For instance, if you decide to
show up late to work, negative reinforcers would include being scolded by your boss,
getting fired, and losing money.
OPERANT CONDITIONING
Skinner believed that the tool psychologists could use to change behavior for the good
of society was operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a theory developed by
Skinner where a being is operating in the midst of the world that is surrounding it. As it
is operating it encounters a specific type of stimuli, which Skinner calls a reinforcing
stimulus. A reinforcing stimulus has the ability to increase the operant, or behavior
occurring immediately before the reinforcing stimulus. Under the theory of operant
conditioning, a behavior is followed by a consequence and the nature of the
consequence alters the chances for repeating the behavior in the future.
The time frame is as follows: a behavior is committed, that is the operant. The behavior
is committed based on the reinforcing stimulus. Then, a consequence takes place based
on the behavior. That reinforcing stimulus teaches that the behavior had positive
effects, and increases the action to be taken again. Therefore, the operant is increased.
Skinner didn't believe that negative reinforcers should be used for operant conditioning.
Skinner took issue with some psychologists use of negative reinforcers. An example of
negative reinforcers would be the famous experiment involving Pavlov's dog. Pavlov
would sometimes drop water on the dog's head or hit the dog to try and modify
behavior. In Pavlov's experiment, the negative reinforcers were combined with positive
reinforcers, like receiving food or a pat on the head.
Skinner's objection to the use of negative reinforcers was not based on any moral
principle, such things did not exist for Skinner. Instead, Skinner felt that negative
reinforcers were a poor means for modifying a subject behavior. Negative reinforcers
gave impetus for individuals not to change their behavior, because many people have a
tendency to push back when pushed. Therefore, if you wanted to effectively change the
behavior of an individual, you should only use positive reinforcers.
Many have argued against negative reinforcers. However, most do so based on moral or
ethical grounds. Skinner provides a pragmatic way to reject negative reinforcers.
SKINNER AND ANIMALS

It should be noted that Skinner took the liberty of transferring the results of his
experiments from animals to humans. The majority of the data that he used for
developing his theory of operant conditioning came from experimenting on lab rats and
pigeons. From there, Skinner extrapolated what was true for pigeons and rats in very
specific circumstances and applied them to human beings in both very different and
very complex situations. This has led to other scientists questioning the validity of
Skinner's research.
Skinner's research on animals consisted of using positive reinforcers in an attempt to

modify their behavior. He would use positive reinforcers to attempt to teach the rats
and pigeons tricks. He, for instance, taught the pigeons how to dance. However, no one
has yet to firmly establish that the same types of positive reinforcers work in humans.
Skinner's research provides excellent detail on training animals, but its applicability to
humans is still questionable.
SKINNER, FREEDOM AND DIGNITY

Skinner did not believe in good people and bad people as created by nature from birth.
Instead, he believed that those distinctions were created by the way individuals were
treated throughout their lives. Skinner believed that bad people did bad things because
they were rewarded and that good people did good things because they were rewarded.
He argued that human being's reinforcers for bad and good decisions were anarchic,
they were all dependent on how you were influenced and there was no universal control
of what was good and bad. This relativistic point of view created the notion that
individuals would be different because they came from histories of different experiences.
Skinner argued that society as a whole should use behavioral technology to design a
culture where the good get rewarded and the bad gets eliminated through behavior
modification. This type of program would first require a definition of what is good and
what is bad. In order to encourage good behavior, it should be rewarded. Negative
reinforcers should not be used when bad is committed, but all good should be rewarded
with positive reinforcers. By encouraging appropriate and good behavior, there would
be more of a motivation to act in those ways. This would also decrease the incentive to
act in bad ways. Slowly, society's behavior could be modified until people always
avoided acting badly and pursued acting in manners that were good.
Another one of Skinners arguments is that freedom is an illusion. He feels that it

doesnt exist, and since it doesnt exist any discussion of freedom as a means to
impede progress was destructive to society as a whole. Skinner viewed the values of
"freedom" and "dignity" as obstructions to achieving progress as a society. Skinner
argued that the desire to do what one wanted, or "freedom," was a value that only the
privileged shared. This privileging of freedom, he argued, was responsible for impeding
the progress of society as a whole. In order to correct that problem Skinner argued that
one should use behaviorist methods of control to force individuals to be productive,
while at the same time use it to make them think they are "free." Skinner felt that the
only way freedom was beneficial to society as a whole was if they felt free.
Freedom as a concept, then, gets in the way of society using reinforcers to produce good
behavior. Admitting that manipulation is the superior option, Skinner urges that we
make people think they are free while still controlling their behavior.
SKINNER'S UTOPIC SOCIETY

Skinner believes that the concept of human agency is what is responsible for the
destruction of society (both social and ecological) that he sees occurring. While this
belief may seem extreme, it is important to remember the circumstances in the world
(post-WWII) when Skinner was developing his theories. In the utopic society he creates
in "Walden 2," Skinner uses his theories of operant conditioning and behavior
modification to remove the concept of human freedom and dignity.
It is interesting to note that Skinner's Utopic society requires behavioral modification and
control in order to exist. It is not created out of a state of nature, but rather through
effort and dedication and using rewards to modify behavior.
CRITICISMS OF SKINNER'S UTOPIA

There are many criticisms of Behaviorism in general and Skinner in specific, most of
which revolve around the behaviorist view of humans as mechanical organisms, lacking
any metaphysical characteristics such as freedom or self-determinism. Behaviorists
critics argue that this view of humans as only the sum of their visible parts justifies the
atrocities committed daily in the name of science.
For instance, genocide is committed because we see people as possessing no inherent

value, they are expendable. Similarly, science uses humans as experiments, who dont
matter so long as knowledge is gained at the end of it all. Further examples would
include killing being justified during war time or the death penalty.
Skinners failure to delineate the differences between people and animals also earned
him much criticism. According to Skinners theories the behavior of a dog or rat or pigeon
functioned just the same way a human mind would. However, the reasons for this
perceived similarity were never made explicit. This drew Skinner heavy criticism from
religious theologians and religious philosophers.
SKINNER'S ETHICAL SKEPTICISM

Skinners views on ethics and morals can best be described as skeptical. He does not
believe that metaphysical concepts like freedom, ethics or morals should be talked
about at all because they are not quantifiable and thus no truth can be reached on
them. In order to see how this is true, ask people to define "freedom." Even opposite
courses of action can both be defined as freedom. Some would claim we have the
freedom to own a gun, while others would argue guns should be banned since we have
the freedom to be safe.
Skinner is an atheist so his rejection of divine power is an easy place to look to when
trying to understand his extreme ethical skepticism. He saw religion as a way to
attempt to justify these abstract concepts that he felt could never be defined. He
thought the best way to move toward some good action was not through a god, but
through conditioning a person that doing good was rewarding.
SKINNER AND "MENTALISITIC"

CONSTRUCTS
Skinner believes that concepts such as freedom and dignity are mentalist constructs.
Mentalist constructs are the unobservable aspects of the human, like the mind,
personality, soul and of course the ego. Skinner vigorously disputes the existence of
what he calls the homunculus, the inner self in all humans that cant be seen. Since the
existence of the values couldnt be proven, Skinner argued they didnt exist. Instead,
Skinner saw all values as a product of behavior, so discussing any metaphysical theories
of values was irrelevant. Skinner also considered all statements of value to be a matter
of sheer linguistics, instead of proof.
To Skinner , statements like "murder is wrong" contained no factual information, instead

all they expressed was personal feelings. The statement should be viewed as "murder
is" with the value judgement being applied due to the past reinforcers of the person
making the statement. Therefore, statements of value contained no statement of truth
which could be applied universally, instead all they showed was an insight into the
reinforcers of the speaker.
SKINNER AND CONTROL

Skinner rejected most arguments that portrayed his behavior modification techniques in
a negative controlling way. According to Skinner, it is impossible to eliminate control
since all human behavior is shaped by reinforcers. With the inability to escape the
effects of reinforcers on behavior, Skinner argued that it was impossible to eliminate
control. He responded to these criticisms by discussing the idea of counter-control. A
critical first step, however, is recognizing control as it exists around us. Pretending that
we can eliminate that control will get us nowhere, and will deny us progress in moving
forward as a society. Instead, we can act out to exert counter-control, which is
predicated upon accepting that control will always exist in some form or another.
According to Skinner, counter-control through his operant conditioning was the only real
way to provide a check on the constant control people encounter. He felt his behavior
modification regimes were also an effective means of counter-control. Skinner argued
that the benign control he discuses in his behavior modification theory allowed a
constant check against negative types of control because under his regime, those
negative forms of control would be weeded out through behavior modification.
However, this solution by Skinner fails to account for people who would use his operant
conditions for re-enforcing negative behaviors.
SKINNER'S THEORIES ON EDUCATION

Shortly after publishing his work on operant conditioning, Skinner began trying to use
these discoveries to find the best way of instructing children in the classroom. It was
there that he came up with what was probably his most infamous invention, the Skinner
Box. The Skinner Box was a cubical space where children could sit inside, that used his
principles of operant conditioning to instruct students. Skinner believed that since
behavior was based solely on reinforcers, individuals would learn better if they were
showed the correct way to do a math problem after they tried each one. These
techniques became widely used in the classroom.
Skinner then began focusing on automated teaching, a method of instruction that would
teach using his principles of operant conditioning without a teacher present. Eventually,
due to cost and lack of public interest, Skinner put his effort to develop automated
teaching into creating books that taught students using operant conditioning. These selfteaching textbooks remain popular to this day, an example of types of books that use
these principle are math books that contain the answers to the problems in the back.
Recently, Skinner's ideas about automated teaching have been discredited because of
the abuse that occurs in the textbook system (individuals will get the answer before
doing the problem). It may therefore be necessary to have an instructor in order to
effectively use reinforcers.
SKINNER IN LD DEBATE
Because of his belief that ethical and moral concepts do not exist, Skinners uses in
debate are quite interesting. One of the best uses for his ethical and moral skepticism is
as an answer to questions of either ethics or morals. If defending a side of a resolution
where you must defend some concrete action against some type of metaphysical value,
B.F. Skinner would be a good author advocate to use.
Another interesting use of B.F. Skinner in LD debate is using some of B.F Skinners ideas
when selecting value and criteria. If you use Skinners behaviorism as a criteria, that
would be a weighing mechanism focusing solely on what individuals do to the exclusion
of a value based decision calculus. This could be valuable if you need to defend a
totalitarian or authoritarian model of government. Skinner could also be used in the
defense of a totalitarian government since in "Walden 2" he relied on behavior
modification to create a utopian society.
Skinner could also be used in LD debate to support the concept of counter-control as

effective means for fighting control. Skinner argues throughout his works that in order to
fight the oppressive controlling nature of things effective methods of counter-control are
necessary in order to defend oneself against even greater control.
Skinner can also function as an answer to all control being bad. Skinner's advocacy can
be used to show that control is not intrinsically bad, but is dependent on the way it is
used.
A final use of Skinner's philosophy can be to challenge the way an opponent defines a
value. Pointing out the contradictions in a value may not win you the round, but it will
force you opponent to clarify what they mean. Skinner explains that terms like "liberty"
and "peace" do not have any meaning that applies to everyone who hears them. If your
opponent is supporting a value, you could ask them to narrow what they mean by that
value. Point out that factors of "liberty" such as personal or societal liberty could
contradict, undermining their value.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Skinner, B.F. THE BEHAVIOR OF ORGANISMS: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS. New York:
Appleton-Century, 1938.
Skinner, B.F. WALDEN TWO. New York: Macmillan, 1948.
Skinner, B.F. SCIENCE AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR. New York: Macmillan, 1953.
Skinner, B.F. SCHEDULES OF REINFORCEMENT. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957.

(with C. B. Ferster [1])
Skinner, B.F. VERBAL BEHAVIOR. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957.
Skinner, B.F. THE ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR: A PROGRAM FOR SELF-INSTRUCTION. New

York: McGraw Hill, 1961. (with J. G. Holland [1])
Skinner, B.F. THE TECHNOLOGY OF TEACHING. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968.
Skinner, B.F. CONTINGENCIES OF REINFORCEMENT: A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS. New York:

Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969.
Skinner, B.F. BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY. New York: Knopf, 1971.
Skinner, B.F. ABOUT BEHAVIORISM. New York: Knopf, 1974.
Skinner, B.F. REFLECTIONS ON BEHAVIORISM AND SOCIETY. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall, 1978.
Skinner, B.F. A MATTER OF CONSEQUENCES. New York: Knopf, 1983.
Skinner, B.F. RECENT ISSUES IN THE ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR. Columbus, OH: Merrill,
1989.
CONTROLS ARE INEVITABLE

1. CLAIMS AGAINST CONTROL ARE ANOTHER TYPE OF CONTROL
Paul Sagal, Philosopher, B.F. SKINNER, 1981. p. 95.
When strong reinforcers are no longer effective, lesser reinforcers take over (178).
Voicing the words freedom and dignity acts as a reinforcer to members of the leisure
class. At the same time, the facts about freedom and dignity - that is, free and dignified
behavior - have become weaker and weaker general reinforcers. For example, well-off
people who do not have to work for a living have more time and thus better means to
protect their dignified holdings and their free status from the threats of those who have
neither time nor means. Inevitably the verbalizations of the latter about how good it
would be to be free and dignified are reinforced by those who have something to
gain by defending the words freedom and dignity. If freedom from the need to work
gives one the dignity to use all ones time in the pursuit of art, music, and literature. And
if such pursuits are the highest good, the no decent person should object to reinforcing
leisure for others as well as for himself. Doing as one pleases seems to many people to
be good, but whether the doing or the saying of it is more reinforcing is problematic.
Wealthy people who apparently have gained dignity and freedom reinforce the laboring
of others by hiring them and them complimenting them on how well they do what they
have been hired to do as well as paying them. For Skinner the survival of a culture is
threatened by its own verbalized values unless those values are also activated and thus
made reinforcing to the whole group. Leisure is not, in fact, and unequivocal good:
Leisure is one of the great challenges to those who are concerned with the survival of a
culture because any attempt to control what a person does when he does not need to do
anything is particularly likely to be attacked as unwarranted meddling (180).
2. CONTROL IS INEVITABLE AND FOCUSING ON "FREEDOM" AND "DIGNITY" INTERUPTS

ALL CULTURAL EVOLUTION
Because Skinner could predict hostile responses from those who were reinforced for
defending freedom and dignity - at any level - he needed to distinguish between good
and bad substitutes for freedom. Noting that any use of a technology of behavior is a
serious matter, he suggested that such a miscarriage could be avoided by looking not
at punitive controllers but at the contingencies under which they control. It is not the
benevolence of a controller but the contingencies under which he control benevolently
which must be examined. All control is reciprocal, and an interchange between control
and counter control is essential to the evolution of a culture. The interchange is
disturbed by the literatures of freedom and dignity, which interpret counter control as
the suppression rather than the correction of controlling practices (182-183).
VALUES CAN'T SOLVE CONTROL

1. ONLY COUNTER-CONTROL IS A VIABLE MEANS FOR STOPPING ABUSES OF
CONTROL,VALUES DO NOTHING
The attempt to control control, as it were, with counter control rather than with either
freedom or suppression is a neat ploy and much more semantically sophisticated then
anit-Skinnerians could see. If it were true that human beings could live better with no
controls upon them and still survive - that is, if they could live without habits and
adjustments and learned values then the elimination of all control would be reinforcing.
The denunciation of all controls, however, is in fact only a special kind of control:
namely, a plea that is differently reinforcing (usually as words) to special groups
preciously conditioned to feel less anxiety when they are told they are free.
Eventually, of course, the issue narrows down to the difference between good and bad
controls, for nothing except chaos is free. Fortunately, good and bad are definable
with reference to survival value. Those who find this parameter to narrow or otherwise
distasteful must then in all fairness disprove Skinners contentions by improving society
without invoking controls. To do so, of course, would require, at least at first, the
stringent control of all would-be controllers.
2. IMPOSSIBLE TO DIFFERENTATE ONE VALUE FROM ANOTHER

Paul Sagal, Philosopher, B.F. SKINNER, 1981. p. 100-101.
Traditional virtues and ideals are also brought down to the earthiness of behavioral
specifications. Bravery is not necessarily virtuous, and happiness is not necessarily
trivial; both, however, are often indistinguishable from ignoble qualities when defined
behaviorally. Bravery and foolishness, for example, are quite similar. A fool according
to Skinner, rushes into a dangerous situation not because he feels reckless but because
reinforcing consequences have completely offset punishing . . . . (64). A brave act and
a foolish one are both controlled by the kind of reinforcement which the community uses
to offset obvious risks.
BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION IS A REGIME

OF DISCIPLANRY POWER
1. REGIMES OF DISCIPLINARY TECHNOLOGY ARE OPRESSIVE
Michel Foucault, Philosopher, THE FOUCAULT READER, edited by Paul Rainbow, 1984. p.
188.
The chief function of the disciplinary power is to train, rather then to select and to
levy; or, no doubt, to train in order to levy and select all the more. It does not link forces
together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to
multiply and use them. Instead of bending all its subjects into a single, uniform mass, it
separates, analyzes, differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point
of necessary and sufficient single units. It trains the moving, confused, useless
multitudes of bodies and forces into a multiplicity of individual elements - small,
separate cells; organic autonomies; genetic identities and continuities; combinatory
segments. Discipline makes individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that
regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise. It is not a
triumphant power, which because of its own excess can pride itself on its omnipotence;
it is a modest, suspicious power, which functions as a calculated but permanent
economy. These are humble modalities, minor procedures, compared with the majestic
rituals of sovereignty or the great apparatus of the state. And it is precisely they that
were gradually to invade the major forms, altering their mechanisms and imposing their
procedures. The legal apparatus was not to escape this scarcely secret invasion. The
success of disciplinary power derives no doubt from the use of simple instruments:
hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and their combination in a procedure
that is specific to it - the examination
2. DISCIPLINARY TECHNOLOGY NORMALIZES ANY "DEVIANCE" WITHING ITS POWER

Michel Foucault, Philosopher, THE FOUCAULT READER, edited by Paul Rainbow, 1984. p.
195.
In short, the art of punishing, in the regime of disciplinary power, is aimed neither at
expiation, nor even precisely at repression. It brings five quite distinct operations into
play,: it refers individual actions to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space
of differentiation, and the principle of a rule to be followed. It differentiates individuals
from one another, in terms of the following overall rule: and the rule be made to function
as a minimal threshold, as an average to be respected, or as an optimum toward which
one must move. It measures in quantitative terms and hierarchies in terms of value the
abilities, the level, the nature of individuals. It introduces, through this value-giving
measure, the constraint of a conformity that must be achieved. Lastly, it traces the limit
that will define difference in relation to all other differences, the external frontier of the
abnormal (the shameful class of the Ecole Militaire). The perpetual penalty that
traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions
compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes.
INDIVIDUAL AGENCY IS KEY

1. DENYING INDIVIDUALS OF THEIR AGENCY IS SPIRIT MURDER
Szasz, Professor of Psychology at State University, New York, Against Behaviorism: A
review of B.F. Skinners About Behaviorism, LIBERTARIAN REVIEW, December 1974, p. 1.
One of the things that distinguishes persons from animals is that, for reasons familiar
enough, persons cannot simply live: they must have, or must feel that they have, some
reason for doing so. In other words, men, women [sic], and children must have some
sense and significance in and for their lives. If the do not they perish. Hence, I believe
that those who rob people of the meaning and significance they have given their lives
kills them and should be considered murders, at least metaphorically. B.F. Skinner is
such a murderer.
2. DENYING INDIVIDUALS OF THEIR AGENCY LEADS TO FASCISM

Charles E. Scott, Professor of Philosophy Indiana University, THE QUESTIONS OF ETHICS,
1990. p. 56-57.
The kinship among our best values and the evils that they recognize, and oppose is an
important aspect of the danger. Two of the Wests recent diseases of power, fascism
and Stalinism, used and extended mechanisms already present in most other societies.
More than that: in spite of their own internal madness, they used to a large extent the
ideas and devices of our political rationality (PK 209). The madness of these two
disease is not totally separate from the procedures of normalcy by which good orders
and orders of goods are arranged. The rationality of good sense, whereby the general
welfare of a population is pursued, and the formation of regulated selves are themselves
divisive process. They divide, even as they seek unification, by the excluding and
hierarchizing power of their own imperatives. The pursuit of the general welfare and the
formation of selves establish totalizing movements by their own activity. These totalizing
movements, which are definitive of modern states, institutions, and selves - as well as
many other ideas and values that are taken to function for the good of us all - appear to
Foucault to create the conditions of fascism and to create those conditions in the
process of achieving the good things sought by the state. If Foucaults thought, in its
exposure of the rationalitys that form us, has a totalizing movement, or if it is regulated
by the best that our culture has to offer, it will have perpetuated the very danger that he
hopes make evident. His intention is to create a discourse that is attuned to its own
dangers as it analyzes other dangers. His discourse, which is not a group of rules for selfformation, is governed by recoiling movements that prevent their instantiation in
principles of conduct or in self-relation. Our intuitive inclination to look for practical cash
value in studies of values, our impulse to make ourselves better by applying the values
of the discourse, our hope of improving the world by reading Foucault are the kinds of
motivations that his work makes questionable. In these motivations flow the powers of
ethics that Foucault holds in question as he constructs a discourse that resists
practicality and that holds open a horizon for multiple solutions that might be as far
from Foucaults thought as Christian confession is from Greek aesthetics. Freedom from
danger is not an expectation in Foucaults work, but ignorance of dangers, particularly

the ignorance that is enforced by our finest disciplines, professions, and knowledge, is
the object of his analysis. The ethical disappointment that accompanies the modesty of
Foucaults project is one of its threats for his readers. In the midst of terrible suffering
and cruel domination, we, at our ethical best, want hope bred of the possibility of relief
from the causes of evil. Rather than yielding to this misleading hope, Foucault refers to
the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and
exploits us.
THEDA SKOCPOL
Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at
Harvard. She is a native of the state of Michigan. She received her Bachelors degree
from Michigan State in 1969 and then went on to study for her PhD at Harvard. From
1975 to 1981 she taught as a member of the non-tenured faculty at Harvard
(Homepage). In 1981 the all-male department of Sociology at Harvard refused tenure to
Dr. Skocpol and Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) filed charges against Harvard
with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (E.E.O.C.) on her behalf
(Impersonal at Best). From 1981 to 1985 she taught Political Science and Sociology at
the University of Chicago, she then returned to Harvards Sociology Department. She
now has tenure in both Sociology and the Department of Government at Harvard.
Dr. Skocpol utilizes her experience in sociology and political science to analyze the
nature of public policy and social revolutions. Her work includes discussions about the
nature of the state, social policies and revolution through historical and comparative
methods. Her earlier works focused more on revolution while her more recent literature
tends to deal extensively with the United States domestic social policies.
Not only is Dr. Skocpol a researcher, professor and well-known author, but she is a wife
and mother. In addition to all of this responsibility she still finds time to be what she calls
her readers to be, an active citizen. She is involved in the community around her not
only through her books but by contributing to local newspapers.
In this essay I will briefly describe some of Theda Skocpols most prominant works and
the theories she has developed in them. Each section should provide another useful way
of approaching domestic and foreign topics in the realm of social policy or social change.
I will end with a general discussion of the importance of Skocpols work for LincolnDouglas debaters.
EXPLAINING SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS

In her early work, STATES AND SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS, Theda Skocpol defines social
revolutions as, rapid, basic transformations of a societys state and class structures,
(4). She points out that they are accompanied and partially carried out by, class-based
revolts from below. This type of change is not the only force of change in the modern
world, in fact, full scale social revolution has been quite rare. However, Skocpol argues,
that this particular form of change deserves special attention because they are a
distinctive pattern of sociopolitical change that has a large and lasting effect on both the
country where the revolution occurs as well as other nations around the world.
Social revolutions are fundamentally different, shows Skocpol, than other types of
societal change. She argues that social revolutions involve two coincidences. First, a
social revolution involves the coincidence of societal structural change with class
upheaval. Next, they involve the coincidence of political and social transformations.
Other forms of change never achieve this unique combination. The examples she points
to are rebellions that, by nature, involve class-based revolt but not structural change. As
well as political revolutions that transform the state but not society and do not
necessarily involve class struggles. The nature of the social revolution is unique because
of its mutually reinforcing nature and the intensity through which they work.
Debaters are often drawn to a social science perspective on social change in order to
explain the effects of their views on society. Skocpols work refutes such mechanisms as
the best method, especially in analyzing revolutions. Her work focuses on a structural
perspective and pays special attention to the specific contexts in which certain types of
revolutions take place. Through comparative historical analysis she helps to create an
understanding of international contexts and changes in domestic policies that spawn
revolutionary change in a particular society. She then uses her knowledge of history to
create a more generalizable framework and allow readers to move beyond particular
cases. This perspective is useful for Lincoln Douglas debaters because it allows for
method of examining values within a particular social and political climate and the effect
they will have on particular resolutions. It also allow debaters to utilize historical
examples without making it sound simply like a list that can be easily countered by a list
on the other side. Skocpols way of tying social and political forces together and
analyzing those issue which effect both provides debaters with a model for effective
argumentation through a discussion of past events.
Skocpols work draws heavily on Marxist tradition from which she recognizes that class
conflicts figure prominently in social revolutions. She takes the Marxist analysis further
by examining other factors that have an influence on social change. After understanding
that a particular class may come to a place where they realize the can struggle for
change it is also important to understand how such groups may carry out their
objectives. For this understanding political-conflict theories are necessary in Skocpols
analysis. The idea of political-conflict is based in the assumption that, collective

action is based upon group organization and access to resources (STATES AND
SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS 14). Thus, in following Skocpols model successfully a debater
would outline a particular stance on the resolution, those individuals capable of creating
change, their social position, and the resources available to the group. Hopefully,
through this analysis the debater should be able to show how their stance can create
positive changes in society.
The same method may prove successful in answering a plan that could have detrimental
effects. The structural perspective taken by Skocpol is one that examines, for better or
worse, the conditions that cause change. Her claim is that:
First, changes in social systems or societies give rise to grievances, social disorientation,
or new class or group interests and potentials for collective mobilization. Then there
develops a purposive, mass-based movement- coalescing with the aid of ideology and
organization- that consciously undertakes to overthrow the existing government and
perhaps the entire social order. Finally, the revolutionary movement fights it out with the
authorities or dominant class and, if it wins, undertakes to establish its own authority
and program. (STATES AND SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS 14-15)
Obviously, not all social revolution is a positive thing. A debater can use this strategy to
make the argument that the status quo is good or at least that the case brought about
by their opponent, if affirmed, could create a situation that would lead to an undesirable
revolution.
MATERNALIST SOCIAL POLICY

FRAMEWORK
In American political debates it is common to hear politicians refer to this nation as a
welfare state. The concept of the welfare state began in countries like Australia, New
Zealand and Brazil between 1880 and World War I. Early social spending in these
countries continued to spread to other nations as well including Denmark, Britain and
Germany where governments enacted laws concerning hour and wage regulations as
well as arbitration of labor disputes for workers. These countries also began
noncontributory pensions for the elderly, and insurance for workers. During wartime
nations like Britain became successful in maintaining and increasing such policies by
juxtaposing their model of the welfare state against the Nazi model, which they
labeled the warfare state.
Though many politicians would like to believe that the U.S. exists in the framework of
the welfare state, that view is inaccurate. While all of the previously mentioned
nations provided social benefits directly from the nations budget, the United States
model, which started long after these other nations programs, never followed a
noncontributory model and in only one instance was anything allotted directly from the
federal government to the citizens. The Social Security Act of 1935 included contributory
retirement programs as its only national program. Other issues dealt with by the Social
Security Act were things such as unemployment insurance, which left states in charge of
taxes and allowed them to determine coverage and benefits. The federal government
has never created a national health insurance policy and though it offers some subsides
for public assistance programs it is left up to the states to administer such policies.
The term welfare has always been a negative term in United States political
discussions. Americans tend to perceive these programs as handouts to people who are
lazy and havent earned them. This concept makes receipt of such benefits demeaning
and citizens attempt to avoid them. Skocpol examines these issues in order to analyze
the way the United States chooses to give out social benefits. In the past individuals in a
variety of areas, political science and history being the most prominent have discussed
the concept of welfare. Skocpol takes the work from both of these areas in to
consideration in understanding the development of social policies in the U.S. and
examining how their development was effected by who could vote and have an effect on
the legislation.
The welfare state concept has always been approached from a masculine standpoint.
The fundamental understanding and belief has been that the public sphere, politics and
business, was for males and females were responsible for the private realm, which
included the charities and the home. Welfare literature often ignores the gendered
dimension when examining American politics.
This mentality causes theorists to miss important issues when attempting to understand
the history and development of social policy in the United States. Skocpol alters that
reality by examining gendered social policies as well as maternalist policies in her work.
She argues that up until this point the role of literature on women and welfare has been
to sensitize readers to the subject and it therefore treats the subject through the use of
narrative and interpretive essay. Skocpol takes on the challenge of creating a
straightforward treatment of gender and social policies while learning from the more
tentative arguments that have previously been made on the subject.
Skocpol develops a maternalist theory of the United Stats social policies. This has a
number of implications for debate. First, this different perspective is one that allows
debaters to emphasize the role of women in the history and development of United Stats
social policy without painting the male population in a negative light. Second it provides
a well rounded concept of social policy in the United States, by examining pensions and
programs for males and the elderly as well as subsidies for women and children. Most
importantly however, this perspective allows debaters to move beyond shallow
criticisms of a patriarchal structure to a full understanding of what that term truly means
and how it may be an inaccurate criticism of United States policies.
The work done by Skocpol in her book, PROTECTING SOLDIERS AND MOTHERS, moves
away from an understanding of United States history as one where powerful men made
all the decisions and women could only make marginal gains under a patriarchal
framework. She explains the powerful place middle-class women found themselves in
once they began to organize around particular issues affecting their place in society. This
book defends an understanding of the power of various womens organizations that
make up the womens movement in America. However, the subject is not presented as
one sided but rather analyzed through an understanding of the interplay between a
variety of forces which she claims include womens organizations as well as, U.S.
political institutions and variously structured social movements and political coalitions
(PROTECTING SOLDIERS AND MOTHERS 36).
THE MISSING MIDDLE

The late 1990s were a fairly positive time in American history. Most nights the average
American could turn on the news and see President Bill Clinton or Vice President Al Gore
promoting their latest policy to put health care in the hands of the people and provide
opportunities to the working class. This could be followed by reports of the Clinton
administrations success at keeping the economy up and unemployment rates low. In
such a political climate it struck many people as strange that Theda Skocpol would
choose that time to speak out about inequality in America. Her book, THE MISSING
MIDDLE, was published in 2000 and all of the issues that she addresses are still
important in current political debates. The framework she sets up in this work provides
yet another useful mechanisim for analyzing problems with the social and political
structure in the United States while finding workable solutions to those issues.
Despite media reports that America was in a prosperous time the majority of the country
was feeling overworked and underpaid, having trouble obtaining health care and proper
treatment at their jobs and not seeing the great wealth they heard about every night
from the news media. A shallow analysis of this problem may yield support for an
understanding that American media is inaccurate, a widely accepted understanding in
the U.S. However, in this case the media was absolutely right, unemployment was down,
the stock market was up and social spending was high as well. In order to explain this
paradox Skocpol developed her theory of the missing middle.
When talking about the middle she refers both to those individuals who fall into the
middle of the socioeconomic spectrum as well as the middle of the generations. Her
theory applies to
Working men and women of modest economic means- people who are not children and
are not yet retirees. They are adults who do most of the providing and caring for the
children, while paying the taxes that sustain retirees now and into the future. (THE
MISSING MIDDLE 8)
The people she is referring to are the one who fall somewhere in between the poor
that are often the focus of welfare debates and the wealthy professionals who are
usually defended in political debates by the conservative politicians. The group Skocpol
seeks to address are generally working Americans who spend long hours at a job
because they need to feed families and want to create a decent life either as a single
parent or in a dual income home.
Those individuals who fall in the middle of the generational and socio-economic
spectrum, Skocpol argues, are generally ignored in political debates. She points out that
political debates devolve into conflicts between what are seen as the rich and poor
in American society on issues such as welfare. More recently social policy debates have
become an issue of the elderly verses the young. Politicians tend to juxtapose the needs
of an aging population with the programs designed to help underprivileged children.
While all of these groups are relevant to discussions on social policy, taking this
approach insures that politicians leave out the largest portion of American society, the
working population, many of them parents, who Skocpol argues, are truly at the
epicenter of the changing realities of U.S. society and economic life (THE MISSING
MIDDLE 8).
The reason many Americans found themselves feeling overworked at the end of the
1990s while the media reported on the positive status of America was because they
were, and still are. Skocpol argues that because politicians continue to ignore the middle
section of people in Americas diverse spectrum of individuals they continuously miss
the needs of this population. Though the Clinton administration can tout low
unemployment rates and a high stock market it is irrelevant to a large portion of the
population. The low unemployment rate sounds good but ignores the fact that more
Americans are working harder for less money than they have before and a majority of
those same people could care less about a rising stack market because they dont own
stock or have the time to learn how to invest their money because they are too busy
getting out there and trying to earn it.
This work is especially important for Lincoln-Douglas debaters to have as a tool when
determining a perspective with which to shape the debate for a couple of reasons. First,
this theory differs from most current social and political theories in that it stand right in
the middle of the dominant perspectives and still provides tons of clash with all of the
things around it. By examining a resolution through the missing middle perspective you
seem to be avoiding the extreme positions and providing a discussion that is more
palatable yet it will always clash with the dominant positions in these debates.
This may leave some debaters thinking, why would I want to take a middle of the road
stance if there will still be a lot of literature that clashes with it? The answer to this is
simple, because the theory of the missing middle addresses, mainly, working class
parents it provides a realistic mechanism for assessing the resolution which your judges
may often relate to. While college student and professors who judge Lincoln Douglas
debate may be more amenable to radical discussions on either the right or the left of the
resolution these individuals are not always the largest portion of a high school debaters
judging pool. Often working parents make up a large portion of the audience at
tournaments and Skocpols theory of the missing middle may be the perfect perspective
with which to approach a resolution and make arguments that your audience can relate
to. Additionally, because Skocpols theory tends to address the unspoken majority in
American society she may provide a safer perspective when you are having trouble with
audience analysis.
LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE
APPLICATIONS
Some of the implications of this authors work for Lincoln-Douglas debates have already
been outlined in previous sections. Here I would like to give a more broad discussion of
the application of Skocpols work to this activity. This particular theorists work is a great
tool for debaters because she takes the time to analyze situations from a viewpoint that
allows the reader to examine historical examples, which LD tends to draw upon, tied
together with values and political context as well as factors such as class, to explain
events. Her work provides a mechanism for examining proposals made in the form of
policy action as well as those that are created more as social changes.
Skocpols work is useful for any Lincoln Douglas debater who finds themselves in a
debate about domestic or foreign social policies. She takes great care in pointing out the
roots of social policy as well as explaining work done in a variety of fields and showing
what other scholars have contributed to the research. She also does a beautiful job of
answering those theories that she chooses to disagree with. In Skocpols book a debater
will not only find a framework through which to construct a case, they will find useful
examples and explanations that support the arguments they choose to make.
Additionally, reading Skocpols work will assist debaters in understanding perspectives
that may be used to answer their case and providing them the tools necessary for
refuting such arguments.
The final reason that debaters may find Skocpols work accessible is that she does not
merely offer an explanation of why things are the way that they are nor does she stop
after a thorough criticism of a particular structure. Instead, her criticisms and
explanations end with plans for practical actions that could bring about desired change.
No matter what subject a debater may access this authors work to find she will end her
discussion with a workable solution to the problems laid out in the discussion. Following
her structure will allow debaters not only to have a political theory on which to base
their arguments but it will provide a logical structure that culminates in a workable
mechanism for change that should make sense to the critic.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barker, Kristin Kay, Federal Maternal Policy and gender Politics: Comparative Insights,
JOURNAL OF WOMENS HISTORY, July 31, 1997, p.183.
Dubrow, Gail Lee, Impersonal at best: tales from the tenure track, OFF OUR BACKS,
May 31, 1982,
p. 28.
Halliday, Terrance C. Review Section Symposium: Lawyers and Politics and Civic
Professionalism: Legal Elites and Cause Lawyers, LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY, Fall, 1999.
Kornbluth, Felicia A., The New Literature on Gender and the Welfare State: The U.S.
Case, FEMINIST STUDIES, April 30, 1996, p.171.
Ritter, Gretchen, and Nicole Mellow, The State of Gender Studies in Political Science,
THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE,
September 2000.
Skocpol, Theda and Stanley B. Greenberg, THE NEW MAJORITY, New Haven: Yale
Skocpol, Theda, THE MISSING MIDDLE, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.
Skocpol, Theda, PROTECTING SOLDIERS AND MOTHERS: THE POLITICAL ORIGINS OF

SOCIAL POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Skocpol, Theda, STATES & SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF FRANCE,

RUSSIA & CHINA, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Wineman, Steven, THE POLITICS OF HUMAN SERVICES, Boston: South End Press, 1984.
SKOCPOLS THEORY OF THE STATE IS

GOOD
1. SKOCPOL CAN ACCOUNTS FOR INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS BEARING ON POLITICS
Kristin Kay Barker, Professor of Sociology, Federal Maternal Policy and gender Politics:
Comparative Insights, JOURNAL OF WOMENS HISTORY, July 31, 1997, p.183.
Skocpol's larger theoretical agenda is to substantiate her framework -- a polity-centered
perspective -- for accounting for the trajectory of social provisions. Given the enormity of
her undertaking, resulting in over 500 pages of text, I will necessarily condense her
account. Simply stated, in her polity-centered perspective (much as in her earlier statecentered model), the history of social policy is understood by situating it "within a
broader, organizationally grounded analysis of American political development"(526). In
other words, governmental institutions, bureaucrats, political parties and officials,
electoral rules, and policy feedback loom large. Together, these institutionalized forces
create policy opportunities and barriers.
2. SKOCPOLS EXPLAINS STATES POLICIES' RELATIONSHIP TO SEXISM WELL
Felicia A. Kornbluth, The New Literature on Gender and the Welfare State: The U.S.
To this already weakened edifice of Marxian theory, historical sociologist Theda Skocpol
delivered a series of blows that threatened to bring it tumbling down. "[C]apitalism in
general has no politics," she argued in 1980, "only (extremely flexible) outer limits....
[S]tate structures and party organizations have (to a very significant degree)
independent histories." 13 Skocpol and her colleagues redirected the focus of study,
from whether and how economic elites could determine political outcomes, to the
emergence of particular government policies from particular governments. 14 In
Skocpol's vision, the shape of a government in itself-which she takes as mostly invariant
over time, that is, the United States possesses a decentralized, weakly bureaucratic
"Tudor polity," whereas historic monarchies like Sweden and France have strong central
states-has enormous weight in shaping public policy. The negotiations and conflicts
among politicians, bureaucrats, and elite interest groups account for much of the
remainder. In her newest work, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of
Social Policy in the United States, Skocpol introduces the term "structured polity" to
describe the mix of political autonomy and social constraints that operate to produce
social policy. However, just as the neo-Marxists admitted the "relative autonomy" of
politics while loading the dice in favor of "determination in the last instance" by
economic power, Skocpol pushes social determinants out of her study so far as to load
the dice in favor of autonomous state actors.
Neither neo-Marxists nor Skocpolians offered a model that entirely works for feminist
students of welfare. However, the emphasis of both models on determination and
autonomy, in combination with the postmodern suspicion of theories that make social
life sum up into a neat coherent whole, has helped in describing the complex historical
relationships between masculine power and government policy. Although not always
explicitly, the literature under review profiles both the tight links between sexism and
state policies, and the random walk that such policies often take along their autonomous
historical paths.
3. INCLUDING GENDER IN POLITICAL STUDIES IMPROVES THE ANALYTIC FRAMEWORK
Gretchen Ritter, Associate professor of American Politics at University of Texas at Austin
and Nicole Mellow, a graduate student in the same department, The State of Gender
Studies in Political Science, THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL
AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, September 2000.
Research on policy in a historical context tends to be preoccupied with broad theoretical
questions that are of concern to feminist and other political theorists. There is a tradition
of research in the area of social welfare exemplified by scholars such as Theda Skocpol
and Gwendolyn Mink that has influenced not only scholarship on American political
development but interdisciplinary feminist scholarship as well. In Protecting Soldiers
and Mothers (1992), Skocpol asserts that the early development of American social
policy was shaped by a social feminist movement that advocated for the establishment
of a maternalist welfare state. In The Wages of Motherhood (1995), Mink follows the
development of this welfare state through the New Deal and argues that it was not only
gendered but also racialized in ways that lowered the civic status of poor women and
nonwhites. This type of policy and law research offers one of the most promising venues
for integrating gender in such a way as to both critique and reformulate standard
theories and interpretations of AP. Gender is being used not just to add women to a fixed
political picture. Rather, it provides an analytic concept for understanding the nature of
political relations and state institutions.
SKOCPOL'S UNDERSTANDING OF
MATERNALISM SHOULD BE ADOPTED
1. SKOCPOL PROVIDES THE CLEAREST UNDERSTANDING OF MATERNALIST POLICIES
Kornbluth, Felicia A., The New Literature on Gender and the Welfare State: The U.S.
Skocpol clarifies her operating definition of maternalism by analogy to the "paternalism"
she argues characterized most other welfare states. "Pioneering European and
Australasian welfare states," she writes, in Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, were doubly
paternalist:
Elite males, bureaucrats and national political leaders, established regulations or social
benefits for members of the working class-that is, programs designed "in the best
interest" of workers, rather than just along the lines their organizations requested.
[W]hile very little paternalist legislation was passed in the early-twentieth-century
United States, the story was different when it came to what might be called maternalist
legislation. (P. 317) As paternalist social policies were paternalist in two ways-in their
content, which treated men as fathers and heads of families, and in their processes of
creation, which were largely closed to their putative working-class beneficiaries-so were
maternalist policies maternalist in two ways. In content, they treated women as mothers
who made claims on the state thereby; in their processes of creation, they were
designed by ambitious middle-class women for working-class women, with the latter's
perceived best interests in mind.
2. MATERNALISM UNDERSTANDS THAT WOMEN HAVE A POLITICAL ROLE AS MOTHERS.

Felicia A. Kornbluth, The New Literature on Gender and the Welfare State: The U.S.
Maternalist reformers may be familiar to some readers, who know them as "social
feminists," or as the fractious, exhausted, post suffrage women's movement. Readers
may also hear in maternalism, which simultaneously justified a public role for women
and affirmed women's primary responsibility for children, echoes of what historians of
the early national United States have termed "republican motherhood." However,
maternalism represents a unique political philosophy that is particular to the historical
moment at which it emerged. Many women reformers in U.S. history may have believed
(in Ladd-Taylor's phrase) "that there is a uniquely feminine value system based on care
and nurturance" or (in Gordon's) have "imagined themselves in a motherly role toward
the poor." But we can distinguish maternalism from social feminism, republican
motherhood, and other reform ideologies by emphasizing its special, time-bound
contribution to political thought. Maternalists were those reformers at the turn of the
twentieth century who believed that motherhood or potential motherhood was a
legitimate basis for women's citizenship, that women as mothers deserved a return from
their governments for the socially vital work they performed by raising children, and/or
that governments had a special responsibility to ensure the health and welfare of
children.
3. THE HISTORY OF MATERNALISM SHOWS THE IMPORTANCE OF WOMENS EXPERIENCES
Kristin Kay Barker, Professor of Sociology, Federal Maternal Policy and gender Politics:
Comparative Insights, JOURNAL OF WOMENS HISTORY, July 31, 1997, p.183.
For over 20 years feminist scholars have outlined the ways in which maternalist rhetoric
and strategies were employed in the formation of social policy campaigns and crusades.
Although often overlooked in scholarship focused on state provisions to workers, federal
social programs for mothers, potential mothers, and children figured prominently in the
configuration of early welfare politics. These texts continue to advance the larger claim
of feminist scholarship that existing categories of analysis fail to capture adequately
women's realities. Historical accounts of the emergence of maternal policies are
significant not only because they make for a richer representation of the crucial years of
welfare-state development in Western capitalist democracies between 1880 and 1940.
More important, they offer a fundamental restructuring of our current understanding of
what is political.
SKOCPOLS THEORY CANNOT CREATE

CHANGE
1. SKOCPOLS THEORY OF THE STATE FAILS TO RECOGNIZE THE AUTONOMY OF LAW.
Terrance C. Halliday, Senior Research Fellow, American Bar Foundation, Adjunct
Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University, Review Section Symposium: Lawyers
and Politics and Civic Professionalism: Legal Elites and Cause Lawyers, LAW AND
SOCIAL INQUIRY, Fall, 1999, p. np.
Theory of the State. Within political sociology, a substantial literature has arisen that
critiques the failure of pluralist theories to recognize the centrality of the state as an
institutional actor with interests of its own with some measure of autonomy from the
economic and political interests that emerge from the market and civil society. Shamir
sympathizes with Theda Skocpol's thesis that state managers develop their own
agendas, but he criticizes Skocpol and other state theorists for failing to comprehend
law's autonomy: "In asserting the autonomy of the state, in both class and statecentered approaches, law and its carriers had been reduced to a mere instrumentality"
(p. 165). Hence Shamir maintains that if it is good enough to argue for the autonomy of
the state and its managers, it is also good enough to take seriously the autonomy of law.
2. THE WELFARE STATE IS AN INSTITUTION OF EXPLOITATION THAT CAN'T BE REFORMED

Steven Wineman, Author, THE POLITICS OF HUMAN SERVICES, 1984, p.36.
It is a mistake to view the welfare state policies as representing a qualitatively different
system from the conservative program. Instead, they represent a different version of
how to sustain the corporate capitalist structure. Point for point, liberal human services
leave basic elements of the political economy in tact: structural unemployment; severe
stratification of power; the predominance of giant corporations; reliance on industrial
production which poisons the planet. If the true agenda of the conservative program is
to serve the interests of big business, the hidden function of the welfare state is to
maintain political and social stability and to deter fundamental change- in the interests
of the corporate order. This function proceeds despite the conscious of many individuals,
from legislators to bureaucrats to social workers, to "do good."
MATERNALISM IS FLAWED
1. MATERNALISM CAN ONLY PROVIDE A LIMITED CONCEPT OF RIGHTS AND

RESPONSIBILITIES FOR AMERICAN WOMEN; THIS CAUSES THEIR POLICY INFLUENCE TO
OFTEN BE COUNTER PRODUCTIVE.
Michel, Sonya, teaches American women's gender, and social welfare history at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she is also the co-editor and author of a
variety of works on these subjects, "The Limits of Maternalism," MOTHERS OF A NEW

WORLD (ed. Koven & Michel), New York: Routledge, 1993. p. 307.
The case of child care and mothers' pensions reveals both the strengths and the
limitations of an ideology rooted in arguments about women's natural capacity as
mothers. While maternalism empowered the early female philanthropists to establish
day nurseries and the NDFN to improve them, maternalism can also cast public child
care as peculiarly unstable enterprise with a self-divided and self-defeating sense of
purpose. Similarly, it was maternalism that fueled the campaign for mothers' pensions,
but also maternalism that contributed to the humiliating and punitive treatment of
recipients. Ironically, after the turn of the century maternalist ideology began to weaken
as parent education and other fields challenged the notion of maternal instinct and
called for training and professionalization for those who dealt with children. What
became extracted and reified was the single trope of the woman as mother in the home,
which continued to be reproduced not only by experts on children and the family, but
also by policy makers seeking to restrict governmental services for women. It was the
limited vision of women's rights and responsibilities, not the idea of child care as public
service to all, and that became maternalism's legacy to the American welfare state.
MATERNALISM IS BAD FOR WOMEN

1. SKOCPOL'S GENDER ANALYSIS IS SIMPLISTIC AND INCOMPLETE
Eirinn Larsen, PhD. researcher at European University Institute, "Gender and the Welfare
State: Maternalism: a New Historical Concept?" A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE
OF CAND.PHILOL. THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN, NORWAY.
Spring, 1996, p. np.
To Gordon, the problems in Skocpol's interpretations are already present in the outset of
the book: she fails to produce any adequate definitions of what she means by
"paternalist" and "maternalist". Gordon continues: "This failure exemplifies ways in
which Skocpol's approach to the influence of gender is undeveloped in relation to the
theoretical level of much scholarly gender analysis today". Clearly, Gordon indicates that
Skocpol's analysis is not matched by familiarity with scholarly debates on gender.
Gender means "female" for Skocpol, and Gordon claims that "she produces an entirely
celebratory account of the women's organizations she studies. She has no critique of
maternalism". Skocpol uses maternalism as an opposition to paternalism, without
directly expressing the distinctions between the two concepts, with the exception of the
structural differences mentioned above. The absence of such a specification and
definition is a result of her failure to ground her concept of gender in questions of male
and female power, says Gordon. Gender is, after all, not merely a neutral or benign
difference; it is a difference, or rather a set of meanings culturally constructed around
sexual difference, in a context of male domination. In the entire book there is no
discussion of male power in general or in its specifics -or, to put it inversely, of the fact
that the forms of political power with which Skocpol is so concerned are shaped by their
maleness.The maternalist strategy was after all a result of women's lack of political
power, says Gordon, and thus the concepts of paternalism/maternalism refer to an
inequity of power in relation to both gender and generation.
2. SKOCPOL'S ESSENTIALISM REINFORCES A DESTRUCTIVE GENDER BINARY.

Eirinn Larsen, PhD. researcher at European University Institute, "Gender and the Welfare
State: Maternalism: a New Historical Concept?" A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE
OF CAND.PHILOL. THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN, NORWAY.
Spring, 1996, p. np.
The stratification of the American welfare system into the social insurance and public
assistance program, often called the two-track welfare system, was, in the way Gordon
sees it, a result of gender values shared by both men and women, in order to maintain
the family wage system. ...male and female welfare reformers worked within
substantially the same gender system, the same set of assumptions about proper family
life and the proper sphere for men and women. By not employing gender as a
male/female opposition, Gordon is able to underscore that men and women were holding
similar visions of the economic structure of the proper family in which the welfare state
took its form. However, while these gendered assumptions did not necessarily express
antagonism between men and women, they were anything but universal: "they
expressed a dominant outlook, to be sure, but one that did not fit the needs and
understandings of many less privileged citizens". In other words, Gordon thinks it is false
to believe that a kind of unity among women was present at this time. Women's activism
was as much as men's, determined by class as much as by gender. "Specifically, this
supposed unity denies that women's agency also derives from other aspects of their
social position." Gordon continues: She [Skocpol] generalizes about these "maternalists"
as if they were manifestations of some universal female principle. They did share some
fundamental beliefs and assumptions about proper role of government and the proper
construction of families, but Skocpol identifies these commonalties no more than their
differences.
ADAM SMITH
PHILOSOPHER/ECONOMIST 1723 - 1790
Life and Work

The founder of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, was born in Kirkaldy, Scotland in
1723, the son of a Scottish judge. After attending Glasgow University and Oxford, Smith
embarked on a long career of lecturing in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Paris, where he
associated with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire. Smith never intended to
be an Enlightenment Philosopher, his chief concerns were in jurisprudence and
economics. His famous Wealth of Nations, although it echoed Enlightenment
assumptions concerning human nature and the benefits of technological progress, was
at the time merely a document designed to identify the way nations can productively
grow and avoid the stagnation of feudalistic state control.
Smith was a moral philosopher, but this term had quite a different meaning than what
we associate it with today. Moral for early philosophers simply meant human, thus
the moral philosopher was concerned with social and political theory rather than the
physical sciences. To Enlightenment thinkers, however, the methodology of the hard
sciences promised to shed light on questions of human nature as well. Smith and his
contemporaries honestly believed that, given the proper formulas and sufficient
empirical data, the actions of individual humans and their society could be predicted
with the same accuracy as the laws of Newtonian physics.
Capitalism
The Eighteenth Century was the dawn of the historical transition for Feudalism to
Capitalism. The former was characterized by a landed aristocracy which owned most of
the wealth and land, allowing peasants to exploit aristocratic resources which would
sustain the serfdom while vastly increasing the wealth of the feudal lords. But as the
small traveling mercantile class began to accumulate more and more wealth
independent of the aristocrats, the merchants became more powerful while the lords
became increasingly irrelevant. Philosophy followed suit, giving us Locke and Rousseau
who dejustified the Divine Right of kings and replaced it with a world view theoretically
granting sovereignty to all citizens. By the time of Adam Smiths death in 1790, the
Revolutions in America and France materialized both the transition from Feudalism to
Capitalism and the natural rights philosophy that accompanied this transition. Rather
than invention capitalism in The Wealth of Nations, Smith merely sought to describe it.
Smiths two major contributions to economics were (1) the Labor Theory of Value, and
(2) social cohesion under Capitalism, the theory better known as the Invisible Hand.
But Smith also wrote a philosophical tract on ethics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Although most people identify Smith as the proponent of ruthless economic competition,
his works are replete with arguments for compassion and even included some
recognition of the role of government in ameliorating Capitalisms often brutal division of
labor.
Searching for a universal standard of measure in economics, Smith contended that the
value of a commodity was equal to the quantity of labor the holder of the commodity
could exchange it for. Thus, if I have an apple, its value is the amount of work I can
make another person do in exchange for that apple. If, however, someone trades me a
banana for an apple, then I must assume that the apple and the banana are roughly
equal in labor value. Additionally, it is important not to confuse this particular theory of
value with the Labor Theory of Value proposed by David Ricardo and later Karl Marx.
Those two economists turned Smiths Labor Theory Upside down: For them, the value of
a commodity was the labor required to produce it, not the labor for which it could be
exchanged. But the important philosophical point raised by the any Labor Theory is that
it assumes, in the fashion of the Enlightenment, that a universal standard of measure is
possible. If this is true, then it is indeed possible to predict the results of large flows of
capital, which implies that the entire economic base of society can be understood and
hence economic mishaps (recessions, depression) can be avoided.
Smith articulated this economic optimism in his second major contribution, the theory of
the Invisible Hand. Smith believed that, left uninterfered with, everyones individual
actions would cohere with everyone elses, resulting in a natural, progressive
maximization of the good of all An individual player in the economic game might believe
his or her actions are motivated solely by self-interest, but the collective sum of selfinterested actions would serve the interests of all. To be sure, mistakes will be made and
misery will sometimes exist (hence Smiths reluctant admission that the government
must sometimes step in) but progress will still occur, like a child who occasionally skins
her knee, but still grows stronger and wiser, society will progressively shake of its
injuries and grow economically and culturally.
An Imperfect System
Uninformed political thinkers often contrast Adam Smith and Karl Marx as polar
opposites. While it is true that Smith favored Laizzes Faire Capitalism and Marx longed
for communal ownership of the means of production, the two thinkers were both political
economists, and this made them members of the same philosophical family. Both
believed that the economic base of society was a chief determinant of the aspects of the
rest of society, and both believed Capitalism would result in a natural, sometimes
efficient, division of labor. Smith, however, was far more optimistic about both human
nature and the viability of the market than Marx. His optimism failed to foresee many of
those downsides of the free market which Marx would refer to as internal
contradictions. Smiths belief in social cohesion, it has been charged, blinded him to the
fact that the market almost never correct itself in the natural and easygoing way Smith
predicted. Instead, Marxists and others point to those periodic crises of overproduction
which result in inflation and decreased buying power for all but the very rich.
Moreover, even Smith occasionally admitted that unchecked Capitalism would result in
large scale alienation of the dispossessed. capitalism is, after all, a game, and in any
contest there must be winners and losers. In this case the losers may not merely be
those who lose all their money, but may also be the spiritually alienated workers and
bureaucrats whose sole function is to keep the machines of the game running. In earlier
times, craftsmen made and sold their products in such a way as to identify themselves
with their work. A shoemaker who devotes considerable attention to his cobbling will
presumably identify with his finished product much more than a worker in a modern
shoe factory who must simply put one piece of the shoe together, over and over, for ten
hours every day. A market economy rewards technological innovations such as mass
production, but one result of mass production is, in Marxian terms, the alienation of the
worker from his or her product.
Capitalism may result in other forms of alienation as well. Workers forced to compete
with each other for jobs might easily stop seeing each other as fellow human beings and
begin to see them as threats to their livelihood. The massive class divisions of owners,
workers, middle managers, the unemployed, etc., surely cannot result in the cohesion
that Smith envisioned. Rather, what is likely to happen is widespread hatred and even
social violence. Likewise, economic competition often leads to international conflicts
over resources, as suggested by a Marxist of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Debaters wishing to employ the philosophies of Adam Smith will find many notable
quotes and principles explaining the tenants of Capitalism. But Smith also wrote about
other issues, such as the limits of reason and the importance of individual freedom.
Many resolutions ask for the comparison of social and individual needs. Stating these
needs in economic terms might have a distinct advantage over their expression in
abstract, philosophical terms: Economics is based on a materialist and pragmatic view of
the world which can be expressed in concrete, real world terms. Debaters wanting to
develop such strategies ought to read a little economic theory and familiarize
themselves with the great economists such as Smith, Ricardo, Marx, and others.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Maurice. ADAM SMITHS ECONOMICS (London: Croom Helm, 1988).
Fry, Michael (Ed). ADAM SMITHS LEGACY (London: Routledge, 1992).
Fulton, Robert Brank. ADAM SMITH SPEAKS TO OUR TIMES: A STUDY OF HIS ETHICAL
IDEAS (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1963).
Lux, Kenneth. ADAM SMITHS MISTAKE (Boston: Shambhala, 1990).
Scott, William Robert. ADAM SMITH AS STUDENT AND PROFESSOR (New York: A.M.
Kelley, 1965).
Small, Albion Woodbury. ADAM SMITH AND MODERN SOCIOLOGY (Clifton: A.M. Kelley,
1972).
Smith, Adam. THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1976). _______ THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
________ ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHICAL SUBJECTS (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1982).
Werhane, Patricia H. ADAM SMITH AND HIS LEGACY FOR MODERN CAPITAUSM (New York:
_______ ADAM SMITH AND MODERN ECONOMICS (Hants, England: Edward Elgar, 1990).
West, E.G. ADAM SMITH (New York: Arlington House, 1969).
CONTEXT IS KEY TO HUMAN MORALS

1. REASON ALONE CANNOT DETERMINE RIGHT AND WRONG
Adam Smith, in Maurice Brown. ADAM SMITHS ECONOMICS, 1988, p. 63.
(I)t is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perceptions of right
and wrong can be
derived from reason, even in those particular cases upon the experience of which the
general rules are formed. These first perceptions, as well as all other experiments upon
which general rules are founded, cannot be the object of reason, but of immediate sense
and feeling.
2. MUST BE AWARE OF SITUATION TO DETERMINE MORALS

Philosophers have, of late years, considered chiefly the tendency of affections, and have
given little attention to the relation which they stand in to the cause that excites them.
In common life, however, when we judge of any persons conduct, and of the sentiments
which directed it, we constantly consider them under both these aspects.
3. LAWS DO NOT RETAIN THEIR VALIDITY OVER TIME

Laws frequently continue in force long after the circumstances, which gave occasion to
them, and which
alone could render them reasonable are no more.
UNRESTRAINED LIBERTY IS THE

HIGHEST SOCIAL GOOD
1. OUR FREE ACTIONS INCREASE SOCIAL GOOD EVEN IF WE ARE UNAWARE OF IT Adam
Smith, in Maurice Brown. ADAM SMITHS ECONOMICS, 1988, p. 129.
As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital
in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that is produce may be
of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue
of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the
public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of
domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing
that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends
only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to
promote an end which is no part of his intention.
2. UNRESTRAINED FREEDOM OCCURS NATURALLY

Adam Smith, in Edwin G. West. ADAM SMITH AND MODERN ECONOMICS, 1990, p. 15. All
systems either of preference or restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away,
the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord.
Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to
pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and his capital
into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.
3. NO NATURAL INEQUALITY EXISTS--PEOPLE HAVE BASICALLY THE SAME ABILITIES Adam

Smith, in Edwin G. West. ADAM SMITH AND MODERN ECONOMICS, 1990, p. 37. The
difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware
of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different
professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause,
as the effect of the division of labor. The difference between the most dissimilar
characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to
arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.
4. PEOPLE WHO ARE DENIED OPPORTUNITY WILL NOT GROW IN ABILITY

Adam Smith, in Edwin G. West. ADAM SMITH AND MODERN ECONOMICS, 1990, p. 46.
The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations...becomes as stupid
and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind
renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational
conversation, but of concerning any generous, noble or tender sentiment, and
consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties
of private life. (ellipse in original)
CAPITALISM IS THE MOST JUST

ECONOMIC SYSTEM
1. CAPITALISM, WHILE IMPERFECT, IS STILL THE BEST SYSTEM
Adam Smith, in Michael L. Fry (Ed.). ADAM SMITHS LEGACY, 1992, p. 35.
This system, with all its imperfections is, perhaps, the nearest approximation to the truth
that has yet been
published upon the subject of political economy, and is upon that account well worth the
consideration of every man who wishes to examine with attention the principles of that
very important science.
2. SELF-INTEREST IS NATURAL
Adam Smith, in Patricia H. Werhane. ADAM SMITHS LEGACY FOR MODERN CAPITALISM,
1991, p. 49.
Self-preservation, and the propagation of the species, are the great ends which Nature
seems to have proposed in the formation of all animals...Nature has directed us to the
greater part of these by original and immediate instincts...without any consideration of
their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to
produce by them. (ellipse in original)
3. GOVERNMENTS EXIST TO PROTECT INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

1991, p. 54.
The first and chief design of all civil governments, is...to preserve justice amongst the
members of the state and prevent all encroachments on the individuals in it, from others
of the same society.--(That is, to maintain each individual in his perfect rights). (ellipse in
original)
4. INDIVIDUALS KNOW WHATS BEST FOR THEMSELVES

Adam Smith, in Patricia H. Werhane, Professor of Philosophy, Chicago. ADAM SMITHS
LEGACY FOR MODERN CAPITALISM, 1991, p. 88.
According to the Theory of Moral Sentiments, every man is certainly, in every respect,
fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person. In The Wealth of
Nations, this translates into the natural liberty to take care of ones own economic
interests without external restraints.
5. SELF-INTEREST LEADS PEOPLE TO HELP EACH OTHER

1991, p. 90.
Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is vain for him to
expect it from their benevolence only. He will be far more likely to prevail if he can
interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to
do for him what he requires of them.
6. RATHER THAN HURTING THE POOR, THE RICH GENERATE WEALTH FOR EVERYONE
1991, p. 101.
The rich only select from the heap what is most precious and agreeable. They consume
little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though
they mean only their own convenience, though the sole end which they propose from
the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain
and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements.
They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessities
of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions
among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the
interest of society, and afford means to multiplication of the species.
Answering Smith
Introduction
Adam Smith is one of the most influential philosophers of the last 300 years. This much
is beyond dispute. Adam Smith wrote an enormous volume called The Wealth Of
Nations, which every high school history and economics teacher claims to have read.
Almost none of them have. This, too, is beyond dispute.
And that's about where the "beyond dispute" ends. The left and the right have waged a
textual war over the claim to Smith's legacy in print during the last ten years, and the
true allegiances of the man who is often (erroneously) called "the father of capitalism"
have been thrown into question more than ever before.
Who is right? Who is wrong? Well, in debate, that's not really the question. The question
is, can you convince your judge that YOU, rather than your opponent, has the right idea
about Adam Smith's ideas? When turning your attention to answering his philosophies,
consider that - as is most philosophers - you'll do yourself a big favor by reading the
original works, even if it an intimidating 900-page book that your lying teacher hasn't
even read. But you'll be glad you did. After all, I'VE read it. Really. Trust me.
Who Was Adam Smith, Anyway?

Adam Smith was a Scottish economist and moral philosopher who is very much in the
tradition of "classical liberalism," a term which his also been used to describe such
intellectual luminaries as John Stuart Mill and Wilhelm von Humboldt.
What does that mean, classical liberal? We'll talk about that in some detail below. But
one thing I can tell you is that it bears little resemblance to what we know today as
"liberalism," a philosophy that necessitates some reliance on governmental intervention
into the economy and human life. That's not to say Smith was opposed in toto to those
things, though, because he certainly wasn't.
Smith took a post as professor of logic at Glasgow University in 1751 and became the
chair of moral philosophy in 1752. He covered a lot of ground in the lectures he gave,
including ethics, rhetoric, jurisprudence and political economy, or "police and revenue."
He published his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759, which was his most influential
work until The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, the year of the American
Revolution's onset.
Anyway, Smith's moral thought is often given short shrift in order to focus on his
economic ideas. That's understandable, given how much more famous he is as an
economist - but there is the not inconsiderable fact that his moral thought influenced his
economic thought, and vice versa.
Beware of the person who tries to tell you that Adam Smith was the father of ANYTHING,
especially the free market, capitalism, or laissez-faire economics. Smith was an
important thinker in a tradition of thinkers stemming from 17th century rationalism and
the 18th century thought it spawned. But, as with many other philosophers of influence,
political types will try to use his words for their own benefit.
Answering Adam Smith

One theme that runs through a lot of the essays I write on these philosophers is to
advise people to get to know the philosopher they want to answer. Its really a precursor
for answering the argument: if you dont know it as well as your opponent, you wont
debate it as well. If you know it better, youll probably debate it better.
For the purposes of this essay, though, Ill try to predict the way most people will debate
the thought of our Mr. Smith, and advise you the best way to tackle that. Due to the fact
that most debaters will argue Smith as "Adam Smith endorses free trade, capitalism and
the lack of government intervention into the marketplace," I think the best way to tell
you how to answer Smith is to explode some myths about our friend Mr. Smith. We'll talk
about modern classical liberal thinkers who have tried to reclaim Smith from the
economic conservatives, and we'll talk about Smith's own moral notions.
Finally, after we're done there, I'll tell you different approach to take. If you think your
judge simply won't buy that Smith WASN'T really the founder of capitalism, WOULDN'T
really embrace free trade uncritically, etc., then we'll talk about other critiques of his
work that you can use. For now, though, let's examine why Smith isn't what you heard
he was in your high school classes.
Myths About Adam Smith

Like anyone whose predominant work was written over two centuries ago, Smith's
application to modern society will be disputed about in academic debates - not just high
school academic debates, but debates throughout the academy. There are a variety of
fronts upon which this battle is being waged.
Let's begin with the idea that Adam Smith was "the founder of capitalism." First, Smith's
Wealth Of Nations was published in 1776. This was during a truly precapitalist time, if we
define capitalism (as most do) as the market-based actions of an industrial economy. In
fact, even those high school history teachers I talked about earlier will tell you that a
quite different economic system ruled the day - a system called mercantilism, where rich
merchants and joint stock companies with state sponsorship (often monarchical
sponsorship, as in the case of Columbus) ruled the day.
If you had money, or were in good with someone who did, you could start a business and
make a lot of cash. If you had a WHOLE lot of money, you could start a transnational
enterprise like the Hudson Bay Company or the Dutch East India Company, and make
even more money - without being constrained by such niceties as child labor laws, or
laws against the slave trade.
Smith's Wealth Of Nations was essentially a critique of this mercantilist economic

system. Written before factories, before Eli Whitney's cotton gin gave rise to mechanized
agriculture in the colonies, Smith's magnum opus basically decried the whole enterprise
as hopelessly corrupt, as rich men gathering together to cheat the public out of money
and distort markets for their own advantage at the expense of the mass of humanity.
Why is he interpreted as a free-market capitalist? Well, partly because his notion of

markets hadn't been seen articulated in such a way before. Mostly, though, it is because
Smith has stern words for governments. He talks about how government policies serve
only to impoverish the nation, how taxation impoverishes the working poor, and matters
like that.
What people often miss is, his REAL criticisms are reserved for the rich people that those
government policies help out. He talks about how the rich obey the vile maxim of the
masters of mankind": All for ourselves, and nothing for other people. He discussing
how they are guilty of conspiracies against the public, where prices are fixed to the
benefit of the capital-rich cabal.
So yes, Smith had some stern rebukes for government and taxes. But he also had a point
to that rebuke: taxes shouldn't be used to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Classical Liberalism
Let me start out this section with a notion: If a talented craftsperson creates a work of
art out of mere avarice - a desire to mass-produce things that people will buy - "we may
admire what he does, but we despise what he is."
This is very much in line with classical liberal thought on free and fulfilling work engaged
in by choice and done under one's own control. This thought saw its earliest formulation
in the 18th century with men like the German thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt. In turn,
Humboldt inspired the famous John Stuart Mill - who you may have heard of as well as
Smith himself.
Its called Classical because this is the first formulation of this particular idea in this form.
Why is it called liberalism? Well, aside from being liberal in its interpretation of human
needs - creativity, freedom, intellectual stimulation - thinkers like Smith favored
openness in terms of economics as well. That's why, to this day, knocking down trade
barriers is called trade "liberalization," in a term that is only marginally accurate, by the
way.
But I digress. We were talking not just about trade, but also about work, and how the
classical liberal would interpret human needs for labor. At the root of human desires, the
classical liberal reasons, is the need for creative work. This type of work must be under
one's own control in order to be truly fulfilling, for obvious reasons. If you've got an
angry boss or a communist party official forcing your hand, it's difficult to be fulfilled.
Now, these ideas are very much NOT capitalist ideas. The capitalist ideal - as we've seen
formulated by such appalling human beings as Daniel Lapin and earlier Ayn Rand,
among others - is the notion that if you can't translate the labor you engage in into
money, than that labor is useless.
Extending this argument to its logical conclusion, the capitalist argues, humans don't
have a right to engage in free and creative work - the laborer must instead rely upon the
market to dictate to him or her what she or he must do. You can see how the classical
liberal would find this notion abhorrent, indeed morally repugnant.
In fact, Noam Chomsky has made the case that Smith himself would find such an idea
"pathological" - that is, indicative and representative of a diseased mind. There are other
ideas Smith pushed which support this case, as we'll see in just a bit. But first, let's
consider some counterarguments that the defenders of Smith-As-Capitalist-Icon are
likely to make. There are basically three of them that will be popular.
Argument The First: "The Market

Should Have No Government
Constraints"
About the only true thing that those people arguing Smith as the defender of capitalism
will say is that Smith argued in favor the market economy. That's true. he did. Sort of.
More, he argued AGAINST the kind of economy that would distort the market away from
the "natural price" of an item. That kind of economy - a mercantilist one - mostly existed
because of monopolies. Due to the serious resource intensiveness of searching for many
expensive goods and the costs of shipping those goods (by long end costly boat trips,
usually), only the super-rich of those sponsored by kings and queens could afford to do
it. Thus, they were the only game in town.
And as Bill Gates could tell you, when you're the only game in town, you can charge
whatever price you want. You can also use all the stroke that your money and privileged
position in society gets you to squash your competition. We call this "monopolistic
behavior." Its not really so different today as it was in years past.
Smith saw a solution to this problem: locally-organized, lively markets of small producers
and consumers. With a lot of people able to produce goods and services, you would have
people continually trying to offer those goods and services for less than their neighbor.
This takes the big producer out of things, and allows communities to grow by producing
essential goods.
David Korten, the bestselling author of When Corporations Rule The World and The PostCorporate World, has painstakingly researched Smith and come up with a list of provisos
which he believes Smith would endorse that markets should live up to.
Smith had a lot of conditions that markets needed to meet before they could be
effective. Another of those conditions was that the markets had to be LOCAL. None of
this transnational stuff, which is one of the things he hated so much about mercantilism.
Rich men that ran the Hudson's Bay Company could obey "the vile maxim" and create
monopolistic price regimes which hurt the poor and working people. To truly achieve
optimal market function, you would have to have many people capable of producing
goods and services in a locality, thereby maximizing competition.
A big part of this is encouraging locally-owned small enterprise. As Smith writes, "A
gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, united in his own person
the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore,
should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third."
In his ideal market, people take on multiple roles - owning land, tending it, and preparing
the goods for market.
What shouldn't be allowed to happen? Big corporations consolidating power. Though

what we know of as corporations didn't exist in Smith's day, there were big businesses
which, though different in form, served the same social role. Significantly, Smith railed
against the "Joint Stock Companies" and their effects on society.
For one thing, the rigidly stratified companies took workers away from the position of
influence, undermining the direct participation necessary from the classical liberal
perspective. For another, he worried that these companies might be turned by legal
decree into "immortal persons" - a warning that has been borne out by history.
So as we can see, the notion of Smith as an unrestrained free-marketeer is far from true.
This continues as we examine one of the next arguments you'll hear on Smith.
Argument The Second: "Markets

Produce Equality"
This is another argument that is made which is literally true - Smith did say something
that included the words "liberty" and "equality" relating to markets - but is not entirely
correct.
What Smith said was the under PERFECT liberty, a free market situation would produce a
tendency toward equality. What this reveals isn't so much Smith's thoughts on markets
as his thoughts on people. If people were able to achieve total freedom, and everyone
was just as free as everyone else, then by golly, EVERYONE would get just as wealthy as
everyone else. What does this idea sound like to you? It sounds like Smith believed that
everyone - even the poor - had an equal shot at success if there was a level playing
field.
This tells us two things: first, that his big problem with mercantilism was that it failed to
create a level playing field; and second, that we (government?) should take steps to
ensure that such a playing field could be created.
Another manifestation of this idea? The difference between the most dissimilar
characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to
arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. That is, you give
everyone a chance, everyone can succeed. Say what you will about this idea, it certainly
isn't a capitalist one.
Well known is Smith's idea that the market brings with it the "division of labor" - whereby
certain workers are shunted in laboring jobs, while others go on to different employment.
Most people only know of the praiseworthy effects Smith ascribed to this phenomenon efficiency of the economy, driving prices down, and so forth.
But Smith the moral thinker condemned the human effects of this trend, saying it
created humans who were "as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature
to be," and would create a permanent underclass unless government - yes, government
- "take(s) pains to prevent" this fate for the "labouring poor."
Argument The Third: "The Invisible

Hand"
Okay, so this isn't really an ARGUMENT, per se. It's rather a catchphrase, a buzzword, an
ear-tingling code that has found its way into the discussion of Smith. It's probably the
only part of The Wealth Of Nations that your high school economics teacher knows. And
THAT I'm serious about.
I list it anyway because it is what people throw off at you in an attempt to "prove" that
Smith was into all of this free-market jive. "Didn't Smith say that under market
conditions, an 'invisible hand' would drive prices to their ideal level?" Well, sort of, but
not really.
Quick quiz: how many times does Adam Smith use the term "invisible hand" in the 900+
page Wealth Of Nations? I'll give you a hint: you can count to that number on the finger
you use most while driving. That's right: the 'invisible hand,' which is presented by
scholars as one of the core elements of Smith's philosophy, is used a whopping ONCE in
the weighty tome that is The Wealth Of Nations. Try this quiz on your teachers. They'll
appreciate it. Really.
The quotation in question: "Every individual...generally, indeed, neither intends to

promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the
support of domestic to that of foreign industry he intends only his own security; and by
directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he
intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible
hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."
What this shows - rather than just giving you a snappy comeback to the inevitable use of
the term by the Smith touts - is that rather than being an integral part of his philosophy,
this notion of "the power of the market" was just an illustration, a one-time thing that
seems almost thrown off half handedly.
It also shows you that, in the back of Smith's mind, there is an overarching principle of
the public interest which seems to be his ultimate goal - indeed, the goal of all classical
liberals.
In Conclusion
I hope youll see from this not only how to answer Adam Smith in debates, but a truism
about life. DONT TAKE WHAT PEOPLE TELL YOU AT FACE VALUE. Ive been told since I
was 14 years old that Adam Smith was the father of capitalism, I read the original works
at 22, and whaddaya know? It isnt true. Makes you wonder what else about history and
philosophy people have gotten wrong.
I also hope it inspires you to go out and read Korten and Chomsky. Obviously, if you want
to read Smith, the original is always the best - but Korten especially gives a great
summary of Smiths nuanced, interesting - and challenging- ideas about ethics and the
market.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Martin J. Calkins and Patricia H. Werhane, Adam Smith, Aristotle, and the Virtues of
Commerce, JOURNAL OF VALUE INQUIRY, vol. 32, no. 1, March 1998.
Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, MELLON LECTURE, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY

OF CHICAGO, October 19, 1994,
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9410_education.html, accessed May 10, 2001.
David C. Korten, WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD, San Francisco: Kumarian
Press and Berrett_Koehler Publishers, 1995.
David C. Korten, THE POST CORPORATE WORLD: LIFE AFTER CAPITALISM, San Francisco:
Berrett Koehler Publishers Inc., 1998.
Ian S. Ross, editor, ON THE WEALTH OF NATIONS: CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES TO ADAM

SMITH, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press: 1998.
Adam Smith, THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS, eds. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie,
London: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Adam Smith, THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, with an introduction by Robert Reich, New York:
The Modern Library, 2000.
Patricia H. Werhane, NEW LITERARY HISTORY, 27.1, 1996.
Patricia H. Werhane, ADAM SMITH AND HIS LEGACY FOR MODERN CAPITALISM, New York,
1989.
Gwydion M. Williams, ADAM SMITH: WEALTH WITHOUT NATIONS, London: Athol Press,
2000.
ADAM SMITH DID NOT DEFEND OR

FOUND CAPITALISM
1. ADAM SMITHS IDEAS ARE THE ANTITHESIS OF CAPITALISM
David Korten, board chair of the Positive Futures Network, YES! A JOURNAL OF POSITIVE
FUTURES, Spring 1999, http://www.yesmagazine.org/9economics/kortendave.html,
Accessed May 1, 2001.
Smith wrote about place based economies comprised of small, locally owned enterprises
that function within a community supported ethical culture to engage people in
producing for the needs of the community and its members. The economy Smith
envisioned is nearly the mirror opposite of our existing global economy, which is best
described by the term capitalism. The term capitalism was coined by European
philosophers of the mid 1800s to describe an economic regime in which the benefits of
productive assets are monopolized by the few to the exclusion of the many who through
their labor make those assets productive. The relationship of capitalism to a market
economy is that of a cancer to a healthy body. Much as the cancer kills its host and itself
by expropriating and consuming the host's energy, the institutions of capitalism are
expropriating and consuming the living energies of people, communities, and the planet.
And like a cancer, the institutions of capitalism lack the foresight to anticipate and avoid
the inevitable deathly outcome. We have a collective cancer, and our survival depends
on depriving it of its power by restructuring our economic rules and institutions to end
absentee ownership, rights without accountability, corporate welfare, and financial
speculation.
2. CAPITALIST ECONOMICS DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS SMITHS NOTION OF MARKETS

David Korten, board chair of the Positive Futures Network, president of the People
Centered Development Forum, THE POST CORPORATE WORLD, 1999, p. 38-9.
The theory of the market economy traces back to the Scottish economist Adam Smith
(1723-1790) and the publication of Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations in 1776. Considered by many to be the most influential economics book ever
written, it articulates the powerful and wonderfully democratic ideal of a self organizing
economy that creates an equitable and socially optimal allocation of a society's
productive resources through the interaction of small buyers and sellers making
decisions based on their individual needs and interests. Market theory, as articulated by
Smith and those who subsequently elaborated on his ideas, developed into an elegant
and coherent intellectual construction grounded in carefully articulated assumptions
regarding the conditions under which such self organizing processes would indeed lead
to socially optimal outcomes. For example, Buyers and sellers must be too small to
influence the market price. Complete information must be available to all participants
and there can be no trade secrets. Sellers must bear the full cost of the products they
sell and pass them on in the sale price. Investment capital must remain within national
borders and trade between countries must be balanced. Savings must be invested in the
creation of productive capital. There is, however, a critical problem, as international

financier George Soros has observed: "Economic theory is an axiomatic system: as long
as the basic assumptions hold, the conclusions follow. But when we examine the
assumptions closely, we find that they do not apply to the real world." Herein lies the
catch: the conditions of what we currently call a capitalist economy directly contradict
the assumptions of market theory in every instance.
3. SMITH WOULD REGARD CAPITALISM AS PATHOLOGICAL

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, MELLON LECTURE, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO, October 19, 1994,
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9410_education.html, accessed May 10, 2001.
It's quite remarkable to trace the evolution of values from a pre capitalist thinker like
Adam Smith, with his stress on sympathy and the goal of perfect equality and the basic
human right to creative work, to contrast that and move on to the present to those who
laud the new spirit of the age, sometimes rather shamelessly invoking Adam Smith's
name. For example, Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan, who writes that
"what each person seeks in an ideal situation is mastery over a world of slaves." That's
what you seek, in case you hadn't noticed. Something that an Adam Smith would have
regarded as simply pathological.
ADAM SMITH HAD MANY CONDITIONS

FOR JUST MARKETS
1. ADAM SMITH ONLY DEFENDED LOCAL MARKETS, NOT INTERNATIONAL
Centered Development Forum, WHEN CORPORATIONS RULE THE WORLD, 1995, p. 122.
A third condition basic to the market theories of Adam Smith, but rarely noted by
corporate libertarians is that capital is locally or nationally rooted and its owners are
directly involved in its management. Adam Smith made quite explicit in The Wealth of
Nations his assumption that capital would be rooted in place in the locality where its
owner lived. He made it clear that this condition is critical to enabling the invisible hand
of the market to translate the pursuit of self-interest into optimal public benefit.
2. THE INVISIBLE HAND IS FAR FROM CENTRAL TO SMITHS IDEAS

Indeed, the following is the only sentence in the entire text in he made reference to the
invisible hand. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he
intends only his own security, and by directing that industry in such a manner as its
produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as
in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his
intention. The circumstance that Adam Smith believed induced the individual to invest
locally, was the inability to supervise his capital when employed far from his home. In
the current age of instant communications by phone, fax, and computer, and twentyfour hour air travel to anywhere in the world that circumstance no longer endures.
However, the advantage to the community and the larger society of productive
investment being locally owned remains. Local investment is more likely to remain in
place and is more easily held to local standards.
3. SMITH FAVORED WORKER-OWNED ENTERPRISES

Smith was also quite explicit that optimal market efficiency depends on the owners of
capital being directly involved in its management-the owner managed enterprise. One
could also argue that implicitly he favored worker owned enterprises, as in his ideal
small firm owner, manager, and worker were one and the same person. Thus Smith's
vision of an efficient market was one comprised of small, owner managed enterprises
located in the communities in which the owners reside, share in the community's values,
and have a personal stake in its future. It is a market that bears little in common with a
globalized economy dominated by massive corporations without local or national
allegiance managed by transient professionals who are removed from real owners by
layers of investment institutions and holding companies.
4. SMITH HAD A HOLISTIC PERSPECTIVE THAT INCORPORATED POWER AND CLASS

Economist Neva Goodwin, who heads the Global Development and Environment Institute
at Tufts University suggests that the neoclassical school of economics, with which many
of most vocal proponents of corporate libertarianism are identified, may be roughly
characterized as the political economy of Adam Smith minus the political analysis of Karl
Marx. The classical political economy of Adam Smith was a much broader, more
humane subject than the economics that is taught in universities today. . . . For at least a
century it has been virtually taboo to talk about economic power in the capitalist
context; that was a communist (Marxist) idea. The concept of class was similarly banned
from discussion. Adam Smith was as acutely aware of issues of power and class as he
was of the dynamics of competitive markets. However, the neoclassical economists and
the neomarxist economists bifurcated his holistic perspective on the political economy,
one taking those portions of the analysis that favored the owners of property and the
other those that favored those who sell their labor. Thus, the neoclassical economists left
out Smith's considerations of the destructive role of power and class. And the
neomarxists left out the beneficial functions of the market. Both advanced social
experiments embodying a partial vision of society on a massive scale and with
disastrous consequence.
SMITHS FACTS WERENT RIGHT AND

HIS THEORY WAS WRONG
1. SMITH CHEATED ON KEY AND CENTRAL FACTS
Gwydion M. Williams, member of Ernest Bevin Society, a British Trade Unionist group,
ADAM SMITH: WEALTH WITHOUT NATIONS, 2000, p. 5.
A detailed analysis of Smith's logic shows that he cheated, not on minor matters but on
the key and central arguments. Rather than show reasons why division of labour is best
expressed in commercial society, he pretended that division of labour could only happen
via a free market. No attempt was made to reconcile this with existing social realities,
where Britain's flourishing industry relied on regulated markets and where complex
division of labour would be found in areas where market forces had not yet reached.
Adam Smith's most famous example, the manufacture of pins, turned out to have
ignored the actual social context of pin making. It was in fact one of many industries
that had been promoted in England by government initiative. It was moreover
exceptional among the industries of the time, with its fragmentation of production into
small repetitive tasks.
2. SMITHS IDEOLOGY IS JUST APOLOGETICS FOR THE RICH AND POWERFUL

Smith stood for the 'rights of money', as distinct from the rights of producers and
workers. But money is no more than a way of thinking about certain sorts of human
relationship. And Smith's ideology had time and again been used as a pretext for
distorting society in favour of the owners of money and against the interests of
everybody else. And yet, as I show in detail later on, his assertion that progress was
generated by the 'rights of money' is just an assertion, and rests on no genuine body of
evidence.
3. SMITHS COMMERCIAL SYSTEM DID NOT LEAD TO THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

ADAM SMITH: WEALTH WITHOUT NATIONS, 2000, p. 5.6
After several years spent studying both Adam Smith and the standard histories of
industrialisation, my main conclusion is that there is no necessary connection between
the Industrial Revolution and the Commercial system idolised by Adam Smith. Original
scientific thought, agricultural improvements, technological progress, mass production
all of these can occur without the commercial system. Whereas commercial structures
with no strong state to support them tend to fail this was the fate of the Hanseatic
League. The British Industrial Revolution was a special case, occurring outside of existing
social structures, yet also under the protective umbrella of a state that imposed peace
and a common legal standard, as well as tariff barriers that featherbedded newly born
British industries until they gradually grew to world class status. And it was a state that
was all in favour of 'improvement'; and happy to leave the details to enterprising
individuals.
4. SMITH TACITLY ACCEPTED THE SLAVE TRADE

In the absence of hard evidence, it is a reasonable suspicion that Britain could not have
achieved its industrial takeoff just by honest work and ingenuity. It could not have
happened without colonies based on conquest and genocide. It would have failed, or
been much slower, without the remarkable flow of wealth that came from the modern
capitalist slave trade. Smith was remarkably evasive on the subject of slavery. He
preferred to look just at the residual serfdom in foreign countries and not at the modern
capitalist chattel slavery that was fueling the progress and prosperity he so admired. As
an observer of the world around him, he was decidedly 'economical with the truth'.
ADAM SMITHS NOTIONS OF JUSTICE

ARENT HYPER-INDIVIDUALIST
1. ADAM SMITH, LIKE ROUSSEAU, WAS A COMMUNITY THINKER, NOT AN INDIVIDUALIST
Patricia H. Werhane, Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics in the Darden Graduate School of
Business Administration and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia,
NEW LITERARY HISTORY, 1996, p. 14-15.
Tzvetan Todorov's essay "Living Alone Together" challenges us to rethink the thesis that
each of us is a purely autonomous individual, and that individuality, not community, is
humankind's highest achievement. Going back to the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau
and Adam Smith, Todorov demonstrates that the roots of what is often called radical
individualism do not rest in the Enlightenment, as is sometimes alleged, and in fact that
thesis is contradicted by the work of two of its greatest philosophers. As Todorov
demonstrates, both Rousseau and Smith argued that human beings are neither merely
egoists nor asocial. While defending a form of individualism, both put forth a definition of
humankind as constitutively social beings. The importance of Todorov's conclusions
cannot be exaggerated in light of an accumulation of secondary literature arguing to the
contrary.
2. THE EGOIST NOTION OF JUSTICE DOESNT MAKE SENSE FOR SMITH

NEW LITERARY HISTORY, 1996, p. 19-20.
Nevertheless, the origin of obligation and covenant and thus justice rest in this third law
of nature. It would appear, then, that the origin of obligation derives from natural law,
not from social convention. Obligation and covenant are not alien to the natural order,
they are part of natural law; but they are realized only when there are guarantees of
reciprocal respect and trust, guarantees that are possible to be realized only in a
commonwealth. The point of this discussion of Hobbes is twofold. First, Hobbes makes an
important argument that although the state of nature is a state of chaos, one of its laws
is that "men performe their covenants made." So it is part of natural law that one honors
promises, contracts, and agreements, even though the mechanism that guarantees that
this will occur must be established in a social context. In the state of commonwealth
rights claims, in particular liberty, entail "be[ing] contented with so much liberty against
other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe." That is, rights claims entail
obligations to respect equally rights of others and reciprocally, obligations of others to
respect my claims. Thus laws of nature impose restrictions on natural rights so that, in
fact, the realization of one's liberty can only take place in this context of obligation. Thus
the contention that rights talk has mainly to do with manifesto rights neither derives
from the father of the Enlightenment nor, as I have argued elsewhere, does that view
make sense for Adam Smith.
3. THE ALLEGED HYPER-INDIVIDUALISM OF SMITH, HOBBES AND LOCKE IS WRONG

NEW LITERARY HISTORY, 1996, p. 15.
Without distracting from this careful, clear, and largely accurate analysis, in what follows
I shall expand Todorov's conclusion. I shall argue that even the work of Thomas Hobbes,
the accused "father" of asocial theories, has been sometimes exaggerated. This being
the case, the alleged radical individualism of contemporary rights theories which trace
their origins to Hobbes (as well as to Locke and Smith), is simply wrongheaded.
SUSAN SONTAG
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER AND CRITIC

(b. 1933)
The most interesting thinkers of this century have been those who have talked about the
way we talk, written about the way we write. Until philosophy took that self-reflective
turn, its conclusions and methods were not careful enough to see that philosophers own
biases and blind-spots often blocked intellectual progress.
Susan Sontag is a philosopher obsessed with biases and blind-spots. Her work takes the
obvious, the unquestioned, as its starting point and leaves the reader eventually
enraged at his or her own inability to have seen the forest for the trees. Sontag has done
this with cultural attitudes, language, revolutionary politics and aesthetics, leaving no
stone unturned, considering nothing too sacred for serious, but respectful criticism.
Life And Work

Conceived in China (where her American parents were trading furs), Susan Sontag was
born in New York City on January 16, 1933, and grew up around West Coast cities such
as Tucson and Los Angeles, raised by a plethora of distant relatives. By the time most
people are ready to consider themselves adults and begin their lives, Sontag had
already lived a fuller life than many of us. At age fifteen, she entered U.C. Berkeley,
staying one year. Then she transferred to the University of Chicago, where at seventeen
(by that time she was ready to graduate) she got married. The same year --her
nineteenth--she entered Harvard as a postdoctoral student, she had her first child and
eventually got degrees in literature and philosophy. She was divorced and studying at
Oxford and Paris by age twenty four, and in 1959 she returned to New York and began
writing for the Partisan Review and teaching.
Sontag was considered part of a cutting edge circle of New York intellectuals who
helped usher in the radical literature and criticism of the 1960s; mostly concerned with
critiquing elitist attitudes on culture and the arts, she wrote: The ethical task of the
modern writer is to be not a creator but a destroyer--a destroyer of shallow inwardness,
the consoling notion of the universally human, dilettantish creativity and empty
phrases. She believed harsh criticism was the most important role of any intellectual;
institutions which had laid hegemonic claim to American society were ready to be torn
down: All possibility of understanding, she wrote, is rooted in the ability to say no.
In 1966, Sontag published Against Interpretation, a book encouraging the acceptance of

new art forms and a new artistic sensibility which reflected the innovation of nontraditional artists. In the book, Sontag criticized the tendency to unthinkingly apply old
or familiar cultural interpretations to newer styles of art. Most artistic and literary
criticism had assumed there was some message behind the statement made by the
work itself. Sontag encouraged readers instead to listen to the work rather than
dismiss it with some dry interpretive pattern. The gist of Against Interpretation was more
political than aesthetic; Sontag was arguing that humanity was changing, becoming
more crowded and quick. Open-mindedness and a willingness to accept pluralism, she
argued, was not radical, subversive or harmful, but instead was practical and vital for
the changing times.
Eventually, the intense interest in radical politics which emerged at this time drew
Sontag into the fray, and she visited both revolutionary Cuba and war-torn Vietnam. In
1969, she wrote Styles of Radical Will her attempt to deal with politics. Nominally a
liberal to that point, Sontag admitted she was beginning to develop a sense of moral
dilemma at being a citizen of the American empire. But characteristically, she criticized
American radicals for glamorizing third world revolutions; American intellectuals, she
felt, had set Vietnam up as an object designed to show how evil America was,
instead of truly appreciating the Vietnamese struggle for liberation. Western radicalism,
she argued, talks too much and feels too little.
For the next several years, Sontag devoted most of her writing to artistic enterprises
such as photography, movies and theater. But in the l970s, her life would dramatically
change as she was diagnosed with cancer. While recovering from the disease, she wrote
Illness as Metaphor. which examined the way diseases are used as political and spiritual
metaphors by naive or cynical social writers. Later, she would pen a sequel, AIDS and its
Metaphors which continued her running commentary that the chief sign of a societys
enlightenment was both the way it treated its sick and the way it used sickness to
represent other social problems.
Always critical of both the left and the right in politics, in 1982 Sontag publicly
renounced communism, calling it fascism with a human face, and became active in
PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Editors and Novelists), an international anticensorship group. Throughout her career, she has seen the writer as a vital self-checking
mechanism of the democratic society; everything from cold interpretation to flaming
metaphors to the naked totalitarianism of censorship has come under attack from
Sontag as a silencing of the human spirit.
Criticism, Education And Democracy

Susan Sontags work is eclectic: political philosophy, literary and artistic criticism,
personal essays, deconstructive analysis, fiction and films have all been produced by
this leading American intellectual. But all are ripe with themes of autonomy and the
necessity to continually question ourselves. The most important statement made by
Sontag is that the modern age, which confuses us with its speed, impersonalness and
rapid production of information, requires the critics to keep it in line.
Sontag believes that the self-intellect, ones own intellectual mind, is itself dialectical,
always debating with itself, like a play with protagonists and antagonists. This ability to
criticize is the basis of modernity, and Sontag believes we should love the modern and
cultivate it through an educated class of critics. But contemporary life, she feels, is
killing this tradition by, in a sense, affirming and validating everything, making every
new idea or artwork a classic or a collectable. Now, more than ever, we must promote
critical thinking, dissent, and free speculation.
Contrary to the belief that such thinking is post-modern (because the post-modern is
often associated with dissent, the radical left, the avant garde in art, etc.), the idea of
constant criticism is, to Sontag, the very essence of the modern. Post-modernism can
often in reality be a hidden pro-institutional ideology because it encourages us to accept
everything the way it is and not to try to change anything (post-modernists, Sontag
argues, see the attempt to change things as somehow unethical because changing
denotes bias and prejudice against the way things are, and since all bias and prejudice
is, according to post-modernists, bad, things should be left alone). Sontag argues that
nothing which cannot withstand scrutiny is worth shielding from criticism. Unless
everything is subject to such critical tests, our language, symbols and ideas became
rigid and oppressive.
The rigidity with which ideas and norms are imbedded into the collective consciousness
can be seen in societys use of metaphors. Sontag singled out disease metaphors
because she had encountered them in her own struggle with cancer and with watching
her friends die of AIDS, but her statements about how we use and re-use language can
apply to any overused metaphors. She points out, for example, that disease is used as
a metaphor for social strife, which legitimizes a sterilization or healing which can in
reality be nothing more than the totalitarian eradication of dissent.
War metaphors are another favorite target of her critiques; she points out that the
war on disease, like the war on poverty or the war on drugs is dangerous not only
because it legitimizes the violence of genuine war fighting, but because it raises images
which obscure the reality of the struggle against these undesirable things. Instead, she
argues, we should at all times attempt to call things what they are and struggle against
them as they are.
Finally, although Sontag has in recent years became less militantly critical of everything,
she has throughout her intellectual career encouraged her readers to live as if they are
in a time of intense change, whether this is objectively true or not. This is because we
must always feel a sense of urgency about what is around us in order for our ideas to
change and grow. Nothing, in Sontags opinion, is exempt from criticism. This separates
her from both the right and the left, who have their own respective sets of taboos and
untouchables. Sontag has been denounced by all sides, which, to her, is the ultimate
sign of her success.
The Danger Of Elitism

But perhaps, when everyone criticizes you, its not simply because you are always right.
In Sontags case, there is a Line of thinking from her critics which paints her as arrogant
and self-satisfied by her ability to do nothing but criticize, to always take the intellectual
high ground. Her criticism of revolutionary leftists, for example, ignores the important
contributions made by American radicals in opening up the discursive and political space
to generate social changes such as civil rights and anti-war movements. Her
eschewment of reductionist art and literary interpretation, critics say, ignores the
important role that such criticism plays in telling us about ourselves. Critics claim that
Sontag is nothing but negative, and in being so, she misses the virtues of the very
institutions she seeks to improve and defend.
Like other liberal critics such as Herbert Marcuse and Norman Mailer, who also came of
age in the 1960s, Sontag also seems to assume that the critical spirit can only come
as result of an educated consciousness, and that an educated shift in consciousness is
necessary for meaningful social change. This, critics say, makes her an elitist, a charge
which goes well with the accusation of her arrogance. Since when, critics ask, have naysayers such as Sontag ever accomplished anything meaningful for the majority of
Americans? By arguing that criticism is more important than political action (an
argument which she even seems to contradict in some of her criticisms of the Western
left), and by arguing that criticism can only come as the result of a Harvard-type
education, Sontag entrenches at least one attitude she doesnt seem interested in
negating: the idea that only an enlightened few can be appointed the guardians of
democracy.
But these charges are not unique to Susan Sontag, and her work is, in fact, accessible to
most people who can read and think. If she is arrogant, it is perhaps because she sees
through the self-importance of others and must assert at least some degree of her own
in order to fight fire with fire. And if she stresses education and a lucid pen, perhaps she
is simply pointing out that the modern age gave many people this power to criticize and
she is no exception. Whatever the case, Sontag cannot help but inspire anger for her
refusal to fully accept, without question, any dogma or system. In this, she is both a
product of her age (many people today feel the same contempt for self-certainty) and an
advocate for absolute critical freedom.
Ideas For Debate

Susan Sontags work provides many different weapons for debaters. Since she is mostly
concerned with bow ideas and words are used, debaters should carefully read her works
for both attitude and content. The Metaphors works about disease, in particular,
provide goad grounds for criticizing opponents who stress ideas such as social order,
declaring ~ on social evils, and so on.
Similarly, her criticism of the over-interpretation of things suggests a strategy of

simplification in debates which become too immersed in critical theory, during which
some debaters will critique certain values or ideas as being motivated by some sinister
set of underlying objectives (such as Nietzsches will to power or Ayn Rands egoist
critique of unselfish communitarianism). Stop saying that something is something else
all the time, Sontag says; debaters can easily say these things in response to opponents
efforts to prove their cleverness by interpreting things away from what they were
originally intended to be.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Sontags writing stresses that we must always
question ourselves and the things we hold sacred, not for the sake of questioning itself
(see, for example, Heidegger), but instead because it is the only way to preserve our
identities, to prosper, and grow. Thus, appeals to
tradition, social order, or conservatism of any kind (including the radical but actually
conservative
dogmatism of the radical left or right) are especially fitting for a dose of Susan Sontags
leveling gaze.
Bibliography
Sontag, Susan. AGAINST INTERPRETATION AND OTHER ESSAYS (New York: Farrar, Strauss
and Giroux, 1966).
. AIDS AND ITS METAPHORS (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1989).
. THE BENEFACTOR (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1963).
. CONVERSATIONS WITH SUSAN SONTAG (Jackson: University Press of

Mississippi, 1995).
. DEATH KIT (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1967).
. I, ETCETERA (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1978).
. ILLNESS AS METAPHOR (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
. STYLES OF RADICAL WILL (New York: Doubleday, 1969).
. UNDER THE SIGN OF SATURN (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux,
1980).
Kennedy, Liam. SUSAN SONTAG: MIND AS PASSION (Manchester Manchester University

Press, 1995).
Sayres, Sohnya. SUSAN SONTAG: THE ELEGIAC MODERNIST (New York: Routledge, 1990).
OPEN AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE IS THE

MOST IMPORTANT SOCIAL VALUE
1. MUST TREAT ALL SOCIAL ISSUES CAREFULLY AND IMPORTANTLY
Susan Sontag, American philosopher, in Sohnya Sayres. SUSAN SONTAG: THE ELEGIAC
MODERNIST, 1990, p. 2.
We may not be living in the final stage of the enlightenment. However, from the point of
view of the
writer--and, for that matter, from the human point of view--it is always better to believe
we are living in the last stage of human history, if only because that attitude makes you
scrutinize whats going on much
harder, pay greater attention to every detail. Maybe the curtain wont fall tomorrow, but
its better to think that it may. Then we will take care of whats going on in front of us.
2. WE MUST BE WILLING TO EXAMINE AND CRITICIZE ALL -ISMS

Susan Sontag, American philosopher, in Sohnya Sayres. SUSAN SONTAG: THE ELEGIAC
MODERNIST, 1990, p. 2.
Today, we are living out the paradoxes of eschatological thinking. Actually, the various
avant-garde isms were not supposed to replace one another. Each conceived of itself
as the terminal ism. But we have
discovered that there is no terminal ism; the messiah doesnt come. History doesnt
end although particular histories end.
3. REPETITION OF FALSE IDEAS PREVENTS SPECIFIC SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS

Susan Sontag, American philosopher. AIDS AND ITS METAPHORS, 1990, p. 164.
Part of making an event real is just saying it, over and over. In this case, to say it over
and over is to instill the consciousness of risk, the necessity of prudence as such, prior to
and superseding any specific recommendation.
ISSUES WHICH SEEM THREATENING

MAY ACTUALLY BE HARMLESS
1. SEEING SOCIETY AS FLAWED AND IN NEED OF RESTORATION RESULTS IN VIOLENCE
Susan Sontag, American philosopher. ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, 1990, pp. 8 1-2.
It is hardly the last time that revolutionary violence would be justified on the grounds
that society has a
radical, horrible illness. The melodramatics of the disease metaphor in modern political
discourse assume a punitive notion: of the disease not as punishment but as a sign of
evil, something to be punished. Modern totalitarian movements, whether of the right or
of the left, have been peculiarly--and revealingly--inclined to use disease imagery. The
Nazis declared that someone of mixed racial origin was like a syphilitic.
European Jewry was repeatedly analogized to syphilis, and to a cancer that must be
excised.
2. SUFFERING AND ILLNESS REVEAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Susan Sontag, American philosopher. ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, 1990, p. 42.
At the least, the calamity of disease can clear the way for insight into lifelong selfdeceptions and failures of character. The lies that muffle Ivan Ilychs drawn-out agony-his cancer being unmentionable to his wife
and children--reveal to him the lie of his whole life; when dying, he is, for the first time,
in a state of truth. The sixty-year-old civil servant in Kurosawas film Ikiru (1952) quits
his job after learning he has terminal stomach cancer and, taking up the cause of a slum
neighborhood, fights the bureaucracy he had served.
With one year left to live, Watanabe wants to do something that is worthwhile, wants to
redeem his mediocre life.
3. MUST SEE DEATH AS POSITIVE AND INEVITABLE TO AVOID ITS MYSTIFICATION

Susan Sontag, American philosopher. ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, 1990, pp. 55-6.
For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of
death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate
affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It
can only be denied. A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology
comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of
affirming the primacy of spirit over matter.
APOCALYPTIC SCENARIO DISCOURSE

SHOULD BE REJECTED
1. APOCALYPTIC DISCOURSE REFLECTS WESTERN SOCIAL FEARS
There is also the need for an apocalyptic scenario that is specific to Western society,
and perhaps even more so to the United States. (America, as someone has said, is a
nation with the soul of a church--an evangelical church prone to announcing radical
endings and brand new beginnings.) The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need
to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative
complicity with disaster. The sense of cultural distress or failure gives rise to the desire
for a clean sweep, a tabula rasa. No one wants a plague, of course. But, yes, it would be
a chance to begin again. And beginning again--that is very modern, very American, too.
2. APOCALYPTIC RHETORIC DESENSITIZES PEOPLE TO REAL THREATS

Susan Sontag, American philosopher. AIDS AND ITS METAPHORS, 1990, pp. 175-6.
With the inflation of apocalyptic rhetoric has come the increasing unreality of the
apocalypse. A permanent modern scenario: apocalypse ....... and it doesnt occur. And it
still looms. We seem to be in the throes of one of the modern kinds of the apocalypse.
There is the one thats not happening, whose outcome remains in suspense: the missiles
circling the earth above our heads, with a nuclear payload that could destroy all life
many times over, that havent (so far) gone off. And there are the ones that are
happening, and yet seem not to have (so far) the most feared consequences--like the
astronomical Third World debt, like overpopulation, like ecological blight; or that could
happen and then (we are told) didnt happen--like the October 1987 stock market
collapse, which was a crash, like the one in October 1929, and was not. Apocalypse is
now a long-running serial: not Apocalypse Now but Apocalypse From Now On.
Apocalypse has become an event that is happening and not happening.
3. ANY NORMAL HISTORICAL PROCESS CAN BE DESCRIBED AS APOCALYPTIC

Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as
heading toward catastrophe. (Either the too little and becoming less: waning, decline,
entropy. Or the too much, ever more than we can handle or absorb: uncontrollable
growth.) Most of what experts pronounce about the future contributes to this new double
sense of reality--beyond the doubloons to which we are already accustomed by the
comprehensive duplication of everything in images. There is what is happening now. And
there is what it portends: the imminent, but not yet actual, and not really graspable,
disaster.
4. OVEREMPHASIS ON APOCALYPTIC SCENARIOS PRODUCE DANGEROUS DENIAL

A proliferation of reports or projections of unreal (that is, ungraspable) doomsday
eventualities tends to produce a variety of reality-denying responses. Thus, in most
discussions of nuclear warfare, being rational (the self-description of experts) means not
acknowledging the human reality, while taking in emotionally even a small part of what
is at stake for human beings (the province of those who regard themselves as menaced)
means insisting on unrealistic demands for the rapid dismantling of the peril.
5. OVEREMPHASIS ON APOCALYPTIC SCENARIOS DOES VIOLENCE TO OUR HUMANITY

That even an apocalypse can be made to seem part of the ordinary horizon of
expectation constitutes an
unparalleled violence that is being done to our sense of reality, to our humanity.
ORDER AS A POLITICAL VALUE

SHOULD BE REJECTED
1. EMPHASIS ON SOCIAL ORDER BREEDS REPRESSIVE IDEOLOGIES
Such token appeals for mass mobilization to confront an unprecedented menace appear,
at frequent intervals, in every mass society. It is also typical of a modern society that the
demand for mobilization be kept very general and the reality of the response fall well
short of what seems to be demanded to meet the challenge of the nation-endangering
menace. This sort of rhetoric has a life of its own: it serves some purpose if it simply
keeps in circulation an ideal of unifying communal practice that is precisely contradicted
by the pursuit of accumulation and isolating entertainments enjoined on the citizens of a
modern mass society. The survival of the nation, of civilized society, of the world itself is
said to be at stake--claims that are a familiar part of building a case for repression.
2. EMPHASIS ON SOCIAL ORDER ENCOURAGES OBSESSIVE SOCIAL CONTROL

Susan Sontag, American philosopher. ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, 1990, p. 76. Order is the
oldest concern of political philosophy, and if it is plausible to compare the polis to an
organism, then it is plausible to compare civil disorder to an illness. The classical
formulations which analogize a political disorder to an illness--from Plato, to, say,
Hobbes, presuppose the classical medical (and political) idea of balance. Treatment is
aimed at restoring the right balance--in political terms, the right hierarchy. The prognosis
is always, in principle, optimistic. Society, by definition, never catches a fatal disease.
3. SOCIAL ORDER AS A RATIONAL VALUE RESULTS IN SOCIAL CONTROL

Susan Sontag, American philosopher. ILLNESS AS METAPHOR, 1990, p. 77.
Machiavelli offers an illness metaphor that is not so much about society as about
statecraft (conceived as a therapeutic art): as prudence is needed to control serious
diseases, so foresight is needed to control social crises. It is a metaphor about foresight,
and a call to foresight. In political philosophys great tradition, the analogy between
disease and civil disorder is proposed to encourage rulers to pursue a more rational
policy.
4. OBSESSION WITH SOCIAL CONTROL RESULTS IN ANTI-HISTORICAL THINKING

So indispensable has been the plague metaphor in bringing summary judgments about
social crises that its use hardly abated during the era when collective diseases were no
longer treated so moralistically--the time between the influenza and encephalitis
pandemics of the early and mid- 1920s and the acknowledgment of a new, mysterious
epidemic in the early 1980s--and when great infectious epidemics were so often and
confidently proclaimed a thing of the past. The plague metaphor was common in the
1930s as a synonym for social and psychic catastrophe. Evocations of plague of this
type usually go with rant, with antiliberal attitudes: think of Artaud on plague, of Wilhelm
Reich on emotional plague. And such a generic diagnosis necessarily promotes
ahistorical thinking. A theodicy as well as a demonology, it not only stipulates something
emblematic of evil but makes this the bearer of a rough, terrible justice.
5. AUTHORITARIANISM USES FEAR ABOUT SOCIAL DISORDER TO PROMOTE REPRESSION

Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the
imminence of takeover by aliens--and real diseases are useful material. Epidemic
diseases usually elicit a call to ban the entry of foreigners, immigrants. And xenophobic
propaganda has always depicted immigrants as bearers of disease (in the late
nineteenth century: cholera, yellow fever, typhoid fever, tuberculosis).
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza was born in 1632 in Amsterdam. He was the middle son in a prominent
family in Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community. As a boy, he was undoubtedly one
of the star pupils in the congregation's Talmud Torah school, as he was noticeably
intellectually gifted. It is possible that as Spinoza progressed through his studies, he
was being groomed for a career as a rabbi. However, he never made it into the upper
levels of the curriculum. That is because at the age of seventeen, he was forced to cut
short his formal studies to help run the family's importing business. Then, on July 27,
1656, Spinoza was issued the harshest excommunication ever pronounced by the
Sephardic community of Amsterdam; it was never rescinded.
It is not known for certain what monstrous deeds and abominable heresies that
Spinoza is alleged to have committed. But there is little doubt that Spinoza was already
giving utterance to ideas that would soon appear in his philosophical treatises. In those
works, Spinoza denies the immortality of the soul; strongly rejects the notion of a
providential God -- the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and claims that the Law was
neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews. Can there be any mystery
as to why one of history's boldest and most radical thinkers was sanctioned by an
orthodox Jewish community?
By all appearances, Spinoza was content finally to have an excuse for departing from the
community and leaving Judaism behind, it did appear that his faith and religious
commitment were gone by this point. Within a few years, he left Amsterdam altogether.
ETHICS
While in Rijnsburg, Spinoza worked on the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect,
an essay on philosophical method, and the Short Treatise on God, Man and His WellBeing, an initial but ultimately interrupted effort to lay out his metaphysical,
epistemological and moral views. His critical examination of Descartes "Principles of
Philosophy" was completed in 1663; it is coincidentally the only work he published under
his own name in his lifetime. By this time, he was also working on his philosophical
masterpiece, what would eventually be called "the Ethics." However, when Spinoza
began to witness the principles of toleration in Holland being threatened by reactionary
forces, he put the work aside to complete his scandalous Theological-Political Treatise,
published anonymously and to great alarm in 1670.
It is part biblical study, part political treatise. Its overriding goal is to recommend full
freedom of thought and religious practice, subject to behavioral conformity with the laws
of the land. As virtually the first examination of the Scriptures (primarily the
Pentateuch) as historical documents, reflecting the intellectual limitations of their time,
and of problematic authorship, it opened the so-called higher criticism. For Spinoza,
what is most important is the Bible's moral message, its implied science and
metaphysics can stand only as imaginative adjuncts for teaching ethics to the
multitude. Though Spinoza discreetly identifies God and nature, one of the opinions
leading to his excommunication, he writes in a more orthodox vein, even as he denies
the genuinely supernatural character of reported miracles.
It is much debated whether this demonstrates that those who now read the Ethics in an
entirely secular manner misunderstand it, or whether Spinoza was adapting his
presentation not to the masses, but to conventionally religious intellectuals of his time.
It was among these intellectuals that Spinoza wished to promote tolerant liberal ideals.
The study of the Bible is designed to show that there is nothing in it which should
sanction intolerance within Judaism or Christianity, or between them, and to illustrate
certain political facts by reflections on Jewish history, such as the desirable relations
between Church and State. Spinoza's political theory owes a good deal to Hobbes idea
of a social contract, as Spinoza derives a more liberal and democratic lesson from it.
The Ethics is an ambitious and multifaceted work. It is also bold to the point of audacity,
as one would expect of a systematic and unforgiving critique of the traditional
philosophical conceptions of God, the human being and the universe, and, above all, of the
religions and the theological and moral beliefs grounded thereupon. What Spinoza intends
to demonstrate is the truth about God, nature and especially ourselves; and the highest
principles of society, religion and the good life.
Despite the great deal of metaphysics, physics, anthropology and psychology that take
up Parts One through Three, Spinoza took the critical message of the work to be ethical
in nature. The ethics attempts to illustrate that our happiness and well-being lie not in a
life enslaved to the passions and the goods we ordinarily pursue, nor in the related
attachment to superstitions that pass as religion, but rather in the life of reason. To
clarify and support these broadly ethical conclusions, however, Spinoza must first
demystify the universe and show it for what it really is. This requires laying out some
metaphysical foundations.
PROOF OF GOD
In propositions one through fourteen of Part One, Spinoza presents the basic elements of
his picture of God. God is the infinite, necessarily existing (that is, uncaused), unique
substance of the universe. There is only one substance in the universe; it is God; and
everything else that is, is in God.
Proposition 1: A substance is prior in nature to its affections.
Proposition 2: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with
one another. (In other words, if two substances differ in nature, then they have nothing
in common).
Proposition 3: If things have nothing in common with one another, one of them cannot
be the cause of the other.
Proposition 4: Two or more distinct things are distinguished from one another, either by a
difference in the attributes [i.e., the natures or essences] of the substances or by a
difference in their affections [i.e., their accidental properties].
Proposition 5: In nature, there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or
attribute.
Proposition 6: One substance cannot be produced by another substance.
Proposition 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.
Proposition 8: Every substance is necessarily infinite.
Proposition 9: The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it.
Proposition 10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself.
Proposition 11: God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which

expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists
Proposition 12: No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows
that the substance can be divided.
Proposition 13: A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible.
Proposition 14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.
This proof that God an infinite, necessary and uncaused, indivisible being -- is the
only substance of the universe proceeds in three simple steps. First, establish that no
two substances can share an attribute or essence. Now, prove that there is a substance
with infinite attributes (i.e., God). It then follows that the existence of that infinite
substance precludes the existence of any other substance, because if there was a
second substance, it would have to have some attribute or essence. However, it is God
that has all possible attributes, thus the attribute the second substance could posses
would already be possessed by God. Since it has already been established that no two
substances can have the same attribute, there can be, besides God, no such second
substance. If God is the only substance, and whatever is, is either a substance or in a
substance, then everything else must be in God. Whatever is, is in God, and nothing
can be or be conceived without God.
According to the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of divinity, God is a transcendent

creator, a being who causes a world distinct from himself to come into being by creating
it out of nothing. God produces that world by a spontaneous act of free will, and could
just as easily have not created the world. In contrast, Spinoza's God is the cause of all
things because all things follow causally and necessarily from divine nature. Or, as he
puts it, from God's infinite power or nature all things have necessarily flowed, or always
followed, by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it
follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles.
The existence of the world is, thus, mathematically necessary. It is impossible that God
should exist but not the world. This does not mean that God does not cause the world to
come into being freely, since nothing outside of God constrains him to bring it into
existence. At the same time, Spinoza does deny that God creates the world by some
arbitrary and undetermined act of free will. God could not have done otherwise. There
are no possible alternatives to the actual world, and absolutely no contingency or
spontaneity within that world.
Everything is absolutely and necessarily determined. In nature, argues Spinoza, there is

nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine
nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way. Things could have been
produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced.
NATURE
In Book One, Spinoza's fundamental insight is that Nature is an indivisible, uncaused,
substantial whole, in fact, it is the only substantial whole. Outside of Nature, there is
nothing. Everything that exists is a part of Nature and is brought into being by Nature
with a deterministic necessity. This unified, unique, productive, necessary being just is
what is meant by God. Because of the necessity inherent in Nature, there is no
teleology in the universe.
Spinoza goes on to argue that nature does not act for any ends, and things do not exist
for any set purposes. There are no final causes, God does not do things for the sake of
anything else. The order of things just follows from God's essences with an inviolable
determinism. All talk of God's purposes, intentions, goals, preferences or aims is just an
anthropomorphizing fiction. Instead, we should focus on how things flow naturally
from the original act of creation.
Spinoza then suggests that all the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this
one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of
an end; indeed, they maintain as certain that God himself directs all things to some
certain end, for they say that God has made all things for man, and man that he might
worship God. God is not some goal-oriented planner who then judges things by how well
they conform to his purposes. Things happen only because of Nature and its laws.
Nature has no end set before it . . . All things proceed by a certain eternal necessity of
nature. To believe otherwise is to fall prey to the same superstitions that lie at the heart
of the organized religions.
He goes on to explain that people find, both in and outside themselves, many helpful
means to seek their own advantage (e.g., eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants and
animals for food, the sun for light, and the sea for supporting fish). Thus, people
consider all natural things as means to their own advantage. Knowing that they had not
provided these means for themselves, they had reason to believe that there was
someone else who had prepared those means for them. After things are considered
means, we could not believe that the things had made themselves. They had to infer
that there was a ruler, or a number of rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom,
which had taken care of all things for them, and made all things for their use. Since
they had never heard anything about the character of these rulers, they had to be
judged. Hence, we maintain that the Gods direct all things for the use of humans in
order to bind people to them and be held in the highest honor.
Thus, this prejudice was changed into superstition, and struck deep roots in their minds.
A judging God who has plans and acts purposively is a God to be obeyed and placated,
argues Spinoza. Opportunistic preachers are then able to play on our hopes and fears in
the face of such a God. They prescribe ways of acting that are calculated to avoid being
punished by that God and earn rewards.
Spinoza however insists that to see God or Nature as acting for the sake of ends -- to
find purpose in Nature -- is to misconstrue Nature and turn it upside down by putting
the effect (the end result) before the true cause. Nor does God perform miracles, since
there are no departures whatsoever from the necessary course of nature. The belief in
miracles is due only to ignorance of the true causes of phenomena.
This is strong language, and Spinoza is clearly not unaware of the risks of his position.
The same preachers who take advantage of our navet will lash out against anyone who
tries to pull aside the curtain and reveal the truths of Nature. One who seeks the true
causes of miracles, and is eager, like an educated man, to understand natural things,
not to wonder at them, like a fool, is generally considered and denounced as an impious
heretic by whose whom the people honor as interpreters of nature and the Gods. For
they know that if ignorance is taken away, then foolish wonder, the only means they
have of arguing and defending their authority is also taken away.
KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge has three main grades, in order of its adequacy: (1) knowledge by hearsay
and vague experience; (2) knowledge by general reasoning; (3) intuitive rational insight.
The first type of knowledge yields emotion and activity of an essentially confined sort;
human liberation consists in movement through the second to the third type of
knowledge. Only at that level do we cease to be victims of emotions which we do not
properly understand and cannot control. The third type of knowledge ultimately yields
the 'intellectual love of God', Spinoza's version of salvation. More informally put,
Spinoza regards us in bondage so far as we are under the control of external things and
as free to the extent that we meet life with creative understanding of what will best
serve the purposes that adequate ideas will determine in us.
One may still wonder how far Spinoza is really committed to what one might call a
religious view of the world. He was certainly against all forms of religion which he
regarded as life-denying and which view the present life as a mere preparation for a life to
come. Rather, Spinoza argues, our primary aim should be joyous living in the here and
now. This should ideally culminate in that quasi-mystical grasp of our eternal place in the
scheme of things, and oneness with God, or nature, which he calls the intellectual love of
God. Love of God, in this sense, should be the focal aim of the wise one's life.
As for religion he clearly thought that a good deal of it was mere superstition, creating
intolerance and in many ways being unhelpful as a basis for a genuinely good life. But
he also thought that for the mass of people, who are incapable of the philosopher's
intellectual love of God, a good popular religion could act as a morally worthy substitute,
providing a less complete form of salvation available to all who live morally and love
God, as they conceive him, appropriately, provided only that their love of God is of a
type which promotes obedience to the basic commands of morality.
To make his case that God does not willfully direct the course of nature, he first explains
why people think that God acts with a purpose. First, he notes that individual humans do
not act freely, but are under the illusion that they do. We are ignorant of the true causes
of things, but only aware of our own desire to pursue what is useful. Thus, we think we
are free. Given this tendency to see human behavior as willful and purposeful, we
continue by imposing willful purposes on events outside of us. We conclude that God
willfully guides external events for our benefit. Religious superstitions arose as humans
found their own ways of worshipping God. Problems of consistency also arose as people
insisted that everything in nature is done by God for a purpose. Since natural disasters
conflict with the view that God acts with a purpose, we then say that God's judgment
transcends human understanding. For Spinoza, mathematics offers a standard of truth
which refutes the view that God acts with a purpose.
God does not act from a purpose, argues Spinoza. First, the concept of a perfect final
goal is flawed. For Spinoza, the most perfect of God's acts are those closest to him.
Succeeding events further down the chain are more imperfect. Thus if a given chain of
events culminated in sunny weather, for example, that would be less perfect than the
initial events in the chain. Belief in final causes compromises God's perfection since it
implies that he desires something which he lacks.
For Spinoza, the theologian's contention that God willfully directs all natural events
amounts to a reduction to ignorance. That is, all natural events trace back to God's will,
and we are all ignorant of God's will. Theologians insist on this path of ignorance since it
preserves their authority.
Finally, Spinoza maintains that belief in God's willful guidance of nature gives rise to an
erroneous notion of value judgments, such as goodness, order, and beauty. These values
are presumed to be objective abstract notions imposed on nature by God for our benefit.
However, Spinoza contends that all of these value judgments in fact arise out of our own
human construction and human preferences. For example, things are well-ordered when
they require little imagination and are easily remembered. He sees that this is also the
case with beauty, fragrance, and harmony. The variety of controversies we have on
these topics arise from our differing human constructions.
SPINOZA IN DEBATE
Spinoza could be used in debate to challenge the religious undertones of values. He
could also be used to advocate for freedom of thought in all cases. If an opponent
presents a value that could lead to censorship, restricting rights, or any other
infringement on freedom, Spinoza could be used as evidence that such action would be
harmful.
However, Spinoza could also be used to support the idea that the "masses" cannot make
decisions for themselves. This could support policies or advocacies that want
government control in order to protect the larger citizenry from their inability to
comprehend complicated arguments and philosophy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bidney, David, THE PSYCHOLOGY AND ETHICS OF SPINOZA; A STUDY IN THE HISTORY
AND LOGIC OF IDEAS. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962.
Browne, Lewis. BLESSED SPINOZA; A BIOGRAPHY OF THE PHILOSOPHER. New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1932.
Damasio, Antonio, LOOKING FOR SPINOZA: JOY, SORROW AND THE FEELING BRAIN.
Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2003.
de Deugd, C. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SPINOZA'S FIRST KIND OF KNOWLEDGE. Assen,

Van Gorcum, 1966
Della Rocca, Michael. REPRESENTATION AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN SPINOZA.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Deleuze, Gilles. SPINOZA: PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. San Francisco: City Lights Books,
1988
Donagan, Alan. SPINOZA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Freeman, Eugene and Maurice Mandelbaum. SPINOZA: ESSAYS IN INTERPRETATION. La

Salle, Ill., Open Court, 1975
Garrett, Don. THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO SPINOZA. New York: Cambridge

Hampshire, Stuart. SPINOZA. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.
Harris, Errol E. SALVATION FROM DESPAIR; A REAPPRAISAL OF SPINOZA'S PHILOSOPHY.

The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1973.
Hart, Alan. SPINOZA'S ETHICS, PART I AND II: A PLATONIC COMMENTARY. Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1983.
Kashap, S. Paul. SPINOZA AND MORAL FREEDOM. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1987.
Kennington, Richard, THE PHILOSOPHY OF BARUCH SPINOZA. Washington: Catholic

University of America Press, 1980.
Koistinen, Olli and John Biro. SPINOZA: METAPHYSICAL THEMES. New York: Oxford
Lloyd, Genevieve. ROUTLEDGE PHILOSOPHY GUIDEBOOK TO SPINOZA AND THE ETHICS.

New York: Routledge, 1996.
McKeon, Richard. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA; THE UNITY OF HIS THOUGHT. New York:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1928.
McShea, Robert J. THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA. New York, Columbia

Nadler, Steven., SPINOZA: A LIFE. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
---, SPINOZA'S HERESY: IMMORTALITY AND THE JEWISH MIND. New York: Oxford
Preus, J. Samuel. SPINOZA ANDF THE IRRELEVENCE OF BIBLICAL AUTHORITY. New York:
Scruton, Roger. SPINOZA. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Smith, Steven B. SPINOZA, LIBERALISM, AND THE QUESTION OF JEWISH IDENTITY. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Spinoza, Benedict. SHORT TREATISE ON GOD, MAN, AND HUMAN WELFARE. Chicago:
The Open Court Pub. Co., 1909.
---, THE POLITICAL WORKS, THE TRACTATUS THEOLOGICO-POLITICUS IN PART, AND THE
TRACATUS POLTICS IN FULL. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965
---, THE ETHICS. Malibu: J. Simon Publisher, 1981.
Wetlesen, Jon. THE SAGE AND THE WAY: SPINOZA'S ETHICS OF FREEDOM. Assen: Van
Gorcum, 1979.
Wolfson, Abraham. SPINOZA, A LIFE OF REASON. New York: Modern Classics, 1932.
Wolfson, Harry. THE PHILSOPHY OF SPINOZA, UNFOLDING THE LATENT PROCCESSES OF

REASONING. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948.
Yovel, Yirmiyahu. SPINOZA AND OTHER HERETICS. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1989.
HUMAN BEINGS ARE DISTRACTED BY

SHORT TERM DESIRES
1. THREE OBJECTS OF DESIRE PREVENT MAN FROM BEING HIS OWN MASTER
Baruch Spinoza, philosopher, HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR MIND, 1962, p. 18
The surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the
highest good, may be classified under the three headsRiches, Fame, and the Pleasures
of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on
any different good.
2. GRATIFICATION OF SENSUAL PLEASURE DULLS THE MIND

Baruch Spinoza, philosopher, HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR MIND, 1962, p. 18-19.
By sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extend of quiescence, as if the
supreme good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of thinking of any
other object; when such pleasure has been gratified it is followed by extreme
melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled.
3. HONOR AND RICHES ARE NOT THE HIGHEST GOOD

The pursuit of honors and riches is likewise very absorbing, especially if such objects be
sought simply for their own sake, inasmuch as they are then supposed to constitute the
highest good. In the case of fame the mind is still more absorbed, for fame is conceived
as always good for its own sake, and as the ultimate end to which all actions are
directed. Further, the attainment of riches and fame is not followed as in the case of
sensual pleasures by repentance, but, the more we acquire, the greater is our delight,
and, consequently, the more are we incited to increase both the one and the other; on
the other hand, if our hopes happen to be frustrated we are plunged into the deepest
sadness. Fame has the further drawback that it compels its votaries to order their lives
according to the opinions of their fellow-men, shunning what they usually shun, and
seeking what they usually seek.
4. PURSUING OBJECTS OF DESIRE DO NOT PRESERVE THE BEING OF MAN

Baruch Spinoza, philosopher, HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR MIND, 1962, p. 21-22
Further reflection convinced me, that if I could really get to the root of the matter I
should be leaving certain evils for a certain good. I thus perceived that I was in a state of
great peril, and I compelled myself to seek with all my strength for a remedy, however
uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling with a deadly disease, when he sees that
death will surely be upon him unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek such a
remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein. All the objects
pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but
even act as hindrances causing the death not seldom of those who possess them, and
always of those who are possessed by them. There are many examples of men who have
suffered persecution even to death for the sake of their riches, and of men who in
pursuit of wealth have exposed themselves to so many dangers, that they have paid
away their life as a penalty for their folly. Examples are no less numerous of men, who
have endured the utmost wretchedness for the sake of gaining or preserving their
reputation. Lastly, there are innumerable cases of men, who have hastened their death
through over-indulgence in sensual pleasure. All these evils seem to have risen from the
fact, that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend on the quality of the
object which we love.
THE TRUE GOOD IS BASED ON THE

END, NOT THE MEANS OF HUMAN
ACTION
1. IGNORING THE DESIRE OF OBJECTS ALLOWS THE NATURE OF BEING TO BE REVEALED
When a thing is loved, no quarrels will arise concerning itno sadness will be felt if it
perishesno envy if it is possessed by anotherno fear, no hatred, in short no
disturbances of the mind. All these arise from the love of what is perishable, such as the
objects already mentioned. But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind
wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be
desired and sought for with all our strength. Yet it was not at random that I used the
words, If I could go to the root of the matter, for, though what I have urged was
perfectly clear to my mind, I could not forthwith lay aside all love of riches, sensual
enjoyment, and fame. One thing was evident, namely, that while my mind was
employed with these thoughts it turned away from its former objects of desire, and
seriously considered the search for a new principle; this state of things was a great
comfort to me, for I perceived that the evils were not such as to resist all remedies.
Although these intervals were at first rare, and of very short duration, yet afterwards as
the true good became more and more discernible to me, they became more frequent
and more lasting; especially after I had recognized that the acquisition of wealth,
sensual pleasure, or fame, is only a hindrance, so long as they are sought as ends not as
means; if they be sought as means, they will be under restraint, and, far from being
hindrances, will further not a little the end for which they are sought, as I will show in
due time.
2. THE TRUE GOOD IS RECOGNIZING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAN AND GODS
PERFECT NATURE
I will here only briefly state what I mean by true good, and also what is the nature of the
highest good. In order that this may be rightly understood, we must bear in mind that
the terms good and evil are only applied relatively, so that the same thing may be both
called good and bad, according to the relations in view, in the same way as it may be
called perfect or imperfect. Nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or
imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which come to pass, come to
pass according to the eternal order and fixed laws of nature. However, human weakness
cannot attain to this order in its own thoughts, but meanwhile man conceives a human
character much more stable than his own, and sees that there is no reason why he
should not himself acquire such a character. Thus he is led to seek for means which will
bring him to this pitch of perfection, and calls everything which will serve as such means
a true good. The chief good is that he should arrive, together with other individuals if
possible, at the possession of the aforesaid character. What that character is we shall
show in due time, namely, that it is the knowledge of the union existing between the
mind and the whole of nature. This, then, is the end for which I strive, to attain to such a
character myself, and to endeavor that many should attain to it with me. In other words,
it is part of my happiness to lend a helping hand, that many others may understand
even as I do, so that their understanding and desire may entirely agree with my own.
3. KNOWLEDGE MUST BE CONSOLIDATED INTO A SINGLE FRAME OF FOCUS

In order to bring this about, it is necessary to understand as much of nature as will
enable us to attain to the aforesaid character, and also to form a social order such as is
most conducive to the attainment of character by the greatest number with the least
difficulty and danger. We must seek the assistance of Moral Philosophy and the Theory
of Education; further, as health is no insignificant means for attaining our end, we must
also include the whole science of Medicine, and as many difficult things are by
contrivance rendered easy, and we can in this way gain much time and convenience, the
science of Mechanics must in no way be despised. But, before all things, a means must
be devised for improving the understanding and purifying it, as far as may be at the
outset, so that it may apprehend things without error, and in the best possible way. Thus
it is apparent to everyone that I wish to direct all sciences to one end and aim, so that
we may attain to the supreme human perfection which we have named; and, therefore,
whatsoever in the sciences does not serve to promote out object will have to be rejected
as useless. To sum up the matter in a word, all our actions and thoughts must be
directed to this one end.
SPINOZA'S NATURALIZED
EPISTIMOLOGY DENIES METAPHYSICAL
FREE WILL.
1. INTUITIVE MORAL THINKING CAN LEAD TO COUNTERINTUITIVE RESULTS
Michael Slote, Professor of Philosophy, Univ. Maryland, ETHICS NATURALIZED:
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES, Vol 6, 1992, p. 355.
We have reason to believe that common sense moral intuitions conflict with one another
and are incoherent as a class. And this seems to give new life to the philosophical
impulse toward theory and system that has been so clearly exemplified in utilitarian
ethics. But quite apart from the merits of utilitarianism or naturalistic epistemology,
recent discussion connecting these two may give a false impression of that connection
by seeming to imply that any epistemological naturalist will inevitability want to adopt
some form of utilitarianism if she seeks a coherent overall philosophical view.
2. MORAL EVALUATION INVOLVES AN ASSESSMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES, Vol 6, 1992, p. 357-358.
The issue of blameworthiness (or culpability or reprehensibility) is at the very heart of
the issue of moral luck, because it is the idea that luck or accident can make a difference
to blameworthiness, etc., that most grates against our antecedent moral intuitions. If we
concentrate on praiseworthiness the clash on intuitions is less evident, because there is
such a thing as non-moral praiseworthinesswe can praise an artistic performance or
work that it would make not sense to regard as culpable or blameworthyand because
it is therefore not odd at all to suppose that non-moral praiseworthiness can sometimes
depend on accident. Of course, we could distinguish moral praiseworthiness from
praiseworthiness in general and claim that it grates on our intuitions to suppose that
moral praiseworthiness can be subject to luck; but it is just easier to focus on
blameworthiness. And so in what follows I shall frame the issues of moral luck largely in
terms of the notion of blameworthiness.
3. SPINOZAS UTILITARIAN REDUCTIONIST EPISTEMOLOGY CATEGORICALLY IGNORES

QUESTIONS OF MORAL ETHICS.
An ethical view which defines a hierarchy of morally better and worse motives and
claims that actions are to be evaluated solely in terms of their (previously or
independently evaluated) motives, is paradigmatically a form of virtue ethics. Spinozas
Ethics restricts its ethical terminology in the light of problems raised by a more
extensive ethical vocabulary. Spinoza denies the possibility of metaphysical human

freedom and on that basis refuses to allow attributions of moral praise- or
blameworthiness into his theoretical account of ethical phenomena. But he is willing to
speak of certain character traits as virtues or vices, and as admirable or not admirable,
because he assumes we can make sense of these notions independently of any
assumptions about metaphysical freedom of will.
4. SPINOZA FAILS TO MAKE MORAL EVALUATIONS

For Spinoza some people can be better or more excellent than others in various respects
e.g., one person might be a lovely person, another a vicious human beingthough
those judged worse in these ways are not thereby be deemed blameworthy or more
blameworthy than those judged to be better. The absence of freedom undercuts moral
evaluations that inherently assume some sort of metaphysical freedom on the part of
human beings, but other sorts of evaluations do not entail such freedom and thus,
according to Spinoza, apply to the sort of metaphysically determined but rational
creatures we humans are or can be. A person who frequently turns on people
unexpectedlysomeone who acts angrily and aggressively toward people, without
having been given any provocationcan be regarded as vicious and be avoided as such
independently of any commitment to blame the person for being vicious and acting or
interacting badly with others (after all, a dog can be called vicious for similar reasons).
So Spinoza holds, and we can follow him in holding, that ethical evaluations need not
commit us to freedom of will or (therefore) to ascriptions of moral blameworthiness,
moral praiseworthiness, or moral responsibility generally.
NATURALIZED EPISTIMOLOGY
SELECTIVLEY IGNORES VALUES
1. SPINOZA AVOIDS PARADOXES OF MORAL LUCK BY IGNORING CERTAIN ETHICAL AND
MORAL TERMS.
Nowadays, we are less confident than Spinoza was that causal/metaphysical
determinism makes human free will impossible, but we have another motive for wanting
to avoid moral/ethical language that commits us to ascriptions of moral praiseand
blameworthiness that Spinoza lacked. For we have seen that it is precisely with respect
to ascription of blameworthiness and the like that ordinary intuitive thinking ties itself up
into knots; the paradoxes of moral luck most closely concern such ascriptions, and so
one way to avoid the paradoxes is simply to avoid ascribing blameworthiness, etc.,
altogether. An ethics of virtue that speaks of admirable and deplorable traits of
character and of virtues and vices (or anti-virtues) in the manner indicated by Spinoza
can be avoid the paradoxes of moral luck by simply eliminating those ethical/moral
terms whose ordinary use gives rise to the paradoxes. And this way of dealing with
moral luck is quite different both from eliminate and from reductive utilitarianism.
Unlike eliminative utilitarianism, Spinoza-like virtue ethics is only selectively eliminative
of moral/ethical concepts/terms, and the concepts/terms it eliminates are (among) those
utilitarianism retains, but (re)interprets, reductionisticially, in empirical, naturalistic
terms. We have thus uncovered the way in which naturalizing ethical views can seek to
take the sting out of the problem of moral luck.
2. SPINOZAS ETHICS EXTERNALIZES RESPONSIBILITY

One of the most important aspects of naturalizing epistemology has been its typical
commitment to externalism in regard to epistemic/evaluative attributions. For the
Cartesian epistemologist epistemic rationality and/or justification is a matter of the
thoughts, perceptual experiences, and inferences of the would-be knower, and thus
concern only the internal mental states of that knower. But an externalist will treat
rationality and/or justification as at least partly involving matters external to the mind or
subjectivity of the person whose rationality/justification is in question. And a form of
externalism like reliabilism with respect to epistemic justification, by making such
justification depend in part on how reliable certain inferential processes actually are in
representing our environment to us, makes epistemic justification depend on relations
between the mind and the (rest of) the natural world. By contrast, internalism may or
may not locate the mind at a point in the natural world but it leaves epistemic
justification having nothing to do with (the rest of) the natural world, and this illustrates,
I think, the clear sense in which externalism is a typical and exemplary feature of
naturalizing epistemology.
3. SPINOZA FAILS TO RECOGNIZE UNFORSEEABLE CIRCUMSTANCES

But one of the thoughts that help to give rise to the paradoxes of moral luck is our
ordinary belief that moral blameworthiness, badness, and goodness are a matter of
inner willing or intention, not of possibly accident and/or unforeseeable extra-subjective
effects or circumstances. And to the extent, for example, that a Kantian or intuitionist
places a primary emphasis on moral evaluation and sees such evaluation as based in
the inner or mental life of rational agents, such as an approach to ethics seems highly
analogous to Cartesian epistemological internalism, and it is not surprising, therefore,
that Kantian epistemology is a paradigmatic (though of course highly distinctive)
example of Cartesian epistemological subjectivism.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
POLITICIAL ACTIVIST 1815 - 1902
Life and Work

Elizabeth Cady was born in Johnstown, New York. Her grandfather had been a soldier in
the Revolutionary War, and her parents were well-to-do and educated, but suffered from
the patriarchal mindset which ruled the times. Nevertheless, the wealth and intelligence
of her family allowed her to explore the various questions of life which finally convinced
her that women should have the same moral consideration as men. There was nothing
radical to her about the idea; it was a simple logical extenuation of the revolutionary
philosophy from which America had been made. Listening to her fathers legal
encounters and reading from the myriad of books in her family library, Elizabeth was to
develop a keen understanding of the political and legal forces which blocked women
from fulfilling their roles as citizens of a democratic republic.
After graduating from Willards Troy Seminary, an intellectually progressive womens

academy, she married the abolitionist activist Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840. Their
honeymoon was spent in London at the World Anti-Slavery Convention. A furious
controversy broke out at the convention concerning the role of women in the
organizations. The American group was progressive in its attitude toward women, while
many other countries, including Britain, forbade women to hold high decisionmaking
posts. Elizabeth Cady Stanton began to believe that no one group could truly be
liberated unless they supported the liberation of everyone else. Shortly after this, she
met Susan B. Anthony, the suffragette. Their friendship and collaboration would last into
the next century and produce oratories of unprecedented articulation and compassion
for womens causes.
Womens Liberation as a Basic

American Value
Stantons philosophy of liberation can be categorized as follows: (1) an adherence to the
natural rights philosophy of the Founding Fathers, (2) a recognition of the
interconnectedness of all liberatory struggles, and (3) an appeal for women to be
independent and self-sufficient. The first and third of these reflect her belief in the
individualism of the predominant democratic thinkers of her time, while the second,
rather than being collectivist in motivation, was simply the pragmatic recognition of
political reality.
Stanton saw the American Revolution as the historic fulfillment of natural law. Thinkers
such as Locke and Jefferson believed that certain rights were inalienable simply by virtue
of our humanity. But most male individualists failed to recognize that these rights were
equally natural for women, as well as men and women of color. The Slave Clause of
the original Constitution, along with its denial of the status of full citizenship to women,
was to Stanton evidence of its incompleteness rather than an essential defect. At the
1848 Seneca Falls convention on womens rights, Stanton wrote the organizations
manifesto in a language similar to the Declaration of Independence: We hold these
truths to be self-evident, she wrote, that all men and women are created equal. The
exclusion of women was for Stanton a major violation of natural law, since the masculine
and the feminine were necessary for each other, as evidenced in all of nature. To bold
one over the other was contrary to what she saw as the essential design of the Creator:
absolute harmony in life.
Because of this inclusiveness, Stanton saw how hypocritical it was to be in favor of, say,
liberation of Blacks and not women, or vice versa. As a believer in natural law, she held
that all people were fundamentally similar, with overlapping needs, desires, capacities
and rights. All the major reformist movements of the time embraced the idea of
perfectionism, the belief that progress and human ideals were divinely inspired to
improve society. But they were also pragmatist, more concerned with what would work
than with speculative moral philosophy. For any of them to succeed, it was essential to
have the support of comrades in other movements. For Stanton, pragmatism and her
belief in the fundamental worth of all humans combined to make her convinced that all
fronts must be attacked.
The key to any such liberation for Stanton was found in self-sovereignty, the belief that
dependence upon others was a major source of oppression. Women and Blacks had been
denied opportunities for education and skills and because of this they allowed
themselves to be enslaved. Moreover, women who married were threatened with
destitution should their husbands die, become ill, or divorce them. Under this constant
threat, no one could even envision the possibility of freedom. A woman who has no
marketable skills will stay with an abusive husband out of economic necessity. In any
case, for women to define themselves only in relation to their masters was a denial of
the divinely endowed attributes and talents possessed by all human beings.
But Was She a Feminist?

Stanton was very influential to the Suffrage movement which culminated in the 1920
ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the
right to vote. But was she a feminist in the sense we know it today? Several points
suggest against this, and even hint that her philosophy, while understandable in its time
and context, is not compatible with the aims of feminism today. Contemporary feminists
see the entire American system as being fundamentally masculine; the idea of a public
life separated from the private concerns of men and women has allowed even the most
progressive male thinkers to remain fundamentally chauvinist in their personal outlook.
Simply giving women the same rights as men makes little sense when the entire system
is flawed. America was founded on the twin ideas of the exploitation of labor and the
exploitation of the natural environment, both of which, for contemporary feminists,
reflect the male need to control and dominate. Stantons upper class background did not
teach her about the destructive underside of American ideals.
This paradox is also reflected in Stantons adherence to natural law and individual
sovereignty. Contemporary feminist thinkers see both of these as masculine patterns of
thought The idea that there is a set of universal dictums governing all human action is,
they say, distinctively male; one tries to control the world by inventing universal
controlling principles. Similarly, self-sufficiency is a male illusion which hides our
underlying mutual dependence on each other. Most feminists are communalists rather
than individualists, because they see the essence of the feminine as bridging gaps
between people rather than separating everyone into their own private spheres. The
contemporary feminist phrase the personal is political suggests that everything we do
is both affected by and affects others. By simply seeking to move women into the same
sphere as men, none of the fundamental problems of patriarchy can be solved.
While this judgment may be valid, it may also be irrelevant in the case of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. She was, after all, a product of her times, when most women didnt even realize
they wanted rights at all. Through her efforts women were given, at the very least, a
freedom of thought and discourse which made possible the same feminism which
currently criticizes early reformers like Stanton.

Elizabeth Cady Stantons ideas can help debaters distinguish between the often
confusing general philosophies of feminism. They are a powerful argument for a
harmonious inclusion of both men and women, but at the same time they emphasize the
necessity of women being able to act on their own.
Debates between advocates of traditional American ideas and feminist ideas can
become much more interesting given Stantons belief that feminine liberation is a
fulfillment, rather than a refutation, of tradition. Finally, her observations about the
similar needs of all people are employable in debates concerning the demands of
competing groups and cultures.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Elmer C. and Warren D. Foster. HEROINES OF MODERN PROGRESS (New York:
Macmillan,
1926).
Altback, Edith (ed.). FROM FEMINISM TO LIBERATION (Cambridge: Schenkman, 1971).
Anderson, Judith (ed.). OUTSPOKEN WOMEN: SPEECHES BY AMERICAN WOMEN

REFORMERS, 1635-1935 (Dubuque: Kendal/Hunt, 1984).
Ballard, Laura C. Elizabeth Cady Stanton in OUR FAMOUS WOMEN: AN AUTHORITATIVE

RECORD OF THE LIVES AND DEEDS OF DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN WOMEN OF OUR
TIMES (Hartford, Conn., 1886).
Banner, Lois W. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON: A RADICAL FOR WOMEN~S RIGHTS (Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1980).
Beard, Mary R. WOMAN AS FORCE IN HISTORY (New York: Octagon Books, 1967).
Buhle, Paul and Man Jo Buhle (eds.) THE CONCISE HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE:
SELECTIONS FROM THE CLASSIC WORK OF STANTON, ANTHONY, GAGE AND HARPER
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978).
Griffith, Elisabeth. IN HER OWN RIGHT: THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (New
York:
Hymowitz, Carol, and Michaele Weissman. A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN AMERICA (New York:
Bantam Books, 1978).
Riegel, Robert. AMERICAN FEMINISTS (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1963).

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. EIGHTY YEARS AND MORE (New York: Schocken Books, 1971).
and Susan B. Anthony. CORRESPONDENCE, WRITINGS, SPEECHES. Ellen Carol

DuBois, ed (New York: Schocken Books, 1981).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton papers, Library of Congress. MSS 17, 781
and the Revising Committee. THE WOMAWS BIBLE (2 Volumes, New York: 18951898).
Waggenspack, Beth M. ELIZABETH CADY STANTONS REFORM RHETORIC 1848-1854.

Ph.D. dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1982.
THE SEARCH FOR SELF-SOVEREIGNTY: THE ORATORY OF ELIZABETH CADY

STANTON (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989).
WOMEN MUST BE SELF-SUFFICIENT TO

BE LIBERATED
1. SELF-SUFFICIENCY OUGHT TO BE THE HIGHEST PRIORITY FOR WOMEN
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Political Activist, in Beth M. Waggenspack, THE SEARCH FOR
SELF-SOVEREIGNTY, 1989, pp. 82-3
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the
full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body; for giving her the most
enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of
bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear,
is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.
2. WOMEN MUST RELY ON THEMSELVES

SELF-SOVEREIGNTY, 1989, p. 84
Whatever the theories may be of a womans dependence on man, in the supreme
moments of her life he cannot bean her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to
give life to every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, no one can
mitigate her pangs; and if her sorrow is greater than she can bear, alone she passes
beyond the gates into the vast unknown.
3. NEED FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY DEMANDS WOMENS LIBERATION

We see reason sufficient in the other conditions of human beings for individual liberty
and development, but when we consider the self-dependence of every human soul we
see the need of courage, judgment, and the exercise of every faculty of mind and body,
strengthened and developed by use, in woman as well as man.
4. WOMEN NEED TO CONTROL THEIR OWN NAMES

SELFSOVEREIGNTY, 1989, p. 13
There is a great deal in a name. It often signifies much and may involve a great
principle. Why are slaves nameless unless they take that of their master? Simply
because they have no independent existence; even so with women. The custom of
calling women Mrs. John This or Mrs. Tom That is founded on the principle that white
men are the lords of us all.
ALL POLITICAL STRUGGLES ARE

INTERCONNECTED
1. ALL POLITICAL AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS UPHOLD PATRIARCHY
The canon and civil law, church and state, priests and legislatures, all political parties
and religious denominations have alike taught that woman was made after man, of man,
and for man, an inferior being, subject to man. Credes, codes, scriptures and statutes
are all based on this idea. The fashions, forms, ceremonies and customs of society,
church ordinances and discipline all grow out of this idea.
2. ALL PEOPLES RIGHTS ARE INTERCONNECTED

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Political Activist. CORRESPONDENCE, WRITINGS, SPEECHES,
1981, p. 79 But in settling the question of the negros rights, we find out the exact limits
of our own, for rights never clash or interfere; and where no individual in a community is
denied his rights, the mass are the more perfectly protected in theirs; for whenever any
class is subject to fraud or injustice, it shows that the spirit of tyranny is at work, and no
one can tell where or how or when this infection will spread.
3. RACIAL AND GENDER PREJUDICE HAVE A COMMON SOURCE

The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against
sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested much in the same way. The
negros skin and the womans sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended
to be in subjection to the white Saxon man. The few social privileges which the man
gives the woman, he makes up to the negro in civil rights. As citizens of a republic,
which should we most highly prize, social privileges or civil rights? The latter, most
certainly.
4. EQUALITY OF RIGHTS DEMANDS UNENDING STRUGGLE

1981, p. 35 We do not expect that our path will be strewn with the flowers of popular
applause, but over the thorns of bigotry and prejudice will be our way, and on our
banners will beat the dark storm-clouds of opposition from those who have entrenched
themselves behind the stormy bulwarks of custom and authority, and those who have
fortified their position by every means, holy and unholy. But we will steadfastly abide the
result. Unmoved we will bear it aloft. Undaunted we will unfurl it to the gale, for we know
that the storm cannot rend from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more clearly
show to us the glorious words inscribed upon it, Equality of Rights.
5. MEN AND WOMEN HAVE THE SAME NEEDS

SELFSOVEREIGNTY, 1989, p. 68
Man eats, drinks, sleeps and so does woman. He loves, is religious, penitent, prayerful,
reverent, and so is woman. He is noble, courageous, self-reliant, generous,
magnanimous; and so is woman. Are not our hopes and fears for time and eternity the
same?
NATURAL LAW IS TILE BEST

PHILOSOPHY FOR WOMEN
1. NATURAL RIGHTS PHILOSOPHICALLY SUPERIOR TO ALTERNATIVES
There are certain natural rights as inalienable to civilization as are the rights of air and
motion to the savage in the wilderness. The natural rights of the civilized man and
woman axe government, property, the harmonious development of all their powers, and
the gratification of their desires. There are a few people we now and then meet who, like
Jeremy Bentham, scout the idea of natural rights in civilization, and pronounce them
mere metaphors, declaring that there are no rights aside from those the law confers. If
the law made man too, that might do, for then he could be made to order to fit the
particular niche he was designed to fill.
2. NATURAL LAW DEMANDS ABSOLUTE GENDER EQUALITY

Those people who declaim on the inequalities of sex, the disabilities and limitations of
one as against the other, show themselves as ignorant of the first principles of life as
would that philosopher who should undertake to show the comparative power of the
positive as against the negative electricity, of the centrifugal as against the centripetal
force, the attraction of the north as against the south end of the magnet. These great
natural forces must be perfectly balanced or the whole material world would relapse into
chaos. Just so the masculine and feminine elements in humanity must be exactly
balanced to redeem the moral and social world from the chaos which surrounds it. One
might as well talk of separate spheres for the two ends of the magnet as for man and
woman; they may have separate duties in the same sphere, but their true place is
together everywhere.
3. NATURAL LAW SOLVES WOMEWS PROBLEMS

1981,
p. 137
Instead of leaving everything in the home to chance as now, we should apply science
and philosophy to our daily life. I should feel that I have not lived in vain if faith of mine
could roll off the soul of woman that dark cloud, that nightmare, that false belief that all
her weaknesses and disabilities are natural, that her sufferings in maternity are a
punishment for the sins of Adam and Eve and teach her that higher gospel that by
obedience to natural laws she might secure uninterrupted health and happiness to
herself and mould future generations to her will.
4. WOMEN~S AITACKS ON FEMINISM DUE TO IGNORANCE OF THEIR SITUATION Elizabeth

Cady Stanton, Political Activist. CORRESPONDENCE, WRITINGS, SPEECHES, 1981, p. 33
The most discouraging, the most lamentable aspect our cause wears is the indifference,
indeed the contempt, with which women themselves regard the movement. Where the
subject is introduced, among those even who claim to be intelligent and educated, it is
met by the scornful curl of the lip, and by expression of ridicule and disgust. But we shall
hope for better things of them when they are enlightened in regard to their present
position. When women know the laws and constitutions under which they live, they will
not publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied, nor their ignorance, by
declaring they have all the rights they want.
LEO STRAUSS
GERMAN PHILOSOPHER (1899- 1973)

Liberal and radical scholars often contend that thinking conservatives are rare. Perhaps
this is because conservatives feel they have very little to defend; the status quo, after
all, is the status quo, and challenges which actually threaten the existing state of affairs
are rare.
But when those challenges become part of the establishment itself, when radicalism
becomes the norm, then conservatives are pushed up against the wall, and like anyone
in that position, they are capable of finding a great deal of creativity and aggression. Leo
Strauss defended traditional ideas such as natural right, transcendent values, and
philosophical elitism at a time when those ideas bad been discredited and shrugged off
by academics and politicians as well as the general public. His stubborn refusal to give in
to relativism, historicism and pluralism made him the object of ridicule and studied
ignorance by other philosophers, but recently thinkers like Allan Bloom and other Neoconservatives have revived his ideas.
Life And Work

Leo Strauss was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Kirchhain Hessen, Germany on
September 20, 1899. It would be another twenty five years before the scapegoating of
Jews in Germany would reach unmanageable proportions, so the young Strauss was not
denied the social life of most German youth; he served in the German army, then
completed his education at the Universities of Marburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Hamburg,
where he obtained his doctorate. A political Zionist from early on, Strauss was interested
both in the ability of Jews to establish political power, and the tension between Athens
and Jerusalem philosophically, or the conflict between reason and revelation.
These questions would influence Stress thinking throughout his life, but he was forced
to contemplate them elsewhere when Hitlers rise to power sent Strauss fleeing to the
United States. There, he taught at Columbia, the New School for Social Research, and
the University of Chicago, among other places, while writing several important books.
Books such as On Tyranny, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy and Natural Right and
History all put forth the notion of transcendent values and the inherent superiority of
Western notions of political good, while others such as Persecution and the Act of Writing
The City and Man, and What is Political Philosophy dealt with issues ranging from natural
right to liberal democracy to religion.
His belief in conservative notions of political philosophy were unpopular among

intellectuals, especially after World War II, but he attracted a small following at the
University of Chicago, and internationally, purporting to represent a silent majority
who still longed for the age-old traditions inherited from Ancient Greece: a natural
aristocracy, traditional values and an educated class of rulers.
Leo Strauss died in 1973. Over ten years later, a resurgence of interest in his ideas
accompanied the publication of Allan Blooms The Closing of the American Mind, and
conservatives in the debate over multiculturalism in education borrowed heavily from
Strauss insistence that transcendent values exist and should be promoted in education.
The Philosophy Of Natural Right

A major theme of Enlightenment political philosophy is the idea that there is a
transcendent realm of moral values, from which is obtained the idea that all people are
created with certain rights which no government can legitimately deny. In fact, however,
it is not simply rights which are included in the notion of natural right (also called
natural law). All moral values are believed to proceed from the facts we know about
normal human behavior, both ethical and political. Leo Strauss believed that these
norms could be discovered through reason and history, and that they applied equally to
all cultures and historical periods. While relativists maintained that values, ethics, and
morals were contingent upon the historical and local context of any given people,
Strauss believed that the difference in values only proved the need for some overriding
standard of natural right. The idea that there was no standard, simply because different
people had different views, struck him as absurd. He argued that no one would take
seriously, for example, a claim that, since different cultures had different beliefs as to
the nature of the universe, that this somehow negated the idea that there was a specific
set of physical laws which governed the universe. Similarly, if one culture believes the
world is round and another culture thinks the world is flat, this doesnt result in the
conclusion that the world is neither round nor flat, nor does it mean that both sides are
correct; what it means is that one culture is correct and the other incorrect
But how is this determination made? Strauss answered simply that we determine these
things by reason, by critical investigation. It was proven by science that the world is
round, and thus it is infinitely more reasonable to believe in the roundness of the world
as opposed to flatness. In the same respect, it can be shown by reason that humans
ought not to kill one another, ought not to steal from one another, ought to obey their
political leaders, ought not behave in destructive ways, and so on. To Strauss, these are
not merely conventions; the reason they are conventions is that they have real
applicability; they are good.
The Good With A Capital G

To conservative political and ethical theorists, the denial of a transcendent good which
governs the universe, whether based upon religion or reason (most theorists hold it to
be founded upon reason) is both politically destructive and philosophically unsound. It is
destructive because it results in an unhealthy pluralism, an entrenched division between
peoples which only results in conflict and the decay of societys strongest institutions.
But denial of the Good is also unsound. Strauss pointed out that all political philosophy
implicitly searches for the Good. There may be philosophies of radicalism which say
things need to change; Strauss asserted that such philosophies are implicitly Goodoriented in that they say that things need to change for the better, with the assumption
that some states of affairs are better than others. Conservative philosophies, on the
other hand, try to prevent change from occurring, and Strauss reasoned that these
philosophies too urge an implicit notion that the Good exists now. In either case, if we
can believe some political arrangements are better than others, this inevitably means
there is a standard of Goodness by which such states of affairs are measured.
This becomes especially important when social scientists and political philosophers deny
that they are using value-judgments in their thinking. Strauss thought this was both
absurd and dangerous. It was absurd because, as is pointed out above, value judgments
inevitably make their way into political analysis. In fact, he argued, if value judgments
are not explicitly acknowledged, they slip in through the back door. A social scientist
analyzing the threats to democracy implicitly acknowledges that democracy is good,
and this becomes obvious in his or her recommendations or interpretations. The denial
of value-laden analysis is also dangerous in that it treats political questions as strictly
scientific, when, in fact, we are dealing with the most important issues facing citizens.
Such importance means we should not hide the fact that we care about these issues. We
may find that critical characteristics of a good society slip through our fingers when we
pretend they are not as sacred to us as they really are.
According to Strauss, relativism (also called historicism when referring to historical

relativism) is flawed in two important ways. First, it is logically flawed. Relativists make
an absolute claim that no absolutes are possible. If no absolutes are possible, then the
statement no absolutes are possible is not possible.
Apart from the logically flawed nature of relativisms underlying claim, there is another
reason why it should be philosophically rejected: According to Strauss, there are simply
no positive reasons given to validate the position. Relativism bases itself on the failure of
various absolutist claims to themselves be valid; this constitutes a fallacy known as
appeal to ignorance. In other words, the simple claim that no absolute has been
proven to be true does not itself prove that no absolutes are true, just as failure to prove
Gods existence does not constitute a proof against God. In the case of absolute
morals, it may simply be that we have not yet found irrefutable proofs. This does not
mean they are logically impossible.
Finally, there is a reason to hold morals to be absolute independent of the logic debate:
Without the majority of people holding to absolute values, Strauss warns, society will
deteriorate. Commonalties between groups will give way to tension and conflict. Young
people will have no motivation to behave themselves. We will no longer be concerned
with electing virtuous leaders. Strauss believes that we should teach morals as
absolute even if they cannot always be proven to be so. Plato referred to his similar
belief as the noble lie.
Some Objections
Almost all conservative, natural right proponents are also people who believe that
Western culture is superior to other cultures and that society should reflect a nature that
is patriarchal and elitist. Strauss is no exception; although he grounds these beliefs in an
appeal to classical philosophy, many people see his ideas as simply another
manifestation of narrow-minded bigotry.
Nietzsche argued that we invent such noble lies merely to perpetuate existing power
relations. It is easy to imagine critics accusing Strauss of appealing to broad-based
transcendent truths simply to reject other versions of reality more suited to changing
society. It may be that our Western culture induces such a bias in us, a bias which can be
overcome by adhering to a version of relativism that not only preserves our beliefs, but
also respects the beliefs of other cultures.
This is because, for many people, relativism is not so much an ethical belief as it is a
methodological imperative. For anthropologists, relativism is necessary to truly
appreciate the beliefs and customs of other cultures. But what might alarm Straussians
is that these differing cultures can exist in the same overriding civilizations. Within a
liberal and democratic America, many people must follow different paths, even if it is
possible conflict may result The alternative is the imposition of one standard of natural
right, which may or may not be valid, placed upon all sub-groups. This may result in the
appearance of stability, but at the expense of the diversity many see as essential to
progress.
Natural right, or natural law, moreover, may itself be flawed in its acceptation of the
term natural to describe what some people see as more rational than other beliefs
concerning morality. Strauss believes we can arrive at these conclusions through the
exercise of reason, but postmodern thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault believe that
reason itself is a construct of Western thinking that is itself subject to criticism.
Strauss, however, would question whence such criticism is to occur. If one needs to use
the very methods of Western reason to criticize the absolutist tendency of Western
thought, does this not in its own way prove the absolute validity of Western thought?
Additionally, it is in the very nature of Western thought, including natural right theory, to
be anti-authoritarian. Natural right does not require a mindless appeal to authority.
Different morals and customs can be proven appropriate or inappropriate; what is
necessary is that such a tradition of rationality, fostered by excellence in education and
strong democratic traditions, be willing to hold to the notion of rationalism itself as an
absolute.
Ideas For Debate

Most Lincoln-Douglas debaters talk about values, and there has been an increasing
tendency to question the values themselves. Even in this handbook there will be found
thinkers who criticize the absolutist nature of value-holding, and propose that values be
rejected entirely. In Strauss is found the foil for such critiques. He is a strong defender
of the absolute and necessary nature of values. Not only are they important, he argues;
they are also inevitable. The attempt to reject them will simply make them manifest
themselves elsewhere, in places where we are not aware of them, and hence less likely
to carefully choose or defend them.
Strauss also serves as an impressive source for natural right as a value to be upheld. Its
basic components are found in most of his works; they reflect both Platonic and Lockean
traditions of morality, and reject the historicism of thinkers like Marx and the nihilism of
thinkers like Nietzsche. Natural right is justified by Strauss on two counts: its
philosophical viability and its necessity for a stable society. The second reason, stability,
means that even if a debater cannot always justify natural right logically, he or she can
justify it as necessary for a just social order.
Leo Strauss is one of the most thoughtful and eloquent defenders of the unpopular
idea that transcendent values exist, and that societies should hold to unifying principles
rather than relativistic diversity. Debaters can employ his work to their advantage by
reading the literature carefully and thinking about how it might apply to the recent
multicultural and relativistic tendency in Western thinking.
Bibliography
Strauss, Leo. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY (New York: Pegasus Books, 1975).
. THE REBIRTH OF CLASSICAL POLITICAL RATIONALISM (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1989).
. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
. ON TYRANNY (New York: Free Press, 1991).
. PERSECUTION AND THE ART OF WRITING (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952).
. THOUGHTS ON MACHIAVELLI (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958).
. WHAT IS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY? (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958).
. THE CITY AND MAN (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964).
. LIBERALISM, ANCIENT AND MODERN (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
. STUDIES IN PLATONIC POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY (Chicago: University of

Chicago
Press, 1983).
Deutsch, Kenneth L and Walter Nicgorski, editors. LEO STRAUSS: POLITICAL

PHILOSOPHER AND JEWISH THINKER (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994).
Kieimansegg, Peter Graf, et al, editors. HANNAH ARENDT AND LEO STRAUSS
(Washington, D.C.:
Drury, Shadia. THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF LEO STRAUSS (New York: St. Martins Press,
1988).
Udoff, Alan, ed. LEO STRESS THOUGHT: TOWARDS A CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner, 1991).
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY SHOULD SEEK

TRANSCENDENT MORAL PRINCIPLES
1. TRANSCENDENT MORAL PRINCIPLES EXIST
Leo Strauss, political philosopher. NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1968, p. 89.
In brief, then, it can be said that the discovery of nature is identical with the
actualization of a human possibility which, at least according to its own interpretation, is
trans-historical, trans-social, trans-moral, and trans-religious. The philosophic quest for
the first things presupposes not merely that there are first things but that the first things
are always and that things which are always or are imperishable are more truly beings
than the things which are not always. These presuppositions follow from the
fundamental premise that no being emerges without a cause or that it is impossible that
at first Chaos came to be, i.e., that the first things jumped into being out of nothing
and through nothing. In other words, the manifest changes would be impossible if there
did not exist something permanent or eternal, or the manifest contingent beings require
the existence of something necessary and therefore eternal.
2. SEARCH FOR THE GOOD IS IMPLICIT IN ALL POLITICAL THOUGHT

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, p. 3.
All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we
wish to prevent a change to the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about
something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse.
But thought of better or worse implies thought of the good. The awareness of the good
which guides all our actions has the character of opinion: it is no longer questioned but,
on reflection, it proves to be questionable. The very fact that we can question it directs
us towards such a thought of the good as is no longer questionable--towards a thought
which is no longer opinion but knowledge. All political action has then in itself a
directedness towards knowledge of the good: of the good life, or of the good society. For
the good society is the complete political good.
3. NATURE IS CENTRAL TO ALL TRUTH

Nature is the ancestor of all ancestors or the mother of all mothers. Nature is older than
any tradition; hence it is more venerable than any tradition. The view that natural things
have a higher dignity than things produced by men is not based on any surreptitious or
unconscious borrowings from myth, or on residues of myth, but on the discovery of
nature itself. Art presupposes nature, whereas nature does not presuppose art. Mans
creative abilities, which are more admirable than any of his products, are not
themselves produced by man: the genius of Shakespeare was not the work of
Shakespeare. Nature supplies not only the materials but also the models for all arts; the
greatest and fairest things are the work of nature as distinguished from art. By
uprooting the authority of the ancestral, philosophy recognizes that nature is the
authority.
4. HISTORY PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF TRANSCENDENT PRINCIPLES

Leo Strauss, political philosopher. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1975, pp. 145-6.
Far from legitimizing the historicist inference, history seems rather to prove that all
human thought, and certainly all philosophic thought, is concerned with the same
fundamental themes or the same fundamental problems, and therefore that there exists
an unchanging framework which persists in all changes of human knowledge of both
facts and principles.
5. SEARCH FOR OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE IS POLITICALLY FEASIBLE

All knowledge of political things implies assumptions concerning the nature of political
things; i.e., assumptions which concern not merely the given political situation, but
political life or human life as such. One cannot know anything about a war going on at a
given time without having some notion, however dim and hazy, of war as such and its
place within human life as such. One cannot see a policeman as a policeman without
having made an assumption about law and government as such. The assumptions
concerning the nature of political things, which are implied in all knowledge of political
things, have the character of opinions. It is only when these assumptions are made the
theme of critical and coherent analysis that a philosophic or scientific approach to
politics emerges.
NATURAL RIGHT IS THE BEST POLITICAL

AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY
1. NATURE, NOT CONVENTION, DETERMINES WHAT IS RIGHT
Laws are just to the extent that they are conducive to the common good. But if the just
is identical with the common good, the just or right cannot be conventional: the
conventions of a city cannot make good for the city what is, in fact, fatal for it and vice
versa. The nature of things and not convention then determines in each case what is just
2. NATURAL RIGHT NECESSARY TO SUPERSEDE CONTRADICTORY ACCOUNTS OF TRUTH

The assumption that there is a variety of divine codes leads to difficulties, since the
various codes contradict one another. One code absolutely praises actions while another
code absolutely condemns. One code demands the sacrifice of ones first born son,
whereas another code forbids all human sacrifices as an abomination. The burial rites of
one tribe provoke the horror of another. But what is decisive is the fact that the various
codes contradict one another in what they suggest regarding the first things. The view
that the gods were born of the earth cannot be reconciled with the view that the earth
was made by the gods. Thus the question arises as to which code is the right code and
which account of the first things is the true account. The right way is now no longer
guaranteed by authority; it becomes a question or the object of a quest. The primeval
identification of the good with the ancestral is replaced by the fundamental distinction
between the good and the ancestral; the quest for the right way or for the first things is
the quest for the good as distinguished from the ancestral. It will prove to be the quest
for what is good by nature as distinguished from what is good merely by convention.
3. NATURAL LAW REPLACES RELATIVE NORMS

Once nature is discovered, it becomes impossible to understand equally as customs or
ways the
characteristics or normal behavior of natural groups and of the different human tribes;
the customs of natural beings are recognized as their natures, and the customs of
different human tribes are recognized as their conventions. The primeval notion of
custom or way is split up into the notions of nature, on the one hand, and
convention, on the other.
4. NATURAL LAW SOLVES VIOLENCE
For what is natural comes into being and exists without violence. All violence applied to
a being makes that being do something which goes against its grain, i.e., against nature.
But the city stands or falls by violence, compulsion, or coercion. There is, then, no
essential difference between political rule and the rule of a master over his slaves. But
the unnatural character of slavery seems to be obvious: it goes against any mans grain
to be made a slave or to be treated as a slave.
5. NATURAL LAW IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT UNJUST LAWS

Nevertheless, the need for natural right is as evident today as it has been for centuries
and even millennia. To reject natural right is tantamount to saying that all right is
positive right, and this means that what is right is determined exclusively by legislators
and the courts of various countries. Now it is obviously meaningful, and sometimes even
necessary, to speak of unjust laws or unjust decisions. In passing such judgments we
imply that there is a standard of right and wrong independent of positive right and
higher than positive right: a standard with reference to which we are able to judge of
positive right
OBJECTIONS TO NATURAL RIGHT ARE

INCORRECT
1. NATURAL RIGHT DOES NOT LEAD TO AUTHORITARIANISM
Plato has indicated by the conversational settings of his Republic and Laws rather than
by explicit statements how indispensable doubt of authority or freedom from authority is
for the discovery of natural right. In the Republic the discussion of natural right starts
long after the aged Cephalus, the father, the head of the house, has left to take care of
the sacred offerings to the gods: the absence of Cephalus, or of what he stands for, is
indispensable for the quest for natural right
2. NATURAL RIGHT DOES NOT REQUIRE RELIGIOUS BELIEF

The denial of natural right thus appears to be the consequence of the denial of particular
providence. But the example of Aristotle alone would suffice to show that it is possible to
admit natural right without believing in particular providence or in divine justice proper.
For, however indifferent to moral distinctions the cosmic order may be thought to be,
human nature, as distinguished from nature in general, may very well be the basis of all
such distinctions.
3. TRANSCENDENT VALUES NEED NOT BE RELIGIOUS OR METAPHYSICAL

Transcendence is not a preserve of revealed religion. In a very important sense it was
implied in the
original meaning of political philosophy as the quest for the natural or best political
order. The best regime, as Plato and Aristotle understood it, is, and is meant to be, for
the most part, different from what is actual here and now or beyond all actual orders.
MARXISM SHOULD BE REJECTED

1. MARXISM CANNOT ESCAPE FROM RELATIVISM
Leo Strauss, political philosopher. THE REBIRTH OF CLASSICAL POLITICAL RATIONALISM,
1989, p. 20.
Yet, according to Marx, the historical process is not completed, not to say that it has not
even begun. Besides, Marx does not admit transhistorical or natural ends with reference
to which change can be diagnosed as progress or regress. It is therefore a question

whether by turning from Western relativism to Marxism one escapes relativism.
2. MARXISM IS A ONE-SIDED TRUTH THAT IS NOT YET COMPLETE

1989, p. 20.
Surely, the Marxist truths will be preserved, in Hegels sense of the term: the
objectivity of the truth
accessible on the lower planes is not destroyed: that truth merely receives a different
meaning by being
integrated into a more concrete, more comprehensive totality. That is to say, Marxism
will reveal itself as
a one-sided truth, a half-truth.
3. MARXISM CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT A POST-CAPITALIST SOCIETY WILL BE BETTER

1989, pp. 20-1.
The application to Marxism is obvious: even if Marxism were the last word regarding the
ground of the rottenness of capitalist society and regarding the way in which that society
can and will be destroyed, it cannot possibly be the last word regarding the new society
that the revolutionary action of the proletariat brings to birth: the new society may be as
rich in contradictions and oppressions as the old society, although its contradictions and
oppressions will, of course, be entirely novel. For if Marxism is only the truth of our time
or our society, the prospect of the classless society too is only the truth of our time and
society; it may prove to be the delusion that gave the proletariat the power and the
spirit to overthrow the capitalist system, whereas in fact the proletariat finds itself
afterwards enslaved, no longer indeed by capital, but by an ironclad military
bureaucracy.
Taoism
Chinese Philosophy
There is tremendous interest in Taoism today. References to it appear in everything from
art books to philosophy classes. Qiogong (chi kung) and Tai Chi are taught at community
colleges, and spiritually inclined people are investigating Taoist meditations. Scholars
credit Taoism with having had a significant influence on Zen Buddhism (thereby
accounting for its difference from Indian Buddhism), Chinese classical poets such as Li
Po and Tu Fu are widely acknowledge to have consciously included Taoist themes, and
every major building in China--even today--is constructed according to Taoist principles.
If the English language reader wanted to investigate more about Taoism, they might well
be forgiven for thinking that nothing significant had been written since 300 B.C. Readers
interested in Taoism have undoubtedly seen most of these books, and yet articles
written in magazines, questions asked at lectures, and the confusion many people
profess about Taoist principles show that the current body of literature is insufficient
support for applying Taoism to daily life. This is not surprising. Translators usually have
not had long training as Taoists, so their perspective is academic rather that practical. If
readers want to go a step further after reading the popular books on Taoism, they have
very few alternatives. A discussion of Taoism requires an examination of: (1) the
application of Taoism to everyday life, (2) role of experience and experimentation, (3)
character, (4) relation to the outside world, and (5) application to debate.
Taoisms strength in Chinese culture--to the point that it permeates daily life even in the
Asia of today--lies in its many ties to the culture at large. What sounds complicated in
English is simple in Chinese. Is it possible to see Tao in everyday life, regardless of place
or culture? The answer is yes, Taoism is essentially concerned with how individuals act
and think in life. While there are theoretical notions, the attempt is to transform them in
such a way as to motivate and justify action. The message of Taoism is that one can
actually apply the open and accessible ideas of Tao directly to ones life.
Taoism encourages you to explore on your own. That is where true experience lies. That
is why Taoism constantly emphasizes meditation. It is far better to turn away from dead
scriptures and tap directly into Tao as it exists now. The process of tapping into Taoism
as it exists now is at the center of the exploration of meditation. We need to open
ourselves to what is unique about contemporary times, throw off the shackles of
outmoded forms and instead adapt them to our current needs.
Tao fundamentally assumes that an inner cultivation of character can lead to an outer
resonance. When confronted with the mysteries of the universe and the adversities of
life, those who follow Tao think first to secure their own inner characters or souls. This is
directly at variance with a great deal of modern thinking. Currently if we are faced with a
river too broad, we build a bridge to span it. If someone attacks us, we immediately
assume it to be that persons fault and loudly call for someone to expel the intruder. If
we want to ponder something far away, we quickly fly the distance to explore it. The
assumptions of those who follow Tao is much different. It is not that they would never
build the bridge, fight an aggressor, or explore the distant. When confronted with the
river, they might ask why the bridge was needed. Was there some reason that they were
not content with what they had?
Before they went to explore the faraway, those who follow Tao would first think to know
themselves well.
They believe that the outside world is only known in relation to an inner point of view.
They could therefore establish self-knowledge before they tried to know others. Self
cultivation is the basis for knowing Tao. Although Tao may be glimpsed in the outer
world, individuals must sharpen their sensibilities in order to observe the workings of a
superior being. In the Western world today, there are thousands of people exploring
Taoism for answers they cannot find in their own culture. In this worthy search, many of
them lack a companion for their spiritual quests. Taoism can be such a companion. It
addresses the awe and devotion of spiritual life, while recognizing that there are times
when meditation does not appear to succeed and life is discouraging.
Because Taoism is a practical philosophy attempting to explain and integrate its theories
within the larger community. The debater will find Taoism less useful when debating
criteria. Instead, the works of Taoism will more likely benefit the debater who is
examining the relationship between criteria and justification. That is, Taoism reveals how
our values lead to desirable or undesirable action. Moreover, Taoism will benefit the
debater who is interested in how our mind and inner character are influenced by values
and how character influences action.
Bibliography
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OUR VALUES ARE TIED TO INNER

STRENGTH
1. FAITH AND LIFE DEPENDENT ON INNER STRENGTH
Deng Mmg-Dao, NQA, 365 TAO, 1992, p. 3
If we have devotion--total faith and commitment to our spiritual path--our determination
will naturally build momentum. Fewer and Fewer obstructions will come before us. Our
path becomes like a crooked one made straight. No matter what tries to keep us from
our purpose, we will not be deterred. Proper devotion lies not simply in a deadlock
course. It also requires fortitude. Our bodies, our hearts, and our spirits must be totally
concentrated upon what we want. Only by uniting all our inner elements can we have
full devotion. If we see our path clearly and our personalities are completely unified,
then there is no distinction between the outer world and the inner one. Nothing is
faraway anymore, nothing is not open to us. That is why it is said that the world is like a
single point.
2. EVEN DURING DISASTERS MUST HAVE INNER STRENGTH

Deng Ming-Dao, NQA, 365 TAO, 1992, p. 10
Disaster strikes at its own time. It is so overwhelming that we can do nothing other than
accept it. It alters the course of our days, our work, our very thinking. Although it is
tempting to resent disaster, there is not much use in doing so. We cannot say that a
disaster had malice toward us, though it might have been deadly, and it is hard to say
that is has wrecked our plans: In one stroke it changes the very basis of the day.
Disaster is natural. It is not the cure of the gods, it is not punishment. Disaster results
from the interplay of forces: the earthquake form pressures in the earth, the hurricane
form wind and rain, even the accidental fire from a spark. We rush to ask Why? in the
wake of a great disaster, but we should not let superstition interfere with dispassionate
acceptance. There is no god visiting down destruction. Disasters may well change us
deeply, but they will pass. We must keep to our deeper convictions and remember our
goals. Whether we remain ash or become the phoenix is up to us.
3. ORGANIC SPIRITUALITY IS NECESSARY FOR HAPPINESS

Some leaders use threats to win adherents. They invoke death to force good behavior and
to her people toward paradise. Others woo with grand promises. If you have no
satisfaction, they offer us bliss. If you feel inadequate, they offer success. If you are
lonely, they offer acceptance. But if we do not fear death and are happy, what will such
leader have to offer? Spirituality is an organic part of daily life, not something dispensed
by a professional. True spirituality is liberation, not just from the delusions of reality but
from the delusions of religion as well. If we attain freedom form the fear of death, a sound
way of health, and a path of understanding through life, there is happiness and no need
for false leaders.
OUR VALUES ARE TIED TO INNER

STRENGTH Part 2
1. TRUE BEAUTY COMES FROM WITHIN
Deng Ming-Dao, NQA, 365 TAO, 1992, p.124
True beauty comes form within. Take a flower as an example. In the beginning it is only a
bud. It does not attract bees or butterflies, and it cannot yet become a fruit. Only when it
opens is beauty revealed in its center. There is the focus of is exquisiteness, there is the
source of its aroma, there is its sweet nectar. In the same way, our won unique beauty
comes from within. Our glory has nothing to do with our appearance or our occupation.
Our special qualities came from an inner source. We must take care to open and bloom
naturally and leisurely and keep to the center. It is from there that all mystery and power
comes, and its is good to let it unfold in its own time.
2. INNER STRENGTH ALLOWS US TO SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS

Deng Ming-Dao, NQA, 365 TAO, 1992, p. 113.
When the countryside is gripped in drought, it is useless to complain. Even when light
rains fail to moisten the parched landscape, we should accept what happens. This is the
way of Tao, and one who follows Tao accepts what comes. We may have ambitions to
move in one direction, but Tao will decide otherwise. We may have plans for the future,
but Tao will bend time differently. There are hose who will cry out in anger and
frustration, but the follower of Tao remains silent and goes about the business of
preparation. Acceptance does not mean fatalism. It does not mean capitulation to some
slaughtering predestination. Those who follow Tao do no believe in being helpless. They
believe in acting within the framework of circumstance. For example, in a drought, they
will prepare by storing what water is available. That is sensible action. They will not plant
a garden of flowers that requires a great deal of water. That is ignorance and egotism.
Acceptance is a dynamic act. It should not signal ineptness, stagnation, or inactivity. One
should simply ascertain what the situation requires and then implement what one thinks
is best. As long as ones deeds are in accord with he time and one leaves no sloppy
traces then the action is correct.
VALUES CANNOT BE VIEWED AS

OBJECTIVE TRUTHS
1. NO OBJECTIVE TRUTH EXISTS
We cannot communicate directly from mind to mind, and so misinterpretation is a
perennial problem.
Motions, signs, talking, and the written word are all encumbered by miscommunication.
A dozen eyewitnesses to the same event cannot agree on a single account. We may
each see something different in cards set up by a circus magician. Therefore, we are
forever imprisoned by our subjectivity. Followers of Tao assert that we know not absolute
truth in the world, only varying degrees of ambiguity. Some call this poetry; some call
this art. The fact remains that all communication is relative. Those who follow Tao are
practical.
2. TAOISM DENIES SUPREME AUTHORITY

No one is a supreme authority. People seek leaders, priests, gums, and hermits thinking
that someone has
precise formula for living correctly. No one does. No one can know you as well as you can
know yourself. All that you can gain from a wise person is the assurance of some initial
guidance. You many even spend decades studying under such an extraordinary person,
but you should never surrender you dignity, independence, and personality. There is not
single way to do things in life.
3. INTERPRETATIONS ARE BASED ON INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTIONS

Deng Ming-Dao, NQA, 365 TAO, 1992, p.62.
The world exists, but we cannot truly be one with it in our normal modes o
consciousness. Our mind know the world by constructing conclusions form the data of
our senses. All that we know is filtered and interpreted. Therefore, there is no such thing
as objectivity or direct knowledge of the world. Everything is relative because we are
each condemned to our particular vantage points. As long as we all have different
perspectives, as long as perception relies on our senses, then there cannot be an
absolute truth. All knowledge from experience, valuable as it may be, is imperfect and
merely provisional.
4. RANDOM EVENTS MAKE OBJECTIVE REALITY IMPOSSIBLE
Deng Ming-Dao, NQA, 365 TAO, 1992, p. 46.

Each day, they match interim patterns against their master goals and so navigate life
with sureness and
grace. It is precisely this ability to discern and manipulate patterns unknown to the
ordinary person that makes the follower of Tao so formidable. When unpredictable things
happen, those who follow Tao are also skilled at improvisations. If circumstances deny
them, they change immediately. To avoid confusion, they still discern the patterns of
situation and create new ones, much like a chess player at the board.
5. STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN MIND MAKES OBJECTIVISM IMPOSSIBLE

Benjamin Hoff, NQA, THE TAO OF POOH, 1982, p. 77-78.
But down through the centuries, man has developed a mind that separates him from the
world of reality, the world of natural laws. This mind tries too hard, wars itself out, and
ends up weak and sloppy. Such a mind, even if of high intelligence, is inefficient. It goes
here and there, backwards and forwards and fails to concentrate on what its doing at
the moment It drives down the street in a fast-moving car and thinks its at the store,
going over a grocery list. Then it wonders why accidents occur.
6. STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY CAUSES A REJECTION OF OBJECTIVISM

Benjamin Hoff, NQA, THE TE OF PIGLET, 1992, p. 92.
Unfortunately, it is quite easy to be an impatient, inconsiderate, scatterbrained Tigger in
a society that admires, encourages, and rewards impulsive behavior. Advertisements tell
us to buy whatever-it-is and Spoil ourselves. An appropriate word, spoil. We deserve it,
they say. (Maybe we do, but wed like to think were better than that.) Store layouts are
carefully designed to encourage impulse buying. Movies, television shows, and
magazines promote impulsive behavior of the most questionable kind in the flash-it-intheir-faces manner.
Henry David Thoreau

Statements such as if a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is
because he hears a different drummer and the mass of men lead lives of quiet
desperation have become emblematic of Henry David Thoreaus commitment to the
power of the individual. High school and college students, energized by the romantic
echoes of authors such Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Thoreau, related to
the popular movie Dead Poets Society, which was replete with references to individual
power, transcendental philosophy, and the oft-quoted phrase carpe diem. In the
movie, it is Thoreaus words I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived . . . I wanted to live deep and
suck out all the marrow of life that provided the motivation for the students to
reconvene the society that their inspirational teacher had started. Although the
transcendentalism of nineteenth century New England stresses the importance of the
individual, it is significant to note that there are curious differences between the
individualism that Thoreau explains in Walden and demonstrates in The Duty of Civil
Disobedience and the individualism that we may be accustomed to in present-day
America. Particularly with the recent emergence of communitarian thought on the
political and philosophical radar screen, it is critical to examine and differentiate the
roots of Thoreaus affinity for individualism. Therefore, in order to explore Thoreaus
thoughts and how they may possibly be used in an academic debate, it is important to
first offer a biographical sketch of Thoreau and highlight some elements of his life that
influenced his writings and philosophy. Second, a philosophical overview of New England
transcendentalism will be offered to supply a foundation from which to understand
Thoreaus writings. Third, Thoreaus positions on the individual, its relationship to nature
social change will be discussed. Finally, this essay will offer some possible positions and
arguments that Thoreau could claim, taking care to delineate the arguments about
individualism that Thoreau would not likely make.
David Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12, 1817, which, as a
historical note, is important because, while New England Transcendentalism was
centered in Concord in the nineteenth century, Thoreau was the only noted
transcendentalist--member of the Concord Group--born in the Massachusetts village.
While he graduated from Harvard College, Thoreau did not move into a profession that
might be expected of a nineteenth century Harvard graduate. Although he accepted a
teaching position in the Concord schools, he quickly resigned after he was informed that
he was to use corporal punishment for discipline. He and his brother opened a private
school soon thereafter, but it closed after six months due to the failing health of John.
Thoreau, now referring to himself as Henry David, then lived with Ralph Waldo Emerson,
serving as a handyman and gardener to have access to Emersons substantial library. In
1843 Emerson decided it was time for Thoreau to see more of the world and obtained a
position for him as tutor for his brother William Emersons sons on Staten Island.
Thoreau accepted, thinking it would give him an entree into the publishing world in New
York City. But the experiment was a failure. Thoreau was homesick from the moment he
left Concord in early May. A visit home at Thanksgiving time was too much for him, and
he returned to Staten Island for only long enough to pack up his belongings. Thoreau,
reflecting on his experience, said New York was a thousand times meaner than I could
have imagined. Thoreau occasionally worked for his father manufacturing pencils,
writing for the Dial, a transcendental quarterly founded by Emerson, lecturing, and
performing odd jobs as a handyman. Before he moved to the famed cabin on Walden
pond, an incident occurred that blackened Thoreaus reputation among his fellow
townsmen for generations to come. While fishing with the son of one of Concords most
prominent families, Thoreau started a fire to cook the days catch, and proceeded to
burn experiences that perhaps define Thoreaus place in modern literary and social
history occurred. First, he was jailed in Concord for failure to pay his poll tax, which
inspired his essay The Duty of Civil Disobedience. Second, Thoreau spent his two years
in solitude at Walden Pond. Thoreau waited until August 1854 to publish Walden , and
died eight years later from tuberculosis.
These biographical observations are illuminative for two reasons. First, Thoreaus turn to
his personal simplicity embodies the intuitive individualism central to the
transcendentalist movement. Thoreau, as a Harvard graduate, with above-average
marks and the expectation to be a minister, lawyer, farmer or teacher, was content
doing odd jobs, performing manual labor, and writing to sustain himself. In so many
words, Thoreau proclaimed in Walden simplify, simplify. Michael Myers states in his
introduction to Walden and Civil Disobedience that Thoreau sympathized with the
Transcendentalists desire to move beyond the surfaces of American life--its commerce,
technology, industrialism, and material progress--to a realization that these public
phenomena were insignificant when compared with an individuals spiritual life.
Thoreau, for the most part, lived a simple life that parallels the force of transcendental
thought. Second, Thoreaus concern for nature, particularly after the fishing accident,
exposes his use of intuition in the construction of transcendental individuality.
Genuinely encountering reality is to be found only by separating oneself from the
artificialities of city, economic, and family life and communing directly with nature,
where one could front only the essential facts of life. Nature preserves spontaneity and
wildness that civilization suppresses. The communion with nature, in other words,
provides the individual with the opportunity to exercise intuition, which is necessary for
the achievement of ultimate knowledge. Throughout his life, Thoreau continuously
turned to nature, whether it be on long walks with his brother in the woods to living in
the cabin on Walden Pond. These experiences illustrate Thoreaus influence and place in
the emergence of the transcendental individuality of nineteenth century Concord.
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy sheds some light on the philosophical motivations
of New England transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a doctrine which stressed the
spiritual unity of the world and the superiority of intuition as a source of knowledge as
opposed to logical reasoning and sense-experience . . . . It supplied a foundation for the
spiritual religion [transcendentalists] upheld against the natural religion of the
Enlightenment and the revealed religion of Calvinism. The distinction between
knowledge through the senses and knowledge through intuition is critical not only in
understanding transcendentalism, but in grasping its relationship to the power of the
individual. Walter Harding continues in A Thoreau Handbook Thoreau classified himself
as a Transcendentalist. If we use the popular definition that a Transcendentalist is one
who believes that one can (and should) go beyond Locke in believing that all knowledge
is acquired through the senses, that in order to attain the ultimate knowledge one must
transcend the senses, we can unquestionably classify Thoreau as a Transcendentalist.
Why is this distinction important? It may important because it informs the source of
individual power, which in turn, reveals its relationship to outside institutions, such as
government, community, and law. Harding extrapolates on this unique individualism by
sharing From the beginning of his life to the very end, Thoreau believed that all reform
must come from within and cannot be imposed by any outside force. We cannot reform
society; we can reform only the individual. When each individual reforms himself, then
the reformation of society will automatically follow. Reformation through legislation may
achieve temporary results, but lasting reformation will be achieved only when each
individual convinced himself of its desirability. Such is the basic belief of
Transcendentalism. By placing the power of individual knowledge and power within the
realm of intuition rather than sense, Thoreau thought that individuality that may not
necessarily be applicable to the arguments civil libertarians or modern liberal rights
advocates make. These distinctions will certainly be explored further later in this essay,
but it is important to note the philosophical distinction transcendentalists make
regarding individuality--the distinction between intuition and the senses as a source of
knowledge.
Thoreau, as a transcendentalist, used Walden and The Duty of Civil Disobedience to

articulate his vision of individuality and its relationship to government, religion,
spirituality, and citizenship. It is important to note that Thoreaus transcendentalism was
crafted as the industrial revolution was running at full steam. As Americans were
increasingly viewing the accumulation of wealth as an end, and not simply a means to a
better life or stronger government, Thoreau urged movement beyond the conception of
knowledge advocated by Locke and other empiricists. Myers states, Thoreau demanded
a singular relationship with nature that would allow him to leave behind the average and
the mundane so that he could discover the liberating divinity within himself and his
world. He pledged allegiance not to the Republic but to the individualism for which he
stood. . . . In Thoreaus mind, individual discipline, intellectual growth, and spiritual
development were the only true methods of reform, methods that required neither
conventions, membership lists, nor contributions. True reform was interior, private, and
wholly individual. Reforming ones self means discovering the divinity within ones self.
Myers continues the Transcendentalists solved [the problem of the lack of American
integrity] by using other analytical means to affirm that one soul circulates through all of
creation. Rejecting the Lockean sensationalism and Common Sense philosophy then
prevalent, which argued that knowledge could only come through the senses, the
Transcendentalists insisted that this empirical argument was not responsive to a higher,
ultimate reality, the world of the spirit. Thoreau contributed heartily to this
transcendental emergence. Thoreaus individuality was focused on the cultivation of the
self, through intuition and the gathering of knowledge by transcending the senses. This
is distinguished from the civil liberties democracy provides [which] are far less
important than the spiritual freedom nature embodies and inspires Transcendental
individuality is not about the exercise of civil liberties and rights; spiritual individuality is
more important than civil individuality.
This view of individuality is further focused by Thoreaus essay The Duty of Civil
Disobedience. First he famously begins by accepting the motto 'that government is best
which governs least and moves to delineate between matters of conscience and
matters of law. Civil disobedience is the classic defense of conscience above unjust law.
One must not support an immoral law and can protest by, for example, not paying taxes
that implement it, or refusing to obey it and accepting a jail term. By relying on
intuition, or by transcending the senses, individuals identify a commitment greater than
that to unjust laws or governments. Myers states in his introduction that Thoreau calls
on his readers to make a distinction between law and justice and to assert the truth in
their hearts over the laws on the books. The distinction between the government and
the individuals that comprise the government will be important in evaluating how
Thoreaus transcendental individuality may be used in debate rounds. The most
important observation to make from Civil Disobedience is how Thoreau applies
distinctions--between intuition and sense, between conscience and law, between
government and moral citizens.
Finally, before turning to specific debate arguments and applications of Thoreaus

individuality, it is important to once again stress the place of nature in Thoreaus
argument. Nature is the source, the path to awaken the intuition. The lack of American
integrity, the preoccupation with material desires, commerce, and industry, and the
dissonance between the moral responsibilities of individuals and government are all
obstacles to acquiring knowledge by transcending the senses. As transcending the
senses is an indispensable element of acquiring knowledge, it is solitude and nature that
provides for the exercise of individuality.
With a biographical review of Thoreau, a philosophical overview of transcendentalism,

and illustration of Thoreaus exposition of transcendental individuality through his
writings, we can now turn to particular arguments that Thoreau could make, and
perhaps more importantly, the applications of Thoreau that may not be persuasive.
There are several arguments and observations that are applicable to competitive
debate. First, Thoreaus individuality may not necessarily mesh with civil liberty or rights
arguments. By embracing the distinction between intuition and the senses, the
transcendental individuality is not dependent, and actually claims to be above that of
government and the liberal tradition. Once again, it is important to stress Thoreaus
sentiment that we cannot reform society; we can reform only the individual. When the
individual reforms himself, then the reformation of society will automatically follow.
Reformation through legislation may achieve temporary results, but lasting reformation
will be achieved only when each individual convinces himself of its desirability.
Thoreaus individuality is not the individuality of liberal rights theory or civil liberties.
Consequently, an argument, for example, to protect civil liberties or extend a liberal
conception, an American conception of rights, does not necessarily follow from Thoreau.
In fact, if the value in the round is individuality, for example, Thoreau may subsume the
individuality protected and illustrated by civil liberties. In making arguments for
individuality or autonomy, it is critical to distinguish between the sources of individuality.
In a related argument, Thoreaus conception of individuality may actually feed a

communitarian critique. A brief description of communitarian thought is important
before we examine this argument. Recently, thinkers such as Amitai Etzioni, Mary Ann
Glendon, Charles Taylor, and Michael Sandel have offered the communitarian
perspective on many political, legal, and social problems. Primarily, communitarians
emphasize the social nature of life, identity, relationships, and institutions. They
emphasize the embedded and embodied status of the individual person, by contrast
with central themes in particular in contemporary liberal thought which are taken to
focus on an abstract and disembodied individual. They tend to emphasize the value of
specifically communal and public goods, and conceive of values as rooted in communal
practices, again by contrast with liberalism, which stresses individual rights and
conceives of the individual as the ultimate originator and bearer of value. If
communitarians essentially value the community and Thoreau values transcendental
individuality, how can Thoreau feed a communitarian position in a debate? We return to
the distinctions that are important to understanding Thoreaus individuality. Particularly
in Civil Disobedience, Thoreau disentangle[s] the moral responsibilities of government
and citizens . . . Thoreau immediately suggests that the reason government is able to
pursue unjust and immoral policies is because the citizenry has failed to live up to its
moral responsibilities. In placing the exercise of the moral individual within the realm of
civil society, Thoreau recognizes that the transcendental individual has moral
obligations, despite the solitude of Walden. Bob Pepperman Taylor states in his book
Americas Bachelor Uncle: Thoreau and the American Polity When we are honest . .
.about out obligations as free and independent citizens, we will necessarily resist
[slavery and imperialism] and view the government as illegitimate to the degree that it
is associate responsibilities, which in this case requires political resistance to injustice, in
the name of independence we claim to hold dear. Thoreau distinguishes the
government in the development and recognition of individuality--communitarians simply
claim that individuals are embedded in a community and that there are certain
commitments that individuals may contribute to the function of that community, of that
civil society. If a competitor makes a communitarian argument, it may not be proper to
use Thoreaus transcendental individuality to subsume it; it may only feed the
commitments that Thoreau himself recognized.
The greatest strategic use of Thoreaus transcendental individuality may be perhaps as

an a priori argument. By noting the distinctions between liberal individuality and
transcendental individuality, a debater may argue that the best method to accomplish
the advantages of the opponent is to embrace transcendental individuality, without the
encumbrances of civil liberties or government. Furthermore, by using Thoreau to get to
intuition as the source of knowledge and individuality, a debater may circumvent
communitarian and governmental arguments and make a legitimate argument for
universal human rights. An opponent, for example, may make the argument that rights
can only be recognized by a government or a nation, and consequently, universal
human rights and civil individuality cannot be the same. In order for individuality to be
protected, the state must protect it by recognizing a right. By relying on transcendental
individuality, there is no reliance on government, and consequently, a gateway into the
recognition of universal human individuality.
With nature as a spark for the human intuition, and consequently knowledge and
individuality, Thoreau may be used philosophically in an environmental debate. In fact,
modern environmentalists frequently interpret Thoreau as a forebear of radical
contemporary environmentalism. Taylor continues while the whole of Thoreaus work
can be viewed as an extended contribution to this project--aiming to understand the
history of the human experience within the context of the natural world--there is no work
for which this is more true than The Maine Woods. Perhaps most importantly, Thoreaus
transcendental individuality may allow a debater to place humanity within the context of
nature because it is nature, in fact, for Thoreau that allows for the acquisition of
knowledge. Nature is essential to realize individuality. This appears to resonate with
writers such as Jeremy Rifkin, who in his book Time Wars argues lost in a sea of
perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly
alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet. Thoreau, in his disdain for
industry, commerce, and the American preoccupation with wealth in the mid-nineteenth
century, could likely make a very similar argument. Essentially, there is an indisputable
bond between the realization of human potential and nature. This could prove valuable
to an environmental debate.
In Dead Poets Society, the character Neil is engaged by his teacher, Mr. Keating, who
urges Neil and the other students to seize the day. By evoking the words of
transcendentalists Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, Keating sought to enliven a
search for individuality, a communion to transcend external obstacles to discover the
individual. Thoreau, particularly through his primary works of Walden and The Duty of
Civil Disobedience, demonstrates a unique view into the recognition of individuality by
the transcendentalist movement of nineteenth century New England. Thoreau and other
transcendentalists differed from contemporary views of individuality in that they argued
that knowledge was acquired by intuition and not merely the senses. By advocating a
relationship with nature and a simple life to achieve individuality, Thoreau
reconceptualized the meaning of the individual, and it is this difference that must be
recognized in academic debate.
Although it may be tempting to use Thoreau with John Stuart Mill or John Locke, their
views of individuality, particularly in its relationship to the state, government, and laws
are different, at times conflicting. Thoreaus transcendental individuality, while useful to
an individuality debate, must be studied carefully so as not to conflict with competing or
differing versions of individuality and autonomy. Furthermore, Thoreaus use of nature to
achieve individuality through intuition is not only critical to understanding
transcendentalism, but may be useful in an environmental debate. A comprehension of
the sources and relationships of the transcendental individuality of Henry David Thoreau
is the most important recognition to his application in an academic debate round. If his
individuality is used properly and strategically, Thoreau may prove an effective thinker
and writer to a successful Lincoln-Douglas position.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buckley, J.F. DESIRE, THE SELF, AND THE SOCIAL CRITIC: THE RISE OF QUEER
PERFORMANCE WITHIN THE DEMISE OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. (Cranbury, NJ: Associated
University Presses, 1997).
Gura, Philip F. and Joel Myerson, eds. CRITICAL ESSAYS ON AMERICAN

TRANSCENDENTALISM. (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1982).
Harding, Walter. A THOREAU HANDBOOK. (New York: New York University Press, 1959).
Honderich, Ted, ed. THE OXFORD COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY. (Oxford: Oxford

Lebeaux, Richard. YOUNG MAN THOREAU. (Amherst, MA: The University of

Massachusetts Press,
1977).
Moller, Mary Elkins. THOREAU IN THE HUMAN COMMUNITY. (Amherst, MA: The University
of
Massachusetts Press, 1980).
Myerson, Joel. CRITICAL ESSAYS ON HENRY DAVID THOREAUS WALDEN. (Boston: G.K.
Hall & Co., 1988).
Salt, Henry S. LIFE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU. (Urbana, IL: The University of Illinois
Press, 1993).
Sayre, Robert F., ed. NEW ESSAYS ON WALDEN. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992).
Schneider, Richard J. APPROACHES TO TEACHING THOREAUS WALDEN AND OTHER

WORKS.
(New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1996).
Taylor, Bob Pepperman. AMERICAS BACHELOR UNCLE: THOREAU AND THE AMERICAN
POLITY. (Lawrence, KS: The University Press of Kansas, 1996).
Thoreau, Henry David. WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. (New York: Viking Penguin,
Inc.,
1986).
Wagenknecht, Edward. HENRY DAVID THOREAU: WHAT MANNER OF MAN? (Amherst, MA:
The
University of Massachusetts Press, 1981).
HIGHER INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE IS

MOST IMPORTANT
1. REFORMATION OF INDIVIDUAL IS MOST IMPORTANT
Walter A. Harding, THOREAU HANDBOOK, 1959, p. 143.
From the beginning of his life to the very end, Thoreau believed that all reform must
come from within and cannot be imposed by any outside force. We cannot reform
society; we can reform only the individual. When each individual reforms himself, then
the reformation of society will automatically follow. Reformation through legislation may
achieve temporary results, but lasting reformation will be achieved only when each
individual convinces himself of its desirability.
2. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE RECOGNIZES HIGHER LAW OF CONSCIENCE

If the laws of the state came in conflict with the higher laws of the conscience, it was the
conscience and not the state that must be obeyed. It became the duty of civil
disobedience.
3. SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT IS THE TRUE METHOD OF REFORM

Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1986, p. 13.
In Thoreaus mind, individual discipline, intellectual growth, and spiritual development
were the only true methods of reform, methods that required neither conventions,
membership lists, nor contributions. True reform was interior, private, and wholly
individual. Reforming ones self meant discovering the divinity within ones self.
4. SELF-RESPECT NECESSARY FOR EXERCISE OF INDIVIDUALITY

Henry S. Salt, LIFE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 1993, p. 104.
In the first place, he is an earnest and unwearied advocate of self-culture and selfrespect, and insists again and again on the need of preserving our higher and nobler
instincts from the contamination of what is base, trivial, and worldly.
5. INDIVIDUALS MUST CONSTANTLY EXAMINE GOVERNMENT

Bob Pepperman Taylor, AMERICAS BACHELOR UNCLE: THOREAU AND THE AMERICAN
POLITY, 1996, p. 119-20.
We are provided with a constant reminder that we, as democratic citizens, are
responsible for independently evaluating the behavior of our government and political
community, especially in the face of significant injustice or tyranny. We can think of
Thoreau as the first and the greatest American writer to attack the complacency of the
emerging American middle class.
6. CULTIVATION OF ONES SELF ATTRACTED THOREAU

Thoreau shared the disappointment and dismay the Transcendentalists expressed
concerning the lack of integrity they saw in American life. What most attracted Thoreau
to Transcendentalism was not its social activism; he was drawn instead to the
Transcendentalists attitudes concerning the desirability and necessity of cultivating
ones self.
7. INDIVIDUALS SPIRITUAL LIFE MOST IMPORTANT

He sympathized with the Transcendentalists desire to move beyond the surfaces of
American life- its commerce, technology, industrialism, and material progress--to a
realization that these public phenomena were insignificant when compared with an
individuals spiritual life.
INTUITION AND NATURE SHOULD

DETERMINE INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE
1. ONE MUST TRANSCEND SENSES TO ACHIEVE ULTIMATE KNOWLEDGE
Thoreau classified himself as a Transcendentalist. If we use the popular definition that a
Transcendentalist is one who believes that one can (and should) go beyond Locke in
believing that all knowledge is acquired through the senses, that in order to attain the
ultimate in knowledge one must transcend the senses, we can unquestionably classify
Thoreau as a Transcendentalist.
2. TRANSCENDENTALISM FOSTERS DEVELOPMENT OF MANS SPIRITUAL NATURE

Thoreau went to Walden not to escape from civilization but to discover the true
civilization that would permit and foster the greatest development of mans spiritual
nature.
3. SOLITUDE AND RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE INDISPENSIBLE TO INDIVIDUALITY

Thoreau never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. Thoreau
demanded a singular relationship with nature that would allow him to leave behind the
average and the mundane so that he could discover the liberating divinity within himself
and the world. He pledged allegiance not to the Republic but to the individualism for
which he stood.
4. TRANSCENDENTALISTS REJECTED EMPRICIST CONCEPTION OF KNOWLEDGE

Henry David Thoreau, WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, 1986, p. 13-14.
The Transcendentalists solved this problem by using other than analytical means to
affirm that one soul circulates through all of creation. Rejecting the Lockean
sensationalism and Common Sense philosophy then prevalent, which argued that
knowledge could only come through the senses, the Transcendentalists insisted that this
empirical argument was not responsive to a higher, ultimate reality, the world of the
spirit.
5. TRANSCENDENTALISM EMBRACES SUPERIORITY OF INTUITION

Ted Honderich, THE OXFORD COMPANION TO PHILOSOPHY, 1995, p. 879.
The doctrine, [transcendentalism], which stressed the spiritual unity of the world (thus
interpreting God in an untranscendentally panthestic way) and the superiority of
intuition as a source of knowledge as opposed to logical reasoning and senseexperience. They relied heavily on the distinction of true reason from the merely analytic
understanding, the doctrinal corner-stone of philosophical Romanticism.
6. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC LIFE ARE RELATED

Bob Pepperman Taylor, AMERICAS BACHELOR UNCLE: THOREAU AND THE AMERICAN
POLITY, 1996, p. 122.
Thoreaus claim is simply that the justice and restraint of our economic life are deeply
implicated in the justice and restraint of our political life.
THOREAUS WORK IS INCONSISTENT

AND PARADOXICAL
1. WALDENS HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL FORCE DEFEATED BY PARADOX
Michael T. Gilmore, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON HENRY DAVID THOREAUS WALDEN, 1988,
p. 177-8.
In important ways it is a defeated text. Though Thoreau begins with the conviction that
literature can change the world, the aesthetic strategies he adopts to accomplish
political objectives involve him in a series of withdrawals from history; in each case the
ahistorical maneuver disables the political and is compromised by the very historical
moment it seeks to repudiate.
2. WALDENS INTERNAL CONFLICT DEFEATS THOREAUS WORK

Michael T. Gilmore, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON HENRY DAVID THOREAUS WALDEN, 1988, p.
178.
This is not to deny Walden greatness, but rather to emphasize the cost of Thoreaus
achievement and to begin to specify its limits. . . .But one might say in another paradox,
that Waldens triumphant success is precisely what constitutes its defeat. For underlying
that triumph is a foresaking of civic aspirations for an exclusive concern with the art of
living well. And to say this is to suggest that Walden is a book at odds with its own
beliefs; it is to point out Thoreaus complicity in the ideological universe he abhors.
3. BASIS OF WALDEN WAS NOT AS THOREAU REPRESENTED

Llewelyn Powys, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON HENRY DAVID THOREAUS WALDEN, 1988, p. 54.
When we look into the matter there was really little enough to it. At best it was a
dramatic gesture. The celebrated hut was actually situated on the outskirts of Concord,
within a mile and a half of the village, built on Emersons land--in Emersons yard one
might almost say. With an axe borrowed from his friend Alcott he constructed his
habitation out of boards which had been conveyed to the woods from an Irishmans
shanty. It was within sight of the railway and so close to the public highway that the
woodland air was continually being impregnanted with tobacco smoke from the pipes of
wayfarers on the near-by road. Thoreau declares that he never found the companion
that was so companionable as solitude but actually his house was constantly visited by
friends. Indeed, it was fitted with a guest chamber.
4. THOREAU OFFERS NOTHING ORIGINAL TO TRANSCENDENTAL INDIVIDUALITY

Llewelyn Powys, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON HENRY DAVID THOREAUS WALDEN, 1988, p. 53.
A good case in point is the work of Thoreau which I suspect has been and is today much
overrated. Thoreau is cried up as being one of the greatest American writers. In reality,
he is an awkward, nervous, self-conscious New Englanders who, together with an
authentic taste for oriental and classical literature, developed a singular liking for his
own home woods. He does not strike me as an original thinker, bolstered up as his
thoughts always are by the wisdom of the past. Mysticism, that obstinately recurring
from of human self-deception is, in his case, even more unsatisfactory than usual, while
his descriptions of nature that have won such applause are seldom out of the ordinary. I
am inclined to think that his reputation owes much to his close association to Emerson,
that truly great man, who under so kindly and sedate an exterior possessed so mighty a
spirit.
5. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE INCONSISTENT

Laraine Fergenson, APPROACHES TO TEACHING THOREAUS WALDEN AND OTHER
WORKS, 1996, p. 156.
Students may note that Civil Disobedience seems to contain paradoxical or selfcontradictory statements, especially in the discussion of the relation between the
individual and society. Jacques Barzun finds in the essay a series of strong impressions,
lucidly expressed but uncoordinated- indeed totally inconsistent.
THOREAU IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH

MODERN POLICY CONCERNS
1. THOREAU WOULD HAVE BEEN A UNEVEN ALLY OF KING AND GANDHI
Michael Meyer, APPROACHES TO TEACHING THOREAUS WALDEN AND OTHER WORKS,
1996, p. 152.
Gandhi, King, and many other political activists who have enlisted Thoreau in a
particular cause would have found him an uneven and recalcitrant ally. . . . Thoreau
found social reformers nearly as meddlesome as he did the government.
2. THOREAU AMBIVALENT ABOUT METHODS OF REFORM

1996, p. 152.
Thoreaus ambivalence about reformers was matched by his ambivalence about the
means by which reform could be achieved. In Civil Disobedience he rejects voting and
legislative actions as an adequate expression of moral conviction.
3. THOREAU ENDORSED USE OF VIOLENCE

1996, p. 153-4.
Thoreau did not take issue with Browns use of violence; instead he endorsed it and
refused to worry about reconciling his earlier faith in individual passive nonviolence and
his present unqualified support of Brown: the question is not about the weapon, but the
spirit in which you use it. Students who read A Plea for Captain John Brown alongside
Civil Disobedience are often surprised to see how violently the idea of a peaceable
revolution competed with other means of reform.
4. THOREAU ULTIMATELY NOT CONCERNED WITH ISSUES

1996, p. 154.
Thoreau, however, ultimately retreated from this issue because he was, as a
transcendentalist, essentially apolitical. His skirmishes with slavery would not deter him
from his primary concern with self-reform and idealistic principles; he always chose
eternity over the times.
5. THOREAUS DENUNICATION OF MODERNITY UNDERMINED BY MODERN WALDEN
Michael T. Gilmore, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON HENRY DAVID THOREAUS WALDEN, 1988, p.

177.
Among the many paradoxes of Walden perhaps none is more ironic than the fact that his
modernist text--modernist in its celebration of private consciousness, its aestheticizing
of experience, its demands upon the reader--starts out as a denunication of modernity.
Utilitarianism Responses
I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I
do not want is what I do.
-Paul the Apostle
Introduction
The promise of utilitarianism is, in a way, the promise of democracy. The political system
that seeks to remove power from the hands of a few elites and give it to the majority,
is part and parcel of the philosophical system that says that those consequences that
are best for the majority are those consequences we ought to seek.
Given such a close connection between utilitarianism and democracy, one would think
that supporting the latter almost necessarily means supporting the former. However,
there is a difference between feeling that, politically, the will of the majority must be
upheld and balanced with minority rights, and arguing that we ought to always act in
accordance with a certain set of predictable consequences, and that those
consequences must be calculated to give a certain number of people a certain amount
of happiness.
The problem does not stem from any belief that people ought not be happy, or that the
will of the majority ought not be respected. The problem I will outline in this essay stems
from two basic tenants of utilitarian thought: (1) the idea that consequences can be
predicted with sufficient accuracy to be a guide for ethical action; and (2) the idea that
there is a general consensus of what counts as utility-happiness for a majority of
people.
In this essay I will first outline the general principles of utilitarianism. Then I will make
three basic arguments, which undermine the strength of that philosophy: First,
consequences are too unpredictable to make them the center of moral agency. Second,
measuring the desirability of consequences rests on an arbitrary and capricious notion of
welfare or happiness which raises insolvable problems. Third, differences in value
systems, especially according to class, render a general consensus of happiness
impossible.
Although this essay is critical of utilitarianism as an absolute philosophy, I will conclude

with the caveat that there are still some cases in which it is appropriate to adhere to
utility, and consequences, as predictors of good behavior. My argument is simply that
utilitarianism cannot be the center of our criteria for measuring the moral desirability of
action. This does not mean that there arent some cases in which the philosophy can
work, perhaps in tandem with other ethical criteria.
The philosophy of utility

In its simplest manifestation, utilitarianism holds that agents ought to act in a way that
will maximize utility, and more specifically, maximize the good of as many people as
possible. That act is right which produces the best consequences for the greatest
number of people.
There are at least two interesting things from the outset about a philosophy of utilitymaximization. The first is that utilitarianism seems to assume that singular moral agents
make choices involving other agents, choices that produce strings of consequences felt
by others. The second important characteristic of utilitarianism is that it assumes there
is a measurable level of happiness or utility, measurable at least in the sense that it
lends itself to some kind of assessment when the agent is making the choice in question.
Both of these assumptions will be questioned later in this essay, but for now it is
important to distinguish a little more about utilitarianism itself.
Because the basic form of utilitarianism begs the question of whether we are speaking of
individual actions, or sets of actions expressed in general rules, philosophers have tried
to separate utilitarianism into two different manifestations. They are:
1. Act Utilitarianism: "What effect will my doing this act in this situation have on the
general balance of good over evil?"
2. Rule Utilitarianism: "What general rule when followed by all in situations like this
would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number?"
(http://saul.snu.edu/syllabi/philosop/PHIL3013/301318.htm)
Because rule utilitarianism seems to be a more reasonable way to make ethics, most
utilitarians today are rule-utilitarians, although rule-utilitarianism, it should be noted,
also seems to encompass act utilitarianism at the level of individual choices. However,
philosopher J. J. C. Smart argues that rule-utilitarianism ultimately collapses into actutilitarianism:
Suppose that an exception to rule R produces the best possible consequences. Then
this is evidence that rule R should be modified so as to allow this exception. Thus we get
a new rule for the form do R except in circumstances of the sort C. That is, whatever
would lead the act-utilitarian to break a rule would lead the Kantian utilitarian to modify
the rule. Thus an adequate rule-utilitarianism would be extensionally equivalent to actutilitarianism (J. J. C. Smart, UTILITARIANISM FOR AND AGAINST, 1973, pp. 10-11).
So utilitarianism, whether in the form of general rules or individual acts, says agents
should make choices based on predicted consequences, to maximize the good, for as
many people as possible. Each of the components of this philosophy are questionable,
and the following sections in the essay address each in turn.
The problem of unpredictability of

consequences
The first of my objections is that utilitarianism assumes we can predict consequences.
My argument is that we cannot. An example will illustrate this point:
Suppose I am walking along the waterfront and I see a child struggling in the water.
Concerned that the child will drown, and knowing I am a good swimmer, my ruleutilitarian maxim kicks in: I ought to act to save that child. It will result in good for the
child, and (because I like to help people) good for me as well. I have calculated the
probable consequences of my action, and finding that the consequences will be
desirable, I jump in the water. Swimming towards the struggling child, I prepare to save
the child. Just then, the undertow strengthens. It sucks us both under. We both drown.
Now, other ethical formulas would hold that I did the right thing, even though the
consequences were not desirable, and were not what I had planned. Utilitarianism,
however, would force a retroactive condemnation of my action, because the
consequences that finally resulted were actually worse than if I had done nothing, if I
had just continued walking along the waterfront. For if I had kept walking, only one
person would have drowned, but because I jumped in the water (and because of the
undertow), two people drowned.
What is going on here? To begin with, utilitarianism cannot account for my intent alone.
Unlike Kants categorical imperative, utilitarianism measures the morality of ones
actions based on the consequences. Thus, my intent to save the child is irrelevant.
Regardless of any other consideration, this alone seems to render utilitarianism an
incomplete moral philosophy. Surely I ought to receive my due moral credit simply for
attempting to save the child, even if I fail.
But more importantly, utilitarianism seems to assume a universe full of predictable

consequences. It seems to assume that if a moral agent acts upon the prediction of
consequences, those consequences will behave as predicted. But the universe doesnt
work this way. Instead, the universe is complex. Actions result in more unpredictable
than predictable consequences.
It is not a matter of human beings simply lacking the intellect to predict consequences.
Rather, as philosophers of complexity point out, the very nature of actions and
consequences is unpredictable. This unpredictability makes it impossible to assign
responsibility to specific agents for specific consequences. Danilo Zolo explains some of
the manifestations of realitys complex nature in this way: Complexity refers to the
cognitive situation in which agents, whether they are individuals or social groups, find
themselves. The relations which agents construct and project on their environment in
their attempts at self-orientationi.e. at arrangement, prediction, planning,
manipulationwill be more or less complex according to circumstances.
Similarly, as the situation becomes more complex, more laden with interdependent
variables (as are almost all political situations), the more interdependent the variables
become. Variations in the value of one variable inevitably act on other variables (and so
too they on it), making the task of cognition (and operation) more difficultOnce a
certain threshold of complexity is crossed, the very quality changes of the calculations
needed to predict the effects of the recursive relations which interconnect the
environmental factors. Even analysis of individual phenomena becomes less certain,
given that their basic conditionand developments from that conditioncan scarcely be
separated from the nexus of non-linear connections (Danilo Zolo, Democracy and
Complexity, 1992, pp. 6-7).
The drowning child example, and Zolos observations about complexity, suggest that
utilitarianism can never really be a philosophy which offers any guidance for ethical
actions, since those actions are to be measured by something that can never be
measured: actions consequences.
The problem of measuring

Another problem with utilitarianisms ability to assess consequences is that utilitarianism
assumes those consequences can be measured good or bad according to some kind
of constant scale. In other words, the statement the greatest good for the greatest
number of people assumes a uniform standard for what is good.
Even philosophers in favor of utilitarianism admit this difficulty is hard to negotiate. As J.

J. C. Smart writes:
To sum up so far, happiness is partly an evaluative concept, and so the utilitarian

maxim You ought to maximize happiness is doubly evaluative. There is the possibility of
an ultimate disagreement between two utilitarians who differ over the questions of
pushpin versus poetry, or Socrates dissatisfied versus the fool satisfied. The case of the
electrode operator shows that two utilitarians might come to advocate very different
courses of action if they differed about what constituted happiness, and this difference
between them would be simply an ultimate difference in attitude (J. J. C. Smart,
UTILITARIANISM FOR AND AGAINST, 1973, p. 24).
The troubling thing about Smarts admission is that he then goes on to dismiss this
objection as being rare and irrelevant, encouraging his readers to leave these more
remote possibilities our of account (p. 24). In fact, these possibilities are far from
remote, as any reading of a daily newspaper would demonstrate.
One might, of course, argue that subjective interpretations of good are possible within
a utilitarian framework. But in order to prove that, one must also show that it is possible
to mandate acts that have effects on other people that will somehow accommodate
those differing conceptions of good. I believe this is difficult, if not impossible; not
simply because so many differing conceptions of goodness exist, but because inevitably
such thinking encourages a world where elites determine what is good for everyone
else. As Bernard Williams argues in the evidence section below:
It is worth noticing that the idea of a utilitarian elite involves to a special degree the
elements of manipulation. It is possible in general for there to be unequal or hierarchical
societies which nevertheless allow for respect and decent human relations, so long as
people are unconscious that things could be otherwise; but which, once such
consciousness has arisen, must inevitably become a different and more oppressive
thing (Bernard Williams, UTILITARIANISM FOR AND AGAINST, 1973, p. 139).
Williams argument is not hypothetical. Several instances exist where elites have defined
the best interests of the people, and implemented very specific policies, even though
the people would not have perceived these as their best interests. Here is one
particularly troubling example:
Thousands of American Indian women lost their reproductive rights during the 1970s
after being sterilized in government-run hospitals, either without their consent or after
being pushed into the procedure, according to a University of Nebraska at Omaha
graduate who has studied the issueImmediately after childbirth, Torpy said, tired and
dazed mothers were asked to sign forms authorizing a sterilization procedure. In other
cases, she said, mothers were told that they risked losing their children to foster care, or
risked losing federal financial assistance, if they had additional children. The GAO report
said that sterilizations occurred at Indian Health Service centers in New Mexico, Arizona,
Oklahoma and South Dakota (Omaha World-Herald September 23, 1998, p. 20).
Now, suppose that the utilitarian replies: Well, this example is not utilitarian at all!
These women would not have chosen sterilization as being in their best interest. They
would have rejected the utility of sterilization. Hence, no utilitarian would support this.
To this response I would reply that, if indeed, the utilitarian must ultimately defer to the
will of individuals in order to determine what is in their best utility, then we are left
with the original epistemological impossibility of determining any generalized greatest
good for the greatest number. In any event, it seems far more likely that a society
which based its decisions on collective utility would inevitably promote some policies as
being in others best interests regardless of what those others thought of those policies.
The example of animal welfare

The inability to measure non-human animals desires and needs means that they cannot
be considered when assigning satisfaction-value to the various beings in the utilitarian
calculus. Apart from obvious pain and discomfort (which would at best make a utilitarian
case against painful animal experimentation) we are left with no way to know whether
animals are satisfied with certain choices made by humans.
Although this example seems extreme because animals are not normally part of our
moral consideration, it illustrates a larger problem with value incommensurability. It is
not simply the problem of one persons pain being another persons pleasure. It means
that if we cannot always communicate our values, desires, or needs (and human
experience tells us we cannot), then we cannot assign utility values that apply
universally.
The animal welfare example also demonstrates another important objection to

utilitarianism: the problem of adoptive preferences. The argument goes something like
this: Utilitarianism argues that we should promote the best possible consequences for
the greatest number of people. However, those beings who have experienced a great
deal of destitution and sufferingthe chronically poor, the disabled, the mentally ill, and
as outlined above, animals who experience nothing but human exploitationtend to
internalize sets of expectations much lower than those who have not been so
unfortunate. If the purpose of utilitarianism is to compare competing options of
desirability and undesirability, it seems that these characteristically deprived groups will
be unable to make such comparisons.
This is also true because many groups of people (and certainly animals) possess
incomplete information about their surroundings and the options available to them. In
the example given by Martha Nussbaum in the evidence section below, we see that
women in oppressive or culturally patriarchal societies are often simply unaware that
their lives could be better. Utilitarianism does not know what to do with this ignorance.
Utilitarians, therefore, are caught in a dilemma. Either:
Utilitarianism defers to the individual preferences of each affected person, or

Utilitarianism has a basically uniform standard of happiness.
Huge problems exist with each possibility. If the first possibility is true, then
utilitarianism can never be a philosophy of the greatest good for the greatest number,
since there are a plethora of value differences, each incommensurate with the other,
which no rule or act can encompass. If, on the other hand, the second possibility is true,
then we are again left with the necessity of deferring judgment to elites, whose job it is
to define happiness for the rest of us. Poor women will be forced to be sterilized, and
other injustices will take place, all in the guise of the greatest good for the greatest
number.
To summarize this last objection, then: Utilitarianism purports to require that each
ethical act be done with the design of promoting the greatest good for the greatest
number. However, people have differing conceptions of good. Either those differences
are merely based on preference-variance, or they are based on ignorance and
oppression. In either case, it is impossible to achieve any consensus. And if consensus
cannot be achieved, but the utilitarian still insists on promoting the greatest good,
then this good can only be the idea of goodness imposed by the utilitarian herself, often
forced upon the recipients, and frequently to their detriment. One wonders why anyone
would subscribe to a philosophy that either collapses into subjectivism, or superimposes
into totalitarianism. I have argued here that utilitarianism must do one or the other.
Conclusion
In this essay, I have demonstrated that it is not easyin fact, it is sometimes impossible
to do the kind of epistemological work required to ethically uphold utilitarianism.
Consequences are unpredictable by their very nature, not just because we dont know
enough. Even if we could predict consequences, we could not call them desirable or
undesirable for other people. Happiness is too vague a term, and welfare is sometimes
not the same as happiness. Moreover, different classes of people have different ideas of
happiness, and some of those classes, particularly powerful classes, cannot be happy on
their own terms without exploiting other people. These facts combine to suggest that it
would be less than desirable for a moral agent to walk around looking at every option
and asking herself what the consequences would be, whether they would be
desirable, and whether they would be desirable for a whole lot of people. That isnt
the way ethics work, and thats probably a good thing.
Ultimately, however, there are appropriate times to be a utilitarian. Sometimes we do

have a good idea of the consequences, and we know that we are choosing on behalf of
many others who may not share our same subjective value preferences. Sometimes we
are elected by others to represent them. Sometimes, knowing it is impossible to please
everyone, we simply must seek to do the least harm possible. In those cases, some
measure of utility might be helpful, even if it doesnt govern our entire range of ethical
choices.
For this reason, I am comfortable saying that, in our pluralist and pragmatic age,
utilitarianism must be assimilated into the plurality of ways we sometimes try to do
what is right. But in so being assimilated, it must admit of its fallibility and limits.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ashford, Elizabeth. Utilitarianism, integrity, and partiality. JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY,
August, 2000, pp. 421-39.
Baron, Jonathan. Utility maximization as a solution: Promise, difficulties, and

impediments. AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, May, 1999, pp. 1301-21.
Brandt, Richard B. MORALITY, UTILITARIANISM, AND RIGHTS (Cambridge: Cambridge

Clune, Alan C. Biomedical testing on nonhuman animals: An attempt at a

rapprochement between utilitarianism and theories of inherent value. MONIST, April,
1996, pp. 230-46.
Dhillon, Amrita and Mertens, Jean-Francois. Relative utilitarianism. ECONOMETRICA,

May, 1999, pp. 471-498.
Feldman, Fred. UTILITARIANISM, HEDONISM, AND DESERT: ESSAYS IN MORAL

PHILOSOPHY (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Freeman, Samuel. Utilitarianism, deontology, and the priority of right. PHILOSOPHY

AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Fall, 1994, pp. 313-49.
Jeske, Diane. Persons, compensation, and utilitarianism. PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW,

October, 1993, pp. 541-75.
Levy, Sanford S. Utilitarian alternatives to act utilitarianism. PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL

QUARTERLY, March, 1997, pp. 93-112.
Lyons, David, ed. MILLS UTILITARIANISM: CRITICAL ESSAYS (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1997).
Mill, John Stuart and Bentham, Jeremy. UTILITARIANISM AND OTHER ESSAYS (New York:
Penguin Books, 1987).
Miller, Harlan B. and Williams, William H., eds. THE LIMITS OF UTILITARIANISM
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).
Quinton, Anthony. UTILITARIAN ETHICS (La Salle, Ill: Open Court, 1988, 1973).
Scarre, Geoffrey. UTILITARIANISM (New York: Routlege, 1996).
Shaw, William H. CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TAKING ACCOUNT OF UTILITARIANISM

(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1999).
Smart, J.J.C. and Williams, Bernard. UTILITARIANISM: FOR AND AGAINST (Cambridge:
Sterba, James P. Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy. ETHICS, October 1997, pp. 223225
Wood, James. UTILITARIANISM, INSTITUTIONS, AND JUSTICE (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997).
UTILITARIANISM IS AN INADEQUATE
VALUE THEORY
1. CONSEQUENCES CANNOT DETERMINE VALUES
Bernard Williams, professor of philosophy at University of Cambridge, UTILITARIANISM
FOR AND AGAINST, 1973, p. 82.
No one can hold that everything, of whatever category, that has value, has it in virtue of
its consequences. If that were so, one would just go on forever, and there would be an
obviously hopeless regress. That regress would be hopeless even if one takes the view,
which is not an absurd view, that although men set themselves ends and work towards
them, it is very often not really the supposed end, but the effort towards it on which they
set valuethat they travel, not really in order to arrive (for as soon as they have arrived
they set out for somewhere else), but rather they choose somewhere to arrive, in order
to travel.
2. DETERMINING CONSEQUENCES BEGS THE QUESTION OF AGENCY:

It is impossible to ascribe certain consequences to certain agents
So from a consequentialist point of view it goes into the calculation of consequences
along with any other state of affairs accessible to me. Yet from some, at least, nonconsequentialist points of view, there is a vital difference between some such situations
and others: namely, that in some a vital link in the production of the eventual outcome is
provided by someone elses doing something. But for consequentialism, all causal
connections are on the same level, and it makes no difference, so far as that goes,
whether the causation of a given state of affairs lies through another agent, or not.
3. MANY VALUES ARE NON-UTILITARIAN

First, many of the qualities that human beings prize in society and in one another are
notably non-utilitarian, both in the cast of mind that they involve and in the actions they
are disposed to produce. There is every reason to suppose that peoples happiness is
linked in various ways to these qualities. It is no good the utilitarian saying that such
happiness does not count. For as we have already seen in this connection, modern
utilitarianism is supposed to be a system neutral between the preferences that people
already have, and here are some preferences which some people actually have. To
legislate them out is not to pursue peoples happiness, but to remodel the world towards
forms of happiness more amendable to utilitarian ways of thought.
UTILITARIANISM IS TOTALITARIAN
1. UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES RACISM AND GENOCIDE
Suppose that there is in a certain society a racial minority. Considering merely the
ordinary interests of the other citizens, as opposed to their sentiments, this minority
does no particular harm; we may suppose that it does not confer any great benefits
either. Its presence is in those terms neutral or mildly beneficial. However, the other
citizens have such prejudice that they find the sight of this group, even the knowledge of
its presence, very disagreeable. Proposals are made for removing in some way this
minority. If we assume various quite plausible things (as that programs to change the
majority sentiment are likely to be protracted and ineffective) then even if the removal
would be unpleasant for the minority, a utilitarian calculation might well end up favoring
this step, especially if the minority were a rather small minority and the majority were
very severely prejudiced, that is to say, were made very severely uncomfortable by the
presence of the minority.
2. UTILITARIANISM REQUIRES ELITES TO DECIDE THE BEST INTERESTS OF ALL

It is worth noticing that the idea of a utilitarian elite involves to a special degree the
elements of manipulation. It is possible in general for there to be unequal or hierarchical
societies which nevertheless allow for respect and decent human relations, so long as
people are unconscious that things could be otherwise; but which, once such
consciousness has arisen, must inevitably become a different and more oppressive
thing.
3. UTILITARIANISM ALLOWS THE SUFFERING OF SOME INDIVIDUALS

Martha C. Nussbaum, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, FORDHAM LAW
REVIEW, November, 1997, p. 281.
First, there is the familiar problem that utilitarianism tends to think of the social total, or
average, as an aggregate, neglecting the salience of the boundaries between individual
lives. As Rawls pointed out, this approach means that utilitarianism can tolerate a result
in which the total is good enough, but where some individuals suffer extremely acute
levels of deprivation, whether of resources or of liberty.
4. UTILITARIANISM DEVALUES RIGHTS IN FAVOR OF SATISFACTIONS
Joseph Mendola, Professor of Philosophy at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, SMU LAW

REVIEW, Winter 1999, p. 124.
Traditional utilitarianism, with its moral conception that the good is a summation of the
satisfaction of individual preferences (or more generally a summation of individual
goods), faces certain standard objections rooted in intuitive conceptions of moral rights.
The utilitarian Bentham's insistence that talk of rights is "nonsense upon stilts" seems to
reflect an obvious moral implication of traditional utilitarianism, an implication that if
enough satisfaction for others can be achieved by violation of traditional rights to bodily
integrity, property, liberty, or even life, then a utilitarian is bound to hold such violations
appropriate or even morally mandatory.
5. UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES VIOLATING INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS

Joseph Mendola, Professor of Philosophy at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, SMU LAW
REVIEW, Winter 1999, pp. 124-5.
One diagnosis of this set of traditional problems with utilitarianism is that utilitarianism
unfortunately allows other people's preferences about what one does, perhaps rooted in
conceptions of morality or in tastes one does not share, to trump one's own preferences.
The sum of individual satisfactions gained by others from restraining someone by law
from activity that is intuitively that individual's own business, which is intuitively their
right, will yet be greater than the satisfaction that the individual will hence lose.
UTILITARIANISM FAILS TO RECOGNIZE

DIFFERENCES
1. UTILITARIANISM CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR DIFFERING CONCEPTIONS OF GOODNESS
REVIEW, November, 1997, pp. 281-2.
A second problem with utilitarianism is its commitment to the commensurability of
value, the concern to measure the good in terms of a single metric and thus to deny that
there are irreducibly plural goods that figure in a human life. Both Sen and I have
pursued this question extensively, apart from our work on capabilities. But it has also
had importance in justifying the capabilities approach, since the quality of life seems to
consist of a plurality of distinct features - features that cannot be simply reduced to
quantities of one another. This recognition limits the nature of the tradeoffs it will be
feasible to make.
2. SATISFACTION IS A BAD CRITERIA: THE PRIVILEGED HAVE HIGHER EXPECTATIONS

But a third feature of utilitarianism has been even more central to the capability critique.
As Sen has repeatedly pointed out, people's satisfactions are not very reliable indicators
of their quality of life. Wealthy and privileged people get used to a high level of luxury,
and feel pain when they do not have delicacies that one may think they do not really
need. On the other hand, deprived people frequently adjust their sights to the low level
they know they can aspire to, and thus actually experience satisfaction in connection
with a very reduced living standard.
3. FAILURE TO ACCOUNT FOR ADAPTIVE PREFERENCES DOOMS UTILITARIANISM

This phenomenon of "adaptive preferences"preferences that adjust to the low level of
functioning one can actually achievehas by now been much studied in the economic
literature, and is generally recognized as a central problem, if one wants to use the
utilitarian calculus for any kind of normative purpose in guiding public policy. We are
especially likely to encounter adaptive preferences when we are studying groups that
have been persistent victims of discrimination, and who may as a result have
internalized a conception of their own unequal worth. It is certain to be true when we are
concerned with groups who have inadequate information about their situation, their
options, and the surrounding society - as is frequently the case, for example, with
women in developing countries. For these reasons, then, the utility-based approach
seems inadequate as a basis for offering comparisons of quality of life.
4. UTILITARIANISM CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR PERSONAL DIFFERENCES OF VALUE

Stephen E. Gottlieb, Professor of Law at Albany Law School, HASTINGS LAW JOURNAL,
April, 1994, p. 841.
The fundamental problem with utilitarianism has been the impossibility of true
interpersonal comparisons of benefits and harms. For most of the issues debated, there
is no scale that measures the quality of alternatives or even ranks results. Apples,
oranges, Mozart, and Dali are incomparable. Without a common scale, balancing is not
intelligible. It cannot be described, and can hardly be improved.
UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES CRUELTY TO

ANIMALS
1. UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES HARMING ANIMALS
Martha C. Nussbaum, Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, HARVARD LAW
REVIEW, March 2001, pp. 1529-30.
First of all, because the view is committed to aggregation of all relevant pleasures and
pains (or preference satisfactions and frustrations), it actually makes the answer to
ethical questions about our conduct to animals depend on many complex empirical
calculations for which results are uncertain. Thus, as Tom Regan argues, Utilitarianism
provides a very shaky and unclear rationale for vegetarianism. Animals do not have
rights; therefore we have to calculate all the satisfactions and non-satisfactions of all the
people and animals involved: for example, the people who like meat and will mind its
absence from their diet; the workers in the meat industry who will have to find other
jobs; the short-and long-term economic impact of a global shift to vegetarianism. The
answers to these calculations are unknown and may prove unknowable. In short, here as
in other areas, Utilitarianism is hard pressed to rule out egregious harms, if those harms
might possibly produce an aggregate overall good.
2. UTILITARIANISM DISCRIMINATES AGAINST BEINGS WITH LOWER SENTIENCE

REVIEW, March 2001, pp. 1530-1.
Third, although in its origin the view is quite egalitarian about the worth of all life, in
practice Utilitarianism favors animals with complex forms of consciousness. While this
conclusion might prove ethically "right," we at least ought to debate it rather than
simply assume its validity. According to both Bentham and Singer, it is only wrong to kill
an animal when doing so frustrates an animal's interest in its well-being, and they
understand this interest as a conscious awareness that death is bad. As Bentham
already saw, this requirement draws a pretty significant line - if not precisely between
humans and animals, at least between humans and some animals, on the one hand, and
most animals, on the other. The preference to continue living is difficult to ascertain:
how broadly does it extend in the animal kingdom? By insisting on the presence of this
preference as a necessary condition of the wrongness of killing, Singer thus makes
differences of capacities directly relevant to that moral issue. "Species membership may
point to things that are morally significant." That argument sounds plausible, and yet the
idea that there is no moral importance in the deprivations of life suffered by creatures
who cannot be said to have a preference for continued life seems questionable.
3. UTILITARIANISM JUSTIFIES WHOLESALE RAISING AND SLAUGHTERING OF ANIMALS

REVIEW, March 2001, p. 1531.
Finally, all Utilitarian views are highly vulnerable on the question of numbers. The meat
industry brings countless animals into the world who would never have existed
otherwise. To Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello, this reproduction is one of the worst aspects
of the industry's moral cruelty: it "dwarfs" the Third Reich because "ours is an enterprise
without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into
the world for the purpose of killing them." For Singer, these births of new animals are
not by themselves a bad thing: indeed, we can expect new births to add to the total of
social utility. So long as the animals who are killed die painlessly, the existence of more
life experience rather than less is a good.
Max Weber
Political Philosopher (1864-1920)

Max Weber was born in 1864 in Erfurt, once a Hanseatic town, now part of Germany. He
is universally acknowledged as one of the most significant figures in the development of
modern social science. Weber was responsible for the concepts of meaningful social
action and ideal-type, forms of domination, and die stratification process of societies.
Webers ideas have become the modern sociologists stepping stones toward a deeper
insight about society. Among sociologists, Weber is recognized as one of the principal
founding fathers of the discipline. Webers own writings covered and enormous
intellectual realm. He not only had an encyclopedic knowledge of Western history, but
also carried out extensive investigations into a range of other civilizations. Weber was a
voluminous writer, and both his interests and his intellectual outlook altered to some
degree over the course of his career. Describing and analyzing Webers work, therefore,
presents formidable difficulties. In addition, Weber has become regarded throughout the
world as an undisputed classic of sociology. Every lexicon or history of this discipline
mentions his name as central and emphasizes his authoritative influence on its
development. Understanding Webers theory requires an examination of: (1) his notion
of capitalism; (2) Religion; (3) Human action; and (4) Application to debate.
There are numerous issues that Weber addresses. For example, Webers works on the
position of the German industrial workers connected the consequences of the advance
of capitalism in Germanys increasing industrialization. Weber argued that capitalist
development cannot be prevented, it is inevitable for contemporary society and only the
course it takes can be influenced economically. Thus, Weber opposed two political
developments in particular: the tendency to a feudalization of bourgeois capital and the
theory of the domestic market. Weber argued that both forms of society have at their
center a conservative domestic capitalism. The tendency toward the two political
societies, Weber contended, might have stood in the way of a successful social
development and the development of Germanys political freedom. In capitalism, the
freedom of contract was thus the freedom of the property owner to exploit the worker.
For Weber, the relationship between propertied and property less classes was inherently
conflictual, something that was part of the very fabric of capitalism. Weber did not seem
to regard this as either remediable or altogether heinous. Conflict over the distribution of
resources was a natural feature of any type of society and to imagine an earthly
paradise of harmony and equality was too utopian.
Moreover, Webers study of the cultural significance of Protestantism provides insight

into his views of religion. Weber was inspired by a discussion that had been going on in
Germany for many years, the connections between religious and economic
developments. In his discussion of religion and the rational capitalist mentality, Weber
argues that religion is an active, determinate force in the creation of the capitalist spirit.
The values of religion was the inspirational drive behind the ideas and practices of
rational economic activity. In particular, rational economic conduct was based on the
idea of a calling which is consistent with religion.
Finally, Webers study of human action also provides insight into the relationship
between action and economy. Weber argues that human action is motivated by a
complex of subjective meanings which seems to the actor as adequate conduct. The aim
of Webers sociology is to link individual difference, both in attitude, belief and value in
order to achieve societal cohesiveness. Webers assumption is that society must have an
avenue to make sense of differences between individual human actors. Hence the
primary agent of action is always the individual person. Weber posits that individual
action is diverse and as subjective as our differing values. However, we must have some
way in which to understand collectivities, such as the state, and association, or business
corporation. Weber argues that social action can be determined as (1) Instrumentally
rational, that is determined by expectations as to the behavior of objects in the
environment and of other human beings; these expectations are used as conditions or
means or the attainment of the actors own rationally pursued and calculated tools. (2)
Value-rational, that is determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of
some form of behavior, independently of its prospects of success. (3) Affectual, that is
determined by the actors specific affects and feeling states. And (4) Traditional, that is,
determined by ingrained habituation.
Any debate that centers around issues of class, property, or bureaucracy will find
Webers work helpful. The debater will find that Weber is less useful in establishing and
evaluating values. Instead, there is much more in terms of debating more practical
concerns. Webers perspective provides excellent support for notions of repression and
marginalization within value systems that promote class society. In addition, the debater
can construct an argument that many of our values are based within the market system
and therefore should be rejected.
Bibliography
Reinahrd Bendix. FORCE, FATE AND FREEDOM: LECTURES ON HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Rogers Brubaker. THE LIMITS OF RATIONALITY: AN ESSAY ON THE SOCIAL AND MORAL
THOUGHT OF MAX WEBER. London: Allen & Unwin, 1984.
Kathi Friedman. LEGITIMATION OF SOCIAL RIGHTS AND THE WESTERN WELFARE STATE: A
WEBERIAN PERSPECTIVE. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
Anthony Giddens. CAPITALISM AND MODERN SOCIAL THEORY: AN ANALYSIS OF THE

WRITINGS OF MARX, DURKHEIM, AND MAX WEBER Cambridge: University Press, 1971.
E.B.F. Midgley. THE IDEOLOGY OF MAX WEBER: A THOMIST CRITIQUE. Aldershot Hangs:
Gower, 1983.
Arthur Mitzman. THE IRON CAGE AN HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION OF MAX WEBER. New
York: Knopf, 1970.
Wolfgang J. Mommsen. THE AGE OF BUREAUCRACY: PERSPECTIVES ON THE POLITICAL

SOCIOLOGY OF MAX WEBER. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
Frank Parkin. MAX WEBER. London: Tavistock Publications, 1982.
Walter Garrison Runciman. A CRITIQUE OF MAX WEBERS PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL

SCIENCE.
Cambridge: University Press, 1972.
Max Weber. THE AGRARIAN SOCIOLOGY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS. Atlantic Highlands,

NJ:
Humanities Press, 1976.
Max Weber, ANCIENT JUDAISM. Hans H. Gerth & Don Marmndale trans. Glencoe, IL: Free
Press, 1952.
Max Weber. BASIC CONCEPTS IN SOCIOLOGY. H.P. Secher trans. New York: Greenwood
Press, 1969.
Max Weber. THE CITY. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958.
Max Weber. CRITIQUE OF STAMMLER. New York: Free Press, 1977.
Max Weber. GENERAL ECONOMIC HISTORY. New York: Collier Books, 1961.
Max Weber. THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM. London: G. Allen &
Unwin, ltd., 1930.
Max Weber. THE RATIONAL AND SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF MUSIC. Don Martindale,
Johannes Riedel & Gertrude Neuwirth, trans & ed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
Max Weber. THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION. Boston: Beacon press, 1963.
Max Weber. THE THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION. A. M. Henderson &
Talcott Parsons, trans & ed. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1947.
CANNOT SEPARATE MEANINGS AND

ACTION
1. INTERPRETATIONS OF ACTION ARE EMBEDDED IN INDIVIDUALS NOT GROUPS
Frank Parkin. Tutor in Politics and Fellow of Magdalen college(Oxford), MAX WEBER, 1986.
p. 1.
Rather, it is the reason Weber gives for focusing upon the individual and not upon
groups or collectivities; namely, that only the individual is capable of meaningful social
action. Weber says that it may often be useful, for certain purposes, to treat social
groups or aggregates as if they were individual beings. But this is nothing more than an
allowable theoretical fiction. As far as the subjective interpretation of action is
concerned, collectivities must be treated as solely the resultants and modes of
organization of the particular acts of individual persons.
2. MEANING AND ACTION ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED

Dirk Kasler. NQA, MAX WEBER- AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORK, 1988. p. 176.
Thus as we have already explained, meaning is not intended as some pre-formed
ideality but as one real, determining factor in human action. At this point the central
premise of every interpretive approach emerges: the actor attaches a meaning to his
or her action and this meaning acts at the very least as a contributory determinant to
the action. Thus any scientific attempt to analyze human action requires the inclusion of
meaning in an explanation of social phenomena.
3. VALUES ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM ACTION

Dirk Kasler. NQA, MAX WEBER- AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORK, 1988. p. 153.
Already we can see the object domain of Webers interpretive sociology being limited to
social action. The primary agent of action is always for Weber the individual person.
Action in the sense of subjectively orientation of behavior exists only as the behavior of
one or more cognitive purposes to proceed from other objects and investigation in the
case of interpretive sociology, even in the investigation of social collectivities, such as
the state, an association or bushiness corporation, it is a specifically different matter. But
for the subjective interpretation of action in sociological work these collectivities must be
treated as solely the resultants and modes of organization of the particular acts of
individual persons since these alone can be treated as agents in a course of subjectively
understandable action.
4. ACTION IS DEPENDENT ON A CONSTRUCTED MEANING

Dirk Kasler. NQA, MAX WEBER- AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORK, 1988, p. 152.
This procedure, in which a concrete, observable, human action is underpinned by an

ideal-typical constructed meaning, which is established with the help of an
instrumentally equipped understanding does not lead to a causally valid interpretation
but solely to a peculiarly plausible hypothesis. It is not only that the actor or actors are
themselves often not conscious of the motives of their action or rather are repressed by
others, but also the fact that behind actions, which from the outside may be judged as
the same or similar, very different complexes of meaning can lie, both these reasons
make the construction of a certain complex of meaning only the uncertain procedure of
die imaginary experiment.
5. SUBJECTIVE MEANINGS PROVIDE THE MOTIVE FOR ACTION

Dirk Ksler. NQA, MAX WEBER- AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORK, 1988. , p.
152.
As the motive of an action, Weber described a complex of subjective meaning which
seems to the actor himself or to the observer an adequate ground for the conduct in
question. Webers differentiation between subjective adequacy or adequacy on the level
of meaning (Sinnadaqanz) and causal adequacy (Kausaladaquanz) emerged from this
definition: The interpretation of a coherent course of conduct is subjectively adequate
(or adequate on the level of meaning), in so far as, according to our habitual modes of
thought and feeling its component parts taken in their mutual relation are recognized to
constitute a typical complex of meanings.
6. ACTION DEPENDENT ON UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY

Dirk Ksler. NQA, MAX WEBER- AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORK, 1988. 153.
Weber emphasized the historical dimension of this category, when he wrote: Social
action, which includes both failure to act and passive acquiescence, may be oriented to
the past, present or expected future behavior of others. Webers sociology is in no way
only about social action, but its forms its central subject matter, that which may be said
to be decisive for its status as a science.
ALL MODERN STATES REQUIRE POWER

FOR EXISTENCE
1. ALL MODERN STATES USE VIOLENCE FOR POWER
Max Weber cited in Frank Parkin. Tutor in Politics and Fellow of Magdalen college(Oxford),
MAX
WEBER, 1986. p. 73.
Weber was so insistent upon characterizing the modern state as an instrument of
violence that he was
prepared to deny that states can usefully be classified according to the aims and policies
they pursue.
Weber: Sociologically, the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends... [sic]
Ultimately, one can define
the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it... [sic]
namely, the use of physical force. What this implies, of course, is that no really helpful
distinction can be drawn between
different types of state -- capitalist, socialist, fascist, bourgeois, military, totalitarian, or
whatever. Since they all employ roughly the same physical means of violence,
differences in political design and purpose are somewhat secondary. Dictatorship and
democracy, strawberry and vanilla.
2. STATE DOMINATION REQUIRES INDIVIDUAL CONSENT

Franlc Parkin. Tutor in Politics and Fellow of Magdalen college(Oxford), MAX WEBER,
1986. p. 74.
It is important to note that Weber defines domination not merely as a structure of
command that elicits
obedience, but as obedience that is willingly given. Domination means that commands
are complied with
as if the ruled had made the content of the command the maxim of their conduct for its
very own sake. In
case there should be any lingering doubt on this point, Weber makes it crystal clear that
a positive
commitment on the part of the subordinate to the authority they obey is a cardinal
feature of domination.
3. SOCIETIES HOLD TOGETHER VIA POWER
p. 71.
This is the leitmotif that runs through all Webers political sociology. Societies and their
lesser parts are held together not so much through contractual relations or moral
consensus as through the exercise of power. Where harmony and order apparently
prevail, the threatened use of force is never altogether absent.
Inside the velvet glove is always an iron fist. The terminology of violence, coercion, and
force is as natural to Webers sociology as the terminology of moral integration is to
Durkheims.
4. POWER IS USED SUBTLY TO MAINTAIN GOVERNMENT FORM

Dirk Ksler. NQA, MAX WEBER- AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORK, 1988. p. 167.
Weber investigated the different stages of historical development in the evolution of
democratic forms of domination, dealing in particular with two types: the types of
plebiscitary leadership and the types of leaderless democracy which are characterized
by the attempt to minimize the domination of man over man.
In the same context Weber gave detailed determinations of the different forms of the
means to limit domination, i.e., collegiality and the division of power.
5. STATES WILL JUSTIFY USE OF POWER TO RETAIN AUTHORITY

p. 72. Seen against this background of quasi-religions adulation, Webers conception of
the state was downright heretical. In his view, the most notable feature of the state was
the fact that it could successfully lay claim to a monopoly of the legitimate use of
violence. He held that violent social action is obviously something absolutely
primordial. Every social group, of whatever kind, is prepared to resort to violence in the
protection of its interests. The state is different only in the sense that it claims the sole
right to use force upon anyone and everyone living within its territorial jurisdiction.
6. POWER IS EMBEDDED IN SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND STATE DOMINATION

Dirk Ksler. NQA, MAX WEBER- AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORK, 1988. p. 162.
We can reach no final verdict on the inter-relationship of the three concepts, and
particularly on whether Weber actually accepted a three pronged conceptual system as
well as an equality of importance among definitions. The fact is that Weber only briefly
dealt with the two concepts of power and discipline, against which he was concerned
with the phenomenon of domination, scientifically and in practical politics during his
whole life. The main reason was that domination represented a category which was
considerably fruitful in sociology--because of the (relative) reciprocity of the social
relationship: the desire to dominate on the one hand and the desire to obey on the
other. In this sense domination is the result of a sociologically more precise definition of
power.
Cornel West
Afro-American Critical Thought

A leading scholar in the field of Afro-American philosophy, Dr. Cornel West has been
called the preeminent African-American intellectual of our generation and a
progressive socialist in the age of triumphant capitalism (West, 1993). West was born in
Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 2, 1958. His family eventually settled in a middle-class
neighborhood in Sacramento, California. The grandson of a Baptist
minister, West combines the ethics of African-American religious tradition with key social
and political
perspectives. His aim is to examine how Black Americans can continue their struggle for
freedom to achieve a racially equal society.
This biography briefly highlights some of Wests key philosophical and practical ideas for
achieving his vision of a genuine multiracial democracy. Specifically, it will explain AfroAmerican Critical Thought
and its related concepts, it will provide an overview of West the scholar, it will identify
one of the most recent racial ills among African Americans: Nihilism, and it will explain
Wests notions about how
Nihilism can be overcome.
The purpose of Wests Afro-American Critical Thought is to critique African-American

history in the United States. Afro-American Critical Thought focuses on African-American
suffering and explores options for improving the future. It is largely grounded in the
traditions of Black Christianity, or Prophetic Theology which, West maintains, gave
African American slaves the ability to hold onto a sense of identity and purpose during
times of despair.
West believes that a combination of Black or Prophetic Christianity and Marxism holds
the hope of Western civilization. His reasoning is that Black Theology provides the sense
of personal freedom and equality that secured the hope of black slaves through the
years, while Marxism provides the social vision and political program absent from
Black Theology that is necessary to bring about radical changes in our socioeconomic
and political structures. Essentially, West believes that Marxism, as a social system,
provides the basics for living: food, shelter, clothing, literacy, jobs and health care. In
addition, the norm of individuality, which both Christianity and Marxism espouse,
reinforces the importance of community, common good, and the harmonious
development of personality. In essence then, West is advancing a
philosophy in Afro-American Critical Thought which builds up blacks by providing them
with a sense of pride in their past, prescribing ways to improve their economic and social
situations (through a new emphasis on Marxism), and directing them to focus on a sense
of meaning and purpose beyond their everyday lives (through Black Christianity).
As a scholar, West seeks to define social scientific knowledge and rejects much of
modernist philosophy.
West maintains that knowledge is not a set of proposed foundations, but rather a matter
of public testing and an open evaluation of consequences. In other words, he does not
believe in absolute knowledge. Instead, he believes that knowledge is created by a
community of people who are interested in a particular discipline or idea. So, to West,
knowledge is based on the collective perspectives of a scholarly community, where
consensus determines truth rather than one persons definitions or concepts passing as
absolute. This perspective checks for discrimination when we consider that there are
now a significant number of individuals within the scholarly community (i.e., West,
Asante, and others) who speak out against societys treatment of blacks. In Wests
philosophy then, a belief in an absolute Truth would assume that the plight of blacks
was somehow pre-destined or ordered because it was once accepted as the norm. Thus,
to put the ordeal of black slavery into context, one must disagree with the notion of
absolute knowledge and challenge the idea of white supremacy which has shaped AfroAmerican experiences in the modern world.
In his most recent writings, a pressing issue that West maintains has been ignored for
some time by blacks and whites alike is Black Nihilismwhich he defines as a profound
sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair
widespread among African-Americans (West, 1993). He maintains in his latest book:
Race Matters, that the L.A. Riots and tremendously high suicide rates among young
black people are prime examples of the effects of nihilism. Wests prescription is a love
ethic to counter what he calls this disease of the soul. By encouraging self love and
peaceful political resistance in ones community, he believes a political conversion will
occur, providing blacks with the ability to overcome their oppression and partake in a
racially equal society.
Related to Black Nihilism, West believes that there are currently two basic challenges
confronting African
Americans: self-image and self-determination. The former is the personal struggle to
define ones self. The latter is the political struggle to gain significant control over the
major institutions that regulate peoples lives (e.g., economics, government, etc.). These
ideas are related to Wests ideas about Christianity and
Marxism in that Christianity provides blacks with a sense of history and purpose and
Marxism provides a way to gain control over their economic, social and political
struggles.
Wests prescription for overcoming Black Nihilism is for African Americans to first look to
themselves and
their common history for help, hope, and power. Second, West argues for the rebuilding
of our countrys
infrastructure (for example, water and sewage systems, bridges, tunnels, highways,
subways, and streets) to provide blacks with greater access to businesses and other
institutions. Then, a large-scale public intervention is required to ensure access by all to
basic social goods such as housing, food, health care, education, child care, and jobs,
which, according to West, are the fundamentals of a good life.
Finally, Black Nihilism can only be overcome with new leadership. This will involve
looking beyond the same elites and older frameworks. West says that there is a
desperate need for new leaders who can grasp the complex dynamics of African
Americans and who can imagine a future grounded in the best of black history, yet who
are attuned to the frightening obstacles that now perplex them. He strongly believes
that racial hierarchy dooms us as a nation to collective paranoia and hysteria which, he
says, will result in the unmaking of any democratic order.
Based on a review of Wests philosophy, it is not difficult to see the influence of the
loving black
Christian family and church he experienced during his childhood. To this day, he
remains committed to the Prophetic Christian gospel and believes that it holds the
promise of a more equal and humane society.
Educated at Harvard and Princeton Universities, West is currently a professor of religion
and director of Afro-American Studies at Princeton University.
Applying Cornel Wests philosophy to debate can take a number of forms. Initially, the
debater will find relevance in any issue that relates to issues of race. For example, the
debater could argue that capitalism uniquely oppresses blacks. As a solution to this
systemic problem, the debater could advocate or support Black Christianity as a
desirable vehicle for reducing oppression.
Finally, the debater could use Wests philosophy as part of a critique of modernity. As
argued previously, West rejects modernity claiming that there is no absolute knowledge.
Hence, Wests philosophy could be used to critique and absolute values.
Bibliography
Cornel West, PROPHESY DELIVERANCE!: AN AFRO-AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY
CHRISTIANITY. Philadelphia The Westminster Press, 1982.
Cornel West, POST ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Cornel West, PROPHETIC FRAGMENTS. Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988.
Cornel West, THE AMERICAN EVASION OF PHILOSOPHY. Madison: University of Wisconsin

Press, 1989.
Cornel West, THE ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF MARXIST THOUGHT. New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1991.
Cornel West, BREAKING BREAD. Boston: South End Press, 1991.
Cornel West, PROPHETIC REFLECTIONS. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1991.
Cornel West, PROPHETIC THOUGHT IN POSTMODERN TIMES. Monroe, ME: Common

Courage Press, 1991.
BLACK NIHILISM IS BAD FOR AFRICANAMERICANS

1. BLACK NIHILISM LEADS TO A COLLAPSE OF THE MEANING IN LIFE
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Princeton University, RACE MATTERS, 1993, p. 5.
The collapse of meaning in lifethe eclipse of hope and absence of love of self and others,
the breakdown of family and neighborhood bondsleads to the social deracination and
cultural denouement of urban dwellers, especially children. We have created rootless,
dangling people with little link to the supportive networksfamily, friends, schoolthat
sustain some sense of purpose in life. We have witnessed the collapse of the spiritual
communities that in the past helped Americans face despair, disease, and death and that
transmit through the generations dignity and decency, excellence and elegance.
2. NIHILISM IS A NEW THREAT TO BLACK AMERICANS

Sadly, the combination of the market way of life, poverty-ridden conditions, black
existential angst, and the lessening of fear of white authorities has directed most of the
anger, rage, and despair toward fellow black citizens, especially toward black women
who are the most vulnerable in our society and in black communities. Only recently has
this nihilistic threatand its ugly inhumane outlook and actionssurfaced in the larger
American society.
3. NIHILISM LEADS TO A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE DISPOSITION

Nihilism is to be understood here not as a philosophic doctrine that there are no rational
grounds for legitimate standards or authority; it is, far more, the lived experience of coping
with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness.
The frightening result is a numbing detachment from others and a self-destructive
disposition toward the world.
NO ABSOLUTE SET OF VALUES IS

POSSIBLE
1. CERTAIN UNIVERSAL VALUES DO NOT EXIST
Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Princeton University, THE ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF
MARXIST THOUGHT, 1991, p. 2-3.
The radical historicist approach discards the quest for philosophic certainty and the search
for philosophic foundations because, it claims, this quest and search rests upon a
misguided picture of philosophy -- a picture of philosophy as the discipline that enables us
to grasp necessary and universal forms, essences, substances, categories, or grounds
upon which fleeting cultural and historical phenomena can rest. For the radical historicist,
philosophy itself is but a part of the fleeting cultural and historical phenomena, and it is
hence incapable of grounding anything else. The vision of philosophy as a quest for
philosophic certainty and search for philosophic foundations is an ahistorical vision, a
hapless attempt to escape from the flux of history by being philosophic, that is, by being
bound to certainty, tied to necessity, or linked to universality.
2. OBJECTIVE AND UNIVERSAL MORAL PRINCIPLES ARE IMPOSSIBLE

By calling into question the possibility of securing either timeless criteria, necessary
grounds, or universal foundations for moral principles, the radical historicist approach is
calling into question a particular conception of objectivity in ethics and hence the possibility
of ethics as a philosophic discipline. Without such criteria, grounds, or foundations to serve
as a last court of appeal for adjudicating between rival moral principles, objectivity in ethics
or valid justification of moral principles becomes but a dream, a philosophers dream which
results from an obsession with philosophic certainty and security in the flux of historical
change and development. In this sense, ethics as a philosophic discipline has no subject
matter.
3. VALUE HIERARCHIES ARE CULTURE AND COMMUNITY DEPENDENT

Once more to put it crudely, the radical historicist is a moral relativist who has made this
metaphilosophical move. The radical historicist discards the pejorative self-description
relativist and rejects the objectivist lens. The radical historicist does not see attainable
or unattainable timeless criteria, necessary grounds, or universal foundations which cut
through the flux of history, but rather different dynamic human agreements and
disagreements and changing community-specific criteria constituting continuous and
discontinuous traditions which are linked in highly complex ways to multiple human
needs, interests, biases, aims, goals, and objectives.
VALUES MUST BE ASSESSED

ACCORDING TO THE SITUATION
1. MORAL PHILOSOPHY OUGHT TO FOCUS ON ETHICS FOR PARTICULAR SITUATIONS
MARXIST THOUGHT, 1991, p.3.
Two noteworthy implications for moral philosophy result from the radical historicist
approach to ethics. First, the distinction between moral philosopher and social critic
breaks down. The moral philosopher is no longer viewed as either engaging in an
investigation into the nature of the logic of moral discourse or generating timeless
criteria, necessary grounds, or universal foundations for moral principles which should
regulate human behavior. Rather the moral philosopher attempts to put forward moral
guidelines or insights as to how to solve particular pressing problems, overcome urgent
dilemmas, and alleviate specific hardships. Of course, the moral philosopher must still
justify guidelines or insights, but the notion of justification is understood in a new way.
2. VALUES ARE GIVEN MEANING THROUGH THEIR USAGE

MARXIST THOUGHT, 1991, p. 2.
Therefore, for the radical historicist, the search for philosophic foundations or grounds
for moral principles is but an edifying way of reminding (and possibly further
committing) oneself and others to what particular (old or new) moral community or
group of believers one belongs to. Instead of focusing on the status (objective or
subjective, necessary or contingent, universal or particular) of moral principles, the
radical historicist approach stresses the role and function these principles (or any
principles) play in various cultures and societies. Instead of accenting the validity or
objectivity of the justification of moral principles, the radical historicist approach
highlights the plausible descriptions and explanations of the emergence, dominance,
and decline of particular moral principles under specific social conditions in the historical
process. Instead of philosophic notions such as status, validity, objectivity, the radical
historicist approach prefers theoretic notions such as role, function, description, and
explanation.
3. VALUE CONFLICTS MUST BE JUDGED BY COMPARING PRACTICAL ALTERNATIVES

For the radical historicist, the task of ethics is not philosophic, it is not to put forward
irrefutable justifications of particular moral viewpoints. Rather the task of ethics is
theoretic: the task is to discover ways in which to develop a larger consensus and
community such as through example and exposure, through pressure and persuasion,
without the idea of a last philosophic court of appeal in the background. If one disagrees
with a particular consensus or community
4. VALUE CONFLICTS CAN ONLY BE ASSESSED IN PARTICULAR SITUATIONS

MARXIST THOUGHT, 1991, p. 12.
The radical historicist is a moral relativist liberated from the vision of philosophy which
holds the moral relativist captive. This liberation primarily consists of overcoming the
fundamental distinctions of objectivism/relativism, necessary/arbitrary,
essential/accidental, universality/particularity, etc., by understanding that these
positions are but alternate sides of the same coin, that both positions are tied to a
common picture of what philosophy is and ought to be, that both positions become
credible alternatives only by freezing the historical process or by selecting a particular
time slice in a specific culture and society.
5. BLACK CHRISTIAN VALUES PROVIDE A SENSE OF EQUALITY AMONG BLACKS

Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Princeton University, PROPHESY DELIVERANCE: AN
AFROAMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY CHRISTIANITY, 1982, p. 16.
The basic contribution of prophetic Christianity, despite the countless calamities
perpetrated by Christian churches, is that every individual regardless of class, country,
caste, race, or sex should have the opportunity to fulfill his or her potentialities. This first
and fundamental norm is the core of the prophetic Christian gospel. A transcendent God
before whom all persons are equal thus endows the well-being and ultimate salvation of
each with equal value and significance. I shall call this radical egalitarian idea the
Christian principle of the self-realization of individuality within community.
Bernard Williams
BIOGRAPHY
Bernard Williams received the M.A. degree from Oxford University, but has received
honorary degrees from the University of Dublin, the University of Aberdeen, Cambridge
University, Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Chicago. Initially
moved to study the Latin and Greek languages and literature, Williams interests quickly
turned to politics and philosophy. Some of his early influences at Oxford were Gilbert
Ryle, and David Pears; but Williams' thought is also drawn from the works of
Wittgenstein and Hume. Recently, Williams work has drawn increasingly from Nietzsche.
After serving in the Royal Air Force, Professor Williams held a series of academic
positions in England. In 1967 he was appointed as the Knightbridge Professor of
Philosophy at Cambridge University and became the Provost of King's College in 1979.
From 1990 to 1996 he also held the position of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at
Oxford University. Professor Williams has been dividing his time between America and
England since 1988 when he came to Berkeley to serve as the Monroe Deutsch Professor
of Philosophy.
Some of Williams key works include: Truth and Truthfulness in 2002; Making Sense of
Humanity in 1995; Shame and Necessity in 1993), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy in
1985; Moral Luck in 1981; Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry in 1978; A Critique of
Utilitarianism, in Utilitarianism: For and Against (co-authored with J.J.C. Smart) in 1973;
Problems of the Self in 1973; and Morality: An Introduction to Ethics in 1972.
Williams has also served on several government committees in England, including the
Royal Commission on Gambling, Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, the
Labour Party's Commission on Social Justice, and participated in the Independent Inquiry
into the Misuse of Drugs Act (1997-2000).
From 1967 through 1986 Williams was a member of the Board of Sadler's Wells Opera
(later the English National Opera). He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since
1971 and Foreign Honorable Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
since 1983. He has been awarded honorary; he was knighted in 1999.
CAN LUCK MAKE A MORAL

DIFFERENCE?
Williams is highly skeptical of the Kantian view of morality and what he sees as
prevalent ideas about it: morality is a supreme value that is immune to luck. The
influence of luck is felt at almost everywhere. A spin of the roulette wheel can make one
person terribly wealthy, while the costs of a traffic accident are almost impossible to
calculate. Some seem to have all the luck, some can never catch a break. Luck can
give one person a leg up; but it can also hold people under its boot. Even characteristics
like speed, strength or health are often described as results of a genetic lottery.
Cancer is often a consequence of being unlucky enough to grow up near a Superfund
cite. Regardless, we often think of luck as affecting our happiness, successes, and
health in a multiplicity of ways.
Despite all of the unfairness, inequality, and injustice brought to the world via luck, there
should be one value which is equally accessible to everyone: morality. Bill Gates may
have a lot of money but that doesnt make him a moral person. Bill, however, may be
moral but not because of luck. Morality therefore provides us with a kind of solace in its
immunity to the whims of luck. Williams wonders if rationality has the same immunity.
WILLIAMS ON RATIONALITY AND

MORALITY
Williams begins by noting that it is impossible to foresee the success of a discussion
before it was made for instance. It would be impossible to tell if Gauguin would succeed
at becoming a great painter. Even if Gauguin had reason to think he would succeed, he
could not be sure what would come of that talent, nor whether the decision to leave his
family would help or hinder the development of that talent. In the end, no success would
justify Gauguins choice according to Williams. Similarly, the only thing that could show
Gauguin to be rationally unjustified is failure. To the extent that success depends on
luck, rational justification therefore depends on luck.
What, if anything, does this have to do with morality? Williams hopes to inflict fatal
damage on the notion of the moral by setting up a collision between rational and moral
justification. Rational justification, Williams has suggested, is, at least partly, a matter of
luck. Moral justification, as we have noted, is not supposed to be a matter of luck at all.
This clearly leaves room for clashes between the two sorts of justification, cases in which
an action is morally unjustified, but rationally justified (or vice versa).
Williams' point is not that morality is the only source of value, but that it is the supreme
source of value. On this picture, the mere fact that morality and rationality collide does
not necessarily pose a problem. The possibility that rationality and morality may be
distinct sources of value is no more troubling than the fact that morality and pleasure
are distinct sources of value. There can be more than one source of value so long as
moral value trumps these other sorts of value.
The example of Gauguin is meant to suggest that morality is not the supreme source of
value after all. We are supposedly stuck between two unpalatable options. If we are in a
situation in which moral value and another value (i.e., rationality) clash and the other
value can be the winner. This sort of move will eliminate the threat that rationality
poses to morality's supremacy, but this occurs at the expense of one of our deep
commitments about morality, namely, its invulnerability to luck. Either way, the notion
of morality fails to escape intact. This, anyway, is what Williams would have us believe.
CRITIQUE OF WILLIAMS
Despite all the attention that Williams' articles have generated, his argument is actually
remarkably unimpressive. It is not clear, for instance, that moral value has to be the
supreme sort of value. Why can't it just be an important sort of value (and, according to
what value are the various sorts of value to be ranked anyway)? Moreover, what is there
to stop us from saying that our gratitude (if we have any) that Gauguin did what he did
is just misguided and so that this is not a case in which it is better that the rational thing
rather than the moral thing happened? It may be that our gratitude is no indicator of
whether or not it is better that Gauguin did as he did.
These large problems aside, there is an even more basic problem with Williams'
argument. It rests on a claim about rational justification that can quite easily be made to
look doubtful. At the heart of Williams' argument is the claim that a rational justification
for a particular decision can only be given after the fact. This is what allows luck to enter
into rational justification. If we do not accept this claim, Williams has given us no reason
to think that either rational or moral justification is a matter of luck and so we cease to
have a reason to imagine a conflict between rationality and morality (on these grounds
anyway). If so, Williams has given us no reason to think that either rational or moral
justification is a matter of luck. What's more, there is good reason to doubt the claim
that rational justification must sometimes be retrospective. The usual intuition about
justification is that if we want to know whether Gauguin's decision to leave his family
and become a painter was a rational one, what we need to consider is the information
Gauguin had available to him when he made that decision. What did he have reason to
believe would be the fate of his family? What indication did he have that he had the
potential to become a great painter? Did he have good reason to think his family would
hinder his quest after greatness? Did he have reason to believe a move to the South
Seas would help him achieve his goal? And so on. Our standard picture of justification
tells us that, regardless of how things turned out, the answer to the question about
Gauguin's justification is to be found in the answers to the above questions. Luck is
thought to have nothing to do with his justification. Indeed, if Gauguin is found to have
been somehow relying on luck -- if, for example, he had never painted anything, but just
somehow felt he had greatness in him -- this would weigh substantially against the
rationality of his decision. The same could be said of the moral status of his decision:
what counts is the information he had at the time, not how things turned out.
Williams does have an argument against this picture of justification, albeit an ineffective
one. He appeals to the notion of agent regret. Agent regret is a species of regret a
person can feel only towards his or her own actions. It involves a 'taking on' of the
responsibility for some action and the desire to make amends for it. Williams' example is
of a lorry driver who "through no fault of his" runs over a small child. (Williams, 1993a,
43) He rightly says that the driver will feel a sort of regret at the death of this child that
no one else will feel. The driver, after all, caused the child's death. Furthermore, we
expect agent regret to be felt even in cases in which we do not think the agent was at
fault. If we are satisfied that the driver could have done nothing else to prevent the
child's death, we will try to console him by telling him this. But, as Williams observes, we
would think much less of the driver if he showed no regret at all, saying only 'It's a
terrible thing that has happened, but I did everything I could to avoid it.' Williams
suggests that a conception of rationality that does not involve retrospective justification
has no room for agent regret and so is "an insane concept of rationality." (Williams,
1993a, 44) His worry is that if rationality is all a matter of what is the case when we
make our decisions and leaves no room for the luck that finds its way into
consequences, then the lorry driver ought not to experience agent regret, but instead
should simply remind himself that he did all he could. This, however, just does not
follow.
The problem is that, in any plausible case of this sort, it will not be rational for the driver
to believe that he could not have driven more safely. Driving just isn't like that. Indeed,
what it is rational for the driver to do is to suspect there was something else he could
have done which might have saved the life of the child. If he had just been a little more
alert or driving a little closer to the centre of the road. If he had been driving a little
more slowly. If he had seen the child playing near the street. If his brakes had been
checked more recently and so on. It will be rational for him to wonder whether he could
have done more to avoid this tragedy and so also rational for him feel a special sort of
regret at the death of the child. (See Rosebury, 1995, 514-515 for this point.) Agent
regret exists because we can almost never be sure we did 'everything we could'. Thus it
provides us with no reason to believe there is a retrospective component to rational
justification (and so no reason to conclude that luck plays the role in justification
Williams suggests).
None of this is to deny that the way things turn out may figure in the justifications
people give for their past actions. It is just that, despite this, the way things turn out has
nothing to do with whether or not those past actions really were justified. Sometimes the
way things turn out may be all we have to go on, but this tells us nothing about the
actual justification or lack thereof of our actions, not unless we confuse the state of an
action being justified with the activity of justifying that action after the fact.
Why then have Williams' claims about moral luck been taken so seriously? Because
despite the shakiness of the argument he in fact gave, he pointed the way towards a
much more interesting and troubling argument about moral luck. This argument,
glimpses of which can be found in Williams' paper, is explicitly made in Thomas Nagel's
response to Williams.
THE PROBLEM OF MORAL LUCK

The problem of moral luck traps us between an intuition and a fact:
1) the intuition that luck must not make moral differences (e.g., that luck must not affect
a person's moral worth, that luck must not affect what a person is morally responsible
for).
2) the fact that luck does seem to make moral differences (e.g., we blame the
unfortunate driver more than the fortunate driver).
Responses to the problem have been of two broad sorts. Some claim that the intuition is
mistaken, that there is nothing wrong with luck making a moral difference. Others claim
that we have our facts wrong, that luck never does make a moral difference. The first
sort of response has been the least popular. When it has been made, the approach has
usually been to suggest that, if cases of moral luck are troubling, this is only because we
have a mistaken view of morality. Brynmor Browne (1992), for instance, has argued that
moral luck is only troubling because we mistakenly tend to think of moral assessment as
bound up with punishment. He argues that, once we correct our thinking, cases of moral
luck cease to be troubling. In an argument reminiscent of Williams, Margaret Urban
Walker (1993) claims that cases of moral luck are only troubling if we adopt the
mistaken view of agency she calls 'pure agency'. She argues that this view has
repugnant implications and so should be rejected in favor a view of agency on which
moral luck ceases to be troubling (namely 'impure agency'). Judith Andre (1993) claims
that we find cases of moral luck troubling because some of our thinking about morality is
influenced by Kant. She adds, however, that the core of our thinking about morality is
Aristotelian and that Aristotelians need not be troubled by cases of moral luck. The
claims of all these authors are controversial.
The most popular response to the problem of moral luck has been to deny that cases of
moral luck ever occur. This is usually done by suggesting that cases in which luck
appears to make a moral difference are really cases in which luck makes an epistemic
difference, that is, in which luck puts us in a better or worse position to assess a person's
moral standing (without actually changing that standing). Consider the case of the
fortunate and unfortunate drivers. On this line of argument, it is claimed that there is no
moral difference between them, it is just that in the case of the unfortunate driver we
have a clear indication of his deficient moral standing. The fortunate driver is lucky in
the sense that his moral failings may escape detection, but not in actually having a
moral standing any different from that of the unfortunate driver.
Along these lines, we find passages like the following: "the luck involved relates not to
our moral condition but only to our image: it relates not to what we are but to how
people (ourselves included) will regard us." (Rescher, 1993, 154-5) "A culprit may thus
be lucky or unlucky in how clear his deserts are." (Richards, 1993, 169) "If actual harm
occurs, the agent and others considering his act will have a painful awareness of this
harm." (Jensen, 1993, 136) "The actual harm serves only to make vivid how wicked the
behaviour was because of the danger it created." (Bennett, 1995, 59-60)
While appealing, the difficulty with this response to the problem of moral luck is that it
tends to work better for some sorts of luck than for others. While it is plausible that
resultant or circumstantial luck might make only epistemic differences, perhaps
revealing or concealing a person's character, it is not at all clear that constitutive luck
can be said to make only epistemic differences. If a person possesses a very dishonest
character by luck, what feature of the person does luck reveals to us that (non-luckily)
determines his moral status? One response to this worry has been to deny that the
notion of constitutive luck is coherent. (See, in particular, Rescher, 1995, 155-158 and
also Hurley, 1993, 197-198.) This claim turns upon a substantive claim about the nature
of luck, a topic that has been surprisingly absent from the literature on moral luck. It is
my own view that it is only by investigating the nature of luck that we will be able to
reach any sort of a final conclusion regarding the problem of moral luck. The problem of
moral luck is both real and deep.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://philosophy.berkeley.edu/williams/ Accessed June 29, 2003.
THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY. An interview with Bernard Williams. The Center Magazine.
November/December 1983, pp. 40-49
Williams, Bernard. TRUTH AND TRUTHFULLNESS. Princeton University Press, 2002.
Williams, Bernard. MAKING SENSE OF HUMANITY. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Williams, Bernard. SHAME AND NECESSITY. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Williams, Bernard. ETHICS AND THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY. Harvard University Press,
1985.
Williams, Bernard. MORAL LUCK. Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Williams, Bernard. DESCARTES: THE PROJECT OF PURE ENQUIRY. Harvester Press, 1978.
Williams, Bernard. A CRITIQUE OF UTILITARIANISM, IN UTILITARIANISM: FOR AND

AGAINST. with J.J.C. Smart, Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Williams, Bernard. PROBLEMS OF THE SELF. Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Williams, Bernard. MORALITY: AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS. Harper and Row, 1972.
Williams, Bernard. PHILOSOPHY AS A HUMANISTIC DISCIPLINE. Philosophy 75 (294), Oct.

00, 477-496.
Williams, Bernard. TOLERATING THE INTOLERABLE. In THE POLITICS OF TOLERATION,

ed. Susan Mendes, Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
Williams, Bernard. MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND POLITICAL FREEDOM. 56 Cambridge

Law Journal, 1997.
Williams, Bernard. HISTORY, MORALITY, AND THE TEST OF REFLECTION. In THE

SOURCES OF NORMATIVITY, ed. Onora O'Neill, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Williams, Bernard. THE POLITICS OF TRUST. THE GEOGRAPHY OF IDENTITY, ed. Patricia
Yeager, University of Michigan Press, 1996.
Williams, Bernard. THE WOMEN OF TRACHIS: FICTIONS, PESSIMISM, ETHICS. THE

GREEKS AND US, ed. R. B. Louden and P. Schollmeier, Chicago University Press, 1996.
Williams, Bernard. ACTING AS THE VIRTUOUS PERSON ACTS. in ARISTOTLE AND MORAL
REALISM, ed. Robert Heinaman, Westview Press, 1995.
Williams, Bernard. IDENTITY AND IDENTITIES. In IDENTITY: ESSAYS BASED ON HERBERT

SPENCER LECTURES. Given in the University of Oxford, ed. Harris, Henry, Oxford
Williams, Bernard. CRATYLUS' THEORY OF NAMES AND ITS REFUTATION. In LANGUAGE,

ed. Stephen Everson, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
UTILITARIANISM IS A BANKRUPT
MORAL FRAMEWORK
1. UTILITY CONFUZES MORAL ACTS AND MORAL OUTCOMES
Neil Erian, Symposium Reconsidering 20th Century Philosophy, OFF THE PRECIPICE INTO THE
GORGE: WHY UTILITARIANISM CANT SAVE US," March 25 2003.
http://www.fordham.edu/philosophy/fps/symposia/upcoming.htm, Accessed June 1, 2003. p-np.
But this is exactly what consequentialism prescribes, a standard of right action that need not be
comparable with any realistic state of affairs or conform to the moral agent's conscience or
integrity. In essence, consequentialism substitutes imagination run wild for what is in essence a
traditional cognitive approach to deciding right actions. Williams offers a warning: to say 'there is
nothing which is just right no matter what its consequences' is not the same thing as saying 'right
depends upon the consequences.' It is this illicit shift from moral actions to moral outcomes,
based upon the equation of those two notions, which undermines the ability of utilitarianism to
make itself a practicable morality.
2. UTILITY CANNOT MAINTAIN ITS OWN POSITION OF NEUTRALITY

Williams demonstrates, however, that utilitarianism must smuggle into its calculus the agent's
motivational moral feelings in its attempt to get him to act. In Williams' first example, the moral
agent, George, is ideologically opposed to working in a laboratory that makes chemical and
biological weapons. Acting on the principle of utility, the man trying to hire him tells George that
if he doesn't take the job, a zealous advocate of such weapons is waiting in the wings to accept it.
Thus, by means of George's own conscience the employer attempts to induce the utilitarian
action from George. In Williams' second example, the moral agent, Jim, finds himself in charge of
the fate of twenty South American Indians. If he refuses to go along with a plan that demands a
violation of his conscience, the utilitarian might accuse him of a "self-indulgent squeamishness."
The problem with such an accusation is that it violates utilitarianism's own principle of
impartiality towards the agent. In principle, the utilitarian may only make the calculation of the
best state of affairs and then passively accept without evaluation what the agent chooses. In
principle, any evaluation of the agent destroys the alleged impartiality utilitarianism claims as its
central principle. This, of course, makes utilitarianism a completely impracticable code of ethics,
because it demands the agent's self-destruction (and utilitarianism's self defeat). Any attempt to
live by utilitarianism can only lead the agent to feeling alienated from and defeated by his ethical
principles.
3. ADOPTION OF UTILITY ASSULTS INDIVIDUAL INTEGERITY

What happens when the principle of utility is invoked in a certain dilemma, and it clashes with
such a commitment? If the clash was with a short-term commitment then deferring to the
utilitarian response might be practicable. But for the agent who has been committed to some
project over a period of decades, to defer to the utilitarian response would be to sacrifice his
integrity. Utilitarians cannot respond to this and claim that of course the commitment should be
abided since it has great potential utility. This is illicit, given that we have already seen that the
agent's commitments are not rooted in utilitarian states of affairs, rather the recognition of the
agent's own projects. Utilitarianism requires that the committed agent act against and alienate
himself from his own projects. It demands an assault on his integrity.
WILLIAMS ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY IS

FLAWED
1. WILLIAMS VIEW OF INTEGRITY IS NOT A VIRTUE
Damian Cox, Marguerite La Caze, and Michael Levine, Authors, "Integrity", THE
STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, 2001
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2001/entries/integrity/>. Accessed June 1, 2003,
p-np.
One apparent consequence of defining integrity as maintenance of identity-conferring
commitments is that integrity cannot really be a virtue. This is Williams's view. He argues that
although it is an admirable
quality, integrity is not related to motivation as virtues are. A virtue either motivates a person to
act in desirable ways (as benevolence moves a person to act for another's good), or it enables a
person to act in
desirable ways (as courage enables a person to act well). If integrity is no more than
maintenance of identity, however, it can play neither of these roles. On the identity view of
integrity, to act with integrity is just to act in a way that accurately reflects your sense of who you
are; to act from motives, interests and commitments that are most deeply your own. (Williams
1981a p.49) A further consequence of this view of integrity as maintenance of identity-conferring
commitments is that there appears to be no normative constraints either on what such
commitments may be, or on what the person of integrity can do in the pursuit of those
commitments. The person of integrity can do horrific things and maintain their integrity so long
as they are acting accordance with their core commitments. A number of criticisms of the identity
view of integrity have been made. First, integrity is usually regarded as something worth striving
for and the identity account of integrity fails to make sense of this. (See Cox, La Caze, Levine
1999.) It disconnects integrity from the prevalent view that it is a virtue of some kind and
generally praiseworthy. Second, the identity theory of integrity ties integrity to commitments with
which an agent identifies, but acts of identification can be ill-informed, superficial and foolish. A
person may, through ignorance or self-deception, fail to understand or properly acknowledge the
source of their deepest commitments and convictions and we are unlikely to attribute integrity to
a person who held true to a false and unrealistic picture of themselves. (On the other hand, this
view of integrity as maintenance of identify-conferring commitments, recognizes the relevance of
self-knowledge to acting with integrity. If a person fails to act on their core commitments, through
self-deception, weakness of will, cowardice, or even ignorance, then they lack integrity.) Third, on
the identity view of integrity, a person's integrity is only at issue when their deepest, most
characteristic, or core convictions and aspirations are brought into play. However, we expect
persons of integrity to behave with integrity in many different contexts, not only those of central
importance to them. (See Calhoun 1995, p.245.) Fourth, as noted above, the identity view of
integrity places only formal conditions upon the kind of person that might be said to possess
integrity. The identity view of integrity shares this feature with the self-integration view of
integrity and similar criticism can be made of it on this ground. It seems plausible to observe
certain substantive limits on the kinds of commitments had by a person of integrity.
2. WILLIAMS VIEW DOES NOT INCLUDE ENOUGH CONCEPTS

Heidi Li Feldman, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan, OBJECTIVITY IN LEGAL
JUDGMENT, Michigan Law Review , March, 1994, p. 1193.
At the same time, Williams's delineation includes too few concepts. Williams focuses on action as
the upshot of application. But consider, for example, negligence. A judgment that somebody's
conduct has been negligent does not lead to action in any straightforward way. Even if we grant
that finding liability counts as an action, judging conduct negligent does not even lead directly to
such a finding; even when it does, the connection between that judgment and action can be
tenuous. The defendant may refuse to pay damages, the plaintiff may not try to enforce the
judgment, and others might not be deterred from acting the way the defendant had acted. A
judgment of negligence is as compatible with inaction as with action, even if such judgments
often do provoke action.
WOODROW WILSON
When most of us think of Woodrow Wilson, we dont necessarily think philosopher -but thats what this visionary president of the United States was.
Best remembered as the progenitor of the League of Nations (the precursor to todays
United Nations) and of the fourteen point program for peace, Wilsons name is also
invoked by students of international relations theory today in the context of so-called
Wilsonian idealism -- the notion that an interventionist American foreign policy can
spawn positive changes in other countries and cultures.
This, for better or for worse, is the former presidents predominant legacy: the liberal
internationalism that continues to inform American foreign policy under most
Democratic presidents (and some Republicans, such as the first George Bush).
Like most historic truths, these simple summations contain quite a bit of accuracy and
a little sleight-of-hand. The veracity of these statements depend on ones political
perspective, on ones position in the world, and various other factors. I will try to present
diverse perspectives on the life, work and thoughts of this embattled and interesting
president.
Though perspectives differ on his ideas -- and the efficacy of those views in a swift and
fierce world -- it cannot be denied that those views have had a major impact on
American and global visions of justice.
THE LIFE OF WOODROW WILSON

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in 1856 in Staunton, Virginia, and grew up during and
immediately following the Civil War. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and at times
taught college courses. He was inspired by his fathers religion and love of education.
Young Woodrow Wilson first went to Davidson College in North Carolina, but was forced
to withdraw due to illness. He graduated what was then the College of New Jersey (and
what later became Princeton University) and went on to get his law degree from the
University of Virginia in 1879-80 and passed the Georgia bar in 1882.
His law practice floundered, though, prompting a career change into government and
politics. He returned to school in 1883, studying government and history at Johns
Hopkins University. His book Congressional Government was accepted as his dissertation
in 1885, and led to his receipt of the Ph.D. degree in political science from Johns
Hopkins. To this day, Wilson is the only U.S. president to hold a Ph.D. proving that most
presidents just arent too smart. But Wilson was, teaching at Bryn Mawr College,
Wesleyan University and Princeton University. After an accomplished career as an author
and essayist, he was named president of Princeton University in 1902.
From there, politics was a natural step. In 1910, Wilson won the Democratic nomination
for governor of New Jersey, subsequently winning the election by a wide margin. His
agenda was a progressive one: he focused on preventing the publics exploitation by
monopolies and trusts. This earned him serious popularity with the masses, and just two
years later he accepted the Democratic nomination for president.
Wilson called his platform the "New Freedom" platform, and gave keen attention to
stimulating the American economy. Again, he earned a landslide victory, winning the
presidency with 435 electoral votes out of a possible 531. His brother wasnt a
governor, and he did not have to cheat to win.
True to his word, Wilson followed through on a domestic agenda based on busting
corrupt trusts. To this end, he created a dramatic array of economic reforms. He pushed
through the Underwood Act (which reformed tariffs and instituted a progressive income
tax) and the Federal Reserve Bill (which established our modern banking system,
creating new currency and establishing the twelve Federal Reserve banks and their
board of governors) in 1913. Yes, we can partially blame Alan Greenspan on Wilson. He
also established the Federal Trade Commission in 1914 to restrict "unfair" trade
practices.
These economic reforms show Wilsons brand of liberalism: create reforms that stabilize
a functioning market economy and offer marginal protections for the poor, while
promoting international trade to enrich the wealthy. You can see the economic legacy of
Wilson in todays New Democrats.
THE WAR YEARS

Some of the controversy surrounding Wilsons idealism involves the way he handled
American involvement in World War I, which began in 1914. Wilson, despite growing
pressure from allies like Britain (who were losing an entire generation of young men),
resisted American involvement in Europes war. In fact, he ran for reelection in 1916 with
the slogans "he kept us out of war" and peace without victory.
Conventional wisdom holds that escalation of submarine warfare by Germany forced

Wilsons hand in declaring war -- the sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania is often
cited. It may be, however, that these events came at the same time a revolution in
Wilsons thinking was brewing --a revolution that would inspire his ideas on how to make
peace.
Some critics believe that Wilson, despite his public pronouncements, had already
decided to enter the fray. They point to that fact that he created the U.S. governments
first major state propaganda agency (the Committee on Public Information, also called
the Creel Commission). The population of the U.S. didnt favor war at the time, and the
theory goes that Wilson intended to change their minds.
At any rate, he asked Congress for a declaration of war in April 1917. This turn of events
led the United States into the fight, and led to Wilsons famous efforts at peace -culminating in the Fourteen Points Address of 1918, which well discuss below.
The critics on the right accused Wilson of thinking wrongly that the United States owes
an obligation to the rest of the world -- that instead of intervening to help other nations,
we should tend to our own business. The critics on the left had then and have now a
radically different take: that not only are their few if any places where American
intervention can help the rest of the world, the impulse to intervene is itself a pernicious
manifestation of liberal internationalism that desires to control the rest of the human
community.
This type of thinking reveals itself at home, too, when people opposing governmental
policies must also be controlled through imprisonment. Historians such as Howard Zinn
point to the Sedition Acts that were used to jail opponents of the war. He criticizes the
administration for passing such legislation and the Supreme Court for failing to
challenge it on a constitutional basis:
This shows the irony of liberalism: Wilson supported many progressive social agendas
(women received the right to vote when he was in office, for example), but when ones
own power and decision-making are challenged, that commitment to social progress
sometimes flies out the nearest window.
Domestic policy aside -- and it was not an insignificant part of Wilsons presidency -most people remember Wilson for his foreign policy, specifically the role he played in the
ending of World War I. Lets turn to his ideas on that front now.
THE IDEAS OF WOODROW WILSON

In 1919, the Versailles Treaty was signed with Germany during the Paris Peace
Conference. However, a new Republican Congress in the United States rejected the
peace negotiated under Wilson, skeptical of the League of Nations. A separate peace
had to be negotiated between the United States and Germany. Still, the Europeans
considered Wilson a key factor in making peace -- he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace
Prize.
Why was the peace negotiated by Wilson so controversial at home? Many of his ideas
were quite ahead of their time, including the internationalist tendencies favoring
collective security that are even today rejected by many Republicans who favor the bigstick, unilaterist school of diplomacy. That doesnt mean, however, that the ideas
behind the league have lost their relevance.
FOURTEEN POINTS
The best single summary of Woodrow Wilsons political philosophy came in his Fourteen
Points Address to Congress, where he promoted his plan for peace in Europe. There, we
see the ideas he held most dear in both promotion of peace and economic justice.
Before presenting the fourteen points themselves, Wilson had this to say about the end
of the war to end all wars:
We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the
quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and
the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war,
therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to
live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our
own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and
fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All
the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we
see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us, Wilson
said.
How to establish justice? The first five points hold up remarkably well in todays political
climate. In fact, they might have been written after the Gulf War by George Bush or Bill
Clinton.
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private
international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and
in the public view.
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in
peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international
action for the enforcement of international covenants.
III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an
equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and
associating themselves for its maintenance.
IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the
lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based
upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of
sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the
equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
One can see in these first several points the framework for establishing what we would
call today a neoliberal economic order -- one largely supported by both political parties
in the United States. The prime points of this neoliberal order include free trade
(absolute freedom of navigation, the removal of all economic barriers to trade, an
international regime managing trade, and a colonial system that would provide raw
materials and labor for the trading system) and an international market that today we
might call globalized.
View this in the context of his domestic economic policy: Wilson established the Federal
Reserve Bank, stabilized the economy with numerous reforms that foreshadowed biggovernment liberalism, and established the progressive income tax. Overseas, he sought
to promote trade as a path to peace. This shows that he believed in government as a
positive force for change in economics as in foreign policy.
Points six through thirteen establish the territorial settlements following the conflict,
including evacuation of conquered lands, the establishment of an independent Polish
state, etc. But the fourteenth point was the most controversial to the Republican
Congress Wilson faced at home, and arguably the one with the most historic staying
power:
XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the
purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity
to great and small states alike.
As weve talked about, this vision is whats behind todays U.N. -- a collective body for
the nations of the world to gather and discuss problems, solve disputes, and work
together toward common goals.
Weve talked a bit about the lefts criticism of Wilson as a Machiavellian liberal who
wanted to build a world he and his country could control. The right has a somewhat
different slant, preferring to think of Wilson as a meddlesome tinkerer who bumbled into
trouble by trying to do too much good overseas.
As the far-right author David Horowitz wrote this February:
(Of course, a consensus to Horowitz means something different than what it does to
the rest of the world. Not even the mainstream right takes him seriously. But thats
another story.)
From another right-wing perspective, groups like the Cato institute toe a more
isolationist line. As long as the United States can protect itself with the most powerful
military in the world, they argue, why blunt the focus of American foreign policy by
taking on multiple humanitarian missions? This kind of misguided internationalism,
they would argue, is Wilsons legacy.
Wilson would argue that promoting justice (through institutions like American
democracy) abroad is the best way to get peace. These thinkers claim that its a fallacy
to presume we can effectively promote those institutions worldwide, and even if we can,
the nation-building activities have bad tradeoffs. Take the example of Latin America,
where Wilson once refused to acknowledge non-democratic governments. One scholar
on inter-American affairs, Abraham F. Lowenthal, was quoted in a Cato publication as
concluding:
Of course, its overly simplistic to say that only the right favors this line of analysis.
Many left-wing thinkers have taken a similar angle, but made more of these policies
effects on the nations in question rather than the impact they had on the United States.
It is possible, then, to see Wilson at once as overly idealistic and overly cynical. Some
see him as a man who naively believed one powerful country could bring peace to the
world. Others see him as a man who wanted to bring peace to rich nations and rich
men living within them, while maintaining other kinds of dominance (economic, for
example).
DEBATE APPLICATION
Motives are a difficult thing to ascertain in any human being, given the myriad factors at
play in the formation of ones thinking. It is better, in my estimation, to examine the
policies Wilson favored rather than muddy the water with simple labels like idealism,
which mean different things to different people.
A more concrete term we can grab onto might be liberalism: the belief that
government economic or social interventions are necessary to build a just world. Wilson
is important to understand as a precursor to todays modern liberal politicians, both in
domestic and foreign policy. His ideas have impacted todays Democratic party in at
least two major ways.
Economic policy: unlike his Republican successors such as Calvin Coolidge, Wilson didnt
believe in laissez-faire (let it be) economics. He believed the government should take
an active role in stimulating the economy through establishing necessary regulations at
home.
Overseas, he backed the free trade policies that modern Democrats fall over themselves
to back. One can see Bill Clintons economic policys roots in Wilson. He passed the
Family Leave Act as a domestic reform to marginally benefit working Americans while
vigorously pursuing free trade agreements abroad.
Foreign policy: Wilson, despite his initial reluctance to get involved in World War I, was
interventionist by nature. This can be explained by the American publics marked
opposition to the war: he knew from polls what a winning election issue would be, but
then pursued his own policies after employing substantial spin from his propaganda
agency. For these reasons, it is possible to see both Bushs and Clintons attacks on Iraq,
for example, as Wilsonian in nature -- the defense of a nation from an attack by an
autocratic and oppressive neighbor (though Wilson wouldnt have been a fan of Kuwaits
oppressive monarchy, either).
CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF WOODROW WILSON
When Wilson was president, his dogged pursuit of the Versailles Treaty necessitated
traveling 8,000 miles by rail around the country. After this effort, he fell ill and never fully
recovered. Since Wilson was unable to campaign for the presidency, James M. Cox took
the Democratic nomination and was beaten by Warren G. Harding in 1920.
Wilson retired to Washington, D.C., where he died in 1924. He never saw most of the
impact his ideas would have on the world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adar, Korwa G. professor of International Relations at the International Studies Unit,
QUARTERLY, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1998, http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i2a3.htm, accessed
April 22, 2002.
Ambrosius, Lloyd. WOODROW WILSON AND THE AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC TRADITION: THE
TREATY FIGHT IN PERSPECTIVE; Cambridge University Press, 1990
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: WOODROW WILSON, PBS documentary, 2001, available online

at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/sfeature/sf_legacy.html, accessed May 1, 2002.
Auchincloss, Louis. WOODROW WILSON: A PENGUIN LIFE, Viking Press, 2000.
Blum, John Morton. WOODROW WILSON AND THE POLITICS OF MORALITY, AddisonWesley Pub Co, 1998
Chomsky, Noam. Professor of Linguistics at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, Z

MAGAZINE, November 1994, p. 10.
Daniels, Josephus. THE LIFE OF WOODROW WILSON, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1971.
Gilderhus, Mark. PAN AMERICAN VISIONS: WOODROW WILSON AND THE WESTERN
HEMISPHERE, 1913-1921; University of Arizona Press, 1986
Knock, Thomas. TO END ALL WARS: WOODROW WILSON AND THE QUEST FOR A NEW
WORLD ORDER; Princeton University Press, 1995
Kuehl. Warren and Lynne Dunn, KEEPING THE COVENANT: AMERICAN

INTERNATIONALISTS AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, 1920-1939; Kent State University
Press, 1997
Levin, Norman Gordon. WOODROW WILSON AND WORLD POLITICS; AMERICA'S

RESPONSE TO WAR AND REVOLUTION; Oxford University Press, 1980
Link, Arthur. CAMPAIGNS FOR PROGRESSIVISM AND PEACE; Princeton University Press,
1965
Link, Arthur. THE NEW FREEDOM; Princeton University Press, 1956
Rowen, Herbert. WOODROW WILSON: A LIFE FOR WORLD PEACE, University of California
Press, 1991
Zinn, Howard. Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University, Z MAGAZINE NETWORK

DAILY COMMENTARY, May 7, 2000, http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/content/200005/07zinn.htm, accessed April 22, 2002.
WILSON PROMOTED PROGRESSIVE

SOCIAL AGENDAS
1. WILSONS LEGACY INCLUDES MANY PROGRESSIVE AGENDAS
Ira Katznelson, Historian, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: WOODROW WILSON, PBS
documentary, 2001, p. np, available online at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/sfeature/sf_legacy.html, accessed May 1, 2002.
Wilson matters as the first modern president. Wilson matters as the person who led the
United States into global geopolitics. Wilson matters as someone who followed a
progressive political agenda and who established a model for subsequent possibilities,
some of which had to wait a long time to come back.
2. WILSONS CONCEPTS OF POWER AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ARE STILL USEFUL

John M. Mulder, Historian, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: WOODROW WILSON, PBS
I see Wilson's life as tragic in the sense that he obviously lost on the League. He's not
tragic however in the larger scope of American history because what he did was to help
us understand the complexity of power both domestically and internationally in ways
that we are still working with. The Wilsonian concepts of how political power should be
used on behalf of social justice are still defining assumptions for twentieth century
American political life.
3. WILSON SUPPORTED MANY PROGRESSIVE AGENDAS

Ira Katznelson, Historian, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: WOODROW WILSON, PBS
Wilson's also important as the president who presided over a number of major
constitutional changes. The direct election of United States senators, prohibition, and
womens suffrage. The period of his presidency was a period therefore of extraordinary
new assertion of governmental capacity in the United States, as well as presidential
ambition.
4. IT WASNT WILSONIANISM, BUT THE COLD WAR, THAT PROMOTED COLONIALISM

In the spirit of Wilsonianism, the US welcomed decolonization and independence in

Africa in the 1960s. However, with Cold War prism taking a centre stage, emerging
American national interests became defined in terms of combatting communism in
Africa and other parts of the world. Indeed, such concerns were evident even prior to
much of Africa's independence. After his visit to Africa, Vice-President Nixon in his report
to Eisenhower explained that "the course of Africa's development...could well prove to
be the decisive factor between the forces of freedom and international communism".
WILSONIAN THOUGHT HELPED CREATE

INTERNATIONAL PEACE
1. WILSONIAN PHILOSOPHY HELPED CREATE THE U.N. AND HAD A GLOBAL IMPACT
In his foreign policy pronouncements vis-a-vis the European colonial powers President
Woodrow Wilson advocated for the pursuit of democracy and human rights
conceptualized within the context of self-determination for the colonized peoples. The
idea of universal morality was central for Wilson. In his view, the realization of individual
freedom, limited government, and legitimacy of power held the key to both international
peace and the emancipation of humanity from injustice. It was within this philosophical
context that he advocated for the need to make the world safe for democracy. This, he
argued, would promote America's long term interests. Wilsonianism emerged as a
distinct policy philosophy at the end of the First World War. One of the central concerns
at the time was how to avoid war and conflict in general. For Wilson, the crucial priority
was the need to establish people-oriented internal and international democratic
institutions that would act as the custodians of democracy and human rights as
conceptualised within the general rubric of self-determination. This idealism culminated
in the formation of the League of Nations in 1919. Thus, Wilsonianism was not only
internationalised but also institutionalised. Although the United States did not become a
contracting party to the League, Wilsonianism had a global impact.
2. WILSONIAN THINKING HELPED PAVE THE WAY FOR DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA
Such thinking would go on to inform the founding fathers of the United Nations. The UN
system tangibly paved the way for the process of decolonization in Africa through the UN
General Assembly resolutions, with African countries which were independent at the
time as well as India and the socialist countries taking the lead. In this respect,
Wilsonianism not only challenged dictatorial and authoritarian systems worldwide but it
also helped oppressed people become aware of their rights. For the colonized peoples of
Africa, democracy and human rights (or self-determination in general) was equated with
the absence of colonialism. Moreover, the momentum on the issues of democracy and
human rights was evidenced with the appointment of Eleanor Roosevelt to Chair a
Commission on Human Rights. The results of Roosevelt's Commission were the
establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its corollaries the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
3. WILSONS IDEAS HELP CONTROL POTENTIAL INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY

John Morton Blum, Historian, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: WOODROW WILSON, PBS
documentary, 2001,
p. np, available online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/sfeature/sf_legacy.html,
If one wants to talk about Wilsons legacy, I see it at least more in terms of a process
than I do in terms of a product. It isnt the League of Nations but the importance of
thinking through a way to the control the potential anarchy and the relations of states.
What Wilson was capable of was as a president, to involve himself in great affairs and to
try to find ways in which to work out the problems created by those great affairs, he was
never evasive in that way.
4. WILSONS IDEAS WERE VICTORIOUS EVEN THOUGH HIS POLICIES WERENT

Jay Winter, Historian, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: WOODROW WILSON, PBS documentary,
2001, p. np, available online at
Wilsons ideas were victorious even if his policies werent. He left his stamp upon the
way in which American foreign policy has been formulated throughout the 20th Century
and the paradox is that a man whose vision was repudiated by the political leadership of
his time managed to achieve a way of framing the language of American foreign policy
throughout the 80 years since his death.
WILSON SUPPORTED AMERICAN

COLONIALISM AND IMPERIALISM
1. WILSON FAILED BECAUSE HE TRIED TO APPLY AMERICAN PRINCIPLES TO THE WORLD
Walter LaFeber, Historian, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: WOODROW WILSON, PBS
It seems to me that Wilson failed because he tried to apply American principles to the
world; and the world did not want the American principles. He took a kind of an
American liberalism and essentially tried to create a form of world institutions: selfdetermination, open trade, the things that Americans had evolved over three-hundred
years and incidentally in the process of which we had killed six hundred thousand of
each other in the Civil War because it hadnt worked too well. The Europeans knew this.
The Europeans knew that Wilsons principles had problems.
2. WILSONS IDEALISM CONTINUES TO JUSTIFY HORRIBLE TRAGEDIES IN HAITI

Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Z
MAGAZINE, November 1994, p. 10.
Whether Aristide is allowed to return in some fashion is anyone's guess at the time of
writing. If he is, it will be under conditions designed to discredit him and further
demoralize those who hoped that democracy might be tolerated in Haiti. To evaluate
what lies ahead, we should look carefully at the plans for the security forces and the
economy. The military and police forces were established during Woodrow Wilson's
invasion as an instrument to control the population, and have been kept in power by U.S.
aid and training for that purpose since. That is to continue. As discussed here in July, the
head of the OAS/UN mission through December 1993, Ian Martin, reported in Foreign
Policy that negotiations had stalled because of Washington's insistence on maintaining
the power of the security forces, rejecting Aristide's plea to reduce them along lines that
had proven successful in Costa Rica, the one partial exception to the array of horror
chambers that Washington has maintained in the region. The Haitian military, Martin
observed, recognized that the U.S. was its friend and protector, unlike the U.N., France,
and Canada. The generals continued their resistance to a diplomatic settlement, trusting
that "the United States, despite its rhetoric of democracy, was ambivalent about that
power shift" to popular elements represented by Aristide. They were proven right. As the
matter is now rephrased, "At first, Father Aristide resisted having so many former
soldiers in the police force, but Administration officials said they persuaded him to
accept them," so the New York Times reported on the eve of the invasion. This was one
of the successes of the educational program designed for the "doctrinaire
monomaniac."Aristide's unwillingness to "broaden the political base" has become a kind
of mantra, on a par with "Wilsonian idealism." Like many other mindless propaganda
slogans, the phrase conceals a grain of truth. Aristide has been unwilling to shift power
to the "enlightened" sectors of foreign and domestic Civil Society and their security
forces. He still keeps his allegiance to the general population and their organizations --
who could teach some lessons to their kindly tutors about what was meant by
"democracy" in days when the term was still taken seriously. It is intriguing to watch the
process at work. Consider Peter Hakim, Washington director of the Inter-American
dialogue, well-informed about the hemisphere and far from a ranting ideologue. While
Aristide was elected by a two-thirds majority, Hakim observes, "in most Latin American
countries, movement from authoritarianism to democracy tends to reflect a more
broadly based consensus than is currently the case in Haiti." It is true enough that from
the southern cone to Central America and the Caribbean, the consensus is "broadly
based" in the sense that sustained terror and degradation, much of it organized right
where Hakim speaks, has taught people to abandon hope for freedom and democracy,
and to accept the rule of private power, domestic and foreign. It hasn't been easy;
witness the case of Guatemala, just now attaining the proper broad consensus after
many years of education. Hakim also surely knows the nature of the "consensus" at
home, revealed by the belief of half the population that the political system is so rotten
that both parties should be disbanded. And he knows full well what efforts are made to
broaden government to include authentic representatives of the overwhelming majority
of the population in Latin America, or by its traditional master.
WILSONS SOCIAL IDEAS WERENT NOT

PROGRESSIVE, BUT REPRESSIVE
1. WILSONS RHETORIC WAS PRO-DEMOCRATIC, BUT HIS SOCIAL POLICIES WERENT
Victoria Bissell Brown, Historian AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: WOODROW WILSON, PBS
His greatest contradiction from my point of view, is that his rhetoric was pro-democratic,
but his behavior was often very paternalistic, very controlling, very unsympathetic with
and having very little patience for the messiness of democracy, the noise of democracy.
He saw democracy as a tool for creating harmony, civilized mediation. He wasnt always
comfortable with the fact that democracy is a noisy and messy business.
2. WILSONS PHILOSOPHY INCLUDED RACISM AND WAR-MONGERING

Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University, Z MAGAZINE NETWORK
DAILY COMMENTARY, May 7, 2000, p. np, http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/content/200005/07zinn.htm,
As for Woodrow Wilson, also occupying an important place in the pantheon of American
liberalism, shouldn't we remind his admirers that he insisted on racial segregation in
federal buildings, that he bombarded the Mexican coast, sent an occupation army into
Haiti and the Dominican Republic, brought our country into the hell of World War I, and
put anti-war protesters in prison. Should we not bring forward as a national hero Emma
Goldman, one of those Wilson sent to prison, or Helen Keller, who fearlessly spoke out
against the war?
3. WILSONIAN POLICIES ARENT IDEALISTIC: JUST THE SAME OLD REALPOLITIK

The principles of democracy and human rights have been persistent, if at times
secondary, themes within the rhetoric of American foreign policy toward Africa since the
end of World War II. The linking of such Wilsonian precepts with foreign policy practice,
however, has been an altogether different story. US policy makers consistently followed
the dictates of realpolitik in the era of the Cold War, leaving concerns for democracy and
human rights aside. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War,
conditions are now in place for the tangible and coherent pursuit of an American foreign
policy based on democracy and human rights. In the current era, the question emerges
as to the resonance of such Wilsonian principles in US foreign policy towards Africa.
3. WILSONS IDEAS JUSTIFY VICIOUS COLONIALISM

MAGAZINE,
November 1994, p. 10.
"Perspective" on what is taking place was provided in the New York Times by R. W. Apple,
who reviewed the lessons of history. "For two centuries," he wrote, "political opponents
in Haiti have routinely slaughtered each other. Backers of President Aristide, followers of
General Cedras and the former Tontons Macoute retain their homicidal tendencies, to
say nothing about their weapons" -- which the homicidal maniacs in the slums have
cleverly concealed. "Like the French in the 19th century, like the Marines who occupied
Haiti from 1915 to 1934, the American forces who are trying to impose a new order will
confront a complex and violent society with no history of democracy." One takes for
granted that the vicious terror and racism of the Wilson administration and its
successors will be transmuted to sweet charity as it reaches the educated classes, but it
is a novelty to see Napoleon's invasion, one of the most hideous crimes of an era not
known for its gentleness, portrayed in the same light. We might understand this as
another small contribution to the broader project of revising the history of Western
colonialism so as to justify the next phase.
HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn is a historian and activist to take note of by any measure. The author of
more than 15 books, Zinn is not only prolific but is considered one of the most accessible
modern historical writers. His progressive history text, A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES, has sold more than 800,000 copies. 88 In addition to his historical writing,
he has authored several plays, spoken word CDs, and an autobiographical commentary
on politics and history. He received his Doctorate in history from Columbia and is a
Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University.
There are a number of different values and philosophical arguments that Zinn writes
about. Because many of them are framed in terms of their historical context, either
nationally or in terms of his own life, this essay will engage each of these values in the
context he provides.
88 Interview of Howard Zinn by Robert Birnbaum, Zinn and the Art of History,
HOWARD ZINN ONLINE, no date, accessed May 12, 2002,
http://howardzinn.org/index23.htm
CRITIQUES OF HISTORIOGRAPHY
Zinns seminal text, A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, revolutionized the way
history is told. There are four ways in particular that Zinns historical methodology
radically different from the norm: he recognizes (and even embraces) the bias in
perspective that is a natural part of historiography; he tells the narrative of history from
the bottom up, that is, from the perspective of those who have been disempowered
throughout each era; rather than shying away from controversy, he actively engages it;
he integrates the concepts of historiography with activism. I will address each of these in
turn.
History has traditionally been told as though there was an objective truth waiting to be
discovered and written. This is particularly the case in texts that claim to be at all
comprehensive, such as history textbooks used in schools. These books have a vested
interest in making their version of history appear definitive, because, from the authors
perspective, it makes them appear more credible and authoritative than their
competitors.
Howard Zinn takes an entirely different approach to the writing of history. In his essay
The Uses of Scholarship, Zinn critiques what he sees as the sometimes unspoken, but
almost universally accepted, rules for good scholarship. These are that writing should
be disinterested, objective, narrowly tailored to one academic discipline, scientific (i.e.,
neutral), and rational (unemotional).89
One of Zinns primary arguments against this approach is that the disinterested and
rational approach to history facilitates a distance between the historian and the
subject matter that leads to complicity with evils in history:
It is precisely by describing the brutality of war, the character flaws of our leaders, and
the lies propagated by politicians, the mass media, the church, [and] popular
leaders,91 for example, that students can be taught to think critically about the world
that they live in, within the context of history.
The second way that Zinns historical methodology challenges the dominant orthodoxy
is that it describes history from the standpoint of the oppressed. Most United States
89 Howard Zinn, THE ZINN READER: WRITINGS ON DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY,
1997, p. 503-506
91 Zinn, THE ZINN READER, p. 507
history is told from a perspective that puts the government and politicians at the center,
and ignores the daily lives of ordinary citizens. In contrast, Zinn is a champion of the
notion that historical change occurs more through mass movements of ordinary people
than through the wisdom and insight of so-called Great Men. 92 This is due, in part, to
Zinns personal background with the civil rights movement and the labor movement, but
extends to all of his writing, such as his retelling of the colonization of North America
from the perspective of indigenous peoples.
Third, and closely related to the last point, Zinn does not shy away from controversy in
either his historical writing or his commentary on modern political events in magazines
such as THE PROGRESSIVE, Z MAG, MOTHER JONES, and others. This makes him
simultaneously one of the most loved and hated historians of this era, [D]espite his
popularity, Zinn's brand of "bottom-up" history has been reviled by political
conservatives, and he confesses that he isn't surprised."Whenever you introduce a
new view of historical events, the guardians of the old order will spring to the attack,"
Zinn says.93 His perspective is that revolutionary and even utopian ideas are crucial for
shaking up the stronghold conservatives have over academia.
Finally, in part because of his commitment to stirring up controversy, Zinn is well known
for integrating his own personal advocacy and activism with his writing. This stems, to a
great degree, from his role as a professor. In 1956 Zinn moved his wife and children to
Atlanta, Georgia, to take a position as the chair of the history and social sciences
department at Spelman College, a Negro college in a deeply segregated area. Inspired
by his students, who were engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, he participated in
extensive protest with his students, and as a result eventually wrote the book
DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY (his treatise on civil disobedience), A PEOPLES
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, as well as many essays about his specific experience
at Spelman. Zinn explained: I could see history being made before my eyes by ordinary
people who are never written about in the history books. 94
In addition to these issues of racism, the role socioeconomic class played throughout
history greatly effected Zinn. Zinn came from a working class background, lived in
tenements, and at a young age was influenced by the writing of Charles Dickens, John
Stienbeck, Upton Sinclair, Marx, and various communist, anarchist, and anti-fascist
writers. At age eighteen, during the depression, he won a New Deal job as an apprentice
shipfitter, which was painful, physically demanding, and prohibited union membership.
92 Zack Stenz, Howard Zinn brings his passion for history to Sonoma County in The
Sonoma Independent, April 18-24 1996, p. np, accessed May 11, 2002,
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/04.18.96/books-9616.html
93 Stenz, p. np.
94 Stenz, p. np.
Despite the benefits of that job, and his next job as an Air Force bomber, his youth
heavily influenced his perspective on class in the United States: If you look at the laws
passed in the United States from the very beginning of the [A]merican republic down to
the present day, you'll find that most of the legislation passed is class legislation which
favors the elite, which favors the rich. You'll find huge subsidies to corporations all
through [A]merican history.95 Despite being someone who might be described as having
pulled himself up by his bootstraps to raise from a working class background to a
famous intellectual, he does not identify with those who argue that hard work is all that
is needed to get ahead. Instead, he is a proponent of progressive social and economic
policy. This is the perspective of much of his historical writing (A PEOPLES HISTORY OF
THE UNITED STATES includes lots of infrequently taught labor union history) as well as
the chapter of his memoir called Growing Up Class Conscious from YOU CANT BE
NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN.
95 Howard Zinn, Gray Matters Interviews Howard Zinn, HOWARD ZINN ONLINE,
December 3, 1998, accessed May 12, 2002, http://howardzinn.org/index23.htm
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, NONVIOLENCE,

AND DEMOCRACY: NINE FALLACIES
Zinn writes extensively, in nearly all of his books, about the role of social protest and
civil disobedience within democratic societies, particularly the United States. One of his
lesser known books, however, is focused specifically on this topic. The book is organized
into nine sections, each of which refutes one of the primary arguments made by
opponents of civil disobedience, particularly former Supreme Court Associate Justice Abe
Fortas. Some of these fallacies are specific to the role of the court system in ensuring
justice, but I will focus on those concerning the role of the social protester.
YOU MUST ACCEPT PUNISHMENT IF YOU COMMIT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
This fallacy derives from the glorification of Socrates decision to accept his unjust death
sentence. However, Zinn argues that if one is punished for breaking an unjust law, then
the punishment itself is unjust, and when unjust decisions are accepted, injustice is
sanctioned and perpetuated.96 In fact, Zinn writes, it treats protest like a game to argue
that protesters should accept the penalty for losing instead of continuing their protest to
the end. This argument, by Zinn, is useful in answering quotations from Martin Luther
King Jr., in his essay Letter From A Birmingham Jail, which Zinn argues are taken out of
context when they are characterized as arguing that protesters must accept the
punishment for their acts of civil disobedience.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MUST BE LIMITED TO LAWS WHICH ARE THEMSELVES WRONG
Statists argue that violating laws other than those which are directly unfair is unjustified.
This would include violating curfews, blocking streets, etc. in the course of a protest.
Zinn outlines several situations which demonstrate the inanity of this principle. Perhaps
the most obvious example were the sit ins in the segregated South which violated laws
against trespassing, when the segregation was not a public law but a decision by a
private business owner. In a theoretical sense, the reason this principle is invalid is that
it fails to distinguish between important and trivial laws in the context of preventing
massive injustice. This principle would also proscribe any solution to injustice resulting
not from unjust laws, but the failure of the government to enforce just laws (e.g.,
desegregation).
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MUST BE ABSOLUTELY NONVIOLENT
96 Howard Zinn, DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1968, p. 29
There are a plethora of excellent theoristsincluding Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and
Thoreauwho argue for the benefits of nonviolence. Unfortunately, most of the people
who respond to this argument are peoplesuch as Malcom X and Ward Churchillwho
explicitly espouse levels of violence that may be difficult to defend. One virtue of Zinns
writing is that he does not explicitly encourage violence, but instead finds a middle
ground between violence and nonviolence.
On the one hand, Zinn argues that all things being equal, nonviolence is better than
violence. Moreover, he sees the ultimate end of civil disobedience, and progress
generally, as being a nonviolent world. On the other hand, Zinn points out, even thinkers
like Gandhi and Thoreau at times defended the use of violence when no other option
was available.
Furthermore, Zinn distinguishes between different levels of violence. In any humanist

philosophy, for example, a distinction must be drawn between violence against people
and violence against property. Generally, he points out that the severity of the protest
must be weighed against the severity of the injustice: Would not any reasonable code
have to weigh the degree of violence used in any case against the importance of the
issue at stake? Thus, a massive amount of violence for a small or dubious reason would
be harder to justify than a small amount of violence for an important and a clear
reason.97
The litmus test for determining the legitimacy of violence in civil disobedience has to do
with the degree to which it is discriminating: Violence might be justifiable as it
approaches the focusing and control of surgery. Self-defense is by its nature focused,
because it is counterviolence directed only at a perpetrator of violence. Planned acts
of violence in an enormously important cause (the resistance against Hitler may be an
example) could be justifiable. Revolutionary warfare, the more it is aimed carefully at
either a foreign controlling power, or a local tyrannical elite, may be morally defensible. 98
In essence, Zinns argument is that limited violence is justified when the oppression
being fought is extreme, when there are no other viable means of successful protest,
and when the target of the violence is directly responsible for the oppression.
RULE OF LAW HAS INTRINSIC VALUE / DEMOCRACY MAKES PROTEST UNNECESSARY
There are two primary justifications for the argument that the law has intrinsic value and
that, therefore, even civil disobedience that has good intentions is unjust. The first of
these arguments is that regardless of whether the laws are just or unjust, they maintain
peace and stability, and must therefore be followed. The problem with this view is that it
places stability at a premium while ignoring the price of that stability: Surely, peace,
stability, and order are desirable. Chaos and violence are not. But stability and order are
not the only desirable conditions social life. There is also justice. Absolute obedience to
law may bring order temporarily, but it may not bring justice. 99
The most important question then becomes: when the law does not serve the cause of
justice, do citizens have a greater obligation to ensure lawfulness or justice? Zinn writes:
Thus, when an individual sees injustice in the world around her, and she sees no other
effective method, she is justified in violating lawseven if that lawlessness leads to
social instabilityto fight to stop the injustice.
The second justification for the argument that the law (at least in a democracy) has
intrinsic value, thus making civil disobedience unjustified, is that law is created by the
people, thus represents the common sentiment of what is just. This is certainly true at
times, and in these cases it is irrefutable that the law ought be followed. Nevertheless,
as Zinn writes: The law may serve justice, as when it forbids rape and murder or
requires a school to admit all students regardless of race or nationality. But when it
sends young men to war, when it protects the rich and punishes the poor, then law and
justice are opposed to one another.101 It is in these instances that civil disobedience is
justified.
It is too simplistic to argue that because democracy is majoritarian, it will protect

whatever the majority sees as just, and will therefore be just. Often, as we have seen
throughout history, the majority denies basic principles of justice to the minority for the
sake of the majoritys benefit, be it material, social, or anything else. In these situations,
the minority is structurally precluded from using the law to advance their rights. Thus,
civil disobedience may be the only possible method for fighting for justice. There is no
better example of such a case than in the civil rights movement in the United States.
99 Zinn, THE ZINN READER, p. 370-371

101 Zinn, THE ZINN READER, p. 370-371
PATRIOTISM AND OPTIMISM

Zinn is frequently criticized for not being sufficiently patriotic, particularly for a United
States historian. Many conservative historians, in various terms, have characterized A
People's History as a Hate America book, Zinn says. Butwhile it's true that I take a
very critical view of the United States government in history, I take a very positive view
toward the mass movements of people in America who have fought to make the country
a better place. 102 This demonstrates the fundamental distinction Zinn draws between
how conservatives define patriotism and how he defines it. There are two primary
differences
First, Zinn argues that there is a substantial difference between loyalty to the
government of a country and loyalty to the country itself. It is hard to imagine how
anyone could read Zinns articles or book chapters about the civil rights or labor
movements without sensing the strong sense of pride he feels in American people. Zinn
argued that the great writers could see through the fog of what was called patriotism,
what was considered loyalty. 103 To demonstrate the distinction, he quoted from the
satire A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT, by Mark Twain:
Similarly, Zinn feels that the real, eternal part of what makes America America is not the
government, but the people and the social movements that have fought for justice for all
people.
The second aspect of Zinns redefinition of patriotism is his insistence that criticizing the
government, far from being unpatriotic, is actually one of the best ways of being a
patriot. As he argues in his examination of civil disobedience, challenging unjust
governmental policies is an integral part of being a citizen of a democracy. Only by
exercizing the right (and duty) to protest do we as individuals truly participate in
democracy. Thus, by protesting we strengthen and engage in the true democratic spirit
of America.
However, Zinn is not purely critical of the United States government and its leaders. His
optimism leads him to take a more balanced approach: the left hasn't balanced its act
very well. They've done a very good job of illuminating the various bad policies of the
Sonoma Independent, April 18-24 1996, accessed May 11, 2002,
103 Howard Zinn, Artists of Resistency, THE PROGRESSIVE, July 2001, accessed May
11, 2002, http://www.progressive.org/zinn0701.html
American government, but they haven't shown what people have done to resist these
policies, often successfully. And that's a critical thing to do, to show people in the
present day that they can fight back and win. 105 One important aspect of Zinns writing
is that it does not, in contrast to the perception of his critics, attempt to describe a world
of oppressive futility, in which the government is overwhelmingly bad and cannot be
resisted. Instead, he writes history from a perspective which demonstrates the gains
that have been made by social movements since the government was established.
Sonoma Independent, April 18-24 1996, accessed May 11, 2002,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Churchill, Ward. PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY : REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF ARMED
STRUGGLE IN NORTH AMERICA. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 1999
Fortas, Abe. CONCERNING DISSENT AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. New York: Signet Books,
1964
FREESPEECH.ORG, Accessed May 17, 2002,

http://free.freespeech.org/evolution/articles.htm
HOWARD ZINN ONLINE, Accessed May 17, 2002, http://www.howardzinn.org/
HOWARD ZINNS ZNET HOMEPAGE, Accessed May 17, 2002,

http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=97
Zinn, Howard. A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES: 1492 TO PRESENT. New
York: Harper Perennial, 2001
Zinn, Howard. DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE : CROSS-EXAMINING AMERICAN

IDEOLOGY. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991
Zinn, Howard. DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY: NINE FALLACIES ON LAW AND ORDER.
New York: Vintage Books, 1968
Zinn, Howard. HOWARD ZINN: ON HISTORY. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2000
Zinn, Howard. HOWARD ZINN ON WAR. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2000
Zinn, Howard. TERRORISM AND WAR (OPEN MEDIA PAMPHLET SERIES). New York: Seven
Stories Press, 2002
Zinn, Howard, et al. THREE STRIKES: MINERS, MUSICIANS, SALESGIRLS, AND THE
FIGHTING SPIRIT OF LABOR'S LAST CENTURY. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001
Zinn, Howard. YOU CANT BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF

OUR TIMES. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994
Zinn, Howard. THE ZINN READER: WRITINGS ON DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY. New
York: Seven Stories Press, 1997
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS JUSTIFIED

1. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DENIES THAT LAWS ARE ALWAYS MORAL OR CORRECT
Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University, Gray Matters
Interviews Howard Zinn, HOWARD ZINN ONLINE, December 3, 1998, accessed May 12,
2002, http://howardzinn.org/index23.htm
The principle of civil dissobedience doesn't state as a universal that you must always
dissobey the law (laughter). What it does do is refuse the universal principle that you
must always obey the law. And what it does is declare a willingness to decide when laws
are consonnant with morality and when laws are immoral and support terrible things like
war or racism or sexism, injustices of all sorts. And so laws that sustain injustice should
be dissobeyed. Sometimes though it's the law itself that's dissobeyed, sometimes the
law that is dissobeyed is a law against trespassing or a law against picketing and people
will commit civil dissobedience and trespass as the sitdown strikers did in the United
States in the 1930s when they took over factories or as the black protesters did in the
civil rights movement in the United States when they sat down in lunch counters and
refused to move. But the idea of civil dissobedience is that Law is not sacrosanct.
2. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MAY BE JUSTIFIED BY SPECIFIC CRITERIA

Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University, DISOBEDIENCE
AND DEMOCRACY, 1968, p. 48-49.
All this is to suggest what criteria need to be kept in mind whenever civil disobedience,
in situations of urgency where very vital issues are at stake, and other means have been
exhausted, may move from mild actions, to disorder, to overt violence: it would have to
guarded, limited, aimed carefully at the source of injustice, and preferably directed
against property rather than people. There are two reasons for such criteria. One is the
moral reason: that violence is in itself an evil, and so can only be justified in those
circumstances where it is a last resort in eliminating a greater evil, or in) self-defense.
The other is the reason of effectiveness: The purpose of civil disobedience is to
communicate to others, and indiscriminate violence turns people (rightly) away.
3. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS NECESSARY FOR JUSTICE

I think that the history of the United States indicates that when we have had to redress
serious grievances, that has not been done by the three branches of government that
are always paraded before junior high school students and high school students as the
essence of democracy. It hasn't been Congress or the President or the Supreme Court
who have initiated acts to remedy racial inequality or tho do something about the
goverment going to war or about economic injustice. It's always taken the actions of
citizens and actions of civil dissobedience to bring these issues to national attention and
finally force the President and Congress and the Supreme Court to begin to move. You
were talking about this going on for hundreds of years. If you go back a hundred and
fifty years ago to the middle of the nineteenth century, to the 1850s, you'll see that it
wasn't Lincoln who caused the anti-slavery sentiment in the country to grow. Lincoln was
reacting to the growth of the movement that became stronger and stronger from the
1830s to the outbreak of the civil war. And in the 1850s, manifested itself in many acts
of civil dissobedience against the Fugitive Slave Act that had been passed in 1850. The
Fugitive Slave Act required the federal government to aid southern slave owners in
bringing escaped slaves back to the South. Well people in the North, black people,
escaped slaves, free black people, white people, they gathered together in committees.
They broke into courthouses and into jailhouses to rescue escaped slaves. And they used
certainly acts of civil dissobedience. And in a number of cases, when they were brought
up on charges and put on trial, juries acquitted them. Because juries recognized the
morality of what they were doing even though they had broken the law.
DEMOCRACY DOESNT DELEGITIMIZE

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
1. PROTEST IS NECESSARY WHEN VOTING FAILS TO PROMOTE JUSTICE
Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University, DISOBEDIENCE
AND DEMOCRACY, 1968, p. 65-66.
We have been naive in America about the efficacy of the ballot box and representative
government to rectify injustice. We forget (hence all the emphasis in recent years on
voting rights for the Negro) how inadequate is the ballot. We forget what the history of
American politics has shown repeatedly: that there is only the vaguest connection
between the issues debated in an election campaign and those ultimately decided by
the government; that the two-party system is_only slightly less tyrannical than the oneparty system, for Michels iron law of oligarchy operates to keep us at the mercy of
powerful politicos in both parties. We forget that the information on which the public
depends for judging public issues is in the hands of the wealthiest sections of the (true,
we have freedom to speak, but how much of an audience we can speak to depends on
how much money we have);,that wealth dominates the electoral process (see Murray
Levins meticulous study, Kennedy Campaigning); that the moment we have cast our
ballots, the representative takes over (as Rousseau, and before him, Victor Considerant
pointed out) and we have lost our freedom. The result of all this is that most of uswhen
we are honest with ourselvesfeel utterly helpless to affect public policy by the
orthodox channels. The feeling is justified. Historically, we have found it necessary to go
outside the proper channels at certain pivotal times in our history. Slavery probably
could not he ended without either a series of revolts by blacks, or finally, a devastating
war waged, ironically, by the very government that condemned John Brown to death for
seeking a less costly means of emancipating the slave. And the rights of even a portion
of the laboring population were secured only by extra-legal uprisings in a wave of violent
labor struggles from 1877 to 1914, and again during the sit-down strikes of the 1930s.
2. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ENHANCES DEMOCRACY

So the Law should not be given the holy deference which we are all taught to give it
when we grow up and go to school, and it's a profoundly undemocratic idea to say that
you should judge what you do according to what the law says. Undemocratic because it
divests you as an individual and the right to make a decision yourself about what is right
or wrong and it gives all of that power to that small band of legislators who have decided
for themselves what is right and what is wrong. So to me the idea of civil dissobedience
is to really enhance democracy.
3. DEMOCRATIC LAW IS NOT SACROSANCT, IT MAY BE VIOLATED ON BEHALF OF JUSTICE

Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University, THE ZINN
READER: WRITINGS ON DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY, 1997, p. 400-401.
Or perhaps we should say ignore man-made law, the law of the politicians to obey the
higher lawwhat Reverend Coffin and Father Berrigan would call the law of God and
what others might call the law of human rights, the principles of peace, freedom, and
justice. (Daniel Berrigans elderly mother was asked by a reporter, when Dan went
underground, how she felt about her son defying the law; she responded quietly. Its not
Gods law.) The truth is so often the total reverse of what has been told us by our
culture that we cannot turn our heads far enough around to see it. Surely, it is obedience
to governments, in their appeals to patriotism, their calls for war, that is responsible for
the terrible violence of our century. The disobedience of conscientious citizens, for the
most part nonviolent, has been directed to stopping the violence of war. The
psychologist Erich Fromm, thinking about nuclear war, once referred to the biblical
Genesis of the human race and the bite into the forbidden apple: Human history began
with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of
obedience.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS UNJUSTIFIED

1. GOOD MOTIVATIONS FOR CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DO NOT MAKE IT JUSTIFIED
Abe Fortas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, CONCERNING DISSENT AND CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE, 1968, p. 62-63.
For example, a young man may be advised by counsel that he must refuse to report for
induction in order to challenge the constitutionality of the Selective Service Act. This is
very different from the kind of civil disobedience which is not engaged in for the purpose
of testing the legality of an order within our system of government and laws, but which
is practiced as a technique of warfare in a social and political conflict over other issues.
Frequently, of course, civil disobedience is prompted by both motivesby both a desire
to make propaganda and to challenge the law. This is true in many instances of refusal
to submit to induction. It was true in the case of Mrs. Vivian Kellems, who refused to pay
withholding taxes because she thought they were unlawful and she wanted to protest
the invasion of her freedom as a capitalist and citizen. Let me first be clear about a
fundamental proposition. The motive of civil disobedience, whatever its type, does not
confer immunity for law violation. Especially if the civil disobedience involves violence or
a breach of public order prohibited by statute or ordinance, it is the states duty to arrest
the dissident. If he is properly arrested, charged, and convicted, he should be punished
by fine or imprisonment, or both, in accordance with the provisions of law, unless the
law is invalid in general or as applied. He may be motivated by the highest moral
principles. He may be passionately inspired. He may, indeed, be right in the eyes of
history or morality or philosophy. These are not controlling. It is the states duty to arrest
and punish those who violate the laws designed to protect private safety and public
order.
2. CITIZENS SHOULD NOT VIOLATE THE RULE OF LAW FOR THE SAKE OF PROTEST
We are a government and a people under law. It is not merely government that must live
under law. Each of us must live under law. Just as our form of life depends upon the
governments subordination to law under the Constitution, so it also depends upon the
individuals subservience to the laws duly prescribed. Both of these are essential. Just as
we expect the government to be bound by all laws, so each individual is bound by all of
the laws under the Constitution. He cannot pick and choose. He cannot substitute his
own judgment or passion, however noble, for the rules of law. Thoreau was an inspiring
figure and a great writer; but his essay should not be read as a handbook on political
science. A citizen cannot demand of his government or of other people obedience to the
law, and at the same time claim a right in himself to break it by lawless conduct, free of
punishment or penalty.
3. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE MAY SPIRAL OUT OF CONTROL, JUSTIFYING ITS RESTRAING
These mass demonstrations, however peacefully intended by their organizers, always
involve the danger that they may erupt into violence. But despite this, our Constitution
and our traditions, as well as practical wisdom, teach us that city officials, police and
citizens must be tolerant of mass demonstrations, however large and inconvenient. No
city should be expected to submit to paralysis or to widespread injury to persons and
property brought on by violation of law. It must be prepared to prevent this by the use of
planning, persuasion, and restrained law enforcement. But at the same time, it is the
citys duty under law, and as a matter of good sense, to make every effort to provide
adequate facilities so that the demonstration can be effectively staged, so that it can be
conducted without paralyzing the citys life, and to provide protection for the
demonstrators. The city must perform this duty. An enormous degree of self-control and
discipline are required on both sides. Police must be trained in tact as well as tactics.
Demonstrators must be organized, ordered, and controlled. Agitators and provocateurs,
whatever their object, must be identified, and any move that they may make toward
violence must be quickly countered. However careful both sides may be, there is always
danger that individual, isolated acts of a few persons will overwhelm the restraint of
thousands. Law violation or intemperate behavior by one demonstrator may provoke
police action. Intemperate or hasty retaliation by a single policeman may provoke
disorder, and civil disobedience may turn into riot. This is the dangerous potential of
mass demonstrations.
NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE FAILS

1. NONVIOLENT STRATEGIES ARE UNABLE TO EFFECTUATE CHANGE
Ward Churchill, Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at
University of Colorado, 2001, PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, p. 44
Absurdity clearly abounds when suggesting that the state will refrain from using all
necessary physical force to protect against undesired forms of change and threats to its
safety. Nonviolent tacticians imply (perhaps unwittingly) that the immoral state which
they seek to transform will somehow exhibit exactly the same sort of superior morality
they claim for themselves (i.e., at least a relative degree of nonviolence). The fallacy of
such a proposition is best demonstrated by the nazi states removal of its Jewish threat.
Violent intervention by others divides itself naturally into the two parts represented by
Gandhis unsolicited windfall of massive violence directed against his opponents and
Kings rather more conscious and deliberate utilization of incipient antistate violence as
a means of advancing his own pacifist agenda. History is replete with variations on these
two subthemes, but variations do little to alter the crux of the situation: there simply has
never been a revolution, or even a substantial social reorganization, brought into being
on the basis of the principles of pacifism. In every instance, violence has been an
integral requirement of the process of transforming the state. Pacifist praxis (or, more
appropriately, pseudo-praxis), if followed to its logical conclusions, leaves its adherents
with but two possible outcomes to their line of action: To render themselves perpetually
ineffectual (and consequently unthreatening) in the face of state power, in which case
they will likely be largely ignored by the status quo and self-eliminating in terms of
revolutionary potential; or, To make themselves a clear and apparent danger to the
state, in which case they are subject to physical liquidation by the status quo and are
self-eliminating in terms of revolutionary potential. In either event mere ineffectuality
or suicide the objective conditions leading to the necessity for social revolution
remain unlikely to be altered by purely pacifist strategies. As these conditions typically
include war, the induced starvation of whole populations and the like, pacifism and its
attendant sacrifice of life cannot even be rightly said to have substantially impacted the
level of evident societal violence. The mass suffering that revolution is intended to
alleviate will continue as the revolution strangles itself on the altar of nonviolence.
2. NONVIOLENCE DO NOT CREATE SUSTAINABLE VICTORIES

Brian Martin, Associate Professor in Science, Technology & Society at the University of
Wollongong, Australia, NONVIOLENCE VERSUS CAPITALISM, 2001, Accessed May 17,
2002, p. np, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/01nvc/nvcall.html
It is important to note that not all uses of nonviolent action lead to long-lasting,
worthwhile change. Nonviolent action is not guaranteed to succeed either in the short
term or long term. The 1989 prodemocracy movement in China, after a short flowering,
was crushed in the Beijing massacre. Perhaps more worrying are the dispiriting
aftermaths following some short-term successes of nonviolent action. In El Salvador in
1944, the successful nonviolent insurrection against the Martnez dictatorship did not
lead to long term improvement for the El Salvadorean people. There was a military coup
later in 1944, and continued repression in following decades. The aftermath of the
Iranian revolution was equally disastrous. The new Islamic regime led by Ayatollah
Khomeini was just as ruthless as its predecessor in stamping out dissent.
3. NONVIOLENCE FAILS IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERN CONFLICTS

Brian Martin, Associate Professor in Science, Technology & Society at the University of
Wollongong, Australia, NONVIOLENCE VERSUS CAPITALISM, 2001, Accessed May 17,
2002, p. np, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/01nvc/nvcall.html
The consent theory of power Gandhi approached nonviolent action as a moral issue and,
in practical terms, as a means for persuading opponents to change their minds as a
result of their witnessing the commitment and willing sacrifice of nonviolent activists.
While this approach explains some aspects of the power of nonviolent action, it is
inadequate on its own. Moral persuasion sometimes works in face-to-face encounters,
but has little chance when cause and effect are separated. Bomber pilots show little
remorse for the agony caused by their weapons detonating far below, while managers of
large international banks have little inkling of the suffering caused by their lending
policies in foreign countries.

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LIFE AND WORK

ON PRISONS AND THE JUSTICE

ON RELIGION AND THE STATE

In addition to harmful socio-political consequences, Mumia believes that the intertwined

APPLICATION TO LINCOLN DOUGLAS

---. All Things Censored. New York: Seven Stories, 2000.

---. We Want Freedom. Cambridge: South End, 2004.

Boyd, Herb. Autobiography of a People. New York: Doubleday, 200.

Weinglass, Leonard. Race for Justice. Maine: Common Courage, 1995.

THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IS

2. ALL STAGES OF LAW ENFORCEMENT SUBJECTS AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND OTHER

4. PRISONS DEHUMANIZE THEIR INMATES

5. DECISIONS MADE BY THE JUSTICE SYSTEM MEASURE STATUS NOT FACTS

THE WAR ON TERRORISM SHIFTS THE

2. THE MEDIA USES THE WAR ON TERROR TO MASK US COMPLICITY IN TERRORISM

3. THE US ACTIVELY TRAINED TERRORISTS TO FOSTER REBELLION IN LATIN AMERICA

4. THE WAR ON TERROR PROVIDES A JUSTIFICATION FOR DEHUMANIZATION OF A PEOPLE

RESISTING OPPRESSION BY STATE

2. FAILURE TO ORGANIZE SUPPORTS OPPRESSIVE STATE REGIMES

3. ACTING WITHIN DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURES SILENCES MINORITY VOICES

4. SOCIAL CHANGE REQUIRES A VAST GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT

THE DEATH PENALTY IS JUSTIFIED

2. THE COMPOSITION OF DEATH ROW INMATES REFLECTS SOCIAL REALITIES

3. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DOES NOT DELIBERATELY TARGET MINORITIES

WAR ON TERROR IS JUSTIFIED BY THE

2. THE STAKES IN THE WAR ON TERROR WARRANT VIOLATING LEGA

3. CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT HAS VERIFIED THAT PROSECUTING THE WAR

Paul Rosenzweig, Senior Legal Research Fellow (Heritage Foundation), 2004

Adler became an instructor at Columbia University in the1920s. He continued to

Throughout his career as a philosopher and educator, Adler wrote continually,

DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS?

ARISTOTLES NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

---,"SPENGLER, THE SPENGLERITES, AND SPENGLERISM," Psyche 29 (July 1927), 73-84.

---, DIALECTIC. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1927.

---, RELIGON AND THEOLOGY. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1961.

---, THE IDEA OF FREEDOM. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973.

---, THE AMERICAN TESTAMENT. New York: Praeger, 1975.

---, PHILOSOPHER AT LARGE: AN INTELECTUAL BIOGRAPHY. New York: Macmillan, 1977.

---, REFORMING EDUCATIONS: THE SCHOOLING OF A PEOPLE AND THIER EDUCATION

---, TEN PHILOSOPHICAL MISTAKES. New York: Collier Books, 1987.

---, INTELLECT: MIND OVER MATTER. New York: Macmillan. 1990.

---, THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF PHILOSOPHY: METAPHYSICAL, MORAL, OBJECTIVE,

PHILOSOPHICAL "TRUTH'S" DON'T

2. A MODERATE INTERPREATION OF KNOWLEDGE AS OPINION IS MORE ACCURATE

3. PHILSOPHY IS ONLY A BRANCH OF KNOWLEDGE

THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE IS A KEY

2. PHILOSOPHY MUST QUESTION THE NATURE OF BEING AND EXISTENCE

3. PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE MUST BE PUBLIC, NOT PRIVATE

IT IS POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH TRUTH IN

2. SUBJECTIVE VALUE JUDGEMENTS ARE TRUE

3. FINDING TRUTH IN VALUE STATEMENTS IS NECESSARY TO CONFRONT SKEPTICISM

THE SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE IS

2. SKEPTICISM IN REGARDS TO TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE CAN NEVER BE OVERCOME

3. HUMANS BEINGS MUST BE CONTENT WITH LIMITED TRUTH AND KNOWLEDGE

WHO THEY WERE

THE CASE FOR THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS

Direct democracy of that sort is appealing to Anti-Federalists because it makes up for

THE CASE AGAINST THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS

In addition to security, economic prosperity seems to be a direct result of a strong

RESPONSES TO SOME OF THE ATTACKS ON THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS

statistics say. Participation in a public democracy, as Hannah Arendt suspects, can be

Arendt, Hannah. THE HUMAN CONDITION, University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Bailyn, Bernard. THE DEBATE ON THE CONSTITUTION: FEDERALIST AND ANTIFEDERALIST