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Philosophical conversation under conditions of epistemic and metaphysical pluralism: dialogue, argument, and dialectic

“The Ibādat Khāna (House of Worship) was a meeting house built in 1575 CE by the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) at Fatehpur Sikri to gather spiritual leaders of different religious grounds so as to conduct a discussion on the teachings of the respective religious leaders. In his eagerness to learn about different religions, Akbar built call of prayer at Fatehpur sikri in 1575 known as the Ibadat Khana. At this place, he invited selected mystics, intellectuals and theologians, and held discussions on religious and spiritual themes. He invited scholars belonging to various religion such as Hinduism, Islam , Zoroastrianism, Christianity and even atheists [also invited: Jains and Jews]. He conducted religious debates with these people. They visited Ibadat Khana and discussed their religious beliefs with Akbar.”

A book I’ve recently finished reading, Forgiveness and Mercy by Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton (Cambridge University Press, 1988), struck me as an exemplary model of what is simultaneously a conversation (and correspondence), a dialogue (although Jean Hampton states the book is not, ‘in any strict sense, a dialogue’), and an argument between two formidable intellectuals: Murphy (1940–2020), a philosopher of law, and Hampton (1954–1996), a political philosopher. What is more, by my lights this work incarnates three philosophical virtues or principles: (i) the principle of humanity, (ii) the principle of charity, and (iii) the principle of “intellectual non-violence.” Permit me to introduce these complementary or mutually reinforcing normative principles (or virtues) for analytic and hermeneutic philosophy.

The first, the “principle of humanity,” is logically prior to our next two principles although it is in part arguable owing to its second clause. It states that “when interpreting another speaker we must assume that his or her beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attribute to him or her ‘the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances’” (Richard Grandy). It is perhaps arguable because we may be mistaken as to the identity of the precise propositional attitudes, given that a person can have different propositional attitudes toward the same proposition.

The second principle is fairly well known (at least among philosophers and students of rhetoric) even if often ignored or unevenly practiced. The “principle of charity” in general means (philosophers have formulated slightly different versions of this principle) “interpreting a speaker’s statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.” This implies that we may be able to state the presuppositions, assumptions and premises of an argument in clearer or better terms than those found in the formulation or expression of the philosopher himself, thereby according this new version greater power (with regard to plausibility, soundness or persuasiveness) than the original.

The third and last principle is unquestionably the most arduous, described by the late B.K. Matilal as originating with the Jains, hence a Jain principle that philosophers in this religio-philosophical tradition have “surprisingly and conspicuously” evidenced in their own work, namely, “intellectual non-violence,” by which is meant that “any criticism must be preceded by a proper and total understanding of the doctrine one tries to criticize.” Matilal elaborates:

“… [T]he Jains carried the principle of non-violence from the physical and practical plane to the intellectual plane. Thus, ‘respect for the life of others’ was eventually transformed into an obligatory respect for the views and beliefs of other. The Jainas claim that when two or several parties are seriously and sincerely arguing regarding the truth, it is seldom that one side is absolutely wrong, while the other side is absolutely right. The world is not divided only into black and white, for there are innumerable shades of grey in between. The Jainas contend that one should try to understand the particular point of view of each disputing party if one wishes to grasp completely the truth of the situation. The total truth, the Jainas emphasize, may be derived from the integration of different viewpoints (nayas).”

The specific Jain doctrine referred to here by Matilal is known as anekāntavāda, which will be treated in more detail in a future post (anekāntavāda is one of the three Jain doctrines of relativity used for logic and reasoning, the corollary or corresponding doctrines being syādvāda—the theory of conditioned predication, and nayavāda—the theory of partial standpoints). For our purposes, we will be “bracketing” or setting aside the Jain belief in the notion of an “enlightened being” or kevalin (like Mahāvīra ) who is said to acquire absolute knowledge and truth—omniscience—kevala jñāna, although it might be said that it is owing to such omniscience that we can have intellectual confidence in affirming the notions of epistemic relativism and metaphysical relativism or relative truth (which thus maintains an intrinsic or necessary relation to absolute truth). The omniscient human being (this holds for the Buddha of Buddhism as well) is the individual who can see the entire elephant in the famous Jain (or is it simply Indian, as it appears in the texts of other religious worldviews on the subcontinent) parable of the “blind men and an elephant.” In this story, each blind man touches a different part of an elephant (trunk, leg, ear, etc.), depicting in their mind’s eye this wonderful creature according to their respective limited experience and description of a specific part the animal. Yet each of the men claimed to account for and understand the true appearance of the elephant, although each could of course only partly succeed in their empirical description and conclusion due to their inherently limited vantage points.*

Philosophers may presume that a full understanding of the views and beliefs of others they disagree with and proceed to critique is a given (rightly taken for granted) in their profession, yet the history of philosophy, especially but not only in the West, suggests that this particular Jain principle is not always front and center, as other motivations insinuate themselves, serving, so to speak, as metaphorical blindfolds (e.g., one may feel an overwhelming imperative to publish; one may be eager to demonstrate one’s professional bona fides or even ‘brilliance;’ one may be intellectually insecure or, on the other hand, intellectually self-righteous, and so forth). Indeed, this principle could be said to be a necessary condition of the principle of charity, but it, or anything like it, has rarely been explicitly advocated by philosophers. One notable exception is seen in an argument on behalf of both descriptive and normative pluralism in philosophy made some years ago by Hector-Neri Castañeda. It is a part descriptive and part normative brief on behalf of a deliberate and energetic philosophical pluralism found in his essay, “Philosophy as a Science and as a Worldview,” in Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal, eds., The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? (Open Court, 1989). I would like to share this argument at length, for I see Murphy and Hampton as providing us with a tantalizing taste of what is involved in practicing this sort of pluralism.

“The interdisciplinary connections of philosophy, the broader view of ordinary language [in comparison to ‘the monolithic days of lexicalist ordinary language philosophy’], the richer view of experience fomented by existentialism and Wittgenstein, the re-discovery of the immense treasures of the history of philosophy, have all connived to break the conventional barriers among problems—let alone philosophical problems. They have also conferred on the current practitioners of philosophy a hitherto unbeknownst freedom to apply to each problem whatever tools we deem appropriate. Thus, in current philosophizing there is a boundless methodological pluralism.

[….] All topics are available; all its applications are legitimate; all methods are feasible; all interdisciplinary connections are accessible. [….] Moreover, contemporary philosophers have never had so many opportunities for a superior training as they have today. [….]

… [I]n the practice of philosophy there are two major tendencies, each correct—up to the point where the other tendency is not joined but shunned. One is the forest approach, the tendency to see very general structural lines of the world or of experience. The other, the bush approach, is the tendency to dwell upon small aspects of experience. Each approach can be, and has been, exercised in varying degrees. This is not bad. What is bad is the policy of merely exercising the extreme degrees. [….] Fruitful philosophical experiences are combinations of the two approaches: taking a full attentive look at the forests of the structures of experience and seeing their measure and reach in their realizations in the particular trees and bushes of experience: the pervasive general in the particular; the abstract structures within the concrete empirical [for what it’s worth, I think Hilary Putnam exemplified this sort of philosophical praxis]. We want to understand the very large structures of experience, but we must understand them in their concrete settings in human life in its full social niche within the world at large—with occasional considered guesses at what things might be outside the human situation.

Some philosophers do not see the large picture of the theories or approaches within which they attempt to shed light on some small pieces of philosophical topics. This happens not infrequently in some exercises of so-called analytic philosophy: refined little lamps are set to cast the most intense lights on the smallest aspects of human experience. Sometimes the light is lost on the empty spaces surround the miniscule points under consideration. No wonder, then, that even many of those philosophers working within a school, or approach, whose scope and organization they see fully, may yet fail to appreciate the contributions by philosophers in other schools. Some fail to see the richness and complexity of human experience, yet, more importantly, some fail to see that the world is capable of being different in different contexts or perspectives [a point made rather systematically and emphatically in Jain epistemology]. Often the presupposition is straightforward: there is one world and an indivisible unity of man and world, hence, they assume, there is just one theory of the structure of man and world [thus the more intoxicating parts of scientism, crude realism, and metaphysical absolutism, in either a reductionist or idealist direction]. This … gives us the polemical approximation to unity of the philosophical profession.

Here I wish neither to defend nor to attack this assumed view of philosophical truth. I submit instead a first-order philosophical pluralism: to understand human nature we need all the theories, all the models we can invent. I am not proposing a relativistic Protagorean metaphysics. I am recommending, first, a methodological theoretical pluralism [students of comparative philosophy may already be disposed to see things this way, although there is nothing intrinsic to comparative philosophy that entails such theoretical pluralism] [….]

Perhaps human-world reality is not a monolith, but a many-sided perspectival structure. Perhaps the greater understanding will be achieved by being able to see human reality now one way and now another way. Thus, we need ALL philosophical points of views to be developed, and ‘developed’ is meant in earnest: the more it illustrates the harmonious unison of the encompassing Forest Approach and the riches of the Bush Approach. Hence, all philosophers are part of one team collectively representing the totality of philosophical wisdom, and individually working the details a point of view: we are ALL parts of the same human project. Looking at things this way, we realize that we need not polemicize against the most fashionable views hoping to supplant them with our own view. Instead, with a clear conscience, we may urge the defenders of those views to extend them, to consider further data to make them more and more comprehensive, pursuing the goal of maximal elucidation of the structure of experience and the world. At the same time we urge other philosophers to develop equally comprehensive views that are deliberately built as alternatives. The aim is to have ALL the possible most comprehensive master theories of world and experience.

To be sure, we cannot foretell that such a plurality of view as envisaged is ultimately feasible. But neither can we prove that in the end there must be just one total view, bound to overwhelm all others. If many master views are feasible, then the greatest philosophical illumination will consist alternatively to see reality through ALL those master views. It would be still true that the greatest philosophical light comes, so to speak, from the striking of theories against each other, but not in the destruction of one theory in the striking process, but rather in the complementary alternation among them. Each master theory would be like a pair of colored glasses with different patterns of magnification so that the same mosaic of reality can appear differently arranged [this calls to mind my youthful experimentation with psychedelics!]. Here Wittgenstein’s reflections on the duck-rabbit design are relevant. The different theories of the world give us different views, the rabbit, the duck, the deer, the tiger, and so on, all embedded in the design of reality. The analogy is lame on one crucial point: the master theories of the world and experience must be forged piecemeal: with an eye on the Bush Approach, patiently exegesizing the linguistic and phenomenological data, and with another eye on the Forest Approach, building the theoretical planks (axioms, principles, theses, rules) carefully and rigorously.” [….]

Among the consequences of “pluralistic meta-philosophy” noted by Castañeda is a “later stage in the development of philosophy” in which we will be rendered fit to engage in a “comparative study of master theories of the world and experience,” or what he terms “dia-philosophy.” In other words, our master theories of philosophical structures will be sufficiently rich and comprehensive for us to be able to articulate holistic and dia-philosophical critique: “compar[ing] two equally comprehensive theories catering to exactly the same rich collection of data, and, second, assess[ing] the compared theories in terms of their diverse illumination of the data.”

“The natural adversary attitude” will take the form of “criticisms across systems or theories,” but “not as refutations or strong objections, but as contributions of new data as formulations of hurdles for steady development.“

*    *    *

* Several things should be noted before proceeding further. The fact that the Jains came to believe in “intellectual nonviolence” does not imply philosophical passivity or indifference. The Jains engaged in vigorous debate with other philosophical schools and believed, at the beginning and at the end, in the superiority of Jaina doctrine! Finally, consider the following from Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri:

“No less than the Buddhists, the Jainas were deeply knowledgeable about other systems of Indian philosophy. Their descriptions of these other systems tend to be faithful, which can make them a useful source for otherwise lost ideas. They are also sophisticated doxographers. The eighth-century Haribhadra Sūri composed a very useful book called Compendium of the Six Systems [Ṣaḍ-darśana-samuccaya]. This does not refer to the six Brahmanical schools … but rather Buddhism and Jainism plus four Hindu systems [i.e., Nyāya, Sāṃkhya, Vaiśeṣika, and Mīmāṃsā (perhaps Yoga and Vedānta subsumed respectively within Sāṃkhya and Mīmāṃsā)]. The only thing Haribhadra really regards as beyond the pale is Cārvāka naturalism.”

This attitude and comparative neglect of a naturalist philosophical tradition in India is unfortunate and inconsistent with Jain doctrine, so while the Jains, like a few Buddhist philosophers, are said to be accepting “of all the available points of view“ with regard to the metaphysics of the soul and its liberation, their teaching on anekāntavāda, the non-onesidedness of reality and answers to philosophical questions (or ‘theory of standpoints’) should likewise encompass materialist or naturalist philosophies as these are clearly among the—in principle—unlimited number of available philosophical perspectives on our world. This is more evident in the case of contemporary Western philosophy, while attempts were made in the history of Indic philosophy to ignore, dismiss, or demean the philosophers and philosophies of materialism or naturalism (bearing in mind that these can be distinguished, as well the fact that there is a plurality of both materialist and naturalist worldviews!).

References and Further Reading

• Adamson, Peter and Jonardon Ganeri. Classical Indian Philosophy (A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vol. 5). New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Bartley, Christopher. Indian Philosophy A-Z. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
• Castañeda, Hector-Neri. “Philosophy as a Science and as a Worldview,” in Avner Cohen and Marcelo Dascal, eds., The Institution of Philosophy: A Discipline in Crisis? La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989: 35-60.
• Desikachar, T.K.V. and Hellfried Krusche (Anne-Marie Hodges, trans.) Freud and Yoga: Two Philosophies of Mind Compared. New York: North Point Press, 2014.

• Ganeri, Jonardon. Philosophy in Classical India. London: Routledge, 2001.
• Gokhale, Pradeep P. Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Goodman, Lenn E. In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books/Prometheus Books, 2001.
• Grimes, John. A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, revised ed., 1996.
• Iyer, Nandini, “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” in Knut A. Jacobsen, ed., Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson, 2005: 123.
• Krausz, Michael, ed. Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989.
• Long, Jeffery D. Jainism: An Introduction. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009.
• Lynch, Michael. Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.
• Lynch, Michael P. Truth as One and Many. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna. The Central Philosophy of Jainism: Anekāntavāda. Ahmedabad: L.D. Institute of Indology, 1981. [There is a fair amount of typographical errors in this volume.]
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna. Logic, Language and Reality: an introduction to Indian philosophical studies. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985.
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna (Jonardon Ganeri and Heeraman Tiwari, eds.) The Character of Logic in India. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna (Jonardon Ganeri, ed.) The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal: Ethics and Ethics (Philosophy, Culture and Religion). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• McClintock, Sara L. Omniscience and the Rhetoric of Reason: Śāntaraksita and Kamalaśila on Rationality, Argumentation, and Religious Authority. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010.
• Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Putnam, Hilary (James Conant, ed.). Realism with a Human Face. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
• Putnam, Hilary. The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Rescher, Nicholas. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993.
• Sharma, Arvind. A Jaina Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2001.
• Wong, David B. Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Addendum: Should you be interested in the Murphy and Hampton volume, or if you’ve already read it, perhaps you’d be interested in some other titles I’m reading by way of continuing (at least in my mind) this dialogue and its principal arguments. I’m focusing on this material because of its relation to criminal law theories of retributive punishment as well as how it bears on the topic of (political) pardons (including the possibility of ‘self-pardoning’). Incidentally, the latter, in turn, is also germane to questions and issues in transitional justice. Please see, for starters:

• Anderson, Kevin and Richard Quinney, eds. Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society (University of Illinois Press, 2000).
• Duff, Antony, ed. Philosophy and the Criminal Law: Principle and Critique (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
• Duff, Antony and David Garland, eds. A Reader on Punishment (Oxford University Press, 1994).
• Duff, R.A. and Stuart P. Green, eds. Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2011).
• Elster, Jon. Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Elster, Jon. Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
• Fingarette, Herbert and Ann Fingarette Hasse. Mental Disabilities and Criminal Responsibility (University of California Press, 1979).
• Gorringe, Timothy. God’s Just Vengeance: crime, violence, and the rhetoric of salvation (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• Honderich, Ted. Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited (Pluto Press, revised ed., 2006).
• Moore, Michael S. Placing Blame: A Theory of the Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 1997).
• Moore, Michael S. Causation and Responsibility: An Essay in Law, Morals, and Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (Oxford University Press, 2016).
• Sarat, Austin and Nasser Hussain, eds. Forgiveness, Mercy, and Clemency (Stanford University Press, 2007).
• Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (Robert A. Kaster and Martha C. Nussbaum, trans.) Anger, Mercy, Revenge (University of Chicago Press, 2010).
• Tadros, Victor. Criminal Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2005).
• Teitel, Ruti. Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press, 2000).

The Post Office: Covid? the Election?

In May of this year, I renewed my membership in the New York bar. The renewal was processed on May 27. On August 27, the Bar sent a notice confirming my renewal. I received the notice a few days after the election - more than 2 months later!

Lost at sea and taking on water

“A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 52% of Republicans thought that Trump had ‘rightfully won’ the election. A Politico/Morning Consult poll served up an even more alarming result: 70% of Republicans don’t believe the election was ‘free and fair.’ A Monmouth University poll found that 77% of Trump supporters attribute Biden’s victory to fraud. An Economist/YouGov poll found that 4 in 5 of Trump‘s supporters believe fraud changed the outcome nationally.”

This is why Americans cannot simply “come together” (thus dissensus in both civil society and legislative bodies becomes intractable, a fact Liberal democratic theory has never fully come to grips with outside the resort to violence) and this is why the glib rhetoric about “bipartisanship” is misleading if not illusory and dangerous. As long as the pathological cult of Trump defines the Republican Party, there is virtually no prospect of working with Republicans. This explains why it is essential that the Democrats have a majority in the Senate. Biden cannot democratically govern solely by Executive Orders, Proclamations, and Memorandums. Negotiating, bargaining, and even logrolling is well-nigh impossible under these conditions, let alone debates, conversations, discourse and deliberations, at least insofar as these are governed by fundamental norms of communication, minimal logical standards, and democratic rules and procedures. One of the worlds that rules the hearts and minds of a considerable portion of the population (both citizens and those that represent and lead them) is configured and distorted by self-deception, wishful thinking, states of denial, illusions, delusions, and phantasies. There is no possibility for drawing a viable or meaningful Venn diagram, as at least one of our sets is adrift in space, no longer susceptible to minimally rational motivations and ends, wallowing in both formal and informal fallacies, lacking the capacities and constraints of all rhyme and reason. Our Liberal democratic ship of state is lost at sea and taking on water.

Ascertaining the motives of Donald J. Trump

I’ve noticed that President-elect Biden, and earlier a fair number of prominent Republican and Democratic legislators as well say on occasion (often enough so as to be noticeable) that they cannot “know” or will not attempt to “read” Trump’s mind (the former may be true if by knowledge here one implies unassailable certainty), or “speculate about what he’s thinking,” or that they “can’t speak to his motives.” This assumes or presumes that one’s mind is solely or primarily within the confines of one’s head (if not brain, the workings of which are not perceived by the senses), and thus one’s motives—which are not unrelated to one’s beliefs, feelings or emotions, desires and so forth (e.g., interests, passions and reasons as distinguished by British moralists of the eighteenth century)—are inscrutable unless the person in question reveals in word (perhaps in conjunction or harmony with a deed or deeds) what they in fact are, that he makes a public avowal of same. But that is implausible and silly. We often, and reasonably if not rationally, read or infer a person’s intentions or motives (be they ‘selfish and vicious’ or ‘social and virtuous’ in the words of Hume) from their behavior, from their actions, from their words, and usually a combination thereof (and this, in the case of public figures, has an accessible history).

We have working assumptions and beliefs about human nature and commonplace reliance on folk psychology that allow if not encourage us to speak to one’s motives, even if our beliefs, ascriptions and speculations are fallible or impartial or simply mistaken. Given the tenets of psychoanalytic psychology with regard to the unconscious and sub- or pre-conscious mind, intentions and motives can be in the first place or prima facie inscrutable or mixed in mysterious ways. But this possibility does not nor should not preclude our attempts to understand the motives of another person (we grant people the presumption of reasonableness or minimal rationality until sufficient reason arises for rebuttal), especially a pathological demagogue like Trump, whose danger to our fragile democratic republic is immeasurably worsened by the actions of his closest sycophants in the administration as well as his more distant minions distributed throughout the population. We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to proffering evidence for Trump’s principal and general motivations being passions and (narcissistic) self-interests rather than reason although at times there is coherence or method to his madness. As for the specific quality and character of those motives, that determination is aided by an understanding of why we characterize his behavior as that of a pathological narcissist (addicted to present hedonism), and what is worse, at once both a psychopath and sociopath. That may not exhaust the locus of his motivations, but it explains quite much, as much as we might expect in this case.  

The following works have shaped (for better and worse) my thinking on this subject over several decades, although there is no one theory or philosophy represented by this material, and the influence comes in degrees, with the caveat that I have not dedicated anything remotely close to the time and attention to this topic our authors display or betray here (its length is meant to intimate the range and complexity of the subject). While I took some philosophy courses as an undergraduate and graduate student and taught in a philosophy department for over fifteen years at our community college, I am not a professional philosopher. I have the temerity (or is it chutzpah?), however, to avow an ardent amateur’s interest in philosophy, thereby revealing perhaps a different cluster of virtues and vices (and no doubt more of the latter) than found among contemporary professional philosophers.

Suggested Reading

• Bilgrami, Akeel. Self-Knowledge and Resentment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Brakel, Linda A.W. Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and the A-rational Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Brakel, Linda A.W. Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969 (Prentice-Hall, 1945).
• Cane, Peter and John Gardner, eds. Relating to Responsibility: Essays in honour of Tony Honoré on his 80^th Birthday. Oxford, UK: Hart Publishing, 2001.
• Deigh, John. The Sources of Moral Agency: Essays in Moral Psychology and Freudian Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Dilman, Ilham. Freud, Insight and Change. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
• Dilman, Ilham. Raskolnikov’s Rebirth: Psychology and the Understanding of Good and Evil. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2000.
• Elster, Jon. Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Elster, Jon. Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Elster, Jon. Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Farber, Leslie H. The Ways of the Will: Selected Essays (Robert Boyers and Anne Farber, eds.) New York: Basic Books, 2000.
• Fischer, John Martin and Mark Ravizza, S.J. Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 
• Hacker, P.M.S. Human Nature: The Categorial Framework. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.
• Hacker, P.M.S. The Passions: A Study of Human Nature. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons (Wiley Blackwell), 2018.
• Hirschman, Albert O. The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997 (1977).
• Hollis, Martin. Reason in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Social Science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Holmes, Stephen. Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. [In particular, the first three chapters.]
• Hutto, Daniel D. Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding Reasons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
• Hutto, Daniel D., ed. Narrative and Understanding Persons (Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 60). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Hutto, Daniel D., ed. Narrative and Folk Psychology. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2009.
• Lloyd, S.A. Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Lucas, J.R. Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man: The roots of human nature. London: Routledge, revised ed., 1995.
• Moore, Michael S. Placing Blame: A Theory of the Criminal Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg. Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1988.
• Velleman, J. David. The Possibility of Practical Reason. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• White, Morton. Philosophy, The Federalist, and the Constitution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Wollheim, Richard. The Thread of Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984.
• Wollheim, Richard. On the Emotions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

Transitional Justice Issues for a Fragile Democratic Polity?

Questions of transitional justice arise in light of the unprecedented crisis facing an already fragile democracy in our country.

As a backdrop for this post, I’m assuming that “We should not delude ourselves that Biden’s election spells the end of the contemporary crisis of American democracy. That crisis results from forces much larger than Trump, and to which his own political success is attributable. It stems from the convergence, for the first time in American history, of all four of threats that endanger democracy the world over: political polarization; conflict over who belongs as a full member of the political community; rising economic inequality; and the concentration of power in the nation’s top leader. History reveals that American democracy, time and again, has proved to be fragile in the face of these threats.” From an op-ed in the LA Times by Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman)

First, an introduction to transitional justice:

“Transitional justice refers to the ways countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large-scale or systematic human rights violations so numerous and so serious that the normal justice system will not be able to provide an adequate response. Transitional justice is rooted in accountability and redress for victims. It recognizes their dignity as citizens and as human beings. Ignoring massive abuses is an easy way out but it destroys the values on which any decent society can be built. Transitional justice asks the most difficult questions imaginable about law and politics. By putting victims and their dignity first, it signals the way forward for a renewed commitment to make sure ordinary citizens are safe in their own countries – safe from the abuses of their own authorities and effectively protected from violations by others.

Mass atrocities and systematic abuses devastate societies and their legacy is likely to make conditions of the country fragile: Political and legal institutions like parliament, the judiciary, the police and the prosecution service may be weak, unstable, politicized, and under-resourced. The violations themselves will have severely damaged whatever confidence might have existed in the state to guarantee the rights and safety of citizens. And communities will often have been ripped asunder in the process and social or political organizations greatly weakened. Finding legitimate responses to massive violations under these real constraints of scale and societal fragility is what defines transitional justice and distinguishes it from human rights promotion and defense in general.”

*           *           *

While the transition from a Trump administration to a Biden one should not, strictly and generally speaking, raise pressing questions of transitional justice as that term has been understood in international and domestic law, including international criminal law (we often think of this, for example, in terms of a transition from an authoritarian or simply brutal, anti-democratic regime to a democratic one), there are some aspects of this particular Presidential transition that might or should prompt us to consider subject matter intrinsic to questions associated with transitional justice. Consider, for instance, the Trump administration’s colossal and inexcusable failure with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the de facto “herd immunity” policy that has resulted in widespread suffering and deaths, many of which were unavoidable, that is, unnecessary and thus inexcusable  (indeed, there are individuals who are criminally culpable in this regard). Obdurate systematic racism, militarized policing, voter suppression, extreme economic inequality, a morbidly obese defense budget, a belated and feeble response to global warming, an antiquated social and economic infrastructure which is environmentally unsustainable, among other conspicuous problems, raise urgent social and transitional justice issues as evidenced in the “aims” of transitional justice outlined by the International Center for Transitional Justice:

“The aims of transitional justice will vary depending on the context but these features are constant: the recognition of the dignity of individuals, the redress and acknowledgment of violations, and the aim to prevent them from happening again. Complementary aims may include:

• Establishing accountable institutions and restoring confidence in them
• Making access to justice a reality for the most vulnerable in society in the aftermath of violations
• Ensuring that women and marginalized groups play an effective role in the pursuit of a just society
• Respect for the rule of law
• Facilitating peace processes and fostering durable resolution of conflicts
• Establishing a basis to address the underlying causes of conflict and marginalization
• Advancing the cause of reconciliation”

These aims are, I believe, pertinent to addressing the multi-faceted threats to what is left of democracy in the U.S.

Finally, consider these comments from Jane Mayer’s interview on Democracy Now! that broach transitional justice topics, in particular in the final paragraph:

“Well, so, as we all know, there is a very broad pardon power in the Constitution that the president has. He can issue pardons almost without any kind of guidelines to whomever he wishes. And one of the questions that people, legal experts have, and historians, watching all of this, this incredible spectacle, is whether Trump might try to pardon himself. It has not been done before in our history. An earlier corrupt president, Richard Nixon, thought about it and thought that he had the power to do it. The Justice Department at the time looked into it. And there’s a sort of relatively flimsy, quick opinion that suggests that the Justice Department found at that time that they didn’t think it could be done, because it’s just illogical, as the paper says. The opinion just says no man can stand in judgment of his own trial. But it’s never really been tested before. And a number of experts who I interview suggest that they think it’s possible that Trump could try to pardon himself, and might even get away with it if he did. But what’s interesting is that the pardon power he has is to be able to pardon himself against federal charges. And that might be able to wipe the slate clean for himself of many, many possible criminal charges, but it would not reach the New York state charges that he may be facing from the DA’s Office or from the Attorney General’s Office in New York, because those are state charges. So he might still have to go ahead with some kind of process there, and he wouldn’t be able to get himself off the hook.

What people are suggesting is it’s possible that maybe there would be some sort of global settlement offered him on the way out the door, that in exchange for some kind of concession that he might give saying that he had — he was guilty or a fine or something like that, that there might be some kind of, you know, just general settlement. It’s a very ticklish, difficult problem of what to do with a president. We don’t want to look like a new president prosecutes the former president. It sort of has a kind of a tin-pot dictatorship feel to it. At the same time, there’s a sense that you need to hold everybody accountable, and nobody is above the law, and that includes presidents of the United States. So, this is really a complicated, fraught subject. And, anyway, this is all what’s going on in terms of why, again, Trump may be fighting so hard not to leave that White House.”

I’m hoping to find or make the time to post in more detail about this way of looking at the early post-Trump era in our country through the lens of transitional justice, although I’d be happy to learn of any thoughts you might have on this in the meantime. 

From Public to Social Reasoning in a Liberal Democracy

   

From Public to Social Reasoning in a Liberal Democracy*

“Democracy [in Athens] started with Solon [638-558 BCE] stating that persuasion should be the way to win, not money or force or family relations. ‘Citizens come into the forum with nothing but their arguments.’ In today’s consolidated democracy, ‘we may take for granted that a democratic regime presupposes freedom of speech and assembly, and liberty of thought and conscience.’ Taking them for granted may obfuscate their strength and fragility.’” — Nadia Urbinati (quoting Michael Walzer and John Rawls respectively), Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People (Harvard University Press, 2014).

The bracketed reference to Athens above is meant to suggest the origins of “democracy” may not be exclusively of Grecian provenance, for

“… the little word democracy [dēmokratia] is much older than classical Greek commentators make out. Its roots are in fact traceable to the Linear B script of the Mycenaean period, seven to ten centuries earlier, to the late Bronze Age civilization (c. 1500-1200 BCE) that was centered on Mycenae and other urban settlements of the Peloponnese. It is unclear exactly how and when the Mycenaeans learned to use the two-syllable word dāmos, to refer to a group of powerless people who once held land in common, or three-syllable world like damokoi, meaning an official who acts on behalf of the dāmos. What is also unclear is whether these words, and the family of terms we use today when speaking about democracy, have origins further east, for instance in the ancient Sumerian references to the dummu, the ‘inhabitants’ or ‘sons’ or ‘children’ of a geographic place. But these uncertainties are tempered by another remarkable discover by contemporary archaeologists: it turns out that the democratic practice of self-governing assemblies is also not a Greek innovation. The lamp of assembly-based democracy was first lit in the ‘East,’ in lands that geographically correspond to contemporary Sryia, Iraq and Iran. The custom of popular self-government was later transported eastwards, towards the Indian subcontinent, where sometime after 1500 BCE, in the early Vedic period, republics governed by assemblies became common. The custom also traveled westwards, first to Phoenician cities like Byblos and Sidon, then to Athens, where during the fifth century BCE it was claimed as something unique to the West, as a sign of superiority over the ‘barbarism’ of the East.” — John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (W.W. Norton & Co., 2009).

Amartya Sen made a similar point several years earlier, urging us not to view democracy as “just a gift of the Western world.” As Sen explains,

“democracy is intimately connected to with public discussion and interactive reasoning. Traditions of public discussion exist across the world, not just in the West. And to the extent that such a tradition can be drawn on, democracy becomes easier to institute and also to preserve. Even though it is very often repeated that democracy is a quintessentially Western idea and practice, that view is extremely limited because of its neglect of the intimate connections between public reasoning and the development of democracy—a connection that has been profoundly explored by contemporary philosophers, most notably John Rawls. Public reasoning includes the opportunity for citizens to participate in political institutions and to influence public choice. Balloting can be seen as only one of the ways—albeit a very important way—to make public discussions effective, when the opportunity to vote is combined with the opportunity to speak and listen, without fear. The reach—and effectiveness—of voting depend critically on the opportunity for open public discussion. [….]

Long traditions of public discussion can be found across the world, in many different cultures. But here India does have some claim to distinction…. The Greek and Roman heritage on public discussion is, of course, rightly celebrated, but the importance attached to public deliberation also has a remarkable history in India. [….] [After citing an encounter between Alexander and Jain philosophers, Sen points out that] in the history of public reasoning in India, considerable credit must be given to the early Indian Buddhists, who had a great commitment to discussion as a means of social progress. The so-called ‘Buddhist councils,’ which aimed at settling disputes between different points of view, drew delegates from different places and from different schools of thought. The first of the four principal councils was held in Rājagriha shortly after Gautama Buddha’s death; the second about a century late in Vaiśālī; and the last occurred in Kashmir in the second century CE. But the third—the largest and best known of these councils—occurred under the patronage of Emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE, in the then capital of India, Pātaliputra (now called Patna). These councils were primarily concerned with resolving difference in religious principles and practices, but they evidently also addressed the demands of social and civic duties, and furthermore helped, in a general way, to consolidate and promote the tradition of open discussion on contentious issues.

[…. ] [Ashoka] was strongly committed to making sure the public discussion could take place without animosity or violence. Ashoka tried to codify and propagate what must have been among the earliest formulations of rules for public discussion—a kind of ancient version of the nineteenth-century ‘Robert’s Rules of Order.’ He demanded, for example, ‘restraint in regard to speech, so that there should be no extolment of one’s own sect or disparagement of other sects on inappropriate occasions, and it should be moderated even on appropriate occasions’ [the history of Tibetan Buddhism testifies to how difficult this was, for a time at least, to put into practice!]. Even when engaged in arguing, ‘other sects should be duly honoured in every way on all occasions.’

Ashoka’s championing of public discussion has had echoes in the later history of India, but none perhaps as strong as the Moghal Emperor Akbar’s sponsorship and support for dialogues between adherents of different faiths, nearly two thousand years later, Akbar’s overarching thesis that ‘the pursuit of reason’ rather than ‘reliance on tradition’ is the way to address difficult problems of social harmony included a robust celebration of reasoned dialogues. A royal sponsorship is not essential for the practice of public reasoning, but it adds another dimension to the reach of the argumentative history of India. In the deliberative conception of democracy, the role of open discussion, with or without sponsorship by the state, has a clear relevance. While democracy must also demand much else, public reasoning, which is central to participatory governance, is an important part of a bigger picture.” — Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).

*          *          *

The seemingly motley list of “further reading” below is intended to capture some of the (historical and geographical) breadth and depth of public reasoning insofar as such reasoning is capable of revealing, implying or exemplifying ancient, incipient, or Liberal democratic values, principles, and practices that can be and thus should be, or in fact are essential ingredients of a morally robust democracy in the contemporary world. I should note that I understand salons (and perhaps coffeehouses and the ‘republic of letters’ as well) of the European Enlightenment to be one of the fora of social reasoning that blur the boundaries between everyday conversation and more obviously public or democratically oriented deliberations, discussions, and reasoning. Indeed, properly conceived, and with Anthony Simon Laden, we should view reasoning as “a species of conversation,” a form of “relating to others,” not merely making (often agonistic) claims and assertions involving “specific paths to judgment such as deduction, induction, and abduction.” While democratic procedures and the corresponding reasoning that takes place often entail, eventually, coming to some sort of conclusion and is primarily directed to making (individual and collective) decisions and legislating, that fails to do justice to the overarching character and quality of “social reasoning,” which is no less, even if indirectly (say, as a by-product or spillover effect) relevant to democratic procedures and deliberations or the spirit of a democratic society.

Social reasoning does in fact speak more directly to the nature of democratic societies in which citizens hold different worldviews, religious or not, which are often said to be, loosely and at times misleadingly, “multicultural,” societies in which different sorts of pluralism does not make for easy consensus or agreement on any number of topics. Social reasoning takes place among unique individuals or persons: as individuals, and as members of families (or simply in the intimate realm of daily life which extends beyond families), and finally as members of various kinds of groups and community in the society. Laden asks us to consider this reasoning outside the prevailing views, models and practices of same found in professional philosophy and among their academic colleagues in cognitive psychology (which does not render these irrelevant!) insofar as it entails “inviting or proposing” (Laden notes that these can ‘come in all sorts of guises’), thus allowing for the creation of new “relationships,” whereby we construct or modify existing “shared spaces of reasoning” (such spaces allow us to speak to another person or group of persons in the first instance, to speak in a mutually intelligible manner). And although casual conversation, for example, is often aimless and open-ended, it is not “formless.” Laden further speaks to the norms that simultaneously govern conversation and social reasoning more generally, therefore “form[ing], shap[ing], and maintain[ing] our relationships to one another” as well as fashioning “the spaces of reasons we inhabit.”

The anarchist philosopher William Godwin (1756 –1836) drew inspiration for his model of the plausibility of anarchist society and it conspicuous reliance on sophisticated individual judgment as a vehicle of rationality and benevolence from “the context of the social circles in which he lived, worked and debated.” I think Godwin provides us with a powerful picture of just that sort of “social reasoning” we find in Laden’s argument. These radical social circles, in turn, “were part of a larger middle class community which drew on a range of philosophical and literary traditions in developing critical perspectives on contemporary social and political institutions” (Mark Philp). To be sure, Godwin’s An Enquiry Composing Political Justice (first edition, 1793, later editions to 1798) evidences learning from the philosophes and British radicals, as well as others on the periphery of the early Liberal tradition (e.g., Paine), but especially the “writings, sermons, and traditions of Rational Dissent.” But his strong conviction in the veracity of his critique and vision was grounded in the daily life and round of conversations in the social circles of metropolitan radicalism in which he worked and shared his convivial and leisure activities. While this social and intellectual milieu soon succumbed to government repression, it provides what we might call the intimate empirical evidence Godwin needed to fortify his belief (shared with Condorcet) in “perfectibility” (which is distinct from perfectionism) of man and the necessity of an anarchist society as the fertile soil for same.

Godwin was not a political activist (although he knew and was friends with members of radical groups and organizations) but a philosopher. And while the radical social circles in which he lived temper the utopian tendencies of his great work, at the very least they demonstrate radical principles incarnate in praxis, even if Godwin had insufficient appreciation of the greater socio-economic and political conditions that gave rise to (in the sense that they were the necessary preconditions of) radical sentiment. “Given the assumptions and conventions of his background and his social circles” writes Philp, “his position could be rationally defensible.” Godwin’s seemingly naïve faith in the power of private rational judgment was confirmed in his conversational experience within these social and intellectual circles. In Philp’s words,

“… [Godwin’s] membership [in] a literate and intellectual culture … cannot be identified politically, socially or intellectually with either aristocratic privilege or with the potentially violent and disruptive London poor. It is in this group that we find the politically unattached intellectuals and writers who had greeted the French Revolution and who had called for reform at home on intellectual and humanitarian grounds.  [While this group is] is diffuse and made up of heterogeneous social and intellectual currents … there seems to be no doubt that in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there existed in both London and the provinces significant number of critical, literate, professional men and women who held often very radical views on social, political and religious issues who regularly met together for the purposes of discussion in a number of overlapping social and professional circles. [….]

Godwin move[d] in the company of artists, portrait painters, engravers, grammarians, industrialists, writers, editors, publishers, antiquarians, librarians, actors, theater managers, playwrights, musicians, novelists, poets, classical scholars, scientists, dons, lawyers, mathematicians, doctors, surgeons, and divines—and this list is not exhaustive. We should also recognize that members of these groups sustained a commitment to radical thinking throughout most of the last decade of the century. As both [Roy] Porter and [Marilyn] Butler stress, [the middling class radicalism of these men and women was not simply the product of a Dissenting background, the French Revolution, and the influence of the philosophes, for it required the warp and woof of a cultural experience of that type of sociability that formed the basic fabric of late-eighteenth century intellectual life:

Once he had concluded his morning’s work Godwin’s day was free and he generally spent it in company—talking and debating while eating, drinking and socialising. His peers’ behavior was essentially similar; they lived in a round of debate and discussion in clubs, associations, debating societies, salons, taverns, coffee houses, bookshops, publishing houses, and in the street. And conversation ranged through philosophy, morality, religion, literature and poetry, to the political events of the day. Members of these circles were tied together in the ongoing practice of debate. These men and women were not the isolated heroes and heroines of Romanticism pursuing a lonely course of discovery; they were people who worked out their ideas in company and who articulated the aspirations and fears of their social group. Their consciousness of their group identity was of signal importance….”

Godwin’s anarchist ideal of a natural society is fundamentally “discursive,” or perhaps better, conversational, in other words, a society defined by “intellectually active and communicative agents, a society where advances are made through a dialectic of individual reflection and group discussion.” Reason and argument in conversation were the lifeblood of the radicalism that flourished in the soil of this kind of sociability:

“The rules [which function as social norms] of debate for this group were simple: no one has a right to go against reason, no one has a right to coerce another’s judgment, and every individual has a right—indeed, a duty—to call to another’s attention his faults and failings. This is a highly democratic discourse, and it is essentially non-individualist: truth progresses through debate and discussion and from each submitting his beliefs and reasoning to the scrutiny of others.” The values of openness, rationality, and discussion or conversation that distinguished this sociability were likewise suffused with the norms and values that animated the literature of “sensibility.”

* Such a society need not be capitalist. As readers may know, I happen to believe eco-socialism is perfectly compatible with Liberal democracy, indeed, that it is preferable, in fact, obligatory, on any number of democratic, social justice and moral grounds, including for urgent environmental and ecological reasons.

Further Reading

• Azadpur, Mohammad. Reason Unbound: On Spiritual Practice in Islamic Peripatetic Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 2011).
• Bohman, James and William Rehg, eds. Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (MIT Press, 1997).
• Blom, Philipp. A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment (Basic Books, 2010).
• Craveri, Benedetta (Teresa Waugh, trans.) The Age of Conversation (New York Review Books, 2005).
• Diagen, Souleymane Bachir. Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition (Columbia University Press, 2018).
• Elster, Jon, ed. Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
• Fontana, Benedetto, Cary J. Nederman, and Gary Remer, eds. Talking Democracy: Rhetorical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy (Pennsylvania State Press, 2004).
• Fumaroli, Marc (Laura Vergnaud, trans.) The Republic of Letters (Yale University Press, 2018)
• Ganeri, Jonardon. Philosophy in Classical India (Routledge, 2001).
• Garsten, Bryan. Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Harvard University Press, 2006).
• Garver, Eugene. Rhetoric: An Art of Character (University of Chicago Press, 1994).
• Gaus, Gerald. The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
• Gilbert, Alan. Democratic Individuality (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Goodin, Robert E. Reflective Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2003).
• Goodin, Robert E. Innovating Democracy: Democratic Theory and Practice after the Deliberative Turn (Oxford University Press, 2008).
• Goodman, Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Cornell University Press, 1994).
• Goodman, Lenn E. Islamic Humanism (Oxford University Press, 2003).
• Gordon, Daniel. Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670-1789 (Princeton University Press, 1994).
• Groff, Peter S. Islamic Philosophy A-Z (Edinburgh University Press, 2007).
• Habermas, Jürgen (Thomas Burger, trans. with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (MIT Press, 1989; in German, 1962).
• Habib, Irfan, ed. Akbar and His India (Oxford University Press, 1997).
• Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values, and Issues (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
• Hirakawa, Akira (Paul Groner, trans.) A History of Indian Buddhism: From Śākyamuni to Early Mahāyāna (University of Hawaii Press, 1990).
• Hourani, George F. Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1985).
• Israel, Jonathan I. Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, Human Rights, 1750-1790 (Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Israel, Jonathan I. The Enlightenment that Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 1748-1840 (Oxford University Press, 2019).
• Kale, Steven. French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1948 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
• Kock, Christian. Deliberative Rhetoric: Arguing about Doing (University of Windsor, 2017).
• Laden, Anthony Simon. Reasoning: A Social Picture (Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Krausz, Michael, ed. Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).
• Leaman, Oliver. An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2^nd, 2002).
• Leaman, Oliver. The Qur’an: A Philosophical Guide (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).
• Leaman, Oliver. Islam and Morality: A Philosophical Introduction (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).
• Long, Jeffery D. Jainism: An Introduction (I.B. Tauris, 2009).
• Lynch, Michael P. Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity (MIT Press, 1998).
• Lynch, Michael P. Truth as One and Many (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna. The Central Philosophy of Jainism: Anekāntavāda (L.D. Institute of Indology, 1981).
• McEvilley, Thomas. The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies of Greek and Indian Philosophies (Allworth Press, 2002).
• Melton, James Van Horn. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
• Miller, Stephen. Conversation: A History of a Declining Art (Yale University Press, 2006).
• Moosvi, Shireen. Episodes in the Life of Akbar: Contemporary Records and Reminiscences (National Book Trust, 1994).
• Nikam, N.A. and Richard P. McKeon, ed. and trans. The Edicts of Aśoka (University of Chicago Press, 1959).
• Nusseibeh, Sari. The Story of Reason in Islam (Stanford University Press, 2017).
• Perdue, Daniel E. Debate in Tibetan Buddhism (Snow Lion Publications, 1992).
• Perdue, Daniel. The Course in Buddhist Reasoning and Debate (Snow Lion, 2014).
• Philp, Mark. Godwin’s Political Justice (Cornell University Press, 1986).
• Rawls, John. Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1993).
• Rescher, Nicholas. Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (Oxford University Press, 1993).
• Robinson, Francis. The Mughal Emperors and the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran, and Central Asia (Thames & Hudson, 2007).
• Strong, John S. The Legend of King Aśoka: A Study and Translation of the Aśokāvadāna (Princeton University Press, 1983).
• Thapar, Romila. Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Oxford University Press, revised ed., 1998).
• Turkle, Sherry. Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (Penguin Press, 2015).
• Urbinati, Nadia. Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
• Urbinati, Nadia. Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (University of Chicago Press, 2006).
• Walton, Douglas N. Plausible Argument in Everyday Conversation (State University of New York Press, 1992).
• Walton, Douglas N. The New Dialectic: Conversational Contexts of Argument (University of Toronto Press, 1998).
• Warder, A.K. Indian Buddhism (Motilal Barnarsidass, 3rd ed., 2000).          

“One who shows off will not shine…”

This is from chapter 24 of the Daodejing (often called Laozi after its reputed author). The selected material is only parts of their respective chapters:

“One who shows off will not shine

one who promotes himself won’t become famous

one who boasts of himself will get no credit

one who glorifies himself will not become leader.

In Dao

this is called ‘stuffing oneself,’ ‘overdoing it.’”

*           *           *

From chapter 9:

“When gold and jade fill the halls,

no one can guard it all.

Rich, famous—and conceited:

leading to a downfall self-caused.”

*           *           *

From chapter 67:

“I have three treasures,

I protect and keep hold of them.

The first is called ‘gentleness’

the second is called ‘frugality’

the third is called ‘not presuming to act like leader of the world,’

            so able to become head of a government.

Now:

To be hold without being gentle

to be lavish without being frugal

to act like leader without putting oneself last:

This is death.”      

   
I have used Michael LaFargue’s translation because I like much of its commentary as well as its “hermeneutic” appendices (‘a reasoned approach to interpreting the Tao Te Ching’), which includes a topical glossary and an important discussion of the different kinds of aphorisms and sayings in the text: The Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary (State University of New York Press, 1992). Should you be interested, here is a short “study guide” for Daoism.

Islam and (nonhuman) animals

   

The following material (lightly edited) I saved from BBC website some years ago devoted to Religions & Ethics, with a section on “Animals” (the link is to an archived version which appeared later) I am posting this by way of an introductory historical and conceptual background to a future—and related—post.

*          *          *

“There is not an animal on earth, nor a bird that flies on its wings, but they are communities like you…” Qur’an 6:38

[With regard to ‘communities,’ there is an interesting metaphorical and allegorical poem in Persian (available in English trans.) about aspects of Sufism titled The Conference of the Birds or Speech of the Birds (1177) by the Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, commonly known as Attar of Nishapur. ‘The title is taken directly from the Qur’an, 27:16, where Sulayman (Solomon) and Dāwūd (David) are said to have been taught the language, or speech, of the birds (manṭiq al-ṭayr).’]

“Whoever is kind to the creatures of God, is kind to himself.”—The Prophet Muhammad, narrated by Abdallah bin Amru in Bukhari and Muslim collections

[Incidentally, this reminds one of Kant’s moral psychological view, in the words of Tom Regan, that ‘people who are indifferent to the suffering they cause animals may come in time to form a habit of indifference and thus might be equally indifferent to the suffering they visit upon humans, while those who are sensitive in their dealings with animals may develop a habit of sympathy that is also expressed in their dealings with humans.’ Thus for Kant, the preeminent concern centers on ‘the effects that our treating animals in certain ways [has] upon our character,’ and thus how we may come to treat human animals. It is this that ‘provides the grounds for morally approving or disapproving our treating animals in certain ways.’ Perhaps needless to say, this has come to be seen in many circles as a woefully insufficient basis for animal ethics, however much it may capture an important truth about developmental human psychology.]

     

(i) Muslims generally believe that:

• all living creatures were made by Allah
• Allah loves all animals
• animals exist for the benefit of human beings
• animals must be treated with kindness and compassion

(ii) Muslims are instructed to avoid:

• treating animals cruelly
• over-working or over-loading animals
• neglecting animals
• hunting animals for sport
• hunting for food is permitted if the animals are killed humanely
• cutting the mane or tail of a horse
• animal fighting as a sport
• factory farming

(iii) Using animals is permitted

The Qur’an explicitly states that animals can be used for human benefit. “It is God who provided for you all manner of livestock, that you may ride on some of them and from some you may derive your food. And other uses in them for you to satisfy your heart’s desires. It is on them, as on ships, that you make your journeys.” Qur’an 40: 79,80

(iv) Muhammad and animals

There are many stories and sayings of the Prophet that demonstrate his concern for the welfare of animals. Once someone traveling with the Prophet took some eggs from a nest, causing the mother bird great grief. The Prophet saw this and told the man to return the eggs. When the Prophet was asked if Allah rewarded acts of charity to animals, he replied: “Yes, there is a reward for acts of charity to every beast alive.” The Prophet said “Whoever kills a sparrow or anything bigger than that without a just cause, Allah will hold him accountable on the Day of Judgment.” The Prophet explained that a killing would be for a just cause if it was for food.

(v) Muslim ritual slaughter

Muslims are only allowed to eat meat that has been killed according to Sharī‘ah. This method of killing is often attacked by animal rights activists as barbaric blood-thirsty ritual slaughter. Muslims disagree. They say that Islamic law on killing animals is designed to reduce the pain and distress that the animal suffers.

These are the rules for Islamic slaughter:

• the slaughterer must be a sane adult Muslim
• the slaughterer must say the name of God before making the cut
• The name of God is said in order to emphasize the sanctity of life and that the animal is being killed for food with God's consent
• the animal must be killed by cutting the throat with the single continuous back and forth motion of a sharp knife
• the cut must sever at least three of the trachea, oesophagus, and the two blood vessels on either side of the throat
• the spinal cord must not be cut
• animals must be well treated before being killed
• animals must not see other animals being killed
• the knife must not be sharpened in the animal’s presence
• the knife blade must be free of blemishes that might tear the wound
• the animal must not be in an uncomfortable position
• the animal must be allowed to bleed out

(vi) Is this a cruel way to kill an animal?

Some experts say that the animal killed in this way does not suffer if the cut is made quickly and cleanly enough, because it loses consciousness before the brain can perceive any pain. Other experts disagree and say that the animal remains conscious long enough to feel severe pain.

Pre-stunning to prevent pain

Secular animal slaughter involves pre-stunning animals so that they are unconscious before they are killed. Until recently Muslim law has not permitted pre-stunning. Muslims feared that pre-stunning might reduce the amount of blood that could drain from the carcass and also because they thought that the animal was sometimes killed by the stunning. But recently (2004) Masood Khawaja, president of the Halal Food Authority, stated that it was not against halal practice to “immobilize” animals, provided they were not actually killed before their throats are cut. Halal meat imported to the UK from New Zealand is stunned before slaughter. Masood Khawaja said that this was acceptable to Muslims, provided the religious rites were observed. “It is acceptable as long as the animal is not dead prior to slaughter, all flowing blood has been drained, and a Muslim has done the ritual slaughter.”

(vii) Experiments on animals

According to Al Hafiz B.A. Masri, using animals for research may be permitted in Islam. The animals must not suffer pain or mutilation and there must be a good reason for the experiment: “Actions shall be judged according to intention. Any kind of medical treatment of animals and experiments on them becomes ethical and legal or unethical and illegal according to the intention of the person who does it.” Masri, B.A., Al-Hafiz. Animals in Islam (Great Britain: Athene Trust, 1989)

See too the article, “Religion and Animal Welfare—An Islamic Perspective,” by Sira Abdul Rahman.

 

Further Reading

• Abdul-Matin, Ibrahim. Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about Protecting the Planet. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2010.
• Baffioni, Carmela, “Ikhwân al-Safâ’,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed.  https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/ikhwan-al-safa/
• Epistles of the Brethren of Purity [Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ] (Lenn E. Goodman and Richard McGregor, trans.) The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Foltz, Richard C., Frederick M. Denny, and Azizan Baharuddin, eds. Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust. Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2003.
• Foltz, Richard C. Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures. Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2006.
• Gade, Anna M. Muslim Environmentalisms: Religious and Social Foundations. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
• Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ.  (Rabbi Anson Laytner and Rabbi Daniel Ethan Bridge, trans.; illustrated by Kulsum Begum) The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2005.
• Khalid, Fazlun and Joanne O’Brien, eds. Islam and Ecology. London: Cassell, 1992.
• Linzey, Andrew and Clair Linzey, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics. New York: Routledge, 2019.
• Masri, al-Hafiz. Islamic Concern for Animals. Petersfield, Hants, England: The Athene Trust, 1987.
• Netton, Ian Richard. Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ). London: RoutledgeCurzon, 1992.
• Nurbakhsh, Dr. Javad. Dogs: From the Sufi Point of View. London: Khaniqahi-Nimatullahi Publications, 1989.
• Regan, Tom, ed. Animal Sacrifices: Religious Perspectives on the Use of Animals in Science. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986.
• Tlili, Sarra. Animals in the Qur’an. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• Usmani, Mufti Muhammad Taqi. The Islamic Laws of Animal Slaughter. Goleta, CA: White Thread Press, 2006.

Finally, see too the interdisciplinary bibliography on “Animals: Ethics, Rights & Law.”

Elections and Voting

“In order to become a naturalized citizen of the United States, until recently you had to answer this question: ‘What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens?’ The correct answer, according to the United States government, was, ‘The right to vote.’ But that ‘right’ has always been on shaky ground. Just as the Constitution once countenanced slavery, it also allowed voting to be restricted to property-holding white men. The Thirteenth Amendment expunged the stain of slavery from our basic law, but the Constitution has never fulfilled the democratic promise we associate with it. Put simply—and this is surprising to many people—there is no constitutional guarantee of the right to vote. Qualifications to vote in House and Senate elections are decided by each state, and the Supreme Court affirmed in Bush v. Gore that ‘[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.’

Amendments to the Constitution have required ‘equal protection,’ eliminated the poll tax, and made it unconstitutional to restrict voting based on race, sex, and age for those over 18. For years the Supreme Court relied on these amendments to expand the franchise, and the broadening of voting rights, which was associated with the civil-rights movement, was widely accepted as a marker of progress toward a just society until about 2000. More recently, in an environment of increasingly rigid partisan loyalties, controlling who votes offers more leverage than persuading voters to change their minds, and thus access to the ballot itself has become an arena of intense political conflict. These conflicts constitute what the election scholar Richard Hasen calls ‘the voting wars.’ Most of these wars end up in the courts, where the rules of engagement—defined by our Constitution—do not sufficiently protect voters’ rights to exercise their franchise. In the absence of an explicit right to vote, the Court has found no issue with a variety of regulations that unnecessarily interfere with voting.” — Jonathan Soros, “The Missing Right: A Constitutional Right to Vote,” Democracy (Spring 2013) No. 28

Revised and updated bibliography: Elections and Voting.

See too, the compilations for (i) Constitutionalism, (ii) Democratic Theory, (iii) Human Rights, and (iv) Toward an Understanding of Liberalism.