Anscombe, Stebbing, and Comic Spectacles in public philosophy

I used to think that after she died, Susan Stebbing was quickly forgotten in post-war analytic philosophy eager to move forward and unwilling to dwell on the great debates and confusions of the 1930s. While I now know that’s strictly false (the relative neglect already started in 1940 and was never complete), I was a bit surprised to see a rather unflattering reference to Stebbing (1885-1943) in a remarkable place.

For, in 1956 G.E.M. Anscombe (1919-2001) courageously objected to Oxford’s decision to award then former President Truman a honorary doctorate. In a pamphlet she privately published, “Mr. Truman’s Degree,” she explains why. In age of debates over de-platforming and war-crimes (and even de-platforming war-criminals), Anscombe’s pamphlet is still topical and unlike some of her other writings quite readable. The work is also very suggestive on the nature of political speech in the academy (and national politics), and the nature of honorary degrees. And, finally, and this anticipates some of what follows, the pamphlet instantiates and engages with the norms of what we call ‘public philosophy.’

The reference to Stebbing occurs at the conclusion of Anscombe’s summary of a defense of granting the degree made by the historian, Alan Bullock, who was then the Censor (Head) of St Catherine’s Society. (This society was then a non-residential college at Oxford.) I am not quite sure of the exact chronological details, but I take it this defense was made after it was clear that awarding the degree to Truman would generate opposition by some (primarily Anscombe).

I quote the passage in full so that it’s clear that the comment on Stebbing comes out of the blue (and is not further developed):

The Censor of St. Catherine’s had an odious task.  He must make a speech which should pretend to show that a couple of massacres to a man’s credit are not exactly a reason for not showing him honour.  He had, however, one great advantage: he did not have to persuade his audience, who were already perfectly convinced of that proposition.  But at any rate he had to make a show.

The defence, I think, would not have been well received at Nuremberg.

We do not approve the action; no, we think it was a mistake.  (That is how communists now talk about Stalin’s more murderous proceedings.)  Further, Mr. Truman did not make the bombs by himself, and decide to drop them without consulting anybody; no, he was only responsible for the decision.  Hang it all, you can’t make a man responsible just because his is the signature at the foot of the order.  Or was he not even responsible for the decision?  It was not quite clear whether Mr. Bullock was saying that or not; but I never heard anyone else seem to give the lie to Mr. Truman’s boasts.  Finally, an action of this sort is, after all, only one episode: an incident, as it were, in a career.   Mr. Truman has done some good.

I know that in one way such a speech does not deserve scrutiny; after all, it was just something to say on its occasion.  And he had to say something.  One must not suppose that one can glean anything a man actually thinks from what he says in such circumstances.  Professor Stebbing exposing the logical fallacies in politicians’ speeches is a comic spectacle. 

Choosing to kill the innocent as a means to your ends is always murder.  Naturally, killing the innocent as an end in itself is murder too….

My first impression of the mention of “Professor Stebbing” was that it is a mere, gratuitous aside adding nothing to the real point Anscombe is making; perhaps indicative of a startling, personal animosity. But what gave me pause was the intensity, economy, and clarity of the whole pamphlet, which is simply riveting.

In addition, and now I arrive at my point, Anscombe’s pamphlet culminates in a searing indictment of the possible impact of philosophical speech in the penultimate paragraph.* This indictment anticipates the argument of her (1961) “War and Murder” and the more famous (in philosophy) “Modern Moral Philosophy.” That is to say, Anscombe explicitly cares greatly about the effects of philosophical speech on wider society within the academy and political life. (Today we domesticate this care in terms of ‘inductive risk’ and ‘responsible speech.’)

And when one reflects on it, this also points to the fact that the implicature of Anscombe’s remark about Stebbing is even more negative about Stebbing than it may first appear. In the argument of the pamphlet, Oxford moral philosophy (both in its consequentialist and expressivist guise) is indicted for being symptomatic for the socially widespread idea that no action can be thought horrid or proscribed in its own right. Oxford moral philosophy is, at least in principle, pernicious. By contrast, Stebbing’s activity is presented as offering a “comic spectacle.”

In her comment on Stebbing, Anscombe is referring to the kind of activity Stebbing engaged in in her (1939) book, Thinking to Some Purpose. (Interestingly enough it was reprinted in 1959.) The argument of Thinking to Some Purpose is an exemplary instance of public philosophy (while also inaugurating the contemporary practices of critical thinking). In the book, Stebbing repeatedly exposes “the logical fallacies” and other errors “in politicians’ speeches.”

Now, we would need to know Anscombe’s attitude toward the comic (and the nature of public spectacle) to be fully confident about what she means to claim here. But short of that we can infer some preliminary insights from the context in which her criticism of Stebbing appears.

In her wider argument and in her criticism of Stebbing, Anscombe presupposes that the content of certain public utterances are not always aimed at truth or logical consistence, but rather meet other needs of role-functional and situational (“occasional”) demands. To make this concrete, notice that she attributes to Bullock’s speech a nearly wholly ceremonial function, in fact to perform a kind of spectacle (notice the repetition of ‘'show’ and its cognates). I repeat:

“He must make a speech which should pretend to show that a couple of massacres to a man’s credit are not exactly a reason for not showing him honour. He had, however, one great advantage: he did not have to persuade his audience, who were already perfectly convinced of that proposition.  But at any rate he had to make a show.”

Interestingly enough, Anscombe does suggest, in an aside, that Bullock’s remarks while (shall we say) apt, in a certain sense, for the occasion would not be able to withstand judicial scrutiny (Nuremburg). And she implies clearly in her own voice that this aptness is analogous to the communist hacks who persist in defending Stalinist criminality. In fact, she goes on to scrutinize the speech, despite knowing that “such a speech does not deserve scrutiny.”

Anscombe offers the scrutiny of Bullock’s speech — and this is worth emphasizing — because all the members of Oxford community would be implicated in the “shameful business in some slight degree.” (This is a quote from the final paragraph of the pamphlet.) Because the honorary degree is conferred by Oxford as a corporate body everyone in it is tainted, even polluted in some sense, by the stain of voluntarily associating oneself with Truman’s actions.

In fact, this pollution is present despite the fact that Anscombe has a rather deflationary understanding of honorary degrees. In our lingo, she comes close to saying that honorary degrees are awarded to celebrities in virtue of their celebrity. (She doesn’t quite say that because being ‘very distinguished’ in her age may involve modestly more objective merit than being a celebrity in ours.) I quote:

Now, an honorary degree is not a reward of merit:  it is, as it were, a reward for being a very distinguished person, and it would be foolish to enquire whether a candidate deserves to be as distinguished as he is.  That is why, in general, the question whether so-and-so should have an honorary degree is devoid of interest.  A very distinguished person will hardly be also a notorious criminal, and if he should chance to be a non-notorious criminal it would, in my opinion, be improper to bring the matter up.  It is only in the rather rare case in which a man is known everywhere for an action, in fact of which it is sycophancy to honor him, that the question can be of the slightest interest.

Now, if we return to what’s lurking behind Anscombe’s criticism of Stebbing, we can discern that Anscombe thinks, at minimum, it’s objectively wrong to expect sincerity and to expect and police for logical consistency in political speeches of any kind. I don’t want to assimilate her position to my more liberalism-inflected kind of Platonic skepticism about the political — in which opinion necessarily rules — in virtue of the fact that the production of truth is a costly and difficult enterprise (paradigmatically represented by institutions of justice [but do note the reference to Nuremberg] and science/scholarship); but hers has a family resemblance to it.** (I explain why I don’t want to assimilate her view to my Platonic skepticism below.)

So, to restate part of the charge of Anscombe against Stebbing’s practice is that Thinking to Some Purpose exhibits what we may call a ‘performative category error’ because Stebbing deploys standards that are wholly out of place. Lurking in Anscombe is, thus, a more general criticism of a set of commitments that Stebbing shares with, say, the Vienna Circle and its heirs in contemporary analytic philosophy (and political philosophy) that political life and public opinion can be cleansed by philosophical methods and practices. Anscombe quite clearly (again “War and Murder” is illuminating on this) thinks that’s naïve. (Simply put: Anscombe’s defense of the state out-Hobbes Hobbes.)

Many of my regular readers will know that I am not especially sympathetic to Wittgensteinian quietism. But Anscombe is not in that stereotypical sense a quietist at all. Rather she rejects Stebbing’s demanding civic republicanism and norms for public speech as a species of comedy not because she is a cynic about politics. To fight fake news while handing honorary degrees to practitioners of genocide is a grotesque absurdity. Rather, she thinks that what political life needs or requires in virtue of the sordid facts about human nature is a clear respect for and boundaries around some minimal standards that once were known as essential to jus gentium. And while this is not my own solution to the problem she diagnoses Anscombe is almost alone among analytic philosophers of the age to approach politics and public philosophy soberly.

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*I get some small light on the subject when I consider the productions of Oxford moral philosophy since the first world war, which I have lately had occasion to read.  Its character can easily be briefly demonstrated. Up to the second world war the prevailing moral philosophy in Oxford taught that an action can be ‘morally good’ no matter how objectionable the thing done may be.  An instance would be Himmler’'s efforts at exterminating the Jews: he did it from the ‘motive of duty’ which has ‘supreme value.’ In the same philosophy—which has much pretence of moral seriousness, claiming that ‘rightness’ is an objective character in acts, that can be discerned by a moral sense—it is also held that it might be right to kill the innocent for the good of the people, since the ‘prima facie duty’ of securing some advantage might outweigh the ‘'prima facie duty’ of not killing the innocent. This sort of philosophy is less prevalent now, and in its place I find another, whose cardinal principle is that ‘good’ is not a ‘descriptive’' term, but one expressive of a favourable attitude on the part of the speaker. Hand in hand with this, though I do not know if there is any logical connection, goes a doctrine that it is impossible to have any quite general moral laws; such laws as ‘It s wrong to lie’ or ‘Never commit sodomy’ are rules of thumb which an experienced person knows when to break.  Further, both his selection of these as the rules on which to proceed, and his tactful adjustments of them in particular cases, are based on their fitting together with the ‘way of life’ which is his preference.  Both these philosophies, then, contain a repudiation of the idea that any class of actions, such as murder, may be absolutely excluded.  I do not know how influential they may have been or be; they are perhaps rather symptomatic.  Whether influential or symptomatic, they throw some light on the situation.

** “War and Murder” is informative on her views of political life. About that some other time more.