French radical Secularism, the closed society, and unreasonable views.

A few weeks ago, Cyril Hédoin responded insightfully and constructively (here) to an essay I recently published in Liberal Currents. Subsequently, he did a follow up piece in which he assimilated my stance on what I call the ‘platonic skepticism’ of liberals about the rule of opinion in public life into a larger framework about different kinds of skepticism exhibited by liberals. I have never met Hédoin, who is a professor of Economics at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne.

In the piece that triggered Hédoin's response I argued that public reason liberalism and French Laïcité, or radical secularism, share three features: (i) they transcend the right/left opposition, (ii) they demand considerable public censorship, and (iii) they are both grounded in a Platonic skepticism about the ability of truth to dominate mere opinion in a democratic context.* My own alternative (liberal) position, accepts a version of (iii), but rejects (i-ii) as inimical to healthy liberal political life. So far so good.

Now, Hédoin does not object to my characterization of French radical secularism. In fact, he reinforces my claim about (ii) in a striking fashion when he notes,

there is the big elephant in the room here, which in France is close to being an absolute taboo (in part because we don’t have the data to easily address this issue): what are the effects in terms of social exclusion and education of France’s radical secularism? French politicians from the right and part of the left have stuck to the same principles for decades. The public space should be immune from religious manifestations. But what are the consequences of the strict application of these principles for teenagers (especially girls) who, at least for some of them, end up in private religious schools where it is absolutely not clear that they are taught the values of the République. In Weberian terms, politicians who remain committed to the principles of laïcité display an “ethics of conviction.” But the “ethics of responsibility” would demand to confront the likely negative consequences (for individuals and for society in general) of, as a matter of fact, forbidding young people from benefiting from public schooling. This may justify loosening one’s commitment to principles.

It’s worth pausing here. French intellectuals often assume that anglophone critics have little understanding of French Laïcité, or radical secularism. They suspect, not without justification, that anglophone critics project their own concerns onto a political scene of which American and British media provide a very limited and distorted picture. Fair enough. We are all subject to this feature of imperialism.

But in mainland Europe (and perhaps Quebec), Laïcité or radical secularism, has significant pull on right leaning politicians and intellectuals. So we cannot allow ourselves to be wholly ignorant of it. Such right leaning politicians and intelligentsia see it is as a political strategy to politicize and defeat what they call “political Islam.” And because French (radical) republicanism rooted in Enlightenment radicalism has enduring appeal on left-leaning thought in Europe it also means that arguments about radical secularism — often packaged in terms of democratic citizenship — help shape the Overton window in these matters without much friction. In particular, left and right intellectuals view political Islam as a threat to freedom(s), including the freedom of speech. The brutal attacks on Charlie Hebdo and Salman Rushdie fit this narrative.

Yet, the practice of Laïcité, or radical secularism, is itself incompatible with freedom of speech in fundamental ways. As I noted in my original post, all kinds of religious expressions, including what clothes one might wish to wear in public, are policed by government. Radical secularism is also not imposed and enforced in fully impartial fashion. In addition, as Hédoin himself implies, but doesn’t state explicitly, for decades now the French government understands the constitution as preventing the gathering of ethnic/race and religious data. This impacts all kinds of European data and the study of comparative political science/behavior. (That’s how I learned about it. My empirical colleagues have to find clever ways around such legal restrictions.)

As Hédoin notes the refusal to collect such data makes informed debate about the effects of policy very difficult. It leaves the grounds of repeated expressions of social anger in the form of street protests and militancy as a complete mystery, and vacates public debate about such protests to victim blamers and those with authoritarian instincts.

Be that as it may, it is also very peculiar that friends of radical secularism, who often present themselves as partisans of nearly absolute free speech, fail to see that they defend no such thing. In order to immunize Laïcité one must infringe on speech and research in structural fashion. That’s not a hypothetical or conceptual claim; it describes empirical reality. Repeat after me: Laïcité is incompatible with freedom of speech. It’s also bizarre that self-proclaimed proponents of the Enlightenment, who often proclaim their willingness to examine all controversial ideas, end up defending systematic restrictions on possible knowledge. (Again, scientific data gathering is very curtailed.)

To be sure, I have argued (in another essay at Liberalcurrents) that states should not be in the business of fixing population categories of its citizenry (including sex, ethnicity, race, etc.) in exclusive and exclusionary fashion. So I have some sympathy with the impulse behind the French legal taboo on certain data. But that’s not an effect of my endorsement of a kind of skeptical Platonism, but because I think the state has no business in fixing social categories; the state should not be in the business of fixing social truths that can leave no room for compromise and individual fluidity or inconsistency. I view that as incompatible with two very fundamental commitments of liberalism: (a) to leave citizens as free as possible to pursue their own meaningful individual and collective choices; (b) to prevent, where possible, the state itself from generating zero-sum political situations. However, I also noted that this should be made compatible with using inclusive data to tackle particular policy challenges.

Now, while developing his response, Hédoin adds that [iv] “If you think that, in a democratic context, opinions will systematically overcome truth (or reasonableness), then you’ll be prone to consider that there are strict limits to toleration and that non-regulated diversity is not synonymous with mutual benefits.” This is an astute psychological remark in two ways.

First, [iv] helps explain why, in practice, radical secularism (left and right) is so intolerant in the name of protecting freedom. Second, [iv] points to the error of treating society and political life in terms of mutual benefits or a harmony of interests. That’s an impossible dream. I have explained why I think of it as an error here (also at LiberalCurrents). The better liberal position is to treat (irreconcilable) conflicting interests as a means to be made serviceable to a public interest. This requires domesticating and redirecting political conflict, in part, through fracturing representation (by, say, introducing bicameralism, federalism, and temporally and geographically non-overlapping constituencies).

At this point one might fear I am not really addressing the underlying insight that drives [iv}. I quote Hédoin one final time:

The…objection is less serious, at first sight at least, but it is nonetheless based on a fear that is part of the collective imagination, as witnessed by the fact that it has served as the background for a novel by the French author Michel Houellbecq [sic]. Is there not a risk that if we let unreasonable beliefs and practices develop in our society, they become so widespread they grant political power to “unreasonable” (religious) individuals in the capacity to alter the constitutional design? This may be pure fantasy and in itself an unreasonable view. But this is precisely the kind of unreasonable view that should be tolerated in a liberal society that is not too much elitist and sectarian. Then, the question is: how do you deal with people who hold it?

In the accompanying footnote Hédoin makes clear he has Houellebecq’s Soumission in mind. In my view this book is systematically misunderstood as a warning against the take-over of political Islam. I view it, rather, as a satire of French academics, and more importantly — and this chimes in with Houellebecq’s wider oeuvre —, also a diagnosis of a kind of spiritual malaise of modern life. In fact, it is not unnatural to read the novel as itself rejecting French radical secularism which facilitates this malaise.

My reading of the novel is not idiosyncratic. As I have noted, it is also proposed by the Dutch far right politician and intellectual, Thierry Baudet, who thinks the novel even invites us “to preserve traditional European culture or indeed to reestablish it: a world in which the family is once again at the center, in which nations are restored, maybe even a form of Christianity is reinstated.” (I think this misses some of the novel’s satirical targets.) Baudet’s stance converges with the more sophisticated (and humane) diagnosis of the failures of French Laïcité in Pierre Manent’s (2016) Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge that I have discussed (here.)

I mention Baudet because I view Hédoin’s question as more than mere rhetorical or philosophical in character. The “unreasonable view” he posits is an intrinsic part of active political movement building not just in my native Netherlands, but across Europe.

Obviously, a detailed response would be quite lengthy, but a few things are worth stating at once: first, as practiced, with its taboos on certain kind of data collection, Laïcité makes it harder to combat such unreasonable views with appeal to fine-grained empirical knowledge of social reality. So, I view this as another reason to reject it.

Second, because of French cultural and political centralization, it is especially vulnerable to well organized movements that manage to attract protest voters against the status quo with true believers in a kulturkampf to restore the nation and western civilization to glory, and the fellow-travelers who think they can profit from it. And since European federalism is weak, it cannot be counted on to be a powerful countervailing bulwark. So, France requires constitutional and political reform such that when unreasonable views are ascendant they can be contained and made less threatening, or forced into compromises. This is especially needed because the policing of clothes and bodies in name of protecting the republic has also allowed deeply illiberal practices become part and parcel of French political life.

Third, I view it as inevitable that at least some “unreasonable views” will be felt to be vital in any given political society. (That’s an implication of my Platonic skepticism.) But the liberal should not shy away from engaging with them, first, in the spirit of curiosity about what these views reveal about possible experiments in living and the passionately held commitments of our fellow citizens. This confrontation with such views is, thus, also a mechanism to keep liberalism itself from growing stale; I view it as a disaster that academic moral egalitarians are mostly talking to each other, and many right liberals are still refuting Statism. Finally, it is an invitation to continue to articulate a renewal of our liberal faith as well as think soberly about the strategic allies we will need to survive a confrontation with the political movements bent on a war with political Islam in the service of establishing a closed society.

*There is some controversy over to what degree my general presentation of these issues is entirely fair to right public reason thinkers like Gauss and Vallier. Hédoin (and Vallier) have rightly objected to some of my claims. I fully grant that I did not do justice the nuances of Vallier’s position (especially), but I think the spirit of my underlying argument actually can be vindicated when the details of Vallier’s position are examined. About that some other time.