Humboldt, Public Epistemology, and Professional Certification

Since my collaboration with Nick Cowen, which originates in the pandemic, I have gotten increasingly interested in liberalism’s self-understanding of the state’s role in being a machinery of record (see here) and — in what with a nod to Tom Pink (recall) — I have been calling witnessing truth. (See also this post on Feyerabend.) In this post I want to extend my treatment to Humboldt, who as Noam Chomsky notes in a fine essay, is “opposed to all but the most minimal forms of state intervention in personal or social life.”

As I have noted (recall) Chomsky (see here) is like myself a great admirer of Humboldt’s The Sphere and Duties of Government (now also known as The Limits of State Action). In the history of liberalism there is no thinker that has developed so eloquently and carefully the political conditions that make possible Adam Smith’s commitment that every person should be able “to pursue his own interest his own way;” and nobody has been so thoroughgoing about the possible pay-offs of doing so. As Chomsky notes, while Humboldt is quite laissez-faire in his approach, he is not proposing atomistic individualism: “that while they would break all fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many new social bonds as possible.” (p. 98 in Burrow’s edition of Colthard’s translation of Humboldt.) Unlike Smith, who makes play with others his paradigmatic case of liberty (and who wishes for us to be “bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection”) for Humboldt it is (in a passage singled out by Chomsky), “to inquire and to create—these are the centres around which all human pursuits more or less directly revolve.” (p.76)

That, for Humboldt we are inquisitive agents, is tied to the central role of education and the “diffusion of scientific knowledge by freedom and enlightenment” (p. 68) in our lives. This is also noted by Chomsky. But this doesn’t mean the state has no role in securing the veracity of expertise. I quote the passage (which occurs in context of one of Humboldt’s most important treatments of freedom of speech):

Since, however, there are many cases where a correct judgement requires special knowledge, and since, in regard to these, security might be disturbed if anyone should unthinkingly or designedly turn the ignorance of others to his own advantage, the citizen should have the option, in such cases, of applying to the State for advice. The most striking instances of what I mean-whether we consider the frequent necessity for such special knowledge, the difficulty attending just discrimination, or, lastly, the extent of the harm to be feared-are supplied by those cases in which the professional services of physicians and advocates are required. Now, in order to meet the needs and wishes of the nation in these cases, it is not only advisable but necessary that the State should look into the qualifications of those who take up such vocations, provided they agree to submit themselves to its tests; and, giving them testimonials of fitness, when they pass these tests, acquaint the citizens that they can only confide with certainty in those thus certified. Beyond this, however, the State may not go, or prevent those who have declined, or failed in examination, from exercising their vocation, or the public from using their services. Moreover this supervision should be confined to occupations which are not intended to act on the internal, but only on the external life of man, and in which he is not himself required to cooperate, but only to remain passive and obedient, and where the truth or falsity of the results is the only thing of importance. Secondly, such regulations are only proper in those cases where correct judgement requires special knowledge, and is not attainable by the mere exercise of reason and practical discernment, and further where the rarity of their occurrence makes seeking advice itself difficult. (pp. 87-88)

Humboldt proposes a form of state certification of professionals with what we may call opaque expertise. (I return to this below.) He explicitly excludes state certification of clergy, who he treats as ministers of our ‘internal life.’ I use ‘certification’ and not ‘licensing’ because Humboldt does not treat the state’s approval as necessary or sufficient for exercising the profession.

For, strikingly Humboldt does not wish to give a monopoly to the state certified professionals and he allows them to sell their services to the public. (This seems to anticipate Milton Friedman’s position, although I need to recheck the details.) Humboldt’s anti-paternalist argument is not itself rooted in the efficiency of free-markets. Rather, it is rooted in the idea that there is an intrinsic value to our freedom to pursue our lives as we see fit and, secondarily, that allowing for social experimentation may well generate social benefits (which is part of the argument for free speech in wider context on p. 87). This is a way for society not just to discover ways of doing things that certified professionals may overlook, and to allow different (say) culturally salient traditions of expertise to flourish alongside each other (as Feyerabend would empasize); but also to avoid the downside risks of creating a closed class of rent-seeking self-congratulatory professionals. As Adam Smith puts it in Wealth of Nations: “The exclusive privileges…statutes of apprenticeship, and all those laws which restrain, in particular employments, the competition to a smaller number than might otherwise go into them, have the same tendency, though in a less degree. They are a sort of enlarged monopolies.”

For the state to be able to certify opaque expertise, it means it needs reliably to be able to draw upon expertise. Humboldt does not discuss the details. But at minimum, the state constantly needs to invest in procedures and create the conditions for its access to technical know-how to do so. It needs a state apparatus that allows it to be in a position to provide testimonials to expertise in opaque contexts. Not unlike Bentham and Smith, Humboldt requires a knowledgeable state.

It is noticeable that Humboldt does not wish to create certifications for all areas of opaque expertise. His expectation is that ordinary folk encounter lawyers and physicians on a somewhat regular basis. Less so than, say, mining engineers. And this suggests that for Humboldt the state’s role should be focused on protecting individual citizens and not (say) corporations, which may have resources to do their own quality checks.

Obviously, the requirement for “special knowledge not attainable by the mere exercise of reason and practical discernment” it itself context specific. In Enlightening ages, where “diffusion of scientific knowledge” is far advanced some kinds of certification may not be necessary at all while those would have been needed in earlier periods. One can also imagine that when certain technologies are introduced into mass consumption, state certification may be a useful transition tool to alert the wider public to a registry of competent professionals that can service such technologies. But where that’s also not needed after a while. Obviously, this kind of contextual judgment may be hard to exercise when the economic gains of certification are high.

Obviously, this is not the end of the matter even in light of Humboldt’s restrictive commitments. As Humboldt notes in context, fraud and liability will require non-trivial further attention and may complicate the certification regime.

One final note, I don’t think it is ad hoc that Humboldt singles out medicine and law as professions where state certification is useful. Indirectly securing the conditions of public health (and the rule of law) are themselves intimately connected to the more fundamental aims of the state: “The State, then, is not to concern itself in any way with the positive welfare of its citizens, and hence, not with their life or health, except where these are imperiled by the actions of others; but it is to keep a vigilant eye on their security.” (89) For Humboldt we’re responsible for our own health, but the state can help secure us against the public health externalities that follow from our social interactions.