Reichenbach's tempered Machiavellian ethical politics
Logic does not compel me to do anything.—Reichenbach, The rise of Scientific of Philosophy, p. 294.
Today is a bonus post because I expect to be unable to write a number of days next week. I spent the past week reading Reichenbach’s (1951) The Rise of Scientific Philosophy because I was hoping it would say something about the relationships among the sciences and philosophy’s role in mediating it. That hunch turned out to be wrong.
Some time I may, perhaps, try to take the measure of the book, but today I want to focus on a feature of one of the otherwise weaker chapters of the book: the penultimate one (17th) on the “Nature of Ethics.” Reichenbach’s views here are usually categorized as ‘non-cognitivist.’
Today my interest is in his account of statements that appear to express obligations. Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) treats these as “volitions” that “are imposed upon us by the social group to which we belong, in other words, that they are originally group volitions.” (p. 285) And, in fact, lurking here is a mixture of Nietzsche and a kind of group selectionism (that was, in fact, Darwin’s own position for moral sentiments):
The rules not to steal, not to kill, and so forth, were rules the enforcement of which was necessary for group preservation. As generations passed, individuals were conditioned to these rules; and in our own education we were subject to a conditioning process of the same kind. No wonder, then, that we feel ourselves on the receiving side of the moral imperatives; in fact, we are. If a feeling of duty is regarded as characteristic for moral aims, such a conception mirrors the fact that moral aims were instilled into us forcibly, whether through the authority of the father or of the teacher or by the pressure of the group in which we lived. (p. 285)
My interest here is not to defend this view against charges of relativism (or defend it at all). For, it is by no means obvious how the authoritativeness of the obligation really survives scrutiny knowing that only repeated violence and force are its origin. It need not be fatal, of course, if we can find another source of its authority. But Reichenbach explicitly ends up denying this possibility: “As we have discovered…the feeling of obligation cannot be transformed into a source of the validity of ethics, let us forget about the appeal to obligation.” (p. 291)
For many this will be the point to turn one's back. But there are three important payoffs to Reichenbach’s account that historically,
The ethics of our social and political life is a conglomeration of group ethics of various strata. Nations have grown through fusion of states and merging of social groups; they have taken over the ethical rules of older times, especially through the codified law, which perpetuates the moral systems of the Romans, of feudalism, and of the Church. No wonder that the result is no consistent system….The attempts of philosophers to fashion ethics as a system of knowledge have broken down. The moral systems thus constructed were nothing but reproductions of the ethics of certain sociological groups; of Greek bourgeois society, of the Catholic Church, of the Middle Class of the preindustrial age, of the age of industry and the proletarian. We know why these systems had to fail: because knowledge cannot supply directives. Who looks for ethical rules must not imitate the method of science. Science tells us what is, but not what should be. (p. 286-287; emphasis added.)
The first pay-off is that on this view modern moral philosophy is inevitably a hodgepodge. This may be unwelcome, but it seems empirically or sociologically a fairly robust claim.
The second is more fundamental. Reichenbach here wants to close the whole era of post-Hobbesian moral philosophy which is, in fact, characterized by imitation of the perceived methods of modern science. (Treating the revival of virtue theories as if pre-Hobbesian here.) Unfortunately for those attracted to Reichenbach’s analysis, he doesn’t really earn this conclusion because he restricts his account of ethical systems that imitate the methods of science to ones that presuppose a synthetic a priori (and that’s because pertaining to this Reichenbach treats science as fundamentally hypothetico-deductive in character).
This is connected to the third pay-off. If there is awareness that ethics is not in the domain of truth it also cuts off moral fanaticism (“We try to pursue our own volitional ends, not with the fanaticism of the prophet of an absolute truth” (301)). There are no moral experts or prophets that have access to moral truth.
Whatever one may think of this, Reichenbach goes on to reject the idea that from this analysis a kind of moral “anarchism” (p. 292) that is “everybody may do what he wants” (p. 287)) follows. Rather, he proposes what he calls the ‘democratic principle,’ “Everybody is entitled to set up his own moral imperatives and to demand that everyone follow these imperatives.” (p. 295; emphasis in original)
From the wider context of Reichenbach’s account it is clear that he means that one ‘demands’ can, in turn, be translated into group rules and even democratic or majoritarian decision-making. In fact, he is explicitly committed to “public discussion and peaceful experiments rather than by resort to war.” (p. 298) As he explains:
a principle which is at the basis of all political life in democratic countries, knowing that in adhering to it I reveal myself as a product of my time. But I have found that this principle offers me the opportunity to propagate and, in large measure, to follow my volitions; therefore I make it my moral imperative. I do not claim that it applies to all forms of society; if I, the product of a democratic society, were placed in a different society I might be willing to modify my principle. (p. 296)
At this point we seem to have slid from ethics to politics. Or to be more precise, no real distinction between ethics and politics is allowed. In fact, the conception of politics is Machiavellian (in Burnham’s sense) in character: politics involves the clash of organized powers with their opinions. (In the 1940s, Burnham was an ex-Trotsky-ist and Reichenbach a former socialist.)
The principle is not an ethical doctrine, answering all questions of what we should do. It is merely an invitation to take active part in the struggle of opinions. Volitional differences cannot be settled by the appeal to a system of ethics constructed by some learned man; they can be overcome only through the clash of opinions, through the friction between the individual and his environment, through controversy and the compulsion of the situation. Moral valuations are formed in the pursuit of activities; we act, we reflect about what we have done, we talk to others about it, and act again, this time in what we regard as a better way. Our actions are trials to find out what we want; we learn through error, and often we know only after our action is done whether we wanted to do it. (p 296)
Since volitional statements are neither true nor false, Reichenbach’s view should not be conflated with the idea (often mistakenly attributed to J.S. Mill and subsequent Liberalism) that this struggle will inevitably lead to truth. What we learn (the feedback from reality), is the error of the means in satisfying our wants, or the lack of “cognitive relations” (p. 297) among as well as one might say the ‘fittingness of’ the wants in light of our social environment. (This is a point of contact between Reichenbach’s and (see here) Nagel’s conception of philosophy.) The view of politics (but not the ethics) is, however, compatible with my own (skeptical) liberalism that embraces a kind of skeptical Platonism about the public sphere, so I don’t want to claim that this position is intrinsically illiberal. In fact, he valorizes “the interplay of group and individual.” (p. 300)
However, as Reichenbach deepens his position, the anti-individualist elements in it are made explicit. As isolated individuals our volitions lack social force. In addition, Reichenbach suggests (see also. p. 299) that in group life our volitional satisfaction may well be highest: “The give and take of social cooperation offers much deeper satisfaction than does obstinate refusal to abandon one’s goals.” (p. 300) As he explains:
Whoever wants to study ethics, therefore, should not go to the philosopher; he should go where moral issues are fought out. He should live in the community of a group where life is made vivid by competing volitions, be it the group of a political party, or of a trade union, or of a professional organization, or of a ski club, or a group formed by common study in a classroom. There he will experience what it means to set his volition against that of other persons and what it means to adjust oneself to group will. If ethics is the pursuit of volitions, it is also the conditioning of volitions through a group environment. The exponent of individualism is shortsighted when he overlooks the volitional satisfaction which accrues from belonging to a group. (p. 297, emphasis added.)
I have called all of this ‘Machiavellian,’ because for Reichenbach power is ineliminable from the origin and continued evolution of group volition. As he puts it, “power plays a leading part in the change of moral valuations— if power is measured by any form of success in asserting one’s volitions against those of other persons.” (p. 301).*
It would seem to follow then (this will sound surprisingly Foucauldian) that on this view our apparent obligations are no more than the effect of the dynamics of organized social opinions. But for Reichenbach we always can reject their authority not with an appeal to our conscience, but rather by firmness and trust in our own will. One is tempted to say, "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise." And for Reichenbach that means always an invitation to others to join in one’s struggle.
*See also “the power of social organization, the power of a social class that has discovered its common interests, the power of cooperative groups, the power of speech and writing, the power of the individual that shapes the pattern of a group through exhibiting outstanding behavior. Yes, it is power that controls social relationships.” (p. 301.)