By Nathan Beacom
Friday, January 06, 2017
In a well-known paper written after World War II, the
philosopher Karl Popper laid out a stark dilemma for societies: they can settle
members’ disagreements only through argument or violence. Totalitarian and
utopian societies are those that opt for the latter. They prefer the use of
force to the more uncertain process of argument.
The society that embraces argument over violence, by
contrast, is what Popper called the “open society.” The American system was
conceived as one such open society, but, as many of its early thinkers warned,
if Americans lose the virtues that make an open society possible, they will
open the way to tyranny.
The important question is how a society may maintain or
lose the virtues of argument. If it retains them, it will be free; should it
lose them, violence is sure to follow.
Humility Protects
Us from Violence
Among these basic virtues is a fundamental humility.
Humility teaches that we, just like our neighbors, are prone to error, mistakes
in argument, and ignorance. Humility is a disposition to recognize that
reasoning towards the truth is a difficult process fraught with potential
dangers and confusions.
This is actually a perquisite to real argument, for
argument is not a matter of beating an opponent, but of working with a partner
to come to an agreement about the truth of things. It is clear that the virtue
of humility allows us to recognize that we need of others to balance us,
challenge us, and fill the gaps in our knowledge. This is how America’s
founding figures generally understood the principle of tolerance.
The failure to develop this virtue is an invitation to
violence. Indeed, the corresponding vice of dialectical pride is what lies at
the heart of a tyrannical ideology. The ideologue is so certain of her
rightness that disagreement can only seem to be the result of an evil will,
rather than a mere difference of opinion held in good faith. Evil is not to be
reasoned with, but mocked and destroyed, so the opponent is not to be reasoned
with, but forced into line.
We do not discourse and reason about the rightness of
murder with murderers, we jail them. Likewise, if certain kinds of thought
constitute crimes, then, so the thinking goes, we do not hear such criminals
out, but use force against them.
What Socialism and
Fascism Have in Common
The many ways in which the discussions of our own day
fail in this fundamental virtue of argumentation indicates a dangerous seed of
violence. Calling names, imputing bad motives, mockery, and the anger and
emotivism that characterizes many of our public arguments are a failure of
humility and fellow-feeling. Those who lack this virtue in conversation also,
when in power, commit violence against their opponents.
It is unclear whether social media has accelerated the
atrophy of these virtues or merely made it more apparent, but inasmuch as the
discussions we see on Twitter and Facebook are typified by precisely the
vicious tendencies we seek to avoid, we have reason to be a bit concerned.
Today we see the growing prevalence of radical movements
in politics. On the Right there is a pull towards populism, nationalism, and
even fascist tendencies. On the Left there is a growing draw towards Marxism
and related radical programs. These ideologies are both distinguished by a
rejection of the fundamental dialectical virtues.
The rightist might suppose, with a figure like Benito
Mussolini, that the philosophy of the Right must be intolerant of dissent,
stamping out objections and unifying the people. The leftist may follow
Vladimir Lenin’s expression of the Marxist idea that violence is endorsed if it
is in the interest of the proletariat, which really means if it is in the
interest of Marxists. We have ample evidence that these ideologies lead to
horrible consequences, and that rejecting dialectical humility is part of what
brings them about.
I do not mean to say that these radical politics are more
than a fringe at the moment, but if the broader society lacks the virtues of
argument, it will be susceptible to the seductions of radicalism. Today, we see
a generation that is beginning to forget the real histories of these radical
ideologies. Yet to one, like Popper, who saw them up close, it is clear that
they are a danger passionately to be avoided. We may think that in our time a
Mussolini or a Lenin could never rise to power, but we should cautiously
consider that human nature remains susceptible to the same failures throughout
the ages.
How to Recover
These Essential Virtues
As Sohrab Amari of the Wall Street Journal has said, it is a special task incumbent upon
us at this moment to defend the central American ideas of liberal toleration
against the various ideologues who are looking to weaken its principles and
institutions. Good conservatives and good liberals alike can work together to
shore up those institutions, so long as they accept humility and the other
virtues of the dialectic.
We can start by promoting these virtues in our own lives,
communities, and conversations. How do we gain the virtues of argument? For
that we can take the advice of the greatest thinker on the subject of virtue,
Aristotle, who teaches us that virtue grows from repeated action and through
its own exercise. Noble practices beget virtuous dispositions.
Conversations must be entered into with an intentional
and reflective awareness about what the virtues demand of us. We need models of
argumentation who can exemplify argument done well. We might be hard-pressed to
find figures in our own nation’s political life, but this is part of the reason
it is so important to study our history and philosophy, for there we find one
pathway into the virtues we require.
One could carry on laying out further virtues, describing
their character and how to work on them. This is not the space for that kind of
treatment, but each of us ought to make an effort to seek out that kind of
formation ourselves and with our friends. When Benjamin Franklin left the
Constitutional Convention, a famous story has it, a fellow on the street asked
him, “Well, Dr. Franklin, what have we got?” To which the good doctor replied,
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
A republic always needs keeping by a virtuous citizenry
lest it decay into tyranny. One important way we can do our part to keep the
republic is by promoting those virtues that an open society requires. Engaging
in that work is an integral element in safeguarding the polity from the
oppressions and violence that radical ideology brings.
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