The Duty to Use Drones The Duty to Use Drones In Cases of National Self-Defense Lina Dayem University of Chicago Author Ginevra Bulgari Vance Kelley Galen Hall Naima Okami Editors Spring 2019 Download full text PDF (14 pages) Introduction Since the tactic was first implemented, targeted killing by drones has been associated with political secrecy, dubious legality, and unsavory practices, and has thus garnered a negative reputation. In this essay, I endeavor to vindicate the use of drones, if only under the constrained circumstances of national self-defense. I argue the following: If a state can permissibly carry out targeted killings for the purpose of national self-defense, then it ought to do so with drones because of the minimized risks to soldiers and civilians. To argue this position, I first demonstrate that we should think of targeted killing as fitting into the self-defense paradigm, rather than military or law enforcement paradigms. I explain that states may permissibly engage in targeted killing when it is justified in terms of national self-defense. Next I explain how drones minimize risk to both soldiers and civilians. By combining the logic of self-defense with the principle of risk minimization, I arrive at the conclusion that in circumstances where targeted killing is necessary for national self-defense, states have a duty to use drones. Finally, I respond to potential objections about the use of drones, all of which can be addressed by improved drone policy. Military and Law Enforcement Paradigms Provide Inadequate Justification for Targeted Killing Targeted killing is a practice in which many governments engage. To justify targeted killings, theorists and politicians generally invoke one of two paradigms that permit the use of deadly force: the military paradigm and the law enforcement paradigm. These paradigms act to orient government policy—they direct how we may morally and legally behave towards our enemy. Targeted killing remains controversial because it cannot be clearly endorsed by either paradigm. The Military Paradigm The military paradigm activates the laws and conventions of war. Enemy combatants are the only parties liable to death. According to the jus in bello[1] convention, combatants can permissibly be killed during wartime without punishment (with some exceptions). Hostile treatment towards a combatant is permissible simply by virtue of combatant status, rather than any actions taken by the individual in question. In other words, a combatant’s liability to death derives precisely from assumption of the role of a soldier. In this paradigm, identifying an enemy terrorist as a combatant engaged in acts of war could enable the state to justify permissibly killing him without a trial. So, the fact that targeted killings of terrorists occur without trial suggests potential use of the logic of the military paradigm. Furthermore, in the case of the United States’ conflict with Al-Qaeda, we notice that the military paradigm seems to underlies the operative language of both parties, although it does not fully account for the conflict’s operative logic. Declaring a “War on Terror” and Jihad (Holy War)[2], respectively, implies at least nominally that each side considers the other’s fighters to be enemy combatants. The problem, of course, is that under international law a private citizen (such as Osama bin Laden) cannot declare war as that is a right granted only to sovereign states.[3] Conversely, under international law, a state cannot declare war against a non-state actor.[4] We may doubt the applicability of the military paradigm to targeted killings for several other reasons. First, terrorists willingly forgo the conventions that govern combatant status. The convention states that combatants wear the insignia of their country and carry their weapons openly.[5] Terrorists, however, do not wear uniforms, and hide amongst civilians. Of course, the main tactic of terrorists—targeting civilians—violates the jus in bello convention of noncombatant immunity. It is not only the status of the terrorists that is unclear; the status of those who carry out targeted killing is equally blurry, as civilian leaders often order targeted killings. In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a civilian organization, has the authority to command drone strikes.[6] CIA control over drone strikes blurs the line between combatant and civilian, since civilians do actively engage in hostile conduct. This further complicates traditional boundaries of warfare with respect to justice and permissibility. Finally, naming someone in advance to be placed on a hit list runs counter to the very idea of status-based liability. In war, individual soldiers on the battlefield are not identified by the enemy and specifically targeted. Rather, a soldier is attacked by another soldier as part of a relationship of hostility qua soldier.[7] In other words, a soldier is liable to be killed due to his status as a soldier, rather than because of his actions. The practice of naming a target in advance singles him out qua individual. Therefore, the naming practice is fundamentally at odds with the status-based logic of legitimate military hostility. The Law Enforcement Paradigm Political theorists and governments have also justified targeted killing under a law enforcement paradigm. These parties maintain that terrorists should be considered criminals, rather than combatants. However, the goal of law enforcement is to arrest—not kill—the criminal. By the law enforcement paradigm, it is wrong to deprive a suspected criminal of due process by killing him before a trial. Indeed, the instances where law enforcement officers can permissibly kill are restricted to cases wherein a criminal resists arrest by putting the life of officers or others at risk. In this situation, liability to death is action-based rather than status-based. In other words, the criminal has effectively forfeited their right to life by initiating an attack. Liability to death may also come after the trial as retributive justice. So in certain cases, certain crimes may be punishable by death. While the death penalty is controversial, in cases where it is legal, it also represents an instance of action-based liability as punishment for a past action. However, by its very nature, targeted killing skips the fundamental steps of arrest and trial. Placing a name on a hit-list presumes guilt, and the individual listed becomes liable to instantaneous death by drone strike without being afforded due process. Under the law enforcement paradigm, this would be considered an extrajudicial execution, tantamount to murder.[8] Invoking the Principle of Self-Defense to Justify Targeted Killings The Self-Defense Paradigm In this discussion, I will draw from the work of several authors, such as McMahan, Gross, and Finkelstein, who analyze targeted killing as an act of self-defense. The self-defense paradigm better addresses the conceptual lacunae in the military and law enforcement paradigms as they concern targeted killing, and thus maps more clearly onto the practice of targeted killing. The basic premise of the self-defense paradigm is that when there is a threat to national security, a state has a right to protect itself. Self-defense can be considered a special offshoot of the law enforcement paradigm because, as described above, it is sometimes permissible for law enforcement officers to engage in certain self-defensive practices involving lethal force.[9] This paradigm deals with the threats that terrorists pose to national security and so is preemptive in nature. In this way, the killing of a terrorist should not be conceived of as punishment or retributive justice, since the paradigm does not deal with past actions. Instead, under the self-defense paradigm, someone who has never committed an attack could be just as liable as someone who has already committed several, provided that they pose the same current threat. Indeed, under this framework, a terrorist’s past crimes only serve as an epistemic gauge for predicting the likelihood that the individual will strike again.[10] The self-defense paradigm bypasses the military paradigm’s murky combatant-noncombatant distinctions because its liability criterion centers on action rather than status. If someone poses a threat to a state, the actions a state may take against the individual are not constrained by their status. Rather, the individual’s status is irrelevant both to their liability to death as well as our ability to retaliate. The self-defense paradigm also circumvents the law-enforcement paradigm’s crucial steps of arrest and trial because it operates on the logic of preemptive justice rather than retributive justice. Like the law enforcement paradigm, the self-defense paradigm uses the logic of action-based liability to death, but in a less evident manner. A terrorist’s liability to death derives from the notion that in planning an attack, a terrorist wrongs innocent people by increasing their likelihood of harm.[11] Thus, the harm caused by the terrorist’s death would need to be proportional to the harm prevented by protecting innocents from the attack. In other words, if their death would not disrupt realization of that harm, the targeted killing is not justified. Finally, it must also be considered whether or not the targeted killing could result in dangerous unintended consequences.When these criteria are met under the self-defense paradigm, the result would be that targeted killing is permissible as an act of self-defense. In the next sections, I argue that in the cases where targeted killing is permissible, states have a duty to use drones to carry them out because drones reduce risk to both civilians and soldiers. The Duty to Minimize Risk in Cases of Self-Defense: Individual Cases To demonstrate the duty to minimize risk to civilians and soldiers in cases of national self-defense, I will employ an analogy involving individual self-defense. Imagine that an individual is attacked in a way that threatens their life. It is uncontroversial that they have the right to defend themselves against the attack. By initiating the attack, the attacker has forfeited their right not to be harmed. Because the victim’s life is threatened, responding proportionally to the attack means that they may permissibly kill the attacker, if that is the only way to thwart the attack. However, imagine that the attack occurs in a crowded location. While the victim still has the right to defend themselves, they would wrong bystanders by inflicting harm on them, or risking their harm. The bystanders, detached from the conflict, have done nothing to make themselves liable to harm. Consequently, they must minimize the harm to which bystanders are exposed. Therefore, the means by which one may defend themselves in this crowded location are constrained. For instance, while the victim may shoot the attacker in the open, the victim many not shoot indiscriminately into the crowd in order to scare the attacker away. Similarly, if the attacker hides within the crowd, it would be wrong to simply aim at the group of people if there existed high likelihood that a bystander would be harmed. Furthermore, imagine the victim had the choice between two weapons that each afford equal capabilities to thwart or end the attack. One of the weapons is more precise than the other. For example, consider a handgun in comparison to a large vehicle (to be used as a deadly weapon). By aiming a gun at the attacker, they have a lower chance of accidentally hitting a bystander than if they were to drive the vehicle into the crowd. Because the victim has the choice between the two weapons, it would be wrong to choose the car, because it poses higher risk to bystanders. These two examples demonstrate that even in the presence of bystanders the victim retains the right to self-defense, yet has a duty to minimize the risk they pose to the innocent. For the bystanders simply have the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and have done nothing to make themselves liable to harm. The duty to minimize risk even when acting in self-defense is not only a consideration which must be undertaken with respect to bystanders, but at the state level also stretches to the defensive capabilities afforded by the state to its soldiers. Consider an analogy offered by Bradley Strawser. He imagines a commander who orders their troops to take off their bullet-proof vests and run at the enemy, and concludes that the commander wrongs the troops by ordering them into a dangerous situation without the normally available protection.[12] In doing so, the commander unjustly increases their risk to harm. While there may exist important moral differences between denying defensive capability to soldiers and aiming a weapon at a crowd of bystanders, Strawser’s analogy highlights the fundamental idea that it would be wrong to increase the possibility of harm to a soldier, or civilian, through deprival of defensive capability. Applying a Duty to Minimize Risk to Cases of Self-Defense: State-Level The duty to minimize harm to bystanders in the individual case can be extended to situations of state-level self-defense as a duty to minimize the risk of harm to civilians and soldiers. If under reliable intelligence a state discovers an imminent threat to its national security, the state has a right to defend itself against that threat. But at the same time, the means available to the state for the purpose of self-defense must be bound by a duty to minimize risk to civilians and to soldiers. If a state can justifiably respond to an imminent threat of a terrorist attack, it does not have a carte blanche to employ any weapon in its arsenal. For instance, a state could launch a nuclear bomb on the city where the attacker is hiding. While this would certainly be an effective method to kill the attacker, it is a grossly disproportionate and as such obviously unjust. Instead, the state might instead choose a “boots on the ground” mission to find the individual, or any number of other more precise strategies. Any kind of armed engagement involves risk to both civilians and to the soldiers involved. As in the case of individual self-defense, it is the state’s duty to employ a strategy that offers the least risk to all parties involved. I will now explain how drone technology seems to be the obvious choice for risk reduction in such a scenario. Risk Reduction Through Use of Drones Undertaking targeted killing with drones reduces the risk of harm to a state’s own soldiers, as well as foreign civilians, in several ways. For pilots, the remote operation of unmanned weapons dramatically reduces chance of harm: drone pilots can operate from a base thousands of miles away from the conflict zone. They personally face no threat of harm, retaliation, or retribution. In contrast, engaging in a “boots on the ground” mission puts the soldiers involved at an increased risk because they are directly exposed to the hazards of a hostile territory, which leaves them open to the possibility of attack. The remote aspect of drone strikes may also reduce harm to civilians in the conflict zone. Journalist Michael Lewis perceptively reasons that because drone pilots feel secure, they are surprisingly less likely to initiate a strike out of fear or anxiety for their personal safety.[13] What Lewis articulates is that the mistakes frequently made by soldiers in the “fog of war” can be minimized by drones.[14] Moreover, drones themselves can act as intelligence-gathering machines. A target may be surveyed for months before an attack is carried out. This has several benefits. First, it confirms that the target is actually involved in terrorist activities, reducing the chance of targeting an innocent person. If the suspect is the right person, then the extensive intelligence allows the pilot to identify a pattern in the subject’s daily life so that the subject may be targeted at times when they are more likely to be alone. Furthermore, when operated with due care, drones are precise, capable of striking only a single person. As journalist Mark Bowden notes, “[A drone’s] extraordinary precision makes it an advance in humanitarian warfare. In theory, when used with principled restraint, it is the perfect counterterrorism weapon. It targets indiscriminate killers with exquisite discrimination.”[15] To ensure that its deployment is as precise as possible, operators have adopted measures to minimize civilian risk. For example, a recent review of drone procedures by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan recommended that strikes occur while the target is in a vehicle, rather than in a compound. This is because it is easier to keep track of those entering and exiting vehicles than those entering and exiting compounds, reducing the likelihood that a target’s family member or close associate will also be hit. In addition, the strike could take place on an isolated road, further reducing the risk to bystanders.[16] Even under unideal operation conditions, drone strikes are generally less deadly to civilians than other available means, such as ground strikes or piloted airstrikes.[17] Finally, the practice of targeted killings itself can reduce a conflict’s escalation and thus its casualties. Targeted killing, when justified as preemptive action as described above, functions to avoid prolonged engagement or full-scale war. Comparing the civilian casualties of war to drone strikes demonstrates clearly that conventional warfare is the deadlier of the two.[18] Thus, for the aforementioned reasons, when states can permissibly carry out targeted killing for the purpose of national self-defense, they have a duty to do so with drones because they minimize risk of harm for civilians and soldiers alike.This duty to employ drones should be understood as prima facie, a strategy that should be adopted unless specific circumstances require the use of other measures. In other words, the duty stands as long as using drone technology will minimize risk to bystanders and soldiers involved in the operation. If in a given operation, certain material limitations, geographical specificities, or procedural carelessness will cause an elevated risk of harm, the duty no longer stands. Objections Many critics object to drones on the grounds that civilians sometimes are killed in drone strikes—because of this unjust risk to civilians, they argue that the use of drones cannot be justified. I will first respond by emphasizing that my argument deals with minimizing risk, not eliminating risk altogether. To eliminate risk completely would be to advocate for pacifism. We need to compare the risk that drones pose to civilians to the risk that other weapons and armed operations pose to civilians. Recent figures indicate that in comparison to conventional measures, drone strikes have ranged from slightly to far less lethal in producing collateral damage.[19] The above objection can take on a more nuanced character, deserving a different response. Perhaps critics feel an intuitive discord between the very precise capability of the drone and the fact that it nevertheless produces civilian collateral, damage which seems to imply carelessness in drone operations. To respond to these critics, I argue that their concern has more to do with mishandling and reckless use of the technology than with a problem with the technology itself. This kind of criticism is not unique to drones; any weapon can be used well or poorly. However, I contend that because drones are known for their precision, concern over rates of collateral damage may be even more relevant than in the case of use of other weapons. As such, elevated numbers of civilian casualties may be an indication of faulty intelligence or careless policy. I reiterate that the duty to use drones is only prima facie: if drones cause or exacerbate harm—either as a result of material factors or policy faults—then the duty to use them is dissolved. Indeed, I would agree with critics that these cases call for rigorous reassessment of policy and procedure. However, I would highlight that by focusing on drone technology in discussing this problem we misplace responsibility by blaming the weapon for the faults of its operators. In his 2006 essay “Terrorism and Just War,” Michael Walzer advocates for targeted killing as a counterterrorism measure. He acknowledges that counterterrorism occurs in the grey area between war and law enforcement, and usually away from active war zones. In his view, to keep the effects of counterterrorism from resembling the effects of terrorism, it is the duty of counterterrorist fighters to take extensive measures to prevent civilian casualties. For it is the care and protection of civilians that distinguishes legitimate counterterrorist activities from the illegitimate engagement of terrorists, as terrorists do not operate with similar notions of “collateral damage.” Walzer believes this care for civilians should be upheld even more so in the case of targeted killings because they are activities outside of wartime. He concludes that “what justice demands is that the army take positive measures, accept risks to its own soldiers, in order to avoid harm to civilians.”[20] While I believe that the motivation for Walzer’s argument is noble, it rests on a false premise. For, when read carefully, we observe that Walzer takes risk as a sort of sliding scale oscillating between the two extremes of risk to soldiers or risk to civilians. Rather, it is possible to work to minimize risk for civilians without this occurring at the expense of soldiers, minimizing risks for both parties. Walzer does not seem to entertain this possibility. However, when used with due care, the drone is the most precise weapon that we have in our arsenal. Its use would minimize risk to civilians while simultaneously eliminating risks to soldiers as well. If this is truly the case, then there does not seem to be a reason that, by his criteria, Walzer would object to their use. It does not seem that acknowledging the duty to avoid harming civilians would necessarily preclude the duty to avoid harm to soldiers. Again, however, my argument for the use of drones is only a prima facie. If it is indeed the case that more civilians would be harmed by the use of drones, either due to material limitations or reckless policy, then they should not be used. Many critics argue that if drones make targeted killing easier and less risky to soldiers, states will undertake more targeted killings than they would otherwise. They worry that the easy, efficient, and asymmetric nature of drone engagement may cause operators to ignore or forget that killing is only permissible when absolutely necessary to prevent greater harm. In turn, criteria for appearing on a hit-list for such targeted killings could become weaker and weaker. Walzer expresses this concern in his essay “Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare.” He writes, “why should we think it different from the sniper’s rifle? The difference is that killing-by-drone is so much easier than other forms of targeted killing. The easiness should make us uneasy. This is a dangerously tempting technology. It makes our enemies more vulnerable than ever before, and we can get at them without any risk to our own soldiers” (italics added).[21] Therefore, he and likeminded observers assume that when there is lower risk to military personnel, the “necessity” threshold for pursuing a targeted killing would be lowered. My immediate response to such an objection is to specify that I do not argue for a blanket duty to use drones. My argument only pertains their use in justified instances of self-defense. Just because drones are tempting to overuse or abuse, it does not follow that they will definitely be misused. In a similar vein to my previous responses, I emphasize that the key is a consistent and honest drone policy, with transparency and accountability. If states consistently hold themselves to a high bar of certainty required to permissibly engage in a targeted killing, then temptation does not have to materialize into a dubious precedent. Similarly, some critics contend that the remote warfare aspect of drones will create a “video game mentality” in its operators, emboldening them to undertake even more risks. This notion, however, is simply untrue. According to a 2011 Department of Defense study, drone operators experience depression, anxiety, and PTSD at rates similar to combat pilots.[22] In the Atlantic article “The Killing Machines,” Mark Bowden, after conducting interviews with drone pilots, describes why these pilots experience such emotional distress. Combat pilots are not responsible for long-term intelligence collection, and are trained to leave the scene as soon as their missions are complete. On the other hand, a drone operator is responsible for collecting intelligence. This operator may observe the same person for months, becoming intimately familiar with the target’s daily life after seeing him with his friends and family. What’s more, the drone’s camera feed continues after a missile is launched. Drone pilots witness “the carnage close-up, in real time—the blood and severed body parts, the arrival of emergency responders, the anguish of friends and family…War by remote control turns out to be intimate and disturbing.”[23] One might also worry that justifying targeted killing with the logic of preemptive self-defense fails to address the combatant-noncombatant ambiguity previously discussed in reference to the military paradigm. For, if someone is killed before he commits a wrongful action, doesn’t that indicate that his killing could have only been status-based? I respond to this objection by reiterating that self-defense operates on the logic of action-based liability. While not immediately obvious, planning a deadly attack is a type of wrongful action severe enough to warrant liability to death, as it increases the likelihood of harm to a innocent people.[24] In this way, the assailant’s status is irrelevant; it is the nature of the threatening action that allows permissible retaliation. However, because of the preemptive nature of the response, there will always remain some uncertainty—indeed, the assailant could have had a change of heart and not followed through with the planned attack. Given this uncertainty, it is necessary to set the epistemic bar rather high when assessing the true likelihood that a suspected assailant will follow through with the threat. Indeed, extended surveillance should be used to ensure—to a degree of near certainty—that the targeted individual’s outward behaviors definitively imply intention to carry out an imminent attack. This would be possible with use of a drone, since it carries intelligence gathering capabilities. Ultimately, we should make quite certain that the assailant is truly preparing an attack for which killing them would be proportional to prevent the harm to innocents. In sum, my responses to these five objections follow a specific trend, emphasizing the need for stringent procedural constraints in use of drones, a high epistemic bar for identifying targets who pose a threat before proceeding to killing, and conducting the strikes with tremendous care for the welfare of civilians. I believe that if the policy for targeted killings was transparent, rigorously regulated, and strictly followed, the objections discussed above would be void. Conclusion In this essay, I have demonstrated that whenever targeted killing is permissible as an act of national self-defense, states have a duty to use drones to carry out the attack. In support of this argument, I have explained that the logic of self-defense is better applicable to targeted killings than either the logic of military conduct or of law enforcement. As the self-defense paradigm requires use of means which reduce risk to all parties involved, drones stand out as the obvious choice—precise, remote weapons which reduce the risk of harm to both soldiers and civilians. Finally, I responded to several objections to drone technology, ultimately concluding that strict and thoughtful procedures with regards to the technology’s use could allay critics’ overarching unease. Endnotes [1] Term of art meaning “just conduct during war.” [2] This is not to conflate the version of jihad that means “holy war” with its broader meaning: that is, a spiritual struggle within oneself against sin. [3] Jeff McMahan, “Targeted Killing: Murder, Combat or Law Enforcement?” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, eds. Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 142. [4] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,”142. [5] This is a long-standing military convention, explicitly defined in by the United States’ “Military Commissions Act of 2006,” to respond to the lack of its explicit codification under the Geneva Convention. [6] Under the Obama administration, this power was transferred to the Pentagon, thereby placing drone strikes under military jurisdiction. However, this policy was reversed in March 2017 by the Trump administration, placing drone strikes in the jurisdiction of civilians again. See Mark Bowden, “Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, and “Trump Gives CIA Authority to Conduct Drone Strikes,” Reuters. [7] Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 15, no. 6 (July 1972): 123-44. [8] Michael L. Gross, “Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence?” Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (August 2006): 325. [9] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,”135; Claire Finkelstein, “Targeted Killing as Preemptive Action,” in Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, eds. Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 179. [10] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139. [11] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139 [12] Bradley Jay Strawser, “Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles,” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (December 2010): 346-7. [13] Michael W. Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever,” The Atlantic, August 21, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/drones-actuallythe-most-humane-form-of-warfare-ever/278746/. [14] Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever.” [15] Mark Bowden, “The Killing Machines,” The Atlantic, September 15, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-aboutdrones/309434/. [16] Lewis, “Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever.” [17] Bowden, “Killing Machines.” [18] Daniel L. Byman, “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice,” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-weapon-ofchoice. [19] Bowden, “Killing Machines,” The Atlantic. [20] Michael Walzer, “Terrorism and Just War,” Philosophia 34, no. 1 (2006): 9. [21] Michael Walzer, “Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare,” Dissent Magazine, January 11, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/targeted-killing-and-drone-warfare. [22] James Dao, “Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do,” The New York Times, February 22, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilotsfound-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html. [23] Bowden, “Killing Machines.” [24] McMahan, “Targeted Killing,” 139. References Bowden, Mark. "The Killing Machines." The Atlantic, September 15, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/ . Byman, Daniel L. “Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice.” Brookings (blog), November 30, 2001. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-weapon-of-choice/ . "Charter of the United Nations: Chapter VII." United Nations. Accessed November 20, 2018. http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii/ . Dao, James. "Drone Pilots Are Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do." The New York Times, February 22, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilots-found-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html . Finkelstein, Claire. "Targeted Killing as Preemptive Action." In Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, 156-82. Oxford University Press, 2012. Gross, Michael L. “Assassination and Targeted Killing: Law Enforcement, Execution or Self-Defence?," Journal of Applied Philosophy 23, no. 3 (August 2006): 323-35. Lewis, Michael W. "Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever." The Atlantic, August 21, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/drones-actually-the-most-humane-form-of-warfare-ever/278746/ . McMahon, Jeff. “Targeted Killing: Murder, Combat or Law Enforcement?” In Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World, edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman, 135-55. Oxford University Press, 2012. Nagel, Thomas. "War and Massacre." Philosophy and Public Affairs 15, no. 6 (July 1972): 123-44. Strawser, Bradley Jay. "Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles." Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (December 2010): 342-68. Singh, Kanishka. "Trump Gives CIA Authority to Conduct Drone Strikes." Reuters, March 13, 2017. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-cia-drones-idUSKBN16K2SE . U.S. Congress, House. Military Commissions Act of 2006. HR - 6166, 109th Congr., 2nd sess. Introduced in Senate September 22, 2006. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/150084.pdf . Walzer, Michael. "Targeted Killing and Drone Warfare." Dissent Magazine, January 11, 2013. Accessed November 20, 2018. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/targeted-killing-and-drone-warfare . Walzer, Michael. "Terrorism and Just War." Philosophia 34, no. 1 (January 2006): 3-12.

In this essay, I engage with G.A. Cohen’s argument by analogy that proletarians are individually free. I grant that Cohen’s analogy successfully represents the world. I disagree, however, with his conclusion, and use Philip Pettit’s conception of freedom as non-domination to demonstrate that proleta The Individual Unfreedom of the Proletarian Cal Fawell University of Chicago Author Marko Winedt Hanci Lei Neil Sehgal Matthew Dowling Editors Spring 2019 Abstract In this essay, I engage with G.A. Cohen’s argument by analogy that proletarians are individually free. I grant that Cohen’s analogy successfully represents the world. I disagree, however, with his conclusion, and use Philip Pettit’s conception of freedom as non-domination to demonstrate that proletarians are individually unfree. Specifically, I argue that even though fewer proletarians leave the proletariat than possibly could, they are nonetheless “dominated”—and thus, each is individually unfree. This essay grants the accuracy of Cohen’s analogy, and from this assumption draws the conclusion that proletarians are individually unfree. In drawing this conclusion, this essay follows the style of modus ponens. It first argues for the conditional: if Pettit’s notion of freedom holds, then the conclusion Cohen draws must fail. It then argues that Pettit’s notion holds, showing that it accurately captures our intuitions on the subject. In arguing for the conditional, this essay contends that Pettit’s criteria for unfreedom are satisfied for each individual proletarian. In arguing for the antecedent, it demonstrates a number of intuitive considerations which support Pettit’s conception of freedom. From this, it concludes that each character in the room of Cohen’s analogy is unfree. Combined with the original hypothetical stance that Cohen’s analogy accurately relates to the world, it follows that proletarians are individually unfree. Download full text PDF (12 pages) In The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom , G.A. Cohen addresses the status of wage-earners whose only available resource is their potential to work for a salary; they are unable to produce the necessities of life themselves. These people are known as proletarians; the class of all such proletarians is known as the proletariat. Cohen begins with the view that since only a few proletarians are able to advance from the proletariat, proletarians—taken as a whole—are forced to sell their labor power. He denies, however, that this conflicts with his claim that “most proletarians are not forced to sell their labor power,” justifying this denial with an analogy: Ten people are placed in a room the only exit from which is a huge and heavy locked door. At various distances from each lies a single heavy key. Whoever picks up this key—and each is physically able, with varying degrees of effort, to do so—and takes it to the door will find, after considerable self-application, a way to open the door and leave the room. But if he does so he alone will be able to leave it. Photoelectric devices installed by a jailer ensure that it will open only just enough to permit one exit. Then it will close, and no one inside the room will be able to open it again.[1] The structure of this analogy is relatively simple. A group of people are imprisoned, all are initially able to escape, but ultimately only one is allowed to do so. He draws out the significance of this analogy by saying that: Whomever we select, it is true of the other nine that not one of them is going to try to get the key. Therefore it is true of the selected person that he is free to obtain the key, and to use it. He is therefore not forced to remain in the room. But all this is true of whomever we select. Therefore it is true of each person that he is not forced to remain in the room, even though necessarily at least nine will remain in the room, and in fact all will.[2] Here, Cohen alludes to the crucial assumption that whoever attempts to exit the room will not be interfered with from this task by the other occupants (elsewhere: “…each is free to use [the means of egress], since, ex hypothesi, no one would block his way”[3]). Cohen uses this analogy to argue that every individual in the proletariat is free to leave it. He neatly introduces this line of thought by saying that “there are more exits from the British proletariat than there are workers trying to leave it. Therefore, British workers are individually free to leave the proletariat.”[4] He calls this “argument 7.” Analogously: just as any chosen member of the room is able and free to leave it, Cohen believes that this same freedom applies to any—and therefore every—member of the proletariat. Yet, Cohen understands that “there is a great deal of unfreedom in their situation.”[5] He invents a term for this unfreedom, naming it “collective unfreedom,” which describes the case in which “not more that one can exercise the liberty they all have.”[6] Cohen uses this device to explain our intuitions about the unfreedom of this situation, ultimately claiming that “there are very few exits from the British proletariat and there are very many workers in it. Therefore, British workers are collectively unfree to leave the proletariat.”[7] He calls this “argument 8.” Cohen means to hold argument 7 (that proletarians are individually free) and argument 8 (that proletarians are collectively unfree) together in a state of non-contradiction in order to satisfy our intuitions about freedom on both collective and individual levels. It is the aim of this essay to show that, on the contrary, argument 7 fails. To do this, Philip Pettit’s conception of liberty as non-domination is enlisted. In short, Pettit holds that X dominates Y if X has the capacity to interfere on an arbitrary basis in certain choices that Y is in a position to make. There are three components to Pettit’s view of domination: one is dominating if they have (a) a capacity to interfere, (b) on an arbitrary basis, (c) in certain decisions another is able to make. Critically, domination is an inherently potential characterization of unfreedom. It is the capacity for a certain kind of interference, not the interference itself. With respect to (a), the capacity to interfere, Pettit claims that this interference must be intentional and must worsen the other’s situation. He claims as much when he says that “when I interfere I make things worse for you, not better. And the worsening that interference involves always has to be more or less intentional in character: it cannot occur by accident.”[8] Thus, in situations where only accidental or positive interference is possible, it violates Pettit’s view to say that there is domination. In describing how a choice situation may be worsened, Pettit provides three variables: options, expected payoffs, and outcomes. Understanding the idea of worsening options is pretty straightforward—Pettit explains this as “changing [for the worse] the range of options available.”[9] For our purposes, the elimination of options fits this criterion. By “worsening the expected payoffs,” Pettit means the attachment of punishment to a certain course of action in order to discourage it. By “worsening the outcomes,” Pettit means attaching punishment to a course of action that has already occurred in order to negatively affect the actual payoffs. Pettit qualifies (b), the condition of arbitrariness, by studying the relative locations of the agent deciding and the person affected (“the other”). He understands an act to be arbitrary if “it is subject just to the arbitrium, the decision or judgment, of the agent,” and moreover, that the action is done “without reference to the interests, or the opinions, of those affected.”[10] In other words, an arbitrary action is one which denies the status of the affected party as a meaningful human being by disregarding their wants and needs. On the other hand, Pettit sees non-arbitrary decisions as those which track, or take into account, the preferences and welfare of the people liable to interference. Pettit explains (c), or “certain decisions the other is able to make,” as a way of compartmentalizing different domains of freedom and domination. He says that the most salient aspect of this clause “is that it mentions certain choices, not all choices. This highlights the fact that someone may dominate another in a certain domain of choice, in a certain sphere or aspect or period of their life, without doing so in all.”[11] In other words, the other can be dominated at work while free in the home, or vice versa; the other can be dominated politically or socially, but not in their decisions of which music to listen to, etc. Pettit holds that domination—and therefore, freedom—can vary in extent, intensity, and across different domains. Domination can be in the form of absolute power over another in many critical domains, limited ability to interfere in largely inconsequential domains, and everything in-between. The intensity of domination varies along both of these dimensions, and though Pettit fails to give an explicit framework for determining an order of severity, he acknowledges, at the very least, that loose hierarchies exist. It is critical to understand that Pettit’s conception of domination is such that interference does not need to be actual in order for there to be unfreedom. At the heart of this view is the fact that the mere ability to interfere engenders unfreedom through domination. He writes that: The possession by someone of dominating power over another—in whatever degree—does not require that the person who enjoys such power actually interferes...it does not require even that the person who enjoys that power is inclined in the slightest measure towards such interference. What constitutes domination is the fact that in some respect the power-bearer has the capacity to interfere arbitrarily, even if they are never going to do so.[12] Here, Pettit explains that unfreedom can occur even without actual interference. Not only does he believe this, but also that unfreedom can occur even where actual interference seems very unlikely. He strongly emphasizes that the mere ability of arbitrary interference, however “small” that interference may be, causes a proportional amount of unfreedom. It is now possible to apply Pettit’s view to Cohen’s analogy. In Pettit’s view, any one person in the room is dominated by any other person in the room. This is true because each person has the relevant capacity to interfere in the relevant way with every other person. Suppose we initially select one person from the hypothetical room, as Cohen does. It is true that they have the capacity to interfere in the relevant sense—intentionally and harmfully. This person could choose to leave the room, thus rendering every other inhabitant finally trapped. In Pettit’s terminology, this certainly worsens their choices, since it removes their choice to leave the room. It is especially clear that this is a worsening of their choices when one recalls that the room stands for the proletariat, and exiting it stands for ascending to a higher class. It is further possible that this person could make their exit in order to intentionally worsen the lives of the other occupants. There is nothing stopping the person from growing resentful of their peers, and seeking to harm them by leaving the room for the sake of finally imprisoning them. Even if this sounds unlikely, it is important to remember that “what constitutes domination is the fact that in some respect the power-bearer has the capacity to interfere arbitrarily, even if they are never going to do so.”[13] Domination is not a question of probability, but rather capacity. Thus, by having the ability to leave the room, the selected person has the ability to intentionally interfere in the lives of the others for the worse. Second, this person may perpetuate this act on a totally arbitrary basis. Nothing forces the person to track the interests of the other occupants of the room when deciding whether or not to leave. They are free to make their decision to leave without any regard for the wants or needs of the others, and can reason purely from their own preferences and needs. Thus, the selected person has the capacity to interfere arbitrarily. Finally, their interference is, indeed, in “certain choices that the others are willing to make.” It is a real decision whether or not the others choose to leave the room. The capacity to arbitrarily interfere centers on this very locus of choice, and thus meets the third criteria for domination. Therefore, the selected person has the capacity to interfere—on an arbitrary basis—in certain choices that the others are in a position to make. But this is just the definition of domination—thus, the selected person dominates the others, which means that each of the others is in a position of domination. In Pettit’s view, this amounts to saying that each of the people in the room is unfree. But as Cohen writes, all this is true of “whomever we select.”[14] Thus, each person in the room dominates all the others, which means every person in the room is in a position of domination. Therefore, every person in the room is individually unfree. This conclusion is the negation of Cohen’s in his “argument 7.” It is worth briefly noting that Pettit generally formulates the dominating relationship between persons. He says that “while a dominated agent, ultimately, will always have to be an individual person or persons, domination may often be targeted on a group or on a corporate agent: it will constitute domination of individual people but in a collective identity or capacity or aspiration.”[15] Thus, the fact that the chosen agent is able to arbitrarily interfere in the same particular domain of choice for multiple other people does not mean it is not domination. A more serious objection to the claim that each person in the room is dominated and therefore unfree, however, is the thought that reciprocal domination over an identical domain of choice is impossible. It seems, prima facie, that because each person is dominating all the others just as much as the others dominate them, all have the same choice options; since the idea of domination seems to intuitively rely on asymmetrical relationships, it would seem that the idea of reciprocal domination is internally inconsistent. This worry may be mitigated in a number of ways. First, it is important to keep in mind the precise definition of domination: X dominates Y if X has the capacity to interfere, on an arbitrary basis, in certain choices Y is in a position to make. There is nothing in this definition which logically excludes it from being a reflexive two-place relation. The intuitive connection with asymmetry can be explained by the fact that the capacity for arbitrary interference is often made possible by asymmetries such as wealth, power, status, and others. Though this is the case, Pettit explicitly mentions that reciprocal power to interfere may be used as a strategy for achieving non-domination. He mentions two possibilities: defense and deterrent. He writes that “the strategy of reciprocal power is to make the resources of dominator and dominated more equal so that, ideally, a previously dominated person can come to defend themselves against any interference on the part of the dominator.”[16] In other words, the dominated party would be able to use their resources to counter the arbitrary interference of the other, and thus, this very possibility would eliminate the capacity of arbitrary interference and dissolve the dominating relation. However, it is not clear how this defensive interference would be possible in Cohen’s analogy, since he assumes that if one tried to leave, “no one would block his way,” and once the original person left the room, no one else could leave in order to finally imprison them.[17] By the very nature of this particular kind of interference, defensive interference—within Cohen’s analogy—is impossible. Pettit himself admits that the “ideal” of defensive interference will rarely materialize. Instead, he discusses retaliation as a second way of using reciprocal power to reduce domination. He says that the dominated agent may be able “at least to threaten any interference with punishment and to impose punishment on actual interferers.”[18] Cohen’s analogy, however, does not speak to such retaliatory interference. Given that the others would be locked in the room, it is hard to see how they would be able to affect the escaped person. Here, though, the analogy breaks down, since there is nothing necessarily physically separating someone who “recently exited the room” (e.g., joined the corporate workforce, or gained control of a company) from the wrath (e.g., physical attack) of their previous fellows. Still, it is not the original situation of reciprocal domination which engenders the possibility of retaliation. The relevant kind of domination—that is, leaving the room and trapping the rest—does not enable retaliation. Ultimately, then, this response has no bearing on the claim that the reciprocal domination must be self-annihilating, since it is not in virtue of this that retaliation is possible. For example, suppose that A and B work in a factory. A hates B, and so A decides to harm B by getting promoted to become the owner of the factory—eliminating B’s ability to do so. B cannot retaliate by also coming to own the factory. The job has been filled; the “room” has been “exited.” Yet, B can destroy A’s property, harass A’s person, or even threaten A’s life. This retaliation does not stem from the original position of reciprocal domination. Thus, Pettit’s only two ways that reciprocal domination might eliminate itself do not find application in Cohen’s scenario. We may safely conclude, then, that all the people in the room are dominated by at least one (and in fact all) of the others, which just means—in Pettit’s view—that each person in the room is individually unfree. It will now be the aim of this essay to motivate Pettit’s view independently from its application to Cohen’s argument. I shall do this by arguing that, even on the negative view of liberty, it is intuitively desirable to expand the horizon of freedom from mere non-interference to non-domination in Pettit’s sense. To begin with, certain kinds of obvious unfreedoms cannot be recognized as such under a negative conception of liberty which only recognizes interference as unfreedom. For instance, consider a slave whose master has not exercised their capacity to arbitrarily interfere in the slave’s life for the worse, and gives no indication that they ever will. Obviously, the slave is unfree, for the slave is a slave. Pettit remarks that: The observation that there can be domination without interference connects with the theme highlighted in the last chapter, that slavery and unfreedom is consistent with non-interference: that it can be realized in the presence of a master or authority who is beneficent, and even benevolent.[19] In other words, the example of the slave under a benevolent (non-interfering) master shows first that a strictly negative view of liberty fails to account for this obvious instance of unfreedom. The strength of Pettit’s view lies in the fact that the reasons we conclude this slave to be unfree are simply that the criteria of domination are met—and this shows the intuitive strength of his view. In elucidating these intuitions, Pettit quotes Richard Price as saying that “individuals in private life, while held under the power of masters, cannot be denominated free, however equitably and kindly they may be treated.”[20] Like Pettit, Price focuses on the persons “under the power of masters,” though not actively interfered with. Being under the power of another, in Price’s sense, certainly seems to imply the master’s capacity to arbitrarily interfere. Analyzing the unfreedom of the slave leads Price to conclude that it is this capacity to be arbitrarily interfered with which engenders unfreedom. Pettit himself characterizes domination as leading to this kind of slavish relationship. In domination, he says, “the powerless are at the mercy of the powerful and not on equal terms. The master-slave scenario will materialize, and the asymmetry between the two sides will become a communicative as well as an objective reality.”[21] Pettit also finds examples of this intuition in Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Machiavelli describes the power of a free community as “the power of enjoying freely his possessions without any anxiety, of feeling no fear for the honor of his women and his children, of not being afraid for himself,” and Montesquieu defines liberty as the “tranquility of spirit which comes from the opinion each one has of his security, and in order for him to have this liberty the government must be such that one citizen cannot fear another citizen.”[22] In both characterizations of freedom, the common denominator is that when the conditions of domination are met—that is, when one has to “bow and scrape,” appease their dominator, and maintain “eternal discretion”—there is personal unfreedom (and vice versa). In other words, it is strongly intuitive to claim “freedom if and only if non-domination.” What Pettit’s definition does is make this intuition explicit. Pettit’s view is further strengthened by accounting for the intuition that a state of freedom should foment equality among the agents by whom it is enjoyed. Pettit often alludes to this intuition by showing the converse: in a dominating relationship, the individuals are not able to look each other in the eye. The dominated person may only assert their equality on the pain of being interfered with, which is to say, they cannot. Similarly, the dominating agent’s power suggests a condescending mindset. More to the point, it seems that domination dehumanizes the dominated, while non-domination forces the would-be dominator to see the other as a person. Pettit says that in a state of non-domination, You do not have to live either in fear of that other, then, or in deference to them. The non-interference you enjoy at the hands of others is not enjoyed by their grace and you do not live at their mercy. You are a somebody in relation to them, not a nobody. You are a person in your own legal and social right.[23] Here, Pettit argues that when one is free from domination, one secures one’s personhood. By this argument, Pettit seeks to directly align non-domination with freedom, as opposed to appealing to the converse, as above. Non-domination seems to imply fundamental equality and restores the relationship to that which holds between equal persons, instead of that which holds between master and slave. Because non-domination shares this intuitive property of freedom, and because of the (above) strong intuitions that the conditions for freedom are those of non-domination, Pettit’s view of freedom of non-domination ought to be accepted. Finally, it should be noticed that the intuitive support for Pettit’s conception of freedom does not trivially apply to the people in Cohen’s analogical room. Since the people in this room are on equal standing, it may seem like there is no room for the master-slave relationship to emerge, that people will be able to meet each other in the eye, and that there can be no degradation of personhood as there is when the domination is truly one-sided. A thought experiment will make clear how the intuitive strength of Pettit’s view holds, even in contexts like Cohen’s analogy in which there is reciprocal inter-domination. Imagine the following situation: persons A, B, and C are in the room. Person A wishes to have an affair with person C and afterwards leave the room. However, person B is jealous of this, and plans to leave the room as soon as the affair commences—if it does—in order to forever imprison A, denying A’s ultimate wish for escape. B makes this known to A. Now, A must appease B by not having an affair with C in order to fulfill their ultimate wish to leave the room. Thus, B dominates A, as A is unable to exercise their individual freedom: in order to exit the room, A must “bow and scrape” to B’s preferences. The mere fact that A also dominates B does not mean that A does not acutely feel the unfreedom of their domination by B. A cannot look B in the eye, because B stands between A and A’s desires. B’s whim determines the fate of A’s life. That A may leave the room, forever trapping B and C, does not negate this fact. All this thought experiment seeks to demonstrate is that the intuitions which locate freedom with non-domination are still present in Cohen’s analogy. Succinctly, these intuitions are first that someone is free if they are able to exercise their freedoms without the approval of another, and unfree if not (which is equivalent to defining freedom as non-domination). This is exactly the case in the analogy of the room: person A is unable to exercise their freedoms because they lack the approval of person B. Backtracking for a moment, the second intuition is that freedom as non-domination accords with the intuition that freedom produces equality. The inverse, that unfreedom induces inequality, also holds in Cohen’s room: precisely because of the possibility of situations such as the above thought experiment, the people in the room will be unable to look each other in the eye. Since this is the inverse, it is hardly a rigorous proof; however, even the inverse demonstrates a correlation between equality and non-domination which certainly does not malign the suggestion that they are equivalent. Suppose instead that the people in the room were individually free, as Cohen claims. Then they would enjoy equality amongst themselves, according to the rule: if there is freedom, then there is equality. When Cohen speaks of the possibility of solidarity among the members of the room—for instance, those who want to rise, not out of the proletariat, but with the proletariat—he asserts the possibility of the consequent, implying the situation is one of genuine freedom. However, two considerations must be noticed. First, the above thought experiment is meant to show that this possibility is nontrivial, and must be argued for. As the experiment shows, there is also a great possibility that there is profound inequality—an inability to “look each other in the eye”—amongst the members of the room. Insofar as this denies the consequent, it speaks to the possibility of the original situation being one of unfreedom. Second, it is important to remember that even if Cohen were able to succeed in proving the possibility of equality amongst the members of the room, it would be fallacious to conclude from this that they were free. Therefore, both of the original intuitions which support Pettit’s particular notion of freedom (respectively, the potentiality of interference and the relationship between freedom and equality) remain relevant to Cohen’s analogy of the room. Since these intuitions remain intact, Pettit’s concepts should still be held in the analogy of the room. Thus the individuals in Cohen’s analogy are individually unfree. Before concluding, it is worth noting that Cohen modifies his analogy in the same paper: in the modified analogy, exactly two people may leave the room. However, this modification leaves the above arguments unaffected. Indeed, as long as there are fewer exits than people in the proletariat, nothing changes. This is because the above arguments remain unchanged if we select two people at random, treat them as a single agent, and then in a similar manner proceed to show that the others are dominated by them, concluding that since they were chosen at random, all are dominated. Pettit has no problem with this kind of strategy, saying that “while a dominating party will always be an agent…it may be a personal or corporate or collective agent: this, as in the tyranny of the majority, where the domination is never the function of a single individual’s power.”[24] Thus, considering the dominating agent as an arbitrary group of people (the exact count of which equals the number of exits from the proletariat) rather than a single individual does not threaten any of the above conclusions. In conclusion, this essay first demonstrated that on Pettit’s view of freedom as non-domination, Cohen’s analogical backing for “argument 7” fails to prove that any proletarian is individually unfree. This is precisely because in this analogy, every person in the room is individually dominated. Assuming, with Cohen, that this analogy accurately represents reality, it is useful to step out of the analogy and towards what it depicts: Cohen begins by saying that there are more exits from the proletariat than proletarians leaving, and thus that any proletarian is individually free to leave the proletariat. Pettit’s view, however, shows how proletarians can hardly be said to enjoy freedom, since they are constantly threatened with losing it based on the arbitrary whims of their peers. Thus, holding Pettit’s view entails rejecting Cohen’s. This essay then argued for the intuitive strength of Pettit’s view, showing first that Pettit’s formulation of freedom matches with common, intuitive formulations, and then showing how the claim that ‘freedom is non-domination’ accurately tracks our intuitions about the relationship between equality and freedom. From this, in the style of modus ponens, it follows that the people in the room are individually unfree. Once again stepping out of the analogy, it follows that proletarians are each and all individually unfree. Endnotes [1] Cohen, G. A. “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 12, no. 1 (1983): 9. [2] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 10. [3] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 10. [4] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 13. [5] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 11. [6] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 11. [7] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 14. [8] Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010), 52. [9] Pettit, Republicanism, 53. [10] Pettit, Republicanism, 55. [11] Pettit, Republicanism, 58. [12] Pettit, Republicanism, 63. [13] Pettit, Republicanism, 63. [14] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 10 [15] Pettit, Republicanism, 52. [16] Pettit, Republicanism, 67. [17] Cohen, “Proletarian Unfreedom,” 10. [18] Pettit, Republicanism, 67. [19] Pettit, Republicanism, 64. [20] Pettit, Republicanism, 64. [21] Pettit, Republicanism, 61. [22] Pettit, Republicanism, 71. [23] Pettit, Republicanism, 71. [24] Pettit, Republicanism, 52. Bibliography Cohen, G. A. 1983. “The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 12 (1): 3–33. Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford Univ. Press, 2010.

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The Captain and the Doctor: On the Enchantment of Modern Men George LeMieux Author Alexander Gerasimchuk Fatima Avila Editors Though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England. Introduction Modern man is lost. He is not home to himself. He lacks the longings that great men once had. While Nietzsche, Rousseau, or Burke might better articulate or explore this problem, I intend to explore how it might be remedied, a possible antidote to our modern poison. From the Western canon, I have identified three such antidotes or rather three figures who might re-enchant the modern man, the man of the democratic age. They are the vanguard of Marx, the conqueror of Nietzsche, and the disciple, which is first constituted Biblically but later in Toqueville among others. I shall conduct this search through the metaphor of a ship’s captain, in this case, Captain Jack Aubrey as depicted in the celebrated series and film Master and Commander , which I will briefly outline. Before that outline is given, I will first justify this metaphor by the virtue of captaincy itself (despite the fact I would shoehorn this favorite film of mine into anything). Then in the aftermath, I will examine these three figures as our “captains.” In this examination, I hope to reveal that modern man may only be enchanted, or at least enchanted to humanity’s benefit, by a disciple. For our captain, only the disciple offers a path that does not self-destruct and looks beyond worldly motivation. A Metaphor Since there is a long and storied history of philosophers making use of the ship and other nautical nomenclature as metaphor for their sophisticated views on man, government, and what other nonsense comes to their minds, I see no reason to deviate from the tradition. For what is better than a ship with captain and crew? She, like her nation, must suffer through trial and tribulation, storm and battle. She must adjust her sails so that she catches the wind but not let loose so much as to rip her masts apart. She must have a rigid hull built to withstand cannon and carronade, but she must also have flexibility, lest the changing temperatures and humidity crack her hull. She must be led by a captain, strong and decisive in his command. Yet he must not be a tyrant. He must court the hearts of his men so that he may win their will. If not, his men will mutiny. The uninspired crew would have no other reason to entertain the otherwise insufferable conditions of life at sea. Indeed, I do think this will be a fitting metaphor. The Captain Captain Jack Aubrey of His Majesty's Royal Navy is a man caught between two worlds, between two times. Behind him is the aristocracy of old: kings, queens, lords, ladies, and government by the few for the many, at least ideally. In front of him stands modernity: merchants, naturalists, revolutions, counter-revolutions, Napoleon, the new world, America, and democracy. Such is the world of Captain Aubrey as depicted in Patrick O'Brian's novel and Peter Weir’s film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Jack is a man of tradition. He respects the Crown. He reads his scripture. He loves his country. Jack’s hero is none other than Duke and Admiral Horatio Nelson, a brave and sturdy man who dies defending his love of king and country. And yet Jack sees his idols, his pillars crumbling. He has witnessed the chaos of the revolutions in France. He holds the Burkean sentiment that it is the modern radicals that “despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; [...] they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’” It is this modern threat with its rights and revolutionaries that is epitomized by the two foils of the film. The first foil is the Acheron —the ship of the modern age. She is at the forefront of naval technological advancement. Her hull is braced by three layers of live oak and white oak, making her near impenetrable for any ship of her class. She is the largest of any frigate built, able to carry more guns, yet also more aerodynamic, “heavier, but faster spite it” (Weir, Collee). In every way, she outclasses the H.M.S Surprise , Jack’s nimble but aging frigate. And where is the Acheron built? Boston. While Peter Weir had the financial sensibility to make the antagonist of the film French, i.e. Acheron , Patrick O’Brian’s ship was called U.S.S Norfolk . It is with this name that the dichotomy O’Brian intended is much clearer. It is the new world and the old world, His Majesty and Mr. President. And the new world is winning. The second foil is not a figure of oak and iron but of flesh and bone. Doctor Stephen Maturin is the ship’s surgeon and a savant of a surgeon he is. He is also a naturist, collecting, diagraming, and recording the various species he encounters on the ship’s voyages. Upon the ship’s travel to the Galapagos Islands, the parallels to the young Darwin are evident. More important, however, than any of this, he is Jack’s best friend. Despite sharing little common interest, much less a common worldview, Jack confides in Stephen what he confides in no one else. Stephen, in turn, voices his dissent to Jack, when no crew member nor officer would otherwise dare. He is both his greatest ally and greatest challenger. He is the check to Jack’s ambition and the prosecutor of his reason. He is the liberal to Jack’s conservatism. He echoes the voices of democracy, of the social contract, and the danger of tyrants. His respect for Jack comes not from his title or station but from how he leads, how he governs. It is Stephen who most quickly becomes the radical, the revolutionary, when Jack steps out of line. The Jack we see at the film’s beginning is willing to die on the hill of order and naval tradition. He is unable to see anything but the objective of his mission. Stephen and even the other officers are unable to go as far. To Jack’s credit, it is his daring and force of will, despite insurmountable odds, that makes him a great captain. In his pursuit of the Acheron , Jack takes risks that make his moves unpredictable and effective; his crew calls him Lucky Jack for a reason. But those risks do not come without their costs, even if Jack is lucky more often than he is not. Eventually, Jack carelessly pursues the Acheron into a storm and loses a man and a mast in the process. Still, Jack does not turn tail, despite Stephen’s pleas. He refits and refocuses. Only by the film's end does Jack reform and he does so not through reasoning but out of his friendship with Stephen. When Stephen is injured in an accident on board (a marine shoots him while aiming for a bird), Jack sends his ship ashore to one of the Galapagos islands instead of continuing his pursuit, likely to his detriment. This act of compassion, as it turns out, is the saving grace of the Surprise. Not only is the Acheron spotted on the far side of the island, but Stephen inspires Jack on how to capture her. While Jack's act of compassion does not separate him from his ideology, it reveals a complexity in his nature. In not letting his warrior-like nature subjugate the other parts of his conscience, Jack demonstrates his command of self, making him a good captain in more ways than one. His compassion for Stephen, despite their differences, allows him to occupy a middle ground between old and the new, between those of high and low station, between those conservative and radical. Despite their differences, Jack and Stephen end their days together with music, with a duet, playing the cello and violin as the Surprise sails into the sunset. Looking at this time and this day, in this new world, one must wonder if such bonding, such good feeling, such balance between the conservative and the liberal is possible. Every day the position of the radical, of the accelerationist, becomes more compelling even to the conservative. In America, the rigging and line that once held hull and sail together have frayed and torn, not in the harshest winds but in their daily use. The physical lines that once held men together are now virtual, connections in the cloud and the internet. These lines between men were once tangible things; now, there are few of these left. The conservative now must ask himself what he intends to conserve and if he is capable of such conservation. With conservatives far to the right, liberals far to the left, and a confused chasm in between, can those old ropes hold society together any longer? Perhaps, it is time to cut the rope. Perhaps, it is time for both right and left to become radical. Or, perhaps, there is faith to be had in those old ropes. Perhaps, there could be a man to renew their strength, reorganize them, and apply a fresh coat of tar to protect them. Perhaps, there might be a man who could tie new ropes without cutting away the old. Is there such a captain for this ship of modernity? Is there a Jack who can reason with the moderns, take heed of their desires but not be dragged off course? What does such a captain look like? The Captain’s Virtue Before one can talk of any mystical quality a good captain must have, one must first talk about his primary obligation, his duty, his vocation. For if this station is not sound in virtue, the metaphor is not fit for its goal. A captain, such as Jack, is the leader of a warship and of its crew. He would not be a good captain if he could not sail, navigate, or command the ship in battle. He must understand every part of his command and responsibility. It was for such reasons that those men who became captains most often started their time at sea from their early teens as Midshipmen, who were responsible for commanding gun crews of sailors twice their age. It is this good practice, of physical strain and tangible purpose, that makes the vocation virtuous. Virtue is not found in sophistry or the professing of morality but in good works and deeds. Both Rousseau and Marx recognized that the “sensible” men of the world are not the magistrates but the “workers” and the “people.” In this way, the captain is a unique station. It is a position that reaches downward to the grit and servitude that is required but reaches up toward order and inspiration. On one hand, a captain must stand amongst his sailors and with his marines facing the enemy, taking with them every shot fired, equally as likely to be impaled by shrapnel and splinter, equally as likely to take grapeshot from a swivel gun, equally as likely to take a cannonball straight through his gut. On the other hand, a captain must reach upward. He must engage in strategy, diplomacy, and negotiation. He takes his orders from admirals, parliament, and the King. He must, with his officers, stand apart and govern the crew, making sure he does not fraternize with them or become too social. He must whip those who are insubordinate. And it is he who gives the parting sermon after his men die in battle. The captain is both above and below, a man who mediates between king and country, between God and his men. Vanguard For Marx, the nature of our captain is clear. He must be a vanguard, a man who can reach from the high to the low, from bourgeois to proletariat, a man who has the means to lead the proletariat to “acquire political supremacy” and “ constitute itself the nation” (Marx 488). The vanguard can not be of the lower classes as they do not hold the means of production or own sufficient property. The vanguard will not be the bourgeois socialist who wants “all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting from them.” That man would not lead nor fight in the “impending bloody conflicts” that the revolution requires. But the captain might. He, by virtue of his practice, gains access to the epistemic standpoint of the working man. He can call his men into battle because he will be in that battle himself, because he will stand in front, with pistol and cutlass in hand, because he knows their plight and their struggle. Yes, the captain might be the perfect vanguard, if he had the disposition and the courage required to lead the revolution. But no vanguard will heal or reinspire the whole nation. He will take the radicals he agrees with and burn the rest. The ideal vanguard may be the captain, the general, or some other man of higher but not so noble station, that comes down to act on behalf of the proletariat. But the unifying captain is, in the root of his position, opposed to such a severing. More fit, would be the treasonous first officer who leads a mutiny against the captain and the remaining loyal officers. To be a vanguard is to be a “slash and burn” farmer who wreaks devastation on the present vegetation so that the soil may be made fertile again. There will be no healing, under the vanguard. Conqueror Then perhaps the captain, who must fight to re-enchant our new world, must be a conqueror. The conqueror does not require a revolution, or at least not an ideological one, for the conqueror has no need for the traditional radical who operates on moral principles. He is not the vanguard who cries out to the poor that they must liberate themselves. The conqueror only asks for good men, inspired to fight for their home and fatherland, inspired to make something more of what they have been given. The conqueror rises in rank and comes to lead a nation because of his proven success on the battlefield. This captain inspires not because of his pleasant sailing or wise words but because he sinks ships. Nietzsche asks “[m]ust the ancient fire not some day flare up [...] More: must one not desire it with all its might.” Is it not blood that would surely wake the modern man from his slumber, wake the animal instinct inside of him? Perhaps the true conservative can only believe that “antiquity incarnate” arises through a conqueror, a superman, a Napoleon. And yet one must ask of Nietzsche, what is to happen after the conquest? What is to happen after one has conquered all he can or has been defeated? What was Napoleon to do, having failed in Russia? What was Alexander to do when he lay sick and dying in his bed? What is left to hold a nation together when the expansion has stopped and the wars have come to an end? How is a conqueror to at last govern his people? If the measure of man’s vitality is only to be strength and victory, then there will be no man who finds purpose in times of peace. When the soldier again becomes the carpenter after his service is done, he must now aspire to be the superman of carpentry. He must strike down all other table builders and door makers in his path if he is to achieve vitality. He will feel not for his fellow man, now that he does not need him to protect his flank or cover his advance. He will be a frustrated and lonely man, who, in his attempted rationalization to maximize his will and vitality, will frantically look around every corner to become the carpenter of all carpenters, betraying every man who gets in his path. Nietzsche might retort that one should not care for the carpenter, for all carpenters are weak men who failed to rise to a higher station. But if one is to build a society, does one not need the carpenter? Would it not be better to be his friend so that he may more willingly and caringly craft one’s furniture? Perhaps Nietzsche thinks that forcing the carpenter to build a chair would be better to maximize the will than to engage in normal transaction or to politely ask him. Society needs carpenters; a ship needs sailors. Neither will run well if every request is made out of threat or a difference in power. Sure power may be unequally distributed among men, and men will surely wield that power to their advantage, but every interaction need not be a Melian Dialogue . No unification of society, no mending of wounds, could ever take place in such a one-dimensional existence. Even if, for but a fleeting moment, conservative and liberal may be united by the fires of war, such a state is only temporary. While the ancient fires may rise again, they may just as quickly die. For all Napoleon was, how many more revolutions and fragile republics followed? There was no remnant of antiquity to build upon. Instead, it was democratic man who, upon the rubble of Europe, raised his new throne. In his time, Tocqueville correctly surmised that democracy would be here to stay: “I think that in the long run, government by democracy shall increase the real strength of society.” While “slave” in its morality, democracy is dominant in its presence. Its practitioners are no longer just the carpenters or even the priests; they are the captains, the generals, the senators themselves. While European antiquity lay unaware, the strength and size of America, of democratic power, grew. “Something that passed unnoticed a century ago now strikes the attention of all.” Now, antiquity not only lacks the popular momentum to overcome the democratic age, but it lacks the strength. If there is to be a man who rekindles the flame of the West, he will not be a conqueror who slays democratic man. He will be a democratic man himself. And What for God? Purposely absent from the mind of Marx’s vanguard and Nietzsche’s superman is the Kingdom of God. Nietzsche and Marx are the archetypes of, as John Courtney Murray would categorize them, “the postmodern atheist”. The post-moderns not only leave God out of their government, philosophy, and science as the moderns do; they actively strike Him out, act against Him, and demonstrate how He cannot exist. The postmodern is offended that a God could exist and (in Marx’s case) allow for so much scarcity, so much evil, or (in Nietzsche’s case) deprive man of his freedom, the will, that makes man human. God, if he exists, is either a tormenter, imprisoner, or both. Nietzsche further declares that the morality man claims to have derived from God, the morality of the Christian and the Jew is the greatest perversion of the natural order: strength and weakness. Good and evil, concepts of vengeful weaklings, invert the true “morality” by which man once lived and should live again. Of Marx’s and Nietzsche’s cases, Nietzsche’s is the stronger. When one eliminates God from the worldly equation, one must also eliminate the morality that came with Him. Marx may claim scarcity is the great evil, but this concept of evil only comes through sympathy for the suffering of others. What is the evil of inequality or greed or a dominant bourgeois class if there is no concern for fellow man? From where does the humanist goodness, ascribed by Marx to the elimination of suffering, originate? Without an order, ordained above and outside by divine authority, there can be no objective good. No worldly cosmodicy is sufficient to prove an objective good. If one’s ultimate goal is “good” for the nation, one cannot look to Nietzsche for a cure; the concept of good is, in fact, part of the disease. But if one looks to Marx, one cannot find a source of good. Therein, the postmoderns are fruitless. And democratic man seems to agree. The true moral plague is that democratic man is not looking for goodness but instead assumes it. The modern atheist does not kill God but walks away from Him. In His absence, he does not search for truth or morality but merely replicates the idea of good that was passed down to him. He imitates, but his imitations, as they are not rooted in the source, are imperfect: bastardized (Murray and Nietzsche agree). He might even hold some personal religious sentiment but will not act on religious conviction. He does not mix the personal with the external world. He will work, govern, and wage war but will never do so in the name of God. He lives as if God does not exist. This … breed says in effect that, since he cannot know what God is, he will refuse to affirm that God is. But this stupidity, one may well think, surpasses that of the idolater. It is not merely an implicit refusal of God; it is an explicit denial of intelligence. The essence of God does indeed lie beyond the scope of intelligence, but his existence does not. It is this modern man—the man who does not deny God but shoves him aside—that has become commonplace. This modern man feels neither the warm light of heaven nor the scorching hellfire below. He wanders in a cold fog, blind, deaf and dumb. He lingers in the cave only seeing shadows of the truth. Because he does not see the source of the light, he assumes there is no source and does not search for it. It is this modern man who must be re-enchanted. Disciple So how is our captain to deal with the moderns, with the Dr. Maturins that now sail aboard every ship? What is he to do with those who synthesize values of democracy and the equality of man but do not acknowledge the creator who created them equally? Thankfully, the modern agnostic, despite his lack of reason in comparison to the Nietzschean, has not yet thrown off his moral yoke. In some ways, he still feels a connection to the world beyond the material. There are yet some embers left to kindle. There are yet men left to kindle them. There is hardly any human action, however private it may be, which does not result from some very general conception men have of God, of His relations with the human race, of the nature of their souls, and the duties to their fellows. Nothing can prevent such ideas from being the common spring from which all else originates. If man is to truly be re-enchanted—to be inspired and given lasting direction—he must look to that only thing which is transcendent, that is not merely of time and matter. If there is ever again to be unity amongst men, there must be unity with their creator. There must be disciples to show us the way. When man has been enchanted, even democratic man, it has been with and through religious spirit, fostered by disciples and prophets. These men once walked among us. These were the men in between God and humanity, Heaven and Earth, men who heard His voice and acted on His will. They were Moses and Abraham and David and Paul and Peter. God even revealed Himself to man in mortal form, in and through man’s pain and flesh. And yet, despite all of these, man’s faith remains weak. The disciples' task is never finished. He may never stop, for if he does, man is quick to forget and quick to lose his way. He will lose himself in the desert, and never find the promised land, his true home, his self. The disciple must be an ever-present and ever-constant reminder of God. The captain, disciple in his most righteous form, has some divine spark, some glint in his eye, some Promethean fire in his bosom that animates bravery and fortitude. The captain calls his men to voyage into the unknown, across the far side of the world. He calls his men to fight for a home that long disappeared behind a horizon last seen thousands of miles ago. He brings together those born across the empire, those who share little, and those who resent much. The duty the captain must call his men to cannot be incentivized with the stuff of the earth. He can promise them no amount of riches or glory among men to keep them steadfast. There is something the captain must awaken in his men that moves their spirits, their souls, guiding them toward something not here attainable. Only manna sent down from upon high can quell a spiritual hunger. And so the Captain must be like Moses, the interlocutor between man and God—newly the interlocular between conservative and liberal. He does not make the manna nor the law in the heavens, but he does transmit them. He walks down from Sinai to deliver to those below. He understands the plight of his crew, the doctor, and the common man, but he does not let them build golden calves. He has ambition but he does not raise towers of Babble; he does not push onward without cause. Where have these disciples gone? Where is Moses to be seen? Who upholds the commandments given from on high? Might it not be the lack of disciples but man who is the problem? Have there been one too many golden calves built in town squares, one too many towers of Babylon raised to the mockery of Heaven? Are there enough ears today willing to hear a sermon, enough lips willing to say a prayer? I contend there are. While the world may not be presently enchanted, there have been moments, glimpses, of enchantment. There was Reagan who stood in the way of the communist threat with his quick wit but mild manner. There was Dr. King who appealed to the heavens, preached to the masses, and marched hand in hand with the persecuted. There was Churchill who looked the devil right in the eye and spat back at him. There was Lincoln who looked over a battlefield and made a promise those men would not die in vain. There was Washington who led his soldiers, served his time, and ceded his throne. It was these disciples that reminded man of himself, of his nature, of his longings. They called upon God, evoked a higher duty, and bound men to each other. They knew that “[r]eligion [...] imposes on each man [...] obligations toward mankind, to be performed in common [...] and so draws him away from thinking about himself.” Like a captain, those disciples, who were fit to suffer, suffered in common with their men when they could have stood afar. Dr. King marched with his men, was imprisoned for them, and died for them. Reagan too took a bullet for his nation, although he fortunately survived. Lincoln, in his service and his stress, aged himself twenty years in the span of four and was assassinated shortly thereafter, giving the last full measure of his devotion. Washington lost battles for months on end in the bitter cold until he found success in a Christmas night attack. Oh, the joy nations will feel when leaders acquire such courage again when they call upon the heavens as they did not so long ago. Oh, they will know that feeling that gathered hundreds of thousands on the National Mall, that mustered the men who crossed the Delaware, that had black and white Union soldiers singing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” as they marched surely to their deaths at Fort Wagner. Only then can man come home to himself. Conclusion Who is our captain to be? What direction would we have him take our ship? Must he not be both a man of the people and a man of the elite, a democratic man who still has a touch, a memory in him, of that antiquity, that nobility, that honor of old? Still, he is not the vanguard of the proletariat, for the vanguard is a mutineer hellbent on revolution, not a captain. Neither is he the conqueror, for the captain must govern his ship beyond the rush of battle. He must lead his crew through those many times at sea which are dull and mundane. He must care for his men beyond their use in warfare. He must be selfless because that is what God calls him to be in times of struggle, a disciple who looks upward before he looks onward. But if those fires are ever to rise again, if the trumpet must once again cry its song of battle, the captain must be ready. He must again be simply a man of his trade, a good seaman and a good officer. He must dexterously maneuver his ship, out-sail, and outsmart his opponents. And when he must call for cannon fire, he must know what to cry to his men. He must have their best, not just for him, but for their God, their nation, and their fellow man. JACK - Want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly? CREW- No! JACK- Do you want to call Napoleon your king? CREW- No! JACK- Want your children to sing The Marseillaise? CREW- No! JACK- Mr. Mowett, Mr. Pullings, starboard battery! References Burke, Edmund, et al. Select Works of Edmund Burke: A New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Liberty Fund, 1999. Marx, Karl, et al. The Marx-Engels Reader. Norton, 1978. Murray, John Courtney. “The Problem of God Yesterday and Today.” Georgetown University Library, 1963, library.georgetown.edu/woodstock/murray/1964c. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, Vintage Books, 1989. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract. Translated by John T. Scott, The University of Chicago Press, 2014. Tocqueville, Alexis De, et al. Democracy in America. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006. Weir, Peter, and John Collee. Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. Twentieth Century Fox, Aug. 2001.

Author Name < Back Unwitting Wrongdoing: The Case of Moral Ignorance Madeline Monge Should we blame and praise people for actions which they are ignorant of performing or which they take to be morally neutral? There are two competing theories for the moral assessment of ignorant agents. Capacitarianism focuses on whether an agent could have to have done something to not be ignorant but instead acquire moral knowledge. Valuationism determines an ignorant agent’s blameworthiness by looking at their values. Someone is blameworthy if they act within their values and still commit the harmful act. My paper makes three points. First, I examine how thought experiments revolving around moral issues are either written in support of, or as counterexamples to, the two theories of moral responsibilities. The description of these thought experiments causes the reader to lean in favor of what the theorist is trying to argue. In other words, these thought experiments function as intuition pumps. Second, reflection on the thought experiments used in support of the two theories of moral responsibility reveals that these theories, rather than being rivals, are two sides of the same coin. In this paper, I presuppose ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Knowledge I take to be a composite state that consists at the very least of three necessary conditions: truth, belief, and justification. This view, which can be traced back to Plato’s Theaetetus , claims that what distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief and lucky guessing is that it is based on some form of justification, evidence, or supporting reasons. The truth condition of the justified-true-belief analysis of knowledge states that if you know that p, the p is true. The truth condition need not be known; it merely must be obtained. The belief condition claims that knowing that p implies believing that p. Finally, the justification condition demands that a known proposition is evidentially supported. he justification condition prevents lucky guesses from counting as knowledge when the guesser is sufficiently confident to believe their own guess. Given that ignorance is the lack of knowledge and given that knowledge has at least three necessary conditions, there are many different sources of ignorance: lack of belief, lack of truth, and lack of justification. There are numerous psychological factors that can give rise to each of these three conditions. Among these psychological factors are forgetting, cognitive biases, miseducation, or lack of exposure. I presuppose this ignorance to be lacking knowledge. There is not only one type of ignorance, rather, there are two main classes of such: factual ignorance, and moral ignorance (Rosen, 64). There are various sources of ignorance from where factual and moral ignorance arise. When someone does not know, forgets, is lacking exposure to, is miseducated, does not retain, or misunderstands a given fact that cannot be disputed under any circumstance, they can become either factually or morally ignorant. These sources can be relieved with conscious effort, or by external involvement (Rosen, 302). Ultimately it is up to the agent to recognize errors that result from their ignorance. A debate surrounding the exculpating factors of moral or factual ignorance is important to understand. It is generally thought that immoral actions can only be exculpated by factual ignorance, but not moral ignorance. Factual ignorance hinges around objects of descriptive facts. I will be using an example of slavery in ancient slave-times to illustrate this concept. Let’s suppose someone lives next door to someone who has slaves but also does not know they are living next door to slaves. This would be a situation of factual ignorance because the neighbor does not know the fact that there are slaves living next door (Rosen, 72). It could be because they are unobservant, or because the slaveholder does a good job of keeping the slaves quiet; there is also the chance that the neighbor doesn’t care, is distracted by their own life, or denies their worry of believing that there are slaves. The slaveholder hiding slaves is an objective/descriptive fact that cannot be disputed. Even if they deny it, the slaveholder would still have slaves, and the descriptive fact would not change. On the other hand, moral ignorance arises when someone is ignorant of a moral fact. Moral facts are normative, and they prescribe courses of actions that are true simpliciter (Rosen, 64) . If the neighbor to the slaveholder knows that they are living next door to slaves, but does not know the slaveholder is harming them, this wouldbe moral ignorance. It is morally impermissible for the slaveholder to have and harm slaves. The neighbor should know the slaveholder is acting immorally by keeping and harming the slaves. Moral ignorance does not stop at the fact that the neighbor does not know it is morally wrong to harm people, but they may also not know they should do something about the harm. This ignorance of harm can be defined as, not knowing that an action may cause pain (harm) when one should know it does so. They also ought to know that, without good reason, harming people should be avoided at all costs because it is morally impermissible (Biebel, 302). Should the neighbor be exculpated because of factual or moral ignorance? If the neighbor does not know that having and harming slaves is morally impermissible, this could not be factually exculpated. This is a case of moral ignorance. The neighbor would be morally exculpated for their ignorance in this scenario because they are unaware that having and harming slaves is impermissible by moral standards (Rosen, 66). There is no opportunity for the neighbor to be factually ignorant. What prompts this type of ignorance? Perhaps the neighbor does not care that the slaves are being harmed, is distracted by other events, or is afraid of the repercussions that will incur because of speaking out against the moral injustice. The most important aspect of moral ignorance is to remember that it is prescriptive, and not descriptive. The argument of moral ignorance and blame revolves around what should or shouldn’t be done because of lacking knowledge. This is largely in part to the distinction between factual and moral ignorance. Factual ignorance may sometimes exculpate an immoral action, but it is ultimately moral ignorance that will exculpate an individual (Sliwa, 6). I. Capacitarian and Valuationist Assessments of Moral Responsibility: There are now several theories that concern moral ignorance: volitionist, attributivist, capacitarian, valuational, parity, and pragmatic. While all differ from one another in how they attribute blame to cases of moral ignorance, capacitarian, parity/pragmatic, and volitionism share a disposition of blame that focuses on someone’s capacity of knowledge (Biebel). Valuationalism and attributivism respond to blameworthy actions as being dependent on the personal volition of the agent. I’d like to classify these two categories as capacitarian and valuational. I will occasionally refer to specific points that individual theories make, but with the example of the slaveholder, I will continue the conversation with the two main theories. The capacitarian theories revolve around the counterfactual capacity that an individual has when deciding which action to take in a morally relevant situation that could’ve been prevented. They look at situations where someone is blameworthy. They want to know if it was in the agent’s capacity to correct or avoid being ignorant, and if this would have prevented them from performing the immoral action. Capacitarians consider people responsible for their actions if they are responsible for their capacity of behavior. People who lack the capacity for knowing what is morally permissible, say children, or people who are mentally incapable of retaining information relevant to moral standards, are not culpable for their immoral actions. They can be corrected, and may learn afterwards, but they are not blameworthy. They lack the ability to retain vital moral considerations. Capacitarians do not skip over the fact that people’s ignorance may be the reason they are acting immorally. If someone believes from their ignorance that what they did was the most rational and correct method of handling a situation of moral relevance, then they may be exculpated. However, this justification is only one part of the knowledge needed to have an accurate and knowledgeable conclusion. How a morally significant situation should be handled depends on someone’s capacity to know whether they had the opportunity to do something differently. This difference in choice may have changed someone’s ignorance into knowledge and prevented the immoral action. When someone is not aware why they are ignorant, they are also unaware of how they can resolve their lack of knowledge. This is the way capacitarian’s view moral ignorance to be exculpable, and encapsulates much of capacitarians’ concern. How can someone be blamed for not knowing a moral standard if they have never been socially conditioned or taught what the moral standard is? When I go over the varying vignettes that hone in on how the capacitarian theory can be utilized I will be able to further demonstrate the degrees of internal and external factors that influence moral ignorance, conveying how someone might come into the position to remedy their ignorance but lack the awareness or determination to do so. Arguing against the capacitarian theory is the valuationist theory. Valuationism responds to capacitarianism with a specific criticism. Capacitariansim uses immoral ignoramus as a clear reason to excuse someone from an immoral action, but valuationists believe that the capacitarian theory is too easily applied to every case of immorality. They do not think it is wise to exculpate someone who has forgotten or is unknowledgeable about morality. Valuationism approaches the topic of blame and exculpation surrounding immoral actions by looking at omission and forgetfulness. The theory considers omission and forgetfulness to lead to potentially harmful instances of ignorance. Harmful ignorance is when someone consistently shows blameworthy immoral actions. Valuationists trace the value systems and the past actions of agents to see what led them astray towards immoral actions. They look at recidivism rates, as well as values and virtues. Valuationalism investigates how people are held accountable for their actions and believe someone is only deserving of moral praise if they have reason to act morally. Moral responsibility is the condition of whether someone is praiseworthy, blameworthy, or excused from the former two because of their involvement in a moral act. Someone could also fail to act or omit an action. This is potentially why someone deserves a moral reward or punishment. Valuationists agree that psychological states may affect someone’s behavior to act accordingly during a moral situation. They see this as one component in the person’s link to act or neglect to act. Therefore, valuationists think it can only serve as a partial excuse for someone and is not a strong enough argument to exculpate them from a morally relevant situation. Psychological states in a valuationist framework does not make someone incapable of moral knowledge, nor does someone’s emotional attachment serve as a reason for someone to act immorally. Whether someone cares about an action does not render them more or less blameworthy. It may affect how much or little they will react, but it should not affect their moral assessment. Therefore, valuationalist’s believe that most people are, more often than not, blameworthy for their moral ignorance. If they have not responded in a morally kind manner to a situation, it’s because their values align with preconceived notions of their background. These preconceived notions are often the fundamental reasons for why someone acts immorally. Capacitarians avoid looking at an agent’s value system because they want to know if the immoral act could have been avoided, and if the agent could have prevented themselves from being ignorant in the first place. When we look at somebody's capacity to act, we are tracing their past actions and whether or not they had the ability to change their moral knowledge. Capacitarians rely on a history of someone’s actions. The values that arise from somebody's capacity to act are decided through the person's past actions from the moment they are born. Capacitarians look at past actions carefully because the culmination of them sets up the targeted subject that a valuationist uses to counter their argument. Values are deeply seated through someone’s past actions. The more they are reinforced through choice of action and external influences, the more established they become. The deeply seated beliefs that someone has grown into values are important for evaluating the response a person has to a morally loaded situation. We saw examples of this in the altered versions of the vignettes. Without the added context, a reader wouldn’t have been able to tell what the characters valued, nor what their guiding principles were. When we manifest actions as guiding principles, we are acting from a result of our values. These have been established by our capacities to act in the past. The values we are focusing on in this paper are intrinsic. For example, valuing education leads to being more productive in helping your children with their schoolwork and helping them improve when they need it. Valuing health means you likely eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly. These specific examples of intrinsic values provide a foundation for readers to rest on when making their own evaluative judgments. These intrinsic values lead to other good things, like, your children getting into a good school, and you living a life with bountiful opportunities because of your health. The Valuationist Theory focuses on such intrinsic values, and are meant for the valuationist to rationally conclude whether the characters in the vignettes are blameworthy or not. Values directly shape what people do and say. Their actions are subsets of behavior, and their behavior is a combination of capacities for potential action and values. Action is intentional behavior. Guiding principles of values will manifest as actions. The way we act is a subset of our values and that action is intentional. Each subset, whether planned or an unconscious reaction, is a value in disguise.Our actions are mostly intentional and based on our values, but sometimes they can be accidents due to forgetting. They may also be from a lack of capacity to change behaviors in the past and potentially due to a lack of values. II. Perspectives on the Assessment of Moral Responsibility with Respect to Capacitarian and Valuationist Approaches: In this next section, I will review various vignettes that scholars have introduced into the conversation of moral ignorance, discussing how our theory of moral responsibility will change depending on how the stories are described. I will be using a vignette from Alexander A. Guerrero’s 2007 article, “Don’t Know, Don’t Kill: Moral Ignorance, Culpability, and Caution”, which discusses the moral ramifications of poisoning someone with cyanide. I will also incorporate a recent, original vignette about the moral culpability of leaving a dog in a hot car. Both cases convey how the same set of events may be narrated in a way that supports the C or the V theory. . The support from these different theories is not derived from the event themselves but in how their contexts are described. Omitting and highlighting certain features will change which theory best explains whether someone should be blamed or praised. It is impossible to give a complete account of these theories in these vignettes, but we will be careful in fully describing each theory and embellishing. This will show which theory best explains each vignette. Both what could have happened and what is described will show whether one is morally blameworthy in the capacitarian sense. If a vignette lends itself to the capacitarian theory, it will focus on possible actions that could have changed depending on the capacity of the protagonist’s acknowledgement to do something differently. If the vignette falls towards the valuationist perspective, it is because of the protagonist’s present character traits and values. A. Case One: Guerrero’s Poison Let’s consider the case of Anne, who poisons Bill by spooning cyanide into his coffee. Anne believes she is spooning sugar, and she is blameless for her false belief. Is Anne blameless for poisoning Bill? Rosen concludes that an action done from ignorance is not a locus of original responsibility. This means Anne is only responsible for poisoning Bill if she is responsible for her ignorance about the fact that she is poisoning Bill. Guerrero has constructed a vignette that partially supports a theory where ignorance can be morally exculpated. What happens when details of the character’s capacities and values are introduced? I’m going to reintroduce Guerrero’s story with these details added to demonstrate the effectiveness of manipulating the story so the capacitarian or the valuationist theory provides a better explanation and justification of our natural inclination to blame the protagonist. B. Case Two: Guerrero’s Poison (modified) Let’s consider again the case of Anne, a single mother who is Bill’s girlfriend. Bill regularly comes over in the morning to share a cup of coffee because he has been dating Anne for a few months. After a long night of helping her children prepare for an important exam, Anne believes she is spooning sugar into Bill’s morning coffee and is unaware that she is poisoning him with cyanide. Anne does not know that last night after she went to bed exhausted from tutoring her children, she had a sleepwalking incident where she mistakenly poured out the sugar in the sugar dish and replaced it with cyanide. Afterwards, Anne went back to bed and did not remember what she did in the middle of the night. That morning while Anne was spooning poison into Bill’s coffee, he innocently read the morning news on his phone and did not give the sugar a second thought. Was it in Anne’s capacity to make sure she was spooning sugar and not cyanide into Bill’s coffee? If Anne does not regularly sleepwalk then we cannot expect it to be within her capacity to know that she ought to check the sugar dish just in case she had tampered with it the previous night. What about Anne’s values? We know that Anne values relationships and caring for others, as well as education. This is why she stayed up to help her children prepare for an exam, and also why she regularly invites her boyfriend over for coffee. Here Anne is not blameworthy for her ignorance, nor has she acted within a set of immoral values that would prompt her to poison Bill. This has never happened before to Anne. Anne has never sleepwalked a day in her life and has a consistent record of showing Bill hospitality and care. Under a valuationist’s account of moral blame, Anne would not be considered blameworthy because her actions do not align with her values, and after the incident, she continued to grieve and disapprove of her ignorance. She did not intend to cause suffering, nor does she value suffering. Anne unfortunately is the cause of Bill's death because she had a momentary lapse in her sleep routine which caused her to act involuntarily on account of ignorance. In this case, Anne would not be blameworthy by capacitarian standards, nor by valuationist standards. Anne is not originally responsible for poisoning Bill, and she would be considered morally exculpated. Based on what the story tells us about Anne’s character traits and values, one can see that she did not act with malicious intent. It was an honest mistake, and a serious accident. Even though Anne has never sleepwalked before, would it be reasonable to expect her to check her sugar before she gives it to Bill? I think it would be considered unreasonable for anyone to expect Anne to check her sugar because Anne does not have a past history of swapping out her sugar with other substances. If it were the case that Anne has sleepwalked before, and she has a past history of replacing her sugar with other substances, like salt, powder bleach, or baby powder, then it would be reasonable to expect her to check. If Anne had a history of swapping substances, then her negligence to check on the sugar dish would be an involuntary act in ignorance. In this vignette, how a capacitarian and a valuationist consider someone to be morally blameworthy or exculpated is revealed through the protagonist’s capacity and character traits. This example shows us that the capacity of memory to prevent a potentially harmfully ignorant situation is a mitigating factor in someone’s judgment of immoral behavior. Anne did not willfully act immorally and is not blameworthy for her involuntary action done out of ignorance (Alvarez & Littlejohn, 8). Both theories attribute a small degree of responsibility to the harm Anne has done, but not enough to judge her as being willfully ignorant nor morally culpable. Capacitarian and valuationist theories agree with each other in how they assess this vignette due to Anne’s isolated incident. Let us take another vignette to compare capacitarian and valuationist theories. In this next scenario we have the unfortunate event of a dog dying after being left in a hot car unattended for some time. C. Case Three: Hot Dog Imagine Mrs. Crawford is out running errands with her medium sized cocker-spaniel in the back seat. The dog is in good health, well-groomed and fed, and Mrs. Crawford sees to it that he is well taken care of. Today of all days Mrs. Crawford pulls into a parking lot with no shade to block out the sun from her car. There is no breeze, and it is ridiculously hot outside. Instead of bringing her dog into the store with her, Mrs. Crawford decides to leave her dog in the car with the windows rolled up. She reasons that the air-conditioner was on during the drive to the store, so the car is not muggy or hot. She also reasons that she will not be in the store for a long time because she has a list of things she wants to purchase. At this point in her decision, Mrs. Crawford locks the car and leaves for the store. Suppose Mrs. Crawford is making good time in the store. She is almost done picking out everything on her list and is careful not to get sidetracked. However, Mrs. Bailey sees Mrs. Crawford in the aisle over and makes her way to talk to her about some important matters. Mrs. Crawford is delighted to see and talk to Mrs. Bailey, and easily becomes swept up in her conversation. She remembers her dog is in the car but does not remember how hot it is outside because the store is well air-conditioned, aiding to Mrs. Crawford’s choice to talk to Mrs. Bailey for longer than expected. Now the dog is still outside in the hot car, and because it is not properly ventilated or shaded, the car quickly becomes extremely hot inside. The dog is soon unable to withstand the heat and becomes sick and passes out in the back seat before Mrs. Crawford returns from the store. Mrs. Crawford is mortified. She had no idea that leaving her dog unattended for as long as she did would result in its sickness. She quickly takes her dog to the vet. Here we have a vignette that sets up Mrs. Crawford to be morally exculpated by her ignorance if we are not considering her values or capacity to have made changes in favor of the dog’s life. We are now going to see another representation of this vignette with both capacity and values of Mrs. Crawford included. Within this next vignette, I will provide more background information that will show how someone's capacity can prevent ignorance from occurring or may cause someone's ignorance to flourish. I will also be including Mrs. Crawford's values, which will show whether-or-not by the valuation as to perspective that Mrs. Crawford is in fact acting in line with her values. D. Case Four: Hot Dog (modified) Imagine Mrs. Crawford is a steady workaholic. Mrs. Crawford decides to skip her dog’s walk and bring them to the store with her. She is alert, and well aware that bringing her dog with her might be a hinderance, but she does it anyway. Today of all days Mrs. Crawford pulls into a parking lot with no shade to block out the sun from her car. There is no breeze, and it is ridiculously hot outside. Instead of bringing her dog into the store with her, Mrs. Crawford decides to leave her dog in the car with the windows rolled up. She thinks she is doing the right thing by leaving her dog behind in the car and reasons that the air-conditioner was on during the drive to the store, so the car is not muggy or hot. At this point in her decision Mrs. Crawford locks the car and leaves for the store, confident that her decision was the right one. Suppose Mrs. Crawford is making good time in the store. She is almost done picking out everything on her list and is careful not to get sidetracked. However, Mrs. Bailey sees Mrs. Crawford in the aisle over and makes her way to talk to her about some important matters. Mrs. Crawford suddenly forgets about her need to complete her shopping trip in a timely manner. She forgets her dog is in the car, nor does she remember how hot it is outside because the store is well air-conditioned. Now Mrs. Crawford’s dog is still outside in the hot car, and because it is not properly ventilated or shaded the car quickly becomes extremely hot inside. The dog is soon unable to withstand the heat and becomes sick and passes out in the back seat before Mrs. Crawford returns from the store. When she returns, Mrs. Crawford is mortified. She had no idea that she had been talking to Mrs. Bailey for so long. She did not even think about her dog, or the possibility that leaving her dog unattended for as long as she did would result in its death. She quickly takes her dog to the vet. What can we understand about this scenario that is different from the original? With this new perspective, we can see that Mrs. Crawford was completely forgetful in the care of her dog. While she is a workaholic with a one-track mindset, her decision to bring her dog along seems out of the ordinary and not in line with her normal character traits. We can tell by this story that Mrs. Crawford values social relationships, which is why she stopped to talk to Mrs. Bailey, independence, which is why she went out to the store in the first place, and the well-being of others, hence her decision to leave her dog in the car. Did Mrs. Crawford have the capacity to change her course and make sure she took measures that would secure the safety of her dog? I believe so. She was not tired; she was not overcome with thoughts of work that would normally cause her to forget other obligations. She was distracted, but by something that she had the capacity to say no to. Here I would like to point out that Mrs. Crawford was in her right mind and within the right capacity to know that talking to Mrs. Bailey would disrupt her schedule of running errands. This change of schedule had the potential to possibly upset or cause extreme distress to her dog that she left in her car. Mrs. Crawford ought to have known that the dog in the car was the most precedent of her concerns. She knows that by moral standards her dog has moral worth and is a moral responsibility that she has tasked herself with. Mrs. Crawford is someone that knows the difference between morality and immorality, and she is fully aware that her dog has a right to life. By placing her own dog within harm's way, Mrs. Crawford showed not only ignorance of fact but moral ignorance as well. Since she did not know that she was possibly harming her dog by talking to Mrs. Bailey and staying within the store for an extra length of time. Mrs. Crawford would be considered morally blameworthy. She knew that her dog was in the car. Even though she may not have known that by leaving them in the car she was potentially endangering her animal, this shows moral ignorance because she did not consider her dog’s life to be worthy enough to take extended measures that would have ensured survival. From the capacitarian theory she is considered blameworthy, but considered innocent from the valuationist perspective. III. Capacitarianism and Valuationism are Two-Sides of the Same Coin: Before we start to cut deeper into each of the theories independently, I would like to point out that these vignettes show us how different theories about moral ignorance are more accurate attributions of blame, depending on how the story is told. The way an author prescribes a vignette will directly affect the way a reader chooses to apply a theory. The author’s choice to write objectively or subjectively will also affect whether a reader will approach the ignorant action with a mind of blame or exculpation. This mode of thinking is something we see in moral realism. There are two positions in moral realism that we might be able to categorize the capacitarian and valuationsist theories under. First, normative realism posits that ethical sentences describe positions that are grounded in objective features. Some of the objective features may only be true in that they report the descriptions accurately, such as “killing someone is bad”. These descriptions do not contain subjective opinions, which aids in their accuracy and helps to establish moral truths. Second, the version of metaethical realism that can be used to look at these theories states that, in principle, it is possible to know about the facts of actions that are right and wrong, and about which things are good and bad (Copp, 2007). This position depends on the subjective opinions of others to determine these aforementioned facts. Metaethical realism takes a more common-sense approach to ask questions like “should we reasonably expect someone to check the sugar dish before serving sugar?” The reason why we need to keep moral realism in mind while assessing capacitarianism and valuationism is because it directly affects our assessment of them. We can see that assessments about moral responsibility are sensitive to additions and omissions of information regarding capacities and values of the agents. With the incorporation of certain details about an agent’s past actions and value systems, a reader can be swayed to agree or disagree with certain theories of moral assessment. Certain details require someone to be objective or subjective in their interpretation of the events (Baumann, 2019). This can greatly affect how a story is understood by various readers. However the story is told, whether narrow or elaborate, the rationale behind omitting and adding detail will always have a direct effect on the reader’s intuition of the story. Depending on how the vignette is written, the reader can be manipulated to believe that certain events will result in one theory being more conclusive than another. What this shows us is that the philosophers who wrote the vignettes wrote them in a way to prove the point of their own theories. These vignettes function as intuition pumps. Anything the philosopher wants to say activates a reader’s intuitive approach to assessing a situation. While the capacitarian and valuationist theorists may focus on different characteristics of someone’s motivation, their approaches to assessments of moral responsibility are similar. Both look at the contexts in which the act was performed; however, they differ in which part of the context they think to be relevant in their assessments. Capacitarians consider the most relevant point of context of behavior and compare it to be the behavior leading up to the harmful act. The capacity of the agent is also dependent on their knowledge of their wrongdoing. Capacitarians ask whether or not agents could’ve done something differently in the past to prevent their immoral act from taking place. If they engage in a harmful immoral act, then it is a result of their ignorance. Whether to attribute blame to the agent who acted out of ignorance would depend on their capacity to know that there was some way they could have prevented themselves from doing so. If they did not have the capacity to know they were acting immorally, or that they could’ve prevented themselves from acting as such, then they would not be considered blameworthy. Thus, an agent acting out of ignorance without the capacity to know they are doing so would be morally exculpated. Valuationists choose not to look at the behaviors preceding the events and instead examine the value system of the agent. They do this because they think the value system of a person should be considered the relevant context of the moral assessment of an act (Arpaly, 2004). The community of moral theorists has situated these two theories in contexts of past actions or value systems. Up until this point, we have discussed these two theories independently, however, I would like to show how they are closely related. If a vignette focuses on the capacity or the value system of a person, then readers will be persuaded to agree with the theory that provides a better explanation of moral judgements concerning actions. For instance, the more detailed the information regarding the context of the agent, the easier it will be for us to apply a theory that best suits the framework. The information needs to highlight either the agent’s value system or the agent’s past actions. If the information in the vignette does not include any context for the reader, then it is natural for them to assume and fill it in themselves. The various assumptions that arise from different readers’ perspectives have the ability to lead to a deep disagreement about the moral assessments of actions. An under-described thought experiment gives you inconclusive information to fill in gaps that a narrow story leaves out. Without enough information, a reader must add their own information. When a reader substitutes the information missing in the vignette, it can pull people into a deep disagreement about the moral assessment of the agent. This makes it easy for a reader to feed into their own thoughts. A reader is then foolish for reading into the story what they hope to get out of it. This creates circular reasoning on the reader’s part. In all cases, different people will have different assumptions while reading the under-described thought experiment, which will inevitably lead to problems applying certain theories to each one. Unfortunately, there is no way to halt varying interpretations because it is unreasonable to expect anyone to be able to provide every possible angle that a situation can have. In other words, there is no way for the author to close the room for interpretation entirely. If a deep disagreement arises, then this must be a result of an author’s manipulation of the vignette. For a deep disagreement to form, the vignettes would need to have an unclear description of an agent’s past actions and capacity or an unclear description of their value system because this would pin the capacitarian and the valuationist standpoints against each other. When the contexts of the past actions and value systems are clear and detailed in a vignette, it is unlikely that a deep disagreement will occur. Rather than finding a clash of theories, the verdicts would be expected to converge due to their connection. Throughout this paper I have been providing a route to view the literature of moral assessment to show how the valuationist and the capacitarian approaches are in competition with each other. However, I think this view wrongly pins the two theories against each other. The values that a person has will manifest itself in their actions, likewise, their actions are guided by their values, whether consciously or unconsciously. When we lay out this connection, we can see how someone’s past actions and value system are actually connected. With that said, I think it would be in our best interest not to play the two against each other, and instead show they are dependent on one another. This holistic/detached perspective demonstrates how these two theories are two sides of the same coin. IV. Conclusion: The more a vignette spells out a history, the more we get a sense of the value system of the person involved. Any value system shapes how people perceive information and influences their decisions. This means it also influences their intuitions and builds peoples’ overall foundations for actions. How a person has acted up to the point of the scenario usually tells us the story of the person's value system. Here we get a better sense of how they would act in future situations based on how they have acted prior. If a vignette is written in detail, spelling out a person’s capacities, values, or both, then the competing theories proposed by valuationists and capacitarians will likely converge. However, if it's sparse with little to no information, then the two rival theories may clash. They will seemingly work against each other because the readers are left to fill in the details. Without an established history or value system described, readers do not have anything prescribing their thoughts. Clashing is due to the under-description of the vignette and not used to interpret theories. I think this is where a lot of the deep disagreement stems. In this conversation about the moral assessment of blame, we have two theories that are seemingly different but work in tandem. They have a great opportunity to change the way that we, as philosophers, attribute blame, especially since wishful thinking does not give moral valence. If readers can speculate the history and the potential for a person based on their capacity to potentially act out their value systems, then they will not need to speculate on what the author meant. After all, it is not the job of a reader to fill in the blanks, it is up to the author/philosopher to explain a thought experiment in full to establish their theory (Baumann, 2019). Any description that influences a perspective is an important factor, but we need to decide whether someone is or is not morally culpable in a particular situation. To do this, it is necessary to know all the past relevant information. Swapping things around, omitting necessary information, and changing the context to fit someone else’s narrative of events is not an effective way to correctively assess the morality of an agent, nor is it conducive to figuring out whether they are morally exculpable. Withholding information is one way to prevent knowledge, and if we are concerned with knowing whether someone has performed an immoral action, then the truth is of utmost importance (Baumann, 2019). This is the way things become known. When looking back at the argument between the valuationist and capacitarian, knowledge of the subject’s past is necessary for determining if someone should be considered morally blameworthy. For determining both a person’s capacities and values in the present, it is vital to investigate their past. A person’s past determines their values just as much as it determines their capacities. A person’s past values can be written off due to their present capacities; likewise, a person’s past capacities can be written off because of their present values. The present moment is a culmination of all the previous values an agent has upheld. Valuationists point out how a person’s values are a result of what they did or didn’t do in the past. These values are determined on the agent’s capacity to understand and act on those values. Similarly, capacitarians see capacities as manifestations of value systems. The key to finding out someone’s capacities and values is buried in their past. What is the difference between these two theories if they both require knowledge of the person’s past behavior? Are they distinct theories that have similar foundations, or are they two sides to the same theoretical coin? Since both theories require the past to determine their present conditions, it’s possible that proposing these two ideas as distinctly different theories does not hold up to scrutiny. This is because values are conditions that people think should be upheld and reinforced, while capacities are behaviors of what people are capable of doing. Values are conditions that people strive for, give people numerous filters for actions, and are considered valuable in the social world. Once someone has a set of values, their subsequent actions are determined. When capacitarians look at capacities of individuals, they are looking at what actions would have been expected to perform given their capabilities. These actions are expected to be performed because of individual values. This is where we see the two theories speaking a similar language. If we need to know as much information about an individual’s past to form a coherent judgment of blame, then it’s possible these two theories are derived from the same theoretical foundation grounded in the past. The past is important to these two theories as a person’s past actions are suggestive of their values, and the person’s past values are suggestive of what actions someone can do based on their capacities. At this point, to look further into this topic I think it is indispensable to ask, how do we know what someone’s past values or capacities are, and how can we tell if they have led to present conditions? References Aristotle. 2011. Nicomachean Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Arpaly, N. 2004. Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baumann, M. 2019. "Consequentializing and Underdetermination" Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 511-527. Bernecker, S. 2011. The Epistemology of Fake News. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Biebel, N. 2017, October 12. Epistemic justification and the ignorance excuse. Retrieved from Springer Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11098-017-0992-4 Copp, D. 2007. "Introduction: Metaethics and Normative Ethics" The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory . Harmen, E. 2011. "Does Moral Ignorance Exculpate?" Ratio, XXIV , 443-468. M. Alvarez, &. C. 2017. "When Ignorance is No Excuse" Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition , 1-24. Rosen, G. 2003. "Culpability and Ignorance" Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103 , 61-84. Rosen, G. 2004. "Skepticism About Moral Responsibility" Philosophical Perspectives, 18 , 295-313. Sliwa, P. 2020. "Excuse without Exculpation: The Case of Moral Ignorance" Oxford Studies in Metaethics , 72-95.

Anna Savo-Matthews The Unchurching of Black Lives Matter: The Evolving Role of Faith in the Fight for Racial Justice Anna Savo-Matthews The Black church was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1990s, American society began a trend in secularization, whereby many Americans began to identify less with religious institutions. This societal shift, coupled with the rise of social media, has had a marked impact on racial justice movements. To illustrate how secularization has affected protest, this work compares the Civil Rights Movement with Black Lives Matter and specifically examines the decline of the Black church’s organizational capacity in Jacksonville, Florida. Faith has long been closely intertwined with racial justice movements. Scholars of Black liberation theology believe that Jesus is the God of the oppressed, someone who stands with those struggling for freedom. This religious movement was born from civil-rights activism of the 1960s, and it continues to inspire activists to this day (1). Furthermore, the Civil Rights Movement’s close relationship with the Black church has been well documented, as the church provided organizational support that was crucial for the movement’s success (2). When comparing the Civil Rights Movement to more recent racial justice movements, more specifically the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, the Black church has had a less prominent role in organizing and mobilizing protestors. However, spirituality still had a great influence over the content of the protests, as protesters often draw from a greater plurality of religious inspiration than the Civil Rights Movement did (3). In line with findings on a national scale, local reporting has found that spiritual rituals were incorporated into the Black Lives Matter protests in Jacksonville. Prayer, vigils, and altars were incorporated into the protests, and the rhetoric used by many organizers and protestors reflected common religious tropes. The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Church The impact of religion on the Civil Rights Movement has been well documented. Both in terms of organization and content of protests, the Black church had an enormous effect on the Civil Rights Movement. The Black church was an autonomous sphere, owned and controlled by Black people, within a larger societal context where Black people were excluded economically, socially, and politically. As a result, in terms of structure, the Black church was the primary organizational center for the Civil Rights Movement (4). The church provided a network of charismatic clergymen who were “economically independent of the larger white society,” a regular meeting place free from surveillance, and a membership that was united by a rich culture and similar political aims (5). As a result, the Black church gave the Civil Rights Movement many resources crucial for a successful social movement. Additionally, the content of the protests themselves were often based on religious teachings from the Black church; one would have to look no further than Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches to see its influence. In one of his most famous speeches, “Eulogy for Martyred Children,” King draws upon Christian notions of martyrdom and applies these sentiments to the fight for racial equality. Older martyrdom accounts—like those of Perpetua and Felicity, or animal sacrifices found in Leviticus—speak of suffering and death transformationally powerful, sometimes for entire communities. King employs a similar theme in his speech, claiming that the children who lost their lives “died nobly,” and that “the innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city” (6). Furthermore, King’s speeches often explicitly draw connections between his faith and the modern-day fight for racial justice, saying “They did not die in vain. God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive” (7). When an innocent life is lost due to senseless violence, it can be a rational response to try to make sense of the tragedy. In this way, martyrdom accounts serve an important social function, allowing communities to grapple with tragedy in a meaningful way. Furthermore, these tragedies can be leveraged politically. Many sociologists consider martyrs to be “tangible cultural resources” that can be used to motivate social and political movements. The violence inflicted on a martyr can “galvanize a course of action” and rally a community around their cause (8). Black Lives Matter and Secularization Originally founded in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the Black Lives Matter movement began to build a more prominent national profile in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, who were both killed by police in the summer of 2014 (9). The Black Lives Matter movement reached a new level of public support following the murder of George Floyd, and it is estimated that tens of millions of people participated in protests across the country in 2020 (10). As a result of its large and diverse membership, the movement is very decentralized; however, the general aims of the movement include police reform and reallocating police department funds to invest in Black communities directly. In contrast to the powerful, direct influence the Black church had on the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter’s religious influences are far less straightforward, and this is especially apparent in the movement’s organization. Sociologists and political scientists have contended that the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter movement have markedly different structures. Professor of political science Dewey Clayton has noted that the leadership structure of the two organizations are “vastly different,” describing Black Lives Matter’s structure as “highly decentralized and unstructured” (11). He suggests that, rather than the Black church, social media is the new movement center for Black Lives Matter, contributing to its decentralized nature. Other scholars and researchers have confirmed that social media has played a “core role” in the proliferation of the movement, as platforms like Twitter and Instagram allow for the “documentation of cases of police violence” against both “individual African Americans” and “BLM protests,” which can draw emotional responses from casual users of social media (12). Because of its heavy use of social media, Black Lives Matter “does not want one leader,” but rather encourages leaders from all over the country to “engage in grassroots organizing in their local communities” (13). Jamal Bryant, a clergyman who spoke at Freddie Gray’s funeral, acknowledged this shift in leadership and noted that his role in Black Lives Matter is more limited, saying, “The difference between the Black Lives Matter movement and the civil-rights movement is that the civil-rights movement, by and large, was first out of the church. The Black Lives Matter movement, largely speaking, is not” (14). However, despite the Black church’s receding role in the organization of the movement, the influence of religion and spirituality on the Black Lives Matter movement is still apparent on a national scale. Founders of the movement, like Patrisse Cullors for example, practice Ifà, a religious tradition from Nigeria. She describes her spirituality as having a huge influence on her protests, saying that , “seeking spirituality had a lot to do with trying to seek understanding about [her] conditions… and how [she understands] them as part of a larger fight, a fight for [her] life.” In Black Lives Matter more broadly, researchers have found that protests often incorporate a wide variety of religious rituals, from invoking “the names of abolitionist ancestors'' to “the creation of sacred sites and alters at locations of mourning” to “purification, protection, and healing practices'' like burning sage (15). Overall, Black Lives Matter has incorporated rich religious pluralism into the national movement, as it draws inspiration from Native American, Buddhist, and African religious traditions, in addition to Black Protestant traditions (16). Scholars have found that Black Lives Matter draws from a broader source matter than the Civil Rights Movement did, and others argue that “the Black church is not the only religious well from which Black movements have historically drawn,” and Black Lives Matter is no different (17). Given the broad variety of faiths that Black Lives Matter draws inspiration from, Erika Gault argues that “we are actually seeing more religion, not less” (18). Younger activists from Baltimore described their own beliefs similarly; they did not necessarily have a diminished sense of spirituality, but they felt a need to express their religious beliefs outside of formal institutions. Brion Gill, a 25-year-old organizer, recounted that many of her friends within Black Lives Matter identify as “spiritual but not religious” and claim that they want “a relationship with the Creator” but don’t wish to manifest that “within the church space” (19). BLM’s move away from formal religious organizations fits within social trends more broadly. Around the turn of the century, sociologists began to describe a new theory of secularization, which emphasized that faith is still a “powerful force at the individual level” despite a decline in religious institutional authority (20). Theorists from this newer perspective, sometimes called neosecularization theorists, emphasize that religion is not necessarily “declining… They believe that it is changing” (21). These findings are similar to those articulated in a major study by Hout and Fischer, who found that the number of Americans who identified themselves as having no religious preference increased significantly in the late nineties. From the early ‘90s to the early 2000’s, the number of adults who reported having no religious preference doubled, from roughly 7 percent, to 14 percent (22). However, despite this increase, a significant portion of the population still retains spiritual beliefs: “Over two-thirds (68 percent) of adults with no religious preference expressed some belief in God or a higher power in 1998 or 2000; one-fourth said they do not doubt that God really exists” (23). Thus, the decrease in identification with formal institutions is not driven largely by a decrease in religious sentiment, but rather a stronger desire to disassociate from organized religion. This urge to express religious beliefs often originates from a desire to distance oneself from the conservative political views often associated with religious institutions (24). The sudden decline in religious identifications correlated with the rise of the Religious Right, as “religious conservatives definitely received more attention in the press in the 1990s than during earlier years” (25). Therefore, the authors argue that the rise of the Religious Right initiated dissociation with religious institutions among left-leaning individuals. Hout and Fisher stress that a decline in religious identification is most attributable to a dislike of the Religious Right, and not a result of a decline in religious sentiment or ideas: “The key fact, in sum, about people who express no religious preference is that most are believers of some sort, and many are quite conventional” (26). One of the most commonly used metrics to gauge the religiosity of an individual is the frequency with which they pray. This metric was cited by the authors of this study, and they noted that of the respondents who claimed no religious preference, “Relatively few are secular, agnostic, or atheist; most actually pray. Their most distinguishing feature is their avoidance of churches” (27). Therefore, we may expect contemporary activists to still express religious beliefs and participate in religious rituals in protest, even though they may not be guided by any specific institution. The authors of this article actually raise concerns regarding the future of religious institutions and their connections to social and political movements, asking the question of how the “spiritual but not religious” trend will affect new social movements (28). Overall, secularization in the Black Lives Matter movement seems to be widely consistent with a general nationwide trend towards secularization. While formal religious institutions have less power in influencing behavior and social movements, religious beliefs are still held by a majority of those who participate in the BLM movement. This seems to be the general consensus among scholars who have studied the movement; that, while the movement is no longer organized through the church, spirituality still has a great influence on the movement, and at times, protest can even be a spiritual act. To examine these claims, I will take a closer look at one specific city. To get a sense of how the shift from ‘churched’ social movements to a decentralized movement plays out in a specific city, I will compare Jacksonville’s Civil Rights Movement to its Black Lives Matter movement. Jacksonville and Racial Justice Jacksonville has an extensive history with the Civil Rights Movement. For a considerable portion of time, the primary method of challenging segregation in Jacksonville was through litigation. The City Council segregated numerous public services: streetcars, saloons, theaters. There were long, drawn-out attempts to overturn these and other segregation policies like unequal pay, and an “all-white Democratic primary” (29). However, the courts ruled against African American attorneys seeking to challenge segregationist policies. As a result, civil rights activists turned to civil disobedience. One of the most well-known events in the history of civil rights activism in Jacksonville occurred on August 27, 1960, when a group of African American men staged a sit-in to protest segregation in local businesses and lunch counters (30). The group of protestors were attacked by a group of over 200 Ku Klux Klan members, armed with baseball bats and axe handles. The lunch counters were desegregated in the months following this protest. Although African American communities in Jacksonville had pushed for desegregation in the past, many locals see Axe Handle Saturday as the true start of the Civil Rights Movement in Jacksonville. A first-hand account from protestor Rodney Hurstdetails the planning that went into this protest. His account demonstrates the importance of the Black church. In Hurst’s view, the Black church was a lifeline for the Civil Rights Movement: “the civil rights movement in Jacksonville would not have survived without the support of Black pastors and their churches” (31). Along with providing a support network for protestors, Black churches were the meeting place for the NAACP meetings during the fifties and sixties, providing resources for a legal organization responsible for many local civil rights victories (32). The NAACP’s efforts were crucial in desegregating businesses and public services in Jacksonville. In the months following Axe Handle Saturday, the NAACP Youth Council continued a boycott of downtown merchants, and in the following year the NAACP and business leaders reached an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters (33). Turning to the Black Lives Matter protests that took place decades after the Civil Rights Movement, it is apparent that Jacksonville mirrors national religious trends. While Jacksonville’s Civil Rights Movement used the Black church as its main movement center, taking advantage of its resources and member base, the Black Lives Matter protests were organized in a more decentralized manner, often relying on social media to spread awareness of police violence and information about upcoming events and protests. Over the course of the summer of 2020, several waves of protests were held in Jacksonville; from May 30th to June 8th, the city saw thousands of protestors participate in marches in the downtown area (34). Smaller marches occurred sporadically throughout the greater Jacksonville area in the subsequent weeks. A smaller march took place near Atlantic and Neptune Beach on June 28th. An inter-faith group held a Juneteenth celebration live stream discussing racial injustice on June 19th, and a group of Black ministers hosted a press conference in front of the Duval County Courthouse on June 8th (35). Another wave of protests occurred on July 10th, as protestors blocked off portions of highways around the downtown area (36). Consistent with findings on a national scale, the Jacksonville protests were largely organized through social media; websites like Twitter and Instagram played a crucial role in spreading information throughout the Jacksonville community. Social media accounts were started at several Duval county high schools to document instances of racial profiling; the accounts generally followed a similar format: “they’re titled “Black At [the respective school]” and allow students, parents, and faculty to submit posts where they document racist experiences they’ve had at their respective high school, which are shared publicly on the Instagram account (37). Kiara Alexis, a young community organizer born and raised in West Jacksonville, described the crucial role Twitter played in diffusing information throughout her community, saying “Twitter has become this hub… the news won’t tell you what’s going on, but people on Twitter, they’re gonna come up there and they’re gonna give it to you” (38). Diversity in Spirituality Again, in line with findings on a national scale, although the church was not the main avenue through which protests were organized, religion and spirituality still had a notable impact on the content of the protests. Moments of prayer were incorporated into many of the protests that took place in Jacksonville. One notable example took place on June 3, outside of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, where faith leaders led a prayer before a press conference on police accountability (39). Rituals and prayers were not only seen in smaller protests: one of the largest rallies that took place in Jacksonville was the “Reflective Walk” for Floyd in which over 1,000 participants prayed before marching throughout Jacksonville’s San Marco business district and residential areas (40). Even protests that were planned by secular organizations, like The Women’s March Jacksonville Chapter, involved spiritual ceremonies. The Women’s March held a two-hour long remembrance ritual on June 4, where “candles were lit in memory of those who died by police or racial brutality, plants watered on a table as each was remembered.” Participants at this protest were encouraged to express their “sorrow and disgust over the racial division in this country” (41). Jacksonville’s protests often seem to embody what sociologist Emile Durkheim would identify as “collective effervescence,” referring to the emotional effect experienced by individuals when they collectively perform religious rituals; when people come together and perform the same action together, they may feel ‘outside of themselves.’ Durkheim describes this process in Elementary Forms of Religious Life, saying that “When collective life reaches a certain degree of intensity it awakens religious thought… vital energies become overstimulated, sensations stronger; there are even some that are produced only at this moment” (42). In this moment, collective effervescence then strengthens group identity. The common usage of prayer in protest likely serves a similar function; overall, rituals like group prayer serve an important, unifying force during protests, allowing the protester to step outside of themselves and feel a greater sense of unity with those they are protesting with. Aspects of the Jacksonville protests encourage such an experience. For example, Chapter President Bonnie Hendrix was reported as saying “I felt it was time for black people to have the podium to raise their voice, to be heard, to let the pain and anguish of years of oppression, out,” acknowledging the heightened emotional experience that was produced by the remembrance ritual (43). Even disregarding the use of rituals like prayer and reflection, protests exhibited religious characteristics in other ways. When activists described their motivations for protesting, they often directly or indirectly referenced their religious beliefs, often echoing sentiments in speeches from the Civil Rights Movement. On June 8th, several dozen ministers from local Black churches read a letter addressed to Jacksonville mayor Lenny Curry, Sheriff Mike Williams, and various other city and state officials. The letter called for a variety of reforms that asked for increased transparency and communication between police and community members. Some of the demands included roundtable discussions with black officers, increased sensitivity training, and increased diversity in leadership (44). Martyrdom narratives were incorporated into the minister’s press conference as well, as one minister was quoted as saying “It was as a result of George Floyd that all of a sudden a choir began. A choir of people from all across this nation have come together to lend their voices together in harmony for the express purpose of making sure that people can be treated fair.” In a similar manner to how martyrdom narratives were used during the Civil Rights Movement, the pain and suffering inflicted upon George Floyd can be the impetus for social change. In the quote from Rev. Williams, there are themes of unity and healing, demonstrating similar themes to those used by Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Eulogy for Martyred Children” as well as older martyrdom accounts, like those in Leviticus, where the loss of innocent life has the power to transform an entire community. In honor of Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery, the Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida held a livestream, connecting the protests that took place this summer to the fight for equality during the Civil War. Religion again played a large role in the motivations for those participating in the conversation. In describing her motivations for fighting for justice, Rev. Juana Jordan referenced Matthew 10 as an inspiration for resilience in her activism, saying “[Jesus] says people are gonna harass you, and he talks a lot about… using your voice. If you are a part of the family, if you are gonna do what I’m doing, people are gonna come against you. But there’s some responsibilities that you have” (45). In a later comment, Rev. Juana again connected the notion of equal rights to Scripture, saying “I believe in communion, there is more than enough at the table. When Jesus laid out the table, he stretched the table to make sure everybody could come around” (46). This livestream reiterated a common theme from Hurst’s personal account, where faith gives activists resilience in their work. Conclusion In conclusion, faith still plays a prominent role in Black civil rights movements, but its role has been complicated due to recent trends in secularization and the rise of social media. Although social media has replaced the Black church as the organizational center of the movement, spirituality has proved itself to be indispensable to the movement due to its ability to unify protesters through rituals. Finally, spiritual beliefs also seem to be a powerful source of motivation for those who participate in protest, providing inspiration to continue persevering when met with opposition. With this sudden shift towards a more decentralized movement center, it will be interesting to see if Black Lives Matter will be able to achieve the same legislative successes as the Civil Rights Movement. Endnotes 1 “Black Liberation Theology, in its Founder’s Words,” NPR, 2008. 2 Morris, Aldon D , The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, (The Free Press, 1986). 3 Gleig, Ann and Farrag, Hebah, “Far from Being anti-religious, faith and spirituality run deep in Black Lives Matter,” The Conversation. 4 Morris, Aldon D , The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, 4. 5 Ibid. 6 King, Martin Luther, “Eulogy for the Martyred Children,” Carnegie Mellon University. 7 Ibid, 221. 8 DeSoucey et al, “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom,” ( Cultural Sociology, 2008), 114. 9 Luibrand, Shannon, “How a death in Ferguson sparked a movement in America,” 2015. 10 Buchanan, Quoctrung, and Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” 2020. 11 Clayton, Dewey M, “Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States,” Journal of Black Studies , Vol. 49 no. 5, 2018. 12 Bolsover, Gillian, “Black Lives Matter discourse on US social media during COVID: polarised positions enacted in a new event,” The University of Leeds, Centre for Democratic Engagement, 2020. 13 Clayton, Dewey M, “Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States.” 14 Green, Emma, “Black Activism, Unchurched,” The Atlantic, 2016. 15 Gleig, Ann and Farrag, Hebah, “Far from Being anti-religious, faith and spirituality run deep in Black Lives Matter,” The Conversation. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Green, Emma, “Black Activism, Unchurched.” 20 Yamane, David and Roberts, Keith A, “Secularization: Religion in Decline or Transformation?” Religion in Sociological Perspective, (SAGE Publications, 2015), 25. 21 Ibid. 22 Hout, Michael and Fischer, Claude, “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations,” American Sociological Review , vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 165-190, (April 2002), 166. 23 Ibid, 173. 24 Ibid, 168. 25 Ibid, 179. 26 Ibid, 175. 27 Ibid, 175. 28 Ibid, 178. 29 Crooks, James B, “The history of Jacksonville race relations. Part 2: Struggling for equality,” The Florida Times-Union, 2021. 30 Ibid. 31 Hurst, Rodney L, “It was never about a hotdog and a Coke,” Wingspan Press, 2008. 32 Ibid. 33 Woods, Mark and Soergel, Matt, “Ax Handle Saturday: The segregated lunch counters are gone, but the ‘Jacksonville Story’ continues,” 2020. 34 Avanier, Erik, “Thousands march through San Marco during peaceful demonstration,” 2020. 3 5 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, Uploaded by Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flDBJx_HWhM&feature=youtu.be 36 Cravey, Beth R. and Patterson, Steve, “Black Lives Matter protesters march through downtown Jacksonville; 3 arrested,” The Florida Times-Union, 2016. 37 Bloch, Emily, “Students at Jacksonville’s elite schools discuss racism — often anonymously,” The Florida Times-Union, 2020. 38 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, 50:13. 39 “Photos: Jacksonville Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death,” The Florida Times-Union, 2020. 40 Ibid. 41 Scanlan, Dan, “Jacksonville Residents continue protests in support of black lives,” The Florida Times-Union. 2020. 42 Durkheim, Emile, “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life,” ( Oxford University Press: 2001), 317. 43 Scanlan, Dan, “Jacksonville Residents continue protests in support of black lives.” 44 Savo-Matthews, Anna, “Black ministers call for Jacksonville reforms amid unrest,” The Florida Times-Union , 2020. 45 “The Spirit of Juneteenth,” YouTube, 61:28. 46 Ibid, 66:54. Works Cited Aron, Hillel. “These Savvy Women have Made Black Lives Matter the Most Crucial Left-Wing Movement Today” LA Weekly. November 9, 2015. http://www.laweekly.com/these-savvy- women-have-made-black-lives-matter- the-most-crucial-left-wing-movement-today/. Avanier, Erik. “Thousands march through San Marco during peaceful demonstration.” News4Jax . June 3, 2020. https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/06/03/city-says-to-expect- emergency-personnel-in-san-marco- square-due-to-scheduled-walk/ “Black Liberation Theology, in its Founder’s Words.” NPR. March 31, 2008. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89236116 Bolsover, Gillian. “Black Lives Matter discourse on US social media during COVID: polarised positions enacted in a new event.” The University of Leeds, Centre for Democratic Engagement. August 21, 2020. https://arxiv.org/ pdf/2009.03619.pdf Bloch, Emily. “Students at Jacksonville’s elite schools discuss racism — often anonymously.” The Florida Times-Union. June 16, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/local/2020/06/16/students-at-jacksonvillersquos- elite-schools-discuss-racism-mdash-often-anonymously/112296954/ Buchanan, Quoctrung, and Patel. “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History” The New York Times. July 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size. html Clayton, Dewey M. “Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States.” Journal of Black Studies . Vol. 49 no. 5, pp. 448-480. March 21, 2018. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021934718764099? journalCode=jbsa Cravey, Beth R. and Patterson, Steve. “Black Lives Matter protesters march through downtown Jacksonville; 3 arrested.” The Florida Times-Union. July 10, 2016. https://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2016-07-10/story/black-lives-matter-protesters- march-through-downtown-jacksonville-3 Crooks, James B. “The history of Jacksonville race relations. Part 2: Struggling for equality.” The Florida Times-Union. September 5, 2021. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2021/09/05/james- crooks-history- jacksonville-race-relations-struggling-equality/8210831002/ DeSoucey et al. “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom.” Cultural Sociology. Vol. 2, no.1, pp. 99-121. 2008. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1749975507086276 Durkheim, Emile. “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.” Oxford University Press. Translated by Carol Cosman. 2001. Farrag, Hebah H. “The Role of Spirit in the #BlackLivesMatter Movement: A Conversation with Activist and Artist Patrisse Cullors.” Religion Dispatches. June 24, 2015. https://religiondispatches.org/the-role-of-spirit-in-the-blacklivesmatter-movement-a- conversation-with-activist-and-artist-patrisse-cullors/ Gleig, Ann and Farrag, Hebah. “Far from Being anti-religious, faith and spirituality run deep in Black Lives Matter.” The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/far-from- being-anti-religious- faith-and-spirituality-run-deep-in- black-lives-matter-145610 Green, Emma. “Black Activism, Unchurched.” The Atlantic. March 22, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/black-activism-baltimore- black-church/474822/ Hout, Michael and Fischer, Claude. “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations.” American Sociological Review . vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 165-190. April 2002. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3088891?seq=1 Hurst, Rodney L. “It was never about a hotdog and a Coke.” Wingspan Press. Jan 1, 2008. “The Spirit of Juneteenth.” YouTube. Uploaded by Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida, June 24, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flDBJx_ HWhM&feature=youtu.be King, Martin Luther. “Eulogy for the Martyred Children.” Carnegie Mellon University. http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=- file&item=434085 Luibrand, Shannon. “How a death in Ferguson sparked a movement in America.” August 7, 2015. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-black-lives-matter-movement-changed- america-one-year-later/ Morris, Aldon D . The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change . The Free Press. January 1, 1986. Savo-Matthews, Anna. “Black ministers call for Jacksonville reforms amid unrest.” The Florida Times- Union. June 8, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/ news/local/2020/06/08/black- ministers-call-for-jacksonville-reforms-amid-unrest/112295624/ Scanlan, Dan. “Jacksonville Residents continue protests in support of black lives.” The Florida Times- Union. June 4, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/sto- ry/news/local/2020/06/04/jacksonville- residents-continue-protests-in-sup- port-of-black-lives/112302732/ “Photos: Jacksonville Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.” The Florida Times-Union. June 7, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/photogallery/LK/20200607/PHOTOGALLERY/607009988/PH/1 Vandenboom, Liza. “The Faith of the Black Lives Matter Movement.” Religion Unplugged. July 10, 2020. https://religionunplugged.com/news/2020/7/10/ the-faith-of-the-black-lives-matter- movement Woods, Mark and Soergel, Matt. “Ax Handle Saturday: The segregated lunch counters are gone, but the ‘Jacksonville Story’ continues.” The Florida Times-Union. August 21, 2020. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/ history/2020/08/21/jacksonville-civil-rights-demonstrators-took-action-60-years-ago-ax-handle-saturday/5620995002/ Yamane, David and Roberts, Keith A. “Secularization: Religion in Decline or Transformation?” Religion in Sociological Perspective, Sixth Edition. SAGE Publications. 2015. Previous Next

Oliver Hicks The Necessity of Perspective: A Nietzschean Critique of Historical Materialism and Political Meta-Narratives Oliver Hicks Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche both contributed immensely to 19th century political philosophy and laid the foundation for countless revisions, interpretations, and new theories throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. While they share a common goal of exposing hidden, socially constructed restraints in order to liberate the individual, they differ sharply on both the nature of those societal restraints and what liberation actually looks like. I present these thinkers as foils: Marx guided by a normative approach that sees liberation as an inevitable conclusion of current social conditions, and Nietzsche describing liberation as necessary but ultimately ambiguous. Ultimately, I assert that this ambiguity is a necessary acceptance of true liberation that ought to humble any assertion of truth, morality, or rationality. I. Introduction But everything is fair It’s a paradox we call reality So keepin’ it real will make you A casualty of abnormal normality - Talib Kweli, Respiration (1) The above remarks are from a verse of the 2002 duet album Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star , in which artist Talib Kweli describes his inner-city New York landscape. The broader context of the song speaks to the harsh and often hopeless reality of a low-income Black experience. It begins with a dialogue from the seminal hip hop documentary Style Wars , in which a New York graffiti artist describes a recent work titled “Crime in the City.” The work implicitly asks the audience whether “crime” is all his city has to offer or if it is simply what one chooses to see when examining the New York streets. Kweli contributes his own perspective in the aforementioned line, in which he calls his reality a “paradox” where everything in this world is fair. Thus, nothing can be unfair with the proper perspective, lending itself to the paradox of never being able to pin down what is truly right or wrong. Kweli speaks of inter-gang violence, where young Black men are pitted against each other for the scarce resources present in their desolate environment. Yes, success is good, but at what cost to the broader struggle of their community? The second part of his stanza questions the efforts of anyone in this world to be truly “real,” as Kweli plays with a definition that is so integral to one’s identity in the hip hop community. Hip hop and rap are built around delivering viscerally authentic, or “real,” stories, usually about struggle, persecution, and ultimately perseverance against an adverse world. Thus, “keeping it real” becomes the idealized form of living as opposed to whitewashed versions of struggle or falsified stories for commercial success. But what does “realness” actually entail, and is it captured by this idealization? Kweli would answer that it is less objective than it might seem. Any attempt at authenticity is undermined by another perspective, and thus the vanity that accompanies an allegedly “real” individual instead makes them a casualty: they are not truly real, authentic, nor honest versions of themselves, but rather they are only “real” by an externally defined perspective, one that society wants for them. Kweli is inverting a pillar of rap culture by arguing that what is deemed true “realness” by people in the city is actually defined by the same subjective standards used to define its opposite. Put simply, the inner-city stories to which Kweli is referring are authentic as defined by what is expected of the storytellers: to be hard, cold-blooded, and insensitive to the harsh world around them. But does this produce genuine versions of who these individuals could be given different circumstances? Or are they simply buying into the “abnormal normality,” one defined by social constructs that is ultimately abnormal to whatever their “real” selves might be? The question of authenticity amidst veiling social norms is one discussed by a variety of modern political theorists, all seeking to understand who we are in order to understand who we ought to be—and how we ought to be governed. From descriptions of a primordial state of nature proposed by early contract theorists to Karl Marx’s world-encompassing system of historical materialism, these modern thinkers attempt to sketch out the natural, psychological, and social undercurrents of our behavior. Though Marx was the first to usher in a hermeneutics of suspicion by critiquing existing philosophical norms in search of hidden truths, he did so with the intent of outlining his own normative conception of humanity's goal (or his own end point on the linear timeline that is progress): communism. Decades later, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed “we are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge” in his preface to On the Genealogy of Morals. He proposed a philosophy that sought to interrogate reigning value systems that presented themselves as natural or self-evident without replacing them with his own explicit normative solution (2). Nietzsche recognized the limitations of philosophical inquiry while operating within the system he was critiquing. Humans lack a basic sense of what is good as enshrined in the concept of natural law or historical materialism because our entire system of moral values is a product of changing power dynamics. More importantly, we cannot see any semblance of truth unless we shed these artificial moral constructs. The relativity inherent in our ability to make judgements of ourselves and fellow citizens ultimately moves the goalposts of political theory itself: we are no longer moving toward that ideal form with which Plato was so obsessed because we cannot accurately define it. There are no political meta-narratives, no slate of criteria with which we can accurately and objectively identify our deepest human nature—to do so would be to dismiss far too many factors and make far too many assumptions. Rather, we must instead work to interrogate our unwavering beliefs in perceived truths or ideal forms in order to understand how we might escape them as they arise. As shown by Talib Kweli in his aforementioned lyrics, the inability to shed the social, moral, and ethical constructs that surround a particular Black experience raises questions regarding the obscuration of truth and the need for a variety of perspectives. Using Nietzsche’s skepticism of philosophy and morality as a foil for Marx’s historical materialism, I will draw on a number of their works to discuss the validity of any proposed political meta-narrative. First, I will present a brief model for viewing history as forward-facing in the pursuit of a realized ideal form, courtesy of Marx. Then, I will use Nietzsche to reject the notion of an ideal form and instead emphasize the need for perspective to understand any type of truth, political or otherwise, in order to escape the social constructs that mystify this truth and enslave us to normative ideals. II. Historical Progress as Forward-Facing: Marx’s Determinism Marx famously remarked at the beginning of The Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”(3). More importantly, however, was the history that Marx was proposing henceforth. Communism was not just a prescription for the ills of capitalism, but a prediction of the inevitable collapse of the market economy itself: the contradictions intrinsic to capitalist function would ultimately lead to its own demise. Communism would simply be the final and best option for a post-revolutionary society. In this way, Marx lays a deterministic view of human progress. If humanity keeps moving forward as is, we will reach an inflection point; if we actively work to deconstruct the status quo, we will reach that same inflection point sooner. Though bleak, this notion of progress posits its own normative assumption that society is moving forward : ideology has simply masked antagonistic class divides while capitalism exploits them, but we will inevitably overcome this stain on history to usher in a new and better world. This deterministic presentation of history, or historical materialism, is one of Marx’s greatest contributions to political philosophy. Using this dialectical approach, Marx identified two main forces that drive historical change: the division of classes and the division of labor. The evolution of class systems is best articulated in the first section of the Manifesto , where Marx focuses primarily on Europe’s transition from feudal to modern societies, namely bourgeois societies. Feudal societies were composed of complex hierarchies: feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs, and more. Among these classes existed a constant dynamic of oppression, wherein higher classes dominated subordinate ones as defined by the material conditions of each (14). Centuries of global exploration, however, produced ever-expanding markets and ever-increasing demand that revolutionized the modes of production and condensed class antagonisms into Marx’s binary: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This defined the “Modern Industry” that Marx witnessed in the 19th century, wherein “the modern bourgeoisie is itself a product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange” (5). Underlying this series of class revolutions are developments in the division of labor: first in tribal communities, then ancient communes, feudal states, commercial states, and finally the capitalist state of the bourgeoisie. The division of labor reflects both the growth of the productive capacities of these communities as well as the growth of divided interests among individuals. For example, Marx argues that the division of labor within a nation first leads to the “separation of industrial and commercial from agricultural labor, hence to the separation of town and country… [then] to the separation of commercial from industrial labor” and so on (6). Occurring simultaneously are infinitesimal divisions within these branches “among the individuals cooperating in definite kinds of labor” (7). Ultimately, Marx places the modern industrial state, with all of its complex and specialized divisions, on an historical timeline that inevitably moves toward the maximization of its productive capacities since it is constantly in competition with similarly structured nations. This maximization, however, along with its own internal contradictions, begets its own destruction. The consolidation of “scattered private property” into the consolidation of “capitalistic private property” in the hands of an increasingly smaller elite becomes too heavy to support itself, and the fetters that confine the socialization of labor for exploitation ironically lead to the organization of a massive, oppressed class that revolts against their slave-wage masters (8). This revolution, Marx argues, is a smoother transition than the original consolidation of private property via the socialization of labor, since the latter is the “expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers,” but the former is the “expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people” (9). However, the light at the end of this tunnel that is capitalism and the driving force behind this expropriation of the few by the many is Marx’s concept of “species-being.” As human beings, Marx considers our most basic and fundamental essence to be our drive to engage in productive activity; it is our “working-up of the objective world,” in which “[man] duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created” (10). This creative process, when done freely, consciously, and socially, is what separates us from animals and satisfies our life purpose: we choose what to make and when to make it in order to survive. Capitalism disrupts this process by commodifying labor and subsequently alienating the laborer first from their product, second from their process, third from themselves, and finally from each other (11). As a result, the worker becomes antagonistic to the entire system of private property: they are resentful of the bourgeois capitalist, suspicious of their fellow worker, and disillusioned with themselves, all because of alienation from their species-being. The rediscovery of our species-being is the natural epilogue to the implosion of capitalism. And yet, this conclusion relies on Marx’s own crypto-normativity. Like the early contract theorists who came far before him, Marx is simply making his own normative assumption regarding human nature: we live to create the world around us, and are only satisfied by seeing ourselves in that world. One could argue that the exploitation of this process is a violation of a Marxist natural law, and that a communist revolution is a means of retributive justice. As noble as it may be to argue that communism is the inevitable end point of a history structured by material conditions, Marx’s theory is limited by its own dogmatic assumptions. However, he was not alone in proposing human history as a deterministic teleology. Marx built his theory off the critique of Hegel, who argued a similar conception of history driven by conflicts in ideas rather than material conditions. Adam Smith falls into this same category, emphasizing the ability to improve society through the accelerating efficiency of mutually beneficial economic transactions and production (he even titled his magnum opus The Wealth of Nations —“Nations” being plural to suggest collective benefit in pursuing capitalistic ends). Immanuel Kant believed in the ability of individual societies to develop the faculties of humankind over time, leading again to the upward trajectory of progress and the inevitable achievement of our full potential. However, each of these thinkers suffer from the same flaw: they boldly claim to know the end stage of humanity and the final form to which political philosophy strives while being limited by their own historical context and intellectual horizons. III. Rejection of the Pure Form: Nietzsche’s Response Though his work is filled with a multitude of social and moral critiques, Nietzsche claimed that “the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far was… Plato’s invention of the pure spirit and good as such” (12). Consistent with Nietzsche’s long-standing critique of religion was his belief that Christianity had become “Platonism for ‘the people’” by providing an ideal form to which, by restricting one’s indulgences and taking leaps of faith, one could strive and achieve a good moral life. To Nietzsche, however, faith extends far beyond theology: it applies to every corner of philosophy and knowledge. Philosophers’ pursuits of knowledge are done in vain, since each proposes an alleged “cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic” that is, in reality, simply “an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of ‘inspiration’... that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact” (13). A particularly heinous example of this prejudice is Kant’s “discovery” of a new human faculty, one that allowed him to argue man’s capacity to make synthetic judgements a priori . Nietzsche argues this discovery was in fact not a discovery at all, but a lazy leap of faith that compelled him to answer his own questions “by virtue of a faculty” and essentially invent his own causa sui (14). Consequently, Nietzsche argues that we ought to approach knowledge with suspicion. By questioning the value of truth and certainty in the face of their opposites, Nietzsche rejects the idea of proposing a fully contained and explanatory system for any type of knowledge, since “in the philosopher… there is nothing whatever that is impersonal; and above all, his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is ” (15). Dogmatic philosophy and its ideal forms, therefore, are less interesting to Nietzsche than the necessity of our belief in them. Rather than ask what our beliefs say, a better question to pose is what these beliefs say about us . By accusing all philosophy of being dogmatic, Nietzsche is drawing attention to the philosophical limitations of any single individual. As such, a new generation of philosophers ought to embrace “the dangerous ‘maybe’ in every sense,” instead putting their faith in possibilities rather than certainties (16). To recognize one’s own inability to offer an all-encompassing system for the world is to endorse the necessity of perspective, the variety of which is the only way to understand the true nature of anything. To deny this necessity, which Nietzsche calls “the basic condition of all life,” is to instead continue the pursuit of that Platonic good spirit or ideal form (17). Rather than working to defend knowledge as we come to understand it, philosophers should be constantly interrogating knowledge in an attempt to free themselves from their own prejudices. In doing so, one rejects the idea of truth as purely objective and “knows how to employ a variety of perspectives and affective interpretations in the service of knowledge” (18). Nietzsche draws attention to the fact that there is no view from nowhere: “there is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity,’ be” (19). Put differently, one can liken Nietzsche’s concept of truth to a statue: any singular view of the statue only provides a singular picture of it. The view from the front of the statue will give a completely different image than that from the back, assuming we could even agree upon which is front and back in the first place. A plethora of angles upon which to view the statue, therefore, is necessary to truly understand it since any individual view is inherently limited by their position relative to the object. “Free spirits,” then, unlike those who throughout history have proposed their singular view of the statue as correct, are that new generation of individuals who constantly question their own prejudices and adopt new angles (20). In this way, one could argue that Nietzsche rejects the concept of Truth altogether, and perspectivism becomes a practical tool for understanding the world around us as we develop our own concepts of knowledge. At the very least, Nietzsche seems to suggest that regardless of the existence of any Truth, we cannot even begin to understand Truth unless we prioritize an ensemble of perspectives over any individual one. In doing so, we can use the former to prevent us from being limited by the latter. Once again, Nietzsche’s perspectivism has less to do with its relationship to truth (capital-T or otherwise) and more to do with its relationship to the individual and their inherently limited perspective. This concept of agency and power in the face of social restraints is consistent throughout Nietzsche’s works, and one of the most obvious ties is in his critique of Christianity. Nietzsche makes explicit his disdain for the church in The Genealogy of Morals by arguing that the church itself pioneered a type of slave morality that inherently limits the capability of man by suppressing his instincts. Throughout history, however, this morality was used strategically by the weak (namely priests) to seize some semblance of power from the nobility, whose morality is entirely self-affirming, contemptible towards things outside itself, and emphasizes power over restraint (21). Not unlike Talib Kweli’s description of his catch-22 lifestyle as a gangster in inner-city New York, Nietzsche asks us to consider a bird of prey and a lamb: “there is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey—but that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey for carrying off the little lambs” (22). In fact, he continues, the lambs would be perfectly well off to regard anything like a bird of prey as evil, since it is the source of violence against them; the bird of prey, however, might view this “somewhat derisively, and will perhaps say: ‘we don’t bear any grudge at all towards these good lambs, in fact we love them, nothing is tastier than a tender lamb” (23). The perspective that is intrinsic to these qualitative judgements of good and evil both undermines their objectivity and highlights a cornerstone of Nietzsche’s philosophy: will-to-power. With regard to Marx, Nietzsche dismisses one of his most basic assumptions using this concept of the will-to-power: … life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation; —but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal—it takes place in every healthy aristocracy—must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavor to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency—not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power… “Exploitation” does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life (24). By arguing that exploitation is not inherently evil, it is easy to dismiss Nietzsche as equally normative with different assumptions. The difference, however, is that Nietzsche’s critique does not lead him to propose a political solution or theorize a political meta-narrative meant to end suffering as he sees it, for that would be replacing one restraining superstructure with another. Will-to-power, according to Nietzsche, is not a facet of human nature that must be complemented by politics nor economics: the will-to-power is a means to finding that solution. It is the unaffected and unfettered ability of truly “free spirits” to escape the confines of “good” and “evil” themselves. As discussed above, no philosopher is truly impartial nor void of their own prejudices, and political meta-narratives such as Marx’s unwavering rejection of exploitation cannot exist to serve their purpose without accepting some degree of dogmatic assumptions. Nietzsche himself is no exception, which is why he hypothesizes these free spirits rather than identifying with them. But continuing to engage in philosophy, particularly political philosophy, without interrogating these assumptions and prejudices is distracting; we cannot begin to construct new worlds until we have deconstructed old ones. Earlier in Nietzsche’s career, we see a similar critique of Christian morals in a different context. In On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life , Nietzsche argues that Christianity seeks to define an end point for humanity by predicting “an end to life on earth… and [condemning] the living to live in the fifth act of the tragedy” (25). By limiting the scope and potential of humanity, Christianity restrains the true potential of the strong and capable, or those who might have the potential to transcend the social or moral limitations they have inherited. Moreover, Nietzsche argues that “Christianity would like to [destroy] every culture which incites to striving further and takes for its motto memento vivere … [it] rejects with a shrug of the shoulders everything in the process of becoming, and spreads over it the feeling of being very late arrivals and epigoni” (26). Though Marx’s calls to action for the proletarian revolution seem counterintuitive to a feeling of being “late arrivals” or “epigoni,” Nietzsche’s critique holds true with regard to Marxism’s crypto-normative, deterministic approach to social organization. Marx provides an all-encompassing system that is meant to both explain and predict the movement of human progress, which owes itself entirely to factors and conditions that are beyond the individual. In a way, this parallels Nietzsche’s diagnosis that we are products of our society to a degree much higher than we realize. The difference, however, lies in their prognosis. Marx believed that the course of these societal effects, namely material conditions, would inevitably lead to the implosion of the status quo that, if properly prepared for, could usher in his optimal form of social organization. Individuals, therefore, might not be “late arrivals” nor “epigoni,” though Marx certainly seems to think that these individuals are entirely at the behest of their own material conditions. The asymmetrical influence that these material conditions have on us—the proletariat being exploited by these material conditions and the bourgeoisie benefitting from them—leads Marx to draw moral conclusions: exploitation is bad and satisfaction of species-being is good . What Marx fails to do is recognize that he is a product of his own material conditions, and so are his theory and determinations of “good” and “bad.” The quasi-utopian society that is only permitted by the revolution is itself borrowing descriptions from the idealized lifestyles of the bourgeoisie. In The German Ideology , Marx suggests that man in a capitalist society is “a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his livelihood,” which is true for most working-class individuals. He then adds that in a communist society that same man may “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as [he has] a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic” (27). The ability to actively satisfy one’s species-being, or to do as one pleases without the alienating incentives required by capitalism, is simply the universalization of bourgeois life—it’s not hard to imagine that these hypothesized jacks-of-all-trades did exist in 19th century Europe, they just happened to be the elite. He who can labor (or engage in any productive activity) without being defined by that labor is a privilege of the ruling class—and one that Marx identifies as good and therefore preferable. In other words, a communist society destroys class conflicts by creating the conditions of one class for all classes. This is not to say that Marx is proposing an egalitarian utopia as his positive project, since he does believe in a relatively heterogeneous society living by the mantra “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”(28). Moreover, the concept of class itself is theorized to dissolve post-revolution, but this does not mean that Marx’s ideal conditions for all human beings aren’t plagiarizing the conditions of a single class as observed pre-revolution. When workers own the means of production rather than capitalists, they will have the resources, leisure time, and material conditions to produce in accordance with their species-being and satisfy Marx’s normatively defined purpose (or achieve his own concept of “good”). Like Kant, Marx is creating his own causa sui . A Nietzschean contribution to Marxism might argue, then, that capitalism must be deconstructed in the same way that we might deconstruct Christian morality: not with the intent of replacing these superstructures with our own normative solution, but by interrogating them to essentially see where it takes us. Again, the elusive free spirit is not an indirect, self-congratulatory description of the value of Nietzsche’s own theories, nor is it a pessimistic and nihilistic acceptance that nothing truly matters. Rather, it is a new theory in itself—one that considers the possibilities of a new generation of entirely self-affirming thinkers stripped of their prejudices and social restraints. IV. Conclusion Marx’s ultimate conclusion is that a history of society determined by material conditions leaves us no choice but to reject our current modes of production in favor of a society that complements the satisfaction of our species-being. If we don’t, then capitalism will destroy itself anyway. Marx certainly presents himself as a revolutionary determined to unite the working men of all countries toward a common purpose, but it’s difficult to reconcile this call for individual agency toward a collective purpose with the material conditions that seem to govern us regardless of that agency. Marx’s own logic is, again, itself determined by the superstructures he seeks to identify; he is no more or less a product of them than any of the characters in his theory. The vain assertion of a universal truth that is species-being simply uses his own normative definition of what is good by borrowing language from those who have already determined what is good: the bourgeoisie. Consequently, we see his proposed political meta-narrative, that contradictory principles of capitalism inevitably lead to the realization of human emancipation, is at best incomplete and at worst deeply flawed. In the case of the former, we can at least use Marx’s critique of capital to understand how material conditions have shaped our world views: they can determine incentives, exploit workers based on factors beyond their immediate control, or assign value to both people and commodities. These are invaluable critiques that have wide-ranging implications, but they are nowhere near close enough to providing an all-encompassing system of human behavior. In the case of the latter, however, we are met with the dangerous hubris of which Nietzsche is so suspicious. The true nature of anything can only be understood by simultaneously interrogating our prejudices and assumptions while recognizing the need for multiple perspectives. Truth ought to be sought after, but it is extremely elusive and mystified by social constructs, whether they be political, material, moral, sexual, racial, or otherwise. From a postmodernist perspective, Nietzsche was perhaps prodigal. Today, we live in a pluralist world that is constantly challenging the normative assumptions that structure so much of our interconnected lives. Critical race theory has interrogated the fundamental principles of our facially neutral laws; emerging disciplines of queer and feminist studies have reshaped the way we understand and perform our gender and sexuality; successive generations of increasingly agnostic individuals have undermined religiously-grounded social norms to further liberate the arts and create a vibrant pop culture. Social media alone has become one of the greatest conduits for self-expression and has created channels of communication that the world has never before seen. Everything from college campuses to corporate boardrooms have acknowledged the importance of representation and diversity in order to create more inclusive communities. The 21st century is an era of interrogation that requires one to accept a multiplicity of perspectives. Ultimately, it could be said that we are unified by a common obligation to better understand each other. In a way, Marx becomes the casualty to which Talib Kweli is referring in his verse. The idealization of a satisfied species-being is arguably a normality defined by what is expected of human beings in a capitalistic world: to enjoy their work. It is not difficult to imagine that this is actually abnormal, and the entire concept of labor as we understand it could transform or even wither away in the epochs to come due to technology, climate change, or some other unforeseen development. Nietzsche therefore becomes a critical theorist superseding even Marx, for he seeks to critique not just one superstructure but all the superstructures that limit our ability to define for ourselves what is good, bad, evil, true, rational, or authentic. Political philosophy ought to continue elevating the voices that provide these pointed critiques and encourage generations of free spirits as they come. As Kweli might argue, to truly engage in philosophy is to suspect any normality as actually abnormal, and not suffer as a casualty of its misleading assumptions. Rather, we ought to use these suspicions in the service of life and work towards the most ideal form of social organization we can find while recognizing that there is always work to be done. Endnotes 1 Black Star. “Respiration (feat. Common).” Track 11 on Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star . Rawkus Records, 1998, CD. 2 Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 451. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. 3 Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. “The Communist Manifesto.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 473. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. 4 Ibid, 474. 5 Ibid, 475. 6 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The German Ideology.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 150. New York: Norton, 1978. 7 Ibid, 150. 8 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Capital, Volume One.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 437. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. 9 Ibid, 438. 10 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 76. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. 11 Ibid, 72-77; Marx describes species-being at length throughout the Manuscripts. 12 Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Beyond Good and Evil.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 193. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. 13 Ibid, 202. 14 Ibid, 207-208. 15 Ibid, 204. 16 Ibid, 201. 17 Ibid, 193. 18 Ibid,. 555. 19 Ibid, 555. 20 Ibid, 242-243. 21 Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 472–479. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967.; Nietzsche describes his master-slave dichotomy of morality throughout the first essay of his Genealogy , though particularly in sections 10, 11, 12, and 13. 22 Ibid, 480. 23 Ibid, 481. 24 Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Beyond Good and Evil.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 393. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. 25 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life . Translated by Peter Preuss. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1980. 44 26 Ibid, 45. 27 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The German Ideology.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 160. New York: Norton, 1978. 28 Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Critique of the Gotha Program.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 531. New York: Norton, 1978. References Black Star. “Respiration.” Track 11 on Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star . Rawkus Records, 1998, CD. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 437–601. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The Communist Manifesto.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 469–500. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “The German Ideology.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 146–200. New York: Norton, 1978. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Capital, Volume One.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 294–438. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 66–125. New York, New York: Norton, 1978. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Beyond Good and Evil.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 179–435. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Genealogy of Morals.” Essay. In Basic Writings of Nietzsche , translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, 437–601. New York, New York: Modern Library, 1967. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life . Translated by Peter Preuss. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1980. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. “Critique of the Gotha Program.” Essay. In The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by Robert C. Tucker, 525–542. New York: Norton, 1978. Previous Next

*Feature* JPPE INTERVIEWS, STEVEN PINKER: Free Speech, Protests, the “Alt-Right”, and Jordan Peterson Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill and his PhD from Harvard. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style. Fall 2019 JPPE : There’s considerable debate over the distinction between free speech and hate speech. How do we know when one meets the other? Is there a responsibility of college campuses or their students to help provide definitions or guidelines for these ideas and which views we believe are of academic merit? Pinker : There are limits on free speech that are recognized in all societies—even in the most libertarian societies when it comes to free speech—such as the incitement of imminent lawless activity, libel, extortion, and some cases of obscenity. There can be restrictions on the place, time, and manner in which speech is expressed. This is all contained in free speech jurisprudence. Nevertheless, those limits are pretty expansive in the United States, and I think laudably the “default” is the notion that speech is free except for very circumscribed exceptions. And that pertains to government strictures on free speech, which is not the same as the discretion that any outlet or platform has regarding who they give a voice to. And of course, a university is not going to invite any drunk on a soapbox in a public park or any ranter on Facebook. There are certain standards of scholarly accuracy and attention to academic literature. So I think the issue doesn’t arise in terms of whether a university ought to invite some provocateur who is just not part of the community of scholarly discourse and intellectual argumentation; but rather it arises when there are scholars who clearly do meet that standard but whose opinions just happen to be controversial, yet they can back up what they say with generally accepted academic standards. Of course, protests too are a legitimate form of free speech, so there can’t be any objections to protests. Although, there is jurisprudence; there are guidelines among defenders of free speech that you may protest but that you may not shut someone down. That is, there is no heckler’s veto, even though there can be of course protests that don’t disrupt the ability of heterodox views to be expressed. JPPE : From what you have observed, do you believe that students are keener to protest speakers than when you were an undergraduate? Pinker : I think there is a narrowing. It’s been going on for some time. It was certainly true when I was an undergraduate and that was a long time ago. And so despite some commentary, which blames it on the millennial generation or on generation z, there was plenty of this in my day. There is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which monitors disinvitations and speech codes, and it found that things have gotten a little bit better in 2018 compared to previous years. They’ve only been monitoring it for, I think, 10 or 15 years. Things definitely got worse until last year, but there have been ups and downs. FIRE also monitors de-platforming, which is a disruptive attempt to prevent speakers from speaking once they’re there; they monitor speech codes. My sense is it’s gotten worse, although it definitely existed when I was a student. JPPE : Did you participate in these kinds of protests? Pinker : No (laughs). JPPE : It seems somewhat arbitrary to determine who is of “scholarly merit”. Pinker : It’s kind of what academics do all the time. We referee one another’s grant proposals, manuscripts, and tenure cases. There are disputes. There are unclear cases. But there is definitely a difference between a Richard Spencer on the one hand and a Charles Murray or a Heather Mac Donald or Jordan Peterson on the other. JPPE : That last name—Jordan Peterson—is someone speaking to a large and predominantly male audience. How do you explain the Jordan Peterson phenomenon? Pinker : I agree it’s a puzzle who he is speaking to. I think he symbolizes for young men two things: one of them is an intellectual engagement that transgresses some of the very narrow boundaries in elite universities and in media like the New York Times. While he’s not alt-right or all of the things that people lazily accuse him of, he is not New York Times or Brown University. He is clearly an erudite and intelligent person. He was a professor first at Harvard, then at the University of Toronto. He is an extremely knowledgeable political psychologist and expert on psychological personality testing. He stretches the boundaries of what you can say, however, not into the territory of white supremacists or neo-nazis and other kooks and crackpots and nutcases. The other thing is that the demographic of young men he speaks to often feel so marginalized by, on the one hand, leftist feminist discourse in universities and, on the other hand, the kind of nihilistic immature culture in advertising, extreme sports, and popular culture, which seems to glorify immaturity, hedonism, and decadence. And I think they realize that someone just saying pretty banal things like “be mature, be responsible for what you say, and clean up after yourself”; that strikes them—caught between these two worlds—as something noble and revelatory. And it can’t be a bad thing that you have a charismatic guy telling young men to be responsible, not to hurt people, and to make their bed. It’s astonishing that it has to be said. But apparently it does. JPPE : You said that there were highly literate and highly intelligent people that gravitate to the alt-right. What do you make of the blow-back you received from that statement? Pinker : The New York Times reported it under an op-ed titled "How Social Media Makes Us Stupid". That was Jesse Singal who wrote that op-ed. For one thing, many people misinterpreted that because their impression of the alt-right is tiki-torch-holding-neo-nazis, whereas the people that call themselves alt-right are not that. I think their views are often quite noxious, and I’ve argued against them. But I know, since some of them are former students that write back to me—I mean Harvard graduates—, that it is a mistake to write them off as tiki-torch-holding-skinheads and neo-nazis. Some of them are smart; they are intelligent, and they feel that there are so many topics that are forbidden in standard university settings. And they feel that mainstream scholars can’t handle the truth and that they feel privy to a kind of forbidden truth, which I argued is dangerous because it means that rather extreme views proliferate in this community without themselves being criticized by opposing views or data that bear on those views. And they can actually blossom in a kind of noxious form if they’re not expressed in an arena in which they can be criticized.

Kyu-hyun Jo Cause, Causation, and Multiplicity: A Critique of E. H. Carr’s “Causation in History” Kyu-hyun Jo Abstract This paper will assess three central components of Edward Carr’s lecture ‘’Causation in History’’ in What is History? First, Carr does not show causation’s real function of distinguishing between various types of history; the kinds of causes a historian employs describes the nature of their historical inquiry. Second, Carr’s notion of “accidental causes” is oxymoronic because accidents are unpredictable for any historical actor. There is no logic to explain why unexpected accidents had to happen for historical actors from their viewpoint. Therefore, its contrast with ‘’rational causes’’ is misleading. Finally, however important causes are in formulating historical interpretations, causes do not determine a historian’s interpretation. 1. An Outline of the Main Arguments The explanation of causes in historical phenomena—explaining how historical events occurred by examining and describing the reasons behind their occurrence—is perhaps the signature hallmark of History as a Social Science. Yet, how does a historian know what a cause is and how should he or she explain the cause? This paper will provide a critique of Edward Carr’s methodology in his lecture “Causation in History,’’ collected in his seminal book, What is History? I will first assess Carr’s discussion of determinism, then discuss his distinction between accidental and rational causes, and finally, analyze how examples function throughout the lecture to highlight his arguments. From such examination, I will emphasize the function of historical causality within Carr’s framing of History as a scientific process. After examining Carr’s logic on historical causality, I will conclude with three main arguments. First, while Carr shows the necessity of causal explanations in historical analyses, he does not crucially show that the real importance of causes in historical explanation lies in their power to determine subdivisions in fields of historical research. Second, Carr’s distinction between “accidental causes’’ and “rational causes’’ is misleading because “accidental causes’’ is an oxymoronic concept. Accidents occur unpredictably and unexpectedly from a historical actor’s perspective, and it is impossible to accurately judge why an accident had to occur, unless a historical actor involved in an accident should miraculously resuscitate to directly inform the historian of the accident’s details. Moreover, if the fundamental purpose of a historical cause is to provide a logical explanation to the occurrence of historical phenomena, Carr, in conceiving “accidental’’ as an opposing concept to “rational,’’ is basically comparing illogical and logical causation in history. However, if “illogical’’ means “that which cannot be explained logically,’’ then it is questionable how an “illogical cause’’ is actually an explanatory cause. It is possible to explain that an accident became an accident, even if it is much harder to determine why an accident exactly occurred. Insofar as there is an explanation, however unsatisfactory the quality of the explanation may be, explaining how an accident came to be called as such, still qualifies as being logical, or having the capability to be explained with reasonable statements. In other words, the contrast between accidental and rational causes in historical explanation is misconstrued because “accidental causes’’ is an oxymoronic concept. Finally, while Carr may be correct in emphasizing the importance of causes in historical interpretation, he is mistaken in assuming that causes alone dictate the structure and content of historical analysis. The search for historical causes is only necessary for the sake of providing diverse angles of historical analyses; historical causes are not so important to exclusively determine and decide the entire content of a historian’s interpretation. It is the historian’s liberty to interpret facts about an event and then determine what the important causes of an event may be, but historical causes alone do not possess the great power to determine the direction of the historian’s interpretation. Rather, it is interdisciplinary historical analysis, which provides a rationale, a justification for why certain causes have better explanatory causes for a certain historical event than others, which ultimately in- forms the direction of a historian’s logic. The art of performing meticulous and exact historical interpretations involves adopting interdisciplinary methods, and only after the invocation of interdisciplinary methods to provide a rationale for establishing a hierarchy between causes can a historian perform interpretations. 2. A Brief Literature Review and the Significance of “Causation in History” A close analysis and an examination of Carr’s conception of causality and his ideas is necessary because there has yet to be a systematic study of Carr’s “Causation in History.” The majority of the secondary literature on What is His- tory? are book reviews that concentrates on commenting on the book’s overall structure and its main argument that History is a dialogue between the past and the present. This literature either mentions Carr’s discussion of historical causality solely in relation to his main argument, or ignores it altogether (1). For example, in the most recent comprehensive discussion of philosophies of History and historiography, the author closely analyzes Robin Collingwood’s emphasis on human ac- tions as the subject of historical inquiry is closely analyzed as a conditional theory for historical causation. Though Carr was a major critic of Collingwood’s views of History in general, neither Carr’s “Causation in History” as an independent work nor What is History? is given sufficient attention (2). Critical studies of Carr’s ideas regarding History have concentrated on his pursuit of objectivity and positivism, or his conceptualization of History as a study of causes. Ann Frazier (1976) argues against an absolute positivist view of History. She asserts that insofar as a historical narrative is a “reconstruction from present experience of what might have happened in the past,” it is impossible to absolutely determine what “actually happened in the past” (3). In other words, Carr’s vision for an objective and a pure History devoted to verifying past events with exactitude is untenable and impossible to realize. Geoffrey Partington (1979) criticized Carr’s “moral positivism and moral futurism” in favor of replacing them with relativism to better account for differences in time and place in which a historical event occurred when making a historical judgment (4). Most recently, Ann Talbot (2009), while comparing Carr’s view of chance and necessity with that of Leon Trotsky, concluded, “History is no longer a study of causality but is determined by the propensities of the historian” (5). In short, the secondary literature has engaged with various aspects of Carr’s view of History and concentrated on how historians write about the past and how recent interpretations of History have abandoned Carr’s concern for causality. However, the secondary literature, in particular Talbot, does not explain why Carr’s search for the role of causality in the writing of History is outdated, missing the central value of “Causality in History” as Carr’s most definitive statement on what History is as a science, for it is in this lecture where a truly scientific and methodical answer to the title of Carr’s book actually appears. A critical examination of Carr’s conception of historical causality is necessary to show why it is outdated or, as I noted earlier, there are three major deficiencies in Carr’s logic about historical causality. In “Causation in History” Carr develops the most methodological and structural argument about the nature of historical causality and criticism against historical determinism, which taken collectively, is actually devoted to explaining why History is a science, rather than explaining causality’s place in History for its own sake. Carr’s views about causality in History are essentially concerned with how causality functions in History to give its scientific character, not whether History’s entire academic identity is simply a study of causation. It is in this particular lecture where Carr’s understanding of History as a science in terms of approaches and methodology is most clearly expressed and where a genuinely structural analysis of History as a science—how historical causation reflects the scientific nature and essence of History—is most lucidly given. In short, this particular lecture deserves a close analysis because it explains why and how History functions as a science: by ordering facts through causality to transform historical fact into historical knowledge. How History becomes under- stood as History to a historian is perhaps the best method to know how history be- comes transformed into professional History. This paper intends to highlight the importance of causation within the question, “What is History?,” later evaluating Carr’s ability to frame historical inquiry as a scientific process through causation and causality. 3. Carr’s Main Ideas on Historical Causality Carr opens his discussion about historical causation with the observation that the historian “commonly assigns several causes to the same event’’ (6). However, the historian is bound by “a professional impulse to reduce it to order, to establish some hierarchy of causes which would fix their relation to one another’’ to decide which cause should be “the ultimate cause, the cause of all causes’’ (7). In other words, Carr believes that a multiplicity of causes serves a secondary function of letting the historian rationally prioritize a single cause that produced an event. From this discussion of the historian’s need to identify an order to historical causes, Carr argues that “historical determinism’’ and “chance in history’’ are “red herrings’’ which obstruct the logical flow of historical causation and proceeds to show how they are not part of a proper historical logic. “Historical determinism’’ is “the belief that everything has a cause or causes, and could not have happened differently unless something in the cause or causes had also been different’’ (8). In other words, “historical determinism’’ assumes that the occurrence of every phenomenon in life is dependent on a single cause unique to that particular phenomenon such that even the slightest alteration in the cause would necessarily produce a different phenomenon. However, Carr sees “historical determinism” as both unsatisfactory and un- realistic because it does not recognize the unpredictable vicissitudes of human behavior and actions According to Carr, the choices people make defy strict classification as either a matter of free will or logical determinism. He believes that various forms of human behavior and actions can arise from both free will and determined causes, arguing that historians are flexible in understanding human actions to arise from both sources (9). From this reasoning, Carr does not entertain the view that historical events occur “inevitably,’’ unless “inevitably’’ is qualified to mean that antecedent causes would have to be different for an event’s outcome to be radically different from what was expected (10). Since Carr is uncomfortable with the notion that historical events occur in a vacuum, it is unsurprising that he also finds explanations relying on “chance’’ or “accidents’’ unsatisfactory. Not only are accidents unexplainable through “historical determinism,’’ but accidents are also causal interruptions to a string of events which a historian wishes to investigate. In other words, the occurrence of an accident is not a license with which a historian can argue that there was no clear cause for an event to occur; an accident is merely an obstacle preventing the historian from focusing on a chain of causality which clearly awaited the historian’s discovery. Of course, Carr is aware that it might be possible for accidents and chance events to happen in history, for such occurrences are not only minor, but are continually compensated by other accidents or chance events, and “chance” might be a “character of individuals’’ (11). In other words, the randomness of accidents is possible because an accident is by nature an unexpected event and the forms in which it may occur are varied and diverse, and may be influenced by the unpredictable variety of personalities of every individual. Yet, Carr finds these apologetic defenses of accidents and chance events unsatisfying because accidents and chance events are often “seriously exaggerated,’’ or perceived to “accelerate or retard’’ historical progress, a sentiment which Carr dismisses as mere “juggling with words’’ (12). Moreover, he thinks that “chance events’’ are “natural occurrences’’ which complement each other is merely an euphemism to claim that there are events in life we cannot comprehend. Carr believes that those who use accidents in their theories have granted themselves the undeserved liberty to excuse themselves from the tedious business of rigorously investigating causes of an event. Such a person, in Carr’s view, is “intellectually lazy’’ or possesses “low intellectual vitality’’ (13). In other words, because accidents are also induced via human activity and actions, Carr does not believe that accidents truly occur unexpectedly or without any causation. Insofar as accidents can be caused by some faults in human personality or will, these faults, however inherently various, deserve to be studied as causes behind the accidents they create. The historian must observe and analyze accidents just as he or she would investigate any other “normal’’ political, social, or cultural event and ponder on why the accident occurred or whether it could have been avoided or prevented at all. So how does a historian pay proper attention to historical causes and formulate a causal relationship between historical facts? For Carr, it begins with the realization that there is little to distinguish between “historical’’ and “unhistorical’’ facts such that it is always possible for the latter to become the former (14). For example, someone living in 1066 and directly witnessing the Battle of Hastings might record that the battle “is taking place,” but once a historian agrees with the witness who claims that it was important that the battle occurred, the historian preserves the fact that the battle occurred in the past and has historical importance by simply stating the same fact in the past tense: “The Battle of Hastings clearly occurred in 1066.” Yet, the murkiness of the distinction does not mean that all causes are to be treated equally, for Carr believes that there are “rational’’ and “accidental’’ causes. The former can be applied to diverse countries, eras, and conditions, which warrants generalizations. By contrast, “accidental’’ causes, which have to be specifically devoted to explaining how an accident as a particular event in a specific time, location, and circumstances, cannot be generalized. An accident occurs under particular conditions and is fundamentally a result derived only from the particular conditions and therefore “teach us no lessons and lead to no conclusions’’ (15). In other words, rationality for Carr is synonymous with generality, while “accidental’’ causes are limited in their generality because they can only be comprehended only within the specific contexts they had occurred. The more important point is that “rational causes’’ have purposes borne from human motivations, whereas “accidental causes’’ do not have an objective. With that said, such a distinction does not mean “accidental causes’’ can be dismissed. Regardless of the type of cause, Carr believes that insofar as historians are expected to make interpretations about them, they are issuing value judgments, and causality is “bound up with interpretation,’’ for the act of assigning causes is itself a judgment. Moreover, because history is a purveyor of tradition, history is obligated to be a record of “past habits and lessons of the past’’ for future generations (16). Due to the arbitrary and selective nature of historical time, Carr concludes by arguing that historians must habitually ask “whither’’ along with “why?’’ (17). The audience for whom the historian writes is as important as personal and private reasons for which the historian writes history. Carr believes that the historian’s search for causation necessarily implies a search for an ultimate cause which can clearly answer why a phenomenon occurred, and insofar as a historian is searching for the ultimate cause, “historical determinism’’ is unsatisfactory because it disregards the importance of multiple causality in ac- counting for the unexpected and unpredictable nature of historical events. Carr also finds the treatment of “chance’’ or “accidental causes’’ as synonymous with “no causation’’ as unsatisfactory, because they are just masking a historian’s laziness or unwillingness to scrutinize historical events very closely to find a logical causation between them. Finally, regardless of whether a cause is “rational”—has the ability to be generalized—or is “accidental’’—happens by pure chance or as an outcome of unexpected events—distinctions between them are not very important because causality in general must inform a historian’s interpretation, which, in turn, is a form of value judgment. The possibility of a “subjective’’ causality is not an excuse to not treat “accidental causes’’ or “rational causes’’ unequally, for the division of time, which is the basic element of a historian’s thinking, is a subjective category which is bound to change depending on the nature of a “future’’ a historian is interested in addressing. As long as the future is subject to change, so will the perception of “past’’ and “present,’’ which is why a historian must be well aware of the purpose for which he or she desires to write history and the audience for whom the historian wishes a work to have a lasting influence. Logic is important to maximize the delivery of rhetorical clarity, for it is the essence of an argument’s organization. Yet, because logic is a general description of a reasoning’s supposed trajectory, logic needs to be supplemented with proper examples to illustrate and convince others that the trajectory is an accurate and rational one. This section has shown how Carr’s logic about historical causation could probably be considered rational; the next section will examine and analyze Carr’s use of examples to determine whether there is sufficient rhetorical strength in the logic to convince the reader that the logic is traveling on its proper and designated route. 4. Carr’s Use of Examples and Their Logical Compatibility with His Main Points This section evaluates Carr’s usage of historical examples in illustrating his main themes and arguments, offering a critique about the propriety of the examples in relation to the points they are making. In particular, it will concentrate on Carr’s examples drawn from the Russian Revolution and the accident of Robinson. This section will conclude that while his use of these examples is sound because he effectively illustrates the importance of unpredictability in historical causation to a historian’s thought process, the Revolution and the accident of Robinson do not greatly support Carr’s main theoretical argument because they do not show how and why a particular hierarchy of causes is necessary for one example but not the other. Carr uses episodes from the Russian Revolution to illustrate his opposition to historical determinism. There are several problems with Carr’s use of the Russian Revolution as an example to counter the assumptions of historical determinism. Fundamentally, the example does not show how Carr would be able to choose his “ultimate’’ cause behind the Revolution’s origins. While it is clear that multiple causes must be considered to establish the complexity of the event and there- by highlight its importance, Carr does not show how a hierarchy of causes can be derived from a consideration of multiple causes. What he actually wishes to show by discussing the Russian Revolution is that “historical determinism” is not a proper historical logic because it essentially engages in counterfactual reasoning, which is not germane to the historian’s critical aim of determining the past as it is. Against historical determinism’s charge that a historian may not consider other alternatives while focusing too much on one cause, Carr argues that supposing that Stolypin had completed the agrarian reform or that the Bolsheviks did not win the Russian Revolution are not relevant to historical determinism, for the determinist would simply look for causes other than ones which actually occurred to argue that different causes would have different outcomes. Hence, Carr suggests that the suppositions have “nothing to do with history,’’ because counterfactual assertions cannot be proven with any certainty with documented evidence and are non-historical (18). The problem is that Carr never really identifies the precise kind of historical interpretation for which his example from the Russian Revolution is meant to offer support. If the suppositions he made are not “historical,’’ then the real question is, which suppositions should be deemed “historical?’’ Refutation by negation does not necessarily lead to clarity; it only serves as a proof of what an opposing argument cannot be, rather than proving the essence of the opposing argument. More- over, because the basic theoretical argument against “historical determinism’’ is that historical events have multiple causes and do not occur in a vacuum, Carr’s example should have shown how a genuine historical argument can be fruitful by considering multiple causes. After all, the real problem Carr has with “historical determinism’’ is that it assumes that historical events were bound to happen with- out any particular value ascribed to the events’ circumstantial causes. Since Carr is uncomfortable with the unscientific and unhistorical nature of the philosophy, it would have logically made more sense for him to show how historical logic operates in a coherent and powerful manner such that it could not be easily dismissed by proponents of historical determinism. Hence, it would have sufficed to show how causation and causes operate in a historical analysis rather than a proving how “historical determinism’’ has a faulty logic, since the fact that there is a deficiency in an opposing logic does not necessarily imply that an alternative logic must be better simply because it does not have that deficiency. The other problem with Carr’s use of the Russian Revolution is his assumption that the supposed currency of the Russian Revolution as a “modern historical’’ problem has greater importance than “older’’ events such as the Norman Con- quest or the American Revolution. Carr believes that there is a greater desire to remember “options’’ still available for a more recently concluded historical event than much older ones. Carr claims that the expression of diverse passions from non-historians makes it hard for them to accept conclusions of a historian who merely recounts an event as it happened (19). Carr does seem to show why “historical determinism’’ is popular, but his analogy does not necessarily prove why “historical determinism’’ is an unhistorical logic. All events eventually get forgotten to certain degrees in which some facts are going to be better known than others, but it is primarily a historian’s scholarly curiosity which determines the importance of a historical event. Since every historian must have different reasons for believing that a historical event is important, the only impediment with regard to time would be the availability or lack of primary sources rather than a poverty of a historian’s imagination or will to realize innovation. “Older’’ events were once “modern’’ and therefore, importance is inherently a subjective standard which arises from the question of how well individuals remember events. People do remember events which are closer to their immediate memories better than older ones in terms of general details, but squabbling over how alternative causes behind an event might have changed the actual outcome is not necessarily the only reason for which a “modern event’’ must be remembered better than an older event. Christopher Columbus died believing that he had discovered “India” instead of the Caribbean, but the fact that the person might engage in a “historically deterministic’’ debate about how the course of history might have been different had Columbus really landed in North America does not necessarily mean that the person would not engage in historical determinism about other historical events, especially if the person has a passionate interest about them. Chronological distance has no definite correlation with interest because the latter is not necessarily dependent on time but rather on this person’s intellectual curiosity regardless of the event’s currency to the immediate present. Furthermore, thinking historically is a capability, not a matter of predilection. Even if that person remembers the IMF Crisis better than Columbus’s discovery of the Caribbean, it does not follow that “unhistorical’’ suppositions such as “if Columbus had set sail for Africa instead, he would have never discovered the Caribbean” are not relevant to historical thinking. A “cause’’ is not some given concept or model; one has to think through a selection of reasons behind an event to determine which reasons were essential and which ones were merely auxiliary or unimportant in precipitating the occurrence of a phenomenon. Counterfactual reasoning can help a historian think through a rationale for why a supposed cause is actually a noteworthy one; the only caution is to only think through counter- factual claims, not write them down as part of the actual historical reasoning. In other words, the clarity of memory does not necessarily lead to more “historically deterministic debates’’ because logical clarity is independent from the question of whether that logic is “historically deterministic.’’ It is perfectly logical to assume that if Columbus had not been adept at sailing when he was young, then he would have not made the voyage to the Caribbean, for one is only thinking about the causal logic of actions in a given situation and time period without describing the historical consequences of those actions. Thinking about historical events does not always have to imply that one is only thinking about history in terms of chronology, for situational logicality is also important to fathom causality in action, which is what gives contextual meaning and significance to time. Moreover, “historical determinism’’ is an attitude about a particular event or a specific set of events for which a different outcome would have been likely had causes been also different from ones which were originally suggested. Why assume that a desire to adopt such an attitude is stronger with a modern event than a more chronologically distant one? The expression of a particular attitude is not necessarily dependent on how new or old an event is, and chronic difference between a historical event and the individual who is remembering the event may vary ac- cording to the individual who decides to remember it. Yet, emotional attachment to a particular event need not inversely relate with chronological distance because reasons for recollection are far too varied to summarize merely as a function of time. As long as “modern’’ is a relative term expressed from the viewpoint of certain individuals and groups, there will be no rigid standard to determine which memories constitute “modern history.” Moreover, if the historian’s task is to select an “ultimate cause’’ of a particular event, how can a historian be so sure that there is an “ultimate cause’’ without ranking a supposedly “historically deterministic’’ cause? The danger of falling into “historical determinism’’ is not a good reason to avoid considering hypothetical claims, because a historian can always change hypotheses into positive statements by searching for relevant primary and secondary sources to test whether or not there is sufficient evidence to prove its validity. The suitability of a historical cause’s use as part of a historical argument is first and foremost dependent on how reliable that cause is. Carr’s other main concern about historical causality is the disturbing use of the concept of “accidents’’ in history as synonymous with the idea of “no causation.’’ The primary example that he uses to illustrate his critique is “Robinson’s accident.’’ Carr gives a hypothetical example of Robinson, who was crossing the street to buy cigarettes but was unexpectedly struck and killed by an oncoming car. However, if the driver was intoxicated, was driving a car with defective brakes, and hit Robinson in a dark alley where barely anything was visible, what was the actual cause of the accident—Robinson, the defective brakes, the dark alley, or the drunk driver? Instead of answering his own inquiry, Carr states that if two passers-by were to give the opinion that Robinson was killed because he was a heavy smoker, and that had he not gone out to buy the cigarettes, there would have been no accident, they would be employing a “kind of remorseless logic found in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass .’’ Carr concludes by remarking that such hypothetical reasoning is not a mode of thought appropriate for history (20). The main deficiency he finds in the concept of “accidents’’ is that an “accident’’ is also an historical event. It is therefore subject to a historian’s analysis of preceding causes leading to the occurrence of the accident. In other words, “accidents’’ cannot escape a historian’s scrutiny just because they seemingly occur without any single clear cause. However complex an accident may be, Carr believes that there is still a hierarchy amongst causes behind an accident which allows the historian to discern between primary causes and auxiliary or negligible ones. The historian’s ability to discern “relevant facts’’ from “irrelevant facts’’ until there is a “rational quilt of knowledge,’’ represents an approximation of a historian’s working mind (21). Unfortunately, Carr does not give a clear answer to the critical question, how does this discernment actually work in practice? There are two ironic errors that Carr commits in telling this narrative. First, despite Carr’s attempt to show why “accidents’’ are still valid elements to consider in historical thinking, he chose the wrong type of example; his example is purely unhistorical. We are only present- ed with a sequence of actions within one ‘historical’ moment rather than several different yet interconnected events across a wide span of time. When historians consider an accident and its causes, they always consider the accident’s relative importance to other events, figures, or conditions. To declare that an event is “historical’’ is to designate a relational quality which suggests that an event has a “historical significance’’ which can describe the event’s relationship or value by connecting with other events, figures, or conditions. If one is ever inclined to declare that a single event alone is historically significant, it can only happen because one presupposes that the event is already well-known because of its relationship with preceding or simultaneous events. For example, from Archduke Ferdinand’s viewpoint, his assassination by Gavrilo Princip was an accident. However, before investigating the causes of the assassination, the historian must establish a rationale to explain why studying the assassination is important. In the case of Archduke Ferdinand, the historian, using a bit of hindsight, can argue that the assassination began a massive wave of violence which rattled across the European continent and ignited the sparks of World War I. By contrast, in Carr’s example, we are not given a reason to believe that studying Robinson’s accident is historically worthwhile. In other words, because Carr did not explain the “historicity’’ of Robinson’s accident, we are not presented with a credible reason to believe that this is a historical event. Carr’s second error is that if we consider Carr’s reason for invoking Robinson’s accident as an example, the example does not illustrate a necessity or method to find multiple causes in historical analysis. If a historian’s prime objective in search- ing for multiple causes is to search for an ultimate cause for a historical phenomenon, then Carr ought to have shown how a historian might approach Robinson’s case as a historical phenomenon. His conclusion that a historian engages selectively with causes is not actually a literal answer to any of his two-part question: 1) How does a historian choose multiple causes? and 2) How does a historian actually select an “ultimate cause’’ from those multiple causes? This is because there is no reason to assume that there must be a single cause for Robinson’s accident at all unless Robinson himself or the driver told the police that there was actually one cause to the accident. Even if the driver had told the police that there was only one cause, it is purely the driver’s own opinion which may or may not be corroborated by other witnesses or circumstantial evidence. From an unassuming observer’s point of view, there is no exact means to verify a sequence of events and pinpoint a singular cause because the observer did not encounter Robinson’s accident in real time along with Robinson. Insofar as this difference between an observer and Robinson exists, there will always be a gulf between speculations and the actual truth. Indeed, because of this gulf, the real moral of Robinson’s accident ought to have been that searching for multiple causes is necessary for a historian to account for every possible explanation of a phenomenon, since the point of finding possible causes of an accident is to establish that an accident can be explained to convince people that the accident can be perceived as an accident. Carr’s argument that one should establish a “hierarchy of causes” implies that there is a particular cause which outranks others in terms of importance. However, there is no such thing as an absolute verification of a truth’s minute details for the historian, unless, very rarely, absolute verification is a necessary condition to prove the soundness of his or her main arguments. A historian is obliged to consider as many aspects of a past event, but no one can know every single detail to get a complete and impeccable picture of an event. The historian has the right to exercise a liberty of imagination based on primary sources and eye-witness accounts, but the historian must also understand that his or her tools to unearth historical facts also delineate the parameters of epistemological certainty. Moreover, Robinson’s example also poses the question of how a historian deter- mines a cause of an accident as an accident, a process that is limited by the quantity and quality of evidence one can find. Since the parameter of what constitutes historical knowledge is bound to change depending on which sources this historian can find, Carr is actually unable to answer the first part of his question. Further- more, because the parameters of knowledge are at the mercy of the availability of historical sources, an attachment to the belief that there must be an ultimate cause is both unrealistic and false, which is why Carr is never able to give a clear answer to the second part of his question. Historical causes are not tangible and therefore cannot be visually compared with each other. Of course, if a historian is writing an autobiography and writes a history of his or her life from what he or she remembers, then, there might be some liberty for the historian to rank causes and choose the ultimate one. In such a case, there is no basis from which another historian can ask why the causes were ranked in one way but not another, because every mind has but one master. The absence of a hierarchy among causes does not imply an absence of certain- ty or that historians ought to be skeptical about everything they encounter. To the contrary, there are undeniable truths in history such as the Holocaust or Russian pogroms of the 19th century. Rather, acknowledging a multiplicity of causes al- lows for a holistic consideration of multiple dimensions of a historical event from which causal explanations can be drawn, which actually prevents a historian from engaging in “historical determinism.” If the objective of studying a historical event is, as Carr claims, to search for one cause with absolute explanatory power, then the historian is actually engaging in ‘historical determinism’ because such an objective reflects the idea’s actual essence. Hence, Carr’s opposition to “historical determinism,’’ which was precisely because he believed in the multiplicity of causes, does not logically follow from invoking Robinson’s example. Furthermore, the witnesses in Robinson’s accident were actually reflecting Carr’s faith in the multiplicity of causes, so the next task was for Carr to show how he could select his ‘ultimate cause’ for explaining why Robinson died. Instead, Carr vaguely suggests that the historian has to be selective about his causes without explaining the end to which this selectivity has value. Hence, Robinson’s example is actually a Straw Man argument because the original purpose for which the example was mentioned does not become clear until Carr supplies a rationale for justifying a hierarchy of causes. As for how and why the hierarchy fundamentally exists, Carr never gives a clear answer. Therefore, Robinson’s death merely illustrates an argument about an element which is not extant in any of Carr’s arguments prior to his discussion of Robinson’s death. 5. Three Central Problems with Carr’s Methodology in “Causation in History’’ In this concluding section, I will identify three central problems with Carr’s method which will serve as a summary of this paper’s main arguments. First, Carr’s notion of a hierarchy of causes and its importance in historical explanation is unfortunately quite nebulous because he never specifies the purpose be- hind the existence of the hierarchy, ignoring the true function of historical causes as a form of scientific processing. Second, Carr’s distinction between “rational” and “accidental” causes is not valid because regardless of an event’s nature, multiple causes are necessary to account for inherent complexities in any historical event and such causes ultimately serve as evidence for a historian’s claim, which means that the more causes a historian can find, the more reliable and believable a historian’s account becomes. On the one hand, multiple causes are necessary to describe different facets of a phenomenon; a historian will summarize his or her main arguments to show readers how those facets constitute the “wholeness’’ of a historical fact. On the other hand, there needs to be a multiplicity in the kinds of causal analysis a historian uses to approximately position arguments within a given subfield of History. Finally, Carr is wrong to suggest that causes determine a historian’s interpretation because the former is just a means for which the historian has the freedom to determine an end. Causes are merely building blocks with which a historian constructs an independently designed interpretation. With regard to Carr’s questions about how a historian chooses multiple causes and selects an “ultimate cause” among them, I argue that the only certainty a historian can have comes from ascertaining that the nature of a cause aligns with the field in which it must be accurately used. When a historian asks the question, ‘Why was Archduke Ferdinand assassinated?’ the historian implicitly means that, in general, he or she is looking for political causes specifically related to nationalist motivations behind the assassination and its impact on the outbreak of World War I, rather than cultural or social causes behind the rise of nationalism in a general sense. An argument can be made that such distinctions can be interchangeable, since Gavrilo Princip’s association with the Black Hand was a culturally motivated expression of a desire to express Serbian nationalism. However, “political’’ and “cultural’’ cannot be so liberally applied in an interchangeable manner because they are merely generic labels conceived under the assumption that historians and the general public know that such a distinction can exist. A historian may find out that Gavrilo Princip preferred Serbian circuses to Austrian ones, but one does not use this cultural fact to describe anything with sufficient certainty about Princip’s personal decision to assassinate Ferdinand, even if there is nothing mentioned in primary sources about it. The transformation of a fact into a cause is actually a fixed relationship, in which a fact can become a cause, but a cause alone can never become a fact. The historian’s designation of an occurrence as a cause reflects a personal belief that an element within a historical figure’s character or a historical event has some reasonable degree of explanatory power. History is, in general, filled with facts, but it is the conditional possibility of several facts turning into believable causes of a historical phenomenon which truly excites the historian. Causes are essentially facts whose relationship amongst themselves and the phenomenon which they wish to explain is firmly and convincingly established by a rich array of primary sources. Facts which hardly need any source-based proof are not likely to become causes because they are generic and mundane enough to be independent of any historical situation. In short, what Carr really means by “a hierarchy of causes’’ is that not all causes are created equal. The real problem is that Carr never really demonstrated what a hierarchy of causes is. While it may not be possible to definitively identify which types of causes matter more than others, Carr ought to have at least shown how a hierarchy among causes can be conceived. Yet, the real heart of the matter is that Carr could not actually show his audience that a hierarchy among causes exists because there is no singular standard of a “hierarchy,’’ other than what a scholar perceives through a meticulous reading of the relevant historical literature. That Carr could not provide a concrete hierarchy strongly suggests the impossibility of doing so because different hierarchies of causation matter for different subfields of History. Movement of capital, markets, and industrial structure in the early 18th century matter more as direct causes be- hind the Industrial Revolution than as causes behind the death of the Avant Garde in the late 20th century. The difference in subfields also translates to differences in particular “states of the field,” or the variance in the levels of academic discourse about various historical topics, leading to different developments in varying facets of historical inquiry. The nature of primary or secondary sources a historian must search for necessarily depends on the questions the historian wishes to answer in relation to how certain historical topics have been addressed in the existing scholarly literature. In other words, a search for primary or secondary sources is a dependent variable of “current’’ historical scholarship because the main function of amassing historical information is to facilitate a productive and meaningful scholarly debate. This debate, in turn, will invite future generations of historians to construct new angles and roads along which the debate must continue. Moreover, because proving causality in historical analysis can only be done through a meticulous examination of primary and secondary sources, it follows that the richness in illustrating historical causality is dependent on the availability of sources. In short, ascribing a strict sense of a hierarchical notion of historical causality is impossible because of three main variables: multiple causes and multiplicity in the kinds of causes, a rigid relationship between facts and causes, in which only the former can transform into the latter, and finally, differences in subfields and varying conditions in historiography, which imply that a historian must pragmatically conceive of a hierarchy of causes which reflects the availability of primary and secondary sources and their ability to cogently deliver a progressive view or methodological contribution to the existing scholarship. The second major problem with Carr’s method is his misconstrued distinction between “rational’’ and “accidental’’ causes. An “accidental’’ cause is a misnomer because no cause can arise without a reason. Even the most unexpected events have clear causes because searching for causation is essentially identical to search- ing for reasonable connections previously ignored or overlooked. Furthermore, if Carr himself acknowledged that ‘accidental’ causes need to undergo strict academic scrutiny as much as “rational’’ causes, then what he really means is that a scholar must have the same approach and attitude toward “accidental’’ causes as he or she has toward “rational’’ or normal causes. Yet, Carr does not illustrate how a historian actually investigates “rational’’ causes because he is interested in comparing “accidental’’ causes with “rational’’ ones rather than demonstrating how a historian uses each type of cause to con- struct a historical analysis or make an observation. In practice, Carr did not have to make a distinction between the two causes. A historian can propose rational explanations for supposedly accidental causes, and once this is done, there is no difference between “rational’’ and “accidental’’ causes. I will illustrate my point by comparing Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon as a “rational’’ event, and Pierre Curie’s carriage accident as a literally “accidental’’ event. I will show how these two events deserve equally serious scholarly attention because they all involve the same process of investigation, regardless of an event’s nature. Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon would be a rational event because the crossing itself is a “reasonable’’ action in that a man mounted on horseback can cross a river because he has the will and means to do so. Such an action can be expected, for regardless of what the Roman Senate thought, Caesar only had two choices: defy the Senate by crossing the river or obey the Senate and let them limit his actions. Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon was not “surprising’’ as an action in itself; neither would the decision not to cross be surprising, unless Caesar somehow died for reasons unrelated to the crossing. By contrast, Pierre Curie’s carriage accident is not a rational event because the exact circumstances are open to much speculation. We do not know so many de- tails about how Marie Curie’s husband died, but it would hardly matter whether the driver of the carriage or Pierre Curie was drunk or whether Curie was jogging when the driver lost control of the carriage and hit Curie at break-neck speed. What remains true independent from causes is that it was an accident because neither Curie nor the driver would have expected to run into each other, for they were no mutual acquaintances. According to Carr, the rationality of a cause does not affect its historical investigation, making both “rational” and “accidental” causes garner the same approach. Although Carr never defines what a “rational’’ event is, since human beings are responsible for creating events, it follows that what is rational is what can be expected within the realm of reasonable human behavior and thought. If the primary function of historical causes is to explain why a phenomenon, regardless of its nature, occurred, then identifying how an accident became an accident is in itself an explanation, no matter how unexpected or unforeseeable the accident must have been to the people involved in it. However, regardless of how much we know or do not know about Caesar or Pierre Curie, the principles of research remain identical. A historian must first amass all records on the crossing of the Rubicon and Pierre Curie’s accident, gather any witness testimonies to corroborate on controversial or obscure aspects of each case, perform a theoretical analysis of causes and speculations, and finally, arrive at reasonable conclusions based on the existing evidence. The rationality of the research process which is common to both events is what makes a study of the two events rational, for the nature of an event does not necessarily reflect or dictate the nature of the means with which one ought to study each event. If accidents, like rational events, also have causes, then Carr ought to have shown how “accidents’’ could be considered the antithesis of rational events. An accident is unexpected, but is not irrational, for every cause of an accident is borne from actions which the individuals involved consider rational. If two speeding cars collide, it could be an accident borne from the drivers’ disregard for the speed limit, or from one driver’s inebriation. Still regardless of whether it is due to mis- handling the car or personal flaws, none of the causes are irrational. Disregarding the speed limit or drinking heavily may have been a mistake, but neither of these activities are incapable of having a logic ascribed to them, for a historian can still argue that committing these mistakes, regardless of their severity, contributed to the occurrence of the accident. Insofar as all actions have causes and motives in their creation, the historian is obliged to study them with an eye towards collecting all relevant facts, an action unrelated to how rational or irrational a historical event may seem. It is because, as I argued through the example of Caesar crossing the Rubicon and Pierre Curie’s accident, no elements are beyond the reasonably expected scope of human behavior. Regardless of whether an event was planned or turned out to be an accident, what remains constant in both cases is that there are various actions a person can take at a particular time, and every action will have a distinct set of reasons. Carr’s distinction between rational and “irrational’’ causes is therefore, a faulty comparison, for there is no clear reason given to believe that accidents are inherently “irrational,’’ and because historians can also surmise about causes behind accidents insofar as accidents are human-induced events. The final point of this paper is that a historian’s personal selection of causes does not dictate a singular direction of interpretation. Establishing causation and providing interpretation are independently creative activities conjoined by the necessity to give coherence to a historian’s general argument. Carr seems to believe that a historian is reflecting private opinions through a selection of causes, but the selection is only the means to the ultimate end-to generate a unique interpretation which does not necessarily reflect what the causes themselves have to say about a topic. Causes in and of themselves reflect no emotions; until the historian judges the causes to be positive or negative in nature in relation to the argument he or she wants to make from the causes, causes are merely guidelines and building blocks to the overall argument which gives the essential structure to the historian’s logic. Causes merely reflect a historian’s judgment about a possibility in believing that a phenomenon happened in one direction. The real essence of the historian’s argument lies in what the historian thinks about the phenomenon, not the causes. The historian’s attention must not be limited to understanding how a car’s assembly line malfunctioned, but be extended to observe how the car as a finished product qualitatively suffers as a result of faults in the assembly line. Carr’s argument about causes might be feasible if a historian is trying to find out the causes behind a historical tragedy, but even in this case, the historian’s real argument is about proving one can see that it was a tragedy. For example, if the sinking of the Titanic was truly due to a crash into an iceberg, and a historian proves that indeed it was so, the moral of the research is not just that “a ship hit an iceberg and sank.” Rather, the moral is that because of this linkage, one can conclude that it was a terrible accident and a tragedy. Even if a historian should conclude with identifying the iceberg as the cause of the tragedy, the identification of the cause does not dictate the interpretation of the phenomenon because interpretation is not about identifying what or why something happened. Instead, interpretation is concerned with what one should observe from the structure of a historical phenomenon that emerges from identifying the cause behind the phenomenon. Identifying causes alone does not make the study of History interesting; one needs to show how causes function to produce original observations about a holistic phenomenon that emerges from showing a causal relationship between or within a series of linked phenomena. Once a general picture of a historical phenomenon emerges, every historian can have a glimpse into how the phenomenon got concluded, no matter how many diverse facts about it are unearthed. Yet, the most interesting question in historical research is not what happened, but how an event unfolded to produce a particular result. In answering “how,’’ every historian is bound to focus on diverse and specific causes to explain the general outcome. Most historians will not focus on what the importance of a particular cause is simply by analyzing the cause in its own terms but on what that cause means in relation to a web of other multiple causes. Furthermore, since a cause is but one element in a historian’s interpretation of relations between phenomena; what are termed “causes’’ were actually phenomena happening in real time for historical actors. Therefore, the originality of historical interpretation does not arise simply from cherry-picking elements from a single phenomenon to serve as “causes’’ but in linking multiple phenomena into one grand narrative. In creating this grand narrative, the historian’s goal is to show how the phenomena relate to each other, and therefore to produce an original view about how to understand the relationship. What Carr’s arguments do show is that a search for causes and causation is worthwhile because every historical cause originally begins from ascertaining historical facts, which in turn, helps a historian discover and rationally explain new discoveries. Moreover, historical causes need to delineate boundaries between various subfields in History to assure that each field employs appropriate causes which best explain a phenomenon under scrutiny. Furthermore, a proper search for historical causation must not engage in a distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘accidental’ causes because all causes are valuable insofar as they serve the primary function of explaining what happened and why an event occurred. Insofar as the historian’s duty to tell the true sequence of actions behind an event remains valid for all rational or accidental incidents, a historian must concentrate on finding causes to fulfill a cause’s fundamental purpose. Finally, causes are building blocks to facilitate an original and interesting interpretation of a historical event, but causes alone do not possess the power to determine the entire direction of an interpretation. An incisive eye for finding accurate explanations must combine with a historian’s unique imagination and vision to recreate a believable “image’’ of a reality that corresponds closely to the truth which the historian found. The combination can only come about smoothly if a discovery of causes and an original analysis of the significance of the discovery are independent and not concurrent activities of an inquisitive scholarly mind. A respect for a cause’s individuality that is distinct from a historical fact, a respect for a cause’s explanatory prowess rather than its rational or accidental nature, and a separation between the discovery and interpretation of causes are essential to the pursuit of History as a rigorous, liberal, and original science. Endnotes 1 Bernard Barber, “Review of What is History? by Edward Hallett Carr,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 68, No. 2 (September, 1962), 260-262; Seymour Itzkoff, “Review of What is History? by Edward Hallett Carr,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2 (June, 1962), 132-134; Jacob Price, “Review of What is History?: The George-Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, January-March 1961 by Edward Hallett Carr,” History and Theory, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1963), 136-145; Patrick Gardiner, “Review of What Is History? by E. H. Carr,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 73, No. 4 (October, 1964), 557-559. 2 Aviezer Tucker, “Causation in Historiography,” in Aviezer Tucker ed., A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 101. 3 Ann Frazier, “The Criterion of Historical Knowledge,” Journal of Thought, Vol. 11, No. 1 (January, 1976), 66-67. 4 Geoffrey Partington, “Relativism, Objectivity, and Moral Judgment,” Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (June, 1979), 125-139. 5 Ann Talbot, “Chance and Necessity in History: E. H. Carr and Leon Trotsky Compared,” Historical Social Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2009), 95. 6 Edward Hallett Ibid (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), 116. 7 Carr, What is History?, 117. 8 Ibid, 121-122. 9 Ibid, 122-123. 10 Ibid, 126. 11 Ibid, 133. 12 Ibid, 137. 13 Ibid, 134. 14 Ibid, 135. 15 Ibid, 141. 16 Ibid, 142. 17 Ibid, 143. 18 Ibid, 127. 19 Ibid, 136. 20 Ibid, 138. In the actual passage, he calls it the “Dodgsonian mode” after the author of Through the Looking Glass. 21 Ibid, 136. References Barber, Bernard, “Review of What is History? by Edward Hallett Carr,” American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 68, No. 2 (September, 1962), 260-262. Edward Hallett Ibid (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961). Frazier, Ann, “The Criterion of Historical Knowledge,” Journal of Thought , Vol. 11, No. 1 (January, 1976), 60-67. Gardiner, Patrick, “Review of What Is History? by E. H. Carr,” The Philosophical Review , Vol. 73, No. 4 (October, 1964), 557-559. Itzkoff, Seymour, “Review of What is History? by Edward Hallett Carr,” History of Education Quarterly , Vol. 2, No. 2 (June, 1962), 132-134. Partington, Geoffrey, “Relativism, Objectivity, and Moral Judgment,” British Journal of Educational Studies , Vol. 27, No. 2 (June, 1979), 125-139. Price, Jacob, “Review of What is History?: The George-Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, January-March 1961 by Edward Hallett Carr,” History and Theory , Vol. 3, No. 1 (1963), 136-145. Talbot, Ann, “Chance and Necessity in History: E. H. Carr and Leon Trotsky Compared,” Historical Social Research , Vol. 34, No. 3 (2009), 88-96. Tucker, Aviezer, “Causation in Historiography,” in Tucker, Aviezer ed., A Companion to the Philosophy of History (Chichester, United Kingdom: Wiley-Black- well, 2011), 98-108. Previous Next

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Eleanor Ruscitti God Save the Fish: The Abyss of Electoral Politics in Trade Talks—a Brexit Case Study Eleanor Ruscitti “The EU is continuing to make demands that are incompatible with our independence... we cannot accept a deal that doesn’t leave us in control of our own laws or waters” ~ Boris Johnson on December 20, 2020 (1-2). Abstract During the “exit negotiations” between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU), the relatively economically insignificant fishing industry received a disproportionate share of not just UK media attention, but global press as well; not to mention an array of political machinations, which almost halted a free trade agreement between two of the world’s largest trading partners. This evaluation seeks to understand why such disproportional influence existed. Why were both the EU and the UK coming to blows over something as seemingly innocuous as fishing, and willing to risk the most significant trade agreement in recent European history? Existing subject matter literature cites history and symbolism as the main factors that brought fishing into the limelight, almost killing a multi-billion-dollar trade deal between these two primary trade partners. While this paper concurs with existing analysis, it finds further illumination in the murky waters of electoral politics. It argues that the Conservative Party brought fishing to the trade talk surface to demonstrate that they were protecting a disenfranchised industry while aiming to convey the benefits of Brexit to maintain votes and prevent Scottish secession. More broadly, this paper sheds light on the potential ramifications that domestic politicians have on free trade agreements, especially in this new global populist era where the leverage of the disenfranchised is key; an affirmation of the American colloquial- ism that “all politics is local” (3). I: Introduction A Fishy Paradox From many perspectives, most of the Brexit drama did not make sense. From an economic point of view, it made more sense for the United Kingdom (UK) to remain in the European Union (EU) to keep access to the European Single Market (Single Market) and their largest and longest trading partners, especially in an era of increasing globalization. However, even though the vast majority of expert opinions concluded that leaving the EU would be economically disastrous for the UK, in the summer of 2016, its citizens voted to leave. Brexit was not just about economics, though. It was a reaction of nostalgia and entrenchment vis-à-vis a world that was rapidly becoming more interconnected with the EU leading the way. As the offshoring of lower productivity sectors of the economy and the development of more technologically advanced goods and services providers sailed ahead, once-thriving industries were no longer key to the economy. These changes left many in the UK workforce feeling stranded in an unnavigable wake of market disruption, while Brussels charted a course toward ever-increasing globalization. The disenfranchised felt as though they were under the thumb of Brussels, having to abide by laws that they believed were unfavorable to the UK. A rather sentimental notion of sovereignty and the call for “taking back control” resonated within certain portions of the British populace. Their goal was to withdraw from their largest economic market to regain full regulatory control yet maintain access to the Single Market via a free trade deal that represented over 40 percent of its exports (4). When the time came to negotiate this free trade deal, economic reasoning took a back seat, again. As the final days of the deal approached, most of the negotiations had been settled. However, over a dinner of pumpkin soup, scallops, and steamed turbot with mashed potatoes (a not-so-subtle nod to the feud) UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen almost derailed the entire deal for the seemingly economically insignificant fishing industry (5). Johnson left the dinner asserting that “very large gaps remain between the two sides (regarding a fishing deal) and it is still unclear whether these can be bridged.” Von der Leyen said that “we understand each other’s positions. But [we] remain far apart” (6). With only 15 days left to seal the deal, and no consensus on fishing in sight, many were left confused and frustrated. The fishing industry employs roughly 12,000 workers out of a UK workforce of over 33 million (excluding the processing industry, which employs a larger portion); represents 0.1 percent of British domestic output; 0.2 percent of EU GDP; and accounts for just 0.8 percent of total EU-UK trade (7, 8, 9, 10). It produces a little more than £1 billion of the total £300 billion worth of UK exports. It seemed that the UK was effectively putting at risk over 99 percent of its trade with the EU to defend an industry that accounted for a mere fraction of the world’s sixth-largest economy. Even Harrods in London contributes more to the British economy (11). Many questioned why the British government was prepared to risk the most important trade negotiations in recent British history over an industry that barely even touches the economic needle, let alone moves it. Literature Review Academics and journalists alike, such as Professor Anand Menon (12), Jeremy Phillipson (13), Sophia Kopela (14), and Stijn Billiet (15) tried to address the paradox, but the vast majority failed to account for the genesis of the paradox by failing to consider the role of elections and electoral politics. Professor Menon argued that the British government’s focus on the repatriation of fishing rights was instrumentally relevant because it was symbolic and represented a commitment to the “left behind.” Menon asserted that the media’s amplification of the issue brought it to relevance, and in a sense, forced Johnson to act (16, 17). Other scholars, such as Craig McAngus, Christopher Huggins, and John Connolly concluded that since fishing was one of the most Europeanized policies for the UK, it would receive the most attention throughout the trade talks (18, 19). On par with the rest of Brexit, the answer lies in convoluted domestic politics rather than economic reasoning. As mentioned in previous analyses, the fishing industry was perceived as a symbol for the wider movement fueling Brexit: “taking back control” and revitalizing a domestic industry that was lost under the heel of the EU boot. Politicians focused on it in order to create an image that the government was helping the citizens, and particularly, the disenfranchised (20). The cause for this might not be just because of the media’s influence, as per Menon’s analysis, but rather because of a synergistically strong confluence of the Scottish fishing lobby, an upcoming Scottish general election, and the Conservative party’s political agenda. II: Why Do Politicians Protect and Amplify Certain Industries in Free- Trade Agreements? Theoretical Frameworks: Lobbying Influence and the Self-Serving Politician There are a multitude of theories regarding the significance of certain industries in trade talks, often finding answers in lobby groups and politicians’ electoral objectives. Typically, democratically elected/appointed officials ultimately determine trade agreements. As theorized by Robert Putnam in 1988, the politics of trade agreements are often a two-level game in which public sector officials/politicians are simultaneously in negotiations at both the international and the domestic levels (21). Putnam assessed that domestic groups pressure the officials to adopt favorable policies and, in turn, these officials seek to amplify their power by developing relationships with these groups who offer support via votes or campaign contributions (22). Politicians then go to the international level and seek to maximize their ability to satisfy domestic pressures while balancing the needs of their international partners (23). Following Putnam’s two-level game theory, Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman introduced special-interest politics into the analysis, analyzing profit-maximizing lobbying groups. They found that, “lobbies seek to curry favor with politicians who covet their financial support... seeking to maximize the aggregate welfare of the lobby groups’ members” (24). As the politician’s objective is to maximize their own political welfare––which often relies on having a large number of contributions––they champion the policy of those who donate the most. In other words, those who donate the most have purchased the most access to influence during trade talks. Sometimes, though, the most influence comes from industries that do not have deep pockets. In 1982, Arye Hillman assessed why politicians put their support behind declining industries that have little special-interest money and/or little economic or voting influence (25). Hillman found that politicians protect and promote declining industries for self-interest motives to maximize political support, rather than for altruistic ideals, as the industry will still typically decline even with protection (26). However, a strong influence of a declining industry may not solely manifest from a politician’s political agenda. In “Entry and Asymmetric Lobbying: Why Governments Pick Losers”, Richard Baldwin and Frederic Robert-Nicoud use Grossman and Helpman’s 1994 pressure group approach to conclude that while government policy is influenced by pressure groups that employ expensive lobby- ing tactics, losers (such as declining industries) lobby more diligently through less expensive means (27). They concluded that it is not just the government that picks the losers, but rather it is also the losers that pick the government (28). The Fishing Industry as a “Loser” Lobbyist It is helpful to use Grossman and Helpman’s campaign finance lobbying, Hillman’s self-serving/re-election interests, and Baldwin’s and Robert-Nicoud loser lobbying framework to contextualize the fishing paradox. To begin, one must view the fishing industry as a lobbyist and Johnson as a political welfare maximizer. However, the fishing industry is not the lobbyist illustrated by Grossman and Helpman. After analyzing over 7,000 donations to both Conservative Party and Unionist Party between 2016-2020, the Scottish Fishing Federation and the National Federation of Fishermen did not appear to make meaningful contributions to the party. Several material contributions came from the fishing towns, yet such donations did not correlate with the amount of influence achieved. From 2016-2020, of the £169,449,385 donated to both parties, only £275,950 came from relevant coastal towns––roughly 0.163 percent (29). It is a bit of a conundrum, as according to Grossman and Helpman, the more robust sectors that donate the most would receive the highest levels of government support. When applying Baldwin and Robert-Nicod’s theory, though, it becomes clear that the fishers were not campaign contribution lobbyists, rather they were “loser” lobbyists who were loud and deliberate. They saw the Brexit movement as their policy opportunity and harnessed their symbolic nature to make themselves quite relevant in final trade talks. Concurrently, Johnson acted as a political welfare maximizer. When applying Hillman’s theory, the declining fishing community became relevant to the Conservatives, who hoped to maximize political support for electoral gains, re-election, and legacy. The newly formed Johnson administration needed to amplify an easy-to-understand industry that resonated with Brexit supporters and exemplified regained sovereignty. But it is often overlooked that the Conservatives also needed an industry that could help maintain the Tory Scottish Parliament seats and form a bulwark against the growing post-Brexit Scottish independence movement. The industry that conveniently and succinctly represented these values was the Scottish fishing industry. To see how this fits together, the story of Brexit and the fishing industry should be traced. First, we will examine the path to Brexit and the ways in which fishing––particularly the Scottish fisher––was influential from the beginning. Then we will scrutinize the trade talks and the political machinations of each actor. We will see that the political endgames of politicians are apparent in trade talks and domestic electoral gains often materially influence their tack as they adjust for the ever-changing political winds. III: A Deep-Seated History Part 1: How Did the UK Get to Brexit? An Overview of UK/EU Relationship: A Troubled Beginning As Professors Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth note, “Brexit was, in many ways, an accident waiting to happen” (30). The UK and the EU always had an am- bivalent relationship––a noncommittal half-in, half-out—in which the UK has been referred to as the “awkward partner” that never really embraced the deeper political, cultural, and ideological ambitions of her partners across the Channel. In the aftermath of WWII, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was created in 1951 to ensure stability across the continent by linking economies. While the UK embraced the idea of a united Europe, she saw herself as a separate entity––not just physically, but culturally as well. She was an island empire on which the sun had never set. But as the empire declined in stature and size during the post-war recovery period, she realized that in order to achieve her global ambitions in the new post-imperial world, she may find herself in a useful position to be the bridge between the US and the new ECSC: the European Economic Community (EEC). After two prior attempts, the UK finally joined in 1973 under Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath (31). However, Euroscepticism reigned from the get-go. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell argued that a federal Europe would mean the “end of Britain as an independent European state” and promised to hold a referendum if elected (32). Two years later, in 1975, Labour formed a government under Harold Wilson and held the UK’s first EU referendum (33). Although closely divided, the UK would vote “Yes” to a united Europe, with the then-Europhile Conservative leader Margret Thatcher leading the way for the Conservatives, while Labour remained extremely divided over the subject (34). Thatcher’s Europhilism, however, was short-lived. A staunch supporter of the Single Market, Thatcher ultimately changed course due to the contentious Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its budget contributions (35). She felt that the UK contributed more than its fair share of funding. Rhetoric of losing power and control to Brussels became common in her speeches and while her Eurosceptic agenda and rhetoric would ultimately become her downfall, it planted the seed for a growing anti-Europe movement that divided both parties internally (36). This seed later found its political moment amongst the disenfranchised in 2016 after a Conservative political opportunist called another EU referendum in hopes of bridging a divided Tory Party and securing a re-election win. Divisions within the Tories regarding Europe had been brewing since the Thatcher years, and were proving to be problematic for David Cameron’s upcoming general election as the rise of a relatively new right-wing populist party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), began siphoning off the Conservative Eurosceptic votes. Hoping to mitigate Tory Europhile defections, Cameron promised an EU membership referendum if re-elected, believing that the party would vote to remain (37). The result was a complete miscalculation as he underestimated just how powerful Euroscepticism had become. The country split into two camps: Leave vs. Remain. The Remain campaign took a negative approach, focusing their argument on the economic consequences of a vote to leave (38). As mentioned, however, Brexit was not about economics and, as such, it did not resonate at the doorstep. The Leave campaigns led by Boris Johnson and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage took a more emotional, visceral approach that resonated well with the disenfranchised who felt that the globally interconnected EU was the source of all their problems. They had seen their employment opportunities evaporate as the industrial sector left the country and viewed the EU as their scapegoat. The campaigns of Vote Leave and Leave.EU tapped into this discontent, arguing to “take back control” of a trade by creating their own trade deals, revitalizing declining industries, and bringing jobs back to Britain (39). The Take Back Control mantra percolated throughout the country and was succinctly exemplified with the vignette of the fishing industry. The fishing industry perfectly embodied the Conservative Leave movement––it was an industry key to the British identity, but was disenfranchised and felt powerless and expendable, and held deep-seated resentment towards Europe. This resentment was a manifestation of an EU policy known as the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) that seeks to conserve fishing stocks and ensure fair competition in European waters by setting catching quotas for European fishing vessels based on 1983 catch activity (40, 41). The EU can determine quotas in each boundary as the policy requires that each member state pool its sovereignty and open its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to all member states, creating a ‘European Water’ and overriding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (42). To understand why the British held deep resentment towards this policy, one must understand the fishing wars. Part 2: Fishing Wars To Control or Not to Control, That is the Question As an island nation, Britain has had an obsession with claiming ownership and sovereignty of its waters, at times to the point of belligerency. Fishing has always been key to British identity, especially Scottish identity, which makes it a rather sensitive topic. The tension between the Island and the Continent regarding the open seas dates back to the Anglo-Dutch wars and grew throughout the Anglo-French rivalry and crescendoed with the infamous 1950s-70s Cod Wars where the UK and Iceland faced off over British access to the rich cod waters off the coast of Iceland (43, 44). These violent showdowns repeated throughout multiple decades, with Iceland almost leaving NATO and falling into the Soviet orbit (45). The clash ended with the UK’s long-distance fishing fleets losing access to Iceland’s lucrative fishing grounds followed by a sharp decline in fishing industry revenues. Around the same time, the UK joined the EU and was required to join the contentious CFP. The UK’s fishing industry was wary about entering the CFP and pooling access to its waters, relinquishing control over its EEZ. Academics, politicians, and journalists alike wondered why the Heath government did not try to negotiate an opt-out of the CFP––an action for which the UK is famous––or even negotiate a better deal for the UK (46). The answer circles back to Iceland. When the UK lost its long-distance access to Iceland, there was little inshore activity to replace it as the nation had become so dependent on the white fish from the more northern seas (47). British fishers were not fishing near the British coast. As such, most of the quota rights for inshore fishing went to the French, Dutch, and Danish fishers during the accession negotiations (48). The Resentful Fishers This did not sit well with the fishers, particularly the Scottish fishers, who watched their industry decline just as the EU gained access to UK waters. When asked about Britain’s entrance into the CFP, Scottish fisher Baden Gibson insisted that: “The EU and its fisheries policy have destroyed businesses beyond fishing... If you fish outside of your quota the penalties can be fierce— my worry would be that I would lose my boat and then I would lose everything. I realize that there must be quotas, but it should be fishing organizations who set those quotas” (49). Fishers felt a loss of control and that the government sold them out for access to the Single Market. This was further exacerbated when it came down to ownership of the quotas. Over the years, more and more foreign entities started to own Brit- ish fishing fleets, with 50 percent of all English quotas “owned” by British-flagged ships that were actually Spanish, Dutch, or Icelandic; that is about £160 million worth of England’s fishing quota (50, 51). The feeling of loss of control was palpable. It must be noted that it was not necessarily Brussels causing the decline. Rather, it was overfishing and advances in technology that prevented fishers from achieving previous catching thresholds as well as the aftermath of the Cod Wars that prevented them from fishing in certain areas. Another factor was the rise of multimillion-dollar fishing companies in the UK (52). Nonetheless, British fishers did not see it this way. From their perspective, the correlation was objectively clear: the UK fishing industry thrived before EU membership, but as part of the EU, it died at the hands of the quotas. Reforming the Common Fisheries Policy Calls were made by the fishing industry to reform the CFP, and in 2014, the European Commission tried to do so, putting forth reforms that would increase the labor market mobility of fishers (53). These schemes were criticized as they did not consider the local and cultural factors enough and did not give countries sufficient control over the quota issue. The reforms adjusted the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund and allowed member states to manage 89 percent of it, while the European Commission would manage 11 percent (54). However, that still did not fix the unpopular element of being too distant and top-down with rules dictated by Brussels, far away from the UK and even further from understanding the local fishers’ needs (55). The fishers wanted a greater say in fishery management; they wanted to decentralize the decision-making structures as they felt like bystanders in decisions that impacted them greatly. Part 1: The Referendum Brexit as a Policy Window for Fishers The EU referendum was the fishing industry’s “policy window” under Leave’s rally cry of “Take Back Control.” It was finally time to expel the European vessels from British waters and manage their fish stocks independently. Rather than lobbying via campaign contributions, as Grossman and Helpman’s theory predicts, the fishing industry-aligned more with Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud’s theory of lobbying diligently through less expensive means. In this case, the less expensive means came in the form of a new 21st-century campaign tool: social media. UKIP’s Nigel Farage teamed up with the campaign group Fishing for Leave (FFL) to storm social media and conduct demonstrations, calling for the UK to leave the EU and leave the CFP. To make a public display of discontent and grievances a few days before the referendum, Farage led a 35-boat flotilla of fishers up the Thames, asserting that “today’s flotilla is not a celebration or a party but a full-throttled protest. We want our waters back” (56). He also said that “one thing I can promise you, is that you are about to hear a lot about the fishing industry” (57). They were vociferous lobbyists who would become a key electoral constituency for the Conservatives. The hope, and promise, was that leaving the EU would allow the UK to reclaim fishing dominance and sovereignty over their territorial waters, which would, in turn, see fishing communities thrive again with replenished stock and the return of jobs. On June 26, 2016, the referendum was held, and the UK voted to leave 51 percent to 48 percent. The fishing industry, as predicted, was a firm supporter, especially the Scottish fishers (58). A pre-referendum survey indicated that 92 percent of Scottish fishers intended to vote to leave (59). Fishing communities such as Banff and Buchan voted for Brexit, with around 54 percent voting to leave, but were outnumbered by the rest of Scotland who largely voted to remain (60). They were a small, disenfranchised group within a larger community that found a policy window and representation within the Brexiteers. They would become incredibly important to the Conservatives who needed to keep a seat at the team in Scotland. Part 2: The Trade Talks The Conservative’s Seat at the Scottish Table: The Rise of the Politically Important Scottish Fishers The Scottish fishers were Brexiteers, but that did not necessarily mean they were pro-Tory. After Heath’s historic 1973 betrayal of fishing, Scotland’s northeast fishing community channeled its anger by voting with the pro-independence, social democratic Scottish National Party (SNP) for the following decades. The Tories were treacherous in the eyes of the fishers, best underscored by the 1973 quote from a UK civil servant: “In light of Britain’s wider European interests they, the Scottish fishermen, are expendable” (61). While the Scottish Tories initially lost the community’s trust, gaining it back was easier than one may think as the Scottish fisheries did not ideologically align with the rest of Scotland and the SNP. Leading up to the referendum, Scottish scholar Dr. Craig McAngus conducted a survey of Scottish fishers’ demographic characteristics as well as their political, social, and constitutional attitudes. McAngus found that they were: (1) a unionized industrial working class made up of mostly middle-aged men with standard grade qualifications who value self-sufficiency and sense of freedom to succeed in their profession and take on a libertarian ideology that is skeptical of state intervention; (2) very Eurosceptic, portraying themselves as “victims of an overly bureaucratic and unsympathetic governance regime,” and would lean towards the Conservative Party rather than the Labour Party whose values of collectivism and socialist principles conflicted with their notion of an unsympathetic governance regime; (3) differing from the rest of the Scottish population in that they tended to trust the UK Government more than the Scottish Government, which seems contradictory at first given Heath’s 1973 betrayal for access to the Single Market, however, their support relates to the Scottish independence movement. As the Scottish Government is currently led by the SNP, and as the fishers tend to be more British-unionist, conflicts often arise between the secession-seeking Scottish government and the union-seeking fishing industry. How the British Government Attempted to Divert Fisher’s Support Away from SNP to Scottish Tory via Brexit Scottish independence from the UK has been a divisive topic ever since Scot- land joined the UK in 1707. In a 2014 independence referendum, Scotland voted to remain in the UK, 55 percent to 45 percent, but the debate never settled. Scot- land’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon continued to push for another referendum, rather than receiving additional devolved powers from Westminster (which had been done in the past as a way for Westminster to circumvent Scottish independence). After the Brexit referendum, her calls for independence grew louder than ever as the majority of Scotland voted to remain in the EU––62 percent to 32 percent. Sturgeon argued that it was undemocratic for Scotland to be “dragged out of the EU against its will,” demanding another independence referendum–– indyref2––and then hoping to re-join the EU.62 But, to hold another referendum on Scottish independence, the UK’s Prime Minister must grant formal permission and the newly minted PM Boris Johnson did not support such. Johnson and other supporters of a unified UK argued that the 2014 referendum was a once-in-a-generation opportunity––a phrase Sturgeon campaigned on back in 2014––and asserted that under this reasoning, another referendum should not be held for another 40+ years. On the horizon, however, was the upcoming May 2021 Scottish Parliament election, thus Johnson and his Scottish Tory counterparts were finding themselves in a political pickle. Opinion polls saw a sizable shift from a slight majority of pro-independence voters in 2019 to a solid majority in 2020. Analysts attributed this shift to Brexit, and also to Sturgeon’s handling of the Coronavirus, which many believed had been better than Johnson’s. With polls indicating that the SNP was on course to win an overall majority in the May 2021 Scottish Parliament election, polling expert Sir John Curtice said that the country “seem[ed] headed for a significant clash between the UK and Scottish governments over whether another independence referendum should be held” (63). Conservatives started to worry that if they lost their Scottish Tory seats to the SNP, the Scottish Parliament would be comprised mostly, if not all, of the SNP. Scottish Tories would lose their voice in the Scottish Government, and Westminster would have to grant an independence referendum if asked, or risk being further branded as undemocratic. There was, however, a Brexit-supporting Scottish constituency that could potentially save the Scottish Tories: the Scottish fishers. As mentioned previously, fisheries have been caught between supporting the SNP and the Tories for decades. The fisheries voted SNP in the years after Heath’s “betrayal,” as the then-SNP Leader Alex Salmond sought to bring Scotland out of the CFP (64). During the 2014 independence referendum, Salmond made fishing a material role in the SNP’s campaign, asserting that if independence was gained, fishing would be the #1 national priority and would have direct representation in the EU (65). The issue, however, was that the fishers wanted out of the CFP, not more EU representation, which is what Salmond was campaigning for. As a result, SNP lost a large majority of the fisheries in the 2015 Scottish Parliament election. The hemorrhaging of fishing votes continued when the Brexiteers campaigned to “Take Back Control” during the 2016 EU/UK referendum. The 2017 Scottish Parliament elections saw a loss of fishing votes from SNP to Scottish Conservatives. The Tories increased their hold from one seat in 2015 to 13 in 2017, gaining the northeast fishing community seats as per figure 11 (66, 67). Figure 11 (68) Yellow indicates SNP seats, orange indicates Liberal Democrats, red indicates Labour, and blue indicates Scottish Tory. Brexit was the perfect opportunity for the Conservative Party to regain both the fishers’ trust and seats in the Scottish Parliament. Once they regained that support, they could potentially prevent independence by keeping the vote. The game was not over, though. The SNP made it its goal to regain coastal communities by illustrating that the Tories could not be trusted in looking out for Scotland’s best interests.69 Conservatives then countered by making fishing a key part of the “exit-negotiations.” A Hiccup: When May did not prioritize the Fisheries After the referendum, Cameron stepped down and Theresa May assumed Tory leadership in 2016. May called a snap election in 2017 in hopes of increasing her party’s slim majority in the lower house and having a stronger mandate to negotiate a Brexit deal with the EU. However, due to a resurgent Labour Party, May did not gain a majority and had to form a confidence-and-supply agreement with ten MPs of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) (70). That being said, May did gain some Scottish coastal seats due to the 2017 surge in Scottish Tory support. Suddenly, Scottish fishers––as well as the DUP––became one of the preeminent interest groups for May’s coalition, as they were some of the few who kept her party from anemic minority status. Appeasing them and creating and maintaining trust would be necessary to get her Brexit deal approved and to keep Scottish Parliament seats. May proceeded with her Brexit plans and announced a Fisheries Bill to take back control of British waters and remove fishing quotas after the country with- drew from the EU (71). This pleased the fishers, but as 2017 progressed, the EU countries whose fishing industries were heavily dependent on access to UK waters became worried that access to the waters would be completely severed and that the EU would set an undesirable precedent for its member nations. Denmark claimed it had historical rights to fish in British waters dating back to the 1400s, while other EU countries claimed that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea stated that countries must respect each other’s “traditional fishing rights”, and the ability to access British waters fell under traditional rights (72). In March of 2018, then-Brexit Secretary David Davis and the EU’s Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier announced that the UK and the EU had agreed on a Brexit transition deal. However, to achieve the deal, the UK partially conceded its fishing contentions: fisheries would be required to follow the CFP rules until the end of the December 2020 Brexit transition period (73). The UK fishing industry was infuriated. Bertie Armstrong, CEO of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, said, “This falls far short of an acceptable deal. We will leave the EU and leave the CFP, but hand back sovereignty over our seas a few seconds later... Our fishing communities’ fortunes will still be subject to the whim and largesse of the EU for another two years” (74). Again, Nigel Farage protested on a fishing boat floating along the Thames outside of Parliament while chucking dead haddock into the river. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon took to Twitter hoping to sway the fishers back over to the SNP stating: “This is shaping up to be a massive sellout of the Scottish fishing industry by the Tories” (75). The thirteen Scottish Conservative MPs announced that the deal was like “drink[ing] a pint of cold sick” and assured that they would be prepared to vote against their own party if they did not see a return to full control of British waters as “the EU does not care about Scottish fishermen and neither do the SNP government who wants us to re-join the Common Fisheries Policy and the EU” (76). A sense of betrayal was palpable, and May’s fellow Conservative politicians started to understand that prioritizing fishermen would need to be on their political agenda. May would go on to put forth two other Brexit deals but was met with sound political rejection. In June 2019, she stepped down and Boris Johnson assumed leadership in July. The Hiccup Continues: Johnson Learning to Prioritize Fish With May’s Brexit failure in the rearview mirror, Johnson was keen on steering the UK out of the EU. However, after May’s perceived slight, he found little support amongst the Scottish Conservatives and fishers. In August, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson resigned. She worried that a Johnson government would boost support for independence, given that his hard-liner Brexit stance stood in complete opposition to the majority opinion of Scotland and the SNP (77). Johnson, however, had a different agenda; one that was keen on maintaining the union and appeasing the fishing industry was one way of doing so. In July 2019, Johnson made his first visit to Scotland and pledged that fishing access would not be sacrificed in the new Brexit deal.78 The Scottish fishers welcomed his rhetoric, with Bertie Armstrong stating, “We have been looking for a straight and direct answer and that’s exactly what we have got... Scottish fishing’s sea of opportunity lies on the other side of Brexit” (79). Additionally, Johnson assured fishers that he would “strengthen the union” and pledged £300 million for boost- ing growth in the devolved nations (Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) as a way to try to counteract critics who said his no-deal strategy would break up the UK (80). Among those critics was Nicola Sturgeon, who branded Johnson as the “last prime minister of the UK” (81). After a series of controversial events in the Fall of 2019––proroguing Parliament and then withdrawing the whip from 21 MPs (effectively expelling them from the party)––Johnson was left with no majority in Parliament and found it impossible to get Brexit legislation through. He enacted the Benn Act to extend the divorce date from October 19th, 2019 to January 31st, 2020, and then called a snap election for December 12th, 2019. While Johnson took a strong stance against Scottish independence, his attention to fishing seemed to wane during the snap election. Johnson did keep Scotland in his sights, but most of his attention was to mainland England, hoping to gain back the English voters who defected to Labour in 2017 (82). He visited Scotland once during the campaign, where he delivered the Scottish Conservative manifesto and claimed that Scotland was “paralyzed” by the SNP. Johnson asserted that “a vote for the Scottish Conservatives is a vote to stop a second independence referendum and to get Brexit done... Only a vote for the Conservatives will stop the SNP’s plans to break up the UK” (83 , 84). However, given that May lost many British votes to Labour in 2017, he also needed to prioritize issues that were of interest to larger voting blocs, such as the NHS, the police, and the British education system. To do so, as is now second nature to many politicians, Johnson harnessed Twitter to connect with constituents. On Twitter, Johnson spoke less about fishing and more about those three campaign stances. In total, Johnson tweeted 62 times regarding his campaign agenda on those issues, while only tweeting about fishing five times and Scotland nine times. Figure 13 (85) Illustrates the number of times Johnson Tweeted about a specific subject: 5 times about fishing; 9 times about Scotland; and 62 times about the NHS, policing, and schooling. With much focus on Johnson’s campaign, fishers in coastal Scottish towns were growing worried that fishing was not his top priority. These fishers became more apprehensive and began questioning Johnson’s true intentions: “There’s a calculation that the fishing industry is making that there’s a heavy risk they will get sold out on the way out of the EU, just like they did on the way in” and that maybe “the SNP might get a better deal for Scottish fishing from the EU” (86) especially since Johnson “changes his mind like the weather” (87). A growing number of fishers were unsure whether Johnson would protect the fishing industry or divert his focus towards other aspects in the UK during the trade talks. Election day came, and while Johnson won the largest Parliamentary majority since Thatcher in 1987, he lost several crucial seats in Scotland, which resulted in a small swing back to the SNP, who won 48 out of 59 seats (88). Although a tabloid journalist, Torcuil Crichton provided some thoughtful insight by noting that Scottish Tory 2017 gains were halved in 2019, and any further “betrayal” of the fish- ing industry “will fuel the independence argument and undermine the principles Brexit was fought on” (89). Suddenly, the importance of Scottish independence began to sink in. Johnson needed to show Scotland the benefits of staying in the UK and that Brexit was good for Scottish communities. The fishing industry was the perfect political tool for this end. Johnson could argue that he was going to secure them a good deal, stand up for the disenfranchised against an “overbearing” Brussels, and bring back the domestic industry. He could argue that the UK’s government was paying attention to Scottish needs and, as such, Scotland should stay in the UK rather than back the independence-preoccupied SNP. It is for this reason that fishing was greatly amplified during the trade talks. The Tories needed to secure the Scottish fishing industry a good deal––the rare Scottish industry that embodied the Brexit movement, had yet to back SNP fully, and were against independence––or else potentially be forced to consider calling an independence referendum. Fishing was the fulcrum for Johnson’s political leverage. The Talks and the Deal With the general election behind him and the risk of Scottish independence at the forefront of his mind, Johnson entered the trade talks as a strong counter to Macron and other EU officials who wanted the status quo ante . The issue has now come full circle, back to the famed scallop and turbot dinner on December 9th, 2020, when Johnson and von der Leyen sat down to hash out the final open issue. Britain demanded 80 percent of the EU’s catch to be returned to the UK, but reduced this to 60 percent as a compromise; the EU countered with 20 percent (90). The UK demanded that this transition would take no longer than three years, while the EU asked for a 14-year transition period, which they then reduced to seven. The EU asked for its fishing vessels to be able to fish in the six-to-twelve-mile zone from the British coastline, but the UK insisted that EU vessels be banned from this zone. Von der Leyen left the dinner saying the two sides remained “far apart” (91). The whole trade deal was on the line, with only a few days to go. Finally, on Christmas Eve, after four-and-a-half years of bitter negotiations and only a week to spare before the UK would crash out of the EU, they came to a deal. The 1,200-page document was passed by MPs on December 30th, 521 to 73, and it goes as follows: The transition will be phased over five and a half years, during which EU vessels will still be able to fish in the UK waters. During the adjustment period, EU quotas will decrease by 15 percent in the first year, and then two and a half percent for the following four years. That means by year five, the UK will regain 25 percent of the current EU catch in British waters; Fish will continue to be traded between the two parties with no tariffs imposed; After the five-year adjustment period is over, the UK and EU will enter annual negotiations to determine the quota of fish that EU vessels are allowed to catch in UK waters (92). Johnson announced the deal while wearing a fish patterned tie and praised it as a great deal in which fishers would see their hauls increase from half of the fish quota in British waters under CFP, to about two-thirds by the end of the adjustment period (93). However, neither the fisheries, the French, nor the other EU nations, saw it this way. A deal had been made, but the saga was far from over. V: Conclusions Summary of Findings While fisheries were the “losers” that lobbied hard to grab the government’s attention initially during the Brexit campaign (much like Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud’s theory), it appears that the Conservatives needed the fishers during the exit negotiations and thus took a hard position on access to UK waters, not for social merit, but rather for their electoral and political gains (much like Hillmen’s theory). Matt Bevington, an analyst with the UK in a Changing Europe, pointed out that Johnson saw fishing as one of the few areas where the government would be able to score a “win” to tout as evidence of Brexit’s success (94). Barrie Deas, CEO of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organization, said that the fishing industry was a “litmus test’’ for Brexit since we will not know most of the effects of the Brexit deal for many years, but the effects for fishing will be realized immediately (95). The Guardian journalist Daniel Boffey noted that fisheries were important to Johnson as he needed to show some benefit of Brexit to Scottish communities as Sturgeon was ramping up her demands for another independence referendum (96). In a similar vein, Denis Staunton of the Irish Times emphasized that North East Scotland is now essential to Johnson’s electoral constituency and will play an important role in the Scottish independence debate over the next few years (97). However, if he remains unable to please the Scottish fishers, the SNP may snatch up those who feel expendable to the Tories. This will again potentially embolden the independence movement since no politician wants to be known as the last Prime Minister. Lessons Learnt While the deal itself was a “Christmas miracle” to the Tories, in many respects, its aftermath has not been so merry. Johnson was unable to provide the fishing industry the deal that they wanted, and more importantly, that they were expect- ing. While the Scottish Tories matched their 2016 performance in the May 2021 Scottish elections, the fishing debacle still plagues the Johnson government with many lessons to be taught to future politicians (98). Hoping to illustrate the UK government’s commitment to the disenfranchised and their commitment to taking back control from the EU, many promises were made. These promises, however, were not plausible, let alone achievable––especially in regards to the fishing industry. Now, the Scottish independence movement has re-emerged, with the SNP harnessing the fishing failure as another reason for why they should leave the UK. Electoral politics influenced the amplification of the industry during the talks. In so doing, it amplified a delicate social, economic, and political bond that is about to snap. However, the main lessons scholars may glean from this case study is the extreme influence of domestic electoral politics in trade agreements: 1. An industry being economically insignificant does not mean that it will be insignificant in the international arena. Not everything in trade talks distills down to economics. More likely than not, declining domestic industries will be protected in trade talks for political purposes. 2. That is not to say, however, that economics is not influential. Johnson was a champion of the industry throughout the trade talks, but ultimately, he had to secure a deal that would allow European vessels access to UK waters for a limited time in order to salvage a trade relationship. In other words, economic interests were prioritized over politics towards the end of the talks. As Barrie Deas said, “It’s what we always feared... When you get to the endgame in the negotiations it becomes a binary choice and economics prevails over politics. I think that’s what’s happened and it’s really not good news.” Ultimately, for better or for worse, Johnson needed a deal (99). 3. Politicians often pick easily understood industries to get their message across. While much of the fishing industry is quite complex, once dissected, its disenfranchised status is not. Johnson harnessed the underserved with a message centered around one question: “what does Brussels know about potholes in London?” His intent with the fishing industry was to illustrate an example of him protecting locals to show (1) that Brexit can be a success and (2) that he was fighting for the British (and Scottish) industry. Fishing was an industry that many people could understand as it portrayed Brussels as treating them unfairly with “draconian quotas.” It would have been difficult if, for example, Johnson had tried to highlight intellectual property rights; few people would latch on to that due to its highly technical nature. Here, success revolves around clear messaging, which is something the Remain camp struggled to achieve. In the eyes of the Brexiteers, these were local fishers––the heart and soul of the UK, even if they were no longer as economically significant––being taken advantage of by Brussels. Fishers also happened to be politically right-leaning and resided in the “hostile” territory of Scotland. As the world enters a more global epoch, there has been a greater emphasis on interdependence and trans- nationalism, which often glazes over domestic factors. But, as former Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill (D-MA) famously quipped: “all politics is local,” or, rather, “all local politics are global,” especially in free-trade agreements. Constituents care more about what is happening on the home front, rather than what is going on in Brussels. They care about how Brussels affects them at home more than being in an economically efficient partnership with the EU. 4. Thus, as Putnam theorized in 1988, international negotiations are a two-level game in which domestic groups pressure the government to adopt favorable policies, as the politicians seek to amplify their power by consulting coalitions of these groups. The politicians then go to the international level and seek to maximize their ability to satisfy domestic pressures while balancing the needs of their international partners. However, the need to get reelected and to preserve legacy presides over the strategy they bring to the negotiation table and the industries they choose to protect. Electoral politics is at the heart of all politics, especially in free trade arrangements. Future Research It has been eight months since this paper was originally completed, and fishing still remains top of the fold. The UK and France are in continuous disputes, threatening sanctions and denying each other licenses to harvest in each other’s seas. To understand this continued conflict, scholars and politicians must look at the EU’s perspective as well as the British perspective. While this paper sought to understand why British politicians amplified the fishing industry during the talks, the UK was not its only amplifier. Just as with the UK, fishing is an economically insignificant industry for the EU overall, yet it continues to be amplified by EU member states. From the EU’s perspective, British waters have fish that are the staple of the European diet: herring, mackerel, sole, and shellfish (100). Herring and mackerel are Denmark’s most popular seafood, and it would be impossible to catch their quota if they could no longer fish in UK waters. This would devastate Denmarks’ industry, culture, and customs. For France, on the other hand, it is more about political weight, similar to what we saw in Scotland with Prime Minister Johnson. As journalist John Lichfield pointed out, “The north of France, around Boulogne, is hugely important for the presidential election in 2022... The regional president... might well be one of Macron’s main rivals at that time, so [Macron] needs to be seen to be supporting what is already a struggling area economically” (101). Additionally, the EU was determined to not set an undesirable precedent. They could not let Britain dictate access to such waters, which could potentially portray the EU as weak to other countries trying the same. This was one of the reasons the EU insisted that the previous level of access to UK waters be maintained, and why Phil Hogan, the EU’s Trade Commissioner, assured Johnson that if he wanted to gain access to EU financial markets, the UK would have to allow EU vessels in British fishing waters (102) Both sides took hardline positions for their constituents, thinking that they were doing their best while also serving their political agendas. Now, though, both British and EU constituents and their businesses are the ones suffering from the fallout of the deal. As stated by Olivier Lepretre, the head of the Hauts-de-France regional fishers association, they want to move on with their lives: “Fishers really don’t care about the politics” anymore, “they just want to work, to go to sea” (103). But, Brexit always was, and still is, a political initiative at its core, and as such, the politics remain. The continued fishing feud illuminates much larger and more profound structural relationship issues that will play out over the next few decades as the two former partners navigate these uncharted waters and tack against the political winds. Endnotes 1 Robert Fisk, “Boris’s Last Push for Brexit Sees Him Kissing Fish and Posing for Selfies as New Poll Gives Leave the Narrowest of Leads,” The Sun (The Sun, June 22, 2016), https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1326026/boriss-last-push-for-brexit-sees-him-kissing-fish-and-posing-for-selfies-in-a-gruelling-final-day-of-campaigning/ . 2 Raf Casert, “EU-UK Trade Talks Floundering over Fish as Cutoff Day Nears,” Associated Press , December 20, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/brexit-europe-global- trade-boris-johnson-europe-94ead6da2c46c87efc51328893cd3590 . 3 Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill. 4 Avery Koop, “Visualizing the UK and EU Trade Relationship,” Visual Capitalist, February 9, 2021, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-uk-and-eu-trade- relationship/ . 5 Adam Coghlan, “Breaking Bread Over Brexit With Fish in Brussels, a Short Story,” Eater London , December 10, 2020, https://london.eater.com/2020/12/10/22167244/no-deal-brexit-fishing-boris-johnson-ursula-von-der-leven-dinner . 6 Daniel Boffey, “The Brexit Brussels Dinner: Fish and Frank Talk but No One Left Satisfied,” The Guardian, December 10, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/ dec/10/the-brexit-brussels-dinner-fish-and-frank-talk-but-no-one-left-satisfied . 7 Elena Ares et al., “UK Fisheries Statistics,” House of Commons Library, November 23, 2020, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn02788/ . 8 Reuters Staff, “PM Sold out Fish in Brexit Trade Deal, Fishermen Say,” Reuters, December 26, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-fish/pm-sold-out-fish- in-brexit-trade-deal-fishermen-say-idUSKBN2900KG . 9 Kat Haladus, “Fisheries: An Industry That’s Worth 0.1% of the UK’s GDP Is Holding up the Talks,” UK Customs Solutions, December 23, 2020, https://ukcustomssolutions . co.uk/2020/12/23/fisheries-an-industry-thats-worth-0-1-of-the-uks-gdp-is-holding-up-the- talks/. 10 Matt Bevington, Professor Anand Menon, and Professor Jonathan Portes, “Fishing: Why Is It Such a Tricky Issue in UK-EU Negotiations?” UK in a Changing Europe, November 10, 2020, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/explainers/fishing-why-is-it-such-a-tricky-issue-in-uk-eu-negotiations/ . 11 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries,” British Sea Fishing, January 20, 2021, https://britishseafishing.co.uk/brexit-and-britains-fisheries/ . 12 Anand Menon and UK in a Changing Europe Team, “Fisheries and Brexit,” The UK in a Changing Europe , June 2020, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ Fisheries-and-Brexit.pdf . 13 Jeremy Phillipson and David Symes, “‘A Sea of Troubles’: Brexit and the Fisheries Question” 90 (2018): pp. 168-173, https://doi.org/10.31230/osf.io/fxnqj . 14 Sophia Kopela, “Historic Fishing Rights in the Law of the Sea and Brexit,” Leiden Journal of International Law 32, no. 4 (2019): pp. 695-713, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0922156519000438 . 15 Stijn Billiet, “Brexit and Fisheries: Fish and Chips Aplenty?” The Political Quarterly 90, no. 4 (2019): pp. 611-619, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923x.12748 . 16 Tom McTague, “Why Britain’s Brexit Mayhem Was Worth It,” The Atlantic (Atlantic Media Company, December 24, 2020), https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/12/brexit-trade-deal-uk-eu/617509/ . 17 Anand Menon and UK in a Changing Europe Team, “Fisheries and Brexit”. 18 Craig McAngus and Christopher Huggins, et al., “The Politics and Governance of UK Fisheries after Brexit.” Political Insight 9, no. 3 (September 2018): 8-11, https://doi.org/10.1177/2041905818796570 . 19 John Connolly et al., “The Governance Capacities of Brexit from a Scottish Perspective: The Case of Fisheries Policy,” Public Policy and Administration , January 2020, https://doi.org/10.1177/0952076720936328 . 20 Matt Bevington, Professor Anand Menon, and Professor Jonathan Portes, “Fishing: Why Is It Such a Tricky Issue in UK-EU Negotiations?” 21 Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: the Logic of Two-Level Games.” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706785 . 22 Corneliu Bjola and Ilan Manor, “In the Long Run,” In the Long Run, July 19, 2018, http://www.inthelongrun.org/criaviews/article/revisiting-putnams-two-level-game-theory- in-the-digital-age-domestic-digita/ . 23 Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt and Patrick A. Mello, “Two-Level Games in Foreign Policy Analysis,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.496 . 24 Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman, “Trade Wars and Trade Talks,” Journal of Political Economy 103, no. 4 (1995): pp. 678, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3450062/Helpman_TradeWars.pdf . 25 Arye L. Hillman, “Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives.” The American Economic Review 72, no. 5 (1982): 1180-187. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1812033 . 26 Hilman, 1186. 27 Richard E. Baldwin and Robert-Nicoud, Frédéric, “Entry and asymmetric lobbying: why governments pick losers.” PSPE working papers, March 2007. Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. 28 Ibid. 29 Data collected by Eleanor Ruscitti via the UK Electoral Commission donation reports from 2016-2020, http://search.electoralcommission.org.ukcurrentPage=1&rows=10&sort=AcceptedDate&order=desc&tab=1&open=filter&et=pp&isIrishSourceYes=true&isIrishSourceNo=true&prePoll= false&postPoll=true®ister=gb®ister=ni&optCols =IsAggregation . 30 Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth, “Brexit: What Happened? What Is Going to Happen?” Politique Étrangère, no. 4 (2016): pp. 123-138, https://doi.org/10.3917/pe.164.0123 . 31 Ibid, 4. 32 Kevin H. O’Rourke, “A Short History of Brexit: from Brentry to Backstop,” in A Short History of Brexit: from Brentry to Backstop (London: Pelican, 2019), p. 74. 33 James Walsh, “Britain’s 1975 Europe Referendum: What Was It like Last Time?” The Guardian, February 25, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/25/britains-1975-europe-referendum-what-was-it-like-last-time . 34 Ibid. 35 Pan Pylas, “Britain’s EU Journey: When Thatcher Turned All Euroskeptic,” Associated Press, (January23,2020), https://apnews.com/article/64855d1ff67454443db5132bdfb22ea6 . 36 Ibid. 37 Vivien Schmidt and Jolyon Howorth, 7. 38 Ibid, 4. 39 Jorge Martins Rosa and Cristian Jiménez Ruiz, “Reason vs. Emotion in the Brexit Campaign: How Key Political Actors and Their Followers Used Twitter,” First Monday 25, no. 3 (March 2, 2020), https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v25i3.9601 . 40 European Commission, “The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP),” European Commission, 2015, https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp_en . 41 Andy Forse, Ben Drakeford, and Jonathan Potts, “Fish Fights: Britain Has a Long History of Trading Away Access to Coastal Waters,” The Conversation, March 25, 2019, https://theconversation.com/fish-fights-britain-has-a-long-history-of-trading-away-access- to-coastal-waters-112988 . 42 Convention on the Law of the Sea , New York, 10 December 1982, United Nations Treaty Series, pg. 40. https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e. pdf 43 Thomas Wemyss Fulton, “The Fisheries,” in The Sovereignty of the Sea: an Historical Account of the Claims of England to the Dominion of the British Seas, and of the Evolution of the Territorial Waters; with Special Reference to the Rights of Fishing and the Naval Salute (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1911), pp. 25-57. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/54977/54977- h/54977-h.htm . 44 Keith Johnson, “So Long, and Say Thanks for All the Fish,” Foreign Policy, February 28, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/28/fishing-uk-european-union-brexit-trade- talks-cfp/ . 45 Ibid. 46 Dan Roberts, “‘We Have Been Hijacked’: Fishermen Feel Used over Brexit,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 23, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/we-have-been-hijacked-fishermen-feel-used-over-brexit . 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Serena Kutchinsky, “Is Nigel Farage the Fisherman’s Friend?” Newsweek, June 27, 2016, https://www.newsweek.com/eu-referendum-brexit-fishing-policy-nigel-farage- scotland-snp-473435 . 50 John Litchfield, “Ukip Is Wrong: British Fishing Answers to Westminster Not Brussels,” The Guardian, April 6, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/ ukip-british-fishing-westminster-brussels-brexit . 51 Oliver Barnes and Chris Morris, “Brexit Trade Deal: Who Really Owns UK Fishing Quotas?” BBC News, January 1, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/52420116 . 52 Keith Johnson, “So Long, and Say Thanks for All the Fish.” 53 European Commission, “The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP): the essentials of the new CFP,” 2015. 54 Ibid. 55 Craig McAngus, “A Survey of Scottish Fishermen Ahead of Brexit: Political, Social and Constitutional Attitudes,” Maritime Studies 17, no. 1 (2018): pp. 41-54, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0090-z . 56 Daniel Boffey, “UK Fishermen May Not Win Waters Back after Brexit, EU Memo Reveals,” The Guardian, February 15, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/15/uk-fishermen-may-not-win-waters-back-after-brexit-eu-memo-reveals . 57 Severin Carrell, “Nigel Farage to Lead pro-Brexit Flotilla up Thames,” The Guardian, June 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/03/nigel-farage-pro-brexit- flotilla-thames-eu-referendum-leave-campaign . 58 Chris Morris and Oliver Barnes, “Brexit Trade Deal: What Does It Mean for Fishing?” BBC News, January 20, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/46401558 . 59 Craig McAngus, “A Survey of Scottish Fishermen Ahead of Brexit: Political, Social and Constitutional Attitudes.” 60 The Newsroom, “Scottish Constituency of Banff and Buchan ‘ ̃Voted for Brexit’,” The Scotsman, November 22, 2016, https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-constituency-banff-and-buchan-voted-brexit-1462018 . 61 Kevin McKenna, “Scotland’s Fishermen Feel a Sickening Sense of Betrayal Yet Again,” The Guardian, March 24, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/ mar/24/scotland-fishermen-betrayal-peterhead-brexit . 62 “Scottish Independence: Will There Be a Second Referendum?” BBC News (BBC, March 22, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-50813510 . 63 Ibid. 64 Scotland Correspondent, “SNP Tries to Dump EU Fisheries Policy” (The Times, March 31, 2010), https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-tries-to-dump-eu-fisheries- policy-7b8tnlq3gw5 . 65 Scottish Government, “Scotland’s Future and Scottish Fisheries,” Scottish Government, August 14, 2014, https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-future-scottish-fisheries/pages/2/ . 66 “General Election 2017: Former SNP Leader Alex Salmond Loses Seat,” BBC, June 9, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40212541 . 67 “General Election 2017: SNP Lose a Third of Seats amid Tory Surge,” BBC News, June 9, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40192707 . 68 Ibid. 69 “Letters: Tories Could Not Be Trusted to Negotiate in Good Faith in Independence Talks,” HeraldScotland, November 11, 2020, https://www.heraldscotland.com/ news/18864349.letters-tories-not-trusted-negotiate-good-faith-independence-talks/ . 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries.” 73 Ibid. 74 The Newsroom, “Fishing Industry’s Anger as UK and EU Strike Brexit Transition Deal,” The Scotsman, March 19, 2018, https://www.scotsman.com/country-and-farming/ fishing-industrys-anger-uk-and-eu-strike-brexit-transition-deal-318889 . 75 Ibid. 76 Jenni Davidson, “Brexit Deal for Fisheries like ‘A Pint of Cold Sick’, Conservative MP Douglas Ross Says,” Holyrood Website, October 4, 2019, https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,brexit-deal-for-fisheries-like-a-pint-of-cold-sick-conservative-mp-douglas-ross- says_13762.htm . 77 Libby Brooks, “Scottish Tories Still Anxious over Johnson’s Impact on the Union,” The Guardian, July 23, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/23/scottish-tories-still-anxious-over-johnson-impact-on-the-union-independence-ruth-davidson . 78 Tom Peterkin, “Boris Johnson Pledges That Access to Fishing Will Not Be Sacrificed in New Brexit Deal,” Press and Journal, July 30, 2019, https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/scottish-politics/1807666/boris-johnson-pledges-that-access-to-fishing-will-not-be-sacrificed-in-new-brexit-deal/ . 79 Ibid. 80 Rowena Mason and Libby Brooks, “Boris Johnson Heads to Scotland to Deliver £300m Pledge,” The Guardian, July 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/28/boris-johnson-heads-to-scotland-to-deliver-300m-pledge . 81 Ibid. 82 Tim Ross, “Boris Johnson’s Tories Abandoned Scotland to Win Their Big Victory,” Bloomberg, December 23, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-23/how-johnson-s-tories-ditched-scotland-to-rule-a-divided-kingdom . 83 “General Election 2019: Boris Johnson Claims Scotland ‘Paralysed’ by SNP,” BBC News, November 26, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50561993 . 84 Reuters Staff, “Boris Johnson to Tell Scotland: Vote Conservative to Stop Independence Bid,” Reuters, November 6, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-election- scotland/boris-johnson-to-tell-scotland-vote-conservative-to-stop-independence-bid-idUSKBN1XG333 . 85 Data collected by Eleanor Ruscitti via Boris Johnson’s Twitter account 86 Alistair Grant and Rohese Devereux Taylor, “Constituency Profile: Fishing for Votes in Scottish Coastal Communities,” HeraldScotland, December 1, 2019, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18072191.general-election-2019-fishing-votes-scottish-coastal- communities/ . 87 Ibid. 88 “Results of the 2019 General Election,” BBC News, https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2019/results . 89 Torcuil Crichton, “Why Scottish Fishing Rights Are a Brexit Deal Breaker in EU Trade Talks,” Daily Record, October 15, 2020, https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/.politics/scottish-fishing-rights-brexit-deal-22850163 . 90 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries.” 91 Ibid. 92 Chris Morris and Oliver Barnes, “Brexit Trade Deal: What Does It Mean for Fishing?” 93 Harry Taylor, “Kipper Tie: Boris Johnson Sports Fish Symbol in Brexit Message,” The Guardian, December 24, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/24/net-gains-boris-points-up-his-ties-to-the-fishing-industries . 94 Jeremy Kahn, “A Fine Kettle: How Fishing Became the Issue That Could Sink a Post- Brexit U.K.-EU Trade Deal,” Fortune, October 15, 2020, https://fortune.com/2020/10/15/fishing-rights-brexit-u-k-eu-trade-deal/ . 95 Barrie Deas, “Opinion Piece,” NFFO, October 9, 2020, https://nffo.org.uk/news/opinion-piece.html . 96 Daniel Boffey, “Catches, Quotas and Communities: the Key Fisheries Issues at Stake,” The Guardian, October 17, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/17/catches-quotas-and-communities-the-key-fisheries-issues-at-stake . 97 Denis Staunton, “Johnson Covers Brexit Win on Fish to Show He’s ‘Taking Back Control’,” The Irish Times, December 4, 2020, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/johnson-covets-brexit-win-on-fish-to-show-he-s-taking-back-control-1.4426956 . 98 “Scottish Election 2021: Conservative Match Best Scottish Election Results,” BBC News (BBC, May 8, 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-57042432 . 99 Dan Roberts, “‘We Have Been Hijacked’: Fishermen Feel Used over Brexit.” 100 Laura Hughes, “Brexit: Why Fishing Threatens to Derail EU-UK Trade Talks.” 101 Lucy Williamson, “Brexit: Why France Is Raising the Stakes Over Fishing” (BBC, October 13, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54526145 . 102 British Sea Fishing, “Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries.” 103 Jon Henley, “French Fishing Industry Divided over Sanctions on UK Trawlers,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, November 1, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/01/french-fishing-industry-divided-over-sanctions-on-uk-trawlers . 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Author Name < Back Interview with Geoff Mulgan Catherine Nelli JPPE: Great. So, we'll start off speaking about your new book, Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination . Could you explain what political imagination and radical political imagination are before speaking about what the book is about, your argument, and your process researching and writing it? Mulgan: So I became more and more concerned in the last few years that we might have a worsening problem of political imagination. And there were various signs of this, there was a kind of obvious one which the many activists, the many people who are politically enthusiastic can very easily see into the future, how things could go horribly wrong, could see ecological disaster, climate catastrophe, and so on. Which in many ways is a good thing, but very much harder to imagine or describe almost any kind of social progress, what would be a significantly better way of organizing welfare, or democracy, or health, or education. I observed that we have a huge capacity now for technological imagination. Vast sums of money spent on think tanks and conferences, looking at smart homes or smart cities or AI and so on, but almost nothing comparable in terms of serious work thinking about how our future society or economy could be run, rather than just the hardware. Politics—it's very striking. On the one hand, how many leaders now talk about going back to make America great again, or France or Britain or China or India. The last US election was a contest between two old men who haven’t really said very much about where they would want the world to be in a generation or two from now. I have increasingly felt that this sort of failure of imagination was fueling in a very subtle way a sort of fatalism—a sense that actually the world won't get better. Just as in our own individual lives, if we can't see something good on the horizon, something which might be better for us a year, five years down the line, it's quite hard to be happy and thriving. I think there's something equivalent for societies and the whole world. What I did in the book is partly researching the past of social and political imagination. And there'll be many ways in which people tried to look ahead; they did it through writing utopias, and there are hundreds, if not 1000s, of utopian writings from feminist utopias of the 15th century through to the great 19th century ones, like Bella , which was, I think, at the time the second best selling author ever in the US. There were attempts to create model communities, model towns, model organizations. There's the role of generative ideas. And one of the things I point out in the book is that often quite generic ideas like human rights or a circular economy may be a bit vague at first, but they then spawn lots of other ideas which become useful and change the world. And a large part of the book is about methods: what are the methods we could be using now to get better at thoughtful, rigorous imagination of the future a generation or two from now? How do you use methods, often from creativity and design, to expand your menu of options, you can then interrogate each of those, many of them might not be attractive, but at least to cultivate the habit towards the muscle of thinking creatively ahead. I look at the role of universities in that, I look at the role of political parties, which at times in history have played a big role in imagination, but have largely vacated it in much of the world. And also the role of places—how to create museums, galleries, physical places where people can come together to imagine into the future. And if nothing else, I hope the book will spark at least a bit of a debate on the question: Do we have a problem? Maybe some people will say we don't have a problem. Some people may say, well, actually, imagination is always bad, it leads to terrible results, and many of the blueprints in the last century, and many of the utopias did have horrible results. And one of the arguments I make is that now, we need to combine imagination with experiments. So you don't impose a fully formed blueprint on a city or a society; you try it out in a much more organic, experimental way. And others may say actually, technology is the answer to everything and we don't have social imagination because we don't need it. We can fix everything with a new anti-aging drug or some fantastic ecology, which will sequester carbon and so on. As I say, I think all of those will be wrong, but at least hopefully that will get a debate going. JPPE Do you look at a sort of comparative analysis of case studies from different countries? Or is the structure of the book more idea based? Mulgan It’s ideas. Basically, there were lots of references to real examples, either from history or from the present. And one of the parts of the book which is a bit more like comparative political analysis is trying to compare the dominant political imaginaries of the next 20 or 30 years globally. What are they? And I argue probably the most powerful ones or the strongest ones are nationalist techno authoritarian ones, particularly China, Xi Jinping thought, but in a different way the BJP’s to visions of the future in India. Putin doesn't really have one in Russia. But he and Erdoğan are other examples. And I argue that this is a very powerful semi-imaginary which actually is rather vague about the future but tries to tie together, in some ways, quite traditional authoritarian nationalism with high technologies. It's very 19th century Prussian militarism. I look at different imaginaries of the Green Movement and some of the frictions and issues in deep and less deep ecological thought. I look at what might happen to liberalism, a revived neoliberalism, and different strands of conservatism. But essentially, that is an attempt at a comparative analysis of both current and future imaginaries. JPPE Do you think digital technologies detract from or contribute to radical political imaginations? What are the different ways that they could contribute or detract? And in what way should they be conceptualized and used to the benefit of imagination? Mulgan So I've got quite a background in digital technology—my PhD is in telecoms and I've probably been immersed in all these things. And my answer is essentially “both and.” So sometimes thinking about things digitally can be very useful because as happened to retailing, or banking, or relationships, all sorts of things, if you look at it through a digital lens, you often deconstruct what's going on. And then you can remake it in a completely different way. So you end up with Amazon, not with, you know, high street shops or with match.com rather than people meeting in bars. And in that sense, actually, digital technology is quite useful for social imagination. And any imagination of where democracy might be in 50 years time has to have a substantial digital element. And those places like Taiwan and Iceland are reinventing democracy. The US still seems to be stuck in an 18th century model of democracy. We don't quite understand why, but that's another story. Digital is part of that, but if you only think in a digital way, as so much of the movement around smart cities, smart data, and smart homes did, you usually end up with results which are not very pleasant for humans to live in or which lose all sorts of dimensions of the present. And I think this was a big failure of the internet, where there was some incredibly naive techno optimism about how on its own the internet would spread democracy, equality, removal, corporations, etc. And often the exact opposite happened. And that tells us there was a major intellectual failure amongst the sort of Silicon Valley thinkers who simply didn't understand what they were part of. And that's why thinking simultaneously with a social lens and a technological lens is vital for the next 50 or 100 years. JPPE What’s the difference between social and political imagination? How do they coincide and interact? Mulgan I think they overlap with each other. There isn't a straightforward boundary line. By politics we tend to mean the things which politicians end up talking about put into their programs, maybe pass laws about in Congress or Parliament or the Bundestag. And that is the world of politics, which often does include or has at times included powerful visions of where society might head. There are many examples of where that happens outside politics much more through social movements and daily life. And people are getting on with social innovation and were ignoring the political realm. And often things start off social and then become political, so many ecological ideas, like the idea of a circular economy and radical recycling or veganism, you know, these tended to begin very much with social movements, and much, much later, became politicized, became an issue for laws and elections and programs and carbon taxes and so on. So one of the things I try to look at in the book is this dynamic between the social and the political, and then back into the social. For example, when you pass new laws on equality they in turn then affect the norms within every organization, ultimately, maybe back to the household and the family too. JPPE You speak about the tapering off of visions of the future. There seems to be a desire for change within the social world but very few productive outlets to channel this desire. How do you foresee this changing over time and how would you wish it to change to spark future action? Mulgan I think one answer to that lies with institutions and what role they play, especially powerful institutions can either encourage this sort of work or discourage it. So take universities. I've been doing a parallel strand of work, looking at why it is that in universities, and particularly in social science, the sort of exploratory design work, thinking ahead work, has largely disappeared from most universities all over the world. It's disappeared partly for good reasons, as people have become more data driven and more empirical, and partly because a lot of the radicals moved into a safe space of critique, rather than proposal. That was one of the weird things which happened to Marxism in universities in the last 20 or 40 years. It moved out of real active politics into academic critique. And founders haven't rewarded it because they've tended to reward deepening work within disciplines, whereas exploratory creative work has spread across multiple disciplines. And in a paper I published last year in Germany, I tried to set out in more detail what a probe of exploratory social sciences would be; what it would look like for the universities to have significant interdisciplinary teams working on the design options of a zero carbon economy or a radically transformed mental health system. And that's what I hope universities could do. At the moment they have almost no role in this and it’s incredible in a way. There's so much brain power in universities, and they don't play an active role. JPPE What would it take for them to do that? Mulgan Leadership. Money. You have to have a debate, you have to believe there's a problem. People at universities acknowledge there is a problem needing to be solved. So one of my purposes is at least a debate about that. And then political parties. I mean, the political parties in much the world have rather atrophied, hollowed out, hardened. And often it's the new political parties who are more creative than the old ones, which dominate your country and my country and some others. But if you were inventing a political party now, it would probably have much more of its core purpose being to organize a dialogue with the public about options for the future, about ideas. Instead, they tend to be captured by interest groups. They just work on winning elections or their money goes into election fighting rather than thinking. They’ve lost the capability of having broad open dialogues as opposed to campaigning, and so on. And it's interesting. Some of the newer parties have experimented with much more interesting methods of social dialogue like the Five Star Movement in Italy, Podemos in Spain, and there are quite a few others. I wouldn't say they've got there. But a political party which aspires to run a country should be owning part of this conversation about the options for the future. I think cities can do it. Good mayors often do have the resources to bring the whole of a city into a discussion about its physical future. So for example, just now we've just finished a really interesting session with a group of cities. A project I coordinate looks at what can be done over the next five or 10 years for cities to really prioritize population level mental health. And that's something which, you know, much of the public thinks is kind of obvious, that they should be doing that. And yet, politics lags far behind and nearly all the money is still in physical health, and hospitals and things like that. And very few political parties would feel comfortable actually even talking about mental health as a priority. They’re stuck in an anachronistic way of seeing the world. JPPE When did you first become invested in the power of political imagination and creative imagination? And how did you first identify the lack of the imagination that you see now? Mulgan I don't know, I suppose in different ways I’d probably be part of this. I've had a career which has partly been working in governments top-down, and I was part of some quite good exercises of political leaders trying to spark this. So Tony Blair, who has both strengths and weaknesses, but did at various times try to encourage big public conversations about the future and future priorities. I worked for an Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who did a huge exercise, getting the whole country thinking 15, 20 years ahead on climate change and pensions and water, and then bringing 1000 people into parliament to talk about the results. So I have seen how good leaders can do this from the top down. And from the bottom up, lots of grassroots organizations, social innovation projects, I've automatically tried to think radically about the future. But I guess since the financial crisis in particular, I think horizons have shrunk right in amongst leaders, but also amongst NGOs, social movement organizations, they'd be more in case of trying to survive. And that's happened alongside this growing sense of imminent ecological catastrophe. And these have all contributed to squeezing out the capacity to imagine radically. JPPE So does it require different methods of funding so they can move past survival mode? Mulgan I think there's certainly a big role for philanthropy. Your country has enormous amounts of spare money in philanthropy, but almost none of it goes into this. There are some good reasons for that, obviously, philanthropy tends to come from the beneficiaries of the old system, so they're never likely to be very radical in challenging it. I still think a little bit more effort on the part of the Fords and Rockefellers and Hewletts would have paid off because this isn't very expensive. But who else is going to create the space for people to think, to look ahead, to range a bit more widely? And I’ve spent most of my life on much more short term practical, pragmatic problem solving. But we all need some sense of the bigger picture, what that's leading towards, to help make sense of the actions in the present. And that's what's missing. And I would say in the US, politics, philanthropy, and higher education have all essentially failed their societal role in that respect. JPPE So as you said, it requires opening the debate so that people know that there's a problem. What are the steps after that? Mulgan Well then I think it's about organizing and funding and orchestrating the more detailed work, which needs to be done. And I do use the analogy with art or film or writing. Everyone can take part in it a little bit. We can all make our movies on Tiktok and so on. But actually, if you want really good films, it's actually quite hard, it's quite skilled, it's quite professional. It requires quite a lot of people. Or for a good Netflix TV series. And it’s the same for social imagination. You can start off with sparks and some of it can be very open and participatory. But if you are going to do a detailed thinking through how to regulate or organize a netzero economy that requires a highly specialized knowledge, interrogation, and argument, and so on. That's what universities should be doing. I work with a lot of governments around the world, you know, 10 to 15 at any one point. And if they're looking at a new policy area, you sort of assume there must be off the shelf, lots of lots of options, which they could consider. Let's say a new kind of universal basic income is one, which I've been a bit involved in, and is much talked about in much of the world. And there are quite a lot of pilots now of UBIs, but the quality of the work of it is still very thin. And if you are a government wanting to introduce one, actually, you will have to do most of the work designing it, thinking through its impact. There is not a menu of options you can draw down. And the same is true with almost any field. Let's say bringing the circular economy principles to fashion or whatever, the legwork and hard labor has not been done to prepare the options for others to draw on. And this is also true at a global level. The UN was set up in the 1940s, benefitting from lots of hard work, which had been done imagining what a UN could be in the dark years of the 30s. I've been doing work recently on what could be new global governance arrangements, if conditions became more favorable. There's nothing out there in terms of well thought through options. There's lots of good description, lots of good analysis, lots of good critique of all that's wrong with the UN. But it's as if the people who are the experts feel too nervous to ever put their names to a proposal, which someone else might shoot down. So we have this sort of bizarre deficit of looking ahead, whereas in other fields, like in sciences, or the life sciences or AI, lots of people are paid to think speculatively to design possible new genomic treatments or new algorithms. And the imbalance between a world of science and tech, which was too good looking ahead, and the world of the social and the political, which has given up on it, I think it's really become a serious problem.