Philosophers on the Index

Some time back there was some hubbub about an APA blog post piece posing the question "Should we continue to read and honour immoral philosophers?" The answer, it was widely thought, is so obviously "yes" that it is a sign of the moral decay of philosophy - dare I say western civilisation more broadly! - that this is now in doubt. Unfortunately for those of us seeking a fun day out on the internet, however,  the piece in fact agreed the answer is obviously "yes" and proceeded to argue as much. Curses.

So why don't I give the internet what it wants and actually try to argue for the absurd proposition? 

I will say up front: in the end, I don't buy it. Common sense is basically right on this one. Sometimes you can learn valuable things from people who did bad stuff. Honouring people is, I guess, a bit more iffy; but in many cases we honour people who did bad stuff for different good stuff they also did. I suppose we could put a blanket ban on ever honouring anyone. But, meh, short of that we gotta accept that all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of Carnap (who in his youth was a caddish misogynist). Often that seems fine to me, really? None of us are perfect. So, yeah, there we go. The boring position is correct.  

Still though! I think it can be interesting to think about why one might believe its opposite. I guess what interests me is that some fear of this position is pretty common and powerfully felt. The mere suggestion of it in an inquisitive blog post headline was enough to cause a minor stir. And I am curious -- what is it people are worried we might be persuaded of? What's the sort of thing one might say here which would actually make you worry about the future of Kant or Hume or Shakespeare (did he do anything wrong besides fail to exist?) or so on? Why do people so powerfully fear this apparently quite unlikely thing?

I think there are two broad classes of argument people find compelling here. The first is the more common. This is the fear of moral corruption -- the view is that there are false but beguiling views. If we let people encounter these ideas they will not be able to resist the temptations to evil they offer. This is the charge against Socrates, by his presence and teaching he corrupted the youth, encouraging them to engage in irresponsible and even dangerous questioning. Probably denying the gods of the Athenian state is lower down most people's moral schedules nowadays than it was the people of that jury. But I think it is easy to see the principle at play -- my suspicion is many people on the left think that racist ideas or theorising have something like this effect, and many on the right think the equivalent of gender theory.

Now, immediately one runs into the problem: how could we know that? In that, apparently the person issuing the warning against reading person X has read X, resisted the Siren's call, and is thus now capable of recognising the evil X for what it is and condemning appropriately. But then that suggests the view is apparently not so beguiling after all; can't the person who first did this just explain where X went wrong? And in any case, who put that person in charge of deciding what is false or pernicious for the rest of us? It seems we should want to check their working, and that will require us to read X after all. In short; the claim that any author or text is inherently corrupting would require us to outsource our judgement in a way we typically do not feel comfortable with, and in any case seems a bit self-undermining on reflection.

Except... except I think many people do feel comfortable with that sort of outsourcing and think some people really are just built different, only you have to make sure to phrase it correctly. The problem I outlined above is stated from the perspective of someone with a sort of stereotyped Enlightenment view about shared and common powers of rational judgement, who dares to know and would not subordinate their discernment to another. And while enough of our culture is built on valorising that perspective that when you say things in line with it they sound tempting, I think outside of such contexts people tend to actually believe it.

Remove the abstraction of talking about "person issuing a warning against X". Call it, instead, "Concerned parents invested in their children's education, worried about what their kids will be taught when they are head out to college". Or maybe call it "Scholars on colonialism / fascistic propaganda, analysing the disinformation strategies used by contemporary populists". Then, I think, many many people do find it tempting to believe that some such group really does just know better than their wards what they can bear to be exposed to. They have the benefit of life experience and grounded personalities, or scholarly training and expertise grounded by commitment to an admirable moral goal, that makes them actually just straightforwardly in a position to answer those questions. They do know better, their wards cannot be trusted to reach the right judgement, they will encounter the information in a scenario wherein they cannot bring their superior guiding wisdom in to moderate, and we do not need to check up on them because some reasonable authority (the PhD granting institution and broader academic field, God or the sacred traditional family structure more generally) has granted them their status. I think a great many people just do, in fact, believe in such moral authorities who really can issue paternalistic advice to others.

The problem being -- as the stylised examples I just picked are meant to make clear -- our society has multiple sources of such. We are no longer in the era of Confessional states, looking to Rome's Index to guide the hand of the Royal Censor. We are a pluralistic society with multiple competing civic and state institutions all trying to domineer the others. No academic on the left is unaware of the fact that there are lots and lots of censorious people who would quite like to use state power to suppress reading ideas in critical theory etc. And no one on right (academic or not) is unaware that most academics are left of centre and would be inclined to use censorious power in ways they do not like. So while a great many people agrees with the principle that some authorities might properly curate our reading habits, everyone none the less fears this being granted because they think the wrong authorities would end up doing so.

(As an aside the whole situation somewhat reminds me of  Buchak's work on risk aversion and evidence avoidance, that I have responded to before. When one fears what one's future self would do with information an-otherwise-rational but risk averse person might sensibly, from their own perspective, prevent themselves from learning this. One might think either of oneself that there are agents who can proxy for you in working out what you'd do with the information, and so wisely tell you to avoid it, or that there are others who ought trust you while being risk averse, and so submit to our tutelage.)

That, at least, is my theory. This is why I think it generates so much fear. There is an argument for censorship based in fears of moral corruption that a great many people in fact agree to, so long as you are careful to phrase it the right way. But they also fear the effects of the argument being endorsed. Hence it is a source of tension, a constant drama. 

There is a second reason that I think is much less socially significant, but plays an especial role among academics. There is an opportunity cost to any reading you do -- so why read bad people when you could read good people? Now, of course, no one actually does a complete rational accounting of their reading habits to ensure they are trading off information gained from moral valence in an optimal fashion. So one cannot take this too far. But, still, as academics we exist within an attention economy -- reading people is a reward since it confers credit and prestige, the coin of our realm. So if we read bad people it apparently violates meritocratic principles of justice. One is not giving each their due, one is rewarding the bad. And through the opportunity cost, failing to reward the good. 

To be frank I think this is all a bit silly, and am generally very sceptical of notions of citational justice that academics can get keen on. Bit too inside baseball, to use my favourite idiom I picked up while living in America.  But I mention it because I think it is another important aspect to the psychology behind the fairly extreme response to the blog post I referenced in the opening. It speaks to our deepest fears. It raises the prospect that maybe if you are unworthy you ought properly be forgot, that it would be right and proper for everyone to shun you and your ideas. And much like Kendrick Lamar in Sing About Me the questions gnawing through the souls of many academics are -- am I worth it, did I put enough work in? 

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and while you do please be aware that I was a lovely chap really
(Painting by Matthew Philipose)