Callard's Open Socrates- cancel Tolstoy

 Why ask why? The answer is that the answer to some 'why' questions involves a 'Structural Causal Model'. If we possess such a thing, we can start tinkering with parameters to alter outcomes for the better. That is useful. But asking the 'why' question wasn't itself useful. What was useful was the the SCM and the desire to use it to make things better. 

This is not to say doing or talking useless shite can't be a nice enough way to pass the time. So long as such activities attract only useless shitheads, no great harm is done if they burgeon. What is wrong is to subsidize or otherwise celebrate this type of stupidity.

Consider Agnes Callard's new book 'Open Socrates'. If you spend your own time and money on purchasing and perusing it, it is only your own time and money you have wasted. On the other hand, if the teaching of that shite is subsidized by the tax-payer then there is a negative 'externality'- i.e. a cost received outside the market. That is why Socioproctology must point the finger at assholes who pretend Callard aint a shithead. 

Callard asks why we are afraid to ask stupid or useless questions. The answer is that we aren't afraid, we just have better things to do. Now it is certainly true that a crazy person may ask stupid or useless questions. Indeed, they may become obsessed with the question 'why am I a cat with the body of a hippopotamus?- and feel that life has become empty and meaningless because no one can supply a satisfactory answer to this pressing question. 

True, a literary genius, like Tolstoy, or a mathematical genius, like Godel, might suffer a mental illness and yet produce very crazy, yet thought provoking, work. But, academic philosophy no longer attracts smart people. Even if Callard is as crazy as a bedbug, she can't say anything interesting. She is too ignorant and too stupid. Moreover, readers nowadays can 'ask Alexa' or otherwise very quickly check factual claims. 

Consider the following

Google 'Tolstoy' and you find exactly what you expect. The guy suffered from depression. Thankfully, learning of the American Temperance Movement, he gave up alcohol which meant that, ceteris paribus, his condition was bound to improve. Giving up meat and whoring and doing a bit of manual labour meant he would live to a great age. Still, the fact is, as a Russian writer living at a time of great socio-political change, he either had to find new material- society novels were passe, Karenina was a damp squid compared to Doestoevsky's 'Demons'- or suffer a decline in esteem. Tolstoy chose so well that Lenin credited him with motivating the 1905 uprising. Thus Stalin pampered Tolstoy's pal, Vladimir Chertkov, while sentencing a lot of Old Bolsheviks to death. 

What Callard has written is foolish. Tolstoy was recognised as a great writer but he was being eclipsed and could easily be made as much a butt of ridicule as Doestoevsky had made of Turgenev a few years earlier. The most demonic character in 'Demons' is Kirillov the 'Man-God' who feels obliged to kill himself to free Man of his fear of Death and thus is content to provide a scape-goat for some squalid secret society of a murderous and nihilistic type. I suppose, writing Karenina and realizing that the affairs and intrigues of the aristocracy were as boring as shit, Tolstoy invests in the even more deeply boring figure of Levin as his alter ego. But Levin was a cul de sac. He should either just get a Zossima type starets as a spiritual adviser or enlist in the Bulgarian Army and get shot. It is no wonder that Tolstoy- who drank a fair amount at that time- wanted to kill himself. He slowly worked his way back to productivity and, with the novella 'death of Ivan Ilyich,' showed he could deal with the trials and tribulations of a more middle class character. Still, it was Doestoevsky's death which gave him his second lease of literary life. Admittedly he had to overplay the peasant-sage shtick. But this is because he didn't have the sense of humour of those more humbly born. His view of society was bound to be stilted rather than genuinely satirical. 

 More generally, it is precisely the successful artist who feels the greatest anxiety. Those who praise him today may condemn his next book. Worse, they might lampoon him. The young would smirk knowingly at the mention of his name. The temptation is great to blow your brains out before your body runs to fat and your brain fills with shit. 

There was a continuity between the aristocrat Pushkin and the aristocrat Tolstoy. But the daemonic Gogol's successor, the even more daemonic, Doestoevsky, was smarter, funnier and more profound. Tolstoy needed to reinvent himself. The most boring character in Anna Karenina, nevertheless, could open a door out of the grand St. Petersburg salon and towards the humble samovar of the moujhik. 

The other point has to do with the manner in which, after Darwin's dangerous idea had gained currency, all writers, to a greater or lesser extent, posed or responded to existential questions. In Russia, there was a special urgency to the 'what is to be done?' question. Since there were no good answers, the 'why do anything? What is the fucking point?' question gained salience. Tolstoy knew that his literary reputation could disappear overnight. He knew that his peasants might slaughter him and his family. If God himself had been slain and Man was but a hairless monkey, what, indeed, was to be done? Sell up and become a citizen of Switzerland? Turgenev had many friends in France and Germany and England. He was at home in the West. Tolstoy would have always felt an exile. Still, the question remained, on what terms was he to stay on in Russia? Classical Liberalism was a fad whose day had passed. Narodnik nonsense was vulgar and might involve the country in costly and pointless wars in the Balkans. Socialism required a much larger industrial base. Given the options available, Tolstoy's choice of Pacificism wasn't silly. After all, the Russian army was in fact much weaker than appeared to be the case. 

Tolstoy's prescription for those who suffer suicidal ideation is sensible enough. Give up booze. Alcohol is a mental depressant. Keep yourself busy. Take things one day at a time. Callard writes- 

There is no 'Pandora's box' but there is such a thing as 'spiralling'. Tolstoy suffered a specific illness and said 'don't spiral'. Socrates did not suffer that illness. Had he met a depressed guy who kept trying to top himself, Socrates would have given him the same advise as Tolstoy. 

Both Socrates and Tolstoy took risks by appearing 'impious' (asebia). Socrates was put to death. Tolstoy might have been exiled. He was certainly under police surveillance at certain times. Both were patriots. But the risks they ran weren't out of proportion to the benefit they sought to secure for their countrymen. 

Still, the truth about Socrates was that he was 'ultracrepidarian'. He talked about things in which he had no expertise. He would have been acquitted by the Court if he had been able to say 'I am a Sophist. I charge high fees. I could rattle off the names of my students. The vast majority are successful and enjoy great public esteem. True, one or two, turned out to be bad apples. But why blame me rather than their wrestling coach or riding instructor? I do a job, just as they do a job. How are we supposed to predict what our student will do with the skills we are paid to impart to them?' Had Plato been indicted, he could have pointed at his Academy. Wealthy students from other cities came to study there. This was good for Athens. 

Tolstoy had a vocation- writing- for which he was paid quite well. Socrates may have had a vocation but he didn't get paid. He talked and he talked and eventually talked himself into a death sentence. He had charm. He had eloquence. He may have been regarded as a 'pharmakos' or scape-goat sacrificed so some spiritual benefit be gained by the Polis. But, there was no 'strategy' to this. We feel Socrates was possessed of a particular 'genius' or 'daemon'. He had no plan of his own. Still, the fellow was a gentleman. This is not something one might appreciate in adolescence, but, at my age, he is a welcome enough guest at my solitary symposia. 

Callard does not understand that Socrates never suffered from depression. He was never suicidal. He was part of a particular coterie in Periclean Athens which sought to use an amorous and charming type of discourse to create affectionate bonds to hold together a coalition. Thus an Athenian might say 'I disagree with Pericles on issues of fiscal policy and international diplomacy. But, I suppose you could say, we share a certain philosophy.'  If Socrates was the one who had persuaded him of this, his genius for conversation would be judged to have had political utility. Sadly, Athenian politics was a risky business. But then, life itself was risky. There might be a slave insurrection or a sudden invasion. Many a patrician might end his days as a galley slave. 

Socrates saw that many people in Athens- even Simon the shoe-maker- were talking about deep ontological and metaphysical questions. He talked to them as he talked to the professional Sophists who taught rhetoric and helped their clients win court cases. But he didn't 'dive headlong' into anything. He wrote nothing his acolytes thought worth preserving. When debating with a superior mind- Parmenides accompanied by Zeno- he gets trounced and takes his defeat in good part. It is his amateur status which secures him the station of a  a gentleman, though he was neither well-born, nor rich, nor had any great accomplishment to his credit. Yet, he inspired others- Aristophanes ridicules him, Plato and Xenophon praise him to the skies. Yet, in the end, he is a bit of a Schlemiel, and that endears him to us. 

Callard does not understand that anybody at all can be a mimetic target. There were plenty of Tolstoyans just as there were many imitators of Socrates and Diogenes and so forth. 

Callard draws attention to a stupid mistake Socrates made when presenting his defence. He tells the story of the Delphic oracle who answered no to the question 'is there any man wiser than Socrates'. It is fucking obvious that what Socrates should say next is 'no man is wiser than me. No man is wiser than any of you. But when you jointly make a decision, then there is a greater wisdom than that possessed by any mortal. But with great wisdom comes great mercy. I call myself a fool. Why else would I now stand before you accused of the dreadful crime of asebia? Instruct me and make such use of me as benefits our beloved Polis.' 

The problem with Periclean Democracy was that collective action problems were solved in an individualistic manner. There's a good reason, Rome, not Greece, provides the basis of Civil Law whereas Math and Physics and Philosophy remained a Greek monopoly. Could the Ecclesia have been repurposed- e.g. by delegating specialist matters to expert committees or training up a class of 'logothete' civil servants- such that collective action problems could be better solved by reason of the application of more minds in line with the Condorcet Jury theorem? Perhaps. But the very individualism which made Athens so creative militated against it evolving superior organs of Government. 

Callard draws attention to Socrates's fundamental flaw- he wanted to talk only to people like himself as he makes clear to Gorgias. Since Gorgias is happy to meet Socrates on a field where he has professional  expertise, Gorgias agrees. 

The problem here is that plenty of propositions are neither true nor false. They are too vague to admit of verification or refutation. However, if you talk to people who are unlike you, it is likely that they have knowledge you don't have and thus there can be an epistemic Pareto improvement. Still, Socrates gives a good enough definition of philosophy as dealing only with 'open questions' such that as good an argument can be made for or against a proposition. The problem here is that empirical disciplines 'close' questions which philosophers, in their ignorance, continue to treat as open.

Socrates's point was that nobody could show he was wrong because he confined himself to topics where the thing was impossible. But this is also true of people who talk only about their cat or, in my case, my neighbour's cat. Sadly, it starved to death after its owner died. I told the police there was a cat in the flat and that it was probably hiding. I assumed they had removed it. They hadn't. Sad.  

We don't care if we are refuted if we talk nonsense. What is important is that we got somebody to listen to us. There's a reason we should display anger at being refuted. If we didn't, people might think we made a habit of talking just for the sake of talking. 

Of course, there is a certain pleasure in conviviality. If we know we are talking nonsense, we can talk and talk without risk of falling out with each other for any reason that isn't nonsense. Thus cat people may pretend to be interested in stories about each other's cats and religious people may pretend to be interested in stories about how Jesus Christ appeared to me in the shape of a tortilla and so forth.

I suppose the space around a soldier becomes peopled by soldiers or those who study military tactics. The space around a politician gets peopled by politicians or those interested in politics. But the space around Socrates wasn't peopled by Socrateses. Athenians were highly individualistic. That's why we know so many of their names.

On the other hand, there is a space near you where which is dedicated to overcoming our fear of a particular question- viz. how to overcome death. It is peopled by Christians. Billions of people seek to live as Jesus did, or the Buddha did, or Prophet Muhammad did. There are no Socratians. Guys who gas on about him are ill paid pedagogues. Socrates himself, in the Lysis, suggested that his method would be of use to pederasts. Talk that type of bollocks to beardless youths and they will clamour to be sodomized by you. Sadly, Socrates was mistaken. Pederasts had to continue to pretend to lurve and take a genuine interest in those they wished to bugger. Thankfully, beating and incarceration discourages paedophilia just as killing Socrates curbed a potential nuisance. On the other hand, crucifying Christ was a mistake. The son of a Carpenter took the place of Divine Emperors. 

Callard claims to understand decision theory but she does not know economics which descends directly from empirical 'Political Arithmetic' and the practical knowledge gleaned by merchants, farmers and industrialists. In its mathematical form, it concerns itself with constrained optimization. It has never had anything to do with 'ethics'. The name given to what is optimized is Utility or Ophelimity. Empirically, this means 'revealed preference'- i.e. whatever it is that people actually choose. However, this is epistemic- i.e. knowledge based- and hence its 'extension' changes as knowledge changes. In this sense, like 'Beauty' or 'the Good' it is unknowable and thus has no representation in set theory. 

Economists don't rate Bentham or Mill. Sidgwick kept abreast of Jevons and thus counts as a Marginalist ancestral to Marshall & Pigou. However, this is to ignore the obvious. Utility just means money. Maximize that. In particular, Governments should spend on stuff which will tend to increase the tax base. But this is an idea as old as taxes. Moreover, it is independent of historical circumstances. Thus, the School of Salamanca was more laissez faire than the Mercantilist England of the Tudors and Stuarts. 

Economics is about saving or making money. A few stupid academics may teach both Econ and Philosophy and Morris Dancing. But they don't get paid a lot compared to the economists whom Jeff Bezos hires. 

What is the origin of the economic doctrine of the 'invisible hand'? The answer, known to Christians, is that it is the 'mysterious economy' whereby the Katechon holds the Eschaton at bay. Religion is the common origin of Law, Economics, Politics and Philosophy. 

rejected Aristotelian economics. They were sound on portfolio choice theory. Still, it must be said, it is a particular sort of Religion which best promotes economic progress both for individuals and nations. Sadly, it is like the feather which helps Dumbo the elephant fly. It can't help anyone else to fly and, truth be told, didn't enable Dumbo to fly. Still, it served a purpose for a time. 

Callard asks why, in Ethics, there is a Neo-Aristotelian but no Neo-Socratic ethics? The answer is obvious. Aristotle was a pedagogue and gave a descriptive account of prevailing endoxa. Socrates was a chatterer, not a pedant. Still, he was a decent enough chap. He fought bravely for his country and did not sodomize children. 

In pedagogy, a 'Socratic' approach is one based on dialogue. But, it is quite usual to ask searching questions and seek for contradictions or inconsistencies when deciding upon an important matter. Thus this method can be 'layered' on to anything. 

Callard takes a different view.

will never be called into question.

 Callard think this means that one type of free speech, calling into question a particular principle, is disallowed. This is not the case. A principle  applies in 'eligible' situations. If you determine eligibility, you can get any outcome from any principle. 

Chicago University was pushing back against 'cancel culture'. But an avowal of a creed is not Socratic. It is 'mere puffery'. Socrates didn't set up the Academy or Lyceum. He never said 'my school will be super duper' because he wasn't in that line of business. The plain fact is American Universities were set up to make their students smarter and more productive so that the country as a whole became stronger and more prosperous. At one time, there was some play-acting about encouraging dissent and diversity and other such shite. But that story is over. Being anti-woke is popular. That's the performance smart peeps now want to give. 

Callard either writes carelessly or she is extremely stupid. An announcement is a command, if it is made by a person with authority. Alternatively, it may be a proposed command. It can never be a question. 

Every tool has that audacity. The screw-driver drives in screws. The hammer hammers stuff. The Socratic method may be used in education & training or for a judicial or other decision making process. Socrates wasn't a Christian, but the Church has used the method of elenchos (which means cross-examination or refutation), though, no doubt, it may have originated in the Law Courts or the deliberations of the Elders of the Clan. However, it is not at all essential that there be two or more parties to it. The mathematician takes up a proposition and then looks at the negation of that proposition. Suppose that negation leads to an absurdity, then the mathematician believes he has a 'proof by contradiction'. 

Callard is unaware of this. She writes

Socrates wasn't a stupid chatterbox. Graham Wallas & EM Forster popularized the saying '“How can I know what I think till I see what I say?” which they attributed to a little girl or an elderly lady- i.e. people who lacked dicks and thus who were assumed not to have brains. 

A lawyer or a guy hoping to get a loan may hold an imaginary conversation in his head so as to prepare for possible objections or to so present his arguments that those objections are forestalled. Thinking is not a 'social interaction'. Indeed, the latter requires you to disguise the former to a greater or lesser extent. Thinking can be open-minded even when done in perfect solitude provided no arbitrary restrictions are placed on what is thought. If a person benefits by gaining the truth, thinking is likely to be truth oriented. Inquisitive people are inquisitive. We may imitate them on a particular occasion if we believe we will profit by it. Thus a man who is not inquisitive at all may start asking the sort of questions an inquisitive person does if he wants to find out more about a woman whom he is attracted to. Socrates' motto was 'Know thyself'. He wasn't interested in persuasion nor was he a sceptic. He also wasn't a gnostic. Ignorance does not have evil results. It is not that which obstructs spiritual liberation. It is merely a predicate applicable to some people regarding some things at certain times. 

Socrates didn't say he knew he knew nothing. There were some things he knew (and one thing in particular- love) and other things he didn't know. But with respect to the 'Beautiful' and the 'Good', he was better off than those who thought they had knowledge when such was not the case.

... ἔοικα γοῦν τούτου γε σμικρῷ τινι αὐτῷ τούτῳ σοφώτερος εἶναι, ὅτι ἃ μὴ οἶδα οὐδὲ οἴομαι εἰδέναι.
... I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.

I suppose if you are at leisure to 'inquire into human affairs' by chatting with different people then Socrates provides you with a 'plan for life'. But it is the same plan as that of a Socioproctologist who spends his time pointing the finger at assholes like Callard who claim a knowledge they clearly don't possess. 

Socrates knew that there were good people who denied having any knowledge of how to be good or why they themselves were good. The same was true of the beautiful or those with great talent in particular fields. He himself knew about love and his 'plan of life' was to go around talking to people in a charming manner such that they felt goodwill towards each other. I suppose, there was a political angle to this. Socrates had been a friend of Pericles's mistress who, as a hostess, would seek to bind more closely together the coalition which supported her husband. 

Callard thinks Socrates was saying 'keep talking to other people so as to find out how to live your life better'. This was not the case. He wasn't advocating the setting up of an Agricultural Research Institute to conduct inquiries from which all farmers might benefit. He wasn't even prodding Plato to set up an Academy in which mathematics would be taught. What he knew about was 'love' in the sense of the affectionate ties which can hold a political coalition together while promoting Arts, Sciences & Commerce which benefit the Polis. 

There is no 'ideally knowledgeable life' though there may be immortal Gods who were omniscient. There is no 'substantive ethics of inquiry'. Some do the thing ethically and get nowhere because they are stupid. Others do it unethically and get somewhere because they are less stupid. Socrates understood this just as well as we do. He really wasn't a pompous pedant. Learning stuff may make you better at doing that stuff but it won't make you good. Nor do you need other people to show you where you are wrong- unless you are very stupid and in a class-room full of other very special little snow-flakes. True, some people find 'Group therapy' helpful but a lot of other people don't need anyone to point out to them that maybe they drink too much. It is enough to wake up and find you have shat yourself to realize that you need to cut down on the booze.

Callard does not seem to understand the difference between imperative statements- e.g. 'Do this!'- and principles. Utilitarianism has a principle for ranking different states of the world. It has no prescription regarding how that ranking is to be implemented. As for the categorical imperative, it is still inferior to being good. As Socrates says, categorical thinking is like using the oars of the boat when there is no wind to belly out the sails. 

In every political party or representative Institution there are people who go around chatting to people so as to create an atmosphere where dogmatic differences are put aside or rendered less obstructive of what Rawls called an 'overlapping consensus'. Even if some found Socrates irritating, he acted as a lightning rod. Two people on opposite sides of the fence might agree that the fellow deserved a good kicking. As a result they might look upon each other more kindly. The truth is, Socrates quaffed his cup of hemlock rather than seek to escape because, in this way, political passions might be assuaged. Though it was but a gadfly that the Ecclesia had swatted, perhaps that insignificant death would appease their blood lust. Socrates offered himself as the pharmakos- the Paschal lamb- in the hope that it might heal wounds and unite the Polis. That was admirable. But it can't be a 'plan for life' for any American now. This is because to get sentenced to death you have to do more than just talk. 

Callard puts some very strange views into Socrates's mouth

ignorance and only one solution, which is to learn.

Needless to say this is nonsense. The plague or the Persians killed both the learned and the unlettered. Socrates really wasn't saying 'go to Collidge. Make something of yourself.' This is because there were no fucking Colleges at that time. 

 

Socrates had been a soldier. He knew there were people who knew it was wrong to run away from the enemy but who couldn't stop themselves from doing so. What he questioned was those who claimed to teach an infallible method of cultivating courage. 

Socrates was Greek at a period when the Gods, for their own reasons, might still possess a man to bring about his downfall. As to why harm befalls some at the hands of others- this is the dark mystery of the Fates who may themselves be enchained by forces darker yet. 

Inquiry can be a harmful thing. If you keep inquiring into your lover's activities, she may tell you to fuck off. Your boss may sack you if you keep inquiring into the company's activities. A political party you belong to may be equally discommoded by your inquiries into its sources of funds or track-record of meeting manifesto pledges.

This is common sense- which Socrates did not lack. Callard believes otherwise. 

All of this is nonsense. Excessive inquiry can prevent business or other relationships being carried on as usual with the inquisitive person. Telling him to fuck the fuck off, improves matter for the rest. 

Socrates understood that parrhesia was perfectly compatible with condign punishment. Indeed, it was from the latter that it gained its imperative power. It is one thing to say 'Islam sucks' if you live in Texas. It is another thing entirely to do it in Teheran. 

As for egalitarianism- the plain fact is Socrates thought slavery could be a good thing. Anyway, this side of the grave none are not slaves of the gods. 

What was the secret of Socrates's charm? He wasn't particularly witty or gossipy or even persuasive. But he made his interlocutor feel young again or, if they were on the brink of manhood, it reminded them of an earlier innocence and spirit of play. 

Callard resents precisely this aspect of her hero.

Sadly, philosophy singularly fails in this respect. What it may give you is the ability to bullshit. But this means it is the employer's money which talks. Bullshit walks or takes the subway. 

Of course, it is quite possible to 'overdo Philosophy' and end up earning big bucks constructing LLMs or allocating funds between research programs. But this 'overdoing' took you out of Philosophy into a STEM subject field. At an earlier time, this was not uncommon. Then Philosophy became adversely selective of imbecility. If it is wholly shit, it is because it is taught by shitheads to drooling imbeciles. 

There was a time when only a small percentage of the workforce had a College education. This meant that even those who threw caution to the winds and dropped acid with Prof. Leary or turned to domestic terrorism under the influence of Prof. Marcuse, could rehabilitate themselves and end up as tenured Professors living bougie lives. Now there are too many graduates and PhD holders in shitty subjects. People have to be cautious. 

It is now very dangerous to do so. Pederasty is no longer winked at. You can go to jail for a very long time for indulging in 'Greek love'. Indeed, even having pictures of naked boys on your computer could get you into a lot of trouble. On the other hand, you are welcome to live your life in a Kantian manner producing the definitive account of Leonard Nelson's influence on Grete Hartmann or, if you are a sufficiently advanced Feminist scholar, the other way around. 

An 'untimely question' is one which crops up at the wrong time. Educators and lawyers and politicians, in preparing their arguments are careful to interject statements like 'at this juncture, you may well ask the following question. I won't answer it right away because I first have to give you relevant background information. But, be assured, I will give a very comprehensive answer at such and such time'. 

Callard takes a different view- 

Callard is saying that an 'untimely question' is the question which, with hindsight, we should have asked. But what was 'untimely' was our 'mental preparedness'. We were confused, we were flustered, we were not in tune with the spirit of the Age or the needs of the times. Had, by some magic, the right question popped into our heads, it would have been very timely indeed. 

Callard does not grasp that 'default answers' only appear to actual questions- not questions we didn't ask but which, with hindsight, we ought to have done. Moreover, non-default answers come from the same sources as default answers. It is just that more time is taken inspecting the menu of options. Answers of any type are not 'savage commands'. They are context dependent and only as prescriptive as we choose them to be. We act in a confused manner if we are confused or if it is in our interest to appear so. But a confused person can always act in a manner that is decisive and unambiguous while a person with great mental clarity may appear to act in a haphazard, scatter-brained manner. The TV show 'Elsbeth' features a dotty lawyer who appears to be a brainless chatterbox. Yet, her focus is laser like. 

This is sheer nonsense. Utilitarianism replaces theology and the divine right of Kings with Hutcheson's 'greatest good of the greatest number' which cashes out as maximizing 'transferable utility' i.e. aggregate money income (and hence the tax base). This has nothing to do with the 'savage commands' of the body which are dealt with by legal sanctions and punishments. Kant is not concerned with the group and his doctrine is compatible with autocratic rule. Aristotle is descriptive merely. All dealt with 'kairotic'- i.e. timely- questions though all misfired. 

Callard says the Socratic alternative is to go on inquiring and separating truth from falsehood. But that means more alethic research not armchair philosophy or chit-chat.  She mis-states three intensional paradoxes which arise because Knowledge is an 'intension' whose 'extension' changes as more of it is acquired. Meno's paradox is resolved by saying 'you start of searching for a thing which, over the course of your search, you find out is some other thing entirely'. Columbus did discover America though he may have thought it was India. Moore's paradox is that you can believe a thing while knowing it isn't true. This is because the intension 'belief' includes non-epistemic items in its extension. Thus I believe Mum's cooking is the best in the world though I know no expert on South Indian cuisine would agree. Callard's third paradox is about

Callard does not seem to know that in giving testimony, you act in bad faith if you don't tell the whole truth or if you include false statements. But saying I had this 'working hypothesis' is not to affirm something false. Nor does it impugn the conclusion you reach. To see why consider the following

Defence attorney- Detective Smith, you have said that you got a warrant to search my client's house because you had grounds to believe he kept illegal weapons on his property. Yet, you found no such weapons. What you found was a large quantity of cocaine. Since your premise about my client was false, it follows that your conclusion about him- viz. he is in the drug business- must surely itself be false. How can you justify this arrest?

Detective Smith- In procuring the warrant I presented evidence tying your client to illegal transactions involving the exchange of weapons for drugs. We have been able to establish that one day prior to our executing the warrant, your client exchanged a large quantity of guns for drugs. That is why he had drugs in his possession. He was planning to send the drugs to Canada in exchange for automatic weapons. We did not know that apart from gun running, your client is also a big intermediary in the supply chain for cocaine. Now, we not only know that but can provide admissible evidence which establishes this beyond doubt, peradventure or infirmity of suspicion.'

Clearly, in this case there is a close connection between what the police expected to find and what they actually did find. Suppose, the warrant had been gained for something else- e.g. possession of child pornography. Then there might be some suspicion that the warrant was improperly obtained and any evidence flowing from it was 'fruit of the poisoned tree'. But such is not the case here. 

Suppose the Judge in this case has read Agnes Callard's worthless book and has been persuaded by it. He intervenes as follows-

Judge- 'Detective Smith! I see you have been given the job of asserting truth. Please tell me the name of the other Detective on this case who has been given the job of avoiding falsehood. 

Detective Smith- There is no such detective. All police officers are enjoined to avoid falsehood while giving evidence under oath. Falsehood is avoided by saying what is true and carefully distinguishing suspicions or working hypotheses from facts established by evidence of an admissible kind. 

Judge- But that contradicts what Prof. Callard has written! Can she truly be a complete moron?

Detective Smith- Does she teach Law?

Judge- No. She teaches philosophy.

Detective Smith- I think that answers your question. 

Working together with another person is how we get babies. But, for everything else, one person may achieve a great deal more than they would if they were saddled with Callard as interlocutor. There can certainly be synergy between two smart people. There are gains from specialization and the division of labour. But, equally, there can be negative synergy. As for Philosophy, as Plato realized, it is mathematics, not idle chatter, which can free minds of 'blindness and bias and provinciality'. But, equally empirical research is required to rid Mathematics of particular shibboleths. 

Consider the impact of non-Euclidean geometry on the English mathematical establishment starting from around 1870 with Clifford's famous speech. If the actual geometry of the Universe was non-Euclidean then logic could point to no necessary truths. Bertrand Russell describes this scandal thus 'I discovered that, in addition to Euclidean geometry, there were various non-Euclidean varieties, and that no one knew which was right. If mathematics was doubtful, how much more doubtful ethics must be! If nothing was known, it could not be known how a virtuous life should be lived. Such thoughts troubled my adolescence, and drove me more and more towards philosophy.' In other words, discovering reality did not correspond with the nonsensical dogmas of philosophy,  drove this fellow further towards nonsense such that reality and utility and common sense disappeared from his mental horizon.

 What was the result of his teaming up with Whitehead? Both wasted their time. Russell wrote lucid nonsense. Whitehead wrote impenetrable garbage. Still, at least they didn't bum each other. We must be thankful for small mercies.

As for Tolstoy, whose wife thought Chertnov might be bumming him, there is a very simple way to read the following- 

Tolstoy's readers, in Russia or England or even India, would immediately identify the Biblical reference- viz. James 4.4.13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business, and make a profit.” 14You do not even know what will happen tomorrow! What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that.

Far from being an 'untimely question', it is right and proper for a bonus paterfamilias raising a son and husbanding a goodly estate, to turn his mind to the 'four last things'- Death, Judgment, Heaven & Hell. True, the answer had been supplied by the brother of Jesus almost two thousand years previously but, it is quite natural and proper for an aristocrat who has been a soldier and a man of the world to only 'get serious' after he has reached middle age and has settled down and is concerning himself with the proper education and instruction of his son and heir. 

From what little I know of Russian Orthodoxy, Tolstoy could easily have put himself under the spiritual direction of a starets and employed his marvellous literary gifts to reveal to the rest to the rest of the world certain evident points of superiority of the Greek Church to what we are familiar with in the West. In particular the Economia/ Akreibia distinction is very useful. Tolstoy, I think for 'kairotic' socio-political reasons, didn't take the easy path. He launched into an investigation of the most diverse soteriological traditions including those of India as propagated by Ramakrishna & Vivekananda. Would this lead him towards hesychasm and theosis? No. He went in what appeared a crazier direction- that of championing the Doukhobors. Apparently, the Canadians who had granted them asylum at Tolstoy's request looked askance at their habit of burning down school-houses and dancing naked around them. Later some returned to Mother Russia and, strangely enough, thrived on Stalin's collective farms!

 Callard with typical cack-handedness does not merely suppress the, quite conventional, Christian origin of the question troubling Tolstoy, she also pretends he didn't expend considerable effort researching other religions and sects.

This is nonsense. Both the question and the answer are supplied in the Bible which Christians hold to be uncreated Divine Revelation. Faith is founded upon a mystery, not on reason. Still, it is true that the fact Callard has shown great determination in not asking if she is actually a duck named Agnus Mallard, shows that her claim to to have decisively answered anything at all (since ducks are notoriously taciturn interlocutors) is gravely undermined. 

The plain fact is, Socrates has greater salience for the West than does Suqrat for the Islamic East because Socrates, like Christ, is a 'pharmakos' or 'korban'- i.e. a scapegoat sacrificed for the commonweal. Tolstoy's great importance is similarly linked to his eccentric but profound Christian faith. Callard, I believe, is Jewish. But that's not what motivates her suppressio veri or suggestio falsi. She is merely stupid and ignorant and has been rendered incapable of saying anything true or sensible by reason of her training in, and teaching of, arrant nonsense to imbeciles. 

Still, in one sense Callard is right. Studying philosophy at Uni is more likely to ensure you, like Socrates, earn nothing by it and end up punished by the law. This is why philosophy students must 'cancel' Tolstoy. He made a lot of money from his books and lived to a great age. Moreover he didn't have to sit down to pee. How is that fair? 

Cervantes his own Pierre Menard

Because the King's lion displays but his hindquarters to Thought

 Tautochrone, the Tâtonnement, by which all become Quixote

Usury's but a loan floated on what, in currency, is hard

& every Cervantes but his own Pierre Menard

Envoi- 

Peace hath a Prince! Language a Lord! 

Embodied as a but broken record.

Shaw's unpleasant plays

deal with 'repugnancy markets' i.e. money derived from immoral, illegal or unfashionable activities. Statute and tort law can provide specific remedies. However, incentive compatible 'mechanism design' is required. That is an ideographic matter beyond or below the scope of nomothetic moral or metaphysical approaches. 

 What of the more general problem that money derived in repugnant ways is diffused through the entire economy? You may be inclined to say, with a Roman Emperor, 'money does not stink'. It has no memory of how it came to be earned. Still, there is a reputational benefit in having 'clean' wealth and, equally, a social penalty for being the beneficiary of tainted cash- e.g. money gained from 'trade' rather than inherited from rapacious ancestors or the bloodless practice of an avaricious profession. 

It is in this context that Shaw's 'unpleasant plays' still have a message for us. 

Widower's houses.

In this play, an aristocratic Doctor falls in love with the well-educated daughter of a self-made man. Initially, the Doctor, who has radical political ideas, welcomes what people of his own caste would regard a mesalliance. Then he discovers that his prospective father-in-law gains his livelihood by renting out his rectum. At that time, rent-boys were considered social pariahs. Sodomy was per se illegal. True, one could argue that Widowers need some place to place their pecker and that it is preferable that they rent rather than buy such accommodation. Since Capitalism only came into existence by swallowing the widow's mite and the orphan's portion and since its appetites have grown enormously since then, it follows that it must now replenish itself by encompassing the exiguous earnings of rent-boys servicing randy widowers and incestuous paedophiles who had previously chopped up and sold for meat any wives or children they may have had. At the end of the play, the aristocratic Doctor discovers that the wealth, power, and hegemonic role of his own Whig ancestors arose out of the fact that the soi disant 'Houses' of Parliament were but the rented out rectums of the lumpenproletariat. 

Mrs Warren's profession

A prostitute turned Madam with a chain of brothels across Europe is shocked to discover that her well-educated daughter prefers to soil herself as an actuarial consultant in the City of London. Shaw does not condemn the girl out of hand. How else is she supposed to make a living? Would Jevons or Wicksteed or Alfred Marshall pay her to use algebraic topology to show that the existence of vaginas artificially skews the market for sexual services such that rent-boys suffer significant wage discrimination? Indeed, the female monopoly on child birth has resulted in the vesting of unearned rents amongst a class so idle it can afford to waste time sitting down to pee. Moreover, Regicide was rendered infructuous, the Guillotine was made mock off, by the officina gentium, the vagina nationum, of Queen Vic, Gorbless'er, under whom Finanzkapital had so burgeoned. Put simply, there is little point cutting the heads of Kings- or even those of the bourgeoisie- if kooches keep popping out babies who might become Kings or Capitalists or Christians or heterosexual males or other such abominations. 

The Philanderer

A couple of men keep putting their dicks in vaginas when they ought to be bumming each other. The women are after only one thing- marriage- and to have more of that commodity are willing to outsource Divorce to South Dakota. Sadly, Bertrand Russell's brother thought such divorces were legal in Britain. They weren't and so the noble Earl was sent to jail for three months for bigamy. I'm not sure what the moral here is other than the usual Shavian one that vaginas are ikky. Stay the fuck away from them. 

Archilochus & Neoboule

Love is the heart's soft flame, the shadowy fire

Heating the alembic of Archilochean satire 

To hold, to what's hateful, a looking glass

  Neoboule's hand, Hymen! let pass

Envoi- 

Peace hath a Prince! Now not bread nor wine are dear

All Whoredom leans upon Longinus' spear

Sen's Sympathy & Commitment.

Adam Smith's 'a theory of moral sentiment' made an absurd claim- 'As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. 

This is nonsense. We use language, including 'body language', to learn how other people, or animals, are affected by things which are happening to them even if those things have never happened to us and could never happen to us. It is not necessary for me to imagine what it feels like to have a vagina or to push a baby out of a vagina to know that the thing is painful. I also don't know what it feels like to use a vibrator but can guess by the fact that there is a big market for such things, that people who use them derive pleasure from them. Indeed, there are lots of things, whose use I don't know and don't want to know, which I know to be valuable to certain people who, it is evident, will pay good money to purchase them. I may have no 'sympathy' for such people but am content to say 'different strokes for different folks' and leave it at that.

Though our brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. 

Even if the person on the rack is a cousin, rather than a brother, we are likely to be discommoded by his piercing shrieks of agony. True, Smith was Scottish and may have been more fortunately constituted. 

They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations.

Nonsense! If people will pay good money to escape the rack, we understand that the thing is best avoided. Moreover, if my boss texts me with a demand that I send Kuy Teav to his hotel room and I don't know what Kuy Teav is, I ask my colleagues. One of them says, 'leave it with me. My wife is from Cambodia'.  I make no further inquiry. I don't care if Kuy Teav means 'rent-boy' in the Khmer language or  if it is a Cambodian dish or type of sleeping garment. All that matters is that the boss is happy. 

 Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. 

This simply isn't true. Some people may have sufficient imagination to 'put themselves in the shoes' of other people. Most don't. They don't care why people buy or sell a product. They just look at whether they themselves would find it profitable to enter that trade. 

It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. 

This may be true of people similar to ourselves. But our imaginations 'can copy' tales about Gods and Demons and flying unicorns. I like to think of myself as one of the latter species having marvellous adventures on the rings of Uranus. 

By the imagination, we place ourselves in his situation.

Or the situation of a flying unicorn. So what? Commerce has little need for imagination. It does require a sharp eye for price movements and changes in rates of profitability. As for 'moral sentiments', they may arise from Theology, or a concern for Duty or Reputation or 'Fama', rather than Sympathy. Indeed, previously, people thought 'synderesis'- i.e. innate knowledge of the fundamental principles of moral action- was implanted in all humans by their Creator. 'Sympathy' was just a psychological term Smith used to replace a 'scholastic' one. 

For Amartya Sen, Sympathy differs from Commitment in that

'The former corresponds to the case in which the concern for others directly affects one's own welfare. 

Everything which affects a thing, directly affects it. To say x indirectly affects y means that x directly affects some z which directly affects y.  

Sympathy is a feeling. Sometimes we want to feel sympathy and put ourselves in a position where sympathy is what we have a reasonable expectation of feeling. Affluent Americans who paid money to watch a Satyajit Ray movie about very poor Bengalis, did so because they expected to feely sympathy not derision or boredom. In this case sympathy is part and parcel of welfare just as feeling horror is part and parcel of the pleasure (that is utility or welfare) gained by watching a horror movie. There is 'impredicativity' here which means that a structural causal model can't be constructed. 

'If the knowledge of torture of others makes you sick, 

you have a mental illness or neurosis or phobia similar to what happens when a person feels vertigo when they think of cliff or hear about a person who is threatening to jump while standing on the ledge of a skyscraper.

it is a case of sympathy;

No. You may have no sympathy whatsoever for the terrorist being tortured. It's just that you lose your lunch when you have to hear his screams. 

 if it does not make you feel personally worse off, but you think it is wrong and you are ready to do something to stop it, it is a case of commitment.' 

This is a foolish view. What is being described is queasiness not sympathy. The sight of blood may make a person queasy. They avoid seeing it. They may have no sympathy for injured people who are bleeding to death. Equally, I may be very deeply committed to not dying. Yet, if my Doctor tells me I have to stop eating pizza and drinking sugary drinks while binge watching Netflix in order to postpone death, I am not willing to do so. 

As for commitments- what matters is whether you stick to them. A professional whose fees are properly paid is likely to fulfil this commitment- e.g a hotshot attorney who gets you off on a murder charge even if he thinks you are guilty. What makes the lawyer's commitment credible is his concern for his own professional reputation. A guy who thinks you have suffered a great wrong and who promises to clear your name may be incapable of making a commitment in this respect because he is a drug addict and lacks any type of legal skill. 

Sen says 'The characteristic of commitment with which I am most concerned here is the fact that it drives a wedge between personal choice and personal welfare, and much of traditional economic theory relies on the identity of the two.' 

This is nonsense. Traditional economic theory differentiates between utility and disutility. When you make a commitment you are stipulating that you will taken on a certain level of disutility- e.g. working from 9 to 5- in return for a certain sum of money (this is 'transferable utility) which will enable you to enjoy more utility in your leisure hours. There is no 'wedge' between choice and utility. There is a trade-off between disutility and utility.  

Some people gain utility by showing sympathy while others gain utility by committing to pay money or spend time helping a certain class of people. Sometimes sympathy motivates commitment. Sometimes, a commitment may lead to sympathy (e.g. a lawyer who comes to see that his shit-bag client has had a hard life). But they may be wholly divorced from each other. 

One can have commitments with respect to oneself for wholly self-regarding reasons. If I committed to a healthy lifestyle, I will soon derive more pleasure from eating sushi than I do from guzzling Pizza. I will enjoy jogging more than I currently enjoy watching Netflix. Yet I won't make the change because of the initial discomfort. Also, I'm betting Big Pharma will come up with a pill which fat, lazy, bastards like me can take so as to postpone death. 

Marshallian (i.e. Neo-Classical) Economics had thoroughly grasped the points made above. Sen chose to ignore these developments so as to reinvent a square wheel so as to provide an 'availability cascade' for academics as useless as himself. 

As a case in point, Mark S. Peacock writes

This paper examines Amartya Sen’s concept of sympathy and the oversimplified, ambiguous and sometimes erroneous interpretations of this concept by Sen’s interpreters.

Why examine what is obvious nonsense? 

In the first section, two types of sympathy can be found in Sen’s ‘Rational fools’ essay – a contemplative

i.e. thinking starving peeps would probably really enjoy a nice Pizza 

and an active type

sending some money to a charity so they can buy starving peeps Pizza 

of which the former has conceptual primacy. Following this, active sympathy is examined to ascertain what Sen means by ‘actions based on sympathy’ and why he deems these to be ‘egoistic’.

Coz the guy doing it has an ego.  

Sen’s understanding of egoism means that sympathy is not straightforwardly assimilable to the orthodox theory of rational choice.

Sure it is. I contemplatively feel sympathy for myself- a guy hungry for pizza- and for other hungry guys who would like some pizza. I order a Pizza and hand around slices and feel very good about myself. This is called gaining 'utility' or 'ophelimity' or 'welfare' or 'pleasure' or 'satisfaction'. Rational choice can analyse this well enough. Suppose I order the Pizza on the phone and the guy on the other end says 'that will be two hundred quid' and my reply is 'fuck that! I'll order Chinese!' then we have a data point from which, eventually, my 'price elasticity' for Pizza can be calculated.  

The section after that analyses the place of altruism in Sen’s work

altruism is a Tarskian primitive. It means different things to different people. I believe it involves letting other people smell my farts. They think it involves telling me to fuck off so everybody else can enjoy the dinner party.  

and ascertains that altruism can be aligned both with sympathy and commitment,

and with farting 

depending on the definition one uses.

Nope. The thing is a Tarskian primitive. It has no definition. What you think good for other people is not necessarily what they think is good for themselves and others. 

The final section compares sympathy and commitment and establishes that they are to be distinguished, not according to the welfare a person expects to obtain from making choices, but according to the reason which motivates that person to make a choice.

Nonsense! Sympathy is an emotion. Commitment is more like a promise. A person may be very sympathetic to you but may refuse to promise you any type of support. Equally, another person who has no sympathy for you may credibly commit to help you for some reason of their own. Thus Hamas may feel no sympathy for Shia Iran but its commitment to help that country, for its own reasons, is credible enough. Equally, people who have zero sympathy for Jews or for Israel, may be relied upon to help that country for geopolitical reasons.  

 Introduction In his essay, ‘Rational fools’ (1977), Amartya Sen uses the concepts ‘sympathy’ and ‘commitment’ to capture aspects of human choice which are not straightforwardly conceivable in rational choice theory.

Emotions we feel may have a utility of their own. I may pay to watch a movie about the Holocaust so as to feel sympathy for the victims just as I may pay to watch a horror movie so as to experience the emotion of fear. Equally, I may gain utility by committing to show up for work so as to get paid even though I am wholly out of sympathy with the notion that doing work is good for the character or for one's self-respect. Rational Choice theory has a theory of disutility just as much as it has a theory of utility. It is Sen whose theory is vacuous. Why, if he feels sympathy for famine victims, did he not become a soil scientist like his father so as to boost agricultural output, or else join the FAO under another relative of his- B.R Sen? Why was his actual 'commitment' only to lecturing on useless, stupid, shit? The answer is provided by Rational Choice theory. Sen's sympathy was overridden by the great disutility he would have experienced if he had actually done something useful.  

Sympathy has been treated by Sen’s interpreters as the weaker sibling of the pair, and Sen himself is partly responsible for the modest reputation which sympathy has. He has not, for instance, developed the concept of sympathy in his later opus in a manner similar to the reworking which commitment has undergone. And sympathy is less seditious vis-à-vis the orthodox theory of rational choice than commitment, something which makes the latter concept of more interest to Sen than sympathy. 

Commitment is merely a credible type of promise though, no doubt, it is defeasible by a change in opportunity cost. I am committed to buying a Pizza we can share till I realize I might have to cut back on my purchase of other things I want if I actually bought the pizza. There is nothing particularly interesting about this. I suppose Sen gasses on about it because he wants to fool us he is 'committed' to helping the poor rather than posing as a sort of Mother Theresa. 

Similarly, in my work on sexology, I put more stress on having a ginormous cock than on being a tender and sensitive lover. To be clear, I want people to think I have a big cock. I don't care if they think I won't go down on a woman even if that's the only way I've ever been able to get a girl to climax. 

... Sen means... states that commitment involves counterpreferential choice.

Sadly, we don't know what preferences are. We do know what revealed preference is and we can speculate whether a particular person would really have preferred something else.  

 Sen ultimately, in his work of the 2000s, concludes that sympathy can be incorporated into an extended version of orthodox rational choice theory which maintains the assumption that individuals pursue their self-interest in all their endeavours.

There is no need for any such assumption which, in any case, is either tautological or incapable of being controverted by any empirical observation whatsoever.  

Fabienne Peter and Hans Bernhard Schmid discuss three types of motivation which Sen distinguishes. One is ‘(narrow) self-interest’: ‘One acts from self-interest when one aims at maximizing one’s own welfare’.

Again, no one can say whether this isn't the case. Suppose you say 'I will go to the shop and buy the dress which makes me look most horrible even though I yearn for praise for my beauty and elegance.' I may reply, 'I don't believe you. You are only saying this so I will think some dress could make you less hideous than you actually are, Mummy.' 

Sympathy, they write, is also a type of motivation: ‘One acts from sympathy when one’s own welfare is affected by how others are doing, as in the case where helping others makes one feel better’.

But one can be very sympathetic to a person one likes to see suffer. A doting husband may poison his wife so as to have the pleasure of nursing her. Suffering has ennobled her. She no longer compares my dick unfavourably to that of the Pizza delivery boy.  

The third motivation is commitment which, as Peter and Schmid write, is ‘motivationally unrelated to the agent’s welfare, however broadly conceived’. I

This is impossible. There is no way to prove that commitment won't benefit one in some indirect or unexpected way.  

n this section, I contrast self-interest and sympathy and turn my attention to commitment in the final section of this paper. Peter and Schmid’s depiction of self-interest and sympathy is noteworthy for three reasons. First, that self-interest marks a type of motivation is clear from their mention of the aim behind an agent’s self-interested action – to maximise her welfare.

Nonsense! Under Knightian Uncertainty, Rational Choice involves regret minimization not Welfare maximization. The same is true for reasons connected to cost of information acquisition, complexity, computability, concurrency etc. 

 is sympathy always egoistic?

yes. Chairs don't have an ego but can't be sympathetic. The cat can be sympathetic but it is very egotistical.  

Pettit qualifies his statement when he discusses what Sen calls ‘altruism through sympathy’

which does not exist. We may say 'that person's sympathy for the suffering led them to act in an altruistic manner'. We don't say 'that torturer's sympathetic enjoyment of his victim's screams are altruistic.'  

which, writes Pettit, ‘is not self-interested in the sense of being pursued with an instrumental eye to securing some personal benefit … [but] that the person we favor is someone whose welfare matters to us, intuitively, in the same manner as our own; let them fare well and we feel good’ .

In which case we get a personal benefit.  

Favouring somebody whose welfare is as important to us as our own does not sound egoistic.

Nor does favoring Saturn over Uranus. But it is equally irrelevant.  

The third noteworthy point about Peter and Schmid’s portrayal is that, whereas they associate self-interest with the maximisation of one’s welfare,

which makes one feel better. Nobody likes knowing they missed out on an opportunity or ended up paying more than they had to.  

sympathy, in the form of helping others, makes one ‘feel better’. Feeling better presumably includes cases in which my helping another person maximises my welfare, but feeling better might also involve increasing, but not maximising, my welfare.

If there is no Knightian Uncertainty, then whatever you do maximizes your Utility. The theory is tautological.  

A question raised hereby concerns the relationship between sympathy and welfare maximisation.

It is the same as the relationship between either of them and farting. This is not a question worth answering.  

In what follows, I undertake a close examination of Sen’s pronouncements on sympathy, particularly those of ‘Rational fools’. My argument issues in the following conclusions: (a) sympathy is not necessarily a type of motivation for action

Sympathy is an emotion. It is likely to be a 'Darwinian algorithm of the mind'- i.e. it exists for an evolutionary reason. This means it necessarily is a type of motivation for action which, however, may be overridden by some stronger emotion or by a rational calculation. 

but can consist solely in a person’s feelings in which case sympathy is contemplative;

in which case the action that is motivated is 'contemplation'.  

(b) Sen places an epistemological condition on contemplative sympathy which requires that a person, A, can only feel sympathy if she knows and does not merely believe that the welfare of another person, B, with whom A feels sympathy, has changed.

This is the reverse of the usual view- which is that it is right and proper to have contemplative suffering for a fictional character- e.g. Tess of the d'Urbervilles- but not for a woman of flesh and blood whom you could help with a charitable donation. 

(c) pace Sen, ‘uncertainty’ does not necessarily leave the formulation of sympathy unaffected;

Not if Sympathy is indeed a 'Darwinian algorithm of the mind'. Evolution occurs on an uncertain fitness landscape. Thus uncertainty leaves untouched whatever formulates emotions.

(d) contemplative sympathy is the primary but not sole type of sympathy,

it is neither save by arbitrary stipulation. But I could say there is a type of sympathy only expressible by a ruminative fart and another whose origin is the sniffing of such a fart.  

for there is another, active, type of sympathy which Sen clearly delineates;

does it involve farting? 

(e) Sen’s understanding of egoism does not imply that the actor seeks to maximise her welfare when she performs actions based on sympathy;

Because Sen's understanding of everything is defective. Egoism is the trait displayed by things with an 'ego' or sense of possessing a self.  

(f) actions based on sympathy are ‘altruistic’ only

by subjective stipulation. We don't what is or isn't truly altruistic. Still, to have a reputation for altruism can be very beneficial. But, under different circumstances, so is having a reputation as a right bastard.

on a narrow (self-interested) understanding of that term; only commitment is compatible with a non-selfinterested understanding of altruism which Sen identifies;

The only way to have a non self-interested understanding of anything is by not being the sort of self which evolved to be self-interested- in other words, not being a human being. But there are an infinite number of way of not-being human.  

(g) choice based on commitment is

not a choice. Mummy offers you a choice between pizza and Chinese takeaway for dinner. You say no. You have a prior commitment to eating the shit your bride insists on cooking for you. I only came back to get my Teddy-bear. Hopefully, it will be able to keep me safe from her tonight.  

distinguished, not by the expected welfare effects it has for the agent who makes that choice, but by its reason-based (as opposed to preference-based) motivational structure.

A preference is a reason though you may have a reason for overriding a particular preference because of a prior commitment.  That's pretty much all that can be said on the topic.  Sen, however, wanted to say more. He wanted to show that if Preferences exist then it must also be the case that Democracy prevents Famine while Freedom causes Development and that true Democratic Freedom for India would involve the banning of Hinduism. 

True, Sen was and is merely a virtue signaller. He has no sympathy or commitment to anything save his own self-aggrandizement but must pretend to be a brown monkey incapable of understanding why other brown monkeys, who have a bit of money, remain in India despite the fact that lots of brown monkeys there are as poor as shit. Surely, a person with proper Smithian 'moral sentiments' would run the fuck away from India so as to be a Professor of useless shite at Harvard? How can you explain Manmohan or Mohammad Yunus staying on in their shit-hole homelands? The answer is obvious. They don't have good moral sentiments. They make a fetish out of 'Economic Growth' which is a code-word for raising productivity and therefore Income for vast numbers of people. Clearly this is incompatible with Freedom as Development as the Capability to Evaluate the Freedom to Develop without having any fucking Freedom or Development whatsoever. 

Amartya Sen vs Janos Kornai

In responding to a letter from Janos Kornai, in which the Hungarian economist stated that Marxism was responsible for Bolshevism and Stalinism, Sen wrote-  

... if I encounter an idea in Marx that I am inclined to reject after scrutiny, all I need to do is to drop that notion—and its implications—from intellectual acceptance.

The problem here is that if that 'idea' is an axiom or foundational assumption then 'rejecting it' entails rejecting the entire Marxist theory. Moreover, Marx makes a prediction- viz. Communism is inevitable. Either he is right or he is wrong. That is a decision his readers have to make for themselves. 

But that selective exclusion would not force us to reject other Marxian ideas which seemed to me to be sound, such as “objective illusion” (from The German Ideology)

this is the notion that the ideas of the ruling class aren't really 'universal values'. Just because things are the way they are, this does not mean they could not be otherwise. But some 'revolutionary' ideas were simply silly. Marx tells us of  'a valiant fellow who had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. 

Marx was being silly. We float in water. Gravity does not matter. The fact that we don't possess gills is what prevents us breathing under water, like fish. 

#If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistic brought him new and manifold evidence. This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary philosophers in Germany.'

Sadly, Marx & Engels were describing themselves. They had an 'objective illusion' that they themselves were smart. They weren't. They were stupid. 

Consider the following quote from the German Ideology- 'For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.'

This was wholly false. The Brits became the ruling class in India by protecting all the ancient customs and laws and religions of the indigenous population. The class which gains power, be it by the power of the purse or the sword or superior administrative efficiency, retains it only by those means. True, a bunch of ranters may grab power during a period of instability, but if they don't solve the fiscal and the military and the administrative problem, their reign will be brief indeed. 

Sen & Co suffered from a dangerous illusion- viz. that poverty could be cured by redistribution rather than by raising productivity. Objectively, they were wrong and thus they were increasingly  disintermediated. Sen lived to see Manmohan become PM of India and then, more humiliatingly yet, Mohammad Yunus take power in his own ancestral Bangladesh. 

Sen did not understand why Marxism became the official ideology of the greater part of Eurasia. It was because 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was militarily and economically feasible. Industrial workers could force peasants to hand over food and they could produce the weapons they would themselves use against invaders or insurgents. Since India refused to permit an industrial proletariat to develop, Indian Communism could never make a bid for absolute power. The soldiers were the sons of 'kulaks' and enjoyed killing brainy Bolshevik babus. 

or the long-run superiority of distribution according to needs—when feasible (from The Critique of the Gotha Programme).

In which Marx said 'to each according to his contribution' till scarcity disappears. Sen thinks Marx meant the opposite of what he said. 

Had I been a Marxist, I might have faced a problem in rejecting one of his ideas while accepting another.

Nonsense! Like Meghnad Desai, Sen could have been a 'Hayekian-Marxist'.  But equally one could be a Jewish Pope who is also Empress of China.

But since I do not see myself as a Marxist, that choice is mine—not Marx’s.

It is one thing to pick and choose quotations from an author. It is another to say 'Marx said 'to each according to his needs' in his Critique of the Gotha Program when, the fact is, he said 'to each according to his contribution'.  

For this reason, a non-Marxist has a liberty that a Marxist may not have in being able to choose with discrimination.

The reverse is the case. If you keep quoting the Bible and then confess you are an atheist, people think what you are exercising is not 'liberty' but 'hypocrisy' or 'stupidity'.  

Interestingly enough, the liberty to choose one’s priorities, discriminating among them, is something on which Marx himself bestowed much praise.

Nonsense! The dude wasn't a libertarian nor, though a heavy drinker, did he demand the abolition of 'tied houses'- i.e. pubs forced to sell only the beer produced by the Brewery which owned them.  

In a famous passage in The German Ideology, he recommends bringing “the conditions for the free development and activity of individuals under their own control,"

in which case there will be a smaller menu of choice 

and notes that:

[it] makes it possible for me to do one thing to-day and another tomorrow,

what makes it possible? Marx says ' In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow'. Marx was wrong. Even under Communism, women, not men, would give birth. The farmer could not also be a sailor. The fisherman would not be allowed to perform heart surgery. 

to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

Rich people in Victorian England could certainly choose any or none of these activities. Working people could not. Marx is saying 'after scarcity has ended, no one will need to work from 9 to 5.  

A skilled Marxist may be advantaged in being like a good fisherman, but a non-Marxist has the freedom either to choose or to abandon fish (“just as I have in mind”).

No. A good fisherman can decide to become a Marxist. A bad fisherman can't become good by either embracing or rejecting bits of Marx.  

It is the freedom of the non-Marxist which I am emphasizing here—a freedom that Marx greatly valued.

Did Marx express delight when people disagreed with him? No! He poured the vials of his wrath upon them. Marx may have valued his own freedom strongly enough to run the fuck away from places where he might be put in jail. This did not mean he wanted Kings and Plutocrats to continue to enjoy freedoms they currently possessed.  

We can choose some of Marx’s ideas, rejecting others (with or without making any use of them).

We can lie about Marx- did you know he advocated compulsory gender reassignment surgery for all male heterosexuals?- but, if we do so, people will simply think we are liars rather than that we are exercising our freedom. 

Some of the sadder aspects of communist regimes tended to bring out only too clearly Marx’s role as a “ruler” rather than as an intellectual, competing with others—like Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau—for the acceptance of their respective ideas.

Marx and Engels had been Revolutionaries. If the 1848 revolutions had been successful, both would have been 'rulers'. Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau had no such ambitions.  Lasalle, on the other hand, had a Napoleonic streak. Marx hated him. 

And yet Marx himself was not the political ruler or leader of any state

but he wanted to be.  

(any more than Rousseau or Hume was), and Marx’s “promotion” to infallible political leadership happened only after his death.

Because he kept saying all the other Leftists were stupid and evil while only he himself had uncovered the dialectical logic of History.  

Marx can be seen in at least two different ways

the objectively right way which squares with the historical record or else a subjective and false way which, however, may enable us to 'virtue signal'.  

and our respective interpretations of Marx partly reflect that dichotomy.

I see myself as someone who got a lot from Marx’s ideas and concerns, without

contributing anything of value to Economics or Philosophy 

—and this is important to emphasize—ever becoming a “Marxist.”

Though he started of as the side-kick of Maurice Dobbs. Indeed, the Sen-Dobb thesis was Stalinist to the hilt. Confiscate productivity gains from workers so as to finance industrialization through 'Five Year Plans'.  

I have always felt quite free to learn from Marx’s analysis without being under any obligation to be automatically a “supporter.”

Why be a supporter if that would entail having to surrender a portion of your wage to the Party? Also, you would not be allowed to run off with your best friend's wife. Such behaviour was classed as 'bourgeois decadence'. Still, Sen wasn't a 'useful idiot' but only because he was a useless idiot.  

Indeed, even as I saw that my intellectual horizon was being extended by Marx’s analyses, I did think that some of his ideas were, in my view, seriously mistaken.

'Objective illusion' was mistaken.  

I do think, for example, that “the dictatorship of the proletariat” is an unsustainable idea

It worked. Trotsky got factory workers to kill 'Whites' and 'kulaks' who resisted food requisition. Later, Stalin collectivized the land which the peasants had seized for themselves during the Revolution.  

and reflects some kind of muddled thinking by Marx—one with sad consequences for many.

Marx saw that the French peasant who received land after the Revolution were valiant soldiers for Napoleon. He could see the military potential of the industrial proletariat. In 1848, General Napier had shown the 'Physical Force' Chartists his canons. He had 'Physical Force'. They did not. But military technology was changing. Surely a day would come when the workers in the pistol or machine gun factory could seize control of it and arm their fellow workers? At that point, snipers could kill be artillery men before they could fire off their canons.  

His lack of interest in how political power would be exercised—and even more in how it could be restrained (we do not find any significant discussion in Marx of a Galbraithian “countervailing force”)

Marx was suspicious of Trade Unions- in particular those of the highly skilled. They were likely to make common cause with the petit bourgeoisie and adopt Imperialism as their ideology.  

—seemed to me to be a notable lacuna in Marxian political economy.

Sen picks out the things which made Marxism feasible as a political program and calls them 'lacunae'. He truly has shit for brains. 

Marx’s conceptions, aside from those that have remained rather pure (like “exploitation”),

which Morishima, Sen's colleague, erected into a 'fundamental theorem of Marxian economics'. Its utility is to show that if even one dick enters one vagina and jizzes without the woman jizzing equally and oppositely, then all Women are exploited. Only by chopping off all heterosexual dicks can Equity be achieved.  

have been discussed so much, mixed with other approaches, that they come into our thoughts in very many different ways (for example, many people are surprised to learn that the idea that every person has many distinct “identities” had an early appearance in Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme)

Very true. Marx showed that Clark Kent was also Superman. This greatly influenced Nietzsche- right? Wrong. What Marx said was ' The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature....

The fact is that 'physical organization' refers to the physical body. Marx says identity is confined to that body. We don't also have an immortal soul nor is there anybody who appears as a wood-cutter over here but who is also the Emperor of China. 

Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. 

Men have names and addresses and dates of birth. If I catch hold of a cat thinking it is my cat, it has no way to convince me of my mistake. It has to scratch and bite me till I let it go.

They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. 

This means men can tell you not just their own names but what belongs to them by reason of the labour they expended in producing it. 

By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.

Which is why you have to use a lot of force against them if you desire to take away their means of subsistence. Communist Parties in some countries were able to wade through a sea of blood to establish their absolute power. 

Sen believes that Marx was for the 'Welfare State'. The truth is he bitterly opposed Lasalle's 'State Socialism' which envisaged massive state loans to found large-scale cooperatives that would eventually take over all industry and all branches of the economy. This process would culminate in socialism. Bismarck rejected this but did bring in collective insurance. This provided the impetus for the emergence of the Welfare State as opposed to the previous patchwork of assistance to the poor at the Parish level . Marx considered such 'reformism' to be reactionary. 

the idea of the “welfare state” in post-Second World-War Europe did draw on Marx’s prioritization of needs (going beyond rewarding work) and of social sharing.

Marx objected to this type of charity more particularly if it was done by the State. Why? It would give the poor and the vulnerable a stake in the existing economic order. They would be less attracted to revolutionary politics. 

European countries had been moving towards collective insurance and the State takeover of welfare functions from parishes from the 1890s onward. Marxists played no role in this. 

Yet it also had other inputs, particularly from the empirical research—by R.J Hammond, Richard Titmuss and others—of social benefits of war-time sharing—particularly of food and medicine.

They looked at the outcomes of policies over which they, initially, had no influence. Sen must be aware that Leftists at the LSE hated Titmuss. Hammond's account of war-time rationing was read by Indians though Britain had far greater State capacity and esprit de corps. What worked during the Blitz for Britishers would not work for Indians. 

A different—but related—point to this contrast is that Marxian inspirations have often been quite splendidly used in a productive way by non-Marxists who happen to sympathize with some parts of Marx’s general reasoning, including his radicalism.

Were they economists or political scientists? If not, what they produced or didn't produce is irrelevant.  

There are lessons even in the contrast between Sergei Eisenstein’s work as a relaxed film director before the Soviet regime took firm and inflexible form (his film “Batleship Potempkin” is a good example of his work from that earlier period) and his work later on after he had become a celebrated citizen of the strongly disciplined USSR.

This is nonsense. Eisenstein was a Red Army soldier who was promoted for producing effective propaganda. Following the Party line, he initially was a 'Proletkult' theatre director scoring his first success with a 'Eccentricism' influenced production of a play by Ostrovsky. He was also a theoretician who was wise enough to keep in step with the ever-changing Party line. To say 'Potemkin' or 'Strike' were 'relaxed' is simply false. They were highly mannered. This drew criticism, more particular after Potemkin became a world-wide success. Eisenstein then promised to embrace 'social realism'- the new dogma of the party. Still, if his brief stint with Paramount in Hollywood had been a success, he have remained in the West. The truth was his 'formalism' did not match the new aesthetic of the talkies which eschewed grand Guignol gestures. Still, Eisenstein's skills as a sycophant finally won over Stalin and so he got to make Nevsky which then paved the way for his hagiography of Ivan the fucking Terrible. 

To take a sharper example,

A stupider example. Eisenstein was a Party hack. Picasso wasn't.  

Pablo Picasso’s politics as a member of the Communist Party may have benefitted both from

the fact that Stalin had helped the Spanish Republicans and were doing the heavy lifting in the war against Hitler.  

his political understanding and from the distance at which Picasso placed his work from the details of his political beliefs. That distancing did not affect the excellence of such paintings as “Guernica” which

was disliked by the Soviet Union as was 'massacre in Korea'  

were clearly political and influenced by Picasso’s political sympathies. However, as his agent and dealer, D-H. Kahnweiler, claimed, Picasso “has never read a line of Karl Marx, nor of Engels of course."

But Picasso was aware that the Anarchists had been pretty shit in the Spanish Civil War. Anyway, the French Communist Party might take power. The Americans might prefer this if the aim was to contain Germany.  

Familiarity with Marx’s understanding of the world did benefit Picasso’s vision,

though he did not in fact have any such understanding himself.  

but it would be hard to speculate what degree of closeness—and distance—may be most productive in one’s relation with Karl Marx.

For a painter or a plumber- none at all. Economists and Political Scientists, however, have to make a decision- was Marx right or was he wrong? The answer, sadly, is he was wrong. It is true that the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' can be achieved, but the difficulty is how to stop proles from running away from it.  

However, having an understanding of Marx may not be such a terrible thing to happen to a non-Marxist.

Terrible things would have happened to Sen in his natal Bengal if he had come out as a critic of Marx. Still, once Mamta came to power, there was little point pretending to be a crypto-Marxist. 

Turning back to Kornai- who regained salience with his powerful attack on Orban a decade ago- it is important to understand that he had abandoned Marxism way back in 1956. He was very much part and parcel of the Western 'positive' Econ tradition though, no doubt, he wished to be useful to his country and thus had to make compromises- e.g. only publishing what the Party would consider permissible. 

Bernard Chavance writes-

In Contradictions and dilemmas (1986), Kornai wrote that we are faced with inescapable dilemmas resulting from the conflict of different value systems.

Why? The answer is 'concurrency'. There is no 'natural' way to choose which value to prioritize. The thing is bound to be arbitrary. But this also means resources will be invested in 'gaming the system' so as to get more favourable results. But, this is like 'rent dissipation'- i.e. is wasteful.  

For instance, 'there is a contradiction between the efficiency conditions on the one side, and the ethical principles of solidarity and security on the other.

Either 'solidarity' raises efficiency (e.g. allocative efficiency improves if you help me when I need help and I reciprocate or 'pay it forward') or it does not. If the thing results in 'rent dissipation'- e.g. everybody going on strike to raise their relative wages- then there is a nuisance which must be curbed. The same thing can be said about 'security' which reduces Knightian Uncertainty and thus is 'regret minimizing'. 

With his well-known image of the supermarket he criticized the notion of an optimal economic system as naive and said that all real economic systems are organic wholes, containing good and bad features.

There may be occulted 'linkages' such that policies aimed at one sector of the economy have unintended consequences elsewhere. 

They consequently constitute « package deals », it is not possible at will to choose only the beneficial and to exclude the detrimental components of different systems – as unemployment for capitalism and shortage for socialism.

It may not be desirable to get rid of unemployment or shortages. It is a good thing that I am unemployed though there is a big shortage of Algebraic Topologists. This is because I have shit for brains and ought not to be employed doing anything which requires a high IQ.  

He concluded with a kind of impossibility theorem:

It seems to me that it is impossible to create a closed and consistent socioeconomic normative theory which would assert, without contradiction, a politico-ethical value system and would at the same time provide for the efficiency of the economy.

In other words, Sen & Co are seeking to do the impossible- or, rather, pretending to seek to do it.  

It is impossible if that theory seeks to be realistic and wishes to take into account the true behavioural characteristics of people, communities, organisations and social groups. (Kornai, 1986, p. 137)

We don't know those characteristics in different states of the world. If we did we would know if this kid is capable of becoming a great basket-ball star while that other kid could be the next Terence Tao. Anyone with the ability to spot talent of this sort could get very rich as a scout or 'head-hunter'.  

5A task of research was to find an answer to the question: « what compromises between the different normative principles are brought about by the social forces of the different social systems »? (ibid., p. 137-138).

This is not a task for 'research'. It is 'discovery' made by the people empowered to make the compromises. However, what is easier is to do what was previously done and then hire some guy to pretend that it represents 'ethical' investing or diplomacy or whatever.  

6Keynes had a similar attitude, when in « The end of laissez-faire » (1926) he insisted on distinguishing the assessment of capitalism from the point of view of comparative economic efficiency or from a moral perspective. These two approaches led to opposing conclusions in his eyes, and he famously stated that acceptable compromises had to be searched for: « Our problem is to work out a social organisation which shall be as efficient as possible without offending our notions of a satisfactory way of life. » (Keynes, 1926, p. 294)

The whole world would soon realize that economists like Keynes had shit for brains.  

7A second stance in Kornai is linked to the idea that you cannot add up or aggregate the different assessments of diverse phenomena to reach a kind of unified utility function (Kornai, 2013a).

But you can get a good enough measure of real GDP and thus future Tax Revenue. Work to raise that in a sustainable fashion.  

He gave in 2006 a quite unique appraisal of the experience of the great transformation in Central and Eastern Europe:

some countries preferred to 'front-load' the pain of austerity and thus were able to have a shake-out followed by rapid and sustainable growth. Others were complacent or corrupt. Ukraine should be wealthier and more secure than Poland. But it refused to make the difficult choices.  

in a long-term perspective, it was for him a success as a swift and peaceful historical change that took place in the direction of the main tenets of Western civilization, capitalism, and democracy, but in an existential and middle term perspective for the populations who went through numerous hardships it represented a failure. « I keep two accounts and not one, and do not merge them. On one account, I gladly acknowledge a great success at the level of world history: a system was created superior to the former one, without bloodshed, with incredible speed. On the other account, I have the list of good and bad experience in everyday life; much joy and much pain. I consider it both sensible and defensible to say that what has happened in this region can be simultaneously considered a success in terms of its global historical significance, and a failure in many important aspects because it caused pain, bitterness and disappointment for so many people. » (Kornai, 2006a, p. 241)

Kornai didn't predict that Orban would offer a better deal to middle class families and thus get a lock on power.  

His moral reflections in his autobiography also contained an analogous view – where he hinted with irony at a « methodological advance » – about the assessment of personal life actions: « I do not believe that the wrongs done by a person in one stage of his or her life can be righted by useful service to humanity in another stage. We need at least two accounts here. In one the wrongs indelibly remain, but we must of course strive to gather as many and as effective a body of good deeds in the other account. » (Kornai, 2013a, p. 10; 2006).

Why? One may point to a chap who devotes himself to arcane research and say 'that fellow is a parasite. He rides his own hobby horse while being fed at the expense of the productive people in society.' Yet some such people may make discoveries of enormous benefit to the whole of society. One day soon, Socioproctolgy will be recognized for what it is- viz. a cure for insomnia. 

1.3. Supremacy of democracy

Thirdly, we also find a distinctive judgment – at some variance with the dilemma and compromise view – that could be coined Kornai’s axiological primacy of the political. He dismissed as « repugnant » the tradeoff that some posit between democracy and growth for China, being disposed to renounce the former for the benefit of the latter (Kornai, 2014, p. 11).

Who will fight a war against the Red Army to liberate China from the iron grip of the Party? Consider the fate of the Chinese Republic which quickly degenerated into War Lordism and the Japanese invasion.  

He put forward his lexicographic ordering of preference between ultimate values. « Of primary value are democracy and the values closely tied to it, such as respect for fundamental human rights. Abandoning those cannot be compensated for with material goods, faster growth, or great welfare. There is no tradeoff whereby it would be “worth” sacrificing a slice of democracy for a rise in GDP ».

Kornai was wrong. If India could be ruled by a Dictator (it can't because 'assassination tempers autocracy) people would vote for such a Dictator even if he or she decides to establish a dynasty- like the one in North Korea. 

The principal standard is the rule of a democratic regime. « If that requirement is met (or approximately met), then and only then can we start to weigh the secondary, tertiary etc. criteria. And if the assessment has reached that point, it becomes possible to consider tradeoffs among the secondary, tertiary, etc. criteria. » (Kornai, 2013a, p. 9)

One may equally say 'the first priority is the establishment of Islamic rule. Once that is established, we can have elections. The Creator must be served before his creatures can be served.' 

Kornai’s approach of democracy had a specific tone. He usually referred to a minimalist and procedural definition inspired by Schumpeter, underlining the dismissible character of the government:

a popular uprising can cause the elected leader to flee. De Gaulle initially fled from Cohn Bendit and his revolting fellow students.  

A “democratic minimum” is fulfilled if a government of a country comes into power as a result of a competition for the votes of the citizens and can be removed from office within the framework of a civilized process without a palace putsch, military coup, assassination, or revolution. (Kornai, 2006a, p. 215)

India meets this condition but only because Rahul doesn't want to meet the same fate as this Daddy and his Granny.  

On the relation between capitalism and democracy, Kornai moved away from Schumpeter, who thought democracy could evolve outside capitalism. His essential point was that « capitalism is a necessary, but not sufficient condition of democracy » .

India isn't Capitalist. At the time when its first general election, under universal adult suffrage, was held, only about twenty percent of the population was wholly within the 'cash nexus'.  

We observe that he did not attempt to develop the theoretical reasons for such a thesis, it was for him, as it were, a conclusion derived from historical observation.

which ignored large swathes of Africa and Asia.  

A similar position may be seen in his 1990 article where he asserted the historical strong links between private property and market coordination on one hand, and between state property and bureaucratic coordination on the other, as another argument against market socialism that would attempt to combine state ownership and market coordination – a case of « weak links » (Kornai, 1990).

Kornai was aware that all was not well in Tito's Yugoslavia.  What he, and everybody else, failed to predict was that the 'divorce between ownership and control' in Western economies would lead to the rise of mega-billionaires like Musk who would have outsize political influence. 

Beyond Kornai’s courageous and early critique of the decline of democracy and the shift to autocracy in Orbán’s Hungary, we see that his last great study published was dedicated to the evolution of political regimes in the capitalist post-socialist world, where he found about one tenth of the population living in democracies and nine tenth in autocracies and dictatorships (Kornai, 2016b).

Just say 'countries will be ruled they always have been ruled' and you have hit the mark. 

2. Kornai, Marx, and capitalism

12Amartya Sen discusses the relation of Kornai to Marx, focusing on the questions of equity, power, and freedom. We observe that Kornai abandoned marxism in the 1950s, defined himself as an anti-marxist in the last decade, and stated that in his eyes Marx had a responsibility in Bolshevism and Stalinism (Kornai, 2009). But his relation to Marx’s thought cannot be reduced to such statements. Theoretically, the latter remained a major influence on Kornai’s Weltanschauung. In his article « Karl Marx through the eyes of an East-European intellectual » he wrote:

I sought to integrate various schools of thought. If forced to name those who have influenced me most, I mention the names of Schumpeter,

who was an odd sort of Marxist 

Keynes

who, in Malthus, has a common intellectual ancestor with Marx and Lasalle 

and Hayek,

there were Hayekian Marxists- like Meghnad Desai-in the Eighties.  

but first on the list comes the name of Karl Marx. (Kornai, 2009, p. 982-983)

Which is why Kornai was a bit krap.  

13The author of Capital was at once an economist, a sociologist, a political scientist, and a historian;

He was none of these things. He was a journalist of a polemical and paranoid type.  

he « was the great pioneer and incomparable practitioner of the system paradigm ».

Which is wholly useless.  

Alluding to his contrasting view of socialism as a shortage economy

i.e. features 'repressed inflation' 

and capitalism as a surplus economy,

Nonsense! A Cartel would prefer to create an artificial shortage and to allocate goods through other than open market processes. When I was in School, our teacher explained that some Levi jeans were deliberately damaged so they could be sold as 'seconds'. This was pure price discrimination. In monopolistic competition, you may deliberately create a shortage- e.g. a restaurant with a long waiting time which does not raise prices because of the 'scarcity indicates quality' fallacy. 

he also notes: « I learned mainly from Marx how important it is to study and explain the persistent deviations from market equilibrium » .

Like what? A 'reserve army' of unemployed people keeping wages down? But, during booms, there was no such reserve army.  

The Socialist System, published in 1992, presents grand dynamics of socialism with its emergence, institutional forms, development, laws of motion, and eventual crisis and collapse, which have a decisive and unique marxian flavour.

In other words, the thing was garbage.  

2.1 High incomes, inequalities and innovation

14In a friendly comment, Sen imagines what could have happened if Kornai had taken up Marx’s line of thought and expanded it in the direction of « incentive compatibility », about distribution questions.

Marx was not a fool. He knew that the rich and the talented would run the fuck away from regimes they found personally 'incentive incompatible'. The question was, would the productivity of the land and factories they left behind be impaired? The answer, sadly, turned out to be 'yes'. Get rid of the Jew and the guys who look a bit Jewy and other guys who do the kind of high IQ stuff Jews are good at and, what happens? You lose the fucking Second World War because the guys who can discover how to make nuclear bombs have found refuge in America. 

However, while Kornai generally characterized high inequalities as a feature of capitalism, and mentioned equity on his list of important values, he often opposed what he saw as marxist or populist views on this topic. The conservative colour that Sen disliked in the american title of The Road to a Free Economy (1990), was seen in his attitude towards income inequalities. In his Essays on the Nature of the Capitalist Economy, he underscored in a schumpeterian spirit the innovation impulse and resulting dynamism as great positive characteristics of capitalism and viewed the « huge rewards » expected by potential innovators as a necessary incentive for risk-taking (Chavance, 2015).

He was behind the times. The Econophysicists and even some Social Choice mavens were groping towards the notion that volatility drives liquidity drives Capital markets. Creative destruction was about more than innovation. It was about a realignment of control rights under a Social Contract that is necessarily incomplete.  

After the 2008 financial crisis, when public opinion was « upset by skyrocketing earnings of many business people and top managers », and demanded measures against such tendency, he asserted: « Although the anger is morally justified and psychologically understandable, nevertheless an (unpopular) caveat is needed. » How difficult it would be to imagine « the work of an honest and competent jury […] able to draw the line between a well-deserved and an undeservedly high reward. I am not prepared to propose a practical decision, but just want to draw the attention to the two (mutually contradictory) aspects of very high business income. » (Kornai, 2013b)

What nobody understood was that the Fed taking on more and more 'down-side' risk and doing Quantitative Easing would result in the absurdity of billionaires like Trump getting big big cheques from the Treasury. He should have been thanking Obama, not pretending he was born in Kenya.  

It is all the more striking to see how in his last publication, as Amartya Sen observed, the great thinker somewhat altered his general historical and theoretical assessments.

He didn't like Orban.  

Recalling his expectations in Hungary in 1956, in view of all further historical developments, he had a disillusioned and bitter thought.

'Now I see that my expectations about the benefits to come from capitalism and democracy were unrealistic.

What is realistic is to admit that a highly productive people who are determined to become yet more productive, will do well regardless what type of political or economic regime they have.  

More than six decades later, the image formed in me is much more sober. I know how much injustice and inordinate income-inequality is born of capitalism.

It is unjust that Beyonce earns much more than me just because she is pretty and talented whereas no one wants to see my booty shake. 

The institutions of democracy are unable to prevent the abuse of power and corruption, albeit to different degrees in different countries. (Kornai, 2021)

This depends on the independence and reliability of the judiciary and other statutory bodies which are meant to act as 'checks and balances'. That in turn depends on the ethos of the people of the country. I recall a talk given by a leading Indian barrister at the LSE. Actually, I am lying. I don't recall what he spoke about. It was above my head. But, later on, at the bar, he spoke to us students in Hindi. He said 'English Justice worked in England because the English considered it shameful to lie on oath. In India, you were considered a fool if you didn't lie your head off when facing a Judge.'  

János Kornai gained a large recognition in different strands of economic thought.

No, but he provided a bridge for economists in Communist countries to, timidly, move towards less stupid economic policies. Sen could have done the same but couldn't be arsed. Manmohan shone in that respect.  

His work always aroused interest and debates, including of course criticism. Usually, he did not enter directly in controversies with his opponents, but later modified his ideas if he recognized value in their commentaries. The respect he obtained from his followers and his critics alike was a consequence of his intellectual and moral integrity.

Whereas Sen is reviled by non-Bengalis because he doubled down on virtue signalling by telling stupid lies.