Judith Sklar's foolish Fear & Cruelty

Judith Sklar's 1982 essay 'Putting Cruelty first' has just been mentioned on the Good Place. In it she says that much hinges on how we rank vices. If we consider Cruelty the worst type of behavior then certain important consequences follow.

 Cruelty, as the wilful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear, however, is a wrong done entirely to another creature. When it is marked as a supreme evil, it is judged so in and of itself, and not because it signifies a rejection of God or any other higher norm. It is a judgement made from within a world where cruelty occurs as part both of our normal private life and our daily public practice. By putting it irrevocably first – with nothing above it, and with nothing to excuse or forgive acts of cruelty – one closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality.

Is this really true? Suppose there is evidence- as indeed appears to be the case- that the best surgeons have higher sociopathy. They are more inclined to be cruel. In their private life, they may pay a lot of money to poor people so as to derive sexual or other pleasure by subjecting them to sadistic practices. Would we really consider surgeons, as a class, worse than stupid people who become responsible for great harm to everybody by their negligent and foolish actions? Consider Hannibal Lecteur- the fictional psychopath. By the end of the narrative he is something of a hero. His cruelty is applauded when it metes out just punishments to stupider- and therefore lesser- mortals.

The 'test of actuality' applies to any ranking system. If the one we are espousing- e.g. by saying cruelty is the worst vice- does not correspond to how people actually rank vices then it is foolish. It may be cruel to indoctrinate your students in it because you are deliberately harming their ability to advance in Society. It may be that you don't think it cruel to withhold approval or an academic credential from a student whose dissertation draws attention to the fact that you are a stupid shithead who has wasted her life babbling foolish lies. Yet, the result of your action may be that the guy has to do ill paid manual labor which results in his ruining his health and suffering physical pain.

Indeed, is it not cruel of academics not to give top marks to all students who are at risk of having to do degrading and physically painful work?

We could go one step further. Suppose nice jobs are few in number. The opportunity cost of your having a nice job is that someone else has to take a job which will cause them physical pain at some point in their life. Thus if you really believe cruelty is the worst vice, then you should never take a nice job. You should do the most degrading and physically painful type of work which is socially necessary.

If 'cruelty is Society's primary flaw' then we must lexically preference that economic regime where socially necessary physical pain is minimized. This may involve living in an autarkic Gandhian Village Republic. Sex, of course, would be banned because childbirth is physically painful. In this way, Humanity would die out and Society would become politically flawless- at least from the perspective of this type of stupidity.

Ronald Coase frequently criticized American Social Science for not recognizing that Opportunity Cost is a global concept. If one affirms that a particular choice is the worst, then you must compare possible worlds where this has been implemented across the board. Coase thought Americans were subject to a 'sunk cost fallacy'- assuming what already obtained affected opportunity cost. But this is not the case. All that matters are possible states of the world.

Sadly, in the real world, stupidity, not cruelty, is what is most responsible for avoidable suffering. But, all too often, stupidity is recognized only after the fact. The day may come when Obama is condemned as a cretin, while Trump is hailed as a genius.

Sklar's ignorance of developments in economic theory occurring in her own day led her to write worthless shite.

 This is what she had to say about the 'Liberalism of Fear'-

For this liberalism, the basic units of political life are not discursive and reflective persons, nor friends and enemies, nor patriotic soldier citizens, nor energetic litigants, but the weak and the powerful. And the freedom it wishes to secure is freedom from the abuse of power and the intimidation of the defenceless that this difference invites. . . . The liberalism of fear . . . regards abuses of public powers in all regimes with equal trepidation. It worries about the excesses of official agents at every level of government, and it assumes that these are apt to burden the poor and the weak most heavily. The history of the poor compared to that of the various elites makes that obvious enough. The assumption, amply justified on every page of political history, is that some agents of government will behave lawlessly and brutally in small or big ways most of the time unless they are prevented from doing so.

The trouble with this view is that the Sovereign has the strongest interest in preventing his servants from disobeying his instructions. One the other hand, under the notion of 'Law as command', nothing 'lawless' is done if the servants of the State are ordered to behave brutally.

Clearly, the 'Liberalism of fear' arises not out of abuses of power by the Sovereign's servants- which the Sovereign would find it in his own interest to punish if they are brought to his attention- but by the very fact that a Sovereign with absolute power may be morally corrupted by it. His commands may be cruel and injurious to the community.

Thus, there is no 'Liberalism of fear'. There is only Liberalism which holds that there must be checks and balances on the exercise of all power. These checks and balances may be 'Utopian'- i.e. arise out of the implementation of an ideal Constitution. They can't be wholly 'non-Utopian' because fear of the abuse of power can be dispelled by a virtuous Sovereign who, like Kautilya's ideal King, is kept informed of everything by a vast network of spies. In other words, only the education of the Prince matters. Liberalism can go hang.

Indeed, it is not obvious that the word means anything at all over and above its pragmatics as a denominational label. Consider Sklar's definition of Liberalism-

Liberalism has only one overriding aim: to secure the political conditions that are necessary for the exercise of personal freedom. 

Sadly, 'political conditions' are completely irrelevant when it comes to 'the game against nature' that is constituted by the exercise of personal freedom. It may be, in a specific case, that some people say 'such and such political change will allow a specific personal freedom to be exercised'. But, an even better result may be achieved by a purely economic change. Thus homosexuals may have more freedom if people find it pays better to be nice to them than to harass them. You can pass all the laws you like, but if incentives don't change, the abuse remains.

It may be that Liberalism is an ideology which continually points to its own futility. That may be a good thing- speaking practically. But, if so, why should philosophers bother with it?

The fact is, the folk theorem of repeated games- which is that any coercive result can be arrived at non-coercively (i.e. without any political change)- had been enshrined in Econ as the Myerson General Feasibility theorem by the early Eighties. Was Sklar wasting her own and everybody's time by continuing to keep a bankrupt academic availability cascade trundling on for a few more decades?

She says-

Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult.

This is a purely idiographic, empirical, matter. It has everything to do with education and technology and 'mechanism design' and 'Tiebout sorting' and so forth. It has nothing whatsoever to do with nomothetic political philosophy.

That belief is the original and only defensible meaning of liberalism.

In which case, Liberalism means 'wasting your time talking useless nonsense of a particular high falutin' sort'.

It is a political notion, because the fear and favor that have always inhibited freedom are overwhelmingly generated by governments, both formal and informal.

This is sheer nonsense. Governments are expensive and have very limited capacity. By contrast, mobs may have a lot of coercive power. It is not fear of the police but fear of getting our heads kicked in which causes us to forego many of our statutory freedoms.

And while the sources of social oppression are indeed numerous, none has the deadly effect of those who, as the agents of the modern state, have unique resources of physical might and persuasion at their disposal.

Sheer nonsense! If I make it a habit to send my feces to Boris Johnson through the post, I may indeed be arrested. The police will make me a nice cup of tea and wait for the psychiatrist's report. I may pay a fine or even be given a short custodial sentence. But, I would have gained a more than compensatory popularity. By contrast, if I take a dump on my neighbor's doorstep- she will kick me in the goolies. Her brothers will come round and make it clear I'd better quit the neighborhood or spend the rest of my life taking nourishment through a straw.

Apart from prohibiting interference with the freedom of others, liberalism does not have any particular positive doctrines about how people are to conduct their lives or what personal choices they are to make.

If this really were true, the term 'Liberal' would be identical to 'antinomian Libertarian'. The fact is we respect Liberals because we believe they are trying to be better than the herd and that they hope to raise up the masses by their own example of living good and worthwhile lives distinguished by high ideals and altruism.

It is not, as so many of its critics claim, synonymous with modernity.

I think the word is associated with generosity and wide sympathies. Liberalism understood in this way just means 'being a nice guy'. That is all we can aspire to. It is mischievous to try to shit higher than one's arsehole by pretending to be doing 'political philosophy'. As I have frequently explained, Socioproctology is the way to go. You can now buy a PhD e-certificate in the subject for just 99 cents. Don't let fear of being ridiculed hold you back. Get your PhD today. Not to do so would be to inflict cruelty on me. I might have to get a real job.