David Hume had reactionary political views as far as Britain was concerned but he was a great champion of the Utilitarian approach to Law and Politics. In this view, Justice only matters in so far as it promotes economic prosperity. Christian suspicion of escalating inequality in wealth, or bleeding heart pleas for redistribution, are a nuisance which must be sternly rejected, if not put down by force.
Amartya Sen, with obstinate stupidity and brazen falsehood, maintains the reverse. This extract is typical-
I BEGIN WITH a perspicacious remark that Hume made in 1751, in an essay called “Of Justice,” to be published later in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. In the early days of the increasing globalization in which Hume lived, with new trade routes and expanding economic relations across the world, Hume talked about the growing need to think afresh about the nature of justice, as we come to know more about people living elsewhere, with whom we have come to develop new relations:
Hume said that public utility, under conditions of economic scarcity, was the sole origin of Justice. We should learn from smarter and more developed people and adopt their practices, but we must mercilessly exterminate or enslave savages- e.g. Indians, Africans etc. We should learn nothing from them and have no relations with them save that of master and slave. It is not useful or meritorious to consort with inferior beings and to adopt their habits or even to acquire any great sympathy for their disgusting way of life.
Sen quotes the following passage
Again suppose, that several distinct societies maintain a kind of intercourse for mutual convenience and advantage,
in other words, this is not an exploitative relationship but one of mutual respect and benefit. There is a sort of alliance between these societies. They are not inherently inimical to each other.
the boundaries of justice still grow larger, in proportion to the largeness of men’s views, and the force of their mutual connexions.
The more commerce and cultural intercourse you have with equals or superiors, the more legal business there will be between you. Great profit can be derived from acting as an intermediary in legal or other transactions between advanced nations. Those engaged in this line of work are likely to have broader minds and horizons of achievement. They will rise in wealth and social position and be eagerly sought after for their sage counsel and ability to successfully conduct business on the behalf of Governments and wealthy business houses.
History, experience, reason sufficiently instruct us in this natural progress of human sentiments, and in the gradual enlargement of our regards to justice, in proportion as we become acquainted with the extensive utility of that virtue.
Sadly, this meant that Hume and his chums must turn a blind eye to the sufferings of the Highland Scots while concentrating on making themselves useful to the English and the French and the Dutch and other more economically developed people.
The remark is of interest in itself, and also helps us to understand the general idea of justice,
Justice is that which promotes mutually beneficial economic activity. The problem is that Econ has progressed a lot since Hume's time. New technology has permitted new economic mechanisms and thus novel questions arise about the conscionability of contracts or apportionment of property and control rights. Coase's Theorem suggests the former may not matter too much but there is a trade-off between efficiency and incentive compatibility not to mention the vexed question of dynamic effects. Smart peeps can make money applying the relevant theory. Stupid peeps can talk Sen-tentious bollocks.
and its particular application to global justice, that can be seen to be part of the Humean line of analysis. But it can also be used to illustrate Hume’s general arguments for the need to interrelate ethics and epistemology, and moral reasoning and human sentiments
There is no such argument in Hume. Utility matters. Sentiments matter. But sentiments must either be utile or else you are bound to fuck up in life. In other words, if you are attracted to poor and ugly whores, not rich virgins, you will end up in the gutter. Be sensible. Concentrate on getting ahead and living a pleasant and respectable life. Fuck philosophy. The thing is just metaphysical nonsense masking an unblushing hypocrisy or hysterical bigotry.
The underlying approach to justice here contrasts with the influential view of Hobbes, according to which there has to be a sovereign state for us to entertain any coherent idea of justice.
You can have any idea you like but if anarchy prevails you may be killed or enslaved at any moment.
Hobbes was moved by the idea that institutional demands of justice can be met only within the limits of a functioning sovereign state, which is needed to establish and support the required institutions.
Nobody is moved by 'institutional demands of justice'. Hobbes thought justice would only be available under a strong King. He was wrong.
While Hume was deeply concerned about the importance of institutions,
No. Institutions cost a lot of money and tend to be shit. Hume was a canny Scotsman.
on which he made many penetrating observations, he was reluctant to allow the idea of justice to be narrowed by the boundaries of sovereignty,
Hume did not have an idea of Justice. He had an idea of utility- i.e. doing business. Justice is just a service industry.
Thus, the rules of equity or justice depend entirely on the particular state and condition, in which men are placed, and owe their origin and existence to that UTILITY, which results to the public from their strict and regular observance. Reverse, in any considerable circumstance, the condition of men: Produce extreme abundance or extreme necessity: Implant in the human breast perfect moderation and humanity, or perfect rapaciousness and malice: By rendering justice totally useless, you thereby totally destroy its essence, and suspend its obligation upon mankind.as if there were no issues of global justice that could take us beyond our national borders.
Very true. Sen himself frequently sails out to battle Somali pirates.
The overarching concern in the idea of justice is the need to have just relations with others—and even to have appropriate sentiments about others; and what motivates the search is the diagnosis of injustice in ongoing arrangements.
Hume thought we needed to have useful relations, not just relations, with others. It is polite to show appropriate sentiments from time to time but nobody will pay for you to go around diagnosing injustices.
In some cases, this might demand the need to change an existing boundary of sovereignty—
Cool! Sen will go beat up Putin and thus change 'existing boundaries of sovereignty' in Ukraine.
a concern that motivated Hume’s staunchly anti-colonial position. (He once remarked, “Oh! How I long to see America and the East Indies revolted totally & finally.”)
Is Sen right? No. Hume had a crazy philosophical type of extreme Toryism. He wanted the economy to be ruined so that a more absolute monarchy could be restored.
Is Sen lying or is he being very very fucking stupid when he says Hume was a 'staunch anti-colonial'? Perhaps, the fault is that of his wife, Emma Rothschild. Why not simply say that Hume championed the right of African Lesbians to ascend to the Throne of England? The fact is Hume was a younger son but still belonged to the 'Gentry'. He was a reactionary of an eccentric but erudite and charming type. But, his Utilitarianism was sensible enough.
Or it might relate to the Humean recognition that as we expand trade and other relations with foreign countries, our sentiments as well as our reasoning have to take note of the recognition that “the boundaries of justice still grow larger,”
because utility or mutual advantage has grown. If you do more and more business in Amsterdam and Paris, it is a good idea to have legal representation there. Why? You can speedily resolve any contractual or other problem which might arise. Smart people in the cities learned foreign languages and made themselves familiar with the legal system in France and Holland and so forth.
without the necessity to place all the people involved in our conception of justice within the confines of one sovereign state.
We don't need no 'conception of justice'. We need a business model. If it goes international, then we get legal representation abroad.
As it happens, contemporary theories of justice have largely followed the Hobbesian route rather than the Humean one.
But those theories are shit.
They have tended to limit their considerations of justice within the boundaries of a particular state.
There are theories of international law which works well enough in the commercial sphere or for useful purposes.
In an important essay in 2005 called “The Problem of Global Justice,” Thomas Nagel explained that “if Hobbes is right, the idea of global justice without a world government is a chimera.”
But it is equally a chimera with world government. The fact is there is service provision discrimination within any given jurisdiction. Some get access to justice. Some don't. The market is segmented in typical monopsonist fashion.
THE REMARK BY HUME that I have cited
was misinterpreted. Hume says only Utility matters. Society yields utility. Justice is just a service industry.
throws light also on other parts of the understanding of ethics, epistemology, and practical reasoning that Hume presented.
Hume says ethics is founded in our feelings which, if we are sensible, will be ultimately determined by utility. He himself found the commercial upper middle class insufferable because he was 'gentry' but utility meant he had to put up with them. Indeed, parts of his theory were taken over by Republicans and progressive thinkers. Bertrand Russell, who like Hume and Smith and Kant, believed a war against less developed people was always just, nevertheless shied away from Hume's extreme Tory views. He suggested that Hume's historical work was not meant seriously. It represented a private crochet or display of prejudice of a sort which Historians were notorious for.
Hume has a highly deflationist epistemology. He makes Utility the sole foundation of everything. Sen, with typical fatuity, maintains the reverse is the case.
First, the remark fits well with Hume’s general argument that the understanding of justice must depend on
UTILITY- nothing else
what we know—
knowledge does not matter. What we feel does matter. But we must change our feelings so that they accommodate utilitarian considerations. You may not like the nouveau riche but doing business with them is profitable. You must learn to get along with them. Marry their daughters if they have big enough dowries.
that it is hard to make ethics stand free of epistemology.
Hume says 'epistemology' is shit. Ultimately your thinking is either utilitarian or you end badly- like the fucking savages.
If there is a “gradual enlargement of our regards to justice” resulting from our expanding global contacts, this relates to Hume’s insistence that we cannot treat ethics as a freestanding field, dissociated from our understanding of the world, including what we know about each other.
Fuck off! Ethics is about what sentiments it is useful to have. The main thing is to do sensible things and end up more prosperous and secure than you had been.
If we know nothing, or almost nothing, about a group of people,
but, you can conquer or enslave them and then just call the whole bunch of them 'savages' and ignore any differences between them unless one sort is has higher mortality, and thus lower productivity, in the plantation or down the mine.
it is hard to talk about their needs, entitlements, or freedoms.
If they are Indian or African, fuck them. They have no entitlements or freedoms. Feed them the minimum and then make as much profit from them as possible.
We have good reason to pay more attention to the lives of others as we acquire greater knowledge of their lives, along with our growing connections with them.
How does this square with what Hume actually said? The necessity of justice to the support of society is the SOLE foundation of that virtue; and since no moral excellence is more highly esteemed, we may conclude, that this circumstance of usefulness has, in general, the strongest energy, and most entire command over our sentiments. It must, therefore, be the source of a considerable part of the merit ascribed to humanity, benevolence, friendship, public spirit, and other social virtues of that stamp; as it is the SOLE source of the moral approbation paid to fidelity, justice, veracity, integrity, and those other estimable and useful qualities and principles. It is entirely agreeable to the rules of philosophy, and even of common reason; where any principle has been found to have a great force and energy in one instance, to ascribe to it a like energy in all similar instances. This indeed is Newton's chief rule of philosophizing
Hume had a good way of measuring Utility- money. If you make more money slave trading, then slave trading is good.
Moreover, this understanding is not only important for ethics as a discipline,
it isn't a discipline. It is a con.
it tends also to be reflected, Hume argued, in people’s sentiments about whether we must take note of the lives of distant people as we come to know more about them.
Hume didn't think we needed to 'take note' of even the Scottish Highlander- forget the African or the Indian.
Hume clearly thought that this was a reasonable thing to do, and also that people’s sentiments would actually be influenced in precisely such a direction through the impact of their greater knowledge about others elsewhere.
Commercial knowledge- sure. If slaves can be more profitably employed in Brazil, send them to Brazil.
Hume’s understanding that the broadening of our concern is not only what reason demands, but what will affect our actual sentiments,
which in turn had better get aligned with our economic interests otherwise we might end up marrying a poor ho-bag rather than a rich virgin
makes such broadening difficult to brush off, since (as he put it in dealing with a related issue) “what affects us, we conclude can never be a chimera; and as our passion is engag’d on the one side or the other, we naturally think that the question lies within human comprehension; which, in other cases of this nature, we are apt to entertain some doubt of.”
Hume was being humorous. The fact is we often decide that stuff which 'affects us' is a chimera. You weep reading about slaves being tortured and then have a talk with your stock broker. Selling your shares in the Royal African Company would mean having to move to a less genteel neighborhood. You conclude that your feelings for the slaves were a chimera.
What Hume actually wrote was-
Hume is saying, 'we can have stupid sentiments which cause us to do stuff- like selling shares in the Royal African Company- which will hurt us economically. Smart peeps will read my 'Philosophy' (which Hume knew people only read because they relished his dry wit and cynical cast of mind) and settle down to a sensible, Utilitarian, maximization of revenue and social prestige. The Scots needed to be as pragmatic and greedy as the English and the Dutch and so on. No more Romantic Jacobin rebellions. Make money. Get rich.
The congruence of reason and sentiment, in this case, is in line with a general claim that Hume made elsewhere, in a somewhat exaggerated form (a form that he never seemed to spurn): that “reason and sentiment concur in almost all moral determinations and conclusions.”
Provided Utility is the sole motivating or determining factor, which it is in the sense that silly sentiments cause you to fuck up and become poor and die young while doing the smart thing makes you prosperous and secure and long lived.
That such a concurrence could easily occur is worth noting partly because Hume also discussed cases in which there was no such concurrence (at least not spontaneously), and also because many formulations of “Hume in summary” concentrate almost exclusively on Hume’s remarks denigrating the role of reason in morality, in favor of sentiments, without noting that he did see them to be interrelated.
By utility. In the short run, you might get caught up in a Romantic cause- e.g. that of the Jacobin- but middle to long term you understand that you should reject silly sentiments and concentrate on simulating, or actually having, sentiments which contribute to your prosperity, security and longevity.
In the “summary Hume” that is frequently aired, it is also quite common to quote Hume against the possibility of reasoned ethics—for example, his speculation that reason is a “slave to the passions,” or his observation that “the rules of morality ... are not conclusions of our reason.”
But, ultimately, if your passions are silly you will die in a ditch or in the Poor House. Human beings, if they don't die quickly, gravitate to sensible sentiments which are useful and contribute to their prosperity and security. Savages- Indians and Africans- are a different matter. Conquer or enslave them if it is profitable to do so.
There are so many different things that Hume said on the relation between reason and ethics that it would be presumptuous of me to search here for some kind of definitive clarification of his overall position on the connections involved.
He gave that clarification in very ample measure. Only Utility matters. Don't do stupid shit. Get rich. Fuck the savages. They have no 'human rights'.
But it is worth noting that immediately preceding the remark just quoted, about rules of morality not being conclusions of reason, Hume declares: “Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular.”
But morals have to adapt themselves to utility- otherwise you become poor and die in a ditch. More sensible people displace you.
The qualification “of itself” is important to note. This is, in fact, not an argument that reason is unimportant for morality or for motivating action. It argues only that reason cannot accomplish this entirely on its own.
No. Reason can accomplish nothing. It faces a 'halting problem'. One can go on reasoning and reasoning without ever reaching a conclusion. Passions can motivate you to end that chain of reasoning one way or another. But if passions are not sensible and don't motivate useful actions, you may die in a ditch.
Reason has to be about something, and clearly other factors, such as our knowledge of facts, are also involved in morality and practical reasoning (on which Hume wrote extensively). For reasoning to be influential in our lives and decisions, moreover, it has to sway people’s actual sentiments.
No. People have sentiments and try to get others to have the same sentiments through persuasive reasoning. Thus, my sentiment may be that a particular lady should sleep with me. I reason with her that she may enjoy this. She beats me. Her reasoning is that I may enjoy being beaten. We then get an amicable divorce.
(On this Hume also said a great deal.) This understanding can be seen in the context of delineating the way reasoning can work. These exercises of delineation do not in themselves undermine the important role of reasoning in ethics, nor entail any denial of the usefulness of reasoned argument about what we actually do know, or what our sentiments really are, or what they could be expected to be after critical scrutiny.
Hume knew very well that 'reasoning' changes if money is on the table. You may be shit at reasoning, but if you have money you can get a guy even smarter than Hume to do your reasoning for you. The judicious spreading about of cash will get you the verdict you need from people in authority.
Hume had much use for reason whenever it could be sensibly deployed.
That's how he was making his money- or, at the least- establishing his reputation and thus securing his own comfort.
The totality of his works richly illustrates his reason-dependent approach.
He was a sensible man. He knew there would be no takers for his extreme Tory views. But he himself did well enough and managed to stay on the right side of the law in theological matters.
While Hume expressed his frustration that “avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends” might well be “insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society,” or that people very often are too guided by self-interest in their thinking about justice, he also argued that there could be “moderation and abstinence” based on a reasoned understanding of the mutual dependence of people on each other. He points out, for example, that people “pull the oars of a boat by common convention for common interest, without any promise or contract,” and that their sense of justice is developed by thinking in “company and conversation.”
Hume is merely saying that we coordinate our actions with others for mutual benefit without any 'reasoning' or a priori considerations of 'justice' or other such metaphysical shite.
This is the full quotation- '
Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention, tho' they have never given promises to each other.
So, it is an unstated agreement- or just a type of cooperative behavior common in our species.
Nor is the rule concerning the stability of possession the less deriv'd from human conventions, that it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it. On the contrary, this experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct: And 'tis only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. In like manner are languages gradually establish'd by human conventions without any promise. In like manner do gold and silver become the common measures of exchange, and are esteem'd sufficient payment for what is of a hundred times their value.
The recognition that much of practical reasoning is conducted in company—a point that Gramsci would emphasize powerfully in his essays inL’Ordine Nuovo two centuries later—
Gramsci was a nutter who thought workers could run factories just as well as entrepreneurs. They couldn't. Gramsci failed utterly. No political party now advocates 'Worker Control'. Why? Workers know their factory will go bankrupt if it is run by a Workers' collective which spends its time passing resolutions against Israel and SCOTUS and so forth.
does not undermine the role of reasoning, but helps to characterize how it tends to occur.
Hume's point is that reasoning does not matter. Utility is the ultimate determiner of all things. Don't do stupid shit. Be well behaved and try to get rich.
The characterization also includes Hume’s treatment of what he called “experimental reasoning … which we possess in common with beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends.” At one level, this is, as Hume argued, “nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power.” But experimental reasoning does not imply any absence of reasoning.
It does not imply anything at all. It is just a 'discovery process' and occurs in animals as much as it does in our species.
The instinct that makes a person reluctant to put his or her hand into the fire is, as Hume discussed, both an instinct and an example of a species of reasoning.
Or it is neither. We may say 'instinct' or we may say 'implicit reasoning' but we may also say 'conditioned reflex' or use more up to date neurological terms. Words, as used by philosophers, don't matter. Why? Philosophers are as stupid as shit. Consider the following-
The instinct to keep our hand out of the fire is not unrelated to our seeing
like the instinct to keep our hand in the fire
—and learning from others—what happens if an object like a hand happens to go into the fire,
or what happens when cats start sodomizing dogs
and this is what experimental reasoning is about.
Very true. Dogs buggered by cats are probably saying 'woof, woof' to express the following sentiment-
The net effect of this dual role is to extend the reach of reasoning—even to animals
sodomized dogs in this case
(the discussion cited here comes in an essay called “Of the Reason of Animals”)—rather than to deny that this type of decision could be compatible with any kind of reasoning since it is, in an immediate sense, just an instinct.
just as sodomized dogs produce turds which, my experimental reasoning tells me, Amartya Sen eagerly devours.
Hume's point is that you can write any type of nonsense and claim it represents 'reasoning'. But only what is utile prevails.
SIMILARLY, HUME’S insistence that the reach of ethical reasoning is, of necessity, limited is also a part of this delineation. Indeed, Hume thought that reasoning has a confined reach even in central issues of epistemology.
But epistemology is utter shit. Facts matter. Theories about what are and aren't facts are worthless.
We may not ever be able, as Hume points out, to “satisfy ourselves concerning any determination, which we may form, with regard to the origin of worlds, and the situation of nature, from, and to eternity.”
Hume was wrong. Technology greatly changed the quantity and quality of facts we could rely on. Sen, cretin that he is, doesn't get that we now have empirical evidence that 'Big Bang' is more likely than 'Steady State'.
But this did not prevent Hume from trying to see what can be sorted out through reasoning.
Nothing can. But this did not become obvious till the Wu Experiment. Still, Hume was more in the right of things than Kant. But Kant was more Sciencey. Even Goethe made a contribution to Science.
Indeed, it is these efforts of reasoning that made Hume such a suspicious character to the religious establishment of his time.
Hume's empiricism was the problem. Why believe Moses parted the Red Sea when nothing in our experience makes this seem probable to us? One doesn't need to 'reason' very much to reject an established religion. It is obvious that if you get paid to maintain some absurdity, then you have a vested interest in a type of reasoning which no one else will indulge in unless they too can get paid. Hume's genius was to stay out of trouble while building his own reputation and doing well enough for himself from the material point of view.
We have reason to pursue knowledge to the extent we can, undeterred by the recognition that we may not be able to resolve all the issues that arouse our interest and curiosity.
That is not Hume's view. We should only pursue utile knowledge- stuff that more than pays for itself. There is no reason to pursue knowledge about what Sen had for dinner in 1982 or how often he whacked off as a teenager.
Great harm has been done to contemporary decision theory and the theory of rational choice by the
fact that stupid cunts engaging in it can't properly specify the choice situation or understand the underlying volatility surface.
presumption that reasoning can be given a role only if it is able to resolve every decisional problem.
If a decisional problem is not resolvable it is not really a problem at all. It is a fate. What reasoning can there be with fate?
Indeed, understanding the incompleteness of our ordered information about the world,
is delusive. If information is incomplete no ordering is robust- i.e. more information may reverse the ordering. Indeed, with complete information, there may be no ordering whatsoever. I like cake and don't like tarts. But if I knew everything I might consider all things to be just as good. Indeed, I may need or desire nothing at all.
or stopping at incomplete—but articulate—orderings of alternative courses of action, is an integral part of human reasoning.
No. It may feature in the reasoning of a cretin like Sen. But it aint integral to shit.
The large subject of learning to rely on partial resolution, which is quite crucial in modern social choice theory,
which is wholly useless, if not actively mischievous
clearly has Humean antecedents.
No. Hume said only do useful stuff. Utility is all that matters. Also, don't tell stupid lies- e.g. a guy who isn't a Dictator is actually a Dictator just because he can make better choices for the community.
The usefulness of reasoning is not dependent on its being able to solve every problem at hand.
Nor is the uselessness of stupidity.
This understanding, which is still inadequately appreciated in decisional analysis,
by cretins as opposed to smart guys doing useful stuff.
was championed already by Hume more than a quarter of a millennium ago.
No it wasn't. Back then you couldn't earn even a farthing by being a low IQ pedant babbling about 'decision theory' to kids some of whom would be smart enough to drop out of Collidge and make billions while fundamentally changing every aspect of modern life.
And I should add here that even the Hobbesian insistence on the need for a sovereign state for the possibility of saying anything coherent about justice,
There is no such 'insistence'. In a state of anarchy, people could still pray for a strong Prince to put down all disorder and establish himself as a 'stationary bandit'.
which allegedly makes any contemporary statements on “global justice” to be a “chimera,”
A chimera is something we can't yet create. Babbling about a world where every Transgender Disabled Lesbian would get a turn being Arvind Kejriwal's moustache is silly.
closely relates to the assumption that no idea of justice can be viable unless it is able to resolve every putative claim of injustice.
You can resolve any claim by saying it is nonjusticiable, vexatious, trifling, or a matter of political question.
In this “all or nothing” view,
which nobody holds
we cannot seek an enhancement of justice through preventing famines
yes we can. Binoy Ranjan Sen showed the way.
, genocides, or gross subjugation of women in the world until a global sovereign state starts functioning and can meet all the institutional needs of a globally just world.
A globally sovereign state won't do shit. The plain fact is, Justice is a service industry. A World Government would be like a National Government. It may prevent or punish some crimes but it won't prevent or punish all crimes. However, as economic development occurs and technology improves, for purely utilitarian reasons, stupid and wasteful activities like genocide or the subjugation of women, harassment of Gays, etc, will diminish greatly. No doubt, they will be replaced by other sorts of senseless crime.
This is indeed a far cry from Hume’s understanding of the gradual enlargement of “the boundaries of justice” in the world.
Utility triumphs as Technology improves. The rewards for cooperation rise. The return on conquest and enslavement falls.
And that understanding remains critically relevant as we try to remove patent injustices that plague our world.
Sen hasn't tried to remove shit. He merely signals a virtue he does not possess.
Hume approved of the 'Indian Prince' who refused to believe that frost, or snow, was possible because it was outside his experience. The thing about Faith is that it is within our experience though its object is inaccessible. Religious Faith does tend to correlate with a concern to Judge, in the words of Christ. as if we 'were Gods'. But Utilitarianism is not greatly concerned with Justice- at least that was Hume's view. The thing is a Service industry just like Pedagogy.
In another interview Sen reveals this fundamental inability to understand Faith and its relationship to Reason. Let us begin with, not an 'Indian Prince', but an Indian Emperor.
Amartya Sen said that
Akbar, in 1590 provided, I think, the most definitive argument why reason has to have priority over faith.
The dude was an Emperor. He killed people who fucked with him. In particular, he had made himself secure against the Sunni aristocracy by getting Hindus and Shias on side. In other words, the reason everybody had to (quite literally) bow down to his arguments and to prostrate themselves (sajda) before the Throne was purely game-theoretic and involved not getting killed. Sen is too stupid to understand this.
He says he does have faith – namely, Muslim faith – which he examines and affirms
but changes as he sees fit. However, it must be said that even Aurangzeb retained the right to pick and choose between mazhabs for the ruling he wanted. Akbar, it must be said, was an illiterate soldier who was very good at killing people which in turn meant that other guys who were very good at killing people wanted to be his pals. Of course, if they didn't do sajda to him, he killed them. This meant God lurved him. He truly was God's shadow on Earth. Akbar came close to doing for Indian Islam what Henry VIII did for English Christianity. But, ultimately he failed. Aurangazeb went back to Sunni bigotry and his interminable wars led to the eventual collapse of the Mughal Empire. This was cool because the Brits were way smarter. They were also very religious but didn't let their faith get in the way of making money. It turns out that non-coercive equilibria are based on 'transferable utility'- i.e. money. Non Violent politics is Money politics. Pax Britannica was about Money. So was Tagorean shite and Gandhian shite- so long as the Brits stuck around. Then the Brits left and Sen's people had to run away from Dacca. Sad.
but he, first, wouldn’t like people simply to accept that faith without reasoning about it
If so, Akbar was a fool. All religions affirm that no process of reasoning can terminate in accepting a particular Faith. Why? Faith is a mystery which passeth all understanding. As a matter of fact, all Akbar was doing was reducing the power of the Ulema and ensuring that stuff like the Shia- Sunni split between the Safavis and Ottomans didn't get too entrenched in India.
The point about an Emperor who can kill any rebel and always command a winning combination of forces no matter who defects is that what he calls reasoning is the shite you have to nod your head to. But Akbar did back peddle on some of his 'toleration'. In particular, Akbar realized that the Catlicks be kray kray. This was pretty much the English take on them. Sadly, theology doesn't matter. Naval power does. The Moghuls did make one or two experiments in that direction but lost interest quickly.
and, second, if other people reason differently and arrive at a different conclusion, deciding to remain Hindu or Christian or Jewish or Parsee (all of whom were represented in his court), he wouldn’t say they were doing something wrong and he would be interested as to why they thought that way.
Because Akbar needed Hindu Rajputs to beat any combination of Sunni malcontents. What Sen doesn't get- even though his family fled East Pakistan- was that Hindus or Christians or Jews or Parsees don't get to stay Hindu or Christian or Jewish or Parsee if the Muslims take over. Sooner or later an Aurangazeb takes over from an Akbar. The non-Muslim population of Muslim majority countries tends to fall though 'guest workers' may flock to a well run Emirate.
So, I think faith and reason may not be contradictory, but to say you have to give priority to faith rather than reasoning is not something I find easy to support.
Sen's family gave priority to faith not reasoning. They fled to where the majority were of their own faith. They didn't stick around to reason things out with Muslim mobs who were itching to slit kuffar throats.
I would say that faith and reason are complementary.
Reasoning may have to do with certain types of beliefs. It has nothing to do with faith.
Well, I would go further. I would say that a faith that you arrived at on the basis of reason, like Akbar, is for that reason supportable in a way that unreasoned belief is not.
We have a reason to remain in the faith of our ancestors- the thing is oikieiosis and is related to kin selective altruism or even the extended phenotype. We may have a reason to convert to a religion in which, for the first time, we find total Faith and Spiritual solace. But we may also convert because a Religion is sensible enough and we want to bring up our kids in it so they have better life chances.
I wouldn’t say that faith and reason are complementary in the sense that they have equal status. I don’t take that view.
Complementary doesn't mean 'equal value'. Butter is a complement to Bread. We use little butter relative to bread.
I think the issue is whether you begin with reason or whether you begin with faith. It’s one thing to say, ‘I’ve put my faith on the table and you can criticise it,’ it’s another to say, ‘I’ve put my reasoning for my faith on the table and you can discuss that.’ That is the distinction.
It is a distinction without a difference. You reasoning about your faith is criticized by pointing out that it doesn't match with the contents of your faith. Thus when I say 'My reasoning about why I want to continue to be Hindu has to do with the way my Faith makes my dick thicker and longer and capable of bringing any woman to orgasm multiple times', my ex-wife might reply 'You gotta micro-dick and are shit in bed. Anyway, Hinduism is about how to be less shitty and maybe get reborn as something better than a fucking cockroach, you fucking cockroach'.
Akbar is not the only one who did it, though I think his conversations with his close friend Abu’l-Fazl are among the most moving on the subject.
Close friend? The guy was his secretary and propagandist. He wrote the Akbarnamah to show Akbar as an 'insan-e-kamil' perfect man endowed with Divine Viceregency (Khilafat). Sen thinks these guys were College chums.
But there are others, including the Buddhist emperor Ashoka [in the third century BC].
Again a guy who was turning himself into a Divine Emperor. But then Alexander and Caesar and the Chinese and Japanese Emperors were equally Divine. Sen, no doubt, thinks this was because of 'reasoning'. Perhaps he himself will become Amartya- immortal- by finding a reason for not dying.
Your new book is called The Idea of Justice but in many senses it is about reducing injustice in the world. What are the injustices that most concern you at present?
The book is mainly a work in philosophy.
If by philosophy you mean vacuous shite- sure.
It’s not diagnosing the ills of the world; it’s using some of the ills of the world to illustrate the problems.
Ills are ills. They don't illustrate any problem. They define what a successful solution to a genuine problem is because the ill diminishes greatly by its application.
The prime moving question in the dominant tradition in the theory of justice, from Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant all the way down to contemporary political philosophers like the finest political philosopher of our time, John Rawls, is ‘What is a perfectly just world?’
This is completely false. Hobbes thought Justice was an 'artificial virtue' necessary for society to function. For Locke, Justice is what you have to have where private property exists. Rousseau thought Justice should promote the human good while for Kant justice promotes liberty. In other words, all these thinkers are only concerned with some minimal type of justice sufficient for civil society, or private property, or human flourishing, or the existence of liberty. In other words, Justice is a means to an end. No body cares if it is perfect. It just needs to be good enough.
and, more narrowly, ‘What are perfectly just institutions?’
But those guys didn't describe any such institutions. They didn't say 'we need this type of Judicial system not the thing we currently have'. They didn't even say chattel slavery is unjust.
That is the quest in which they’re all involved. I think it’s the wrong quest.
There was no such quest. There were lawyers and judges who wrote about how the judicial system could be improved. There were Utopian schemes for ideal societies. But there was no philosophy about 'perfectly just institutions'. Why? Such institutions would have perfect information and face no incentive incompatibility. Econ theory explains why this is impossible mathematically speaking. But the thing is obvious. Judges aren't mind readers. Human beings are fallible. Good people may get good results out of a bad system. Bad people may get bad results out of a good system.
Who looks for 'perfect justice' in this world? Nobody at all. It is a different matter that revolutionaries may want to kill the rich and powerful and to take over the Government. They may say they will deliver perfect social and economic and sexual justice. But why believe them? The last lot may have done the same thing when they began their ascent.
There also exists a tradition, in Europe and in India and elsewhere, to ask the question: What are the manifest injustices in the world that we could remove, whose removal would in our judgement be an enhancement of global justice, and an enhancement in which, if people used their reason, we could expect to get agreement? I think that’s the kind of territory the book covers.
But it doesn't. Sen doesn't say whether abortion is wrong or whether it is right. He doesn't say whether theocratic countries like his ancestral Bangladesh should be censured for turning people not of the right faith into second class citizens and exposing them to ethnic cleansing. Most glaringly, Sen fails to say whether 'the War on Terror' was justified. We may explain such lacunae by positing cowardice on Sen's part. But cowardice does not need to be stupid. It can gesture at the 'manifest injustices' involved in climate change, regime change, discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexuality even if it does not take sides for fear of financial penalties or a fatwa.
Can you explain the distinction between niti and nyaya?
Niti means 'Policy' and 'nyaya' means Justice. Politicians (Netas) do Niti. Judges (Nyayadesh) do Justice. There is a separation of powers between Executive and Judiciary.
Sen is telling ignorant lies in what follows. Maybe he confused the word 'Niyam' with 'Niti'. The fact is there is only one usage of niti which bears on the legal system- viz dandaniti- but this refers to the punishment prescribed by the King after a person has been found guilty by Judges. But this is like 'Presidential pardon'. Otherwise, Niti always means policy of conduct of a public or private type. It has nothing to do with judicial processes.
Sanskrit has 20 or more words for ‘justice’ and they all have slightly different connotations; but niti and nyaya are the main ones.
No. Having observed 'niti'- i.e. correct policy or ethics- is a defense in law. But the word does not mean Justice
s. (The virtue which consists in giving what is due,integrity, honesty) धर्म्मः, न्यायः, नीतिः f., नयः, धर्म्मन्यायः, न्याय-शीलता, न्यायिता, न्यायाचारता, धार्म्मिकत्वं, ऋजुता, शुचिता, साधुता.
— (Equity, agreeableness to right) न्याय्यत्वं -ता, न्यायता, युक्तिः f.,योग्यता, उपयुक्तता, यथायोग्यता, यथार्थता, याथार्थ्यं, सामञ्जस्यं, सम्यक्त्वं.
— (Right application of justice, redress of wrong) न्यायः, दण्डः, दण्डयोगः.
— (Impartiality) साम्यं, समता, सर्व्वसमता, अपक्ष-पातः.
— (Merited punishment, retribution) उपयुक्तदण्डः, न्याय्य-
दण्डः, यथापराधदण्डः, यथापराधशासनं, योग्यशिक्षा, प्रतिक्रिया.
— (One
who administers justice) धर्म्माधिकारी m. (न्), धर्म्माध्यक्षः,
न्यायाधिकारी m., दण्डनायकः; ‘administration of justice,’
न्यायप्रणयनं, न्यायकरणं, न्यायदर्शनं, व्यवहारदर्शनं; ‘court of justice,’
A lot of Indian legal thinking in the first millennium BC is concerned with niti, which is used mainly of the justice of rules, policies, institutions.
No. It is used exclusively to mean policy or conduct. The justice or injustice of policy or conduct is decided by a Nayayalay or Dharmasabha. To give an example, a King may have the policy to pay all day laborers equally. This may be held to be unjust. He should pay more to some and less to others. However, he may also have the right to give gifts to whom he pleases to make up the difference.
Nyaya, on the other hand, is concerned with the justice of how people’s lives are going – or the lives of all living beings.
Absolutely not. Courts only get involved when there is a dispute and one party with locus standi demands Justice. True, the King may himself discharge the function of Judge but when he should do so in a protocol bound manner and consult Pandits and Mantris. He may also order an investigation to establish the facts of the case.
On the other hand, the King and his Ministers should constantly be enquiring into 'how people's lives are going' and altering policy so as to promote prosperity, security and ethical conduct. This is an Executive, not a Judicial, function.
It is about the justice of what is happening to the world, no matter whether it has been brought about by what look like good rules or bad rules.
Policy should be flexible. We don't want 'Piso's Justice'. But where rules are stupidly applied, both Roman and Hindu Law considers the fault to have arisen through anger or some other inappropriate affect.
The right question to ask is ‘What does reason require us to do?’
No it isn't. Reasoning is interminable. Consequences are unknowable in advance. The right question to ask is 'what am I being paid to do?' If you aren't being paid, don't do it unless you can profit by it in some way.
If that fits in with Christian or Hindu or Islamic or Sikh thought, good for them! If it doesn’t, maybe they need a re-examination
Sen's people didn't stick around to ask Muslims in Dacca to 're-examine' their thoughts. The point about Judgments as opposed to opinions given by pedants is that Judgments can either be coercively enforced or nobody bothers to get them.
For example, in the great debate in the [Bhagavad] Gita, Krishna is really arguing for niti.
Krishna is God. He is dispelling the 'Vishada' depression of his devotee by granting him theophany and taking all his sins upon himself.
The cause is just, he tells Arjun: he is an invincible warrior, without him his side cannot win and it is his duty as a member of the warrior caste to do his job.
But Krishna himself was known as Ranchod- one who flees the battlefield- and his elder brother had refused to fight. Hindus know this stuff. That's why they appreciate the Gita. Sen is a fucking cretin.
And Arjun is resisting him by saying: Well, of course it’s a just war and we will win it, but a lot of people will die. Do we want to live in a world – to create a world – in which justice is done and yet the overall outcome is unjust?
Nope. He is saying he knows with certainty (because a Gandharva had given him the gift of second sight which however only vested himself by reason of 'vishada') that his side will win. This means the death of their Guru and their grandsire. Obviously, if Arjuna uses a bit more of his chaksuchi vidya he will realize that Karna is his true eldest brother in which case the Pandavas have to forfeit. This is the dramatic tension in the Gita. Ultimately, Karna gets his way. The secret of his biological mother is kept and the battle goes ahead.
As the story goes, Krishna, who is an incarnation of God, overwhelms Arjun’s argument and Arjun says his doubts are resolved, and he fights and wins the war. The Gita’s message is similar to that of Kant in some ways: you have to do your duty regardless of the consequences.
Only if you choose to be an 'agent' not a 'principal'. But everybody can choose to be a principal. In that case, the Vyadha Gita, not the Bhagvad Gita, applies. Krishna says 'do as you like' but what Arjuna really likes is becoming the devotee of the Lord of Yoga.
But it’s interesting that the Mahabharata, the epic in which the Gita is set, ends with a great sense of tragedy, with funeral pyres burning everywhere and women weeping for the dead.
That's the Striparvan. But it aint where the Mahabharata ends. Everybody ends up in Heaven.
If you are a discerning reader, I think the Mahabharata does not really take a position as to which side really won.
No. Arjuna's grandson, gets the throne. Krishna is his maternal great-uncle. The Mahabharata is about the transition from the Age of Heroes to that of Empires based on Trade and the prosperity of a class of entrepreneurs who don't concern themselves with the affairs of Princes and Pundits. They make money, like the Vyadha (butcher), and attain the honeyed wisdom of the Chandogya. We have moved from the Vedic period into that of the Buddha.
In my book, I don’t ignore niti, both because rules are instrumentally important
Niti is discretionary. Clerks may follow rules. The Chief Executive has to be more creative.
and because some types of niti have intrinsic value, like non-discrimination between men and women,
This does not have intrinsic value. It may be highly mischievous. This is a matter for discretionary, creative, policy.
or between one caste or race and another; and yet ultimately you have to judge what is just in terms of ‘realisation’ – that is, how people’s lives go.
People judge how their own lives go. But their judgments can be wrong. There is little point 'judging what is just', though when you are 5 it may seem awfully unjust that Mummy gets to tell you when to go to bed. Also, how come Daddy buys the Financial Times instead of Spiderman Comics? How fucked is that?
You talk a little about Jesus in the book…
He comes in in a number of cases, but the main discussion is about the Good Samaritan story. A central issue today is whether you can think about justice without thinking about global justice, and that story is quite subversive.
Nonsense! Sen hasn't understood the parable at all.
The question with which Jesus ends the debate is not ‘Did the Samaritan do right? Did the priest do wrong?’ but ‘When the wounded man is able to think about it, who would he think was his neighbour?’ Once again, the epistemic leads to the ethical.
Both the Levite and the Samaritan were in the neighborhood of the wounded man. The Samaritan helped him. The Levite didn't. Why? The Levite wasn't ethical. The Samaritan was. But this has nothing to do with 'global justice'. The Emperor of China could have done nothing. He wasn't in the locality. Jesus is saying 'if you want to get to Heaven, help those in need whom you come across'.
This is the point David Hume makes in the 1770s when he says that there were lots of people we did not know anything about but now that we have trade and other relations with them we cannot ignore their existence – and so the boundaries of justice have to grow wider.
Sen quotes this passage in Hume-
Again suppose, that several distinct societies maintain a kind of intercourse for mutual convenience and advantage, the boundaries of justice still grow larger, in proportion to the largeness of men’s views, and the force of their mutual connexions. History, experience, reason sufficiently instruct us in this natural progress of human sentiments, and in the gradual enlargement of our regards to justice, in proportion as we become acquainted with the extensive utility of that virtue.One of the problems with the existing theories of justice that are based on the social contract and look for the perfect society is their parochial nature – namely, you’re thinking of one state at a time.
Utopias are perfect societies. The Social Contract tradition was about arguing for weakening the power of the Church and the feudal lords so that 'second sons' like Hume and middle class folk could rise up in commerce or the professions- provided, of course, enough Indian and African savages could be conquered or enslaved.
Many people have argued that there can be no such thing as global justice because you can’t have a global sovereign state;
Yes you can. One nation conquers all others or else there is a Federal World State.
but if you follow Smith you can think: ‘What would it look like to people far away?’
Nonsense! Nobody is faraway from this globe. As for beings on other planets, they would not be interested in our ideas of justice.
Second, the fact that there is not a global state doesn’t prevent you from being effective in removing injustices like lack of medical care, lack of education and so on.
Yes it does. Lots of people in India are trying to get to Europe or America to remove injustices regarding their own lack of money, medical care, lack of education etc. The fact that there aint no global state to facilitate this frustrates the fuck out of them.
This is an important difference from the social-contract approach to justice because that is so rigidly national.
It is purely notional. There's nothing stopping the Galaxy from having a Social Contract.
There have been some attempts recently to think of a global social contract, but that requires such flights of fancy that it boggles one’s imagination.
No. There have been plenty of smart lawyers who have in fact put together lots of effective law or administrative protocols facilitating transport, commercial and other links between countries. A Contract can consist of almost nothing but puffery. The UN Charter is an example. One could have a Global Social Contract committing us to guaranteeing an above average standard of living to everybody.
I think we are better off, both analytically and practically, thinking about what are the injustices on which, as things stand, we can expect to get agreement if people use their reason.
Being raped or beaten or knifed. That's something we can all agree about. Fuck can Sen do about it?
In Smith’s time or Mary Wollstonecraft’s, it might have been the abolition of slavery or the subjugation of women.
The Evangelical and Quaker and other such Christians did indeed campaign of the abolition of slavery.
Today, it might be the prevailing hunger in the world, or global warming and its impact on people’s lives.
Binoy Ranjan Sen, while at the F.A.O made ending hunger a global priority. But this had nothing to do with Justice and everything to do with Economic Policy. The same is true about Global Warming.
I would argue that if you reasonably can get agreement on these concerns, a theory of justice has reason to pursue them.
Fuck can a theory of justice do about rape or murder or Global Warming? I suppose a Theory of Physics could pursue Time Travel and then maybe, one day, we get Time Travelling cops who prevent rapes and murders and global warming. Physics kicks ass. Philosophy is for losers.
Can the Christian church be a positive influence in terms of global justice?
Not if it keeps fucking little kids in the ass. Still, it aint the Christians we are currently most concerned about. Sen's people had to flee East Bengal. But they seem safe enough now if they've managed to get to America. But that could change. After all, a lot of them sand-niggers look alike don't they? The good thing about concealed carry is you can blow their head off if you think they might be about to go all burqa-burqa-jihad BOOM!
