The Virtues of Political Disagreement
The Stone / International New York Times | 11 June 2015
This interview, the fifth in a series on political topics, discusses philosophical issues concerning political disagreement. My interviewee is Jerry Gaus, professor of phiosophy at the University of Arizona. He is the author of “The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World.” — Gary Gutting
Gary Gutting: Many people think the greatest obstacle to solving our national problems is the large ideological gap between the right and the left. They think that to make any significant progress, we need a shared vision of what sort of society we want. Your work on the diversity of values underlying political debates seems to challenge this view. Could you give our readers a basic sketch of your position?
Jerry Gaus: You’re quite right: There’s a common assumption that diversity of values and ideological perspectives gets in the way of solving our problems. Let’s suppose we agree that there are certain national problems we need to solve and that, at least approximately, we agree what the contours of a solution would look like. Now there is some very impressive work, for example by Scott E. Page, which rigorously shows how those who see the world in the same way — say they all share a secular worldview or a religious perspective — tend to get caught at the same places in searching for solutions.
In seeking to solve problems, homogeneous groups look at things in the same way and agree on the way forward; that works nicely until they get caught at some difficult part of the problem, in which case often no one can see the next step. Seeing the problem in the same way, they hit the same wall. In contrast, in diverse groups people understand, and so approach, problems in different ways, so they get stuck at different points. In this case where one perspective gets stuck, another is apt to see a way forward.
G.G.: But in politics our diverse perspectives typically lead to very different views about what our problems are, as well as about how to solve them.
J.G.: Agreed, yet it remains true that very different perspectives and ideologies, pursuing their own agendas, have often provided fundamental insights for their rivals. A striking example is the way social democrats supporting a secular welfare state have learned from both free-market economists and from religious organizations how to improve the delivery of social services. Similarly, feminist insights have helped conservatives rethink their views of the family.
G.G.: These seem to be examples of how politicians adjust their views to win over voters, not examples of ideologically opposed groups coming together to solve shared problems. Isn’t the latter what we would need to break the gridlock in Congress we’ve seen in recent years? How, if at all, does Page’s account apply to recent congressional politics?
J.G.: “Learning from others” and “coming together” are distinct. The standoff in current U.S. politics is not because we disagree; every contemporary democracy is characterized by deep disagreements. I am skeptical about the value of any single-cause explanation of current American political life, but I do think one factor is the common belief among many Democrats and Republicans that the other side is stupid, corrupt and, indeed, evil. Many on the left see themselves as supporting enlightenment and justice against the superstitious and plutocratic Republicans; many conservatives see themselves as being on the side of freedom and self-reliance against the snobby political correctness of the cultural and political elites who, deep down, are repelled by their own market society. If that is the way we view others, then a political war is all we can expect. Each marches forth in the righteous belief they are protecting the truth from the enemy.
G.G.: What’s the alternative? Shouldn’t we fight for what we think are the best policies?
J.G.: That’s the critical question: how do we “fight” for what we think is right under modern conditions, where the free use of reason leads to opposed convictions about the place of humans in the universe, the nature of a just society and the good life? The first step is to realize that we contest and fight in many ways. I cancontest ideals and convince others that I really do have the sound basis for my claims about what is best. I also might contest and learn from others in ways that improve my understanding about what is the best. We all might contest and learn from each other, and come to better conclusions about what is best from all our perspectives. All these forms of “fighting” are the engines of a dynamic diverse society.
G.G.: But in the end, isn’t it likely that we will still disagree?
J.G.: Of course. We will then be faced with the sort of fights inherent in healthy democratic politics, voting to resolve our differences about which of a number of reasonable policies we all can live with, we shall adopt. But there is another sort of democratic fight — what might be called a political war — a fight over whose ideals are to shape the life of all. This is a struggle for the power to impose one’s ideals on others. Whoever wins that fight, many will be forced to live under laws and policies that they view as deeply wrong and, perhaps, in violation of their most fundamental commitments.
As we see today, those who have lost can become hostile and alienated from political life. The key problem is this: Can we forge a basic framework of laws and policies that diverse perspectives can live with and support? If that can be achieved, we can freely contest our views of the ideal, while living together in a moral and political framework of cooperation that, at least in its broad contours, all endorse — perhaps not as their ideal, but as worthy of their allegiance.
G.G.: Are political philosophers part of the problem here? From Plato on they seem to have been interested in describing ideal societies much more than formulating a range of acceptable but nonideal societies.
J.G.: Thinking about ideal ways of living can be valuable; in painting these pictures of utopia one comes to better understand one’s own values and principles, and the sort of social order that would express them. And different theorists can learn from the ideal pictures of others. The worry arises when, having painted these pictures that we find so beautiful and pleasing — at least to us and some like-minded others — we embark on the grand project of remaking our society in their image, or we condemn our societies as unjust because they fall short of them. One would have thought that after the 20th century, and its ideal-based political disasters, political theorists would have embraced the diversity and inherent imperfections of the open society. Yet, today one of the most important strains in contemporary political philosophy is “ideal theory.” Followers of John Rawls seek to construct “realistic utopias” while yet others reject the “realistic” constraint as too accommodative of human nature! Genuine justice might simply lie outside the bounds of humanity’s capability.
G.G.: Could you give some examples of how two groups with sharply opposed ideals have found (or could plausibly find) a political framework acceptable to both?
J.G.: At the end of the 19th century a great political conflict occurred between parties of socialism and liberalism — particularly, between the Labour and Liberal parties in Britain. The result of this conflict was not the victory of one ideal but, as, L. T. Hobhouse, one of the chief political philosophers of the era put it, a “liberal socialism,” which eventually led to the Anglo-American version of a modern democratic welfare state, which provided the commonly accepted framework for societies in the last half of the 20th century. Today we see this is just part of the background of public life: a consensus on democratic institutions, markets, the primacy of individual civil liberties and a system of social insurance, which includes aid to the aged, the unemployed and the poor. But all that arose out of a struggle between the Labour Party, devoted to equality and doing away with capitalism, and the Liberal Party program of individual responsibility, free trade and private enterprise.
G.G.: Is it still true that in the United States a “modern democratic welfare state” is “the commonly accepted framework” of our politics. Don’t our recent political disagreements show that there’s no longer a consensus about, in particular, the importance of civil liberties and government aid to the needy?
J.G.: Democratic politics is centrally about disagreements at the margins; should we press on in a certain direction or pull back? I think you are right to point out that in contemporary America many either want to pull back a lot, or press on much further. The margin of dispute has become larger on some issues, and so more of the framework is subject to contestation. We remain divided on the core question that goes back to the original dispute between the socialists and liberals: what is the relation between, and proper spheres of, government assistance and individual responsibility?
Pew Research Center survey data indicates Americans are split down the middle about whether government aid to the poor is really beneficial and whether the state can or should do more for the poor. Yet much of the basic framework is very widely endorsed. Programs like Social Security, unemployment insurance and public education, for instance, aren’t really contested. And compared to, say, the ’50s to the ’70s, there is wider and deeper support for an expanded set of civil and political rights, especially concerning minorities and women. Recent evidence indicates something close to an astounding change in favor of marriage rights for gays and lesbians as part of the new political framework.
G.G.: Many use Page’s work to argue for diversity in another context: to show the value of increasing the number of minorities and women in fields where they are underrepresented (relative to their proportion of the population). Do you think this approach can develop a good case for affirmative action and similar programs?
J.G.: As Page himself points out, there is a gap between identity or ethnic diversity and diversities of perspectives. They no doubt are correlated; empirical studies do show that when women are added to problem-solving teams that were formerly all male, problem-solving ability increases. But a narrow focus on identity, race or gender diversity blinds us to the importance of other forms of diversity — such as ideological, cultural and theoretical, including the religious. American philosophy departments, for example, are now consciously and resolutely pursing gender diversity. This is to the good, but to add a number of women who have similar ideological, religious and scientific perspectives to each other, and to many of their male colleagues, is not going to greatly enhance diverse thinking.
G.G.: To be clear, we’re not discussing whether justice requires some sort of affirmative action in areas where women and minorities are underrepresented. Your point is that increasing gender and racial diversity may of itself not do much to increase diversity of thinking.
J.G.: As I have said, I believe that our political framework has indeed evolved in the direction of far more robust rights for women and minorities. But now we are focusing on a different point, which is not about justice but about how diversity helps generate improvements in our moral and political views and collective problem solving. The relation between this case for diversity and affirmative action is more obscure. To say that diversity is a source of dynamic change and improvement is a long way from endorsing a government policy that will valorize some types of diversity while inevitably sidelining others.
G.G.: Just how much diversity should we tolerate? You’ve saidelsewhere that “minding your own business” is an important virtue in a free society. Does that apply to people whose views we think are radically misguided or even morally repugnant?
J.G.: Minding one’s own business isn’t easy. Most people prefer to live among like-minded others, and most are interested in limiting how different their neighbors are. But life in a free and open society requires living on publicly equal terms with strangers one may well loathe. Perhaps they engage in homosexual acts, or perhaps they wear a burqa. Indeed, as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen demonstrated in his famous essay on “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal,” a system of liberty rights is inherently inconsistent with giving rein to people’s “nosy” values as to how others should live — or, we may say, what they deem “radically misguided or even morally repugnant.”
But you are entirely right that toleration has limits. As we saw in the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris earlier this year, and many times before and since, a free society cannot tolerate those who would disregard the liberty of others to live as they see fit. One cannot harm others in the pursuit of one’s own ideals, or because one feels deeply insulted by their lives and opinions. The critical question is not whether I judge a person to be radically misguided, or judge her way of life to be morally repugnant, but whether she is a danger to the life and liberty of others.
This interview was conducted by email and edited. Other installments in this series can be read here.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy since 1960,” and writes regularly for The Stone.
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