Last issue I gave a detailed overview of Isaiah Berlin’s essay on The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West. This is a pivotal point for me as my general thesis for The Pendulum (the book I am writing) is that Utopianism is doomed to failure for one fundamental reason—people by nature are fractious and universal agreement is unlikely to happen and may even be an impossibility. Berlin eschews philosophical system building for this very reason.
More than that, he believes those building philosophical systems, if they become true believers in their system, in its moral righteousness, are willing to, and in fact do, impose totalitarian methods to impose their system on an unwilling humanity. For their own good, of course. For this reason Berlin favours a negative concept of liberty, where liberty is defined as the individual’s right to pursue his own ends without interference from other people, as long as he respects the equal right of those others to pursue their peaceful choices.
While he recognizes positive liberty as having some appeal, the concept provides a slippery slope for statism and so he prefers negative liberty. Negative liberty maximizes the individual’s ability to choose his own path, his own goals and objectives, his own tastes.
In this edition I summarize his arguments for value-pluralism which is the basis for his opposition to utopianism.
Isaiah Berlin’s Value-Pluralism
The opening essay of The Isaiah Berlin collection, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, is an autobiographical sketch called "The Pursuit of the Ideal." In it Berlin relates his philosophical evolution from the prevailing orthodoxy of 2000 years to his argument for value-pluralism.
But what is the orthodox position he is arguing against? In simple terms it is that there exist definitive solutions to the problems of mankind, whether these be "injustice, oppression, falsity in human relations, imprisonment by stone walls or conformism." By the latter he means "unprotesting submission to man-made yokes" such as cruelty, humiliation, servility, poverty" and so on. Finding these solutions would bring about a perfect world, "a reign of truth, love, honesty, justice, security, personal relations based on the possibility of human dignity, decency, independence, freedom, spiritual fulfillment." (3) A world in which we would all hold hands and sing Kumbaya together.
From the ancient Greeks through to the 17th century rationalists and18th century empiricists, it was believed that a perfect world was within mankind's grasp if only we could attain the knowledge necessary to bring it about.
The rational reorganization of society would put an end to spiritual and intellectual confusion, the reign of prejudice and superstition, blind obedience to unexamined dogmas, and the stupidities and cruelties of oppressive regimes which such intellectual darkness bred and promoted. (5)
These ideals, Berlin realized, had a common thread. All believed that:
All genuine questions must have one true answer and one only, all the rest being necessarily errors.
There must be a dependable path towards the discovery of these truths.
The true answers, when found, must necessarily be compatible with one another and form a single whole, for one truth cannot be incompatible with another. (6)
That "dependable path" almost invariably means reason. Philosophers such as Plato argued that such knowledge could only be obtained by extensive contemplation of the good. And only philosophers were qualified to so use reason. The 17th and 18th century philosophers believed any reasonably intelligent man could grasp these ephemeral truths once they were understood and explained. Even critics such as Hegel and Marx who saw progress in terms of "conflicts of [dialectical] forces" believed in an eventual resolution and paradise on earth. They rhetorically asked:
Is there not a movement, however tortuous, from ignorance to knowledge, from mythical thought and childish fantasies to perception of reality face to face, to knowledge of true goals, true values as well as truths of fact? (7)
Berlin bought in to this view until he read Machiavelli whose ideas "shook my earlier faith." (8) Berlin's take on Machiavelli is considerably different than that of most readers who see the author of The Prince as a guide "on how to acquire and retain political power, or by what force or guile rulers must act if they are to regenerate their societies, or protect themselves and their States from enemies within or without."
Berlin saw in Machiavelli the exposition of two conflicting ethical ideals: the Christian virtues of "humility, acceptance of suffering, unworldliness, the hope of salvation in an afterlife" and the "manly, pagan virtues" of bravery, resourcefulness, intelligence, entrepreneurialism, and patriotism. He elaborated on this at length in an essay called "The Originality of Machiavelli." (included in the anthology Against the Current and discussed in my essay linked at the end of this essay.) Of Machiavelli, he writes:
He does not condemn Christian virtues. He merely points out that the two moralities are incompatible, and he does not recognise an overarching criterion whereby we are enabled to decide the right life for men. The combination of virtu [pagan values] and Christian values is for him an impossibility. He simply leaves you to choose - he knows which he himself prefers. (8)
Berlin writes that this insight "undermined my earlier assumption ... that there could be no conflict between true ends, true answers to the central problems of life." (9) This revolutionary idea was further bolstered by his reading of Giambattista Vico's Scienza nuova which argued, among other things, that historically different cultures had their "own vision of reality, of the world in which it lived, and of its relation to its own past, to nature, to what it strove for."
As an example, Vico noted the Homeric Greeks, who "were cruel, barbarous, mean, oppressive to the weak; but they created the Iliad and the Odyssey, something we cannot do in our more enlightened day." "For Vico there is a plurality of civilizations," Berlin notes, "each with its own unique pattern." (10)
They did not differ "in all respects - for they were all human - but in some profound, irreconcilable ways, not combinable in any final synthesis." These ideas were further reinforced by Berlin's reading of Johann Gottfried Herder. Herder did a comparative study of many different cultures and concluded that, as Berlin puts it:
The ways in which men live, think, feel, speak to one another, the clothes they wear, the songs they sing, the gods they worship, the food they eat, the assumptions, customs, habits which are intrinsic to them - it is these that create communities, each with its own 'lifestyle'.
But isn't this just moral relativism he asks. He answers decidedly no. "It is what I should describe as pluralism." (11)
That is, the conception that there are many different ends that men may seek and still be fully rational, fully men, capable of understanding each other and sympathising and deriving light from each other, as we derive it from reading Plato or the novels of ancient Japan - worlds, outlooks, very remote from our own.
This is not to say that different cultures and civilizations don't share some values in common. But there are many different values and "what is clear is that values can clash." (12) Not only can values clash between cultures but also between individuals, "between you and me." As an example, he suggests: "You believe in telling the truth, no matter what: I do not, because I believe that it can sometimes be too painful and too destructive."
We can discuss each other's point of view, we can try to reach common ground, but in the end what you pursue may not be reconcilable with the ends to which I find I have dedicated my life.
"Values," he continues, "may easily clash within the breast of a single individual; and it does not follow that, if they do, some must be true and others false."
Berlin gives several examples of conflicting values for which it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine which value should take precedent. One is the gifted artist whose struggles to create a masterpiece "plunges his family into misery and squalor to which he is indifferent." Should he be condemned for pursuing his dream? Should he sacrifice his potential masterpiece for the sake of his family? And while Berlin notes the artist in the example as indifferent to his family's misery, consider the case where he is not indifferent. He cares deeply about both his art and his family. That would be a clear case of a value clash "within the breast of a single individual." Do we not, from our own experience, understand such conflicts? When we have what is commonly referred to as a crisis of conscience, is it not a clash of values and the crisis exists because we see value to both sides and find it hard to decide the correct path?
Another example: "Should a man resist a monstrous tyranny at all costs, at the expense of the lives of his parents or his children?" he asks.
In his book, Isaiah Berlin: An Interpretation of his Thought, John Gray recalls a specific case Berlin mentioned to him in conversation. During WWII a government official, knowing there was a serious leak in his department that was causing deaths at the hand of the enemy as well as hindering the war effort, decided to fire his entire team even though they knew the leak came from one person they couldn't identify. Innocent members of his team lost their jobs in the interests of the war effort. (page 10 in Gray)
More controversially, Berlin suggests a conflict between the ideals of liberty and equality. And here he is speaking of equality of outcome, not of opportunity. "Liberty ... may have to be curtailed in order to make room for social welfare, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to leave room for the liberty of others, to allow for justice or fairness to be exercised." (The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 13)
Or not. Berlin clearly favors the idea of negative over positive liberty. As Gray notes, "at its simplest, Berlin's rejection of positive freedom is a rejection of paternalism." (Gray, 9)
Such ethical conflicts, Berlin argues, are an empirical fact. They cannot be resolved in some perfect world. "We must say that the world in which what we see as incompatible values are not in conflict is a world altogether beyond our ken." (Crooked Timber, 14) He considers such a world to be "conceptually incoherent."
His vision sounds bleak. "We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss." While some may adhere to some all-encompassing philosophy to which they willingly submit, "whose word is fully accepted as unbreakable law," Berlin argues that people with such "unshakeable convictions" are blind to reality.
Those who rest on such comfortable beds of dogma are victims of self-induced myopia, blinkers that may make for contentment, but not for understanding of what it is to be human.
But while Berlin argues that this dooms the idea of a perfect State, he suggests that there is still another problem to consider. While many of humanity's woes are solvable, and indeed we have made great strides in increasing freedom, reducing hunger and misery, abolishing slavery and prejudice and so on, "every solution creates a new situation which breeds its own new needs and problems." (15) Our "children face new problems, brought about by the very solutions of the old ones," and solutions to these new problems will create further new problems" and so on, for ever - and unpredictably."
In other words, life is constant change. We don't know what the future may bring and so, as Berlin puts it, "We cannot legislate for the unknown consequences of consequences of consequences."
A perfect state is unattainable because the future is unpredictable. Change creates further change and further ethical conundrums. The only way to stop it is to stop all change. And Berlin, in fact, avers that the ultimate end of an allegedly perfect society is stasis.
He notes that in the Marxist utopian dream, "once the fight is won and true history has begun, the new problems that may arise will generate their own solutions," but this strikes him as "a piece of metaphysical optimism for which there is no evidence in historical experience." Such a society, Berlin believes, becomes technocratic. All problems can be solved by technological means.
That is a society in which the inner life of man, the moral and spiritual and aesthetic imagination, no longer speaks at all. Is it for this that men and women should be destroyed or societies enslaved? Utopias have their value - nothing so wonderfully expands the imaginative horizons of human potentialities - but as guides to conduct they can prove literally fatal.
In fact, Berlin excoriated this tendency towards a technocratic fascism in his essay on Helvetius in Freedom and Its Betrayal. (see link at end of this essay)
Berlin believes that this fatal flaw inheres to all utopian schemes. Why?
If one truly believes that such a solution is possible, then surely no cost would be too high to obtain it: to make mankind just and happy and creative for ever - what could be too high a price to pay for that? To make such an omelette, there is surely no limit to the number of eggs that should be broken - that was the faith of Lenin, of Trotsky, of Mao, for all I know of Pol Pot. (15-16)
Such are the perils of utopian thinking. That mindset is characterized by Berlin thus:
I know which way to drive the human caravan; and since you are ignorant of what I know, you cannot be allowed to have liberty of choice even within the narrowest limits, if the goal is to be reached. ... If there is resistance based on ignorance or malevolence, then it must be broken and hundreds of thousands may have to perish to make millions happy for all time. What choice have we, who have the knowledge, but to be willing to sacrifice them all? (16)
One is reminded of the French revolutionary Robespierre. In her book Sister Revolutions, contrasting the American and French revolutions, Susan Dunn notes that "Robespierre even indicated that a purge of the majority of citizens was not unthinkable, for he had come to believe that most of the people in France were the dupes of the Revolution's enemies." This was a revolution founded on the rights of man, on a fealty to liberty. And one famous cartoon from 1793, the year of the Terror, shows Robespierre guillotining the executioner after everyone else in France has been killed.
"If your desire to save mankind is serious," writes Berlin of the utopians, "you must harden your heart, and not reckon the cost." (6)
Although it may be anathema to libertarians and Objectivists, Berlin calls for moderation and compromise. "The first public obligation is to avoid extremes of suffering," he writes. "Revolutions, wars, assassinations, extreme measures may in desperate situations be required." Berlin is a realist here. But what counts as a desperate situation is very much something that must be considered with great care. As should the measures taken.
History teaches us that their consequences are seldom what is anticipated; there is no guarantee, not even, at times, a high enough probability, that such acts will led to improvement. We may take the risk of drastic action, in personal life or in public policy, but we must always be aware, never forget, that we may be mistaken, that certainty about the effects of such measures invariably leads to avoidable suffering of the innocent. So we must engage in what are called trade-offs - rules, values, principles must yield to each other in varying degrees in specific situations. (18)
The best we can hope for, he continues, is "a precarious equilibrium that will prevent the occurrence of desperate situations, of intolerable choices."
While this will not appeal to idealists who fervently believe in some perfect world, nevertheless, "there are, if not universal values, at any rate a minimum without which societies could scarcely survive." There are things from the past we have left behind to which we can never return, such as slavery, Nazism, torture, persecution of homosexuals, treatment of women as second class citizens, that "there is no justification for compromise on." (19)
But the search for perfection, he avers, is "a recipe for bloodshed." He is moved by something Kant said: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made."
To force people into the neat uniforms demanded by dogmatically believed-in schemes is almost always the road to inhumanity. (19-20)
There is more than a little irony in Berlin's thesis. The ideas of Machiavelli and of the romanticists, while seemingly a chaotic jumble of contradictory and incompatible ideals, lead to a conclusion that justifies liberalism (in the classical sense). So I'll leave you with a summary of his position specifically as it concerns Machiavelli.
If rationality and calculation can only be applied to means or subordinate ends, but never to ultimate ends… then the path is open to empiricism, pluralism, toleration, compromise… the bases of the very liberalism that Machiavelli would surely have condemned as feeble and characterless… He is, in spite of himself, one of the makers of pluralism, and of its - to him - perilous acceptance of toleration. ("The Originality of Machiavelli" in Against the Current, p. 98-99)