Motus Mentis

Our commenter Jacques has replied, in an email to me, to Michael Anton’s response (published in our previous post). I am posting it below.

Michael Anton (on the question of “natural rulers”): “One can raise all sorts of objections to this. For instance, if Trump is such a natural ruler, why did he lose the popular vote by three million votes?”

Jacques replies:This objection would be a dialectical mistake. Anton is claiming that nature hasn’t divided the species into rulers and ruled. He offered little evidence for this non-obvious claim, and so it is fair to merely note that, in fact, it appears that some people are naturally suited to ruling and that some are naturally suited to being ruled. And it does appear that way to many people, I think. When people are left to their own devices, they don’t typically organize themselves in an egalitarian or democratic fashion. Think of families, gangs and tribes and sports teams or rock bands. On Flight 93 it would have seemed to everyone that some people were acting as leaders and others were not. I guess one could argue that it does not appear to people that only some are natural rulers or leaders, but that gets us into some pretty subtle questions. Prima facie there seems to be no strong reason for accepting the claim that there is no natural hierarchy rather than the claim that there is one. (I am not insisting that there is one, by the way!)

In any case the issue of the popular vote seems like a red herring. Maybe this just shows that the masses may disagree about which individual is best suited to rule — Hilary or Donald. The disagreement is consistent with the hypothesis that only some sub-set of the population appears to them to be suited to that task, either naturally or non-naturally. I’d expect that most people who voted for Clinton also had the impression that Trump was far better (naturally) suited to rule than some other people, even if they also believed that Clinton was better suited (and even naturally better suited) than Trump.

But in any case why does it matter what the average voter thinks? The real question we each have to ask ourselves is what we think. I would be surprised if Anton could really maintain that he had never met some people who seemed to him to be naturally badly equipped for a leadership position, or at least far less well equipped naturally than others. In fact his main argument on this point is weak. He says that no one has ever consented to slavery. But then, as he points out, the ancients reasonably believed that only the wise could discern wisdom. So it could well be that many people don’t accept a position of slavery or servitude precisely because they are foolish and vicious; the mere fact that they don’t want that role is simply irrelevant unless we are all already assuming that everyone is equally wise and capable of sound judgment as to their own proper station in life. But of course that would beg the question in this context…

MA: “Then [J] compares slavery to being ruled. That is just silly. We are all ruled, especially in a rights-based republic…”

J: But it’s not silly at all! It touches on a profound question that modern theorists don’t like to investigate. What is slavery exactly? What are the special features of this particular kind of subordination or social inferiority or lack of autonomy that distinguish it from all the other kinds that everyone takes to be normal and acceptable? It’s actually pretty hard to answer these questions. Those we call ‘slaves’ are ruled in all kinds of ways, and in many ways they are less free or autonomous than someone like me. But then people working in a sweatshop or born into a community of multi-generational welfare dependency and illiteracy and poverty are also much less free and autonomous than someone like me, and all kinds of basic capacities and options and powers that I take for granted are impossible for them. And of course, my own life is very significantly shaped and determined by the decisions of rich and powerful people that I can’t remove from power; in most cases I can’t even get them on the phone. What we call ‘slavery’ is really just one vaguely defined range of human situations on a spectrum. So it makes sense to compare ‘slavery’ to other ways of being non-consensually ruled, controlled, constrained, directed, obligated… The comparisons are useful because they help us to step outside the familiar but false ways of thought encoded in mainstream political theory. For example the idea that “we consent to rule in order to accomplish things as a political community”. As you point out in your reply to Anton, this is mostly a fantasy. Americans don’t consent to the US Constitution or the decisions of Supreme Court judges, or the whims of the donors who run the parties, or the people who pay for the mass media, etc. There is no real consent, no real “community”. We are slave-like, in many ways, and the slaves were citizen-like, in many ways. At least it’s not obvious to me that there is a strict principled distinction between all the situations we describe as ‘slavery’ the other ones–or, in particular, the one we describe as ‘a rights-based republic’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘self-government’.

MA (on liberty and consent): “Your commenter Jacques objects to this, saying that ‘the highly intelligent, for example, are naturally more free and independent in many key respects than people who are borderline retarded.’ That’s just an assertion, he doesn’t say why, how, or in what way. In any case, for the founders “equally free and independent’ is a claim to moral status, to justice. The highly intelligent does not have a natural right to rule the borderline retarded. If Jacques thinks that is wrong, and there is such a natural right, he should explain how and from what it is derived, just the founders explain where they think the natural rights they cite come from.”

J (bold type added by MP): But the assertion is plausible if “freedom” and “independence” are understood in ordinary ways. For example, if freedom means being in a position to effectively pursue one’s aims, traits like high intelligence, stamina, foresight, charisma strength and resilience will tend to greatly enhance freedom. Of course there is no specific list of traits, but it’s plausible that certain personalities are far better situated to effectively pursue their aims than others–and that many of these differences are natural. If freedom does not mean what I take it to mean here, we should ask what exactly it means. Similar points seem to hold for “independence”. I’d suggest that given these plausible reflections, the onus is on the egalitarian to clarify and defend the idea that all are naturally equal with respect to freedom and equality.

The highly intelligent may not have a natural right to rule over the borderline retarded (or a natural duty to care for such people). I don’t know, as I doubt the existence of natural rights and the coherence of the concept. But I would say that if there are natural rights, it would make sense that people who are apparently naturally suited for leadership should be leaders and people whose natural capacities appear to suit them for subordinate roles in public life should have subordinate roles. Again, the burden of proof seems to lie with the egalitarian: demonstrate that there are natural rights, and that there are no natural rights to rule over others grounded in natural capacities and dispositions…

Next up: my emailed reply to Mr. Anton, and his response to me. Again I would like to thank Mr. Anton, who is certainly a busy man these days, for taking the time to engage with us on these important topics.