The Crooked Timber Of Humanity

Socrates said, “To do is to be.”
Sartre said, “To be is to do.”
Frank Sinatra said, “Do-be-do-be-do!”
   — a famous joke

[Mushari] didn't understand that what [Kilgore] Trout had in common with pornography wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world
   — Kurt Vonnegut, from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

I would like to talk about a quote I used in yesterday's Four-Year Anniversary post. This is more an essay than a post. It is long, and there are many lengthy, difficult quotes to read. Be prepared.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made

I've always assumed this quote from Immanuel Kant means what it says—humans are inherently flawed, and any human arrangement is bound to carry those flaws. I used it in the context of the four-year anniversary of the financial meltdown because it is clearly apropos in that context. I also used this Isaiah Berlin quote, which might be viewed as the antithesis of my view of the Human Condition. The quote is describing a kind of utopia.

Men would no longer be victims of nature or of their own largely irrational societies: reason would triumph; universal harmonious cooperation, true history, would at last begin.

For if this was not so, do the ideas of progress, of history, have any meaning? 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? Can history be a mere purposeless succession of events, caused by a mixture of material factors and the play of random selection, a tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing?

For if this [utopian vision] was not so, do the ideas of progress, of history, have any meaning?  If you believe, as I do, that the 21st century of the common era is almost certainly humanity's last century on this Earth, do the ideas of progress, of history, have any meaning? See my recent post Let's Talk About Time And Decline. But of course, the notion that humanity is not progressing toward some glorious future is unthinkable.

This was unthinkable. The day would dawn when men and women would take their lives in their own hands and not be self-seeking beings or the playthings of blind forces that they did not understand. It was, at the very least, not impossible to conceive that such an earthly paradise could be; and if conceivable we could, at any rate, try to march towards it.

That has been at the centre of ethical thought from the Greeks to the Christian visionaries of the Middle Ages, from the Renaissance to progressive thought in the last century; and indeed, is believed by many to this day.

Yes, indeed, this utopian vision is still believed by many people to this day. After I found this Isaiah Berlin quote, I decided to investigate further. Bear with me as I go through this.

One of Berlin's last books was called The Crooked Timber of Humanity. My investigations led to a 2011 posting by John Quiggin called Back To Berlin on the website crookedtimber.org. I'll get back to that post in a moment, but the interesting part occurs in the first comment by George Scialabba.

When I first heard of Crooked Timber, but before I had read it, I disliked it for its name. I’d always rejected Berlin’s anti-utopianism, which I assumed was also Kant’s, as expressed in that notorious phrase that Berlin was always quoting.

But on pages 232-4 of A Zone of Engagement, Perry Anderson argues persuasively that Berlin got Kant wrong. “Berlin has virtually made of this [phrase "from the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing is ever made"] a saw. Here, we are given to understand, is a signal expression of that rejection of all perfectionist utopias which defines a humane pluralism. But what was the actual force of the text from which the sentence is taken?”

Kant’s message in The Idea for a Universal History, Anderson counters—

... is not the diversity of values, the imperfectibility of institutions, or the contingency of history,” as Berlin’s frequent invocation of the phrase seems to imply. It is, rather, that “social advance has at length reached the point where the task for humanity can be the realization of a civil society under the rule of law, guaranteeing freedom for all." … The collective destiny of humanity, working through the deficiencies of its individual members, reveals what Kant calls ‘the hidden plan of nature to bring into existence an internally and externally perfected political constitution.’ The naturalism and finalism of this vision are at the antipodes of Berlin’s outlook.

So far from Kant insisting on the irremediable crookedness of humanity in general, he uses the self-same term — krumm — to describe the kind of timber humanity need not become in a well-ordered civic union, where something straight — gerade — is just what can indeed be made. ‘Only in such an enclosure as civil unification offers can our inclinations achieve their best effects; as trees in a wood which seek to deprive each other of air and sunlight are forced to strive upwards and so achieve a beautiful straight growth; while those that spread their branches at will in isolated freedom grow stunted, tilted and crooked.’ The imagery of the bent and the straight, in other words, tells the opposite story from its proverbialization.

Kant, it appears, was really a liberal utopian, or a utopian liberal. So now I like him again. And the name “Crooked Timber” too. (I’ve always liked the actual Crooked Timber, of course, at least since I gave in and began to read it.)

If Perry Anderson is right, and I have no reason to believe he is not, Immanuel Kant was a liberal utopian. Or a utopian liberal! Quoting Kant, social advance has at length reached the point where the task of humanity can be the realization of a civil society under the rule of law, guaranteeing freedom for all. Kant certainly did not mean that humans and all their works are inherently flawed, as Berlin and I thought.

Now, I am just about as far away from being a liberal utopian (or utopian liberal) as a person can possibly be. I have explained this view in my critiques of Progress and economics, my ridicule of technology as a form of salvation, and my descriptions of the abject failure and corruption which pervades governance in the United States. But crookedtimber.org is a hopeful, liberal blog. And now here is Quiggin's original post.

So, I finally stumbled across Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Chapter 1 of which ‘The Decline of Utopian Ideas in the West’ ends as follows—

a liberal sermon which recommends machinery designed to prevent people from doing each other too much harm, giving each human group sufficient room to realise its own idiosyncratic, unique, particular ends without too much interference with the ends of others, is not a passionate battle-cry to inspire men to sacrifice and martyrdom and heroic feats. Yet if it were adopted, it might yet prevent mutual destruction, and, in the end, preserve the world.

Immanuel Kant, a man very remote from irrationalism, once observed that ‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.’ And for that reason, no perfect solution is, not merely in practice, but in principle, possible in human affairs, and any determined attempt to produce it is likely to lead to suffering, disillusionment and failure.

Broadly speaking, I’m sympathetic to what Berlin is saying here. Revolutionary utopianism has been a disaster, particularly for the left.

But, we still need a feasible version of utopia to oppose to the appeal of irrationalist tribalism and the naked self-interest of the top 1 per cent. And, whatever Berlin may have intended by it, “prevent people from doing each other too much harm” should not mean leaving the rich to enjoy the fruits of a system constructed in their own interests, and letting the devil take the hindmost.

A social democratic and feasible utopia should give all human beings (individually and as a member of various groups) sufficient room and resources to pursue their own idiosyncratic, unique, particular ends with a reasonably equal capability of achieving ends that are feasible given the resources available to society as a whole.

It’s hard to spell out what that means, but I think easy enough to see that developed societies were moving in that direction, broadly speaking, until the 1970s, and are mostly moving away from it today (with some exceptions in areas like gay rights).

The failure of the market liberal model to deliver on its promises, evident in the global financial crisis, along with the current struggle over austerity provides an opportunity to recover some of the ground lost in the last thirty years while, hopefully preserving the gains.

Note his use of the auxiliary verb should. I never use this form. I prefer the forms to do and to be. The big corporations do run the mainstream media. The Congress is corrupt, and so on. What should be is irrelevant. The people are protesting, not the people should be protesting (see below).

The failure of the market liberal model, according to Quiggin, provides an opportunity to recover some of the ground lost in the last thirty years.

I note, without irony, that almost every single thing which has occurred since the financial crisis four years ago conclusively demonstrates that no such positive opportunity exists. Witness the current sham presidential election. I also note that this week marks the one-year anniversary of the failed Occupy Wall Street movement, which went out with a whimper, not a bang, without accomplishing anything concrete, as last winter began. I might also point out that this small, incoherent, ineffectual movement was the only positive sign that American society is not damaged beyond all repair which I've seen in the four years since Lehman Brothers went into bankruptcy. "Feasible utopias" do not exist.

And I would raise the stakes. I would further claim that any form of human governance, including the market liberal model, is bound to blow up sooner or later, and thus devolve into the kind of farce we have today in the United States. This is especially so in circumstances in which great wealth, and great political and military power are concentrated, as they are in America. Great power and wealth are drugs so potent that humans can not resist them, especially those who are drawn to them to begin with. America is not an exception to this rule. Lord Acton said power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. How right he was!

But let us raise the stakes even further. I found an essay called The Crooked Timber of Isaiah Berlin.

There is much to commend Berlin's view of a liberal pluralism as at least as descriptively accurate as a kind of philosophical realism that still hangs on to an undefined yet persistent idea of "human nature", to which our politics should be responsive.

The author of this post, Geoffrey Kruse-Safford, doesn't know me from Adam, but I am just the kind of philosophical realist he is referring to. I do indeed write about "human nature," and in many postings on DOTE I have taken some pains to describe it. I am also an empiricist.  For example, it appears—this is an observation of how the world works, not some vague feeling about the world—that the urge to have more offspring and increase their material comfort, given the means and opportunity to do so, is built right into our species Homo sapiens. It appears that that's who we are. If you don't believe this, take note of what's being done about anthropogenic climate change—nothing! And why not? Because doing so goes against the grain. We would have to reduce the size of our populations and economies to mitigate global warming.

I would add that our politics is not "responsive" to our Human Nature. Our politics is a manifestation of that nature.

[Berlin's] largeness of moral vision - accepting difference, even incommensurability, as not denoting either some kind of ontological primitivism or moral viciousness - serves at the very least this function: It can keep us from believing, for even a moment, that we and we alone have stumbled upon the final theory, and are therefore obliged to impose it upon the world.

Unlike [Richard] Rorty's pessismistic, small-scale anti-realism - which is little more than acquiescence to an intolerable status quo because, well, things have always sucked, we just don't have the perspective to understand this, so suck it up and deal - Berlin at least has the virtue of understanding that human beings do, indeed, stake their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor for things and that this, too, is a positive moral stance.

I believe I have indeed "stumbled upon"—I didn't stumble upon it in any sense—a "good enough" approximation of the "final theory" of how human beings work. My view does not imply "a positive moral stance," although that is something we can wish for. Moreover, I am not "therefore obliged to impose it upon the world." Only some wacko idealist would try to do that. I merely describe my views on this blog. Again, I never say should, as in you should do this, or you should do that. Liberals like that word. Conservatives like that word. Leftist activists like Chris Hedges or Karl Marx like that word. I prefer the verbs to do and to be.

In the end, if the 21st century is humanity's last on this Earth, or its next to last, then we simply don't have time for the kind of bullshit which seeks the best, "feasible" liberal utopian vision by which we should govern ourselves.

If there was ever a time for human beings to get truly serious about taking a long, hard look at who they are and what they do, this is it. There will be no second chances.

Comments

[Lisa]

I agree, Dave, with not using the word "should".
I hear what you're saying with regards to the crooked timber. It's great when looked at correctly.

Have you ever read anything by Daniel Quinn? I'm reading his book "Ishmael" again and he talks about the difference between "Taker" and "Leaver" culture. The Takers (which we would call "civilized people") that became that way about 10,000 years ago consider themselves inherently flawed. And so they (we) are. Not because of our humanness - but because we left our natural state. We "fell", so to speak, and began to till the soil. That means we are at war with all other creatures at all times. No other predator on earth is at war with all other creatures at all times.

The Leavers still exist - but they're dying out. They all live differently according to their location and traditions but - they are the same in that they are not at war with all other creatures at all times. Their food is also not under lock and key. They don't own land. They might claim territory but that's different. I wouldn't consider these people flawed. They're just living as man was living for millenia. (sorry about that spelling.) Would any animal living the way they've lived for eons be considered flawed?

The way Quinn explains it - we tried this experiment of agriculture and certain things were the result. It hasn't worked out for various reasons but we just think if we keep trying to do it better or harder - then it will. If people have enough to eat we'll conquer hunger - but it doesn't work that way - the population just grows. There are laws at work that we are trying to defy. The law of gravity will not be defied - not even by an airplane. The law of how humans are to live is there but we keep trying to defy it. That's the flaw.

Lisa

[Ben]

Dave, you're as old as Moses and ten times as wise, what do you make of the "geopolitical events" occurring throughout the Middle East and the South China Sea? Is there anything real their? Is it media hype? I ask because I am fearful a regional military conflict will break out, which then may escalate from a regional war to a global war (quickening the pace of human sapiens destroying the biosphere). Am I overreacting to thew news?

[Amy]

Dave,
I have just found your blog through Mish's; I can't believe it took so long. My husband and I have become PPAs (I think) over the last 2 years after feeling like aliens our whole lives without understanding why. I struggle daily with why to get up each day (your Joe Bageant post), with how to live in my awareness and in this culture/world at the same time, with how to live with/love/prepare/be with my 2 young children (yes, even if humans see our fate, given the opportunity most of us succumb to the urge to have offspring) given what I think about what we humans are and do...

I find solace in your writing, in the authenticity and the consistent refusal to resort to cheap hope. I thank you for your generosity in sharing your thoughts, although I realize generosity may not be your motive...that's how I receive them. I am sorry that you are lonely. (if your blog can be all about you, my comment can be mostly about me.).

Has taking a serious, long look at what humans are and what we do drastically changed the way you live? Thomas Jefferson couldn't make himself give up his slaves (although he hated the institution) for many reasons, not least of which was that it would have meant a vast reduction in his standard of living. While taking tiny steps to do so, I am mostly and immediately unwilling to give up my 172 energy slaves. Hypocritical and self-destroying, perhaps like having children.

I hope making breakfast tomorrow is enjoyable.

[Ken Barrows]

We have decided who we are: a species intent on destroying other species and becoming as comfortable as possible. Once we decide that isn't possible, we'll come up with something else. Problem is, it will probably be too late.

[James]

I will avoid too much comment on Immanuel Kant except to say that he was writing in a very particular region and era. His work largely deals with ethics, philosophy, and metaphysics (notably the conflict between rationalists and empiricists). He was against the skeptics and probably most exemplified his development of the Categorical Imperative- a deontological moral system that formed a kind of universal standard for evaluation of morality.

Yet Kant assumes that there is a greater moral imperative and so delves into the land 'of "should", just like all moralists. His work is largely irrelevant for understanding "is" and "do". The "crooked timber" quote is excellent taken alone, but is not an accurate portrayal of Kant's view, since he did believe man (well, at least European man) was advancing and could, or should, reach an enlightened end state. A utopia explained by his rationale, of course.

We all know how that turned out. To his credit, though, he opposed German Idealism (and being claimed as part of such) and nationalism, which lead to increasing military conflict throughout the following centuries.

Regardless, I think it is interesting to see how some have spent so much time analyzing the human condition yet seem so oblivious to its true, destructive, petty nature. I guess no one wants to be called the monster. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

[Mike Roberts]

Well, yes, you make a good point about not using "should", but I think that if all I was left with was what the human condition actually is, I might well slit my wrists. If I truly thought that there was no hope, at all, for any grandchildren I may have, then I might as well either do the aforementioned task or just not care about any of this and do exactly the same as most others who have the opportunity; extract as much as I can from others and have as jolly a time as I can possibly manage.

There is certainly a high probability that humans, along with most other species, will go extinct before the end of the century (with some projections showing a rise of 6C by then), but I remain hopeful that there is some future for any grandchildren that I may have and a reason not to discourage my kids from having those grandchildren (in strictly limited numbers, of course). But perhaps the only way to get that wish is for civilisation to collapse very, very soon.

[passenger66]

I believe in psychology there is something called "The Tyranny of the Shoulds".
Rather than saying to those one can (and especially to those one cannot avoid) affect(ing), "You should...", the advice is to say something more like "I think it would be better if you...".