Ends and Means
Some people seem to think that Leon Wieseltier is an excellent literary critics, and certainly I’m in no position to question anyone’s literary criticism skills. As an amateur philosopher, though, he’s pretentious and bad. I think I’m in sympathy with the point of this passage but this is ridiculous:
I am not unmindful of the relationship of means to ends. I took Kant. But an election is not a seminar; and to worry the means so much more than the ends is also to distort the relationship. The air of ethical exquisiteness in which Barack Obama wraps himself has psychologically hobbled his party. It finds itself elevated and stunned.
For one thing, to have picked up the bit of shopworn wisdom that the “ends don’t justify the means” hardly requires deep engagement with Kant. For another thing, this isn’t what Kant’s discussion of ends and means is about. Rather, Kant’s principle is that we must always treat human beings as ends rather than as means to our own ends. This has a great deal of relevance to our understanding of Kant’s moral philosophy. But nothing whatsoever to do with what Wieseltier is writing about here. But, hey, why not name-check Kant in an ignorant way? That’d be fun!
He then skips on from ignorant philosophical commentary to ignorant foreign policy commentary but, again, with agonizingly pretentious and awful writing:
The latest refinement of the Democratic creed of soft power is the view that environmentalism is a foreign policy. A week after the Russian invasion of Georgia, I was present at a conversation about whether the crisis around Russia’s borders could be relieved in part by the greening of Poland. I agreed that Putin has been emboldened by the new riches of Russia’s natural resources, but I averred that even if Poland found a way to emancipate itself from foreign fuel, so that every one of its schools was powered by the sun and every one of its cafes by the wind, there would still be a foundation in reality for the anxiety about Russia. The new Russian imperialism is animated by more than the new prices of commodities. Chávez does not owe his socialism to his petroleum. And the horror in Sudan has not been perpetrated by the weather. The verdure of the Democratic foreign-policy discussion is a proper retort to George W. Bush’s astounding delinquency about climate change; but energy does not explain everything. Green is not the only color. Indeed, monochromacy is a form of color-blindness. Even if we were to conquer our oil habit, we could not stand idly by if, say, jihadists came to power in Riyadh. (Israel is not the only reason.) A green world will not be a good world.
Anyone who doesn’t think the weather is relevant to “the horror in the Sudan” doesn’t actually know a damn thing about the Sudan. Rather, he’s someone who likes to use the horror in the Sudan as a political bludgeon with which to beat liberals. Which is to say, he’s a New Republic foreign policy writer.
Similarly, is the new Russian imperialism animated by factors other than commodity prices? Sure. But without high commodity prices Russia wouldn’t have any capacity to threaten its neighbors. Similarly, one major source of concern for Europe about Russian behavior has to do with Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas. A greening of Poland really would make it harder for Russia to push Poland around. And, again, whether or not it’s the case that “Chávez does not owe his socialism to his petroleum” (which I think is debatable — the primary thing he has socialistic views about is Venezuela’s energy industry), Chavez certainly does owe such clout and popularity as he has to petroleum. And then there’s this business about Saudi Arabia. We could not stand idly by, he tells us. And then, parenthetically, he assures us he has reasons for thinking this. Reasons he won’t tell us! But surely we would care much, much, much, much less about what happens in Saudi Arabia if Saudi Arabia didn’t have oil. This is common sense.
47 Responses to “Ends and Means”
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September 25th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Brian Leiter has gotten onto Wieseltier before for this sort of thing. Here’s the post he wrote when Wieseltier reviewed Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell.” It’s pretty awesome.
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2006/02/why_review_a_bo.html
September 25th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Man, that guy is a ridiculous cockbag. At least he’s always on the last page so it’s easy to skip him.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I’d mostly agree, but on Kant it’s important that he says we must not treat people as _mere_ means, not as means at all. The latter would likely be impossible so this is an important point.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I think you have to dig pretty deep to figure out what he’s saying at all, and deeper still to imagine his motivation in saying it this way. I suppose it comes down to something like this.
First, we have a problem: how do we defend the usual mindless neocon resort to militarism, especially against Russia, where even back in the actual Cold War we knew that saber rattling was not a valid option? Well, we can find a straw man. Hah, got one! The left just thinks that environmentalism solves everything. In fact, environmentalism in Poland solves everything. (This would actually be a good parody of Tom Friedman columns, given the effort he’s put into backing energy independence, in part to detach himself from his own history of supporting stupid wars.)
Ok, that adds a problem, though: maybe no one has ever made such a claim, and it wouldn’t be a good one. But then again, it’s not nasty enough. After all, energy independence isn’t a bad goal. It’s not as if we should trash the planet just to find a better excuse to threaten Russia with war. But if we phrase it that way, maybe we can make the left sound as if it’s not really opposed to the goal of bombing Russia, just worried that the cost of environmental damage is too high.
Hmm, not bad, but still isn’t working. The ends don’t justify the means is a little stale, not to mention not at all relevant here. Still, it’s something most people would actually buy into. But we can make it really, really stale, like a holdover from some course assignment you assured yourself couldn’t be this great if it weren’t some pompous nonsense no cool person would dream of liking. So let’s blame it all on Kant.
Maybe Kant’s not only irrelevant here, but also a pretty good ethical philosopher? Not to worry, no one who’s tried to wade through how we’ve backed into militarism through two paragraphs of impenetrable nonsense will get as far as to think of that.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Some people seem to think that Leon Wieseltier is an excellent literary critics, and certainly I’m in no position to question anyone’s literary criticism skills.
Actually, I am in such a position, being a professional literary critic (ie, I have a job and am paid by a major university to do literary criticism, believe it or not–I still can’t really), and I can assure you: Leon Wiseltier is a terrible, and terribly pretentious, literary critic. So, breathe easy.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Not that I’m so great, but, Jesus, he’s a terrible writer. He “averred”! And would it kill him to use a contraction once in awhile, so he can at least attempt to write in plain American which cats and dogs can read?* The whole thing goes for portentiousness, and fails — it’s like a faux-marble bathroom in a Doubletree.
*Literary reference. Two can play at that game, Wieseltier.
September 25th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Weiseltier’s piece is awful, but he may have been thinking of Kant’s important claim that “who wills the end, wills also (necessarily, if he accords with reason) the sole means” (Groundwork 4:417-418).
But the pretentious name-dropping voids any charity on the part of the reader, I think.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Wieseltier’s article is something for Andrew Sullivan to file under “Poseur Alert.”
September 25th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
“but, Jesus, he’s a terrible writer. He ‘averred’! ”
Yeah, that “averred” is something. But I like his hair.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
To paraphrase Dave Sim: “You can argue with me, but you can’t argue with this hair!”
September 25th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
He IS a pretentious, ignorant, and comically bad literary critic as well. He’s a tenth rate Lionel Trilling.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
The whole thing goes for portentiousness, and fails
He aims for “por” and hits “pre”.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
The verdure of the Democratic foreign-policy discussion is a proper retort to George W. Bush’s astounding delinquency about climate change; but energy does not explain everything.
It reads like someone’s attempt to enter a parody of George Will in a Bulwer-Lytton contest. What utter crap.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
(John McCain did not say that America should stay in Iraq for a hundred years.)
It sure sounds like he did, but heck, I never took Kant.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
“Rather, Kant’s principle is that we must always treat human beings as ends rather than as means to our own ends.”
Well, it is more than that. Kant’s ethics is about as anti-consequentialist as you can get. So reading (and agreeing with) Kant would mean that you believe that a good end or outcome never justifies a morally wrong means.
Of course this is different than the end doesn’t justify the means. The end always justifies the means. If it didn’t satifactorily bring about the end it’s a useless means. To that extent his point that “to worry the means so much more than the ends is also to distort the relationship” is actually pretty good. Perhaps it’s true that a very good end does not excuse a bad means. But that’s by no means uncontroversial.
“Some people seem to think that Leon Wieseltier is an excellent literary critic”
He’s still well respected, as far as I know, by no less than Michael Walzer and Hendrick Hertzberg, which is why it surprises me to hear him bashed as a horrible philosopher and annoying writer. I don’t know his stuff very well.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
The man has clearly got a blind spot when it comes to Kant. In another essay from last June called “Let justice be done” he bizarrely invoked Kant to warn against putting justice before everything else, as if Kant, the arch deontologist, a man who thought it is was a sin to lie even in the direst of circumstances, were a prudent Millian utilitarian. It’s hard to understand how anyone with the faintest knowledge of Kant could have made that mistake much less a Harvard society of fellows alum. He’s probably not one to read comments but i and a number of others called him out on it at the time.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
That would be Immanuel Kant. He was referring to Larry … Larry Kant.
September 25th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Kant explicitly says that one cannot lie, even for a greater cause, because this is to treat humans as means and not as ends. His example is pretty telling: One cannot lie, even to assassins who have come to your house asking if you are hiding your friend, who they will kill if you tell the truth. I don’t think that intelligent people should abide, even for a second, by Kant’s logic in this instance. It is one of the most reprehensible claims ever made by an otherwise excellent philosopher.
September 25th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Oddly enough, Kant’s little dictum about ends and means is strikingly different from that St. Augustine had said about original sin consisting in seeing ourselves as ‘ends in themselves’, instead of as means to the glory of God.
“Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For “pride is the beginning of sin.” And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction. And it does so when it falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to satisfy it more than itself.”
The City of God, book 14, chapter 13.
September 25th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Matt, you’re right of course about Kant but if you agree with his principle, that human beings should always be treated as ends rather than as means to our own ends, then how to explain those liberals who have continued to support the war in Iraq? Unless you accept the current wisdom which is that all of the violence which has occurred in Iraq is the responsibility of Al Quaeda-in-Iraq, their attitude seems to be a determination to install democracy in Iraq even if it takes the life of every man, woman, and child in Iraq, to do it. Not what Kant was about!
September 25th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Henry,
I opposed our intervention in Iraq from the beginning. Nevertheless it seems clear to me now that if we withdraw in the near future, more Iraqi lives will be lost than if we stay. This has nothing to do with the benefits of “democracy” vs. authoritarianism; it has to do with the benefits of a colonized peace, as galling as it always is to the colonized, versus a generalized, free-for-all civil war.
September 25th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
This goes to show that being a literary critic, even a highly regarded one, doesn’t mean you aer terribly insightful or well informed, but it does mean you are probably opionated. The only problem is that it is exceedingly difficult to discern what your opinions are, most likely because they are wrong or even nonsensical.
Also, I thought it was more fashionable to name drop Hegel without knowing what knowing what he’s talking about. And, of course, that’s because no one knows what he’s talking about, so you can’t get called on your ignorance. But Kant–there are at least three or four lines in the Metaphysic of Morals that some people can cogently claim to understand, so referencing him is risky for a literary critic.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I don’t know anything about Kant. I do know that I giggled when Wieseltier called Obama condenscending. Talk about lack of self awareness.
September 25th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Matt: “As an amateur philosopher, though, he’s pretentious and bad.”
And you’re a “professional philosopher”, on the basis of a fucking degree from Harvard?
It is to laugh.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Pretentious deployments of misunderstood philosophy? Wordy but incomprehensible opinions about politics? WELCOME TO ANY ENGLISH DEPARTMENT IN AMERICA.
September 25th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Wieseltier is of course German for ‘know-nothing windbag.’*
* No it’s not. But it would so perfect if it were.**
** Though the actual etymology isn’t terribly far off.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Given the context of ‘I am not unmindful of the relationship of means to ends’, Matt Y is right to think that LW must have thought he was saying something like ‘I am not unmindful of the fact that the ends don’t justify the means’. Therefore, even if LW didn’t have in mind Kant’s imperative ‘Act in such a way that you always treat humanity … never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end’, but rather had in mind the bit of Kant that another Matt quotes, that would be no help. Another Matt quotes Kant’s claim that ‘who wills the end, wills also (necessarily, if he accords with reason) the sole means’ — which lends no support to the claim that the ends don’t justify the means.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Leon Wieseltier: “And the horror in Sudan has not been perpetrated by the weather.”
Matt Yglesias: “Anyone who doesn’t think the weather is relevant to ‘the horror in the Sudan’ doesn’t actually know a damn thing about the Sudan.”
Let me rephrase LW’s point in my own words: “the awful things in the Sudan have been perpetrated by individuals, not the weather — weather can’t ‘perpetrate’ anything, since it’s not a conscious being.”
And here’s MY’s point: “anyone who thinks that the weather in the Sudan is completely irrelevant to the awful things happening there is completely ignorant of the situation in the Sudan.”
To me, it looks as though MY has attributed a position to LW that is not his. What did I miss?
December 11th, 2008 at 7:53 am
President-elect Barack Obama’s interview on Sunday’s
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