After the discipline of the body, Locke turns to the means of disciplining the mind, which requires first of all that the father establish his authority over the child. Given Locke’s characterization of the child’s hierarchy of desire, in which freedom ranks only slightly beneath mastery, it is not surprising that concretely establishing adult authority is a major difficulty for the Lockean parent, and the discussion of this problem takes up the bulk of the Thoughts. This differs from his project in the Two Treatises, where his interest was primarily in setting paternal power on a non-patriarchal foundation. Although a distinction between the terms ‘power’ and ‘authority’ is artificial to Locke, it may nonetheless help to conceptually clarify the difference in these projects.Notice how Arendt parachutes into this argument from absolutely nowhere. Is there a single contribution of Miss Self-Important's own mind in this? Unless you count the connection of Arendt to Locke, no. (And to think, just yesterday, I was criticizing Mehta for reading Locke too much through the lens of Foucault.) But I still think this is right! Is it my fault if Arendt happened to be right about everything?
Hannah Arendt argues that authority properly understood is distinct from both power and persuasion in that it “precludes the use of external means of coercion; where force is used, authority itself has failed. Authority, on the other hand, is incompatible with persuasion, which presupposes equality and works through a process of argumentation. Where arguments are used, authority is left in abeyance. Against the egalitarian order of persuasion stands the authoritarian order, which is always hierarchical.” The most natural and historically consistent settings for the exercise of authority, Arendt points out, have been “such pre-political areas as childrearing and education”—an observation that, though certainly external to Locke’s writing, is nonetheless harmonious with it. Paternal power is akin to right—it is what justifies and delimits the father’s control of his children against competing claims, including those of the state or of natural freedom, whereas authority is what justifies the family’s hierarchical structure and children’s obedience to parents.
The distinction between power and authority also explains why, as Tarcov points out, “Locke, far from identifying fatherly care with political power, like Filmer, draws a strict distinction between them and grants instruction solely to parental power, not to civil government. Education is exclusively entrusted to the authority that lacks the power of life and death.” This is the essential liberty-promoting purpose of Locke’s hierarchical family that modern egalitarians miss by holding the principle of authority in contempt. Locke confines education to pre-political life and imposes strict limits on its duration, after which all citizens, with the exception of “lunatics and idiots,” must be admitted to the full rights of citizenship by virtue of having reached majority. The significance of this can perhaps be seen more clearly by considering the converse—a regime in which age is no obstacle to political equality. The only way such a regime would not require education for citizenship is if it had no law, in which case it would be simply anarchy. But if it has a law and does require education, then who is to be educated in such a regime if not everyone equally? But a regime in which citizens are deemed to require ongoing political education is one in which the educators can only be tyrants. Arendt concludes, “Education can play no part in politics, because in politics we always have to deal with those who are already educated. Whoever wants to educate adults really wants to act as their guardian and prevent them from political activity.” Thus, for Locke, the same principle that dictates subordination and obedience in the family makes possible equality and liberty in political life.
Also, note how this further (indirectly) vindicates my belief that there really are no important differences between Arendt and Strauss.
10 comments:
Ah, Political Theory, where such parachutings are not just acceptable, but de mode, de rigeur, and chic. Skinner would disapprove.
But what would Gadamer say about Locke & education?
This is, technically, a history paper. Or, a paper for a history course, given by a Cambridge school affiliate. But look, I tried to show how Arendt is just a very good interpreter of Locke...who happens to have influenced every thought that pops into my head okmaybeyes.
What would Gadamer say? Can I add it to the paper?
Oh, dear. You'll just have to take Arendt out. Or stuff her into the footnotes with a "Cf." or "Also see."
I think Gadamer would say that authority/character possesses an argument even when it is not unarticulated, and that Arendt recapitulates (or regurgitates) the deformation of the Enlightenment. So Arendt's various dichotomies don't apply, or only divide authority and persuasion into different modes, equally legitimate. But for an actual quotation, as relevant as I could find at short notice:
Truth and Method, pp. 281-82: That which has been sanctioned by tradition and custom has an authority that is nameless, and our finite historical being is marked by the fact that the authority of what has been handed down to us--and not just what has been clearly grounded--always has power over our attitudes and behavior. All education depends on this, and even though, in the case of education, the educator loses his function when his charge comes of age and sets his own insight and decisions in the place of the authority of the educator, becoming mature does not mean that a person becomes his own master in the sense that he is freed from all tradition.
Actually, that works too. Authority remains kind of ungrounded in Locke, even though he tries to strengthen and incentivize it externally. He is not much interested in tradition though. I think it's ok to regurgitate deformations of the Enlightenment in this context--Locke was an Englightenment thinker.
"Even when it is not articulated," I should have said - double-negative man strikes again.
hmmm, if there are no important differences between Strauss and Arendt, it's can't be the case tat Arendt is right about everything, since Strauss is wrong about everything (especially the history of philosophy.) I've not read enough Arendt to know know if she's as wrong as Strauss, but it certainly wouldn't be to her credit if she were.
But Strauss is not wrong about everything, so I think Arendt remains safe from that danger.
What is Strauss not wrong about? (He's wrong about his reading of all major figures in the history of philosophy, for example- ask Richard Tuck if he thinks Strauss is right on Hobbes, or go as Striker in the philosophy dept. if she thinks Strauss is plausible at all on Socrates, or read the spankings of him by Burnyeat, Irwin, etc.) His "esoteric" readings are mostly garbage, and his positive views are no good either. See, for example, here:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/07/letter_16.html
or, for more fun, the demolitions of Straussians like Alan Bloom and Harvey Mansfield by Martha Nussbaum over the years in places like the NYRB.
Here's some more examples of his sort of garbage being spanked:
http://crookedtimber.org/2003/10/03/what-was-leo-strauss-up-to/
Richard Tuck on Leo Strauss:
"His views on ancient political thought have right received a great deal of criticism, but I am bound to say that his views on early modern political thought seem to me to have been extremely penetrating."(The Rights of War and Peace, 5)
Matt: Though you may be forgiven for a lack of familiarity with us, we here at Nobody Sasses a Girl in Glasses do not take Martha Nussbaum as our authority in matters requiring the application of judgment. Neither of these critiques are substantive--they're just garden-variety attacks on Strauss's politics on the baseless assumption that proponents of "Cold War American conservatism" must be partisan hacks incapable of reading anything correctly. One could easily levy the same accusation against Marxist scholars of the same era (CB MacPherson nominates himself from my readings this week), who were transparently promoting their political agendas through their readings of political philosophy. This is all last decade's news. Strauss's essay on the The Republic remains the best interpretation of it I've ever read.
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