Taking Practical Reason Seriously
I would like to comment on this conversation with Danny Cullenward and David Victor, authors of a new book Making Climate Policy Work.
A conversation with Cullenward & Victor
The book has a particular concern with respect to climate policy but its argument is of broader significance with respect to politics and climate change. ‘It’s an extended argument, not just that carbon pricing isn’t working, but that, at least in terms of its more grandiose aspirations, it can’t work. It flies in the face of fundamental political forces.’
Far too often, those concerned with climate change have insisted that physics trumps politics and doesn’t do deals. I have consistently tried to show the utterly inadequacy of that view, arguing that to oppose physics to politics doesn’t resolve the problem of an ecologically destructive politics and political economy, merely inverts the relation to produce a socially and economically destructive ecology. Neither politicians nor citizens will accept such a climate ‘truth’ and will, quite rightly, reject it. Such an approach will crash economies and reverse advances on health, disease, poverty, hunger recorded in the past century, bringing about the very catastrophe in social terms they seek to avoid in ecological terms. The question is not one of physics versus politics or politics versus physics but of establishing the social and natural metabolisms in proper relation. Grandiose political aspirations based on non-human and pre-political ecological truths cut no ice in the political world. They will either fail on account of their utopianism or be established only by way of authoritarian and austerian imposition. Environmentalism defaults to authoritarian elitism for want of a serious politics and critique of political economy. You cannot fly in the face of fundamental political forces of various kinds and expect any demands issued to the realm of government and politics to succeed. The irony is that people who have the most to say with respect to the hard facts, figures, and logic of physical necessity turn into complete voluntarists in the political realm, thinking that the equally hard facts of the hard boards of politics can be overcome by an assertion of will. Backing that will with statements of ‘necessity’ makes the position no less utopian and voluntarist.
To denigrate ‘fundamental political forces’ here is to be more hindrance than help, because these issues will be resolved politically, if they are to be resolved at all. To try to force politics – and hence governments and citizens – to bend the knee to statements of physical necessity neither addresses let alone resolves the problem – which is one of the relation between nature and society – nor will succeed in commanding sufficient support from the key political agents. It’s a cul-de-sac, and that’s where environmentalism as politics has been for decades.
The article continues:
‘Climate discourse often consists in clarion moral calls coupled with pie-in-the-sky policy schemes. Politics — the mechanics of passing, implementing, and enforcing policies in the real world — gets waved away with the cursed term “political will.”
But understanding and planning around political economy is just as important as understanding and planning around physics. Neither can be bypassed or overcome with sheer will.
Cullenward and Victor take political economy seriously.’
Hallelujah and praise be! It has long since been time to take political economy and its critique seriously. At very long last, tragically late in the day, there is the beginning of recognition of the centrality of social forms and relations, systems of governance and economic provision, the socially specific forms of mediation which govern the human interchange with nature. I can only speculate that it has taken this long for those addressing the environmental crisis to reach this point on account of their prejudice that natural science trumps the social sciences and humanities, in the way that nature trumps human society. That view is a prejudice, elevating science and technology as true knowledge and know-how over ‘soft’ and secondary subjects that deal with mere beliefs and norms, will and motivations, stories and all those things that fall far short of truth. I will also speculate that the fact that no one has studied the forms of mediation in the context of the critique of political economy more than Karl Marx. Immediately, we move into the awkward terrain of class division, exploitative relations (exploitative of nature as well as labour), material interest, institutionalised power, systemic imperatives and structural inequality and injustice – in fine, the difficult and awkward world of politics as structure, agency, and struggle.
The book spends a long time discussing the intricacies of carbon pricing. I find the politics more interesting than the relative merits of various policies. (As important as policies and policy frameworks undoubtedly are, they will succeed only when set within a broader view of politics as system-wide structural transformation, making such policies and policy frameworks possible and effective in the first place. As I wrote in my review of John Bellamy Foster’s The Return of Nature:
‘the resolution of the environmental crisis requires much more than ambitious programmes of cuts in carbon emissions and investment in renewable energy, but a new kind of society whose institutional framework and economic system - allied to the transformative agency with the structural capacity to act - make the implementation of such programmes practicable and effective in the first place, and cease generating the ecological rifts that make it necessary in the second.’
‘What is “political will” in climate politics and why is nobody studying it?’ the article asks.
At long last, some people are starting to show some signs of interest in the missing dimensions of climate analysis and action.
‘Well, what about politics? It's this black box. Everybody just invokes “political will.” Nobody has put structured thinking into how these politics operate. Not loose reporting or subjective stories, but real building blocks. We tried to do that, because we think that's missing. Once you do that, you can start to predict outcomes, test the validity of your theory, and compare the politics of different strategies to one another.’
- Danny Cullenward
That’s a start, but only a start. It remains at the level of the scientific approach, at the level of political science, rather than actually getting into the heart of politics as practical reason. The implication is that politics, like all other objects of scientific analysis, is a ‘thing’ that can be observed, analysed, explained, and rendered predictable as an objective external datum. This, if I may say, is the easiest aspect of politics, the kind of thing that dominated ‘political science’ and sociology in the 1950’s. There is a need for a more critical approach, and practical. That is, not a political economy approach but a critique of political economy. Science concerns the exteriority of things, critical-practical reason the interiority. Science, and here ‘political science,’ looks at things from the outside, as a passive observation. There is a need to see both things and processes as having both interior and exterior meanings.
This exchange struck a particular chord with me:
‘This is an area where the academics have been slow to get their act together. In the field where I was originally trained, political science, there's almost no one engaged with the climate debate in a serious way.’
- David Victor
I’ve been onto this very question from the very first. In fact, I have been like a cracked record in emphasising the need to bridge the gap between theoretical reason (our knowledge of the external world, the realm of fact, reason-nature, science) and practical reason (politics and ethics, the realm of value, the realm of motivation, will, and artifice, reason-culture). For all of the talk of interdisciplinary studies, academics tend to remain within their specialist fields. There is also a tendency to see specialist knowledge as the only true knowledge. And for all of the environmentalists’ talk of interconnection and holism, there is a heavy scientistic and technological bias in studies. It is as if there is an insistence on pristine pure theory before the scientists of environmentalism will dip their toes into practical waters. In the main, the field of practical reason is studied as a ‘thing’ and an object from the outside, passively and contemplatively. There is little idea of how that field actually operates and little commitment to intervention in that field and its springs of action, from the inside. Analysis is still stuck on the exteriority of things; there is little genuine connection with the interiority of things. All that there tends to be with respect to interiority is education and training. There is a dualism between educator and educated that has little if any motivational appeal and effect.
I have been emphasising these points so often for so long that I have run out of energy, patience, time, and hope. I shall repeat what I have said umpteen times: truth about the world cannot simply, and passively, be given but has to be actively willed, internalised, and lived by human subjects. Facts need to be existentially meaningful. The approach I take emphasises the need to reconcile the two great wings of the philosophical tradition: objectivity (reason-nature, science, fact, theory, disclosure) and subjectivity (reason-culture, will and artifice, value, practice, imposure).
‘I’ve been frustrated about that for years. Why is it?’ asks David Roberts.
I’ve been writing on these very issues for years, and have gone from being frustrated to becoming disheartened. My conclusions have been that the field of environmentalism is dominated by scientism, the scourge of the modern age. This scientism exhibits a tendency to simplify and reduce complex questions of change and action in the dialectical interplay within social metabolic orders and between the social metabolism and natural metabolism. This scientism has entrenched a solutionist toolkit that addresses all existential problems as problems of physical existence. That is, it remains firmly focused on the exteriority of things, even when it comes to questions of politics and ethics which most certainly do involve motives and will.
‘Why is it?’ a frustrated David Roberts asks. Simply, it is much easier to adopt an academic approach and remain on the outside of the object of analysis, proceeding from there to design institutional and technological solutions to influence individual and social action than it is to investigate difficult political and socio-economic issues with respect to the root causes of these crises and actually intervene in social relations and practices in order to change them.
‘Well, it's changing now, mainly with the younger generation,’ says David Victor. ‘They're waiting for the older generation to die out. Part of the problem is the core disciplinary standards, which are very heavily anchored around classic theories of political choice, and very empirical.’
Having spent decades hammering away at this theme, and being frustrated by the lack of interest shown by environmentalists, I still feel somewhat youthful and radical. It seems that rather than becoming increasingly frustrated at the scientistic bias of environmentalists – which produces a romantic and reactionary naturalism as its counterpart – I should really have been content waiting for the older generation to just die out, taking its biases, blinkers, and political failures with it. There are still huge problems to address, including this heavy academic and scientistic emphasis with respect to knowledge. The approach is heavily cognitive and only addresses the affective dimension by way of scientific study and explanation. Those looking at the problem tend to remain on the exteriority of the question and are lacking the connections with people and practice that bring them to the interiority.
‘One of the challenges in climate policy is that there's been a lot of talking, but not a lot of doing, until recently. So there's not a lot of data for political science. And then on top of that, the folks who care a lot about the climate problem end up being very activist about it and are not seen by the discipline as doing real science. I do think it's changing right now.
So I believe the phrase “political will” is nowhere in our book — it's only mentioned derisively.’
Victor concludes:
‘What we're trying to do here is offer a very simple theory of politics that explains a lot of the variation in what we observe. We're hoping political scientists take that theory and formalize it and do empirical work with it.’
We need more than theory and empirical work. We need to come out of this constant tendency to ‘academicize’ an issue and problem. There is a need to foster and sustain the right actions within appropriate modes of conduct and effective communities of practice.
I have written at length and in depth on the integration of theory and practice, on ecological praxis, on human beings as knowledgeable change agents, generating knowledge of the world as they act upon the world to change it, on the motivational economy, on modes of conduct, character construction, on communities of practice, on the virtues as qualities for successful flourishing living.
Even the people taking part in this interview, showing some signs of taking these issues seriously, are still stuck in the dualism of object and subject, theory and practice, theoretical reason and practical reason, fact and value, science and ethics/politics. Note what David Victor says here concerning the split between ‘talking’ and ‘doing,’ resulting in a lack of data for political science. Even that statement implies the need for ‘data’ as a condition of effective action. There is little sense of praxis as the dialectical interaction of object and subject. The idea that the scientists and activists are doing two entirely different things follows from that dualism. Note also the statement that academics and scientists involved in the climate discipline do not view activists as ‘doing real science.’ That separation between theory and practice is politically debilitating, and not least because theory, the realm of the one and only true knowledge, is identified with science. The split between the realms of fact and value see only the former, the realm of science, as the realm of true knowledge and reason; the latter, the realm of ethics, is dismissed as the realm of value judgements, belief, will, and incapable of true knowledge. That dualism issues in a scientistic bias that holds object and subject apart and is utterly lacking in motivational significance and practical purchase.
David Victor notes that when ‘political will’ is either ignored or mentioned only ‘derisively.’ I have spent the best part of a quarter of a century doing a lot more than ‘mentioning’ the importance of practical reason. I can see why I’ve been ignored and overlooked. I can also see why environmentalism has been a monumental failure as a politics and ethics. Despite a wealth of scientific knowledge and technological know-how, environmentalism has failed to achieve its political goals. Whilst those in the embrace of the delusions of scientism will struggle to understand why, those on nodding terms with the nature of historical change, politics, and motivations will find no mystery. Knowledge and know-how lack the qualities of true virtue in that they are not appetitive; such things give human beings the ability to act, but not the will to act.
Having written on that point at length and in depth and detail for years, I shall resist the temptation to write further. I shall simply encourage those who are concerned with making up for lost time to investigate the relevant texts on the ‘Posts’ page on my Being and Place site as well as my various books.
It’s a formidable body of work, admittedly, and people are short of time.
So I shall quickly write a short list.
Here are a number of relevant texts on my Posts page
Scientific and Moral Truth
What Place Value in the World of Fact
Facts, Truths, and Inner Motives
Dialectic and Disclosure
Science and Questions of Value, Significance, and Meaning
Toward Reason Existing in Rational Form
The Rational Universe, Creative Human Agency, and the Logic of Collective Action
Heart, Hand, and Head
Materialist Dialectics
The Return of Materialist Dialectics
Finding Meaning Through Metaphor
Economics, Ecology, and Ethics
The Economics of the Good
Marx, ecological rift and the social metabolic order
Unchaining the World
Balance
Class, Capital, Climate Change, and Common Good
Tell the Truth - The Capital System is the Problem
High Politics and Green Truths
A Civic Environmentalism and a Moral Ecology
A Rational Environmentalism
System Change or Climate Change
Individual Choice, Moral Responsibility and Collective Action - The Improbabilities of Changing Ourselves and Changing the World.
Knowledge and Opinion
Reclaiming Politics from Game Playing
The Critique of Enlightened Self-Interest
And who will our saviours be?
Political Change the Key to Addressing Climate Change
Bridging Theoretical and Practical Reason
Politics, Psychology and Physics
Building the Political Will and Legitimacy for Climate Action
Climate Mobilization and Leap
Re-politicizing the Environment
The Price of Political Deficiency
The Unity of Social Formation and Character Formation
Why has the campaign to get the public on board with regard to climate change failed
Inspiring Environmental Action
Eco-Praxis
Making Eco-Citizens
Fact, Value and Political Ideology
Moral Concern and Earthcare
The Existential Truth About Climate Change
Collective Grief, Love, and Joyful Hope
Ecological Restoration as a Restorying
Fostering the Inner Motives and Virtues for Environmental Action
Fostering Transformative Motivations Within Communities of Practice
Reasons, Emotions, and Motivations
The Ecology of Hope
Looking after the Human Environment (the need to pay attention to the health and quality of the human environment as well as the natural environment).
And much, much more besides. These are short and lively texts, and hence readable and accessible. I have developed the views here at length in books. If I had to select the key texts from my books list, these would be the selections
Social Restitution and Metabolic Restoration in the Thought of Karl Marx (2018)
An Introduction to the Thought of Istvan Meszaros (2018)
Being at One: Making a Home in the Earth’s Commonwealth of Virtue (2016)
The Ecology of Good (2020)
Cultivating the Morality of the Senses (2016)
Being and Place: The Dialectics of Catastrophe and Hope: Restoration and Restorying (2019)
The Coming Ecological Revolution: The Principles and Politics of a Social and Moral Ecology (2011)
Lewis Mumford, Civic Environmentalism, and Ecological Regionalism (2015)
Lewis Mumford and the Architectonics of Ecological Civilisation (2012)
The Quest for Meaning, Belonging, and Morality: Morality and Modernity (2020)
I provide an auto-bibliographical overview in
Rational Freedom, Transcendent Standards, and the Quest for the Good Life (2020)
That’s quite a lot of words. Rather intimidating. I’m a speed reader and speed writer. Most people are not. To be honest, I need a team of editors, simplifiers, popularizers, and vulgarizers. But just imagine the frustration in seeing people groping very, very slowly to where they need to be, and I’m already there. I can only signpost.
Why listen to me? Well, for one thing, I do actually have an expertise of my own to offer. I am a historian by training, with a strong record from ‘A’ level to first degree. I understand facts, I understand change. Historical change is always but always a synergy of material interests, metaphysical ideals, and moral motivations within determinate social relations and contexts. Too much study change from the outside, bringing extra-historical truths drawn from various disciplines to bear. Such an approach doesn’t ‘take,’ for want of cultural and organic roots. I understand facts, I am steeped in facts and their evaluation, and I understand the historical processes that go into the making of fact and the acting on fact. I have sought to bring that understanding to bear on environmentalism. The lack of a historical dimension brings with it a failure to understand change and agency. For another thing, I am trained in philosophy, at PhD. So I understand logic and reason as well as fact. I also studied High Politics for three years as a compulsory course for my degree. High Politics concerns power, political contest, decision-making, policy, the soliciting of support and the winning of consent. It's a field which tests any truths and beliefs you may cleave to. I can remember coming to my High Politics class immediately after a lecture on Hegel in my philosophy class. We all found Hegel intoxicating and so were in high spirits as we took our places for High Politics. 'Do you like Hegel?' a friend asked the High Politics lecturer, L.W. Brady. Dear Laurie was a great scholar and something of a dry stick, a stickler for facts tested by experience. He replied with an understated but firm 'no,' adding 'too much idealism.' High Politics is the field in which ideals are tested and have to prove their worth. Constant repetition of a pre-political truth does nothing to ensure its translation into practice - that's politics as the field of practical reason that does that. Ideals which are not attached to their means of realisation - means which are as moral and psychic as they are institutional, social, and technical - are idle and utopian. I learned from my historical studies that historical change is a creative combination of material interests, metaphysical ideals, moral motives, social movement, and political power. Focus on one area to the neglect of the others, and you will stumble, stall, and maybe run aground. Climate policy heads into a cul-de-sac if it is about climate alone. Climate change is not the problem but the physical manifestation of a deeper problem lying in the social relations of human beings to each other within society and of society to nature. To come at this problem from nature and its necessity to society is to address the problem from entirely the wrong direction. It is the specific forms of mediation in the relation between the social and natural metabolism which matter, balancing the fundamental truths of each sphere (it is easy enough to state a natural 'necessity' that functions in terms of a much reduced human population, limited technology, and a crashed economy, it's just that this scenario doesn't so much solve the problem as avoid it - the people who exist in the here and now want a decent standard of living and want their legitimate needs satisfied. That is the hard question).
And I also understand that scientism and logical positivism are utterly decreative and demotivating delusions. And for another, and not the least important reason, I am an ‘ordinary’ member of the public, working in mail and distribution door-to-door in the streets of my local community. I not only know the ‘ordinary’ people who are on the receiving end of an endless environmental campaign of education and awareness raising, I am one of them. And I know the educational approach ‘from the outside’ is felt to be a hectoring and a lecturing that betrays a complete ignorance of the structured patterns of behaviour within which individuals find themselves.
And I am a writer and educator whose views condense this expertise and experience. I think it is worthy of consideration.