Enlightened Absolutism: Is it possible?

[Traitorfish]

If it actually worked it of course is desirable.

I don't think that's obvious. You seem to be assuming a certain sort of hedonic utilitarianism, and that is by no means a universally held position. Would it not be possible for someone who possesses a non-hedonic ethics to argue that the freedoms which would be traded away in such a system are more fundamental to the living of a good life than the petty liberties which it ensures?

(I mean, I agree with the main thrust of your point, that the enlightened despotism is simply not a viable project, but it seems that it might be worth fleshing out the ethics a little bit as well.)

 

[Leoreth]

But doesn't that mean that in the end we'd have to assign an intrinsic value to the political process, beyond the results of the political process?

 

[Winston Hughes]

But doesn't that mean that in the end we'd have to assign an intrinsic value to the political process, beyond the results of the political process?

It's not saying that the political process is an end in itself, but that there are certain results which can only be obtained through participation in such a process.

 

[Traitorfish]

But doesn't that mean that in the end we'd have to assign an intrinsic value to the political process, beyond the results of the political process?

Is that a problem? Maybe the political process is itself a factor in the good life. Again, it's not obvious.

(edit: X-post with Winston? It's not obvious, said the broken record. )

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I don't think that's obvious. You seem to be assuming a certain sort of hedonic utilitarianism

I had to look that up, but if "hedonic utilitarianism" means that in the end everything needs to be justified by its use for achieving happiness, then yes, this is exactly what I assume.
And as Leoreth IMO correctly noted, any fundamental deviation from such a concept means to few certain values/things/actions/experiences/whatever as self-selfing. Which means to argue with: "It is good because it is good". And that is I would say a reasoning as shallow and superfluous as it can get and I in deed would think that to be "obvious".
But then there is also what Winston Hughes argued and so did lovett. Which is that what democratic participation delivers could function as a source of happiness itself. I concede, in such a case, things aren't just as obvious. Frankly, I at first did not consider such a possibility to be worth inclusion in my original stance, because I viscerally thought this to surely be negligible in comparison to the importance of the quality of political yield.
But I already fleshed this impression out in my last response to lovett.
Its core argument was ....:
(1) That the direct and immediate political power is necessarily limited to a small minority for practical reasons (you can't have 10 chefs and one waiter), which excludes it as a significant factor of common well-being as something directly expierenced.
(2) For everyone available political power like political debate or activism don't depend on the presence of democracy, but IMO would be endorsed by our ideal despot (for the assumption that such a despot needed extensive feedback and advise and that this requires a culture of free speech).
(3) And what is then left is institutionalized participation: the right to vote and the power of this vote. Which leaves me with assuming that making a cross on a peace of paper which by the necessity of equal participation will not mean a damn on the individual level means such a great experience for the voters that it overshadows political yield. I don't think I have to explain why that doesn't convince me either.

But there is one assumption of mine I already can see debated by you Traitorfish (and possibly also lovett), which is that "immediate political power is necessarily limited to a small minority for practical reasons". If there is a system where this was not the case, where immediate political power was a thing practiced by a population as a whole, I concede that my argument would not apply (but note that this requires more than just direct democracy, but effectively the abolishment of hierarchies except on the lowest of levels).

 

[Chiteng]

With the widespread belief that democracy equals liberty, does anyone here believes that liberty is possible under one despotic ruler, as was proposed by Frederick the Great and Thomas Hobbes?

Now, this all goes against established republican ideals such trias politica and parliamentarism, but is it indeed possible to have a decent amount of liberty under a regime that has absolute power vested in only one person who would essentially be the state itself?

18th century Denmark was pretty much an absolute monarchy but from what I've read it possessed many of the liberties we now take for granted such as freedom of the press. And while the potential for abuse under an absolute dictatorship would be immense, the interest to do good (out of fear of getting overthrown by force, or worse) would perhaps be just as important, perhaps even more so than in democracies.
Also note that 20th century totalitarian states were oligarchies and not monarchies: Hitler and Stalin were in power owing to their respective political parties, not vice versa. Hitler wasn't equal to Nazi-Germany, the Nazi party as a whole was.

So what about enlightened despotism? Contradictio in terminis and totally outdated, or actually possible and perhaps even desirable?

It is the 'Sauron principle'
One entity, regardless of its power, needs time to focus on each issue.
Absolute power, enables greater freedom, simply because the tyrant doesnt have time to deal with everything.
It is when the entity clones itself with bureaucracy that it becomes a problem.
Each little tyrant gets to focus on whatever issue he finds a need.

The modern state has the greatest problem

 

[Traitorfish]

I had to look that up, but if "hedonic utilitarianism" means that in the end everything needs to be justified by its use for achieving happiness, then yes, this is exactly what I assume.
And as Leoreth IMO correctly noted, any fundamental deviation from such a concept means to few certain values/things/actions/experiences/whatever as self-selfing. Which means to argue with: "It is good because it is good". And that is I would say a reasoning as shallow and superfluous as it can get and I in deed would think that to be "obvious".

Do you not think that it's a bit, well, arrogant to cast aside the entirety of non-utilitarian ethical philosophy- from Plato to Kant to Nietzsche to Sartre, to take only a few of the big names- with such an idle swipe of the hand? We're not talking about a handful of Himalayan mystics or ivory tower obscurantists, here, we're talking about the greater weight of human ethical philosophy throughout history. It's no small thing to cast that aside without even bothering to acknowledge it as legitiamte thought.

Furthermore, doesn't hedonism at some point involve the claim that "pleasure is good because it is good"? At some point any ethics is going to come down to that sort of axiom- or, at least, I haven't encountered an ethics which does not. If anything, Benthamian hedonism is more circular than most, because it doesn't attempt to ground its claim in any substantive account of the subject, which all of the previously named-thinkers offered, simply taking it for granted that pleasure is good and good is pleasure.

But there is one assumption of mine I already can see debated by you Traitorfish (and possibly also lovett), which is that "immediate political power is necessarily limited to a small minority for practical reasons". If there is a system where this was not the case, where immediate political power was a thing practiced by a population as a whole, I concede that my argument would not apply (but note that this requires more than just direct democracy, but effectively the abolishment of hierarchies).

Certainly that would be my preference, but I don't think it's nearly that clear cut. There are plenty of incidences of widely-dissolved political power that fall short of anarchism, from the mass-assemblies of the" Athenian polis to the "town hall democracy" of colonial America to the more democratic moments of the 20th century trade union movement. Even moments of mass political intervention, such as the American civil rights movement, represent moments in which people far beyond the managers of the state are able to exercise significant political power; that it is not an exercise of institutional power doesn't make it any less real. There is certainly a strong tendency towards the concentration of power, but it is by no means an iron law.

 

[Tahuti]

It is the 'Sauron principle'
One entity, regardless of its power, needs time to focus on each issue.
Absolute power, enables greater freedom, simply because the tyrant doesnt have time to deal with everything.
It is when the entity clones itself with bureaucracy that it becomes a problem.
Each little tyrant gets to focus on whatever issue he finds a need.

The modern state has the greatest problem

There is one caveat however: Parliaments don't have time to focus on all issues either, so they delegate it to bureaucratic organs. What does stop a single despot from doing the same?

In fact, this was historically often the case, with 18th century Portugal and practically every Chinese imperial family being examples of despotic monarchies that over time developed highly bloated bureaucracies with the support of the monarch that supposedly should have all power.

 

[Flying Pig]

Despots in general, having spent some effort gathering absolute power into their hands, often have strong personal aversions to giving that power away to anyone

 

[Leoreth]

It's not saying that the political process is an end in itself, but that there are certain results which can only be obtained through participation in such a process.

For the individual, or the community?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

It is the 'Sauron principle'
One entity, regardless of its power, needs time to focus on each issue.
Absolute power, enables greater freedom, simply because the tyrant doesnt have time to deal with everything.
It is when the entity clones itself with bureaucracy that it becomes a problem.
Each little tyrant gets to focus on whatever issue he finds a need.

The modern state has the greatest problem

Just the same, a despot can't deal with everything he needs to, and can't be an expert on everything he needs to be [to be as effective as a team of experts would be], so for the sake of efficacy and quality, he must create a bureaucracy, because otherwise most things wouldn't get done unless done very poorly and outside the formal structure of the despotism. And if the success of your system is dependent upon people violating its central principles, then it isn't a very good system after all.

 

[Chiteng]

Just the same, a despot can't deal with everything he needs to, and can't be an expert on everything he needs to be [to be as effective as a team of experts would be], so for the sake of efficacy and quality, he must create a bureaucracy, because otherwise most things wouldn't get done unless done very poorly and outside the formal structure of the despotism. And if the success of your system is dependent upon people violating its central principles, then it isn't a very good system after all.

That was my point. People who violated the central principles would call that FREEDOM

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Do you not think that it's a bit, well, arrogant to cast aside the entirety of non-utilitarian ethical philosophy- from Plato to Kant to Nietzsche to Sartre, to take only a few of the big names- with such an idle swipe of the hand?

Call it what you like. It is what I am convinced of. And I think for sound reasons.

Furthermore, doesn't hedonism at some point involve the claim that "pleasure is good because it is good"? At some point any ethics is going to come down to that sort of axiom- or, at least, I haven't encountered an ethics which does not. If anything, Benthamian hedonism is more circular than most, because it doesn't attempt to ground its claim in any substantive account of the subject, which all of the previously named-thinkers offered, simply taking it for granted that pleasure is good and good is pleasure.

That is a good point to raise, but I disagree that pleasure is good because it is good. I also don't just take it as granted. I think the notion that pleasure is good is actually the only one which means the lack of an arbitrary selection of value, while hence any other notion which is not based on "plasure is good" means such an arbitrary selection.
To follow this line of thought, one needs to realize the ultimate and universal source of all human motivation and hence all value humans may perceive. Which are emotional urges. The satisfaction of such urges is what constitutes pleasure as I understand it. Hence, pleasure is the only objective criteria of the fulfillment of human needs.
Which means, that ideals like justice, honesty, kindness or whatever have to be understood as mere tools of creating pleasure, or they as said arbitrary and inevitably select for some emotional urges over others.
The problem just is, that this truth (if you forgive me this arrogant term ) is very far removed from practical experience. Pleasure is such a complex critera, there are so many variables and complex causal relations involved, that in practise it can easily becomes totally infeasible as a stand-alone criteria. So we look for rough abstractions of what good means, to compensate, to have something to orientate on. This is what IMO ideals are. What non-utilitarian ethical philosophy comes down to.

Certainly that would be my preference, but I don't think it's nearly that clear cut. There are plenty of incidences of widely-dissolved political power that fall short of anarchism, from the mass-assemblies of the" Athenian polis to the "town hall democracy" of colonial America to the more democratic moments of the 20th century trade union movement. Even moments of mass political intervention, such as the American civil rights movement, represent moments in which people far beyond the managers of the state are able to exercise significant political power; that it is not an exercise of institutional power doesn't make it any less real. There is certainly a strong tendency towards the concentration of power, but it is by no means an iron law.

But democratic participation beyond institutional power is not excluded by despotism, as my point "(2)" was supposed to convey, but in deed a fundamental premise of what I believe to be ideal despotism. In general: A lack of institutional democracy does not necessarily mean a lack of democratic participation beyond institutional democracy. It just requires institutions which are - for what ever reason - receptive to change brought by public opinion and a public culture of achieving such.
And a small town like ancient Athen or a small town like in colonial America is the kind of reduction of hierarchy to the low levels (I edited low levels in, sorry for that) I referred to.

 

[Winston Hughes]

For the individual, or the community?

That depends who you ask. There's a tradition around this notion of positive liberty (or, if you prefer, self-rule) which is as ancient as political philosophy gets and yet is still very much alive. I'm no great supporter of that line of argument, but, as TF suggests, it's not obviously wrong.

 

[Akka]

The problem is not finding an example of something that can work - about ANY kind of government CAN do very good things.
By definition, absolutism is all about the person in power, so if (s)he's someone very decent, very responsible, very capable and very dedicated on being a fair ruler, life under his/her rule can be the best possible.

The problem is finding a type of governement that works RELIABLY. Absolutism is fine when the right person is in power, but how can you ensure that it's always the case ?
Democracy's advantage is that rulers answer to the nation as a whole. It's not without flaws (the biggest and most obvious one being that by definition, the population as a whole as an average intelligence that is, well, average, so the choices it can make are easily very doubtful), but at least it does ensure that the relevant body of persons is the one being able to scrutinize the power that will be used on them and from them.

 

[Traitorfish]

Call it what you like. It is what I am convinced of. And I think for sound reasons.

Could you elaborate? As I said, tossing out everything beyond the peculiarly Benthamite conception of the good life is a pretty drastic move, and not one that I think we can take too lightly.

That is a good point to raise, but I disagree that pleasure is good because it is good. I also don't just take it as granted. I think the notion that pleasure is good is actually the only one which means the lack of an arbitrary selection of value, while hence any other notion which is not based on "plasure is good" means such an arbitrary selection.
To follow this line of thought, one needs to realize the ultimate and universal source of all human motivation and hence all value humans may perceive. Which are emotional urges. The satisfaction of such urges is what constitutes pleasure as I understand it. Hence, pleasure is the only objective criteria of the fulfillment of human needs.
Which means, that ideals like justice, honesty, kindness or whatever have to be understood as mere tools of creating pleasure, or they as said arbitrary and inevitably select for some emotional urges over others.
The problem just is, that this truth (if you forgive me this arrogant term ) is very far removed from practical experience. Pleasure is such a complex critera, there are so many variables and complex causal relations involved, that in practise it can easily becomes totally infeasible as a stand-alone criteria. So we look for rough abstractions of what good means, to compensate, to have something to orientate on. This is what IMO ideals are. What non-utilitarian ethical philosophy comes down to.

I don't think it's at all obvious that all human actions can be attributed to the pursuit of pleasure. That's a claim of psychological egoism, a very specific account of human psychology which is by no means universally accepted among philosophers, psychologists or social scientists. Humans frequently act in a manner which is consciously contrary to their own pleasure, and not merely a theoretical future pleasure (the smoker who knows full the dangers of his habit, for example), but by engaging in activities which lead to their immediate suffering.

To take an extreme example, when a samurai ritually disembowelled himself, was he engaged in something pleasurable? Or is that he is possessed of some cultural or ideological impulse that leads him astray from the "natural" pursuit of pleasure? If the former, then it seems that "pleasure" is so nebulous as to be unidentifiable with how we usually use the term, and if the latter, then it seems that you would simply be reserving for yourself the right to dismiss any examples contrary to your claim as invalid. How do we reconcile this willingness to engage in violent self-obliteration - and Japan being a Buddhist culture, with no expectations of heavenly reward that may explain, e.g. a Muslim suicide bomber- if we are of the conviction that humans are by nature hedonistic?

But democratic participation beyond institutional power is not excluded by despotism, as my point "(2)" was supposed to convey, but in deed a fundamental premise of what I believe to be ideal despotism. In general: A lack of institutional democracy does not necessarily mean a lack of democratic participation beyond institutional democracy. It just requires institutions which are - for what ever reason - receptive to change brought by public opinion and a public culture of achieving such.

The second point presents mass activity as merely advisory, which isn't what I mean. The trade union movement or the civil rights movement didn't simply suggest to the powers that be that policies X, Y and Z should be put into place, they applied authentic political power in such a fashion as to oblige. These were forms of mass self-activity that wielded real political power despite and frequently against the nominal concentration of power in the state, which your model doesn't really seem to take account of.

And a small town like ancient Athen or a small town like in colonial America is the kind of reduction of hierarchy to the low levels (I edited low levels in, sorry for that) I referred to.

Well, that depends what you mean by "hierarchy". The Athenian assembly sat land magnates and landless workers side by aside, and their relationship was no more or less hierarchical than that between a wealthy business-owner and a Starbucks barista. Politics is a more complex collision of forces than I think you're acknowledging, and produces correspondingly complex results.

The problem is finding a type of governement that works RELIABLY. Absolutism is fine when the right person is in power, but how can you ensure that it's always the case ?

I am thoroughly unconvinced that any system which permits me to be executed without trial can ever be described as "fine".

 

[Winston Hughes]

To follow this line of thought, one needs to realize the ultimate and universal source of all human motivation and hence all value humans may perceive. Which are emotional urges. The satisfaction of such urges is what constitutes pleasure as I understand it. Hence, pleasure is the only objective criteria of the fulfillment of human needs.

There's the kernel of valid point here, but you're stretching the definition of 'pleasure' to the point where it can produce any number of absurdities. 'Happiness' comes closer to what you mean, but it still seems inadequate for describing emotions which are unpleasant, but morally appropriate.

(Take 'grief', for example. While an excess of grief is clearly not a good thing, it is entirely right that we feel some sense of unhappiness at the passing of a loved one, and it would represent a significant devaluation of human experience were we to eliminate such sensations entirely.)

I am thoroughly unconvinced that any system which permits me to be executed without trial can ever be described as "fine".

If the right person was in power, then the system wouldn't permit you to be executed without trial.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

That was my point. People who violated the central principles would call that FREEDOM

Well advocating that sort of "freedom" is in reality luddism, because technology and population size dictate such necessities, and in today's politics, it is tied to open reactionism, the desire to return to the socio-political environment that existed when such "freedom" was still possible.

Don't misunderstand; I am a great fan of the Yeoman Republic, and had the Industrial Revolution not occurred, I would probably advocate in favor of that instead of a workers' democracy. But unfortunately for us romantics, it did happen, so we must deal with the reality of the present, not the idealized past that we try to impose on it.

 

[innonimatu]

In fact, this was historically often the case, with 18th century Portugal and practically every Chinese imperial family being examples of despotic monarchies that over time developed highly bloated bureaucracies with the support of the monarch that supposedly should have all power.

Sorry, minor historical nitpicking, but choosing the portuguese 18th century monarchy as an example of bloated bureaucracy is way off the mark. Foreign ambassadors to the court kept complaining in their correspondence about how poor the court was, in accommodations and entertainment. After the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 the king and court lived for decades in a temporary wooden palace which became known as the "royal shack", before they finally got around to having a new one built. The army, the major state expenditure in the states of that era, was nearly nonexistent, with the only war of the period not having had any major battle.
The damn religious orders, that was what was sucking the treasury dry.

 

[lovett]

He was very definitely opposed to the democratic movement of the Civil War era, which he regarded as a vehicle for the immensely divisive religious fundamentalism of the day, and to that end he was quite willing to reach for convenient arguments against democracy per se. But the fact that he allows an elected assembly, rather than dismissing such a notion out of hand, tells us that there's something more subtle going on in his philosophical perspective than a straightforward endorsement of monarchy over democracy.

Your mistake, I believe, is to underestimate the depth of his pragmatism when it comes to maintaining the power of the sovereign. To Hobbes, the question of which type of government is preferable is only a secondary concern. The theoretical ideal is monarchy, but, as he hints at when he allows the possibility of an elected assembly, the best arrangement is always the one which is most able to sustain itself in practice. Hobbes would probably have been a little surprised to discover that, in the modern world, representative democracies tend to be far more stable than absolute monarchies, but there's no doubt which arrangement he would have preferred once that tendency became apparent.

I suppose the difference between us is that, where you see subtlety, I see an (illegitimate) attempt by Hobbes to avoid stating certain conclusions entailed by his premises, because of the empirically falsified nature of said conclusions.

Namely, he cannot say that monarchy is the only form of government which will not lead collapse into the state of nature, because it evidently isn't the case. He was well aware of the aristocracies and republics which had so avoided collapse for extended duration (think: Rome, Sparta). Nonetheless, his premise certainly imply this conclusion by the exact same steps they imply the sovereign power must be indivisible.

We can say, then, that his system of ideas is certainly undemocratic. Central premises of that system commit him to an anti-democratic stance. Of course, he is also pretty explicitly anti-democratic, it's just his anti-democratic position is not explicitly owed to premises on which he relies. In CH.19 Leviathan he says that monarchy has 'the highest aptitude to produce peace and security for the people', primarily because the monarch's private interest will (so he thinks) necessarily coincide with the public interest. This is a (pretty poor) rational choice model of monarchy. He marashalls a few other arguments, but never has the gall to contend non-monarchical government inevitable collapses.

I suppose if one ignores this explicit pro-monarchy stance, and argue it is based on pragmatic arguments which are today seen as false, one can argue that Hobbes was in a way a democrat. But that ignores the fact that, even if we imagine Hobbes fully informed of the relevant empirical facts, his system of ideas commits him to being anti-democracy. And we can hardly think of Hobbes as Hobbes if we strip of him that system.