The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel: Essays on Political Philosophy in Our Modern Era of Interacting Cultures

10. In Defense of Political Philosophy: Responding to Some Recent Remarks by Professor Donald J. Munro

Chapter X h In Defense of Political Philosophy: Responding to Some Recent Remarks by Professor Donald J. Munro So graciously phrased, Professor Donald J. Munro’s challenging response (Zhong-guo zhe-xue yu wen-hua, vol. 4) to my critique of some of Professor Lao Sze-kwang’s thought (Zhong-guo zhe-xue yu wen-hua, vol. 3) does not take issue with the premise shared by Professor Lao and me, namely that humankind, divided as it is into a number of nations or civilizations with diverging interests and values, will be better off if these values and interests can increasingly converge; and that such convergence requires increasingly homologous ideas about what is a rational and moral way to argue about conflicts of interest. Professor Munro and I also, I think, agree that these ideas have to be philosophical to an important extent. That is, this intellectual convergence has to include considerable agreement about what exists, the nature of knowledge, moral-political norms, and the relations between these three kinds of ideas. Following thinkers like Tang Jun-yi, I see study of the historical accumulation east and west of ideas called “philosophical” as needed in order to discuss these topics in as enlightened a way as possible. No one denies that philosophers are not the only kind of intellectuals who produce knowledge about these topics. Munro criticizes Lao and me for retaining “an amazingly positive faith in what philosophers can accomplish alone…. They also need the new knowledge found in the cognitive, psychological, and biological sciences” about “patterns of social behavior and related emotions found in humans and, sometimes, in other 668 The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel mammals,” as well as knowledge about “physical geography” (pp. 324–326). Yet Munro and I agree that all such kinds of knowledge are crucial properly to understand the world; that respect for such knowledge is an integral part of the global intellectual convergence we aim for; and that much if not most of this knowledge is produced not by philosophers but by various kinds of scientists and other scholars. We also agree that whatever philosophers can contribute to this intellectual convergence, their influence has a limited role in the causal patterns of history. This point goes back to Max Weber’s multicausal way of analyzing history, which has been basic to all my work since the 1960s. The great variety of causal factors brought out by the Weberian social science tradition certainly includes the role of those “people with political savvy” mentioned by Munro (p. 324), that is, leadership in the political “center,” to use sociologist Edward Shils’s term.1 How much philosophers can do to effect the desirable global convergence above ultimately depends on a complex, uncertain causal chain including the extent to which they can influence intellectual opinion, the extent to which intellectual consensus can influence paideia and public opinion, and the extent to which the latter can influence the political center. My contention—it is only a contention, a hope, but it is supported by a good deal of scholarship, especially Reinhard Bendix’s thesis of “intellectual mobilization”2 —is that this is indeed one of the most effective causal chains history makes available. That is, I do have great faith not “in what philosophers can accomplish alone” but in what political philosophy can contribute to an effective process of “intellectual mobilization.” The problem, I contend, is not that this causal chain is unavailable but that intellectuals east and west have misused it. How they have misused it, I would say, is the main question which Munro and I tend to answer differently. He emphasizes a failure to make good use of “the new knowledge found in the cognitive, psychological, and biological sciences,” while I see a fundamental breakdown east and west in the effort to devise an optimal political philosophy. Conversely, he is concerned about my “amazing faith” in what philosophy can accomplish, while I am concerned about his “amazing faith” in the moral-political import of “scientific” findings. 10. Donald J. Munro’s Utilitarianism 669 In a very helpful March 2009 email, Professor Stephen C. Angle suggested that Professor Munro lacks any such “amazing faith” in scientific findings, since he merely suggests they are relevant to the agenda of political philosophy. I argue below that the extent to which they are depends on how one conceives of this agenda. They certainly are relevant...