Democracy and the ‘Wisdom’ of Crowds
















On “facile rejection”

One of my pet peeves is the facile dismissal of a philosopher’s entire corpus based on a criticism that can be summarized in a few lines or less. Let me call this the problem of “facile rejection.” For example, I continuously come across the same slogan-like criticisms:

  • Plato takes abstractions for realities and dismisses the concrete world;
  • Descartes tries to deduce the world from “I think therefore I am” and can never escape his head;
  • Kantian ethics are empty and formal and not applicable to lived existence;
  • Hegel is a sinister totalitarian who wants to reduce the other to the same;
  • Heidegger is a sinister totalitarian Nazi who couldn’t make room for “the other” in his being.

Obviously, I could go on…

Now there is something half-right in all of these criticisms. My objection to facile rejection is not directed against the criticisms themselves; it is that objections become outright rejections without redeeming what is still true in the philosophy. Here are some additional pointers toward what is wrong with facile rejection:

1. No philosophy cannot be entirely summarized without distortion, even by the originating philosopher. Only doxic versions of noetic insights are communicable and doxa is always defective in relation to noesis. (** Doxa is the word usually translated “opinion” and I discuss Plato’s technical understanding of the term here. **)

2. Understanding builds upon experience and it is important to try to reconstruct the experience that gives rise to the questions that the articulated philosophy tries to answer. An interpretation/criticism that is not grounded in the living question of the philosopher and the experiential background that gives rise to it fails to even engage the philosophy.

3. Since every work of philosophy as written must be written in the form of doxa, it must represent a middle ground between knowledge and ignorance. Doxa is neither true nor false but true/false. So a criticism that uncovers some evidence of ignorance cannot justly reject the entire doxa without making sense of the residual knowledge still indicated by it. I have found in reading the dialogues that rejected definitions by Socratic interlocutors often contain kernels of truth that haunt the rest of the dialogue. These bits of neglected truth glimmer in the dramatic developments, even if lost in the thematic ones.

4. The facile rejection of an entire philosopher’s work based on a single line of criticism is an indication that the one doing the rejection is probably stuck in a doxic mindset and that an adequate philosophy can be contained in a written doxa. This is a fallacy.

5. Although I have given examples of criticisms that have some merit, even if half-truths, many facile rejections are nothing more than rhetorical dismissals based on the latest philosophical fashion. Continental philosophy, more so than Analytic, tends to exhibit the facile rejection based on what is trending in the academy. (I say this as one who is generally more sympathetic to the Continentals than the Analytics.)

Interestingly, I learned most of this by studying Plato, the one who is lost in airy abstractions (per his facile critics). Isn’t it odd that Plato (by the standard facile rejection) is considered the most distant from concrete concerns and yet his philosophy is the most concrete in presentation?

The Cardinal Virtues and the Divided Line



JUSTICE (Dikaiosyne)





COURAGE (Andreia)





MODERATION (Sophrosyne)





WISDOM (Sophia)





Just food for thought:


PIETY (Eusebia)

Piety-in-the-city — Not given explicity

Piety-in-the-soul — Not given explicitly


What I’m Currently Reading











On political agnosticism

I am a political agnostic, or at least I try to be.

Let me put this agnosticism in personal context. Just like anyone else, I have my political opinions and habitual reactions to political happenings. I like everyone else suffer from biases that color my view of the world: I “see” more acutely confirmatory evidence for my opinions and can glaze over those that call them into question. I enjoy polemics against leaders from other political persuasion. I can point out evidential support for my beliefs, but such “evidence” is within the context of my prior opinions. However much I would like to attribute my opinions to a superior intellect or access to better information, I simply can’t. I meet intelligent people of varying stripes: those whose opinion agree with mine and others who disagree.

Beliefs are not knowledge. In fact political beliefs can be the very impediment for becoming knowledgeable about that which we tend to overlook or discount. So while I have beliefs, I don’t credit them as being knowledge. They simply are not.

Note that by claiming to be an agnostic, I am not therefore what is called an independent or moderate. For however those labels may take a stance of agnosticism toward parties and partisanship, neither is shy about professing and acting upon their beliefs as if they were knowledgeable.

Well, what to do? How ought I participate in a democratic process? The essence of injustice for Plato is to act upon another without knowledge of the sphere in which they operate, without appropriate respect for the immanent law/nomos of the good in which they know how to effect. Justice is “doing one’s own work and not meddling in the proper work of another.” I cannot see how voting or assuming political office in our current system is consistent with that conception of justice. (See my earlier post “On Tyranny” for some background to my thinking on this.) The positive side of justice to “do one’s own work,” i.e. to accomplish what one knowingly can, obedient to the immanent laws of the production of good in the world. The baking of the baker and the carpentry of the carpenter are positive expressions of just action. But the presumptive meddling of the carpenter in the baking of the baker (or vice-versa) is unjust. Our system is unjust in the Platonic sense of being institutionalized meddling, whether Republican, Democrat, Green Party, Libertarian, etc.

The most heretical-sounding position toward which my philosophical education leads concerns voting. The world is complicated and not reducible to sound-bites and political platforms. Those who pursue zealously the opportunity to rule over others, despite their manifest ignorance concerning the mass of this complication, are hubristic in the extreme. To choose right-wing hubris over left-wing hubris or vice-versa is akin to choosing the color of the whips and chains used against others. Can we really vote knowingly when candidates must practice every form of disguise and keep us diverted from the fact of their own ignorance? Professions of ignorance and doubt are punished at the ballot box. Confident-sounding opinions are extravagantly rewarded. I don’t vote not out of apathy, but in open acknowledgment of my ignorance. I would like to know, but find that I don’t. I am still waiting for the barest evidence of knowledge (even knowledge of ignorance) in those who would presume to rule me and others.

To practice the “political art” of Plato and Socrates in modern America requires, or it seems to me, the following:

1. To pursue excellence in one’s craft.

2. To respect the excellence and autonomy of the other’s craft.

3. To acknowledge that where the other is expert, the other is authoritative for me.

4. Not to participate in systems of meddling, nor act as an authority where one is not — which includes not voting.

5. To pursue political knowledge and work to cure one’s own political ignorance.

6. To question the claims to political knowledge of those who would presume to rule, perhaps leading them or others into pursuing a more just course, such as a humble life in pursuit of excellent work.

7. To acknowledge openly and inquiringly my own ignorance, submitting it to whatever would cure me.

So — in the light of number 5, 6 and 7 above, feel free to correct me in the comments where you find me in error. Make clear to me political obligations that my ignorance keep me from seeing. I truly want to be a good citizen and contribute as I can to a just political order.

Any thoughts?

“Like-minded people do not fight.”

“Like-mindedness (homonoia) occurs among good people; base people, at any rate, both decide on and have an appetite for the same things but still harm each other. And it seems that like-mindedness is not univocal any more than friendship is. Rather, the primary and natural kind is excellent, which is why it is not possible for base people to be like-minded; but there is another kind according to which even base people can be like-minded whenever they both decide on and have an appetite for the same things. They have to desire the same things in such a way that it is possible for both to get what they desire; if they desire the sort of thing which both cannot have, then they fight.  But like-minded people do not fight.” — Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1241a

Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of like-mindedness (homonoia) in this passage, one version among the virtuous and one among the base, although really only the former type is like-mindedness in the fullest sense. The passage ends with the astonishing claim that “like-minded people do not fight.”

Is this so? Or better, assume that it is so, and ask what could Aristotle mean by “like-mindedness” such that it precludes fighting. Any thoughts?


See this link to an earlier discussion of the importance of commonality.

Plato on the communication of philosophy


             — Plato, Seventh Letter, J. Harward translation.