The Philosopher in the City: The Moral Dimensions of Urban Politics
Arkes, Hadley
THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE CITY: THE MORAL DIMENSIONS OF URBAN POLITICS Hadley Arkes / Princeton University Press / $27.50, $6.95 paper Edward C. Banfield This book is an effort to show how...
...the question is practical precisely because there is no principle by which it may be coped with, let alone solved...
...This is gibberish for I conjecture that prostitution will continue to be disreputable...
...Arkes would say...
...Perhaps the sentence says that the portents are intimate...
...Arkes began by saying...
...If this means that love is not a chance occurrence, it is another factual error...
...with another person would be unthinkable unless one were motivated by the deepest personal love...
...It puts a burden on the reader...
...It must "be found in principle-in a principle, we might say, that begins with the awareness of principle itself and of beings that alone have access to the understanding of principle...
...Racial discrimination, slavery, prostitution, abortion, and pornography are all morally wrong (that Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas would have disagreed with each other and with Mr...
...We pass over the question of the force of the words "another person" and "personal" as well as the factual error (when he was running for President, Jimmy Carter said that such a thing is thinkable) to get to the next sentence: "But to say that two people are bound together in love is to say that they are connected by a more than casual attraction...
...This brings me to my main complaint...
...The wrong of prostitution, for example, "cannot be found in any contingent reckonings about venereal disease, the stimulation of crime, or the break-up of families...
...Moral principles turn out to be a good deal less knowable and certain than Mr...
...What is it to "understand" the things that make one worthy...
...One cannot address a practical question at its "root...
...Consider-what I believe is a fair example-the following on prostitution: "[T]here is nothing precisely equal to the intimacy of the sexual act and the moral portents that envelop it.'' This has a magisterial sound, but what exactly does it mean...
...Arkes does not recognize the difference between philosophy and politics...
...First, the matter of style...
...The pretentiousness of such writing is merely ridiculous...
...But that cannot be what it means...
...Politics, properly understood, is the activity of drawing these moral inferences from the nature of man...
...By the same token, an act that is wrong "of necessity" ("categorically' ') ought to be forbidden by law however benign its consequences...
...Let us pass over the question of the force of the words "inescapably" (are some implications escapable...
...Arkes says that he thinks the argument against it "finally holds" but he grants that it is "tangled and complicated...
...Except as a principle implicit in the nature of man which declares an act to be wrong "of necessity," law has no business interfering with it, no matter what may be its consequences for a public...
...Sexual intercourse...
...These words are at the very end of the book...
...Moral truths, he tells us, are as knowable and as certain as mathematical truths...
...and "sentiment" (is some love not a sentiment...
...In the last analysis," he writes, "it may indeed be only the philosopher who is capable of addressing, at their root, the practical questions of public policy that arise in the city.'' He fails to see (perhaps his vision is blocked by his metaphor) that the "root" of a practical question is fundamentally different from the question itself...
...Does it make sense to say that an act is "equal" (let alone "precisely") to another in intimacy...
...One thinks something important may be hidden away in the verbiage, and so one must constantly ask oneself: Is it possible to make sense of this...
...The rehashes are especially irksome because they have little or nothing to do with the argument of the book...
...Does the word "and" in the quoted sentence connect "portents" with "act" or with "intimacy...
...And that it too is not precisely equalled by any other act...
...Persons accustomed to dealing with mathematical truths will be perplexed at the equivocal status of some moral ones: prostitution, for example...
...If the author had begun with an extended consideration of these imperfections he would have been led to acknowledge that a politician (the word "statesman" is an attempted evasion of the issue) must act generally in an unprincipled or even wrong way if he is to perform his indispensable function of finding the terms on which we can live together in society...
...He begins the next sentence: "If I am wrong...
...authentic" (are some sentiments inauthentic...
...Surely it does more than imply it...
...Arkes is aware that this is an imperfect world and therefore moral principles may often be inexpedient to apply...
...They are true "of necessity...
...If not, it must say that no act equals in intimacy the sex act plus its moral portents...
...But Mr...
...If to establish the truth of moral principles it is necessary to depend upon the perfection of "our" moral judgment, they are not as knowable and as certain as mathematical ones...
...it is the great error of our time to have been misled by utilitarianism and positivism into thinking that consequences matter...
...One of the main contentions of that argument is that the consequences of a policy, as described by social scientists or others, are irrelevant ("largely irrelevant," Mr...
...If Mr...
...Prostitution inescapably implies that the intimacy of sexual intercourse need not be connected to any authentic sentiment of love...
...Arkes carries the thing too far...
...Arkes does not say so in so many words, he must think that prostitution would be no less wrong even if it were a sure cure for venereal disease, crime, the break-up of families, and all other social ills...
...gambling, drinking, and some zoning (e.g., against fast- food places on highways) are not wrong in principle...
...Then he "estimates" that "our perfected moral judgement will finally support even more strongly our traditional reluctance to regard prostitution as a legitimate occupation on the same plane of respectability as nursing, carpentry, or tailoring...
...In my judgment the author, a professor of political science at Amherst College, is profoundly wrong about the-nature of politics, law, and moral truth...
...In part it is because he is verbose and altogether lacking in clarity...
...For clarification of these claims, the author is content to refer the reader to Kant...
...Are we to assume that this intimacy, i.e., without love, is also enveloped in moral portents...
...Chapter by chapter he rakes over the details of stuff from the history of constitutional law and now-forgotten controversies about the views of Jonathan Kozol, Kenneth Clark, Floyd Hunter, and others...
...Matters are not clarified on the next page...
...The next sentence says: "And that connection [what connection?] finds its proper ground when it proceeds from an understanding of those things which makes one's partner truly worthy of being loved...
...But its confusion is a serious matter...
...Unfortunately, it is far from successful...
...Arkes had saved all those un-needed words for another occasion and had said what he means straight out, his book would still be tedious...
...In part this is because he writes at length on matters which have little to do with his subject...
...His book is painfully tedious...
...This must mean that love is not love except as: a) the loved one is worthy (let us pass over the "truly") of being loved, and b) the lover understands the worthiness of the loved one (let us pass over "of those things which make...
...They may be drawn as inferences from the nature of that creature which can grasp, in the first place, the idea of morals, and which has the freedom, therefore, to choose between right and wrong...
...Statesmen, he tells us, have "an obligation to be prudent and reasonable...
...Whatever portents are, can they "envelop" sexual, or for that matter other, acts...
...I am aware that many people think this is the way academic books should be written...
...Although Mr...
...Arkes does not note it...
...THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE CITY: THE MORAL DIMENSIONS OF URBAN POLITICS Hadley Arkes / Princeton University Press / $27.50, $6.95 paper Edward C. Banfield This book is an effort to show how principles of morality may be applied to certain problems of the American city...
...From first to last the book is written in pretentious gibberish...
...Arkes on some of these matters is worth noting, although Mr...
...What makes one "worthy" of being loved...
...What are ' 'moral portents'' ? I suppose they are signs of moral things to come, but what things can these be...
...I]f one puts new precepts into men who are imperfect containers, the precepts themselves may come to be despised, and those men may erupt into evils that are worse yet...
...The proposition is that prostitution implies that there may be intimacy without love...
Vol. 14 • November 1981 • No. 11
