A Conflict of Visions
Sowell, Thomas
A CONFLICT OF VISIONS Thomas Sowell/William Morrow and Co./$15.95 Herbert Schlossberg Several months ago I participated in agreement and disagreement emerge a small conference on economics at...
...It is neither a paradigm nor a nection with each other, patterns of theory, but something more basic...
...Sowell's Enlightenment orientation ought to propel him headlong into the unconstrained vision, but...
...Sowell But there is another Thomas Sowell compares these visions to maps be-besides the economist and polemicist, cause they serve to guide us through the and that is the historian of ideas...
...He remarks, quo...
...As if to underscore the health...
...unable to detect that he is an adherent And that is why I think the days of of the constrained vision...
...One of the low points of the ately apparent...
...We might think of it as Idols for Destruction (Thomas Nelson...
...But that is purely a funcsions of this view are often accom- tion of the sources he selected...
...Adherents of the unconstrained vi- tives, especially those among the latter sion regard such arguments as having who might better be called libertarians...
...He should tions are linked together logically...
...But to say we must respect an idea merely by virtue of its antiquity is hardly more satisfactory than to say we must respect another by virtue of its novelty...
...The issues here go far beyond Sowell's two visions, which makes me wonder if these visions are as fundamental as they are made to appear in A Conflict of Visions...
...All of us view life's issues through the status of permanent victimhood...
...But there was one thing that in Sowell too—but she lamented troubling him, and that was the doc- the fact that in such people there was trine of sin, the acceptance of which he no connection between their ethical thought was virtually a sign of maturi- position and any metaphysical foundaty...
...y n this gap in Sowell's thinking, I be-And since the sources of health are JL lieve we have something related to systemic, efforts to alter the funda- the recent bloodletting between oldmentals of the system can only destroy style conservatives and neoconservait...
...If a book helps of periods when the transitions are un- us to consider ideas in fruitful ways usually rapid and therefore disori- that we could not do before, we have enting...
...T here are many implications of this discontinuity between the ethic and the fundamental convictions that ought to fuel it...
...It's natural for such people, when facing the discontinuities with their own assumptions, to head back for the next line of trenches, which is libertarianism...
...that relying on economic the Dutchman didn't attempt to refute incentives without abridging them with it (and couldn't do so when he was coercive measures leads to economic challenged...
...Well, someone replies, he didn't choose Some of the specific positions of the anybody from the ancient world—two sides should make the antithesis maybe that's characteristic of the econclearer: omist thinking about history...
...He concluded that such was indeed possible...
...Paul...
...Here he muses on persistent something is true or false before we themes of controversy in Western soci- have begun to analyze the issue...
...A quarter-century ago an expo- Good Pagan's Failure almost half a cennent of the unconstrained vision, polit- tury ago...
...On vital issues like defense policy, the sanctity of human life, and the legalization of what some call victimless- crimes, the two are at loggerheads...
...that the wisdom inherited from the course of his presentation, this the past should receive a respectful au-employee of the World Council of dience...
...About ten years ago the Rutgers biologist David Ehrenfeld observed that kind of behavior among the clergy and speculated on whether someone could belong to one religion while thinking he belonged to another...
...immutable evil is a given evil is produced by Hobbes, Hayek, and Schumpeter, but the system not Cromwell, Niebuhr, and Eliot...
...a web of unarticulated presuppositions...
...They cause us to sense that sions...
...war is to be ex- war is irrational Evidently Sowell's interests and reading pected list are firmly rooted in a tradition that American Revolution French Revolution checks and balances control by the elite excludes those who take religion knowledge from expe- knowledge from seriously...
...the connection...
...In the political arena, it's not likely that the recent correspondence of interests between conservatives and libertarians has much staying power...
...This complexities that otherwise would con-is the one we meet in A Conflict of Vi- fuse us...
...he and his fellows begin wondering why they have those convictions and cannot come up with a satisfactory answer, the society begins coming apart at the seams...
...Thus it provides us with a who has retained some of the most valuable tool for a variety of uses...
...But the social atomism of that philosophy doesn't provide any nurture for an ethic based on love, and people who become disenchanted by that vacuum can find the utopian vistas of the unconstrained vision enticing...
...And if a reviewer wishes These ruminations should not be the author had done more, why, let him thought to detract from Thomas get busy and do it himself...
...I'm re-"the limitations of man are at the minded in this of Rosalind Murray, heart" of the constrained vision, but Gilbert Murray's daughter and Arnold the word sin does not appear in the Toynbee's first wife, who published The book...
...It's one thing to describe wisdom in organic or systemic terms, as Sowell does, but someone who takes that position without believing in a transcendent source by which wisdom entered into the society is ultimately engaging in a sort of ancestor worship...
...Kateb then went on to sweep this in- tion from which it could be said to sight under the rug, but the fact that spring...
...no validity, functioning purely as It's instructive to examine Sowell's cast apologies for the injustices of the status of characters in.that light...
...that society should be wage laws...
...the be encouraged by this attention, as I patterns are too consistent to be hap-am, because it suggests that his work penstance...
...rience reason It seems plain that the unconstrained fidelity sincerity vision entails a decisive repudiation of tradeoffs solutions the religious faith that made European incentives intentions politics civilization what it was...
...Although he points to people ern intelligentsia from Christian faith...
...It is a form of economics prudence rightness the Promethian rebellion, and is as old as the serpent's bait: "You shall be as One of the strengths of Sowell's gods...
...One of the marks of the constrained vision is its respect for the wisdom of the past...
...Since these people are more prone for example, that the partisans of the to impute base motives to their oppo- constrained vision don't talk -much nents than the other vision is, expres- about justice...
...When the ethical norms that distinguished Western civilization from others are left hanging in midair because they have been severed from their roots, they may still appear attractive to many...
...Yet his predi- the Sowells—the intellectuals who selections appear in other ways that will tain the Christian ethic without its leap out at many readers...
...that law should be based on Churches made a point by citing with what the Constitution says rather than disdain the opinion of Thomas Sowell what the judge prefers...
...In wealth...
...But Sowell's exemplars of the book is the exhaustiveness with which constrained vision are themselves ex-he shows the implications of the vi- amples of the withdrawal of the Westsions...
...The elements of the constrained vi- he of the constrained vision—to make sion may be inferred from the name...
...He believes fckmdations—are numbered...
...That sort of confusion, it apTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987 45...
...Ludicrous idea!—and ap- protected from criminals rather than parently unworthy of refutation, since the reverse...
...When 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1987 pears, is present in the adherents of Sowell's achievement in this volume, both visions, and may be characteristic which is considerable...
...Hamilton but not Edwards...
...Why Godwin but not Wilhuman nature is human nature is malleable infinitely berforce...
...the constrained vision...
...Limitations inherent in the structure of the world do not permit us to build social systems that transcend them...
...that schools that unemployment among black should teach the basics and discipline youths is exacerbated by minimum troublemakers...
...A vision finally issues forth in theory, being Herbert Schlossberg is the author of its foundation...
...no complaints...
...They cohere as they are em-is considered dangerous, hence that braced by either what he calls the con-some of it is successful in convincing strained vision or the unconstrained vi-people that there is no future in milking sion...
...the lens of one or the other...
...fruitful ideas of the civilization that is Sowell keeps an admirably even hand now being overthrown, but who has throughout this analysis, and those not not accepted the theological foundafamiliar with his other works may be tion of those ideas...
...That's the sort of thing Sowell puts up with from the know-nothings, not the most bashful of whom are the C owell's answer is that the compo- know-nothings who speak for black 0 nents of both clusters of convicestablishment organizations...
...The good pagan is running on he recognized his difficulty throws into his memory and is receiving no sustesharper relief the failure of Sowell— nance from any external source...
...That is what is happening now...
...There is an interesting contrast between Sowell's intellectual pilgrimage and that of the organization I mentioned earlier...
...And why do those who discomedic nature of Sowell's notion, he agree with one of those propositions added: "And he's black...
...Marx, for example) who do not fit As he says of the clusters of convictions neatly into either category, the scheme that define the two visions, that cannot has ramifications in virtually every be a coincidence...
...tend to disagree with all of them...
...it is relevant a reflection of Sowell's own faith...
...Rather, it seems to be field of human endeavor...
...he turns against his natural home in favor of a moral system that is rooted in reality...
...A vieties, and considers why it is that on sion is our sense of how the world important subjects bearing scant con- works...
...But then why does he use Shaw but not Shaw's Constrained Unconstrained good friend and debating adversary man is egocentric man is perfectible Chesterton...
...Meanwhile the World Council of Churches departs from the constrained vision implied by Christian theology and turns instead to the pursuit of fantasy...
...He to the state, the family, the school, the is, I would judge, one of the finer ex-law court, the academic discipline, and amples of Enlightenment man, one so on...
...She admired the good pagan's ical scientist George Kateb, wrote a moral sense, the instincts that lead him book extolling Utopia as the hope of to choose the right—she would admire humanity...
...Why do those who be-event was a paper by a Dutch econo- lieve government should confine its ac-mist, a gentleman who works for an tivities largely to protecting society organization in Geneva known chiefly from its enemies also believe that justhese days for dizzy rhetoric lauding tice has nothing to do with equality of the compassion of Marxist caudillos...
...Posner rather than St...
...A CONFLICT OF VISIONS Thomas Sowell/William Morrow and Co./$15.95 Herbert Schlossberg Several months ago I participated in agreement and disagreement emerge a small conference on economics at for reasons that do not seem immediOxford...
...Why did panied by pungent remarks about the he choose Friedman rather than moral inadequacies of those holding to Moses...
Vol. 20 • September 1987 • No. 9
