On holding opinions in a democracy
Hirschman, Albert 0.
I wish to inquire into an ancient theme, that of the microfoundation of a democratic society, the exemplary constitution of the democratic, rather than of Adorno's authoritarian, personality. I...
...Is it because, perhaps for the first time, I felt I would do better than my father: I surely would not be caught lacking a Weltanschauung by the time I was a grownup...
...Apparently it can be just as much a denial of individuality, personhood, and self—a sort of "escape from freedom" —to be outfitted with a full set of strong opinions on all the issues of the day as to suffer the "awful" (Chekhov) condition of not having any opinions whatever...
...Might they learn to value both having opinions and keeping an open mind, to mix the delights of winning an argument with the pleasures of being good listeners...
...An important influence on the quality of life of individual citizens could then be exerted in this indirect way...
...Given the "basic need" for identity in our culture, the forming and acquiring of opinions yields considerable utility to the individual...
...Ecology aside, the consensus has lately been that the social and political effects of economic growth are as beneficent as its direct effect on the individual's welfare...
...Hence there will be an overproduction of opinionated opinion...
...The most straightforward way of avoiding this overproduction would be for individuals to change the value system under which they operate...
...Under present cultural values these noxious side effects do not enter the individual calculus—they are what economists call external diseconomies...
...394 • DISSENT Notebook Some progress can perhaps be made with our topic if it is viewed from a collective rather than from an individual angle...
...Daddy doesn't have a Weltanschauung...
...I also showed that the possession of opinions will be the less effective in those respects, for the more the opinions are acquired through the wholesale embrace of an "ideology," the more pronounced is their "kneejerk" character...
...Correspondingly, indifference and lack of conviction have been denounced in the harshest terms, as illustrated by Dante and his scathing portrayal of the angels who would not take sides in the battle between God and the devil, and of the lukewarm in general...
...To him it is apparent that a well-ordered society requires the inverse arrangement: the best, not the worst, should be full of passionate intensity, that is, of sharply articulated and firmly held opinions...
...The desirability of economic progress has often been evaluated in this dual fashion: One looks not only at the impact of, say, economic growth on individual well-being, but also on its contribution to the maintenance and strengthening of a free democratic society...
...Vati hat keine Weltanschauung...
...In the end, the state's ruin would affect its citizens adversely, however much they may have prospered for a time...
...Although those were relatively tranquil days and I was not yet politicized I began in those years to ask myself various philosophical and semireligious questions...
...You know what...
...Social scientists and psychologists who hold forth so volubly on the virtues of individuality, personality, and identity might therefore do well to explore how to combine these desiderata with such democratic qualities as intellectual openness, flexibility, and readiness to appreciate a new argument, perhaps even pleasure in embracing it...
...Is it a good thing to have opinions...
...I cannot remember at all the nature of my questions, but distinctly recall running from that conversation to the other end of our apartment to exclaim to my sister: "Weisst Du was...
...In his short story "The Darling," Chekhov answers this question very much in the positive: SUMMER • 1989 393 Notebook And what was worst of all, [Olenka] no longer had any opinions whatever...
...At first blush, it seems that, like other aspects of the quality of life, such as clean air, "opinions" can be treated like consumer goods: the more the better as well as, in this case, the stronger the better...
...For a democracy to function well and to endure, it is essential, so it has been argued, that opinions not be fully formed in advance of the process of deliberation...
...The participants in this process—both the public at large and its representatives— should maintain a degree of openness or tentativeness in their opinions and be ready to modify them both as a result of the arguments put forward by the contending parties and, more simply, in the light of new information that could be developed in the course of public debates...
...She was filled with dread and bitterness [my emphasis...
...Not to have opinions is thus symptomatic of a basic lack and of a desperate predicament...
...There I suggested that holding many strong opinions is an ambiguous indicator of well-being: It may or may not lastingly fulfill the promise of endowing the holders with true identity and rich personality...
...SUMMER • 1989 395 Notebook Jerusalem: Memorial to Holocaust Victims Les Stone/IMPACT VISUALS 396 • DISSENT...
...It is, in fact, the opposite condition that has been widely commended by social scientists, psychologists, and philosophers: to have opinions very much of one's own...
...Wilhelm von Humboldt went perhaps farthest in this direction when he proclaimed individuality (Eigentiimlichkeit) and originality (Originalitat) as "that on which all the greatness of man rests in the last instance and after which he must ceaselessly strive...
...I must have been perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, so it took place sometime in the late twenties...
...But presumably it is not harmful, and may in special circumstances be useful, to have some idea about the human type one would wish to foster in a democracy...
...At the time, my relations with my father were good and trusting and those with my older sister were then becoming very close as they would remain for many years...
...To open up this problem, I shall use the device of comparing "opinions" to other valued possessions of the individual, such as ordinary consumer goods...
...Without a political process that manifests at least some aspiration toward this admittedly somewhat idyllic picture, democracy loses its legitimacy and will thus be endangered...
...A few centuries later, much the same value judgment found another famous poetic expression: The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity...
...Perhaps, to paraphrase a famous Chicago theorem, there ain't no such thing as a free ride...
...In the meantime, however, we have come to appreciate that this "time-saving" feature of political parties, particularly of those with an ideological bent (those that in Germany were called Weltanschauungsparteien) and the ensuing "free ride" to a full set of strong opinions, comes at a considerable cost...
...The purpose is not to declare that opinions are "just like," say, durables, but to bring out some characteristic differences...
...Finally, it is possible that I remember this moment—including its spatial attributes—so clearly because it encapsulates and portends a question that was to remain with me for the rest of my life—to the point where I am just now, some sixty years later, ready to venture some thoughts on how desirable it is to be equipped with a complete set of firm ideas, beliefs, or opinions...
...But surely such possession, widely diffused among the citizenry, also has important effects, positive and negative, on the character of society...
...Why do I remember this not particularly brilliant utterance so well...
...When she had Kukin, or Pustovalov or, later, the veterinary surgeon, Olenka could explain it all and give her opinions about anything you like, but now there was the same emptiness in her head and in her heart as in her yard outside...
...Old-fashioned as it may seem, this sort of reasoning may well be worth refurbishing in conjunction with the problem at hand...
...Or is it rather because the moment I said it I felt that it was my indignation and my outburst that were foolish—after all, we remember best those mortifying moments in which we blunder, stumble, or make ourselves otherwise ridiculous...
...At the same time, if carried beyond some point, the process has dangerous side effects—it is hazardous for the functioning and stability of the democratic order...
...and John Rawls, in his Theory of Justice, included self-respect (presumably based on identity, character, and "opinions") among the "primary goods" that a well-ordered society must supply to its citizens...
...My father (a surgeon), had a questioning and skeptical mind, but lacked the defense of irony so that I recall him as a bit melancholy and occasionally even perplexed...
...In a powerful passage he singled out these wretches as deprived of "the hope of death" and relegated them to the vestibule of Hell for the reason that, if they were let in, the damned would have someone to look down on...
...In conclusion I return to the earlier argument that evaluated the utility of having opinions from the individual, rather than collective, point of view...
...Up to the eighteenth century, for example, political economists and philosophers frequently worried about the corrupting effect on the state of increases in wealth...
...Here Chekhov seems to be saying that not to have any opinions is tantamount to not having individuality, personhood, identity, character, self...
...Introducing the knee-jerk concept complicates the appraisal of the benefits that flow from having opinions...
...But such harmony between the direct and indirect, or individual and social, effects was not always taken for granted...
...Chekhov's story itself intimates that to have a lot of ready-made opinions can be as ridiculous as not to have any opinions is "bitter...
...You see, for instance, a bottle, or the rain, or a peasant driving in his cart, but what the bottle is for, or the rain, or the peasant, and what is the meaning of it, you can't say, and could not even for a thousand rubles...
...I realize that the formation of that sort of personality is like happiness in that it normally eludes a direct quest...
...I start with a recollection from childhood or early adolescence...
...It goes back to Berlin, the city where I spent the first eighteen years of my life, from 1915 to 1933, when I left for Paris...
...As is well known, ideological relics of this sort have considerable potential for mischief...
...The suspicion arises that this emphasis is rooted in a long aristocratic tradition and has not been suitably modified by the subsequent, still rather young democratic age...
...In short, vacillation, indifference, or weakly held opinions have long met with contempt, while approval and admiration have been bestowed on firmness, fullness, and articulateness of opinion...
...A portion of the paper appeared in the May 1989 issue of American Economic Review...
...Closer to our time, Erik Erikson stressed the struggle to achieve identity as a crucial formative life experience...
...Yeats explains here how it is that, as he says earlier in "The Second Coming," "things fall apart...
...And she who has no self can hardly have any self-respect...
...She saw the objects about her and understood what was going on, but she could not form an opinion about anything and did not know what to talk about...
...Not only social thought, but much of Western culture has endorsed this position and has celebrated the value of exhibiting strong opinions and of taking a principled stand, to the point where there is even some doubt whether the economic principle of decreasing returns applies to the good under examination...
...Let me try to put the matter in the economist's language...
...Although the goods we buy in the market are unambiguously conducive to material welfare, opinions are not necessarily the key to individuality and self-respect...
...Now one way of acquiring opinions in the opposite, personality enriching manner is to give them definite shape only after they have passed through intense confrontation with other views, that is, through the process of democratic deliberation...
...One day we had a conversation where I must have asked him questions to which he frankly avowed not having the answers...
...Yet matters are hardly that simple...
...Thus far I have been inquiring into the contribution to individual satisfaction and happiness that is made by the acquisition and possession of a set of many-sided and strongly formulated opinions...
...It turns out, therefore, that the public interest in democratic decision making converges nicely with the private interest in forming opinions in such a manner as to enhance one's self-respect.0 This article is based on a presentation given at the Free University of Berlin in December 1988, when the university awarded the author an honorary degree...
...And how awful it is not to have any opinions...
...For all his Olenka does in her happier moments is to parrot, each time with considerable conviction and aplomb, the opinions of her successive husbands and lovers...
...This chapter had the demonstrative heading "Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of WellBeing...
...Humboldt's views strongly influenced John Stuart Mill, who cited and explicated them at length in the third chapter of his essay On Liberty (1859...
...Recent contributions to the theory of democracy have stressed the role of deliberation in the democratic process...
...We express our doubts about the value of the Downs mechanism by designating those who take advantage of it as "knee-jerk liberals," or "knee-jerk conservatives...
...If this view has merit then the traditional strong emphasis of Western culture on the virtue of strong opinions turns out to be curiously wrongheaded...
...it all seems to depend on some further, complex specifications regarding the more or less "autonomous" manner in which the opinions have been formed...
...When Anthony Downs wrote his Economic Theory of Democracy, he thought it was one of the advantages of political parties to offer citizens a full range of ready-made and firm opinions on all the issues of the day...
Vol. 36 • July 1989 • No. 3
