[lit-ideas] Philosophers of Empire
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- Date: Fri, 2 May 2014 05:58:26 -0400 (EDT)
What is a philosophical analysis of the concept of 'empire'?
L. Helm's position seems to agree with that of Hanson, as cited in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
"Classics professor and war historian Victor Davis Hanson dismisses the
notion of an American empire altogether, mockingly comparing it to other
empires: "We do not send out proconsuls to reside over client states, which in
turn impose taxes on coerced subjects to pay for the legions. Instead,
American bases are predicated on contractual obligations — costly to us and
profitable to their hosts. We do not see any profits in Korea, but instead
accept the risk of losing almost 40,000 of our youth to ensure that Kias can
flood our shores and that shaggy students can protest outside our embassy in
Seoul.""
Philosophy of Empire.
L. Helm raises an interesting topic or point -- how to define 'empire' and
how to make sense of allegations such as "The United States of America
is/was an Empire'.
What interests me about L. Helm's stance on the topic is methodological,
and McEvoy should feel free to add his view on 'stipulative definitions'.
Rather, I should take a 'Griceian' account. After all, Grice repeatedly said
that philosophers are into 'conceptual analysis' -- never mind the concept
of what. And what they do is to provide definitions which display necessary
and sufficient conditions for the analysis of the concept chosen for
philosophical inquiry.
Here they keyword is indeed POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, but the addition of
"United States of America" brings historicity into an otherwise theoretical or
abstract question. So let's revise.
In a message dated 5/1/2014 4:22:37 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Various “assertions” have been made alleging that the U.S. is an empire,
but I’ve seen no “arguments” in the sense that you produce evidence and
then draw a conclusion from the evidence that comprises the end point of an
argument; ergo the U.S. is an empire. I think of Niall Ferguson asserting
that the U.S. is an empire, just not a very good one since it doesn't do
any of the things that earlier empires did allows him to get away with a very
soft definition, something along the lines of “the U.S. is the most
powerful nation in the world therefore it is an empire.”"
I like the idea of some definitions of 'empire' being soft. This has
various sides to it. For one, 'empire' WAS the keyword in mainstream political
philosophy. I read from
"Political Theory of Empire and Imperialism"
in the Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 13: 211-235 -- available
online:
"The study of empire," the author writes, is
"a theme in the history of political thought" and was
"pioneered by a few scholars working with a broadly Cambridge-school
approach, most prominently Anthony Pagden, James Tully, J.G.A. Pocock, Richard
Tuck, and more recently David Armitage."
"Pagden's early, seminal studies explored debates over the legitimation of
Spanish rule in the New World, debates conducted in language borrowed from
Aristotelian psychology (natural slave and child) and Roman legal and
political thought (imperium, dominium, orbis terrarum)."
"In illustrating how empires generated new states and political forms, and
shaped modern political ideologies such as democratic republicanism, Pagden
made a powerful case for the centrality of empire to political theory. His
most recent books, written for more popular audiences, stress the possibly
“insuperable future dilemmas” facing the polities created in the wake of
formal empires (Pagden 2001, p. 160) and, controversially, the “perpetual
enmity” between Europe and Asia (Pagden 2008)."
"Tully placed questions connected to empire at the heart of both LOCKE's
thought and modern constitutionalism, as I discuss further below. Pocock
(2005, ch. 2 [1973]) insisted, from a professedly “antipodean” perspective,
that British history and political thought must be understood in imperial and
global terms. More recently, his magisterial volumes exploring
Enlightenment thought by way of a study of the contexts of Gibbon's Decline
and Fall
of the Roman Empire have emphasized the global orientation of the
enlightened histories that were so prominent a feature of the intellectual
landscape
(Pocock 1999–2005). Pocock explores the wide range of meanings of “empire”
at the time, as well as what he calls the era's “crisis of the seaborne
empires” (Pocock 1999, Vol. 4, p. 227) and the anxieties on the part of so
many political and social thinkers of the time about the disorders of the
global commerce that was supposed to succeed the age of conquests. As Tuck
(1999) has argued, early-modern theorists of subjective rights conceived the
sovereign individual in terms of the sovereign state and vice versa. They
worked out their theories, with “often brutal implications” for indigenous
and non-European peoples, partly in response to two key practical problems
arising from European commercial and imperial expansion: struggles over
freedom and control of trade and navigation in Asia, and states' efforts to
legitimate their settlement colonies in the New World (Tuck 1999, p. 108)."
It seems that after Locke, Mill figured large in justifying empire. We are
then talking about mainstream political philosophers concerned with a
crucial concept, and no doubt struggling with a conceptual definition of it.
It should be granted that Locke and Mill are notably British rather than
American, even if the study, within political philosophy, or analysis of the
concept of 'empire' may have been practiced by American political
philosophers as well.
The centrality of the task DEFINING 'empire' I also found, especifically,
at
http://www.protevi.com/john/Empire.pdf
who cares to refer to this set of 'necessary and sufficient conditions'
which may relate to L. Helm's idea of some definitions of 'empire' being
'soft', while what we need is a 'hard' one that does rely on some sort of
'reductive' if not 'reductionist' analysis of 'empire' to its basics.
The author writes:
"Is the United States on the verge of becoming an empire?"
"There is no finite set of characteristics for, say, “empire” that serve
as necessary
and sufficient conditions for membership in that category."
What we need is what Grice would call a "CONCEPTUAL" analysis (vide his
"Conceptual analysis and the province of philosophy", in "Studies in the Way
of Words" -- this essay is particularly apt, since Grice sees the role of
the philosopher as that of providing conceptual analysis not necessarily for
his own clarification. A philosopher can engage in philosophical analysis
for the sake of helping others. He grants that his main motivation has to do
with questions of defining concepts HE finds troubles with).
The author of the above link goes on:
"To start, the concept of empire belongs to a group of other concepts for
ancient systems of geo-sociopolitical order, including nomadic warrior bands
(with a leader who is first among equals -- primus inter
pares -- and who divvies up the booty they plunder from other groups);
central place cities (with large
scale slave-based agriculture and tending to mixed regimes w/ monarchial
elements); and gateway cities
(tending to commercial republic; expansionist democracy; forming leagues
and allies)."
"These cities tended to have interludes of tyranny – one-man absolute rule
– on their way from aristocracy to
democracy or mixed regimes."
"Finally, there is an important concept, developed in the ancient world,
for inter-state relations,
“hegemony”, which is leadership by one unit of other units formally equal
in “rights” but materially
unequal in power."
"When we talk about the concept of "empire" we must at first distinguish
the geopolitical and civic political
senses of the term."
"Geopolitically, empire is the domination by one group of a large number
of other
groups spread over a large territory. In civic political terms, we talk
about imperial rule as absolute
monarchy, large bureaucracy, elaborate regulatory codes: “big gummit” in
other words. On the side of
the people, an empire tends to be composed of a few influential rich
families and a mass of isolated and
relatively powerless “citizens.”"
The author is concerned with what after Locke we may term 'nominal' versus
'real' definitions. A real definition, however, has the risk of relying on
an obscure idea of 'essence'. But it seems that any reference to a
condition being both NECESSARY and sufficient may always be criticised as
'essentialist' if not 'stipulative'.
The author goes on:
"(Now if you insist that I answer the essentialist question at this point,
I would have to say the US for the
most part works hegemonically rather than imperially – the threats are
enough to so constrain other
states’ options in both domestic and foreign policy that we exert
effective control over large parts of the
world – but to show we mean business, an invasion is sometimes necessary,
in which case we shift to
imperial action. The long history of our control of Central and South
America shows this: was
fomenting the Pinochet takeover in Chile – that other September 11 – an
imperial or hegemonic act?
What about the IMF’s role in Argentina in past years?)"
"As soon as we talk history, these conceptual distinctions are
problematized."
"Rome forms an interesting case where these ideal distinctions are
finessed on the ground.
Most of the geopolitical expanse of what we call the Roman Empire was
gained when its civic
political structure was that of a republic."
Back to Helm's post. He goes on:
"To assert as some do that “empires operate differently nowadays” is an
assertion in search of an argument.
To put it another way, if Rome, Britain, Spain, France and the Netherlands
were at one time empires but the U.S. is “a different sort of empire,”
then where do we find in this a definition of what an empire is? And if you
reply that the new definition is merely whatever the U.S. happens to be,
then how is that a definition of “empire”?"
Well, indeed, definitions can be intensional (the ones I prefer) or
EXtensional, as per by enumeration. I would think in terms of set-theory, the
idea would be. Let "E" be the class we call "Empire" (as per a Venn diagram,
say). We then define "E" extensionally:
E = {Rome, Britain, USA}
I'm sure there is an extensional way to proceed to represent the fact that
Rome, Britain and USA, while they HELP to define, extensionally, the
'set', "Empire", do not yet provide the set's full extension. Extensional
definitions avoid dealing with INTENSIONS. IntenSionally, one could define
"Empire" without reference to members of the set. This leads us to _analyse_
"Empire" in terms of more basic characteristics which, jointly, should provide
_necessary and sufficient_ conditions for the appropriate use of "Empire"
in utterances like, "... is an Empire". E.g.: "Rome is an Empire", "Britain
is an Empire". And so on.
Helm goes on:
"For the above reasons and many others, those who think about the modern
era in mega-terms, especially Fukuyama and Huntington do not apply the term “
empire” to the U.S. Fukuyama doesn’t see the U.S. as being unique,
merely the best example of a Liberal Democracy. He sees all nations becoming
Liberal Democracies in the future. A state needs to become on if it is to
succeed economically. In fact, the most successful nations already are,
either wholly or partly. Think of the nations which aren’t successful today
and the common explanation for why they are not is that they are not Liberal
Democracies and do not have modern economies that participate in the “world
economy.” Huntington, without addressing economies, as I recall, argued
that wars will continue between Civilizations (using the common definition
of “civilization” which he references in Clash of Civilizations) occurring
along “fault lines,” those being the borders where a nation of one
civilization is up against that of another, as in the case of Pakistan and
India
for example. He also uses the term “core state.” Within most
civilizations there is a “core state.” The U.S. is the “core state” in the
“West”
civilization. Russia is the “core state” within the Eastern Orthodox
civilization. In Huntington’s terms, the U.S. is the most powerful nation in “
the West.” Things have indeed changed, and there are no more empires in
the sense that Britain, Spain, France and the Netherlands were empires up
until WWII the end of WWII. Now you have “core states” and spheres of
influence. The problem with the Middle East isn’t that their states aren’t in
the world economy as Liberal Democracies; it is that they don’t have a “
core state.”"
Interesting. If one disallows extensional definitions, which tend,
granted, to look pretty 'unclarifying', we should look for those basic
characteristics, in geopolitical terms, which will help us define 'empire'.
Helm is
right that other notions play an interesting role, such as 'state', and
'liberal democracy', and these ideas are developed in the second link provided
above.
On top of all that, a rather side issue, which seems to have some sort of
'lingustic effect'. The phrase 'American empire' IS used, when it comes to
architecture! So one has to be careful!
Cheers,
Speranza
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Empire_(style) informs us that
"American Empire" is a classical style of American arts and architecture"
"It gained its greatest popularity in the U.S. after 1810 and is
considered a robust phase of the classical style."
"As an early-19th-century design movement in the United States, it
encompassed architecture, furniture and other decorative arts, as well as the
visual arts."
"The Red Room at the White House is a fine example of American Empire
style."
I guess Jacqueline Kennedy knew all about it!
"A simplified version of American Empire furniture, often referred to as
the Grecian style,"
not to be confused with the Griceian style,
"generally displayed plainer surfaces in curved forms, highly figured
mahogany veneers, and sometimes gilt-stencilled decorations."
"This Americanized interpretation of the Empire style continued in
popularity in conservative regions outside the major metropolitan centers well
past the mid-nineteenth century."
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