[Ohiogift] Limits of Reason (and of the Common Core)

[Will Fitzhugh]

"Rather, the problem is the insistence on abstract precision in political [educational] questions and thus on measuring practice by fine theoretical metrics." 

[substitute Education for Politics...]

Yuval Levin,
The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
New York: Basic Books, 2014, pp. 228-230


BURKE’S PRESCRIPTION AND THE LIMITS OF REASON 

Edmund Burke’s belief in the complexity of human nature and the insufficiency of choice leads him to be far more skeptical than most of his peers about reason’s potential for guiding political action. Burke routinely mocks the idea that the radicals’ rationalism had unleashed a great enlightenment upon a hitherto dark world. Having read, as he puts it, “more than he can justify to any thing but the spirit of curiosity of the works of these illuminators of the world,” Burke reports himself perplexed at their claims to a new path to wisdom. “Where the old authors whom he has read, and the old men whom he has conversed with, have left him in the dark, he is in the dark still.” 

There is more to this than a sarcastic jab at self-appointed beacons of reason. Burke believes that Enlightenment liberals’ and radicals’ emphasis on human reason begins from a misunderstanding of human nature—the mistaking of a part for the whole: “Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.” By ignoring the greater parts—especially the sentiments and attachments that move people in politics—one misses the most important factors behind political actions and social attachments. Many of the greatest challenges a statesman must confront arise from the less rational elements of the human character. Governing is, of course, a rational activity, and political thought must certainly be guided by some general principles, but it’s a mistake to assume that effective principles can be drawn from abstract premises rather than actual experience. 

The general must be derived from the particular, not the other way around. “It seems to me a preposterous way of reasoning, and a perfect confusion of ideas, to take the theories which learned and speculative men have made from [the practice of] government, and then, supposing it made on those theories which were made from it, to accuse government as not corresponding with them.” This confusion of the relationship between theory and practice in politics can have dangerous consequences, Burke warns, because as political life becomes an enactment of a theory rather than a response to particular social needs and wants, it becomes unmoored both from the ends that should guide politics and from the limits that should restrain it. He believes that the importation of theory too directly into political life is among the foremost errors both of the British government in its dealings with America in the late 1770s and of the revolutionaries in France a decade later. Again and again he warns against mistaking politics for metaphysics, and he describes his concerns in terms of three distinct but closely related worries. 

First, Burke believes that the attempt to apply what he calls metaphysical methods in politics confuses politicians and citizens about the purpose of politics— leading them to think that governing is about proving a point rather than advancing the interests and happiness of a nation. The trouble is not that principles do not belong in politics. On the contrary, Burke writes, “I do not put abstract ideas wholly out of any question; because I well know that under that name I should dismiss principles, and that without the guide and light of sound well understood principles, all reasonings in politics, as in everything else, would be only a confused jumble of particular facts and details, without the means of drawing out any sort of theoretical or practical conclusion.” 

Rather, the problem is the insistence on abstract precision in political questions and thus on measuring practice by fine theoretical metrics. This insistence can confuse us about what the purpose of politics actually is. Government is “a practical thing, made for the happiness of mankind,” Burke writes, not “to gratify the schemes of visionary politicians.” It runs into trouble, therefore, when statesmen “split and anatomiz[e] the doctrine of free government, as if it were an abstract question concerning metaphysical liberty and necessity and not a matter of moral prudence and natural feeling.” Burke’s objection is in essence methodological. Politics cannot be understood by a method too exacting and abstract for the subject. Since “man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations,” politics must be attuned to his motives and interests. This does not mean that no distinctions can be made in politics, but it does mean that hairsplitting, speculative distinctions are often far too fine to be of service. “No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter incapable of exact definition. But, though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable.” 


Levin, Yuval (2013-12-03). The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left 
(Kindle Locations 2403-2443). Basic Books. Kindle Edition. 



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“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
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