Better Know Your Impeachment Process: Black & Bobbitt, Pt. 1

Better know your impeachment process episode # . . . whatever.

Today I'm going to start sharing quotes from some of the outstanding legal scholars who have addressed the topic of impeachment. I'll start with "Impeachment: A Handbook, New Edition," by Charles Black (1974) & Phillip Bobbitt (2018). The late Charles Black was an outstanding constitutional scholar back when I was in law school. He wrote the original edition of this book in 1974, as Richard Nixon was nearing impeachment (he resigned before he was actually impeached). In 2018, constitutional scholar Phillip Bobbitt (Columbia) updated Black's work, keeping Black's original text intact but updating in light of the Clinton impeachment and other legal developments. I'll regularly share pertinent quotes from this & other works to allow readers to get an overview of the parameters of the impeachment process from some of the best minds who've written on the topic.

The following is a quote from Black's original 1974; thus, the "I" is Black and the president to whom he refers is Richard Nixon:

To countervail (as I hope) my lifelong political set against just about all of this president’s positions, I confess to a very strong sense of the dreadfulness of the step of removal, of the deep wounding such a step must inflict on the country, and thus approach it as one would approach high-risk major surgery, to be resorted to only when the rightness of diagnosis and treatment is sure.

Black, Charles L. Jr.. Impeachment (p. 4). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Black next considers the role of we citizens in this process. Read & consider his words carefully:

This book is for the citizen. What part ought the citizen to play in the process of impeachment and removal? My own answer would be that, for the most part, our attitude as to any impeachment ought to be that of vigilant waiting. The impeachment process, whether “judicial,” “nonjudicial,” “criminal,” or “noncriminal,” resembles the judicial criminal procedure in that it is confided by the Constitution to responsible tribunals—the House of Representatives and the Senate—and in that these bodies are duty-bound to act on their own views of the law and the facts, as free as may be of partisan political motives and pressures. In this process, a snow of telegrams ought to play no part.

Id., p. 5.

The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained by Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal

2016 publication

This book addresses a topic that neither author can quite explain and don't claim to understand. If you're looking for sure answers or reassurance, this book won't provide it for you. If you're looking for debunkers, this book won't please you. But if you're looking for an honest and diligent inquiry into events that seem just too damned weird by two men who seem--at least on the written page--quite rational and sensible (some really weird stuff notwithstanding), then you might enjoy this book. I did.

This book consists of alternating chapters that create a virtual dialogue between Streiber, who has experienced some really weird stuff, and Kripal, a scholar of comparative religion. Streiber was a fiction writer who lived in the Hudson Valley with his wife Anne in the late 1980s when "beings" (for lack of a more exact term) began to appear in his presence and do things to him and around him. As I said, some really weird stuff. Strieber, in collaboration with his wife, began to write about these experiences. Once published (and he was an established writer already), Streiber and his wife learned  that they were not alone in having experienced visitations from beings that defy any normal classification or description. The most value-neutral term that seems to apply is that Strieber experienced the "paranormal." And I repeat: in this book (I've not read his others), Strieber does not seem "crazy," although he reports crazy stuff happening to him.

Now there are various hypothesizes that one could generate to explain the "true nature" of Whitley's claims: a simple hoax (he sells a lot of books with his fantastic tales); a brain lesion that causes hallucinations (he checked for that--negative); something in the local water; disturbed "spirits;" and so on. And here is where Kripal comes in. Kripal, a scholar of comparative religion at Rice University, now concentrates his focus on the paranormal. (For a more thorough consideration of Kripal's back story, read my review of his book Flip.) Kripal has known Streiber for several years before writing this book and finds Strieber (in my words) a credible witness. But a witness to what? And by the way, what has this to do with religion?

Stop and consider what religions around the world share. The Scriptures of the Jews and Christians, the Quaran, tales of Greek and Norse gods, American Indian stories, tales of Hindu gods and avatars, Tibetan Buddhism, or Taoist tales. All religions have fantastic accounts that defy our current ideas about how "reality" works. No doubt much of this is the religious equivalent of sales puffery or the size of the fish that got away. And these accounts draw upon ancient ideas about science and reality that no longer receive credence in contemporary popular culture. Probably the most charitable and persuasive interpretation of religious narratives is that they serve as myths and metaphors from which we can draw guidance for our lives, as in Joseph Campbell's description of the Hero's Journey or Jungian archetypes that transcend our individual minds, in addition to the accounts of established religions. And in my lifetime, we have the phenomena of UFO sightings and accounts of visitors from "outer space." A version of mass hysteria? An uptick in UFO mania coincided with the Cold War. (And since the end of the Cold War and a change in focus in our primal fears, we've seen an uptick in zombie lore and tales that seem to capture the popular imagination.) All of these possibilities undoubtedly have some merit and truth in them, but do they (or like theories) exhaust the possibilities? Can any single theory account for Streiber's bizarre tales? Is this all about Streiber and his individual brain and mind? Or is there some other reality that has impinged upon Streiber's mind? If so, is this reality governed by contemporary popular ideas about physics and reality? If these experiences are all "in his head," where do they come from? His personal, fevered imagination? He's a writer--an artist!--after all, and he's written horror and speculative fiction. Is this an elaborate guise? Or is he subject to some mass psychosis?

Kripal doesn't believe that any of the possibilities set forth above provide an adequate account of what's going on with Strieber. Like a lawyer building a case, Kripal takes his readers one (alternating) chapter at a time through his attempt to provide a coherent, rational way thinking about Strieber's experiences. This writing duette with its alternating chapters allows both authors to riff upon one another's way of approaching the issues. Also, it provides us with Strieber's accounts in small, tolerable doses; otherwise, I might have cast Strieber's account aside as so much gobbledygook early on. Kripal's methodical, rational investigation of the stories and how to we might understand them provided a needed imprimatur for me.

So where does this book come out? In fact, neither Strieber nor Kripal pretends to provide a definitive account of these (and other) bizarre events. While both men believe in the "reality" of the events that Strieber recounts, neither man conveys any sense of certainty about any conclusions. The only conclusion that I took away is that neither man believes these events "supernatural." Instead, as the title suggests, they believe these events are "super natural." That is, these events are uncommon and not easily understood, but neither are they manifestations of something from "another realm," at least not a realm of the "supernatural" as understood in popular religion. These (in some sense) miraculous events are not the result of divine intervention, but a part of the fabric of reality. And if you think that reality is only what we experience in our daily, hum-drum lives, go read a (reputable) book about quantum physics.

So what do I conclude? I'm not sure at all, but I intend to follow Kripal further down the rabbit hole. What we're perceiving in these accounts is a challenge to accept as credible, but even more so, how we understand these tales that we've been told is the challenging puzzle that intrigues me.

Finally, I must say that the words of a man who saw a ghost kept repeating in my head as I read this book:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Perhaps Hamlet was right.

An Essay on Metaphysics by R.G. Collingwood

I wimped out in my review of Collingwood's An Essay on Philosophical Method, claiming that I could only "appreciate" it. I thought that this work would prove as intimidating, but I'm feeling more ambitious, so I'll call this a review, albeit an awed and tentative one. Let's dive in!

If the business of metaphysics is to reveal the absolute presuppositions that are involved in any given piece of thinking, the general class of study to which metaphysics belongs is clearly the study of thought. 

Collingwood, R. G.. An Essay on Metaphysics. Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition.

Collingwood set forth a plan for writing about history, art, and metaphysics in the 1930s. His declining health (a series of strokes from uncontrolled high blood pressure) prevented him from completing his project, but he remained immensely productive to near the end of his life in 1943. He published the Essay in 1940, and it was his next-to-the-last publication before his death, with only his The New Leviathan to follow the Essay. The Essay (hereinafter EM) is composed of complex yet fluid and lucid prose. In it, Collingwood sets forth the need for metaphysics and it's history (which is an intimate relation). The account begins with Aristotle, addresses Kant, and does battle with the logical positivists of his day, who wanted (in essence) to abolish metaphysics.

What I have chiefly tried to do in it is neither to expound my own metaphysical ideas, nor to criticize the metaphysical ideas of other people; but to explain what metaphysics is, why it is necessary to the well-being and advancement of knowledge, and how it is to be pursued.

The most significant aspect of this work arises from his contention that metaphysics must always begin with "absolute presuppositions" and not "propositions." A proposition or relative presupposition may be either true or false, but not so an absolute presupposition, which is neither true nor false. (Collingwood distinguishes "relative presuppositions" from "absolute presuppositions" on this point.) An absolute presupposition is a starting point that is neither true nor false but is a given, somewhat like an axiom in geometry. Presuppositions are--like all knowledge--embedded in history. Thus, the presuppositions of Aristotle differ from those of Descartes because of changing attitudes and beliefs about natural science and mathematics in their respective cultural milieus. What Collingwood's ideas about "presuppositions" ground metaphysics in history and recognizes the impossibility of avoiding a sense of the given in constructing any metaphysics. Although he doesn't reference it, it strikes me that what Collingwood has done for metaphysics is like the role of Godel's theorem for math and logic; it "proves" that one must begin with a given, an arbitrary starting point. (N.B. Don't trust my understanding of Godel. I'm not qualified to judge his work, and I'm not sure that I have even an accurate layman's understanding, but what I've said here is the impression I've gotten over the years having encountered discussions of it here and there--such as in Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid that I read many years ago. Or make the same point via the popular fable "it's turtles all the way down."

Absolute presuppositions are not verifiable. This does not mean that we should like to verify them but are not able to; it means that the idea of verification is an idea which does not apply to them, because, as I have already said, to speak of verifying a presupposition involves supposing that it is a relative presupposition. If anybody says ‘Then they can’t be of much use in science’, the answer is that their use in science is their logical efficacy, and that the logical efficacy of a supposition does not depend on its being verifiable, because it does not depend on its being true: it depends only on its being supposed (prop. 3).


The logical efficacy of a supposition does not depend upon the truth of what is supposed, or even on its being thought true, but only on its being supposed.

Of course, all of this means that there will be--and have been--grounds for changing the presuppositions of metaphysics throughout history. Based on this, many analytic or logical positivist philosophers of Collingwood's day (Ayer, for instance) take the position that metaphysics is all poppycock because we can't prove its "absolute presuppositions" true or false. To the logical positivists, everything is a true-false test. Collingwood fights this simplistic attitude via a careful review of the history of metaphysics.

If anybody says that metaphysics, as the name of a science, means according to those who expound it simply ontology [the study of "pure being"], and that ontology, according to the view put forward in the preceding chapter, is a chimera; and if he goes on to infer that whatever is expounded under the name of metaphysics is erroneous or nonsensical, all he is doing is to demonstrate that he cannot or will not distinguish between what people are actually doing and what they think they are doing. This may be mere stupidity on his part; but it may also, like many sophistical arguments, involve a certain disingenuousness.

Collingwood also expounds what he calls (not as such in this work) his "logic of question and answer." Louis Mink, in his study of Collingwood, makes the important point that Collingwood is not propounding a new "logic" in any formal sense, but what might be better described as a mode of inquiry. The logic of question and answer is best known through Collingwood's works on history. For Collingwood, the logic of question and answer must guide what he calls "scientific history." He argues that the same principle applies to metaphysics and that any question must "suppose" an answer.

All metaphysical questions are historical questions, and all metaphysical propositions are historical propositions. Every metaphysical question either is simply the question what absolute presuppositions were made on a certain occasion, or is capable of being resolved into a number of such questions together with a further question or further questions arising out of these.

Metaphysics is about a certain class of historical facts, namely absolute presuppositions. The problems of metaphysics are historical problems; its methods are historical methods. We must have no more nonsense about its being meritorious to inhabit a fog.

But lest one think that Collingwood is one of those philosophers with his head in a cloud (a tiresome stereotype), he always brings metaphysics back to natural science. The point of metaphysics, as Collingwood describes it, is to provide a foundation upon which science can work. Collingwood argues at length that metaphysics is not a "deductive science" but a historical enterprise. And because history involves change, so too, the absolute presuppositions of metaphysics will change. Scientists, as he notes, don't always like this reality. Collingwood notes:

In my own experience I have found that when natural scientists express hatred of ‘metaphysics’ they are usually expressing this dislike of having their absolute presuppositions touched. I respect it, and admire them for it; though I do not expect scientists who give way to it to rise very high in the scientific world.

Collingwood turns his attention to "psychology," which he finds a pernicious influence upon metaphysics. Collingwood wants to draw a strict line between the thinking process involved in metaphysics and the claims made by psychology as an academic discipline. After setting forth a critique of metaphysics by an imaginary psychologist, Collingwood begins his reply with his typical aplomb:

If psychology is really the science which tells us how we think, it is beyond doubt that what I have called metaphysics falls within its province. And there I would gladly leave it if once I could satisfy myself that this phrase, even if not a complete account of psychology, is a correct one so far as it goes. But on this point I ask to be fully satisfied. The work of metaphysics is too important, too intimately bound up with the welfare of science and civilization (for civilization is only our name for systematic and orderly thinking about what are called ‘practical’ questions), to be handed over to any claimant on the strength of his own unsupported assertion that he is its rightful owner.

And then psychology takes a drubbing, at least to the extent that Collingwood perceives it as encroaching upon the activities of the mind as the thinking process. He starts by examining the history of psychology and psychological thinking. And as is his custom, he's prepared to go back to the ancient Greeks to ground his inquiry. Of them, he writes,

What they [the ancient Greeks] regarded as peculiar to mind was not having ends but being aware of this and having opinions, in some cases knowledge, as to what its own ends were. If a mind is something which has opinions as to what it is trying to do, its possession of these opinions will in certain ways complicate its behaviour. An organism unconsciously seeking its own preservation will simply on any given occasion either score another success or score for the first and last time a failure. A mind aiming at the discovery of a truth or the planning of a course of conduct will not only score a success or a failure, it will also think of itself as scoring a success or a failure; and since a thought may be either true or false its thought on this subject will not necessarily coincide with the facts. Any piece of thinking, theoretical or practical, includes as an integral part of itself the thought of a standard or criterion by reference to which it is judged a successful or unsuccessful piece of thinking. Unlike any kind of bodily or physiological physiological functioning, thought is a self-criticizing activity. The body passes no judgement upon itself. Judgement is passed upon it by its environment, which continues to support it and promote its well-being when it pursues its ends successfully and injures or destroys it when it pursues them otherwise. The mind judges itself, though not always justly. Not content with the simple pursuit of its ends, it also pursues the further end of discovering for itself whether it has pursued them successfully.

Thus distinguishing mind and body, Collingwood describes the norms which govern the operation of the mind. (N.B. No mention of "brain" here!) The criteria for judging the mind arise in ethics (governing actions) and logic (governing thought processes). Collingwood notes that these are often referred to as "normative" standards, but he prefers to label them as "criteriological." He goes on to observe that the rise of psychology in the sixteenth-century didn't arise from a dissatisfaction with logic or ethics, but instead it "arose from the recognition (characteristic of the sixteenth century) that what we call feeling is not a kind of thinking, not a self-critical activity, and therefore not the possible subject-matter of a criteriological science." EM. Collingwood continues:

The business of thinking includes the discovery and correction of its own errors. That is no part of the business of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, and experiencing the emotions associated with them. These activities were thus not activities of the ‘mind’, if that word refers to the self-critical activities called thinking. But neither were they activities of the ‘body’. To use a Greek word (for the Greeks had already made important contributions to this science of feeling) they were activities of the ‘psyche’, and no better word could have been devised for the study of them than psychology.

But Collingwood describes psychology as going off the rails in the seventeenth and eighteen-centuries by encroaching on what was previously the exclusive purview of logic and ethics. Collingwood describes the change:

In the theory of knowledge the same revolt [against the Aristotilian tradition] was at work. Here it took the form of maintaining that intellectual activities, or operations of thought, were nothing but aggregations and complexes of feelings and thus special cases of sensation and emotion. Theoretical reason or knowledge was only a pattern of sensations; practical reason or will, only a pattern of appetites. Just as the aim of materialistic biology was to wipe out the old biology with its guiding notion of purposive function, so the aim of what I will call ‘materialistic epistemology’ was to wipe out the old sciences of thought, logic and ethics, with their criteriological methods and their guiding notions of truth and error, good and evil. Just as materialistic biology hoped to study organisms by substituting for the old biological methods the modern methods of Newtonian physics, so materialistic epistemology hoped to study the processes of thought, theoretical and practical, by substituting for the old methods of logic and ethics the modern methods of psychology, the science of feeling.

But less one think that Collingwood is a metaphysical and science troglodyte, he continues this line of thought with a concession and a cutting metaphor:

This programme, as the more acute and painstaking thinkers of the eighteenth century especially in its later years were not slow to realize, was foredoomed to failure. It might very well be true that a revolt against the old logic and ethics had been desirable and had proved beneficial; for it might very well be true that people who professed those sciences had misunderstood their normative character, and had claimed a right of censorship over the thoughts and actions of other people; and for the sake of scientific progress such tyranny might very well have to be overthrown. When it is a case of overthrowing tyranny one should not be squeamish about the choice of weapons. But the tyrannicide’s dagger is not the best instrument for governing the people it has liberated. Epistemological materialism, in attacking the criteriological science of logic (for brevity’s sake I shall henceforth say nothing about ethics) and offering to replace it by psychology, deliberately proceeded on the assumption that thought did not possess that power of self-criticism which had in the past been rightly regarded as distinguishing it from feeling. If any one who thinks has before his mind a criterion, the double notion of truth and falsehood, by reference to which he judges his thought, any science of thought which repudiates the character of a criteriological science becomes thereby a pseudo-science of thought.

Collingwood has no tolerance for what he brands a "pseudo-science of thought." Collingwood continues with a brief critique of Freud and some contemporary academic psychology. After his discourse about certain psychologists, Collingwood devotes an entire chapter to "The Propaganda of Irrationalism." This chapter is in some ways out-of-place in the book because it deals with social and political attitudes, and it may give too much weight to what may be an academic (in the multiple senses of the word) dispute that has only limited relevance to the larger society. However, if one could only read one chapter from this book, I'd say read this one because of its contemporary significance. One of the reasons I've become fascinated by Collingwood's work arises from the fact that he was living and writing his most important work in the 1930s and early 1940s as totalitarianism (Soviet Communism and German National Socialism (Nazis)), fascism (Italy & Romania), and authoritarianism (Vichy France, Franco's Spain) were dominating the European landscape. Collingwood responded to these developments viscerally and with thought, and his passionate thought shines through in this chapter. Rather than quote it here, I'll devote a separate blog post to some extended quotations. Suffice it to say, what Collingwood says about the world in this chapter at the time that he wrote EM bears an uncanny and unnerving relevance to now.

I do not wish any reader of these pages to form an impression, or even a suspicion, that I value these achievements at a low rate. The study by psychologists of sensation and emotion, whether in the laboratory or in the consulting-room or in what other conditions soever they think it capable of being pursued, is a most important kind of research and a thing which every friend of science will encourage by every means at his command.

The following chapter (XIV) addresses positivism again, and Collingwood pays his respects before unleashing his criticisms. In short, Collingwood describes the positivists as attempting to have scientific theories without the benefit of history as a form of knowledge, and history as a form of knowledge establishes "facts" that positivism so values. Further, positivists want to believe that science has no need of "absolute presuppositions" (only "propositions"); ergo, no metaphysics upon which to ground the inquiries of science. Collingwood sums up the positivist position

It [positivism] has developed into the following syllogism. ‘Any proposition which cannot be verified by appeal to observed facts is a pseudo-proposition. Metaphysical propositions cannot be verified by appeal to observed facts. Therefore metaphysical propositions are pseudo-propositions, and therefore nonsense.’ The argument has been set forth with admirable conciseness and lucidity by Mr. A. J. Ayer in his book Language Truth and Logic (1936).

The final section of the book deals with three provocative issues in metaphysics: the existence of God, Kant, and causation. While God and Kant have their respective merits as topics, as a lawyer, I found the discussion of causation the most compelling. The concept of causation is crucial in the law, especially in criminal law and torts. In torts, no action, either intentional or negligent, can create liability arising from the person's action (or inaction) unless the act (or inaction) causes harm to another. Much legal ink has been spilled on this topic of causation in the law. Terms like “causation-in-fact,” “legal causation,” and "proximate cause” are among the most dissected concepts in the field of tort law. Civil jury instructions in tort cases instruct jurors to determine whether a defendant's action caused the plaintiff the harm claimed. In other words, the idea of causation is not only a matter of concern to lawyers or philosophers but also to laypeople called to serve on a jury. As an example of a causation instruction, the following is the Iowa Uniform Civil Jury Instruction that defines “causation” in a tort case:

700.3 Cause - Defined. The conduct of a party is a cause of damage when the damage would not have happened except for the conduct.)

To begin his consideration of causation, Collingwood identifies three different senses of the word "cause" in English. Collingwood explores the earliest sense of the word and then the later variations based upon that original sense. In other words, he performs a historical analysis of the uses of the word. (In this, he seems to be adopting a form of inquiry conducted at length by Owen Barfield in his 1926 book, History in English Words.) The original use of the term cause in English according to Collingwood is what he labels “Sense I”:

Sense I. Here that which is ‘caused’ is the free and deliberate act of a conscious and responsible agent, and ‘causing’ him to do it means affording him a motive for doing it.

This, too, is a familiar use of the word in the law. Lawyers speak of a client having a “cause of action;” for instance, in negligence or libel. In other words, a legal justification for bringing a lawsuit. Rounding out the senses of the term “cause,” are Collinwood’s descriptions of "sense II" and "sense III"

Sense II. Here that which is ‘caused’ is an event in nature, and its ‘cause’ is an event or state of things by producing or preventing which we can produce or prevent that whose cause it is said to be.

Sense III. Here that which is ‘caused’ is an event or state of things, and its ‘cause’ is another event or state of things standing to it in a one-one relation of causal priority: i.e. a relation of such a kind that (a) if the cause happens or exists the effect also must happen or exist, even if no further conditions are fulfilled, (b) the effect cannot happen or exist unless the cause happens or exists, (c) in some sense which remains to be defined, the cause is prior to the effect; for without such priority there would be no telling which is which. If C and E were connected merely by a one-one relation such as is described in the sentences (a) and (b) above, there would be no reason why C should be called the cause of E, and E the effect of C, rather than vice versa. But whether causal priority is temporal priority, or a special case of temporal priority, or priority of some other kind, is another question.

Sense III is the sense of cause that natural scientists adopted and that comes down to us today in many of the natural sciences. Needless to say, given the length of the description Collingwood must use to describe it, this last sense is the one that gives philosophers--and that should give scientists--pause. After laying out the three “senses” of the word “cause” in English (and Collingwood uses the word “senses”), Collingwood describes how the terms are used in the discipline of history. Collingwood writes

In sense I of the word ‘cause’ that which is caused is the free and deliberate act of a conscious and responsible agent, and ‘causing’ him to do it means affording him a motive for doing it. For ‘causing’ we may substitute ‘making’, ‘inducing’, ‘persuading’, ‘urging’, ‘forcing’, ‘compelling’, according to differences in the kind of motive in question.

Collingwood goes on to supplement this understanding:

A cause in sense I is made up of two elements, a causa quod or efficient cause and a causa ut or final cause. The causa quod is a situation or state of things existing; the causa ut is a purpose or state of things to be brought about. Neither of these could be a cause if the other were absent.

It is clear in these quotes (and the intervening text) that Collingwood is emphasizing the human element in “cause;” the fact that human thought responds to a trigger and formulates a purpose or intention for acting—one might say a pull as opposed to a push (i.e., a simple stimulus and response, like Pavlov’s dogs or Skinner’s pigeons). Collingwood some time exploring “sense II” of causation, which I will pass over here, and he moves into “sense III,” which, to start, involves the dispute between the empiricists and the rationalists of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. This long-established but divergent paths still provide a fertile source for thinking about causation. Collingwood also explores a work by Bertrand (“Earl”) Russell, which he admires and critiques. Out of this discourse, Collingwood observes

Causation in sense III is an anthropomorphic idea. Natural scientists have tried to use it as a weapon for attacking anthropomorphic conceptions of nature; but it has been a treacherous weapon. It has led them unawares to reaffirm the view they were attacking. And that may be why, in Earl Russell’s own words, ‘physics has ceased to look for causes’ (op. cit., p. 180).

He continues:

The idea of compulsion, as applied to events in nature, is derived from our experience of occasions on which we have compelled others to act in certain ways by placing them in situations (or calling their attention to the fact that they are in situations) of such a kind that only by so acting can they realize the intentions we know or rightly assume them to entertain: and conversely, occasions in which we have ourselves been thus compelled. Compulsion is an idea derived from our social experience, and applied in what is called a ‘metaphorical’ way not only to our relations with things in nature (sense II of the word ‘cause’) but also to the relations which these things have among themselves (sense III). Causal propositions in sense III are descriptions of relations between natural events in anthropomorphic terms.

History, the acts of humans, keeps creeping into efforts to abstract the human element from every conception of causation. Also, we have the unintentional but not less real fact that any current thinking comes loaded with conceptions received (or smuggled in) from the past. And "the past" has myriad ways of attempting to understand the world. Collingwood writes

The reason why we are in the habit of using these anthropomorphic terms is, of course, that they are traditional. Inquiry into the history of the tradition shows that it grew up in connexion with the same animistic theory of nature to which I referred in discussing sense II of the word ‘cause’, but that in this case the predominant factor was a theology of Neoplatonic inspiration.

Newton, according to Collingwood, adopts “cause” from this Western cultural heritage and seeks to make it fit with his newer ideas about “force” and “motion.” Then comes Kant, who attempts to gather and refine these existing senses of “cause;" i.e., those from empiricists, like Hume, and rationalists like Leibniz; and those of Bacon and Newton. Kant believed he had shaped these traditions into one coherent conception. But Collingwood argues that Kant wasn't successful. Collingwood sums up his criticism of Kant in this paragraph:

It does not follow that Kant was mistaken in thinking both statements [about logical necessity and temporal sequence] to be true. He was trying to state what people (himself included) meant when they spoke of causes. They meant to express a certain absolute presupposition [Collingwood’s term] which they habitually made in the course of their thinking about nature: the presupposition which is called the idea of causation. This presupposition was itself a constellation of presuppositions; and among the elements that went to compose it, if Kant is right, were these: that a cause and its effect are related by a necessary connexion, and that a cause and its effect are related by way of temporal sequence. The logical incompatibility of these two suppositions does not prove that they were not concurrently made; it only proves that, if they were concurrently made, the structure of the constellation that included them both was subject to severe strain, and that the entire fabric of the science based upon them was in a dangerously unstable condition.

This frame of thought continued through the nineteenth century and up to the time of Einstein. Yet, as Collingwood reveals in a representative sample of his contemporaries, many philosophers and natural scientists have not followed the lead of the physicists but have stuck with Kant’s problematic conception. Collingwood concludes his point

All these writers, it will be seen, attach themselves to some group or society of persons to whom they refer as ‘we’. I have ventured to italicize the word in my quotations. What is this group or society? It is the group or society of persons who accept the Kantian definition of the term ‘cause’. They are not, and do not include, contemporary natural scientists: for these, or at any rate those among them who are physicists, have abandoned the term. Nor do they include such philosophers as have, like Whitehead and Russell, understood and accepted the work which these physicists are doing. They are a group of neo-Kantians whose reverence for the master has induced them to accept not indeed all his doctrines but this particular doctrine. I say this because, the doctrine being a self-contradictory one, it can hardly have commended itself to them by its inherent reasonableness; nor can they have had for accepting it the same reason which I suppose Kant to have had, namely the fact that, self-contradictory or not, it was actually presupposed by contemporary physicists. It has somehow got itself fixed in their minds; presumably from their study of Kant. To quote the bitter words of Earl Russell: ‘The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm’ (op. cit., p. 180).

Russell, like Collingwood, often displayed a sharp tongue and a gift for metaphor. 

Let me conclude this tour (I now regret the phrase “review;” I’m still not qualified) of Collingwood’s Essay with his concluding words, which address not only the current states of metaphysics and natural science but politics as well.

This movement [to maintain Kant’s conceptions about causality] may impede the advancement of science (and the advancement of science and the existence of science, I repeat, are not two things but one) in two different ways. Politically, by creating in the body politic a demand that scientific thinking should be put down by force. There are places where this is already happening. Academically, by creating in the specialized organs through which society endeavours to further science and learning a feeling of hostility to that furtherance. This feeling of hostility to science as such may be ‘rationalized’ through an obscurantist philosophy which by sophistical arguments pretends to prove that the advances which are actually being made are in fact no advances. Sophistical, because reactionary: based on the assumption that the superseded views are true, and thence proceeding to argue that the views which have superseded them must be false because they do not agree with the views they have superseded. The partisans of such an obscurantist philosophy are traitors to their academic calling. Within the body of persons ostensibly devoted to the advancement of science and learning they are working, unconsciously perhaps but still working, to obstruct that advancement and weaken the resistance with which that body is bound in honour to confront the onslaughts of irrationalism. . . . . Since metaphysics is an indispensable condition of science an enemy to metaphysics is an enemy to science, and a reactionary anti-metaphysician is an enemy to whatever in science is progressive. Trying with a clumsy hand to put back the clock of scientific progress, he stops it. This is my reason for offering to the public what might seem essentially an academic essay, suitable only for readers who are already, like myself, committed to an interest in metaphysics. The fate of European science and European civilization is at stake. The gravity of the peril lies especially in the fact that so few recognize any peril to exist. When Rome was in danger, it was the cackling of the sacred geese that saved the Capitol. I am only a professorial goose, consecrated with a cap and gown and fed at a college table; but cackling is my job, and cackle I will.

And cackle he has.

Garry Wills on "Gun Rights"

If someone asks me who's my favorite author, I would look at them dumb-founded, like they'd asked me who's my favorite daughter--and I've only two of them! But if you gave me some leeway, say living authors and asked for an all-star team about the size of a football all-star team (offense and defense), I could probably comply. But even if the number of picks was kept lower, Garry Wills would make the team. Descriptive, elegant prose combined with erudition and wit mark Wills's writing. And because he's no youngster (now 85), he's all the more valuable. So sometimes I just want to check-in on him,  and here's what I've found of late.

This is a sample of what Wills recently wrote about the American obsession with "gun rights" [sic]:

"If a person were found to have shown up regularly in so many places where so many crimes had been committed by so many people, how could that person not be called to account for such suspicious behavior? He would clearly be investigated for being present with such persistence at crime scenes. Did he facilitate them, making them easier by his mere presence? What could induce any innocent person to be so energetically omnipresent at so many varied crime scenes? What excuse could relieve him from the charge of being an accessory? A person with such skill and dogged effort would be considered a national menace, no matter how many excuses he could concoct for such weird conduct.
But guns can do all of those things and profess an entire non-involvement. “Who, me?” says Gun, going on:
I never asked to be part of anyone’s wrongdoing. Why pick on me? You must have a gun-persecution disorder. You accusers are the ones who show up at every crime scene, trying to drag me into actions as if I’m an agent. I am totally passive. I never asked to be bought by a homicidal maniac. Go after the nutty people and leave me alone."

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/09/05/the-rights-of-guns/

NYBOOKS.COM

The Rights of Guns

“Gun rights,” as used by devotees of an absolutist Second Amendment, means their right to own guns. But in America today, it has come to mean more: the rights of guns. Guns themselves possess more rights than persons do. Guns’ exemption from common-sense legislation guarantees them not only ri...

A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism by Adam Gopnik

A single word can’t easily contain a complex concept, and a concept cannot easily (if ever) contain a reality. A linguistic referent (word), to supply any value, must include an essential aspect of the referred chunk of reality. So we can go on at length, and often fruitfully, about the most important concepts we live by: love, freedom, God, imagination—and liberalism. The list could continue at length. The discussion goes on indefinitely and yet fruitfully. Might one conclude that any concept that receives a definitive definition [sic] is little better than a tautology and of little value? 

That a word or concept has a history does not make it mean what it once meant. Trees have roots; human beings don’t. What they have instead are histories. Histories are ways of thinking about the past and the present, which allow us to imagine new futures.

Liberalism is as distinct a tradition as exists in political history, but it suffers from being a practice before it is an ideology, a temperament and a tone and a way of managing the world more than a fixed set of beliefs. (At least this means that poets and novelists and painters, a Trollope or a George Eliot or a Manet, can be better guides to its truths than political philosophers or pundits.) 

To return to the point, defining “liberalism” is a fraught task, one that can only prove one more iteration in a continuing effort. But so be it, and if one had to deal with only one book to delineate (contemporary) liberalism, I doubt that one could find a more compelling work than Adam Gopnik’s A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism (2019).  Gopnik doesn’t approach this formidable topic as a political philosopher might, but as the skilled journalist that he is. (He’s been writing for the New Yorker since 1986.) Gopnik portrays liberalism primarily through its history, and its history primarily through its practitioners. And in doing so, he writes in almost aphoristic prose. Indeed, it’s a temptation to simply lay out a series of quotes from the book in lieu of a review. (I far exceeded my Kindle allotment of highlights.) Gopnik treats “liberalism” as he might the subject of one of his New Yorker profiles, bobbing in and out of personal vignettes and summary analysis.

Liberalism ends in the center not because that’s where liberals always think the sanity is, but because they recognize that there are so many selves in a society that must be accommodated that you can’t expect them to congregate in a single neighborhood at one end or another of the city. The meeting place, the piazza, in an Italian village, is placed in the center of the town because everyone can get there. The ancient Greeks thought of this meeting place as the “agora,” which meant the market but meant more broadly the place where citizens met for unplanned meetings. Tyrants of all kinds, Persian and Spartan, feared the agora in the most literal way, and tried to eliminate it from their cities. 

 . . . .

Humanism precedes liberalism. Connection comes before action. A readiness for self-inspection precedes an effort at self-improvement, and a confidence in our neighbors precedes faith in citizenship. Thinking about liberal order or the liberal future in terms of laws and legislatures is far too limiting. Park designers, sociologists, and beyond have more to tell us about building open societies.

Thus, the lead characters in this book are a pair of couples, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, and Mary Ann Evans (who wrote under the pseudonym “George Eliot”) and George Henry Lewes. We learn from the tale of these two couples that liberalism and feminism often go together. In addition, Gopnik delves into the liberalism of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who organized the great civil rights march of August 1962, where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Bayard worked for liberal causes as a black, gay man, making the importance of liberation and dignity inherent in liberalism especially high values in his life. Another exemplar of liberalism in life and action is Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became one of the great Americans of the nineteenth century and whose oratory could match that of Lincoln for its power and persuasion (and whom Lincoln came to admire).  Another, surprising choice (to me anyway), is Charles De Gaulle, the leader of Free France during the Second World War and later president of the Republic. Gopnik notes that while De Gaulle had some very conservative-leaning beliefs and attitudes, his defense of liberalism—a very lively topic in France from before the Revolution (1789) to the present—proved crucial for France.

Modern liberalism—as distinct from earlier and more general meanings of the term as “generous” or “learned”—begins with a psychological principle, a human principle. Its foundation is fallibilism—the truth that we are usually wrong about everything and always divided within ourselves about anything we believe. Reform rather than revolution or repetition is essential because what we are doing now is likely to be based on a bad idea and because what we do next is likely to be bad in some other way too. Incremental cautious reform is likely to get more things right than any other kind. 

And while Gopnik does an excellent job of singing the praises of liberalism, neither does he ignore its critics. Here, too, he draws upon worthy exemplars, such as Samuel Johnson and G.K. Chesterton. And of more recent vintage, political thinker Patrick Deneen, whose Why Liberalism Failed (2018) became a bit of a sensation (well, among those who read such topics), receives a fair hearing. And, as Gopnik notes, liberalism always seems caught in the middle, so the Left criticizes liberalism also. While the conservative critique says, “too much, too soon, not sure I'll work” the left argues “too little, too late, gotta have a whole new plan.” On the left, Gopnik spotlights “Red Emma” Goldman, the native of Russia who emigrated to the U.S., was eventually deported, and then went on to the Soviet Union, where she, unlike so many others, saw through the façade of Lenin’s Potemkin Village. She supplied poignant critiques of her fellow leftists and liberals.

The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform. The right-wing assault also tends to focus on the evil that liberalism does internally to the traditional communities and nations it betrays; the left wing pays attention, as well, and sometimes more often, to the evil that liberalism does externally to its distant victims in the foreign countries it exploits. [N.B. Yes, too many critics conflate liberalism with capitalism, sloppy move. sng]

Gopnik reports that this work arose from musings with his teenage daughter when the results of the 2016 presidential election became clear. How? Why? What went wrong? What do good and wise people stand for? What do we aspire to? Without unduly disparaging respectable figures on the right or the left, Gopnik demonstrates more than argues that despite liberalism’s reputation for a bland, middle-of-the-road, melioristic attitude, it is a rich source for establishing a good life for individuals and their communities. In Gopnik’s liberalism, there is as much of Edmund Burke as there is of Adam Smith (a misunderstood liberal: "Smith believed not that markets make men free but that free men move toward markets. The difference is small but decisive; it is most of what we mean by humanism.") or of John Stuart Mill. In fact, the inability of liberalism to strictly define itself (or care to) is its power. (Compare liberalism to the endless Marxist battles around theorizing). Liberalism is protean, yet with the essential elements of liberty, dignity, and compassion, its many threads can be tied together into the beautiful and useful cloak under which we can best conduct our lives.

But let Gopnik have the last word:

What is liberalism, then? A hatred of cruelty. An instinct about human conduct rooted in a rueful admission of our own fallibility and of the inadequacy of our divided minds to be right frequently enough to act autocratically. A belief that the sympathy that binds human society together can disconnect us from our clannish and suspicious past. A program for permanent reform based on reason and an appeal to argument, aware of human fallibility and open to the lessons of experience. An understanding that small, open social institutions, if no larger than a café or more overtly political than a park, play an outsized role in creating free minds and securing public safety. A faith in rational debate, rather than inherited ritual, and in reform, rather than either revolution or reaction. A belief in radical change through practical measures. A readiness to act—nonviolently but visibly and sometimes in the face of threatened violence—on behalf of equality. A belief that life should be fair—or fairer, or as fair as seems fair: people’s lives should not be overdetermined by who their parents were or how much money they might have inherited or what shade of skin their genes have woven. A belief that the individual pursuit of eccentric happiness can be married to a common faith in fair procedure.

American Philosophy: A Love Story by John Kaag

John Kaag's American Philosophy: A Love Story (2016) is one of those books that successfully weaves a personal narrative with deep learning. I enjoyed it very much.

The set-up is rather simple. A young philosopher with an interest in American philosophy is going through a rough time. Rather by chance, he learns for the existence of the personal library of one of the preeminent American philosophers of the first half of the 20th century, William Ernest Hocking (1973-1966). Hocking was a doctoral student at Harvard during the time of some of the towering figures in American philosophy: William James, Josiah Royce, and Georges Santayana (with Charles Sanders Pierce hovering in the wings, as it were). Hocking later joined the Harvard philosophy department and guided it into the mid-20th century. Hocking did well enough in his chosen field to be able to afford to buy a farm in New Hampshire, where he built a library for himself. And Kraag "discovers" the library with the help of a local, and he begins to explore it with the permission of the family (Hocking's three granddaughters).

The personal life of the narrator (John Kaag) isn't going well as the narrative opens. His marriage isn't working and nothing seems quite in sync. However, the discovery of the library and the treasury of books within it give him a project upon which to focus. And as befitting a philosopher, every book allows a story of its own to be told, sometimes about the contents of the book itself (Descartes, for instance), sometimes about the times and conditions under which it was written, and sometimes about figures associated with the library's builder, Hocking. And as I mentioned, we have Hockings older peers (James, Pierce, Royce), his later colleagues (Whitehead, for instance, whom Hocking enticed to Harvard), and other famous figures, contemporary and past, such as Robert Frost, Pearl Buck, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. Also, women in Hocking's life, such as his wife Agnes, and more public figures such as Lydia Child and Jane Addams (of Hull House fame), add a significant theme to the story (primarily the under-valuation of these women in American culture). Kraag brings each figure into the account as he finds an inscription or letter or autograph in the collection of books and papers. And as he contemplates his discoveries, he works to come to terms with his own situation. Indeed, after the break-up of his marriage, another woman enters his life he begins to share in his adventure, both professionally and on a personal level.

Kaag tells his own story with honesty and compassion, and he's an expert in American philosophy who capably relates an aspect of American life--American philosophy--that is often ignored and certainly under-appreciated today. (Has any American philosopher been a consequential figure in American culture since John Dewey? Has any American philosopher since Dewey held the prominence of William James or Ralph Waldo Emerson? I think not.)

Kaag tells the story of American philosophy in a way that prompts me to want to know it much better. I've certainly delved into William James, and some Dewey and Pierce, but with this book, I realize the Royce and Hocking hold promise as well. (Santayana was already on my radar.) For anyone interested in American philosophy and culture, this book will prove both fruitful and enjoyable. 

"The Propaganda of Irrationalism" from An Essay on Metaphysics by R.G. Collingwood: Quotes from His Argument

The beard a sign of radicalism? Just relaxed after a cruise.

I've begun reading Collingwood's An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), and I've found it quite engaging. But I've also discovered a wonderful polemic and commentary in it about politics, education, religion, and science. In other words, topics related to the main topic--metaphysics--but not required. Reading these words in the chapter entitled "The Propaganda of Irrationalism," provided a pleasant surprise. I knew that by the time he was writing this, Collingwood was on his way--if not arrived--at his position as a "fighting philosopher." He was keenly aware of the barbarism on the march in Europe. He was not prepared to stand idly by, and words--sharp words, incisive analysis--were his weapons. Please take special note of the final sentence of this extended series of quotes from the chapter. We, too, live in dark times.

Let us suppose a civilization whose most characteristic features had for many centuries been based upon the predominance, among those who shared it, of the belief that truth was the most important thing in the world, and that consequently scientific thinking, systematic, orderly thinking, theoretical and practical alike, pursued with all the energy at his command and with all the skill and care at his disposal, was the most valuable thing man could do. In such a civilization every feature would be marked with some peculiar characteristic derived from this prevailing habit of mind and not to be expected in a civilization differently based. 

To take a few examples. . . . . 

Politics would be predominantly the attempt to build up a common life by the methods of reason (free discussion, public criticism) and subject to the sanction of reason (i.e. the ultimate test being whether the common life aimed at is a reasonable one, fit for men who, no matter what differences divide them, agree to think in an orderly way). Education would be predominantly a method for inducing habits of orderly and systematic thinking. Social structure would be predominantly of such a kind as to place in the most honourable and commanding position those who were intellectually the élite of the people, the priest-kings of the god of truth, men of science and learning on the one hand, men of affairs on the other. Economic life would come into line with the prevailing habit of mind by converting customary methods of production, distribution, transport, &c., into ‘scientific’ ones; that is, by applying the notion of orderly and systematic thinking to economic matters no less than to any others. 

. . . . 

And suppose that now within this same civilization a movement grew up hostile to these fundamental principles. I will not speak of a conspiracy to destroy civilization; not because I shrink from a notion so reminiscent of a detective novel, but because what I am thinking of is something less conscious, less deliberate, less dependent upon the sinister activities of any mere gang, than a conspiracy: something more like an epidemic disease: a kind of epidemic withering of belief in the importance of truth and in the obligation to think and act in a systematic and methodical way. Such an irrationalist epidemic infecting religion would turn it from a worship of truth to a worship of emotion and a cultivation of certain emotional states. Infecting education it would aim at inducing the young to abandon the habit of orderly thinking, or to avoid forming such a habit by offering to their imitation examples of unscientific thinking and holding up the ideals of science to contempt by precept and example. Infecting politics it would substitute for the ideal of orderly thinking in that field the ideal of tangled, immediate, emotional thinking; for the idea of a political thinker as political leader the idea of a leader focusing and personifying the mass-emotions of his community; for the ideal of intelligent agreement with a leader’s thought the idea of an emotional communion with him; and for the idea of a minority persuaded to conform the idea of unpatriotic persons (persons not sharing that communion) induced to conform by emotional means, namely by terror.  [Emphasis added.]

Comment: I think that contemporary political events provide some telling examples of what Collingwood describes in the part of the quote that I italicized. 

Next let us suppose that the tissues of the civilization invaded by this irrationalist disease are to a considerable extent resisting it. The result will be that the infection can progress only by concealing its true character behind a mask of conformity to the spirit of the civilization it is attacking. The success of the attack will be conditional on the victims’ suspicions not being aroused. Thus in educational institutions an explicit proposal to abandon the practice of orderly and systematic thinking would only bring those who made it into disrepute, and discredit them with the very persons they were trying to infect. But so long as nothing like a panic was created, liberties could be taken which would quickly have proved fatal among persons whose faith in scientific thought had not already been weakened. Let a sufficient number of men whose intellectual respectability is vouched for by their academic position pay sufficient lip-service to the ideals of scientific method, and they will be allowed to teach by example whatever kind of anti-science they like, even if this involves a hardly disguised breach with all the accepted canons of scientific method. 

. . . . 

And has there been a tendency of late years to belittle the notion of scientific thought, either by magnifying emotion at the expense of intellect, or by expounding an ideal of disorderly or unsystematic thinking, called ‘intuition’ or the like, as something preferable to the methodical or progressive (if you want to sneer, you say ‘plodding’) labour of reason? Has there been a tendency towards belittling rules, principles, policies, in the field of action, and towards developing a kind of ethical intuitionism or a kind of ethical emotionalism? 

2. Has the political tradition of our civilization been based on the idea of a political life lived according to a plan whose chief recommendation has been its claim to reasonableness? Have political leaders been chosen in the past for their supposed intelligence, far-sightedness, grasp on principles, and skill in devising means to ends that accorded with these principles? Have their followers been persons whose intellect, inferior to theirs in power, nevertheless agreed with it as one intellect does agree with another, by thinking in the same way? Have the methods by which leaders carried their points against opponents and secured their hold over their followers been the methods of reason; that is, public discussion of principies, public statement of facts, and public debate as to the relation between principles and policies, between ends and means? And has there been a tendency of late years to become impatient with the work of politically educating an entire people; to choose leaders not for their intellectual powers but for their ability to excite mass-emotions; to induce in followers not an ability to think about political problems, but certain emotions which in persons untrained to think will explode into action with no questions asked as to where such action will lead; and to suppress discussion and information in favour of what is called propaganda, that is, statements made not because they are true but because they generate these emotions or spark them into action? And have these changes gone so far that even the characteristic facial expression of a political leader has changed from the expression of a thinker (the mathematician-thinker’s face of a Napoleon, the humanist-thinker’s face of a Gladstone) to the expression of a hypnotist, with scowling forehead and glaring eye?. . . .

Collingwood, R. G.. An Essay on Metaphysics . Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition.

Comment: Whoever could Collingwood have been thinking of when he wrote that final part of the quote that I've italicized? Someone Italian or German (or both)? Who might we think would meet this description? Do you have to think twice about your answer (assuming you're an American)?


ADDENDUM 2019 Nov. 8

In my post on An Essay on Metaphysics, I skipped a discussion of the chapter "The Propaganda of Irrationalism," saying that I'd post something separate about it. In writing that, I'd forgotten about this post, which includes the extended quotation from that chapter set forth above. I've decided that rather than do a whole new post or add a lot of chatter on my part (since I can't challenge the lucidity and gusto of Collingwood's prose), I'll just add some further quotations to help round-out Collingwood's point. Also, of related interest, I've re-advertised an earlier set of posts (12 in all) that includes quotes and commentaries from Collingwood's essay, "Man Goes Mad" from 1936. It very much reflects and expands upon the points made in this chapter. Here's the first post in that series, and you can follow the sequence from there if you prefer. Now, for more RGC!

Now let us suppose that such a civilization had been in existence for a long time, during which the application of its fundamental principles had reached a somewhat elaborate development. Suppose, for example, that the rationalization of economic life had reached such a point that its populations could not be kept alive at all, or protected from starvation and disease, let alone kept in the degree of comfort to which they had become accustomed, except by the ceaseless exertion of innumerable scientists. And suppose that now within this same civilization a movement grew up hostile to these fundamental principles. I will not speak of a conspiracy to destroy civilization; not because I shrink from a notion so reminiscent of a detective novel, but because what I am thinking of is something less conscious, less deliberate, less dependent upon the sinister activities of any mere gang, than a conspiracy: something more like an epidemic disease: a kind of epidemic withering of belief in the importance of truth and in the obligation to think and act in a systematic and methodical way.

Collingwood, R. G.. An Essay on Metaphysics. Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition. 

I quite like the "epidemic" metaphor, a "plague" if you will. (Hat tip to Camus.) 

An "it could happen here" turn of argument: 

The reader is lastly to suppose, if he will, that the situation I have described is the one in which, together with the rest of the world, he now stands. I do not wish him necessarily to confine this to a matter of mere supposition; I will confess that to myself it is more than a supposition, it is a fact, and I think the reader might be well advised to consider it in the same way. If he wishes to do something on his own account towards considering whether it is a fact or not, he should ask himself the following questions among others.

Id. 

Civilizations sometimes perish because they are forcibly broken up by the armed attack of enemies without or revolutionaries within; but never from this cause alone. Such attacks never succeed unless the thing that is attacked is weakened by doubt as to whether the end which it sets before itself, the form of life which it tries to realize, is worth achieving. On the other hand, this doubt is quite capable of destroying a civilization without any help whatever. If the people who share a civilization are no longer on the whole convinced that the form of life which it tries to realize is worth realizing, nothing can save it. If European civilization is a civilization based on the belief that truth is the most precious thing in the world and that pursuing it is the whole duty of man, an irrationalist epidemic if it ran through Europe unchecked would in a relatively short time destroy everything that goes by the name of European civilization.

Id. 

Science is a plant of slow growth. It will not grow (and for a plant the end of growth is the end of life) except where the scientist as the priest of truth is not only supported but revered as a priest-king by a people that shares his faith. When scientists are no longer kings, there will be (to adapt a famous saying of Plato’s) no end to the evils undergone by the society that has dethroned them until it perishes physically for sheer lack of sustenance.

Id. 

Prefatory note: This entire section of the book sets forth Collingwood's detailed criticism of psychology to the extend that he perceives it as getting out of its lane. As this quote indicates, Collingwood isn't damning the whole enterprise in toto; only to the extent it intends to establish the standards for judging "thought," about which Collingwood has some very firm, closely argued opinions. This quote ends the chapter. 

I do not wish any reader of these pages to form an impression, or even a suspicion, that I value these achievements at a low rate. The study by psychologists of sensation and emotion, whether in the laboratory or in the consulting-room or in what other conditions soever they think it capable of being pursued, is a most important kind of research and a thing which every friend of science will encourage by every means at his command.

My suspicions are not about this; they are about the status of psychology as the pseudo-science of thought which claims to usurp the field of logic and ethics in all their various branches, including political science, aesthetics, economics, and whatever other criteriological sciences there may be, and finally of metaphysics. In these fields I find it to be a fact that psychological inquiries have proved absolutely incapable of adding anything to our knowledge. I find it to be a fact that they are conducted in open defiance of the recognized canons of scientific procedure. I find it to be a fact that their devotees and advocates are not abashed by all this. They regard the calling of attention to it as a symptom of an obsolete mentality and a thing to be treated with obloquy and contempt, not as a criticism which they must meet by reforming their work or else by abandoning it. I do not think it possible to suppress, or conscientious to conceal, a suspicion that the true explanation of these facts may be that psychology in its capacity as the pseudo-science of thought, teaching by precept that what is called thought is only feeling, and by example that what is called science is nothing more, is no mere addition to the long list of pseudo-sciences; it is an attempt to discredit the very idea of science. It is the propaganda of irrationalism.

Id.