Alan Ryan

The Open Society and Utility

I HOPE I SHALL OFFEND NEITHER PROFESSOR CRICK NOR DR KING if I do not discuss their papers in detail. With almost all they say I have no disagreement; and to what they say I think I have little to add. The first thing I wish to do is pursue a point which Crick makes early on in his paper and then drops. Crick says there that one aspect of toleration is ‘putting up with‘ whatever it might be; to say that the weather, one’s colleagues, or last night’s party were ‘tolerable’ amounts to saying that one could put up with them. Of course, as he and King agree, to call any of these tolerable certainly implies that we did not actually like or enjoy it or them; whatever we regard with favour we do not simply tolerate. Crick thinks there is not much to be done with the notion of ‘putting up with‘ something;2 but I shall try to show that we can get further than he thinks.

No doubt everyone agrees that when we tolerate an activity or a person, we are putting up with that activity or that person; we allow it or him to continue to exist, and we do not take whatever steps we might to prevent the activity or get rid of the person. When we do propose to interfere by way of constraint or coercion with the freedom of action of someone else, we usually think we should give adequate reasons for such interference; and what this amounts to is giving reasons why we cannot, or ought not to be expected to, or should be expected not to3 put up with that behaviour. Now, so far as elucidating the acceptability of our reasons for intervention goes, I think Dr King’s habit of lumping dislike and disapproval together is misleading. We frequently feel that dislike needs no justification or apology, precisely because no question arises of using that dislike as a reason for interfering with the freedom of others. Professor Crick, for example, regards his aversion to some kinds of homosexual men

See Crick above, p. 145. Ibid., p. 146. Ibid., p. 144. I ought not, for example, to tolerate your being assaulted; there

* See King above, p. 172. where a religion is described as disapproved and as is no virtue in my tolerating the evils done to others.

disliked as if the expressions are equivalent; see also Crick throughout.

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as a matter of taste, and is at pains to say that his tastes provide not even a prima facie case for legislating against homosexual behaviour. I do not suggest that tastes cannot be matters for argument at all; all I suggest is that no-one can consistently call a matter a matter of taste and yet think it a matter where coercion is warranted. But where dislikes are not matters of taste and can be properly described as disapproval rather than mere dislike, we are at least starting to offer moral arguments to show that whoever or whatever it is cannot be tolerated.

Thus, we may find Jones interesting, we may greatly enjoy watching the way he can reduce a classroom to chaos and his pupils to bewilderment, and yet we shall admit that we do not approve of his going on teaching, that we think he is an intolerably bad teacher. We may think a colleague who cannot tell the difference between the views of Wittgenstein and those of Austin an intolerably bad philosopher, even if we derive great enjoyment from seeing him make a fool of himself. Insofar as what we care for is the advance of philosophy, we must disapprove of the promulgation of nonsense. But this certainly does not mean that we shall accept that absolutely any means of putting them out of business is legitimate. To think that what they are doing is intolerable is to think that they ought to be stopped, even if they wish to carry on; but it is certainly not to think that the means of stopping them are immaterial. If Jones’s wife and children would suffer great hardship if he was dismissed without ado, we shall be inclined to put up with his incompetence until we can find a vacancy in the administration where he will do less damage. Equally, it is obvious that while philosophers have no business to allow the promulgation of error, it is the arguments not the philoso- phers which are to be knocked down. The general principle is obvious enough: we have to consider the costs to the person with whom we interfere as well as the costs to all the rest of us, and the way in which we interfere is inevitably an important part of the cost. No great imagination is needed to think of realistic examples of the pattern of argument I have just illustrated. A city may realize that it has an intolerable parking problem, decide it cannot tolerate casual parking, introduce regulations restricting it, and employ traffic wardens to enforce these regulations; behind the wardens will be the courts and the whole apparatus of coercion with which we try to interfere with intolerable - non ‘puttable up with’ - behaviour. But

5 See Crick above, p. I 5 I.

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no city would contemplate introducing capital punishment for parking offences ; the cost of securing compliance with the rules would be too high. So what I have so far argued is that expressing disapproval involves producing a prima facie case against toleration, but like all other prima facie cases, this one may be overruled.

‘PUTTING UP WITH IT’

Retracing our steps, we can see how the idea of ‘what we can put up with‘ will explain one or two further things that Crick says. First I want to take issue with his claim that no t h y of toleration existed in the ancient world.6 In his funeral oration Pericles is at pains to justify the Athenians’ toleration of each other’s eccentricities ; they enjoy diversity, they see no need to put pressure on those who behave differently from themselves, and they know that a variety of tastes and interests is no impediment to their love of Athemy I am sure Crick is right to think they would not have recognized a right of conscientious objection, and that they would not have tolerated a lack of public spirit; but a state so dependent on a citizen militia could hardly be expected to survive an absence of public spirit. But mere differences they could certainly put up, and more than put up with. Plato, naturally, was no Athenian in this.* His holism and his rigorism combined to persuade him that every action had to be justified as a necessary step in the search for the Good; whatever is not prescribed is proscribed, for the least departure from perfect unity and harmony will lead to chaos.g But Pericles was no Plato. The differences between them can be summed up by seeing how differently they would have answered the question of what a society could put up with in the way its citizens acted. These differences might be all but impossible to bring to an empirical test, embedded as they are in such different metaphysics; nonetheless, the logic of the dispute is clear - what for Pericles are differences of taste, differences which Mill called mere likings and dislikings,1° are for Plato dif- ferences about morally central issues, where society can only tolerate wrong decisions at the cost of self-destruction.

Ibid., p. 144. Thucydides : Pelopponesian War I, 18-40. Rep~blic VIII, 5 5 5-61, Cornford ed., pp. 274-80. For example, Reptiblit VIII, 546-8, Cornford, pp. 262-4.

lo Uti/itarianism, Liberg, Represenfafive Government, Everyman Library, pp. 70-1.

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Arguing along these lines, we can suggest that the growth of religious toleration to which Crick attaches such importance has its roots at least partially in intellectual changes - as well as in the way the warring sects became exhausted by fighting each other and learned to pursue a ‘minimax’ strategy of peaceful coexistence. To the extent that Protestants believed that outward observance could do nothing to help a man’s chances of salvation, they had no reason to believe that there was any religiotis point in coercing disbelievers. It is, for example, not at all surprising that when Locke draws limits to toleration and argues against tolerating Roman Catholics, his arguments are wholly political ones, couched in terms of Catholic allegiance to a foreign sovereign; he simply could not have produced any religious grounds.ll If we believe that men can and must please God by outward observances, we are much less likely to find toleration attractive. Indeed, what the contemporary secular liberal would want to call toleration might well appear to the committed Catholic as nothing better than ‘tolerating’ the suicide of one’s friends; allowing the heretic to imperil his immortal soul is surely a breach of an obvious duty towards him. The importance of empirical - in a sense - beliefs can be seen even more simply in two other cases. The God of ancient Judaism was by modern liberal standards distressingly prone to regard the entire community as hostage for good behaviour on the part of every individual; under such con- ditions, individual dissent is intolerable for simple utilitarian reasons. Since we cannot control God’s activities, we are forced to recognize that actions which in Mill’s eyes would have been ‘self-regarding’ actions’ emerge on this analysis as other-regarding and intolerably dangerous. The same goes for Justinian’s antipathy to sodomy; if he had been right in thinking that sexual deviation caused earthquakes and thunderstorms, then such behaviour would not be what the Wolfenden Committee termed ‘private immorality’, but an intolerable and all too literal assault on the fabric of society.13

Similarly, we can explain Crick‘s observation that toleration is likely to be achieved most readily by a modern well-off society. The danger inherent in my reliance on the notion of ‘what we can put up with’ is obvious enough; we can (at a pinch, and if we are willing to forgo all sorts of things that we do not think we should be required to forgo) put LIP with all sorts of things that we do not think we

l1 Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, Blackwell, Oxford, I 95 6, pp. I 5 7-8. l2 Op. cit., pp. 72-3. l3 Hart, Law, Liberty and MoraJity, Oxford, 1963, p. so.

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should have to put up with. To put it as briefly and crudely as I dare, it is, I think, the existing structure of roles with their attendant rights that people rely on for their conceptions of what we ought not to be asked to forgo. The motorist who could at a pinch drive twice as far to evade the stone-throwing children is in general supported in his belief that their activities rather than his are not to be tolerated. But, if the street he wants to use is constituted as a children’s play-street, this presumption fails. Now, the defining feature of modern societies is often said to be the ease with which we can change roles, a process much assisted by a high level of wealth, for this eases the costs of transition in the most literal manner. (Crick’s reference to ego- security is also highly relevant here, for it takes a secure person to contemplate changing his role without undue anxiety about its effects on his identity. 4,

To make the case more concrete, suppose we are confronted with a slave-holding society faced with the question of whether to eman- cipate its slaves. It might be said that slave-owners could not be plausibly expected to tolerate propaganda or legislation directed to that end; qua slave-owner, a man may well think that everything he values will disappear along with his slaves, for he will lose the esteem he enjoyed and this is certainly a real deprivation. l5 To this there are two obvious replies; the first is to point out that he can recoup his losses in the new social order in which he will occupy a new role - if, for example, he is compensated for the financial losses he incurs, he can become an entrepreneur. The plausibility of this reply depends a good deal on what we think the slave-owners’ values are, and such writers as Genovesela make it look anything but plausible. The other reply is to point out that the previous benefits enjoyed by the slave- owner were in any case illegitimate, so that the intolerable situation is not the change but the statt/s quo ante; accorlngly, the morally proper answer is that the slave-owner has just got to put up with the change. Elaboration of this argument, however, would lead us away from any very distinctive problem of toleration and into the much wider question of how we ought to distribute the costs and benefits of social life. I incline to the view that this tendency for arguments about toleration to turn into wider problems accounts for the fact that one famous essay on toleration - Mill’s Libet-9 - was much more of a propagandist exercise on behalf of the utilitarian ethic than has

l4 See Crick above, p. I 5 3 . l6 Genovese, The Polifical Econony of Slauety, New York, 1965, p. I. l6 Op. cit., p. KO.

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usually been recognized. But I have argued this elsewhere and need not repeat myself.17

OBJECTIONS TO TOLERATION

For I want to devote what space I have left to an area where there is a genuine problem about toleration as such. We have to begin by reconsidering religious toleration. Earlier I suggested that the relig- ious believer is a secular utilitarian so far as his moral beliefs go, but one whose judgements of cause and effect rest on what he believes about the wishes and intentions of God. But many writers find this kind of analysis unattractive. They sometimes argue, in the manner of Dr Douglas explaining the religious attitudes of the ‘Bog Irish‘,18 that religious belief is essentially non-empirical, that it is to be under- stood as a symbolic attachment to the group which provides our identity. We may come to think that an attachment to ritual, together with a corresponding inability to tolerate - at least at close quarters - any kind of ritual impurity, is an essential element in maintaining the identity of group and individual alike.lg The person who finds ritual efficacious not only will not be able to tolerate the unclean outsider, he will scarcely be able to visualize as a question the utilitarian urge to ask what damage non-observance does. However, the secular utilitarian can still recognize that ritual plays an indis- pensable part in preserving the social and mental health of the com- munity. The political importance of this argument emerges the moment we think of Burke’s defence of ‘prejudice’,20 which indeed shares its tendency to vacillate between a utilitarian account of the value of ritual and the suggestion that there is a wisdom higher than the rational adjustment of individual self-interest. But both are likely to be hostile to a principled defence of toleration. This is infinitely far from saying that either Burke or Dr Douglas have been defending intolerance, for it is arguable that a society which sets out to be tolerant will end by being less tolerant than one which dealt more gently with its own prejudices - indeed, this is part of Burke’s case against the French revolutionaries.

But emphasis upon the value of ritual and the importance of symbolic attachments does expose a certain thinness in secular

l7 The Philosophy of John Stuart Mili, London, I: 970, ch. XIII. l8 Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols, London, 1970, p. 3. 19 Op. cit., Preface. 2o Rejections on the Revolution in France, New York, 1961, pp. 100-1.

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utilitarianism. Utilitarians have had little to say about such matters as decency or decorum and attacks upon them; they are sound enough when discussing straightforward threats to the general welfare - but can they tell us as much about the obJcene, say, or the dixgusting? Few utilitarians want to permit all and any affronts to decency, but they have rather little to offer in explanation.21 This is not to say that the defenders of a non-utilitarian position are much better. The argument between Hart and Devlin offers an obvious illustration; Devlin begins by suggesting that toleration stops where the man on the Clapham omnibus becomes outraged, that nothing is needed but to ask if things have gone too far for the plain man; but he almost at once retreats to the view that outrage does not count unless it is outrage founded on a calm consideration of the dangers presented by the outrageous activities in question.22 Hart has little difficulty in pointing out that while the first view is intolerably conservative, the second amounts to conceding the game to the utilitarian. Yet, when Hart comes to claim that shocking behaviour is intolerable for the utilitarian reason that it is a shock, he surely puts the cart before the horse - the point being that what people find painfully shocking depends on a sense of ‘purity and danger’23 which is a very ‘culture- relative’ sense indeed.

Those who emphasize in this way the role of non-utilitarian con- siderations do present a considerable challenge. We said earlier that a society of secular, rational utilitarians who were readily moved by moral arguments and possessed the resources to ease social transition would find toleration easy to practise, since it would be included in their general inclination to seek the equitable distribution of costs and benefits. But the suggestion of those who emphasize the role of ritual and symbolic beliefs is just that such a society is inconceivable. To discuss such things in utilitarian terms is already to misunderstand them. A society which satisfied the needs for identity and attachment which are expressed in ritual and symbolism would not be a utilitarian society, it would not be a very liberal society, but it would satisfy perhaps more vital needs than societies which scored highly on these values.

Defending a Mill-like concern for an ‘open society’24 against the more claustrophobic implications of this anthropological attack

21 Mill, op. cit., p. I 5 3 . 22 The Enforcement of Morals, London, 1965, pp. 15, 17. 23 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, Penguin Books, 1970. 24 Cf. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, London, I 962, Vol. I, ch. I 0.

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involves protecting more than one flank. We might start by defend- ing the ‘intellectualist’ analysis of religion with which we began; in effect this means denying that there is a realm of symbolic discourse which is unamenable to analysis in other terms. Methodologically, this would impel us towards trying to explain ritual and symbolism in terms of attempts to manipulate unseen casual influences. Whether or not such a methodological stance if plausible is ultimately an empirical matter, is not one we can settle here.25 It would, however, be unwise to stake much on it in view of the widespread hostility to it to be discerned in anthropological literature. The second move we might make is simply to defend the morality of the open society as in itself preferable to that of the ritually cemented group, making no more empirical assumptions than the belief that we can liberate our- selves from those subliminal attachments that induce us to behave intolerantly towards outsiders who pose no utilitarian threats to us. The third move we must make is simply to point out the unsatis- factory aspects of the alternative; there are two glaring weaknesses on which we are bound to seize. The first is the implication that there will be a curious and socially disturbing distinction between the theorists who know what ritual is and how it works - and who will thus be immune to its beneficent effects - and the uninitiated who will reap its benefits in ignorance of its operations. We seem to be in for a population of unintegtated and unhappy Guardians who are to look after the cheerful dwellers in Plato’s cave.26 The second objection is that it is simply too late to appeal to the virtues of the higher irrationalism; once we begin to ask how an institution works and what its point is, we are not going to accept non-utilitarian answers. Once committed to the rationalist path, there is no way out except the more effective use of reason. And in that case, one of Mill’s better-known arguments for toleration is irresistible; to find out what social and political arrangements work best, we must provide an environment which encourages ‘experiments in living’. 27

25 See, e.g. W. G. Runciman, Sociologv in its Place, ch. 3. 26 Natural Symbols, ch. I I , pp. I >6-7. 27 Mill, 03. cit., p. I I 7.

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