Cohen G. A. and Jonathan Wolff, eds.

, Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy

Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy by Cohen, G. A.; Jonathan Wolff
Review by: Allen Wood
Ethics, Vol. 124, No. 4 (July 2014), pp. 889-894
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Cohen, G. A. Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy. Edited by
Jonathan Wolff.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Pp. xi1360. $35.00 cloth.
Gerald Allan Cohen 19412009 died suddenly and unexpectedly of a massive
stroke on August 5, 2009. He was born in Montreal but pursued his academic
career mainly in the United Kingdom, as Quain Professor of Jurisprudence, Uni-
versity College London, and then after 1985 Chichele Professor of Social and
Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford. In this review, however, I will call him
simply Jerry, because that is what I, and everyone, always called him. Jerrys in-
tellect was at least as impressive as his academic titles might suggest, but he was
also a weird, entertaining, and thoroughly lovable human being, who might, at any
moment, crack a joke, pinch your cheek, begin singing a Broadway tune, or per-
form a devastatingly funny impression of some philosopher or public gure. He
never let you forget that he was culturally a Jew, politically a Marxist, and down
to his socks an analytic philosopher.
At his death, Jerry left a considerable collection of lecture notes and also
papers deserving of reprint, which he had already thought of publishing. They
have been ably edited by his student Jonathan Wolff University College, Lon-
don, who has appended to them a highly informative memoir about Jerrys life,
works, and career, based on the obituary he wrote for thePhilosophers Magazine in
August 2009 and the longer memoir published in Proceedings of the British Academy
in 2011. The book consists of three parts: rst, Jerrys lecture notes, covering a pe-
riod of many years, on Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche;
second, a set of ve reprinted papers, mainly but not exclusively on Marx, dating
from 1968 to 1996; and third, Wolffs memoir. Some of the lectures read like lec-
ture notes, terse andcryptic althoughsome of the cryptic passages are illuminated
by Wolffs informative notes. But many of them are quite polished and, at least
for long stretches, read like published papers. They occasionally display the de-
lightful wit for which Jerry was famous: Aristotle collected 156 constitutions
and wrote commentaries on all of them, but of that, fortunately, only the Con-
stitution of Athens survives 48; A hypothetical contract, one might say, is not
worth the paper its not written on 89; If you sit next to a man on a plane in
the United States and ask him what he does and he says I make plastics, you can
condently infer from his response, if he is being truthful, that he does not make
plastics 199. But Im afraid the angular voice, the sparkle in the eye, and the wry
curl of the lip that would have accompanied such remarksthese, sadly, have now
been lost to the world forever.
Jerry was a constructive social, political, moral, and economic theorist. He
was author of the best book about Marxs theory of history ever written, and in
his later work had much to say about such themes as freedom, self-ownership,
economic equality, social justice, and socialism. But his greatest talent as a phi-
losopher always lay in his capacity to take apart, criticize, and yet also explore
the defensive resources of the views of others, both great historical philosophers
such as Marx and also twentieth-century philosophers, especially John Rawls,
Robert Nozick, and Ronald Dworkin. In his lecture notes, we see these talents
displayed to an impressive degree concerning a wide range of great historical
gures about whom he did not write much during his lifetime.
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Jerry was well trained by his teacher Gilbert Ryle, and his standards of clarity
and argumentative rigor were as high as anyones. But he never engaged in an-
alytical philosophy only for the sake of displaying the techniques and devices
honed by this style of thought. His attention was always on things that mattered
not only philosophically, but also politically, morallyfor human beings. If, as I
hope and believe, analytical philosophy will one day cease to exist because it will
become impossible to contrast it with any other school, style, or movement its
standards and methods having come to saturate all these others, then Jerry
Cohen will deserve an important place in the narrative history of this salutary
development.
MEMOIR
I begin with a comment on the third part of the book, the memoir by Jonathan
Wolff. This is an insightful survey of the course of Jerrys career as a philoso-
pher, including the changes of interest, changes of focus, and changes of mind
which his thought underwent over the years. We are given a picture of Jerrys
defense of Marxs theory of history, then some of the skirmishes that led to second
thoughts about it. We see Jerry founding the September or Non-bullshit Marx-
ism Group. We pursue his engagements with Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin,
and John Rawls, as he focuses successively on self-ownership, the currency of egal-
itarian justice, and his critique of Rawlss difference principle as not egalitarian
enough. The story ends with Jerrys nal short book,Why Not Socialism? 2009, but
still unpublished at his death, that defends the vision of a society based on the
human capacities for cooperation and generosity, rather than as with capitalism
being based on, and at the same time reinforcing, the reprehensible human traits
of fear, greed, and the will to dominate and exploit. This memoir would be a
good thing to read for anyone who picks up any of Jerrys books or papers and
wants to knowfromthe start where it ts into his thought and into the course of
his works.
PLATO
Jerrys lectures are not surveys of the thought of the philosopher but instead
are typically intensive engagements with certain themes, problems, issues, doc-
trines, and arguments found in the philosopher. In the rst lecture, Plato and
His Predecessors, the main theme is physis versusnomos in Greek social and politi-
cal thought. Plato, by resting moral and political standards on a metaphysically
conceived nature, is seen as a reactionary, while the sophists, introducing the rad-
ically new doctrine that human institutions are conventions made by human be-
ings, are seen as implicitly challenging political privilege and the traditional order.
Jerry claims that at least their historical importance is that they opened up the
possibility of a challenge to the natural superiority of Greeks to barbarians, free-
men to slaves, and aristocrats to the mass of those less wellborn 15. But he
realizes that the sophists did not actually challenge thesethey were typically
conservative in their social views, and their intellectual and rhetorical wares were
on sale mainly to the privileged. Jerry also realizes that Plato himself was a radi-
cal of sorts, whose position transcends philosophically the social categories in
terms of which he is introduced. Jerry rejects Poppers view that Plato was a to-
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talitarianyet not because he respects the rights of the masses but only because
he disrespects them so much that he sees no point in extensive intervention in
their lives 36. Jerry presents us with a Plato who has some resources for re-
sponding even to criticisms to which, in Jerrys view, he ultimately succumbs. Al-
though the lecture is labeled Plato and His Predecessors, there is also a nearly
twenty-page discussion of Aristotle and a thoughtful comparison of him with
Plato 4664. These lectures end with an insightful application to the mod-
ern world: If Rousseau recognized that classical values could not be realized in
the modern state, and Hegel pretended they could, Marx demanded that the
same state be abolished and the values realized in a stateless community. Where
Hegel falsied reality and came to terms with it, Marx saw the reality and refused
to make his peace with it. The modern world, dominated by the hopes of these
thinkers, is also not at peace with itself 64.
HOBBES
These lectures deal with several basic themes: 1 the psychological basis of peo-
ples need to leave the state of nature for a despotic state; 2 a complex game-
theoretic reconstruction of the reasoning, or rather of several distinct lines of
reasoning the competition story, the difdence story, the glory story that
lead to the establishment of a Hobbesian sovereign Hobbes, Jerry thinks, is
an implicit game theorist, but he did not realize he was; 85; 3 the alternative
theories of Hobbesian political obligation consequentialist, hypothetical contract-
arian, actual consent, and authorization; and 4 the alleged paradox of a sover-
eign who can make laws without being bound by them. The variations on the
Hobbesian situation, seeing it as a prisoners dilemma, an assurance game, and
in subtle permutations of these, is very illuminating theoretically, but I think he
may sell short the strength of Hobbess argument when all its resources are put
together. Although there is a seeming paradox in Hobbess inferences that the
sovereign, because he makes the law, is not subject to itwhile the subject, in
authorizing him, also makes the law and is therefore subject to itI think there is
no contradiction. The subject, if desperate enough to avoid the state of nature,
might without self-contradiction be terried into authorizing the sovereign to leg-
islate on just these terms.
LOCKE AND HUME
The lectures on Locke focus on the themes of self-ownership, property, and
political obligation. They are sympathetic to their subject, in part because of the
subtext that periodically reaches the surface that libertarians like Nozick have
misread Locke. The next lectures, on Hume, are focused largely, although not
exclusively, on Humes anticontractarian arguments directed against Locke, and
here Jerry is concerned mainly to defend Locke against Hume. The chief weak-
ness he sees in Humes position is that it never directly confronted the Lockean
premise of self-ownership, on which Locke rests the need for consent as a ground
of political legitimacy 121. Among the numerous gems in these lectures is the
following statement, directed at Hume: Suppose one said, plausibly, that slavery
is legitimate only if it is voluntarily undertaken, for example as the result of a
fair gamble. Would the fact that there is plenty of slavery that comes from taking
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captives in war, and that such slavery is regarded as legitimate, refute that? Only
a historian could think so 123.
KANT
Kant is a difcult philosopher to understand. Kant as I will call him is a c-
tional legendary, mythical character, inhabiting the minds and the writings of
people mostly moral philosophers who have failed to understand Kant or for
various reasons have not even tried very hard to understand him. Like Kant,
Kant is full of difcult terminology. But Kant is far easier to understand be-
cause his moral views are so stark, simplistic, and garishly ugly. As with other leg-
endary or mythological characters, Kant occupies an important place in the
world of those who see it in terms of the mythhere, a myth dramatizing the
neuroses from which our moral culture suffers. If you present them with evi-
dence that Kant is not Kantthat Kant in fact never existedthey wont
listen to you because they have their own neurotic need for Kant to be Kant,
lest they lose one of their chief means of orienting themselves in their self-
appointed healthy mindedness.
Jerrys lectures about Kant are lectures about Kant. Kant is the deon-
tologist supreme 159. Kant is perfectly described by Max Webers cartoon
version of an ethics of disposition, as contrasted with the conscientious realists
ethics of responsibility 160. Kant rejects all teleological ethics: he draws no
distinction between having desires and having purposes and takes a dim view
of both. Jerrys Kant thinks as he did Sidgwicks version of the myth that we
are free or responsible only as supernatural noumena, while our moral trans-
gressions take place down here in the phenomenal world, so that we cannot
consistently hold people responsible for any of themalthough such blanket
mercy would be the furthest thing from Kants nasty, judgmental mind. Ana-
lytical philosophers like drawing distinctions, but Jerrys Kant is pathologically
addicted to themor rather, to one great big distinction between the Non- or
Immoral and the Moral which encompasses and thereby blurs a dozen oth-
ers. For Kant is committed quite indefensibly to identifying all dozen distinc-
tions with one another 154. Thus although addicted to distinctions, Kant
is also bad at drawing them. Jerry painstakingly takes apart Kants many confu-
sions here in an impressive analytical tour de force. It seems almost beside the
point to observe that virtually nothing Jerry says about Kant actually holds of
Kant. These lectures conclude with a brief, rather cryptic discussion of what
the universalizability test is not 18182. The lurid portrayal of the mythical
antihero even rises to the level of rather witty self-satire: Kant believes that he is
most morally admirable who has a rotten soul, but acts against its natural dic-
tates 150.
HEGEL
The lectures on Hegel begin with some metaphysics 18388, giving yet another
opportunity for jabs at Kant this time Hegelian ones, deating the supernat-
ural gas balloon that is the thing in itself . But Hegels absolute idealism on
this account, an extravagant piece of subjective idealist metaphysics doesnt come
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off looking so good either. The bulk of the Hegel lectures 188200, however,
is devoted to a highly illuminating and admirably clear account of the master-
servant Herr-Knecht relation which Jerry casually and somewhat traditionally
misstates as master-slave. He concludes correctly that this account is in-
tended to illuminate not our material needs but our needs for recognition and
for a sense of our own personality. Such needs are ignored by empiricists 199.
NIETZSCHE
These lectures, somewhat more elaborate but very well written, apparently date
from very early in Jerrys teaching career: 196570. The rst shorter lecture is
biographical 2018, now a bit dated because it is based on sources available at
that time. The second much longer lecture is a set of reections, very sympa-
thetic on Nietzsches attempt to take us on a journey to a land beyond good
and evil 20843. He correctly understands Nietzsche as interested not in what
is good for human beings but instead in what if anything is, or could be, the
good of human beingswhat might make their existence something to be val-
ued or considered worthwhile. In other words, Nietzsche is used as a vehicle for
a pointed critique of utilitarianism and eudaemonist ethics generally. Along the
way there are also some very illuminating reections on the concept of psychic
health and also a lovely little lucid account of what makes thinking dialectical
23940.
Jerrys reading of Nietzsche is conspicuously charitable. He begins by say-
ing that Nietzsches thought is no longer as scary as it once was. One expla-
nation he gives for this is that the sting in his teaching has been interpreted
away by many commentaries 201. This might have served as a self-description of
some of what was to follow. For example: So we are told not to pity the weak. But
we are not told to step on them either 241except, of course, that we are told
precisely this by Nietzsche, over and over again, in a variety of creative ways, with
little regard for what would happen if people took him seriously. The best you
can say for Nietzsche is that his intemperate rhetoric makes for such bad pub-
lic relations for social policies that really do step on the weak that his arguments
are almost never used, unless with a pusillanimous gloss that would have dis-
gusted Nietzsche himself.
PAPERS
The second part of the book Papers reprints several essays of Jerrys that
are well worth looking at or looking at again, if you havent read them for a
long time. Bourgeois and Proletarians is a marvelously insightful exegesis of
themes in Marxs Paris manuscripts and The Holy Family, in which Jerry makes
surprisingly good sense of Marxs attempt to connect up different aspects of the
alienation found in capitalist society. The main thesis is that the capitalist accepts
alienation because his role makes a nonalienated existence impossible for him:
so it is only the worker who has any capacity to see beyond it. The Workers and
the Word is an acute and subtle defense of Marxs critique of ideology against the
charge that it discredits itself by being committed to including itself within the
scope of what it criticizes. There is also Jerrys essay replying to Jon Elsters crit-
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icism of functional explanation in Marxs theory of history and his review of my
1981 Marx book 2nd ed., 2004 in which Jerry, along with paying the book some
very generous compliments, defends at some length against what the texts say
the thesis that Marx attacks capitalist exploitation because he thinks it unjust.
Finally, there is Jerrys memorable critical essay commenting on Christine Kors-
gaards Sources of Normativity.
I have said that these lectures contain a number of philosophical gems. I
have quoted only one or two of them but will end by quoting my favorite, which
is tossed out in the middle of his lectures on Plato: Consider Quines plea for
the naturalization of epistemology. He said, contemplating the historic disagree-
ments regarding criteria of knowledge and rational belief: Why not settle for psy-
chology? But how do we get a psychology save by practicing science under canons
of right reasoning on whose rightness science is impotent to comment? It is our
criteria that endow science with its warrant. Science could thus never impugn our
status as normative, warrant-giving, creatures. It is thus important to know ourselves,
as producers of the criteria of validity 24. Reading and rereading these lectures
may be as close as any of us who knew Jerry will ever again come to having a phil-
osophical discussion with him and as close as those who never knew him will ever
be able to come to having known him. Thats a sad thought, but it makes me
grateful to Jonathan Wolff for having guided this memorable book into print.
Allen Wood
Indiana University
Dyzenhaus, David, and Poole, Thomas, eds. Hobbes and the Law.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. 254. $90.00 cloth.
Hobbes has come to occupy a peculiar role in the history of philosophy. He wrote
at a time of violence and religious fervor, when most accepted the legitimacy of
natural hierarchiesbetween king and subjects, nobles and commoners, men
and women; in that context his belief in the possibility of a secular state, based
on a rational contract between free and equal individuals, is both radical and
compelling. But Hobbes also has a well-known darker side: his insistence on ab-
solute undivided and unlimited sovereignty, his defense of a sovereign account-
able only to God and not to his people, his enthusiasm for monarchy, and his
denial of almost all rights to resist or disobey political power. As a result we tend
to emphasize his radical starting points and his inuence on later, more attrac-
tive thinkers, while avoiding any real consideration of his conclusions about
how actual political institutions should be structured.
Hobbes and the Law includes ten essays on juristic aspects of Hobbess phi-
losophy set in context by a short introduction. Despite local disagreements, all
the essays reject the familiar and simplistic caricatures of Hobbess substantive
views. This is the second anthology on the subject of Hobbes and law. Hobbes on
Law ed. Claire Finkelstein Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005 is an excellent collection
of previously published papers representing much of the best work to that date.
In contrast, the current anthology consists of specially commissioned papers,
894 Ethics July 2014
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