Jakten på den ideelle løsning folk.uio.no/daget/utopia11

1. Jakten på den ideelle løsninghttp://folk.uio.no/daget/utopia11.ppt Forelesning, STV 1530, 10. mars 2011.Dag Einar Thorsen d.e.thorsen@stv.uio.no

2. Hva er en utopi? Hvor er Utopia?

3. Sir/St. Thomas More(Skytshelgen for advokater og politikere!) • Skrev boken Utopia, som ble utgitt i 1516. • ”Utopia” kan bety både ”godt sted” (ευτοπία – eutopia) og ”stedet som ikke er” (ουτοπία – outopia). • Halshugget av Henrik VIII i 1535.

4. Nyere definisjoner av utopier „Die utopischen Modelle im hier gemeinten Sinn werden – im Gegensatz zu der Tradition des politischen Denkens von Aristoteles über Hobbes und Locke bis hin zu Rousseau, Kant und Carl Schmitt – als Fiktionen funktionierender Gesamtgesellschaften vorgestellt und geschildert. Als konkrete Beschreibungen bester oder schlechtester Sozietäten stehen sie unter dem Zwang, von den politiktheoretische und sozialphilosophische Reflexionen weitgehend entlastet sind: Sie müssen bis ins Detail des Alltagslebens aufzeigen, wie die Mechanismen der gewünschten oder gefürchteten Gesellschaft aussehen und welche Praxis der in ihr lebenden Menschen aus ihr folgt.“ (Saage 1997:2; cf. Kumar 1987:25)

5. “Utopia, then, is first and foremost a work of imaginative fiction in which, unlike other such works, the central subject is the good society. This distinguishes it at the same time from other treatments of the good society, whether in myths of a Golden Age, beliefs in a coming millennium, or philosophical speculation on the ideal city. Fictive elements no doubt have their part to play in these modes but in none of them is narrative fiction, as in the utopia, the defining form” (Kumar 1991:27) “What, then, is the essence of utopianism? In contrast to Berlin and Kolakowski, I take the defining feature of utopian thought to be the vivid imagination of the norms, institutions, and individual relationships of a society meant to be regarded as qualitatively better in at least certain respects than that in which its originator lives” (Davis 2001:76-7).

6. Isaiah Berlin

7. The most dangerous belief “One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals – justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission or emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty itself, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society. This is the belief that somewhere in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution.” (Berlin 2002:212)

8. Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet

9. “This ancient faith rests on the conviction that all the positive values in which men have believed must, in the end, be compatible, and perhaps even entail one another. ‘Nature binds truth, happiness and virtue together by an indissoluble chain,’ said one of the best men who ever lived [i.e. the Marquis de Condorcet], and spoke in similar terms of liberty, equality and justice. But is this true? It is a commonplace that neither political equality nor efficient organisation nor social justice is compatible with more than a modicum of individual liberty, and certainly not with unrestricted laissez-faire; that justice and generosity, public and private loyalties, the demands of genius and the claims of society can conflict violently with each other. And it is no great way from that to the generalisation that not all good things are compatible, still less all the ideals of mankind. […] To admit that the fulfilment of some of our ideals may in principle make the fulfilment of others impossible is to say that the notion of total human fulfilment is a formal contradiction, a metaphysical chimera.” (Berlin 2002:212; cf. also Condorcet [1793] 1971).

10. “So I conclude that the very notion of a final solution is not only impracticable but, if I am right, and some values cannot but clash, incoherent also. The possibility of a final solution – even if we forget the terrible sense that these words acquired in Hitler’s day, turns out to be an illusion; and a very dangerous one. For if one really believes that such a solution is possible, then surely no cost would be too high to obtain it: to make mankind just and happy and creative and harmonious for ever – what could be too high a price to pay for that? To make such an omelette, there is surely no limit to the number of eggs that should be broken – that was the faith of Lenin, of Trotsky, of Mao, and for all I know of Pol Pot.” (Berlin 1990:15).

11. Pol Pot (Saloth Sar)

12. “Since I know the only true path to the ultimate solution of the problems of society, I know which way to drive the human caravan; and since you are ignorant of what I know, you cannot be allowed to have liberty of choice even within the narrowest limits, if the goal is to be reached. You declare that a given policy will make you happier, or freer, or give you room to breathe; but I know that you are mistaken, I know what you need, what all men need; and if there is resistance based on ignorance or malevolence, then it must be broken and hundreds of thousands may have to perish to make millions happy for all time. What choice have we, who have the knowledge, but to be willing to sacrifice them all?” (Berlin 1990:15).

13. Pluralism(source: Tulane University)

14. “Pluralism, with the measure of ‘negative’ liberty that it entails, seems to me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who seek in the great disciplined, authoritarian structures the ideal of ‘positive’ self-mastery by classes, or peoples, or the whole of mankind. It is truer, because it does, at least, recognise the fact that human goals are many, not all of them commensurable, and in perpetual rivalry with one another. […] To say that in some ultimate, all-reconciling yet realisable synthesis duty is interest, or individual freedom is pure democracy or an authoritarian State, is to throw a metaphysical blanket over self-deceit or deliberate hypocrisy. It is more humane because it does not (as the system-builders do) deprive men, in the name of some remote, or incoherent, ideal, of much that they have found to be indispensable to their life as unpredictably self-transforming human beings. In the end men choose between ultimate values; they choose as they do because their life and thought are determined by fundamental moral categories and concepts that are, at any rate over large stretches of time and space, and whatever their ultimate origins, a part of their being and thought and sense of their own identity; part of what makes them human” (Berlin 2002: 216).

15. Social and political collisions

16. “Of course social and political collisions will take place; the mere conflict of positive values alone makes this unavoidable. Yet they can, I believe, be minimised by promoting and preserving an uneasy equilibrium, which is constantly threatened and in constant need of repair – that alone, I repeat, is the precondition for decent societies and morally acceptable behaviour, otherwise we are bound to lose our way. A little dull as a solution, you will say? Not the stuff of which calls to heroic action by inspired leaders are made? Yet if there is some truth in this view, perhaps that is sufficient” (Berlin: 1990:19).

17. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, prince de Bénévent Surtout, Messieurs, point de zèle!

18. “[W]e cannot sacrifice either freedom or the organisation needed for its defence or a minimum standard of welfare. The way out must therefore lie in some logically untidy, flexible and even ambiguous compromise. Every situation calls for its own specific policy, since ‘out of the crooked timber of humanity’, as Kant once remarked, ‘no straight thing was ever made’. What the age calls for is not (as we are so often told) more faith, or stronger leadership, or more scientific organisation. […] What is required is a less mechanical, less fanatical application of general principles, however rational or righteous, a more cautious and less arrogantly self-confident application of accepted, scientifically tested, general solutions to unexamined individual cases. The wicked Talleyrand’s ‘Surtout, Messieurs, point de zèle’ can be more humane than the demand for uniformity of the virtuous Robespierre, and a salutary brake upon too much control of men’s lives in an age of social planning and technology.” (Berlin 2002:92)

19. Helmut Schmidt Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen. Das Schneckentempo ist das normale Tempo jeder Demokratie.

20. Et fritt sammendrag: Demokrati som anti-utopi • Utopier kan være inspirernde, og bidra til politisk handling, men kan også være farlige. • Utopier er farlige fordi de må virkeliggjøres mot viljen til de som ønsker en annen type samfunn, helt uavhengig av om dette er andre utopier eller bare opprettholdelse av status quo. • Ethvert politisk system må balansere ulike verdier, interesser og målsettinger, og må finne fram til prosedyrer for å løse sosiale og politiske konflikter dersom systemet skal vare og gi folk en noenlunde fredelig tilværelse. • Demokratiet er et konserverende og ofte frustrerende politisk system, men er også det eneste politiske system som lover indre stabilitet og et generøst mål med personlig frihet for alle. • Demokratiet er altså ikke den best tenkelige verden, men kan være den beste vi er i stand til å skape her på Jorda, eller i en hvilken som helst verden befolket av feilbarlige og bare delvis rasjonelle vesener.

21. Berlin, Isaiah (1990): The Crooked Timber of Humanity. Edited by Henry Hardy. London: John Murray. Berlin, Isaiah (2000): The Power of Ideas. Edited by Henry Hardy. London: Chatto & Windus. Berlin, Isaiah (2002): Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty. Edited by Henry Hardy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Condorcet, Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de ([1793] 1971): Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l‘ésprit humain. Préface et notes par Monique et François Hincker.Paris: Editions Sociales. Davis, Laurence (2001): “Isaiah Berlin, William Morris, and the Politics of Utopia”; pp. 56-86 in Barbara Goodwin (ed.): The Philosophy of Utopia. London: Frank Cass. Kumar, Krishan (1987): Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford: Blackwell. Kumar, Krishan (1991): Utopianism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Saage, Richard (1997): Utopieforschung. Eine Bilanz. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

22. På Nettet! • Denne presentasjonen er tilgjengelig her: http://folk.uio.no/daget/utopia11.ppt • En lengre versjon er også tilgjengelig: http://folk.uio.no/daget/utopia09.ppt