Elite

If one agrees with Rorty's conception of philosophy as the process of finding and refining a set of metaphors for some kind of use in life, the inherent and immediate question is to what scope these metaphors will be applied. On an individual scale, philosophy can be an amalgam of idiosyncratic experiences that result in a perfectly coherent and adaptive worldview (one's ideas can be said to have "cash value"), but is contingently based on that individual's circumstances. This basically amounts to a simplified version of existentialism, whereby no individual is bound by any externally imposed moral or ideological definitions, but all are bound by the contingency of their own individual experiences, which they themselves have a hand in shaping.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, diverse and heterogeneous populations require metaphors that are more universally adoptable. However, whether or not an idea may be more easily adopted by large groups of people (let's call this "liquidity") is not exactly a normative consideration. While liquidity may be important for accomplishing the purposes of the advocate of the new metaphor (i.e., the poet or the philosopher), the quality of a metaphor may lie in the depth of its communication, not only its breadth. For example, an idea may have high liquidity because it is oversimplified and loses nuance that is reasonably appreciable to the relatively smaller audiences of experts in that subject. Newtonian mechanics is a perfect example of how one paradigm or set of metaphors is appropriate and highly liquid, though it is descriptively inferior in quality when it comes to explaining sub-atomic mechanics. And that's just dealing with something as reliably observable as the natural world, let alone the much more contentious ideas relating to notions of justice, decency, and other metaphysical constructs. Such issues must be resolved by political communities in such a way that allows the state to survive in a (somewhat) Machiavellian sense. Coming to a grand consensus on notions of political justice is arguably the prime function of any form of government. The metaphors used in these political inquiries are definitive of the state; they define the polis.

The goal of all poets and philosophers (especially those post-Hegel who are "historically aware") is to fashion metaphors that will supplant conventional language by virtue of their superior communicative merits. Indeed, this goal is co-extensive with a more holistic "search for Truth," but without the pretension that some objective reality exists that we attempt to discover and then put into words with varying degrees of success. Sadly (depending on your point of view), arguments based purely on "reason" are often less effective as advocacy employing more emotionally evocative imagery. Given that some of the most universal human emotional attributes are "fear" and "laziness," it is no surprise that more abstract and intellectually demanding philosophical ideals are less convincing to the large majority of people. Classically-minded philosophers since Plato, and Nietzsche in particular, have complained of the incompatibility of their notions of "good philosophy" and political realities. Logically, this amounts to a problem of liquidity in "good philosophy."

Consistent with the metaphor of a free market of ideas, attempting to increase the liquidity of all ideas is one sound goal of public policy, and high quality public education (and a liberal arts education beyond that) is certainly one of the surest ways to achieve it. However, it is also fairly clear that many of the principal determinants of academic success, and the liquidity of ideas in general, are culturally contingent: the involvement of one's parents, one's role models, and so on. In any event, this warrants an entirely different discussion.

The Federalists thought they reconciled "good philosophy" and "good politics" in the Hobbesian tradition, channeled through Locke, Montesquieu and a host of other philosophers. As with most natural rights philosophies, their propositions on governance were publicly accessible and verifiable, while simultaneously appealing to the private existential interests of the population as a whole. The emphasis was on the personal liberty to create one's own identity without the need for the state, but with the state there to ensure a maximum of mutual collaboration in these private endeavors. Some variation on this theme has dominated the world's politics for the last hundred years, due in no small part to the high liquidity and cash value of the ideas at the foundations of liberal democracy.

All of this has been somewhat of a buildup to suggest that a well-entrenched class of culturally-minded elites would be good for a population if they contributed their own syntheses to a national dialogue. For those of you who knew him, think Ward Elliott before he went insane; perhaps his father is a better example. These cosmopolitan individuals, who grew up in relative luxury (like a William or Henry James), channel their efforts toward learning about the best that other cultures have to offer, and importing that perspective in the domestic market of ideas. The Federalists were cosmopolitans in this exact way; they were on a new continent trying to assimilate a heterogeneous population and successfully synthesized abstract notions of governmental power and individual liberty imported from Britain and France. Even on a more practical level, "worldly experience" can sharpen one's understanding of human psychology, simply due to one's greater exposure to different types of individuals. These elites have the power to shape the culture by offering a wider range of perspectives and experience by which to analogize and perform philosophical synthesis than the majority of the polity.

The Framers understood this and created a republican form of government in order to try to promote "representation" by elites, or perhaps the more Burkeian description of "delegation" of political power. Unfortunately (in my view), the Progressives offered an alternative vision of justice and political philosophy which was strongly anti-elitist and appealed to the more visceral notions of redistributive justice inherent to any democracy. The Framers had always hoped that the elites would guide government voluntarily, but fashioned a government that was capable of dealing with much less. The Bush Administration has been a profound testament to that notion.