Liberty and Justice for Who?

Josh Landy
Are freedom and equality all we need?

Ray Briggs
Or do liberal ideals just end up supporting oppression?

Josh Landy
How can we make sure that justice is for everybody?

Ray Briggs
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco Bay Area.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus, where Ray teaches philosophy, and I direct the Philosophy and Literature Initiative.

Ray Briggs
Today’s episode is generously sponsored by the Stanford Global Studies program. And we’re asking: liberty and justice for who?

Josh Landy
Liberty and justice for everyone. Right, right. I mean, we’re all capable of rationality. And we all deserve to be free and equal.

Ray Briggs
Oh, yeah. Interesting to hear that coming from an Englishman, Josh. Didn’t your country run an oppressive colonial empire for centuries?

Josh Landy
You’re a one to talk—your precious United States was founded on colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and slavery.

Ray Briggs
Yeah okay, you know, you’re right. But you Brits are the ones who invented the whole ideology of liberalism. I mean, you had John Locke and John Stuart Mill, telling people that everyone was free and equal, and then just using those ideas to steal other people’s land and enslave them.

Josh Landy
What do you mean, Ray? You think a bunch of philosophers invaded India?

Ray Briggs
Well, sorta. I mean, they didn’t marching with muskets. But, you know, John Locke did have stock in the rRoyal Africa Company, which was involved in the slave trade. And John Stuart Mill worked for the British East India Company, which stole something like $45 trillion worth of stuff from India.

Josh Landy
I mean, working for those companies is pretty awful. I won’t defend that. All I want to say is that, you know, Locke and Mill still had some interesting ideas. I mean, were they right to say that freedom and equality are important?

Ray Briggs
Well no, I think their ideas were exactly what enabled England to build this huge empire and then pretend that everything they were doing was okay.

Josh Landy
I don’t get it. Ray. I mean, those classical liberals, people like Locke and Mill they said everyone’s capable of rationality and, like, as a consequence, they should be allowed to govern themselves. So how can that possibly be used as a justification for taking away people’s autonomy and replacing it with British rule?

Ray Briggs
Well, you know, they thought everybody was capable of rationality, in theory, but only some people they thought were actually rational. Oh if you were English, then you counted as capable of self governance. But if you were born and raised in Ireland, or India or Africa, well, then they thought you kind of had to be babysat by somebody more responsible.

Josh Landy
Well, that is clearly a ridiculous belief on their part. But surely, it’s not a problem with the concept of rationality. I mean, they just failed to recognize rationality and other people because they couldn’t see past things like differences in language and customs. They, they saw people wearing different clothes, and they foolishly concluded that those people weren’t civilized. So that’s obviously a huge and and dramatically problematic error. But it’s not a problem for liberalism. I mean, if they’d been proper liberals, they would have opposed that kind of bigotry.

Ray Briggs
Well, Josh, they were liberals. They were like the earliest liberals, and they didn’t oppose that kind of closed minded bigotry. So liberalism as an ideology just doesn’t work. It just ends up being covered for theft and exploitation.

Josh Landy
I don’t know. Any ideology can be used as a cover for theft and exploitation. Look at the United States: you all didn’t appeal to liberalism, you said God wanted you to conquer the entire continent. And you know, when the Persians were running around conquering all their neighbors, I don’t think they were quoting John Locke.

Ray Briggs
You have to face facts. Even if liberalism isn’t worse than other ideologies, it’s still useless. It doesn’t matter if it could theoretically work in some ideal world. It could never work in reality.

Josh Landy
Never? Look at us today. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we’re not doing perfectly by any means. But we’re at least doing better mean Britain doesn’t have an empire anymore. For one thing, and, and a lot of Western social institutions, including the good ones are grounded on liberal principles, principles of self governance.

Ray Briggs
Ooh, a lot of Western social institutions. Isn’t that nice for the West? And what about the rest of the world?

Josh Landy
Well, outside the West race, some democratic movements draw on liberal ideas, why don’t give credit where it’s due?

Ray Briggs
Well, I still think liberalism has done more harm than good. And I bet our guest is going to back me up. It’s Uday Singh Mehta from the City University of New York, author of “Liberalism and Empire.”

Josh Landy
I don’t know, I think he may back me up. Ideals of equality and rationality have sometimes had great effects—like the Haitian Revolution, which has been described as the largest and most successful revolt led by slaves in the western hemisphere.

Ray Briggs
So we sent our roving philosophical reporter, Holly J. McDede, to look into that uprising for liberty, equality and fraternity for all. She files this report.

C.L.R. James
He knew French, British and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were.

Holly McDede
That passage is from “The Black Jacobins” by C.L.R. James. It’s an account of the 1791 Haitian Revolution.

Charles Forsdick
It’s a very popular book on the British left that many read, knowing nothing about Haiti, but having an interest in radical politics and in Atlantic history.

Holly McDede
Charles Forsdick, now professor of French at the University of Liverpool says a long time ago before he even got into studying France in earnest, he read that book. It tells a story of former slave and military leader Toussaint Louverture. He was born in the friend Caribbean colony called San Domingo (now Haiti). He led thousands of former slaves into battle against French, Spanish and English forces,

C.L.R. James
There is no oath to sacred for them to break—no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property, which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.

Holly McDede
Forsdick is co-author of the book “Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions.” Earlier in his career studying French history, Forsdick kept noticing there wasn’t much acknowledgement of the Haitian Revolution.

Charles Forsdick
150 years before the major wave of decolonization Following the Second World War—because of its prematurity. It was systematically silenced and disavowed in the Atlantic world of the 19th century, because of its potentially incendiary messages.

Holly McDede
The Haitian revolutionaries said if there is to be liberty and must be for all people, a message different from liberal thinkers elsewhere.

Christian Høgsbjerg
They didn’t see freedom as a kind of gift from above. You know, under Toussaint’s leadership, it had to be won by the enslaved masses themselves from below.

Holly McDede
That’s Christian Høgsbjerg, Professor of History and Politics at the University of Brighton. He co-wrote that book on Toussaint with Charles Forsdick. But let’s back up for a moment.

A Tale of Two Cities
I dropped a stitch—cursed aristocrats!

Holly McDede
So former slaves in Haiti revolted and battled French slave owners just a few years after France’s own revolution against the absolute power of the King.

A Tale of Two Cities
I’m very much afraid, my good tutor that you will talk my nephew to take the new philosophy of equality seriously. Now I enjoy M. Voltaire and these other modern philosophers, but I take them lightly—merely as an exercise for the mind.

Most of our lands are stolen, I intend to see them returned to the peasants to whom they rightfully belong.

Holly McDede
The Spanish, French and English all want to control of Haiti. Toussaint Louverture and his army sided with Spain. Then he switched allegiance to the French, when the revolutionary government first outlawed slavery in 1794.

Christian Høgsbjerg
It was under the leadership of the Jacobins, the most radical, liberal, sort of bourgeois wing of the French Revolution under Robespierre. And Toussaint realized that actually, this was a government was actually quite sincere about its commitment to the Enlightenment ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity.

Holly McDede
But then Toussaint Louverture’s trust in France cost him. After the rise of Napoleon he was tricked, captured by the French and died in prison.

Christian Høgsbjerg
So we never actually became the leader who actually saw the intimate victory of a Haitian revolution that fell to his one of his lieutenants, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who actually ultimately let the Haitian patient victory in 1804 after bloody war of independence.

Holly McDede
In order to secure that independence, French slaveholders and their descendants demanded that Haiti pay the equivalent of between 20 and 30 billion in today’s dollars. Even President Thomas Jefferson made sure to isolate the country politically and economically. Again, Charles Forsdick.

Charles Forsdick
That’s why the story of Hait,i as a political force, it’s very much blunted, silenced, disavowed.

Holly McDede
But the success of the Haitian Revolution also became a source of inspiration for people resisting enslavement and racism ,from the civil war in the US to the anti colonial movements of the 50s and 60s,

Charles Forsdick
And crucially, that legacy of the Haitian Revolution was very apparent in summer 2020, when Louverture became recognized as as one of the precursors of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Holly McDede
And in Haiti and elsewhere, the struggle continues to deliver the universal emancipation that the revolution promised. For Philosophy Talk, I’m HollyJ. McDede.

Josh Landy
Thanks for that great report. Holly. I’m Josh Landy. With me as my Stanford colleague Ray Briggs, and today we’re thinking about justice and the liberal tradition.

Ray Briggs
We’re joined now by Uday Singh Mehta. He is professor of political science at the City University of New York and author of “Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought.” Uday, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Uday Mehta
Thank you, thank you.

Josh Landy
Uday, you’ve written a lot about freedom and rationality, what events in your own life first got you interested in those ideas?

Uday Mehta
You know, so I, I grew up in India and China and Britain, I studied in these places. You know, I went to Catholic school in China, and then to a boarding school in India, and then I went to a boarding school in Britain. And then I did my college and PhD in America. So had exposure to these various parts of the world. And all of these places have different cultures, different ways of operating. And that’s, I think, what got me interested in liberalism.

Ray Briggs
That sounds like a really a kind of broadening experience. So what is some critics say that liberalism was responsible for the bad actions of the British Empire in places like India? Can you tell us what some of those actions were? Yes.

Uday Mehta
So they, for instance, didn’t give Indians the right to vote till the late 19th century. They were cruel to the Indians, they took away their land, they created all sorts of nasty institutions. They got rid of institutions that through which Indians had historically got the identity, and some of these institutions whereby present standards, very good, you know, they got rid of Sati, this practice of widows self emulating themselves in the funeral pyre of their husbands. So it’s not that they did only bad. They did a lot of good things, too. And so I, you know, I am I should say at the outset, I am a kind of tortured liberal. Even though I’m a critic of liberalism. At least that’s what I think I am,

Ray Briggs
Right, so the British and India did like some good things, but there was also this, like, cruelty and refusal to just let people make their own decisions. How when, like all of these English, liberals have this ideology that people should be free. How does that fit with treating others this way?

Uday Mehta
You know, at the outset, I should say, We’re varieties of liberalism. So in my head, where there’s political liberalism is associated with law, nailed with Montesquieu in the French tradition, but there’s another kind of liberalism to this economic liberalism, you know, commonly associated with, you know, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and, and the second kind of liberalism is associated with free trade, lowering taxes, etc. Now, there’s a third kind of liberalism, the kind of liberalism I like, and that is associated in my head with people like Henry Adams, Burke, Michael Oakshott. And what this kind of liberalism emphasized, was a kind of education, becoming self conscious. It didn’t invoke language of rights. As a general matter. It was not concerned with universalizing its ideas. So they’re in my head these three broadly three liberalism’s and it’s the first one that I think was most oppressive, because it was the first one in which you had to be rational to be free.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about liberalism and justice with Uday Singh Mehta from the City University of New York

Ray Briggs
Is 18th century liberalism responsible for colonialism? How did freedom loving philosophers like Locke and Mill get tangled up in the slave trade? Can their can their political philosophy be salvaged? Or does it belong in the dustbin of history?

Josh Landy
Liberty in theory, empire in practice—along with your comments and questions, when Philosophy Talk continues.

The Wailers
Get up, stand up / stand up for your rights.

Josh Landy
Do liberal ideas help us stand up for our rights or they just keep us sitting down. I’m Josh Landy and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs and we’re thinking about liberty and justice with Uday Singh Mehta from the City University of New York, author of “Liberalism and Empire.”

Josh Landy
Today’s episode is generously sponsored by the Global Studies program at Stanford University. And you can join today and other panelists for a global dialogue series conversation about “Liberalism and Its Global Trajectories” on Friday, October 28, at 12pm Pacific. More information about this online event at the Global Studies website, sgs.stanford.edu.

Ray Briggs
So Uday, you were saying that there’s a political kind of liberalism, and that that enabled the English to sort of oppress other people around the world because of its focus on rationality. Can you say more about how that worked?

Uday Mehta
Yeah. So, you know, in Locke, and in Mill, I think the liberalism in those people is governed by a particular syllogism, which is, you have to be rational to be free. That’s Locke’s formulation. In Mills formulation, you have to be educated in a particular way to exercise liberty. And I think in Locke’s formulation, if you ask the question, What do you mean by rational? The answer you get is, basically, you have to have certain conventions, you know, you have to have things, you have to have norms, you have to know who to say hello to who to stand in front of, and who to bow towards. So if you have those ideas in a different society, you couldn’t be rational. And so you’d have to be educated into those norms.

Josh Landy
So that was that that’s the kind of paternalism right that these folks encounter culture is different from theirs, didn’t make the effort to understand or couldn’t understand and just concluded, they were not up to scratch, they, you know, they’re, they’re clearly not ready yet for the full use of rationality, and therefore, for self governance, we’re gonna help them, we are so wise, we will teach them the correct ways. So that seems like it’s one source of the problem. What about what about universalism? That the way in which some of these thinkers seemed to abstract away from specifics of space and time and had these big, big canvases where they seem to think that everything sort of operates the same way? Do you think that that was part of the problem, too?

Uday Mehta
Yes, yes. Liberalism from the outset, was a kind of export commodity. Because it had these ideas, these abstract ideas, which they took to be facts, they were the thought of these abstract ideas, like freedom, equality, fraternity, to identify liberalism, in terms of the classic adages of the French Revolution. And the thought these things were exportable, they were true, wherever you went. But they also thought in concrete form, you had to be taught into them. I mean, John Stuart Mill, in his book on liberty says, Those who are not ready for Liberty have to be taken by leading strings, though. So those are the strings that a child is taught to walk with. And that’s his view of entire civilizations of entire cultures.

Ray Briggs
So that that’s kind of a horrible way to view entire other cultures. But I’m kind of wondering like, there is some kind of appeal to the idea that you need to be rational in order to be self governing. Like we don’t let kids like you just mentioned children, we don’t let children govern themselves. And like, if you think that like nobody, but an English gentleman is an adult, that’s that’s definitely a mistake about who is rational and who is a child. But is that really, is that really a problem with like, the idea of rationality? Or is that just a mistake about who is rational?

Uday Mehta
I think it’s both. I think it’s both. I mean, there are different conceptions of rationality. So, you know, where I come from. You know, if you don’t do namaste to somebody, you’re being rude. And some people might say, that’s a fault of rationality. Now, same gesture in England, would not be thought of as respectful. In contrast, you know, in England, you shake people’s hand. So there is a culture is constitutive of rationality.

Josh Landy
But couldn’t you back up and say something More general, like each culture has its own norms of politeness. It’s rational to be polite, and to adopt the norms of whatever culture you’re in currently. So couldn’t you say, Well, look, that seems like a pretty harmless universal claim, you know, wherever you go try to learn the local norms and be polite within those norms. And, and couldn’t there be other harmless and maybe even good universals like equality, justice, you know, freedom, things like that. So to what extent are our our universals and even a universal idea of rationality is that isn’t necessarily a problem. If I say, you know, my universal idea of rationality involves learning the local customs and abiding by them.

Uday Mehta
It wouldn’t be a problem, if you did not know that other cultures have their own way of being rational.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, so it seems like a lot of the problem with like British liberal ideals, interacting with the rest of the world is that people are just not paying enough attention to like, all of the stuff that gives rationality like it substance, like you have to know something about norms of politeness and how they work and why yours aren’t the only ones. But it’s like you think that some philosophers did better at this than others? Why?

Uday Mehta
Because I think they took circumstances seriously. They were not as abstract.

Josh Landy
Yeah, and one of I find it fascinating that one of your heroes in this regard is Edmund Burke, right, you you’re talking about Edmund Burke, you know, he has this lovely line about how the, how India In India, they frame their laws and institutions prior to our insect origins of yesterday, we are this pathetic newcomer compared to this venerable tradition. And I think to some of our listeners, this might come as a surprise that, you know, he is he’s a conservative, he’s a self professed conservative, some people would, would sort of think about aligning those kinds of sentiments, with non conservative so so tell us more about how Burke’s conservatism goes along with his, his attitudes towards Empire how he was a staunch opponent of empire.

Uday Mehta
Yeah, he was a staunch proponent of empire, in India, in Ireland in America. And I think why he was a staunch opponent was because he his he didn’t have these abstract principles. He, he valued circumstances, there’s a famous line in the introduction to his famous book reflections on the French Revolution, where he says, for some people, circumstances amount to nothing, when in fact, they are what give principles, their particular hue and color. So he took circumstances very seriously. Similarly, in his prosecution of Warren Hastings, who was Governor General of India, he said, you know, things like, this man, is insensitive to the norms of this other country. And that’s why he prosecutes them or that’s why he deserves to be prosecuted.

Ray Briggs
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about liberty and justice with Uday Mehta from the City University of New York. And Uday, we have an email from Harold on our website. So Harold asks, If liberty and justice for all, then how can liberalism square that demand from someone who would just as soon advocate and pursue overthrow of a government?

Uday Mehta
I would ask Harold, who is he talking about? Is he talking about the Americans? I mean, the Americans overthrew the government in Afghanistan. And I think what they did there was they said, These people are not ready to govern themselves. So they, they kind of followed the liberal playbook. You know, when liberals go into other places, typically, the justification for that is these people require education, to become Democrats to represent themselves and until such time, we can treat them like children.

Josh Landy
So that’s a case of going in somewhere else and overthrowing your government. But what about cases of overthrowing Government in one’s own backyard, obviously, you know, I’m I confess to being a Brit, myself, the Americans threw us out. And of course, in Britain that, you know, John Locke’s Second Treatise of government is often understood as a justification, whether postdoc or in advance of the Glorious Revolution at the end of the 17th century, you know, Locke advocates for a right, a right of rebellion, right? So you, under certain circumstances, if the if the states violating the freedom of citizens, you got a right to revolution? So isn’t, Aren’t there some circumstances where liberals would say, you know, what, if if government is really going too far, yeah, you do get you know, you colonists, now, Americans, you get to throw out the queen?

Uday Mehta
Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I think you’re talking about the last chapter of the Second Treatise, where he says, something to the effect, the passage that you have in mind, where people have the right to revolt. And then he says, if they have, if they’re being oppressed, they can either look to heaven, or they can do make revolution. So this idea of looking to heaven. That’s, I think, what anchors his right to revolution.

Ray Briggs
So what heaven is that? Like the Christian god, what is the heaven at the end of the Second Treatise?

Uday Mehta
So I think the right to rebel revolt is linked to some kind of god figure. So it’s not individuals per se, they have to reach a point when they’re the look for their justification, in some kind of divine sanction.

Josh Landy
I’m totally fascinated by Locke, I’ve got to tell you, and I’m delighted we have you here to talk to him about because I can’t figure out where he lands. He’s a totally fascinating 17th century figure. He says that, you know, nations have the right to rebel against a tyrannical leader. But you know, you also own some stock in the rural African company. But then he then he sold his stock in the rural African company. And, you know, he, he, he was involved in, in writing the constitution of Carolina, where which seemed to support slavery, but then he was also involved in, in writing law reform in Virginia that seemed to kind of go against slavery, is each conflicted. Does he change his mind? What should we say about John Locke?

Uday Mehta
All the three examples, you give—his stocks in the African company, his being the author of the Constitution in Carolina, which, after all, was a slave owning state and his relationship to Virginia, which had abolished slavery (I think it had abolished slavery)—I think these are the sorts of things that show that Locke himself was a tortured liberal. Just like you and yeah, like me, like, my first book was on Locke. And, yeah, I mean, I think most liberals are tortured. Except people like those who emphasize the point of liberalism is to know yourself, to have self consciousness, and with the words that are important in that version of liberalism, are things like education, but not in the sense that Locke and mill meant it, not in the sense that you have to be made ready for education, because you’re not born with rationality. For somebody like Oakshott or Burke, for that matter. Education is what is the inheritance of every human being.

Ray Briggs
So I’m so curious to hear more about sort of education. And also its its role in resisting tyranny like what what is the link there for Burke and Oakshott?

Uday Mehta
I mean, Burke and Oakeshott just are not imperialists. So famously, Burke says, you know, we Brits have no business being in America. Just like he says that of India, he says, We have no business being in India. Why? Well because they have their own society.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, so actually, this maybe brings us to a question from Donald in the Bay Area. So Donald has asked if you could say something about the links between liberalism and capitalism, including some of the fundamental tensions between them, and also how racism fits into that. So a small question from Donald.

Uday Mehta
I think the link is the following. As I said, in my head, that broadly three kinds of liberalism, there’s the political liberalism, of people like Neil and Madison, that’s the one that talks about rights, abstract universal rights, freedom, liberty and equality of freedom, equality and fraternity, then there is this liberalism, of free trade, lowering taxes. And that’s associated, first of all, with Adam Smith, and it has its successors and people like Hayek and Milton Friedman. And that second group of liberals is what produces capitalism, even though Locke has notions of private property. So, they’re the link between capitalism and free trade, you can only have free trade, if you have capitalism. I mean, you, you had barter before that. But free trade requires some version of private property or if not private property, national property. So there is a kind of sense in which free trade presupposes two things. That trade is between nations and companies like the East India Company, our versions of the nation. And that itself requires, you know, what companies have its shareholders. And, you know, these are investments. So that that’s the link, you know.

Josh Landy
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re asking you about liberty and justice with Uday Singh Mehta, author of “Liberalism and Empire.”

Ray Briggs
Is liberalism doomed or can it be salvaged? Is there a better political ideology? What will it take to bring about global justice?

Josh Landy
Finding a theory that works—plus commentary from Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher, went Philosophy Talk continues.

Zap Mama
It’s not too late for making a better world

Josh Landy
It’s not too late to make a new world, but how do we do it? I’m Josh Landy. And this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ray Briggs
…except your intelligence. I’m Ray Briggs, our guest is Uday Singh Mehta from the City University of New York. And we’re thinking about justice and the liberal tradition. Today’s episode is generously sponsored by the Stanford Global Studies program.

Josh Landy
So today, if you had to pick a political ideology, that stands the best chance of bringing about global justice, what would that be?

Uday Mehta
I think it would be something that is humble, that doesn’t think in terms of power, but doesn’t think in terms of nations that thinks, whatever it thinks, it does so with humility.

Josh Landy
And do you think there’s, there’s the sources of this in the thinkers, you look at, you know, Burke and John Locke, John Stuart Mill, even older writers, like Michel de Montaigne, you know, we famously said in the cannibals, we surpass them in every kind of barbarity and Bartali made us the las cosas, who said, Look, we really got to abolish the slave trade also on the 16th century. And, and one of my favorites, maybe because he’s frenched. And he did who, who liked Montaigne said, Look, if you want to think about uncivilized people, look at the Europeans, were the uncivilized people, and was also a cultural pluralist. Do you can we draw today on any of these folks from the 16th century, the 17th, the 18th century?

Uday Mehta
Yes, I can, I think we can. The very people you mentioned, did row, mountain. I mean, the other person I have mentioned is another Frenchman, Tocqueville. I mean, Tocqueville is a complicated thinker. He admired the Americans a lot. But then he when it came to Algeria, he believed it that the French should be there. In fact, he, in his letters to mill, he said, imperialism is the last way for the Europeans to recover glory. So he was a complicated figure. And, you know, I like to think of him. Since i i love to kill as another tortured liberal. Except I’m, I’m tortured in a different way.

Ray Briggs
Yeah. So I want to I want to hear like more directly about being a torture liberal How does it differ from being a regular liberal? And should we be that instead?

Uday Mehta
Yeah, I think the difference between a tortured liberal, and the regular liberal, like John Stuart Mill, is that the tortured liberal does things with humility. He doesn’t think or she doesn’t think that power is the solution to everything, because he or she takes the other person’s context seriously. And yet the Liberal Party is, they do believe in things like justice. And so so you know, it’s not that I have some other notion of justice and equality, it’s that I would apply it in a different way, I would be more patient, I would be more humble, I would acknowledge the people’s differences of culture.

Josh Landy
It’s so interesting, because you would think that John Stuart Mill would be all over that. I mean, his book on liberty is all about how fantastic it is not just for the individual, but for culture, that everyone gets to express their uniqueness, and live, you know, live and experimental kind of life that there should be let 1000 Flowers bloom. Why was he so? Why was he so different? When it came to other cultures? I mean, he was great at thinking about diversity within Britain. But well, so what was the block there?

Uday Mehta
You know, I’m sure you know, this, that the book on liberty is dedicated to his partner, his who became his wife, Harriet Taylor. And the dedication is something like, to Harriet Taylor, who wasn’t least in part, the author of this book, and who was, in most ways, my superior. So I mean, that he’s a very, very early feminist. But, you know, in the same book, towards the end in on liberty, he says things like, the East has no history. And what he means by that is, it is defined by its conventions. And those conventions are what politics replaces. I mean, just think about that comment, the East has no history. You know, that’s an outrageous thing to say.

Ray Briggs
Yeah, I noticed that we’ve been focusing a lot on European thinkers who are kind of largest in their tradition that like Josh and I, and you to, like, at least a large extent, are embedded in but if we wanted to, like look outside of the European Canon for useful political ideas, like what do you have a few recommendations?

Uday Mehta
You know, I’m in the process of completing a book on Gandhi. And, as I say, somewhere in the introduction, the reason I think of Gandhi, is that because he is, I think, a successor to Burke.

Ray Briggs
I had not heard that description of Gandhi before.

Uday Mehta
Most people have not. And let me spell out what I think is the connection between Burke and Gandhi. Both are stridently opposed to revolution. Both think time matters. Both are committed to patience. Both take culture seriously. You know, I can give specific examples like, you know, in Gandhi’s most famous book called in Swaraj, the figure of Gandhi has an interlocutor who’s I think called the editor. So this interlocutor says, things like the British should be kicked out. And Gandhi’s response is kicking out the British will just rip. Who would you replace them with? You would replace them with Indians. Bye Art, these, those Indians would behave like the British. And so Gandhi’s objection is to a broader frame. It’s modern civilization. It’s a modern civilization that has given us the particular investment in, in our bodies in material wellbeing. And to get rid of that you need, of course, you need certain practices like spinning, silence dietary practices, but more than anything else, you have to change the people’s conception of themselves.

Josh Landy
That’s totally fascinating. And that presumably takes time. And I, that’s a fascinating connection between a Gandhian and Burke totally fastening. So what what do you think that they would say to somebody who says, Look, I don’t have the time, I’m impatient, like we need, we can’t wait, we can’t wait 10 years, 20 years, 40 years for people to—

Ray Briggs
Right, I’m gonna die. And the and the human race might die the way that the climate is going now.

Josh Landy
So what’s the answer to that?

Uday Mehta
So Gandhi would say, be patient, and ultimately don’t fear dying. That’s what he felt about himself. You know, he said, I look forward to death. And, I mean, I, I gave a lecture at some point, when I was teaching at Amherst, and it was shortly following the invasion of Afghanistan 20 years ago. And I said, what I am saying, now, we should have been patient, America should have been patient. And somebody in the audience said, What do you think we should have spent 10 years looking for Osama bin Laden? And my response was, why not? Why not? If that is the price, you pay for not destroying a country? Take that risk.

Ray Briggs
So I’m seeing the link with with education because I mean, it sounds like what you’re describing as as, like a better politics or a better way forward, requires a lot of virtue, like a lot of patience, a lot of courage, a lot of ability to sort of suspend your ego. Where would you recommend looking to build those virtues?

Uday Mehta
I would recommend reading to authors, Michael Oakshott. And Gandhi. I think Mike Luke shorts, emphasis on learning, learning, not for instrumental purposes. But I mean, he’s a big advocate of poetry. And then Gandhi for his specific views on the cultivation of the self. There are other thinkers I could think of. I can’t think of them now.

Josh Landy
If you had to put if you were to put guarantees advice into a single pithy sense, what would you what would you think he would, he would tell us today?

Uday Mehta
Be patient.

Ray Briggs
That’s wonderful, very pithy. I like that.

Josh Landy
On that note, I wish that we could have all the patients and talk to you all day. But we’ve come to the end of our show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Uday Mehta
Thank you, Josh, and Ray. It’s been a pleasure.

Josh Landy
Our guest has been Uday Singh Mehta, professor of political science at the City University of New York, and author of “Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought.” So Ray, what are you thinking now?

Ray Briggs
Well, I’m really glad that that new day is going to be back soon at Stanford Global Studies for an online event where our listeners can can check out him in dialogue with Jennifer Pitts and Duncan Bell, both of whom have really interesting and relevant recent books that are related to today’s conversation. So Jennifer Pitts has a book called “A Turn to Empire,” Duncan Bell has a book called “Dreamworlds of Race,” and our listeners might want to check them out and check out that conversation and we’ll give more information about that conversation in just a moment.

Josh Landy
And we’ll put links to everything we’ve mentioned today on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you can also become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes.

Ray Briggs
And as I mentioned on Friday, October 28, at 12pm You can join the Stanford Global Studies program for an online event and their global dialogue series, liberalism and its global trajectories. Featuring today’s guest Uday Singh Mehta. More information at the Stanford Global Studies website, sgs.stanford.edu.

Josh Landy
Now a man so fast he has no equal it’s Ian Shoales, the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales. The passing of Queen Elizabeth was met with grief, with grumbling, and just oodles of media attention. Not to be a snide Yankee, but we like to pretend royals mean nothing to us, a pretense exposed by our bizarre attitude towards Meghan Markle. She’s in the news almost daily for something or other, chiding her for not being more princessy when she had the chance. Like that was going to end well. She was doomed. Piers Morgan had it in for her. Everybody had it in for her except Oprah. You could hear the tongue clucking around the world. You can be an American and a princess both, you know. Ivanka nails it! What’s wrong with you? Well clearly Meghan wanted to be an influencer. She lives in Malibu, she has a podcast. Princesses can be influencers, true, but true princesses accept attention graciously, they don’t go looking for it. So little empires are impacted, as the consultants say, by big empires, even as big empires, like the USA are still impacted by the empires that spawned them. Why are we the United STATES of America, for instance, and not just America? Well, we kind of liked being colonies. We had our own little duchies, on our own and out of the clutches of the East India Company. We dumped the king and moved on, but states’ rights still separate and bind us together. As I write this, California and Florida are vying to be the most obnoxious state, and we love our little faux wars. All across the nation we have regional royalty, Miss Alabamas, kings of the road, dukes of hazard, and we have dynasties: The Adamses, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Trumps. Is Ivanka not a princess? Little girls emulate the Disney princess templates. A bit of a controversy when told the live action princess we call the Little Mermaid was going to be played by a young black woman, conservative men got all mad, probably because they remember the high school gridiron battles when the Homecoming Queen went to prom without them. We have memories in our bones of the queens of yore, in myth, in legend, in operas, in actual history. Empire gave way to imperialism. Lusty bold marauders now had minions maraud for them. Originally, civilization wore its exploitation on its sleeves. Conquered people were just folded into the greater empire. Then imperialism gave way to colonialism, slavery became a thing. You don’t conquer, you incorporate. You can have slaves, but you have to purchase them. And while it’s creepy to force humans to your will by fiat of empire, it’s even creepier if you buy them on the open market. We’re still haunted by this horrible sin. Post colonialism is making us crazy. Half of us in a half hearted black lives matter kid of way, and the other half denying there’s a problem, well no the problem is everybody won’t shut up about a problem that no longer exists. Sometimes I think these are just plot elements in an epic novel we never finished reading. And instead we have all these authoritarian fantasies. Trump, for example, is a post modern version of an enlightened despot, not the kind of king who knew Greek and commissioned operas, nope. This is the wild colonial cousin who says he’s got royal blood, leading the charge against black mermaids. What kind of culture is that? What culture is being betrayed? Why are grown men thinking about the casting decisions of live action cartoons. Is that what we do now? We exploit the world, we exploit ourselves, and we don’t even get blood diamonds out of it. Just a long long string of increasingly crappy movies. So farewell to the queen on horseback with a sword and an army behind her, the queen having a lover executed without even a backwards look, bequeathing estates on those who please her, marrying cousins from other lands, to ensure the dynasty will continue. There goes the final queen, and we look for echoes of glory as she walks slowly from the limo with her corgis, and her sensible shoes. It’s comforting. There weren’t any major sea battles off the coast of Spain. No redcoats on the streets of Boston. Just an old lady clutching her purse, as the two bit leaders of the sectional free world, and beyond, stake their claims and then forget what they were talking about. It’s sad really. Clearly we long for a strongman, or woman, to bluster and lead us into the future. Alas, that ancient carnival is finally leaving town. I gotta go.

Josh Landy
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco Bay Area and the trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University copyright 2022.

Ray Briggs
Our executive producer is Ben Trefny. The Senior Producer is Devon Strolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Yiqi Shi, Merle Kessler, and Angela Johnston.

Ray Briggs
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from various groups at Stanford University, and from the partners at our online Community of Thinkers. Support for this episode comes from the Stanford Global Studies program.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or mis expressed on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or other funders.

Ray Briggs
Not even when they’re true and reasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, Philosophy Talk dot ORG, where you can become a subscriber and gain access to our library of more than 500 episodes. I’m Josh Landy.

Ray Briggs
And I’m Ray Briggs. Thank you for listening.

And thank you for thinking.

Kids in the Hall
The Queen of England doesn’t know her ABCs anymore. A, b, c, d, x, p, q… R, x, y, d… Hello!