Principles and Particulars
In his essay “The Sage of Slabsides,” Guy Davenport wrote (of John Burroughs) that “writing for magazines taught him how to shape an essay, and he never forgot Whitman’s rule that a fact accurately observed is worth any amount of opinion.”
In “What are Intellectuals Good For?”, George Scialabba wrote, “to put it crudely and provocatively: sensibility now matters less than facts…”
Image the following conversation between two people walking in a desert and rapidly running out of water:
A: We’ll be able to refill our water supply shortly, there is a city just up ahead
B: How do you know?
A: Well, there are cities in the world, aren’t there?
B: Yes, but there are also places in the world that don’t have cities, such as in the ocean depths
A: Are you anti-city, then? I’m pro-city
B: I’ve always been suspicious of cities
This is how a lot of political conversation sounds to me today. The two people died of dehydration, by the way.
One major problem with America’s institutions today is that, as we’ve seen, many people who lead them simply don’t believe in anything, have no principles. But another major problem in the American “public conversation” is that much of our political discussion assumes that politics is just the play of abstract principles.
Take the current discussion about tariff policy purely as an example (this is not an post about tariff policy). In this discussion, some people will define themselves as “pro-tariff” and “anti-tariff,” as a matter of general principle, and then simply restate that commitment as if it is somehow itself a commentary on the latest tariffs that the Trump administration has put in place.
Let me tediously spell this out for a second:
There is a sense in which that could meaningfully be done. If your view is that every tariff at any rate that could ever be imposed in any circumstance on any country is good, then restating that you are “pro-tariff” view is indeed a commentary on current events, since all conceivable events have been included in your general stance. Likewise, if your anti-tariff view is that there could never be any circumstances in which any tariff at any rate imposed on any country would be a good idea, then restating that anti-tariff view likewise touches reality (and obviously there are people who do pass this test). However, if by “pro-tariff” you mean “there are some situations in which certain tariffs applied to particular countries are a useful policy tool,” then simply stating that you are “pro-tariff” in response to a particular tariff announcement has the appearance of being a commentary on events, but actually is not. Likewise, if by “anti-tariff” you mean “there are some specific circumstances in which I would support tariffs, but in most cases I would oppose them,” you too have still not told us what we asking about in this conversation, which is whether we should support or oppose this particular thing in front of us.
One factor at play here: There is a tendency for “public intellectuals” and those who engage with them to love “theories” and “visions” of politics that offer general frameworks for how we should think about the world. This tendency involves caring more about developing and articulating such frameworks than about getting into the weeds on the messy and particular details of a specific political event (there is also, of course, sometimes simply laziness and intellectual decadence at issue, or, alternatively, an intellectual crime of passion for which some leniency might be extended). As a result, some think—or post on social media under the unconscious assumption—that what really matters in politics is agreement on principles, that principles are everything and particulars are trivial afterthoughts or pedestrian secondary considerations.
These dispositions are reinforced by the fact that people sort into political camps based on abstract commitments and “stances”—and it’s felt to be a betrayal of your tribe if you don’t get on board with any particular action or policy that is presumed to be worthy of your support based on your abstract stance. Oh, you’re pro-water? Then why don’t you want to drink this fetid water from a stagnant pond? And why don’t you want to drink that water laced with arsenic? I guess you’re not really so pro-water after all. Why don’t you go join those anti-water people over there?
You can see this dynamic at play even when people are credited for “breaking with” their tribe by criticizing some particular policy despite their abstract commitments. But phrasing it as “despite one’s abstract commitments” is precisely the point. To take the tariff example, a commitment to the idea that “sometimes tariffs are a useful policy tool” does not stand in any even apparent tension with the practical judgement that this is not one of those times. There is no “despite” here, and one does not have to speak as it there were some “despite” to explain. Why do we have the assumption to begin with that there is some mechanistic entailment between abstract commitments and particular policy judgements? Specific circumstances, facts, and details always, always matter enormously.
(Obviously one must put one’s principles into practice. To say you have principles and then never try to make them real in the world is not tenable. But though abstract principles might, in a sense, be the beginning and the end of politics, it remains true that particulars are the long middle in which we live most of our lives)
The prevalence of abstract politics helps account, I think, for why you can’t open a social media website with instantly seeing 300 examples of the motte-and-bailey maneuver. It’s the national polemical pastime. Particular facts and circumstances are our baileys and abstract “positions” are our mottes. The over-reliance on “shorthand” functions the same way. When we don’t spell out what we mean in specific detail, but begin to rely more and more on stock phrases or expressions, we lose touch with particular realities in favor of increasingly thoughtless generalities.
Like Whitman, John Burroughs, and Guy Davenport, I think we need fewer opinions, and more facts.