Learning from a Luddite?

In recent times, Prof. Michael J. Sandel has come under fire for his public lecture “What Money Can’t Buy,” where he questions the claims of many economists that their discipline by itself is sufficient for addressing the moral problems involved in the market transactions of controversial items such as body parts. Sandel furthermore asks those economists to consider moral philosophy, stressing that without that discipline’s insights economics is limited and cannot provide an adequate solution to the problems of marketization. After the lecture was given, critics of Sandel, including some students of Harvard, at once protested against what they perceived to be a groundless attack on the dignity of economics, and a Crimson columnist even went so far as to suggest that Sandel’s arguments constitute a “return to the mind of a Luddite,” a reactionary phenomenon which simply is to be laughed away in the modern world.

But does Sandel consider himself a sworn enemy of economics? Far from it. The only concern that his arguments are trying to address is that in our age where increasing specialization in modern education has brought about a narrowing of the horizon of thought, economists are losing sight of the limits of their discipline as well as the necessity for communication between it and moral philosophy. Master economists in the past, who had an integral sense of the scope of their discipline within the knowledge of the whole, always warmly acknowledged that necessity. For instance, Adam Smith and David Hume held an intimate correspondence of ideas throughout their lives. It is then only from a sincere desire to restore the unity of knowledge that Sandel challenges economists to reconsider the limits of their approach.

It would not surprise me however, if a modern critic should regard the very attempt by Sandel, a humanities scholar, to challenge economics in this supremely rational and objective age, as a sign of a regress to backward irrationality, wayward subjectivity, and most lamentably of course, “the mind of a Luddite.” He would come to such a conclusion because he is convinced that the current edifice of economics as a “value-free” science has achieved an absolute progress from Sandel’s moral philosophy. But such a conviction rests on an unexamined modern prejudice, namely the prejudice for whatever is new, treating the superiority of modern economics to old-school philosophy as a self-evident fact not in need of any examination by reason. For under such a prejudice, whether an argument is right or wrong is not decided by the judgment of reason, but by how much it conforms to progressive notions which equate the new with the right, and the old with the folly of Luddite’s mind.

Yet my way of evaluating a Luddite’s mind necessarily differs from those for whom it seems buzzwords like newness and progress settle all questions, for I judge the truth of ideas solely by reason without regard for their temporal sequence. Whereas for some there is no doubt that the emergence of a value-free framework in economics away from normative moral philosophy constitutes an indubitable proof of its self-sufficient ability to solve the moral questions of the market, I would instead point to the “old” ideas of Hume and Kant who long ago revealed the problem of fact-value distinction, the idea that the fact that something ought to be done cannot be derived from what is done. According to this distinction then, as a value-free science dealing with facts, economics excludes itself from considerations of normative values, and leaves a gap which only normative philosophy can fill. Therefore any objection to Sandel that does not confront the fact-value distinction on which Sandel bases his whole argument in my judgment would fail to do justice to Sandel.

All that Prof. Sandel asks of economists is to hearken to the voice of a discipline which dates back to the days of Socrates and which is home to some of the greatest minds in the Western tradition. For some however such a request is a priori denied by the authority of empirical science. But how does the scientific principle of empiricism, which requires investigating phenomena without a priori biases, warrant such a priori denial in the name of a buzzword like progress, which is certainly an unexamined prejudice? Rather would not someone who studies the problems of the market in a truly empirical spirit soon come to realize what Crimson columnist Sarah Siskind stated so exquisitely in her recent piece, that “government is not a science,” and that the study of political things by nature depends on both the humanities and the sciences? Let us remember then to keep a spirit of humility to the wisdom of the great thinkers of the past, lest we fall for the danger that Edmund Burke warns of, that “people will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.” Let us acknowledge that we can still learn from our ancestors’ timeless minds, and yes, even from the mind of a Luddite.

Kaishuo Chen ’14 is a government concentrator in Quincy House