An Interview With Jonathan Wolff (Part I)

Jonathan Wolff is a widely renowned Professor of Philosophy at University College London. He specialises in political philosophy with a keen interest in the relationship between philosophical theory and public policy. Recently, he has written on a variety of topics such as disadvantage, distributive justice, health, equality, disability, and the ethics of risk. His ‘An Introduction to Political Philosophy‘ (1996) is widely seen as the one of the best introductory guides to political philosophy on the market today. Other notable publications include ‘Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State, Polity Press‘ (1991); ‘Why Read Marx Today?‘ (2002); and ‘Disadvantage‘ (2007) (co-written with Avner de-Shalit). He also writes a monthly column in the guardian which can be found athttp://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jonathanwolff.

Part 1 – Political Philosophy & Public Policy

(Read Part II of the interview here.)

Jonathan Benn: As a student at university, what was the initial attraction that made you specifically want to focus on doing political philosophy as opposed to specialising in other areas of philosophy?

Professor Wolff: I don’t know that I ever consciously made that decision. When I was an undergraduate I thought I was probably more interested in philosophy of science or aesthetics. But I think probably one of the main reasons was that when I was an undergraduate here at UCL, Gerald Cohen was one of the lecturers here and he was doing extremely interesting work. He was, at that time, already regarded as one of the leading Marxist thinkers in the world. And I thought it would be worth taking the opportunity to study with someone who is at the top of their field, which is what I did.

JB: You are very interested in the thinking and writings of Karl Marx. Why do you think that Karl Marx is still relevant to political philosophy today?

JW: I’m not sure he’s relevant to political philosophy as it’s done in the journals at the moment. So if I see someone trying to take a ‘Marxist stand’ on some issue being discussed in political philosophy today, it’s normally not very convincing. But I do think that Marx is worth studying for a couple of reasons. One is that he’s just an incredibly interesting person to both read and to think about. So it’s quite surprising that people always ask me “why is Marx relevant today?”, when they rarely ask why other philosophers like Leibniz or Augustine are relevant today. But you don’t expect that it’s only worth reading Leibniz or Augustine if you can find points of relevance because it is the interest of penetrating the ideas themselves which is worth studying. Secondly, I do think that no one has bettered Marx’s criticisms of capitalism, not that I think he had anything to say about what we should do instead. But in terms of pointing out the problems and difficulties with capitalism, I think Marx is the best critic. But in contemporary political philosophy, the debate of ‘capitalism: for or against’ isn’t really a topic any more.

JB: Some people hold the view that philosophy is primarily an activity that should focus on theorising from afar, that is to say, leave the questions relating to how a theory could be practically implemented to policy-makers in other fields. In respect of political philosophy, to what extent do you agree/disagree with this view?

JW: Well I’m not very keen on legislating the aim of philosophy by telling people what they should do and what they shouldn’t do. I think there’s room for all sorts of activities within philosophy. But I think there is a mistake that people make –and it’s a mistake I’ve made myself– which is to think, that, what political theory ought to do is produce a theory of some sort and then leave it up to policy makers to implement that theory as if what one has done is create a type of ideal legislation and the world has to change itself to meet that. I came to see after working on public policy committees that probably no philosophical theory would give you sensible recommendations if you just tried to implement it as it is.

I mean take something like Mill’s Liberty Principle, which we teach undergraduate students and everyone in philosophy thinks, broadly speaking, is correct – the only reason for interfering with the liberty of any individual is to prevent harm to others. Well that’s a very stirring principle and it would be a good thing to have on a t-shirt, but if you actually try to apply that to the real world, it would rule out much of the legislation that we have because we just naturally think that governments are there to look after us, not just to protect us from harming other people. So, for example, one of the first policy areas that I looked at was gambling law. Now if you apply Mill’s Liberty Principle to gambling, then there should be casinos on every high street. You ought to be able to slot your credit card into a machine and drain it to your credit limit and so on because, after all, all you are doing is harming yourself. But we think that some people’s judgements aren’t to be always trusted; they fall into temptation, they’re not always rational, they’re not always a reasonable judge of their own best interests. And this is similar to Hume’s view that we have governments pretty much to protect us from ourselves. But if you believe Hume, then you don’t believe in Mill’s Liberty Principle. But we like to think that we believe Mill’s Liberty Principle. So I think it is only by looking at the real world that you can actually see whether you believe the theory you claim to believe. And so you do need much more of a connection between ideal theory or philosophical theory and the real world to see that ‘actually, I think most philosophical theory is not something that could be implemented’. And so, in my view, the belief that that philosophers should just formulate political theories and then leave it for someone else to implement them is just completely wrong.

JB: In light of this last answer of yours, where do you stand in the debate between ideal theory and non-ideal theory in philosophy? [N.B. Ideal theory is usually interested in theorising within an 'ideal' set of circumstances.. It does not usually concern itself with constraints or difficulties that may, in practice, affect its realisation. (For example, an ideal theory might assume that everyone agrees and complies with the contents of that theory, irrespective of whether they actually do.) Conversely, non-ideal theory aims to find the most 'ideal' theory that can practicably be realised, taking full account of the the limitations of circumstance.

JW: Okay, so [in non-ideal theory] I’ve looked at gambling law, the regulation of drugs, the regulation of railway safety and all sorts of public policy issues that – with the exception of regulation of drugs – philosophers have either tended not to find very interesting, or it just hasn’t occurred to them that it could even be a topic. For example, the regulation of public safety is an issue that very few philosophers have written about. Another area I have looked at is the ethics of animal experimentation, which obviously has been a very big public issue in this country as well as a philosophical issue. If you look at the philosophical literature, there are some very clear and striking theories about the proper moral treatment of animals by human beings.

Peter Singer, for example, is the most famous person to argue that all animals are equal. If you believe Singer, then what we routinely do within laboratories is worse than concentration camps, and that we have a moral imperative not just to try to make some changes, but that we ought to really be closing them all down. In fact, we’re all huge moral cowards for not taking arms against animal laboratories because on his view, it would be like tolerating concentration camps in one’s own country. So suppose you believe that view and that you are also sitting on the type of committee that I sometimes sit on, where you are asked to make recommendations in respect of a certain issue of public interest. In full moral conscience, you would have to recommend that we close everything down! But if you did that, then this would be a way of just making sure no one asks you again for your opinion because that is not, at the moment, a practical option. All we can do at the moment is recommend small changes. So, for example, we might say a certain type of experiment should not be done any more like test cosmetics on animals. But this all sounds very conservative because of its apparent status quo bias. So one of the things that I’ve been trying to think about lately is, given this status quo bias, how is large a change is ever possible?

In the UK, we made quite a number of large changes in the 1960s. We got rid of the death penalty, homosexuality was legalized, abortion became much easier or legal in some cases. So we did make a huge number of beneficial changes during this period. But how is that possible given the bias of the status quo? So I have now come around to the view that you need to distinguish ‘status quo regulations’ from the ‘status quo values’ that people have. This is because public opinion can be severely out of joint with current regulations (which is why we have public committees, for they look into that). Now, you will not, of course, get very far if you make recommendations that are totally out of joint with some major current in public opinion. So if you tried to legalize homosexuality in the 1930s, it is probable that it would not have worked. Therefore, the role of ideal theory is, I think, to try and shift the status quo of public opinion so that when if an issue comes up for public debate, there becomes a chance of changing things.

So if you go back to Peter Singer, he was arguing for animal liberation for fifteen or twenty years. At the time he did that, there were a lot of horrendous experiments that were being done. There were some purely curiosity-driven experiments that had no medical benefit which was tantamount to torturing innocent monkeys. Now in his book, it is quite interesting that he doesn’t also discuss medical experiments. He only discusses the curiosity-driven ones. This is because he says that the latter are so obviously horrible, that we don’t even need to also discuss the medical ones in order to know that we need to change the practices. And although people haven’t changed to follow Singer’s theory, I think his writing has shifted public opinion because after him came a number of people who shocked the public by writing about how horrible some of these lab experiments are – which then made it possible to make small legislative changes.

So I think that the role of the philosopher and the role of ideal theory can be really important, even in public debates. But you have to understand how the causation works. It is not that the theory will then be implemented, it is that the theory will – in a diluted and trickle-down form – shift public opinion to some degree, and that when public opinion is shifted, it is possible to change regulations or bring in new regulations. So there is a role for ideal theory in terms of its indirect ability to influence practical matters. But I wouldn’t want to say that it is the only role for ideal theory because I think it’s a perfectly respectable way of spending one’s time, even if you don’t think of it as having any practical applications. After all, if you are working in other areas of philosophy such as the philosophy of time, for instance, you wouldn’t say ‘oh, that’s very well, but what are the practical implications?’ So why should political philosophy have more to answer for in terms of its practical implications than other areas of philosophy? So to sum up, I think there is ‘pure’ work to be done that is very valuable and important. Sometimes it will have an accidental spillover into the practical world. Sometimes it will be done in order to have that spillover. But I think there are different things to do in political philosophy without having to say that it should all take one form.

Read Part II of the interview here.