If you build it

I see that Randy Barnett is a little annoyed at us. This is very understandable, as he has gone to the trouble of writing books, and we haven't gone to the trouble of so much as reading them. Sometimes a snark is a boojums, perhaps. So I went to the law library to check out Barnett's The Structure of Liberty. (Noticed NUS does not have a copy of his new book, Restoring the Lost Constitution. I'm official philosophy department library rep, so on my list of books to order it goes. Could do with a little more libertarianism around the place. Perhaps prof. Barnett will accept this proxy purchase as a token of our good will. We at John & Belle do like our Volokh Conspiracy with coffee every morning.)

Having read a few pages on the bus I see already that Barnett is staunchly determined to immunize himself against charges of utopian irresponsibility. I quote the epigraph to chapter 1 - from an 18th Century sermon, it so happens:

Human art in order to produce certain effects, must conform to the principles and laws, which the Almighty Creator has established in the natural world .... And every builder should well understand the best position of firmness and strength, when he is about to erect an edifice. For he, who attempts these things, on other principles, than those of nature, attempts to make a new world; and his aim will prove absurd and his labour lost. No more can mankind be conducted to happiness; or civil societies united and enjoy peace and prosperity, without observing the moral principles and connections, which the Almighty Creator has established for the government of the moral world.

Well, fair is fair; we shall see. Belle has expressed interest as well, so she is assigned chapters 12, 13 & 14, as per Barnett's post. I suppose what I am going to be asking is whether the man is really building models that could be blueprints for real buildings - in which case one sort of test will apply; or whether his models are impossible things - unconstructable out of crooked timber, etc. - but perhaps instructive. Perhaps these models are supposed to clear up conceptual clutter (and be all-around elegant and charming). My rather hasty post, in response to Belle's pony post, tried to make this point but flubbed it. Matthew Yglesias wrote a very nice response which was clearer, said what I meant to say, and even mentioned the opening of Jacob Levy's Multiculturalism of Fear, which was the text I had in mind myself, oddly enough.

Anyway, I've thought of an analogy. Seth Lloyd's Nature paper, "Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation" is fun. (Here's a nice short piece about Lloyd and his results.) Obviously the man isn't actually in the laptop business (though apparently people keep trying to order the things.) He's interested in clarifying important and interesting issues and concepts. And he clearly likes an idle notion with nice, crinkly edges that edify. So my suspicion is that Barnett designs societies like Lloyd designs laptops. Which is perfectly consistent with the spirit of that sermon Barnett quotes, actually. It's all about coming to know principles and laws. And no need to pretend the model that limns the laws - for teaching purposes - could ever be built in a million, billion years. Well anyway, that's the thing I'm going to ask Barnett as I read. As well as whether what he is saying makes any sense whatsoever. We'll see.

Comments

[bob mcmanus]

"This philosophical way of
speculation is not unpleasant among friends in a free conversation;
but there is no room for it in the courts of princes, where great
affairs are carried on by authority." "That is what I was saying,"
replied he, "that there is no room for philosophy in the courts of
princes." "Yes, there is," said I, "but not for this speculative
philosophy, that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times;
but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows
its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man with
propriety and decency to act that part which has fallen to his
share." -- Thomas More, Utopia

Was that Edwards?; gotta readme some Edwards