Do Ideas Shape History or Does History Shape Ideas?

Whether Ideas Have Consequences Matters for Culture War

How often in recent years have you started a conversation with a friend about a topic of interest, only to discover that what to you is virtually self-evident is, to your friend, patently false? When it happens it can be easy for the conversation to become unpleasant. Both parties can assume that the other just doesn’t get it and dismiss their views out of hand.

Me, I’ve been having that conversation for the last 20 years. My debate partner is an old friend (we’ll call him Asheron, since we used to play Asheron’s Call together). What Asheron and I like to argue about is this:

Do ideas shape history, or does history shape ideas?

I believe ideas shape history; Asheron believes history shapes ideas.¹ My ongoing debate with Asheron has been on my mind all week, as I’ve reflected on my recent essay on Practical Idealism.

Now, if Asheron is right, much of my effort at Tree of Woe is wasted. Ideas don’t matter. And, interestingly enough, that’s one of the most common comments I get from associates who read my blog: “Why do your waste your time on this stuff?” Why do I? Obviously, because I think Asheron is wrong. But is he?

History Shapes Ideas

Below I’ve summarized Asheron’s point of view, loosely drawn from a number of conversations that date back over two decades. The “you” in this quote is, of course me, since I’m the other party to the argument.

Your basic methodology works like this. You find some philosophers in the past arguing for X; you notice that X occurred after they proposed it; and you then assert that those philosophers are the proximate cause of the shift for which they lobbied. 

For instance, you’ll read Kalergi’s Practical Idealism, see that it argued for the elimination of traditional femininity, see that traditional femininity is being eliminated, and point to that as an example of ideas shaping history. It must look completely obvious to you which way the causality arrow points and flabbergasting to you that I don’t see it. 

But what’s the actual causal mechanism by which ideas shape history? If you go back in time, at the same time that some philosophers were saying X, some other philosophers were saying -X or even Y or Z.  Why didn’t -X, Y or Z happen?  Why were the X-philosophers more powerful than the -X/Y/Z philosophers?  What made them prevail? You cannot assert that X has causal power unless you can explain why -X doesn’t.

Today, the ideas of postmodern progressives such as Foucault, Derrida, and Marcuse seem to have prevailed in our society. But the idea that Foucault and friends possessed some unstoppable mental force that bowled over all other thinkers in their path just seems mind-bogglingly hard to believe. 

I think it’s much more likely that culture changes come in waves caused by unpredictable and contingent factors, and that the philosophers who have happened to have developed ideas that are compatible with the new culture then get to ride the cultural waves to fame. Those philosophers’ arguments did not create the cultural waves.  Rather, the cultural waves created the philosophers’ reputation for their arguments. The philosophers with contrarian views, having stochastically ended up being wrong, fell away into obscurity.

And the result is an illusion that the philosopher’s ideas had consequences, but they didn’t. Instead, random cultural events had consequences, and one of those consequences was that some philosophers ex post seemed very influential.

It’s no different than the random walk down Wall Street. A hedge fund manager beats the market and is praised as a great trader. But was he a great trader, or was he just the guy who won the coin toss?

An example of Asheron’s view should suffice. Imagine if, through events outside my control (perhaps a terrorist strike that kills all politicians except Rand Paul), a physiocratic-libertarian government took power in the US. To the extent that policies I advocated got adopted, I might get to be retroactively deemed one of the most influential philosophers of the 21st century. Those who support the newly installed Republic of Rand might cite my work as its intellectual foundation and moral justification for his new regime. I might get appointed to the chair of physiocratic studies at the newly-founded Rand University. But it won’t actually be the case that I in any way caused the new regime to come into power. My ideas didn’t determine the course of history; history determined the course of my ideas.

That is, to a first approximation, Asheron’s view; or, perhaps more accurately, it is his view of what might be happening, therefore making it impossible to authoritatively assert any causality of ideas on history.

Now, Asheron’s view has the great virtue of being exceptionally depressing, and here at Tree of Woe we almost always support whichever argument is most bleak. What could be more bleak than believing that everything I do is for naught? I can feel the vultures pecking out my eyes just thinking about it.

Sometimes, however, we must put aside our preference for easy pessimism and follow the hard road.

Ideas Shape History

Let’s start with this:

Your basic methodology works like this. You find some philosophers in the past arguing for X; you notice that X occurred after they proposed it; and you then assert that those philosophers are the proximate cause of the shift for which they lobbied. 

This is something of a caricature of my actual methodology (though, to be fair, probably no more of a caricature than what I’ve sketched of Asheron’s own position, though I have tried to steelman it). My actual methodology is more like this:

1. I notice that certain predictions made in our society are verifiably failing to come true; or that certain explanations given for action do not make sense; or that certain actions are not actually the optimal solution to a supposed problem;

2. I ask myself what idea someone would have to believe in order to believe that the prediction, explanation, or action is correct, even though it’s verifiably wrong, absurd, or sub-optimal;

3. I look for evidence that those involved in the matter actually do believe the idea I have imputed; and, if so

4. I assign causality to that idea and search for its origin.

But my methodology above merely explains how I determine which ideas matter; it doesn’t explain why I think ideas matter at all. Why do people listen to ideas? Let me develop my line of thinking on this matter.

Let’s start by making the Sowellian assertion that human beings have a constrained human nature. We are creatures of a particular sort, who share by virtue of design or evolution certain moral intuitions and psychological drives. (I have written about this previously.)

Next, let’s assert that, while the world we inhabit has certain positive sum game elements, it also has many aspects which are zero-sum. Thus, from time to time, human beings must inevitably come into a conflict which cannot be solved in a win-win manner. At the most primitive level, the drive for reproduction itself is a conflict: Og and Brak the cave-men cannot both impregnate Helga the cave-woman at the same time.²

Finally, let us assert that the moral intuitions and psychological drives which humans have inherited inevitably come into conflict within the individuals themselves. If I like drinking alcohol, but drinking alcohol causes liver damage, should I drink alcohol? Do I prioritize my appetite over my health? We are not born with fixed instincts that guide us to success. We must make choices, and with choices come errors, regrets, misdeeds, and more.

Because human beings inevitably come into conflict with both their own drives and with each other, every human being needs a philosophy of life to guide them to take action. That philosophy could be an ideology, it could be a religion, or it could be just the customs of a traditional way of life. As I have written elsewhere, we must choose a moral system just as we must choose a diet of food; and even if we do not consciously choose, we nevertheless choose by virtue of our actions.

In a primitive culture, there is typically only one philosophy of life, to which everyone adheres. “This is the way,” says the tribesman. To break ancient taboo is unthinkable; to do things differently is just not done. The history of humanity was, for a very long time, the history of unbroken traditions, of sons doing things the way their fathers did, forever.

In a sufficiently advanced civilization, there will be a number of philosophies of life available. For instance, an educated citizen of Athens could choose Cynicism, Epicureanism, Platonism, Peripateticism, Pythagoreanism, Skepticism, Stoicism, and other philosophies of life. Each of those philosophies would commend itself to a radically different way of life. Should they go into politics? Should they eat meat? Should they get married and have children? Should they fight in wars? The answers to these questions can vary.

The answers to the questions will vary — but so to will the success of those who adopt those answers as their philosophy of life. Because they arise from needs inevitable to the human condition, philosophies of life are functional and can be evaluated on the basis of whether those who adopt them flourish in life.

That means that philosophies compete against each other in an almost Darwinian sense — and this is the proper understanding of the Dawkins meme concept. As an easy example, if a philosophy preaches that its adherents should kill themselves, that philosophy will die out swiftly. If a philosophy preaches that its adherents should actively proselytize and have many children, it will tend to grow.

A civilization with many competing philosophies is often described as pluralistic or syncretic or tolerant. A civilization with just one philosophy might be traditional or authoritarian or close-minded. The society of the civilization will be partly shaped by the philosophy that emerges from the interplay of humanity's innate moral intuitions and innate drives to prosper and reproduce.

To summarize:

1. Because of zero-sum competition between humans, each person inevitably requires, and either choose or default into, a philosophy of life.

2. The philosophy of life a person follows increases or decreases their chance at flourishing in various areas of life such as survival, reproduction, accumulation of wealth, etc.

3. The effect of philosophy of life on flourishing puts different philosophies into competition with each other as some prove successful and others less so.

4. The emergent society of persons will be shaped by the success of the philosophies in competition.

Here is where it gets interesting.

The various philosophies of life use our innate moral intuitions and innate drives as the foundation for their answers. For instance, we know that people tend to innately to favor their kin group (brother, children) more than strangers. Many philosophies tap into that by extending kinship claims to e.g. everyone "the brotherhood of mankind” or particular groups “the brotherhood of arms,” and so on.

Because humans vary in capabilities, their ability to leverage particular philosophies for success can vary widely. Different philosophies offer justifications that allow some people to have a better chance than others. For instance, if I'm disabled and need the aid of others, I'm going to find the tenets “love your neighbor” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” much more valuable than I would if I were a noble skilled in war who can take what he wants. This is, of course, Nietzsche’s insight of master and slave morality.

Now, remember we asserted earlier that some conflicts between human beings are zero-sum. I win, you lose. You win, I lose. Zero-sum conflict is a fancy way of saying “war”. What this means is that a philosophy is an intellectual weapon in the war of life. If you equip yourself with a philosophy that is conducive to flourishing, you have a better chance of flourishing; if you equip yourself with a philosophy that is conducive to failure, you have a better chance of failure.

Scale that up to the size of a polity and we see that the arsenal of available philosophical weapons helps determine the shape of the intellectual battlefield and has some correlation to the outcome of the battle.

As an analogy, when gunpowder cannons were invented, the cost of gunpowder was very high. As a result, only kings could afford it. But gunpowder cannons made it possible for kings to quickly knock down the castles of rebellious noblemen. As a result, the rise of gunpowder spelled the end of feudalism. The inventor of gunpowder didn't say "I will end feudalism;" he simply followed engineering and science. But kings who wanted to end feudalism came to understand that by exploiting gunpowder, they could achieve their aim. You cannot understand how feudalism ended without knowing this. In a sense, the invention of gunpowder cannons caused the end of feudalism. Yes, you also still need to know all the other stuff that was going on, but you need to know this fact, too.

It is in this sense that I think ideas have causal power. Society emerges from the interplay of humanity's innate moral intuitions and innate drives to prosper and reproduce. Different humans, and different groups of humans, competing to advance within the constraints of their intuitions, develop philosophical weapons to rationalize, justify, explain away, and/or promote those intuitions or drives which are most conducive to their particular individual and group success.

So Who is Right?

I don’t expect a Substack essay to solve an intractable argument that has proceeded for decades, really for centuries. But I will close with this.

If Asheron is right and I am wrong, then by developing and evangelizing a philosophy you are making yourself feel smart but not accomplishing much.

But if I am right and Asheron is wrong, then by not developing and evangelizing a philosophy that promotes your position, you are ceding the battlefield to the enemy's superior ideological firepower.

If we agree that it’s impossible to tell who is right, it seems evident to me that if you're in a culture war, you should assume ideas matters and build those weapons. Call it Pascal’s Propaganda.

1. Obviously both Asheron and I acknowledge that both do happen — sometimes an idea shapes history, and sometimes history shapes ideas, and sometimes both at once. Our disagreement is about which way the current usually flows, about who is mostly right most of the time. The wind can blow from any direction on any given day, but there’s a prevailing wind.

2. This realization is what ultimately led me to conclude that Ayn Rand’s Objectivism was not the entire answer. Rand asserted that there were no conflicts of interest among rational men, but clearly there were: Hank Rearden, Francisco D’Anconia, and John Galt all wanted to get with Dagny Taggert. The idea that Hank and Francisco would be utterly untroubled by John's seduction of Dagny was the least-realistic moment in the entire novel.