Three Books By Thomas Sowell
By Margaret Snyder (09/20/03)
A review of:
A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell
The Search for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell
If you were trying to make sense of the culture wars and were only able to read a single book on the subject, that book would have to be A Conflict of Visions: The Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell.
I remember the thrill as the scales fell from my eyes on my first reading of this little book about six years ago. How could intelligent people believe what liberals believe on social issues? And why were they so predictable? Now I knew—they had a different vision. Why do I think as I do on the same subjects? Now I knew—it was my vision.
By “vision”, Sowell means the collection of assumptions about human nature that underlie the way we interpret events and predict the consequences of real or hypothetical actions and policies. Most of us do not have an articulated vision but it operates nonetheless and after reading this book, you will have a much greater understanding of your vision, no matter which vision it is.
I first became aware of my own vision, not that I thought of it as such, during the Kennedy administration, when I was in the eighth grade. Our U.S. History teacher, Mr. Richard Stine, was explaining to us what Communism was, and in the course of his explanation, he (a good Democrat) said that it was an idea that sounded nice, but it just didn’t take human nature into account. I remember the moment vividly because I had had some curiosity about what Communism was and his explanation had satisfied me. The part about human nature made perfect sense to me. And, frankly, it was about as good an in-a-nutshell explanation of Communism as I have ever heard. (Fortunately, educators had not yet decided that the “teacher-centered classroom” was bad, so Mr. Stine was free to teach us.)
A Conflict of Visions explained to me how some people could have such different views of human nature. In fact, I took to buying copies and giving them away to liberal friends, telling them, “This book showed me that liberals aren’t stupid and I thought it might show you that conservatives aren’t mean-spirited.” I confess that these proselytizing efforts have borne no fruit that I am aware of.
Acknowledging at the start that the two polarities he discusses—the constrained and the unconstrained visions—exist in fact on a continuum, he chooses a number of writers, mainly from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, who embody the “purest” version of each vision.
In the constrained vision, human nature is immutable. Fashions change, attitudes change, science and technology advance, but human nature does not change. Man is not morally better now than he was three thousand years ago. Those of the constrained view accept human flaws as inevitable, human problems as having no perfect solutions, only “trade-offs”: we evaluate our options and hope we pick the one with the fewest negative consequences for the fewest people. In the constrained vision, tradition represents the distilled wisdom of generations, and therefore contains much more wisdom than any one individual or cohort could possible amass. Thinkers representing the constrained vision include Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.
In the unconstrained vision, man can be improved. He is “perfectible”. Human reason has advanced so that intelligent individuals can guide the continued improvement of the species. There are no problems that are not amenable to solutions discernible by human reason. This is the vision that lends itself to Utopian experiments. Some of the thinkers Sowell quotes to illustrate the unconstrained vision are Rousseau, William Godwin, the Marquis de Condorcet, Thomas Jefferson, G.B. Shaw, and Ronald Dworkin.
If you were unfamiliar with Dr. Sowell’s work, you would have to pay close attention to learn from this book that he subscribes to the constrained vision. This is not a tendentious book, but a very informative one that will enhance your understanding of the arguments around every divisive issue.
As for Sowell’s prose, well, there is probably no other writer who could have taken what some might consider dry subject matter and a little on the dense side and made reading about it so nearly effortless. His skill in making the language do his bidding has been equaled in this age only by the late E.B. White.
Now, if you are good and eat this delicious meat and vegetable dish, you may have dessert. In fact, two desserts:
One is The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. Warning: If you are a liberal, you will not like this book. In it, those of the unconstrained vision become “the anointed” and those of the constrained vision, “the benighted”. Wear asbestos gloves, it sizzles; you will have no trouble figuring out where the author stands.
The other is The Search for Cosmic Justice, likewise not suitable for liberal sensibilities. In it, Sowell sets forth the two understandings of the concept of “justice”. In the constrained vision (that of “the benighted”) justice means consistently applying the laws according to their intended meaning. This justice is not perfect, but it is the only kind that can reasonably be approached in human society.
In the unconstrained vision (that of “the anointed”), justice means ever striving toward perfection in the sense that we should take into account everyone’s special circumstances and try to “level the playing field” to achieve “cosmic justice”. This way lies madness, or as we usually call it, judicial activism.
Read one or read them all. Buy them, don’t get them from the library: you will want to keep them.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Margaret Snyder
