Oct
24
Unconstrained vs. constrained vision
October 24, 2008 | 2 Comments
Peter Robinson discusses his interview with Thomas Sowell, where Sowell elaborates on his 1987 book, A Conflict of Visions. Robinson sums up the book’s major thesis:
Then there is Thomas Sowell, the economist and political philosopher. He prefers an older way of looking at American politics–a much older way. In his classic 1987 work, A Conflict of Visions, Sowell identifies two competing worldviews, or visions, that have underlain the Western political tradition for centuries.
Sowell calls one worldview the “constrained vision.” It sees human nature as flawed or fallen, seeking to make the best of the possibilities that exist within that constraint. The competing worldview, which Sowell terms the “unconstrained vision,” instead sees human nature as capable of continual improvement.
You can trace the constrained vision back to Aristotle; the unconstrained vision to Plato. But the neatest illustration of the two visions occurred during the great upheavals of the 18th century, the American and French revolutions.
The American Revolution embodied the constrained vision. “In the United States,” Sowell says, “it was assumed from the outset that what you needed to do above all was minimize [the damage that could be done by] the flaws in human nature.” The founders did so by composing a constitution of checks and balances. More than two centuries later, their work remains in place.
The French Revolution, by contrast, embodied the unconstrained vision. “In France,” Sowell says, “the idea was that if you put the right people in charge–if you had a political Messiah–then problems would just go away.” The result? The Terror, Napoleon and so many decades of instability that France finally sorted itself out only when Charles de Gaulle declared the Fifth Republic.
And how does this relate to the current campaign?
What role have the two visions played in the campaign? Sen. John McCain, who is trailing, has by and large embraced the constrained vision; Sen. Barack Obama, who is leading, the unconstrained vision. Asked if Obama represents the purest expression of the unconstrained vision since Franklin Roosevelt, Sowell, himself an African-American, replies: “No. Since the beginning of American politics. This man [Obama] has been a left ideologue for 20 years.”
I have read A Conflict of Visions, and it is a terrific book. If I had read it earlier, it probably would have had a more prominent place in my dissertation, as his thesis really gets to the heart of my own. In a similar vein, I highly recommend Michael Spicer’s book, The Founders, the Constitution, and Public Administration: A Conflict in Worldviews. Like Sowell, Spicer splits the philosophical worldviews that have dominated the American – and really the world’s – political spectrum in two. Spicer distinguishes between rationalists and anti-rationalists. The French Enlightenment thinkers and those who followed in their week were rationalists who believed in the ultimate perfectiability of mankind. The British Enlightenment thinkers and most of the Framers were anti-rationalists who were more skeptical about mankind and did not cling to the idea of human perfectability. They were also much more respectful of custom and tradition.
However you want to cut the philosophic divide: rationalists vs. anti-rationalists, constrained vs. unconstrained vision, Burkean vs. Rousseauean, Madisonian vs. Jeffersonian, it all comes down to certain core principles. I’d agree with Sowell that, despite his imperfections, McCain represents a much more contrained – and therefore reasonable – vision of the potential use of government than does Obama.
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2 Comments so far
Connecting this to a prior discussion, do you think that notions of “progress” also fit into this argument?
It strikes me that my general rejection of notions of progress fit nicely with the constrained vision identified above.
What think ye?
[...] He has to borrow His ideas from somewhere…then you know you’re looking at the Unconstrained Vision of Humanity identified by Dr. Thomas Sowell. It is a path that only leads to one place, and that place is Debt [...]