Analytical Marxism and the Meaning of Historicism: Reflections on Kai Nielsen and G. A. Cohen

In retrospect, analytical Marxism seemed like a good idea at the time. This new Marxism, which emerged in the late 1970s, promised to be “analytical,” strengthening the most salvageable parts of traditional Marxism while jettisoning metaphysical language and premises that had undermined the impact of the theory. As the analytical Marxist Andrew Levine explains, “mainstream philosophers in the English-speaking world preferred to engage in tasks that appear pedestrian from the Olympian vantage point continental philosophers assumed—discerning conceptual structures, making distinctions (where appropriate), collapsing distinctions (where they are inappropriately drawn), and marshaling clear and sound arguments.”[1] In sharp contrast to the Marxist theorizing of Althusser, who enjoyed considerable popularity in Europe around this time, the analytical Marxists were determined to provide a solid empirical basis to the theory of historical materialism. The Canadian philosopher G. A. Cohen (1941-2009) was the first analytical Marxist to provide a substantive version of this revamped Marxism in his seminal work Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (1979).[2] The sheer rigor of Cohen’s study inspired the hope that obituaries for Marxism were premature. Cohen’s analytical approach also encouraged other Marxists in the English-speaking philosophical tradition to defend historical materialism with a renewed sense of optimism and resolve. The American Marxist philosopher Kai Nielsen (1926- ) clearly sympathizes with Cohen’s scholarship.[3] Although Cohen is the more famous of the two, Nielsen also deserves considerable credit for submitting Marxism to “analytical scrutiny” at a time when there was considerable debate over the meaning or validity of this ideology.[4]

In the decades following the inception of analytical Marxism, there has been serious doubt regarding its viability. A few critics have argued that this movement is not truly Marxist, given its use of non-Marxist ideas such as game theory and methodological individualism.[5] Ambitious works of analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster’s Making Sense of Marx (1985)[6], further reinforced the impression that this new type of Marxism would save the theory only by killing its most central premises. Elster, who rejected Marxist staples such as the labor theory of value, a teleological belief in “laws of history,” and an overreliance on functionalism, seemed to leave an empty shell of Marxism.[7] Despite the best intentions of analytical Marxists, even sympathetic devotees of this movement such as Levine admit that their entire project had helped to kill what they wanted to save: “One might therefore say that, without realizing it, the analytical Marxists saved Marxism by destroying it; that they breathed new life into the Marxist project, even as they came eventually—and regretfully—to the conclusion that they were its gravediggers.”[8]

Is there any remnant of analytical Marxism that is worth preserving? This question is hard to answer, given the prevailing consensus that Marxism in all its varieties is historically obsolete (although a few writers insist that it has made a comeback since the economic crisis of 2008). [9] My contention is that analytical Marxism “breathed new life” into historicism, one of the most maligned philosophies of modernity. In basic terms, historicism teaches that human beings cannot transcend history. As Nielsen writes in Naturalism Without Foundations (1996), “We can hardly jump out of our cultural and historical skins.”[10] We owe this insight to Hegel, who taught that “no one can overleap history.” (NWF, 28) Philosophers must be historicists as well. “To be a historicist is to believe that the warrant for interesting and at least potentially controversial knowledge claims is always historical-epoch dependent.” (NWF, 28) Taking aim at the ahistorical universalism of the Enlightenment, Cohen writes: “Marxist universalism suffers from the abstractedness of the Enlightenment universalism criticized by Hegel. The Enlightenment was wrong because the universal can exist only in a determinate embodiment:  there is no way of being human which is not a way of being human.” (KMTH, 354; author’s italics) In short, historicism teaches that there is no idea or action that is inseparable from history. To assert that one can transcend history is tantamount to claiming that human beings can escape their own humanity.

Although these brief definitions may suggest that historicism is more of an exercise in the history of ideas rather than a philosophical viewpoint, I shall contend that Nielsen and Cohen defend historicism on valid philosophical grounds that support the legitimacy or validity of this perspective. In the process of rethinking Marxism, both of these philosophers have provided a version of historicism that is open to preserving traditional practices (e.g., nationalism, Christianity) that orthodox Marxism once dismissed as reactionary. Although neither Nielsen nor Cohen abandoned his leftist politics in a categorical manner, both of these philosophers later in life embraced positions that fit more comfortably into the opposite side of the political spectrum. In the case of Nielsen, a new openness to the importance of the nation-state emerged. In the case of Cohen, a deep appreciation of the Christian tradition’s influence on morality became evident.

My choice of historicism as a valuable by-product of analytical Marxism may strike some readers as odd for two reasons. First, this movement originally emerged as a rejection of the historicism that underpinned Marxism on the European continent. When analytical Marxists thought of historicism at all, they tended to associate it with the unscientific teleological metaphysics of history that Engels associated with Marx when he eulogized his famous collaborator as a “man of science” who discovered laws of history that were analogous to laws of nature.[11] Consequently, analytical Marxists were determined to purge Marxism of this historicist heritage that had imposed a problematic metaphysical determinism onto Marxism.[12] Second, historicism has had a rough time of it in the twentieth century, even apart from its association with Marxism. It has faced severe scrutiny from distinguished philosophers such as Leo Strauss, who accuses historicism of promoting a teleological concept of history that subordinates human freedom to the fatalistic power of history while it dogmatically affirms the relativistic denial of truth or certainty. I shall show that Nielsen and Cohen are determined to avoid a historicism that conflates history with both fatalism and relativism. In the process of repudiating the rigid materialist teleology of classical Marxism, the analytical version also eschews the dogmatic Marxian preoccupation with class interest in favor of appreciating non-material loyalties (national pride, religion) that at times sound conservative.

Overleaping Teleology (But Not History)

According to Cohen, what separates analytical Marxism from every other version of Marxism is the former’s repudiation of the belief that history is a “dialectical” process. “Belief in dialectic as a rival to analysis thrives only in an atmosphere of unclear thought.” (KMTH, xxiii; author’s italics) This dialectical thinking, which Cohen elsewhere associates with Hegel, should be rejected precisely because it reduces human freedom or agency to God’s providence.[13] (Whether his interpretation of Hegel is accurate is another question, since Hegel understands history as the greatest expression of human freedom.[14]) As a defender of “methodological individualism,” Cohen affirms the agency of human individuals in the creation of history. “Insofar as analytical Marxists are analytical in this narrower sense, they reject the point of view in which social formations and classes are depicted as entities obeying laws of behavior that are not a function of the behaviours of their constituent individuals.” (KMTH, xxiii)

Nielsen is equally opposed to defending a grand theory of history that, in anti-empirical fashion, proposes that there are laws or “ends” that history must obey. Instead, he insists that analytical Marxism must reject this “teleological orientation or talk of meaning” in favor of a theory that operates in “an empirically disciplined manner.”[15] Cohen in a similar vein rejects the “obstetric doctrine” of traditional Marxism which insisted that history operates in a manner analogous to an “organic” process of birth, growth, and decay. In his view, it is “false” and even dangerous to assume, as orthodox Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg did, that socialism would inevitably (or organically) emerge out of a decayed capitalism, as a babe emerges from its mother’s womb.[16]

As Nielsen explains, analytical Marxism seeks to:

avoid such grand a priori and teleological roads; instead they [analytical Marxists] construct accounts of historical materialism that are empirically testable, which give us a causal account of epochal social change, have clearly articulated concepts of class, and show us both that and why we have class and strata in our societies and how and why capitalist societies, no matter how human their faces come to be with social democracy, will remain class societies. These accounts are nonteleological and consist of testable theories.[17]

In brief, Cohen and Nielsen embrace a historicism that is stripped of metaphysical baggage which emphasizes laws or goals of history, subjecting human beings to forces beyond their control. There is such a thing as human freedom:  human beings can (and must) change the world. Yet they also insist that human beings cannot transcend history altogether. Obviously, some large questions arise here. If we are stuck in history, how can we free? Moreover, given the constant movement of history, how can we know that anything (even historicism) is universally true or certain? Are analytical Marxists any more successful than their orthodox predecessors in combatting these tu quoque objections, which essentially expose the self-contradictory nature of historicism?[18]

Strauss on Historicism

Leo Strauss certainly would not think that it is possible or desirable to salvage historicism. It is hard to imagine more different philosophers than Strauss and analytical Marxists. True to his historicism, Nielsen defends John Dewey’s hope that “philosophy should transform itself by setting aside the perennial problems of philosophers—problems (so-called problems) like the problem of the external world or of other minds—and concern itself with the live context-dependent, epoch-dependent problems of human beings: centrally political, social problems; religious problems; and live moral problems that beset human beings.” (NWF, 32) Strauss, in sharp contrast, avers that the great questions of philosophy are as relevant as ever. “Far from legitimizing the historicist inference, history seems rather to prove that all human thought, and certainly all philosophic thought, is concerned with the same fundamental themes or the same fundamental problems, and therefore that there exists an unchanging framework which persists in all changes of human knowledge of both facts and principles.”[19]

This vast disagreement may in part explain why analytical philosophers have generally not taken Strauss very seriously. Nielsen probably represented the majority opinion of the analytical world when he once dismissed Strauss and his student Allan Bloom as unphilosophical because of their failure to meet the “necessary condition” of subjecting their ideas to “cross-examination,” as Plato did.[20] He also chides Strauss and Hegel alike for constructing “grand philosophical narratives” that compare poorly to the rigor of analytical Marxism.[21] (It is worth noting, however, that Cohen once devoted critical attention to Strauss’s early study of Hobbes.[22]) These attitudes notwithstanding, I believe that Strauss’s critique of historicism deserves serious philosophical attention, not least because other major philosophers of the Anglosphere such as Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin have leveled similar charges against historicism.[23]

In attacking historicism, Strauss is not rejecting the study of history per se. Historicism is not identical to an appreciation of history. In Strauss’s view, it is a dangerous doctrine that threatens to abolish political philosophy or critical thought altogether. Strauss does not object to studies of the history of thought, properly understood. The danger stemming from historicism is that it reinvents the history of thought according to the fashion or bias of the moment. “The task of the historian of thought is to understand the thinkers of the past exactly as they understood themselves, or to revitalize their thought according to their own interpretation.  If we abandon this goal, we abandon the only practicable criterion of ‘objectivity’ in the history of thought.”[24] Yet historicists show no interest in the original intention of these thinkers, since they typically assume that they can understand these thinkers better than the thinkers understood themselves. Historicists (especially progressivist ones) can make this claim because of their assumption that these thinkers lacked a proper understanding of their historical context. “The historicist thesis amounts then to this, that there is an inevitable contradiction between the intention of philosophy and its fate, between the non-historical intention of the philosophic answers and their fate always to remain ‘historically conditioned.’”[25]

Based on this critique, Strauss faults historicism for two related reasons. First, it denies that human beings can escape from the historical influences of their age. Strauss’s use of the term “fate” is central to his overall critique of historicism. In Natural Right and History (1953), he accuses historicists of denying that human beings have the freedom to change or even philosophically understand the times in which they live:

All human thought depends on fate, on something that thought cannot master and whose workings it cannot anticipate. Yet the support of the horizon produced by fate is ultimately the choice of the individual, since this fate has to be accepted by the individual. We are free in the sense that we are free either to choose in anguish the world view and the standards imposed on us by fate or else to lose ourselves in illusory security or in despair.[26]

Under historicism, then, we are only free to be unfree, unable to understand or resist the currents of history.

Second, historicism denies that there are universal truths that transcend history. For this reason, Strauss has no difficulty in pointing out that historicism is self-contradictory. If historicism is applied to itself, then it is a doctrine that is relative to its own historical period. Consequently, historicism cannot be true in any universal or absolute sense, given the fact that it denies there is such a doctrine in the first place. “No view of the whole, and in particular no view of the whole of human life, can claim to be final or universally valid. Every doctrine, however seemingly final, will be superseded sooner or later by another doctrine.”[27] Although historicists (notably Hegel) may claim that their moment in history is an “absolute moment” or one that allows them the objectivity to understand history in a final sense,[28] they too must admit that their ideas are subject to the fatal destiny of endless change in history. If all standards of justice are relative to a historical era, then human beings lose the “critical distance” necessary to distinguish a civilized society from a cannibalistic one.[29] In short, historicism leaves us with “mutable” standards of truth or justice, without any sense of what is permanently or universally valid and true.[30]

Given the teleological and deterministic baggage of orthodox Marxism, it is no wonder that even critics of Strauss admit that Marxism “may be the historical theory that comes closest to Strauss’s description of the historicist fallacy” or its self-contradictory nature.[31] Sympathetic readers of Marx have admitted that there is a Marxian version of fatalism that underscores the theory of historical materialism.[32] (It does not help matters that prominent Marxists have at times embraced the crudest determinism. Adorno once observed that Kierkegaard became an existentialist because he “sustained major losses in the market fluctuations of1848”![33]) For this reason, Nielsen and Cohen have attempted to defend Marx against the charges of relativism or crude historicism.[34] For my purposes, however, it is important to show that the Nielsen-Cohen version of historicism (which does not require adherence to every aspect of analytical Marxism) can withstand Strauss’s associations of historicism with fatalism and relativism. How, exactly, does their version of historicism avoid these aporias?

Avoiding Fatalism or Determinism

Neither Nielsen nor Cohen supports the orthodox Marxian expectation that history is inevitably on the side of their political program. Still, Cohen freely admits that Marx relies on a saving tale that promises the end to all conflict in history:

This rhythm of primitive whole, fragmentation, and reunification asserts itself widely in Western thought. It beats not only in Hegel and, as we shall see, in Marx, but in much religious doctrine, in the Christian triad of innocence, fall, and redemption, in Aristophanes’ account of love in Plato’s Symposium, in some psycho-analytic narrations of the genesis of the person, and—seminally for German philosophy of history—throughout Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind. (KMTH, 21)

Cohen and Nielsen absolutely repudiate this eschatology that inspired the false prophesy that socialism would triumph in history. Whereas “strong” (or orthodox) historical materialism is riddled with this happy determinism, the “weak’ historical materialism, which they defend, is not. “Weak historical materialism does not tell us what must happen; it only shows us what reasonably and empirically could happen.”[35] To say the least, history did not cooperate with classical Marxian expectations that a revolution is just around the corner. As Cohen soberly notes, “Capitalism does not produce its own gravediggers.”[36]

To make matters worse for orthodox Marxism, the two “supposedly irrepressible historical trends” that would guarantee the “future material equality” of a communist society did not materialize. These trends include the rise of an organized working class as the majority class in a capitalist society as well as the development of productive [economic] forces that would create material abundance for all.[37] “History shredded each of these predictions,” in Cohen’s view. Advances in automation actually reduced the size of the working class to non-majority status. Additionally, the full development of productive forces has run up against natural limits imposed by planet Earth, whose “resources turn out to be not lavish enough for continuous growth in technical knowledge to generate unceasing expansion of use-value.”[38] It is worth noting that Cohen did not abandon his socialist politics in the face of this evidence, but only abandoned any dependence “on ambitious theses about the whole of human history.” (KMTH, 341)[39]

Although it is tempting to conclude that the sheer weight of historical evidence forces analytical Marxists to abandon the most fatalistic predictions of classical Marxism, there are more philosophical reasons that they can draw upon as well. Nielsen, for example, categorically rejects any theoretical attempt (Marxist or otherwise) to explain human behavior according to a rigidly deterministic teleology based on classical physics. Although Nielsen describes himself as a “naturalist” who believes in only one (physical) reality, this version of materialism is not a reductive one. (NWF, 25, 35, 44) In response to Alasdair MacIntyre’s conflation of naturalism with scientism, Nielsen explains:

What should be apparent from the very articulation of my fallibilistic, pragmatic, nonscientistic, contextualized, historicized naturalism is that I am neither asserting nor presupposing any of these things that MacIntyre says are constitutive of naturalism…I do not think that there is such a thing as a final theory and with that I do not think natural science, or anything else, is to be understood (to quote MacIntyre again) “as in progress towards a complete account not only of the laws governing nature, but also of the phenomena of nature.”[40] (NWF, 47)

Crude historicists who claim that we must be on the right side of history or “jump on the wave of the future” are also easy prey for Strauss’s critique of historicism as philosophically untenable.[41] Yet Nielsen is not guilty of this simplistic historicism. As a philosopher, he would agree with Strauss that the validity of an idea does not depend on its historical context or influence.[42] For example, Nielsen rejects the thesis that the decline of religion’s influence in the West automatically undermines the validity of belief.[43] In short, Strauss and Nielsen share some common ground on the defects of unreflective historicism.

Avoiding Relativism

Does the Nielsen-Cohen version of historicism avoid relativism as well? The key idea that is most relevant here in Nielsen’s “historicized naturalism” (or historicism) is fallibilism, which essentially teaches that “no principles or beliefs or convictions, not even the most firmly held, are, in principle at least, free from the possibility of being modified or even set aside, though some moral truisms may always in fact be unquestionably accepted.” (NWF, 15) Although fallibilism shares with crude historicism a suspicion of “timeless” or “ahistorical” truths, the former is thoroughly empirical in rejecting “final theories” of any kind. (NWF, 26) At the same time, it opposes relativism, or the denial of any standards that could measure the validity of claims:

Historicism goes well with fallibilism. But it is not saying that everything is relative or subjective or that no view can be any better than any other view or more adequately grounded. It is surely not saying that anything goes. It is saying just the opposite, namely, that knowledge is often cumulative, but still is always incomplete and always, where issues of substance are concerned, less than certain. But this is not to say that all is relative or subjective or that all views are equally adequate or equally valid (whatever that means) or anything of the kind. (NWF, 29)

As Nielsen further points out, fallibilism and historicism need each other. Fallibilism makes use of the historicist premise that knowledge is “cumulative” in history, that in fact one period of history may be in a better position to understand the prejudices of a past era than those who lived in that era. (NWF, 28) With a nod to Hegel’s famous Owl of Minerva flying at dusk, human beings generally understand historical change in retrospect. None of this should imply that historicism in this sense justifies uncritical passivity towards change. If anything, Nielsen and Cohen stress the importance of constant critique of what stands for conventional wisdom in a given era. Nielsen and Cohen are particularly aware of the common accusation that the Marxist critique of morality must lead to moral relativism precisely because it reduces ethical credos to their origin or role in a given historical context (or, as Marx and Engels famously put it: “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”[44])

In response to the accusation that Marxism is necessarily relativistic on matters of morality, Nielsen counters that analytical Marxists distinguish between the sociology of morals and the epistemology of morals.[45] In the case of sociology, Marxists question the ideological and mystifying role that moral language and concepts play in an established socioeconomic structure. What the ruling class deems “right” and “wrong” should be subjected to scrutiny, based on the assumption that it identifies morality with its own class interest. Yet the epistemology of morals is a different kettle of fish, targeting on meta-ethical grounds the belief that we can have knowledge of ethics. If Marxists embraced this epistemology, their critique of capitalist injustice would founder on endless questions about what counts as “justice.” Yet Marx never bothered himself with debates over the meaning of right and wrong, given his bedrock conviction that exploitation under capitalism is unjust. In short, the critique of the ideological misuse of morality does not logically lead to the conclusion that morality itself is conceptually up for grabs.

Still, is Nielsen manifesting the sort of crude historicism that, according to Strauss, fails to “teach us whether the change [in history] was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected”?[46] I believe that the answer must be negative here, if we accurately understand what Nielsen has in mind. Truth still exists, even if our idea of truth is intelligible only in historical terms. It is simply a fact that modern science continues to advance our understanding of nature in ways that ultimately affect how other disciplines (e.g., the humanities, social sciences) think about the world. It is not relativistic of Nielsen to deny such a thing as “comprehensive knowledge of our own mistakes.” In fallibilistic terms, it is prudent and reasonable to admit that what we know at a given moment in history is probably true until such a time when new evidence challenges these knowledge claims.

The fact that Nielsen values modern science does not make him a defender of the scientistic view that science can explain all human behavior, as we have seen. However, it clearly illustrates Nielsen’s view that what we consider to be knowledge (universal or contextual) should respect the integrity of modern science. If Nielsen is right, philosophers in the modern age must avoid the “allegedly unwobbling pivots” that, he believes, characterize Strauss’s grand history of philosophy. (NWF, 19) Nevertheless, if Strauss is right, historicism leaves us trapped in our historical context without escape. Put differently, historicism fundamentally kills philosophy or thought, leading to nihilism.[47] Because they are caught in their historical context, philosophers cannot even hope to transcend or critically scrutinize their times. Political philosophy’s traditional quest for the best or most just regime must then come to an end.[48]

Does historicism necessarily leave us in this lurch? Historicism, as Nielsen presents it, never denies the need to be critical of one’s assumptions (or the conventional wisdom of one’s times). In fact, it insists on this practice. What historicism categorically denies is a trans-historical standard that is so certain that it is completely invulnerable to critique. (Even Strauss admits at times that the idea of “an eternal and unchangeable order within which History takes place and which is not in any way affected by History…is not self-evident.”[49]) Nielsen writes: “But that we cannot overleap culture and history is no justification or excuse for remaining uncritically with our initial convictions, convictions, that we cannot avoid starting with.” (NWF, 17; author’s italics) Strauss would likely agree that we need this starting-point, or what he calls the “pre-philosophical.”[50] Still, how exactly does Nielsen’s historicism lead us beyond parochial beginnings based on our tradition, upbringing, or society?

Nielsen’s approach is, once again, fallibilistic. In his discussion of John Rawls’s idea of “wide reflective equilibrium” (WRE), he describes this process as one that comes to “modify or even excise some considered judgments” while “seeking a wider and more coherent web of beliefs and practices.” (NWF, 17) The best that we can hope for is a fallibilistic modification of beliefs that may no longer correspond with our knowledge. WRE is more reasonable than appealing to an eternal order of “moral realism,” which Nielsen would consider “mythical” anyway. (NWF, 17) WRE, however, is never complete nor is it just an exercise in coherence. (NWF, 59, 68-69)  The method or practice of WRE requires not only coherence among our moral convictions, principles, and background theories arising from our society but also an empirically based account of human nature and society. (NWF, 189) Contrary to Strauss, there is no such thing as an “unassisted human mind” that escapes the influence of these contextual assumptions absolutely.[51] Nevertheless, we can and must use our reasoning to justify our beliefs while recognizing that they may face the possibility of revision. Nielsen and Cohen have applied this fallibilistic reasoning to Marxism itself so as to avoid the pitfalls arising from the old deterministic Marxism.

Is there anything that we can know with certainty about human nature, according to this fallibilistic historicism? The closest that Cohen and Nielsen perhaps get to embracing a metaphysics of humanity is the assumption that human beings create history (although, as Marx famously cautioned, “they do not make it just as they please…but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.”[52]). Human beings are history-making animals. (KMTH, 23-25) Yet this is not an appeal to an “ahistorical” essence. (How can it be, if we have no choice but to act in history?) Rather, this is a paradoxical metaphysics which teaches that we human beings have no choice but to create history even though we still have the freedom (however limited) to create history. This open-ended historicism enables Cohen and Nielsen to reevaluate traditional Marxist views on non-class loyalties.

Rethinking Religion

The revamped historicism that Nielsen and Cohen articulate is not only more pragmatic on matters of historical inevitability and universalism than its orthodox predecessors. It also offers a more comprehensive understanding of history, recognizing the importance and even beneficial nature of nationalism and religion. In repudiating teleological metaphysics, analytical Marxists have also found it necessary, as good fallibilists, to modify the economic determinism that has characterized historical materialism. This is no easy task, given the fact that Marx constantly emphasized the primacy of economic or class identity at the expense of other modes of identity such as religion or patriotism. (Even Engels admitted that he and Marx “are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it.”[53]) In The Communist Manifesto, he and Engels confidently predicted that capitalism would sweep away the prejudice of religion by forcing on proletarians the awareness that only materialism can explain reality. “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”[54] They also confidently predicted that “National differences and antagonisms were vanishing” in the face of capitalist globalization, which would unwittingly inspire proletariats of all lands to form a united front against the bourgeoisie.[55] This dismissal of nationalist sentiment was so deeply felt among Marxists that they completely failed to anticipate the upsurge of patriotic feelings among the European working classes on the eve of World War I. As Cohen notes in his defense of historical materialism, Lenin concluded that a single nation-state (e.g., Russia) could not establish socialism successfully; it would need the support of revolutionary movements from around the world. (KMTH, 394)

The fact that religion and nationalism show no signs of extinction in the present age have forced analytical Marxists such as Nielsen and Cohen to rethink classical Marxism further while maintaining a robust historicism. According to Cohen, analytical Marxists should aim for a “restricted” historical materialism that does not seek to reduce all phenomena in history to an economic or class causality (one that is different from the “inclusive” historical materialism that is crudely reductionist.) (KMTH, 364-388) In the process, Cohen and Nielsen have taken on positions that would be to the right of the socialist politics that they embraced in an earlier time of life.

Cohen, in one of his last essays, “Rescuing Conservatism: A Defense of Existing Value,” rethinks the progressivist-Marxist dismissal of conservatism. What inspired him to take this heterodox turn was the survival of his place of employment, All Souls College at Oxford, in the face of pressures to accept corporate funding, which endangered the identity and autonomy of this college. Cohen draws from two unlikely sources of inspiration for guidance:  Hegel’s philosophy and the Gospel’s account of Jesus’s arrest at the Garden of Gethsemane (although he does not develop the implications of this intellectual debt). Both communicate the same conservative message, “that of accepting the given, of valuing the valuable, and of valuing the valued, the subject is at peace with the object.”[56] Cohen goes on to remark that “All Souls is a valuable social creation, partly because of what makes it different from otherwise similar social creations. As a valuable social creation, it merits preservation, and a radical enough transformation would induce both deformation of our identity and, with that, a loss of (some of) the distinctive value that the college embodies.” Moreover, “it is the legitimate desire of its members (All Souls College) to preserve their particular corporate identity.”[57] Cohen sounds even more conservative when he inveighs against the progressivist assumption that it is legitimate to replace one valuable thing with a more valuable (or beneficial) thing. Loyalty to a valuable tradition may count for more than preference for a new innovation:

The conservative impulse is to conserve what is valuable, that is, the particular things that are valuable. I claim that we devalue the valuable things we have if we keep them as long as nothing even slightly more valuable comes along. Valuable things command a certain loyalty. If an existing thing has intrinsic value, then we have reason to regret its destruction as such, a reason that we would not have if we cared only about the value that thing carries or instantiates.[58]

In defending conservatism, Cohen is not abandoning socialism, since he retains the Marxian view that, given capitalism’s role as a solvent of tradition, a socialist revolution is “necessary to preserve the fruits of civilization against the ravages of capitalism.”[59]

Which other traditions have “value,” worthy of preservation, even though their value is not measurable according to egotistical calculation? In his provocatively titled If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (2000), Cohen provides an un-Marxist answer. He contends that the Christian belief in equality is necessary as a foundation for a humane liberalism or socialism. In his view, the Marxian reliance on the sheer force of class struggle is no more successful in convincing human beings to treat others as equals than the Rawlsian reliance on rules to enforce justice. “For Christians, both the Marxist and the Rawlsian conceptions are misguided, since equality requires not mere history and the abundance to which it leads, or mere politics, but a moral revolution, a revolution in the human soul.”[60] The liberal preference for these rules is no substitute for the actual practice of egalitarian justice. Taking aim at Rawls in particular, Cohen writes:

My critique of Rawls reflects and supports a view that justice in personal choice is necessary for a society to qualify as just…Jesus would have spurned the liberal idea that the state can take care of justice for us, provided only that we obey the rules it lays down, and regardless of what we choose to do within those rules. And I believe that Jesus would have been right to spurn that idea.[61]

To be sure, Cohen is not the first Marxist to appreciate the historical (or even necessary) influence of Christianity on modern or secular ideas of equality. Engels also recognized that Christianity was the “first possible world religion” because it addressed “all peoples without distinction.”[62] Still, Cohen’s sympathy with Christianity would not convince everyone that this faith is still necessary as a vital source of egalitarian sentiment. Why does egalitarianism require the leavening influence of Christian universalism?

Cohen’s debt to Hegel, to whom he alluded in his essay on conservatism, now becomes clearer. We have already seen Cohen praise Hegel for exposing the ahistorical abstractions of Enlightenment universalism. Cohen goes on to credit Hegel with being the first philosopher to scrutinize the abstract nature of Enlightenment philosophy, particularly the latter’s inattention to the historical differences between peoples. (KMTH, 4) He also recognizes Hegel as the first philosopher to reconcile what is particular (the nation-state) with what is universal (freedom). The historic particularity of nations is compatible with the universal “world spirit.” Yet this reconciliation, according to Hegel, is not possible until the Christian era. The idea of universal freedom (and equality) was unknown even to Greek democracy. Hegel writes:

No land was so rich as Greece, alike in the number of its constitutions, and in the frequent changes from one to another of these in a single state; but the Greeks were still unacquainted with the abstract right of our modern states, that isolates the individual, allows of his acting as such, and yet, as an invisible spirit, holds all its parts together…The freedom of citizens in this signification is the dispensing with universality, the principle of isolation; but it is a necessary moment unknown to ancient states.[63]

Long before Cohen embraced Christianity as a necessary precondition to equality, he still appreciated Hegel’s attempt at explaining how “Coherent national characters exist as phases of realization of the spirit of the world.” (KMTH, 6) The answer is: Christianity.

Hegel believed that Protestantism spoke the truth about man and the universe. But his religious faith was matched by a faith in reason which said that every truth which Christianity expresses in a wrap of myth or image may be stated without imagery by philosophy. This meant that there was a need for a philosophical formulation of the idea of Providence, of God’s will manifesting itself in history. (KMTH, 6)

Although it is doubtful that Cohen thinks in the Protestant terms that Hegel did, he ultimately concedes Hegel’s main thesis, that secular or modern ideas on equality are also intelligible (and historically rooted in) the “imagery” of Christianity.

To recall Cohen’s critique of Rawls, only Christianity could effect a “moral revolution” that would foster true egalitarian justice. Once again, Hegel is the first philosopher to understand this revolution in historical terms. The paradox is that this moral universalism is specific to one historical faith tradition. Hegel writes:

First, under Christianity Slavery is impossible; for man is man—in the abstract essence of his nature—is contemplated in God; each unit of mankind is an object of the grace of God and of the Divine purpose: “God will have all men to be saved.” Utterly excluding all speciality, therefore, man, in and for himself—in his simple quality of man—has infinite value; and this infinite value abolishes, ipso facto, all particularity attaching to birth or country.[64]

Perhaps needless to say, Cohen’s reasoning sets him apart from other analytical Marxists (e.g., Nielsen) who do not want to revive Christianity in any sense. The fact that Christianity exerts an important influence in history does not convince them that this faith is still necessary as an ethical force. As Nielsen observes, such a claim is an example of the genetic fallacy.[65] Even though Christianity was the first egalitarian faith, it does not follow that human beings in the twenty-first century should cherish this faith. After all, as Nielsen has often pointed out, the Christian church has also impeded the cause of social reform throughout history.[66]) Nevertheless, the modern debt to Christianity is not so easy to dismiss.

Rethinking the Nation-State

In reconsidering the value of nationalism or the nation-state, Nielsen shows how far he has distanced himself from classical Marxism, which disdained this parochial attachment to ethnicity. Levine has even remarked that “no one who knew him (Nielsen) years ago would have expected his thinking to take this turn.”[67] One early antecedent of this unexpected turn is Nielsen’s acknowledgement, in a 1987 essay on identity, that Enlightenment universalism does not cancel out the claims of the Counter-Enlightenment, which emphasizes the historical particularity of persons.[68] Still, only relatively late in his philosophical journey has Nielsen defended the idea of a nation-state that is “cosmopolitan” in its approach to justice. Two large historicist questions arise from his attempt to reconcile a universal moral responsibility to other human beings with the legitimacy of the nation-state to puts its own citizens first. What are the historical preconditions that make this desired reconciliation possible? Additionally, with a nod to Cohen, can we moderns think in cosmopolitan or egalitarian terms without the leavening influence of Christianity?

In order to get some purchase on what is at issue here, I shall examine Nielsen’s definition of what counts as a “cosmopolitan” nation-state. He writes:

We would become more internationalist and less ethnocentric and, with the free and extended circulation of peoples, our cultural life would be enriched. While most of us no doubt would continue to think of ourselves as members of groups which make us distinct peoples where typically we would cherish our distinctness, the very globalization process would make it easier, and with a more secure sense of reality, to also think of ourselves as a worldwide community of peoples and to cherish that thought.[69]

Nielsen’s reflections raise several questions, but one in particular is relevant to my thesis. How, exactly, do we “become more internationalist and less ethnocentric”? Or, how exactly do we ultimately “think of ourselves as a worldwide wide community of peoples” and “cherish that thought”? As a Marxist, Nielsen does not believe that capitalism can achieve this feat, although, as Marx and Engels averred in The Communist Manifesto, the earliest stage of capitalism made globalization possible. With globalization comes the possibility (or inevitability for Marx) that humanity can understand itself as one community at long last in history (an idea that Cohen has dismissed, as we have seen). So far, this great unity has not transpired. Can Christianity do any better? Nielsen’s answer would be a negative one. Still, does he provide a credible alternative?

Nielsen sees no necessary conflict between a state’s primary commitment to its citizens and the same state’s consideration of everyone else’s interests that might be affected (as in the case of secession). He cites with approval Isaiah Berlin’s essay on Herder as a source of good reasons for defending this type of state:

Isaiah Berlin has made vivid for us Johann Gottfried Herder’s eighteenth-century resistance to Enlightenment rationalism. People will suffer and will not flourish where they do not have a secure social identity. Among our very deep needs is the need to belong to a group, to be, that is, a member of some community. But this means, Herder argues, an attachment to local identities and not just to humanity in general.[70]

If I interpret his intent correctly here, Nielsen is committed to a “liberal nationalism” that protects its citizens and adheres to human rights. Moreover, liberal democracies are far more suited than dictatorships to the task of negotiating differences between ethnic groups: Scotland is far more successful than Chechnya.[71] In short, he rejects the inevitability of a tragic choice between the interests of one’s citizens and duties to humanity as a whole.

There is, however, a striking omission in his account. What Nielsen does not discuss here is what exactly makes this type of cosmopolitan state possible. For Herder, there was no mystery as to why some nation-states are better than others in avoiding xenophobia or bigotry while protecting their citizenry. Christianity is the necessary source of this moral universalism, which somehow co-exists with national pride. Like Herder (and Hegel), Nielsen believes that universalism and particularity need not clash with each other or cancel each other out, even though they often do. Yet Herder thought that the only religion that saved humanity from the most parochial versions of particularity is Christianity. He writes in “Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Mankind” (1774):

It is undeniable that this same religion, created in so peculiar a manner, was by the intentions of its founder meant to be (I shall not pronounce on whether this is what it became in the practices of the various ages) the actual religion of all mankind, an impulse towards love, and a bond between all the nations to make of them an army of brothers—this was its purpose from beginning to end….All preceding religions, even those of the best times and peoples, were, after all, only narrowly national, full of images and masquerades, full of ceremonies and national practices to which the essential duties were only ever attached and appended—in short, religions of one people, one corner of the earth, one lawgiver, one age!  This one, on the other hand, was evidently just the opposite in everything: the most honorable moral philosophy, the purest theory of truths and duties, independent of all legislation and petty local constitutions.  In short, if you will, the deism with the greatest love for man.[72]

It is not hard to imagine Nielsen’s response here. Besides appealing to the genetic fallacy cited above, Nielsen has argued that the moral equality which appears in the Christian tradition has not exactly persuaded most self-identified Christians in history to treat their fellow human beings as equals:

There have been, and indeed still are, courageous Christians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Father Berrigan, and today in South Africa, Beyers Naudé, who have struggled against the oppressive existing social order, but massively and not surprisingly the Christian churches have been on the side of the dominant ruling interests and have functioned to reconcile people, against their own interests, to such a class rule. They have repeatedly offered them illusory hopes in such a way as to stem revolt and, wherever possible, to batten down the struggle for human liberation.[73]

Although Nielsen’s response has merit, it is vulnerable to the counter-argument that Christian morality is one of several preconditions that are essential to the creation of a humane society. The fact that the defenders of apartheid misused Christian beliefs to justify a profoundly immoral social order does not demonstrate that Christianity is unnecessary to social progress. It simply proves that other factors (e.g., the level of economic development or affluence) must also be at play in order to build a just regime. Apartheid in South Africa lasted as long as it did because it took advantage of millions of vulnerable people living in a developing nation that provided little if any education to its poorest subjects. Even Nielsen concedes at times that the liberalism of Rawls is suited to advanced nations that lack “extensive intolerances.”[74]

Like Nielsen, Herder recognizes the mixed record of the church, or the gap between the “intentions of its founder” and “what it became in the practices of the various ages.”  Moreover, Herder may be vulnerable to an accusation that Nielsen has hurled at other Christian philosophers, namely that he has overemphasized Christian love at the expense of other important doctrines and in the process constructed a “Godless Christianity.”[75] Nevertheless, this interpretation does not alter the fact that a Christian morality was necessary to provide the moral universalism to which liberal democracies at least pay lip-service today. A truly broad and fallibilistic historicism would have to accept the insight (common to both Herder and Hegel) that Christianity, as Cohen argued, is still necessary as a force that inspires belief in moral equality.

We have come full circle. Although Nielsen and Cohen set out to articulate an historicism that is independent of Hegelian metaphysics, their debt to Hegel is considerable. Notwithstanding their fallibilistic view that knowledge is cumulative or modifiable in history, the Nielsen-Cohen version of historicism heavily leans (albeit indirectly at times) on one of Hegel’s most recurrent ideas: that a universal morality of freedom and equality would not have emerged without Christianity. Moreover, Christianity is still necessary for this purpose. Pace Strauss, this dependence on Hegel does not fall into the aporias of fatalism or relativism. Nor does it require an embrace of Marxism. Rather, this conservative historicism reminds us of the necessity to save what is most valuable within the history of humanity. We cannot escape history precisely because we are responsible for creating and preserving history with thought and resolve. This is one saving tale that is worth preserving.

Notes

[1] Andrew Levine, A Future for Marxism? Althusser, the Analytical Turn, and the Revival of Socialist Theory (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 126.

[2] G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). This work was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1979. The 2000 edition contains a new introduction and additional chapters. This work is henceforth cited as KMTH in the text.

[3] Kai Nielsen, “Analytical Marxism: A Form of Critical Theory,” Erkenntnis 39/1 (July 1993): 3.

[4] Andrew Levine, “Whatever Happened to Marxism?” in Reason and Emancipation: Essays on the Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, Michel Seymour and Matthias Fritsch, eds. (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2007), 185.

[5] Michael A. Lebowitz, “Is ‘Analytical Marxism’ Marxism?” Science and Society 52/2 (Summer 1988): 191-214. See also Richard Norman, “What is Living and What is Dead in Marxism?” in Analyzing Marxism, Robert Ware and Kai Nielsen, eds. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1989), 59-80.

[6] Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

[7] Kai Nielsen, “What is Alive and What is Dead in Marx and Marxism a la Elster,” Laval théologique et philosophique 49/2 (Juin 1993): 278.

[8] Levine, A Future for Marxism, 123.

[9] Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

[10] Kai Nielsen, Naturalism Without Foundations (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996), 17. This work is henceforth cited as NWF in the text.

[11] Friedrich Engels, “Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2^nd edition, Robert C. Tucker, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1978), 682.

[12] Levine, A Future for Marxism, 125, 130, 134-5.

[13] G. A. Cohen, If You’re An Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2001), 45-47.

[14] See Brayton Polka, “Hegel and the Myth of the Fall,” in Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible: From Kant to Schopenhauer (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 21-52; H. S. Harris, “Would Hegel be a ‘Hegelian’ Today?” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 3/2-3 (2007): 5-15.

[15] Nielsen, “Analytical Marxism: A Form of Critical Theory,” 10.

[16] Cohen, If You’re An Egalitarian, 76.

[17] Nielsen, “Reply to Richard Rorty,” in Reason and Emancipation, 140.

[18] See G. A. Cohen, “The Workers and the Word: Why Marx Had the Right to Think He Was Right,” in G. A. Cohen, Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy, Jonathan Wolff, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 268-283. In this essay, Cohen attempts to refute the tu quoque argument that targets the Marxian idea of truth as relative to class origins by contending that Marxism itself is subject to the same genesis.

[19] Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 23-24. See also pages 15, 31-32, and 38. See also Strauss, “Political Philosophy and History,” in What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 57, 59-60, 69.

[20] Kai Nielsen, “Reconsidering the Platonic Conception of Philosophy,” International Studies in Philosophy 26/2 (1994): 52.

[21] Nielsen, “Reply to Richard Rorty,” in Reason and Emancipation, 140. Nielsen is probably referring to Strauss’s grand thesis that philosophers throughout history have been forced to engage in secret writing in order to avoid persecution.

[22] G. A. Cohen, “Hobbes,” in Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy, pp. 78, 80-83, 112. Cohen briefly discusses Strauss’s 1936 study, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, Elsa M. Sinclair, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

[23] Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (New York: Routledge, 2002). This book was originally published in 1957. 51. See also Isaiah Berlin, “Historical Inevitability,” in Isaiah Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998), 119-190. This essay first appeared in 1954.

[24] Strauss, “Political Philosophy and History,” 67.

[25] Ibid., 70.

[26] Strauss, Natural Right and History, 27. See also pages 19 and 28.

[27] Ibid., 21. See also “Political Philosophy and History,” 72-73, 77.

[28] Ibid., 29.

[29] Ibid., 3.

[30] Ibid., 29.

[31] Paul Edward Gottfried, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 45. Gottfried and I offer conservative critiques of Strauss’s anti-historicism. See my Leo Strauss and Anglo-American Democracy: A Conservative Critique (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2013).

[32] Georges Sorel, ‘Necessity and Fatalism in Marxism,’ in From Georges Sorel: Essays in Socialism and Philosophy, edited with a new introduction by John L. Stanley, translated by John and Charlotte Stanley (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987), 111-129.

[33] Theodor Adorno, Construction of the Aesthetic, translated and edited by Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 48.

[34] See Kai Nielsen, “If Historical Materialism is True Does Morality Totter?” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15 (1985): 389-407. See also Cohen, “The Workers and the Word.”

[35] Kai Nielsen, “Reply to Andrew Levine and David Schweikart on Marx and Marxism,” in Reason and Emancipation, 204. (author’s italics)

[36] Cohen, If You’re An Egalitarian, 112.

[37] Ibid., 104.

[38] Ibid., 104-5. See also pages 112-15.

[39] See also Cohen’s last book, Why Not Socialism? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Nielsen passionately defended his deceased friend Cohen, at a conference devoted to his works, against the “absurdly false” accusation that he had abandoned Marxism and socialism towards the end of his life. See Nielsen, “Rescuing Political Theory from Fact-Insensitivity,” Socialist Studies 8/1 (Winter 2012): 239, note 1.

[40] Nielsen is responding to MacIntyre’s essay “Hume, Testimony to Miracles, the Order of Nature, and Jansenism,” in Faith, Scepticism, and Personal Identity: A Festschrift for Terence Penelhum, J. J. MacIntosh and H. A. Meynell, eds. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1994), 83-99.

[41] Strauss, Natural Right and History, 17. See also “Political Philosophy and History,” 61.

[42] Ibid., 13. See also “Political Philosophy and History,” 62, 64, 74, 76.

[43] Kai Nielsen, “Rationality, Intelligibility, and Alasdair MacIntyre’s Talk of God,” in Kai Nielsen, God, Scepticism, and Modernity (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1989), 78-93.

[44] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2^nd edition, Robert C. Tucker, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1978), 489. See also Nielsen, “If Historical Materialism is True, Does Morality Totter?”, and Cohen, “Freedom, Justice, and Capitalism,” New Left Review 126 (March-April, 1981): 12.

[45] Kai Nielsen, “The Crisis of Socialism and Analytical Marxism,” in Globalization and Justice (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003), 71-72.

[46] Strauss, Natural Right and History, 19.

[47] Ibid., 18, 24, 26, 32 . See also “Political Philosophy and History,” 57, 59-60, 69.

[48] Ibid., 15, 21. See also “Political Philosophy and History,” 70-71.

[49] Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence, revised and expanded edition, Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth, eds. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 212.

[50] Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 242. Strauss and Nielsen would, of course, disagree on what should properly count as useful pre-philosophical belief. Unlike Nielsen, Strauss contends that religious myth is indispensable in the political realm, a position which I support as well. Nielsen and I have debated the desirability and necessity of myth in our unpublished exchange, “On Morality and Religious Belief: Grant Havers vs. Kai Nielsen.” (2016)  Available at https://www.kainielsen.org/unpublished-works.html.

[51] Strauss employs this term in the context of explaining the basis of political philosophy. See his “What is Political Philosophy?” in What is Political Philosophy? 13.

[52] Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 595.

[53] Friedrich Engels, “Engels to Bloch,” in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Religion (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2008), 276-277. This correspondence is dated September 21-22, 1890.

[54] Marx and Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” 476.

[55] Ibid., 488.

[56] G. A. Cohen, “Rescuing Conservatism: A Defense of Existing Value,” in G. A. Cohen, Finding Oneself In The Other, edited by Michael Otsuka (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 143. (author’s italics)

[57] Ibid., 147.

[58] Ibid., 153.

[59] Ibid., 173.

[60] Cohen, If You’re An Egalitarian, 2.

[61] Ibid., 6. See also pages 120 and 128.

[62] Engels, “Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity,” in Marx and Engels, On Religion, 203.

[63] G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. 2: Plato and the Platonists, E. S. Haldane and Frances S. Simson, trans. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 209.

[64] G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991), 334. (author’s italics)

[65] Kai Nielsen, Ethics Without God, revised edition (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990), 18. See also page 123.

[66] Ibid., 125.

[67] Levine, “Whatever Happened to Marxism?” 188.

[68] Kai Nielsen, “Cultural Identity and Self-Definition,” Human Studies 10/3-4 (1987): 383-390.

[69] Nielsen, “Introduction,” in Globalization and Justice, 33.

[70] Kai Nielsen, “Liberal Nationalism, Liberal Democracies, and Secession,” in Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, David Rondel and Alex Sager, eds. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2012), 310. (author’s italics) See also Isaiah Berlin, “Herder and the Enlightenment,” in Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind, 359-435.

[71] Ibid., 321.

[72] Johann Gottfried Herder, “Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Mankind,” in  Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings, translated with introduction and notes by Ioannis D. Evrigenis and Daniel Pellerin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2004), 36 (author’s italics). Berlin, in “Herder and the Enlightenment,” notes that Herder “never abandoned” his position on the universal nature of Christianity. (372)

[73] Kai Nielsen, “Politics and Theology: Do We Need a Political Theology?” in Kai Nielsen, God and the Grounding of Morality (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1991), 185.

[74] Kai Nielsen, “Rawls and the Socratic Ideal,” Analyse and Kritik 13 (1991): 82.

[75] Kai Nielsen, “Christian Empiricism,” in God, Scepticism, and Modernity, 176-188. See also Sonia Sikka, Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 220.

This excerpt is from Walk Away (Lexington Books, 2019); also see see “Mugged by Reality” and David Beer’s review.

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