Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama, one of the more celebrated political theorists of the "Straussian" persuasion, has written a curious essay for the WSJ today. I find it curious not out of agreement or disagreement (frankly, I've not entirely made my mind up on the raging biotech debates), but because it's really a surprising bit of writing from a Straussian.

Straussians, after all, advocate close textual analysis, literally coming to understand an author as the author understood himself (to paraphrase Strauss ). By extension, Straussians presumably would want to understand a given subject as that subject understands itself.

What, then, to make of Fukuyama's (mis)representation of libertarianism? Eugene Volokh and Virginia Postrel separately object to Fukuyama's understanding of libertarianism, and I think their objections are well founded. I've not seen anyone address this line from Fukuyama, however, which is rather odd (and located, interestingly, in the middle of his essay):

Libertarians argue that the freedom to design one's own children genetically--not just to clone them, but to give them more intelligence or better looks--should be seen as no more than a technological extension of the personal autonomy we already enjoy.

Notice that Fukuyama uses the term "personal autonomy" rather than liberty. That's certainly not the phrase that libertarians themselves would use. So why would a Straussian put forth that phrase as the libertarian formulation? Hard to say, but it's highly unusual.

In any case, his attack on libertarianism is not well grounded, and it seems almost intentionally clumsy. But oddly, I don't even think that's the central part of his essay. I'm not sure why he's included it (but I have a guess, and I would say it's a Straussian thing). The more interesting part of his essay has nothing to do with the critique of libertarians (which was answered forcefully, as one might have expected it to be). Rather, it's in the final two paragraphs:

The liberalism of the Founding Fathers was built on natural rights. Political rights were seen as a means of protecting those rights which inhered in us as members of a human species that sought certain common natural ends. Thomas Jefferson, toward the end of his life, observed that political rights should be enjoyed equally because nature had not contrived to have some men born with saddles on their backs and others born "booted and spurred" to ride them.

We are at the beginning of a new phase of history where technology will give us power to create people born booted and spurred, and where animals that are today born with saddles on their backs could be given human characteristics. To say, with the libertarians, that individual freedom should encompass the freedom to redesign those natures on which our very system of rights is based, is not to appeal to anything in the American political tradition. So it is perhaps appropriate that the liberal revolution of the 1980s and '90s, having morphed from classical liberalism to libertarianism, should today have crested and now be on the defensive.

Now, we know that Fukuyama buys into a neo-Hegelian version of the end of history that some contend is a rejection of natural right. But in these final two paragraphs, Fukuyama returns to natural right (sort of), from which emerges political right: because by nature all men are equally men, then it derives that no man should by right rule over another except by his consent (that's not Fukuyama's own formulation, btw -- I've substituted the West Coast Straussian formulation becuase Fukuyama's formulation is not as clear). Some might contend (Fukuyama among them) that bioengineering potentially threatens to change the very nature of man -- and, by extension, the very nature of morality (i.e. natural right). THAT is the argument that concludes this essay. Why Fukuyama didn't carry that argument throughout is a puzzle to me, because it's an interesting and important one. Furthermore, it should raise questions for political theorists about Fukuyama's own interpretations of natural right and history -- especially since the effort to remake human nature has been a project of Moderns at least since Rousseau! But perhaps he saves it for his latest book, Our Posthuman Future.

In any case, this is a far more interesting essay for those more esoteric points than for its exoteric flaws, which many libertarian bloggers rightly jumped all over. That's not to say it's a great essay, because I don't think that. But Fukuyama is not deserving of this overreaction from Reynolds:

Fukuyama is not a serious person. But I suppose that's no reason to ignore him. After all, bloggers do pay attention to Cornel West and Noam Chomsky -- whom Fukuyama, with his intellectual sloppiness and rash pronouncements, is coming to resemble.

Even Fukuyama's weaker efforts don't begin to approach West and Chomsky. Fukuyama remains an interesting and formidable political theorist, even if (as I think) his neo-Hegelianism is misguided. But Fukuyama's books do require a great deal of effort, and are probably of most interest to political theorists (rather than the lay blogger) because of their complexity and assumed knowledge of the discipline.

(Update) Upon further reflection, I wonder if Fukuyama's essay might not have been more interesting if he had made explicit the connection I think is in his mind between pro-biotechnology libertarians and the broader Modern project to remake (or reject) human nature altogether. Another political theorist by training, Peter Lawler, touched on the topic to a degree in this piece from earlier in the week.

(05/03/02 Update) I should have known that Orrin Judd would weigh in sensibly on this one.

[Posted at 21:06 CST on 05/02/02] [Link]