Share on Facebook

Monday, January 21, 2019

“There is no such thing as society” (Thatcher): A counter example


The former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is known as one of the world leaders of the second half of the twentieth century. But do you know that she has also a reputation in philosophy? She got it by her bold assertion “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and families.” I don’t know what you think of this statement, but I am not only a philosopher but also a sociologist, and certainly – but not only –from a sociological point of view I think that it is quite naive. It leaves much of what we see around us unexplained and difficult to understand. In the end such social (!) phenomena like groups, associations, society, ingroup-outgroup conflicts, but also shared values and norms would be based on nothing than selfishness if they were family-based or based on individuality. But look around and you’ll see that the world is more complicated and that many loyalties and emotional attachments to others and to organisations, let alone to the nation could not be understood, for everything beyond the family would be merely practical and based on the calculated advantages we receive from extra-familial bonds. For example, all excitement about the Brexit would be mere fuss, and an account of the economic profits and losses would give the answer to the question whether or not Britain should leave the European Union. However, a closer look at the discussion shows that the problem is about loyalties and self-determination of the Britishness. But how can there be a loyalty to something that doesn’t exist and the self-determination of an non-existing x-ness?
I would have forgotten Thatcher’s assertion, hadn’t I read it again in the interesting book by David Papineau on sport and philosophy, Knowing the Score. After having quoted Thatcher’s assertion, Papineau continues: “Teams give the lie to this individualistic vision.” (p. 155) I think it is worthwhile to present here his example of cycle racing as an actual case why Thatcher’s view is false.
At first sight cycle racing seems a sport for individuals. Of course, there are teams but at the finishing line it is the winner who gets the flowers; it’s not the team that gets them. Teams seem only practical ways to go to the race and for organising the training. The only actual sign that the team members belong together is that they wear the same shirts. Is it true? No, and then I am not thinking only of the level of professional cyclists and good amateurs where riders may cooperate because they are paid for it or because they want to show that they are good enough to become professionals. No, riders cooperate at all levels in order to make that not just they themselves win but that one of the team wins. The team counts, not because you are paid for it but because you belong to it; certainly at the lowest levels. “Once you are part of a team”, so Papineau, “... you are no longer limited to asking ‘What shall I do?’ Now you can ask ‘What shall we do?’ ” (p. 159)
Let me illustrate what I mean by pasting together some quotes from Papineau’s book. Take teams in a race. “The domestiques, as the French bluntly term the lesser team members, slave away shepherding their team leader around the course. Their aim is to increase their leader’s chance of a medal, but in doing so they sacrifice any hopes of winning prizes themselves.” (p. 148). Papineau quotes from the website startbikeracing.com: “Team riders decide among themselves which has the best chance of winning. The rest of the team will devote itself to promoting the leader’s chances, taking turns into the wind for him or her ... and so on.” (p.149) Papineau comments “[Y]ou won’t understand cycle racing unless you appreciate the complex dance of altruistic, mutualistic and selfish motives that are in play in a road race.” (ibid.; my italics)
So, as Papineau writes a few pages later, “[W]hat then are we to say about the domestiques who devote themselves to a team victory? Their goal is a living testimony to the way teams transcend their members. They want their team to win, not to win the leader to gain the winner’s medal. The leader’s prize just happens to be the symbol that cycling uses the mark which team has won.” (pp. 156-7) And what Papineau doesn’t tell us is that if a team leader doesn’t win because of his own mistakes, he isn’t only disappointed but feels also ashamed towards the team, which helped him so much, and often excuses himself.
This example refutes not only Thatcher’s assertion (for who can seriously maintain that your cycling team is your family?), but it undermines also “the economic theories of decision-making [that leave] no room for agents to care about anything but individual people.”, so Papineau (p. 156) Indeed, there are individuals, families and groups and much more, including society.

Source
Papineau, David, Knowing the score. How Sport teaches us about Philosophy (and Philosophy about Sport). London: Constable, 2017

1 comment:

ombhurbhuva said...

That isn’t even a conservative sentiment if one considers Edmund Burke and F.H. Bradley with their emphasis on the community and collective wisdom garnered over time and resident in a particular country and polity.