Random quote

All wars have been begun for stupid reasons, but the ruins are not stupid.

Boris Cyrulnik (1937-)

Hannah Arendt on War

Statue on the Mort Homme Hill near Verdun remembering the
 fallenFrench soldiers there in the Battle of Verdun (1916).
"They didn't pass", as the text on the monument says.

“The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man. This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other hand, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting its inmates outside the juridical procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.”
(Hannah Arendt The origins of totalitarianism. San Diego, etc.: Harvest Book, Harcourt, 1976; p.447).                                                                          

Currently we live in turbulent times. An already two years lasting world-wide pandemic still makes victims. It seems gradually to fade away (but maybe it will return; you never know), but now we are startled by a sudden war between Russia and Ukraine. This war is not just a local or regional conflict as they happen to take place, then here and then there (which is already bad enough), but the possibility exists that it will lead to a world war that even can result in a nuclear war, with all its devastating consequences. In these turbulent times, especially because it happened so suddenly (for who had expected that a war would break out in Europe?), people are looking for explanations. Then it is only one step to ask: What does Hannah Arendt tell us? Didn’t she live in a time that in many respects was not too different from what we experience today? For then we saw a dictator who attacked his neighbours looking for Lebensraum (“space to live”), now we see a dictatorship that has invaded a neighbouring country pretending to look for “security” (and both strove or strive for power, of course). And this dictatorship will certainly stretch its arms to other neighbours as well, if it will be successful in the present war (happily, it is not). Although we don’t find in Arendt’s work a real explanation of what it is going on now (for times have changed), nonetheless it can help us understand the present situation and draw our attention to important aspects.
Take, for example, the quotation at the top of this blog. Arendt refers there to the concentration camps in Nazi-Germany and the former Soviet Union. The quotation is not only striking because it seems to describe what has been happening in Russia during the past twenty years, but also because it refers to the same geographical place: Then the Soviet Union, now Russia. It is as if history is repeating itself, ten years after the dissolution of the USSR. In order to make an end of the chaos in Russia during the first years after this event, Putin came to power. Gradually he tightened his grip on the country until he had become the dictator he is today. One way to do so was “killing the juridical person in man” as Arendt calls it: Opponents were put aside by false accusations and sent to prisons or concentration camps, or they were murdered. Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny are clear examples of such victims. But listen, Putin, Arendt warns you: “Nothing is more characteristic of the totalitarian movements … than the startling swiftness with which [their leaders] are forgotten and the startling ease with which they can be replaced.” (ibid. p. 305)
Or take this quotation from Arendt’s The human condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958/1998), which I changed a little for editorial reasons: In modern warfare men go into action and use means of violence in order to achieve certain objectives for their own side and against the enemy. In these instances, speech becomes “mere talk”, simply one more means to the end, whether it serves to deceive the enemy or to dazzle everybody with propaganda; here words reveal nothing, so Arendt, p. 180. Don’t we see this also in the present war? The “truth” about the war in the Ukraine in the “official” media in Russia is a case in point. Here facts have become fake, or “alternative facts”, as some call it. For instance, just a little point, the war is called a “special operation” (which is a striking case of Orwellian newspeak). But we see this fear of what is real in a sense also in the Western countries, for why else has a TV sender like Russia Today been forbidden? Because they tell too much fake news, of course, but isn’t it an essential point in a liberal democracy that fake can be checked against facts by everybody and not only by an authority? In war, there is a fear of truth.
Hannah Arendt did not directly write about war (although she did write about violence), but her works are still relevant when we want to understand how wars come about and what is happening then. Arendt developed her ideas in a time that democratic and dictatorial systems clashed, first Nazi-Germany and the western democracies in the Second World War and then the latter and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Such clashes still happen, unfortunately.

Random quote
I cannot tolerate the fact that a man should be judged not for what he is but because of the group to which he happens to belong.

Primo Levi (1919-1987)

Enemy Images

When there is a war there are enemies. When there are enemies there are enemy images. An enemy image is “a negative perception, usually of a person or group of people, used either consciously or unconsciously to justify or promote discrimination, punishment, and/or violence”, as for instance yourdictionary defines the idea. Implicitly the idea involves that there are good guys and bad guys (and nothing in between). There are we (the good guys) and the others (the bad guys). Or, as sociologists and psychologists say, there is an ingroup (“we”) and an outgroup (“they”, the enemy). Moreover, “the enemy may be seen as stupid, selfish, deceitful, aggressive, hostile, or even evil. This perception remains, even if members of the out-group do nothing more selfish, deceitful, aggressive, or evil than do members of one's own group. However, when they are engaged in a serious conflict, people will normally project their own negative traits onto the other side, ignoring their own shortcomings or misdeeds, while emphasizing the same in the other.” (source) In short, the enemy is stereotyped as evil, or even as the devil. Often enemy images are developed by political leaders and by government-controlled media to prepare the people for a new war and to gain support for this war.
My next observations concern only the western view on the current Ukrainian-Russian War, so the EU and USA. As in all wars, also now enemy images are important. However, the present enemy image of Russia is atypical in some way. Usually, war leads to the development of opposite stereotypes in the heads of the people on both sides (we, the good guys vs. they, the bad guys). This stereotyping is promoted by the political leaders and the media they control, as said, and it is part of the war propaganda. However, in the western countries today political leaders and media just try to prevent such stereotyping. It’s not “the others” as a block who are seen as bad; it’s not Russia as a whole, so the Russian people, who are the culprits of this war; but it is their leaders who are, so those who wage this war, and especially the Russian president Putin and his circle. The Russian people are presented as their victims. So, on TV we see images of anti-war demonstrations in Russia and even images of a state security council whose members are intimidated by Putin.
Nevertheless, enemy images are not absent in this conflict. They are not made by government and media, which, as said, try to prevent that a traditional enemy image of Russia is created. As the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: Not the Russian people are our enemies, but Putin is. Even Vitali Klitschko, the major of Kyiv, said: I have nothing against Russia. My mother is Russian. We see this distinction between Russian leaders and people also in the sanctions imposed by the western countries on Russia: They are meant to hit the political leadership, so Putin and his circle as well as the country as a whole but not the individual citizens (but, as it happens, in reality it is hardly possible to put this distinction into practice). The western sanctions try to avoid demonizing Russia and the Russian people as a whole. However, in this war, the enemy image is not created “at the top” but “at the bottom”, by individual citizens. For instance, in the Netherlands customers avoid “Russian” shops and restaurants, although in most cases the products and food sold there are from Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, plus Russia. “Russian” is merely a label. Moreover, many of these shops and restaurants are owned by Armenians, Ukrainians, etc., and not by Russians. Another case is that the Russian Orthodox Church in Amsterdam has been plastered by opponents of the war, although the religious leaders of this church have distanced themselves from the war and want to break with the patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Moscow. I have penfriends in Russia (and also in Ukraine) and some complain that penfriends have broken with them merely because they are Russian. To my knowledge, all my Russian penfriends are against this war and some have even expressed it openly on the Internet. Nevertheless, as some told me, they receive threats from foreigners and are cursed by them. Isn’t it stupid to blame individual citizens for what political leaders do, even without asking what the individual opinions of these citizens are? Isn’t it a clear case of making an enemy image? But also some Russian speaking Ukrainians begin to hate their mother tongue and switch to using the Ukrainian language instead (although Russian is spoken in many countries; not only in Russia and Ukraine).
Enemy images make the world neatly arranged and surveyable. They are practical to guide our actions and they make decisions simple. But do enemy images help us? They make the world simple, indeed, but they do it in the wrong way. In the end, the world is complicated and cannot be compartmentalized, and false views will lead to false decisions. Moreover, enemy images often hit the wrong people; in the case of the Ukrainian-Russian War, for instance, those who are against Putin and the war. Then, they make it more difficult that power and leadership in Russia are transferred to the right people (from Putin to Navalny, for example) and they make overtures to the enemy in a conflict more difficult. Enemy images lead only to inflexible stereotypes on both sides. We must just strengthen the ties with the right people who can undermine dictatorship and support democracy, for, as I concluded my last blog, democracy enhances the prospects for peace. 

Random quote
Never can an authority admit that the intellectually courageous, i.e. those who dare to defy his authority, may be the most valuable type.

Karl Popper (1902-1994)

Democracy and War

Breukelen, Netherlands: Memorial to those who died
for peace, freedom and democracy

Democracies don’t fight with each other. It’s a thesis that politicians in democratic countries often put forward. It’s one reason for them to stimulate the development of democracies in the world. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to find exceptions to this rule, for instance:
- the Sicilian Expedition: Athens vs. Sicily (415-413 BC).
- the War of 1812: USA vs. Britain.
- the US Civil War (1861-1865).
- the Fashoda Crisis: Britain vs. France (1898).
- Ecuador vs. Peru, a long-lasting conflict that several times led to war and violent incidents in the 20th century.
- the Cod Wars, more or less violent incidents between the UK and Iceland about fishing rights.
- the Spanish-American War (1898).
- the Kargil War: India vs. Pakistan (1999).
There have been more such wars and incidents, but it is striking that during the last hundred years military conflicts between democracies have become exceptional. Moreover, if they took place, in most cases there are good reasons to maintain that they are not contrary to the thesis (more about this below). Therefore, it is generally accepted that the thesis is true, especially formulated this way: Mature democracies do not fight each other. This is seen “as close as an empirical law” in political science. (source, p. 79) But then the political conclusion of this thesis simply follows: Do everything you can to promote the development of democracies, if you want peace.
I’ll pass over why democracies don’t wage war against other democracies (see Mintz and Geva, 1993). However, though I think that we absolutely must promote democracy (and not only because it is a way to prevent war), it’s not simply so that the more democracies there are, the less war there is. “Mature” democracies avoid war against each other, indeed, but wars are not only fought either between democracies themselves or between authoritarian states themselves, but also between democracies and authoritarian states against each other. Democratic states do wage war, but usually only against authoritarian states, although they still tend to be less warlike than authoritarian states. However, not without reason I talked about “mature” democracies, for the thesis doesn’t apply to democratic states in general. As Manfield and Snyder have shown in their article “Democratization and War”, young democracies that are in the process of becoming full democracies tend to be more bellicose than full or “mature” democracies. Young immature democracies often still have authoritarian traits and nationalism is often an important element in the political debate in these countries. Semi-authoritarian leadership usually represents more the interests of the economic and political elite than the interests of the people as a whole. Nationalism (which often just was a reason that such states became democratic; cf Eastern Europe) can also make that a country opposes to other countries in case of a conflict, instead of looking for ways to settle the conflict, especially when such countries are led by semi-authoritarian leaders. Then there is always the chance of a fallback on the road to democracy. For such reasons, young democracies can be more prone to wage war than mature democracies. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a case in point. The Serbia-Croatia conflict is another example. Here we can also mention the Kargil War and the later wars or violent conflicts between Ecuador and Peru. Young democracies are often not able to solve and absorb interior and exterior conflicts and tend to choose violent nationalist solutions. Or as Manfield and Snyder say (p.89): “In principle, mature democratic institutions can integrate even the widest spectrum of interests through competition for the favor of the average voter. But where political parties and representative institutions are still in their infancy, the diversity of interests may make political coalitions difficult to maintain. Often the solution is a belligerent nationalist coalition.” Then, an emergent democracy can even develop into a belligerent dictatorship, as we see in Russia today.
Nevertheless, it often happens that young democracies take the road to mature democracy without falling back into belligerent nationalism. After the Second World War, Germany and Japan smoothly developed into full democracies, “due to occupation by liberal democracies and the favorable international setting provided by the Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods economic system, and the democratic military alliance against the Soviet threat”, so Manfield and Snyder (p.95). In recent years, the Latin American countries have democratized without nationalism and war. (ibid.) Therefore, there is no reason to be afraid of democratizing authoritarian states, thinking that it will increase the risk of war. As Manfield and Snyder conclude their article (p. 97): “In the long run, the enlargement of the zone of stable democracy will probably enhance prospects for peace. In the short run, much work remains to be done to minimize the dangers of the turbulent transition.”

Random quote

"This is a war where children and women are not near the frontline. They are the frontline".

Lyse Doucet, BBC correspondent in Ukraine.

Putin and the planning fallacy

Tower of the Oldehove, Leeuwarden, NL, built about 1530. Failed planning
 is of all times and we never  learn. During the construction of this tower so
much went wrong that it never has been finished.

Now, almost a week after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is already clear that the war doesn’t develop as Putin and his military staff had foreseen. They didn’t achieve the targets they had set, like a quick fall of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, beating the Ukrainian army and installing a puppet government. The invasion stagnates and the political resistance outside Ukraine is growing that fast that it is doubtful whether Russia (Putin) will achieve its targets anyway, even if Kyiv will be taken. Russia (Putin) has miscalculated what it could attain, and even if it will realize its plans as yet, it will have taken more time against much higher costs than foreseen. In other words, Russia (Putin) has become “victim” of the planning fallacy.
The planning fallacy (PF for short) has first been described by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979, see also their 1982). They also coined the term. Here I follow Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and some internet articles. The planning fallacy is usually defined “as an erroneous prediction of future task duration, despite the knowledge of how many hours were used to accomplish similar tasks in the past.” (source) However, as discussions about the PF make clear, it’s not only the planned time for a project that is underestimated but usually also the costs. There are several reasons why planners often trap into the PF fall, such as:
- Planners tend to overestimate their skills and capabilities, leading to an underestimation of the time and costs needed for the project concerned. So, they are often too optimistic.
- Disregard of historical cases, like how you executed your plans in the past, and how others executed comparable plans.
- Ignoring possible risks and uncertainties.
- Pressure to present too optimistic plans, for example because you must execute them within a certain time or against certain costs; or because someone else might get the order.
In short, so Kahneman, we depend too much on the inside view: Planners focus too much on their own specific circumstances and search for evidence in their own experiences, when making plans. Information from the outside that doesn’t directly relate to the project concerned is usually ignored. A project is too often seen as a unique individual case with its own dynamics.
However, there is more, and maybe this is the essence of the planning fallacy: We fail to allow for what former US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld called the “unknown unknowns”. There are factors that we know to exist but cannot fill in or make concrete: the unknowns. However, there are also factors, the unknown unknowns, that we don’t know to exist and that only appear during the project execution. Planners seldom try to allow for them in some way.
The planning fallacy is not unescapable, though. We can do something about it or at least we can mitigate it, namely by taking the outside view. It involves that you must look for objective ways to judge your plans, especially:
- Look for reference cases and objective criteria to judge whether your plan is realistic. No plan is unique, and there are past cases (the so-called reference class of cases) you can learn from and that help improve your planning.
- Make several scenarios, both optimistic and pessimistic, how your project may develop. Usually a pessimistic scenario is more realistic than an optimistic scenario.
- Divide your project into parts and calculate the time and costs to execute them. Then add the time and costs necessary for the parts, and probably the sum will be higher (and more realistic) than the time and costs estimated for the project as a whole.
- Use reliable objective estimation techniques for your project and ask the opinion of outsiders.
If you take the outside view, certainly the effects of the planning fallacy will be mitigated if not avoided.
And how about Russia (Putin)? It’s clear that Russia (Putin) was overoptimistic about his military and political plans and trapped into the planning fallacy fall by leaning too much on the inside view, disregarding facts known to outsiders and ignoring warnings from third parties who felt themselves threatened by the invasion of Ukraine. Here are some planning mistakes that Russia (Putin) made, to my mind:
- Ignoring that often the defender is stronger than the attacker, as the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote already 200 years ago.
- Ignoring that invading and occupying a country is not enough to win a war, so Clausewitz, but that you win only by breaking the will to resist. In 2014, when Russia (Putin) annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian will and power to resist was weak. However, since then and because of the annexation both have very much increased. Moreover, not only the will to resist of the Ukrainian people and the strength of its army have grown a lot since 2014, but this has been ignored or belittled by Russia (Putin).
- Russia (Putin) didn’t take seriously the warnings by third parties like the EU and the USA that they would feel themselves threatened by an invasion of Ukraine and that they would take serious countermeasures and would support Ukraine.
Briefly, although many see Putin as a very rationally calculating person who knows what he does, his calculations were based on the inside view. Putin disregarded the outside view and that’s why he trapped into the planning fallacy fall. 

Source
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: Penguin Books, 2012; pp. 245-252.

Random quote
The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.”

Genesis 4:10

Rondom Montaigne

Is mijn laatste blog over Macht en Poetin je bevallen? Je vindt meer van dergelijke essays in mijn boek Rondom Montaigne. Over Montaigne en zijn vriend La Boétie, maar niet alleen. Montaigne en ook La Boétie laten ons denken en zijn vandaag de dag nog steeds relevant.

Meer informatie en hoe te bestellen vind je hier:

http://www.bijdeweg.nl/RondomMontaigne.html

At the top of the pyramid. Étienne de La Boétie on power

Glory to the dictator

A war for power is casting its shadow over Europe. It made me think of the theory of power by Étienne de La Boétie. Power is a complex phenomenon with many aspects. One aspect concerns the interaction between political systems and countries, and a power theory can try to explain how it works. In the present situation in Europe, such a theory is interesting, for it can help understand the struggle for power around Ukraine and Russia’s war purposes. This is not what La Boétie’s theory is about. However, political systems and countries are not abstract entities. They are led by persons of flesh and blood, which must build up their positions before they are leaders and then maintain them: Leaders apply power to get and keep their positions. It would be nice to have a universal theory that describes how this happens. However, countries are very diverse. Some are democracies; other countries have an authoritarian structure or are even full dictatorships; again other countries have political systems somewhere between these extremes. Although La Boétie’s theory is about how a leader gets and especially maintains his position, it’s not a universal theory of leadership power. It explains only how leadership in authoritarian systems and dictatorships works. But with this theory, at least we can understand the doings of some actors in the present European conflict. Especially we can understand a bit of Putin’s leadership. 

Étienne de La Boétie (1530-1562) was a French judge, Renaissance writer and political theorist. He laid his political views down in his Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. In this treatise, La Boétie raises the question “how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him.” They should only have to renounce their obedience without fighting. “For [the tyrant] is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing.” So, people agree to their own subjugation. They don’t want freedom, though it’s so easy to get it. La Boétie cites three reasons for voluntarily serving a tyrant. Two are less important and I only mention them here: habit and spinelessness. The third reason for obedience is by far the most important. It is the foundation of tyranny.
“Whoever thinks,” so La Boétie, “that [body guards] serve to protect and shield tyrants is … completely mistaken. These are used … more for ceremony and a show of force than for any reliance placed in them.” These guards are in fact only there for the daily order and often a tyrant is killed or driven out by his own guards. The real power rests on a certain social structure that allows a small number of people to control an entire country: “[T]here are only four or five who maintain the dictator, four or five who keep the country in bondage to him. Five or six have always had access to his ear, and have either gone to him of their own accord, or else have been summoned by him, to be accomplices in his [oppression and excesses]. The six have six hundred who profit under them, and with the six hundred they do what they have accomplished with their tyrant. The six hundred maintain under them six thousand, whom they promote in rank, upon whom they confer the government of provinces or the direction of finances, in order that they may serve as instruments of avarice and cruelty, executing orders at the proper time and working such havoc all around that they could not last except under the shadow of the six hundred, nor be exempt from law and punishment except through their influence. The consequence of all this is fatal indeed. And whoever is pleased to unwind the skein will observe that not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied. [Just as] according to Homer, Jupiter boasts of being able to draw to himself all the gods when he pulls a chain.”
“In short, when the point is reached, through big or small favours, that large profits or small are obtained under a tyrant, there are found almost as many people to whom tyranny seems advantageous as those to whom liberty would seem desirable.” The whole network is based on ruling, controlling, playing off against each other and profiting from others, but in the end everybody is connected to the tyrant. He pulls the strings and the so structured society is like a puppet theatre, where the one at the top plays the subjects with favours and benefits like the puppeteer makes his puppets dance. Actually, La Boétie feels a little sorry for the people at the top of the network, “[f]or, in all honesty, can it be in any way except in folly that you approach a tyrant, withdrawing further from your liberty and, so to speak, embracing with both hands your servitude?” The people at the bottom who have no one under them do what they are asked and, after they have fulfilled their tasks, they are free to do what they like. However, those who directly serve the dictator “must anticipate his wishes; to satisfy him, they must foresee his desires; they must wear themselves out, torment themselves, kill themselves with work in his interest, and accept his pleasure as their own, neglecting their preference for his, distorting their character and corrupting their nature; they must pay heed to his words, to his intonation, to his gestures, and to his glance.”
This is how leadership power works, so La Boétie. A power structure is built like a pyramid and the top keeps down the lower layers. Some call La Boétie’s theory naïve, but to my mind it gives the basics of how authoritarian leadership works. Anyway, the Discourse of Voluntary Servitude has withstood the ages and has become one of the most reprinted and most influential books in history. Gandhi has even founded his theory of nonviolence on La Boétie’s idea. And look around: with La Boétie’s idea in your mind, you get already a first view on how authoritarian leadership works.

Note
The translations from Étienne de La Boétie, Discours de la servitude volontaire, are from a download in my computer. I couldn’t find it again on the internet. Here is another translation.

Random quote
What more foolish than to undertake a war for I know what trifles, especially when both parties are sure to lose more than they get by the bargain?

Erasmus (1466-1536)

Descartes and Utrecht

Behind this gate on Maliebaan 36, Utrecht, NL, once was the house
 of prof. Reneri, where Descartes stayed when he lived in Utrecht.
 A plaquette on the door remembers this fact.

Although René Descartes (1596-1650) was a Frenchman, he lived many years in the Netherlands, for in the Low Countries he could more or less freely express his ideas, while in France he risked to be persecuted. For some time he lived in Utrecht, and just his stay there led to such intellectual conflicts with some professors of the newly founded university that he didn’t feel himself safe any longer in the Netherlands and that he left for Sweden.
Before Descartes lived in Utrecht, he had lived in Deventer for some time (he stayed there in 1632 and 1633), where he had deep discussions with Henricus Reneri (1593-1639), which would result in his Discourse on Method. Then Reneri left for Utrecht, where he would become one of the five founders of the University of Utrecht (established in 1636) and the first “Cartesian” professor in the Netherlands. Descartes followed him and lived there in Reneri’s house. Until his arrival in Utrecht some main ideas of Descartes had not yet appeared in print but had been spread mainly verbally. In order to avoid that they would be misinterpreted, Reneri asked him to write them down, which resulted in the Discourse (published in 1637). The effect of the book was contrary to what Reneri and Descartes may have expected. Of course, the book clarified Descartes’ ideas, but it also led to a heavy clash with orthodox Christian theologians and especially with Gisbert Voetius, another founder of the University of Utrecht and professor in theology and also soon rector of the university. Reneri died in 1639 and when, in his funeral oration, Anton Aemilius, a friend of Reneri, praised Reneri’s advocacy of Descartes’ philosophy and described Descartes himself as “the Archimedes of our century”, the conflict exploded. Moreover, now Henry Regius, recently appointed professor of medicine at Utrecht, began to lecture on Descartes’ views. Regius had become close with Descartes and helped him prepare the manuscript of the Meditations. Regius was the type of person who didn’t avoid controversy. He published a set of Cartesian theses for debate at the university and Voetius accepted the challenge. He had decided not only to demolish Cartesian philosophy but also Descartes himself. Voetius strongly rejected Descartes’ (and Regius’) Copernican view of the universe and some theological implications of Regius’ (and Descartes’) view on the relationship between body and soul. The consequence was not only a heavy philosophical and theological debate but also student riots.
One thing led to another. The Senate of the university ordered Regius to restrict himself to teaching medicine and banned the teaching of Cartesian philosophy completely. Descartes was furious. He called Voetius “quarrelsome, envious, foolish, a stupid pendant, a hypocrite, an enemy of the truth”, and charged him with slander “sometimes public and sometimes surreptitious”. Moreover, Descartes stated that his ideas were in line with the orthodox religious ideas. However, via a proxy of Voetius, Descartes was charged with atheism “on the ground that he had set aside the traditional proofs of God’s existence”. Descartes replied with a public Letter to Voetius. In this Letter, Descartes accused Voetius of “atrocious insults”, of being “base and commonplace, stupid, absurd, coarse, and impudent.” He talked of “criminal lies”, “scurrilous insults”, “atrocious slander” against him; etc. It was clear that Descartes was enraged and that he felt hurt as a person and in everything he stood for, his philosophical views in the first place. However, since the accusation of atheism was the most dangerous for Descartes, in the Letter he especially rejected the idea that his views conflicted with the traditional religious ideas.
According to the authorities in Utrecht, Descartes had gone too far, and they decided to sue him for libelling Voetius. Descartes could have ignored this for he had left already the province of Utrecht and now lived in the province of Holland. It was unlikely that Holland would extradite him to Utrecht. Nevertheless, Descartes approached Christiaan Huygens, whom he knew, and the French ambassador to The Hague, with the result that the Prince of Orange himself intervened and made that the authorities in Utrecht withdrew the accusation of libel. Some skirmishes followed yet, but gradually the row came to an end.
Would all this have been necessary? Not if Descartes had followed Huygens’ advice to let the matter rest. “Theologians are like pigs. When you pull one by the tail, they all squeal”, so Huygens. But Descartes had too big an ego to drop the matter. Nonetheless, in the end, Descartes would be the loser of the case. He didn’t feel at ease in the Netherlands any longer. In 1649, he accepted an invitation of Queen Christina of Sweden to become her teacher. However, he wouldn’t feel happy there, also because he couldn’t get along well with the Queen, who didn’t really like his lessons. After having contracted pneumonia, Descartes died on 11 February 1650 in Stockholm. And so, in a sense, Voetius had become the winner of the debate with Descartes. He didn’t succeed to demolish his philosophical ideas. Far from that, for Descartes became the founding father of modern Western philosophy. However, Voetius had indirectly a part in demolishing Descartes as a person chasing him away from the Netherlands to Sweden, where he became unhappy and died. 

Sources
- Eskens, Erno, Filosofische reisgids voor Nederland en Vlaanderen. Amsterdam and Antwerp: Contact, 2009.
- Grayling, A.C., Descartes. The life of René Descartes and its place in his times. London: Simon & Schuster, 2006; esp. pp. 207-218.
- Klomp, Henk, “Descartes verjaagd uit Utrecht vanwege zijn ‘ketterse’ ideeën”, op website https://www.dub.uu.nl/nl/nieuws/descartes-verjaagd-uit-utrecht-vanwege-zijn-ketterse-idee%C3%ABn

Random quote
For the heroism of a few, the misery of millions is too expensive.

Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970)

The Montaigne Dogma

Légal Trap

The shortest essay in Montaigne’s Essays is “That the profit of one man is the damage of another” (Book I-22; in some editions, like the Gutenberg translation that I use here, I-21). It’s only 232 words long and it states that everybody’s gains are based on the misery of others. It’s not only the shortest essay in Montaigne’s book but maybe also the most criticized one. I don’t want to say that it is brilliant, but is the critique right? Since most criticisms go back to and follow what the Austrian economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) has written about it, in this blog I’ll discuss his view.
Von Mises formulated his criticism of Montaigne’s essay especially in his book Human Action, chapter 24 (first section) (HA, for short). Since I don’t have an English version of this book at my disposal, I follow the Dutch text, and von Mises’s words quoted here may not be what he literally has written. But, of course, the essence is right. In HA, von Mises says that an old economic idea is that “the gain of one is the loss of the other; one makes profit only through the loss of others”. It’s an old dogma, so von Mises, and since Montaigne was the first modern author to reformulate it, he calls it the “Montaigne dogma”. And he continues: “It was the centrepiece of the doctrines of mercantilism, old and new. It underlies all modern doctrines that teach that within the framework of the market economy there is an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of different social classes within a country and, moreover, between the interests of several countries.” There are circumstances, so von Mises, that the Montaigne dogma is right, but generally it isn’t: “What causes the profit of a few in the course of a free market community is not the misfortune of his fellow man, but the fact that he alleviates or completely removes that which gives his fellow man a feeling of unease.” And then von Mises gives some counterexamples that apparently are meant as rejections of what Montaigne says in essay I-22, since they are based on and sometimes literally follow what Montaigne says there. “What causes the profit of a few in the course of a free market community”, so von Mises, “is not the misfortune of his fellow man, but the fact that he alleviates or completely removes that which gives his fellow man a feeling of unease. What harms the sick is the plague, not the doctor who treats the disease. The doctor’s profit is not the result of epidemics, but of the help he offers to those affected.” (my italics) Leaving aside that Montaigne doesn’t talk about a free market community, of course, but about human behaviour and how man gains a profit, does Montaigne really say that the doctor harms the patient so that he can treat the patient? Does Montaigne really say that the one who gains does so by harming the other? So, is it right to talk here of a Montaigne dogma?
Let’s look at Montaigne’s essay I-22. Its original title is  “Le Profit de l’Un Est Dommage de l’Autre” (see here), translated in the Gutenberg version of the Essays as “That the profit of one man is the damage of another”. This title is neutral in its meaning: If one person has damage, another profits by it. But let’s quote Montaigne’s examples:
“The merchant only thrives by the debauchery of youth, the husband man by the dearness of grain, the architect by the ruin of buildings, lawyers and officers of justice by the suits and contentions of men: nay, even the honour and office of divines are derived from our death and vices. A physician takes no pleasure in the health even of his friends, says the ancient Greek comic writer, nor a soldier in the peace of his country, and so of the rest.” (Essays I-22)
The examples used here by Montaigne only say that making profit by one person goes together with the damage of another person and that the former takes advantage of the latter’s damage. Montaigne doesn’t say that the one who makes profit caused the damage of the other. So, Montaigne doesn’t say, for instance, that the doctor makes the patient sick, but only that the doctor gets his income because the patient is sick. However, von Mises apparently has read the quoted passage as a kind of “post hoc propter hoc”, so as a kind of “after it so because of it”: The gains come because who gains does so by causing a damage to another. I must admit that the next sentence after the quotation from I-22, might suggest this: “[L]et every one but dive into his own bosom, and he will find his private wishes spring and his secret hopes grow up at another’s expense.” But the title and the tenor of this essay make clear that Montaigne wants to say only that everyone hopes to profit from another’s misery, not that he causes this misery. Maybe there is a dogma that says that “the gain of one is the loss of the other; one makes profit only through the loss of others” but it is not Montaigne’s dogma, anyway not in the way the statement is interpreted by von Mises.
But even if there is no Montaigne dogma in von Mises’s sense, one can ask whether Montaigne is right in saying that the profit of one man is the damage of another. Although it may happen, I think that, generally speaking, it’s not true. There are many ways a man can make a profit. Profiting from the damage or misery of others is only one way.

Random quote
The more violence, the less revolution

Bart de Ligt (1883-1938)

Erasmus in Deventer

The former Latin School in Deventer

Recently I was in Deventer, an old Hanseatic town in the east of the Netherlands. I stayed the night there in a hotel in the centre of the town. Once this hotel was a Latin School. From the 15th century till 1848 boys were educated in the building for religious or worldly functions or for a study at the university. It was not just a school, one among many in Europe, but at the end of the Middle Ages the Latin School in Deventer was one of the most famous schools in Europe north of the Alps and it attracted students from everywhere. One of them was Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), who lived then in Gouda. His father wanted the best education for him and so he sent his son to Deventer. Erasmus was eight years old, when he arrived there, and since he was yet a little boy, his mother went with him.
Not long before Erasmus went to Deventer, the Latin School had got a new headmaster: Alexander Hegius (1439/40-1498). Traditionally, at schools like the Latin School in Deventer, students were taught medieval Latin: Latin as it was used in the religious books of the time and as it was spoken by the clergymen. The method to learn it was memorizing. The students had to learn rhymes with the rules of the language by heart; especially the Doctrinal, a long didactic poem in Latin describing the Latin grammar.
Once a student knew the Doctrinal by heart he was supposed to know Latin. But did he understand Latin? He didn’t, so Hegius. Therefore, Hegius started to make his own teaching material. He began to criticize the Doctrinal and he introduced modern teaching methods that were already used in Italy. But he did more. He replaced the corrupt medieval Latin till then learned at school by the Latin of the classical writers, such as Cicero and Vergil. The students learned also to practically use this Latin, and they learned about the classical culture. Moreover, Hegius introduced a new subject: Old Greek. He was the first to do so in northern Europe. And last but not least: Hegius learned his students to think. Texts could contain mistakes for all kinds of reasons, so Hegius. To find out whether this was the case, you had to compare a text with other versions of the same text and with other sources, in order to analyse what was true and what wasn’t.
The new educational approach made the Deventer Latin School famous in Europe north of the Alps and it attracted students from everywhere. And so it happened that also Erasmus’s father decided that his son had to be educated at this school. Nevertheless, Erasmus was educated in the old way; only the two highest classes were taught by Hegius himself. The lower classes still basically followed the old teaching method, but this didn’t make that Erasmus was cut off from the new development. Erasmus was a curious boy, so once he knew that the highest classes of his school were taught with different methods and were taught different stuff, he asked the older students what it was. This must not have been difficult, for students in the higher classes often had to teach the lower classes, so contact was easily made. In addition, on certain occasions Hegius held free lectures that everybody could attend. These lectures made a deep impression on Erasmus, as we know from his letters and notes.
Erasmus must have been looking forward to be taught by Hegius himself in the highest classes of the Latin School. It didn’t happen. When Erasmus was in the third class (in those days the first class was the highest class in a school), there was an epidemic of plague in Deventer, which killed his mother. Soon thereafter his father died of grief. Erasmus’s guardians were more interested in his inheritance (which must have been quite big) than in the well-being of the boy. Erasmus was sent to a monastery. Even so, thanks to his education in Deventer, Erasmus became one of the most important exponents of the Renaissance, if not the most important. Once he had escaped the monastic life, he further developed Hegius’s teaching methods, he translated classical authors in order to make them known to modern man, and he became a prominent philologist and Bible critic and made a new, critical translation of the New Testament. Would Erasmus ever have reached that level and ever have become that famous, if he hadn’t had his education at the Latin School in Deventer? 

Source
Sandra Langereis, Erasmus dwarsdenker. Een biografie. Amsterdam, De Bezìge Bij, 2021.

Random quote
People have an almost ineradicable tendency to replace reality with constructions of a self-manufactured cloud existence.

Theo de Boer (1932-2021)

Étienne de La Boétie

Statue of Étienne de La Boétie in Sarlat, France

In 1571 Montaigne quitted his job at the Parliament of Bordeaux and retired to his castle. He had enough of his work, as we saw last week. But there was also another reason that he resigned: He still missed his late friend Étienne de La Boétie, who had died eight years before. They had a close friendship and they had had deep conversations. One has the impression that one reason that Montaigne wrote his Essays is that they were a kind of continuation of his discussions with his friend. The influence of La Boétie can be seen in many places in the Essays; only in the Third Book, which Montaigne wrote much later, this influence is fading away. La Boétie’s impact on Montaigne was not only intellectual and spiritual, but it had also a material component, for Montaigne inherited La Boétie’s library, which the latter gave to his friend when he was dying. So it is not surprising that Montaigne dedicated both his Essays and his library to his late friend. But who was this man, who – outside France – is hardly known?

Étienne de La Boétie was born on 1 November 1530 in Sarlat, a town in the Périgord in southern France. He belonged to a patrician family that had worked its way up over the course of several generations. Not much is known about his childhood. We do know that Étienne's father died when he was young, and that he was raised then by his uncle Étienne, who has given him an excellent education. We can only guess which school La Boétie has visited. It may have been the famous Collège de Coqueret in Paris. Anyway, we do not come across his name again until 23 September 1553, when, according to the register of the University of Orléans, La Boétie had been granted a licentiate in law. His first teacher at this university was Anne du Bourg, who was then already leaning towards Protestantism, but was not yet that active fighter for the new religion, which he would later become in his time as a counsellor at the Parliament of Paris. Maybe La Boétie was also attracted to Protestantism at the time, but this is uncertain. What is certain is that he eventually remained Catholic, but was always moderate in his views. Before his university studies, La Boétie had already written his famous Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, possibly already at the age of sixteen, but the latest when he was 18 years old.
Apparently La Boétie had acquired a good reputation during his studies, for he was appointed counsellor of the Parliament of Bordeaux at the age of 23, although the minimum age for this was actually 25 years. He immediately lived up to this reputation, showed great commitment and soon received special assignments, followed by his first major commission in 1560. Soon other special commissions followed. In the meantime, he was married to Marguerite de Carle, a widow from a distinguished family with two children. At a large festive gathering in Bordeaux, probably in 1557, La Boétie met Michel de Montaigne. It was Montaigne who took the initiative, curious to get to know the person who had written the Discourse. It immediately clicked between them. Their friendship would last until La Boétie's death. However, they will not have seen each other often, because La Boétie regularly had to make long trips for the Parliament. An order from his colleagues to talk to the king about a better payment of salaries led him to Paris in 1560. Another time, in 1561, he had to go to the region of Agen, this time as an assistant to the king’s envoy, who had to settle the religious disputes there. This envoy had chosen La Boétie as his assistant precisely because of his moderate views. Partly thanks to La Boétie, the disputing parties reached an agreement. According to his biographer Bonnefon, La Boétie was one of the few thinkers then who took conscientious objection seriously. Even among those who advocated tolerance towards Protestantism, this tolerance was usually only a political means of preventing worse.
The peace in Agen, but also in Bordeaux and elsewhere, turned out to be no more than temporary. Because the Bordeaux Parliament feared an attack by Protestant troops, it was decided to recruit 1200 soldiers and to place every 100 of them under the command of a counsellor. One of these counsellors was La Boétie. It showed that the Parliament had a great confidence in his sense of justice and his ability to enforce authority. It would be Étienne de La Boétie’s last public act. Not long thereafter, he suddenly became ill. We do not know exactly what illness he had, but within ten days he died on 18 August 1563, aged 32, in the presence of his family and Montaigne.
Readers of Montaigne’s Essays will know Étienne de La Boétie mainly as a friend of Montaigne, but his importance is much wider. Outside of France and outside the circle of Montaigne readers he is best known for his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, particularly among peace activists and those who study the idea and practice of nonviolence. In his time already this work was famous and it circulated both among intellectuals and in Huguenot circles. It helped the latter in their fight for religious freedom and their opposition to the French king. It is questionable whether La Boétie intended it that way. Also after his death the work has not been forgotten. It has been reprinted many times to date, especially since the middle of the 19th century. Since then, it has influenced those seeking nonviolent means to resist violent oppression, such as Tolstoy and Gandhi and Dutch peace activist Bart de Ligt. But the Discourse is not the only work that La Boétie has written. Especially within France he is also known by his poems and his translations into French of several works by the classical writers Plutarch and Xenophon and by the Italian Ariosto. In France, La Boétie is seen as one of those who brought antiquity to the attention of his contemporaries. Both through his Discourse and by his contribution to the Renaissance, the influence of La Boétie has become permanent and in France many streets and schools bear his name. 

Sources
- Cocula, Anne-Marie, Étienne de La Boétie, Sud Ouest, Bordeaux, 1995.
- Delacomptée, Jean-Michel, Et qu’un seul soit l’ami. La Boétie, Gallimard, Parijs, 1995.

Random quote
A book – also in case it has been written in an honest way – has no value at least from one point of view: Actually nobody needs to write a book, for there is much else to do in this world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1989-1951)

Idleness

The side room of Montaigne’s library in the tower of his castle,
where he wrote his Essays. Left on the wall he wrote that he
resigned from his job on his birthday.

In 1571, Montaigne decided to resign from his job as a counsellor at the Parliament (court of justice) of Bordeaux and to retire to his castle. This was possible because he had become a rich man. After the death of his father in 1568, he had inherited the Castle of Montaigne and the entire estate that belonged to it. Now he could do what he liked and he didn’t need the income of a job any longer; a job that he didn’t like, because of all the scheming and intriguing by the other counsellors. Now he was a free man. Now he had time to read the books that he had inherited from his late friend Étienne de La Boétie. And he had time to manage his estate. But since he didn’t like the latter he left this to others as much as possible. And reading all day, every day, day in day out? To read is a pleasure, but doing nothing else is something different. It’s not what you can do all the time; at least, most of us cannot. Anyway, Montaigne could not. He had thought that “I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisure to entertain and divert itself, which I now hoped it might henceforth do, as being by time become more settled and mature…”. However, soon he became bored. He discovered that being too isolated from the world is not good for you. Moreover, he discovered that his mind begun to develop all kinds of strange ideas and fantasies, ideas without coherence and context. Or as Montaigne writes himself: His mind had become “like a horse that has broke from his rider, who voluntarily runs into a much more violent career than any horseman would put him to…” and it had become full of “chimaeras and fantastic monsters, one upon another, without order or design”.
Montaigne solved the problem that he lived too isolated by returning to the world, as we know from his life history. Montaigne began to travel again, inside and outside France. And he started to network again, for Montaigne had also political aspirations. Although these political aspirations didn’t materialize in the way he had in his mind (it seems that he wanted to become France’s ambassador in Rome), it made that he became a mediator between Henry, the King of Navarre, (who would later become King Henry IV of France) and the French King Henry III; and it made that he became appointed mayor of Bordeaux (which he accepted reluctantly).
Montaigne solved the problem that his mind began to run away with him in a very different way: He began to reflect on what happened in his mind. Or as Montaigne writes himself: He began to “contemplate [the] strangeness and absurdity [of the ideas that whirled through his mind]”, and to write them down, together with his reflections on these ideas, “hoping in time to make it [=the mind] ashamed of itself.” This resulted in his Essays, which would become one of the most famous and most read books in the history of philosophy, a book that is still widely read, more than 400 years later.
Montaigne tells us what made him write his Essays, in “Of Idleness”, which is the eighth essay in Book I. Actually, it should have been the first essay, for it is a kind of statement why Montaigne began to write his work (beside his “To the reader”, the preface of the Essays). That’s why this essay is so important. But there is more. This essay tells us also something else: Humans cannot live by doing nothing. Humans cannot live isolated from the world. If you didn’t know it yet, you’ll have learned it now, in a time that a pandemic rules the world and one lockdown after the other is proclaimed. Man is a social being and when she or he is isolated from the world or isolates himself from the world, soon the mind begins to behave like a runaway horse and to develop all kinds of strange ideas. Then, as Montaigne made us clear by what he did and what he wrote, there are two things we must do: Go back to the world and bring order again in your mind, for idleness leads to nothing. 

P.S. I had promised myself to avoid writing again on the present pandemic. But what happens? I started writing this blog with a very different idea in my mind, although I did want to write about Montaigne’s essay “Of Idleness”, indeed. But as it often goes, once I had started to write, the writing process pushed me in a direction that I hadn’t planned and hadn’t foreseen, and in the end it moved me towards the covid pandemic again. No help. One cannot live isolated from the world. 

Source

All quotations are from Michel de Montaigne, “Of Idleness”, Essays, Book I, chapter VIII; Gutenberg translation: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0008

Random Note

You are a dictator. You are popular but your popularity is beginning to fade. What to do about it?

– Create an enemy

– Create a problem

– Create a provocation

In short: Create war. 

The Münchhausen Trilemma

You say that you are the King of Babylonia and I ask you “Why do you think so?” Generally then there are three ways to justify that you are, namely:
A) You say that your father was also King of Babylonia, and his father was, and so on, back into the past as far as man can remember.
B) Or you say: “I am the King of Babylonia according to the constitution. I have written the constitution in order to determine who will be the King of Babylonia. The constitution is the legal foundation of the Kingdom of Babylonia. So I am the legal King of Babylonia.”
C) Or you say that you are the King of Babylonia by the grace of God.
Although each of these three justifications that you are the King of Babylonia seems sound, there is a problem with each of them. Answer A has often been applied in history, and it is still valid for several monarchs in the present world, like the Emperor of Japan or (more or less) the King of the Netherlands or the Queen of England. However, maybe, your father was the legal king of Babylonia, and his father was, etc., but at a certain point we must stop going back in history because we don’t know the facts. And maybe there was once a king in the line who didn’t get his power in a legal way. Actually, what we have here is an infinite regression that we must break off at an arbitrary point because of the mystery of history.
On the face of it, Answer B seems sound. For if there is a constitution that appoints you as the King of Babylonia, it must be legal that you are the king. However, it is a circular reasoning, for you, the King of Babylonia, made the constitution and the constitution made you King of Babylonia. The King depends on the constitution and the constitution depends on the King.
Maybe then answer C is a correct justification that you are the King of Babylonia? Perhaps it is, but it’s merely a supposition that it is true, and if I am not religious, I don’t need to accept it. Answer C is a justification based on an axiom.
The trilemma that I have tried to explain here with the help of a fictitious King of Babylonia has first been formulated by a certain Agrippa, a sceptic philosopher who probably lived towards the end of the 1st century. However, nowadays it has especially become known by the work of the German philosopher Hans Albert (1921-) who called it the Münchhausen Trilemma, after the famous story about Baron von Münchhausen who pulled himself out of a mire by his own hair. (see here). According to Albert, in the end no knowledge, no truth or no statement can be established with certainty. For whatever argument or proof we bring forward in order to support a statement, it is always possible to ask further questions that cast doubt on each new argument or proof. In the end, we come into the situation that we have to choose between:
1) An infinite regression, which appears because of the necessity to go ever further back, but is not practically feasible and does not, therefore, provide a certain foundation.
2) A logical circle in the deduction, which is caused by the fact that one, in the need to found, falls back on statements which had already appeared before as requiring a foundation, and which circle does not lead to any certain foundation either.
3) A break of searching at a certain point, which indeed appears principally feasible, but would mean a random suspension of the principle of sufficient reason. (see Source; translation taken from the Wikipedia) We can call this point also dogmatism.
If the trilemma is true, and I think it is, the consequence is that no statement, no piece of knowledge, no assumed truth can be definitively substantiated. In this sense, there is no truth. In the end, we know nothing for certain. The only thing we can do then, so Albert, is to be critical and to make each statement, piece of knowledge, or supposed truth open to criticism, anyhow, for everything can be different from what is seems. Although I fully endorse this idea, there is a problem. For if the Münchhausen trilemma is right, no choice can be justified. Each choice is as good or as bad as any other choice. Then we are in the situation of Buridan’s ass, who now must choose not between two haystacks but between three haystacks. (see here). In such a situation living would be impossible. Then there is only one solution: just do what you think that is reasonable. Act! For action is the foundation of life. 

Source
- Hans Albert, Traktat über kritische Vernunft. Tübingen: J.B.Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1968 (a description of the Münchhausen Trilemma is on p. 13.

Random quote
Looters in normal times are pioneers from a historical perspective.

Peter Sloterdijk (1947-)

The rabbit-duck illusion

“Which animals are most like each other?” The original rabbit-duck illusion,
by an unknown author (see text).

In my blog last week, I used the rabbit-duck illusion, as it is usually called, to explain that there are two ways of looking at. Actually, the figure is not an illusion but an ambiguous image: It doesn’t evoke a false way of seeing but the image can be seen in two different ways that as such are correct. The figure has been made famous by Wittgenstein, who used it for explaining the difference between “seeing” and “seeing as”. When someone shows you the figure, you can say, for example: “I see a rabbit”. However, once you know that the figure is ambiguous and you can switch between the rabbit and the duck, you’ll say: “I see it as a rabbit”. Once we can see an image in different ways, we can notice aspects of the image, so Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, ix). This noticing of aspects is a theme that again and again returns in his later work.
Wittgenstein took the figure from an article by the American psychologist Joseph Jastrow, but the image was first published in 1892 in the German humour magazine Fliegende Blätter, which described it as “Rabbit and Duck” (see picture above). Also Jastrow talked about a rabbit and a duck, but in the original German version of the Philosophical Investigations (PI) Wittgenstein says that the image can be seen either as the head of a hare (Hase) or as the head of a duck (Ente). However, in the English version of PI this is translated as a rabbit-duck distinction. Why this difference? In view of the long ears, I would call the animal in the image a hare rather than a rabbit, and when I am running through the woods and fields around my town I am sure whether I see a hare or a rabbit.
Be it as it may, let me further call the animal in the figure a rabbit in agreement with the present usage. The image is not only philosophically and linguistically but also psychologically interesting. As psychologists know, seeing and watching are not spontaneous and not objective. One has to learn it. So one question is: How do children see the image? Alison Gopnik and her colleagues (source) tried to answer this question, and they found that 3-5 years old children don’t make the reversal between two aspects of an ambiguous image on its own. Others must tell them that it has two aspects. Only later some learn to switch spontaneously. Also the speed of switching between the rabbit and duck aspects is interesting: R. Wiseman and his colleagues found that more creative people find it easier to switch between the rabbit-duck aspects of the image than less creative people do. (source) I wonder whether this result depends on the ambiguous image you take for a study. Personally I find it easy to flip between the rabbit and the duck but difficult to do so in case of the old woman – young woman illusion (see here).
Also when you look at the rabbit-duck image has an impact on what you see. Peter Brugger and Susanne Brugger showed the image to different people, first on an Easter Sunday and later that same year on an October Sunday, and simply asked them to name the animal. This is what they found: “Whereas on Easter the drawing was significantly more often recognized as a bunny, in October it was considered a bird by most subjects…” (some mentioned another animal than a duck, such as a stork, a flamingo, or just “some kind of bird”) (source)
Seeing and watching are not objective, as said. The discussion about the meaning of the rabbit-duck illusion shows that we can see what we see in different ways. Even more, we don’t see only with our eyes but a big part of the process of seeing takes place in the brain. Impressions of light arrive in the brain and with the help of the information already present there, the brain constructs a picture and gives it a meaning at the same time. Actually the interpretation (meaning giving) and the construction of the picture are one process. However, the brain can also make construct pictures without an external input through the eyes, and actually it often happens. Therefore seeing – in the limited sense of receiving input through the eyes – is important, for although the construction of the picture takes place in the brain, what you see does have an impact, and if you cut off your brain from the world, it’s quite well possible that you keep a rabbit for a duck, or the other way round.

Random quote
Movement is … first and foremost the natural mode of being a body.

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1930-)

Two perspectives on “looking at”

At first, I thought it was a rabbit, but because it was

 swimming in the water, I realized that it was a duck.

Look at the figure above. I think that most readers will know that it can be seen either as a rabbit or as a duck but never as a rabbit and a duck at the same time. We can look at the figure either from a subjective point of view, also called the first-person perspective, or from an objective point of view, also called the third-person perspective. In the former case we focus our attention on my looking at the figure, in the latter case we focus our attention on my looking at the figure as such. I want to explain the difference with this figure:

                  

The left oval represents the first-person perspective; the right one represents the third-person perspective. That the words “the figure” are not enclosed by the left oval does not mean that the figure is ignored in the first-person perspective. One cannot “look at” just like that but one can only look at something. The theme of the first-person perspective in this example is, nonetheless, my looking. Likewise, the I as a subject is not covered by the third-person theme, but being the one who looks, I am involved in the analysis from the third-person point of view.
When I am looking at something (to be distinguished from just seeing), implicitly or explicitly I ask questions about what I watch. Such questions can be:
Q. What is the figure like for me?
And a possible answer is:
A. I see a sketch of a rabbit.
And then:
Q: Why does the figure represent a rabbit?
A: The two protrusions at the left are two ears and the little dent at the right is a mouth.
These questions and answers are questions from the first-person perspective, for they concern my subjective view. From the third-person perspective, one would ask questions like:
Q: What kind of figure is that?
A: It is an ambiguous figure representing both a rabbit and a duck, drawn for experimental purposes.
Q: Why do some see the figure as a rabbit and others as a duck?
A: That’s what your brain makes you think, on the basis of the light impulses that it receives from the piece of paper in front of you and your antecedent cognitive state, educational background and frame of mind.
In questions and answers from the third-person perspective my seeing and interpreting the figure as a subject is no longer present, but they concern the objective brain structures and processes and the input of these processes that take place “independent of me” by way of speaking. The first-person perspective is about what the figure means for me and which reasons I have for this interpretation, while the third-person perspective is about the objective causes that determine my perception of the figure as a certain thing and which I normally don’t know about.
It is not so that it is not possible that I, the first person that I am, take a third-person perspective towards myself. Nor is it so that another, a third person, has no access to my first-person perspective, no matter how. For taking a perspective is approaching a general theme in a certain manner by highlighting either the subject or the object, guided by questions of a certain type. And there is no reason why I (the first person) cannot ask the same questions about myself that another (a third person) asks about me or that I ask about another from the third-person perspective. On the other hand, there is also no reason why another cannot ask the same questions about me that I ask about myself. However, unlike me, the other has no direct access to the answers on these questions and therefore his or her knowledge of my first-person perspective can only be found via more or less complicated ways of understanding. Here I can’t elaborate such ways of understanding (see bij de Weg 1996), but what this analysis in terms of questions of the two perspectives makes clear is that these two ways to look at what is around us and to understand and explain what is around us are not contradictory in the sense that only one perspective is correct at the cost of the other, but that the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective are alternative ways of looking at something. The perspectives represent different standpoints characterised by different types of questions. As Karl-Otto Apel worded it in his “complementarity thesis” (1979, pp. 12-13):

1.    The perspectives supplement each other: what is known, experienced or observed from one perspective cannot be known, experienced and observed from the other perspective.
2.    The perspectives exclude each other: they have different intentions, expressed in different types of questions. The first-person perspective is subject directed; the third-person perspective is object directed.
3.    For both reasons, the perspectives cannot be reduced to each other.
It’s already more than forty years ago that Apel developed these ideas and presented his analysis, and both perspectives are still either confused or it is so that one perspective is idolized at the cost of the other (and usually it is, in science at least, that the third-person perspective is seen as the only right method). But is it so difficult to see that different types of questions lead to different types of answers and isn’t it quite authoritarian to forbid some types of questions being asked? 

References
Apel, K-O 1979b, “Types of Social Science in the Light of Human Cognitive Interests”, in: S.C. Brown ed., Philosophical Disputes in the Social Sciences, Brighton, Sussex etc.: Harvester Press etc., pp. 3-50.
Weg, Henk bij de 1996, De betekenis van zin voor het begrijpen van handelingen, Kampen: Kok Agora.