The Irony of Liberal Reason by Thomas A. Spragens,Review by: James P. YoungPolitical Theory, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Feb., 1983), pp. 143-146Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191016 .

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BOOKS IN REVIEW 143

which assumes that human life and health must be universally protected and defended as values at least as inalienable as liberty. Not one or the other paradigm is what we ultimately must have, but a continuing dialectical contest between the two.

-Christian Baj' University of Toronto

THE IRONY OF LIBERAL REASON by Thomas A. Spragens, Jr. Chicago: Universihv of Chicago Press, 1982. Pp. xii, 443. $23.00.

Understandably enough, much of the voluminous recent discussion of liberalism has revolved around questions of political economy. Now, in this outstanding and ambitious new study, Thomas Spragens attempts an analysis of liberal thought from the point of view of its epistemology-its underlying conception of reason.

Liberal reason is Spragen's rather loose "family" term for an array of labels, including Enlightenment reason, scientific reason, positive reason, and critical reason (p. 14). This complex is held to be the inheritor of much of what is most humane in the tradition of Western thought, and yet, due to its ironic defects, ultimately subversive of precisely those values it was originally intended to protect and extend.

Spragens is sharply critical of much of the liberal tradition and believes that some aspects of it, such as its tendency toward excessive individualism, are clearly not worth preserving. Yet, in the end, his project involves a cautious attempt to save liberalism from itself by chastening its aims, specifically by showing that it must give up the epistemological pretensions that were supposed to guarantee its success.

Locke and Descartes, the two principle founders of Enlightenment rationalism, had hoped that by the application of "simple truths and infallible methods" the haze of scholasticism could be cleared away. From the start such a program necessarily had profoundly political implications. Space does not permit an extended account of the author's analysis of the dissolution of liberalism. It is sufficient to say that in Spragens's convincingly argued view, by the twentieth century it had degenerated into a logically unstable and politically unpalatable amalgam of technocracy on the one hand and value noncognitivism on the other.

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144 POLITICAL THEORY FEBR UARY 1983

Clearly one cannot simultaneously hold to the technocratic position that there are scientifically correct solutions to social problems and to the noncognitivist belief that values are in the end irrational-simple matters of demonic choice, in Weber's chilling term. The fact that so many students of politics seem to cling to both-a fact that Spragens might stress more-says a good deal about the contemporary health of the social sciences. Nonetheless, as Spragens shows in his fine survey of recent philosophy of science, neither value noncognitivism nor scientific positivism can today withstand critical scrutiny.

The core of the problem is that both technocrats and noncognitivists share a mistaken major premise, namely, that all genuine cognition is "scientific." To this the technocrats add the minor premise that nor- mative perceptions are cognitive and reach the conclusion that norms must therefore be scientific. The minor premise of the irrationalists is that normative models are not scientific, so it must then be concluded that they are simply not cognitive. Spragens denies both conclusions but accepts both minor premises. In his view, then, normative perceptions are cognitive but not scientific and the fault for the conflict between technocrats and irrationalists is rooted in their shared but illusory belief that all cognition is scientific (p. 316).

But science is not to be equated with rationality so that we can reduce the claims of science without risk and indeed with real benefits. We can gain useful knowledge about the nature of the social world and we can make rational, intelligible decisions about the proper order of that world. To recognize the limits of the intellect need not reduce us to despair. Pursuing this insight, Spragens contends that politics cannot be scientific but that it can and should be rational (p. 382). In the quest to make it so the scientific disciplines can serve as models of rational enterprise, but only if they are properly understood. The essence of science is not logic or the demonstrability of scientific theories or some special set of methods (p. 369). Instead, for Spragens, the principal source of the success of science is that it is a communal endeavor whose internal politics is governed by an interplay among consensus, author- ity, and freedom. Parallel to science, rational political enterprises require a consensus on the commitment to truth, a system of free speech and inquiry along the lines sketched by Mill, and a belief in legitimate authority founded on the ability to give good reasons for one's actions so that authority becomes "a function of assent based on legitimacy" as opposed to power that is merely a function of force (p. 387). The similarity of these points to standard liberal doctrine will surely be clear.

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BOOKS IN REVIEW 145

This is a genuinely impressive book. The politics of epistemology is an important topic that has perhaps too often been left by political theorists to philosophically inclined sociologists, particularly those influenced by the Frankfurt School. Spragens's range of knowledge is immense and the book is lucidly and sometimes wittily written, though it is sometimes rather repetitive. Much of the argument will not seem particularly new to political theorists since, as Spragens is quick to admit, this is a work of synthesis that draws on an astonishing range of precursors ranging from Strauss to Habermas and touching most points in between. Remarkably, this is accomplished without the work degenerating into an ill-digested smorgasbord of incompatible ideas. Moreover, there are points of originality such as the forceful argument that the difference between Descartes and Locke has often been exaggerated. It is also striking how often Spragens is able to demon- strate the extent to which liberal theorists ever since Locke have relied on the substance of premodern thought even while repudiating its methods. The implications of the potential loss of these humane traditions as their philosophical basis is eroded gives urgency to the task Spragens sets himself.

Two points might be added. First, Spragens would have done well to adopt "enlightenment rationalism" as the label for his epistemological family. This a more general category, and its use would permit him to tax Soviet Marxists for their technocratic abuses while avoiding any tendency to blur the vital distinctions that separate them from the liberals in spite of the ancestry the two share.

Second, and more important, is the fact that much more than an epistemological reconstruction is required in order to revitalize liberal political thought. Spragens's work is necessary, but those critics who have focused on questions of political economy are certainly not wrong. The Iron of Liberal Reason would be even stronger, albeit longer, if Spragens had more fully spelled out the links between liberal epistemology and economics. In a world in which so much of the ideological debate is waged over the highly technical formulations of competing economists, this is a vital connection. Spragens's illustrations of technocratic theory lean rather too heavily toward the psychological; B. F. Skinner and Harold Lasswell loom large in relation to their inherent importance. Insofar as ours is a technocratic society, the role of economists, in spite of their conspicuous lack of recent successes, seems much greater than that of psychologists. Some of the reasons for these failures as well as appropriate cautions against the seductions of

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146 POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1983

economic analysis can, however, be discovered in the pages of this book. It is to hoped-probably in vain-that "'policy scientists" will read this study in large numbers.

In any event, no reconstruction of liberalism can be complete without a reconstruction of its political economy. Here Spragens might be read in conjunction with William Connolly's Appearance and Realiti# in Politics, which also starts with epistemological issues, but goes on to a consideration of the social consequences of liberal capitalism, the possibility of an amelioration of these consequences through demo- cratic socialism, and the conclusion that no such solution can success- fully be reached that does not build on liberal constitutional features in many ways essentially the same as those advocated by Spragens in his discussion of rational political enterprises. Although one suspects that Connolly and Spragens would differ politically, perhaps the beginning of a trend can nonetheless be seen here.

-James P. Young State University of New York-Binghamton

DILEMMAS OF PL URA LIST DEMOCRA C Y: A U TONOM Y VS. CONTROL by Robert A. Dahl. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982. Pp. x, 229. $18.50.

Yet a problem arises-which I have called the problem of democratic pluralism- because while necessary, desirable, and inevitable in a democratic order, organiza- tional pluralism may also play a part in stabilizing inequalities, deforming civic consciousness, distorting the public agenda, and alienating final control over the public agenda by the citizen body.

This pivotal passage indicates the remarkable degree to which earlier conflicts over pluralist theory and analysis have given way to a more complex and sophisticated consensus on both the viability and equity of democratic politics. Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, to be sure, reiterates many of the claims and presuppositions that aroused a whole generation of Dahl's critics: first, a methodological atomism and individualism that understands even positive liberty as the control one actor exercises over another (pp. 16-20); second, an emphasis on the many diverse sources of political action and conflict (pp. 62-63); third, skepticism about reality of any objective, widely shared common

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