A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

by Thomas Sowell

Overview

Thomas Sowell’s “extraordinary” explication of the competing visions of human nature lie at the heart of our political conflicts (New York Times)

Controversies in politics arise from many sources, but the conflicts that endure for generations or centuries show a remarkably consistent pattern. In this classic work, Thomas Sowell analyzes this pattern. He describes the two competing visions that shape our debates about the nature of reason, justice, equality, and power: the "constrained" vision, which sees human nature as unchanging and selfish, and the "unconstrained" vision, in which human nature is malleable and perfectible. A Conflict of Visions offers a convincing case that ethical and policy disputes circle around the disparity between both outlooks.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465002054
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/05/2007
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	56,771
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of dozens of books including Charter Schools and Their Enemies, winner of the 2021 Hayek Book Prize. He is the recipient of numerous other awards, including the National Humanities Medal, presented by the President of the United States in 2003.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

THE ROLE OF VISIONS

One of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education. Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again. It happens too often to be coincidence and it is too uncontrolled to be a plot. A closer look at the arguments on both sides often shows that they are reasoning from fundamentally different premises. These different premises—often implicit—are what provide the consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on numerous, unrelated issues. They have different visions of how the world works.

It would be good to be able to say that we should dispense with visions entirely and deal only with reality. But that may be the most utopian vision of all. Reality is far too complex to be comprehended by any given mind. Visions are like maps that guide us through a tangle of bewildering complexities. Like maps, visions have to leave out many concrete features in order to enable us to focus on a few key paths to our goals. Visions are indispensable-but dangerous, precisely to the extent that we confuse them with reality itself. What has been deliberately neglected may not in fact turn out to be negligible in its effect on the results. That has to be tested against evidence.

A vision has been described as a "pre-analytic cognitive act."' It is what we sense or feel before wehave constructed any systematic reasoning that could be called a theory, much less deduced any specific consequences as hypotheses to be tested against evidence. A vision is our sense of how the world works. For example, primitive man's sense of why leaves move may have been that some spirit moves them, and his sense of why tides rise or volcanoes erupt may have run along similar lines. Newton had a very different vision of how the world works and Einstein still another. For social phenomena, Rousseau had a very different vision of human causation from that of Edmund Burke.

Visions are the foundations on which theories are built. The final structure depends not only on the foundation, but also on how carefully and consistently the framework of theory is constructed and how well buttressed it is with hard facts. Visions are very subjective, but well-constructed theories have clear implications, and facts can test and measure their objective validity. The world learned at Hiroshima that Einstein's vision of physics was not just Einstein's vision.

Logic is an essential ingredient in the process of turning a vision into a theory, just as empirical evidence is then essential for determining the validity of that theory. But it is the initial vision which is crucial for our glimpse of insight into the way the world works. In Pareto's words:

Logic is useful for proof but almost never for making discoveries. A man receives certain impressions; under their influence he states—without being able to say either how or why, and if he attempts to do so he deceives himself-a proposition, which can be verified experimentally . . . .

Visions are all, to some extent, simplistic-though that is a term usually reserved for other people's visions, not our own. The ever-changing kaleidoscope of raw reality would defeat the human mind by its complexity, except for the mind's ability to abstract, to pick out parts and think of them as the whole. This is nowhere more necessary than in social visions and social theory, dealing with the complex and often subconscious interactions of millions of human beings.

No matter what vision we build on, it will never account for "every sparrow's fall." Social visions especially must leave many important phenomena unexplained, or explained only in ad hoc fashion, or by inconsistent assumptions that derive from more than one vision. The purest vision may not be the basis of the most impressive theories, much less the most valid ones. Yet purer visions may be more revealing as to unspoken premises than are the more complex theories. For purposes of understanding the role of visions, William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) may tell us more than Marx's Capital. Indeed, we may understand more of Marx's Capital after we have seen how similar premises worked out in the simpler model of William Godwin. Likewise, the vision of social causation underlying the theories of the Physiocrats was in its essentials very much like the vision elaborated in a more complex and sophisticated way by Adam Smith and still later (and still more so) by Milton Friedman.

A vision, as the term is used here, is not a dream, a hope, a prophecy, or a moral imperative, though any of these things may ultimately derive from some particular vision. Here a vision is a sense of causation. It is more like a hunch or a "gut feeling" than it is like an exercise in logic or factual verification. These things come later, and feed on the raw material provided by the vision. If causation proceeds as our vision conceives it to, then certain other consequences follow, and theory is the working out of what those consequences are. Evidence is fact that discriminates between one theory and another. Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

Theories can be devastated by facts but they can never be proved to be correct by facts. Ultimately there are as many visions as there are human beings, if not more, and more than one vision may be consistent with a given fact. Facts force us to discard some theories—or else to torture our minds trying to reconcile the irreconcilable—but they can never put the final imprimatur of ultimate truth on a given theory.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
Part I	Patterns
1	The Role of Visions	3
2	Constrained and Unconstrained Visions	9
3	Visions of Knowledge and Reason	35
4	Visions of Social Processes	67
5	Varieties and Dynamics of Visions	99
Part II	Applications
6	Visions of Equality	129
7	Visions of Power	151
8	Visions of Justice	187
9	Visions, Values, and Paradigms	223
	Notes	255
	Index	285

Editorial Reviews

"Extraordinary on several counts...[Sowell] makes his case fairly, lucidly and persuasively."—The New York Times Book Review

"A classic of a very special kind...Reading [it] is like looking up at the night sky and discovering a new constellation."—Christian Science Monitor

"[A Conflict of Visions] is recommended herewith to anybody sufficiently interested in the American condition to try to get beneath the surface of partisanship, trendy issues and pop ideology to the philosophical foundations of the Republic."—Boston Globe

"[A] fine book ... Sowell's illuminating guide to the political conflicts of our age teaches the valuable lesson that political choices always involve costs."—Commentary

"An excellent condensation of two centuries of social thought."—Booklist

"A provocative analysis of the conflicting visions of human nature that have shaped the moral, legal and economic life of recent times."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Extraordinary on several counts.... There is nothing tendentious or one-sided about his argument.... He makes his case fairly, lucidly and persuasively.

New York Times Book Review

Sowell, an economist and author (The Economics and Politics of Race, etc.), presents a provocative analysis of the conflicting visions of human nature that have shaped the moral, legal and economic life of recent times. For the past 200 years, he writes, two visions ofor ``gut feelings'' abouthow the world works, have dominated: the constrained vision, which views man as unchanged, limited and dependent on evolved social processes (market economies, constitutional law, etc.); and the unconstrained vision, which argues for man's potential and perfectability, and the possibility of rational planning for social solutions. Examining the views of thinkers who reflect these constrained (Adam Smith) and unconstrained (William Godwin) visions, Sowell shows how these powerful and subjective visions give rise to carefully constructed social theories. His discussion of how these conflicting attitudes ultimately produce clashes over equality, social justice and other issues is instructive. (January 15)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This latest work by Sowell examines two competing visions which shape our debates about the nature of reason, justice, equality, and power. These visions are the ``constrained'' vision, which sees human nature as unchanging and selfish, and the ``unconstrained'' vision, in which human nature is malleable and perfectible. The book builds a convincing case that ethical and policy disputes are ultimately based on the differences in these visions. It covers a wide variety of political, philosophical, and economic thought. Although occasionally abstract, this volume is an important contribution to our understanding of current social issues. Recommended for large public and all college and university libraries. Richard C. Schiming, Economics Dept., Mankato State Univ., Minn.

Library Journal

Sowell (Hoover Institution, Stanford U.) makes the case that all political differences have their root in two, mutually antagonistic views of human nature. One view, frequently evoked by left-wing thinkers, suggests that man is perfectible and is labeled "unconstrained." The "constrained" view, advocated by F.A. Hayek, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith and others, sees man as essentially selfish. A supporter of the "constrained" version himself, Sowell looks at how the competing visions influence ideas on social processes and theories of knowledge and reason. He then explores how the competing perspectives condition questions of equality, power, and justice. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews