The Moral Society - Its Structure and Effects

This very interesting, but little read, book by philosopher Ian Hinckfuss is sadly out-of-print (but the manuscript can be found online here). Hinckfuss is a moral sceptic and nihilist, arguing that the only way in which we could possibly gain moral knowledge would be by a "sixth sense" of moral "intuition" or "conscience" (that we have no good reason to think that any human possesses), and that there are no (good reasons to think that there are any) "moral facts" to have knowledge of. The enemies of scepticism are the rationalists (who believe that we can gain moral knowledge in the same way we gain knowledge of logical or mathematical truths), the naturalists (who believe that moral facts are just ordinary natural facts, and thus that moral knowledge can be gained by empirical observation), and the non-cognitivists (who think that moral opinions are not beliefs at all, and can thus be neither true nor false). Hinckfuss makes a good case against these non-sceptical views, paying special attention to the naturalist view.

But if it is widely believed that all knowledge of the natural world must come from empirical observation, and it is also widely believed that moral knowledge, if any, must be rooted in "conscience", why isn't the world filled with moral sceptics? One reason, Hinckfuss maintains, could be that

... societies can live with obvious contradictions for generations or even centuries - especially if the contradictory beliefs are part of the rationales for important societal relationships. In religion this phenomenon is commonplace. It is no less so in morality - or, for that matter, within science. What usually happens under these circumstances is that the apparent contradiction becomes tagged as a philosophical problem so that society can go on believing in its inconsistencies while the philosophers wrestle with their “problem”.

Moral scepticism is hardly new, and has been around in one form or another since the very beginnings of Western philosophy. What is original with Hinckfuss is that he explicitly connects his moral scepticism with a healthy scepticism of elitism and authoritarianism:

[M]embers of the moral elite are often treated as authorities about moral obligations. Since most members of the society will want themselves and others to act in accordance with what they believe their obligations to be, they will tend to favour conformity to the injunctions of the moral authorities. This restricts their own freedom and the freedom of others. Since an authoritarian society is one in which obedience to authority is preferred to individual freedom, morality and authoritarianism go hand in hand. 

Insofar as people believe that there are objective moral facts, they are prone to also believe that some people are better than others at gaining knowledge of these facts (that there are "moral experts"). And those who are thought to know what ought to be done are also often thought to be worthy of leadership. What Hinckfuss calls "moral societies" are societies where belief in the reality and objective validity of moral obligations is widespread. He conjectures that most or all actual societies, past and present, are moral societies in this sense. He notes that authoritarianism is regarded as some sort of evil in most moral societies. So the question arises as to how moral people live and practice within a system which has properties that they regard as evil. The answer, Hinckfuss proposes, is that they seldom regard their own moral society as authoritarian. People tend to be blind to their own authoritarianism. Yet these same people see so readily the authoritarianism in societies other than their own.

Thus moral agents, identifying as they do with what they believe to be their moral obligations, do not feel coerced by them, and insofar as these beliefs coincide with the moral propaganda of the society in which they reside, which will usually be the case, that society will not appear unduly authoritarian to them. It is only when we allow ourselves to take an outsider's view of the moral society in which we live that its authoritarianism becomes apparent.

Hinckfuss seems to also think that coming to accept moral scepticism helps a person to take an outsider's view of one's own moral society; to take an amoral (which is not the same as immoral!) perspective. 

From an amoral point of view, the moral elite of a moral society would be seen as a bunch of free riders [...] who survive by virtue of the doctrine of deserts, moral parsing and associated arts of good public relations, plus, above all, the fact that it is their moral intuitions which bear weight in social decision making.

But despite his disapproval of freeriding and authoritarianism, and his approval of individual freedom, Hinckfuss also disapproves (which, given his nihilism, obviously cannot be moral disapproval) of economic inequality. This implicitly assumes that liberty and equality are compatible. This is a debated claim (and one that I for one think is deeply mistaken). Under liberty, since people are different from each other in all kinds of ways, including in what ends they strive for, they will use this liberty in different ways, pursuing different ends, and will inevitably end up in very different outcomes as a result. Further, Hinckfuss also seems to disapprove of hierarchies of all kinds. A moral sceptic cannot, of course, say that some hierarchies are morally bad and others morally good, but it must still be recognized that some hierarchies benefit those who are part of them, and thus might not merit disapproval (moral or otherwise). The economist Paul H. Rubin noted in his book Darwinian Politics that, because of our evolved nature, humans often confuse dominance hierarchies and productive hierarchies. The same factors that (very understandably) lead humans to dislike dominance hierarchies in the environment in which we evolved, can (less understandably) lead them to dislike productive hierarchies today, even though the latter may benefit all its members. 

Hinckfuss notes that it is often argued (even by moral sceptics) that morality is useful in securing peace and bringing about the prerequisites for mutually beneficial co-operation. But Hinckfuss argues againt this. He thinks that, on the whole, we would all be better off without morality! Naturally, given his purpose, he focuses on the bad aspects of morality. 

In an amoral society, Hitler and Stalin could not have used moral injunctions to lead ordinary people to persecute fellow citizens and the citizens of other countries in such a heartless manner. In an amoral society, moral propaganda is unavailable to the megalomaniac as a tool for mass manipulation. Tyrants could, of course, still use fear to establish and maintain their position. Nevertheless, fear unaccompanied by moral charisma is a two-edged sword as many tyrants have found to their cost when rebellion has finally broken out. Fear and moral constraints have different social consequences. 

There could be war without morality. But moral propaganda eases the task of those with control of the mass media to get almost all the nation determined to attack, plunder, slaughter and subjugate another group of people.

While this is undoubtedly true and important, it doesn't show that morality on the whole leaves us worse off compared to an amoral society. Wouldn't a wholly amoral society be chaotic and messy? How could we co-operate with each other without moral prohibitions on lying, stealing, killing? Hinckfuss tries to calm us:

Apart from any basic altruistic motivations, there is a more self-interested amoral mechanism which encourages people to want to satisfy the desires of others and which thereby augments the possibility of the rational resolution of conflicts. Everyone soon learns the advantages in receiving the co-operation of others in achieving ends which one desires. But such co-operation is unlikely to be forthcoming from those who do not trust us - from those who believe for whatever reason that there is a considerable possibility that we may behave in ways which are detrimental to their interests. Such people will want to distance themselves from us - to put themselves in a position where our actions are less likely to have an effect upon them. If, therefore, we wish to reverse this tendency, it is necessary for us to become trustworthy in the eyes of as many people as possible - to be thought of as people who are likely to act in the interests of others. It is such mechanisms, rather than any moral injunctions, which encourage us to abide by our promises and contracts, to be open and honest in our dealings with others and to be predictable and cooperative in our own behaviour. It is true that there are occasions when people can advantage themselves by disadvantaging others or by risking a disadvantage to others, with little likelihood of any adverse reaction. Likelihoods build up with frequency, however, so, on the surface, at least, it would seem imprudent to so behave with any regularity. Sooner or later the reputation of such people for taking others into account in their behaviour is likely to suffer and with it would suffer their ability to gain the cooperation, let alone the friendship and love of others.

But isn't this a morality? Some would call principles of rational choice that constrain an individual's behaviour in order to gain the co-operation of others, moral principles. David Gauthier has explicitly argued this in his ground-breaking book Morals by Agreement. However, Gauthier also says (in a paper called "Why Contractarianism?") that

Deliberative justification [grounding constraints on behaviour on rational choice principles] does not refute morality. Indeed, it does not offer morality the courtesy of a refutation. It ignores morality, and seemingly replaces it.

I would prefer to say, as a moral sceptic, and in the spirit of David Gauthier, that I reject Morality (with a big M), but still accept morality (with a small m). Another way to put it is that I reject Morality, but accept an improved version of it: morality 2.0. But what is the difference? The primary difference, I would say, is that morality 2.0 lacks that claim to absolute and objective validity that is necessary for a system of rules to qualify as Morality. 
 

The history and standing of moral skepticism

Just as history is written by the winners, so too is moral philosophy written largely by the believers. Although moral skepticism has been a theoretical presence in Western philosophy for as long as anyone can discern, the position has nearly always been presented by its opponents. Callicles was probably a historical figure, and Thrasymachus certainly was, but it is unlikely that the lines that Plato placed in their mouths are remotely close to a sympathetic transcript of anything they ever asserted; their role in the dialogue is to fall silent as Socrates bullies his way to inevitable victory. This pattern repeats through the centuries: Moral skepticism is wheeled on to the stage for the sole purpose of the audience witnessing its crushing defeat. However, unlike the explanation for the paucity of historians from losing sides, the absence of the skeptic’s voice from the dialectic of moral philosophy is not due to his having been defeated (either militarily or intellectually). Indeed, the very fact that moral skepticism needs to be countered again and again – centuries of novel stratagems and ingenious arguments – indicates a foe that cannot be defeated easily, implying that there must exist significant considerations in its favor. The real explanation for the dearth of real-life moral skeptics plying their wares in the philosophical marketplace may be nothing more insidious than a natural process of self-filtration: Those who are drawn to moral philosophy sufficiently to publish works on the topic are more likely than not to be antecedently hostile towards moral skepticism. By analogy, consider theology. One need not believe in God in order to be a capable theologian, but how many atheistic theologians does one really expect to find in the profession? The average atheist, as a matter of contingent fact, simply has little interest in the practice. Similarly, perhaps, the average moral skeptic tends to expend her intellectual energies elsewhere. We suspect that moral skepticism enjoys a higher proportion of support among philosophers in general than it does among moral philosophers in particular.

So begins the introductory chapter by the editors of the recent anthology A World Without Values, edited by Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin. Moral skepticism (aka subjectivism) is the view that there are no objective values and no moral demands built into the nature of things. The best introduction to moral skepticism remains John L. Mackie's Ethics - Inventing Right and Wrong published in 1978. Mackie argues that values are "not part of the fabric of the world" and further that no substantial moral conclusions or serious constraints on moral views can be derived from logic or moral language alone. Because of this, morality is not something we can discover but something that we have to “invent”. (But we don’t just create morality out of thin air or in whatever way we want. Rather, we create it in response to a fairly determinate social problem that arises from contingent but persistent features of the human condition and the nature of our environment. Morality is a device for overcoming interpersonal conflicts and for making possible mutually beneficial co-operation. We can learn something about the general form and content of a realistic and practical morality by asking what such a device has to be like to fulfil this function in the best way.)

In Joyce's own monograph The Evolution of Morality (my review here), skepticism is argued for by an "evolutionary debunking of morality". Since we can explain why we all have moral beliefs, and why we all make moral judgements, without assuming that any such belief or judgment is true, we lack justification for our moral beliefs. Richard Garner attempts something similar in a work-in-progress paper that I've commented on here.

Pascal Boyer on the relation between religion and politics

The fact that religious groups are so involved in political intrigue and manage to find a political niche in most places with centralized authority is very familiar to all of us, so familiar indeed that we may forget that it is a special characteristic of such groups. For instance, castes of craftsmen also try to garner some political support and lend their weight to various political factions, but they are not usually as important as groups of religious scholars. This is not because the goods and services provided by craftsmen are less indispensable or important. In fact the reason may be exactly the opposite. Since the services of literate religious groups are dispensable, the religious schools that do not yield some measure of political leverage are very likely to end up as marginal sects, a process that has happened repeatedly in history.

This, according to the story offered by Pascal Boyer in chapter 8 of his book Religion Explained, is one of the reasons why religious castes or guilds very often try to gain maximal political influence (and why some of them are successful). Even though priests and other religious specialists "are not necessarily central to large-scale political organization [...] the ones that do not manage to garner some political leverage fall by the wayside".

Boyer emphasises the "elusive nature" of the services that organized groups of religious specialists provide, and that any such group always finds itself in a precarious position due to the constant competition with other such groups as well as with "local witch-doctors, healers, shamans, holy men, and knowledgeable elders [...] who can always claim that they too offer some interaction with supernatural agents or protection against misfortune." 

The difficult training and special knowledge make sense and can subsist only if there is some guarantee that people will actually need the special services. At the same time the services in question are very easily replaced, or so it would seem. Perceiving all this and reacting to it appropriately does not mean that you have expert knowledge of political economy. In all such groups, people have a precise though intuitive grasp of their group's position in the market. It does not require much sophistication to realize that your position as a priest or religious scholar is potentially threatened by the alternatives offered by shamans and local healers.

One obvious way to secure their precarious position in the market for religious services is to enter into an "unholy alliance" (my words, not Boyer's) with the political elite. But in order for the political elite to want to bestow special privileges (a monopoly in provision of religious services), they will of course demand something in return: namely, a divine sanction of political authority. It is "largely correct", Boyer writes, "to construe religion as the ally of the oppressors, as an institution that invariably supports centralized political power and offers supernatural justifications for the established order". But this is so, not because religion necessarily supports political authority, but rather because "many successful religious guilds were successful precisely because they adopted this strategy". This creates a selection pressure in favour of religious groups that are pro-authority.  

While centralized political power can be maintained without religion, and religion would exist without centralized political power, there is room for a mutually beneficial alliance between political and religious elites. But note that there need be no element of conspiracy involved. None of the parties (neither the religious leaders, the political leaders, nor the subjects of political power) need be aware of the underlying logic just described. Indeed, they might all wholeheartedly believe in the (dominant) religious doctrine in question. 

Boyer further argues that political and economic factors have not only shaped the way religious guilds organize themselves, but also deeply influenced the very heart of religious doctrine! He notes that it is commonly assumed that "doctrine comes first, and its implementation leads to particular economic and political behaviour". But this assumption is misguided, Boyer argues. Indeed, some crucial aspects of religious doctrine "make sense only if we understand what the market for religious services is like, what kind of commodity religious knowledge and ritual constitute." The standard view, often put forth by religious institutions themselves, is that there are institutions because there is a distinctive "faith" expressed as a doctrine. "To diffuse that unique doctrine and organize activities connected with it, a special organization was then founded, with the result that ritual is standardized." But, Boyer argues, "there is every reason to think that the evolution of religious institutions is more or less the opposite of this standard picture. Doctrines are the way they are because of the organization of religious institutions, not the other way around." Major changes in religion itself are thus consequences of the fact that religious specialists are associated in state-wide groups rather than recruited locally on the basis of personal qualities. The insistence on abstract gods rather than local "ancestors", and an emphasis on "a general and abstract notion of salvation conditioned by moral behavior" (as can be found in most written religious doctrines) are examples of such consequences. Also, "in order to offer a unique set of religious services and a stable one from one religious specialist to the next, a guild requires a description of what it offers." This can help explain why religious texts have become so important in major religions. 

However, when religious scholars attempt to create coherent religious doctrines, they often spawn "abstruse and paradoxical theology"; literate versions of the supernatural concepts that do not connect with any of the "supernatural templates" in our evolved human psychology, and that do not activate the right "inference systems" in our minds. The divorce from common human supernatural templates and inference systems (which are major components of Boyer's analysis of the psychology of religion) is one major reason why such scholarly theological systems are often either ignored or blithely distorted by most congregations. "However great the control religious guilds can obtain through political means and a large diffusion of their doctrines, there always seem to be some nonstandard beliefs and practices left 'sticking out'", Boyer notes. People always seem to add to or distort the official theological doctrine.

This process of addition, re-creation and modification of concepts is constant and in all likelihood destined to go on as long as there are organized groups of literate religious scholars. People may well resort to the services of various literate guilds and even identify themselves as followers of that guild, but this does not mean that their supernatural concepts are really organized by the messages delivered by these specialists. Actual religious concepts always seem to stick out, as it were, to distort the official message or to add all sorts of officially incorrect interpretations. This is in fact inevitable, because the official messages themselves must be understood by people; which means that they must produce inferences to make them coherent or relevant; which in turn implies that their mental constructions must complete, often in divergent ways, messages that are by nature fragmentary, in this as in other domains of cultural constructions.

Literate religious guilds "tend to downplay intuition, divination, personal inspiration, orally transmitted lore and 'essential' persons because all these naturally fall outside the guild's control". But various "imagistic" practices persist and challenge the stability of the official services:

Revelation, trance and other forms of enthusiastic ritual are all difficult to codify and control, which is why they are viewed by religious institutions with considerable suspicion. Also, such rituals offer great scope for enterprising individuals to set up their own particular cult in competition with the guild. Finally, the services of the guild are made stable and distinctive by the systematic use of written manuals and codified messages. But what makes the guild's brand recognizable - an intrinsically positive effect - also makes its rituals entirely predictable. This, then, is the real tragedy of the theologian: not just that people, because they have real minds rather than literal memories, will always be theologically incorrect, will always add to the message and distort it, but also that the only way to make the message immune to such adulteration renders it tedious, thereby fueling imagistic dissent and threatening the position of the theologian's guild.

It is interesting to speculate about how religion would change in the absence of political authority. We already see in the modern western world a rise in so-called "personal religion". Is this a direct result of the weakening of political control over the religious domain? Would religion change further if society became more libertarian? Would large-scale religious organizations (like the Catholic Church) be able to survive under a libertarian order? Would atheism win the day in a libertarian society, or would people return to worship local spirits, ancestors, etc.? 

The best of 2012!

It has been an incredible year. Here is a selection of the best books I have reviewed in 2012:

1. Richard Joyce: The Evolution of Morality

There are many books on the topic of the evolution of moral behaviour, but few of them consider the philosophical question of what morality is; its nature and status. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that most such books were written by evolutionary biologists or economists, not by moral philosophers. Richard Joyce's excellent book views the evolution of morality explicitly from a moral philosophical perspective. He considers whether there can be a "vindication" of morality on the foundation of evolution. A vindication of morality would amount to showing (or providing reasons for thinking) that some moral claims are true. Joyce concludes that attempts to vindicate morality in that sense all fail. He engages instead in what he calls an "evolutionary debunking of morality". Since we can explain why we have moral beliefs, and why we make moral judgements, without assuming that any such belief or judgment is true, there is no evidence for any moral truths. The upshot is moral scepticism. (Richard Garner makes a similar claim in a work-in-progress paper I commented on here.) 

My full review of The Evolution of Morality can be found here. 

2. Bryan Caplan: The Myth of the Rational Voter - Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

Bryan Caplan draws on results from economics, history, (evolutionary) psychology, philosophy, and political science, to show that voters in democratic elections chose bad policies. And contrary to common opinion, the voters generally get what they ask for (though not always; if they did, the situation would be even worse, not better!). Voters generally vote for what they perceive to be in the common good, but they are deeply deluded about which policies would bring about the desired outcome. This, as Caplan argues, is because voters suffer from systematically biased beliefs about economics. These "biases" probably have an innate basis, as Caplan acknowledges. Humans are naturally sceptical about foreigners despite overwhelming evidence that international trade and immigration benefits all. A large part of the explanation can be that we evolved in a zero-sum world with little or no possibilities for mutually beneficial trade. Despite the wishful thinking of what Caplan calls the "democratic fundamentalists", the problems of democracy cannot be "fixed" by more democracy. Indeed, what we need is less, not more, democracy.

Caplan provides a brief summary of the main thesis of the book in this article of the same name. There is also a podcast from EconTalk in which he speaks about the book. My full review of this book can be found here.

3. James L. Payne: A History of Force - Exploring the Worldwide Movement Against Habits of Coercion, Bloodshed, and Mayhem

The present book by James L. Payne came seven years earlier than Steven Pinker’s masterpiece on the same topic and puts forward the same general thesis: that there is a broad historical trend against physical force. Pinker quotes and refers to Payne's book on numerous occasions and rightly calls A History of Force an insightful book. While Pinker is a psychologist, Payne is a political scientist. As such their perspectives differ somewhat which makes the two books excellent companions to each other. Payne believes that war and taxation and ultimately government itself will eventually go the same way as slavery and dueling. He points out that force isn't the only way to get people to do the right thing and that force-based methods are very often counterproductive.

My full review of this book can be found here. 

4. Jason Brennan: The Ethics of Voting

In his book on "voting ethics", philosopher Jason Brennan attacks what he calls the "folk theory" of voting that everyone has a duty to vote, and that any "good faith" vote is morally acceptable. Even many philosophers and political theorists endorse some version of this folk theory. Brennan argues, to the contrary, that there is no moral duty to vote (except in extraordinary circumstances), but if one votes one does have a moral duty to vote well, otherwise one ought to abstain from voting. People who lack the right motive, knowledge, rationality, or ability to vote well should not vote. By voting "well" Brennan means to vote for what one justifiably believes to be in the common good. If one votes, one should vote on the basis of sound evidence for what is likely to promote the common good. One's reasons for voting the way one does should be epistemically justified. And it is not enough to be informed about the candidates' respective election promises. Much more important is to be reasonably well informed about the social-scientific evidence - from economics, sociology, and history, etc. - about how institutions and policies work. Good voters are "self-critical and use reliable methods of reasoning in forming their policy preferences. They actively engage contrary points of view and work hard to overcome their own biases". Sadly, most voters form policy preferences on the basis of what they find emotionally appealing.

The Ethics of Voting is a very welcome book that makes a perfect companion to Caplan's aforementioned book. It is a well argued and insightful book. The first chapter is available for free on the authors' website. My full review of the book can be found here.

5. David D. Friedman: Future Imperfect - Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World

David D. Friedman considers various possible futures in this invigorating book. He applies economic, legal, political, philosophical, historical, and evolutionary perspectives to a large class of possible future technologies and helps us to think rationally about how technological change will affect us and how we can change our lives and institutions to adapt to it. Friedman prudently avoids trying to be a prophet and his purpose is not to predict which future we will actually get (in anything but the broadest of outlines). What he does is rather to raise a substantial number of issues that anyone seriously interested in the future ought to contemplate and he draws attention to what is at stake in each debate. He wisely limits his discussion, with few exceptions, to the next thirty years or so: “Beyond that my crystal ball, badly blurred at best, becomes useless; the further future dissolves into mist.”

Like all of Friedman's books, Future Imperfect is available online for free on the author's website. My full review of this book can be found here.

Reclaiming Education

James Tooley is Professor of Education Policy at the University of Newcastle. In this interesting book, he makes a powerful case for reclaiming education from the state and giving it back to the private sector, to markets and civil society. Tooley argues for this, not from some narrow ideological perspective, nor on the basis of some controversial evaluative premises such as that choice is always valuable in itself, or that parents have the unconditional moral right to decide for their own children. Instead, he argues this from premises that ought to be acceptable even to his opponents. He claims to give his opponents what they say they want, but without relying on the government they mistakenly think is necessary to achieve it. Many supposed justifications for state intervention in education are carefully dissected here and found wanting; government is not needed, Tooley concludes, either in provision, funding, or regulation of education. Not everybody will be convinced by his argument, of course, but there certainly can be no valid excuse for not taking it seriously.

But Tooley also wants to reclaim education in a second sense: to reclaim it from what he calls “the tyranny of schooling”. We need to realize, he argues, that education is so much more than what is going on in schools. He asks the fundamental questions about what education is, what it is that we ultimately want from it as individuals and as a society, and he attempts to “probe behind surface policies and ask the philosophical questions about whether any of what we do now is morally justified and, if not, how we can put it right”. His case is heavily informed by recent and historical evidence from the developing as well as the developed world, which provides us with radical new ways of thinking about the way education is provided for in society.

It is almost universally agreed that present day systems of state education are not without their problems. Sadly, the solution is always presumed to be the same the world over: "What can the government do about it?" But why, asks Tooley, do we assume we need government here? “The private alternative”, he argues, can meet the local and global challenges facing education today and in the future. Markets in education, in combination with other agents of civil society, most notably the family and philanthropy, can satisfy educational demand, and it has done so historically (before the state got involved in education in the first place).

Tooley presents historical data from several countries indicating that “before the state got involved in compulsory schooling or even funding, we did have almost universal schooling provision – and that the progress was such that universal provision was just around the corner”. Data on literacy rates back this up. Tooley cites E.G. West, who once remarked that “when government [in England and Wales] made its debut in education in 1833 mainly in the role of subsidizer it was as if it jumped into the saddle of a horse that was already galloping”. And one can infer from the figures Tooley presents in the book, that there were similar jumps into saddles of galloping horses by other governments throughout the world. He further suggests that without government, private education would have continued to gallop, and thus that universal education could easily have been achieved without the state, if the state had not suppressed and supplanted the private educational opportunities that were prospering in its absence. The real motivation behind states getting involved in education was not to make sure that every child would be given an education, but (at least partly) to use schooling as an instrument of social control.   

As Tooley notes, equality and democracy are among the key concerns that lead people to want the state to intervene in education. Others are worried about social cohesion, or crime, or economic growth. "Without the government being involved in these areas, we are told, we will never achieve equality of opportunity or equity. Or we will never achieve real democracy. Or society will disintegrate. The main thrust of this book is to challenge these assumptions. It considers whether these ideals, sincerely held by many, can be satisfied by government, or whether they are aspirations better met outside the state." But as Tooley points out, no government has ever been able to achieve genuinely universal education, not to speak of equal education for all. Given their record to date, he finds the belief that governments could provide equity in education a “touching faith”. Compulsory state schooling simply doesn’t achieve the objectives it has set for itself, and reforms will not be enough to change this, it is a fundamental design flaw.

Reclaiming Education is divided into five “sessions” (instead of chapters) and each session is concluded with a “focus group” discussion taking place behind a Rawlsian “veil of ignorance”. It is an inspiring book, written by someone who obviously cares deeply about education at every level from the philosophical to the practical, and from the local to the global.