Jul 21, 2009
THE SADISM OF “NUDGE”
Warning: nerdy political theory post coming up.
Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, co-authors of Nudge, one the most important political books of last year, have a special fondness for Odysseus. They particularly like the bit where he confronts the Sirens, because this seems to them to be the perfect example of a “nudge”. Odysseus ties himself to the mast so that he doesn’t have to rely on willpower alone. In just the same way, they argue, we can tweak our physical environment to ensure that our good selves overcome our greedy, irrational selves, the parts of us which cannot resist temptation.
This is an influential meme. It turns up on websites like selfgrowth.com, where Dr. Alex Benzer (author of The Tao of Dating for Women, among other books) has christened it The Odysseus Protocol (sample quote: “Now Odysseus is one crafty dude”). It features in academic and political debates about libertarian paternalism, the philosophy underlying Sunstein and Thaler’s work.
I’ve always found something slightly suspicious about both the idea, but it was not until I began to read Raymond Geuss’s collection of essays Outside Ethics
the “archetype of the bourgeois individual” … Odysseus gains knowledge, control over nature (and aesthetic satisfaction) by virtue of self-repression, being bound to the mast, and by virtue of reducing his sailors to the status of (temporarily) mutilated slaves, who must row with stopped ears.
This relates to Adorno’s view (developed, like the above, with Max Horkheimer in The Dialectic of Enlightenment) that Enlightenment ethics, in particular those of Immanuel Kant, are essentially sadistic. (Anyone who’s read Vernon God Little will be, like me, reading “Immanuel Kant” as “Manual Cunt”). The fully rational universe that Kant describes, above all its emphasis on “duty“, can only be explained by an enjoyment of pain - that, or an enjoyment of pain being inflicted.
The widespread acceptance of The Odysseus Protocol would also seem to support a disturbing further thought. As Geuss puts it:
…the real world which we inhabit is already the world of de Sade - of universal sadism directed at self and others and of sadism’s mirror image, masochism - if just a little bit less fully and systematically organised, a bit less “rational”, than [de Sade's great work] The 120 Days of Sodom.
Perhaps you find this a bit far-fetched. Consider, in this light, the words of our friend Dr. Benzer:
he made sure his crew wouldn’t be tempted by plugging their ears, and he made sure he didn’t do anything silly by getting himself tied up nice and tight.
Less Marquis de Sade, more Oooh matron! Even so…
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.rowlandmanthorpe.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Delicious]](http://www.rowlandmanthorpe.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-delicious.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Digg]](http://www.rowlandmanthorpe.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-digg.png){kind=icon}
I’m glad to see that fancy continental theory is tightening its hold on you (pretending to look beyond the dirty bits in de Sade is always a giveaway!), but I’m not sure you’re right about this.
Nudge may be sadistic, but it’s certainly not Sadean.
De Sade rejects any sort of social convention, authority, or morality in favour of a radical individualism which can only be asserted/realised through increasingly extreme and ultimately self destructive, sensation….
Whereas Nudge is essentially a tool for a technocratic elite to achieve the behavioural ends they believe desirable by manipulating people’s cognitive biases.
That idea that there is a right way to live and that people can be led to conform to it is exactly what de Sade reacts so violently against.
Or to put it another way, liberal paternalism may not be liberal but it’s certainly paternalist and if there’s one thing you could not accuse the divine marquis of……
Geuss says, paraphrasing Adorno and Horkheimer:
de Sade’s universe is the systematically developed and organised model of the kind of abstract, fully self-consistent willing Kant saw as definitive of morality
Obviously I haven’t read any de Sade. I’m not that effete. But if Geuss is right (and he invariably is) then I see a clear connection between nudging and sadism in the sense of Sadean.
The connection to “Nudge” is perhaps not so straightforward, because it’s a book aimed directly at policymakers and politicians, so its rhetoric is technocratic and managerial. But although libertarian paternalism is often presented in this form, I think it’s evident from the way Sunstein and Thayler talk that we should all be taking a paternalistic position towards ourselves.
That’s why there isn’t that much difference between these two philosophers and the (rather absurd) Dr. Benzer.
Interestingly, (to me, at any rate), the similarity between all three is shown in their mutual adoption of crude Enlightenment attitudes towards the self. Like Kant, Thayler and Sustein support an image of the human soul necessarily split between sensuous inclination and rational duty. Their attempts to resolve the inevitable conflict that ensues, Geuss suggests, is both sadistic and Sadean.
How does that sound to you? Or have Adorno and Horkheimer given de Sade a little twist for their own effect?
Sadly have read quite a lot of de Sade…. One of the problems here is that he’s a far better pornographer than he is a philosopher (and he’s not that good a pornographer) so he tends to get massively overrated. Enthusiasm for him is used as a badge of worldliness by a certain type of European intellectual, but luckily I am immune from such affectations (ahem).
Having said that I still don’t quite buy the Adorno line. The pairing of Kant and de Sade is not unique – Lacan also writes about it in the Ecrits – and as I understand it the argument goes something like this.
•Kant and de Sade both start from an enlightenment prioritising of self and rationality
•Kant believes that from these starting points we can construct a universal, cosmopolitan ethics
•However the attempt to live this ethic involves a coercion (of self and others) and a repression of sensual pleasure which equates to a form of Sadean violence against ourselves
But I think this is to misunderstand the nature of Sadean violence.
I agree with Geuss that ‘de Sade’s universe is a systematically developed and organised model of the kind of abstract, fully self-consistent willing’ but de Sade departs from Kant in as far as he sees rationality as leading not to a categorical imperative but to an absolute individualism. All that matters in Sade’s universe is the self. This self is threatened by any form of society or moral system that inhibits its absolute autonomy. This autonomy must therefore be asserted through the deliberate inversion of any received moral wisdom; the pursuit of sensation, and the degradation/destruction of others.
Of course the tragedy of Sadean man is that the pursuit of autonomy leads eventually to the effacement of individuality in sexual jouissance, the anonymous threshing limbs of the orgy or the literal ingestion of the other’s body (shit eating is a recurrent theme).
Or to use one paragraph instead of five: liberal paternalism is about looking after ourselves and others, Sadism is about abusing ourselves and others.
Having said that it’s a while since I read any Sade and I always skipped through the philosophy.
Honest Jon, you’re the kind of upstanding bloke who takes everyone at face value:
de Sade departs from Kant in as far as he sees rationality as leading not to a categorical imperative but to an absolute individualism.
I think Geuss, Adorno, Lacan et al would say that is exactly where Kant is leading. He just didn’t know it.
They would argue that de Sade is effectively satirising Kant. Although I get the impression he didn’t mean to.
A sensible person might say that there are a few too many subconscious attributions in that line of reasoning. I, however, left sensible behind a long time ago.
Hey Rowland, thanks for pointing me towards your thought-provoking post.
I’m not sure I understand everything you wrote, and am even less sure that I can contribute anything to the well-read debate that you and HonestJon had!
The design work around Nudge and “persuasive technology” I’m involved with is pretty pragmatic really. It seems clear to me some of the ways in which I and others behave (to bring the discussion down to gritty levels; energy consumption, diet etc.) are unsustainable in the long run - so on some issues I do think there is a “right way to live”. Also, I don’t think there is a moral difference between a government that attempts to change behaviour through laws and taxes and one that tries to change behaviour by altering the immediate environment in which I live, or the products and services that I use.
I do think that there are potential problems with policymakers using such “techniques” by stealth, which is one of things I’m keen for the work we do to argue against.
Have you read the discussion between Daniel Klein and Sunstein in this paper by the way? Not really related, but I enjoyed Klein’s criticisms: http://www.aier.org/archive/doc_download/3685-ejw-200408
Hi Rowland,
I have to say I didn’t think Adorno’s critique of Enlightenment was really about repressing bodily desires. In a catchphrase it’s about the ‘belly turned mind.’ This is the idea that we are animals that want to control nature and other people in order to sate our desires. Rationality is supposed to transform this urge but ends up repeating it in a ‘dialectical reversal’. So Kant’s moral agent starts to look like a cold, controlling rationaliser of all the material plethora of human emotions: he reduces human richness to fit a narrow concept of rationality (the image here is perhaps of Procrustes fitting people to his bed by stretching or chopping - it’s pretty violent).
So what Adorno is interested in is a world where we don’t reduce other people to simple rationalisations but engage with them most fully and sensitively so that all their individuality can come to the fore (so that engaging with others is a bit like learning to look at paintings really sensitively, a quite sensuous skill). He also seems to think that if we stop thinking in terms of Enlightenment rationality (if we get rid of our attachment to ‘idenitity thinking’ in his jargon), then our more benevolent animal natures will come out, but he is very slippery on saying anything positive about this (like naming the virtues).
Given that nudges accept the fundamental sensuous nature of our reasoning, and given that they try to put emotion and reason back together again, I don’t see this as sadistic (or masochistic). Unless one sees any repression of desire as masochism. But then that would be to say that all desire should be indulged, and that seems to me like the egoism of a child who hasn’t learnt to think of others yet.
Thanks for the comment and hope you’re well.
All best, Matt
There’s good info here. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog. Keep up the good work mate!
I’m Out!