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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:01.201)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Ryan Holston, the professor and holder of the Jonathan Myrick Daniels 61 Chair of Academic Excellence at Virginia Military Institute. And we're here today to talk about his book, Tradition and the Deliberative Turn. Dr. Holston, wonderful to have you on today.
Ryan Holston (00:23.046)
Thanks so much for having me, PJ. This is great.
PJ (00:26.097)
So tell me why this book, what led you to it and why do you think, why should people read it?
Ryan Holston (00:34.15)
Yeah, thanks. Great question. Great one to start out with. I guess, you know, the book is, in a sense, about two big topics, and I probably am interested more in one than the other. You know, deliberative democracy is this kind of big movement in political philosophy or political theory over the last three plus decades.
And so those two themes, deliberation and democracy, kind of come together in this literature. And I guess you could say that I'm more interested in the deliberation part of things. But I think that contemporary democratic theory has kind of taken a wrong turn, if you will. And so anyway, that's sort of...
I guess on a scholarly level, where my interests lie. But, you know, on a more just sort of contemporary level, I think deliberation in, at least in this country, is kind of in a bad place right now. I think that we don't really, and this kind of connects with some things we were saying before we went on the air, but we don't really hear one another. We do a lot of talking.
But things like ideology, things like emotion, there's all sorts of things that kind of get in the way of that listening that is so important. And so I just thought that studying this with a philosopher, Hans -Dorff Gottemir, who I thought was looking at things a little bit differently than a lot of people in the
contemporary scholarly literature we're doing, that he would be a good person to turn to for some insight. So that's just kind of the big picture overview, I guess, of what got me interested in the subject.
PJ (02:44.529)
Is that where the tradition comes in from your use of Godamer?
Ryan Holston (02:49.894)
Yeah. And you know, it's interesting. I get this question quite a bit about, you know, in what sense do you mean tradition? And it has a lot of uses and a lot of meanings for a lot of people. So that's probably a great thing to get out of the way right up front. I look at that word as kind of a more concise way to articulate, yes.
PJ (03:00.753)
It's on my list, yeah.
Ryan Holston (03:18.438)
something that I get from Gottemer. You'll notice what I use in the book in the kind of long form, the long form sort of way of saying that is small scale communities that exist over time. And I guess you could say that I'm trying to get at two things there. One is the scale on which I'm talking about tradition. So I'm not talking about,
anything like the American tradition, right? And I'm not talking about a, a literary tradition or anything like that. I'm talking about something that, looks more like a community of people living together with, shared practices. If that makes sense. And then, and then the other thing that I'm trying to get at is the overtime part. because if you know, I guess.
maybe have any sort of familiarity with contemporary political theory. There's a lot of talk, especially this emerges in the 1990s, a lot of talk about sort of communitarianism. Sometimes it's referred to as neo -Aristotelianism. And what I think Gadamer gets at, maybe a little bit better than some of those guys, which I have a ton of affinity for and think that they're up to some really good things. But what I think Gadamer maybe gets a little bit...
better or more right than they do is the historical nature of community. So the fact that communities don't just emerge out of nowhere, right, but they have a history and it's usually more than one generation that it takes to develop a community. So anyway, so that's kind of my long answer to what do I mean by tradition, I guess, in this context? I'm not saying that all tradition is...
always helpful for deliberation, but I do think that deliberation needs that meaning of tradition, the small scale communities and those that exist over time. In order to be, I guess, you might say sound or genuine or legitimate, and I try and sort of qualify deliberation and the successful deliberation in those ways in the book, I think we can talk.
Ryan Holston (05:46.566)
and we can be technically deliberating. But again, I don't think we always hear one another. And so that's what I mean by successful deliberation or genuine or authentic deliberation. When people really hear one another, are listening to one another, and on the same page, you sort of know it when you're in one of those conversations that it's going on. And it's not the talking past one another.
that I think a lot of us have experienced, I don't know, in the last few decades, at least of my life.
PJ (06:23.577)
A lot of my own work in Gadamer, I think this is why I was drawn to him.
Ryan Holston (06:27.398)
Thank you.
PJ (06:33.105)
has this idea of listening as you were talking there. Sorry, there was a knock or something and it threw me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, apologies. Yeah, no, no, you're good. You're good. I was expecting someone to come in. So my bad resetting. OK. So.
Ryan Holston (06:44.166)
Was that on my end? I apologize, yeah. Okay.
Ryan Holston (06:55.014)
I'm gonna go.
PJ (07:00.497)
As we talk about kind of your use of Gadamer, you talk about his critique of the Enlightenment, and you talk about this turn from Hobbes to Rousseau. What is this turn that you see from Hobbes to Rousseau, and why is that important in your work?
Ryan Holston (07:18.182)
Yeah. Okay. So, this is kind of how I frame things in the beginning, which is a sort of big picture, 30 ,000 foot view, if you will, of what's going on with the deliberative Democrats over the last, I don't know, probably since the mid 20th century. Let's date it back to that. Largely the democratic theory,
is concerned over that period with arguing about what's good about democracy, to put it kind of bluntly. And by the mid 20th century, the consensus view seems to be a largely utilitarian one. And so it's indebted to, I think originally speaking, Thomas Hobbes, of course, a lot of other people, a lot of other scholars figure into that.
But originally, I think it goes back to Thomas Hobbes, and the idea is that democracy is a good thing because it allows us to aggregate our preferences in a maximal kind of way. It successfully kind of aggregates everyone's interests in a way that treats them all equally, and they do so through various mechanisms in democratic societies. The franchise, of course, is the most obvious.
but also interest groups do this and the ability to express your interests freely, you know, vis -a -vis your fellow citizens, the government and so on. And then by the time you get into the late 19, excuse me, late 20th century, late being the last couple decades of the 20th century, these thinkers start to come along and they start to say,
Hey, wait a minute. There's something that's not really satisfying about that from the viewpoint of democracy. It's not true to the spirit of democracy, so to speak. And what they mean by that is if all we do is kind of vote our preferences, right, about whatever, and then cross our fingers that my interests,
Ryan Holston (09:44.902)
outweigh yours, and then I get my, I'm a winner, you're a loser, so to speak. There's something, you know, there's a sense in which we're not really, you know, we're not really treating one another as in our full democratic capacity, right? We've sort of, I've almost sort of used you as a means to an end, right?
And I think that Rousseau is really the thinker who kind of provides inspiration for this because what they say is, if on the other hand, I have to justify myself to you, I have to try and persuade you of my position, then in some sense, I'm trying to get you on board as kind of a co -author or a co -legislator of the policies that I want to see enacted, right?
And of course Rousseau famously in the social contract, he says, you know, being a co -author, a co -legislator of a will that is shared with others, a general will, is what it means to be a true citizen in the fullest sense, right? And so I think ultimately that's what they're trying to advocate for, is that kind of
mutual appeal in a shared rule, a shared polity in which I treat you as an equal, you treat me as an equal, we try and persuade one another. And of course, a consensus isn't guaranteed when you do that, but they say that it's the process of justification that is treating one another as the equals that full citizenship requires.
Now that's kind of the turn, so to speak, from Hobbes to Rousseau. And by the 1990s, you see these guys, John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas, right, they're representing the Anglo -analytic tradition and the continental philosophical tradition. And they're sort of converging on similar ideas of this. So they've got sort of different philosophical orientations.
Ryan Holston (12:10.95)
But they're kind of, you know, with, there's subtle variations in what they think is required of a good deliberation, but they're kind of coming together and they're saying deliberation and more of it and widespread deliberation is ultimately the, you know, the sine qua non, the essential component of what it means to have a really robust democratic polity.
And again, this is kind of where I come in and say, well, deliberation is a good thing, and that's all well and good. But I think that the way that they're articulating this fails to appreciate some of the hard work that needs to be done beforehand, before we ever get into a public forum.
and do this thing called deliberation. And one of the big oversights, I think, is that I mentioned in the book, is that of scale and that of the communities that are essential prerequisites for deliberating well. They can't be the kind of macro liberal democratic hundreds of millions of people coming together.
and there are no sort of prerequisites for what it means to deliberate with your fellow citizen. I think that's where they sort of, they start to look a little bit idealistic in their views of deliberation. They don't see those preconditions as being as important as I do. And that's where I think, you know, Goddard can be helpful.
PJ (13:55.825)
the idea of rehabilitating prejudice, which is always, that always gets people's hackles up. As we talk about these preconditions, and we're looking at this, these small scale communities that you're referring to, does this include the idea of habitus?
Ryan Holston (14:03.174)
Yeah.
Ryan Holston (14:16.038)
You broke up on me a little bit there, PJ. I'm sorry, but can you say that again?
You still there?
PJ (14:24.113)
Yes, yes, sir. So habitus. When we talk about Pierre Bordeaux, the logic of practice, I've been reading in Charles Taylor, who is kind of in similar veins to Goddomer, and he references Pierre Bordeaux, these ideas kind of between individual habits and culture. You have those kind of passed down habits that kind of
help us identify in a community. Is that kind of the range that we're talking about? Like, what's the size of these communities? So it's a little bit of a double question, but I think I'm trying to locate, and I think I understand, but I want to understand what scale communities are we talking about here that are kind of the preconditions.
Ryan Holston (15:14.438)
Yeah. I mean, I'll be honest. I don't give an exact delineation in the book. I don't say, well, you know, it's 5 ,000 people. It's an ancient Greek polis, right? And so, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and so one of the things that I say in the book, and I hope you don't think that this is a cheap way out of answering the question, but one of the things that I say in the book is,
PJ (15:25.765)
I wasn't looking for an exact number to be fair. Yeah
Ryan Holston (15:44.71)
If you want to think of small, or if you want to think of the scale on which conversely the deliberative Democrats are talking, don't think of it as an either or, which I think would pin me down or pin someone down to giving a number or something like that. And then beyond a state, let's say, right? Beyond tens of millions of people you no longer have small. I would rather think of it as a continuum. And so with Gadamer,
you know, what's, what's key is the degree to which I think our practices inform our language. And as you sort of move further along that scale, you're going to see an increasing attenuation of shared meanings. Right. As you move increasingly along that continuum from, you know, the smallest of communities, which, you know, if you're talking about a small town or something like that.
in which everybody's known everybody for generations, right? And we all know what each other are talking about when we talk about what it means to whatever, be free or have a sense of courage or faith or whatever. And then you could go all the way to the other end of the scale to the nation state, the modern nation state, which renders completely thin.
and abstract those shared meanings. And I think that's where we are to a large extent today. And so what I'm arguing for in the book, I don't say exactly what it means to return to small scale. But actually, one thing I do say is I'm not talking about kind of restoring the Greek polis or anti -federalist America or anything like that.
But sort of pushing the needle back, so to speak, in the other direction. And so I'm not advocating for some sort of counter -utopia to what I think is kind of the utopian individualistic view of modern liberal democratic theory. But I do think that there's kind of the sense out there that as we become radically more autonomous as individuals, radically more free,
Ryan Holston (18:11.622)
that nothing is lost, if that makes sense. And I wouldn't even deny necessarily that the gains in freedom that we've made are good things. I think they can be wonderful things. But the problem is that there's no recognition that there is a cost in terms of shared meanings. There's a cost in terms of...
disciplines or a kind of habits of self -restraint and the exercise of civility and the ability to reign in our egoistic selves so that that process of listening can take place. And so no number, but you know, it's a...
It's kind of an effort to say that we're on a continuum here and we should be more cognizant of those choices. If you get into the literature on deliberative democracy, what a lot of these folks will tell you is that we are completely, I apologize for the banging in the background, that's the construction I was mentioning before. But what a lot of the deliberative Democrats will tell you is that we are completely beyond community.
PJ (19:23.313)
All good. No, you're good.
Ryan Holston (19:34.118)
In other words, the modern world is one in which community in the old sense does not happen anymore because we have sort of awoken into enlightenment. Jurgen Habermas says this in particular. He talks about he has this sort of historical understanding of modernity. When modern society begins, we can no longer.
sort of view our inherited values the same way we're in a kind of post metaphysical society. And I find that to be an attempt to kind of preempt the negotiation of those two values I was pointing to a minute ago, right? The autonomous individual and the thick embedded communities in which shared meanings
are helpful to true understanding and truly, truly persuading and reasoning and deliberating with one another. And so, you know, if we kind of just embrace this atomized view of society, and we say that, well, this is modernity, there's no going back, we can do nothing but be autonomous individuals, not really part of any thick,
or shared sense of virtue. Ironically, I think that takes away one of the freedoms that I think is key to being, well, just to being a human being, right? I mean, deciding whether we want to be in community with one another is, I think, an important part of what the formation of that collective consciousness should look like.
And so, yeah, freedom, autonomy, they can be very good things. Attenuating the thick bonds of a shared community, that can be good at times. But I think that in terms of deliberation, something gets lost. The more you venture in that direction as a society and the less that you prioritize, you know, small scale community. And, you know, if you want to put sort of...
Ryan Holston (21:58.662)
you know, heuristics in there. You could think of the small town. You could think of, you know, the region. These kinds of levels of aggregation, I think, would be certainly more conducive than the nation state or even the state in the US.
PJ (22:17.873)
As you're talking here about the continuum, some of these preconditions that you're mentioning, shared meaning, civility, you can see how it's not just a matter of the size of the community, but it's the community over time that matters too. So for instance, lived in Orlando for a couple of years, now live outside Orlando. And
Ryan Holston (22:23.814)
Yeah.
PJ (22:45.457)
Orlando is a very fluid place. I was part of a small men's group and I think there were eight guys and two of them had lived there. One had lived there since he was five and another had lived there since he was five. The rest of us had been there in the last five years.
Ryan Holston (23:02.15)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
PJ (23:03.633)
And so even though we were tight knit and it was small scale, shared meaning was not the same as what you're talking about, like generations in the same town.
Ryan Holston (23:16.518)
That's right. That's right. And even in situations like that, and I think Gautam would be sympathetic to what I'm about to say, even in situations like that, shared meaning isn't lost entirely. Right. I mean, he says this, right. He says there's never the impossibility of going on, of having a kind of translation between horizons of understanding. But it takes a heck of a lot more work.
when you're with people who don't share those roots. It is like translating between languages. I mean, I think that metaphor that he uses is a really apt one for understanding, understanding and how that shared meaning, how it develops and unfolds between people.
PJ (23:45.649)
Yes.
Ryan Holston (24:10.118)
Yeah, and so, and I'm not saying that we should never try to understand anyone outside of our own community. And I think that's vital at times, and that's important for any sort of governance, right? But I think there's a sense in which, you know, these, I think there's a sense in which deliberation doesn't owe anything.
to that earlier acculturative process and that we can kind of benefit from the fruits of those communities without ever having to cultivate them in the first place.
PJ (24:50.609)
I remember Britain in America, and I think this was post -World War II. I can't remember exactly, but some diplomatic talks kept going off the rails and had nothing to do with the actual negotiations. It was because they were speaking the same language and saying the same words, but meaning different things. There were several examples. Literally, they were just losing their tempers with each other. One example I remember is the Americans would say, let's table that.
Ryan Holston (25:11.686)
Yeah.
PJ (25:20.305)
And that meant to take it off the table and talk about it later. And in, and the British, it may, it meant to put it, to put it up on the agenda. And so, like, and I think that's when we talk about continuum, the point, obviously with eight guys, you're going to be able to figure out shared meaning, but it's going to take more work. And a big part of what Goddomer takes from someone like Heidegger is that we are mortal and that we can only,
Ryan Holston (25:23.494)
Right.
Ryan Holston (25:29.318)
Hehehe
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
PJ (25:50.257)
spend so much time trying to understand each other. And so we save, like I think you mentioned earlier, you're talking about we can take a lot of value from our pre -existing communities because we have the already shared knowledge. And of course we can go beyond our community, but that takes work. And so we can skip a lot of work, which we have to, because you can't reconstruct everything from the ground up every time.
In two ways, one is with shared meaning, the other one is with civility. And I think of that like we have meaning that is something that the... So for instance, you can have a bigger community that's been more stable for a long time. That's going to have shared meaning in a way that a smaller community that has been for a shorter time will have maybe similar. So it's across time and across scale, but it's not just...
Ryan Holston (26:20.102)
That's right.
PJ (26:48.209)
Meaning it's also manners and I want to touch on this because you've talked about civility and how important that is in deliberation and how we don't have that and what I What you've been talking about sparked in me this idea that When you can't agree on manners Because that's something that happens along in the community. What's so for instance coming from New England living in the south We interrupt each other in my family. That's what we do
Ryan Holston (26:50.886)
Yes.
Ryan Holston (27:06.022)
Yes.
PJ (27:16.657)
And it's because you're so excited with the other person saying, and it's incredibly rude down here. It's something I have to curb all the time. My grandfather actually asked my mom one time if my dad was hard of hearing because he kept interrupting. And they were both being polite, right? But what happens is, yes, you're right. There's both. Yes. Well, and that's where so who is the judge, right? That's something that gets worked out over time.
Ryan Holston (27:20.294)
Yes.
Ryan Holston (27:24.422)
Ha ha ha.
Ryan Holston (27:32.11)
you
Yeah, right, right. Or thought they were, right.
PJ (27:45.617)
or among a certain amount of people. But what I'm seeing in our culture, and I think this is kind of even what you were saying, and I just want to make sure we're on the same track, maybe shared meaning here, is that when you don't have shared manners, generally what happens is the most assertive person wins. And that's definitely what the internet feels like to me right now. It's like...
Ryan Holston (28:14.502)
Yes. I... No, no, no, no, no. Go ahead and finish your thought, please.
PJ (28:15.473)
Like the person - go ahead, go ahead.
PJ (28:20.369)
I think I was kind of petering off. That was the main thrust.
Ryan Holston (28:23.558)
No, no, no. I think you're spot on. I think you're spot on. And what that calls to mind is the discussions. There's a student of Gottemers, P. Christopher Smith, who has written a fantastic book on his thinking, in which he talks a lot about the liberation. In fact, I drew heavily on his work for the book.
But he focuses in particular on Gadamer's discussion of the Platonic dialogues and the ways in which these people have not been civilized in the necessary manner, the sophists have not been civilized in the necessary manner for deliberation. If you look at those figures, if you look at them as not just...
voices that are saying things, right? Voices that are articulating ideas, but actual characters, actual people with histories and tempers, right? Thrasymachus in the Republic famously, right? Can't sit still. He leaps at them like a wild beast and he interrupts the dialogue and he says, Socrates, there you go again, right? And he can't hold back. He's not civilized.
and Calicles in the Gorgias. These kinds of people haven't been habituated into a community. And what Smith says about this is, look, it's not a coincidence that these people are itinerants, that these people are kind of free -floating and they have no community. They're not really part of Athens. They come in and they're not really invested.
in the dialogue or understanding what justice is. And so what does their behavior look like? It's self -assertive. It's exactly what you just described. And it's exactly the situation that we find ourselves in today, especially with social media, right? We are a bunch of free -floating social atoms. And what is it that we, with these people who aren't even part of our community, what is it that we all...
Ryan Holston (30:41.734)
ultimately resort to so much at the time is just self -assertion. We don't know how to have our egoistic selves reigned in or disciplined in the necessary manner in which you find it in a properly ordered community that I think Socrates was trying to, he was trying to really model that in the Platonic dialogue.
He's trying to model what good deliberation looks like. And yeah, so I agree with your point completely that this is kind of what we're left with. And this is kind of what sparked my interest in the book is that we're no longer, not only are we no longer benefiting from that, we're less and less from that. But...
My problem with deliberative democracy as a theory is they no longer even value it. They no longer even value the process of civilizing someone in a community as a necessary prerequisite for good or sound deliberation. So that's kind of what I'm trying to correct in the book is seeing this at least as normatively important. There's only so much I can change with one book. But...
PJ (32:08.209)
Yeah.
Ryan Holston (32:09.798)
Right? But at least maybe trying to get our understanding of this as a normative priority straight is worth, I think, worth doing and worth talking about. And so that's kind of what I'm up to. So I think, but what you were just reminded of, I mean, for me, you're preaching to the converted. Absolutely.
PJ (32:29.969)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, as you're talking about this question earlier about the denial of community, and it's been a hot minute since I've looked, I didn't read too deep into it, but I remember reading a little bit about Habermas critiquing Gottemoer. And I could see traces of that going on here, because I think that the general thing I came with was that Habermas thought Gottemoer was naive, right?
Ryan Holston (32:48.454)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
PJ (32:59.153)
that and so yeah yeah it's different yes yeah yeah yeah as we talk about and this might go to where gottamer struggles with habermas you talk about the denial of community and how that affects the question of what it means to be human
Ryan Holston (33:00.87)
Yeah, they both think the other is naive. That's a two -way street, but yes.
PJ (33:20.389)
Am I right in, as I listen to that understanding that it really affects humanity in two different ways or our view of humanity. One is the question of what is our purpose? Is part of our purpose to become part of a community? Like, is that a good? And the other one is a slightly different question, but also really important and I think would strike right at the heart of this discussion of deliberative democracy. And that's, are human beings
capable of functioning outside of that kind of community.
Ryan Holston (33:59.494)
Yeah, wow, great questions. So the first, I think the first is much easier than the second. It's not easy, but the second's really hard.
PJ (34:07.481)
Yeah, take your time. Yeah, I know, like obviously that was just like a simple question, right? Like, no, like, I, sorry, it's just the way.
Ryan Holston (34:15.622)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a wonderful, they're wonderful questions. I mean, but the first I think, I'm gonna answer for myself. I always hate answering for Gottemo. I don't know necessarily, you know what I mean? And I say this in the book, that I'm only using his thinking, I'm appropriating his insights for my own sort of thinking through these problems. And I don't want to ever speak for him. But what I...
PJ (34:26.513)
That's fair. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
PJ (34:41.105)
Well, that's all you can do, right? Like, I mean, that's a very Goddomer position. Yeah, right, right.
Ryan Holston (34:45.062)
Yeah, yeah, right. That's right. That's right. And I think so that that distance, that daylight between my views and his is kind of essential there. But I do think that there are trade -offs is the way to think of it. And this kind of goes back to what we were saying before that is community, I think you said, is there something essential about living in community?
is the way you put it. And I think that there are certain aspects of human flourishing, is the way I would put it, that one would be hard pressed to find anywhere beyond a community. And I think shared meaning, and this is what my book is about, and shared meaning is one of them, is one of the key, is one of the big ones. And so, does that mean that we all,
you know, need to get back to some smaller scale way of living. Not an absolute sense, but there is a sense in which those goods or those elements of human flourishing that depend on community will be increasingly attenuated as we get further and further away from that. Could, and the second part of your question was, could we ever live beyond it or something to that effect? Was that your?
PJ (36:10.001)
So there was the purpose question and the good, right? And the other question was the capacity. And so for instance, as we're talking about like kind of this formation of the self, this idea that, you know, you have this itinerant wild beast kind of person who shows up in the platonic dialogues. And I think we're all familiar with online. Yeah.
Ryan Holston (36:33.894)
Yeah, right.
PJ (36:36.337)
And this question of education and manners that if we aren't part of these kind of communities, do we even have the capacity to function in deliberation? And so like those are two, both of those are like, what does it mean to be human? And one of them is like, I don't think we can function as this democratic human without these kinds of formation. Does that make sense?
Ryan Holston (36:57.99)
I see. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I mean, I think you're kind of pressing me in that kind of pessimistic implication of what I'm saying. But I mean, it's hard to resist. How long can we go on like this? I mean, to put it kind of, you know, state it flatly like that, right? I mean, how much longer can we go on like this without those resources of civility?
PJ (37:07.473)
You
Ryan Holston (37:26.054)
And I think the last five, 10 years have shown things getting worse, increasingly worse. I don't see a whole lot of signs or reasons for things to get better on the horizon. And what would have to happen is, I think, a conscious and very intentional...
attempt to resurrect these resources. Kind of recognize, you know, it's kind of like the decision that people make, I talk to my students about this all the time, the decision that people make to get off of social media. It's a very kind of trite, small scale example, but it's kind of like there are things that we can do that are within our power, not to just sort of go with the flow of modernity and the way in which things have been getting worse and worse. If...
to follow up on what you were saying, the wild beast of the social atom out there on the internet is what's sort of this culmination of everything that's wrong with our social relationships today. We don't have to be a part of that, right? I mean, we can be more present. We can live with the people around us instead of.
constantly tuning in on our phones all the time and feeling the need to be seen out there by these anonymous others. Yeah, so that's just one small scale, but there are other very, I think, you know, self -conscious ways of cultivating, you know, local community. It doesn't all have to do with the internet. That's certainly a good target for such reforms, but, you know, but I think...
You know, one of the ways in which I think local communities are increasingly bolstered is the homeschool movement has been fantastic in this way. And I think that there's a kind of anonymity of, you know, the large public school system in which, you know, everyone is just sort of there to learn the basics of going out and one day getting an education, getting a job and earning more money.
Ryan Holston (39:52.102)
These movements are more focused, often more focused on educating for virtue, educating for character, educating the whole person. And that kind of, I don't think that's a coincidence that that doesn't exist on a large scale. And so, you know, and so there are lots of little things that people do to restore their communities and to...
PJ (40:11.057)
Mmm.
Ryan Holston (40:19.846)
and to cultivate the relationships that they're a part of. But I think, you know, that's, it's not an easy solution. It's not electing the right candidate who's going to save America. It's not a policy that's gonna make everything better. And it's not something that maybe we're even gonna see in our lifetime, but I think it is the long, hard work of building a civilization. I think that's...
you know, that's the realistic answer and it doesn't, it might not be all that inspiring to people who want, you know, the sort of, you know, the answer right here and now. I talk to my students about this kind of thing all the time and, you know, they want, they want the fix. They want the quick fix. But I don't think that exists.
PJ (41:10.801)
One, when I asked it, I didn't think of it as pessimistic. In fact, in a lot of ways, what you're talking about with your critique of the deliberative turn is that it's a problem not to have this be a normative ideal. And so if we can make civility a normative ideal again, like these preconditions normative ideals that lead into deliberation, excuse me, let me say that correctly. I just realized that. I just, yeah.
Ryan Holston (41:16.262)
Good. Okay.
Ryan Holston (41:35.906)
Yes. You're right. Yeah.
PJ (41:40.401)
I skipped right over the critique there. Got a little ahead of myself. So this idea, and I think of a couple different things. I had Mark Rochaun, Dr. Mark Rochaun from Notre Dame to talk about why liberal education and why liberal arts education. And he talked about all too often, and the reason I thought this is the example you gave.
Ryan Holston (41:59.27)
Gotcha.
PJ (42:06.897)
people go to college and he has seen this swing in the midst of his academic career. It used to be the number one thing was essentially to become a better human. And now it's to make more money after college. And he said, the problem with that is that making money is, we have created an end that's just another means to an end without giving people, and I've seen this with so many business owners, they make a lot of money and then they don't know what to do with themselves. It's a very common thing.
Ryan Holston (42:18.086)
Yes.
Ryan Holston (42:36.038)
Yeah.
PJ (42:36.529)
I mean, other than, well, some fall apart and then some of them just kind of languish and kind of like, well, I guess I retire early and then I just play, you know, I go on cruises and it's like, is this really what we're made for? The other one, and I think we talked about this individual formation and I just saw this in a podcast where a man was talking about end of life care.
Ryan Holston (42:52.87)
Yeah.
PJ (43:05.009)
And I thought about it from like the the homeschooling side of things. I have five kids my own. I homeschool. So yeah, so I was like, there you go. I know. Right. Right. I know. Yeah. And a lot of it has to do with this kind of character based thing. And I'm still working through this. I don't know how I feel about this. But it struck me because you talked about they're making money to go out and they.
Ryan Holston (43:05.094)
Mm.
Ryan Holston (43:11.174)
okay. Speaking of preaching to the converted, yeah.
PJ (43:30.257)
take care of themselves. That's kind of the goal with this kind of college, this educational approach. And his response was, everybody's concern with end of life care is that they don't want to be a burden to their family. And he said, I think that's wrong. I think we should be a burden to our family because it gives them a chance to be part, like that's what means to be family. And...
Ryan Holston (43:54.598)
That's interesting, yeah.
PJ (43:55.409)
Yeah, and I think he's framing up polemically. Like, I don't think it's like I'm gonna sabotage my bank account, right? But the idea that by saying I don't want to be a burden, what we're really doing is we're severing the obligations between family. And it's part of that autonomous move, that move towards autonomy that is kind of ripping these things apart.
Ryan Holston (44:02.406)
Right. Right.
PJ (44:24.337)
I feel like that's what I had to say. I don't think it's really a question and I probably am doing a bad job as a host. I'm connecting. I'm just trying to figure this out.
Ryan Holston (44:32.518)
Not at all. No, that's a really interesting insight. I mean, it's part of this larger framework of what it means to be a human and what it means to...
Ryan Holston (44:53.542)
What it means to be a part of a society, I'm kind of thinking of the way you originally put your question. To be beyond community, Aristotle says, is either to be a beast or a god. Right? This is a famous line from Aristotle. And so I think in some sense, you know, we're not quite there. But when we talk about, again, the Thracymachean,
wild beast of kind of social media today. Aren't we kind of starting to go down that road? Aren't we kind of starting to see what a human being severed of all ties, severed of all discipline, completely uncivilized would look like? It's kind of striking that we thought all that would be necessary and all that would be good about the internet would be communication.
And there was never a kind of concern for what would be communicated. There was never a concern for the relationships that would be, well, I mean, they have to either be built, cultivated, or destroyed, or I suppose ignored. But there's never really an understanding of what the effects of this.
new set of technologies would be on the human beings that are interacting on them. It's just that all, you know, the flow of information is always good and that it's faster and that there's more access to everything. And so it must be an unqualified good. But I think that, you know, this is kind of the, you know, the forgetfulness of being is the way, well, the way Heidegger would put it, right? And Gadamer gets this from Heidegger.
But it's this idea that we completely forget that there are human beings on the other side of this screen. There's just a free flow of information and it goes from one screen to the other. But there's never really a concern for what happens to the person who's reading and interpreting it and how the words change them and how they might respond in turn to those words. So I think what you said makes a lot of sense.
PJ (47:23.953)
As we're kind of, one, I want to be respectful of your time.
As we talk about kind of this formation, I feel like there's this trap that we can fall into. And I love that line from Aristotle, he said, to we either are going to be beyond, to be beyond communities, to be a beast or a God. As we talk about this incredible influx of information, I felt this enlightenment trap early on. I grew up in a very kind of like modernist background, and I was told I'd need to be all these things to be a good citizen.
And the list of things that you need to understand in order to like exist as this autonomous individual is kind of insane, right? When you look at the Cartesian project and you're like, Hey, you need to build everything up from absolutely certain principles for everything. It's like, that's it. It is a God like project. And so most people give up and they end up being, being beasts. That's, I don't know. I, that was an interesting, I, does that track with kind of.
what you're saying there? Is that a fair thing to pull out?
Ryan Holston (48:35.238)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. One of the things I say in the last chapter, the Enlightenment project has kind of two dimensions to it, two tendencies within it. One is atomization, right, and the other is kind of a wholism, right. And I think we sort of go from one extreme to the other of wanting to be all -encompassing.
like the sort of the community without limits of the delimit of Democrats. The other is this kind of Hobbesian every person, every human being for his or herself. And I think that that's kind of the twin trap of modernity. But I think both, and I say this in the last chapter, both ultimately are individualistic at their core.
they don't have a proper understanding of human beings' relationships to one another. And so that's why I think that these, well, I mean, in the biggest sense, that's why I go back to Aristotle. That's why I go back to, you know, a person like Ottomer who draws heavily on Aristotle, is because it's kind of rediscovering the social roots of human order and proper relationship to each other. And the book, again, the book does it.
in the context of deliberation. But in my thinking, my research, it's not just limited to that. That's just this project. But I do think that a return to Aristotle, or the Aristotelian roots of understanding human nature is something that's desperately needed in this kind of modern autonomous society in which we're living, this atomized society in which we're living.
PJ (50:30.545)
When we talked earlier, we talked about meaning, we talked about civility. Are there other preconditions that people need in order to engage in this kind of deliberative democracy? And are any of them especially linked to community?
Ryan Holston (50:49.414)
That's a really interesting question. I don't talk about it in the book, really. I sort of focus on those two as first and foremost.
Ryan Holston (51:01.766)
And that's probably, I don't really have too much to say about that for now. I'm sorry, but I'll have to think through your prodding on that a little bit more. But I don't have anything else on the top of my mind related to that.
PJ (51:05.745)
Yeah, no worries. No worries.
PJ (51:18.993)
Yeah, well, I mean, that's shared meaning, which is in a lot of ways education and civility are like great places to start like valuing. Like, I think that's more than like, more than enough for our society to focus on. I think if we got those two and really focus on them, that'd probably be good. So I don't think you like left off anything important. Yeah.
Ryan Holston (51:26.822)
Yeah.
Ryan Holston (51:35.672)
I mean, I guess it depends on whether you're restricting. I guess, was your question focused specifically on deliberation? Because if deliberation is kind of the focus, then I mean, I think those would be kind of some key foundations that, again, you know, I'm kind of at a loss to go too much further. But,
But of course, you can go far beyond that for things like educating, well, as you said before, educating the person, right? In a whole list of virtues that are useful, far beyond just deliberating with others, but just living a good life. But anyway, that's about it.
PJ (52:24.881)
Yeah. Is it so maybe I should have asked instead of a deliberative democracy, just democracy in general, because there is the kind of that constraint. And that's part of what you're critiquing is that constraint. Is that fair?
Ryan Holston (52:36.706)
Yeah. I'm sorry, say that again. Is what fair?
PJ (52:41.937)
It would have been a better question to ask what would be good preconditions for democracy rather than just deliberative democracy. Because it's too constraining and that's part of your critique.
Ryan Holston (52:52.07)
I see, yeah, yeah.
So, I mean, that whole catalog of virtues, I mean, what that's really speaking to is the kind of restrained personality or a knowledge of limits that I think we've lost sight of. I mean, I'm sort of going beyond the book here, but I think we've lost sight of as a society, yeah, whether democratic or any other form, I think is essential for any good society is an understanding of...
limits, but certainly to democracy. The Greeks, incidentally, were certainly wary of democracy for this reason. They thought that it had the potential to kind of do away with the limits on the appetite that in many respects, I think we're kind of proving them to be right. But I think that insofar as our education has become increasingly utilitarian,
PJ (53:45.969)
Ha ha ha.
Ryan Holston (53:53.766)
we have lost sight of the teaching of those virtues. And so, you know, the democratic society that we are inheritors of, I think was for a long, long time, at least, I don't know if cognizant of is the right word, but at least benefiting from the teaching of those kinds of virtues. I don't know if, I don't know to what degree that was,
you know, as self -conscious as I'm kind of making it. But I think that in many respects, democracy has kind of lost sight of other ways in which this is going to harm the polity, right? The voraciousness of the modern appetite and the constant need for more, and more is always better, and the satisfaction of desire.
can't be in any way detrimental to the well -being of the polity. So yeah, the teaching of the virtues could instill the proper self -restraint that I think any democracy is ultimately going to need in the long run, or any society is going to need in the long run. And our utilitarian system of education has certainly lost sight of that.
PJ (55:18.029)
Thank you. It was a very gracious response. I'm digging for things beyond the book because I am that optimist. I want to know what the solutions are, right? I know they're not easy solutions. No one looks at the acquiring of virtue and goes, that's easy. At least not anyone who's tried it. So you've been very patient. Thank you. Before we wrap up here,
Ryan Holston (55:30.35)
Yes.
Ryan Holston (55:36.774)
Yeah.
PJ (55:46.897)
If you could leave one thing for our listeners to kind of chew on, to meditate on throughout the week, what would you leave for them kind of as a final thought?
Ryan Holston (55:59.878)
Mm.
I would say, you know, kind of touching on some of the bigger questions that we've been talking about over the last hour or so, insofar as you have those choices in your life between more freedom, more autonomy, and thicker, more meaningful relationships, what do you think is missing?
Are you missing freedom? Are you missing autonomy? Are you missing self -determination? Or are you missing the deep connection with other human beings that comes out of thicker community? That would be something that I think most people would profit from, myself included. I don't want you to think I'm up on a soapbox or preaching too much. But that was kind of one of the big, I think, upshots.
of our conversation. And that's something that I sort of reflect on in the last chapter of the book is that continuum between self -determination and thick communities and how we kind of negotiate the balance in between them. What would you want to choose? What would you want to increase if your place in the world were being reflected on for just a moment?
PJ (57:25.169)
Incredible answer. Dr. Holston, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a real joy.
Ryan Holston (57:32.646)
Thanks, PJ. Thanks for a great discussion. I appreciate it.