The Covid Inquiry is like a poem by Wordsworth. One wanders lonely as an aerosol for pages and pages, drearily marching through miles of marsh, and then one spies a lovely daffodil: a little phrase which offers some amusement or opportunity for reflection. I have noticed two of these already. Both were references to philosophers. You may recall that Vallance got into a tangle about whether Boris Johnson was reflecting on ‘Humeric’ or ‘Homeric’ logic in October 2020. Second, Johnson himself, in his witness statement, claimed that his thinking was what we might call ‘Millian’. Interestingly, both David Hume and John Stuart Mill were of Scottish ancestry and both had names – originally Home and Milne – that had been anglicised for the sake of English pronunciation.
My third finding is another philosopher, but this time without a name adjusted for the English and without any Scottish origins, except in so far as, on this occasion, it was a Scottish lawyer who mentioned Hegel.
On December 13th Claire Mitchell KC spoke in a public hearing on behalf of the Scottish Covid Bereaved. Lady Hallett must have been bored, though gratified, since she could spend the entire day listening to lawyers repeat the standard line over and over again. (There was a pandemic: the people suffered, the Government did not suffer; there were necessary rules: the people obeyed them, the Government did not obey them.) However, this Scottish KC came armed with something a bit unusual. First of all, she used the word harmatia in a sentence. I have never come across that word outside of theology. It is the Greek word for ‘sin’ in the New Testament. A bit further on she used another Greek word, hubris, admittedly a bit less impressive than hamartia, but still fairly recondite: the word for the sin of pride, often contrasted with nemesis. Not content with two remarkable h-words, she went for a third. And this was where Hegel came in.
The transcript has the following:
Post facto suggestions that Hegelian decision-making was employed is laughable in the face of the evidence of the most senior civil servants in this country.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, so went to check the film of the public hearing to make sure she had actually said ’Hegelian’ and not another word (say ‘Hibernian’ or ‘Arcadian’) rendered incomprehensible by a Scottish accent. Well she did say it, though the stenographers botched it a bit. At 1:02:32 in the video on Youtube, one can find her saying, “Post facto suggestions that a Hegelian method of decision making was employed is laughable in the face of the evidence of the most senior s-servants in this country.” The typists were not infallible. But they got the word ‘Hegelian’ right. Of course Mitchell is not infallible either. Not only did she run aground on the sibilance of ‘senior civil servants’ but also forgot the ex of ‘ex post facto’.
Now, I rather like Hegel. In my office I have about 15 volumes of his original writings – the Logic, the Encylopaedia, the Philosophy of History, the History of Philosophy, the Lectures on Religion, the Aesthetics, etc. – all bound in the same shade of blue. But I have no idea what ‘Hegelian decision-making’ is. And, as usual when someone in this inquiry mentions something philosophical, there is no explanation. Hume, Mill and Hegel enter like strange phantoms and leave without having brought anything to proceedings except the brief hope that something profound might have been said: followed by the depressing realisation that nothing profound will ever be said.
I googled ‘Hegelian decision-making’ and found only one website had ever mentioned it, except the one featuring the public hearing. That website features an incomprehensible commentary by Dr. Price from the University of Houston. It sheds no light on what Hegelian decision-making is, or, in Mitchell’s version, “a Hegelian method of decision-making”. We know that Descartes had a method, but Hegel only had a logic.
This logic is dialectical. Hegel scholars hate it when anyone mentions the ‘logic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis’: though this is because Hegel scholars dislike seeing their hero simplified. And the simplification is useful. (Like simplifying Shakespeare by saying ‘ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum’). Hegel suggested that at every stage of thought one finds that anything one posits can be complicated or divided or added to by another element, some sort of opposite or contrary, which in turn requires that some sort of further understanding be made – whether in the form of reconciliation, or advancement or even the simple introduction of something else not yet mentioned. Hegel’s Logic is marvellous: it is like a myriad of wheels within wheels, like a thousand penny farthings of different sizes chained together in a Heath Robinson construction coming clatteringly down the cobbled road of reason. Formally, it is philosophy in the form of a waltz: ONE, two, three; ONE, two, three… But it is more hectic than Tchaikovsky or Johann Strauss. It is Carmina Burana or the Ride of the Valkyries transposed into thought.
Lord knows how the Scottish KC could extract a method of decision-making out of this. Perhaps she supposed that in government, 1. a Prime Minister sagely offers a thesis, whereupon 2. SAGE sagely offers a counter-thesis, after which 3. Dominic Cummings, Michal Gove and Simon Case, with the help of Nicola Sturgeon, who is not to be excluded from the logic, formulate a policy.
It does not sound like Hegel to me.
Hegel in the 1820s called America “the land of the future”: so perhaps ‘Hegelian decision-making’ means: ‘Let’s wait to see what the Americans do, and then do that.’ But Mitchell says that the Government did not engage in Hegelian decision-making. So what could she mean? I am fairly sure she means nothing at all. But it could, I suppose, mean decision making in relation to every possible relevant concern. And if so, it would mean relating one’s decision not to this or that supposed crisis, but to everything that has ever happened in the history of the world.
So perhaps she is right. For what we know is that the Government did not relate its decision to everything that ever happened in the history of the world. They didn’t even relate it to every matter of contemporary relevance in March 2020. The Government responded with panic and uncertainty.
It is odd, however, that Mitchell complains about a lack of Hegelian decision-making when it is obvious that her idea of a good decision is simply one which responds with panic and out of uncertainty but also with absolute puritanical consistency and totalitarian thoroughness. She complains that the decisions the Government involved itself in took the form of “Potemkin meetings”, with “breezy optimism” in the background and “a disgusting orgy of narcissism” in the foreground. This is grand Calvinist denunciation. But as far as I can see, such pretence, optimism and narcissism are at least signs of some limited humanity on the part of our rulers. But I do not expect the inquiry to understand this.
In fact, I do not expect much of the inquiry. But it is pleasant to see the occasional mention of words which come out of a great civilisational past, even if it is not clear that our lawyers know how to use these words.
Hume, Mill and Hegel would all have thought that this episode was a sorry one.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Hegel – a quackademic who thirsted for power. Utterly devoid of any real skills. Arcanaa and materialist phase theory, blah blah blah. Waste of time.
Plus ca change.
The Rona fascism was populated with Hegelian clowns. Idiots with fake models, psychobabbling communists, quacks who pretended to be ‘the science’, Gollum eyed Whitty, a quackadmic clown preaching the history of science at uni, without a family or children selected as the Ubergruepen Fuehrer for ‘Medicine’.
Enough already with the love of Hegel and the ugly assortment of academic twits.
Get rid of them.
Unplug your brain from the matrix and live in reality and see the world for what it is.
Stop worshipping pretty happy dude quacks.
Off topic, I note the disgraced Aviva boss Amanda Blanc, pilloried for her racism and sexism in her relentless pursuit of anti-racism and anti-sexism has been awarded a damehood for her efforts. “Trebles all round!”
A reminder to the plebs:
It’s DAME Amanda Blanc and SIR John Edmunds.
Suck it up Scum!
Granted by a white guy.
Perhaps she deliberately used a term that no-one understood, on the grounds that it probably sounds good, and clever. Betting on the probability that most would keep quiet about their possible lack of knowledge. Now, where have you spotted that technique recently?
Indeed, I think you may be right. When people do this I am always reminded of this wonderful opening passage from the charming novel H M Pulham Esq., by J P Marquand:
“Ever since Bo-jo Brown and I had gone to one of those country day schools for little boys, Bo-jo had possessed what are known as “qualities of leadership”; that is to say, he had what it takes to be the Head Boy of the School. Thus when we went on to St. Swithin’s it was almost inevitable that Bo-jo should end up in his last year as Head Warden, whose duty it was to administer the rough-and-ready justice of that period. They say that they don’t paddle recalcitrant boys as hard as they used to in our day, but then perhaps the younger generation doesn’t turn out such strong boys as Bo-jo.
I heard him make some such remark himself on one of those numerous occasions when our college football team was not doing as well as one might have hoped.
“The trouble with kids now is,” Bo-jo said, “they suffer from moral and mental hebetude.”
Of course he knew perfectly well that none of us knew what “hebetude” meant—Bo-jo always had some trick like that up his sleeve.
“My God,” Bo-jo said, “don’t you know what ‘hebetude’ means? You took English, didn’t you? If you don’t know, look it up in the dictionary.”
It was safe to assume that Bo-jo hadn’t known what “hebetude” meant either, until he had read it somewhere a night or two before; but Bo-jo always had a way of using everything, because he had the qualities of leadership. That was why he became one of the marshals of the Class at Harvard and why he married one of the Paisley girls—and of course he didn’t have to worry much after that. He naturally became the president of the Paisley Mills in time.”
They made a film of it too, which is well worth watching. Hedy Lamarr never looked lovelier.
Thanks for that tof.
“hebetude”
the state of being dull or lethargic.
“after convalescence I would probably fall back into hebetude”
I had to look this one up.
Not to be confused with hebephile!
Yeah me too when I first read the book. In the book, Bo-jo Brown is a bit of a prick, but I think his comment sadly applies right here and now (present company excepted).
There is a point in court proceedings when it is necessary for someone to puncture the balloon of pomposity on display.
Thomas Grant’s History of Court No.1, The Old Bailey tells us that the renowned barrister Marshall Hall was defending a case at the Old Bailey in the early 1900’s when the judge interrupted proceedings to say to Hall, “Is you client (an Irish labourer) not familiar with the maxim res ipsa loquitor?”
“My lord, on the remote hillside of County Donegal where my client comes from, they talk of little else,” was his famous reply.
I’m not familiar with Hegel, so I rather liked ChatGPT’s take on this.
User: Tell me about Hegel’s dialectical process, as if speaking to a child.
ChatGPT: Sure, let’s imagine a story about how ideas can change and grow just like plants do.
Imagine you have a special plant called the “Idea Plant.” This plant starts as a small seed, which we’ll call the “Thesis.” The Thesis is like an idea you have, maybe something you think or believe.
Now, this seed gets planted in the ground and starts to grow. As it grows, it encounters something new, something different from itself. This new thing is called the “Antithesis.” It’s like when your idea meets another idea that’s opposite or different from what you originally thought.
When the Thesis (the first idea) and the Antithesis (the new, different idea) meet, they start to wrestle with each other, just like plants might compete for sunlight and water. They each try to show why they are right and the other one is wrong.
But instead of just staying in a fight, something interesting happens. They begin to mix and interact, and from this struggle, a new thing grows: the “Synthesis.” This is like a new idea that combines parts of both the original ideas. It’s not exactly the same as the first idea or the opposite one—it’s something new that comes from both.
Then, this new Synthesis becomes the new starting point, or the new Thesis. And the whole process starts over again. It grows and meets another Antithesis, and they wrestle and mix to create another Synthesis. And this keeps going on and on, like a cycle of ideas growing and changing, just like plants do in nature.
So, the dialectical process is like a garden where ideas grow, change, and create new ideas by clashing with each other. It’s a way of understanding how ideas evolve and become more complex over time.
ChatGPT seems to have a handle on Hegel, but to be all at sea on botany.
She also used a singular verb for a plural subject!
She may, alternatively, have been following the same scheme that I tried once, when writing an English essay at school, by writing out “Three Blind Mice” (the children’s poem), in full and verbatim, in the middle of my essay.
As I expected the full essay was marked (B+, I think), but without any sign that the poem had ever been noticed by the teacher.
I think I can sum up, for the benefit of lawyers, philosophers and politicians everywhere.
If you are talking boll*cks, eventually your lies will bite you on the ar$e.
It is quite clear that of all the professions, maybe only engineers are fit to run the place. In their world, a successful project does what it is supposed to do, and it is visible to all that it works, so ability to waffle around an abject failure and talk it up as a success is alien to their nature. Plus they learn from mistakes.
Meanwhile, the lawyers lie and pontificate while people die, the politicians will say whatever they think is best for their career, and the medics have been shown to be callous murderers. What a world has been created by these charlatans, devoid of truth, integrity and honour.
A class post.
“I think I can sum up, for the benefit of lawyers, philosophers and politicians everywhere.
If you are talking boll*cks, eventually your lies will bite you on the ar$e.”
A perfect and eloquent summary.
Typo in first ‘hamartia above (you’ve spelt it harmatia, which sounds like it could be a sin!).
Re what it means, maybe chasing events? Acting on events rather than prevention, i.e. not the logic side but the ‘real philosophy’ side of Hegel’s system.
‘hamartia’
a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine.
“there’s supposed to be an action that reveals the protagonist’s hamartia”
I think the KC has got it backwards.
If you accept that Hegelian dialectics derives from the Trinitarian philosophy of Joachim of Fiore, then it’s arguable that our government did follow Hegelian decision making, as I’ll explain.
The Age of the Father corresponds to the pre-Covid epoch, where we believed in a benign paternalistic government.
The Age of the Son corresponds to the Covid pandemic and its aftermath, following the crucifixion of Boris.
The Age of the Holy Spirit is the contemplative utopia yet to come, which the government envisaged we’d be headed for once we’d all died of Covid.
Hegelian decision making? Very straightforward. Cracked it: Many business sectors have witnessed multiple attempts to define the competence of leaders and none more so within healthcare. Contemporary evidence suggests that the focus remains on upskilling of leaders rather than developing residual knowledge within existing organisational structures or systems. To allow a divergent perspective on this dilemma, this discussion will draw upon a non-contemporary analytical tradition of logic from Hegel (1770-1831) and to a lesser extent, Kant (1724-1808) as an intuitive lens for interpretation. In doing so, we consider a unique praxis of what some may call an alternative ‘Hegelian’ approach to common business issues by rejecting the dialectic monism of traditional analytical techniques often associated with connexions of knowledge transfer regimes. Taking this position, we of course reject Russell’s (1872-1970) rather intimidating dismissal of metaphysical idealism and draw from Hegel’s complex but sophisticated analytical approach to inferentialism. This permits the discussion to move away from the more traditional (dogmatic) opines of representationalism frequently adopted in contemporary literature. In doing so, we examine inferentialism not as a contextual solipsism, but as a humanistic link to value and discernment as verifiable knowledge in business context. We conclude by aligning these facets together as a singular frame of reference to allow the development of new ideas around decision-making protocols. Thus, link the dynamics of Hegel’s evaluative reasoning to problems associated with leadership in a contemporary business environment.
You what now? The BS is strong in this one….
Perhaps she meant the decision-making was not in any way influenced, modified, directed, by reality and evidence from observation.
Or that the actual decision-making was not taking place in Government but outside the UK, where there are lots, and lots of cogs and wheels working the global machine.
The author could always ask her what she meant. No response would be interesting in itself.
“…with the help of Nicola Sturgeon, who is not to be excluded from the logic”
What? Nicola Sturgeon excludes herself from any logic.
Have you asked her?