Professor of Philosophy Stephen Angle specializes in Chinese philosophy and Confucianism in particular. He recently read “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” which discusses “libertarian paternalism,” a new philosophy with some interesting connections to Confucianism.
Marty Langer: What books are you currently reading?
Stephen Angle: The one that immediately came to mind is a book called Nudge, which is quite fun and interesting. The subtitle is, “Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.” It’s a book that’s co-written by an economist and a legal scholar; the economist is Richard Thaler, and the legal scholar’s name is Cass Sunstein. It’s about what they call “libertarian paternalism,” which sounds like an oxymoron, right? Paternalism [is] knowing what’s better for somebody than they know themselves, and therefore sort of making them do it, the way a father does, whereas libertarianism is understanding that everybody is free to do whatever they want, and protecting those rights. What Thaler and Sunstein are talking about here are the ways in which, even if we don’t recognize it, situations in our lives are set up to encourage us to make one choice rather than another choice.
Their opening example is about the design of a high school cafeteria. Some friend of theirs who was in charge of high school cafeterias noticed and then told them that you can dramatically affect the choices that high school students will make; in terms of what they’re going to eat, based on whether when they first walk in, right at eye level there’s dessert or when they first walk in right at eye level there’s fruit. Part of the point of this is that there’s no such thing as a neutral design; situations are designed either on purpose or by accident, but they have effects on the choices that we make. And it’s far more pervasive than just cafeterias: there are sections of this book that talk about health care plans, different sorts of financial benefit plans, school choice, marriage, lotteries, organ donations…[and] so on.
ML: Is this something you’re interested in with your own research?
SA: It is, because one of the things that I’m involved in these days is thinking about what sort of relevance Confucian philosophy might have today, and as you know, Confucians have ideas about what a good life is; they’re not libertarians at all. They have some ideas about what kinds of personality traits or virtues we ought to be cultivating, but at the same time they’re no fans of coercing people to do things. What’s interesting to me is that [libertarian paternalism] is not coercive—you have a choice.
ML: Do you find this to be an appealing idea or something sneaky?
SA: It’s a good question…I [do] think that it could be used in a bad way. There’s no question that marketing people are aware of the many sorts of ways of nudging people, and marketing people use these to nudge us towards buying their products. In that kind of context you could say, “well, they don’t have my best interest at heart”—maybe you think that’s sneaky. And maybe we don’t have confidence that governments—or for that matter cafeteria designers—really know what’s good for us. But since one of the premises is, “there is no neutral choice,” then we have no choice but to take this stuff seriously.
If the way you design a benefit plan is that people have to opt in in order to take advantage of the benefit, you’re making a choice. It doesn’t have to be that way: it could be designed so that they have to opt out, and unsurprisingly those will have different effects on what people do overall. So one of the things that Thaler and Sunstein argue for is a lot more opt-out plans, where you come up with a relatively good plan that’s going to work for most people. Their argument is, let’s set it up in the way that’s going to benefit people and then give people the choice.
Thaler and Sunstein are both professors at the University of Chicago, but Sunstein is currently on leave from the University—as of a month or two ago—because he has accepted a position in the Obama administration, where he’s actually having a role putting some of these ideas in effect.
ML: How did you hear about the book?
SA: I guess I heard about it because I was giving a lecture last fall at the philosophy department at Rutgers University, and somebody said, “What do you think about the idea of ‘libertarian paternalism?” and I said, “What are you talking about?” So I went and got the book.
ML: Have you read any other books recently that you’d recommend?
SA: So, yeah, I’m always reading things. One of my other interests is contemporary issues about human rights and democracy, particularly as they relate to China but also in general. I just read a book called “Islam and the Challenge of Democracy.” It’s a short book, also by a legal scholar—a guy named Khaled Abou El Fadl. It’s a relatively short essay, about 40 pages, and then there’re a whole series of responses by different people from different perspectives. I think that it is a terrific argument and it’s a really interesting window into ways that people can think about democracy and also human rights issues from within the Islamic tradition. The strong message of this book, which I also wholeheartedly endorse, is that the Islamic tradition does not stipulate one way in which believing Muslims today can think about democracy. It’s a diverse and complicated, internally contested tradition, and it offers a framework within which to think. There are a lot of different directions in which one can go, and Abou El Fadl develops, I think, a really powerful argument within such a framework for why Muslims really ought to, have to—he thinks—endorse Democracy.
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