Implicit in the contrasts between classical utilitarianism and justice as fairness is a difference in the underlying conceptions of society. In the one we think of a well-ordered society as a scheme of cooperation for reciprocal advantage regulated by principles which persons would choose in an initial situation that is fair, in the other as the efficient administration of social resources to maximize the satisfaction of the system of desire constructed by the impartial spectator from the many individual systems of desires accepted as a given.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971
DK834X_book.fm Page 448 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
449
Chapter 20
Modernity,
Administrative Evil,
and the Contribution of Eric Voegelin
Gerson Moreno-Riaủo
CONENTS
The Meaning of Modernity ... 450 The “Modern” Organization... 453 The Contribution of Eric Voegelin... 456 Summary and Conclusion ... 460 Notes ... 463
“‘Modernity,’” so writes N. J. Rengger, “is a concept that does not have a fixed, easily delineated meaning or provenance.”1 The number of scholarly works treating the subject of modernity substantiates the valid- ity of Rengger’s claim. Just what does it mean to be modern? And, for the purpose of this chapter, what does it mean when we attach the term
“modern” to social concepts such as “administration” or “organization”?
DK834X_book.fm Page 449 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
450 Handbook of Organization Theory and Management
That such things as the “modern organization” or “modern administra- tion” exist is not to be doubted. But what does the usage of “modern”
convey in these instances? Does it denote a historical, sociocultural context? A differentiation of operational mechanisms? A set of moral characteristics?
In providing an answer to the question of “modernity” as it relates to administration and organization, I will herein advance the claim that modern organizations have a propensity toward administrative evil of the sort perpetrated on so many innocent human beings in the 20th century and decried by scholars in the field of administrative ethics.2 I am thus suggesting that administrative evil is not a historical oddity or outlier that occurs once or twice a century. Rather, I am suggesting that administrative evil can be a more common occurrence than we would like to think and has the possibility to be perpetrated at any given time by any organization, public or private.3 To accomplish this goal, I have divided this chapter into three sections. The first focuses on conceptualizing “modernity” itself.
Rengger, for example, primarily considers modernity as a mood “which is amorphous, protean and shifting but which nevertheless asserts a powerful influence on the ways in which we think, act and experience.”4 I, too, will treat “modernity” as a mood but seek to structure its fluidity so as to give it a recognizable shape. This, in turn, leads to an analysis of what is meant by the term “modern” organization. In this section, attention will be given to the distinguishing characteristics of such organi- zation type as well as its reflection of the modern ethos presented in the first part of the chapter. I conclude my investigation with a brief but poignant overview of the important 20th-century philosopher Eric Voegelin, whose philosophy of consciousness and unique reading of modernity offer an important contribution to an understanding of the moral impli- cations and dangers of modern organizations.
The Meaning of Modernity
As mentioned earlier, the literature on the subject of “modernity” is vast.
But it is possible, in spite of the apparent ethereal and amorphous character of “modernity,” to distinguish it from other similar qualifiers (e.g., pre- modern, postmodern) by considering its view of the world or the mech- anisms by which it arrives at its world explanation.5 From its inception, there are three aspects that have characterized the modern mood, namely, scientific rationality, technology, and mastery.6 In spite of the varied perspectives on modernity, there is a wide consensus characterizing modernity as embracing and advancing a commitment to scientific ratio- nality. As Toulmin writes,
DK834X_book.fm Page 450 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
Modernity, Administrative Evil, and Eric Voegelin 451
Despite all the ambiguities surrounding the idea of Modernity, and the varied dates that different people give for its origin, the confusions and disagreements hide and underlying consen- sus. Throughout the current controversy — whether about the modern and the post-modern in art and architecture, the virtues of modern science, or the defects of modern technology — the arguments rest on shared assumptions about rationality. All parties to the debate agree that the self-styled “new philoso- phers” of the 17th century were responsible for new ways of thinking about nature and society. They committed the modern world to thinking about nature in a new and “scientific” way, and to use more “rational” methods to deal with the problems of human life and society.7
Modernity, as Connolly reminds us, distinguishes itself from other historical and “less rational” and “less scientific” eras and perspectives by establishing as legitimate a particular understanding inter alia of rationality and human reason.8 The structure of modern rationality and of a modern conceptualization of human reason assumes a set of presuppositions that are important for our discussion.9 Primarily, modern scientific rationality is prejudiced against any authoritative sources of knowledge that are local or culturally based. Scientific rationality emphasizes universal and general criterions of truth that are graspable by any capable human mind. Implicit in this claim is the modern assumption that human reason is a cognitive faculty that is found in every human being, a faculty that is “self-sufficient”
and “autonomous.” Furthermore, modern rationality is to be “detached”
from its objects of study. It is to be a “procedural” and “rule-following logic.” It assumes that “uniquely rational procedures exist for handling the intellectual and practical problems of any field of study.”10
Scientific Rationality is intimately related to the advent of technology or the “technological imagination” in the modern era.11 Here the focus is not actual technological production or materials. Rather, it is the attitude that life is a technological problem to be solved, an illness that can be cured by rational guidance and instrumentation. The technological imag- ination of modernity emphasizes a problem-solving attitude as the essence of knowledge, science, and reason. It operates on the basis of efficiency, utility, and means-ends rationality. It expresses a deep and abiding faith in progress or the continual eradication of life-problems through the acquisition of knowledge (i.e., technical know-how). Such a perspective is indifferent, at best, and hostile, at worst, to culture, tradition, and questions of existential meaning. The technological imagination makes no distinction between human beings and the rest of nature. All that exists are objects to be manipulated and engineered. As Connolly writes,
DK834X_book.fm Page 451 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
452 Handbook of Organization Theory and Management
In modernity the insistence upon taking charge of the world comes into its own. Nature becomes a set of laws susceptible to human knowledge, a deposit of resources for potential use or a set of vistas for aesthetic appreciation. While each of these orientations jostles with the others for priority, they all tend to place nature at the disposal of humanity. Human and non- human nature become material to work on.12
An understanding of the mood of modernity would not be complete without its final element: mastery. It is a natural by-product and result of the workings of scientific rationality and the technological imagination.
The modern drive to control, to master has been given voice by many, including one of the “fathers” of modernity, Niccolò Machiavelli.13 It has also been given ample and sympathetic treatment by the American phi- losopher John Dewey.14 But one can find perhaps its clearest expression in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche.15 Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power suggests that the entire framework of the natural, social, and moral disciplines, along with sociopolitical arrangements, are creations of human beings to master not only existence but others as well. While human beings convince themselves that their endeavors are motivated by the disinterested pursuit of truth, Nietzsche suggests that the opposite is true, namely, that all of our pursuits are based on a pure self-interest of self- aggrandizement realized through the mastery of our environment. This, so Nietzsche claims, should not cause alarm but should be welcomed by the “high spirits” of the earth, for it is through mastery that human beings (at least a particular type of human being) can realize their mission of grandeur. Thus all the tools at our disposal — philosophy, politics, social institutions — are means by which our will to power can be exercised in a dialectical process where we create the gods before whom we are willing to bow.
What does this drive for mastery, then, mean for human beings and their world? It signifies the enslavement of modern persons to a con- tinual remaking and reframing of the world, to an unending and anxiety- ridden creative and re-creative act in which human beings continually refashion themselves and their societies. This is the essence of modern progress. And buried deep within this seemingly noblesse notion of progress is the necessity to manipulate and control other human beings.
As Connolly argues,
[In modernity] the world loses its earlier property as a text upon which the will of God is inscribed and through which humans can come to a more profound understanding of their proper place in the order of things. But, ironically, in a world governed
DK834X_book.fm Page 452 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
Modernity, Administrative Evil, and Eric Voegelin 453
by the drive for mastery, any absence of control is experienced as unfreedom and imposition: the experiences of alienation, estrangement, expression, authoritarianism, depression, under- development, intolerance, powerlessness and discrimination thereby become extended and intensified in modern life. The drive to mastery intensifies the subordination of many, and recurrent encounters with the limits to mastery make even masters feel constrained and confined. These experiences in turn accelerate drives to change, control, free, organize, pro- duce, correct, order, empower, rationalize, liberate, improve and revolutionize selves and institutions. Modern agencies form and reform, produce and reproduce, incorporate and reincor- porate, industrialize and reindustrialize. In modernity, modern- ization is always under way.16
The dictates of modernity, and those who live according to these, suggest a society that is “methodical and precise.” One where life is a
“progression of achievements,” where “the requirement of rational justifi- cation is extended to all life,” where all is desacralized and considered only from the perspective of “cost-effectiveness” and “instrumental effi- ciency.” It is, as Gellner so aptly states, where
Innovation when beneficial is adopted without undue inhibi- tion. No sacred boundary demarcation of activities hampers its implementation. All of this supports and dovetails with an orderly division of labours and makes possible a rational accountancy of success and failure. The free, untrammeled choice of means is encouraged both by the clear specification of aims and by the leveling out of the world: all things are equally sacred or equally profaned and so there are no sacred prescriptions or proscriptions to inhibit the choice of methods.
They become subject to considerations of efficiency.17
The “Modern” Organization
As moderns, we have been socialized within the context of moder n organizations. Few are the societies or, for that matter, lives that have gone untouched by the actions of modern bureaucracies whether public or private. And it is perhaps possible that our continual contact and familiarity with modern organizations and their principles of operation may numb us to their profound impact. Earlier I suggested that acts of genocide and dehumanization were not mere historical anomalies but
DK834X_book.fm Page 453 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
454 Handbook of Organization Theory and Management
were all-too real possibilities during the modern era. And the portrait of “modernity” just presented briefly highlights the mechanical and engineering approach by which modernity’s view of social and human beings is characterized, an approach which, as is argued later, facilitates the continual possibility of administrative evil to exist. Now, we must consider how the character of modernity creates and affects administra- tions and organizations.
Alasdair MacIntyre, in his work After Virtue, suggests that the moral philosophy of modernity is emotivism and, consequently, in modern life no distinction exists between “manipulative and non-manipulative social relations.”18 MacIntyre suggests a very important question for our purposes:
“What then would the social world look like, if seen with emotivist eyes?
And what would the social world be like, if the truth of emotivism came to be widely presupposed?”19 In other words, what would our social environment be like if governed according to the dictates of modernity?
A special case in point is that of “organizations” or “those bureaucratic structures which … define the working tasks of so many of our contem- poraries.”20 To answer these questions, we must turn to Max Weber.
Weber’s view of, as he calls it, “modern officialdom” captures the essential effects of the portrait of modernity given earlier and, conse- quently, the characteristics of the modern organization. One of the virtuous traits of modern organizations is what Weber calls “technical superiority,”
rendering modern organizations much like a “machine.” As Weber writes, The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization. The fully developed bureaucratic mech- anism compares with other organizations exactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production. Preci- sion, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs — these are raised to the opti- mum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration, and espe- cially in its monocratic form.21
The technological superiority of modern organizations emphasizes the virtue of specialization. Administrators must be experts in their fi eld, amassing more technological know-how and a substantial body of knowl- edge in their particular vocation. Officials must continually train and acquire as much professional information as possible so that their duties can be carried out efficiently and superbly.22 Administrators, in carrying out their duties, must also be sine ira et studio or “without passionate
DK834X_book.fm Page 454 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
Modernity, Administrative Evil, and Eric Voegelin 455
anger and bias.”23 They must carry out “impartial ‘administration,’” that is to say, they must be objective and procedural. As Weber suggests,
The honor of the civil servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of the superior authorities, exactly as if the order agreed with his own conviction. This holds even if the order appears wrong to him and if, despite the civil servant’s remonstrances, the authority insists on the order. With- out this moral discipline and self-denial, in the highest sense, the whole apparatus would fall to pieces.24
To be part of a modern administrative structure, then, entails the loss of the moral self for the sake of organizational integrity and advancement as well as vocational fulfillment. According to Weber, the possibility for ira et studium (passionate anger and bias) does not exist for administrative personnel. These are required and expected to fulfill their specialized functions according to “purely objective considerations” by which business is conducted “according to calculable rules and ‘without regard for per- sons.’”25 Organizations themselves, so argues Weber, take on a purely objective character the more “dehumanized” they become. This is suc- cessfully accomplished the more
… completely [bureaucracy] succeeds in eliminating from offi- cial business love, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation. This is the specific nature of bureaucracy and it is appraised as its special virtue. The more complicated and specialized modern culture becomes, the more its external supporting apparatus demands the personally detached and strictly “objective” expert, in lieu of the master of older social structures, who was moved by personal sympathy and favor, by grace and gratitude. Bureau- cracy offers the attitudes demanded by the external apparatus of modern culture in the most favorable combination.26
No room exists for administrators actively to deliberate the moral content of an organization’s actions or of a superior’s orders. The very premise underlying modern organizations is that “questions of ends are questions of values (irrational and biased), and on values reason is silent;
conflict between rival values cannot be rationally settled. Instead, one must simply choose between parties, classes, nations, causes, ideals.”27 The only values that are rationally demonstrable are the morally empty ones of efficiency, effectiveness, and specialization.
DK834X_book.fm Page 455 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM
456 Handbook of Organization Theory and Management
The Contribution of Eric Voegelin
Various critiques have appeared lately regarding the dangers of the modern ethos as it relates to organizations and public administration.28 Most of these decry the tendency of modern rationality, technology, and the drive for mastery to facilitate the possibility of organizations to commit great acts of human evil. And the commonality among these various critiques is that administrative evil is correlated to some of public administration’s greatest assets. What is it, though, about the modern ethos that has brought about some of the most horrific events in the history of mankind? What is it about rationality, technological progress, and mastery (or certainty), these neutral and often benign notions, that engenders the dehumanization and destruction of human beings?
Eric Voegelin, one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, provides an important answer to these queries.29 Voegelin regarded the pillars of modernity as only a symptom of a much more serious problem.
He argued that the roots of administrative evil were in the modern intellectual revolt against existential order, truth, freedom, and noetic reason. Hence, the logic of modernity was merely symptomatic of a deeper problem of human consciousness. Before providing an exposition of Voegelin’s critique, I would like to present a brief biographical sketch of Voegelin’s life and career.
Eric Voegelin was born on 3 January 1901 in Cologne, Germany, and received his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1922. Voegelin’s academic career was shadowed by the rise of the Nazi party and author- itarianism in Austria. By 1938 Voegelin had established himself as an insightful and serious scholar, having published various important works.30 In spite of this, Voegelin’s works, in particular his critique of the Nazi race idea, were considered threatening to the new political order and prompted his exodus to the United States in 1938.31 Voegelin’s intellectual and scholarly legacy has allowed him to be recognized as one of the 20th century’s most important thinkers. By the time of his death in 1985, Voegelin had left a rich legacy of scholarly publications. His intellectual pursuits centered on an in-depth study of order as it was embodied in different political systems throughout history as well as a philosophy of consciousness. Within this research program, Voegelin rigorously investi- gated the concept of administrative evil and its relation to modernity.32
To understand Voegelin’s view regarding the roots of administrative evil, it is important to comprehend his theory of consciousness and concept of nous (i.e., reason or understanding). As Voegelin writes, “The problems of human order in society and history originate in the order of conscious- ness. Hence the philosophy of consciousness is the centerpiece of a philosophy of politics” (Voegelin 1996, 7). Social and political organizations
DK834X_book.fm Page 456 Tuesday, September 20, 2005 8:11 AM