A Conflict of Visions
Encyclopedia
A Conflict of Visions is a book by Thomas Sowell
. It was originally published in 1987; a revised edition appeared in 2007.
Sowell's opening chapter attempts to answer the question of why
the same people tend to be political adversaries in issue after issue,
when the issues vary enormously in subject matter and sometimes
hardly seem connected to one another. The root of these conflicts, Sowell
claims, are the "visions", or the intuitive feelings that people have
about human nature; different visions imply radically different
consequences for how they think about everything from war to justice.
The rest of the book describes two basic visions, the "constrained"
and "unconstrained" visions, which are thought to capture opposite
ends of a continuum of political thought on which one can place many
contemporary Westerners, in addition to their intellectual ancestors
of the past few centuries.
The book could be compared with George Lakoff's
Moral Politics
, which aims to answer a very similar question.
The book has been published both with and without the subtitle "Ideological Origins of Political Struggles".
Steven Pinker
's book The Blank Slate
calls Sowell's explanation the best theory given to date. In this book, Pinker refers to the "constrained vision" as the "tragic vision" and the "unconstrained vision" as the "utopian vision".
. These two visions encompass a range of ideas
and theories.
, distrust of decentralized processes like the free market
, impatience with systemic processes that constrain human action, and absent or distorted empirical evidence. Sowell often refers to them as, "the self anointed" people with a liberal political view.
and constitutional government. It distrusts sweeping theories and grand assumptions in favor of heavy reliance on solid empirical evidence and on time-tested structures and processes.
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective...
. It was originally published in 1987; a revised edition appeared in 2007.
Sowell's opening chapter attempts to answer the question of why
the same people tend to be political adversaries in issue after issue,
when the issues vary enormously in subject matter and sometimes
hardly seem connected to one another. The root of these conflicts, Sowell
claims, are the "visions", or the intuitive feelings that people have
about human nature; different visions imply radically different
consequences for how they think about everything from war to justice.
The rest of the book describes two basic visions, the "constrained"
and "unconstrained" visions, which are thought to capture opposite
ends of a continuum of political thought on which one can place many
contemporary Westerners, in addition to their intellectual ancestors
of the past few centuries.
The book could be compared with George Lakoff's
George Lakoff
George P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972...
Moral Politics
Moral Politics
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think is a 1996 book by cognitive linguist George Lakoff. It argues that conservatives and liberals hold two different conceptual models of morality. Conservatives have a Strict Father morality in which people are made good through self-discipline and...
, which aims to answer a very similar question.
The book has been published both with and without the subtitle "Ideological Origins of Political Struggles".
Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
's book The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations...
calls Sowell's explanation the best theory given to date. In this book, Pinker refers to the "constrained vision" as the "tragic vision" and the "unconstrained vision" as the "utopian vision".
The competing visions
Sowell lays out these concepts in his A Conflict of Visions, and The Vision of the AnointedThe Vision of the Anointed
The Vision of the Anointed is a book by economist and political columnist Thomas Sowell challenging people Sowell calls "Teflon prophets," who predict that there will be future social, economic, or environmental problems in the absence of government intervention .Sowell claims that these thinkers,...
. These two visions encompass a range of ideas
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
and theories.
The Unconstrained Vision
In Sowell's opinion, the unconstrained vision relies heavily on sweepingly optimistic assumptions about human natureHuman nature
Human nature refers to the distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that humans tend to have naturally....
, distrust of decentralized processes like the free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
, impatience with systemic processes that constrain human action, and absent or distorted empirical evidence. Sowell often refers to them as, "the self anointed" people with a liberal political view.
The Constrained Vision
Sowell argues that the constrained vision relies heavily on a reduced view of the goodness of human nature, and prefers the systematic processes of the free market, and the systematic processes of the rule of lawRule of law
The rule of law, sometimes called supremacy of law, is a legal maxim that says that governmental decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws with minimal discretion in their application...
and constitutional government. It distrusts sweeping theories and grand assumptions in favor of heavy reliance on solid empirical evidence and on time-tested structures and processes.