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A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles Paperback – June 5, 2007

by Thomas Sowell (Author)

4.8 1,559 ratings

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Thomas Sowell’s “extraordinary” explication of the competing visions of human nature lie at the heart of our political conflicts (New York Times)

Controversies in politics arise from many sources, but the conflicts that endure for generations or centuries show a remarkably consistent pattern. In this classic work, Thomas Sowell analyzes this pattern. He describes the two competing visions that shape our debates about the nature of reason, justice, equality, and power: the "constrained" vision, which sees human nature as unchanging and selfish, and the "unconstrained" vision, in which human nature is malleable and perfectible. A Conflict of Visions offers a convincing case that ethical and policy disputes circle around the disparity between both outlooks.

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352 pages
Language

English
Publication date

June 5, 2007
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.88 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0465002056
ISBN-13

978-0465002054
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Popular Highlights in this book

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One of the hallmarks of the constrained vision is that it deals in trade-offs rather than solutions.
Highlighted by 1,422 Kindle readers
While believers in the unconstrained vision seek the special causes of war, poverty, and crime, believers in the constrained vision seek the special causes of peace, wealth, or a law-abiding society.
Highlighted by 1,150 Kindle readers
Facts do not “speak for themselves.” They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
Highlighted by 1,037 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Extraordinary on several counts...[Sowell] makes his case fairly, lucidly and persuasively."―The New York Times Book Review

"A classic of a very special kind...Reading [it] is like looking up at the night sky and discovering a new constellation."―Christian Science Monitor

"[A Conflict of Visions] is recommended herewith to anybody sufficiently interested in the American condition to try to get beneath the surface of partisanship, trendy issues and pop ideology to the philosophical foundations of the Republic."―Boston Globe

"[A] fine book ... Sowell's illuminating guide to the political conflicts of our age teaches the valuable lesson that political choices always involve costs."―Commentary

"An excellent condensation of two centuries of social thought."―Booklist

"A provocative analysis of the conflicting visions of human nature that have shaped the moral, legal and economic life of recent times."―Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of dozens of books including Charter Schools and Their Enemies, winner of the 2021 Hayek Book Prize. He is the recipient of numerous other awards, including the National Humanities Medal, presented by the President of the United States in 2003.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; Revised edition (June 5, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465002056
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465002054
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.88 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #13,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Theory of Economics
- #29 in History & Theory of Politics
- #40 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism

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Ralph White

A Framework for Understanding Political Visions

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2023

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Thomas Sowell came to prominence as a “Chicago School” economist, a group known for its analytic rigor and reliance on empirical evidence. So, imagine his dismay when he tried to craft an intellectual framework to explain the consistent political polarities on issues like military spending, property rights, drug laws, racism, monetary policy, school choice, judicial activism, and social justice. The same people line up predictably on issues that have no intrinsic connection to one another. He had to have been particularly disappointed by the wanton disregard for evidence, and the apparent belief that ardently held visions are so self-evident that they do not require proofs. It is a “Conflict of Visions” only because evidence, mandatory in the physical sciences, is in the social sciences, treated with denial, evasion, and obfuscation. Evidence is a threat to intensely held visions.

These two polarities Sowell calls the “constrained” and the “unconstrained” visions of man and his potential. In the constrained vision, mankind is fallible, but in aggregate learns from its mistakes and is guided by the discipline of processes, including prices, scarcity, warfare, technology, and thus forges nonlinear progress toward an unknown future that ultimately benefits everyone, albeit unequally. In the unconstrained vision, mankind need not accept limits on matters of critical importance provided that just outcomes are established by an educated, advanced, wise leadership.

Sowell’s terms, constrained and unconstrained, at first seem clunky, and for this writer, they slowed his comprehension. But as he warms to his theme, and provides example after example of what he means, they are easier to swallow. By the end though it’s clear that he has avoided terms that might have made the work easier to understand from the beginning. What he means by constrained is realistic. What he means by unconstrained is idealistic, but using those terms would have alienated half his readers. No one is alienated by having his vision of mankind called unconstrained, but many would object to being called idealistic.

For Sowell, constrained means pragmatic, practical; it is a vision in which the locus of knowledge is impossible for any single person to grasp, and the locus of discretion is distributed among individuals wending their ways through mutually constructed processes. His unconstrained vision is idealistic, even utopian, and the locus of knowledge is concentrated in a knowledgeable elite, for instance economic planners, and activist judges.

It's binary and simple, but it’s a remarkably satisfactory intellectual framework to understand, for instance why the opinions of Supreme Court justices are so predictable. But then, this is Thomas Sowell.

31 people found this helpful

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C. Gr.

For Every Thomas Sowell Fan!

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2023

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I've read Thomas Sowell's work most of my adult life. When I read that this is his favorite book of all that he's written I had to have it!

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Paul Adams

How We Divide: Sowell's Dichotomy

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2011

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At the beginning of his classic book, Sowell raises the question of why people tend to cluster on opposite sides of apparently unrelated issues. If we think of global warming, health insurance, military or social welfare spending, the same groups take opposite sides. How do we understand this consistent, systematic difference of outlook about politics and public policy?

Sowell points out that the usual terms in which such differences are discussed - conflicting values or interests, fail to capture this more fundamental divide. Behind these patterned differences on policy and politics lies a conflict between "constrained" and "unconstrained" visions. A "vision" in Sowell's sense is a pre-analytic cognitive act, a sense of causation that precedes rational articulation. Visions set the agenda for both thought and action.

For Sowell, the constrained vision recognizes the wisdom of the generations and of the many now living, as operating in a way somewhat analogous to language. Language develops best and most richly in its actual usage by the many who speak it daily. For the compilers of dictionaries, usage and not the opinions of experts determines meaning.

The constrained vision recognizes the limits of any one person's wisdom, experience, and expertise as well as the intransigence of human nature in face of efforts to "improve" it. It sees knowledge as the social experience of the many, not the expertise of the intellectuals. So it is skeptical of grand schemes to improve the world, focusing on unintended consequences and trade-offs, as opposed to solutions.

The constrained vision is naturally democratic, as Sowell describes it, relying on the decisions of the many over time rather than the brilliance of the elite. It sees utopian schemes as intrinsically authoritarian or totalitarian, in that they arise from the brains of individuals, who then impose their plan on the many, regardless of their own opinion.

Those with the constrained vision want to make the best of the possibilities for improvement within the existing constraints and human limitations, alert to the unintended consequences, failures, and tyranny that beset most grand schemes of social engineering. They are inclined to agree with Dr. Johnson (1709-1784):

How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

They do not expect or try to change human nature and they rely on systemic processes and results rather than intentions.

In the unconstrained vision, which Sowell finds in especially pure form in William Godwin, the philosophical anarchist who wrote Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), intention is the essence of virtue. The unconstrained vision emphasizes the plasticity and perfectibility of man. Where those with the constrained vision see trade-offs, those with the unconstrained see solutions; where the first see results, they see purpose; where systemic processes, intentions. They discount the costs--all too evident in the last century--of attaining utopia. They discount tradition, the implicit knowledge and wisdom of the generations. "Nothing must be sustained because it is ancient, because we have been accustomed to regard it as sacred, or because it has been unusual to bring its validity into question," says Godwin.

The unconstrained vision makes the sharpest distinction, the profoundest inequality between "persons of narrow views" (the masses) and the "cultivated." Wisdom without reflection is unthinkable and only the cultivated few are capable of either. As Marx argued in different terms, the unconstrained vision divides society into the active few and the passive many, the enlightened and the ignorant, those who are products of heredity and environment and those who (in their own estimation) rise above such determination.

With its seemingly inherent elitism, the unconstrained vision readily ascribes a key role to intellectuals, activists, or experts, those who are ahead of the masses and must lead them, through coercion if necessary, to the point of knowledge and understanding at which they have already arrived.
Sowell goes beyond identifying the clusters of beliefs and assumptions usually (but not always) associated with one or the other vision. He wants to operationalize the distinction to focus on those differences that define the two visions, the differences that systematically differentiate them.

Both visions acknowledge that human life involves inherent limitations (e.g., death, need for food) but these limitations are seen as much more extensive and intractable in the constrained vision.

"What distinguishes those with the constrained vision is that the inherent constraints of human beings are seen as sufficiently severe to preclude the kind of dependence on individual articulated rationality that is the heart of the unconstrained vision" (pp.106-107).

Sowell recognizes that his organizing contrast of constrained and unconstrained does not account for all cases. There are hybrids and inconsistencies in the vision of individuals and movements. It is rather a continuum or spectrum. But it does have extraordinary explanatory power, in my view. It enables us to see old dichotomies in social philosophy and social policy in illuminating ways. It helps to explain why, when new issues arise, like national health insurance, global warming, or same-sex marriage, no matter how completely unrelated the topics seem, people divide on them into predicable clusters.

In the second part of the book, Sowell applies his dichotomy to particular areas in which opposed visions conflict - equality, power, and justice. He offers illuminating discussions of legal justice, individual rights, and social justice, for example, showing how the two visions differ systematically.

Sowell is a prolific polemicist, but this book is not one-sided or polemical in the manner of his opinion columns or even some of his books, like the provocatively titled The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy or The Quest for Cosmic Justice . I have used it in teaching doctoral students, who found it both enlightening and challenging. The challenge comes from the complexity of the argument and the range and depth of scholarship on which it draws, as well as its revealing critique of much received opinion in academia.

69 people found this helpful

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Joseph Myren

AWESOME

Reviewed in Canada on October 2, 2023

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AWESOME

Uta C. Groeschel

Taking the debate to its origins

Reviewed in Germany on July 8, 2022

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Sowell’s lucid analysis of the philosophical origins of opposing ideologies and the reason of their inner consistency is a work of genius. Reading it required Monroe concentration than reading other books by Sowell, but it was a worthwhile investment. Do read it if you are interested in a better understanding of human ideological differences.

One person found this helpful

F. T.

insightfull

Reviewed in France on March 26, 2022

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I found this book to be really helpfull to understand my own vision better. This is important because it permits me to attack it and test it to see if it relates to reality. It also enables me to take debates or thinking to another level as I can go to the heart of things instead of talking about supperficial issues. Great book, very well detailed and esay to read.

One person found this helpful

Ricky

Plato v Aristotle

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 31, 2019

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Thomas Sowell discusses a topic that gets to the heart of political, social, psychological and other world view splits that are evident in the modern Western world. He defines a vision as a ‘pre-analytic cognitive act’ – a felt sense of something before applying reason or logic. A Vision is not the same as a wish or a dream. Instead, it incorporates the assumptions we often unconsciously hold when we think. Visions underpin our understanding of the world and Sowell compares the ‘constrained’ vision of the American revolution, with the ‘unconstrained’ vision of the French revolution.
The difference centres on how one views human nature. The constrained vision sees man as essentially flawed, a mixture of good and bad. Therefore, society needs institutions that keep individuals from committing harm and institutions that are kept in check by a separation of powers. These checks and balances are essential if society values freedom. Hence, the conservatives favour ideas such as setting limits, freedom of speech, boundaries, law and order and constitution.
In the ‘unconstrained vision, man is seen as an essentially malleable creature, with harm and pathology being largely social constructs. Institutions should exist to liberate the human spirit and help him aspire to his unflawed state. Socialist liberals see no need for institutions that curb one’s freedoms, only enhance them and promote equality. There is no need for separation of powers or check and balances, only leaders that are ‘philosopher kings’ or elites.
The French revolution ended with the guillotine and Napoleon Bonaparte. Yet it keeps being reborn in socialist politics and the exuberance of youth. The American revolution gave rise to the American constitution, the conservation of independence and freedom, and the success of capitalism.
Thomas Sowell is to be congratulated for his clarity of thought as well as his considered compassion. In ‘A conflict of visions’ he shows just how different the world views are, and how they lead to incompatible policies. As idealism clashes with realism, we have the conflict between Plato’s vision and that of Aristotle.

11 people found this helpful

emilio

Muy revelador

Reviewed in Spain on May 29, 2019

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Te ayuda a entender ciertas conductas y por qué las personas pensamos de forma diferente

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