Theory Shouldn't Be One-Size Fits All

Ed Catmull, Aristotle, Postmodernism, and Talmud

I’m pleased to share my latest podcast conversation with philosopher Kieran Setiya.

Who is right: Rousseau who blames society for our inability to flourish or Augustine who blames our ego-centric pride or Hegel who imagines all conflicts as reiterations of a life-and-death struggle for recognition or Levinas who thinks that the block to our awakening is conceptual thinking itself?

They’re all right.

But rabbi, how can they all be right?

You’re right.

If you read philosophy, a lot of contemporary stuff feels derivative—which isn’t to say it’s not valuable. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, writes in his bestselling Creativity, Inc., that the organizational dysfunction is the main reason people don’t express their genius at work—even at companies that ostensibly value creativity. In reading his argument, I found myself thinking of Rousseau’s notion that “man is born free, yet everywhere is in chains.” Individuality is hampered at scale.

Catmull is right that in some circumstances the world is Rousseauvian—the block to talent is not the supply of talent itself, but, say the opportunity to express it. But he also flatters us as readers by universalizing from his experience at Pixar to the world at large. Are we all a bunch of geniuses who could do amazing things if given the right chance? I suppose it depends on what is meant by genius, but incentives and corporate architecture only work when you already have talent—where does talent itself come from? I’m not persuaded it comes from assuming that the individual is always right and society always wrong. Socialization is needed to steer the lone prophet away from narcissism and solipsism.

It would be equally obtuse to reduce all collective failings to interpersonal psychology. Disagreements arise from difference in worldview, judgment, and values—they aren’t always the result of envy or fantastical projection or something base. Self-interest is too narrow a concept to appreciate the nuanced ways in which conflicts emerge. But Augustine is also right that culture is an expression of the souls that constitute it—well ordered-souls make for better cultures. As we know from the case of Mozart and many artists, you can be a creative genius and be immature. It’s that immaturity that hurts society and makes collaboration impossible, not society that thwarts the individual.

My rejection of theory as a one-size fits all account of how things are suggests I may be postmodern. But it’s also in keeping with Aristotle’s notion that knowledge requires taxonomy — the question is not if Rousseau is right, but when he is right and when he isn’t, by how much, and in what contexts? This is also part of Talmudic training, which seeks to ground abstract principled debates in specific cases. Ironically, you learn most about a concept by seeing when it doesn’t fit. The edge case is our teacher.

We may find ourselves in situations that feel Hobessian, Machiavellian, Kantian, Schmittian, Jungian, Platonic, etc. but that doesn’t mean we need to adopt any one worldview as the key to all things.

Catmull’s advice about fostering creativity at work may be sound, but like any piece of advice we should not treat it as universal. At the highest level, all advice is contradictory. So the heart of the matter is knowing when to ignore it, because as the Talmud says, “here, it’s different” (shani hatam).