I’m fascinated by the concept (and phenomenon) of sycophancy. A sycophant, according to the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, is “A mean, servile, cringing, or abject flatterer; a parasite, toady, lickspittle.” Sycophants aren’t just admirers, for admiration can be between equals. Kant admired Rousseau, for example, but he was hardly Rousseau’s toady. Kant admired and learned from Hume, but he was hardly Hume’s disciple. Sycophants necessarily have lower status than those they serve. Their aim is to ingratiate themselves with the powerful, even if all that is given in return is recognition. To be recognized by a powerful person is to partake of that person’s power, status, glory, or fame.
Nor is sycophancy the same as respect. To respect another is to look back at (re-spect) him or her, to see him or her, as opposed to looking through or past him or her or taking him or her for granted. To respect another is to take the other into account in one’s deliberations, to acknowledge that he or she matters, morally. (One of the debates about animals is whether they are morally considerable, i.e., worthy of respect. Kant notoriously denied that they are.) I will say more about respect in another post. My point here is that respect and sycophancy are different and incompatible concepts. Respect and admiration are laudable; sycophancy is despicable.
I find it hard to believe that anyone with self-respect could be a sycophant. It’s a degrading status. Look at all the derogatory terms we have in English for the status: “toady,” “lickspittle,” “bootlicker,” “minion,” “jock-sniffer,” “henchman,” “useful idiot,” “tool,” “functionary,” “truckler,” “lackey,” “stooge,” “fawner,” “puppet,” “suck-up,” “brownnoser,” “lapdog,” “poodle,” “yes-man,” “apparatchik,” “brownshirt,” “sycophant.” People with the trait are said to be servile, obsequious, compliant, and submissive. All of these terms have negative connotations, which shows how people who exemplify them are viewed in the culture. Most people would rather be dead than be a sycophant. It is, in fact, a kind of social death, a willing renunciation of agency, autonomy, and responsibility. The sycophant becomes an appendage of the person served. Sycophants, like children and imbeciles, are heteronomous.
I also find it hard to believe that anyone would want a sycophant. I certainly don’t. If I learned that someone was attacking others as a way of flattering me, or trying to curry favor with me, or ingratiating himself or herself with me, I would insist that it stop immediately and then proceed to dissociate myself from the person. I can take care of myself, thank you. I fight my own fights, make my own arguments, defend my own interests—and I do so openly, without fear. Only someone with a need for flattery—and who possesses low self-esteem—would tolerate, much less desire, much less seek out, sycophants.
Brian Leiter, as every reader of his blog knows, has many sycophants. Their relationship to him is one of co-dependency. Leiter wants to seem above the fray in his (many) fights with others, so, instead of dealing with the others directly, he encourages his sycophants to attack them. Look how often he links to them. And the sycophants, to their discredit, are more than eager to prove their fidelity to Leiter by doing his dirty work for him. They adore him. Indeed, there appears to be a competition among them to be as vicious as he is. They’re saying, in effect, “Look at me, Brian! I’m only a student, but I can be just as hateful, obnoxious, and ruthless as you are in dealing with people with whom we disagree, especially those awful conservatives!” The sycophants are trying to demonstrate to Leiter that their licks are as good as his, that he has taught them well, that they are worthy of him. If Leiter can rhetorically spank others, then, by God, so can they. (Leiter’s spankings are invariably merely rhetorical. He seldom engages his critics on the merits. I take this as a sign that he lacks philosophical aptitude, for argumentation is the stock in trade of philosophers [not to mention lawyers].)
Interestingly, Leiter’s relationship with his sycophants parallels his relationship with Noam Chomsky. It is one of unquestioned fealty, utter devotion, and uncritical acceptance of whatever the other believes or values. Leiter appears delighted to have sycophants, and it’s not hard to see why. It makes him feel big, powerful, and important, as he imagines Chomsky to be. Leiter craves attention. He has all the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. What Leiter appears not to realize is that, on matters outside Chomsky’s academic specialty (linguistics), Chomsky is a laughingstock. (See here.) Leiter’s worship of Chomsky prevents him from seeing this. Worship is blind, after all. Criticism of Chomsky, to Leiter, is evidence of depravity instead of what most well-adjusted people would take it to be, namely, intellectual independence. Leiter is not an independent thinker. He is a cipher. He is as happy to have sycophants as he is to be one.
I have a thought experiment for Leiter’s sycophants. Suppose you disagreed with something Leiter said, either in his blog or in one of his scholarly publications. Would you feel comfortable bringing the disagreement to his attention, knowing how he abuses his critics? Please don’t reply that you have no disagreements with Leiter. If that were the case, then one of you would be superfluous. No two individuals agree on all things, share all values, or have all the same beliefs. In fact, if you have any self-respect at all, you’ll seek out disagreements with Leiter just to test his reaction and establish your intellectual independence from him. Perhaps you believe that animals have moral status and Leiter does not. Perhaps you have a different view of epistemic justification than Leiter does, or a different normative ethical theory, or a different attitude toward religion, or a different attitude (one less antipathetic) toward the United States. Bring it to his attention and see how he reacts. I dare you. I suspect you’ll be shocked by his reaction, and that it might make you reconsider your servility to him.
Let me end on a personal note. Everyone who knows me knows that I’ve always taken great pride in my intellectual independence. I’ve never been anyone’s toady, even when being a toady would have been to my personal and professional advantage. From the day I met Joel Feinberg in 1983, I was critical of his liberalism. At the time, ironically, I was to his left; now I criticize him from the right. In my first seminar with Joel in 1984, I wrote a term paper (“Bad Samaritanism and the Pedagogical Function of Law”) that was critical of his book Harm to Others (1984). This essay was soon published. Joel replied to it at length in the fourth volume of his tetralogy, Harmless Wrongdoing (1988). I think Joel was delighted—in fact, I know he was delighted—that I took issue with him. Like me, he would have been suspicious if I had been a disciple, and positively revolted if I had been a sycophant. Joel had more self-respect in his little finger than Leiter has in his entire body.
I have always had the utmost respect and admiration for Joel, but I am proud to say that I was never his sycophant. Long after I was his student, I was his friend. It was a relationship of mutual respect and, I like to think, admiration. That Leiter has sycophants is a sign that both he and they are intellectually and emotionally unhealthy. But then, we already knew that, didn’t we?
