Volume 5, Issue 2: Fall 2009

Book Review

Harley-Davidson and Philosophy: Full-Throttle Aristotle

Edited by Bernard E. Rollin, Carolyn M. Gray, Kerri Mommer and Cynthia Pineo

Chicago: Open Court, 2006

(Volume 18 in the “Popular Culture and Philosophy” series)

ISBN-13: 978-0-8126-9595-3

Rick Hogan

Harley-Davidson and philosophy? Socrates and Sonny? Wittgenstein and Willie G? Plato and Peter Fonda? Is this serious?

Yep, it is. To understand why, consider just what philosophers usually do. First, they are often interested in the meaning or analysis of important features of reality and experience, e.g., in connection with science, aesthetics, and morality. Second, they are interested in the justification of key claims about life and the universe. Do we know anything? Are we right to think that there’s a world outside ourselves? Is there an acceptable foundation for claims about right and wrong, good and bad? And many philosophers have focused on these issues in the context of their normative discussion about what a good human life is and how it should be lived.

Consider the following—obviously contrived and impossible—dialogue:

Socrates: I went down to the Piraeus yesterday, where they’d just opened a new Harley dealership, and I put down some drachmas on a Screamin’ Eagle Fat Boy.

Glaucon: By Zeus, Socrates, whatever can you have been thinking?! It’s been scarcely a month since Motocyliades crashed and broke nearly every bone in his body! And Xantippe will skin you alive. But I suppose you’ll say it’s due to that strange notion of freedom that you’re always talking about. You say that you’d rather die than live without freedom.

Socrates: Yes, Glaucon. And this is no small matter, since what’s at stake is how we should live a good life, is it not? And since you mention it now, let us inquire: what is freedom, anyway?

(Recreation loosely based on Plato’s Republic.)

It is in connection with this project of seeking understanding that will enable the good life that makes philosophy—usually thought of as the quintessential highbrow activity—relevant to questions that might be of interest to motorcyclists.  They, after all, often spend a good deal of time talking about the obsession that often plays a pivotal role in how they live their lives.

Harley Davidson and Philosophy is a collection of essays, written in a number of philosophical styles, and using varied methodologies--reflecting a number of traditions in philosophy--that raise issues pertinent to the place of motorcycles (especially Harleys) in the search for the good life and the understanding of its components.

The authors include a number of first-rate philosophers and the quality of the pieces—although varied—is generally high. Most will be accessible to people who don’t know a lot about philosophy, although they are not by any means “light” reading.

Some of the questions that the authors raise include: “Can riding a Harley get you in touch with ‘ultimate reality’?” “What deep role does riding a Harley play in revealing or constructing one’s personal identity?” “What makes Harleys works of ‘art’?” “How does the ‘dialectic’ of Marx and Hegel help us to understand social divisions in the biker culture?” “How does the biker culture reflect what Nietzsche called nihilism (the denial of truth and value)?” “Should a ‘free’ society force people to wear helmets?”

Space limitations prohibit a detailed account of most of the essays, but let me pick out several for brief comment.

Harley riders are often heard to say things like “Riding my Harley makes me free,” etc. Inquisitive people may want to ask whether such claims are true, but before we can successfully attack this question, we need to clarify just what we are talking about. Like Socrates in my concocted dialogue, we want to ask: just what is freedom, anyway? (Before you can hit the home-run of truth, you must enter the stadium of meaningfulness.)

This is the issue tackled by Fred Feldman’s essay, “Harleys as Freedom Machines: Myth or Fantasy?” In standard “Socratic,” “analytic” fashion, he examines a number of possible candidate analyses of freedom and shows how they might be employed in answering our question.

Freedom generally is the absence of constraint. Some philosophers have suggested that there might be metaphysical constraints on freedom. For example, if it’s true that every event has a cause and that a caused event is somehow “necessary,” then it seems that all of our actions too are necessary, and hence not free. Or perhaps Fate (or God) has somehow determined for all eternity what we will do, thus making whatever we do not free. Alternatively, perhaps freedom should be construed as “circumstantial.” If circumstances do not permit us to do X, then we are not free to do X. (If I’m stranded on a desert island without any motorcycles, I’m obviously not “free” to ride a Harley.) So the idea is that I am free only in the absence of the suggested metaphysical or circumstantial constraint.

Each of the preceding accounts of constraint and freedom is fraught with numerous philosophical difficulties, but no matter. Feldman argues that with regard to any of them, it seems quite obvious that Harley riders have no particular advantage over non-Harley riders. In a world without metaphysical or circumstantial freedom, we are all, riders and non-riders, HOG members and Honda honchos, equally in the same inexorable fix.

Maybe the claim should be interpreted in terms of a feeling of freedom? Yet, introspection appears to reveal that there is no such feeling. (Perhaps we confuse the alleged feeling of freedom with the genuine feeling of happiness.)

In short, Feldman’s deflationary analysis apparently shows that the Company propaganda about Harleys being “Freedom Machines” is based on confusion. It is an excellent example of how skillful philosophical analysis can be used to illuminate how we think about ourselves as bikers.

In “’It’s My Own Damn Head’: Ethics, Freedom, and Helmet Laws,” Bernard Rollin takes on an issue dear to many riders: are helmet laws justifiable (legally, morally)?

In his famous On Liberty, J.S. Mill wrote:

The sole end for which mankind are warranted individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. . . . the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. (Chapter 1)

Bernard Rollin writes, rather passionately, in favor of Mill’s view. He argues that the freedom we value is freedom from constraint, and that we must reject the view, for example put forward by Plato in the Republic, that “real” freedom involves acting solely according to the dictates of reason. Proponents of this view usually hold that most people are not in fact able to appreciate what is rationally in their own best interest and that it is therefore justifiable for those who do know—in Plato’s case, his famous “Philosopher Kings”—to paternalistically impose their will on others “for their own good.” (You can bet your Brembos that there would be helmet laws in Plato’s Ideal State.)

Rollin roundly rejects such a view.  We do not, he asserts, know what the good life is and, even if we did, it’s not clear that anyone has the right to impose it on others. We should resist the paternalism that treats adults as if they were children. Morbidly obese people, smokers, and motorcyclists should be left alone and free to pursue their lives as they see fit.

Rollin realizes that there are acceptable limits on freedom. As Mill acknowledges, individual freedom is often justifiably limited when our actions have harmful effects on others. But here’s where things get tricky. When are our actions harmful to others? Most people will readily agree that there must be some sphere of activity left to individual choice and not governed by the principle that one must always do what is best for society. Otherwise, we’d have to say that someone who becomes a Tarot Reader when she could have become a brain surgeon will be “harming” society.

Of course many proponents of helmet laws will claim that bikers who crack their heads open and require expensive brain surgery are doing harm to others in the form of misusing scarce medical resources. (Rollin tucks away a declaration of his willingness to buy insurance to cover his own head, but does not supply details about how such an offer would work in practice.) There are of course relevant empirical claims to be argued about here. (Rollin grants, for the sake of argument, that helmets do in fact reduce serious injuries, but he is in fact skeptical about this claim.)

Is Rollin right? Readers will have to stay tuned, since the large issue of liberty and its legitimate limits is one of the most controversial and provocative issues in social and political philosophy. 

After the clearly structured arguments of Feldman and Rollin, some readers will probably find Randall Auxier’s chapters (“Christ in a Sidecar: An Ontology of Suicide Machines,” and “The Biker Bar and the Coffee House: A Paean to the Postmodern Pagans“) rather tough going. He writes in a diffuse style, and his frequent allusions to philosophers and movements, woven into a number of anecdotes, often makes it unclear where he’s going. A couple of more specific quibbles: Heidegger did not invent “ontology”; the Hellenistic “schools” of philosophy that Auxier uses as the basis of a taxonomy of bikers were not “Platonic,” but deeply anti-Platonic; Jack Nicholson’s character in Easy Rider is “George,” not “Glen,” Hanson.

I have only been able to touch on several of the many fascinating issues raised by the contributors. As is the case generally with philosophy, readers should not expect final, definitive, answers. What is important is moving the discussion toward greater clarity and to enriching the “conversation.”

Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with the bold claim that “All human beings by nature desire to know.” A well known grouchy philosophy professor is said to have responded that Aristotle had obviously never taught at an American University. This observation aside, it does seem plausible to suppose that many people have a deep desire to reflect on their lives and passions, their experiences and avocations. Bikers who fall into this group will find the book under review stimulating and well worth reading. Buy a copy and put it in your tank bag.

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