An Aside on Truth and Rhetoric

It is altogether too easy to accuse politicians, as a class, of mendacity. A few moments on FactCheck.org will go a long way toward dispelling any illusions one might have of either party. A few minutes ought to dispel any illusions that the Supreme Court's recent decision, Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, would have little or no effect on electoral politics, or that the decision would be neutral, or fair, with both the democratic and republican parties having, as it were, equal access to the biggest bucks of corporate sponsorship -- not that it really mattered. Both parties used what money they had on ads mimicking the Old Spice Guy and making extended analogies between the mess on Wall Street and the dog feces in a back yard. The real difficulty, if one wants to insist on some modicum of truth in advertising, if not in politics itself, may not be the politicians themselves. They are simply succumbing to the temptations of a process that virtually demands mendacity. Ideally, of course, elections select out the "better" of two candidates, and in a perverse way perhaps they do. The positive vote, for those who can be bothered to vote, signifies little more than "better you than the other." Insofar as the actual issues at hand -- the sorts of actual technical expertise it would take to actually govern the nation, to make informed economic or foreign policy decisions -- are well beyond the purview of the vast majority of the electorate, the whole matter of electoral politics becomes a contest of perceived character, a side show of sanctimonious pretense and lurid aspersions, of team loyalty, and the more money invested in the various ads, the greater their production value and importantly the greater their frequency, the more likely their viral messages will infect the minds of the masses.
And the elections are a side-show. What really matters is governing, and government, and those in office may well be the Vichy puppets of puppeteers well behind the scenes and screened in anonymity. In this sense, Hacker and Pierson have it right, and their book, Winner Take All Politics, is essentially correct in its analysis. After the yard signs (along with, one hopes, the feces of the aspirant Senator's dog) have been cleared away, those elected are left to govern, and government over the last quarter century has favored the riches of the rich over the remainder of the population, concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people that are well known, but not to the American public as such. The trend shows amazing resilience, surviving both republican and democratic adminstrations, and it continues more or less unabated today. It's not that elections don't matter. They do. The recent republican victories in the House have all but eliminated the possibility of any real movement toward redistributive justice in the US, and the recent compromise tax bill, which continues the Bush era tax cuts not only for the diminishing middle class, but for the wealthiest of Americans, represents a case in point. If the elections didn't matter, neither the AFL-CIO nor American Crossroads, neither the AFSCME nor the Tea Party Express, et cetera, would invest their solicited funds in electoral politics, and it is clear that Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision, has opened the flood gates to Citizens United, a lobby group dedicated, ostensibly, or so its web site informs us, to "restoring the founding father's vision of a free nation, guided by the honesty, common sense and good will of its citizens."
There is a good deal of room for quibbling in the Citizens United mission statement. What exactly, for example, is a 'free nation,' much less one that accords with the 'founding father's vision of a free nation?' One must accept such statements more or less at face value, without much in the way of inquiry, or they elicit much confusion, and little relief. To push it just a bit, by 'freedom,' generally speaking, we mean one or another form of agency or instrumental 'freedom' -- that is, I am free from physical, legal, regulatory, or other restrictions that might limit my freedom to do the things that I might have reason to value -- relative to the topic at hand, free from those constraints that might limit my freedom to speak my mind on matters of importance to me and others. Insofar as there is no social order with perfect agency or instrumental freedom, we feel the latter underwrites the former. I may not get my way within the social consensus, but at least I have had my say in the formative stages of building that consensus. Amartya Sen is perhaps the latest and most cogent defender of open discourse within democratic contexts, where one's say is operative not only within those processes leading to a decision, but within the examination and weighing of those issues leading to the decision. The electoral process is a case in point. One has one's say in the vote one casts and it is weighted no more no less than any other's vote. One also has one's say, or at least has the opportunity to hear and weigh what the candidates, the pundits, and one's neighbors have to say, in the campaign leading to the decision. Free and open discourse, having one's say, is in Sen's view a necessary condition, if not for 'public reason,' per se, then at least the public justification for those governing acts, those decisions, that affect our lives. Within the public domain, so to speak, some acts or restrictions are simply unjustifiable -- public policy that leads to mass starvation -- and he poignantly observes that no 'free nation,' where people have an operative say, has experienced a famine in modern history. Other acts or restrictions are more 'justifiable,' in two senses of the word 'justifiable' -- at one level, justifiable in the sense of 'aligning' those acts or restrictions that I might value with those that you might value and in the process developing a social consensus -- at another level, related to the first, justifiable in the sense that one can articulate 'reasons for' and 'rationalize' the value one applies to certain acts or restrictions, the sorts of predicative ends that come in response to the question, 'why?'
Open, free discourse, of course, is necessary to this two-fold and largely rhetorical process of 'justification,' but successful justification does not necessarily imply that we have achieved 'justice.' We are, as it turns out, quite adept at rationalizing our actions, and even the most persuasive justification may not be 'true once and for all,' and from the time of Socrates on, it is this 'true once and for all' that matters most. In most contexts, we have a rather settled view of 'truth,' a common-sensical view of the world. When we promise, with all the gravitas of the courtroom drama, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we are, in effect, promising to stick closely to 'the facts of the matter,' the sorts of observable (and verifiable) datum of our common experience. The invocation of the court room is not egregious. We all implicitly understand the importance of 'the truth,' the facts, in the adversarial context of legal wrangling. One does not need the philosophical exercise of the Rawlsian 'original position' to derive the ethical imperative to honesty, to know that one might, through unfortunate circumstance, be falsely accused of a crime. We want to protect the innocent and punish the guilty, but we have, for the most part, wisely given precedence to the former over the latter within our courts, a precedence that relies often on the judges insistence on the so-called technicalities of legal argumentation, some of which seem counter-intuitive to our settled judgments. The courtroom, however, plays out the drama of 'open' discourse, even if it is not entirely 'free' discourse -- that is to say, even if that discourse is bound by 'rules,' not all of which are common-sensical, but 'the technicalities' of which are designed to protect the accused from mighty leaps of bad logic to spurious conclusions, particularly in those circumstances when it might not be wise to trust too fully in the 'good will' of our neighbors.
Nevertheless, our common-sensical appreciation of the world serves us rather well. Even the most cynical, obfuscatory, and sceptical of philosophers is unlikely to step in front of a moving Metra train, nor is anyone else, and for the same reasons. As a philosopher, I might mount intricate, technical arguments for the incommensurability of my pain, your pain, and perhaps even argue for the incommensurable cultural differences between an American experience of pain and a Balinese experience of pain, but I suspect that philosophers as a class would not step in front of a moving Metra train because our common sense tells us that doing so would be painful and most likely fatal, and few of us are willing to experiment with the former on the way to the latter. For the most part, we don't need to experiment, because those inattentive or inconsolable enough to step in front of a moving Metra train have provided us with sufficient evidence of 'what happens.' Even if we have not witnessed the event personally, there are newspaper and other credible accounts, and they are credible because they accord with our own experience. We have a developed understanding of the world, a developed theory of reality, that allows us to predict with some accuracy 'what would happen if' on the one hand and on the other allows us to predicate prudential ethical imperatives of the 'look-both-ways' sort. As I tell my students, you can come to an understanding of Newton's laws of thermodynamics, and you can do so whether or not you have ever heard of Newton's laws, whether or not you fully understand the mathematics of angular momentum, and it is probably a good thing that they can come to such an understanding. I would hate to think that my impulse to avoid rushing trains depended upon their understanding of calculus. Were that the case, the carnage at Metra stations would be incalculable. For the most part, that is, we live our lives quite successfully within our well developed, but common-sensical understanding of the world and how it operates, and we hold those theories of 'reality' to be virtually, if not entirely, self-evident in their truth.
Regardless, I am writing philosophy, and I am going to split one hair -- the difference between 'fact' and 'theory.' On the side of 'fact,' we have the observable (and verifiable) datum of our experience. If I see an angel sitting on my living room sofa sipping tea, there is little doubt that I see what I see, but considerable doubt that it forms a part of 'reality.' Because I am not generally accustomed to seeing angels, my impulse is to verification, fetching my wife and asking, "do you see that?" If her answer is "yes," then we are witness to a rare, but verifiable visitation. If her answer, however, is "no," as is more likely the case, then my doubts, not my vision, are confirmed. On the side of theory, given the fact that I am seeing an angel, if the vision persists, and the angel engages me in conversation, there are a couple (actually many) explanations as to why this might be the case. First, of course, is the assumption that angels only appear to the 'elect,' to those who, within the unfolding dynamic of god's plan, have been selected to play a special part. Second, of course, is the assumption that angles only appear to the 'ill,' to those who have experienced a stroke, or have succumbed to the onset of schizophrenia. There is, perhaps, some room for dispute about which 'theory,' which explanation, is the better. If I am the one actually seeing the angel, and if her conversation is engaging, I might actually accept the first theory, but if it is the person next to me at the Metra station insists upon seeing an angel, and he insists upon sharing the angel's message -- to avoid the consumption of deep fried pork rinds as the devil's food -- I am more likely to accept the second explanation and find a seat at some distance from him when the train does arrive, even though his angel's advice makes good sense on any number of levels.
Rhetorically, we are likely to find an argument unconvincing if it does not align well with our common-sense theories of reality, and more or less irrelevant if it does. Imagine a parent arguing passionately at a PTA meeting that the public school teachers have no right, no right whatsoever, to insist that young children 'stop and look both ways' at a Metra crossing because it inhibits their freedom to choose when, where and how they might cross. Likewise imagine a parent arguing passionately that public school teachers should insist that young children should 'stop and look both ways' at a Metra crossing. The former would be met with incredulity, the latter with impatience, and both arguments are, well, pointless. The former argument because it begs the question, 'what world does she inhabit?" The argument does not align well, at a fundamental level, with what we know about Metra trains, what we know about the uninhibited behavior of children, what we know about parents and their need to protect their children, regardless how we might feel in other contexts about freedom. The latter argument because it elicits the 'well duh!' response. My point in eliciting these pointless arguments is this: wouldn't it be great if we could, as Citizens United suggests, rely on the 'good will' and 'common sense' of the people in all matters of importance?
The difficulty, of course, is manifest. We find plenty to argue about, and most of our argumentation arises from ignorance. It is a rather common observation that the contemporary world requires a sort of specialized knowledge that is beyond the ken, if not the ability, of the non-specialist. This is particularly true within the realm of science and technology. The distinction between 'fact' and 'theory' is especially important in this regard because it not only under-girds our common sense understanding of the world, but also our more (our most) sophisticated understanding of the world within what I'll call, for convenience, the inductive/deductive cycle. We are given facts -- this object and that object and many other objects fell when released from a height -- from which we inductively form theories -- all objects fall when released from a height. The universal nature of the theory is important to note -- 'all objects fall.' The universality is important to the truth of the theory, and its universality allows us to make deductions of a pragmatic sort -- if all objects fall, then I will not put myself in a position to fall from a great height because I will plummet to earth and injure myself. Its universality also allows us to justify imperatives of an ethical sort -- buildings with high balconies must have a guard rail to prevent people from plummeting to earth and injuring themselves. There are, however, those instances where our deductions prove false. The balloon filled with helium does not fall, but rises. When faced with evidence to the contrary, we have two alternatives. We could toss the theory, or its universality and make it contingent, or find other plausible explanations for the exception. One might suggest, for example, that the rising helium balloon seems akin to the bubbles rising in a liquid, our salad oil separating from the vinegar, but an alternative explanation, and not just a catalog of exceptions to the rule of gravity, requires a level of sophistication that I wonder how many of our fellow citizens actually possess. There is no limit to the degree of sophistication. Though I believe I have a grasp of the basic principles in operation, one might imagine that a professor of physics would have a better grasp of those same principles, or at least a much more detailed, a much more sophisticated explanation. The extent to which the professor's sophistication improves upon our pragmatic deductions or our justification of the ethical imperatives that follow is questionable, but a real question none the less.
In the balloon example above, to split the hair one more time, one should note that facts falsify theory, not the other way around. This notion of falsification, derived from Popper and from Kuhn, is also important, and marks the boundary of what might properly be called scientific from the dogmatic within the inductive/deductive cycle. The two approaches, the scientific and the dogmatic, are irreconcilable, and attempts to reconcile them have led to the worst sorts of sophistry, but it is, ultimately, a question of what is irrefutably -- that is to say, universally -- true. The set of facts credited by the scientific/pragmatic world view are, of course, experiential, and for the most part material. Observation, particularly verifiable observation, provides the base-line truth. If I see it, you see it, then it must be 'true,' and any theory of our shared reality must accommodate all (not just some, but all) the observed facts. If a theory -- at least one which aspires to universal Truth -- does not accommodate all the observed facts, then it is partial, or tentative, and we await a 'better' theory, one that accommodates those facts, those observations, not yet accommodated. Induction leads to theory, and the value of theory is, of course, that it provides the basis for the prediction, for the deduction, of future observations. If I toss a rock into the air three times, and each time it falls to the earth, I can predict with very high likelihood that it will fall to the earth the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh times. Having said this, no one needs an argument for falling stones. It is only within those domains where theory fails to accommodate all the 'facts' that we need argument proper -- that we need to settle the question "how best to accommodate all the facts given to observation?" As a science progresses, as one might imagine, the answers to those questions become more and more "specialized," more and more "technical" in nature, and to understand the answer requires an "expertise" that belongs to a smaller and smaller cadre of specialists, most of whom operate beyond the purview and beyond the comprehension of the general public. When the conservative activists -- the Tea Party being just the latest version of the same -- complain about the "elites," I strongly suspect it is the visceral reaction if not to the arrogance of "expertise," then to its implied paternalism, its implicit and patronizing assertion of "we know better, trust us."
There is considerable reason for concern. The first is the degree to which "specialized knowledge" has become proprietary, and consequently a source of economic and political power. The second, related to the first, is the degree to which the scientific/pragmatic comes to resemble its opposite, the dogmatic/religious. For those excluded from real argumentation over the validity of scientific/pragmatic claims, whether by education or by the unavailability of proprietary information (e.g. the actual test results on a new drug, for which the greater public may only vaguely understand the significance of those results, much less the validity of the test procedures, an understanding that assumes the pharmaceutical, who holds patent on the drug, hasn't withheld complete results on the clinical trials to protect the potential profitability of their investment) the whole matter must be accepted on a faith guided, as Citizens United again puts it, "by the honesty, common sense and good will of its citizens." One might assume, of course, that the "citizens" in question are thee and me, those who have neither specialized training nor access, but common sense and good will only take us so far in understanding what is really at stake in the clinical trials of a new drug. For the most part, it will take us nowhere, and the citizens in whom faith is placed is neither thee nor me, but the big pharmaceuticals. We place our faith in the uncommon sense and good will of fellow citizens Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Roche, and GlaxoSmithKline, and we have little opportunity to do otherwise -- the drug is safe, trust us.
The day of the Victorian scientific polymath has, alas, passed and it is not surprising, perhaps, that we are entering another great awakening to "faith." The dogmatic/religious world view has a long and venerable history, and to put that venerable history in a secular context, let me begin with Plato:
The divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same place. In the revolution, she beholds justice, and temperance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men call existence, but knowledge absolute in existence absolute.
While the divine intelligence can coexist with the day-to-day pragmatic scepticism accessible to "common sense and good will," it has reclaimed (or is reclaiming) its ascendancy with the greater populace on the converging fronts of evangelical religion and politics. It is fundamentalist and egalitarian in a characteristic American way. The divine intelligence, the real reality, the universal truth has been revealed, once and for all, and so it is not surprising, perhaps, that the biblical fundamentalism finds its counterpart within the constitutional fundamentalism of the Tea Party. If the former places ultimate authority in the biblical account to free us from the apostasy that has crept into religion, returning it to what Christ demands of his followers, the latter places penultimate authority in the constitutional account to free us from the various forms of socialist apostasy that have crept into politics, "restoring the founding father's vision of a free nation."
Here, as elsewhere, the word "free" is highly nuanced, and predicated on what, for lack of a better term, I want to call individual exceptionalism. No one person believes, for him or herself, that he or she is anything less than an end unto themselves. In this regard, one must be free to choose, not simply to pursue what one believes is of value, one's own personal vision of happiness, but in that pursuit to reveal one's values and one's value. The dogmatist must concede "free" choice, but before the first bite of the apple, the individual has ultimate value only insofar as he or she is a potential convert to the faith, after which the individual has value only insofar as he or she has chosen correctly, chooses sincerely and authentically to profess faith in the revealed doctrine. Truth, "knowledge absolute in existence absolute," is transformative. It transcends and frees us (or will free us) from the work-a-day reality, the world we inhabit and call existence. While evangelicals may differ in their theology, and there is considerable variety in the religious experience, the conversion narrative remains central, and those who refuse or fail to make the transformative decision forfeit their value as human beings. Having said this, however, while most dogmatists believe that the Truth has been revealed "once," most really do not believe it has been revealed "for all." Just as the dogma has been revealed by God (or the secular version of the political prophet -- Marx revealing the ineluctable path of history -- the founding fathers revealing the transcendent powers of the free market) it is revealed to an elect, the individual exceptions and the exceptional individuals, those not only predisposed to hear it, but those capable of receiving it, and here too one can cite Plato as a sort of precursor:
Therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect.
It is not merely a matter of the Truth, per se, but also, and crucially, a matter of just who does (and who does not) possess and profess the Truth, and perhaps not surprisingly the philosophers within Plato's world, the elect within American fundamentalism, those who have "intelligence of the universals," all tend to share in cultural, racial, class or other ineluctable markers that make differentiation of the elect (from all others) a relatively easy matter.
What has this to do with rhetoric? As Plato recognized if rhetoric, the art of persuasion, is to be anything other than the practiced and perfected skill at deception, a nuanced skill at winning over the hearts and minds of other to one's own political or economic advantage, it must persuade with truth, and not just any truth, but with the Truth. The difficulty, of course, is that we have competing visions of the truth. Both visions are comprehensive, to use John Rawl's term -- that is to say, each vision, when pressed, excludes the other. It is easy enough to tsk-tsk over the exclusions of the dogmatic/religious vision, particularly over what appear to be the wilful exclusions of enforced ignorance. Not all ignorance is enforced ignorance, and it is easy enough to tsk-tsk over the exclusions of the scientific/pragmatic vision, the hyper-specialization into mysteries that are, if not perfect, then perfectly incomprehensible to the uninitiated lay public. The scientific/pragmatic cannot brook received doctrine, even its own doctrine, and seems hell bent on undermining any universal truth, particularly when the observed facts of the matter contradict that doctrine in fundamental ways. It is an ideal of free public discourse that the "truth will prevail," and free public discourse has long been recognized as crucial to democratic processes. Ronald Dworkin recognizes both in the affirmative answer to his titular question, Is Democracy Possible Here? and he would set out, as he would set out "principles for a new political debate." The same question was addressed, perhaps more fundamentally, in John Rawl's Political Liberalism -- that is to say, how can irreconcilable comprehensive visions co-exist within a single political system? In the end, they probably cannot, and not because we have not, as Dworkin might insist, we have not articulated principles that "both sides" could readily accept. Neither the scientific/pragmatic nor the dogmatic/religious can be reduced one to the other, nor can either be reduced to a set of principles independent of either. While most would accept, as I have pointed out above, "that every human life is of intrinsic potential value and that everyone has a responsibility for realizing that value in his own life," the dogmatist predicates that potential value against acceptance of the dogma. To choose otherwise is to forfeit one's value in the failure to fully realize that value in one's own life. Than too, they probably cannot forever co-exist, and not because our system of civil liberties cannot accommodate both positions. Strictly speaking, to date, they have.
The difficulty, however, is deeper. American style civil liberties are more or less predicated on the scientific/pragmatic vision, where observable and independently verifiable facts trump theory or, in the political sphere, public policy declarations. Suppose, for example, the goal is to reduce teenage pregnancy, along with the devastating social and economic consequences to both mother and child. It is not difficult imagining a social consensus around the end of reducing teenage pregnancy, with adherents from both the liberal and conservative camps, though clearly both would articulate different reasons for their adherence. My own concern with social and economic consequences betrays a liberal bias, one that sets aside any concern with moral precepts and focuses on pragmatic consequences. My conservative counterpart is likely to support a reduction in teenage pregnancy, not because it has consequences, but it is itself a consequence of moral failure, having made the wrong initial choice, succumbing to the temptations of the moment. The consequences of the pregnancy itself are not inconsequential, but deserved as retribution for the indiscretion. It is not surprising then that the conservative wing of our political life would favor an 'abstinence only' policy declaration, as the means to the end of reducing teenage pregnancy. If, however, 'abstinence only' has no discernable effect on teenage pregnancy, and the 'no questions asked' distribution of condoms does, and the observable, verifiable facts (i.e. the sheer number of teenage pregnancies) bear out the difference, then wouldn't it 'make sense' to distribute condoms in the public high schools? One might balk at the notion for other reasons -- e.g. that the distribution of condoms encourages premature promiscuity -- but that too is a question that would seem to have an answer. Does condom distribution increase teenage sexual activity? There would remain considerable room for argument about the credibility or the reliability of the data, but here again, if one has doubts, then it would 'make sense' to run independent tests to validate the data, There would also remain considerable room for argument about the availability of other, potentially more effective means to the end, condom distribution vs other forms of birth control, and its congruence with other goals (e.g. reductions in the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases among adolescents) but at least in principle there seem to be 'answers' to such questions, and it is this principle that should guide anything that might resemble a good and a true public policy decision.
Little of which would carry weight with the dogmatic/religious who would consider the whole discussion able, if not immoral, then amoral. The familiar bromide -- ends, however laudable, do not justify the means -- would be cited in defense of an "abstinence only" policy and that would be that. The difficulty, however, goes deeper to the connect between freedom and morality. To invoke Kant, who told us in his critique of practical reason, that morality "first discovers to us the notion of freedom," and illustrated the point with an example not unlike the one above. While prophylactic measures may indeed be the most effective means of preventing teenage pregnancy as it is perhaps the most effective means of preventing any pregnancy, effectiveness is not morality. We can, that is, choose other means to the end, means less efficacious perhaps, but nevertheless more "moral" and we demonstrate our status as moral beings in precisely this free choice. The scientific/pragmatic argument, relies on physical causality and the physical mechanisms of conception. For the scientific/pragmatic "nothing in phenomena can be explained by the concept of freedom," and it consigns to irrelevancy any discussion of free choice. While it may be true that teenagers choose (or choose not) to engage in sexual activity, for example, that discussion is irrelevant to the goal, preventing pregnancy. The best way to prevent pregnancy is to mechanically prevent conception. If we shift the goal and declare our purpose to be the prevention of teenage sexual activity, then we would again search for "causal factors" -- perhaps the influx of hormones, which might be "prevented" with a drug therapy that neutralizes or eliminates the "sexual urge." There is, as it were, a technical/mechanical solution, if not now, then certainly just over the visible horizon.
There is no end to how far back we can push our search for the cause of a cause of an effect, and the deeper objection to the scientific/pragmatic vision is teleological -- that is to say, at its teleological extreme, it aims at the utopia of the machine, where all is reduced to effective control of causal relations and "no one would ever be so rash," in Kant's phrase, "as to introduce freedom into [the] science" that so effectively produces some version of happiness. In practice, however, the scientific/pragmatic vision is a-teleological, and free choice inserts itself, and experience, again in Kant's phrase, "confirms this order of notions." While the scientific/pragmatic vision would ultimately frees us, more and more, from the burden and consequence of choice, the dogmatic/religious vision draws the line, and one can imagine the hundred versions of dystopia, each of which ultimately affirms our status as moral beings -- that we "can do a certain thing because [we are] conscious that [we] ought, and [we] recognize that [we] are free -- a fact which but for the moral law [we] would never have known." The initiating choice -- to have (or not to have) sex -- to be (or not to be) -- is all, and the choice itself is meaningful only if it is predicated against "moral law" that establishes the "ought," its deontological significance.
This is a central question, and one I will not pretend to answer here -- whether, at the end of the day, we are "stuck with" or "blessed with" choice -- but there have been no satisfactory accounts that reduce "ought" to "is." It is perhaps to Kant's point that, at least once or twice a decade, someone will publish an account of human morality that attempts to reduce it to the material conditions of our existence, to reduce the "ought" of morality to the "is" of mechanistic-causal relationships, one of the more recent being Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. Most such accounts come back to the central insights of the Buddha, as they have been elaborated over the course of the two intervening millenia -- that is to say, the fact of "suffering," and that which causes suffering and its alleviation through the successive elimination of its causes. There is, in other words, a streak of utilitarianism in Buddhist thought, finding the expedient means to the elimination of suffering as the moral end. It escapes any simple pleasure-pain calculus, however, in the simple observation that while consumptive pleasures may effectively end suffering, they do so only for the moment, and the suffering returns. Sam Harris makes a similar observation, arguing that "questions about values -- about meaning, morality, and life's larger purpose -- are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures" and that values, "therefore, translate into facts that can be scientifically understood" and "the most important of these facts are bound to transcend culture, just as facts about physical and mental health do." The difficulty of Harris' account, along with most such accounts, is likewise teleological. While there is perhaps a great deal of consensus around just what constitutes rudimentary physical well-being, I suspect the consensus quickly evaporates when we attempt to push the consensus beyond the rudimentary. Just what constitutes the "well-being" of "conscious creatures?" It is perhaps to the point that, in nearly every dystopian fiction, the central character rebells against a predicated state of perfect "well-being," not because it improves his or her well-being in any physical or mental way, but simply because they can -- and the fulfillment of their potential for willful perversity, willful acts against their own others well-being, in and of itself becomes the moral imperative. In the end, our capacity for willful perversity, the act against our own well being, is precisely what makes us most human. Again the initiating choice -- to rebell (or not to rebell) -- is all, and as has been observed repeatedly, we root for Satan in Paradise Lost, that first and perhaps best dystopian fiction, because he reveals himself, in his rebellion, as a more fully human, a more fully moral being. In short, in the end, any state of well-being, whether heaven or Eden, is predicated on a limitation of human potential, an incompleteness. If Emerson is correct, if the only sin is limitation, then the original sin is not Eve's falling to Satan's persuasion, nor Adam's falling to Eve's persuasion, but the divine imperative that made his rhetoric possible in the first place.
In the end, Socrates famously distrusted rhetoric, the art of persuasion, and particularly those written forms of rhetoric, because, as he put it, "he who would be a skillful rhetorician has no need of truth." Too many politicians of both parties provide sufficient evidence of just how effective vicious mendacity can be in the courts of public opinion. His distrust, however, went deeper. He distrusted any articulation of a final, an ultimate Truth, once and for all, in part because he suspected its incompleteness. Any truth, all truth, should meet the test of the oppositional mind, the wilful perversity of the satanic mind, and in that sense all truth is, if not actually, then potentially penultimate and open to dialectic. If Socrates failed, it is in supposing that a final truth might eventually become available, if not to all men, then to the philosopher. If Plato, his pupil, compounded that failure, it is in supposing that, as a philosopher, he had apprehended, if not the whole of truth, then enough of truth to set out an more perfect state. In the end, all ends are incomplete. From the vantage point of several centuries hence, one suspects (I suspect) that the 20th century, and the various experiments with totalitarian governments, will be viewed as the world historical failure of 19th century optimism for the scientific/pragmatic vision. As Judt has observed, writing on Arendt's intuition, both the marxist and fascist experiments were essentially of the same ilk and both failed because they imposed an incomplete morality. They failed because they took the Kantian categorical imperative to heart, and both acted as though, to paraphrase, the maxim of their will, whether that will derived from an apotheosis of history properly apprehended or from an apotheosis of the creative genius in a romantic Prometheus, a Nietzschian ubermensch -- that is to say, both acted as though the apotheosis of their will could always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation. The difficulty with any categorical imperative lies less with the imperative, more with the categorical, which by its very nature is incomplete. From the vantage point of several centuries hence, one suspects (I suspect) that the 21st century will be viewed as the world historical failure of a resurgent medieval optimism for the dogmatic/religious vision, the postulation of a theocentric state as the final state, if not the catholic utopia of Thomas More, then perhaps a corporate protestantism to the west or perhaps a mullah's prophetic genius to the east. It will end in a familiar violence, because tolerance, the refusal to make a choice is an initiating choice that leaves one outside the categorical boundary of the categorical imperative, outside the faith, in violation of the universal legislation and subject to the penalty of the law.