Twice a month, The duty challenges enthusiasts of philosophy and the history of ideas to decipher a topical issue based on the theses of a prominent thinker.
We are experiencing social, economic and technological transformations of unprecedented scale and speed. The diversity of beliefs, of ideas that clash, weakens any consensus, amplifying the impasse and the powerlessness to solve our most urgent problems.
Everywhere seems to be tearing the social fabric, which was particularly highlighted during the demonstrations of truckers in Ottawa. At the start, we raise a well-defined subject: the crossing of borders between Canada and the United States by unvaccinated truck drivers. To this group are added those who refuse sanitary measures. Then there are those who denounce attacks on freedom in a global way and all those voters who find an outlet in the Conservative Party of Quebec and who embrace the libertarian ideology of Éric Duhaime.
How to understand this escalation as if it were given to us to glimpse under the tip of the iceberg what is hidden there? Was the general discontent of the population exasperated by the pandemic the expression of a deeper malaise? In fact, his challenges were aimed at much more than the refusal of sanitary measures. They claimed the right to speak, to free expression. Far from being limited to a local revolt, the protests showed a real malaise, if not a crisis of democracy.
One cannot question this Kantian adage: “Have the courage to think for yourself”, a foundation of the charters of rights and freedoms. From our experiences, our identity has been built, bringing together our most personal values, shaping our sensitivity, our subjective way of feeling things and giving meaning to the world. Autonomy, acting and thinking for oneself, is the most inalienable right. It is in complete freedom that everyone can express their ideas, even those, and perhaps even especially those which would go against the dominant thought.
In his work Realism with a human face, the philosopher and mathematician Hilary Putman (1926-2016) does, however, issue a warning. We can remain captive to a belief because we cannot recognize that our representation of things is only an image. We end up believing that what we think reflects what the world is like. The way things appear to us is, for us, reality. We are then trapped by our belief, withdrawn from others and from reality. Isn’t this an insidious form of narcissism deeply infiltrating our sensibility? In this way, exclusively centered on oneself, how is it possible to be receptive to different perspectives, contrary to one’s own way of seeing things, and to act in accordance with the well-being of all?
Absolute freedom and the word of others
The advance of economic liberalism withdrawn from social values is coupled with a cultural libertarianism that puts on show these narcissistic selves, products of an individualism withdrawn into itself, whose credo affirms that what I think is true because I am free to think what I want. Thus disconnected from reality, and from others, freedom can justify everything, masking the fact that this vision advocating absolute freedom represents a closure to the words of others.
It is, at first glance, very disconcerting to realize how difficult and often even impossible it is to change a person’s beliefs. The pandemic has provided us with many examples of this. Even solid arguments seem powerless to rectify certain judgments that are more than problematic or downright inadmissible. An argument is answered with a counter-argument. One thus clings to one’s own way of seeing things, which amplifies opposition and dogmatism. This is how the “pro” and “anti” polarize, each of them shutting themselves up in their respective way of seeing things, each of the groups being trapped in their beliefs, blind to what the other may think. The different thought becomes opposing thought. No social project can thus weld individuals into a community. On the contrary, what one says will be decried by the other, and this, with regard to the great questions which characterize our time. So are the issues of secularism, abortion, firearms, immigration, freedom of speech, the clash between nationalist identity groups and diverse groups, and more.
“The way not to solve an ethical problem is to have a radical principle and to accuse those who refuse [d’adhérer à] this absolute principle of immorality,” writes Putman. Obviously, this is a categorical refusal of any vision that would not conform to the one we are promoting, quite the opposite of listening to others. For Putman, it is not a question of eliminating the confrontation of ideas, quite the contrary. Only dialogue can allow the elaboration of new ways of perceiving a problem and finding a more adequate solution. Still, there must be spaces where the diversity of points of view can be expressed.
How to explain this polarization of ideas, and how to foresee a way out of this unproductive confrontation? Politics concerns social and economic organization as well as the management of practical problems affecting living together. During the pandemic, the government was consulting with scientists, public health experts. Their recommendations had objective value since they were based on methodical observations and measurable data. But there is also a whole set of factors essential to health with which the government had to juggle, elements that could not easily be objectified, which escape the accuracy of formal knowledge. In the same way, if politics manages very practical and concrete aspects of citizens’ lives, this organization emerges from an implicit background, from a general idea of what we want society to become, in short , of a belief.
In general, we can represent the world as described by science as a true image of reality. The universe is a machine driven by measurable and objective forces, subject to the laws of reason, thus ensuring the control and domination of nature. The word “rationality” means technical mastery, forecasting, efficiency. We ended up representing the world as described by science as the only true image of the world, reality in opposition to our lived knowledge, perceived as simple subjective preferences, without real value of truth. Our belief in this type of rationality leads to a dichotomy between the facts described by science and the values as subjectively experienced. This rational, instrumental, absolutely necessary knowledge differs from existential, empirical, affective knowledge.
New objectivity
The world is as we actually experience it, accumulating a wealth of lived knowledge. But the latter are perceived as mere subjective, private perspectives, refractory to consensus.
Putman asks this question: “Can we arrive at an objective knowledge, other, resulting from the daily experience, from living in the ordinary? He proposes a new definition of the notion of objectivity.
Any question results from a practical, problematic situation, within a precise context where particular perspectives and issues are opposed. Since all experience is relative to the personal and social history of an individual, since ethical and aesthetic values emerge from the totality of what constitutes each, what is experienced can only be subjective and partial. Everyone interprets a fact, a text or a work of art according to their own point of view. How to think of a new objectivity?
Putman introduces the “metaphor of the judgment of justice”, that of the decision that a judge, faced with a problem where no satisfactory theory or solution appears, is called upon to render. He will opt for a reasonable position by establishing a dialogue in search of what would be the fairest thing to do, by establishing a meaning, an orientation, a shared objective. As a being in the world, located in a space-time, we seek the most accurate interpretation of a fact and the implementation of practices likely to achieve this objective. The dialogue essentially becomes a process of creation where different perspectives interact and influence each other, becoming a consented, provisional agreement.
Dialogue is the process in which objectivity is built. “When the attitude becomes one where the individual does not feel bound by a consensus that he himself would not have chosen, then fantasy and despair give free rein,” believes Putman. Admittedly, this is an objectivity with a human face, that is to say always partial and open to other possibilities.
Values and enigmas
Putman also speaks of “the metaphor of reading”. Faced with a work of art, a text or a fact of everyday life, individuals will have different interpretations. It can not be otherwise. An interpretation involves more elements than logical reasoning; it results from all the background that constitutes an individual, his sensitivity, his intimate resonance. For example, the expression “human flourishing” does not contain anything precise and no objective criteria make it possible to give it a completely satisfactory definition. Different people may interpret the word “fulfillment” from different angles, as if to approach an ideal grasp.
Thus, ethical and aesthetic values remain enigmas: their meaning is never fixed, determined. They remain vague, imprecise ideas, which the sharing of opinions must constantly bring to their most just expression. This sensitivity represents access to another, broader rationality, a form of rationality inscribed in our daily experience of the world, prioritizing concern for the human.