The Fall 2002 issue of Common Knowledge, ran an interview with Gianni Vattimo, author of The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture. The Italian philosopher eloquently expounds his notion of "weak thought", an intellectual commitment to 'weakening' what are commonly held to be objective truths, by exposing them as the products not of divinely ordained, 'metaphysical' precepts, but of violent historical developments. Vattimo has read Hoebbes, Nietsche, a slew of phenomenologists, beginning with Heidegger, and has incorporated their thinking into his own with enticing results. His exchange with Santiago Zabala roughly boils down to this: Throughout human history, political power was usurped and a system of beliefs and values imposed. Hence there is no 'truth' but that which is a consequence of coercive political activity. There are no foundational or universal truths, and the risk posed by the belief in, and the upholding of "supreme and exclusive values" (rather than making allowances for varying conceptions of what is right or wrong, desirable or undesirable), is that of recurring violence as one social-political group tries to enforce its code of ethics, its laws, its convictions, on another. Compellingly, he argues: "When Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews,... he did[n't do] so on the basis of an "opinion." His actions were, on the contrary, based on an "objective truth," a "scientific fact"ùand when a conversation begins to deteriorate into a clash between objective dogmas, 'weak thought' has its peculiar part to play."(p454). Once "ultimate and foundational authority"ùhistorically, the end result of a political power play which included the establishment of a religionùis dismantled, modern ethics and legal systems can be laid open to meaningful scrutiny. And only from this point on can ethics and laws be helped to evolve, through "complex conversations," into a superior means of upholding justice vis-a-vis the individual and society.
Nor can "truth" be arrived at by the wholesale substitution of one set of beliefs and values with another, especially when the latter is bred in reaction to the former. If I may be allowed to contextualize, for V.S. Naipaul, whose Essays are reviewed here by Terry Rigelhof, the revelation of "suppressed histories" leads only to the understanding that today's "rhetoric of skin colour" and "the fanaticisms it breeds" has as false an intellectual foundation as that of the mostly white colonizing cultures which committed the oppressing. Rigelhof quotes Naipaul: the idea of civilization is "an immense human idea" that "cannot be reduced to a fixed system" and "cannot generate fanaticism." Still, Naipaul's reflections aren't necessarily consistent with Vattimo's notion of 'weak thought'? For Naipaul, it seems, 'truth' is there to be discovered. Only language, as well as preconception, frequently gets in the way.
Barry Allen, in an essay marking the centenary of Karl Popper, shows that there's nothing new about a skeptical approach to 'truth'. As Allen tells it, the Positivist school of philosophy, held that "discourse is intellectually respectable if it is scientifically verifiable, and what isn't verifiable is sheer nonsense." Therefore, unscientific discourseùi.e., social criticism, theories about politics, ethics, and religionùcan never aspire to uncover universal truths. Popper beat the positivists at their own game by arguing that there is no certainty even in science since there's no such thing as a neutral observation. Indeed, it isn't science if a 'fact' isn't falsifiable; in other words, the only honest stab one can make at describing the world 'objectively', is one that allows for the possibility of being proven wrong. Barry Allen writes:
The problem in science is not "How can we know the truth?" It is "How can we minimize the risk of dogma?" Likewise in political philosophy. Not "Who must rule?" but "How can we minimize the risk of bad rulers?"...a revolution that would [not] set society on the right foundation. There is no such foundation, neither in science nor politics.
Burton Mack, in his book, The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy, attempts to overhaul predominant theories of religion, those concerning Christianity in particular. He wants to get at the 'true' origins of the Christian movement. Here too there is a philosophical precedent: He wouldn't be the first to argue that religion came out of necessity, shaped by the communal needs of early Christians. Both Machiavelli and Spinoza took pains to dismiss 'revelation' and present religion as the most sophisticated form of political maneuvering by leaders who wanted to bolster their position by investing it with the ultimate authority. Both used Moses as an example of an astute politician, a pragmatists, who knew what was necessary to bring about a stable, law-abidingùwhich is to say God-fearingùsociety. But are pragmatic considerations all that underlie Judeo-Christian norms of conduct, our understanding of right and wrong? In his review of The Christian Myth, Daniel Smith asks, "Did [early Christians]...think they were involved in social experimentation, group definition and maintenance, and so on?" Or did they allow themselves to be guided by what they felt with certainty was eternally true and right? Is man merely a pragmatist? Does he not love his family and friends? Does he not long for happiness and beauty? Is this not universally true? Olga Stein