File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1998/bhaskar.9809, message 41


Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:40:21 +0100
From: Heikki Patomaki <heikki-AT-nigd.u-net.com>
Subject: BHA: Alethia, ontologised truth and violence


I am sorry I am coming back to a discussion that was closed - at least so
it seemed - already sometime ago. I did not have time to go through the
messages concerning 'alethia' before this weekend. Yet, I think "the
alethic dimension of truth" might become a serious problem for CR, and so I
can't resist the temptation of re-opening this issue.

To be sure, the term 'alethia' is beautiful, melodious and not necessarily
elitist. There is even a case to name a newsletter/journal as 'alethia'
because any talk about truth is so disreputable these days, and CR does,
indeed, enable us to make truth judgements. It even demands us to do so.

But then there comes the suspicion that 'alethia' is in Russian 'pravda'.
It would be very easy to misread this simply as an accusation of Stalinism
(that old game of debunking any apparently more Leftish ideas=85), but I
think there is something more to it than that. Despite the irrealism of
much/most of the modern Western philosophy - and Roy would certainly say,
since Plato - there has been a very strong tendency to make truth judgments
appear "objective", beyond doubt, and dichotomic ("either it is true or it
is not true"). Often with and far-reaching ethico-political consequences
(think about the USAmerican liberalism as a case in point, but Leninism
would do as well). I think that the discursive deep-structures that would
explain why this has been the case might be related to Christianity and
foundationalism (and to the related "Cartesian anxiety", as Bernstein
called it). But most certainly they also have to do with epistemic and
ontic fallacies, and with the absences of hermeneutico-dialectical
categories that would enable us to think in less dichotomic terms about
truths.

Now, it seems to me that the idea of truths as in the world - alethic
dimension of truth - serves to confuse the issues and easily betrays the
central (and beautiful) CR distinction between ontological realism,
epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality. Just listen to
Mervyn Hartwig making his case for the name 'alethia':

>I. Of all the concepts of CR/DCR, it perhaps best captures the essence of
what >the movement is all about. Within the CR/DCR system of concepts, it
has a clearly >articulated meaning, referring to the truth of things, as
distinct from the truth >of propositions, i.e. a specific notion of
objective truth. It is central to >situating irrealism as _the_ scandal of
philosophy, central to emancipatory >critique, and indispensable via social
science to getting the dialectic of desire >to freedom going. It is
therefore, as a concept, 'a scandal and abomination' to >the present
bourgeoisie and all their classism, sexism, racism, etc. And speaking >of
scandals, it is scandalous that CR/DCR is presently the only at any rate
>Western philosophical movement to defend an objective notion of truth.

Rather than seeing this as a source of strength, I think it is a major
problem. Already in the earlier works of Roy there was this idea that truth
has an ontological dimension or aspect to it. The later notion of alethic
truth only makes things more confused. My argument is simple:

1. There are no explicit grounds for making truths ontological.
2. By making truth a partially ontological conception, you unnecessarily
complicate things.
3. By making truth a partially ontological conception, you tend to commit
an ontic fallacy.
4. By making truth a partially ontologically conception, you tend to reify
truth-judgements, with far-reaching and grave ethico-political consequences.

It is true [sic!] that any proposition and/or iconic model (including
historical narratives), try to refer to the differentiated, layered and
structured world, and that there has to be what Roy calls "referential
detachment". It DOES NOT follow from this, however, that judgements about
the truth of these propositions or models would be in any meaningful sense
ontological. If the claim is (see p.26 of Plato Etc., for example) is that
the world determines truths (our propositions, models), is not this exactly
the ontic fallacy? And in any case, since "alethic truth" seems to add
nothing and makes things only more complicated, there is a prima facie case
against it. So should not we rather prefer to say that truths and
truth-judgments belong to the transitive dimension of science (except in
social sciences, where truths can be also among the objects of study in the
Foucauldian and Marxist manner), even when we are trying to radically
(re)claim reality in the ontological sense. At most, the notion of 'alethic
truth' should be strictly restricted to describe merely the specific nature
of truth of these fallible quasi-transcendental arguments about the
existence and nature of reality in general.

Hence, it would be best to accept truth as a *regulative metaphor* of
correspondence, that has normative power, particularly when substantiated
with an explicitly realist ontology, but is not in itself ontological in
any meaninful sense.

Last, but not least, ontologising truths and truth-judgments have
ethico-political consequences. It is here that we have close affinities
between some Eastern philosophies, Gandhian thinking, critical peace
research (including Johan Galtung [see his well-known piece on 'Cultural
Violence' in the Journal of Peace Research]), some strands of
post-structuralism, including Derrida and Connolly, and Hannah Arendt, one
of the most important political theorists of this century (whose thinking
has been recently re-interpreted so as apply to more recent developments by
Jeffrey Isaac, who once was among those coining the term 'critical
realism'). I think CR should learn from these arguments. The crux of these
arguments is simple: objective goodness and truth is simple a recipe for
all kinds of forms of violence. Should not CR try to avoid that pitfall?

Many thanks,


			Heikki Patom=E4ki


PS. There is an older and longer version of this argument, which - although
it does not make reference to Dialectic & Plato Etc., since they were not
yet published by the time of drafting of the paper - came out in places
that are not that often read in the UK or the US, namely in India (Gandhi
Marg (15):1, 1992, by the name "Scientific Realism, Human Emancipation and
Non-Violent Political Action") and Finland (as Chapter 5, "The Logic of
Explanatory Emancipation", of 'Critical Realism and World Politics',
Studies on Political Science No.12, University of Turku, 1992).





----------------------------------
Heikki Patom=E4ki,
Network Institute of Global Democratisation (NIGD)
Helsinki & Nottingham
e-mail: heikki-AT-nigd.u-net.com
tel: 	+358 -(0)40  - 558 2916 (GSM)
	+44 - (0)802 - 598 332  (GSM)

ALSO:

Department of International Studies
Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane
Nottingham NG11 8NS
The United Kingdom
e-mail: heikki.patomaki-AT-ntu.ac.uk
tel:	+44 - (0)115 - 948 6610
fax: 	+44 - (0)115 - 948 6385





     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005