Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 00:20:53 -0500 (EST) From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us> Subject: Re: Modernism, Reason and Myth (Was WHOSE MODERNISM? MODERNISM VS POST-MODERNISM) I have a ton of law to cram into my head and a memorandum on a First Amewndment Case to write, but Leo's attack on reason demands at least a short answer. The material on the background to Hobbes' use of the Levianthan imagery is fascinating, but Leo wants to draw some conclusionds >from the fact that Hobbes uses such imagery, conclusions that simply do not follow, and that are pernicious and intellectually corrupt: 1. First Leo says that the opposition between reason and rhetoric cannot be sustained. Now this certainly does not follow from the fact that an arch-rationalist like H uses a mythical figure with certain historical connotations as the central figure around which to organize his book.More deeply, the idea that there is no distinction tends towards the notion that the "best" argument is one that changes minds, by whatever means. The reductio of this absurd notion is that if I could "persuade" Leo of my views, on Marxism, modernism, quantum mechanics, or whatever by giving him drugs, then he would have a good reason to accept them. Doubtless standards of rationality change over time and are no less subject to critique than the material to which they applied. Doubtless they are historically conditioned and full of prejudices that we cannot see from within them. But the very fact that we can have reasons to reject some older or different standards the defects of which we can see shows that the critique to which these standards are subject are rational ones--historically limited, etc., but not simply a matter of rhetorical appeal. The conceptions under which we apply standards of rationality involve various models, analogies, broad background pictures and so forth which are not merely sets of propositions evaluable in the light of others. So Hobbes and the other new philosophers of his time were struck by the metaphor of the world as a mechanism composed of mechanically interacting atoms, which obviously has some connection with the rise of capitalism. These are hard to subject to direct rational assessment, in part because they provide the background to a conception of rationality and in part because they are in some sense not fully propositional. Their test is their efficacy: do they allow those to hold them to acheuve their goals, expand their ambitions, cognitive and other, or do they lead to a sterile defense of explaining away overwhelming counterexamples or anomalies? But this, too, is a rational test, not simply a matter of rhetorical appeal. Rational doesn't mean: abosolute, ahistorical, or even fully articubale and foundationally derivable from self-evident premises. It does mean, or imply, defense of positions by giving reasons. What counts as a reason is up for grabs, but only in light of other reasons one might give. Rhetoric, by definition, is a matter of persuasaion by nonrational means. The distinction is crucial. 2. Leo suggests that the reason-rhetoric dichotomy is somehow tied to the demonization of the Other, and in particulkar the non-European, probably female Menace. How he gets this from Hobbes, or his use of myth, beats me. But two things need to be said here. First, there's no doiubt that many self-styled proponents of "reason" were and are bigots who use the rhetoric of reason--I don't mean rational argument, but the appeal to the idea of the thing--to denigrate or demonize nonWesterners, women, workers, and others whom, it is said, are deficient in reason. (Think of Locke's argument that the wealth of the world belongs to "the rational and the industrious," taht is, people like Locke.) But the rhetoric of reason isn't reason. Generally this rhetorical move is not supported by what its proponents have to regard on their own terms as rational argument from premises they do or by their own terms should accept. So when men dismiss what a woman says on the grounds that "Womewn are emotional, not rational," what they mean is not that women are deficient in argumentative ability, but that they tend not to go in for the emotionally disengaged and abstract pattern of argument that men prefer. I'm not saying this is true, but that's what's really meant. And what's goin on here is not a rational refutation of the woman's ideas but a refusal to engage with those ideas in reasoned discouyrse because of prejudice, superficially "justified" by a difference in argumentativbe style. But this is not a good reason even by "male" standards, to reject the woman's arguments, which may be worthy or not, depending on their merits. The point is that there's nothing sexist, white, European, or oppressiove about rationality. After all, every group has some standards of argument, and in fact these standards are necessary to have coherent discussion at all. To the extent that we can understand others at all, that's evidence that we have enough shared in the way of standards to communicate, among other things, about what those standards should be. Rationality is not rhetoric, even a rhetoric of rationlity. Leo says he doesn'r want to affirm the opposite pole of the reason-rhetoric debate, to promote rhetoric above reason. But in fact I think exavtly what he has done in denying the dichtonomy is just this, in fact, to deny that there is such a thing as reason. If the fact that something comports with your favorite myth, by your traditional standards for "comporting," whatever those may be, is "grounds" to accept it, or even put it beyond "criticism," there's a problem. And if all we have is the clash of myths, "My myth's better than your myth"(and by what standard), there's no rational debate at all. I say: The Proletariat! Rehnquist says, The Constitution! And there we are. (Doubtless we cannot in fact persuade each other, but aren't there ways that someone could see which of us, if either, was right?) Leo's attempt to tar the very idea of rationality with racism, sexism, and imperialism is an example of how pernicious the collapse of reason into rhetoric can be. Even a very smart guy like Leo loses the ability to develop an effective argument when he rejects the distinction and the affirmation of reasin over rhetoric, This does not mean that we do not need myths. We cannot live by rational argument alone. It has a distinct and limited purpose: to get us closer to the truth aboiut whatever we are reasining about, or, in the case of practical reason, to choose egffective and ethical means to acceptable ends. Myth does other things. It gives meaning to our lives, it binds our groups, associations, and societies, it provides beauty and hope. Mere rationality can't do that. So, in a sense, I affirm the value of myth. Rhetoric too has its place: when we try to move others to action, and even in some political contexts, to belief, mere rationality is often ineffective. But rhetoric without reason to back it is irresponsible. Myth without reason is at best complacent and conservative, at worst, mad and obdurate. So, here's to the distinction. A final note. I think Ralph, and maybe Rahul, and certainly I, dislike the French, by which we mean contemporary French thought of the sort fadshionable in American literary and cultural studies circles, not merely because they abandon reason, but because they propound doctrines that, insofar as they are ascertainable, are false and reactionary, and because their writing is intolerably opaque and obscurantist. Voltaire, Rousseau, ah, that's another story. Ralph, Blakean as he's become, may disagree. --Justin --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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