File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-04-08.195, message 158


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






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