The European Rationalist – In Reason We Trust

Rationalism as a philosophy is defined as using reason and logic as the reliable basis for testing any claims of truth, seeking objective knowledge about reality, making judgments and drawing conclusions about it. Although rationalism must ultimately rely on sense perceptions, but it must also couple sense perceptions with logic and evidence. To be consistent with logic, the thought process of a rationalist must be free from logical fallacies, catalogued in many introductory books on logic or critical thinking. There is no place for personal bias or emotion in rationalism, although emotion and rationalism are not mutually exclusive, each has its place. More on this later.

Freethinking, which is sometimes confused with rationalism, is defined as the free forming of views about reality independent of authority or dogma, be it from a divine or human source. If we stick to the strict definitions, then freethinking is not synonymous with rationalism. One need not be strictly rational to be a freethinker. One is allowed the leeway to believe or form any opinion, not necessarily rational (essentially “think as you like”), as long as it is not influenced by existing religious, cultural or traditional dogma or authority. A postmodernist (Read intellectual anarchist) may claim to be a freethinker according to this non-restrictive definition. But rationalism is much more restrictive. It enforces logic and evidence as the guiding principle in thinking and forming opinions and cognition.

So although rationalism invariably leads to freethinking, but freethinking does not necessarily imply rationalism, since freethinking may include irrational views, beliefs and personal bias. I have attempted to provide my own definitions in a precise way in a recent post (Faith Philosophy and Dogma) to help set the criteria for freethinkers/freethinking.

I must point out that I have tried to define and explain rationalism in the sense it is commonly understood today. I have not tried to approach the concept of rationalism from the perspective of the history of philosophy. In philosophical literature rationalism have been historically used to mean a certain epistemological school. The epistemic rationalism of Des Cartes, Spinozza, Wolff, Leibnitz et alia postulated that human knowledge is attainable apriori through intellect alone, independent of senses. To them the true source of knowledge were innate ideas. Sense perception to them was a poor or incomplete source of knowledge. Rationalism was in contrast with empiricism, whose principal proponents were Locke, Hume, Berkeley et alia. But my definition of rationalism is, in my view more meaningful, pragmatic and consistent with contemporary scientific thinking.

Rationalism as a philosophy demands some strict mental discipline that many find hard to implement in their thoughts and actions. Many may not even be aware that they are not being strictly rational. The reason for this is that some mistakenly associate rationalism with certain ideals and outlook that do not necessarily follow from rationalism. Rationalism as a philosophy inevitably leads to scientific method through logic and critical thinking. Therefore a rationalist cannot subscribe a priori to any ideology, political or ideological, nor can a rationalist make statement of truth that is not a strict proposition.

So a rationalist cannot claim to be a strict atheist, i.e cannot assert that “God does not exist”, since God is not a logically well-defined and meaningful concept, all definitions of God in any religious context runs into contradictions and logical inconsistency. So the existence or non-existence of God are both logically meaningless to a rationalist. A rationalist can only take a noncognitivist position in the God context. For more details on this issue please carefully review the following two articles at :

1. http://web.archive.org/web/20080202191437/http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/definition.html
and
2. http://web.archive.org/web/20080202191437/http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/incompatible.html

Does it mean a rationalist cannot have any opinion at all about anything? Of course not. If an opinion does not contradict logic, evidence or observation, rationalism does not prevent one from forming a tentative opinion. For example it is not against rationalism to hypothesize about all the POSSIBLE causes of a crime, when definite evidence is missing to point to the actual cause. Same can be said about theories to explain certain facts of reality. That’s what science is about. Scientific speculation is just that. Theories are just possible explanation about facts and observations. Before theories can become laws they are just scientific opinions. But the important point to realize is that rationalist opinions, although not yet proven, should nevertheless be consistent with logic or observations (i.e does not contradict logic or observations) and should not use ill-defined terms.

Rationalism cannot be a basis for subscribing to a political party based on any dogma, or to express an a priori affiliation or support for a non-dogma based political party.. One can certainly do so as a human out of emotional need or bias, but not DUE TO rationalism. For a rationalist who chooses to be guided by pure rationalism, not emotion, support for a non-dogma based political party should be based on policies, performance, efficiencies and other objective criterion, thus need not be a static one, but changeable based on an ongoing assessment of the fulfillment of those criteria. There is no such concept as party loyalty in a rationalist vocabulary. Some intellectuals believe that certain political stand in an ideological, social or political controversy is required by rationalism, e.g leftist ideology, pro-choice stand in abortion, nurturist stand in nature-nurture debate, etc to name a few. Many of them commit the fallacy of appeal to emotion (invoking patriotism/nationalism) to justify an uncritical adoption of one side of a political issue.

To a rationalist, an apriori biased stand is not consistent with rationalism. They should be prepared to accept whichever viewpoint that scientific and logical reasoning may lead to, even if that goes against the popular trend of thinking. Rationalism is ruthless, it does not need to pamper to one’s emotional need or wishes, or care about political correctness..

In personal life, that means a rationalist has to acknowledge and be critical of the unpleasant facts, if necessary, about one’s near and dear ones, if evidence so suggests. Being able to separate facts from personal biases is an essential hallmark of rationalism. By the same token, a rationalist has to acknowledge, and criticize , if need be, the shortcomings of the race, religion or language he/she belongs to, in a detached way, free from personal bias, as well as acknowledge the superiority of another race, religion in a certain aspect, if objective evidence suggests so. Rationalism also does not imply making an a priori assumption that all bad or wrongs are equal, just because political correctness says so. Rationalism demands doing the required homework to quantify and recognize shades in right and wrong in morality and shades of good and bad in attributes by some objective criteria when applicable. This requires intellectual courage and integrity, as it can be potentially incur one the scorn of the majority, for whom the priority is loyalty, pride, patriotism etc. But rationalism does not recognize such mental constructs or sets such priority. It only cares for logic and evidence.

Rationalism does not allow taking a stand just because it is politically correct or popular. Many intellectuals associate the terms liberal, progressive etc with rationalism/freethinking. But liberal, progressive etc are usually understood and judged in the context of which stand one takes vis a vis certain issues, e.g pro-choice in abortion, leftist ideology ij politics, nurturist stand in the nature/nurture debate, a puritanic belief that all bads are equal (i.e cultural and moral relativism) etc. But rationalism does not require one to adopt such positions, and in fact in certain issues,\ may lead to the opposite stand by scientific evidence and logic. I will not dwell at length on the specifics of those scientific evidences in all such cases as it is a topic on its own and I am only interested on the general aspects of rationalism in this essay. A small example may help to illustrate rationalistic approach to an issue. IF we adopt the axiom that ending a “life” is morally wrong, THEN the act of abortion by definition will be morally wrong, since biology tells us that a fetus has life of its own. There is no value judgement involved, that was a conclusion derived from purely logical inference. (Notice the IF.. THEN.. construct). Whether we should adopt “ending life is morally wrong” as an axiom of course is not dictated by rationalism. But in fact we can derive that axiom from rationalism if we adopt another axiom as more fundamental, for example the axiom that we should do whatever is needed to increases the odds for the survival of human species. In that case rational thinking using evolutionary biology tells us that IF we adopt the precept “ending life is morally wrong”, THEN it increases the odds for the survival of human species (Again notice the IF.. THEN.. contruct). Whether we should consider “increasing the odds of the survival of human species” as a moral imperative is of course beyond rationalism. This is an intuitive moral axiom. This example clearly shows that rationalism does have a role in formulating moral precpets, barring the mosr primitive moral axioms. Even humanism, is not strictly derived from rationalism. Humanism follows from rationalism if the postulate “we should put priority on the welfare of maximum number of humans irrespective of race, color, creed, ethnicity etc.” is added to rationalism. It must be noted that all religions and dogmas claim human welfare as their goal as well. But what differentiates their view of humanism from rational humanism is that for them, that goal is claimed to be achievable only through the implementation of their dogma. So dogma comes first for them. Not only that, the priority for welfare in most religions and dogmas is reserved for their followers. But rational humanism does not make that distinction. Once humanism is arrived through rationalism, the notions of democracy and secularism follows as corollary.

Symbolically: 
Rationalism+Human good-> Humanism-> Democracy->Secularism

Another point that many may have already wondered is that how can we decide who is rationalist or not? After all, followers of all religion or dogma claim they believe in logic and reason. Doesn’t every one have their own logic and every religion their own logic? So how can one not be rational? This is a tricky question that can lead to a slippery slope if not clarified beforehand. Cultural and moral relativists, postmodernists exploit such slippery slope to argue that all are equal, nothing is more valid than another etc. The logic and evidence referred to in rationalism, is shared by humanity with an overwhelming consensus crossing race, religion and affiliation etc. In other words they are universal. Modern logic finds much in common with the logic of early Greek, Hindu and Buddhist philosophers, as well as the early Muslim rationalists (Mutazillites) during the time of the House of Wisdom in Bagdad. This logic has been perfected and improved by later philosophers, like Locke, Hume, Kant and many Mathematicians and logicians of the twentieth century. This is the logic that is taught with tax payer’s funding in public schools in most nations of the world as well as secular private schools. This is also the logic that has WORKED. This logic has been the basis of the scientific method that has been so successful, has changed the world, made predictions about nature that was tested and verified to be true. It is also leading humanity towards continued advancement. It is no surprise that this is the logic that people have staked their money in teaching and learning. There are a set of unambiguous rules for valid logical reasoning, both informal and formal taught in elementary logic class that can act as guide to resolve dilemmas, ambiguities, paradox. contradictions, disputes etc. Also it is important to note that claims must be backed up by not just logic, but evidence and objectivity as well, both of are lacking in claims of religious or other dogmas. Contrast that with the “logic” that person “A” uses to rationalize his own belief, or the “logic” of religion “X” to rationalize that religion. Such “logic” is not shared universally, nor has it demonstrated its utility by coming up with any predictions, inventions or innovations, nor to the discovery of any fundamental truth about nature or reality. A “logic” that has been invented as a dedicated ploy to justify one dogma or belief is no logic at all. Besides such logic does not have universal appeal.

It should suffice to note that a dogma by definition is not based on logic and evidence, so to try to justify a dogma by logic is a fallacy to begin with and thus contrary to rationalism. It is quite intriguing to see vocal champions of religious dogmas even among some PhD’s of reputed universities, who are not ashamed to claim that their belief is supported by logic and evidence!

Rationalism also implies skepticism. Skepticism requires one to doubt any claim to truth, unless proven by evidence and logic, and to suspend belief or judgment in absence thereof, which clearly follows from rationalism. In personal life, such skepticism forces one to refrain from forming judgement or drawing hasty conclusions or opinion about a person or any claim of truth. In the absence of any evidence or logic a skeptic should stay in a “do nothing” i.e neutral mode. This “do nothing” neutral mode is a level most minds cannot recognize and needs some effort to become at ease with it. Most feel tempted to ruch to an opinion one way or the other, even in the absence of any supporting data. If and when the evidence or logic is available only then a skeptic can form an opinion, that is dictated by the evidence and logic, not by their wishful desires or biases.

A rationalist has to have the intellectual courage to acknowledge unpleasant truths. A rationalist never gained/gains materially or otherwise by being rational. It is just a philosophy that they find intuitively appealing.

Let me now turn to some mistaken notions about rationalism that is quite common among many. Many think that rationalism means an arrogant claim to infallibility, that rationalism never admits of ever being wrong, that it denies the possibility that logic itself may be wrong! All these are due to a lack of careful reflection. First that one could be wrong is a trivial and self-evident fact. It is like saying that one cannot be sure that he/she will make it to the destination as the flight may crash. ACKNOWLEDGING that fact of the limits and uncertainties in one’s knowledge is a matter of humility. Humility is a personality trait.  

Rationalism is a philosophy, not a trait. Rationalism does not prevent one, nor does it mandate one to possess certain personality trait. Second to say that “logic” itself may be wrong is to commit a fallacy. Because to judge something as “wrong” needs a logic of its own. One cannot use logic to judge the same logic as wrong! We have assumed that there exists only one system of logic that works best. Until we find a better system of logic, it is a fallacy to judge that logic as wrong. But saying that the “logic” is not wrong does not mean saying that one cannot make mistakes. Mistakes are due to an individual’s limit or flaw in applying logic, not due to logic itself. But there is no better way to overcome that limit than logic itself. Anyway, that humility of admitting the self-evident fact of fallibility is built in the scientific method.  

Scientific method, which is derived from rationalism is based on the premise that there is no absolute or final truth, and that any conclusion about reality is always tentative, subject to continual revision in light of further evidence. But one must not conclude that just because in certain instance one could predict the truth correctly by non-rational (intuition, guess) means that means intuition is superior to rationalism as a means for seeking truth. For example if a coin is tossed, an intuitionist may intuitively guess that the coin will come heads up. A rationalist cannot predict the outcome on the basis of logic and science (It is incredibly complex calculation) If the coin does fall heads up, does it prove that intuition is superior to rationalism? Of course not. Let me now clarify what rationalism is not or cannot It is a mistaken to believe that rationalism can solve all problems in life, or prevent them. It cannot. The fact it cannot is because the truth in many situation in life is not always known in advance for one to make the right decision. Rationalism is limited by the knowledge or truth that is needed in making an informed decision to solve or prevent a problem. In an indeterminstic situation intuitive guesses and judgement is inevitable. And the intuition of rational person is not guaranteed to be right. So in those situations in life where there are unknowns and uncertainties, intuitive guesswork cannot be avoided. Rationalism may offer some guidelines in making the best guesses, but it cannot offer a guarantee for success. For example, rationalism cannot guarantee one will make the right choice in marriage or relationship. Rationalism cannot prevent one from making mistakes in life. Gamble in life cannot be totally averted through rationalism. Risk cannot be either. More generally speaking, from an utilitarian point of view, rationalism is no guarantee to material success in individual life. Rationalism is a principle based on logic and evidence. In an imperfect world, that is not always the sure route to material success. Just like honesty is not. But the value of rationalism goes beyond personal gains or interests. It’s value lies in the collective imnprovement of the quality of human life by following rationalistic approach. COnsider the cost human society has paid and is paying in terms of dollars and man hours for believing in dogmas and faiths that have no logic or evodence as its basis. How much time and resources are being spent towards relgiouis rituals, how much suffering and persecution has enforcement of some cruelst relgious dogmas brought to many decent humans? If majority of a society adopt rationalism as their personal philosophy, then such wastage and social evils could be abolished or minimized. Society would prosper faster then. A common thinking is that morality is beyond rationalism. I think that is a mistaken view. Although the moral axioms at the bottom of a moral system may have to be assumed arbitrarily based on intuition, once the axioms are accepted, further moral precepts based on those axioms can certainly be rationally analyzed or developed. Rationalism is the product of human mind. So is morality. There is no apriori cause for them to be not connected. In the ultimate analysis since it is the laws of nature that has created human brain and thus rationalism, so it should be in principle possible to formulate a moral system based on the same laws of nature via rationalism. It may have to be an evolutionary process.

It must also be emphasized that not all human brains are equally capabale of rationalism or programmed for rational thinking. There is no guaranatee that rationalism can be inculcated by preaching or training. Human brain, being inherently complex, have varying degrees of potential for each type of thinking. It is possible certain brains are more susceptible to certain cues that triggers rational thinking, while others are impervious to any cues. There are some PhD’s of renouned universties, even after being exposed to some of the finest rationalistic arguments, writings and philosophical essays, continue to defend religious dogmas, sometimes even using the very same rationalistic arguments and languages they read about! They are impervious to any rational cues at all. Majority of humans are easily susceptible to cues of dogmatist preaching or rationalist thinking. They are up for grabs, so to speak. These are the fence-sitters, swing voters in the rationalism vs. dogmatism election, metaphorically speaking. It does not make much sense to say “thou shalt be rational”. The best that those who value and cherish rationalism can do is to target this majority, present to them examples of rational arguments to refute or critique issues, debunk the claims of mystics, godmen and other charlartans by logical means and evidence. This can be through electronic and print media, or preferably if possible through practical workshops as has been done in many rural outbacks of India. I also strongly suggest that rationalism be included in high school curricula. While it may be unrealistic to expect this to happen in the current environment in many countries where religious sentiments run high, specially if rationalism is pitted against the popular religion, it may be acceptable including rationalism as a general philosophy to emphasize reason and evidence over blind faith and superstition. Leading educators and academicians need to take the lead in lobbying with the relevant authorites for such curricular changes.

Next, to many, rationalism means robbing one of the sense of beauty, romanticism, love, compassion , i.e leaves one heartless and devoid of emotions. This is a big myth. Rationalism stresses separating the head from the heart, not REPLACING heart with head. Certain things are intrinsically rooted in instinct, and thus beyond rationalism. Love, fear, altruism, conscience (sense of right and wrong), these are biologically rooted instincts. Instincts are not controllable or influenced by rationalism. Instincts are more or less hardwired in our genes and manifested through the workings of the limbic system of our brain. Whereas rationalism results from the thought process determined by the evolution of cerebral cortex. Humans posses both these brain components. So a rational person can feel an instinctive fear in certain environment, or can feel passionate love for certain person. What differentiates a rational person from a less or rational or emotional person is the synaptic connectivities in their cerebral cortex, not in their limbic system. So when it comes to primal instincts controlled by limbic systems, for example self-preservation, the difference disappears. In a life threatening situation, control is automatically taken over by the limbic system from the cerebral cortex, biological instinct of aggression may kick in, and at that point whatever one does is not subject to rationalism anymore. Taste is also instinctive. Rationalism has nothing to do with it.

Although rationalism does not decide or control our tastes and emotions, it can however EXPLAIN (or at least try to through scientific method) the basis of such emotions and likes or dislikes. Rationalism cannot affect or control love. But rationalism can certainly help explain the biological (in both evolutionary and biochemical terms) origin of love, morality and other human values and attributes. The same can be said about all other instincts and emotions. A good example of that would be the book “Why we feel : The Science of Emotions” by Victor Johnston. So being rational does not by any means deprive of those instincts, tastes and emotions, because they are an integral part of being human, rational or not. Rationalism enables humans to understand and explain the underlyinmg basis of emotions, it does not rob us of the emotions. A neurologist does not lose his mind(brain) in trying to understand the workings of the brain, nor does an evolutionary biologist ceases to be a loving mate or parent in trying to explain and understand the biological roots of love, simply because we have no control on our biological instincts, whether we are rational or not. Rationalism however can however help to control the impulses that emotions may lead to. In biological language, although the generation of emotions in the limbic system itself cannot be controlled, the impulsive ACTS (e.g aggression) that those emotions often lead to can be controlled by the feedback mechanism of the cerebral cortex over the limbic system.
Another “reason” for viewing rationalism with cynical eyes by many is because it is believed by them that humanitarian acts should come from an emotional impulse, not from a rationalization process, which does not take the compassion factor in the decision of such acts. On first look, it may look like a noble view, putting heart before head. But as I pointed out, compassion, humanitarian acts all are derived from altruism, a biologically rooted instinct, so rationalism cannot affect it. Although rationalism can certainly manage altruistic instinct in a way that ensures optimum utilization of it. Impulsive altruistic acts do not always lead to the best results. Rationalism can help to channelize our altruistic instincts in the most optimal manner. At a very personal level, of course even a rationalist can (and often does) act out of an impulse and do an act of humanitarianism or compassion, since doing so is not contradicted by logic. Compassion should not REPLACE rationalism, but must be accompanied by it. A good example would be the case of a judge granting leniency to convicted on compassionate grounds. But the compassion follows only after a thorough rational analysis of the crimes committed by the convicted. Rationalism is truly applicable in forming opinions, judgments, learning the truth and solving problems, but not to instincts, or impulses that are non-judgmental, non-intrusive and innocuous

Another “reason” for viewing rationalism with cynical eyes by many is because it is believed by them that humanitarian acts should come from an emotional impulse, not from a rationalization process, which does not take the compassion factor in the decision of such acts. On first look, it may look like a noble view, putting heart before head. But as I pointed out, compassion, humanitarian acts all are derived from altruism, a biologically rooted instinct, so rationalism cannot affect it. Although rationalism can certainly manage altruistic instinct in a way that ensures optimum utilization of it. Impulsive altruistic acts do not always lead to the best results. Rationalism can help to channelize our altruistic instincts in the most optimal manner. At a very personal level, of course even a rationalist can (and often does) act out of an impulse and do an act of humanitarianism or compassion, since doing so is not contradicted by logic. Compassion should not REPLACE rationalism, but must be accompanied by it. A good example would be the case of a judge granting leniency to convicted on compassionate grounds. But the compassion follows only after a thorough rational analysis of the crimes committed by the convicted. Rationalism is truly applicable in forming opinions, judgments, learning the truth and solving problems, but not to instincts, or impulses that are non-judgmental, non-intrusive and innocuousLastly I will be remiss if I do not point out the challenge that rationalism is facing from the postmodernist thinking that seems to be gaining ground in recent years. Postmodernists are challenging that very golden product of rationalism, namely scientific method by insisting that scientific method is just one among many EQUALLY valid route to truth and deserves no special privileged status. This is nothing but intellectual anarchism. Postmodernists are nothing but armchair social scientists that have fallen much behind modern scientific paradigms and are threatened by the scientific approach that the social sciences are adopting (rather being forced to adopt). They are watching with frustration one after another social discipline is losing ground to the exact sciences. Not being able to face upto the challenge of the sciences some of them have chosen the treacherous art of deconstruction and misapplying it to scientific method. So rationalism now faces challenges from two fronts, religious dogma (which Europeans successfully faced during the renaissance), and postmodernism, which is a new challenge that needs to be faced. So the need to emphasize rationalism is more now than ever. Hopefully my fellow Mukto-Monas will share my passion for rationalism.

Aparthib Zaman, aparthib@yahoo.com

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The purpose of this essay is to critically examine the historical dynamics of liberalism and its impact on contemporary Western polities. This essay will argue a) that liberalism today provides a comfortable ideological “retreat” for members of the intellectual elite and decision makers tired of the theological and ideological disputes that rocked Western politics for centuries; b) that liberalism can make compromises with various brands of socialism on practically all issues except the freedom of the market place; c) that liberalism thrives by expanding the economic arena into all aspects of life and all corners of the world, thereby gradually erasing the sense of national and historical community which had formerly provided the individual with a basic sense of identity and psychological security. This essay will also question whether liberalism, despite its remarkable success in the realm of the economy, provides an adequate bulwark against non-democratic ideologies, or whether under some conditions it may actually stimulate their growth.

In the aftermath of the second world war, liberalism and Marxism emerged as the two unquestionably dominant ideologies following their military success over their common rival, fascism. This brought them into direct conflict with each other, since each contended, from their own viewpoint, that the only valid political model was their own, denying the validity of their opponent’s thesis. Beaud writes that when the liberal and socialist ideas began to emerge, the former quickly cloaked itself in science (”the law of supply and demand,” “the iron law of wages”), while the latter had the tendency to degenerate into mysticism and sectarianism.[1]

Some critics of liberalism, such as the French economist Francois Perroux, pointed out that according to some extreme liberal assumptions, “everything (that) has been happening since the beginning of time (can be attributed to capitalism) as if the modern world was constructed by industrialists and merchants consulting their account books and wishing to reap profits.”[2] Similar subjective attitudes, albeit from a different ideological angle, can often be heard among Marxist theorists, who in the analysis of liberal capitalism resort to value judgements colored by Marxian dialectics and accompanied by the rejection of the liberal interpretation of the concept of equality and liberty. “The fact that the dialectical method can be used for each purpose,” remarks the Austrian philosopher Alexander Topitsch, “explains its extraordinary attraction and its world-wide dissemination, that can only be compared to the success of the natural rights doctrine of the eighteenth century.”[3] Nevertheless, despite their real ideological discord, liberals, neo-liberals, socialists, and “socio-neoliberals,” agree, at least in principle, in claiming a common heritage of rationalism, and on the rejection of all non-democratic ideologies, especially racialism. Earlier in this century, Georges Sorel, the French theorist of anarcho-syndicalism, remarked with irony that “to attempt to protest against the illusion of rationalism means to be immediately branded as the enemy of democracy.”[4]

The practical conflict between the respective virtues of liberalism and socialism is today seemingly coming to a close, as some of the major Marxist regimes move in the direction of a liberalization of their economies, even though the ideological debate is by no means settled amongst intellectuals. Undoubtedly, the popularity of Marxist socialism is today in global decline amongst those who have to face the problem of making it work. In consequence, despite the fact that support for Marxism amongst Western intellectuals was at its height when repression in Marxist countries was at its peak, liberalism today seems have been accepted as a place of “refuge” by many intellectuals who, disillusioned with the failure of repression in the Marxist countries, nevertheless continue to hold to the socialist principles of universalism and egalitarianism.

As Francois B. Huyghe comments, welfare state policies accepted by liberals have implemented many of the socialist programs which patently failed in communist countries.[5] Thus, economic liberalism is not only popular among many former left-wing intellectuals (including numbers of East European intellectuals) because it has scored tangible economic results in the Western countries, but also due to the fact that its socialist counterpart has failed in practice, leaving the liberal model as the only uncontested alternative. “The main reason for the victories of economic liberalism,” writes Kolm, “are due to the fact that all defective functioning of the non-liberal model of social realization warrants the consideration of the alternative liberal social realization. The examples of such cases abound in the West as in the East; in the North as in the South.”[6] In the absence of other successful models, and in the epoch of a pronounced “de-ideologization” process all over Europe and America, modern liberalism has turned out to be a modus vivendi for the formerly embattled foes. But are we therefore to conclude that the eclipse of other models and ideologies must spell the end of politics and inaugurate the beginning of the Age of Liberalism?

Long before the miracle of modern liberalism became obvious, a number of writers had observed that liberalism would continue to face a crisis of legitimacy even if its socialist and fascist foes were miraculously to disappear.[7] More recently, Serge-Christophe Kolm has remarked that liberalism and socialism must not be viewed in dialectical opposition, but rather as a fulfilment of each other. Kolm writes that the ideals of liberalism and Marxism “are almost identical given that they are founded on the values of liberty, and coinciding in the applications of almost everything, except on a subject which is logically punctual, yet factually enormous in this world: wage-earning, location of individuals and self.”[8] Some have even advanced the hypothesis that liberalism and socialism are the face and the counter-face of the same phenomenon, since contemporary liberalism has managed to achieve, in the long run and in an unrepressive fashion, many of those same goals which Marxian socialism in the short run, employing repressive means, has failed to achieve. Yet differences exist.

Not only do socialist ideologues currently fear that the introduction of free market measures could spell the end of socialism, but socialism and liberalism disagree fundamentally on the definition of equality. Theoretically, both subscribe to constitutional, legal, political and social equality; yet their main difference lies in their opposing views regarding the distribution of economic benefits/rewards, and accordingly, as to their corresponding definition of economic equality. Unlike liberalism, socialism is not satisfied with demanding political and social equality, but insists on equal distribution of economic goods. Marx repeatedly criticized the liberal definition of equal rights, for which he once said that “this equal right is unequal right for unequal labor. This right does not acknowledge class difference because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual talents, and consequently it holds individual skills for natural privileges.”[9] Only in a higher stage of communism, after the present subordination of individuals to capital, that is, after the differences in the rewards of labor have disappeared, will bourgeois rights disappear, and society will write on its banner: “From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs.”[10]

Despite these differences, it may be said that, in general, socialist ideas have always surfaced as unavoidable satellites and pendants of liberalism. As soon as liberal ideas made their inroads into the European feudal scene, the stage for socialist appetites was set – appetites which subsequently proved too large to fulfil. As soon as the early bourgeoisie had secured its position, liquidating guilds and feudal corporations along with the landed aristocracy, it had to face up to critics who accused it of stifling political liberties and economic equality, and of turning the newly enfranchised peasant into a factory slave. In the seventeenth century, remarks Lakoff, the bourgeois ideas of equality and liberty immediately provided the fourth estate with ideological ammunition, which was quickly expressed by numerous proto-socialist revolutionary movements.[11] Under such circumstances of flawed equality, it must not come as a surprise that the heaviest burden for peasants was the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, which had hailed the rights of equality as long as it struggled to dislodge the aristocracy from power; yet the minute it acceded to power, prudently refrained from making any further claims about equality in affluence. David Thomson remarked with irony that “many of those who would defend with their dying breath the rights of liberty and equality (such as many English and American liberals) shrink back in horror from the notion of economic egalitarianism.”[12] Also, Sorel pointed out that in general, the abuse of power by an hereditary aristocracy is less harmful to the juridical sentiment of a people than the abuses committed by a plutocratic regime,[13] adding that “nothing would ruin so much the respect for laws as the spectacle of injustices committed by adventurers who, with the complicity of tribunals, have become so rich that they can purchase politicians.”[14]

The dynamics of liberal and socialist revolutions gathered steam in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, notably an epoch of great revolutionary ferment in Europe. The liberal 1789 revolution in France rapidly gave way to the socialist Jacobin revolution in 1792; “the liberal” Condorcet was supplanted by the “communist” Babeuf, and the relatively bloodless Girondin coup was followed by the avalanche of bloodshed under the Jacobin terror and the revolt of the “sans-culottes.”[15] Similarly, a hundred years later, the February Revolution in Russia was followed by the accelerated October revolution, replacing the social democrat, Kerensky, by the communist Lenin. Liberalism gobbled up the ancient aristocracy, liquidated the medieval trade corporations, alienated the workers, and then in its turn was frequently supplanted by socialism. It is therefore interesting to observe that after its century-long competition with socialism, liberalism is today showing better results in both the economic and ethical domains, whereas the Marxist credo seems to be on the decline. But has liberalism become the only acceptable model for all peoples on earth? How is it that liberalism, as an incarnation of the humanitarian ideal and the democratic spirit, has always created enemies on both the left and the right, albeit for different reasons?

Free Market: The “Religion” of Liberalism
Liberalism can make many ideological “deals” with other ideologies, but one sphere where its remains intransigent is the advocacy of the free market and free exchange of goods and commodities. Undoubtedly, liberalism is not an ideology like other ideologies, and in addition, it has no desire to impose an absolute and exclusive vision of the world rooted in a dualistic cleavage between good and evil, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the “chosen and the unchosen ones.” Moreover, the liberal ideal lacks that distinctive telos so typical of socialist and fascist ideologies. Contrary to other ideologies, liberalism is in general rather sceptical of any concentration of political power, because in the “inflation” of politics, and in ideological fervor, it claims to see signs of authoritarianism and even, as some authors have argued, totalitarianism.[16] Liberalism seems to be best fitted for a secularized polity, which Carl Schmitt alternatively called the “minimal state” (Minimalstaat), and stato neutrale.[17] It follows that in a society where production has been rationalized and human interaction is subject to constant reification (Vergegenstandlichung), liberalism cannot (or does not wish to) adopt the same “will to power” which so often characterizes other ideologies. In addition, it is somewhat difficult to envision how such a society can request its citizens to sacrifice their goods and their lives in the interests of some political or religious ideal.[18] The free market is viewed as a “neutral filed” (Neutralgebiet), allowing only the minimum of ideological conflict, that aims at erasing all political conflicts, positing that all people are rational beings whose quest for happiness is best secured by the peaceful pursuit of economic goals. In a liberal, individualistic society, every political belief is sooner or later reduced to a “private thing” whose ultimate arbiter is the individual himself. The Marxist theoretician Habermas comes to a somewhat similar conclusion, when he argues that modern liberal systems have acquired a negative character: “Politics is oriented to the removal of dysfunctionalities and of risks dangerous to the system; in other words politics is not oriented to the implementation of practical goals, but to the solution of technological issues.”[19] The market may thus be viewed as an ideal social construct whose main purpose is to limit the political arena. Consequently, every imaginable flaw in the market is generally explained by assertions that “there is still too much politics” hampering the free exchange of goods and commodities.[20]

Probably one of the most cynical remarks about liberalism and the liberal “money fetichism,” came not from Marx, but from the Fascist ideologue Julius Evola, who once wrote: “Before the classical dilemma, your money or your life, the bourgeois will paradoxically be the one to answer: ‘Take my life, but spare my money.’”[21] But in spite of its purportedly agnostic and apolitical character, it would be wrong to assert that liberalism does not have “religious roots.” In fact, many authors have remarked that the implementation of liberalism has been the most successful in precisely those countries which are known for strong adherence to biblical monotheism. Earlier in this century, the German sociologist Werner Sombart asserted that the liberal postulates of economics and ethics stem from Judeo-Christian legalism, and that liberals conceive of commerce, money and the “holy economicalness” (”heilige Wirtschaftlichkeit”) as the ideal avenue to spiritual salvation.[22] More recently, the French anthropologist Louis Dumont, wrote that liberal individualism and economism are the secular transposition of Judeo-Christian beliefs, noting that “just as religion gave birth to politics, politics in turn will be shown to give birth to economics.”[23]

Henceforth, writes Dumont in his book From Mandeville to Marx, according to the liberal doctrine, man’s pursuit of happiness has increasingly come to be associated with the unimpeded pursuit of economic activities. In modern polities, he opines, the substitution of man as an individual for the idea of man as a social being was made possible by Judeo- Christianity: “the transition was thus made possible, from a holistic social order to a political system raised by consent as a superstructure on an ontological given economic basis.”[24] In other words, the idea of individual accountability before God, gave birth, over a long period of time, to the individual and to the idea that economic accountability constitutes the linchpin of the liberal social contract – a notion totally absent from organic and traditional nationalistically-organized societies.[25] Thus Emanuel Rackman argues that Judeo-Christianity played an important role in the development of ethical liberalism in the USA: “This was the only source on which Thomas Paine could rely in his “Rights of Man” to support the dogma of the American Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. And this dogma was basic in Judaism.”[26] Similar claims are made by Konvitz in Judaism and the American Idea, wherein he argues that modern America owes much to the Jewish holy scriptures.[27] Feurbach, Sombart, Weber, Troeltsch, and others have similarly argued that Judeo-Christianity had a considerable influence on the historical development of liberal capitalism. On the other hand, when one considers the recent economic success of various Asian countries on the Pacific Rim, whose expansionary impetus often overshadows the economic achievements of the countries marked by the Judeo-Christian legacy, one must take care not to equate economic success solely with the Judeo-Christian forms of liberal society.

Equal Economic Opportunity or the Opportunity to Be Unequal?
The strength of liberalism and of free-market economics lies in the fact that the liberal ideal enables all people to develop their talents as they best see fit. The free market ignores all hierarchy and social differentiation, except those differences which result from the completion of economic transactions. Liberals argue that all people have the same economic opportunity, and that consequently, each individual, by making best use of his or her talents and entrepreneurship, will alone determine his or her social status. But critics of liberalism often contend that this formula is in itself dependent upon the terms and conditions under which the principles of “economic opportunity” can take place. John Schaar asserts that liberalism has substantially transformed the social arena into the economic field track, and that the formula should read: “equality of opportunity for all to develop those talents which are highly valued by a given people at a given time.”[28] According to Schaar’s logic, when the whims of the market determine which specific items, commodities or human talents are most in demand, or are more marketable than some others, it will follow that individuals lacking these talents or commodities will experience an acute sense of injustice. “Every society, Schaar continues, “encourages some talents and discourages others. Under the equal opportunity doctrine, the only men who can fulfil themselves and develop their abilities to the fullest are those who are able and eager to do what society demands they do.”[29] This means that liberal societies will likely be most content when their members share a homogeneous background and a common culture. Yet modern liberalism seeks to break-down national barriers and promote the conversion of hitherto homogeneous nation-states into multi-ethnic and highly heterogeneous political states. Thus, the potential for disputation and dissatisfaction is enhanced by the successful implementation of its economic policies.

It is further arguable that the success of liberalism engenders its own problems. Thus, as Karl Marx was quick to note, in a society where everything becomes an expendable commodity, man gradually comes to see himself as an expendable commodity too. An average individual will be less and less prone to abide by his own internal criteria, values or interests, and instead, he will tenaciously focus on not being left out of the economic battle, always on his guard that his interests are in line with the market. According to Schaar, such an attitude, in the long run, can have catastrophic consequences for the winner as well as the loser: “The winners easily come to think of themselves as being superior to common humanity, while the losers are almost forced to think of themselves as something less than human.”[30] Under psychological pressure caused by incessant economic competition, and seized by fear that they may fall out of the game, a considerable number of people, whose interests and sensibilities are not compatible with current demands of the market, may develop feelings of bitterness, jealousness and inferiority. A great many among them will accept the economic game, but many will, little by little, come to the conclusion that the liberal formula “all people are equal,” in reality only applies to those who are economically the most successful. Murray Milner, whose analyses parallel Schaar’s, observes that under such circumstances, the doctrine of equal opportunity creates psychological insecurity, irrespective of the material affluence of society. “Stressing equality of opportunity necessarily makes the status structure fluid and the position of the individual within it ambiguous and insecure.”[31] The endless struggle for riches and security, which seemingly has no limits, can produce negative results, particularly when society is in the throes of sudden economic changes. Antony Flew, in a similar fashion, writes that “a ‘competition’ in which the success of all contestants is equally probable is a game of chance or lottery, not a genuine competition.”[32] For Milner such an economic game is tiring and unpredictable, and if “extended indefinitely, it could lead to exhaustion and collapse.”[33]

Many other contemporary authors also argue that the greatest threat to liberalism comes from the constant improvement in general welfare generated by its own economic successes. Recently, two French scholars, Julien Freund and Claude Polin, wrote that the awesome expansion of liberalism, resulting in ever increasing general affluence, inevitably generates new economic and material needs, which constantly cry out for yet another material fulfilment. Consequently, after society has reached an enviable level of material growth, even the slightest economic crisis, resulting in a perceptible drop in living standards, will cause social discord and possibly political upheavals.

Taking a slightly different stance, Polin remarks that liberalism, in accordance with the much vaunted doctrine of “natural rights,” tends, very often, to define man as a final and complete species who no longer needs to evolve, and whose needs can be rationally predicted and finalized. Led by an unquenchable desire that he must exclusively act on his physical environment in order to improve his earthly lot, he is accordingly led by the liberal ideology to think that the only possible way to realize happiness is to place material welfare and individualism above all other goals.[34] In fact, given that the “ideology of needs” has become a tacit criterion of progress in liberalism, it is arguable that the material needs of modern anomic masses must always be “postponed,” since they can never be fully satisfied.[35] Moreover, each society which places excessive hopes in a salutary economy, will gradually come to view freedom as purely economic freedom and good as purely economic good. Thus, the “merchant civilization” (civilization marchande), as Polin calls it, must eventually become a hedonistic civilization in search of pleasure, and self-love. These points are similar to the views held by Julien Freund, who also sees in liberalism a society of impossible needs and insatiable desire. He remarks that “it appears that satiety and overabundance are not the same things as satisfaction, because they provoke new dissatisfaction.”[36] Instead of rationally solving all human needs, liberal society always triggers new ones, which in turn constantly create further needs. Everything happens, Freund continues, as if the well-fed needed more than those who live in indigence. In other words, abundance creates a different form of scarcity, as if man needs privation and indigence, “as if he needed some needs.”[37] One has almost the impression that liberal society purposely aims at provoking new needs, generally unpredictable, often bizarre. Freund concludes that “the more the rationalization of the means of production brings about an increase in the volume of accessible goods, the more the needs extend to the point of becoming irrational.”[38]

Such an argument implies that the dynamics of liberalism, continually begetting new and unpredictable needs, continually threatens the philosophical premises of that same rationalism on which liberal society has built its legitimacy. In this respect socialist theorists often sound convincing when they in effect argue that if liberalism has not been able to provide equality in affluence, communism does at least offer equality in frugality!

Conclusion: From Atomistic Society to Totalitarian System
The British imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, once exclaimed: “if I could I would annex the planets!” A very Promethean idea, indeed, and quite worthy of Jack London’s rugged individuals or Balzac’s entrepreneurs – but can it really work in a world in which the old capitalist guard, as Schumpeter once pointed out, is becoming a vanishing species?[39]

It remains to be seen how liberalism will pursue its odyssey in a society in which those who are successful in the economic arena live side by side with those who lag behind in economic achievement, when its egalitarian principles prohibit the development of any moral system that would justify such hierarchical differences, such as sustained medieval European society. Aside from prophecies about the decline of the West, the truism remains that it is easier to create equality in economic frugality than equality in affluence. Socialist societies can point to a higher degree of equality in frugality. But liberal societies, especially in the last ten years, have constantly been bedevilled by an uneasy choice; on the one hand, their effort to expand the market, in order to create a more competitive economy, has almost invariably caused the marginalization of some social strata. On the other hand, their efforts to create more egalitarian conditions by means of the welfare state brings about, as a rule, sluggish economic performance and a menacing increase in governmental bureaucratic controls. As demonstrated earlier, liberal democracy sets out from the principles that the “neutral state” and free market are the best pillars against radical political ideologies, and that commerce, as Montesqieu once said, “softens up the mores.” Further, as a result of the liberal drive to extend markets on a world-wide basis, and consequently, to reduce or eliminate all forms of national protectionism, whether to the flow of merchandise, or of capital, or even of labor, the individual worker finds himself in an incomprehensible, rapidly changing international environment, quite different from the secure local society familiar to him since childhood.

This paradox of liberalism was very well described by a keen German observer, the philosopher Max Scheler, who had an opportunity to observe the liberal erratic development, first in Wilhelmian and then in Weimar Germany. He noted that liberalism is bound to create enemies, both on the right and the left side of the political spectrum: On the left it makes enemies of those who see in liberalism a travesty of the natural rights dogma, and on the right, of those who discern in it the menace to organic and traditional society. “Consequently,” writes Scheler, “a huge load of resentment appears in a society, such as ours, in which equal political and other rights, that is, the publicly acknowledged social equality, go hand in hand with large differences in real power, real property and real education. A society in which each has the “right” to compare himself to everybody, yet in which, in reality, he can compare himself to nobody.”[40] In traditional societies as Dumont has written, such types of reasoning could never develop to the same extent because the majority of people were solidly attached to their communal roots and the social status which their community bestowed upon them. India, for example, provides a case study of a country that has significantly preserved a measure of traditional civic community, at least in the smaller towns and villages, despite the adverse impact of its population explosion and the ongoing conflict there between socialism in government and liberalism in the growing industrial sector of the economy. By contrast, in the more highly industrialized West, one could almost argue that the survival of modern liberalism depends on its constant ability to “run ahead of itself” economically.

The need for constant and rapid economic expansion carries in itself the seeds of social and cultural dislocation, and it is this loss of “roots” that provides the seedbed for tempting radical ideologies. In fact how can unchecked growth ever appease the radical proponents of natural rights, whose standard response is that it is inadmissible for somebody to be a loser and somebody a winner? Faced with a constant expansion of the market, the alienated and uprooted individual in a society in which the chief standard of value has become material wealth, may be tempted to sacrifice freedom for economic security. It does not always appear convincing that liberal societies will always be able to sustain the “social contract” on which they depend for their survival by thrusting people into material interdependence. Economic gain may be a strong bond, but it does not have the affective emotional power for inducing willing self-sacrifice in times of adversity on which the old family-based nation-state could generally rely.

More likely, by placing individuals in purely economic interdependence on each other, and by destroying the more traditional bonds of kinship and national loyalty, modern liberalism may have succeeded in creating a stage where, in times of adversity, the economic individual will seek to outbid, outsmart, and outmaneuver all others, thereby preparing the way for the “terror of all against all,” and preparing the ground, once again, for the rise of new totalitarianisms. In other words, the spirit of totalitarianism is born when economic activity obscures all other realms of social existence, and when the “individual has ceased to be a father, a sportsman, a religious man, a friend, a reader, a righteous man – only to become an economic actor.”[41] By shrinking the spiritual arena and elevating the status of economic activities, liberalism in fact challenges its own principles of liberty, thus enormously facilitating the rise of totalitarian temptations. One could conclude that as long as economic values remained subordinate to non-economic ideals, the individual had at least some sense of security irrespective of the fact his life was often, economically speaking, more miserable. With the subsequent emergence of the anonymous market, governed by the equally anonymous invisible hand, in the anonymous society, as Hannah Arendt once put it, man has acquired a feeling of uprootedness and existential futility.[42] As pre-industrial and traditional societies demonstrate, poverty is not necessarily the motor behind revolutions. Revolution comes most readily to those in whom poverty is combined with a consciousness of lost identity and a feeling of existential insecurity. For this reason, the modern liberal economies of the West must constantly work to ensure that the economic miracle shall continue. As economic success has been made the ultimate moral value, and national loyalties have been spurned as out of date, economic problems automatically generate deep dissatisfaction amongst those confronted with poverty, who are then likely to fall prone to the sense of “alienation” on which all past Marxist socialist success has been based.

One must therefore not exclude the likelihood that modern liberal society may at some time in the future face serious difficulties should it fail to secure permanent economic growth, especially if, in addition, it relentlessly continues to atomize the family (discouraging marriage, for example, by means of tax systems which favors extreme individualism) and destroys all national units in favor of the emergence of a single world-wide international market, along with its inevitable concomitant, the “international man.” While any faltering of the world economy, already under pressure from the Third World population explosion, might conceivably lead to a resurgence of right wing totalitarianisms in some areas, it is much more likely that in an internationalized society the new totalitarianism of the future will come from the left, in the form of a resurgence of the “socialist experiment,” promising economic gain to a population that has been taught that economic values are the only values that matter. Precisely because the “workers of the world” will have come to see themselves as an alienated international proletariat, they will tend to lean toward international socialist totalitarianism, rather than other forms of extreme political ideology.

Notes:

1. Michael Beaud, A History of Capitalism 1500-1980 (Paris: New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), p. 80. 
2. Francois Perroux, Le capitalisme (Paris: PUF, 1960), p. 31. 
3. Ernst Topitsch “Dialektik – politische Wunderwaffe?,” Die Grundlage des Spatmarxismus, edited by E. Topitsch, Rudiger Proske, Hans Eysenck et al., (Stuttgart: Verlag Bonn Aktuell GMBH), p. 74. 
4. Georges Sorel, Les illusions du progres (Paris: Marcel Riviere, 1947), p. 50. 
5. Francois-Bernard Huyghe, La Soft-ideologie (Paris: Laffont, 1988). See also, Jean Baudrillard, La Gauche divine (Paris: Laffont, 1985). For an interesting polemics concerning the “treason of former socialists clerics who converted to liberalism,” see Guy Hocquenghem, Lettre ouverte a ceux qui sont passes du col Mao au Rotary (Paris: Albin Michel, 1986). 
6. Serge-Christophe Kolm. Le liberalisme moderne (Paris: PUF, 1984), p. 11. 
7. Carl Schmitt, Die geistegeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlametatarismus (Munchen and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1926), p. 23. 
8. Kolm, op. cit., p. 96. 
9. Karl Marx, Kritik des Gothaer Programms (Zurich: Ring Verlag A.G., 1934), p. 10. 
10. Ibid. , p. 11. 
11. Sanford Lakoff, “Christianity and Equality,” Equality, edited by J. Roland Pennock and J. W. Chapmann, (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), pp. 128-130. 
12. David Thomson, Equality (Cambridge: University Press, 1949), p. 79. 13. Sorel, op. cit., p. 297. 
    Sorel, op. cit., p. 297. 
13. Loc. cit. 
14. Theodore von Sosnosky, Die rote Dreifaltikeit (Einsiedeln: Verlaganstalt Benziger and Co., 1931). 
15. cf. Raymond Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism (New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1969), p. 194 and passim. 
16. Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (Munchen and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1932), p. 76 and passim. 
17. Ibid. , p. 36. 
18. Jurgen Habermas Technik and Wissenschaft als Ideologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968), p. 77. 
19. Alain de Benoist, Die entscheidenden Jahre, “In der kaufmannisch-merkantilen Gesellschaftsform geht das Politische ein,”(Tubingen: Grabert Verlag, 1982), p. 34. 
20. Julius Evola, “Proces de la bourgeoisie,” Essais politiques (Paris: edition Pardes, 1988), p. 212. First published in La vita italiana, “Processo alla borghesia,” XXV1II, nr. 324 (March 1940): 259-268. 
21. Werner Sombart, Der Bourgeois, cf. “Die heilige Wirtschaftlichkeit”; (Munchen and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1923), pp. 137-160. 
22. Louis Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx, The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), p.16. 
23. Ibid., p. 59. 
24. cf. L. Dumont, Essays on Individualism (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1986). 
25. Emanuel Rackman, “Judaism and Equality;’ Equality, edited by J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), p. 155. 
26. Milton Konvitz, Judaism and the American Idea (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978). Also German jurist Georg Jellinek argues in Die Erklarung der Menschen-and Burgerrechte (Leipzig: Duncker and
27. Humbolt, 1904), p. 46, that “the idea to establish legally the unalienable, inherent, and sacred rights of individuals, is not of political but religious origin.” 
28. John Schaar, “Equality of Opportunity and Beyond,” in Equality, op. cit. , 230. 
29. Ibid., p. 236. 
30. Ibid., p. 235. 
31. Murray Milner, The Illusion of Equality (Washington and London: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 1972), p. 10. 
32. Antony Flew, The Politics of Procrustes (New York: Promethean Books, 1981), p. 111. 
33. Milner, op. cit., p. 11. 
34. Claude Polin, Le liberalisme, espoir ou peril (Paris: Table ronde, 1984), p. 211. 
35. Ibid. p. 213. 
36. Julien Freund, Politique, Impolitique (Paris: ed. Sirey, 1987), p. 336. Also in its entirety, “Theorie des besoins,” pp. 319-353. 
37. Loc. cit. 
38. Ibid., p. 336-337. 
39. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 165 and passim. 
40. Max Scheler, Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (Abhandlungen and Aufsazte) (Leipzig: Verlag der weissen Bucher, 1915), p. 58. 
41. Claude Polin, Le totalitarisme (Paris: PUF, 1982), p.123. See also Guillaume Faye, Contre l’economisme (Paris: ed. le Labyrinthe, 1982). 
42. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Book, 1958), p. 478. 

Historical Dynamics of Liberalism, From Total Market to Total State, Tomislav Sunic, University of California, Santa Barbara

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Over the next few weeks we’ll look at political systems and ideologies. This should enable the reader to better understand the democracies we live. We’ll start off with the basics and then move on to special interest groups and the sensitive issues surrounding corruption of various political systems, including our own.  

What is Politics?

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. It is the authoritative allocation of values. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within governments, politics is observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions.

In its most basic form, politics consists of “social relations involving authority or power”. In practice, the term refers to the regulation and government of a nation-state or other political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply government policy.

In a broader sense, any situation involving power, or any maneouvring in order to enhance one’s power or status within a group, may be described as politics (e.g. office politics). This form of politics “is most associated with a struggle for ascendancy among groups having different priorities and power relations.”

Political science (also political studies) is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power. Related areas of study include political philosophy, which seeks a rationale for politics and an ethic of public behavior, and public administration, which examines the practices of governance.

Why Study Political Ideologies?

The answer to this question is quite simple. Students of politics are concerned about and interested in the various principles of that intellectual discipline. It may never be known conclusively whether humans alone are capable of formulating and then utilizing abstract ideas to govern their behavior. None can dispute however that ideas about politics constitute a most important element in that realm.

Nelson Mandella, imprisoned for twenty years for his advocacy of racial equality in South Africa, was possessed of an idea about politics. The leader of the 1979 Revolution in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, planned for years during his exile near Paris, to return to his homeland with a plan of purification and change to a pure Islamic state. College students joining together in a march to protest college policies regarding ROTC programs have some motivating idea behind their actions.

While ideas are not in and of themselves ideologies, they are part of the raw material needed to produce a full fledged ideology. As will be seen below ideologies have special qualities that set them apart from other political entities. When combined with other factors such as effective leadership, persuasive rationale’, timely development, and popular appeal political ideology goes a considerable distance in the direction of comprehending things political. Nature of Political Ideologies Ideas have been called “immaculate perceptions” of an imperfect reality. This may also be applicable to the concept of political ideologies.

At least from the time of Classical Greece to the present thoughtful individuals have attempted to devise concepts regarding the nature of politics. These ideas have concerned political reality as it is perceived (descriptive observations), as it ought to be (normative observations), and some have gone so far as to suggest methods for altering reality in order to achieve the desired goal (prescriptive observations). Aristotle attempted to describe the political structures that existed in his era by constructing a trichotomy of types with two variations of each:

1. Rule by the Few – aristocracy /oligarchy
2. Rule by the Many – polity/democracy
3. Rule by One – monarchy/tyranny.

This rudimentary but astute design constitutes a set of concepts regarding politics but falls short of what is termed “ideology.”

Whereas ideas about politics may range from the simple to the extraordinarily complex, ideologies occupy a special niche of these “immaculate perceptions.” At their very core ideologies offer a means to understand, explain and to change political reality. There are, in other words, descriptive, prescriptive, and normative elements in political ideologies.

Sometimes hidden within these elements are assumptions about the fundamental nature of human beings, their proper relationship to one another, the ultimate destiny and purpose of life itself, man kind’s place in the grand scheme of things, the existence of principles of justice beyond those created by man, and in general stated or unstated presumptions of a most basic nature. Discovering, analyzing and challenging these elements of ideologies will enable the thoughtful student an opportunity to discover within him/her self values and beliefs that were theretofore only dimly realized.

Of equal importance is the developed ability to thoughtfully critique ideologies that otherwise might go by the wayside without being understood correctly. Characteristics of Political Ideologies Political ideologies have a number of characteristics that distinguish them from other related concepts. At the outset they constitute a rather comprehensive set of interrelated views on the nature of politics both as it is and as it should be.

As with most, if not all, human concepts, ideologies are derived from perceptions about reality and quite often from opinions about perceived problems in the human condition. It is perhaps in the nature of a significant number of human beings to be continuously dissatisfied with existent conditions. For some the answers to noted injustices lie in the relationship of mankind to God or to some other entity larger than ourselves. For others the faults are found not in the stars but in ourselves. These are the ones who may then devise political ideologies.

Frequently an ideology is initially the product of a single individual working in splendid isolation. Perhaps the best known if not a perfect example of this would be Karl Marx working for years in the archives of the London Museum. His observations led him to the conclusion that great injustices (and ultimately historical imbalances) existed that were inevitably doomed to destruction by the inexorable forces present in human society, particularly found in the process called dialectic materialism and economic determinism. Seldom, it seems, are ideologies initially produced as a consequence of group effort. It must be recognized however that the product of one person’s thoughtful reflections on the political dimensions of the human condition necessarily encompass and build on the work of preceding commentators.

Marx’s debt to the Hegelian dialectic is widely recognized. Hegel’s own intellectual advancements were based in considerable measure on traditions of Aristotelianism present in German intellectual traditions for centuries.

The second characteristic of political ideologies has already been suggested: they are produced by intellectual elites. Only those individuals with the necessary interests and skills (intellectual and communicative) are capable of devising comprehensive analyses of politics. Although any particular ideology may be modified and more completely developed with the involvement of many people over considerable periods of time, there is more often than not a single individual who may be correctly viewed as the founder if not the ultimate creator of that ideology.

Invariably the ideas of this creative individual are published in some form and disseminated among other potentially sympathetic individuals. On occasion, such as in the development of Nazism, rhetorical development may precede written elaboration. Adolph Hitler did not put on paper his hate filled views until some four years after the Nazi party had commenced its campaign to achieve power in post-World War I Germany. Dissemination and propagation of the ideology among the mass population constitutes a most important third element in political ideologies, at least of those that become forces in the world.

As long as an ideology remains only of interest to a very few intellectuals, it is unlikely to become an agent of great change in society. At this point an ideology becomes attached to what may be called a “movement.” Movements in politics by definition involve large numbers of people. These numbers seldom constitute a majority of the adult population but may involve millions of people at one time or another.

Feminism, as an example, is viewed by some as an ideology and by others as a movement. It may also be seen as an amalgam of each. It should be noted however that there have been instances when a social theory that had political implications became accepted by both political and intellectual elites but had no wide spread public following nevertheless produced important governmental policies For example, what was termed “Social Darwinism” did in the United States have very significant policy implications for the United States Supreme Court in a variety of its decisions in the latter part of the 19th Century. Despite the fact that “Social Darwinism” was never propagated widely among any large numbers of people and certainly did not become a “movement” it did provide intellectual justification for a “hands off” or laissez faire array of policies of United States governments.

Contrary to popular belief political ideologies are not fixed or static but are subject to changes, sometimes of a fundamental nature. “Revisionism” may be viewed as a curse by purists or as necessary refinements by those recognizing the imperfections in the original idea. Changes may be resultant from reasoned critiques of the initial set of concepts or they may flow from the clash of the initial concepts with a reality that simply cannot be reconciled with the ideology.

Lenin, for example, was forced by the reality of the continuation of the capitalistic states to devise the theory of imperialism as the final stage of capitalism. This “modification” of Marx was an attempt to explain why the initial predictions of continuing accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few and increasingly intolerable poverty for the workers did not come about in the manner that Marx indicated. Similarly Mao Zedong found it imperative to adapt Marx to the special conditions in China in order to utilize communist ideology in that setting. A fifth trait of ideologies concerns their susceptibility to oversimplification and distortion.

Political concepts often times are quite complex and require, if they are to be understood thoroughly, extensive study, thoughtful qualifications, limited application, time frame containment and a host of other delimiters. For those who wish to use the ideology as a vehicle to obtain change in politics and society these “fine points” may be impediments to obtaining popular support. In the name of political expediency slogans may replace concepts, rallying cries may drown out qualifications, and what emerges is far from the essence of the original set of ideas.

This distortion of the original ideology brings forth the final characteristic needing elaboration. This concerns the relationship of ideology to the political movement that frequently develops as a consequence of the ideology itself. This extension of an ideology into the realm of political action gives a whole new dimension to the original set of concepts. At this point the ideology becomes a powerful motivator of individual and group behavior. The oversimplifications and distortions mentioned above enable movement leaders to develop emotional appeal for the goals of the ideology. This emotional commitment on the part of members of the movement is a powerful force of change in the world of politics.

Eric Hoffer, in his eminently readable and insightful book THE TRUE BELIEVER spot lighted how belief in a cause may produce one of the most formidable and elemental powers in human affairs: the fanatic. Such “true believers” in the cause, in the movement, in the ideas have no reason whatsoever to leave undone anything that would produce the desired end. Their property, their very lives (and those of anyone else) are all of secondary importance to the CAUSE.

The role of leadership is critical in this phase of the transformation of an ideology into a movement. Often the individual or individuals who were responsible for the ideology find themselves supplanted by firebrands, organizers, and spellbinding speakers who pay lip service to the founders but care little for the ratio decidendi in the concepts so dear to those who made the initial intellectual contributions. Lenin is reported to have once asserted that what communism meant for the Soviet Union was a means to rapid industrialization and its attending political/military/economic power. It has been noted with probable accuracy that Marx would have been surprised and possibly appalled at the manner in which his concepts of Communism had been implemented by Lenin, Stalin, the Khimer Rouge and other individuals and groups claiming the mantle of Communist.

The characteristics of political ideologies may be summarized by noting their following traits. They are:

1. a coherent set of views on politics
2. produced by intellectual elites 
3. dissemination among the mass population
4. subject to alteration 
5. susceptible to distortion and oversimplification
6. powerful motivators of human behavior
7. manipulated by political movement leaders

Having now examined some of the more important aspects of political ideologies in general, a review of selected examples is in order. Those chosen here represent the primary ideological developments in the political realm but by no means constitute the whole of the spectrum. First there will be considered what have traditionally been referred to as “moderate” ideologies. Following this will be the more “extreme” varieties and then an overview of unfolding political viewpoints that may evolve into full blown ideologies.

INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES, Dr. Jim L. Riley

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The next few days covers some issues related to panrationalism and pancritical rationalism. The content is based on a paper delivered by Max More at Extropy’s Institute’s 1994 conference EXTRO-1 “Pancritical Rationalism: An Extropic Metacontext for Memetic Progress” .  Let us start off with Rationalism and Justificationism.  

Karl Popper suggests that we can understand rationalism in this way:

We could then say that rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. It is fundamentally an attitude of admitting that “I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth”.

According to familiar versions of rationalism, everything is open to criticism, everything requires justification, except certain privileged propositions or procedures, whether these be sense data, logic, or induction. Bartley refers to this as the dilemma of ultimate commitment, or the problem of presuppositions [72]. Rationalists have held the view that any statement, to be justified (to be held rationally), must be supported by argument. Any argument involves both presuppositions and epistemic standards, which themselves require justification in turn. Argumentation thus leads to an infinite regress of justification, with each new supporting reason itself requiring justification. Unless we reach some indisputable, bedrock position, the original proposition remains unjustified. To justify the original contention, some unquestionable authority must be reached. Such standards, criteria, or ultimate presuppositions are simply accepted without further justification.

The situation is problematic whether different people have the same or diverse ultimate standards. What if people have different ultimate stopping points? How can we rationally arbitrate between them? Suppose René asserts that he has the correct means for deciding between differing ultimate standards or authorities. George will reply that no, he has the correct means and it shows that René’s method is faulty and, furthermore, so is his position. What if, on the other hand, everyone did accept the same ultimate standard? Still, there would be no way to prove that it led to objective truth about the world. An ultimate standard cannot be justified by appeal to another standard, for then it would not actually be the ultimate standard. But neither can it be justified by appeal to itself, for that would be to argue in a vicious circle. But if the standard of rationality is held immune from the need for rational justification, it can be said to be held irrationally or dogmatically. Many thinkers have therefore concluded that arguing about ultimate standards is pointless. It appears that reason is relativized to the differing ultimate standards, defining irreconcilable ideological communities.

The skeptic reacts to this situation by holding that since nothing can be supported rationally, we should (try to) suspend judgment about everything. Such a position is hard to live by: How, for example, can we go about our lives while refusing to accept the validity of inductive inferences? David Hume, the disturbing philosopher who first demonstrated the impossibility of justifying induction, found that when he left his philosophical study, he was unable to prevent himself from believing in the procedure that, in his reflective moments, he believed to be irrational. This conflict of practical action and theoretical belief has bothered generations of thinkers familiar with Hume’s skeptical writings.

While the rationalist skeptic frets over the problem, the fideist glories in it, proclaiming that an irrational, ungrounded ultimate commitment is necessary. Since no ultimate standards can be justified, the fideist gloats, why not accept as your standard the proclamations of the Pope, or the urgings of your feelings, or the will of the people, or the assertions of der Füehrer? The inability of the rationalist to justify ultimate epistemic standards opens the door to securing agreement by means of force or psychological manipulation.

A central epistemic procedure that philosophical thinkers have long sought to justify is that of induction. Inductive inference appears to be crucial to much of our daily reasoning as well as essential for scientific methodology. Whereas deductive reasoning involves logically valid inferences from a universal rule combined with an instance to a conclusion about a particular case (”All tax-collectors are extortionists, Sally is a tax-collector, therefore Sally is an extortionist”), inductive inference goes from some finite number of instances to a universal conclusion (”That human died, and that human died, and that human died, therefore all humans die”). If we want our beliefs to be justified, we must acquire them by a means that confers justification. So can we show inductive inference to be justified?

Clearly inductive inferences are not deductively valid. No matter how many instances we have seen of humans dying, we cannot logically deduce that the next human we observe will also die, since there is no contradiction in asserting the contrary. We can make the inference deductively valid by adding a premise:

Alice was human and she died.

Bob was human and he died.

Chris was human and he died.

[and so on...]

Observed past regularities will always continue into the future.

Therefore, the next human I observe will die.

Now we cannot deny the conclusion if we accept the truth of the premises. Unfortunately, to produce a deductively valid argument, we had to introduce a premise that itself embodies induction. So we have assumed induction in order to make the argument valid.

We will run into circularity even if we forget about trying to turn induction into deduction. When I have observed a constant conjunction between As and Bs (for instance between night being followed by day), I make the inductive inference that the next A will be followed by a B. For this belief to be justified I must be justified in believing in the procedure by which I came to the belief. I believe that a B will occur because I have observed past instances of As being followed by Bs, and I now observe an A. But my belief that this A will be followed by a B will be justified only if I am justified in believing that observed instances provide reason to believe a certain statement about unobserved instances. In other words, I need to be justified in believing in some kind of Uniformity Principle, such as “Instances of which we have have had no experience will resemble those of which we have had experience; th course of nature will continue uniformly the same”. But how am I to justify that belief? I must justify it on the basis of experience: I must justify the Uniformity Principle by means of a justified inference from what has been observed to the truth of the principle. But this is circular reasoning, since every inference from the observed to the unobserved is based on the Uniformity Principle. None of the justificationist attempts to solve this problem whether Strawson’s argument based on the meaning of “reasonable”, Russell’s argument that induction is a priori, or Reichenbach and Salmon’s practicalist or pragmatist approach, has withstood criticism. Pancritical Rationalism solves the problem by doing away with the need for induction, replacing it with the falsification of scientific laws in terms of observational statements.

Induction is not alone in its problematic status as an unjustifiable ultimate standard. I could have chosen instead to look at sensory input as a foundation for knowledge or justified belief. Whatever the particular privileged epistemic process, the problem of ultimate commitment applies to all foundationalist epistemologies (whether intuitionist or empiricist). Less clear is whether the problem equally to coherentist epistemologies, which reject the idea of epistemically basic beliefs. Unfortunately Bartley doesn’t discuss coherentist views like that of Keith Lehrer. Most coherentist views suffer from other fatal flaws however; linear coherence theories, for instance, allow justification to result from infinitely-long, non-terminating sequences of inferences from other beliefs, or from circular chains of reasoning. Possibly some form of negative, holistic5 coherence theory avoids the problem of ultimate commitment, though it would still be a justificationist approach. I shall not try to decide that question here. Whether foundationalist or coherence, standard epistemologies are all theories of epistemic justification. A typical foundationalist view seeks to justify beliefs in terms of some special class of epistemically basic beliefs. In past centuries such basic beliefs were taken to be things like intellectual intuition, the word of God, or clear and distinct ideas. Modern foundationalists have dethroned these and installed beliefs about appearances, or sense-data, as the specially privileged foundations of all justified belief.

It seems, then, that whatever particular epistemology she subscribes to, the rationalist faces the problem of ultimate commitments. As a result, rationalists haave been hard pressed to respond to fundamental anti-rationalist arguments. As Bartley says:

“The blame for continued failure by rationalists to answer sceptical and fideistic arguments about the limits of rationality should, in fact, be placed on the inadequacy and primitive character of our theories of rationality, or on our conception of rationalist identity, rather than on our rationality or reasoning capacity itself, where Pascal, Kant, and many others have put it.” [Bartley, p.85]

I will follow Bartley’s procedure in the middle part of this paper by emphasizing the difficulties inherent in two standard conceptions of rationalism panrationalism (or comprehensive rationalsim), and critical rationalism. Having seen the stages passed through by rationalism, we will be in a position to appreciate a third conception, pancritical rationalism (or comprehensively critical rationalism).

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Metaphysics is hard to define. The term itself means “beyond physics”, but it’s hard to get more precise than that without drifting into controversy.

Let’s look at what metaphysics is not. Newton’s theories about gravity, Einstein’s theories of relativity, and most of the work on quantum mechanics are clearly not metaphysics. These theories make specific predictions about observable phenomena. The theories are subject to being disproven because we can compare their predictions to actual results that we can get in the real world. For example, if we were to state that “for every atom in this universe, there is a corresponding atom in a parallel universe” then this is not physics because it cannot be disproven: we cannot presently detect the presence of atoms in parallel universes.

This brings up an interesting problem for metaphysics. The theory that all matter is composed of tiny particles called atoms was considered metaphysics at one time. When people began to invent instruments capable of detecting such tiny things, atomic theory moved out of metaphysics into physics. So metaphysics is always “at the frontier” and some of it is sure to become physics in the future.

Religion is also not metaphysics. Religion is based on a set of convictions that may well make predictions about the world or explain why certain phenomena occur, but certain kinds of change are not allowed without disturbing the integrity of the religion. This is not to say that religions can’t change, but their overall integrity has to be preserved to some extent. For example, some religions (such as Greek Mythology) have explained that mysterious phenomena are caused by many different gods. Within the context of such a religion, it would be impossible to change this belief to say that all of the phenomena are caused by a single god. To do this would be essentially to invent a new and contradictory religion.

This raises another interesting problem for metaphysics. It may often tread on sacred ground and come into conflict with religion. Socrates was one casualty of this tendency.

These considerations give us some boundaries, and we can define metaphysics more readily inside those boundaries.

Metaphysics is concerned with explaining the way things are in the physical world. The statement that “Evil does not exist” is not metaphysics, whereas the statement that “all things are composed of smaller things, which are in turn composed of still smaller things, and so on down to infinity” is definitely metaphysics.

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy, and part of the answer to the question “What is Metaphysics” requires us to define the difference between science and philosophy. In science, it’s important for new explanations to make predictions that can be tested by experiments. But this is not a requirement of philosophy. Instead, we can try to attack the logical coherence of an explanation to show that it degenerates into absurdity or requires us to hold two contradictory assumptions. In the case of the above statement that all things are made up of smaller things and so on to infinity, this explanation is clearly untestable because we’ll never have an instrument capable of detecting anything that is infinitely small. Also in science, we could reject this theory because it requires us to make some big assumptions, and we can explain everything we’ve seen so far with a simpler theory that makes fewer assumptions. Nonetheless in philosophy one might attack this notion by showing that it ultimately results in an empty universe where nothing is made up of nothing, and there is no ultimate substance anywhere at all. Similar to a ladder that goes down into a hole, and extends down to infinity with nothing to hold it up. (This “infinite ladder” argument is a sort of negative argument that we might not feel comfortable making within the context of a religion. Also in religion one might counter this argument by stating that it is a miracle which only provides more evidence for the truth of the religion.)

So in summary, here is one answer to the question “What is Metaphysics?”:

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that explains physical phenomena using reason and logic in a way that falls outside the bounds of either religion or science.

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The anthropological literature on religion is diverse and voluminous, but there is one common perspective that pervades virtually that entire body of work, and that is the conviction that the epistemological principles of the scientific method cannot and/or should not be applied to the content of religious beliefs, on the grounds that nonempirical phenomena are necessarily beyond the purview of empirical science. Evans-Pritchard offers a familiar formulation of the position in Theories of Primitive Religion:

He [the anthropologist] is not concerned, qua anthropologist, with the truth or falsity of religious thought. As I understand the matter there is no possibility of his knowing whether the spiritual beings of primitive religions or of any others have any existence or not, and since that is the case he cannot take the question into consideration (Evans-Pritchard 1965:17).

Whatever personal convictions anthropologists may hold as individuals, the overwhelming majority have agreed with Evans-Pritchard that, as anthropologists, they either cannot or should not investigate the truth or falsity of religious beliefs. In virtually every major anthropological work on religion, and in most if not all introductory textbooks in cultural anthropology, the question of the truth or falsity of religious beliefs is evaded, ignored, or de-emphasized in favor of questions concerning the social, psychological, ecological, symbolic, aesthetic, and/or ethical functions and dimensions of religion. (see note 1)

Thus, for example, Anthony Wallace, who affirms that religion “is based on supernaturalistic beliefs about the nature of the world which are not only inconsistent with scientific knowledge but also difficult to relate even to naive human experience” (Wallace 1966:vi), nevertheless chooses to “ignore the extremes of fundamentalist piety and anticlerical iconoclasm” and to regard religion as “neither a path of truth nor a thicket of superstition, but simply [as] a kind of human behavior…which can be classified as belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces” (Wallace 1966:5). Similarly, Edward Norbeck, who recognizes that “religious beliefs and acts are created by man on the basis of his life” (Norbeck 1974:7), nevertheless explicitly restricts the anthropological study of religious beliefs to “interpretations of their role in human life and of the factors that have molded the customs into their particular forms” (Norbeck 1974:3). Clifford Geertz (1973:89), who defines religion as a system of “sacred symbols” which functions “to synthesize a people’s ethos…and their world view,” is completely unconcerned with the question of whether any particular religiously-supported world view is true or false. And Marvin Harris, who has long been one of anthropology’s most persistent critics of irrational modes of thought, nevertheless declares that he “can readily subscribe to the popular belief that science and religion need not conflict,” since science, he argues, “does not dispute the doctrines of revealed religions as long as they are not used to cast doubt on the authenticity of the knowledge science itself has achieved” (Harris 1979:6).

In short, a common element of the anthropological perspective on religion can be summarized in a simple syllogism:

1. The essential defining feature of science is empiricism (i.e., the belief that the only reality which exists is the reality amenable to the five senses, implying that reliable knowledge of that reality can be obtained only through the five senses).

2. The essential defining feature of religion is supernaturalism (i.e., the belief that there is a reality which lies beyond or somehow transcends the reality amenable to the five senses, implying that reliable knowledge of that reality can be obtained by means other than the five senses).

3. Therefore, science cannot be used to determine whether religious beliefs are true or false, since empirical epistemological procedures cannot be applied to supernatural phenomena.

Despite its virtual ubiquity in anthropology, that argument is unsound, for the simple reason that both of its premises are false. The essential defining feature of science is not empiricism, and the essential defining feature of religion is not supernaturalism. The conclusion that religion is or should be immune from scientific scrutiny is thus wholly unwarranted; moreover, that conclusion is also ethically objectionable. Considerations of disciplinary integrity, public welfare, and human dignity demand that religious claims be subjected to anthropological evaluation.

My position, then, is that anthropological science can and should be applied to the content of religious beliefs. My goal here is to establish three points: first, that rationality rather than empiricism is the key element of science; second, that irrationality rather than supernaturalism is the key element of religion; and third, that anthropologists have an intellectual and ethical obligation to investigate the truth or falsity of religious beliefs. The first point concerns the nature of science; the second involves the nature of religion; and the third, obviously, is a question of value.

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The cultural historian Lewis Mumford once remarked that the most authoritarian, efficient and socially repressive invention man had ever created was neither the steam engine nor the cannon, but the clock. What he had in mind were the social dimensions of the clock: It synchronises, standardises and integrates people wherever clocks exist and are respected. Right or wrong, Mumford’s observation indicates the potential of technology in shaping and directing human thought and action, given the right social and cultural context. (Clocks may, naturally, be regarded as fancy jewellery in societies where there is no perceived need for synchronisation.)

Let us take a closer look at the clock. It is sometimes said that clocks were initially introduced in Europe as an aid for medieval monks who found it difficult to keep prayer times when they worked in the fields. This version of clock history is half-way between a certain degree of credibility and invention. Different kinds of timepieces had existed well before medieval monasteries, and the abbey clocks did not just regulate prayer times, but also working hours – not unlike contemporary clocks, in other words. However, it is easy to see that the clocks quickly had interesting, unintended side-effects when they became common in European towns. They were instrumental in making punctuality a virtue. They encouraged efficiency since activities now could be planned and synchronised in ways formerly unthinkable. Eventually, the clocks became indispensable for town-dwellers; they needed to ‘keep time’ to get to the concert house or theatre in time, to keep appointments and, increasingly, in working life. Something which has in recent years received wide attention thanks to Dava Sobel’s bestselling book Longitude, is the fact that the accurate partitioning of the globe according to longitude was made possible only after the invention of a mechanical clock with minimal error margins. Combined with the Western calendar, the clock served to dissect time into abstract entities and to establish a linear perception of time. This refers to a kind of time which can be conceptualised as a line where any segment of the same kind (a year, a month, an hour etc.) is identical to any other segment, no matter when it unfolds. Clock and calendar time may be called abstract time since they contrast with the concrete time dominating most societies which are not subjected to clocks and calendars. In a temporal regime based on concrete time, time is measured as a combination of experienced, personal time, external events and societal rhythms such as day/night, harvest times and so on. A time segment such as an hour may accordingly vary in length.

Clock time is an externalised kind of time; it exists independently of events taking place in it, about in the same way as the thermometer measures temperature irrespective of the subjective experience of heat or coldness, and quantified distance measures distance without taking subjective experience of distance into account. A kilometer is a kilometer (and about 0.62 mile) anywhere, any time. Even if everybody knows that five minutes may be both a mere instant and a lenghty period (say, in the dentist’s office), and that twenty degrees Celsius may be warm if one enters the house on a winter day, but cold if one sits naked in a chair after taking a shower, it is generally accepted in our kind of society that the quantitative measurements of such phenomena are ‘truer’ than the subjective experience. Such standardising ideas are alien to traditional societies, and are part and parcel of modernity, which is also built around institutions such as social planning, beliefs in progress, population statistics and a zealous drive to control nature. Typically time, which in traditional societies may not be something one possesses but rather something one lives in, is a scarce resource in contemporary, modern societies. It has been reified to such a degree that a historical preoccupation of the labour movement has been the struggle for shorter working hours, and in the late 1990s, social movements appeared which promote both ’slow cities’, ’slow food’ and, simply, ’slow time’.

The technological change which has been most intensively studied with a view to its relation to thought, is nonetheless the introduction of writing. Lévi-Strauss hardly mentions it explicitly, but an underlying idea in his contrast between the bricoleur and the ingenieur is quite clearly that of writing versus non-writing. Later, Jack Goody has, especially in his The Domestication of the Savage Mind (1977), argued that if one wants to come to grips with the kind of cognitive contrast Lévi-Strauss talks about, one must study transitions to literacy and differences between literate and non-literate societies. Among other things, Goody claims that scientific analysis and systematic, critical thought are impossible without writing. His theory about the transition to literacy as a gigantic watershed in cultural history is contested, and Goody has modified it several times himself. What everybody seems to agree about is that writing is indispensable for the cumulative growth of knowledge, and that it makes it possible to separate the utterance from the context of uttering.

It may be said that some of the criticisms of Goody have been exaggerated. Although there are many exceptions and many interesting ‘intermediate forms’ (societies with limited literacy in one way or another), and although local realities vary much more than a general theory is able to predict, writing does by and large make a considerable difference regarding thought styles. The Greek miracle, that is the transition from mythical to philosophical thinking in the eastern part of the Mediterranean (incidentally paralleled by similar developments in India and China), must have been linked with the development of alphabetic writing, although it was hardly the sole cause. Although the ancient philosophers were deeply interested in rhetoric, that is oral eloquence, they criticised each other’s writings and revealed logical faults in each other’s arguments, often with a time lag of a generation or more. Writing does not necessarily make people more ‘intelligent’ (a difficult concept): it is a crutch for thought which makes the continuous exercise of memory unnecessary; it externalises thoughts, and thus makes it easier to place them outside the brain. When one writes, moreover, one is likely to think along other patterns than when communicating orally, a tendency explored by the philosopher Jacques Derrida and many others. Although there are many similarities between written history based on archives and myths, there are also differences to do with falsifiability, dating and imposition of causal sequences.

Literacy is often accompanied by numeracy. The Phoenicians, this famous people of maritime merchants from the Ancient world, were famous book-keepers. The implications of accurate book-keeping for trade, business and forms of reciprocity in general, should not be underestimated. Technology has both social and cognitive implications here as well, even if it is – naturally – necessary to explore local conditions and variations to get a full picture. Modern computers enable us to make calculations of dizzying complexity at astonishing speed: Some of the readers may think they have a reasonable notion of a billion (1,000,000,000); but consider the fact that each well-nourished, fairly healthy life lasts on average for 2.2 billion seconds altogether!

At the same time, calculators and computers may well make us incapable of carrying out even simple calculations without their aid. The calculator has doubtless affected the ability of schoolchildren to learn double digit multiplication by rote, and digitalised pricing means that cashiers in supermarkets no longer know the prices of all the items in the shop by heart. Thermometers, books, calculators and similar devices create abstract standards and lead to both externalisation and standardisation of certain forms of knowledge.

Now, in practice there is no question of an either-or. It is often said that humans are incapable of counting further than four without the aid of devices such as written numbers, pebbles or the like. However, we are familiar with a great number of traditional peoples, for example in Melanesia, who can count quite accurately and quite far by counting not only their toes and fingers, but other bodily parts as well. Some might get to seventy and further without using a single aid external to the body. There is, in a word, no sharp distinction between the peoples who have only their own memory at their disposal and those who are able to externalise their thoughts on paper; there are many kinds of mnemotechnical aids, and although letters and numbers may be the most consequential ones, they are not the only ones.

This brings me to a related but much less theorised field, namely music. The enormous complexity characterising Beethoven’s and Mahler’s symphonies would have been impossible, had the composers not lived in a society which for centuries had developed an accurate system of writing music, that is notation. Harmony is much rarer in societies without notes than in societies with them. And if one is able to read music, one can play music never heard. The parallel to writing and numbers is obvious: The statement is externalised and frozen, separated from the person who originated it. It can be appreciated in an unchanged manner (externally – interpretations always change) anywhere and any time.

Let me finally mention a phenomenon which will be discussed from a different point of view in the next chapter: Nationalism would have been impossible without writing. In one of the most widely quoted books about the growth of national identities, Benedict Anderson (1983) shows that printing was a crucial condition for the emergence of nationalist thought and national identification. Before the advent of printing, books were expensive and rarely seen in private homes. In Europe, besides, most books were written in Latin. When books gradually became cheaper in the second half of the 15th century, new markets for books which were aimed at new audiences, quickly materialised: Travel writing became popular, likewise novels, essays and popular science. Since profits were important to the printers (who often were also publishers), the books were increasingly published in vernacular languages. Thereby the national languages were standardised, and people living in Hamburg could read, verbatim, the same texts as people in Munich. The broad standardisation of culture represented in nationalism would not have been possible without a modern mass medium such as the printed book (and, later, the newspaper). Thus it may be said that writing has not only influenced thought about the world, but also thought about who we are. It has made it technologically possible to imagine that one belongs to the same people as millions of other persons whom one will never meet.

Further reading

Douglas, Mary (1966) Purity and Danger…. London
Goody, Jack (1977) The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1977.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1966 [1962]) The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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…continued from yesterday

The other indispensable book about classification and society is Lévi-Strauss’s masterpiece La pensée sauvage (1962, The Savage Mind, 1966). Like Douglas, Lévi-Strauss is inspired by Durkheim and Mauss, but he also wishes to disprove Lévy-Bruhl’s ideas about ‘pre-logical thought’ once and for all. However, already in the first chapter, it becomes apparent that Lévi-Strauss is closer to his predecessor than one might have expected.

The main topic of The Savage Mind is totemism. This enigmatic phenomenon has been the subject of much anthropological theory and speculation for more than a hundred years. Totemism may be defined as a form of classification whereby individuals or groups (which may be clans) have a special, often mythically based relationship to certain aspects of nature – usually animals or plants, but it could also be, for example, mountain formations or events like thunderstorms. Groups or persons have certain commitments towards their totem; it may be forbidden to eat it, the totem may give protection, in many cases the groups are named after their totem, and sometimes they identify with it (members of the eagle clan are brave and have a lofty character). In traditional societies, totemism is especially widespread in the Americas, in Oceania and Africa. A great number of competing interpretations of totemism had been proposed before Lévi-Strauss: The Scottish lawyer MacLennan, the first to develop a theory of totemism (in 1869), saw it simply as a form of primitive religion, but it later became more common to see it in a more utilitarian light: Totemic animals and plants were respected because they were economically useful. This was Malinowski’s view.

Departing radically from such views, Lévi-Strauss developed a theory of totemism seeing it as a form of classification encompassing both natural and social dimensions, thereby defining it as part of the knowledge system of a society, and as far from being a functional result of some economic adaptation. Lévi-Strauss claims indebtedness to Radcliffe-Brown, but in fact, his theory was entirely original. Totemic animals are respected not because they are good to eat, but because they are good to think (bons à penser). The natural series of totems at the disposal of a tribe is related to the social series of clans or other internal groupings in such a way that the relationships between the totems correspond metaphorically to the relationships between the social groups. Totemism thereby bridges the gap between nature and culture, deepening the knowledge about both in the process.

‘The savage mind’, or undomesticated thinking (which might have been a better English title), is thus not there in order to be useful or functional (or even aesthetically pleasing), but in order to be thought. In the chapter ‘The science of the concrete’, which introduces the topic of the book, this is made clear. Here, Lévi-Strauss develops his famous distinction between le bricoleur and l’ingenieur, between bricolage (associational, nonlinear thought) and ‘engineering’ (logical thinking) as two styles of thought which he links with traditional and modern societies, respectively. Unlike what many had argued before, including Lévy-Bruhl, there was no qualitative difference between ‘primitive’ and ‘modern’ thought. The difference consisted in the raw material they had at their disposal. While the modern ‘engineer’ builds abstractions upon abstractions (writing, numbers, geometrical drawings), the traditional ‘bricoleur’ creates abstractions with the aid of physical objects he is able to observe directly (animals, plants, rocks, rivers…). Whereas the modern person has become dependent on writing as a ‘crutch for thought’, his opposite number in a traditional society uses whatever is at hand for cognitive assistance. The French word bricoleur can be translated as a jack-of-all-trades, an imaginative improviser who creates new objects by combining old ones which happen to be close at hand.

In order to illustrate the contrast between the two thought styles, Lévi-Strauss speaks of music and poetry as modern cultural phenomena where ‘the undomesticated’ property of the mind can still be glimpsed.

Although the book is introduced with an apparently sharp contrast between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and although cultural difference is discussed in every subsequent chapter, the aim of The Savage Mind is to show that humans think alike everywhere, even if their thoughts are expressed differently. Science, which, unlike ‘the science of the concrete’, distinguishes sharply between the perceptible (le sensible) and that which can be understood in abstract terms (l’intelligible), thus becomes a special case of something much more general, namely undomesticated thought. But it then also becomes clear that the distance between Lévi-Strauss and Lévy-Bruhl is much less than usually assumed. Like his famous successor, Lévy-Bruhl also sees pre-logical thought as the most fundamental style of thought, and logical thought as an embellishment or a special case.

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Thought

In a previous post, it was mentioned that anthropology is concerned with that which takes place between people, not with their innermost feelings and thoughts. How can it then be that this chapter is going to be about… thought? The answer is not simple. It may justly be said that thought has an important social aspect; in different societies, the inhabitants think differently because of differences in the circumstances of learning, different experiences etc. At the same time, thought has an undeniable private and personal dimension, which cannot be studied directly with the methods available to anthropologists.Fortunately, thoughts are usually expressed in social life, for example when people say what they think or express it through their acts, in rituals and other public performances. Therefore, thought can be explored, if often obliquely, through the field methods available to anthropology – participant observation, questions and answers, and common curiosity.

The rationality debate

Studies of thought and modes of reasoning have been central in the history of anthropology from the nineteenth century to the present day. The most famous (and possibly most voluminous) anthropological work from the years before the fieldwork revolution was James Frazer’s twelve-volume The Golden Bough (1890/1912), a comparative work about myth, religion and cosmologies among virtually all the peoples the author had heard about. Frazer shared the evolutionist views of his contemporaries and had little faith in the ability of ’savages’ to think logically and rationally. A younger contemporary of Frazer, the philosopher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, was less impressive in his use of empirical materials, but as a compensation, he was more analytically lucid than Frazer. Lévy-Bruhl described traditional peoples as representatives of what he spoke of, in an unfortunate turn of phrase, as a ‘pre-logical mode of thought’. However, Lévy-Bruhl emphasised that the term ‘pre-logical’ did not necessarily refer to a developmental or evolutionary line of progress, but rather that the unhampered, metaphorical and symbol-laden way of thinking he associated with traditional peoples was more fundamental, and logically prior to, logical thought. Contemporary moderns may have retained their ability to think in a ‘pre-logical’ way, but a logical rationality has been superimposed on it, as it were. Lévy-Bruhl was criticised sharply by several of his contemporaries, who pointed out that the empirical foundation for his lofty generalisations was weak to say the least. However, it would nonetheless be Lévy-Bruhl’s books from the years around the First World War that set the stage for one of the most exciting theoretical debates in anthropology, where contributors from several academic fields have discussed (and still do) to what degree there are fundamental differences in thought styles between peoples, and conversely, to what extent it may be said that a common human rationality exists.

One of the first to criticise Lévy-Bruhl on an empirical basis was Evans-Pritchard. In the 1930s, he had several lengthy periods of fieldwork in the Sudan. His Nuer research has already been mentioned, but his 1937 book about the Azande is no less important – some would argue that it is much more important – than The Nuer. Whereas Evans-Pritchard’s first Nuer monograph dealt with politics, ecology and kinship, Witchcraft, Magic and Oracles Among the Azande is a book about the system of knowledge and belief in a traditional people, and as such, it was one of the first of its kind. One would in fact have to wait for Kluckhohn’s Navaho Witchcraft (1944) for another study of comparable depth.

The Azande live right in the middle of the African continent, only a few hundred kilometres south of the Nuer; but in terms of culture and social organisation, they are very different from the nomadic peoples to the north. They are sedentary crop growers, politically relatively centralised with aristocratic clans and princes. At the time of Evans-Pritchard’s research, they had been incorporated into the British empire, and the power of the traditional rulers had been reduced considerably.

The Zande belief in withchraft, and their use of various remedies to control it, are in the foreground of Evans-Pritchard’s book. Witchcraft, as it is defined in anthropology, is distinguished from magic in that it is an invisible force. Accordingly, it is difficult to decide who is responsible when someone is struck by witchcraft. Magic is, on the contrary, the result of rites and technologies which are known, and one may consult recognised magicians for assistance with one’s problems. In societies where witchcraft is assumed to exist, it is thus necessary to develop methods to expose the witches. When a Zande experiences a ‘mishap’ (Evans-Pritchard’s term), he is likely to blame witchcraft for it, and he may begin to suspect people he believes has a reason to want to harm him. (It stands to reason that like other peoples who are concerned with witchcraft, the Azande may be said to fit Benedict’s ‘paranoid’ cultural type fairly well.)

If a Zande walks on the forest path, stumbles and hurts himself, only to discover that the wound won’t heal, he blames witchcraft. If one objects that occasional stumbling is normal, he might respond that yes, it is normal, but I walk this path every day and have never stumbled before, and besides, wounds normally begin to heal after a few days. When a group of Azande sit under an elevated granary on poles (to protect the cereals against wild animals), which suddenly collapses and hurts them badly, the immediate cause is that termites have slowly perforated the poles until they were no longer capable of keeping the granary stable. But the Azande will say that it was extremely unlikely that they should sit beneath their granary just as it fell, and thus witchcraft had to be involved somehow. Deaths among Azande are always caused by witchcraft, Evans-Pritchard reports; disease is usually caused by it.

The Azande have at their disposal a range of techniques enabling them to explore whether or not a suspect is actually a witch. (The term witch is, in anthropological usage, gender neutral.) Most commonly, they consult so-called oracles, that is spiritual beings who talk to them through mediums. One popular medium is a kind of sounding board, and there are others, but the most expensive and famous is the poison oracle. To make it communicate, one needs a strong plant-derived poison and a chicken. The chicken is fed the poison, and the oracle is asked whether a certain person is a witch or not. If the chicken dies, the answer is yes; if it survives, the accused is innocent.

In the old days, Evans-Pritchard says, witches were regularly executed. Under the ‘indirect rule’ of the British, implemented from the early 20th century, the princely power was reduced, and judicial power was transferred to the colonial courts of law. Therefore, Evans-Pritchard himself never witnessed executions of witches. In his time, many in fact believed that the very witchcraft institution would gradually disappear thanks to ‘progress’.

The oracles were not infallible. When a witch was dead, one would cut their belly open to establish whether it contained a certain ‘witchcraft substance’, described as a dark lump of flesh. If a witch had been convicted and killed, and no such substance could subsequently be found, the relatives of the dead person could demand compensation.

Evans-Pritchard describes the witchcraft institution in a sober and morally neutral way, skilfully showing how the Azande think and act rationally and logically, given their cultural context. If one were to ask an educated Zande if it might not be the case that bacteria, not witchcraft, made him ill, he might respond that yes, of course, but this so-called explanation said nothing about the reason for his illness right now: the bacteria were around continuously, so why wasn’t his neighbour ill, and why didn’t the illness occur last year? The logic is, as we see, impeccable. Unlike medical science, the witchcraft institution offers answers to the pressing questions ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why now?’.

The book on witchcraft is a remarkable read, and it has rightly been praised as one of the few books that set an agenda for research and discussion which lasted more than half a century after its publication. The book offers rare, deep insights into the knowledge system of a traditional people, and shows how it is coherent, gives meaning to the world, and explains unusual events. Had Evans-Pritchard been ideologically bolder, he might have compared the institution of witchcraft with religions such as Christianity.

The book also shows how the witchcraft institution is functional in the sense that is socially integrative. Usually, the people accused of witchcraft belong to politically weak lineages (nobody would dream of accusing a prince), and he points out that the institution functions as a security valve by channeling discontent and frustrations away from the social order (which would have been exceedingly difficult to change anyway) towards individuals who become scapegoats. Much of the later literature on witchcraft in Africa, especially that published in the 1950s, is purely structural-functionalist, and strongly emphasises that those who are accused of witchcraft are often women, who, in virilocal societies are outsiders without strong political support locally. Evans-Pritchard offers a richer picture, supplementing the functional analysis with a vivid description of local life-worlds.

Unfortunately, many of those who have never read the book itself have heard about it through secondary sources, and therefore believe that it is a condescending, functionalistic description of a primitive people that believes in phenomena that do not exist. A main culprit in creating this distorted view of the book is the philosopher Peter Winch. In 1958, he published the very challenging book The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, where Evans-Pritchard appears as one of his main opponents. Winch refers to a number of intermittent remarks in the Azande book, where the anthropologist expresses the view that witches obviously do not exist. In an appendix to the book, Evans-Pritchard distinguishes between three kinds of knowledge: Mystical knowledge based on the belief in invisible and unverifiable forces; commonsensical knowledge based on everyday experience; and scientific knowledge based on the tenets of logic and the experimental method. The middle, quantitatively largest category is common to Azande and Englishmen; the latter exists only in modern societies, whereas the first category is typical of societies where one believes in witchcraft.

Winch argues that the two systems of knowledge – the English one and that of the Azande – cannot be ranked in this way; they can in fact not be ranked at all. All knowledge is socially produced, he continues; and mentions the widespread ’superstitious’ belief in meteorology as a modern equivalent to Zande witchcraft beliefs. In other words, Winch regards scientific knowledge as a kind of culturally produced knowledge on a par with other forms of knowledge.

The criticism of Evans-Pritchard is not based on fabricated evidence, but as I have shown, it does not do justice to his pioneering, and largely non-judgemental exposition of a non-Western knowledge system.

Be this as it may, Winch’s book gave the impetus to a broad debate about rationality and relativism. It would give the initial inspiration for several books, dissertations and conferences in the 1960s and later. Both anthropologists, sociologists and philosophers contributed.

The criticism against Evans-Pritchard contains several independent questions, at least three. The first and second concern methodological possibilites and limitations. The third concerns the nature of knowledge and is anthropological in a philosophical sense.

Firstly: Is it possible to translate from one system of knowledge to another without distorting it by introducing concepts initially alien to that ‘other’ world of representations?

Secondly: Does a context-independent or neutral language exist to describe systems of knowledge?

Thirdly: Do all humans reason in fundamentally the same way?

There are, perhaps, no final answers to any of these questions, and yet (or perhaps therefore) they remain important. We should keep in mind here that Evans-Pritchard himself criticised Lévy-Bruhl’s dichotomy between logical and pre-logical thought, and emphasised time and again that the Azande were just as rational as Westerners, but that they reasoned logically and rationally from premises which were, at the end of the day, erroneous when it came to witchcraft. Winch’s question was whether general, unquestionable criteria exist to evaluate the premises or axioms, and he replies that this is not the case – since the axioms themselves are socially created and therefore not true in an absolute, ahistorical sense.

It should be noted here that a research area which has grown rapidly since the 1980s is the so-called STS field, that is the sociological study of technology and science. In this research, Western science and technology are studied as cultural products, and most of its practitioners adhere to the so-called symmetry principle, which entails that the same terminology and the same methods of analysis should be used for failures as for successes; in other words, that what we are doing is looking at science as a social fact, not as truth or falsity. Similarly, most anthropologists would argue that our task consists in making sense of ‘the others’, not judging whether they are right or wrong.

Classification and pollution

Unfortunately, it is necessary to leave the fascinating controversies about rationality and the rich anthropological research tradition dealing with witchcraft here. Another, no less interesting, way of approaching other knowledges and thought systems, points the searchlight towards classification. All peoples are aware that different things and persons exist in the world, but they subdivide them in different, locally defined ways.

Already in 1903, Durkheim and Mauss published a book about primitive classification, which was to a great extent based on ethnography from Australia. They there argued that there existed a connection between the classification of natural phenomena and the social order. This connection has been explored by later generations of scholars, but historically, there has been a difference here between European social anthropology and North American cultural anthropology. The latter tradition is generally less sociologically oriented than the former, and often explores symbolic systems as autonomous entities, without connecting them systematically to social conditions. Geertz once wrote that whereas society was integrated in a ‘causal-functional way’, culture was integrated in a ‘logico-meaningful way’, and could thus be studied independently of the social. In social anthropology (and, in all fairness, to many American anthropologists), such a delineation is unsatisfactory, since a main preoccupation in this tradition consists in understanding symbolic worlds through their relation to social organisation. Power, politics and technology inevitably interact with knowledge production in a society.

Of the many books about classification and society that have been published since Durkheim and Mauss, two have been especially influential. Researchers and students continue to return to them, and although both were initially published in the 1960s, they do not appear dated even today.

Mary Douglas studied under Evans-Pritchard, and carried out fieldwork among the Lele in Kasai (southern Congo, then Belgian Congo) in the 1950s. She published a monograph about the Lele, but she is far better known for her later theoretical contributions. Especially Purity and Danger (1966) has exerted an almost unparalleled influence on anthropological research dealing with thought and social life.

In this book, Douglas combines influences from her native British structural functionalism and French structuralism, which she became familiar with early on, partly due to her fieldwork in a part of Africa where most of the researchers were French. The main argument is inspired by Durkheim and Mauss, and states that classification of nature and the body reflects society’s ideology about itself. However, her main interest consists in accounting for pollution, classificatory impurities and their results, and one of the central chapters of the book is devoted to a discussion of food prohibitions in the Old Testament. Animals which do not ‘fit in’ are deemed unfit for human consumption, and include, among others, maritime animals without fins and, famously, the pig. The pig has cloven hoofs but does not chew the cud, and there is no category available for this kind of animal. This is what makes it polluting.

Douglas’ theory is as far removed as conceivable from Marvin Harris’ interpretation of sacred cows, and indeed, Harris has argued that the impurity of the pig in West Asia is caused by objective factors, notably the disase-inducing germs which can be present in badly cooked pork. Douglas’ views on this kind of explanation are of the same kind as Lévi-Strauss’ views on Malinowski. According to Lévi-Strauss, the practically oriented Malinowski saw culture as nothing more than ‘a gigantic metaphor for the digestive system’.

The connection between the order of society and the order of classificatory systems is crucial to Douglas’ theory. Among other things, she refers to holy men and women in Hinduism and Christianity, who invert dominant perceptions of pure and impure in order to highlight the otherworldly character of their lives. She mentions a Christian saint who is said to have drunk pus from an infected wound since personal cleanliness is incompatible with the status of the holy woman; and Indian sadhus are famous for their transgressive practices, such as drinking from human skulls, eating rotten food, sleeping on spiked mats and so on.

Phenomena that do not fit in, anomalies, must be taken care of ideologically lest they pollute the entire classificatory system. If this is not done efficiently, they threaten the order of society. There has to be order in nature, just as there is order in society. Douglas’ most famous anomaly is taken from her Lele ethnography, namely the African pangolin. This original forest animal is a mammal, but it has scales like a fish and gives birth to only one or two offspring, just like a human. The Lele have circumscribed the pangolin with a great number of rules and prohibitions to keep it under control; it can be eaten, but only under very special circumstances, and one is usually well advised to avoid close contact with it.

A subgroup of anomalies are the phenomena known as matter out of place, that is objects, actions or ideas which appear in the ‘wrong’ context. The typical example is a human hair, usually far from unaesthetic when it grows out of a head, but repulsive if it floats in a bowl of soup.

Douglas does not write about humour, but one must be allowed to point out that virtually everything that is funny belongs to the same category as the hair floating in the soup: jokes nearly always derive their punchline from wrong contextualisation. Perhaps that is why Geertz once wrote that understanding a different culture is like understanding a joke. When one is able to laugh at the natives’ jokes, one has internalised local norms about correct and wrong contextualisation. This indicates that one has understood a great deal.

Douglas has been criticised for placing too much emphasis on integration in her analyses. Just as Geertz’ concept of culture seems to presuppose that all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of culture fall perfectly into place, Douglas assumes that both society and knowledge systems are ordered and fit together.

On the other hand, one should not rule out the possibility that she may be right. Classificatory systems change – there are many secularised Jews and Muslims who eat pork – and there is clearly a greater variation and more direct contestation, especially in complex societies, than Douglas is prepared to admit. But this very variation also seems to confirm the validity of Douglas’ model. When university educated North European Marxist-Leninists took manual jobs in the 1970s, loyal to the principle of self-proletarianisation, they turned dominant classifications on their head in their attempt to change the very ideological foundations of society. In a racially segregated kind of society as the American South, few actions are more radical, both politically and in terms of classification, than to marry across the colour line. Both these examples show that conscious transgressions serve to confirm the essential validity of the dominant mode of classification.

Douglas’ ideas about matter out of place, anomalies, pollution and the analogies between the body, nature and society, have been exceptionally productive. The next chapter will briefly indicate how some of these ideas may be transposed to studies of multiethnic societies, just to illustrate their fruitfulness.

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Antropology is an intellectually challenging, theoretically ambitious subject which tries to achieve an understanding of culture, society and humanity through detailed studies of local life, supplemented by comparison. Many are attracted to it for personal reasons: they may have grown up in a culturally foreign environment, or they are simply fascinated by faraway places, or they are engaged in minority rights issues – immigrants, indigenous groups or other minorities, as the case might be – or they might even have fallen in love with a Mexican village or an African man. But as a profession and as a science, anthropology has grander ambitions than offering keys to individual self-understanding, or bringing travel stories or political tracts to the people. At the deepest level, anthropology raises philosophical questions which it tries to respond to by exploring human lives under different conditions. At a slightly less lofty level, it may be said that the task of anthropology is to create astonishment, to show that the world is both richer and more complex than it is usually assumed to be.

To simplify somewhat, one may say that anthropology primarily offers two kinds of insight: First, the discipline produces knowledge about the actual cultural variation in the world; studies may deal with, say, the role of caste and wealth in Indian village life, technology among highland people in New Guinea, religion in Southern Africa, food habits in Northern Norway, the political importance of kinship in the Middle East, or notions about gender in the Amazon basin. Although most anthropologists are specialists on one or two regions, it is necessary to be knowledgeable about global cultural variation in order to be able to say anything interesting about one’s region, topic or people.

Secondly, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling the practitioner to explore, compare and understand these varied expressions of the human condition. In other words, the subject offers both things to think about and things to think with.

But anthropology is not just a toolbox; it is also a craft which teaches the novice how to obtain a certain kind of knowledge and what this knowledge might say something about. And just as a carpenter can specialise in either furniture or buildings, and one journalist may cover fluctuations in the stockmarket while another deals with royal scandals, the craft of anthropology can be used for a lot of different things. Like carpenters or journalists, all anthropologists share a set of professional skills.

Some newcomers to the subject are flabbergasted at its theoretical character, and some see it as deeply ironic that a subject which claims to make sense of the life-worlds of ordinary people can be so difficult to read. Now, it must be interjected that many anthropological texts are beautifully written, but it is also true that many of them are tough and convoluted. Anthropology insists on being analytical and theoretical, and as a consequence, it can often feel both inaccessible and aven alienating. (Since its contents are so important and – arguably – fascinating, this only indicates that there is a great need for good popularisations of anthropology.)
Anthropology is not alone in studying society and culture academically. Sociology descibes and accounts for social life, especially in modern societies, in great breadth and depth. Political science deals with politics at all levels, from the municipal to the global. Psychology studies the mental life of humans by means of scientific and interpretive methods, and human geography looks at economic and social processes in a transnational perspective. Finally, there is the recent subject, controversial but popular among students and the public, of cultural studies, which can be described as an amalgamation of cultural sociology, history of ideas, literary studies and anthropology. (Evil tongues describe it as ‘anthropology without the pain’, that is without field research and meticulous analysis.) In other words, there is a considerable overlap between the social sciences, and it may well be argued that the disciplinary boundaries are to some extent artificial. The social sciences represent some of the same interests and try to respond to some of the same questions, although there are also differences.

Moreover, anthropology also has much in common with humanities such as literary studies and history; philosophy has always provided intellectual input for anthropology, and there is a productive, passionately debated frontier area towards biology.

A generation or so ago, anthropology still concentrated almost exclusively on detailed studies of local life in traditional societies, and ethnographic fieldwork was its main – in some cases its sole – method. The situation is more complex now, because anthropologists now study all kinds of societies and also because the methodological repertoire has become more varied. This book consists in its entirety in a long answer to the question ‘What is anthropology?’, but for now, we might say that it is the comparative study of culture and society, with a focus on local life. Put differently, anthropology distinguishes itself from other lines of enquiry by insisting that social reality is first and foremost created through relationships between persons and the groups they belong to. A currently fashionable concept such as globalisation, for example, has no meaning to an anthropologist unless it can be studied through actual persons, their relationship to each other and to a larger surrounding world. When this level of the ‘nitty-gritty’ is established, it is possible to explore the linkages between the locally lived world and large-scale phenomena (such as global capitalism or the state). But it is only when an anthropologist has spent enough time crawling on all fours, as it were, studying the world through a magnifying-glass, that she is ready to enter the helicopter in order to obtain an overview.

Anthropology means, translated literally from ancient Greek, the study of humanity. As already indicated, anthropologists do not have a monopoly here. Besides, there are other anthropologies than the one described in this book. Philosophical anthropology raises fundamental questions concerning the human condition. Physical anthropology is the study of human pre-history and evolution. (For some time, physical anthropology also included the study of ‘races’. They are no longer scientifically interesting since genetics has disproven their existence, but in social and cultural anthropology, race may still be interesting as a social construction, because it remains important in many ideologies that people live by.) Moreover, a distinction, admittedly a fuzzy one, is sometimes drawn between cultural and social anthropology. Cultural anthropology is the term used in the USA (and some other countries), while social anthropology traces its origins to Britain and, to some extent, France. Historically, there have been certain differences between these traditions – social anthropology has its foundation in sociological theory, while cultural anthropology is more broadly based – but the distinction has become sufficiently blurred not to be bothered with here. In the following, the distinction between social and cultural anthropology will only be used when it is necessary to highlight the specificity of North American or European anthropology.

As a university discipline, anthropology is not a very old subject – it has been taught for about a hundred years – but it has raised questions which have been formulated in different guises since antiquity: Are the differences between peoples inborn or learnt? Why are there so many languages, and how different are they really? Do all religions have something in common? Which forms of governance exist, and how do they work? Is it possible to rank societies on a ladder according to their level of development? What is it that all humans have in common? And – perhaps most importantly: What kind of creatures are humans; aggressive animals, social animals, religious animals or are they, perhaps, the only self-defining animals on the planet?

Every thinking person has an opinion on these matters. Some of them can hardly be answered once and for all, but they can at least be asked in an accurate and informed way. It is the goal of anthropology to establish as detailed knowledge as possible about varied forms of human life, and to develop a conceptual apparatus making it possible to compare them. This in turn enables us to understand both differences and similarities between the many different ways of being human. In spite of the enormous variations anthropologists document, the very existence of the discipline proves beyond doubt that it is possible to communicate fruitfully and intelligibly between them. Had it been impossible to understand culturally remote peoples, anthropology as such would have been impossible. And nobody who practises anthropology believes that this is impossible (although few believe that it is possible to understand everything). On the contrary, different societies are made to shed light on each other through comparison.

The great enigma of anthropology can be phrased like this: All over the world, humans are born with the same cognitive and physical apparatus, and yet they grow into distinctly different persons and groups, with different societal types, beliefs, technologies, languages and notions about the good life. Differences in innate endowments vary within each group and not between them, so that musicality, intelligence, intuition and other qualities which vary from person to person, are quite evenly distributed globally. It is not the case that Africans are ‘born with rhythm’, or that Northeners are ‘innately cold and introverted’. To the extent that such differences exist, they are not inborn. On the other hand, it is true that particular social milieux stimulate inborn potentials for rhythmicity, while others encourage the ability to think abstractly. Mozart, a man filled to the brim with musical talent, would hardly have become the world’s greatest composer if he, that is a person with the same genetic code as Mozart, had been born in Greenland. Perhaps he would only have become a bad hunter (because of his famous impatience).

Put differently, and paraphrasing the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, all humans are born with the potential to live thousands of different lives, yet we end up having lived only one. One of the central tasks of anthropology consists in giving accounts of some of the other lives we could have led.

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