The European Rationalist – In Reason We Trust

If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind-though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn’t lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind-one so sublime, we fold it into a larger “soul.” The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant.

We’re a species that is capable of almost dumbfounding kindness. We nurse one another, romance one another, weep for one another. Ever since science taught us how, we willingly tear the very organs from our bodies and give them to one another. And at the same time, we slaughter one another. The past 15 years of human history are the temporal equivalent of those subatomic particles that are created in accelerators and vanish in a trillionth of a second, but in that fleeting instant, we’ve visited untold horrors on ourselves-in Mogadishu, Rwanda, Chechnya, Darfur, Beslan, Baghdad, Pakistan, London, Madrid, Lebanon, Israel, New York City, Abu Ghraib, Oklahoma City, an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania-all of the crimes committed by the highest, wisest, most principled species the planet has produced. That we’re also the lowest, cruelest, most blood-drenched species is our shame-and our paradox.

The deeper that science drills into the substrata of behavior, the harder it becomes to preserve the vanity that we are unique among Earth’s creatures. We’re the only species with language, we told ourselves-until gorillas and chimps mastered sign language. We’re the only one that uses tools then-but that’s if you don’t count otters smashing mollusks with rocks or apes stripping leaves from twigs and using them to fish for termites.

What does, or ought to, separate us then is our highly developed sense of morality, a primal understanding of good and bad, of right and wrong, of what it means to suffer not only our own pain-something anything with a rudimentary nervous system can do-but also the pain of others. That quality is the distilled essence of what it means to be human. Why it’s an essence that so often spoils, no one can say.

Morality may be a hard concept to grasp, but we acquire it fast. A preschooler will learn that it’s not all right to eat in the classroom, because the teacher says it’s not. If the rule is lifted and eating is approved, the child will happily comply. But if the same teacher says it’s also O.K. to push another student off a chair, the child hesitates. “He’ll respond, ‘No, the teacher shouldn’t say that,’” says psychologist Michael Schulman, co-author of Bringing Up a Moral Child. In both cases, somebody taught the child a rule, but the rule against pushing has a stickiness about it, one that resists coming unstuck even if someone in authority countenances it. That’s the difference between a matter of morality and one of mere social convention, and Schulman and others believe kids feel it innately.

Of course, the fact is, that child will sometimes hit and won’t feel particularly bad about it either-unless he’s caught. The same is true for people who steal or despots who slaughter. “Moral judgment is pretty consistent from person to person,” says Marc Hauser, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of Moral Minds. “Moral behavior, however, is scattered all over the chart.” The rules we know, even the ones we intuitively feel, are by no means the rules we always follow.

Where do those intuitions come from? And why are we so inconsistent about following where they lead us? Scientists can’t yet answer those questions, but that hasn’t stopped them from looking. Brain scans are providing clues. Animal studies are providing more. Investigations of tribal behavior are providing still more. None of this research may make us behave better, not right away at least. But all of it can help us understand ourselves-a small step up from savagery perhaps, but an important one.

The Moral Ape

The deepest foundation on which morality is built is the phenomenon of empathy, the understanding that what hurts me would feel the same way to you. And human ego notwithstanding, it’s a quality other species share.

The deepest foundation on which morality is built is the phenomenon of empathy, the understanding that what hurts me would feel the same way to you. And human ego notwithstanding, it’s a quality other species share.It’s not surprising that animals far less complex than we are would display a trait that’s as generous of spirit as empathy, particularly if you decide there’s no spirit involved in it at all. Behaviorists often reduce what we call empathy to a mercantile business known as reciprocal altruism. A favor done today-food offered, shelter given-brings a return favor tomorrow. If a colony of animals practices that give-and-take well, the group thrives.

But even in animals, there’s something richer going on. One of the first and most poignant observations of empathy in nonhumans was made by Russian primatologist Nadia Kohts, who studied nonhuman cognition in the first half of the 20th century and raised a young chimpanzee in her home. When the chimp would make his way to the roof of the house, ordinary strategies for bringing him down-calling, scolding, offers of food-would rarely work. But if Kohts sat down and pretended to cry, the chimp would go to her immediately. “He runs around me as if looking for the offender,” she wrote. “He tenderly takes my chin in his palm … as if trying to understand what is happening.”

You hardly have to go back to the early part of the past century to find such accounts. Even cynics went soft at the story of Binta Jua, the gorilla who in 1996 rescued a 3-year-old boy who had tumbled into her zoo enclosure, rocking him gently in her arms and carrying him to a door where trainers could enter and collect him. “The capacity of empathy is multilayered,” says primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University, author of Our Inner Ape. “We share a core with lots of animals.”

While it’s impossible to directly measure empathy in animals, in humans it’s another matter. Hauser cites a study in which spouses or unmarried couples underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they were subjected to mild pain. They were warned before each time the painful stimulus was administered, and their brains lit up in a characteristic way signaling mild dread. They were then told that they were not going to feel the discomfort but that their partner was. Even when they couldn’t see their partner, the brains of the subjects lit up precisely as if they were about to experience the pain themselves. “This is very much an ‘I feel your pain’ experience,” says Hauser.

The brain works harder when the threat gets more complicated. A favorite scenario that morality researchers study is the trolley dilemma. You’re standing near a track as an out-of-control train hurtles toward five unsuspecting people. There’s a switch nearby that would let you divert the train onto a siding. Would you do it? Of course. You save five lives at no cost. Suppose a single unsuspecting man was on the siding? Now the mortality score is 5 to 1. Could you kill him to save the others? What if the innocent man was on a bridge over the trolley and you had to push him onto the track to stop the train?

Pose these dilemmas to people while they’re in an fMRI, and the brain scans get messy. Using a switch to divert the train toward one person instead of five increases activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-the place where cool, utilitarian choices are made. Complicate things with the idea of pushing the innocent victim, and the medial frontal cortex-an area associated with emotion-lights up. As these two regions do battle, we may make irrational decisions. In a recent survey, 85% of subjects who were asked about the trolley scenarios said they would not push the innocent man onto the tracks-even though they knew they had just sent five people to their hypothetical death. “What’s going on in our heads?” asks Joshua Greene, an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University. “Why do we say it’s O.K. to trade one life for five in one case and not others?”

How We Stay Good

Merely being equipped with moral programming does not mean we practice moral behavior. Something still has to boot up that software and configure it properly, and that something is the community. Hauser believes that all of us carry what he calls a sense of moral grammar-the ethical equivalent of the basic grasp of speech that most linguists believe is with us from birth. But just as syntax is nothing until words are built upon it, so too is a sense of right and wrong useless until someone teaches you how to apply it.

Merely being equipped with moral programming does not mean we practice moral behavior. Something still has to boot up that software and configure it properly, and that something is the community. Hauser believes that all of us carry what he calls a sense of moral grammar-the ethical equivalent of the basic grasp of speech that most linguists believe is with us from birth. But just as syntax is nothing until words are built upon it, so too is a sense of right and wrong useless until someone teaches you how to apply it.It’s the people around us who do that teaching-often quite well. Once again, however, humans aren’t the ones who dreamed up such a mentoring system. At the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, de Waal was struck by how vigorously apes enforced group norms one evening when the zookeepers were calling their chimpanzees in for dinner. The keepers’ rule at Arnhem was that no chimps would eat until the entire community was present, but two adolescents grew willful, staying outside the building. The hours it took to coax them inside caused the mood in the hungry colony to turn surly. That night the keepers put the delinquents to bed in a separate area-a sort of protective custody to shield them from reprisals. But the next day the adolescents were on their own, and the troop made its feelings plain, administering a sound beating. The chastened chimps were the first to come in that evening. Animals have what de Waal calls “oughts”-rules that the group must follow-and the community enforces them.

 

Human communities impose their own oughts, but they can vary radically from culture to culture. Take the phenomenon of Good Samaritan laws that require passersby to assist someone in peril. Our species has a very conflicted sense of when we ought to help someone else and when we ought not, and the general rule is, Help those close to home and ignore those far away. That’s in part because the plight of a person you can see will always feel more real than the problems of someone whose suffering is merely described to you. But part of it is also rooted in you from a time when the welfare of your tribe was essential for your survival but the welfare of an opposing tribe was not-and might even be a threat.

In the 21st century, we retain a powerful remnant of that primal dichotomy, which is what impels us to step in and help a mugging victim-or, in the astonishing case of Wesley Autrey, New York City’s so-called Subway Samaritan, jump onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train to rescue a sick stranger-but allows us to decline to send a small contribution to help the people of Darfur. “The idea that you can save the life of a stranger on the other side of the world by making a modest material sacrifice is not the kind of situation our social brains are prepared for,” says Greene.

Throughout most of the world, you’re still not required to aid a stranger, but in France and elsewhere, laws now make it a crime for passersby not to provide at least the up-close-and-personal aid we’re good at giving. In most of the U.S., we make a distinction between an action and an omission to act. Says Hauser: “In France they’ve done away with that difference.”

But you don’t need a state to create a moral code. The group does it too. One of the most powerful tools for enforcing group morals is the practice of shunning. If membership in a tribe is the way you ensure yourself food, family and protection from predators, being blackballed can be a terrifying thing. Religious believers as diverse as Roman Catholics, Mennonites and Jehovah’s Witnesses have practiced their own forms of shunning-though the banishments may go by names like excommunication or disfellowshipping. Clubs, social groups and fraternities expel undesirable members, and the U.S. military retains the threat of discharge as a disciplinary tool, even grading the punishment as “other than honorable” or “dishonorable,” darkening the mark a former service person must carry for life.

Sometimes shunning emerges spontaneously when a society of millions recoils at a single member’s acts. O.J. Simpson’s 1995 acquittal may have outraged people, but it did make the morality tale surrounding him much richer, as the culture as a whole turned its back on him, denying him work, expelling him from his country club, refusing him service in a restaurant. In November his erstwhile publisher, who was fired in the wake of her and Simpson’s disastrous attempt to publish a book about the killings, sued her ex-employer, alleging that she had been “shunned” and “humiliated.” That, her former bosses might well respond, was precisely the point.

“Human beings were small, defenseless and vulnerable to predators,” says Barbara J. King, biological anthropologist at the College of William and Mary and author of Evolving God. “Avoiding banishment would be important to us.”

Why We Turn Bad

With so many redundant moral systems to keep us in line, why do we so often fall out of ranks? Sometimes we can’t help it, as when we’re suffering from clinical insanity and behavior slips the grip of reason. Criminal courts are stingy about finding such exculpatory madness, requiring a disability so severe, the defendant didn’t even know the crime was wrong. That’s a very high bar that prevents all but a few from proving the necessary moral numbness.

With so many redundant moral systems to keep us in line, why do we so often fall out of ranks? Sometimes we can’t help it, as when we’re suffering from clinical insanity and behavior slips the grip of reason. Criminal courts are stingy about finding such exculpatory madness, requiring a disability so severe, the defendant didn’t even know the crime was wrong. That’s a very high bar that prevents all but a few from proving the necessary moral numbness.Things are different in the case of the cool and deliberate serial killer, who knows the criminality of his deeds yet continues to commit them. For neuroscientists, the iciness of the acts calls to mind the case of Phineas Gage, the Vermont railway worker who in 1848 was injured when an explosion caused a tamping iron to be driven through his prefrontal cortex. Improbably, he survived, but he exhibited stark behavioral changes-becoming detached and irreverent, though never criminal. Ever since, scientists have looked for the roots of serial murder in the brain’s physical state.

 

A study published last year in the journal NeuroImage may have helped provide some answers. Researchers working through the National Institute of Mental Health scanned the brains of 20 healthy volunteers, watching their reactions as they were presented with various legal and illegal scenarios. The brain activity that most closely tracked the hypothetical crimes-rising and falling with the severity of the scenarios-occurred in the amygdala, a deep structure that helps us make the connection between bad acts and punishments. As in the trolley studies, there was also activity in the frontal cortex. The fact that the subjects themselves had no sociopathic tendencies limits the value of the findings. But knowing how the brain functions when things work well is one good way of knowing where to look when things break down.

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of us never run off the moral rails in remotely as awful a way as serial killers do, but we do come untracked in smaller ways. We face our biggest challenges not when we’re called on to behave ourselves within our family, community or workplace but when we have to apply the same moral care to people outside our tribe.

The notion of the “other” is a tough one for Homo sapiens. Sociobiology has been criticized as one of the most reductive of sciences, ascribing the behavior of all living things-humans included-as nothing more than an effort to get as many genes as possible into the next generation. The idea makes sense, and all creatures can be forgiven for favoring their troop over others. But such bias turns dark fast.

Schulman, the psychologist and author, works with delinquent adolescents at a residential treatment center in Yonkers, New York, and was struck one day by the outrage that swept through the place when the residents learned that three of the boys had mugged an elderly woman. “I wouldn’t mug an old lady. That could be my grandmother,” one said. Schulman asked whom it would be O.K. to mug. The boy answered, “A Chinese delivery guy.” Explains Schulman: “The old lady is someone they could empathize with. The Chinese delivery guy is alien, literally and figuratively, to them.”

This kind of brutal line between insiders and outsiders is evident everywhere-mobsters, say, who kill promiscuously yet go on rhapsodically about “family.” But it has its most terrible expression in wars, in which the dehumanization of the outsider is essential for wholesale slaughter to occur. Volumes have been written about what goes on in the collective mind of a place like Nazi Germany or the collapsing Yugoslavia. While killers like Adolf Hitler or Slobodan Milosevic can never be put on the couch, it’s possible to understand the xenophobic strings they play in their people.

“Yugoslavia is the great modern example of manipulating tribal sentiments to create mass murder,” says Jonathan Haidt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. “You saw it in Rwanda and Nazi Germany too. In most cases of genocide, you have a moral entrepreneur who exploits tribalism for evil purposes.”

That, of course, does not take the stain of responsibility off the people who follow those leaders-a case that war-crimes prosecutors famously argued at the Nuremberg trials and a point courageous people have made throughout history as they sheltered Jews during World War II or refuse to murder their Sunni neighbor even if a militia leader tells them to.

For grossly imperfect creatures like us, morality may be the steepest of all developmental mountains. Our opposable thumbs and big brains gave us the tools to dominate the planet, but wisdom comes more slowly than physical hardware. We surely have a lot of killing and savagery ahead of us before we fully civilize ourselves. The hope-a realistic one, perhaps-is that the struggles still to come are fewer than those left behind.

What Makes Us Moral, By Jerry Kluger, published in Time Magazine, 2007

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It seems right to begin with Kierkegaard – acknowledged as the father of existentialism. In his first book Kierkegaard gave a description of three philosophical positions or ways of life: i) a cultured form of worldly hedonism; ii) a life of a judgmental, dutiful moralist; iii) a spirituality which transcends both worldly hedonism and the rules of social morality or ordinary justice.

He called the book Either/Or. For he contended that, as such positions are discrete and self-contained, based on their own unique values, and as reason and logic can’t prove which position is objectively more true or superior, a subjective either/or decision, a free leap of faith, is required to adopt any one and commit oneself to it. Free choice here means choice in the face of the inability to establish the objective rightness of the decision; hence, choice taken in irresolvable uncertainty; hence, choice begetting angst -anxiety that we are completely wrong.

Kierkegaard rejected the Hegelian philosophy dominant in his day. It claimed that by use of reason we can all see how a position evolves out of previous ones and represents a rational advance. Reason can compare and assess positions. If we follow the logic of cultural evolution we make a smooth transition from one to another and eventually arrive at a shared final conclusion: the ultimate position objectively superior to all others. We won’t need a leap of faith. Reason will guide and assure us we’ve arrived at the highest truth. Then we can all go home.

Nietzsche and postmodernism similarly reject the idea that reason can establish objective truth and that positions or ways of life can be compared to see which one is ultimate. Nietzsche is famous for his perspectivism, ie, his argument that philosophies reflect different perspectives on reality and that all such perspectives are founded on diverse culturally relative assumptions and values. We can’t prove objective truth since the criteria for the truth -for what gets called true in a particular culture -vary relative to historical time and place. There are no independent criteria by which we can judge between positions. Moreover, behind logic stands evaluation: eg, that one values being rational, or questioning, or reflective, or analytical, or dialectical, or that one is bothered about non-contradiction, logical determinations of reality, and the like. After all, a late-medieval like Martin Luther can declare that reason is the devil’s whore -ie, that reason is a corrupt faculty, part of our fallen and sinful nature: not a reliable faculty to use in pursuit of truth. It will seduce us away from truth, which can only be found, says Luther, in a God-given scriptural revelation.

So, the value of reason appears relative and can be put in question. Other cultures have not valued it as much as we have in modern times. Nietzsche raises the question why we want truth at all rather than illusion and suggests it is only a kind of imperialism, or piece of moral naiveté, to assume truth is worth more than myth or appearance. Moreover, what we call truths are just our more triumphant fictions: ie, certain fictions, simplifications, and the like, come to the fore at a certain point in time and if they triumph they get called truths by most people in that culture. Thus, truth is basically a concept expressing a people’s incapacity to think otherwise. It reflects limitation, a degree of disempowerment. Our convictions are our prisons. At the same time, though, the temptation of truth is that it promises a power, viz, the security and superiority of feeling we live in the truth or possess the truth -as against others who are in the wrong. So, Nietzsche famously analyses truth and philosophy in terms of an underlying will-to-power.

Postmodernism is close. Foucault also analyses what’s called knowledge in terms of power -eg, that a group which successfully portrays itself as having knowledge thereby acquires power and that such knowledges arise via discrepancies of power in society between so-called experts and those not in the know: between the haves and the have-nots in society, the dominant and less dominant in education. It is the dominant elites which determine what gets to be called the canon of knowledge -shoring up their privileged positions and passing the canon down to future generations. There’s no guarantee the canon, or dominant regime of discourse, is truth rather than a temporarily triumphant fiction serving certain vested interests. (This may have crossed one’s mind before!)

Also close is Lyotard, who calls the many positions grand narratives, or stories of truth, and refers to them as language games. The games are discrete and circular, for they are founded on their own unique set of values and contain within themselves their own game rules or criteria for truth, knowledge, evidence, proof, right method, and the like. There is no objectively true game, since there is no independent position from which you could judge between the games to decide which one is best. Hence, the games are said to be incommensurable -ie, they can’t be measured or compared for their real truth-value. Truths and values are relative to the game you are playing. To say one language game is intrinsically or objectively superior to another would be as absurd as saying that soccer is intrinsically or objectively better than cricket. Games are simply different, not inherently better or worse.

Also similar to Nietzsche is Baudrillard’s notion of simulation and seduction. We don’t live in the real as such, he says, but in our cultural simulation of reality. In late-Capitalist consumer society, where mass media dominate, the mainstream cultural simulation is selected and mediated over and over again. It is reinforced through endless repetitions: hyper-mediated, hyper-realized. The simulation thereby becomes the hyperreal, the realer-than-real: an overdetermined simulation which appears natural, normal, an obvious truth.

Meanwhile, the real itself is a void, a nullity, a desert of the real, as Baudrillard puts it. All cultures are seduced by their truths. Moreover, seduction is not rational, or it is pre-rational, more basic than the rational. For to be rational already presupposes one has been seduced by the ideals of reason. Hence, Baudrillard seems to be in agreement with Nietzsche that behind reason stands evaluation or the mysterious non-rational -the other of reason -which Baudrillard calls seduction. However, Baudrillard, unlike Nietzsche and Foucault, is uncommitted to the view that seduction operates through power or a will-to-power, or even through desire, as some others would have it. Hence, he says we should forget Foucault -presumably Nietzsche too, at least on this point.

How then does seduction operate if not through power or desire? Actually, this is undecidable. For to analyze seduction in terms of power, or desire, or some other factor, be it psychological, psychoanalytic, natural and empirical, or supernatural and non-empirical, would already presuppose a seduction, ie, that one has been seduced by this or that discourse or perspective. Rather, the ultimate sources of seduction remain mysterious, a kind of secret rule of the game. We find ourselves seduced, we know not how or why. One thing remains though: whatever position or way of life we are seduced by, there is no way we can establish its objective or essential truth. It has value only relative to our seduction. To say our seduction is objectively best would be as absurd as Romeo saying Juliet is objectively best. He may feel she is, but he can’t establish this as a truth for others. So the implication of seduction theory in particular, and postmodernism in general, is that beauty and truth is in the eye of the beholder. Hence, it’s said that truth is dead in postmodernity -ie, essential truth, objective truth, is an outmoded notion, a concept from a dead language game of the past.

So, in the light of Kierkegaard and existentialism, Nietzsche and postmodernism, philosophical positions and ways of life now appear as perspectives, simulations, or discrete and discontinuous language games; or in more dramatic terms: at the end of the millennium, truth is dead. But was Kierkegaard right to say free choice or a leap of faith is required to jump the gaps? Is there free choice here? Is there even a self which is free to make such a choice? Does it have the free will? On these questions we find Nietzsche and postmodernism part company with Kierkegaard and existentialism. Let’s consider.

Descartes is the father of modern philosophy or what’s called modernity by postmoderns. Emphasis is on self and related concepts, such as autonomy, responsibility, accountability, free will, free choice, individuality, and the like. It begins with the Cartesian “I think therefore I am”. Several things are implied: that there is a self, that the self is a causal agent, that the self can control thought and action through free will, that the self is a free moral agent -ie, accountable and responsible. Philosophers like Descartes, Kant and Hegel, stressed the rationality of self and said the self is most free when most rational. Kierkegaard and existentialism object. Nevertheless, they still concur on free self, free choice, deliberation and decision, responsibility and accountability. Therefore, we have to say that existentialism belongs to modernity.

Now, what about Nietzsche? He rejects the “I think” in no uncertain terms. It is arbitrary to assume the “I” creates or controls thought and action. After all, thoughts, beliefs, actions, decisions, and the like, can be generated by underlying and unconscious agencies. This, of course, connects to will-topower. Will-to-power can operate in us at levels below the level of conscious awareness or control. The sense of having a free subjectivity, a free self, is itself an illusion generated by will-to-power in the human organism. Moreover, Nietzsche declares: the doctrine of free will is “a hangman’s metaphysics” -ie, a fiction invented by certain resentful and vengeful groups in the past so that others -criminals, conquering tribes, masters -can be held accountable and responsible and duly condemned, punished, or damned. Belief in free will thus serves to rationalize and legitimate righteous indignation and revenge under the fiction of justice and desert. The idea caught on.

Similarly, postmodernism decentres the self, ie, it undermines the ideology of the free self by pointing to factors which condition who we are, what we can think or say or believe, or what we can do. One catch-phrase is: the self does not speak language, but language speaks the self -ie, the cultural language or language games we are brought up in conditions our sense of subjectivity and the possibilities of thought. We may think we are free agents, but actually we are speaking and acting in accordance with our historical conditioning and cultural limitations.

So Nietzsche and postmodernism differ radically from Kierkegaard and existentialism in so far as the latter rely heavily on an assumption of free subjectivity reminiscent of Descartes. There can be no existential free choice, or free and accountable leaps of faith, if self is merely a simulation of selfhood, as Baudrillard might say, determined by modernity’s cultural code. Moreover, in the light of this, Nietzsche is surely not an existentialist and existentialism is not the heir to his thought; rather postmodernism is. Indeed, postmodernism could well be described as kind of neo-Nietzscheanism.

In sum: Kierkegaard the existentialist argued that positions can’t be compared by reason alone and that objective truth is impossible, then declared that a responsible, accountable, free leap of faith is required. He assumed the reality of free will or free subjectivity as the final ground of our action and commitment. Nietzsche and postmodernism object. Underlying factors, such as power, desire, cultural conditioning, language limitations, regimes of discourse, seduction, and the like, must be taken into account. Existentialism is itself a version of the hangman’s metaphysics. Are we speaking at a hangman’s society?!

What now of Max Stirner? Where does he stand? Stirner was writing at much the same time as Kierkegaard, in the 1840’s, and in a similar intellectual environment. Like Kierkegaard he rejected the dominant Hegelianism in which he was schooled. So in some ways he is similar to Kierkegaard, especially in that he too provides a sustained critique of rationalist metaphysics and objective truth. Moreover, at first glance he seems to be arguing in favour of free subjectivity, the free self or free ego, and free individualism. Thus, he might seem to belong in the existentialist camp. However, this is rather misleading. If we look more closely we find he is not committed to the idea of a free self or ego, and that, contrary to initial appearances and to his critics and commentators, he is not advocating individualist egoism at all.

Well, this needs some explaining. Stirner certainly argues against objective truth arrived at through reason, proposing instead that positions have been adopted in the past for underlying egoistic reasons of self-interest. Desire had more to do with it than reason. However, as with will-to-power, this egoistic will did not always operate at the conscious level of deliberation or control. Most of the time people have been unconscious or involuntary egoists, as Stirner puts it, ie, they may have thought they were choosing a position purely because of its truth, but since no position can exhibit its truth, the real motives were psychological, egoistic in the sense of being self-serving or apparently advantageous.

This is summed up in Stirner’s saying, “Nothing is sacred but by my bending the knee.” -meaning: nothing is simply given as sacred or true or right or valuable in itself, but only acquires this appearance of value by our elevating it to this sublime status, disempowering ourselves in relation to it. We project its value, declare it sacred, untouchable, inviolable, thereby losing the capacity to take back its value again, or annul it. We do this because we feel, however dimly, however unconsciously, it is advantageous to be aligned with the sacred.

However, Stirner argues we are, rather, disadvantaged in the process. For we become addicted to the sacred truth, and, as Stirner sees it, a better -more empowering, more reliable, more immediate, more liberating -mode of happiness, a happiness of non-addiction, can be found by undermining and annulling every sacred truth. We achieve this through realizing nothing is sacred of itself but only appears sacred via our projection -by our bending the knee. Seeing it is not sacred or inviolable in itself, we find we can violate it, ie, take back its value and annul it, thus letting go of it.

Example: consider people who fall romantically in love. At one level they feel it is advantageous to be thus enthralled -and so they pursue it: their own thralldom, their own servitude. The other becomes a sacred object or idol to which one becomes addicted, attached. One becomes emotionally dependent. There are certain highs involved, to be sure, which explains the temptation.

But there’s the down side. We are subservient in that our sense of emotionalwellbeing is vulnerable to the other’s will or changeability. As Stirner would say, we have fallen prey to tributariness -ie, we pay the other too much tribute, give the other too much weight, value or power. In short, we make the other sacred by bending the knee. This is the pattern of idolatry. The same applies to everything -eg, God, truths, faiths, beliefs, ideologies, reason, discourse, thought, and even the self or ego. We can make an little idol out of anything.

Do we possess our objects of belief and desire or do they possess us? For Stirner, re-phrasing Hamlet, to possess or be possessed -that is the question. Possessing them without them possessing us means we retain the capacity to take back value any time and cancel, suspend or annul it -ie, we can absolve ourselves of the thing, we can let it go, be non-attached and independent in relation to it. We can, for example, let that old lover go, let that old God go, let that old truth go, let even life itself go -let everything go. To be able to have and enjoy things without them having you, describes the non-attached condition Stirner calls Ownness. We come into our own, we develop maturity, when we can have and not have in this way.

God and the truth is dead for Stirner in that he can let them go. He is radically uncommitted. Indeed, he is not concerned for anything except “the self-enjoyment of life” -akin to what the Greeks called “eudemonia” -ie, philosophical good spirits. To attain and enjoy good spirits is Stirner’s purpose. Attainment comes via the realization that nothing is sacred except by our bending the knee and exercising the capacity to take back all things and annul their value or power over us. This implies we annul all the objects of belief and desire, hence, all the objects of hope and fear and time. What then remains? Only what Stirner calls “creative nothingness” -ie, the ongoing unfolding of life itself here and now without names, conceptualizations, divisions, limits. For these are all objects of belief or desire, potential idols. And we take these back and annul them. So it is no longer a matter of fear and hope, of time, of mediation. The immediate self-enjoyment of creative nothingness is realized where there are no idols left standing to block it. It is the free creative act of life-affirmation, of life affirming itself in and through us: a life-enjoyment without reason, that is, for no reason except itself because, well, enjoyment is enjoyable -which seems obvious.

Now, is this egoism? I say not. For ordinary egoism is the pursuit of enjoyment in time via the objects of belief and desire. And self-enjoyment is precisely not this. On the contrary, self-enjoyment is the radical alternative to ordinary egoism. But is it not egoism at least in the sense that Stirner believes in the free ego or individual self of egoism, as the commentators say? No, again. Stirner is not attached or committed to self or ego, since self or ego is simply a concept, an object of belief or desire, one more potential idol. He annuls it along with the rest. Note that Stirner’s motto throughout the book is not “I have set my affair on the ego or egoism”. His motto is, “I have set my affair on nothing.” Creative nothingness is the last word in his discourse, and on the last page of the book even the idea of the ego or owner is taken back, annulled, returned to the creative nothing from whence it came.

Stirner doesn’t belong in the existentialist camp because he is not committed to key existentialist notions: eg, self, free will, authenticity, accountability, responsibility. He would absolve himself of all such notions. He would not make an idol of them. Well, then, shall we say Stirner is more like a postmodern? After all, he was one of the first to use the term “modernity” to describe the previous period of philosophical culture, and he says that his own position -ownness, or self-enjoyment -comes after this, and so by implication is post-modern. In fact, a good case can be made that he was way ahead of his time, that critics and commentators have failed to understand him, and that he anticipated many themes of postmodernism a hundred and fifty years ago.
However, what Stirner most resembles, it seems to me, is Taoistic Zen. After all, Taoistic Zen is also all about radical non-attachment to any objects of temporal desire or belief and a contemplative openness to and appreciation of the Tao, understood as the nameless, the unconceptualized, Way of reality. As the first line of the Tao Te Ching says, the Tao or Way that can be named is not the real Tao or Way itself. Thus, the Tao is akin to Stirner’s creative nothingness and the contemplative appreciation of the Tao is akin to Stirner’s practice of immediate self-enjoyment.

What about similarity between Taoistic Zen, Stirner, and postmodernism? Well, in so far as postmoderns are committed to discourse itself, or the terms of their discourse -whether power, or desire, or deconstruction, or simulation, or seduction, etc. -and make a sacred idol out of them, then there would be little similarity. However, in so far as ironic detachment from discourse is hinted at in some texts -notably in the case of Baudrillard -then there may be a similarity. In Baudrillard, in his rather extreme brand of postmodernism, there is an ongoing unresolved ambiguity or equivocation over whether his discourse is to be taken as a serious or sacred truth about the real or whether he is instead engaged in a kind of provocative and ironic game with the reader. The former is suggested by his description of himself as a moralist and metaphysician. The latter is suggested by references to his text as theory-fiction and by pronouncements that the secret of theory is that there is no longer any truth in theory. In short, Baudrillard prevaricates on this crucial issue. And so, in the end, one must forget Baudrillard.

Stirner privileges the calm contemplative self-enjoyment of creative nothingness above all and he seems rather scornful of other pursuits. He prefers aloof retreat from the world and he seems to have gone on to live the rest of his life this way. Same goes for mainstream Taoistic Zen. However, postmodern writers, including Baudrillard who at least flirts with the void and contemplative silence, tend to privileged discourse or writing as such, and so churn out endless books -even if they are books of theory which argue we can’t write books of theory any more. This seems to be the state of play in philosophy as we approach the end of the millennium.

Which leaves me with one last question to address tonight. Is there a way forward from here into the next millennium, a way beyond the positions outlined so far, a way beyond even postmodernism: a post-postmodernism perhaps? Is there life after theory? This strikes me as being the primary research question in philosophy at the present time. And to judge by the number of books and compilations with the word “after” in the title, I wouldn’t be alone.

I’ll advance the following conjectures. If the first millennium, the medieval millennium, pre-modernity, can be categorized as the Age Of Faith -ie, where religious faith, piety, theology, supernaturalism, etc. increasingly preoccupied cultural life; and if the second millennium, the modern millennium, can be categorized as the Age Of Reason -ie, where theorizing, reasoning, science, humanism, critical thinking -eventually leading to late-twentieth century postmodern irony, ambiguity, and nihilism -increasingly preoccupied cultural life; then perhaps the next millennium might be characterized differently from both and be called the Age Of Art. This would be an age after theory, an age which is post-religious and post-rational -or in sum, post-truth, and, therefore, also post-irony, post-nihilism, even post-Baudrillard, even post-postmodern: an age where art and artistic effects come to the fore and preoccupy cultural life.

Art existed in previous ages, of course. However, each age has a dominant principle which other interests serve, and in those ages art served the dominant principles of faith or reason. So, in medieval times reason and art were pressed into the service of faith: faith went in search of understanding through reason in theology and in search of aesthetic self-expression through religious art. In modern times, faith and art are pressed into the service of reason: faith becomes either a rational faith, faith within the bounds of reason alone, as Kant had it, or a faith in reason itself; and art becomes rational, humanist, realist, socialist, critical, avante garde, etc., following the evolving trends of critical theory.

What I envisage, then, is an age where art really comes into its own, ie, artistic creativity and effect, aesthetic quality and interest, becomes the dominant principle and faith and reason is pressed into its service. Faith becomes faith in art as a way of life: an artistic faith -in art and imagination we trust, rather than in God we trust (or in science). Reason and its associated qualities logical argument, order, proportion, method, clarity, coherence, concision, discursive elegance, etc. -is employed in so far as it contributes in a work to its aesthetic quality. The latter, then, is what counts, not reason itself. So good or bad in such an age is not decided by a dominant religion or piety, nor by a dominant rational methodology or science, but by degree of artistic appeal.
For example, consider theory -ie, the old representational language game: ie, a game purporting to contain knowledgeable propositions truthfully representing reality as it is -eg, God exists, electrons exist, the self exists, freedom exists, etc. However, representational language turns on epistemology ie, the study of knowledge, which claimed to give the logos or knowledgeable account of knowledge, the truth about the truth. It claimed to know what knowledge is and exhibit its possibility. This always was an absurd undertaking, however, founded in a paradox. For to know what knowledge is presupposes we already know what knowledge is in claiming to have knowledge about knowledge. Put another way, to say a criterion of the truth is a true criterion of the truth either presupposes the criterion already and so begs the question, or else sets up an infinite regress by bringing in another criterion. The upshot is simple: epistemology is impossible; hence, knowledge and truth is impossible; hence, the age-old representational language game of theory is impossible; hence, we need to move beyond representational language and the claim that theory contains statements as true representations of reality.

We cease prevaricating and unambiguously drop the pretense that theory is really saying anything about reality at all. But what then can it be doing? Is there another way of intending or understanding a text? There surely is. Literature, creative writing, fiction, theatre, poetry -do not have to claim to be representing reality. They can be an alternative to the representational language game of truth. A novel, for instance, might be a complete fabrication from beginning to end, an exercise of the artistic imagination, a fantasy work. However, it can still have merit, ie, in an aesthetic sense if it succeeds in generating aesthetic arousal and interest in the reader. So theory, after theory, must be understood this way: as creative writing, literature, prose poetry art. This still allows there can be good and bad theory, but good and bad is not determined by criteria such as truth-content, representational correspondence to reality, or verisimilitude, but by aesthetics.

In short, in the blink of eye -perhaps we should make it at the stroke of midnight bringing in the year 2000? -everyone becomes an artist. Thus: philosophers, theologians, fundamentalists, mystics, scientists, sociologists, critical thinkers -all artists, all exercising their creative imaginations, expressing themselves, inventing theory. No longer any ambiguity about it: theory is theory-fiction. We start from there. We drop the irony and pretense of truth and switch over to a purely aesthetic paradigm. We all become artists, artists all the time, even in our own heads. For thought -ongoing internal discourse -no longer represents reality either. Everyday thinking itself is art, is imagination, is story-telling. Of course, we can be relatively good or bad artists. The criterion is not representational truth, if truth is dead, but turns on aesthetics: broadly speaking, on the degree to which whatever is generated is pleasing or interesting.

Here are some dictionary synonyms for the word “interesting” -absorbing, arousing, amusing, appealing, attractive, compelling, curious, engaging, engrossing, entertaining, gripping, intriguing, novel, original, provocative, stimulating, thought-provoking, unusual. These and related aesthetic terms, such as, beautiful, sublime, elegant, inspiring, moving, etc., now take over from the old terms associated with the dead language of representation, such as, truth, knowledge, correspondence, coherence, pragmatism, probability, proof, evidence, demonstration, verification, falsfication, legitimation, etc. So observe that, where once Lyotard reported there is a legitimation crisis regarding theory there is no longer a legitimation crisis, since, after theory, theory no longer makes claims which require legitimation. Rather, whatever value theory-fiction has turns on its aesthetic merits. The quest, therefore, is no longer a quest for the truth -which always was an impossibility -but, rather, the point of theory and every other aesthetic creation is simply this: to make life more interesting!

Observe those who are down, depressed, dull, in the doldrums, those for whom life has lost its spice, for whom life seems meaningless, who may even contemplate suicide. Life shows no interest. What they need is arousal -that which would enable them to find life more interesting. That is where art comes in. Art is therapy. Art is the endless capacity of the human imagination to create and re-create interest in life, and thereby, meaning and value. And it comes in all shapes and forms: not just books, paintings, films, music, but also: religion, science, mythology, philosophy, debate, psychoanalysis, politics, Zen meditation, whatever. Everything is theatre. Go to a church or ashram or zendo -or for that matter, a parliament -and the theatricality is obvious. Less obvious, but no less theatrical, are our therapy rooms, science labs, and lecture halls. Note the costumes, the props, the role plays, the standards of good and bad form, the rules of procedure -the stage directions, in other words. There is no truth to be found in any of it. Nevertheless, it can be extremely interesting. What’s more, it keeps us all alive and kicking.

All we need do now is create more art as best we can -more inventive art, more pleasing art, more arousing art, more comprehensive art -art for its own sake, where art is the dominant ethos and everything else, eg, faith, reason, virtue, is subservient to the aesthetic principle. Moreover, it is no longer a matter of saying one art form is inherently better than another, eg, that one religion is better than another, or that science is better than religion, or vice versa, or that meditation or contemplation is better than intellectual work or an active life in the world. For they are all equivalent as art forms, and to say one is superior would be like saying horror movies are inherently better than tragedies or comedies. It is merely a matter of what makes life seem more fascinating to you. So generate and enjoy! After theory, this can be done more freely and with a clear intellectual conscience. For truth is no longer a constraint. If it interests one to think there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, then one can entertain the thought, and thereby entertain oneself. After all, this is no more or less true than that there is a God or an electron at the bottom of the garden. Indeed, perhaps fairies ride about on electrons and angels still dance on pinheads. As for the Big Bang, that’s a particularly stirring form of science fiction -however, a fashion which, quite possibly, will be outmoded in fifty or hundred years.

But at this point perhaps we need to consider two typical objections to life as art. First: that it is escapist. However, to claim devotion to art is mere escapism from reality presupposes one can prove what is reality. And after theory, this can’t be done. Moreover, after theory, any theory of reality is itself art. Thus, the objection is outmoded. That’s why entertaining fairies at the bottom of the garden is just as valid as entertaining electrons (if electrons are entertaining). Second: life devoted to art is morally irresponsible. This again presupposes truth, this time a truth of morality. Moreover, after theory, moral theory is itself an art form, as is the ethical self. That is: one finds a type of character attractive, hence one is drawn to those who exhibit it, more-or-less, and one tends to create it as a preferred self-image. Thus, in an age of art, ethics turns on aesthetics, rather revamping the “beautiful soul” idea -except it is no longer claimed beauty has an objective or universal standard or that we ought to conform to one. Beauty is contextual, as is morality. However, if we are concerned as artists to be aesthetically appealing the likely way is to become more beautiful and interesting whether in appearance or character. A pain in the bum is a poor artist in the medium of morality. Of course, one may be good in some other way. But if the ideal in an age of art is maximum comprehensive artistry, it behoves us to develop our artistic talents in as many mediums as possible, as best we can, including the medium of morality. In this way, we become eclectic artists, somewhat Renaissance-like. So virtue is included in an age of art, as is faith and reason, under the dominant aesthetic principle.

If there is anything to avoid it is simply that which usually makes for bad art hence, such as: the ugly, the displeasing, the inelegant, the irritating, the banal, the clichéd, the commonplace, the stereotypical, the repetitious, the overdone, the long-winded, the unoriginal, the uninspired, the dull, the boring, the superficial, the inept, the poorly crafted, the technically unproficient, the juvenile, the unripe, the jaded, the stale, etc. We apply such criteria when adjudicating things in context -eg, a play, an academic essay, a poem, a painting, a scientific paper, a thesis, a political manifesto, a dance, a sermon, a news report, a character, a song, and so forth. Experienced judges usually find themselves in agreement with other experienced judges in the same field. Still, judgments are subjective in reflecting and expressing one’s lack of interest or pleasure in the work, a deficit of aesthetic arousal.

We might note that the disturbing, the unsettling, the occasionally discordant or displeasing, is not always an objection to a piece. It depends on how these elements fit into and complete a whole which overall may be aesthetically pleasing.

Which leads to my penultimate point tonight. People have no idea what reality as a whole is. Indeed, it is quite comic when they think they do. At such times they appear as perceptive as the soap box they’re standing on (which is entertaining in its own way). At any rate, things appear thus after theory. This opens a strategy of re-enchantment. For whenever some discord arises in life, some painful episode, to avoid disenchantment we just have to realize that within the whole this discord may play a positive essential part. It may be a fine artistic touch, a piece of finesse lending grace to the total picture, even if grace is currently incognito. In other words, in an age of art after theory, it is easy to entertain ourselves with the idea that reality itself is an artistic work and that this is how our sufferings can be justified and accommodated. After all, the truth of the idea is no longer relevant. All that matters is that it be a re-enchanting idea to engage with. One just needs to contemplate reality in this fashion, as a perfect aesthetic Whole or Way or Tao, to defuse the blues.

Finally, it will no doubt have occurred to the perceptive person that my discourse tonight must be, according to its own lights, beyond truth. This is so. It is only an argument. An argument could be completely convincing to everyone who hears it, and yet still be false. So what has it to do with truth? My discourse, therefore, is merely intended as a piece of creative writing which may or may not provoke a lively aesthetic effect. It’s sole purpose is to interest or re-enchant, at least its author. If nothing else, it has achieved that.

 

Existentialist Society Lecture. 2nd Nov. 1999.

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An Ravelingien reports on the conference ‘Double standards. Towards an integration of evolutionary and neurological perspectives on human morality.’ (Ghent University, 21-22 Oct. 2006)

In Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy tells the story of Tom More, the inventor of the extraordinary ‘ontological lapsometer’1. The lapsometer is a diagnostic tool, a ’stethoscope of the human soul’.  Just as a stethoscope or an EEG can trace certain physical dysfunctions, the lapsometer can measure the frailties of the human mind. The device can measure ‘how deep the soul has fallen’ and allows for early diagnoses of potential suicides, paranoia, depression, or other mood disorders. Bioethicist Carl Elliott refers to this novel to illustrate a well-known debate within psychiatry2. According to Elliott, the image of the physician that uses the lapsometer to unravel the mysteries of the soul is a comically desperate attempt to objectify experiences that cannot accommodate such scientific analysis. His objection carries back to the conflict between a sociological perspective – that would stress the subjective experiences related to the cultural and social context of human psychology – and a biological perspective – that would rather determine the physiological causes of mental and mood dysfunction. It is very likely that debate about the subjective and indefinite nature of some experiences will climax when empirical science is applied to trace and explain the biology of our moral sentiments and convictions. For most of us, I presume, nothing would appear to be more inextricably a part of our personal experience and merit than our moral competence. The conference ‘Double Standards’ questioned this intuition and demonstrated that the concept of ‘morality’ is becoming more and more tangible.

Jan Verplaetse and Johan Braeckman, the organizers of the conference, gathered 13 reputable experts and more than 150 participants to ponder one of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical questions: how did morality come into existence? For this, they drew upon two different scientific approaches: evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. In theory, these disciplines are complementary.  Neuroscientists assume that morality is generated by specific neural mechanisms and structures, which they hope to find by way of sophisticated brain imaging techniques. Evolutionary scientists, by contrast, want to figure out what the adaptive value of morality is for it to have evolved. According tot hem, morality is – just as all aspects of our human nature – a product of evolution through selection. Moral and social behavior must have had a selective advantage, from which the relevant cognitive and emotional functions developed. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the alleged functions can direct the neuroscientist in searching for the neurological structures that underlie them. Or, the other way around, the imaging of certain neural circuits should help to discover whether and to what extent our moral intuitions are indeed embedded in our ‘nature.’ During the conference, this double perspective gave rise to several interesting hypotheses.

It appears that neuroscientists have already achieved remarkably uniform results regarding the crucial brain areas that are involved in fulfilling moral tasks. Jorge Moll was the first to use functional MRI-studies to show that three major areas are engaged in moral decision making: the frontal lobes, temporal lobe and limbic-paralimbic areas. Other speakers at the conference confirmed this overlapping pattern of neural activity, regardless of differences in the ways in which moral stimuli were presented, and regardless of the specific content of the moral tasks (whether the tasks consisted of complex dilemma’s, simple scenario’s with an emotional undertone, or references to violence and bodily harm). Since these findings, several researchers have started looking for the biological basis of more specific moral intuitions. Jean Decety, for instance, has found the neural correlates that play a role in the cognitive modulation of empathy. fMRI-studies are also being used to compare ‘normal’ individuals with people who show deviant (and in particular criminal/immoral) behavior and to thereby derive new explanations of such a-typical behavior. As such, James Blair suggested that individuals with psychopathy have problems with learned emotional responses to negative stimuli.  According to him, the common neural circuit activated in moral decision making is in a more general sense involved in a rudimentary form of stimulus reinforcement learning. At least one form of morality is developed by such reinforcement learning: what Blair calls care-based morality. Contrary to psychopathic individuals, even very young children realize that there is an important difference between for instance the care-based norm ‘do not hit another child’ and the convention-based norm ‘do not talk during class’. In absence of a clear rule, ‘normal’ individuals will be more easily inclined to transgress social conventions than care-based norms. The reason for this, he proposed, is that transgression of care-based norms confronts us with the suffering of our victim(s). The observation of others in pain, sadness, anger, … immediately evokes a negative response, an aversion, in the self, from which we learn to avoid situations with similar stimuli. Blair offered brain images of psychopathic individuals that showed evidence of reduced brain activity in those parts of the brain that are involved in stimulus reinforcement (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala). Adrian Raine gave an entirely different perspective on ‘immoral behavior,’ in suggesting that certain deviances in the prefrontal cortex point to a predisposition towards antisocial behavior. According to Raine, immoral behavior need not be a dysfunction of normal neural circuits; evolution may just as well have shaped the brain to have a predisposition for immoral rather than moral behavior. Antisocial behavior may have a selective advantage: it can be a very effective means of taking others’ resources. As such, the expression of sham emotions (such as faked shame or remorse) can be interpreted as a strategy to mislead others in thinking that they have corrected their behavior. Raine finds support for his hypothesis in indications of a strong genetic basis for antisocial behavior. He also offered brain imaging results that show an 11% reduction in prefrontal grey matter in antisocial individuals and reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex of affective murderers.

Will we one day be able to evaluate ‘how deep someone’s morality has fallen’? Will there be a ’stethoscope of morality,’ that can measure the weaknesses of our moral judgments and behaviors? If so, will we able to cure immoral behavior? Or, conversely, will we be able to augment the brain processes that are involved in our moral competence? Perhaps most importantly, what do we do with the notion of moral responsibility when there is evidence of predispositions towards antisocial behavior?  Although there is still a long way to go in understanding the neurobiology of human morality, this conference was an important step in introducing some moral dilemma’s that may confront us as the field of research progresses. More information on http://web.archive.org/web/20071103170804/http://www.themoralbrain.be/

1. Percy W (1971), Love in the Ruins, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York.

2. Elliott C (1999), Bioethics, Culture and Identity. A Philosophical Disease, Routledge, London.

 

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An Ravelingien Ph.D. is a fellow of the IEET, and an assistant researcher in bioethics at the Department of Philosophy, Ghent University.

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The Role of Narrative as a Form of Evidence in Modern Academic Debate

International Debate Education Association Conference, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, October 2000Jason Taylor and Jason Jarvis, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

The construction of this essay has been an enlightening experience for the both of us. As we sat down to discuss the details of the paper and formulate our arguments we went through a stimulating series of discussions. We set out to organize a coherent argument for the use of narrative as an alternative source of evidence. We explored a number of possibilities for the direction of the paper. Midway through this process it apparent that the way we were going about defending narratives was constructed in a manner that was completely disassociated from narrative styles of discourse. We realized that we were caught in a paradox. We were, in essence, invoking a highly specialized and technical rationality in order to defend a mode of discourse that seeks to question the practice in which we were presently engaged. We were invoking narrative in a very non-narrative style. “Why don’t we just tell stories for our conference presentation?” one of us suggested. Though we entertained the idea for some time, we eventually came to the conclusion that simply “telling stories” on an international conference panel would not meet the standards of academic rigor that the community expects. Nor would it give us appropriate justification to request funds from our department to attend said international conference. Consequently, we set out to reach a compromise that acknowledged the technical and academic skills that allowed us to be part of this panel, and in that acknowledgement, provide a justification for the use of narrative in an academic and debate context. What follows is a result of that compromise.

Initially, we will explore conceptions of evidence as they are presented within two recently developed traditions of rhetorical theory. Specifically, we address Walter Fisher’s construction of the narrative paradigm and Thomas Goodnight’s elaboration of public, personal and technical spheres of argument. After examining the basic tenets of each person’s theory, we examine how narrative can function within the realm of modern debate and discourse to reconnect both speakers and listeners to ways of knowing that an exclusively technical form of argument excludes and inhibits. Narrative rationality offers a unique tool which can serve to balance the overarching focus that American academic debate and public policy debates have placed on exclusive and technical modes of discourse. These claims will be made through an examination of the importance of narrative in the context of debates about the environment, with a specific emphasis on the bush meat crisis facing Africa.FisherFisher’s primary contribution to our understanding of evidence stems from his articulation of the narrative paradigm. Fisher considers the means by which people evaluate arguments made within the public sphere (Fisher, “Narration as a” 11-15). He is particularly concerned with the increasingly technical nature of moral issues that are evaluated within the public sphere. Fisher asserts that given the traditional view of rationality, publics must be trained in the standards of a rhetorical community in order to evaluate the complex arguments and evidence that they generate (”Narration as a” 4). Unfortunately, most of the public lacks this technical training. Similarly, no individual can begin to reach the levels of proficiency in all of the fields that would be required to evaluate the breadth of issues that are addressed in the public realm. Consequently, Fisher suggests that alternative conceptions of rationality are necessary in order to explain the public’s capacity to understand complex technical evidence that is presented to them. Fisher’s narrative paradigm offers that alternative. Fisher offers a theory of communication that considers humans as homo narrans; people understand the world through the telling and assessment of stories (Fisher, “In the beginning” 75). In this sense, Fisher argues that all evidence can be evaluated by means of a narrative rationality. In his theory, Fisher establishes two conceptions of rationality, the rational world paradigm and the narrative paradigm. The rational world paradigm assumes that humans are rational beings that make decisions based on the assessment of structured arguments. People’s capacity to understand arguments is based on their augmentative skill, knowledge of the subject matter, and proficiency at operating within the appropriate normative structures that shape the argument (Fisher, “Narration as a” 4). Fisher suggests that the public sphere has become dominated by the presence of “experts” who have distorted the meaning of public moral argument for the layperson (”Narration as a” 11-15). The consequence of this distortion is the mitigation of the general public’s capacity to effectively comprehend and contribute to public moral argument. The primary problem with adopting a rational world-view of rationality is that it lacks explanatory power in elucidating peoples’ navigation of public moral argument. Many moral issues that are evaluated within the public sphere are laden with technical terms that most lay persons would not understand given the tenets of the rational world paradigm. Issues of global warming for example, are heavily dependent on complex understandings of gaseous chemistry and physics. Despite these complexities, people are able to come to understandings of important issues. Fisher asserts that the people’s ability to understand public moral argument can be explained more adequately by the narrative paradigm. Conceiving of human beings as storytellers, Fisher contends that people make sense of technical forms of evidence through the use of narrative rationality (Fisher, Human Communication as Narration 349-350). The two primary components of narrative rationality are narrative probability and narrative fidelity. Fisher elaborates:

 

 

 

 

Narrative probability refers to formal features of a story conceived as a discrete sequence of thought and/or action in life or literature;… i.e., it concerns the question of whether or not a story coheres or “hangs together,” whether or not the story is free of contradictions. Narrative fidelity concerns the “truth qualities” of the story, the degree to which it accords with the logic of good reasons: the soundness of its reasoning and the value of its values. (”An elaboration” 349-350)  

 

 

 

 

 

Ultimately, people are able to comprehend the evidence utilized in complex and technical moral arguments much in the same way they understand stories, by evaluating internal consistencies of the story’s progression and by assessing whether or not the values of the story in question are consistent with their own values. Rather than experts, Fisher suggests that knowledgeable individuals play the role of counselor in the evaluation of public moral argument. These counselors should make contributions that help guide the public and lead them toward well informed decisions rather than displaying an unquestionable “truth” before the public (Fisher, “Narration as a” 13).   

 

One of Fisher’s principal critics is Robert Rowland. Rowland suggests that Fisher is over-ambitious in claiming that narrative should be considered a paradigm (264-275). Two elements of Rowland’s critique that are particularly relevant to this discussion are considered hereafter. First, Rowland maintains that Fisher’s construction of narrative rationality ultimately resorts to the same standards of rationality inherent in the rational world paradigm. Rowland explains:

 

 

 

 

…narrative fidelity and probability do not avoid the problems with evaluating public moral argument that led Fisher to develop the narrative paradigm in the first place. In fact, these standards lead directly to traditional tests for argument and evidence. Narrative probability can be seen as the equivalent to consistency, and narrative fidelity can be treated as the equivalent of informal logic tests of evidence and reasoning. (270)   

 

 

 

 

 

Additionally, Rowland argues that the existence of privileged standards of evaluation is necessary in the evaluation of public moral argument, lest we regress into an inescapable state of moral relativism.   

 

Finally, Rowland sees the presence of experts in the evaluation of public moral arguments as necessary and rejects Fisher’s suggestion that knowledgeable individuals should serve as counselors. He asserts that the distinction between expert and counselor is not all that dramatic in the first place and that by having knowledgeable people fill this role, Fisher does not avoid the problem that he attempted to solve. There is no check to ensure that counselors would not still abuse their status. Similarly, there is no reason that a “traditional rationality… has to be elitist” (Rowland 272).

GoodnightGoodnight’s contributions to our understanding of evidence lie in his distinction between the public, personal and technical spheres of argument (”The personal” 214-227). Goodnight’s primary contention is that each of these respective realms is governed by a different set of evaluative standards and thus is distinct from each of the others. These standards determine the kinds of evidence that are appropriate within certain communities and the standards that are utilized to evaluate the utility of that evidence. Goodnight posits:

Members of “societies” and “historical cultures” participate in a vast, and not altogether coherent superstructures which invite them to channel doubts through prevailing discourse practices. In the democratic tradition, we can categorize these channels as the personal, the technical and the public spheres. “Sphere” denotes branches of activity-the grounds upon which arguments are built and the authorities to which arguers appeal. (”The personal” 216)  

 

 

 

 

 

The personal sphere, according to Goodnight is prototyped by the conversation. In this sphere, two, or a small number of individuals engage in conversation that is cast in some private setting. The participants determine the meanings associated with that conversation and standards for evaluating the veracity of claims made within the realm are transient and unstructured. Unlike the personal sphere, the technical sphere, is characterized by highly structured standards of evaluation. The exemplars of this sphere of argument are the trial and the experiment. Standards are applied in a consistent manner allowing for the consistent and efficient evaluation of argument. The final sphere of argument advanced by Goodnight is that of the public sphere. The public sphere exists and is necessary “…to address those topics that can be resolved neither through personal conversation nor state of the art procedure” (Goodnight, “Public Discourse” 429). The public sphere provides a forum for the resolution of controversy and for public deliberation. Goodnight is careful to assert that the boundaries between these spheres are not rigid and at times argument can exist within multiple spheres simultaneously, however, he does suggest that the boundaries are actively maintained by formal structures that encourage the independence of each of the spheres. Privacy laws, for example, discourage the government from meddling in private affairs, thus encouraging the independence of the spheres (”Public Discourse” 428-429).  

 

Similar to Fisher, Goodnight sees the intermingling of spheres as problematic. Despite the fact that formalized structures exist that discourage trans-spherical influence, Goodnight argues that the public sphere “…is being steadily eroded by the elevation of personal and technical grounding of argument” (”The personal” 223). The overemphasis of the personal and technical grounding of argument within the public sphere has led to a general decline in Western culture’s ability to engage in public deliberation. Examples of this deterioration can be seen in recent elections, which according to Goodnight have been more about the presentation of a personality than the critical assessment of substantive argument. Similarly, technical concerns have infiltrated the public sphere in the assessment of many controversial conditions such as the environment. Without training in technical standards for evaluation of these arguments, or the access to the language to interpret them, the general citizenry has been effectively eliminated from public debate.

Goodnight’s assessment of the public sphere has been met with some resistance. Willard questions the manner in which Goodnight separates the technical from the public sphere. He suggests that this separation is achieved by the claim that “the public sphere is rhetorical while the technical sphere is not” (47). If the technical sphere is assumed to be a non-rhetorical sphere, it dramatically distorts our understanding of the ways in which policy decisions are influenced because it assumes that technical issues do not require public deliberation. This is certainly untrue.

Willard asserts it is important to recognize the influence of technical arguments on policy formation. At times questions only addressable by the technical sphere are incredibly relevant to our existence:

 

 

 

 

[Goodnight] underestimates the degree to which public uncertainties turn upon discipline based questions. Is this bridge sound? Does low level radiation cause cancer? How can the ozone depletion be reduced? Should Challenger be launched? Our need for such facts is one reason why we have disciplines; and the degree to which questions of fact intermingle with considerations of collective interest is… the core problematic of public debate. (Willard 49)  

 

 

 

 

 

Because of our frequent (and sometimes necessary) dependence on the technical within the public sphere, Willard suggests that the distinction between the public sphere not be made at such a fundamental level. Ultimately, Goodnight retains most of the explanatory power of his theory by simply stating that the public sphere and the technical spheres are different in important ways. Framing the debate in this manner, it is possible to gain a better understanding of the interconnectedness of the technical and the public spheres.   

 

The CritiqueWhile Fisher and Goodnight’s constructions have certainly proved to be useful in understanding contemporary rhetorical behavior, we believe that an analysis of these theories yields several interesting implications. Most notably is the unidirectionality of influence between specialized, technical ways of knowing (the technical sphere) and common, narrative ways of knowing (the personal and public spheres). Both authors cite as the impetus for their theoretical constructions, the saturation of the public sphere with highly specialized and technical forms of argument. They see this influence as problematic and offer their theoretical constructs as a means to help rectify the situation. While we agree that the domination of specialized forms of discourse in the public sphere is problematic, we also contend that the inability of non-specialized, narrative discourses to influence technical spheres of argument is equally as problematic.As previously outlined, Fisher is concerned with explaining the public’s ability to comprehend arguments when they lack the specialized training of experts. He suggests that within the narrative paradigm, knowledgeable individuals should play the role of counselor, helping to guide the public to informed decisions. This construction, however, suggests a one way relationship between the counselor and the untrained. The counselor (expert) imparts knowledge to the layperson. As such this relationship excludes the possibility of mutual influence. It does not provide the opportunity for the layperson to impart knowledge to the counselor. Additionally, Fisher suggests that the Narrative paradigm is not meant to replace the rational world paradigm, it is intended to subsume it. Technical communities are simply viewed by the public as another form of a story and evaluated by the standards of narrative fidelity and probability. As such, Fisher seems to concede that certain rhetorical communities will continue to operate, invoking standards that exclude narrative ways of knowing from their epistemological foundations. Within these communities technical discourse retains its privileged status and excludes the possibility of outside influence. Thus Fisher’s construction may help explain the public’s ability to understand technical discourses in which they are not trained, but it does not make technical discourse communities accountable for the world outside of them.

Similarly, Goodnight’s construction of personal, public and technical spheres of argument implicates the inability of non-technical forms of evidence to be influential within technical spheres. While Goodnight does recognize the public’s ability to influence the technical sphere at times, he sees this relationship as an issue of resource allocation not epistemology (”The personal” 221-222). Additionally, Goodnight’s exclusive focus on the tainting of the public sphere by the technical and personal spheres and the exclusion of any reciprocal influences illustrates the need to consider the potential of these relationships.

The claims of Goodnight and Fisher are particularly important for scholars of argument and society at large. We contend that the problems we identify below with exclusive technical communities can be seen in other groups such as science and academia, but we have chosen to focus on modern American policy debate. Therefore we will identify some of these problems and then look at debates about the environment as emblematic of the problems created by the rejection of narrative as a legitimate form of knowledge.

Initially, two things should be noted. First, our goal is not to trash American policy debate as a whole. We echo the sentiments of one debater who said: “No other setting can encourage the development of as many different political skills in the form of research, communication and critical thinking, but that is no excuse to become complacent. Everything can get better” (Smith and Grove A-3). Our goal is to demonstrate that failure to include narratives as a legitimate form of evidence is dangerous because it implicitly limits the social significance and educational value of our activity. Second, unlike Hollihan, Baaske, and Riley we do not advocate narrative as a paradigm for debate. Our position attempts to augment the conception of narrative advocated by McDonald and Jarman who suggest that narrative should be considered as another form of evidence (6). Personal accounts, poetry, song, and oral traditions that rely on storytelling offer the prospect of understanding issues in diverse ways. Indeed, we intend to demonstrate that some issues cannot be grasped unless presented in a format other than traditional technical discourse.

Unfortunately, much of modern American policy debate mirrors many of the problems identified by Fisher and Goodnight with the rational world paradigm and the exclusivity of the technical sphere of discourse. While some teams have attempted to change this condition, high school and intercollegiate policy debate in America remains a highly exclusive, technical activity that relies on student and faculty experts who participate in a rapid regurgitation of technical information. Debate is private in the sense that it involves a small number of people engaging in a series of two hour conversations about policy issues and it is highly technical in the language, customs and information that is used in the activity. The general public has little or no understanding of our activity and would be unable to relate to the average policy debate round. Hollihan, Baaske and Riley explain this phenomenon:

 

 

 

 

Highly trained and technically skilled advocates make arguments that can be understood only by highly trained and technically skilled impartial debate judges. Debate educators claim that they are committed to training students for life in a democracy, actual practices in debate, however, produce an elitist ideology which presumes that the man or woman off the street is too uninformed, uninterested, unintelligent, or biased to play an important policymaking role. (185)  

 

 

 

 

 

It seems to us that this trend in debate is highly problematic, if not dangerous for a number of reasons. Initially, policy debate is directly responsible for shaping the modes of thought that future policy makers and citizens are willing to engage. A strictly technical mode of discourse, which marginalizes narrative, creates future technocratic elites who cannot come to terms with the potential values and ways of knowing the world which narrative forms of presentation offer us (Hollihan, Baaske and Riley 186). This is detrimental to society since these policymakers have a direct influence on the content of information in the public sphere. The information that a policymaker or citizen chooses to present to Congress or the news media or when making a speech is directly responsible for the direction of public discourse.   

 

Second, our decisions about the future of American policy debate are important for both our own community and the future of the policy debate community worldwide. This conference is indicative of the fact that our community is not isolated from the rest of the world. American debaters travel yearly on tours of Europe, Japan, and other countries. Foreign coaches come to the United States and study our format in an effort to introduce it to their country. Gyeong-Ho Hur spent four weeks in Vermont this summer studying policy debate with the explicit goal of starting a program at Kyung Hee University in Korea. American style, English language policy debate is being exported and it is incumbent upon our community to acknowledge both our strengths and our shortcomings in an effort to maximize its relevance to communities worldwide.

Third, an exclusive reliance on technical forms of knowledge is dangerous as it serves to desensitize community members to the social reality of the information that is being read. American policy debater Jairus Grove of the University of Texas noted that typical debaters seem “more concerned with the risk of political debate than the effect the presented policies had upon those without the ‘political capital’ to heard or considered important” (Smith and Grove A-1). Jairus and his partner actively sought to incorporate poems, songs, and narrative in an effort to “focus on new political possibilities” (Smith and Grove A-1).

While it is ironic that we can find joy in the tragedy of others around the world as we do research and prepare our arguments, a failure to recognize this irony is tragic and horrifying. In short, does the technical process of debate maximize our educational potential? Does the rejection of narrative as a legitimate form of knowledge and evidence inhibit the ability of our community to truly know the issues and subsequently to translate that knowledge into a complete understanding and relationship to the gravity of the problems that we research? In order to demonstrate our claim that the policy debate community must embrace narrative as a form of evidence we will examine the African bush meat crisis and the importance of narrative in changing our values about non-human nature.

The Bushmeat CrisisWhile there are many environmental problems that we could use to illustrate our claims, this year’s collegiate debate topic provided us with an example that captures the essence of the value of narrative in communicating information in unique and powerful ways. More specifically, we choose to focus on the bush meat crisis in Africa. While the problems that face Africa are many and varied, the bush meat issue is valuable because it exists at the intersection of many issues that challenge the future of the African continent. Bush meat is intimately related to economic development, survival of indigenous cultures and traditions, biodiversity and ecological sustainability, and the AIDS epidemic that has swept across both Africa and the world. Each of these issues will be addressed in turn.Bush meat has traditionally been associated with subsistence hunting practices of African societies. Indigenous hunters would roam the jungles and forests of Africa and hunt animals from the “bush” to eat as food. Any game obtained from the wild in Africa would constitute bush meat. However, the advent of intensive logging has led to the commercialization of the bush meat trade. The result has been that areas of forest that were previously inaccessible have become available to commercial hunters who are now providing meat to the growing populations of cities throughout Africa. In Cameroon, “half a ton of bush meat, mostly of chimps, is transported to Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon every day” (Wasswa). Indigenous forest dwellers have been replaced by illegal for profit hunters who are literally emptying African forests of their wildlife (Africa News, “Chimpanzees”). Even worse the demand for bush meat has increased internationally, and bush meat has been seen on menus throughout Europe and the United States (Africa News, “Gorilla”).

Sadly, primates are uniquely threatened by this practice. As much as 20% of the illegal bush meat trade is primates (Rose, “The African”). The hunting of primates has driven them to the brink of extinction in Africa, eclipsing deforestation as the primary threat to the existence of primates (Africa News, “Chimpanzees”). Even worse, scientists in West Africa announced that the first primate extinction of the century has officially taken place. Miss Waldron’s red colobus monkey was declared extinct in September (CNN). Additionally, six species of primates have been added to the list of endangered species by the World Conservation Union, due mainly to the illegal bush meat trade (CNN). These announcements underscore the incredible importance of rapid action on the bush meat issue.

There are both intrinsic and instrumental reasons to protect primates and stop the spread of the commercial bush meat trade. Joseph Verrengia notes that the bush meat trade is particularly pernicious because it threatens the viability of chimpanzee cultures. Chimpanzees have been seen to exhibit characteristics that had previously only been associated with human societies and cultures. Primates use tools, have grooming and mating customs, and use plants for specific medicinal purposes (Verrengia). In similar situations the international community has intervened when cultures and communities were threatened with annihilation. The fact that these cultures happen to be “animal” cultures hardly seems to justify inaction.

Additionally, wildlife expert Ian Redmond noted in 1998 that primates are often a linchpin of local ecosystems:

 

 

 

 

Primates are often keystone species in their habitat, and their disappearance can lead to significant changes in the remaining ecosystem. Plants which depend on them for seed dispersal, for example, will decline, as will any animal species which feed or otherwise depend on those species of plant.   

 

 

 

 

 

Undoubtedly, the subsistence hunting communities that rely on bush animals as a source of food would suffer as well, if for profit hunting continues. While they are equally guilty of eating bush meat, it is vitally important to recognize that the threats to primates are not from subsistence cultivation which has operated for centuries on a seasonal basis, allowing animal populations to reproduce.  

 

Finally, if the previous intrinsic justifications for curtailing the bush meat trade were not compelling then consider the fact that most of the world’s leading scientists have concluded that bush meat is the most likely origin of the current AIDS epidemic. Failure to curtail the bush meat trade may well result in new strains of HIV being unleashed upon the planet (Rose “Human Health”). This is because primates can transmit Simian Immunodeficiency Virus to humans, and bush meat is generally cleaned and processed out in the wild, creating ample opportunities for the transfer of the disease via blood and mucous to humans where it becomes HIV (Rose, “Human Health”).

While it is true that the above facts are startling and unnerving, the question remains what the best way to understand this issue is. Traditional debate practices would have us recite the facts and statistics at high rates of speed in an attempt to overwhelm both the judge and the opposition with the size of the impacts and the gravity of the situation. This approach has technical value and utility within technical communities, but it also has severe limitations. Our personal understanding has been most dramatically shaped by the narrative accounts that we have come across during our research. It is now time to provide a sample of those accounts and then examine the reasons why such narratives are critically important in shaping attitudes and changing beliefs about the non-human world and human practices which threaten to destroy the delicate balance of world ecosystems.

The Bush Meat StoryGary Richardson, of the World Society for the Protection of Animals recounts the following story from his trip to Africa in 1995: 

 

 

 

As the lorry finally pulled into the marketplace, a crowd of several hundred people surged forward to begin bargaining for the goods. Around fifty animals were tied to its sides, all recently shot and on sale as “bush meat”. I could see the carcasses of antelope, guenon monkeys, porcupines, cane rats and several other local forest species.  

 

Then amongst the throng I noticed the headless torso of a “silverback” lowland gorilla. The sight of this once majestic creature, laying dismembered by the roadside, filled me with revulsion. Its death seemed so pointless and futile. But to the traders and shoppers, who walked casually by, it was just another piece of meat.

From a sack, the owner of the carcass suddenly withdrew the gorilla’s huge black hand, which had been severed at the wrist. Its fingers were still flexible as passers-by fondled and inspected the meat. It looked so human, I found it impossible to believe that anyone could actually consider eating it.

The same day we visited another village where we were told there was a baby gorilla which had been captured alive. We arrived at the site at around midday and were shown the tiny body of the gorilla which lay in an old suitcase. It had died only a few hours earlier. The owner had tried to feed it with bananas, despite it being only a few weeks old.

The hunter told me he had shot the female a couple of weeks ago, hacked her up and put her dismembered body parts in a large sack. He then picked up the tiny baby and stuffed it into the same sack on top of its butchered mother. He sold the meat at a nearby logging camp then brought the baby home for his children to play with.

It’s hard to imagine a more gruesome fate for these highly sensitive and sociable animals. The great apes are mankind’s closest relatives, yet throughout Africa the slaughter of these magnificent species has been continuing unabated.

 

 

 

 

Additionally, the following comments appeared on the Africa News Press Release in an article entitled “Gorillas may be extinct in 50 years”. (Note that this and other pictures are included after the Works Cited page as an appendix):   

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing encapsulates this projection better than Mr. Karl Amman’s World Society for the Protection of Animals award-winning shot of a gorilla’s head severed from the carcass lying on a shallow tin bowl awaiting the cooking pot.  

 

One of the dead animal’s eyeballs is pooping out, haphazardly, more like that of a badly wounded mono-eyed freak, peering sorrowfully from inside the bowl. The mouth is half-shut and a bloodied tongue, visible.

Placed besides the bushy head is a bunch of big, ripe bananas to presumably go with the macabre delicacy once it is stewed. The sight is gruesome, the atmosphere, grim. All part of a graphic illustration of the brutal slaughter of primates for the bush meat trade.

 

 

 

 

Implications: The Imperative of Narrative   

 

There are certain issues that demand narratives. McDonald and Jarman note that “narratives do provide knowldege. A story has the power to convey information and humanize a situation which might be unavailable in other formats. For instance, issues of racism and discrimination seem aptly suited to discussions via narrative” (6). While they confine their comments to a purely human context, I believe that their claims can be expanded to suggest that there are simply some issues that cannot be fully understood until you experience them: environmental problems are exactly such an issue.

Michael Bruner and Max Oelschlaeger note that two-thirds of Americans consider themselves to be environmentalists, yet paradoxically the “noose of the ecocrisis continues to tighten around their necks” (384). Why does such a paradox exist? We suggest that this is due to the dominance of the technical sphere in modern public discourse in relation to the environment. Gary Richardson’s story and one’s like it, frequently fall on deaf ears because they are overwhelmed by the narratives of science, exploitation and instrumentalism that dominate Western culture (Grove-White and Michael 44).

The dominant narratives of Western society explicitly discount the claims of environmentalists as hysterical or little more than hyperbole (Killingsworth and Palmer 3). Unfortunately, the mainstream rejection of environmental discourse has only served to provoke environmentalists more, creating a feedback loop that Killingsworth and Palmer explain succinctly:

 

 

 

 

If the fervor of environmentalism seems irrational, that is because in the view of the environmentalists, an ostensibly rational public discourse has neglected the signs of trouble for so long that only a cry of pain can break the public habit of inattention. (3)  

 

 

 

 

 

While there is a long tradition of nature writing within Western culture, the value of stories is largely discounted by the dominant paradigm. Artists, poets, and storytellers are largely viewed to have little to say on issues that seem to require a technical solution. The participation of such members of society seems to be “absurd” (Raglon and Scholtmeijer 27). Ultimately, “the fault lies not with artists, poets, dancers, and storytellers, but with a society that places little value on the type of insight about nature that arts can provide” (Raglon and Scholtmeijer 27).   

 

Raglon and Scholtmeijer locate the real problem between humans and non-humans as a problem in the way that we understand the non-human world. They suggest that arguments alone will not create the philosophical and reflexive changes that are critical to altering our destruction of the non-human world. “It is only by telling new stories about the natural world, that we will eventually be able to find those ’slippages’ necessary to radically reimagine ‘nature’”(22).

The implication of such claims for modern policy debate practices is somewhat tremendous. Every year debaters compile hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence, often about environmental problems. Ironically, we contribute directly to the environmental crisis through our tremendous resource usage and yet our impact on the environmental crisis in the real world is debatable at best. Moreover, we generally do not accept a form of evidence that many environmentalists and environmental philosophers identify as essential to changing the way all people (ourselves included) view the non-human world and our relationship to it. Raglon and Scholtmeijer indicate that:

 

 

 

 

To act differently in the world, in other words, requires that we see the world in a different way. Our point is that it is only through our stories that different meanings can be investigated. What remains problematical is the fact that few believe that stories are a legitimate source of knowledge about nature. (37)  

 

 

 

 

 

As the examples of the bush meat crisis above demonstrate, technical ways of knowing have their limits. Statistics and facts can enlighten an individual and shock a person intellectually, however they may not provide enough intimate contact with the subject matter to actually cause an individual to take action or fully relate to the subject. Imaginative efforts and practices are particularly valuable because “imagination has its own kind of intelligence, but one that is of its nature manifest in imagery and storytelling that draws the listener/reader into participatory contact with paradoxical forms of knowing” (Ebenreck 11). Richardson’s story is powerful because it elicits an immediate and undeniable feeling of revulsion at the prospect of child being carried around on top of its mother’s own carcass. The story serves as a catalyst to concretize the abstract stream of facts, which may stimulate us intellectually but which do not move us as emotionally as the story does. The story serves the purpose of augmenting the facts of the situation and personalizing them in a persuasive way.   

 

The acceptance of narratives such as Richardson’s or other more non-traditional narratives such as poems or songs is critical to expanding our intellectual and discursive horizons as an intellectual and emotional community. The dominant cultural discourse that rejects non-objective work as a legitimate form of evidence is a fundamental part of the larger environmental problem. Academia is a unique example of these issues as C. A. Bowers explains:

 

 

 

 

Although public school and university education, in both their curricular content and their patterns of teaching, are cultural processes, we have not really understood the special educational issues raised by the culture-language-thought connection. One of the reason for is connected with the specific cultural pattern of thinking now being brought into question by the ecological crisis. Thus, a deeper understanding of culture, as well as the specific cultural patterns now being recognized as problematic, may also help guide us toward a more ecologically responsive approach to public school and university education. (21)   

 

 

 

 

 

As an academic community we have an obligation to investigate the linguistic practices that create and perpetuate environmental problems. Despite the efforts of some members in our community, we perpetuate the problem identified by Bowers in academia by excluding opportunities to revision our relationship with nature. The linguistic choices that we make, and the perceptions that these choices create are intimately tied in with the policies that are ultimately deemed to be appropriate solutions to the problems we discuss (Chawla 254-255). If narrative is excluded as a form of evidence, we train a community of technocrats who sees ecological problems from an instrumental perspective relating to resource usage and over or under development. Therefore, we do a pedagogical disservice to our community and to society at large, as we create a set of trained objective scholars, who enter the world to deal with problems that may require solutions based in alternative forms of communication and knowledge.  

 

If we believe that our community is to have any impact on society at large then it seems imperative that we at least open our forum to forms of evidence that provide the “slippages” necessary to change our perspective about pressing social issues. As persons involved in highly technical, specialized discourse communities, we must recognize the potential for lived, embodied experience and the narratives that describe that experience to influence the technical communities of which we are a part. With respect to environmental issues, this means that an exclusion of narrative as a form of evidence to at least be used in conjunction with scholarly research dooms us to recreate the very problems that legitimize the pillage of the non-human world in the first place. In practice, the communities that we inhabit must question the rigidity of the means by which we evaluate evidence and remain open to alternative ways of knowing. This is imperative as we begin to engage the growing worldwide debate community and the valuable contribution that the American forensics community can make to debate on a global level.

 

 

Works Cited

 

 

 

Africa News. “Chimpanzees, Gorillas may be extinct in 50 years.” 15 May 2000.

Online. Lexis-Nexis. 24 Aug. 2000.-. “Gorilla Population Threatened by Illegal Meat Trade.” 17 April 2000.Online. Lexis-Nexis. 25 Aug. 2000.Bowers, C. A. Education, Cultural Myths, and the Ecological Crisis. Albany, NY:

State University of New York Press, 1993.

Bruner, Michael and Max Oelschlaeger. “Rhetoric, Environmentalism, andEnvironmental Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 16 (1994): 377-396.Chawla, Saroj. “Linguistic and Philosophical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.”Environmental Ethics 13 (1991): 253-262.CNN. “Conservation group adds 200 animals to endangered list.” 28 Sept.

 

 

 

 

2000. Online. Cable News Network Homepage. 28 Sept. 2000. Available: www.cnn.com.  

 

 

 

 

 

Ebenreck, Sarah. “Opening Pandora’s Box: Imagination’s Role in Environmental  

 

Ethics.” Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 3-18.

Fisher, W. R. “Clarifying the narrative paradigm.” Communication Monographs 56

(1989): 55-58.

-. Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value

and action. Columbia, S. C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1987.

-. “The narrative paradigm: An elaboration.” Communication Monographs 52

(1985): 347-367.

-. “The narrative paradigm: In the beginning.” Journal of Communication 35

(1985b): 74-89.

-. “Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral

argument.” Communication Monographs 51 (1984): 1-22.

Goodnight, G.T. “The personal, technical, and public spheres of argument.”

Journal of the American Forensics Association 18 (1982): 214-227.

-. “Public discourse.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4 (1987): 428-431.

-. “Toward a theory of argumentation.” Argumentation and Advocacy 26 (1989): 60-69.

Goodnight, G. T. and Hingstman, D. B. “Studies in the public sphere.” Quarterly

Journal of Speech 83 (1997): 351-399.

 

Grove-White, Robin and Mike Michael. “Talking about Taliking about Nature:

 

 

 

Nurturing Ecological Consciousness.” Environmental Ethics 15 (1993): 33-47.  

 

 

 

 

Hollihan, Thomas and Kevin T. Baaske and Patricia Riley. “Debaters as  

 

Storytellers: The Narrative Perspective in Academic Debate.” Journal of

the American Forensics Association 23 (1987): 184-193.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie and Jacqueline S. Palmer. “The Discourse of

 

 

‘Environmentalist Hysteria’.” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (1995): 1-19.   

 

 

 

McDonald, Kelly and Jeffrey W. Jarman. “Getting the Story Right: The Role of  

 

Narrative in Academic Debate.” Rostrum 72 (1998): 5-20.Raglon, Rebecca and Marian Scholtmeijer. “Shifting Ground: Metanarratives,  

 

 

Epistemology, and the Stories of Nature.” Environmental Ethics 18 (1996): 19-38.  

 

 

 

 

 

Redmond, Ian. Online. 25 Aug. 2000. Available: www.psgb.org/Meetings/Spring1998.html.  

 

Richardson, Gary. “The Slaughter of the Apes.” 1995. Online. 24 Oct. 2000.Available: www.kilimanjaro.com/wspa/wspa.htm.Rose, Anthony. “Human Health Could Depend on Saving Apes.” 1999. Online. 25 Aug. 2000. Available: www.biosynergy.org.-. “The African Great Ape Bush Meat Crisis.” Pan Africa News. Winter 1996.Online. 24 Aug. 2000. Available: www.biosynergy.org/bushmeat.Rowland, R. C. “On limiting the narrative paradigm: Three case studies.”Communication Monographs 56 (1989): 39-54.-. “Narrative: Mode of discourse or paradigm?” Communication Monographs 54(1987): 264-275.

Smith, Ross and Jairus Grove. “A Dialogue about Evolving Approaches toDebate.” Debater’s Research Guide (2000): (A-1)-(A-3).

Verrengia, Joseph. “Chimp Culture Recognized.” Associated Press. 16 June.

 

 

 

 

Online. 24 Aug. 2000. Available: abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/chimpanzees990616.htm  

 

 

 

 

 

Wasswa, Henry. “Chimp Protection Urged in Africa.” Associated Press. 6 May  

 

1.  
   1. Online. 25 Aug. 2000. Available: www.virunga.org/jbin/story/1994.

Willard, C. A. “The creation of publics: Notes on Goodnight’s historical relativity.”

Argumentation and Advocacy 26 (1989): 45-59.

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