[MD] Reason, Tradition, Absolute Truth

[david buchanan]

Hey Matt and all reasonable traditionalists:

Matt said to dmb:
I apologize, but do you understand why people think you're a jackass 
sometimes?  And why people don't enjoy having a conversation with you?

dmb replies:
Yes, of course I understand why people think I'm a jackass. I'm a neurotic 
jackass, not a stupid one.

Matt said:
But you want a sloppy summary version off the top of my head?  Fine, here it 
is.  ...The Reason/Tradition distinction arose in the Enlightenment to 
account for the seperation of science from the Church.  We can call 
"tradition" all those things we learn from other people, by authority and 
socialization and stuff.  "Reason" is the activity of our minds to determine 
truth. ...The problem is that when a secularist argues with a traditionalist 
(say, of a religious background) about their core values, they beg the 
question over the traditionalist.  That's a violation of reason's rules. 
...The argument is that secularist liberals can't get their arguments off 
the ground any more than the traditionalists without an inculcated, 
socialized, educated set of core values. ...The solution is to dump the 
Enlightenment project of self-grounding and simply admit that our values are 
as inculcated as anybody else's.

dmb says:
I'm doing a sloppy - off the top of my head sort of thing here too.

As I understand it, this is your way of describing the problem that liberal 
intellectuals like Pirsig have had with respect to human rights. They were 
just a soup of sentiments one was supposed to cheer for even though nobody 
could spell out what they were. (You already know the quotes alluded to 
here.) It seems that begging the question, failing to get their arguments 
off the ground and admiting that "our" values are as inculcated as anyone 
else's is just a specific way to paint that same soup of sentiments. As I 
see it, the problem you've described is one that the MOQ tries to solve. I 
mean, you seem to be saying that the social/intellectual distinction fails 
because of this problem, but I'm saying that the social/intellectual 
distinction is aimed at solving this sort of intellectual paralysis.

It seems you're saying that the tradition/reason distinction has to be 
thrown out along with SOM. But, as you may recall, my question about that 
included a reminder that the MOQ retains the social/intellectual distinction 
even after its attack on SOM. As I see it, getting rid of the assumptions of 
SOM and replacing it with the MOQ is the thing that allows us to retain this 
distinction, to rank these rival value systems. You know, the non-objective 
approach to anthroplogy, the reading of historical and political conflict as 
a conflict of levels and generally trading a SOM's narrow epistemologies for 
a pluralistic one. This is the stuff that basically lets us retain a more 
refined version of the the tradition/reason distinction, which is called the 
social/intellectual distinction in the MOQ.

Basically, I think you're just re-describing the problem and suggesting we 
should just resign ourselves to the idea that religion and science and just 
different traditons. It seems like you're objecting to the MOQ's solution, 
but you're doing so without really mentioning the solution at all. You see 
what I mean?

Matt said:
I called your question here (about Absolute Truth) a little facetious.  The 
reason is that you have all the bafflement and rhetorical questions in full 
force here, but you say 1) "this idea that 'Absolute Truth' is the problem 
with Plato and Western philosophy is still quite alien to me" and 2) "My 
hunch is that the quest for 'Absolute Truth' is what happens when Plato is 
taken literally and that he is almost always taken literally."  The first 
indicates that you cannot believe that anyone has ever taken "absolute 
truth" seriously, which is why you ask for examples.  But the second says 
that the quest for this absurd thing occurs when Plato is taken literally 
and "he is almost always taken literally."  That indicates that almost 
everybody takes away from Plato an absurd quest for absolute truth, which 
you were previously baffled with the very idea of.  If you say the second, 
then you must already have a pretty good idea of examples, since there are 
so many of them and all that.

dmb says:
I have a hunch about this alien idea. So what? The reason I ask for examples 
is because I want to understand what you mean. Why does that have to be 
facetious? Maybe there is some reason why this is so hard to believe, but 
the idea that "Plato's interpreters have misunderstood him,  ...in a certain 
way and propounded an interpretation that has held the sway of Western 
philosophy--correct or not, an interpretation that breeds the quest for 
absolute truth" is one I never heard until I heard it from you in this 
forum. I have since looked into the matter and was quite disturbed to find 
that seemingly serious people were spending time thinking about it. So, I 
thought, maybe its not as ridiculous as it seems. But I still don't get it. 
It seems ever more absurd.

Matt said:
I understand why you find it so alien because you look to me like somebody 
standing on the other end of 2500 years of failed Platonism (Platonism being 
different from Plato).  The increasing failure of Platonism led to things 
like secularism and fallibilism, beliefs that make it very hard to take 
seriously a momentous notion of absolute truth.  I think you're on the right 
side of this and I wish we could just leave it there.

dmb says:
Well, this is exactly the source of my anxiety. I honestly don't understand 
how anyone can take the idea of "Absolute Truth" seriously. And you're 
telling me that the whole history of Western philosophy did take it 
seriosuly. Man, that's really hard to believe. And if you're right, its 
really depressing.

Matt said:
But you also want to say that the exorcism of (possibly incorrect) Platonic 
ghosts is a pointless task that inflates the importance of something long 
dead.  Look at me, you say, I'm a product of its demise. I agree, but I 
guess I still see ghosts flickering in other people's eyes, which is why you 
keep asking me for examples.

dmb says:
Yes, it all seems quite pointless. I honestly don't see what the fuss is all 
about. And, by the way, you still have not provided a single example. It 
seems that you're really talking about God and the history of 
misinterpertation you refer to is basically the history of Christian 
theology. But this is just a hunch.

Matt said:
David Hall has said that its difficult to teach Rorty if people don't fear 
Cartesianism--and that most people don't naturally fear Cartesianism.  So 
you have to pump up the ghosts, give them life, or else people won't 
understand what the point of it all is.

dmb says:
I have no idea what I'm supposed to be afraid of or what this has to do with 
the price of tea in China.

Matt said:
The article you've pulled from the internet makes a lot of Rorty's 
biography, but I think its turned in the wrong directions.  I think the 
author doesn't really understand Rorty very well.  But he does get right 
that Rorty is a fallen metaphysician.

dmb says:
I can see why you'd want to discredit that article. But let me focus on a 
Rorty's words. Nearly halfway through Rorty is quoted as saying, “I 
desperately wanted to be a Platonist—to become one with the One, to fuse 
myself with Christ or God or the Platonic form of the Good or something like 
that. Pragmatism was a reaction formation.” My interest here is not to 
expose Rorty as a fallen metaphysician, although that's nice too. Instead I 
want to draw your attention to the way he is basically equating the Platonic 
form of the Good with Christ, God and the One. Are these examples of the 
Absoulute Truth? Is that what you've been talking about all along? God?

Matt said:
You mentioned "I think one can see some Leo Struass in him, including a 
specific alliance with Harold Bloom."  Are you confusing Harold with Allan? 
If you meant Harold, I'm not sure where the influence of Strauss comes from. 
Harold was at Yale his whole life and isn't exactly a philosopher (or 
political commentator).  If you meant Allan, then Rorty doesn't have a 
specific alliance with him.  He did, though, write a review in '91 for the 
New Republic of Allan's Closing of the American Mind.

dmb says:
Yep, I confused Harold with Allan. But the Strauss I see in Rorty doesn't 
depend on specific alliances or personal contract or anything like that. 
(Although we are talking about people who know each other's work and went to 
the same school in the same period.) I just mean they both come to similar 
conclusions, namely that there is no real basis for our beliefs, but we 
should assert them anyway, that we should believe in certain myths even 
though they are not really believeable. I can't say why, exactly, but I 
think that stance is despicable.

And you gotta say "despicable" just like Daffy Duck says it. The second best 
way to say it would be like a depressed Eeyore, which is a lot like a 
neurotic jackass. Co-incidence? I think not.

dmb






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