Practices of Truth in Philosophy: Historical and Comparative Perspectives [1 ed.] 9781032219134, 9781032226439, 9781003273493

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“This collection brings together an outstanding group of researchers from a variety of philosophical traditions. Anybody interested in the relation between truth and practice will find much of value herein.” Brett Sherman, University of South Carolina, USA

Practices of Truth in Philosophy

This volume provides a geographically and historically diverse overview of philosophical traditions that establish a deep connection between truth and practice, or even see truth itself as a kind of practice. Under the label “practices of truth” are subsumed disparate approaches that can be fruitfully brought together to explore the intersections between truth and practice in philosophy as well as to address a range of intriguing questions about truth that fall outside the domain of pure theory. The chapters in this volume provide a variety of perspectives on key practices of truth in philosophy and in the history of philosophy, enriching our understanding of the different ways in which truth and practice may be connected, including the role of certain practices in enabling philosophical insight into truth, the ways in which truth may actually be embedded in some practices, and the impact of truth on practice. Practices of Truth in Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in the history of philosophy, comparative philosophy, ethics, epistemology, and the metaphysics of truth. Pietro Gori is Senior Researcher and Invited Lecturer at the NOVA University Lisbon (Institute of Philosophy). He has worked extensively on modern and contemporary philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and epistemology, with a special focus on representatives of an anti-foundationalist turn in philosophy (e.g., Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Mach, and William James). Lorenzo Serini is Assistant Professor and Director of Student Experience and Progression in the Philosophy Department at the University of ­Warwick, where he obtained his PhD in philosophy in 2021. His areas of research and teaching include post-Kantian European philosophy (especially, Nietzsche), the history of skepticism, and regulative epistemology.

Practices of Truth in Philosophy Historical and Comparative Perspectives Edited by Pietro Gori and Lorenzo Serini

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Pietro Gori and Lorenzo Serini; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Pietro Gori and Lorenzo Serini to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-21913-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-22643-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-27349-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

List of Contributors

ix

Introduction 1 PIETRO GORI AND LORENZO SERINI

1 Truth as a Fundamental Value

8

DUNCAN PRITCHARD

2 The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth

24

RICHARD BETT

3 “A Broken Mirror”: Cynicism and the Scandal of the True Life

42

MARTA FAUSTINO

4 Truth and Ideology in Classical China: Mohists vs. Zhuangists 61 MERCEDES VALMISA OVIEDO

5 Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth in Dharmakīrti’s Philosophy

84

DAVEY K. TOMLINSON

6 Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice: The Pyrrhonists, Diderot, and Regulative Epistemology LORENZO SERINI

103

viii Contents

7 Schopenhauer, the Practice of Beauty, the Practice of Compassion, and Metaphysical Truth

128

SANDRA SHAPSHAY

8 The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity: Rejecting a New Myth of the Given

141

SABINA VACCARINO BREMNER

9 Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth: Foucault, Nietzsche, and James

161

PIETRO GORI

10 “Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy, That Is the Hardest Thing”

180

GENIA SCHÖNBAUMSFELD

11 Arendt and Transformative Politics

199

YASEMIN SARI

12 Historicism as a Truth Practice

215

ANTHONY JENSEN

13 Genealogy as a Practice of Truth: Nietzsche, Foucault, Fanon

237

DANIELE LORENZINI

14 “We Come Together for Truth”: Mother’s Movements, Decolonial Feminisms, and Coalitional Practices of Truth

256

EGE SELIN ISLEKEL

15 The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry in the Arts and Humanities

276

SAMI PIHLSTRÖM

Index 297

Contributors

Richard Bett is Professor of Philosophy at John Hopkins University. Marta Faustino is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the NOVA University of Lisbon. Pietro Gori is Senior Researcher and invited lecturer at Institute of Philosophy of the NOVA University of Lisbon. Ege Selin Islekel is Assistant Professor at Fordham University. Anthony Jensen is Professor of Philosophy at Providence College. Daniele Lorenzini is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania and Honorary Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. Sami Pihlström is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki. Duncan Pritchard is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California. Yasemin Sari is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Seattle University. Genia Schönbaumsfeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Lorenzo Serini is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of Student Experience and Progression in the Philosophy Department at the University of Warwick. Sandra Shapshay is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

x Contributors Davey K. Tomlinson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Villanova University. Sabina Vaccarino Bremner is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College.

Introduction Pietro Gori and Lorenzo Serini

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth—i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. (Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 2nd)

The aim of this book is to address one of the long-standing questions in philosophy, namely, the question of truth, but to do so from a fairly unusual perspective—that is, looking at it through the lens of practice rather than theory. In recent philosophical debates, as well as in the history of philosophy (especially within the Western tradition), the problem of truth has been predominantly considered a theoretical issue—that is, a question of theory concerning above all epistemology, metaphysics, ontology, and logic. Discussions about truth have primarily centered on theories and theoretical positions such as “correspondence theory,” “coherence theory,” and “metaphysical realism vs. anti-realism.” However, one may also find alternative philosophical traditions, both ancient and modern, that are not comfortably reducible to theories or theoretical approaches to truth. Within these traditions, the problem of truth has been posed not merely as a question of theory but also and primarily as a question of practice, broadly understood. Philosophers operating in these contexts have viewed truth as inextricably intertwined with different dimensions of practice, including intellectual practices, practical concerns, actions, ways of life, and the like. Although, individually, these alternative traditions have recently received increased attention, the philosophical significance of the various practice-based approaches to truth developed across these traditions remains largely neglected, especially in standard discussions about truth in philosophy and in the history of philosophy.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-1

2  Pietro Gori and Lorenzo Serini In this book, we aim to gather and survey a variety of fascinating practice-based approaches to truth across different philosophical traditions. The chapters collected here will consider traditions that are well-known for linking questions about truth to human praxis, such as philosophy as a way of life, materialism, and pragmatism. The authors will also examine non-purely theoretical approaches to epistemology, addressing questions about the value of truth, modes of conducting philosophical investigation, epistemic procedures, intellectual virtues, and the production of knowledge in scholarship. Further, contributions will look at different ways to blend truth with practice in geographically varied world traditions, including, for example, Africana philosophy (broadly construed), Chinese philosophy, and Indian philosophy. We propose to collect under the label ‘practices of truth’ disparate philosophical approaches that, like the ones mentioned earlier, establish a close connection between truth and practice (in its multifarious dimensions), or even see truth itself as a sort of practice. It is our contention in this book that, despite—indeed because of—their diversity, these approaches can be fruitfully brought together to explore key intersections between truth and practice in philosophy, as well as to address a range of intriguing questions about truth that fall outside the domain of pure theory. Exploring and comparing different practices of truth can help us develop a better understanding of the complex relationship between truth and practice—for example, the role of certain practices in enabling philosophical insight into truth, the ways in which truth may actually be embedded in some practices, and the impact of truth on practice. Moreover, the focus on practices of truth can help us make better sense of thinkers who are famously regarded as skeptical about, or critics of, truth, such as Zhuangzi, the Pyrrhonists, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault, just to mention a few names. In particular, adopting such a focus is helpful to appreciate the extent to which these types of thinkers are themselves engaged in truth-­ related practices of philosophy, though they reject specific paradigms of truth. Of course, this editorial project is neither attempting to provide a historically comprehensive overview of practices of truth, nor does it have the ambition to provide a systematic philosophical account of the interplay between truth and practice. Our discussions with the invited contributors revealed immediately that the topic of practices of truth can be interpreted in many different ways, and we soon realized that promoting different interpretative perspectives on the topic would be one of the strengths of the project. So, without imposing any interpretation, we encouraged each of the authors to explore practices of truth independently and according to their philosophical expertise and curiosity. As a result, the book will offer an extensive, yet cohesive, collection of perspectives on practices of truth

Introduction  3 across different areas of philosophy and across geographically and historically diverse philosophical traditions, including traditions that are less frequently considered in discussions about truth. It will also provide a philosophically rich insight into the various ways in which truth and practice may be connected. Our philosophical exercise in thinking about different practices of truth starts with Duncan Pritchard who, in the opening chapter, addresses the question of what it means for truth to be a fundamental value in relation to practice. Pritchard unpacks the idea that truth is valuable to us in such a way that it does not collapse under the weight of implausible implications, reflecting on Nietzsche’s claim that the truth is terrible and Wittgenstein’s contention that all rational evaluation presupposes an overarching groundless certainty. The following four chapters explore practices of truth and the relationship between truth and practice in Western and Eastern classical traditions. In the first of this series of chapters, Richard Bett focuses on the ancient Greek skeptics’ practice and its relation to truth. In ancient Greece, Bett observes, it was taken for granted that any philosophy worthy of serious consideration must be capable of being incorporated into a life. In this context, Bett argues, it is interesting to consider the strange case of the ancient skeptics, who, unlike many other Greek philosophers, did not believe that to incorporate philosophy in our life we are required to take certain things as true. More specifically, Bett examines how the Pyrrhonian Sextus Empiricus and the Academic skeptic Carneades respond to the challenge that skepticism is not “livable” because it refuses to accept anything as true. In doing so, Bett also highlights the similarities and differences between Pyrrhonian and Academic skepticism in terms of their relation to truth. Marta Faustino’s contribution centers on Cynicism as a particularly illuminating illustration of the peculiar and unique relationship between truth, practice, and life that characterized ancient philosophy. In particular, she looks at the Cynics through the lens of Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault’s conception of philosophy as a way of life. Drawing on ­Foucault’s analysis of Cynicism and parrhesia in The Courage of Truth, Faustino shows that the Cynics concerned themselves more with the embodiment and exposition of truth in their way of life than with abstract elucidation. And this, in Faustino’s view, perfectly exemplifies the prevalence of practice over theory and the intimate relationship between truth and life in ancient philosophy. In the following chapter, Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo turns our attention to the relationship between truth and practice in classical Chinese philosophy. In this tradition, Valmisa Oviedo notes, truth is conceived of, in a pragmatic-like spirit, as a series of embodied beliefs and perspectives that

4  Pietro Gori and Lorenzo Serini lead to fitting dispositions, emotions, and actions (regardless of whether they accurately describe the world, or whether there are other competing beliefs and perspectives that equally accurately or inaccurately describe the world). This means that we should care about truth because of its normative power to guide our behavior in the most fitting way, not because of a theoretical interest in accurately describing reality. Valmisa Oviedo traces the development of this conception of truth in the Mohists and Zhuangists, leading to two radically different sociopolitical and ethical positions: the Mohists used single-truth discourses to enforce ideological monopolies that could not allow pluralism in values, norms, beliefs, and practices, while the Zhuangists warned us against the dangers of such dogmatism. Davey K. Tomlinson’s chapter investigates the role of truth in meditative practices in Buddhist philosophy, especially in relation to Dharmakīrti’s epistemology. Tomlinson addresses the question as to whether truth makes a difference in Buddhist meditative cultivation—that is, the question as to whether there is anything distinctive about the experience of a practitioner who has meditated on the truth or on the knowledge of how things are, as opposed to convictions that are not based on rational inquiry. Drawing on Dharmakīrti’s epistemology, Tomlinson provides an epistemic and phenomenological account of this difference. Our exploration of practices of truth continues with chapters on modern and contemporary Western philosophy. The first of which, Lorenzo Serini’s, builds a bridge between ancient, modern, and contemporary questions about how truth is embedded in our intellectual practices, especially in skepticism. Thus, Serini’s chapter establishes a direct dialogue with other contributions in the book, particularly with Bett’s. Serini discusses the conception of skepticism as a truth-seeking practice in the Pyrrhonists and Denis Diderot from the perspective of recent debates in alternative epistemologies. In all these traditions, Serini suggests, skepticism is conceived of as a practice of investigation, rather than as a theory about the impossibility or partial possibility of knowledge. This conception of skepticism, according to Serini, poses questions concerning the ethics of investigation and beliefs—that is, questions about what it means to investigate well and to form belief appropriately. By drawing a comparison between Pyrrhonian skeptics and Diderot in the light of regulative, virtue/vice epistemology, Serini claims that skepticism is a practice that is essential to pursue excellence in investigation because it enables the inquirer to avoid and combat the intellectual vice of dogmatism, although there may be some vicious applications of it. Sandra Shapshay’s chapter on Schopenhauer’s transcendental-idealist system helps us to think about different kinds of “truth” that may be involved in practices of truth, as well as about how different practices may afford us insight into different kinds of “truth.” According to Shapshay,

Introduction  5 although Schopenhauer’s philosophy certainly developed within a European tradition that regarded truth, first and foremost, as a matter of theory rather than practice, this conceives of “philosophical” or “metaphysical truth” as a class of truths that have a peculiar practical dimension in that they may only be attained when we relate to the world of experience in a non-egoistic or disinterested manner. More specifically, Shapshay shows that, for Schopenhauer, we may attain metaphysical truth by following two pathways that enable us to go beyond our ordinary egoistic perception of the world: aesthetic experience and moral or compassionate behavior. It is Shapshay’s argument that in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, the aesthetic metaphysical insight and the compassionate metaphysical insight are in fact different and that this difference entails a corresponding distinction in the sort of practice that would enable a subject to arrive at these truths. Shapshay calls these distinct practices “the practice of beauty” and “the practice of compassion,” respectively, suggesting that, despite their differences, they can be both seen as practices of (metaphysical) truth, insofar as they are epistemically revealing of the way the world really is, metaphysically speaking. The contribution offered by Sabina Vaccarino Bremner helps us to make better sense of the evocative, yet often misinterpreted, passage of Marx that we chose as an epigraph for this book. Vaccarino Bremner presents a reading of Marx’s views on sensibility in comparison with Kant, claiming that, in contrast to Kant, for Marx, sensibility is not inherently passive but an activity or a practice related to the practical exercise of the faculty of choice as well as to the sensory-perceptive. Vaccarino Bremner shows that, for Marx, the objects of sense are shaped by our collective practices, as concrete (sensible) activity in the material world. In understanding truth as non-isolable from practice, Vaccarino Bremner claims, we interrogate the given not only as conceptually mediated but as collectively made, leading us, in turn, to reflect on the current constitution of material reality, and with it, on the prospects for its alteration. Pietro Gori’s chapter is a comparative study of the anti-foundationalist practices of truth we find in Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William James. Despite the significant differences among their positions, Gori suggests, these philosophers similarly respond to the challenge of providing a non-skeptical response to the relativist stance on truth that arose in the post-Kantian age by drawing attention to the practical dimension. In particular, Gori goes on to suggest, in their different ways, Foucault, Nietzsche, and James share the idea that philosophy must abandon the traditional conception of truth as a static object of inquiry if it is to achieve significant results. These philosophers, for Gori, take truth to be an effect of human activity—that is, something produced within human practices— and, accordingly, they agree that truth would lose its significance if we

6  Pietro Gori and Lorenzo Serini isolate it from the framework of human practices within which it is realized. The chapter written by Genia Schönbaumsfeld focuses on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s belief that radical skepticism—the thought that we might know nothing about the so-called external world—is an illusion. Unlike contemporary epistemologists, Schönbaumsfeld stresses, Wittgenstein does not grant to the skeptic that unless we can demonstrate that we are not massively deceived, we can, at best, have knowledge of how things appear to us. This is because, as Schönbaumsfeld notes, Wittgenstein rejects epistemological foundationalism—the notion that our epistemic practices must be grounded in true basic beliefs. It is Schönbaumsfeld’s contention that, however, Wittgenstein is not a friend of anti-realism, but he is committed to a modest “realism without empiricism.” Yasemin Sari’s contribution centers on Hannah Arendt and transformative politics. It investigates the role of truth in our formation as political agents, showing the transformative aspect of political participation through Arendt’s political paradigm. In particular, Sari examines the role of truth and the process of opinion formation in relation to political judgment. It is Sari’s argument that politics or political participation is, in Arendt’s terms, a transformative experience that may assuage the agonistic or partisan views of politics that seem to be in the background of most political discussions. The chapters by Anthony Jensen and Daniele Lorenzini deal with specific philosophical methodologies or approaches as practices of truth: the former focuses on historicism; the latter centers on genealogy. Jensen considers “historicism”—a range of approaches that describe or explain some phenomenon by using the past in a distinctive way—as a vital truth practice that arises out of several nineteenth-century philosophers and that is then taken over by several contemporary expressions of Continental and Analytic philosophy. Jensen distinguishes different kinds of historicisms depending on how the past is used for the pursuit of truth, looking at various authors (including Vico, Rousseau, Herder, Hume, Hegel, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Foucault, Arendt, Kuhn, and Ankersmit) and at different philosophical traditions (including phenomenology, genealogy, existentialism, and anti-realism). As philosophers carry out their practices of truth, Jensen argues, they employ four distinct modal relations: history is helpful, necessary, sufficient, or prohibitory to the practice of pursuing truth. Daniele Lorenzini delves into genealogy as a practice of truth in Nietzsche, Foucault, and Fanon. Lorenzini argues that even though the major forms taken by genealogy throughout the history of philosophy seem to make it impervious to truth, there is an important sense in which Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s conceptions and practices of genealogy can be regarded as practices of truth. This, Lorenzini goes on to argue, is because

Introduction  7 the Nietzschean and Foucauldian genealogists aim to produce “new truths” that function as disruptive ethico-political forces destabilizing current modes of thinking and being. Lorenzini shows that Frantz Fanon’s psychiatric writings, too, can be construed as genealogical practices of truth. Ege Selin Islekel’s chapter investigates practices of truth that take place in coalitional models of political subjectivity with respect to the task of political space making. In particular, Islekel focuses on Mother’s Movements in Turkey and Argentina as forms of long-durational coalitional activism that establish truth collectively and by creating contested political spaces. Islekel looks at this through the lens of decolonial feminism and Foucault’s notion of parrhesia as speaking truth to power. The closing chapter by Sami Pihlström proposes to develop a comprehensive philosophy of the arts and humanities by drawing on the pragmatist tradition, especially on William James. Using the pragmatist conception of truth as a human practice, rather than a merely theoretical activity, Pihlström interprets the scholarship in the arts and humanities as a practice of truth based on a form of realism. We would like to conclude the introduction by thanking each and all of our authors for the effort they put into this project and for their insightful contributions. We would also like to extend our thanks to all our colleagues who provided us and the authors with helpful feedback and advice on the project as a whole and on the individual chapters.

1 Truth as a Fundamental Value Duncan Pritchard

1.1  Nietzsche famously argued that the ‘truth is terrible.’1 He is not alone among philosophers in thinking this, of course, but he perhaps went much further than most in articulating just how terrible he thought the truth was.2 Nietzsche draws an intriguing consequence from this claim, which is that the unpalatable nature of these terrible truths means that we simply cannot accept them. The most obvious case of this are truths about human suffering and one’s inevitable death, followed by, eventually, one’s complete oblivion (since nothing any of us will ever do will be remembered for long). These are truths that we are hardly ever–perhaps never–able to face head-on, much less consistently embrace in our lives, as to do so would lead to a kind of practical paralysis. We need to somehow forget about these truths in order to get on with living our lives, as once they become part of the foreground of our thinking, they drown out all else. It is thus fortunate that, for most of us at least, we seem psychologically constituted such that we only ever really contemplate these truths briefly, in a kind of ‘side-on’ fashion (whereby one squints at them before setting them to one side, rather than staring at them in full light). Nietzsche would further argue, of course, that our suffering and eventual demise, along with the projects that we devote ourselves to in our lives and which help to put this suffering and demise to the back of our minds (albeit temporarily), are completely without purpose and thus meaning. We might be able to embrace the suffering and ultimate oblivion that is essential to our human condition if we at least had the comfort of knowing that our lives served some wider objective, but Nietzsche maintains that there is nothing that fits the bill. (That’s not to say that he thought life wasn’t worth living, of course—he seems to hold that there can be aesthetic goods that play a positive role in this regard—but just that whatever makes it worth living lacks transcendental purpose). The existential situation is thus truly bleak. No wonder then that we instinctively avoid the terrible truths concerning it.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-2

Truth as a Fundamental Value  9 Nietzsche further argues that our inability to reckon with the truth about the hopeless nature of our predicament entails that truth cannot coherently be a fundamental value at all. Those who maintain that it is a value are, he suggests, simply self-deceived, with their actual values being completely different and operating in disguise, for if truth really were a fundamental value, then one would embrace the terrible truths that he outlines, and of course, no one (or hardly anyone at any rate) does that. The same goes for those who treat factive epistemic standings like knowledge as a fundamental value. Here Nietzsche doesn’t just claim that one is self-deceived in claiming to be aiming at this lofty goal but moreover maintains that we don’t have such knowledge anyway, for what we think we know about the world is illusory. My concern here is not with Nietzsche’s exegesis. Moreover, I don’t believe that the truth is terrible in quite the respects that Nietzsche supposes anyway. For example, I don’t think our lives are meaningless, the projects that we engage in are without purpose, and so on. Nonetheless, it is surely right that some truths are terrible in the Nietzschean sense that we have articulated, in that, for most of us (probably all of us), we are so constituted that we simply cannot endorse them. Even so, I want to argue that the existence of such terrible truths does not entail, as Nietzsche thought, that truth cannot be a fundamental value. The challenge is thus to offer a credible understanding of what it would mean for truth to be a fundamental value that can accommodate the existence of these terrible truths that one cannot endorse. 1.2  Let’s start by considering what is meant by the idea that one cannot embrace these terrible truths about human existence. Notice that this doesn’t mean that one is unable to believe them, as I take it that we do believe them, at least in a broad folk sense of belief. Indeed, we not only believe them but know them. We are perfectly aware that we will die, that most of human life ends in terrible suffering, that such suffering is often unjust (good people suffer just like the wicked), and so on. The issue is not that we are unaware of these truths, but rather that there is a sense in which they are disconnected from our actions. In particular, if we really did take on board what these truths amounted to, then we would surely live our lives differently. That is, for the most part, we live our lives as if we don’t believe these things even though in some sense we do. We act as if we might well live forever and don’t reflect at all on our eventual demise and the terrible suffering that will likely precede it. The issue then is not so much that we are psychologically compelled not to believe these truths about the human condition, as they are so commonplace that we can’t help but be

10  Duncan Pritchard aware of them, but rather that psychological processes ensure that, for most of us anyway, they are suitably compartmentalized from everyday life such that they don’t interfere with our ordinary activities and projects. The core class of terrible truths are thus truths that, for psychological reasons, are only believed in this compartmentalized way. Interestingly, there do seem to be truths that one cannot believe at all, where the ‘cannot’ here is more than just psychological. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that free will is illusory (something that Nietzsche maintained, as it happens). Could one come to believe this truth? The problem, of course, is that the very notion of belief seems inapplicable to subjects who lack free will, as forming beliefs is arguably something only free agents can do. At the very least, the idea that one could consider the matter and come to the conclusion that one lacks free will, thereby forming one’s belief on that basis, seems ridiculous. To conceive of oneself as someone who is even considering the free will problem thus seems to require one to treat oneself as genuinely free. Of course, none of this tells us anything about whether we are free, but only that we seem compelled to think that we are regardless of whether it is true. It could be that one’s lack of free will is also a terrible existential truth. Lacking free will would seem to make one’s life absurd, after all, as our choices and life projects would all now be rendered ridiculous. But notice that even if this is a terrible truth in this sense, our inability to believe that we lack free will isn’t like our inability to embrace existential truths about human suffering and death. Rather than this inability reflecting a merely psychological difficulty, the issue is instead conceptual. While one can, in a broad sense at least, believe the terrible existential truths (albeit only in a compartmentalized way), one cannot believe at all that one lacks free will. We thus have a second category of truths that one cannot embrace, in this case because they can’t be coherently believed to be true. There is a crucial difference between the terrible truths about the human condition and the truths at issue in the free will debate, however. For while the former are widely accepted as true—albeit only in a compartmentalized way, as just noted—the latter is under dispute. That is, while one could not coherently believe that one lacks free will if it were true, for all we know it might not be true. If in actuality it isn’t true (i.e., if we do have free will), however, then there isn’t a terrible truth about our lack of freedom that we are unable to believe. Still, the point remains that there is a sense in which we are committed to regarding ourselves as free regardless of whether it is true, and that seems to pose a challenge to the idea of truth as a fundamental value just as much as there being terrible truths about the human condition that we cannot fully accept. Insofar as we do believe such a claim, it doesn’t seem to be because it is true (which it might not be), but rather because we are incapable in this respect of believing otherwise.

Truth as a Fundamental Value  11 This second class of terrible truths extends beyond the thesis that we lack free will. Consider, for example, the radical skeptical claim that nothing, or at least hardly anything, can be known. One reason why radical skepticism is rarely presented as a position, as opposed to a puzzle or a paradox, is that it is hard to make sense of how it could be coherently presented as a dialectical stance. If one genuinely doubts everything, then how is one even to make sense of the radical skeptical doubt? As Wittgenstein (1969, §613) puts it, when we consider extreme doubt of this kind, it “would seem to drag everything with it and plunge it into chaos.” For example, if one is not certain of anything, then how can one even be sure what the content of one’s radical doubt is? Here, again, is Wittgenstein: If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either. If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty. (Wittgenstein 1969, §§114–15) There is thus a deep incoherence in the idea of believing that radical skepticism is true. As with the problem of free will, this observation tells us nothing about whether radical skepticism is true but only whether we are capable of believing it. Moreover, just as with the problem of free will, the inability to believe this claim is not merely a psychological limitation, but rather reflects the incoherence of radical skepticism as a position. As with the claim that we lack free will, the thesis that radical skepticism is true would likely have existential import, as it would arguably make our lives absurd. But it is still different from Nietzsche’s terrible truths, as the problem is not merely that we would psychologically struggle to fully embrace this truth (if it is a truth), but rather that there is something inherently suspect about the idea that one could believe such a thing in the first place. 1.3  The point I am getting at is that if the existence of terrible truths that we can only loosely believe in a compartmentalized way reveals that there is something amiss with the idea of truth as a fundamental value, then this problem should be even worse once we reflect that there could be truths that we are simply incapable of believing (and not just from a purely psychological point of view). Surely this must mean that there are some inherent limitations to the idea that truth can be a fundamental value. I think it is worth spelling out the Wittgensteinian line on radical skepticism in a bit more detail to highlight just what such a limitation might

12  Duncan Pritchard amount to in practice. For Wittgenstein, the claim is not merely that we should be committed to thinking that radical skepticism is false, but that we inevitably have an all-out visceral certainty that this is so, a certainty that is on vivid display in our actions. Wittgenstein further contends that this certainty cannot be rationally grounded, as it is a certainty that needs to be in place in order for one to participate in the logical space of reasons. This is what makes it a ‘hinge’ certainty, in that for the ‘door’ of rational evaluation to turn, this hinge certainty must stay put.3 Our practices of offering reasons for and against particular claims thus already presuppose this backdrop of primitive certainty, which is why such rational processes cannot be extended to apply to the hinge certainty itself. We can become aware of the role that this arational certainty plays, but that is all.4 Wittgenstein further claims that our hinge certainty doesn’t merely concern the general idea that we are not radically mistaken, but rather manifests itself—indeed, primarily manifests itself—in very specific commitments that we have in ordinary conditions. This is where Wittgenstein turns his attention to the ‘Moorean commonsense’ claims, such as that one has two hands, that one is speaking English, that one’s name is such-and-such, and so on. Wittgenstein claims that the certainty we have as regards these claims in ordinary circumstances is itself a manifestation of the general hinge certainty. Accordingly, this means that these fundamental nodes of common sense are also arational hinge certainties too. Think about that for a moment. That which one is most certain of in normal conditions, such as what one’s name is or whether one has hands, is not something that one can ever have reason to think is true since it is part of the fabric of certainty against which rational evaluation occurs. This is a startling claim, and of course, one might object to it. As it ­happens, I think Wittgenstein is right about this, and I have defended this claim in detail elsewhere, but for our purposes that isn’t all that ­important.5 What’s instead significant is that it is a possible philosophical position regarding the nature of our commitments, one that would extend the class of potential truths that one simply could never believe from the broadly theoretical concerns (albeit theoretical realms that have existential import, as we’ve noted) about free will and radical skepticism to ordinary life itself. Just as one cannot coherently believe that radical skepticism is true, so one cannot coherently believe in normal conditions that one does not have hands either, and much else besides. We can become aware of these specific hinge commitments and the distinctive role that they play in our practices (just as we can become aware of the overarching hinge certainty that one is not radically mistaken), but to be aware of them as such is thereby to recognize, in a way that one wouldn’t ordinarily recognize in everyday life, that one’s commitment to them is essentially groundless.

Truth as a Fundamental Value  13 While we can loosely call our hinge commitments beliefs (i.e., in the broad folk sense of belief), they are very different from beliefs in the sense that is of most interest to epistemologists—viz., that propositional attitude that is a constituent part of knowledge. Call this latter notion K-apt belief, to distinguish it from the broader, folk conception of belief. Our hinge commitments are not K-apt beliefs, as they are not, qua arational commitments, in the market for knowledge.6 Our commitment to them is not a result of rational processes, nor is it responsive in the usual ways to rational processes—e.g., discovering that one has no rational basis for thinking that one has hands will not lead to one being any less certain, in normal conditions, that one has hands. One can say that one doubts that one has hands, just as one can say that one doubts that one knows anything at all or that one has free will, but one’s actions will reveal one’s basic certainty in these propositions. The doubt is thus in an important sense fake (even if one is being sincere in saying that one doubts it). I don’t think this should surprise us. If we can’t believe, even in the broad folk sense of belief (but certainty in the K-apt sense), that our beliefs as a whole are radically mistaken because we are so constituted as to be absolutely certain of the opposite, then how can one have a K-apt belief that one is not radically mistaken? Similarly, if by parity of reasoning one cannot believe the denial of a specific hinge commitment in normal conditions, then it follows that one cannot K-apt believe this hinge either. Although we don’t need the hinge framework to make sense of our inability to believe that we lack free will (we didn’t appeal to it earlier, for example), one could make such an appeal here. To be wrong about whether one has free will, after all, would amount to having a worldview that is radically in error. No wonder then that one cannot believe that one lacks free will. But it would also follow that one cannot have a K-apt belief that one has free will. As previously noted, my interest is not to persuade the reader of these Wittgensteinian claims, but to show what bearing they have on the idea of truth as a fundamental value. For on this picture, there is now a sense in which one’s body of commitments is in basic respects not truth-directed at all, for it consists, in part, of a primitive certainty that would remain in place regardless of whether it is true.7 1.4  It would seem then that if the terrible truths that Nietzsche describes are grounds to be skeptical of the idea of truth as a fundamental value, then the Wittgensteinian picture of the structure of reasons, with arational certainties at its heart, should offer even more grounds for skepticism. I want to suggest, however, that even someone who accepts the Wittgensteinian

14  Duncan Pritchard picture that we have sketched can nonetheless subscribe to truth as a fundamental value. So let us now consider how this axiological claim should be understood. Let’s start with fundamental value itself. I take it this means that the value is final, rather than merely instrumental. That is, to treat truth as a fundamental value is to regard it as something that is valuable independently of any instrumental good it might serve—one values, as it were, truth for its own sake, and not just for the sake of something else (such as its utility). Obviously, the truth often is very useful, and in making the claim that it has final value, one is not denying this fact. The point is rather that the value of the truth isn’t just a matter of its instrumental value—in particular, even if it had no instrumental value, it would still be of value. In saying that truth has final value, is one committed to treating all truths as finally valuable? That’s certainly one possible reading of this claim, but I don’t think that it is obligatory. It would be enough that truth is the kind of thing that is finally valuable, which would be compatible with there being particular truths that lack final value. (Compare: in saying that tigers are fierce, one is merely making a kind claim about the nature of tigers, one that is compatible with the existence of some tame tigers). In any case, as we will see in a moment, I don’t think we should be interpreting the thesis that truth is fundamentally valuable in a way that entails treating all truths as equally valuable in the relevant respect anyway. Thinking of truth as a fundamental value in the sense of being finally valuable puts it into the same category as other goods that are plausibly finally valuable, such as friendship or beauty. Now of course one might be skeptical that anything is finally valuable. Notice, however, that some things had better be finally valuable if anything is to be valuable, finally or instrumentally. The idea that there are only instrumentally valuable goods is obviously incoherent, as instrumental value is a kind of promissory note indicating deferred value, and if nothing is finally valuable, then that promissory note is worthless. This means that the options here are not between maintaining that some things are finally valuable and maintaining that there is only instrumental value, but between maintaining that some things are finally valuable and being a value nihilist (i.e., holding that nothing is valuable). Nonetheless, value nihilism is surely an option here, and of course, if one accepts that thesis, then obviously truth is not a final value as nothing is valuable—the claim that truth is not a fundamental value would thus be trivial. In what follows, however, I am going to put value nihilism to one side and focus on how best to make sense of the idea of truth as a final value on the assumption that there are final values. In maintaining that something has final value, one is according it a special axiological status. Someone who fixates on that which is only instrumentally valuable, as the miser values money, has made a terrible mistake.

Truth as a Fundamental Value  15 (Think of those famous portraits of the miser, dirty, hungry, alone in his hovel dressed in rags, but surrounded by piles of gold). The things that we should care most about are those things that are finally valuable. That which is only instrumentally valuable is still valuable, but it would be a mistake to only value that which is instrumentally valuable or to value that which is instrumentally valuable as if it were finally valuable. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should care about that which is finally valuable to the exclusion of all else. We’ve already noted that final value doesn’t preclude instrumental value. But we should also note that there are other candidates for final value that are as plausible in this regard as truth is (perhaps even more so). Accordingly, just as it would be a mistake to fixate on that which is only instrumentally valuable to the exclusion of that which is finally valuable, so it would be a mistake to fixate on one kind of finally valuable good to the exclusion of all others. For example, one can obsessively pursue truth and in the process fail to recognize other finally valuable goods (such as friendship). In saying that truth is finally valuable, we are thus not committed to maintaining that it should be pursued to the exclusion of all else but only that it should have a special weight in our concerns, alongside other finally valuable goods (and other instrumentally valuable goods too). 1.5  Even with truth as a fundamental value so understood, there is a further concern on the horizon. It is commonly held that to treat truth as having a special value, even if only from a purely epistemic point of view, entails treating all truths as equally valuable.8 For example, it is often alleged that if truth has special value, then one should value trivial truths just as much as deep and important ones, given that they are both equally truths.9 Similarly, it has been claimed that to treat truth as having special value means that one should maximize one’s true beliefs, regardless of the content of those beliefs. For example, someone who cares about truth in this way should be motivated to pursue easy inquiries that lead to lots of trivial true beliefs as opposed to pursuing difficult inquiries that might be unsuccessful (as many important scientific lines of inquiry are, for instance). The former will lead to more true beliefs, after all, so why isn’t it preferable from the point of view of according truth a special value?10 If the foregoing were correct, then it would follow that there is something deeply amiss with the idea that truth is finally valuable, as clearly we ought not value all truths equally nor should we aim to maximize our true beliefs regardless of their content (such as by pursuing pointless inquiries that nonetheless lead to lots of trivial true beliefs). It doesn’t take much reflection on the matter to realize that these objections must be

16  Duncan Pritchard misdirected, however. For notice that it is not just that we all agree that we should value significant truths over trivial truths (and significant lines of inquiry over trivial ones, even if the latter leads to more true beliefs) but that it is also clear that we do so precisely because we care about the truth. That is, someone who opts for the deep scientific truth about the universe over the trivial truth about, say, the number of spoons in a kitchen cupboard does so because she cares about the truth. This person reveals their concern for the truth in displaying this preference. The same goes for someone who pursues the important line of inquiry, albeit knowing that it might be unsuccessful, over the trivial inquiry that she knows in advance will likely lead to success (albeit of a pointless kind). We immediately recognize that this is just what caring about the truth involves. The crux of the matter is that caring about the truth doesn’t mean caring about all truths equally. Instead, to care about the truth is precisely to care about significant truths. Note that the claim in play here is not that there are two separate values at issue, truth and significance, but rather that caring about the truth manifests itself in caring about significant truths. That is, one is only tracking one good, not two. It is not that significant truths are a kind of truth that is valuable because significant, but rather that the proper concern for truth does not manifest itself in a desire for true beliefs simpliciter at all (which would lead to the view that all truths are equally valuable), but a desire for significant truths. Compare the trivial truth concerning how many spoons there are in the kitchen cupboard with the significant truth about the fundamental nature of the universe. While they are both true propositions, the latter is a weightier truth than the former, and hence something that someone who cares about the truth would desire (all other things being equal). Significance here is thus tracking a veritic quality (we’ll come back to this point in a moment). Note that there is another kind of significance at issue with regard to caring about truth. As we’ve previously noted, treating truth as finally valuable isn’t a straightforward matter when there are other goods in play, both finally and instrumentally valuable, that are competing for one’s attention. Accordingly, when making an assessment about whether a particular truth should be pursued in inquiry one needs to weigh up other factors, such as the practical costs of such an inquiry, the opportunity costs of pursuing other inquiries or simply doing something else instead, and so on. There is thus a non-veritic notion of ‘significance’ that has a bearing on such deliberations such that one is interested in the practical utility of the truth in question. Since even the most trivial truths can sometimes have such utility (as when one needs to find out some item of trivia for a pub quiz), this notion of ‘significance’ isn’t quite the specifically veritic notion we have in mind when we say that caring for the truth entails caring for significant truths. A good inquirer should be attentive to both kinds of

Truth as a Fundamental Value  17 significance, both veritic and non-veritic. Even so, it is useful to keep these two kinds of significance apart, as they are very different. 1.6  While the non-veritic significance of a particular truth is relatively straightforward, understanding what is involved in veritic significance is much harder. That certain truths provide one with a greater grip on the nature of things than other truths is relatively clear, but what does it mean to gain a greater grip on the truth where this is not to be reduced to counting true beliefs? I think a useful metaphor in this respect is mapmaking. In caring about the truth we want to gain an understanding of reality in its fundamental respects. Although I don’t think that reality in this sense is restricted to the physical world around us, that’s a good place to start. Understanding one’s physical environment requires constructing a map of it. A good map, however, has certain structural features. Someone who attempts to map a region by simply amassing lots of detail about one small area within that region is not constructing a good map. Indeed, a much less detailed map that nonetheless accurately sketches the main contours of the terrain would be a much better map. This is akin to the contrast between someone acquiring lots of trivial true beliefs as opposed to focusing on veritically significant truths. The latter are significant in the sense that they afford one a grip on the nature of reality that is not provided by, for example, being aware of trivial truths about the number of spoons in one’s kitchen cupboard. The map metaphor is also useful in that the same region can be mapped in different, but entirely compatible, ways—compare physical, political, and topographical maps. Similarly, one’s grasp of the fundamental nature of reality can be on different levels too. One potential downside of the map metaphor is that it privileges conceptions of reality that are physical in nature, but I don’t think we should be so restricted. Our social reality demands understanding too, for example. Similarly, understanding of one’s self is just as important as understanding the world around one. And so on. This is why a concern for the truth can manifest itself in both reading great literature and conducting scientific inquiries. No doubt there can be differing conceptions of what really is important in this regard, but all that’s required for our purposes is a recognition of the difference between inquiries that are aimed at veritically significant truths and those that are aimed at trivial truths. In treating the truth as finally valuable, one is thereby concerned with the former and not the latter.11 Once we understand the desire for truth as being concerned with veritically significant truths in this way, then I think this also explains why another kind of objection to truth as a fundamental value fails to hit its target. According to this concern, the truth can’t be what we

18  Duncan Pritchard fundamentally care about, even from a purely epistemic point of view, because what we seek is not merely the truth but knowledge and understanding of the truth. For example, a good inquirer doesn’t conclude their inquiry once they get to the truth but only once they have knowledge or understanding of this truth. I agree that good inquirers are concerned with knowing and understanding the truth, but I don’t think that this shows that truth is not a fundamental epistemic good. To begin with, recall that knowledge is a factive epistemic standing, and so brings the truth with it. Moreover, I take it that the relevant sense of understanding is also factive; indeed, in the normal case, it is a kind of knowing. For example, one might know the answer to a question but fail to understand it, as when one knows the answer simply because one was told it by someone authoritative but the answer makes little sense to one. In contrast, one would in addition understand that answer if one were able to reconstruct why this answer is correct.12 With this point in mind, the idea of drawing a contrast between desiring the truth and desiring knowledge or understanding is already quite odd, as in desiring the latter one is also desiring the truth, in the specific sense of the kind of apprehension of the truth involved in knowledge and understanding. Of course, one might respond to this point by insisting that what we really care about is not merely the truth, but rather knowledge and understanding of it. But think about this for a moment. Doesn’t knowledge and understanding simply involve a more comprehensive grip on the truth than mere true belief (e.g., of a kind that one might get by having luckily true belief, the product of a mere hunch say)? Indeed, if one wishes to measure one’s grip on the truth in terms of counting true beliefs—an approach that we’ve shown in this chapter to be fundamentally flawed—then one can capture the point in play by noting that someone who has knowledge or understanding will have more true beliefs than someone who only has the corresponding mere true belief. For example, where one’s understanding of an answer to a question consists of knowing why it is correct, then this will involve further true beliefs regarding this explanation, over and above the true belief in the target proposition (i.e., the answer to the question). We don’t need to revert back to the idea of measuring one’s grip on the truth by counting true beliefs to capture this point, however. A better approach is simply to recognize the general veritic significance of knowing and understanding truths as opposed to merely truly believing them. That is, where caring for the truth involves gaining a grip on the fundamental nature of reality (and not merely amassing true beliefs indiscriminately), then it also manifests itself in seeking knowledge and understanding of the subject matters that one is concerned with, as that is precisely what enables one to gain to ‘grip’ in question. Properly understood, then, there are not

Truth as a Fundamental Value  19 distinct goals in play here—a desire for truth and a desire for something over and above truth like knowledge and understanding—but rather simply the desire for truth that naturally manifests itself in seeking out knowledge and understanding of the truth.13 1.7  We are now in a position to draw together some of the main threads of our discussion. Treating truth as finally valuable doesn’t mean prioritizing the truth over everything else, including other finally valuable goods, nor does it mean ignoring the axiological relevance of non-finally valuable goods. Moreover, it also doesn’t entail that one is concerned with maximizing one’s true beliefs, regardless of their significance. In particular, it doesn’t entail treating every true belief as being equally valuable. Seeking the truth means seeking veritically significant truths, and that’s why in seeking the truth, one isn’t concerned with any and all true propositions. It is also why we seek to know and understand the truths that we inquire into. With all this in mind, let’s consider our terrible truths from earlier and also the truths that, it was alleged, one simply cannot believe (e.g., that one lacks free will or that one is radically mistaken), and the truths that one cannot believe in a specifically K-apt sense (e.g., the everyday certainties that constitute one’s hinge commitments). The key question is whether treating truth as a fundamental value entails being unable to embrace these claims about our overall epistemic position. I think it should be clear that the putative tension here is illusory. Treating truth as a final value doesn’t entail always valuing the truth, much less valuing it over everything else. In particular, it’s compatible with truth being a final value that one is aware that there are inherent limitations on one’s capacity to recognize, or otherwise fully embrace, those truths. Indeed, someone who cares about the truth in the sense that we have set out ought to be very interested in this very fact about the human condition. So someone who cares about the truth should be interested in the fact that our human psychology leads us to compartmentalize our knowledge of suffering, death, and the oblivion that awaits us. Similarly, someone who cares about the truth can consistently recognize that there can be truths that we are unable to believe at all, such as that one lacks free will or is radically in error. It also follows that there is no inherent inconsistency in a truth seeker coming to realize that their everyday commonsense convictions are not the result of ratiocination but rather reflect a primitive certainty. In all these cases, caring about the truth means realizing that there can be inherent limitations on one’s truth-seeking.14 There is thus a perfectly respectable notion of treating truth as a fundamental good that doesn’t fall foul of the various challenges that we have considered.

20  Duncan Pritchard Notes 1 He describes the truth in this way in several places—see Leiter (2018) for a helpful summary and also an acute discussion of what Nietzsche means by this description. 2 Nietzsche was especially influenced by Schopenhauer in this regard, who embraces an overarching pessimism. See, for example, Janaway (1999) and Fernández (2006). 3 See Wittgenstein (1969, §§341–43). I refer to the overarching hinge commitment that one is not radically mistaken as the über hinge commitment, to distinguish it from the more specific hinge commitments (discussed below) that are manifestations of the über hinge commitment. See Pritchard (2015, part 2). 4 Some commentators have tried to argue that there can be some kind of indirect rationality that applies to this basic certainty, in virtue of the essential role that it plays in enabling our rational practices to occur. See, especially, Wright (2004) and Coliva (2015). My own view—see Pritchard (2015, part 2)—is that this is not a credible way of understanding these commitments, but it would take us too far afield to argue for this point here. 5 See especially Pritchard (2015, passim). There are, of course, numerous readings of Wittgenstein’s remarks on hinge commitments available. See especially Strawson (1985), McGinn (1989), Williams (1991), Moyal-Sharrock (2004), Wright (2004), Coliva (2015), and Schönbaumsfeld (2016). For a survey of this literature, see Pritchard (2017). 6 See Pritchard (2015, part 2) for more on the idea of our hinge commitments not being K-apt beliefs (even while still being beliefs in the folk sense of belief). For a useful taxonomy of different belief-like notions, see Stevenson (2002). 7 The idea that there may be truths that we are so constituted—in this case in terms of our biological endowment—to be unable to recognize is also found in Chomsky’s work. See, for example, Chomsky (2015, ch. 2). 8 Elsewhere, I have described the idea that truth is the fundamental good from a purely epistemic point of view epistemic value truth monism. See, for example, Pritchard, Millar & Haddock (2010, ch. 1). This draws the contrast both to forms of epistemic value pluralism (i.e., where there is more than one fundamental epistemic good) and alternative forms of epistemic value monism (e.g., where knowledge or understanding are held to be the fundamental epistemic good). I defend epistemic value truth monism in Pritchard (2014b, 2016a, 2019, 2021b, 2021c, 2022). For more on the idea of truth as the fundamental good from a purely epistemic point of view, see David (2001), DePaul (2001), and the exchange between David (2013) and Kvanvig (2013). 9 There are lots of presentations of this trivial truths problem in the literature, but for a clear articulation of the issue, see DePaul (2001, §2). For an influential statement of the problem that urges a virtue-theoretic response, see Sosa (2003). For a recent discussion of this problem, see Treanor (2018). 10 For a particularly clear statement of the trivial inquiry problem in the recent literature, see Elgin (2017, 10). 11 I further remark on this notion of veritic significance in Pritchard (2019, 2021b, 2022). Note that in these works I further associate the veritistic drive in play with the manifestation of intellectual virtue. For our current purposes, however, we can bracket this additional claim. All that matters for our present concerns is the negative point that treating truth as a fundamental value is not to be understood in the problematic ways described here.

Truth as a Fundamental Value  21 12 For further discussion of the relationship between understanding and knowledge, see Kvanvig (2003), Grimm (2006, 2014), Pritchard (2009; 2014a), Pritchard, Millar & Haddock (2010, ch. 4), Greco (2013), and Hills (2016). Note that while most commentators agree that understanding is a more demanding epistemic state than knowledge, there is some dissent on this score. For example, some figures like Zagzebski (2001) and Elgin (2009) argue that understanding is not a form of knowing at all since it isn’t in the relevant sense factive. In addition, on my view understanding isn’t always a more demanding epistemic state than knowledge (though it ordinarily is), as sometimes one’s understanding can fall short of knowing due to environmental epistemic luck (though such cases where understanding comes apart from knowledge are not relevant to our current purposes). For a helpful overview of the contemporary literature on the epistemology of understanding, see Grimm (2010). 13 A related confusion in this regard is the thought that since inquiry only usually properly concludes when one gains knowledge or understanding of the answer to the target question, then it follows that only knowledge or understanding, and not truth, can be the goal of inquiry (and thus the fundamental epistemic good). As I’ve argued elsewhere, this line of reasoning is flawed. For one thing, we should be wary about equating what properly concludes an activity with the goal of that activity, particularly when we are talking about apprehending that a goal has been attained. (A chef concerned with creating delicious food might naturally insist on tasting the delicious food once cooked to be sure that her cooking was successful, but this wouldn’t show that her real goal was the tasting of delicious food rather than the creation of it). But the more general point is that it is a mistake to think that the desire for truth equates with a desire for mere true beliefs anyway, rather than the desire for veritically significant truths, and thus truths that support knowledge and understanding. For more on these points, see Pritchard (2014b, 2016a, 2016b, 2019, 2021a, 2021c). For defences of the contrasting view that it is knowledge that is the goal of inquiry, see Millar (2011) and Kelp (2014, 2018). 14 Note that it doesn’t follow from this claim that one should be intellectually sanguine about these limitations. Indeed, as I argue in Pritchard (2015, part 4; 2020), the recognition that one has fundamental commitments that are in their nature not grounded in reasons (and hence are not truth-tracking) can naturally lead to a kind of intellectual anxiety that I call epistemic vertigo.

References Chomsky, N. (2015). What Kind of Creatures Are We?, New York: Columbia University Press. Coliva, A. (2015). Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology, London: Palgrave Macmillan. David, M. (2001). “Truth as the Epistemic Goal,” Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Virtue, and Responsibility, (ed.) M. Steup, 51–69, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— (2013). “Truth as the Primary Epistemic Goal: A Working Hypothesis,” Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edn.), (eds.) E. Sosa, M. Steup & J. Turri, 363–367, Oxford: Blackwell.

22  Duncan Pritchard DePaul, M. (2001). “Value Monism in Epistemology,” Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Virtue, and Responsibility, (ed.) M. Steup, 170–186, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Elgin, C. (2009). “Is Understanding Factive?,” Epistemic Value, (eds.) A. Haddock, A. Millar & D. H. Pritchard, 322–330, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— (2017). True Enough, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fernández, J. (2006). “Schopenhauer’s Pessimism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73, 646–664. Greco, J. (2013). “Episteme: Knowledge and Understanding,” Virtues and Their Vices, (eds.) K. Timpe & C. Boyd, 285–302, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grimm, S. (2006). “Is Understanding a Species of Knowledge?,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57, 515–535. ——— (2010). “Understanding,” Routledge Companion to Epistemology, (eds.) S. Bernecker & D. H. Pritchard, 84–94, London: Routledge. ——— (2014). “Understanding as Knowledge of Causes,” Virtue Scientia: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, (ed.) A. Fairweather, 329–345, Dordrecht, Holland: Springer. Hills, A. (2016). “Understanding Why,” Noûs 50, 661–688. Janaway, C. (1999). “Schopenhauer’s Pessimism,” Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, (ed.) C. Janaway, 318–344, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kelp, C. (2014). “Two for the Knowledge Goal of Inquiry,” American Philosophical Quarterly 51, 227–232. ——— (2018). “Inquiry, Knowledge and Understanding,” Synthese (Online First). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1803-y Kvanvig, J. L. (2003). The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— (2013). “Truth Is Not the Primary Epistemic Goal,” Contemporary ­Debates in Epistemology (2nd Edn.), (eds.) E. Sosa, M. Steup & J. Turri, 352–362, ­Oxford: Blackwell. Leiter, B. (2018). “The Truth Is Terrible,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49, 151–173. Millar, A. (2011). “Why Knowledge Matters,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian ­Society (suppl. vol.) 85, 63–81. McGinn, M. (1989). Sense and Certainty: A Dissolution of Scepticism, Oxford: Blackwell. Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2004). Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pritchard, D. H. (2009). “Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value,” Epistemology (Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures), (ed.) A. O’Hear, 19–43, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— (2014a). “Knowledge and Understanding,” Virtue Scientia: Bridges ­Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, (ed.) A. Fairweather, 315–328, Dordrecht, Holland: Springer. ——— (2014b). “Truth as the Fundamental Epistemic Good,” The Ethics of ­Belief: Individual and Social, (eds.) J. Matheson & R. Vitz, 112–129, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Truth as a Fundamental Value  23 ——— (2015). Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. ——— (2016a). “Epistemic Axiology,” Epistemic Reasons, Epistemic Norms, and Epistemic Goals, (eds.) M. Grajner & P. Schmechtig, 407–422, Berlin: DeGruyter. ——— (2016b). “Seeing It for Oneself: Perceptual Knowledge, Understanding, and Intellectual Autonomy,” Episteme 13, 29–42. ——— (2017). “Wittgenstein on Hinge Commitments and Radical Scepticism in On Certainty,” Blackwell Companion to Wittgenstein, (eds.) H.-J. Glock & J. Hyman, 563–575, Oxford: Blackwell. ——— (2019). “Intellectual Virtues and the Epistemic Value of Truth,” Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02418-z ——— (2020). “Epistemic Vertigo,” The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence: Being of Two Minds, (eds.) B. Brogaard & D. Gatzia, ch. 7, London: Routledge. ——— (2021a). “Truth, Inquiry, Doubt,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 45, 505–524. ——— (2021b). “Veritic Desire,” Humana Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies 14, 1–21. ——— (2021c). “Veritism and the Goal of Inquiry,” Philosophia 49, 1347–1359. ——— (2022). “Intellectual Virtue and Its Role in Epistemology,” Asian Journal of Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-022-00024-4 Pritchard, D. H., Millar, A., & Haddock, A. (2010). The Nature and Value of Knowledge: Three Investigations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schönbaumsfeld, G. (2016). The Illusion of Doubt, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sosa, E. (2003). “The Place of Truth in Epistemology,” Intellectual Virtues: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, (eds.) M. DePaul & L. T. Zagzebski, 155–180, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stevenson, L. (2002). “Six Levels of Mentality,” Philosophical Explorations 5, 105–124. Strawson, P. F. (1985). Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, New York: Columbia University Press. Treanor, N. (2018). “Truth and Epistemic Value,” European Journal of Philosophy 26, 1057–1068. Williams, M. (1991). Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism, Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty, (eds.) G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. von Wright, (tr.) D. Paul & G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell. Wright, C. (2004). “Warrant for Nothing (and Foundations for Free)?,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (supp. vol.) 78, 167–212. Zagzebski, L. T. (2001). “Recovering Understanding,” Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, (ed.) M. Steup, 235–252, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2 The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth Richard Bett

I  The idea of philosophy as a way of life has attracted considerable interest in recent years. It is undeniable that at many times and places in history, philosophy has been viewed as something not just to be thought about, but also to be lived. The conception of ancient Greek philosophy, in particular, as a way of life—and of modern philosophy, with a few notable exceptions, as having regrettably abandoned this—was especially prominent in the work of the French scholar Pierre Hadot. While Hadot may have overgeneralized the case—the practical dimension is surely more prominent in some philosophers, and in some areas of philosophy, than in others—he put his finger on an important, recurring, and previously somewhat underestimated feature of ancient Greek thought.1 One aspect of this is a certain practical constraint on one’s philosophy that was taken for granted in antiquity: any philosophy worthy of serious consideration must be capable of being incorporated into a life. And this in turn, according to many Greek philosophers, imposed on us a requirement to take certain things as true. A striking case is Aristotle’s discussion of the Law of Non-contradiction. He argues that any coherent form of speech or thought requires that one accept it. But he also argues that no form of human life is compatible with denying the Law of Non-­ contradiction (as numerous philosophers, according to him, claimed to do); any choice of how to act depends on taking certain things to be the case, and not also their opposites. One stops at a precipice, for example, because one takes there to be a precipice rather than its opposite, flat ground; one also takes it that falling over the precipice would be bad rather than its opposite, good (Met. 1008b14–19). For the purpose of delivering the desired conclusion—namely, that denying the Law of Non-contradiction is impossible—the argument about living a life and the argument about the conditions for speaking and thinking are treated as equally relevant and equally weighty.2

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-3

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  25 Another context in which this “livability” constraint was important is skepticism and the objections raised against it by the Greek skeptics’ contemporaries, primarily the Epicureans and the Stoics. Both schools insisted that certain things must be taken as true if human life is to be possible. One of Epicurus’ Principal Doctrines reads, “If you fight all sensations, you will not have anything to make reference to in judging even those of them you say are in error” (Principal Doctrines 23); Lucretius expands the point, arguing that not to take the senses as in general telling us the truth is to “violate the principal assurance and shatter all the foundations on which life and survival rely”; for anyone who tries this, “life itself would break down immediately,” and (in a touch reminiscent of Aristotle) we would be unable “to avoid precipices and other things of this kind that are to be fled, and to pursue things that are opposite to these” (4.505–510).3 For their part, the Stoics insist that no human action is possible without assent: that is, without accepting as true various impressions with which we are presented. These could include, again, impressions such as that there is a precipice in front of one; they also include more directly action-guiding impressions such as that stepping back from this precipice is appropriate. According to Plutarch, the necessity of assent for action was the topic on which both Chrysippus and Antipater—Stoics roughly a century apart— had “the most argument” with the skeptics of the Academy (On Stoic Self-Contradictions 1057A). In his dialogue Academica, Cicero also has Lucullus, who argues against the Academic skeptics, make a point very similar to the Epicureans—namely, that people who do not take some things as certain “snatch away the very instruments or equipment of life, or rather, turn the whole of life upside down from the foundations” (Acad. 2.31). Lucullus is a follower of Antiochus of Ascalon, who in the last years of the Academy broke away from its skeptical orthodoxy and developed a philosophy that he claimed to be truer to Plato, the Academy’s founder, but that in epistemology was indistinguishable from Stoicism (Acad. 2.67, 137, 143, cf. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.235).4 To be taken seriously, then, a philosophy must be practically viable, and to be practically viable, it must be willing to accept a great many everyday things as true. These were both widely accepted assumptions in Greek thought. But support for the second assumption was not universal. Aristotle sees a challenge to it from the people he regards as denying the Law of Non-contradiction, and it is definitely challenged by various thinkers of a skeptical cast of mind—hence the Epicurean and Stoic objections. How Aristotle’s targets might have responded to his charges, we cannot say.5 But we can say something about how the ancient Greek skeptics responded to charges such as those of the Epicureans and Stoics. And that takes us to the main subject of this chapter: the ancient Greek skeptics’ practice and its relation to truth.

26  Richard Bett But first, one more thing about the non-skeptical philosophers on whom I have focused so far. The truths they accept of course extend far beyond everyday contexts such as taking care around precipices. They also accept as true, and claim to have established, elaborate edifices of theory about the nature of the world and the place of human beings in it. Everyday truths may be essential for living—or so they insist—but it is the theory that constitutes the philosophies themselves and that is not only capable of being incorporated into a human life but, if taken on board, makes one’s life the best a human life can be. The connection between the philosophy and the optimal life is rather more obvious and direct in the Epicureans and Stoics than in Aristotle, but Aristotle too takes the philosopher’s life to be the best human life, and his own philosophy to be the best available so far. In considering the ancient Greek skeptics, both their attitude toward theory and their attitude toward everyday life will deserve our attention. The Epicurean and Stoic anti-skeptical attacks I have alluded to are versions of what is usually known as the apraxia or “inactivity” argument— the argument that skepticism is impossible to put into practice and therefore to be dismissed.6 One thing that is immediately clear is that the skeptics accept the need to respond to this objection. That is, they accept the practical constraint with which I began: any philosophy worthy of serious consideration must be capable of being incorporated into a life. But, as just noted, they do not accept what the Epicureans and Stoics view as its corollary—namely, the second assumption I identified just now, that human life is not possible unless one takes certain things to be true. There is more than one way to challenge this, however, as we shall see. Greek philosophy has two distinct skeptical traditions. I have already referred to the Academic tradition, which began in the Academy with Arcesilaus (316/315–c.241 BCE, head of the school from c.268) and lasted until the early first century BCE; besides Arcesilaus, its most important figure was Carneades (214/212–129/128 BCE, head of the school from before 155 to 137/136). There is also the Pyrrhonian tradition, which drew inspiration from Pyrrho of Elis (c.360–c.270 BCE) but was not formalized until Aenesidemus (early-mid first century BCE).7 We have extensive surviving writings from a later member of the Pyrrhonian tradition, Sextus Empiricus (probably active around 200 CE). On the Academic side, neither Arcesilaus nor Carneades wrote anything, but we have considerable evidence of their ideas and methods, especially Carneades’; the most important sources are Cicero, who studied in the Academy in its waning years, and Sextus. In what follows, I deal with the two traditions separately, beginning with the Pyrrhonians; for reasons of space, and given the state of the evidence, I limit myself to Sextus Empiricus on the Pyrrhonian side and to Carneades on the Academic side. The central questions are,

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  27 what is the nature of their philosophical practice, and how, if at all, does the notion of truth figure within that practice? II  Skepticism as Sextus describes it is very different from the philosophies of those such as Aristotle, the Epicureans, or the Stoics. It is not a theory, or a doctrine, or a set of arguments for some conclusion; put most generally, it is not a set of propositions that the skeptic holds to be true. Instead, skepticism itself is a practice or an activity. More precisely, Sextus tells us that skepticism is an ability (dunamis) to perform a certain activity. Specifically, it is an ability to produce oppositions among things that appear and things that are thought in any way whatsoever, from which, because of the equal strength in the opposing objects and accounts, we come first to suspension of judgement, and after that to tranquility.8 (PH 1.8) As he goes on to say (1.9), by “things that appear,” in this context, he means things perceived by the senses—though, as we shall see, “appear” is not always understood so narrowly. The things that are to be placed in “opposition,” then, are sense-impressions and ideas (“things that are thought”). On any given topic, there are competing impressions and ideas, and the skeptic’s distinctive method has the effect of putting these into a condition of “equal strength” (isostheneia). That is, the skeptic brings it about that one is no more inclined to accept any one of these views of the topic than any other. If so, one will not accept any of them. Instead, one will suspend judgment about the matter—which in turn, it is claimed, results in tranquility. We can leave aside the point about tranquility. The move from the perception of “equal strength” among the various alternatives to suspension of judgment is clear enough; if the considerations in favor of each alternative really are equally balanced, one has no motivation to settle for any one of them, which makes suspension of judgment the natural outcome. What needs more discussion is what this situation of “equal strength” amounts to and how it is produced. In considering this, I used to refer to a choice between “psychological” and “rational” interpretations of “equal strength,” opting for the first of these.9 But I am now persuaded that this terminology was misleading. To be sure, Sextus’ skeptic does not subscribe to norms of rationality that would settle whether or not he ought, as a matter of rational necessity, to suspend judgment; as Sextus makes clear in the logical portions of his

28  Richard Bett work (Outlines book 2 and Against the Logicians), norms of rationality are themselves a subject on which the skeptic suspends judgment, just like all other theoretical matters. Instead, he simply finds himself equally drawn to (or repelled by) each alternative; that is what recognition of their “equal strength” amounts to. But this does not mean (as the labels “psychological” versus “rational” seem to imply) that the skeptic’s reasoning abilities play no role in producing this state of affairs. The alternative views on the question at issue will very often be supported by arguments; the skeptic will need to assess the merits of these arguments, consider objections to them, be on the lookout for unconsidered possibilities, and so on. In doing so, the skeptic will be as much a reasoner as those who first devised the arguments. Aside from his general account of skepticism in the first book of Outlines, all of Sextus’ surviving work is devoted to examining the main topics in philosophy and other theoretical disciplines; his appetite for active reasoning is almost indefatigable. It is this active reasoning that is captured by the term skeptikos itself, which means “inquirer.” It is also what is captured by the first few sentences of Outlines, where we are told that the skeptic is someone who keeps on investigating. Unlike either the person who thinks they have discovered the truth or the person who has decided that the truth is undiscoverable, the skeptic continues to be open to all the evidence and to check out the full range of views available, on whatever topics may present themselves (PH 1.1–3). Scholars have often been dismissive of Sextus’ claim to be an inquirer.10 But it is the very first thing he says about skepticism in Outlines. And he later mounts a vigorous defense of the skeptic’s ability to investigate—which he understands in a robust sense, as a rigorous examination of the views advanced on a given subject—in the prelude to his treatments of the three main divisions of philosophy (logic, physics, and ethics) in the rest of the work, which are instances of precisely such investigation (PH 2.1–12). It remains the case, however, that skepticism as Sextus describes it is an unusual kind of inquiry or investigation, in that it is not aimed at discovering the truth. Sextus does not rule out that the truth might someday be discovered; as I said, the view that the truth cannot be discovered is one from which he dissociates himself right at the start (and ascribes to the Academics (PH 1.3)—we shall return to this point). His inquiry is also not oblivious to considerations concerning truth; after all, in lining up the “oppositions” on some subject, he is drawing attention to the variety of credible views that are (or could be) held on that subject, and hence cautioning against settling too quickly on one of these views as the true one.11 Nevertheless, we usually think of investigation as directed toward discovery, and that is simply not what Sextus is up to. As we saw, the skeptic’s “ability” is an ability to produce a situation of “equal strength” among the

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  29 alternatives, not to choose among these alternatives. And Sextus reinforces this when, a little later, he says that the skeptic engages in physics (and also logic and ethics) not “with a view to making declarations with strong confidence about any of the things on which doctrines are held” but “with a view to being able to oppose to every argument an equal argument, and to achieve tranquility” (PH 1.18). Sextus frequently accuses his non-skeptical opponents of being rash—that is, of jumping to conclusions too easily— and that is the point of the words “with strong confidence” (meta bebaiou peismatos). But as regards the contrast with his own attitude, he need not have included these words; even a tentative adoption of views is not on his agenda. Coming down on any side as being true, strongly or weakly, is precisely what he aims to avoid.12 Not that this was always so; for the skeptic was not always a skeptic. Sextus describes what he calls “the starting point that causes skepticism” (archên tês skeptikês aitiôdê, PH 1.12) as follows. Some people, referred to as “highly gifted” (megalophueis), are bothered by what he calls the “inconsistency” (anômalian) in things; presumably, he is talking about the conflicting ways things come across to different people, or to the same people at different times and in different circumstances. These “highly gifted” people proceed to “investigate what is true in things and what is false, on the assumption that by determining these things they would achieve tranquility.” The goal, from the start, is tranquility. But the initial plan is to reach this state by getting beyond the inconsistency and discovering the truth. Who these “highly gifted” people are, Sextus does not say.13 But he does tell us a little more about how this initial plan gets sidetracked and replaced by skepticism. The decision to investigate brings these people to philosophy, but it turns out that philosophy is beset with dispute, with multiple positions that seem to be of “equal strength.” Faced with this situation, they suspend judgment. And it then turns out that this suspension of judgment results in just the tranquility they were hoping for, albeit not (as they had expected) by way of discovery of the truth (PH 1.26, 28–29). These last two stages are familiar from Sextus’ thumbnail sketch of the skeptical “ability.” But the first of the two, suspension of judgment, is not what these people were initially aiming for, while the second, though it was what they were aiming for, occurs unexpectedly, given the deviation from the original plan. What Sextus might have added is some account of how the initially unplanned (perhaps initially even unwelcome) episodes of suspension of judgment and their unexpected sequel, tranquility, are transformed into the new project of full-fledged skepticism—namely, the regular and intentional production of suspension of judgment (and thereby tranquility) by means of assembling opposing ideas and impressions of “equal strength.” Still, it is not hard to imagine how the story might be filled

30  Richard Bett out: once tranquility via suspension of judgment has been experienced enough times as a happy accident, the original project of discovering the truth might be dropped and the new project of generating suspension of judgment put in its place. To be a truly full-scale skeptic, one would have to have conducted this process comprehensively, and Sextus does say on occasion that tranquility follows suspension of judgment about everything (PH 1.31, 205).14 But the characteristic skeptical “ability” might easily swing into action well before that. What range of topics does the skeptical procedure apply to? Talk of “everything” is unhelpful without further specification, but it is clear from his consistent language on the subject that “everything” here means “everything concerning the real nature of things.” Having mentioned “the starting point that causes skepticism,” Sextus refers to “the starting point (archê) of the skeptical setup (sustaseôs)” (PH 1.12—archê here might also be rendered “principle”); that is, the centerpiece of skepticism as a developed scheme of thought. And this, he says, is “every argument’s having an equal argument lying in opposition to it”—precisely the state of affairs generated by the successful exercise of the skeptical “ability.” Now, later in the book, “[f]or every argument there’s an equal argument lying in opposition” is identified as one of several standard skeptical catchphrases; in explaining it, he says that it applies not just to any argument, but to arguments “constructing something dogmatically”—that is, attempting to establish something about matters that are “unclear” (PH 1.202–204). Similar limitations are placed on several other phrases expressing the skeptical attitude (PH 1.193, 197, 198, 200). Summing up the section on the skeptical phrases, he says that they apply to “the unclear things that are subjects of dogmatic investigation,” and that the skeptical attitude is a refusal to “make any firm declarations about the nature of the actual objects out there” (PH 1.208). This withdrawal from speaking about the “nature” (phusis) of things, about the “actual objects out there” (tôn ektos hupokeimenôn), or both, is frequently mentioned in actual cases of suspension of judgment, including when Sextus describes the standard forms of skeptical argument known as the Modes (e.g., PH 1.123, 128, 134). “Dogmatists” is Sextus’ word for those who think they have discovered the truth, and it is now clear that the kind of truth at issue here is truth about the underlying nature of the objects being investigated. In confirmation of this point, when he explains what it means to say that skeptic holds no “doctrine” (dogma), he says that the skeptic never gives “assent to some unclear matter investigated by the sciences” (PH 1.13). “Unclear” things are things that are not matters of plain experience, which therefore need further inquiry, and Sextus’ method is to ensure that one is never in a position to say anything reliable about them because there are always opposing arguments of “equal strength” to be assembled concerning them.

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  31 The subjects on which he focuses serious attention, then, are theoretical disciplines, so it is no surprise that, as I said, nearly all his surviving work is devoted to such subjects. But it is not only theoreticians who might have views about the real nature of things, beyond simply how they strike us. Sextus says that “ordinary people” (idiôtai, PH 1.30) think that certain things are by nature good and others by nature bad. Elsewhere he cites the existence of god, and the existence of motion, as everyday assumptions (PH 3.65, 218–219, M 9.50, 10.45); since they are introduced alongside the corresponding views of dogmatists, he must be understanding these too as assumptions about how things are by nature, and on them too he suspends judgment. Another homely example he offers is honey (PH 1.20). Honey tastes sweet (most of the time), but is it really sweet—is there an argument that could establish the sweetness as inherent to honey, rather than just an effect it happens to have on us? To get into this question seriously, one would have to start a scientific investigation as the dogmatists do. But it is a question that might occur to any of us. Primarily, however, we can think of the skeptical procedure as directed toward the theories found in philosophy and other technical disciplines, and as constituting in some sense a rival to them. Whether skepticism itself is a philosophy is a question on which Sextus seems somewhat ambivalent.15 The reason is presumably that he fears people may understand the term “philosophy” as referring to the kind of philosophy practiced by the dogmatists. In any case, it is the kind of truths that these theoretical disciplines purport to establish that Sextus’ skeptical practice resolutely eschews. Now this raises the question, what is the flip side? Is there another kind of truth that Sextus is open to accepting? This takes us back to the apraxia argument mounted by numerous non-skeptical schools. According to them, accepting many truths is essential to living a human life. But Sextus will respond that it is not necessary to accept as true any pronouncements concerning the real nature of things. He is happy to discuss such matters for as long as any dogmatist likes; but as a skeptic, he will always end up suspending judgment about them. What he will not suspend judgment about is the way things appear, and this is enough to make a human life perfectly possible. Addressing the apraxia objection, he agrees that we need some form of criterion or standard for deciding what to do. But he distinguishes between a criterion of truth, which is designed to make judgments about “reality or unreality”—that is, the kind of thing the dogmatists claim to know about—and a criterion of action, which allows us to conduct our ordinary lives (PH 1.21). Sextus takes up the first kind of criterion when he discusses dogmatic theories in the area of logic and, true to form, suspends judgment about its existence (PH 2.14–79, M 7.25–445).16 But he has no hesitation in adopting a

32  Richard Bett criterion of the second kind: the skeptic’s criterion of action is simply “what is apparent” (PH 1.22). For example, with rare exceptions, honey tastes sweet. Never mind what it is like in its real nature; its sweet taste is enough for us to decide to spread it on our bread, stir it into our tea, etc. There are obviously a multitude of such ways in which things strike us and which shape how we go about our everyday activities. Sextus states this in general terms as follows: “Paying attention to the things that appear, we live without opinions according to the routine of life” (PH 1.23)—where “without opinions” means “without committing ourselves about how things really are.” He goes on to list four main categories of these “things that appear” (PH 1.23–24). The first is “guidance by nature,” which he glosses by saying that “we are naturally perceivers and thinkers.” This is not to suggest any theory of human nature; it is simply to say that, as the natural organisms we are, we have certain perceiving and thinking capacities, which shape the way the world looks and seems to us. (The thinking capacities include those that the skeptics employ in conducting their investigations; the split between the theoretical and the everyday is not absolute.) Second, we cannot help being affected by such things as hunger and thirst; these unavoidable experiences also shape what we find worth doing and pursuing. Third, laws and customs shape how things appear to us and therefore how we act. And finally, there is the teaching of skills—such as medicine, in which Sextus himself was trained—which also refine our sensibilities in certain areas and affect our behavior. All this is assumed to happen at the level of how things strike us, with no commitment to things really being any particular way. This is not to deny that we might sometimes change our minds. A carpenter on a certain project might initially be inclined to use one kind of tool. But a closer look at the task, and maybe a discussion with fellow carpenters, might lead to a different tool looking like the better choice, and to the job being done successfully with that second tool. Though we might express this by saying, “It first appeared that tool A was the best one to use, but it turned out to be tool B,” Sextus would not think of this as going outside the realm of appearances. The whole process still occurs on the level of how things strike us in everyday terms; this is understood as contrasted with the real nature of things, which is what theorists claim to understand (and ordinary people occasionally express views about). This brings us back to the issue of the skeptic’s attitude to truth. As Sextus goes about his daily activities, might he not accept certain things as true—and thus, on one level, satisfy those who posed the apraxia argument, even while suspending judgment on the real nature of things? At this point, it depends on what we think truth amounts to. If truth is understood in terms of some deflationary theory, according to which “it is true that snow is white” says no more than “snow is white,” then to say that the

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  33 skeptic accepts truths looks unproblematic. In their everyday routines, skeptics might hear things such as, “That’s a very big pile of garbage,” “That was a really good meal,” or “You need a Phillips screwdriver for that job”; in response, they might quite cheerfully say, “That’s true” (or perhaps, “I’m not sure if that’s true”). On this conception of truth, provided one can talk at all, one can talk of truth, and this applies to skeptics in their everyday lives as much as to anyone else. But if we might thus be comfortable with the idea of Sextus speaking of truths in the context of everyday life, I have the strong impression that—with one qualification—Sextus himself would not want to do so. And this is because he seems to have a much more robust conception of truth than the deflationary one.17 As we saw, he refers to the criterion of truth as what (according to those who believe in such a thing) allows us to determine “reality and unreality” (huparxis, anuparxia, PH 1.21, 2.14). It is the dogmatists who, he says, claim to have discovered the truth (PH 1.2); and the “highly gifted” people who start their investigations with the aim of distinguishing what is true and what is false (PH 1.12, 26) seem to be aspiring dogmatists. He also says that even the skeptical phrases express how things appear to the skeptic; he does not wish to insist on their truth (PH 1.191, 206); as Sextus uses the word “insist” (diabebaiousthai), it always indicates laying down the law in a dogmatic spirit, with confidence that one has captured how things really are. Finally, consider his gloss on Democritus’ famous saying that, by contrast with many perceived properties of things that hold only “by convention” (nomoi), it is atoms and void which exist “in reality.” Democritus’ word “in reality” (eteêi) is archaic by Sextus’ time, and he explains to his readers that by “in reality,” Democritus means “in truth” (alêtheiai, PH 1.214). I have picked just a few instances from the first book of Outlines, but the pattern is clear: when Sextus speaks of truth, he has in mind correspondence to an objective reality. What is true is what is really the case—which is precisely what, as a skeptic, he is not prepared to make any commitments about. This is not to say that the word “true” (alêthês) is only applied in Sextus to theories about the nature of things. In his treatments of logic, he frequently refers to commonsense propositions, such as “it is day” or “every human is an animal,” as true. But this is in the context of the dogmatists’ logical theory; he is not personally endorsing the truth of these propositions. As for how truth is conceived here, he refers to logic (following the Stoics) as “the science [epistêmê] of what is true and false and neither” (PH 2.95, cf. 229, 247),18 and this includes the topics of sign and demonstration. Since these are methods for making inferences about the “unclear” matters dogmatic theories claim to describe, it seems clear that in these contexts, too, Sextus continues to treat truth as correspondence to

34  Richard Bett reality—and to view the dogmatists as doing the same. To call a statement true is to say that what it asserts is really the case; the topic need not be in any usual sense theoretical, but the commitment is to something’s actually being so, independently of the appearances. Hence we can assume he would not be prepared to claim even “it is day” or “every human is an animal” to be true. While he might have no hesitation in saying these things—they fit his experience just fine—to call these propositions true, from his perspective, would be a step too far; it would be to venture opinions about what, as we saw, he calls “the actual objects out there,” and that is the dogmatists’ province, even if we are dealing with quotidian, rather than theoretical, matters.19 If I am right, his response to the apraxia objection would be, “No, we need not accept anything as true, either in theory or in everyday matters, in order to live a human life.”20 This may strike us as odd, but that may be because talk of truth is not, for us, invested with such significance.21 III  Carneades’ skeptical practice has much in common with that of Sextus. Cicero says that the Academics’ standard method was to argue “on either side” of a question (in utramque partem, Acad. 2.7). He traces this back to Plato himself but also associates it with both Arcesilaus and Carneades (Acad. 1.46). By contrast, Diogenes Laertius (4.28) says that Arcesilaus was the first to argue in this way; the implication, however, is clearly that his successors in the Academy, which must include Carneades, did so as well. Besides arguing on both sides himself, Carneades often argued against the views of non-skeptical philosophers; we find evidence of this on the subject of the criterion of truth (Sextus, M 7.402–411), freedom and determinism (or indeterminism) (Cicero, On Fate 20–33), and the existence of the gods (Sextus, M 9.140, 182–190). We also hear that he assembled a sixfold classification of actual or possible views on the ethical end (Cicero, On Ends 5.16–20); he is said to have defended one of these for dialectical purposes, and the purpose of the whole taxonomy seems to be to cast doubt on the Stoic view of this matter. Carneades, then, like Sextus, comes across as an active and nimble reasoner. And we can be confident that, again like Sextus, the aim of this activity was not to establish any view as definitively true. While we do not hear explicitly of Carneades as suspending judgment, we are told of something that amounts to the same thing: namely, that Carneades eliminated assent—that is, taking things as true— which, as we saw, the Stoics insisted was a necessary condition of action. According to Cicero, this was described by his successor Clitomachus as a Herculean feat, assent itself being characterized as a “wild and savage monster” (Acad. 2.108).

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  35 Much more could be said about Carneades’ argumentative activities. But for the remainder of this chapter, I would like to concentrate on some ways in which Carneades’ skeptical approach differs from that of Sextus. For despite his reported opposition to assent, in at least one case, Carneades seems willing to state a conclusion in his own person.22 As we saw, Sextus attributes to the Academics (including Carneades) the view that nothing can be known (PH 1.3, 226). And this seems to be supported by Cicero, who reports that Carneades asserted that nothing could be apprehended (percipi, Acad. 2.28)—that is, grasped with certainty. The Stoic Antipater is said to have objected that if the Academics are going to make such an assertion, they should at least take themselves to apprehend the assertion itself. But Carneades is said to have responded that, on the contrary, this would be plainly self-refuting: if nothing can be apprehended, that includes the claim itself—it is self-applicable. It is striking, however, that he does not deny making the claim. It appears, then, that Sextus is right to distinguish himself from Carneades; the latter does espouse the view that nothing can be apprehended, whereas Sextus keeps this question open. What other views he may have espoused is hard to say. But Cicero tells us that Clitomachus said he could never get clear on what Carneades’ own views were (Acad. 2.139), which implies that there were some; if he had completely avoided all theoretical views, like Sextus, Clitomachus would have known the answer—it would have been “none.” No doubt his practice of arguing on either side made it difficult to tell, in any given case, whether Carneades was arguing for a certain position for purely dialectical purposes or because he found it plausible. But it does look as if arguing on either side was not the limit of his philosophical activity; sometimes, though he did not claim to apprehend how things are, he did in some sense opt for one side or the other. The question, of course, is how to reconcile this with his reported opposition to assent. We can begin to address this by noting that Carneades was also famous for an account of how one can make decisions by means of “persuasive appearances” (pithanai phantasiai) without committing oneself to their truth—which is clearly another response to the apraxia objection. Sextus discusses Carneades’ treatment of this topic at some length in his Against the Logicians, and Cicero alludes to it on numerous occasions. As Sextus describes it, a persuasive appearance is one that strikes the person having it as true. It is one thing for an appearance to be true or false objectively speaking; it is another thing for an appearance to feel as if it is true or false. Persuasive appearances are those that feel relatively strongly as if they are true, and there can naturally be degrees of persuasiveness. Persuasiveness is not the same as truth, and can never guarantee truth. But persuasive appearances usually lead us in the right direction, and no method of decision is perfect (M 7.168–175). One can also take active steps to increase the persuasiveness of the appearances, by seeing whether

36  Richard Bett they are consistent with other appearances on the same subject, or by checking whether there are factors that might lead us to doubt their truth; here too one might pursue these measures to differing degrees, depending on the importance of the matter at hand (M 7.176–189). Even after all this, a persuasive appearance might turn out to be mistaken—that is, might turn out to be contradicted by another, more persuasive body of appearances. But there are ways to affect the persuasiveness of the appearances so that they come across to us as true to the greatest extent possible. And this allows us a way of deciding what to do without ever having to commit ourselves to the truth of these appearances; one can feel very strongly as if something is true, and act on that basis, without making any definitive judgment on its truth. In addition, although Sextus does not dwell on this, it allows us a way of expressing a preference for certain philosophical views over others; one can prefer the views one finds persuasive without settling on them as definitely true. This may still seem more like a rhetorical sleight of hand than a genuine resolution of the puzzle. To act on a persuasive appearance, one might say, is surely to treat it as true. Equally, in the theoretical realm, to assert that nothing can be apprehended, as Carneades is reported to have done, is surely to treat that as true. As we saw, the Stoics insisted that action requires assent—that is, taking certain things as true. They may well seem to have a point. But here another element in Carneades’ picture deserves attention. An important passage of Cicero’s Academica (Acad. 2.104), which again reports Clitomachus explaining Carneades,23 distinguishes between fullscale assent, where one definitely commits oneself to the truth of an appearance, and a less robust attitude, which one might also call assent, but which Cicero usually refers to as “approving” or “following” an appearance. This weaker attitude to one’s appearances is sufficient for one to act on them; it is also sufficient to guide one in discussion (whether philosophical or otherwise)—the passage specifically refers not just to acting, but to answering questions. And the appearances one thus “approves” or “­follows,” Cicero says, are those that “are not impeded by anything,” which is clearly a reference to those persuasive appearances that have been checked for consistency with others, as described in Sextus’ account of Carneades; Sextus’ word for those that meet this standard is “unimpeded” (aperispastos, M 7.176). The point, then, is that persuasive appearances can be acted on, or used as a basis for choices among philosophical views, without requiring definite commitment to their truth. And so, if “assent” is understood as the full-scale assent described in this passage, it is after all possible to hold views without assenting to them. In particular, the view that nothing can be apprehended is one that Carneades can hold. As we saw, he does not claim to apprehend it, and as we can now say, he does not

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  37 even assent to it in a full-scale fashion. But he finds it persuasive and therefore approves it. Sextus ignores (or perhaps, is simply unaware of) this distinction Carneades drew between assent and approval, and thus exaggerates the difference between Carneades and himself. But he is not wrong that there is a difference, and it revolves precisely around their attitudes to truth. Unlike Sextus, Carneades does have an orientation toward truth. An appearance one finds persuasive is an appearance that one sees as (to some significant degree) likely to be true. Speaking as a card-carrying Academic, Cicero says that the purpose of the Academics’ philosophical activity is to get as close to the truth as possible and that the only difference between them and their dogmatic opponents is that, while the latter “do not doubt that what they defend is true, we hold many things as persuasive, which we can easily follow, but scarcely maintain with certainty” (Acad. 2.7–8). He does not specifically mention Carneades in this context, but to judge from what we have seen, this fits Carneades’ attitude very nicely. There is an inherent connection between persuasiveness and truth, and Sextus’ account of Carneades’ persuasive impression is quite explicit about this.24 But there is a difference between saying that something is true and saying that it is likely to be true. To call an impression likely is to refer to one’s own judgment or belief, and hence to speak in a way that is at least in part subjective; one never goes fur­ ther than saying that something strikes one as true (though it may do so very forcefully). But the judgment is nevertheless about something ­objective— namely, the truth of the impression. Carneades’ philosophical practice, or at least some part of it, is truth-directed in a way that Sextus’ is not; his everyday practice also involves holding views that strike him as true. He stops short of committing himself to their truth (the Stoic requirement), but he nonetheless takes a genuine interest in their truth, as Sextus does not. As I said, what views Carneades held, in this non-committal fashion, besides the view that nothing can be apprehended, is somewhat speculative. But the matters we have just been discussing—his account of persuasive appearances and his distinction between assent and approval—would seem to belong on the list; they too would be self-applicable—he would find them persuasive and approve them, rather than assenting to them in the full-scale fashion. If this entire framework is sound—which would of course take much more discussion to determine than I have been able to give it here— there is simply no reason for him not to adopt them as his own views. Notes 1 Hadot’s main work in this area, translated into English, is Hadot (1995). Another major work on the topic, avowedly inspired by Hadot but taking a very different approach, is Cooper (2012).

38  Richard Bett 2 That contemporary philosophy no longer maintains this kind of sense of the relevance of ordinary life was argued in Burnyeat (1984). I registered a few doubts about Burnyeat’s picture in Bett (1993). But the general point, that philosophy today has much less direct connection with ordinary life than it was assumed to have in antiquity, seems hard to deny; see Cooper (2012), chapter 1. 3 Lucretius’ argument in this passage is in fact that all sensations need to be taken as true. But this Epicurean thesis applies only to the atomic “images” that immediately impinge on one’s senses, and the Epicureans allow that doubt is sometimes appropriate concerning what these images are telling us about the objects from which they emanate. On Epicurean epistemology as less radical than it sounds, see Schwab and Shogry (2023). 4 On Antiochus’ epistemology see Brittain (2012). 5 Those he names were all dead before his time; he may also have in mind contemporaries, but he does not name them. 6 For discussion of various versions of this, see Vogt (2010). 7 The Academics do not actually call themselves skeptics, but they have enough in common with those who did—the Pyrrhonians—to justify placing them in the same category, as was recognized since antiquity. 8 PH (the acronym of the Greek title) is the standard abbreviation for Sextus’ best-known work, Outlines of Pyrrhonism. I refer to it in the main text as Outlines. All Sextus’ other surviving writings are conventionally referred to by the title Adversus Mathematicos (usually translated Against the Professors), abbreviated as M. In what follows I mainly limit myself to PH, but occasionally I mention Against the Logicians, which is books 7 and 8 of M, and cite passages from other books of M. 9 This appears in several of the essays in Bett (2019); see, e.g., 110, 152, 221, 230. Williams (2020) and Smith (2020) both question this distinction, and I concede their point in Bett (2020). 10 See, e.g., Palmer (2000); Striker (2001); Grgic (2006); Marchand (2010). I used to agree; see, e.g., Bett (2019), chapter 1 (originally published 2013). 11 This is well discussed in Castagnoli (2018). 12 That Sextus’ investigation is, on the contrary, directed (at least in part) towards discovery of the truth is argued by Perin (2010); Vogt (2012), chapter 5; Machuca (2021); Smith (2022). This is the main point on which I still take issue with these scholars, despite taking skeptical investigation more seriously than before (cf. n.10). 13 For discussion of this, see Smith (2022), chapter 2—and on the whole process I sketch here, Chapters 2–4. 14 This point is emphasized in Smith (2022), chapter 4.4. 15 I have discussed this in Bett (2019), chapter 2, especially section IV. 16 Introducing the criterion of truth, Sextus says that tools such as rulers, and also the natural operation of the senses, are sometimes spoken of as criteria (PH 2.15, M 7.31–32). But this appears to be a dogmatic classification of criteria— in both places it is how criteria “are spoken of” (legetai)—and he never himself speaks of these as criteria of truth. The criteria of truth he suspends judgement about are not these everyday resources (which he would obviously use to navigate the world as it appears to him), but specifically dogmatic criteria aimed at uncovering what is really the case. 17 The qualification is that Sextus emphasizes that the skeptics are not sticklers for precise language (PH 1.207). Hence, whatever his own conception of truth, he

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  39 might not worry about occasionally saying “that’s true” in ordinary conversation; unless he is talking with philosophers, no one will make anything of this. 18 For the Stoic parallel, see Diogenes Laertius, 7.41. Strictly speaking, this definition applies not to all of logic, but to dialectic, and Sextus follows this terminology. The other part of logic, according to the Stoics, is rhetoric, which Sextus treats not as part of philosophy, but as one of the special disciplines (discussed in M 2). 19 How the skeptic uses language, and whether it is actually feasible, is discussed in detail in Corti (2009). 20 Did those who launched the apraxia objection understand truth in the same way as Sextus himself does (and as he seems to assume they do)? This is much too large a question to examine here; I will simply say that I suspect the answer is yes. A robust conception of truth as correspondence to reality seems to be standard in Greek philosophy; the matter is rarely discussed, but see Hankinson (2003), 78 and, on Aristotle, Crivelli (2004), chapter 4. 21 One further complication: Myles Burnyeat held that “true” (alêthês) in Greek thought is always about an objective world so that claims about the nature of our experience could not be called true or false (Burnyeat [1982], 26–28; Burnyeat [1983a], 121). He was wrong about that, as shown by Bailey (2002), 157–165; Corti (2009), 143–147; the Cyrenaics held that how we are affected by things (though not the nature of things themselves) can be known, and, as Sextus reports it, this includes calling statements about how we are affected “true” (M 7.193, 194). Would Sextus himself go along with this usage? He does say that how things appear to us is not up for debate (PH 1.22). But to call such statements true would be to say that it really is the case that we are thus affected; since Sextus is prepared to question the senses’ or the intellect’s ability or know themselves or one another (M 7.301–313), I very much doubt he would want to make this commitment. The Cyrenaics have a philosophical theory in which this has a point; Sextus does not (see Bett [2018], 20). In any case, however, the everyday claims considered in the last few paragraphs are about things in the world (as they appear to us), not about our experience itself. 22 Many scholars have held that Carneades only ever reacted to the views of others and never put forward views of his own. An important stimulus to this view was Couissin (1929), translated into English in the widely read Burnyeat (1983b), as well as Sedley (1983) in the same volume. I have argued against it in more detail in Bett (forthcoming), especially sections III and V; here I limit myself to the essential points. 23 Note “in almost these words” (his fere verbis, Acad. 2.102); Cicero is clearly trying to be as accurate as possible. 24 This is well emphasized in Thorsrud (2018) (against, among others, Bett [1990]).

References Bailey, Alan. 2002. Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonean Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bett, Richard. 1990. “Carneades’ Distinction between Assent and Approval.” The Monist 73: 3–20.

40  Richard Bett Bett, Richard. 1993. “Scepticism and Everyday Attitudes in Ancient and Modern Philosophy.” Metaphilosophy 24 (4): 363–381. Bett, Richard. 2018. “The Cyrenaics and Skepticism.” In Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present, edited by Diego E. Machuca and Baron Reed, 14–23. ­London: Bloomsbury. Bett, Richard. 2019. How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Skepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bett, Richard. 2020. “Reply to my Commentators, Part 2.” Sképsis: Revista de Filosofia 21: 210–215. https://philosophicalskepticism.org. Bett, Richard. Forthcoming. “The Stoics and Carneades: Dialectic and the Holding of Views.” In The Oxford Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by ­Nathan Powers and Jacob Klein. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brittain, Charles. 2012. “Antiochus’ Epistemology.” In The Philosophy of Antiochus, edited by David Sedley, 104–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 1982. “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed.” Philosophical Review XCI (1): 3–40. Burnyeat, Myles. 1983a. “Can the Skeptic Live His Skepticism?” In The Skeptical Tradition, edited by Myles Burnyeat, 117–148. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 1983b. The Skeptical Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burnyeat, Myles. 1984. “The Sceptic in His Place and Time.” In Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy, edited by Richard Rorty, J.B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner, 225–254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castagnoli, Luca. 2018. “Aporia and Enquiry in Ancient Pyrrhonism.” In The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy, edited by George Karamanolis and Vasilis Politis, 205–227. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cooper, John M. 2012. Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Corti, Lorenzo. 2009. Scepticisme et langage. Paris: Vrin. Couissin, Pierre. 1929. “Le stoicism de la nouvelle Académie.” Revue d’histoire de la philosophie 3: 241–276. Translated into English (“The Stoicism of the New Academy”) in The Skeptical Tradition, edited by Myles Burnyeat, 31–63. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crivelli, Paolo. 2004. Aristotle on Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grgic, Filip. 2006. “Sextus Empiricus on the Goal of Skepticism.” Ancient Philosophy 26: 141–160. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Edited with an Introduction by Arnold I. Davidson; translated by Michael Chase. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Hankinson, R.J. 2003. “Stoic Epistemology.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, edited by Brad Inwood, 59–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Machuca, Diego. 2021. “Can the Skeptic Search for Truth?” Elenchos 42 (2): 321–349. https://doi.org/10.1515/elen-2021-0017.

The Ancient Greek Skeptics’ Practice and Its Relation to Truth  41 Marchand, Stéphane. 2010. “Le sceptique cherche-t-il vraiment la verité?” Revue de Métaphysique et Morale 1: 125–141. Palmer, John. 2000. “Skeptical Investigation.” Ancient Philosophy 20: 351–375. Perin, Casey. 2010. The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism. New York: Oxford University Press. Schwab, Whitney and Simon Shogry. 2023. “Epicureans and Stoics on the Rationality of Perception.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (1): 58–83. Sedley, David. 1983. “The Motivation of Greek Skepticism.” In The Skeptical Tradition, edited by Myles Burnyeat, 9–29. Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, Plínio Junqueira. 2020. “Bett on the Modes of Suspension: Inconsistency?” Sképsis: Revista de Filosofia 21: 174–187. https://philosophicalskepticism.org. Smith, Plínio Junqueira. 2022. Sextus Empiricus’ Neo-Pyrrhonism: Skepticism as a Rationally Ordered Experience. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Striker, Gisela. 2001. “Scepticism as a Kind of Philosophy.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 83: 113–129. Thorsrud, Harald. 2018. “Carneades.” In Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present, edited by Diego E. Machuca and Baron Reed, 51–66. London: Bloomsbury. Vogt, Katja Maria. 2010. “Scepticism and Action.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, edited by Richard Bett, 165–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vogt, Katja Maria. 2012. Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato. New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, Michael. 2020. “Skeptical Arguments and Pyrrhonian Pratice: A R ­ esponse to Richard Bett.” Sképsis: Revista de Filosofia 21: 160–173. https://philosophicalskepticism.org.

3 “A Broken Mirror” Cynicism and the Scandal of the True Life* Marta Faustino

3.1 Introduction When it comes to the relationship between truth and practice in the history of Western thought, ancient philosophy assumes a prominent role. As Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault (among others) have compellingly shown, in antiquity, philosophy was not mere theory or discourse but an art of living, a lived practice, a way of life. Truth was not simply something to be apprehended or understood, but rather something that had to be appropriated, incorporated, and converted into a specific way of life. The way of life was thus as important as (or even more important than) the doctrinal apparatus that supported it or justified it. As Pierre Hadot puts it, [O]ne was a philosopher not because of the originality or abundance of the philosophical discourse which one conceived or developed, but as a function of the way one lived (…); and discourse was philosophical only if it was transformed into a way of life. (Hadot 2004, 172–173) Among the many philosophical ways of life in antiquity, Cynicism stands out as a particularly interesting and enigmatic case. The Cynics took the philosophical life to the extreme by reducing discourse and theoretical speculation to a minimum and openly, provocatively, and shamelessly exposing the truth through their own lives. By rejecting all social conventions, such as cleanliness, good manners, and politeness, Cynicism contrasted not only with common lifestyles but also with less radical philosophical ways of life. Diogenes the Cynic was described in antiquity as “a Socrates gone mad,” and Foucault characterizes the school both as a *  This work was funded by national funds through the FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.), under the Norma Transitória DL 57/2016/CP1453/CT0042 and the Exploratory Project 2022.02833.PTDC.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-4

“A Broken Mirror”  43 “repulsive caricature” and a “broken mirror” of philosophy in antiquity that simultaneously attracted and repelled other philosophers. This chapter will focus on Cynicism precisely as a caricature of ancient philosophy. After outlining the main characteristics of the Cynic way of life and exploring the meaning of Plato’s description of Diogenes as a “Socrates gone mad” (Section 3.2), I will rely on Foucault’s analysis of Cynicism in his final lecture course, The Courage of Truth, to clarify (i) why he viewed the Cynics as constituting a particularly extreme form of philosophical parrhesia and the practice of true discourse (Section 3.3) and (ii) how their actualization of the true life eventually corresponded to a scandalous manifestation of the truth, resulting in an ambiguous relation to other philosophical schools of the same period (Section 3.4). Section 3.5 concludes with a clarification of Cynicism as a “broken mirror” that simultaneously reflected and distorted the image of ancient philosophy while at the same time amplifying its most fundamental traits. By discussing the Cynics in the broad context of Hellenistic philosophy and analyzing their radicalization of the main characteristics of the philosophical life, I aim to shed light not only on a particular philosophical school but also, more broadly, on the peculiar and unique relationship between truth, practice, and life that characterized ancient thought. 3.2 Cynicism and Diogenes as a “Socrates Gone Mad” In the history of Western philosophy, Cynicism is mostly known for its extremely eccentric, unconventional, shocking, and sometimes even offensive lifestyle. The Cynic was typically someone who had no home and took shelter wherever he could, who had no profession and begged in the streets, who had no belongings except for what he could carry in a knapsack, and who had no aspirations besides satisfying his most basic needs, which he met in the most direct and simple way possible, often in public and under the gaze of others. Diogenes, the most famous of the ancient Cynics, is said to have lived in a barrel, eaten what he could grab in the streets, and masturbated in public (see Laertius 1925, 71). The Cynic was thus literally one who lived like a dog (Kuōn) or led a doglike (kunikos) life—a characterization that the Cynics themselves accepted and welcomed.1 Unlike most ancient philosophical schools, and despite their endurance and influence in Greco-Roman culture, the Cynics didn’t leave any written work, and their theoretical framework has essentially been extrapolated from a set of anecdotes and sayings preserved in ancient doxographies, such as the Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius. Significantly, the author dedicates Book VI of this work to ancient Cynicism but devotes only a few lines to the doctrines of the Cynics (Laertius 1925, 109).2 This “fairly rudimentary theoretical framework” (Foucault 2012, 165), together with

44  Marta Faustino their provocative and shocking way of life, prevented the Cynics from gaining consistent philosophical recognition even from their peers, remaining largely discredited or neglected in most accounts of the history of Western thought. Indeed, at the end of the book dedicated to the ancient Cynics, right before presenting “the doctrines which they held in common,” Diogenes Laertius doubts whether Cynicism is “really a philosophy, and not, as some maintain, just a way of life” (Laertius 1925, 107). In the same vein, John Cooper, a contemporary scholar of ancient philosophy, excludes Cynicism from the set of philosophical ways of life in antiquity and even from the history of philosophy, for in his eyes “the cynic way of life was a popular offshoot of philosophy, not a philosophy of its own, i.e. a life based on sustained philosophical analysis and argument” (Cooper 2012, 62 ft.56).3 According to Cooper, the lack of connection between the Cynic life and the school’s philosophical views, doctrines, and arguments—or the absence of doctrines and arguments in support of this particular way of life—radically distinguishes Cynicism from the philosophies that emerged under the influence of Socrates, such that it is “not properly to be counted an instance of philosophy as a way of life at all” (Cooper 2012, 61). And yet, Cynicism explicitly presented itself (and was generally recognized) as an heir of the Socratic tradition—evidently not because the Cynics defended similar doctrines or engaged in similar methods of philosophical analysis and discussion, but because, just like Socrates, they were committed to a philosophical way of life and to the practice of what they held true, both in their own lives and in their interaction with others.4 Its founder, Antisthenes, was a student of Socrates and is said to have advised his own disciples to likewise become fellow pupils of Socrates (Laertius 1925, 5). According to Diogenes Laertius, “from Socrates he learned his hardihood, emulating his disregard of feeling, and thus he inaugurated the Cynic way of life” (Laertius 1925, 5). When asked to describe what kind of man he considered Diogenes to be, Plato is famously said to have replied “A Socrates gone mad” (Laertius 1925, 55), and indeed there are evident similarities between the figure of Socrates and the figure of Diogenes as they have been delivered to us by the doxographic and philosophical tradition. First, despite the eccentricity and “shamelessness” of the Cynic way of life,5 it is Socrates’ simple, frugal, and ascetic lifestyle that the Cynics took as a model and elevated to its extreme form. Even though our portraits of Socrates are all second-hand, he is generally depicted as being barefoot, long-haired, and unwashed, wearing the same clothes day and night and usually carrying a stick. He was completely indifferent to external goods and had an uncanny capacity to endure hardship, such as lack of food and cold weather (see e.g. Plato 1999, 219e–220b). Similarly, Diogenes’ extremely frugal and shocking lifestyle was not pure eccentricity or madness but a radicalization of what Pierre Hadot called “the reversal of

“A Broken Mirror”  45 values brought about by Socratic consciousness”—that is, an exclusive dedication to one’s soul and the understanding that “what is essential is not to be found in appearance, dress, comfort, but in freedom” (Hadot 1995, 161). As Socrates and the schools of the Socratic tradition realized— but perhaps only the Cynics put into practice in absolute terms—freedom is something that one can only attain when one is self-sufficient—that is, when one no longer depends on others or on external goods and circumstances. Freedom thus requires reducing one’s desires to a minimum and training one’s capacity to endure their frustration, eliminating all wants that arise from convention (wealth, fame, power, glory, honor, etc.) and restricting oneself to the natural and most basic human bodily needs, which are easily accessible and attainable by one’s own efforts. As Hard puts it, the Cynics radicalized, “taking it to the utmost extreme,” the Socratic idea that “one can be rich by being satisfied with little, and so achieve a measure of invulnerability to fortune” (Hard 2012, vii).6 Indeed, restricting oneself to the satisfaction of one’s natural needs in the simplest and easiest way possible and voluntarily embracing hardship as a way to train endurance is, for the Cynics—the “champions of askesis” (Hadot 1995, 103; see Laertius 1925, 25–27)—the key to attaining absolute freedom, invulnerability, and self-sufficiency, the highest good and condition of the possibility of a truly flourishing human life. Second, both the Cynics and Socrates privileged oral communication over written works and, in contrast to most ancient philosophers, did not write a single word of their own. Indeed, just like Socrates, the Cynics took philosophy to the streets, and their aim was likewise to challenge people’s wrong beliefs and to lead them to a truly good and fully human life. The similarity between the two in this regard is strong, even if, unlike Socrates, the Cynics relied on wit and their ability to shock rather than thorough questioning and rational argumentation (see e.g., Laertius 1925, 29; Hard 2012, viii). Pierre Hadot describes the Cynics as “overseers” and “spies” of human affairs who took it upon themselves “to supervise the actions” of their fellow men, “surveying their behavior from the heights of a watchtower” and “lying in wait for their mistakes, so as to denounce them” (Hadot 1995, 247). Just like Socrates, the Cynics never ceased denouncing mankind’s illusions and delusions, calling upon them to renounce superfluous desires and social conventions and urging them to “return to a simple, purely natural way of life” (Hadot 1995, 247).7 Thus, even though they relied on different means than Socrates, the Cynics were also certainly gadflies for their fellow citizens. In the absence of reasoned arguments and proofs, Diogenes’ obscene and shocking behavior was itself a way of conveying the natural and proper human way of life and of showing his contempt for social conventions and norms. Finally, Socrates is widely known for having thoroughly questioned traditionally accepted values and for having challenged deeply rooted

46  Marta Faustino conventional habits, customs, and beliefs. The truly flourishing human life is necessarily a life led against convention and ordinary social values. The schools that followed the Socratic tradition developed this precept and tried to replace false social judgments with values that enabled human beings to flourish and fulfill their true nature. The “life in accordance with nature,” as opposed to the life according to human social conventions and values, became a common description of the good and flourishing human life, especially among the Stoics. The Cynics, again, radicalized this precept and took it to the ultimate extreme by rejecting any form of social convention and showing what a life in accordance with nature really looks like when put into practice. The fact that things like eating, sleeping, urinating, defecating, and masturbating appear shocking, repulsive, or offensive when done in public clearly shows the extent to which the civilized life differs from the natural life and is thus not worthy of respect (see e.g., Laertius 1925, 71). On this basis, the Cynics despised and rejected ordinary civilized life and set out to “restamp the currency,” reversing all possible social conventions, values, and norms and adopting only those which were truly in accordance with nature, at its most basic level. Those who fail to lead a truly natural—and hence truly flourishing—human life, the Cynics believed, are not real individuals and remain slavish and anonymous members of the crowd, deserving nothing but contempt (see e.g., Laertius 1925, 35, 43, 41, 60; Hard 2012, ix–xiv). In this context as well, Diogenes seems to be “an exaggeration of a trait the germ of which can be found in Socrates” (Geuss 2001, 31), in this case the “educative mission” (Hadot 2004, 212) of denouncing false conventional value judgments and bringing about true and flourishing individuals.8 These are some of the grounds on which Diogenes was referred to not only as “the Dog” (Aristotle 2004, 1411a24–25; Hard 2012, 44) but also as a “Socrates gone mad” (see Laertius 1925, 55). As the expression indicates, Cynicism was clearly acknowledged as an heir of the Socratic tradition, even if they did not engage in theoretical discussion and the particular features of the Cynic way of life appeared like the reversal of the Socratic model. Yet there is another peculiar feature of Cynicism that, while equally attesting to its roots in the Socratic tradition, definitively sets it apart—in a rather shocking way—from all of its predecessors. This feature, which was emphasized by Michel Foucault in the last stage of his thought, is the connection between way of life and truth in the form of parrhesia, which according to Foucault was not only fundamental for the Cynics but the very core of their philosophical practice.9 Even though this connection is common to most Hellenistic schools, the Cynics’ commitment to the truth and the true way of living was pushed to such extremes that it became intolerable even to other philosophers with the same aspirations. Given our aims in this chapter, this topic deserves special attention, and it is to it that we shall now turn.

“A Broken Mirror”  47 3.3 Foucault on Cynicism, Parrhesia, and the Practice of True Discourse Foucault’s most detailed treatment of Cynicism is found in The Courage of Truth (1983–1984), his final lecture course at the Collège de France. The whole course is dedicated to the notion of parrhesia (translated into English as free speech or free-spokenness), which, according to Foucault, is a modality of truth-telling characterized by a series of distinguishing marks. Etymologically, the notion derives from pan (“everything”) and rhema (“that which is said”); the verb parrhesiazesthai thus means “telling all.” Accordingly, the one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is “the person who says everything” (Foucault 2012, 9), not hiding or concealing anything but rather exposing one’s thoughts with absolute honesty and frankness. Even though there is also a pejorative sense of parrhesia (which involves saying everything one has in mind without any particular reference to the principles of rationality and truth), Foucault’s focus is the positive sense of the term, which presupposes a strong commitment to the truth and to telling it to the other without concealing anything, holding back, or using rhetorical tricks to encode, veil, or hide what one thinks. In contrast to the rhetorician, “the parrhesiastes acts on other people’s minds by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes” (­Foucault 2001, 12; see also Foucault 2012, 10). In addition to this fundamental commitment to the truth, two supplementary conditions are required for a discourse to qualify as parrhesiastic in the positive sense of the term. First, the truth that is exposed must correspond to the personal opinion of the speaker and be presented as such; that is, in order to be a parrhesiastes, the speaker must personally bind herself to what she says.10 Second, not only must she say what she thinks and bind herself to what she says, but she also incurs a certain kind of risk: parrhesia always puts the speaker at risk and thus constitutes an act of courage. This risk is related to the relationship between the truth-teller and the person to whom this truth is addressed: “for there to be parrhēsia, in speaking the truth one must open up, establish, and confront the risk of offending the other person, of irritating him, of making him angry and provoking him to conduct which may be extremely violent” (Foucault 2012, 11). The risk involved ranges from destroying the relationship with the interlocutor that ultimately makes the parrhesiastic game possible to being exposed to torture or even death. In fact, if the parrhesiastic game is to be possible, the one who listens to the truth must be willing to accept what she is being told—but this pact cannot be guaranteed. As Foucault explains later in the same lecture course, even if the interlocutor’s reaction is ultimately calm and accepting, the possibility of a hostile reaction—and the speaker’s corresponding courage in facing that possible reaction—is a structural element of the parrhesiastic game (see Foucault 2012, 25).

48  Marta Faustino Thus, the crucial point in Foucault’s characterization of parrhesia is that it implies risk and therefore courage on the part of the speaker: the parrhesiastes is someone who is courageous enough to put himself at risk for the sake of truth, this being what chiefly distinguishes parrhesia from other forms of veridiction.11 Moreover, because in a parrhesiastic game it is one’s own life that is exposed, it necessarily implies a certain relationship to oneself and a certain way of life, or more precisely a “way of being which is akin to a virtue, a mode of action” (Foucault 2012, 14). More concretely, “when you accept the parrhesiastic game (…) you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken” (Foucault 2001, 17). According to Foucault, telling the truth about oneself—and specifically parrhesia—is a fundamental principle and precept of all ancient morality, deeply rooted in Greek and Roman culture and amply attested in all major philosophical schools in antiquity, at least from Socrates onward. Furthermore, Foucault identifies a development of philosophical truth-telling that will increasingly tend to be related to, articulated with, and relevant for “what the Greeks called ēthos” (Foucault 2012, 25, 28). Shifting their attention from external objects to one’s self, philosophers from the Hellenistic period were still concerned with “telling the truth of things, but above all [with] telling their truth to men” (Foucault 2012, 28).12 Thus, on Foucault’s understanding, the Hellenistic schools contributed in a decisive way to constituting Western philosophy, at least for part of its history, as “a form of practice of true discourse” (Foucault 2012, 33). Among the different configurations of this practice of true discourse, Foucault places special emphasis on the specific mode of truth-telling that aims to shape or give form to one’s bios—that is, one’s form of life or existence.13 In this mode of truth-telling, which appears for the first time in Plato’s Laches, “what has to be accounted for, and the very objective of this activity of accounting, is how one lives and has lived” (Foucault 2012, 160). Thus, in this form of veridiction it is one’s life and way of living that is examined, put to the test, and ultimately transformed through the kind of true discourse that is conveyed by parrhesia. The risk and danger involved is that of “telling men what courage they need and what it will cost them to give a certain style to their life” (Foucault 2012, 161). The courage at stake is thus no longer simply that of telling the truth in the face of some danger but, ultimately, that of leading a true life and exposing it to the gaze of others. This form of parrhesia thus inaugurates a particular relation between the traditional Greek concern with giving form to a ­beautiful and memorable existence—what Foucault often calls the “aesthetics of existence”—and the practice of courageous truth-telling, or, in Foucault’s words, “between the art of existence and true discourse, between the beautiful existence and the true life, life in truth, life for the truth” (Foucault 2012, 163).

“A Broken Mirror”  49 It is within this general framework of Foucault’s analysis that Cynicism emerges not only as a particularly relevant example of both the true life and the aesthetics of existence but as a radicalization of the two precepts to the point of “intolerable insolence”: [I]n Cynicism, in Cynic practice, the requirement of an extremely distinctive form of life—with very characteristic, well-defined rules, conditions or modes—is strongly connected to the principle of truth-telling, of truth-telling without shame or fear, of unrestricted and courageous truth-telling, of truth-telling which pushes its courage and boldness to the point that it becomes intolerable insolence. (Foucault 2012, 165) Cynicism is a movement that deserves Foucault’s special attention in the context of his analysis of parrhesia precisely because, contrary to most other instances of philosophical parrhesia—where the associated way of life was “merely an embellishment,” something secondary or added to the philosophical system of each school, fulfilling a merely homophonic function—in the case of Cynicism the way of life is “absolutely at one” with its philosophy (see Foucault 2012, 170). As such, Cynicism is a form of parrhesia, “which finds its instrument, its site, its point of emergence in the very life of the person who must thus manifest or speak the truth in the form of a manifestation of truth” (Foucault 2012, 217). In other words, rather than simply corresponding harmoniously to the Cynic doctrine and discourse, the Cynic way of life, the Cynic bios, was itself an alethurgy— that is, a manifestation of truth. Indeed, by reducing life to its most elementary and rudimentary form, by showing life in its absolute nakedness, freedom, and independence, stripped of all that is not necessary for its natural maintenance, the Cynics expose, manifest, and reveal life as it truly is—and hence, they claim, as it should be. For this reason, and according to Foucault’s interpretation, the Cynic emerges as “a manifestation of a scandalous break by which the truth becomes clear, manifests itself, and becomes concrete” (Foucault 2012, 188). 3.4 Cynicism and the Scandal of the Truth As we have just seen, what is peculiar to Cynicism and in the Cynic way of life, for Foucault, is the reduction of life to itself, or to “what it is in truth,” which, in turn, is revealed by “the very act of leading the Cynic life” (­Foucault 2012, 171). In other words, through his own mode of life, the Cynic shows what the true life is, or what life is in truth, for “the truth takes shape in his own life, as it were, in his own existence, his own body” (Foucault 2012, 173). In this way, Cynicism makes “the form of existence

50  Marta Faustino a way of making truth itself visible in one’s acts, one’s body, the way one dresses, and in the way one conducts oneself and lives” (Foucault 2012, 172). It is in this sense that Foucault sees in Cynicism an alethurgy, an act of truth or a manifestation of truth, describing the Cynic as a martyr and living witness to the truth, and as a practitioner of what he calls “the scandal of the truth in and through one’s life” (Foucault 2012, 173). Before we try to understand why the Cynic way of life represents a “scandal”—and indeed “the scandal of the truth”—for Foucault, it is important to clarify the meaning of “the true life as life of truth” in ancient philosophy, a topic that Foucault discusses at length in the lecture course that concerns us here. Traditionally, and at least since Plato, the true life (alēthēs bios) is a life that is (i) unconcealed (in the sense that no part of it is hidden and everything in it is “given to view in its entirety” and to the sight of all), (ii) unalloyed (“it is not mixed with something other than itself”; it is not variegated; it is completely unified and identical to itself); (iii) straight (in accordance with rectitude and “what is right,” in line with “the principles, the rules, the nomos”), and (iv) unchangeable, immutable, and incorruptible, shunning disturbance and remaining “without change in the identity of its being,” which ensures its independence, perfect mastery, and complete happiness (see Foucault 2012, 218–219, 221–225). Cynicism is, again, particularly interesting in this context because, despite appearances to the contrary, the Cynics did not break with this important theme in the Western philosophical and spiritual tradition, but rather radicalized it and took it to the extreme, “taking it back as close as possible to its traditional meaning” (Foucault 2012, 227). What they revealed in the process, however, was a life that was precisely “the very opposite of what was traditionally recognized as the true life,” thus producing a “sort of carnivalesque continuity of the theme” and emerging as “the grimace of the true life” (Foucault 2012, 227–228). To make this insight clearer, Foucault briefly analyzes how each of the characteristics of the alēthēs bios is incorporated, radicalized, and reversed in the kunikos bios, the Cynic way of life. First, the Cynics certainly adhered to the ideal of a purely unconcealed, unhidden, and visible life. However, for the Platonic tradition, the true life was an unconcealed life because it contained nothing of which to be ashamed: it contained no dishonest or reprehensible actions, and thus there was nothing to hide from others, whether other people, the gods, or an internal surveying gaze (­Foucault 2012, 251–252). The Cynics dramatized and manifested this precept in the most simple, direct, and literal way possible by exposing life “in its material and everyday reality under the real gaze of others,” rejecting the idea of privacy and adopting the principle of absolute visibility. As such, the life of the Cynic is unconcealed “in the sense that it is really, materially, physically public” (Foucault 2012, 253). Even though this life

“A Broken Mirror”  51 appears scandalous, shameless, and unacceptable, even to other philosophers, the Cynic rejects the idea that there is something shameful or reprehensible about this way of living (and hence something that needs to be hidden), for the aim is to lead a purely natural way of life, and there can be nothing evil or reproachable in nature. For the Cynics, it is the interference of human habits, opinions, and conventions that makes certain natural acts appear shameful and reproachable, while it is the duty of the philosopher to denounce convention and to lead individuals to a life in accordance with nature (see Foucault 2012, 253–255). The scandal produced by the Cynic way of living, “the most truly faithful to the principle of non-concealment,” actually shows that despite their commitment to the unconcealed life and the life in accordance with nature, most philosophical schools in antiquity still remained captive to (at least some) human conventions and social norms. Second, the principle of the unalloyed life—as a life that is pure, identical to itself, and without mixture or otherness, a life independent of all external goods and bonds and invulnerable to unpredictable circumstances and events—takes the form, in Cynicism, of the indifferent life (adiaphoros bios). The idea of the indifferent life, as well as its opposition to a life of wealth, comfort, and luxury, is again a recurring theme in the ancient philosophical tradition. However, in Cynicism, we find “what could be called a material, physical, bodily dramatization of the principle of life without mixture or dependence,” one that involves not only a negative appreciation of wealth and the cultivation of indifference to it but the voluntary choice of a life of absolute, active, and indefinite poverty and destitution (see Foucault 2012, 256–257). The Cynic deprives herself of what is generally considered to be the most basic of conditions, reducing clothes, food, and shelter to the threshold of survival. Poverty for the Cynic is not a mere possibility for which one must be prepared or a temporary training but a real, active, and unlimited form of deprivation, an exercise one performs upon oneself “in order to obtain positive results of courage, resistance, and endurance” and which one pursues without limit, ever seeking further dispossession of what is superfluous: “it is a restless, dissatisfied poverty which strives to get back to the ground of the absolutely indispensable” (Foucault 2012, 258). In the eyes of their peers, however, the Cynics’ radicalization of the unalloyed and self-sufficient life, as well as their positive valuation of its corresponding ugliness, dirtiness, and destitution, leads, paradoxically, to the opposite of joyous self-sufficiency; as Foucault concludes, “the radical application of this principle leads to its reversal: the Cynic’s life of scandalous, unbearable, ugly, dependent and humiliated poverty” (Foucault 2012, 259). Third, also the Cynics believed they were living a straight life, a life according to a certain logos and a certain law. As Foucault points out,

52  Marta Faustino however, there has always been a tension in the notion of the true life as a straight life in ancient philosophy insofar as it implies a life led both according to the law of nature and in conformity with basic social and conventional laws, customs, and norms (see Foucault 2012, 262). The Cynics, once again, radicalized this principle and in so doing resolved this tension by rejecting all social conventions, obeying only the law of nature. The Cynic version of the straight life thus implies that “no convention, no human prescription may be accepted in the Cynic life if it does not conform exactly to what is found in nature, and in nature alone” (Foucault 2012, 263), a principle that goes so far as to overcome major ancestral cultural taboos, such as cannibalism and incest. The Cynic radicalization of the straight life thus ends up ascribing a positive value to animality and making the animal life a model to be followed (see e.g., Laertius 1925, 25)14—something which, once again, is completely and scandalously at odds with ancient thought and its traditional definition of the human being (as a rational being) in contrast to the animals. While for the Cynics animality constituted “a reduced but prescriptive form of life,” a duty and a challenge that involved continuous work on oneself (askesis) toward a truly flourishing life, for other philosophers (and for the average ancient), it appeared as a scandalous denial of the values of humanity, dignity, and decency (see Foucault 2012, 265). Finally, the Cynics also endorsed a version of the unchangeable and sovereign life, but their actualization of this principle also led to a reversal of its common meaning and application. On the traditional view, the true life is a sovereign life because it is master of itself and superior to any other form of life, which implies a certain relationship to oneself and to others. This relationship to oneself is generally characterized in terms of self-­ possession and pleasure, while the relationship to others is one of beneficence, care, and spiritual direction, whether directly, to students and friends, or indirectly, to mankind as a whole, through the example that the sage offers to others (see Foucault 2012, 270–273). The Cynics radicalize the idea of the true life as a life of sovereignty and beneficence by affirming, first, that the Cynic is a king and indeed the only true king. Contrary to political kingship, the Cynic needs “absolutely nothing to exercise his sovereignty” (no army, guards, court, allies, etc.) and is, for that reason, absolutely unshakable. In addition, his sovereignty is not inherited or acquired through education but rather received from Zeus and acquired by nature, without paideia. Indeed, he achieves his sovereignty through battle not with external enemies but with the true enemies, his own internal enemies, which he has defeated (the sage has no faults or vices), which is not necessarily the case with political kings. Finally, the Cynic is not exposed to misfortune and, as such, can never lose his sovereignty and will be king indefinitely (see Foucault 2012, 276–278). In presenting himself as a king

“A Broken Mirror”  53 and comparing himself to political monarchs, the Cynic becomes the antiking par excellence, the one who “shows how hollow, illusory, and precarious the monarchy of kings is” (Foucault 2012, 275). At the same time, however, the Cynic, the only true king, is also a hidden, unknown, and unrecognized king: “he is a king of poverty, a king who hides his sovereignty in destitution” and, in so doing, is actually “the king of derision” (Foucault 2012, 278). Second, the Cynic sovereignty also implies a relationship to others in the form of dedication and beneficence, but the way in which the Cynics express dedication and beneficence to others differs markedly from what we find in the other philosophical schools of the same period. The Cynic views his mission as a self-sacrificial, polemic, aggressive, and bellicose battle. His beneficent service to others is thus not limited to giving spiritual help, assistance, or advice, or even to being an example to others, but rather implies an active and aggressive intervention in the lives of other human beings: “he is useful because he battles, because he bites, because he attacks” (Foucault 2012, 279). As in the other schools, the greatest enemies in this battle are human vices, but for the Cynic, these include not only internal vices but also those rooted in social customs, conventions, and norms (see Foucault 2012, 280). Hence, the Cynic struggles with humanity, against humanity, and for the sake of humanity. The reversal at stake in this last feature of the true life is, accordingly, the transformation of the sovereign life as pleasurable and beneficial (for oneself and others) into the “militant life, the life of battle and struggle against and for self, against and for others” (Foucault 2012, 283).15 The Cynic’s main aim is not only to change the lives of particular individuals, directing them toward happiness, but to radically change human ways of living, thus contributing to transforming the world and human life in general. Summing up, Foucault concludes that the Cynic life is “at once the echo, the continuation, and the extension of the true life (that unconcealed, independent, straight, sovereign life), but also taking it to the point of its extreme consequence and reversal” (Foucault 2012, 243). Furthermore, the Cynics’ practice and dramatization of the true life and their radicalization of its main features leads to what Foucault calls “a scandalous manifestation of the other life” (Foucault 2012, 269; see also 244–245, 314), that is, a life that is absolutely other when compared not only with the common life of ordinary people but even with the life of the philosopher, itself already marked by strangeness in the eyes of non-philosophers. In Foucault’s words: The Cynic is someone who, taking up the traditional themes of the true life in ancient philosophy, transposes them and turns them round into the demand and assertion of the need for an other life. And then, through the image and figure of the king of poverty, he transposes anew

54  Marta Faustino the idea of an other life into the theme of a life whose otherness must lead to the change of the world. An other life for an other world. (Foucault 2012, 287) This transformation of the true life into an other life as a means of bringing forth an other world is, for Foucault, simultaneously “the source and heart of the Cynic scandal” (Foucault 2012, 269) and the greatest singularity, achievement, and legacy of Cynicism in the history of Western culture.16 3.5 Conclusion: The “Broken Mirror” As Pierre Hadot beautifully illuminated, the philosopher has always been atopos—that is, a “strange, extravagant, absurd, unclassifiable, disturbing” (Hadot 2004, 30) and unsettling creature, whose lifestyle and way of thinking have always been at odds with those of the common person. Everyday life—including the behavior, actions, desires, and priorities of ordinary people—seems abnormal, irrational, and absurd to him. And yet, the philosopher must nevertheless live “in this world, in which he feels himself a stranger and in which others perceive him to be one as well” (Hadot 1995, 58). In this sense, there has always been a conflict between the philosopher’s highly uncommon way of seeing things and behaving and the conventional vision shared by most human beings living together in society: “a conflict between the life one should live and the customs and conventions of daily life” (Hadot 1995, 58). This conflict can never be completely resolved, but its intensity largely depends on the extent to which the philosopher or school in question accepts and can adapt to social conventions and norms. While other Hellenistic schools accepted at least some human conventions and lived according to them, the Cynics opted for a complete and radical break by rejecting all social conventions and taking as their sole rule of behavior the law of nature. As such, the Cynics remain unique in the history of ancient philosophy, strange and disturbing not only to non-philosophers but even to their peers (see Hadot 2004, 108). This strangeness is all the more interesting given that, at least from a certain point of view (and as we have seen), Cynicism is the strictest and most austere of all ancient philosophical schools, perhaps the only one to take each of the features of the philosophical life (or the true life) literally and to its extreme. The curious fact that Foucault brings to light is thus that, simply by endorsing the standard themes and principles of the ­philosophical way of life in antiquity and taking them to the extreme, Cynicism stands as a caricature or grimace of ancient philosophy, as a “broken mirror” that simultaneously reflects and distorts the image of ancient ­philosophy—one in which “philosophy is at once called upon to see itself

“A Broken Mirror”  55 and fails to recognize itself” (Foucault 2012, 270), thus simultaneously attracting and repelling other philosophers. For Foucault, Cynicism (…) is the broken mirror in which every philosopher can and must recognize himself, in which he can and must recognize the very image of philosophy, the reflection of what it is and should be, and of what he is and would like to be. And at the same time, the philosopher sees in this mirror something like a grimace, a violent, ugly, unsightly deformation in which there is no way in which he could recognize either himself or philosophy. (Foucault 2012, 232) This paradox, tension, and ambiguity are at the heart of Cynicism and constitute its peculiarity in the history of ancient thought. It is also the basis of Cynic parrhesia: in the case of the Cynics, the courage of truth consists precisely in radically embodying and exposing the principles that philosophers claim to endorse, “facing up to their anger when presenting them with the image of what they accept” but ultimately “condemn, reject, despise”—and, besides this, maintaining their version of the true life in the face of general rejection and disapproval. Hence, in Cynicism, one risks one’s life, Foucault concludes, “not just by telling the truth, and in order to tell it, but by the very way in which one lives” (Foucault 2012, 234). At the same time, even though in this picture of Cynicism as a grimace and broken mirror of ancient philosophy it is mostly shock, scandal, and resistance from other philosophers that comes to the fore, both Hadot and Foucault also stress the admiration and enigmatic fascination with which Cynicism was often met, which to a certain extent justifies its long permanence in Greco-Roman culture.17 Indeed, as a caricature of ancient (and especially Hellenistic) philosophy, Cynicism also functions as a magnifying glass for some of its most important traits, and in so doing, it emerges as “the universal core of philosophy” (Foucault 2012, 201)—or at least the core of ancient philosophy.18 Besides pushing to the limit the main characteristics of the good or flourishing life according to most schools of the Socratic tradition (a life that involves care of self and others; that conforms to the principles one holds true; that is in accordance with human nature; that involves work on oneself in the form of askēsis; that is self-sufficient, independent of external goods, and invulnerable to fortune; and that produces happiness and tranquility of mind), the Cynics highlight a trait that is a central topic of both Hadot’s and Foucault’s accounts of ancient philosophy—namely, the prevalence of practice over theory and the relationship between truth and life in ancient thought—a trait which the Cynics also present in an exaggerated and hence magnified form.

56  Marta Faustino Indeed, the Cynics never founded a school (in the strict sense of a scholastic organization) and neglected altogether the doctrinal side of their philosophy, expressing contempt and often mocking the speculative efforts of their contemporaries. Concerned more with the embodiment and exposition of truth in their way of life than with its abstract elucidation, the Cynics “did not argue and gave no instruction,” for, as Hadot explains, “it was their very life that bore meaning within itself and implied an entire doctrine” (Hadot 2004, 102; see also Dobbin 2012, xv–xvi). Furthermore, as Foucault elucidates, for the Cynics the function of philosophical teaching was not to “pass on knowledge” but to give “intellectual and moral training to the individuals one formed” so as to prepare them and arm them for life (Foucault 2012, 294), a goal that was indeed shared by several other schools of the same period.19 As such, they dismissed wisdom in the sense of erudition but were respected as wise men by some, being particularly influential to the Stoics, who regarded Cynicism as “a shortcut to virtue” (Laertius 1925, 227).20 The fact that they “developed no doctrines and taught nothing” did not prevent them from being regarded as philosophers, for, as Hadot insistently repeats, the ancients’ philosophy was essentially a way of life (see Hadot 2009, 99; 1995, 265). Despite the thinness of their theoretical framework, the Cynics fully realized what Hellenistic schools and their therapeutic philosophies generally recommended: “a life free of conventions, in accordance with pure nature, and completely indifferent to what other people considered desirable or undesirable, good or bad—a life which led to perfect inner peace and lack of worries” (Hadot 2004, 96). Although many of its practices were condemned, rejected, and despised by other philosophical schools, Cynicism was still respected and admired as a certain “attitude and way of being” (Foucault 2012, 178), which explains its “little importance in the history of doctrines” but its crucial importance “in the history of arts of living and the history of philosophy as a mode of life” (Foucault 2012, 315ft.*). Even though they lacked a theoretical system and rejected the rational analysis and argumentation that has traditionally characterized philosophy, they impressed and remain impressive for their capacity for self-control, independence, impassiveness, and endurance, but above all for the audacity and bravery with which they lived and practiced what they considered the truth, the true life, the life of truth. Notes 1 For a good elucidation of Cynicism as a bios kunikos, see Dudley (1937, 5–6); see also Foucault (2012, 243). On Cynicism and the Cynic way of life, see ­especially Dudley (1937); Navia (1996); Desmond (2008); Hard (2012); ­Dobbin (2012); Redmond (2016); Schutijser (2017).

“A Broken Mirror”  57 2 According to Diogenes Laertius, the Cynics completely abandoned the traditional disciplines of Logic and Physics and had no interest in “ordinary subjects of instruction,” devoting their “whole attention to Ethics” (Laertius 1925, 107). 3 Significantly, Martha Nussbaum (1994) also excludes Cynicism from her Therapy of Desire, focusing exclusively on Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism. Nussbaum describes the Cynics as “practitioners of a quasi-philosophical form of life” and justifies, “with some regret,” the omission of Cynicism in her book by citing a lack of sufficient information “about them and their influence, and even about whether they offered arguments at all” (Nussbaum 1994, 8). 4 This is consistent with Hadot’s interpretation of ancient philosophy, according to which one was a philosopher not on the basis of the theories one defended, but “as a function of the way one lived” (Hadot 2004, 173). Ultimately, then, whether or not one includes Cynicism in the “Socratic tradition” and considers it “a philosophy of its own” largely depends on what one takes philosophy to be. On Cynicism and the Socratic tradition, see Hard (2012, x–xvi) and Brancacci (2000). 5 On the “shamelessness” of the Cynics, see Geuss (2001, ch. 2). 6 Indeed, for the Cynics, Socrates did not completely fulfill his idea of frugality and self-sufficiency and was still in some way luxurious and dependent on external goods. See Aelian Varia Historia IV.11, in Redmond (2016, 8): “Diogenes said that Socrates himself was luxurious: for he was too curious in his little House, and in his little Bed, and in the Sandals which he used to wear.” 7 Cf. Epictetus’ explicit comparison of Socrates and the Cynics in this regard: “He [the Cynic] should be prepared, if necessary, to mount the podium and, like Socrates, say, ‘Where are you going, poor souls, and what are you doing? You drift about as if you were blind, you forsake the right road for a cul-de-sac. You look for peace and happiness in the wrong places; and are suspicious of anyone who tries to point you in the right direction” (Disc. 3.22, in Dobbin 2012, 164–165). 8 Both philosophers were in fact obeying the mission which had been assigned to them by the god of Delphi (see Hadot 2004, 111 and Foucault 2012, 226–227). 9 As Foucault emphasizes, parrhesia is a feature that is frequently ascribed to Cynicism in most ancient sources. Indeed, in a significant anecdote reported by Diogenes Laertius, to which Foucault refers, Diogenes is said to have claimed that “the most beautiful in men” is precisely parrhesia (see Laertius 1925, 71; Foucault 2012, 166). 10 This is why parrhesia, on Foucault’s understanding, is fundamentally distinguished from (in fact opposed to) rhetoric. While parrhesia implies a bond between the speaker and what she says, in rhetoric this bond isn’t necessarily present: “Rhetoric is an art, a technique, a set of processes which enable the person speaking to say something which may not be what he thinks at all, but whose effect will be to produce convictions, induce certain conducts, or instill certain beliefs in the person [to whom he speaks]” (Foucault 2012, 13). For a discussion of the relation between parrhesia and rhetoric in the final stage of Foucault’s thought, see Lorenzini (forthcoming). 11 Foucault distinguishes parrhesia from other three modalities of veridiction or truth-telling in antiquity (even if they often appear combined with each other): prophecy, wisdom and the art (tekhnē) of teaching. Parrhesia is distinguished, among other things, by its strong relation to ēthos (Foucault 2012, 15–19, 23ff.).

58  Marta Faustino 12 In a previous course, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault described the Hellenistic period as the “golden age” of the care of the self (Foucault 2005, 30, 81), the great cultural precept with which the ethical practice of parrhesia is affiliated (Foucault 2012, 158). 13 Foucault considers this one of the two great lines of development of Socratic veridiction in Western philosophy (lines that are not necessarily contradictory and often overlap). The other binds the account of oneself not to bios or a mode of life but to the soul (the psukhē) as a reality that is ontologically distinct from the body, as expressed in Alcibiades. Cf. Foucault (2012, 161): “From this first, fundamental, and common theme of didonai logon (giving an account of oneself), a [first] line will go to the being of the soul (the Alcibiades), and the other to forms of existence (the Laches). One goes towards the metaphysics of the soul (Alcibiades), the other toward a stylistics of existence (the Laches).” On the combination of these two lines of development, see Foucault (2012, 163ff). 14 On the Cynic reduction of bios to zoe and its importance to Foucault, see especially Lemm (2014). 15 See Foucault’s defense of the notion of “militancy” or the “militant life” in Cynicism, despite the anachronism of these terms, in Foucault (2012, 283ff). 16 Cynicism, according to Foucault, had a strong influence on the development of Christianity and has been recovered in several contemporary movements, especially revolutionary movements and art (see Foucault 2012, 184–189, 285– 287, 316ff.). The permanence of Cynicism as “an historical category which, in various forms and with diverse objectives, runs through the whole of Western history” justifies his identification of a “trans-historical Cynicism” (Foucault 2012, 174). On the legacy, contemporary relevance, and revivals of Cynicism, see e.g. Bewes (1997); Mazella (2007); Desmond (2008, 209–236); Mosciatti (2019); Vieira (2022, 55–110). 17 According to Foucault, “established, institutional, and recognized philosophy always had an ambiguous attitude towards Cynicism, trying to distinguish between a set of practices which were despised, condemned, and severely criticized, and then, on the other hand, something which was like the core of Cynicism, and which was worth saving” (Foucault 2012, 178). In fact, “[t]here is practically no criticism of the Cynics which is not accompanied by an explicitly favorable judgment of true Cynicism (…)” (Foucault 2012, 198). 18 It is in this sense that Hadot considers Cynicism “a highly revelatory example [of the exact nature of philosophy in the ancient world], since it represents a limit case” (Hadot 2004, 109). 19 According to Hadot, all of ancient philosophy “aimed to form rather than to inform” (Hadot 2009, 55). 20 See Epictetus’ discourse on Cynicism (Disc. 3.22, in Dobbin 2012, 162–173). For an interesting reading of and commentary on this discourse, see Foucault (2012, 291–305). On the idea of Cynicism as a “shortcut to virtue,” see Foucault (2012, 206–208).

References Aristotle. 2004. Rhetoric. Translated by W. Rhys Roberts. Mineola, New York: Dover. Bewes, Timothy. 1997. Cynicism and Postmodernity. London/New York: Verso.

“A Broken Mirror”  59 Brancacci, Aldo. 2000. “Dio, Socrates, and Cynicism.” In Dio Chrysostom. ­Politics, Letters, and Philosophy, edited by Simon Swain, 240–260. New York: Oxford University Press. Cooper, John. 2012. Pursuits of Wisdom. Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Desmond, William. 2008. Cynics. Stocksfield: Acumen. Dobbin, Robert, ed. 2012. The Cynic Philosophers from Diogenes to Julian. ­London: Penguin Books. Dudley, Donald B. 1937. A History of Cynicism. From Diogenes to the 6th Century A.D. London: Methuen & Co. Foucault, Michel. 2001. Fearless Speech. Edited by J. Pearson. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Foucault, Michel. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982. Edited by Fréderic Gros. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador. Foucault, Michel. 2012. The Courage of the Truth (The Government of Self and Others II). Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983–84. Edited by Fréderic Gros. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Picador. Geuss, Raymond. 2001. Public Goods, Private Goods. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Edited by Arnold Davidson. Translated by Michael Chase. Malden/ Oxford/Victoria: Blackwell. Hadot, Pierre. 2004. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Translated by Michael Chase. Cambridge: Belknap. Hadot, Pierre. 2009. The Present Alone is Our Happiness. Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson. Translated by Marc Djaballah. S­ tanford: Stanford University Press. Hard, Robin, ed. 2012. Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes with Other Popular Moralists. Translated by Robin Hard. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Laertius, Diogenes. 1925. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Trans. R. D. Hicks. ­London/Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lemm, Vanessa. 2014. “The Embodiment of Truth and the Politics of Community: Foucault and the Cynics.” In The Government of Life: Foucault, Biopolitics and Neoliberalism, edited by V. Lemm and M. Vatter, 1–13. New York: Fordham University Press. Lorenzini, Daniele. forthcoming. “Foucault on Parrhesia and Rhetoric: A Reassessment.” In Hadot and Foucault on Ancient Philosophy: Critical Assessments, ­edited by Marta Faustino and Hélder Telo. Leiden: Brill. Mazella, David. 2007. The Making of Modern Cynicism. New York: University of Virginia Press. Mosciatti, Roberto. 2019. “Franciscan Cynicism: Bare Life as a Transformative Cosmopolitics.” Journal of Italian Philosophy 2: 42–59. Navia, Luis E. 1996. Classical Cynicism: A Critical Study. Westport/London: Greenwood Press.

60  Marta Faustino Nussbaum, Martha. 1994. The Therapy of Desire. Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Plato. 1999. Symposium. Translated by Christopher Gill. London: Penguin Books. Redmond, Frank, ed. 2016. Diogenes of Sinope – Life and Legend. Handbook of Source Material. Chicago, Illinois: Mênin Web and Print Publishing. Schutijser, Dennis. 2017. “Cynicism as a Way of Life: From the Classical Cynic to a New Cynicism.” Akropolis 1: 33–54. Vieira, Priscila P. 2022. Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth and the Ethics of an Intellectual. New York: Palgrave.

4 Truth and Ideology in Classical China Mohists vs. Zhuangists Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo

4.1 Introduction The Mohists and the Zhuangists agreed that truth is normative (by which I mean action-guiding) and constitutive of our attitudes, dispositions, reasoning, emotions, and actions.1 For both, knowing that something is true is knowing how to bring about a desired outcome with a certain level of certainty by operating in a field of relations. Both texts, the Mozi 墨子 and the Zhuangzi 莊子, argue that we should care for the truth not because it represents or describes reality in a more accurate way than false beliefs and statements, but because it guides our behavior in the most fitting way—in ways that help us thrive by virtue of leading to harmonious, effective, and peaceful social interrelations. As Fraser has noted, in Classical Chinese philosophy, truth isn’t so much a representation of reality as it is a pattern of reliable activity. There’s a shift from are there true beliefs and does this belief represent the world accurately to whether certain patterns of drawing distinctions (knowing) are more effective for our interactions with the world.2 Truth can be defined as a series of embodied beliefs and perspectives that lead to fitting dispositions, emotions, and actions (regardless of whether they accurately describe the world, or whether there are other competing beliefs and perspectives that equally accurately or inaccurately describe the world). Whereas falsity, rather than mistaken representations of reality, are certainties that cause unfitting behavior: dispositions and actions that create ineffective interactions and lead to conflict and harm. We should care about truth not because of a theoretical interest in accurately describing reality but because of its normative power to guide our behavior in the most fitting way. This shared understanding of truth, nevertheless, develops into two radically different sociopolitical and ethical positions. The Mohists wished to take advantage of the causal power of beliefs to implement a government-sanctioned ideology that couldn’t allow for pluralism in values, norms, beliefs, and practices. The Zhuangists, on the other hand, warned

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-5

62  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo us against the dangers of using single-truth discourses to enforce ideological monopolies and engaged in a sophisticated critique of dogmatism. 4.2 Mohist Philosophy: The Power of Ideology The sage, who takes ordering the world as his task, must know what disorder arises from; only then he can put it in order. If he doesn’t know what disorder arises from, he can’t put it in order. To give an analogy, it’s like a doctor treating someone’s disease. He must know what the disease arises from; only then can he treat it.3 (Mozi 14.1; Fraser 2020, 50)

The Mohist project shares with other historical social and political movements a strong idealism toward the power of humans to determine their destiny and create better worlds by eliminating war, violence, abuse, corruption, inequity, injustice, famine, and poverty, all of them common harms in the Warring States period (476–221 BCE), and which the Mohists encapsulate under the umbrella term luan 亂—disorder. Mohist idealism feeds a social justice program to eliminate disorder by identifying its causes, starting from a realistic examination of social structures, institutions, and practices. They promote the institutions that assist in people’s flourishing and strongly oppose those that impede it (such as war, deemed immoral both for its cruelty and the economic deprivation it causes; Mozi 18.2). The Mohists are keenly aware that people need certain socioeconomic conditions in order to thrive, that public social and material conditions shape people’s individual choices as well as the possibilities and outcomes of their actions. The recognition of dependency on sociomaterial conditions addresses the masses’ recalcitrant lack of power over their own lives and their perceived unequal competence with regard to the ruling elite, hence their need to be led in ways that promote their benefit and help them flourish. The Mohists make two interesting observations that become fundamental for their social justice and political projects. The first observation is that beliefs have causal power—namely, that holding certain beliefs affords certain behaviors while preventing others. The paradigmatic example is the belief in the existence of retributive ghosts and spirits, which are said to punish everyone equally, regardless of rank or wealth, when engaging in actions that, directly or by negligence, cause harm. The Mohists observe that, out of fear, those who believe in retributive ghosts tend not to engage in self-interested, vicious, or corrupt behaviors that lead to social disorder and harm, while disbelief in the existence of retributive ghosts frees people from the threat of metaphysical

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  63 retribution, making them more self-indulgent (Mozi 31.1a, 31.6a). Our motivations, dispositions, emotions, and actions follow naturally from our beliefs; as such, what we deem to be true has an enormous practical impact. The second observation is that it’s possible to manipulate people’s beliefs to guarantee desired behaviors and avoid undesirable ones. The Mohists wished to harness this power of manipulation in order to establish a well-functioning, just, and peaceful society.4 Even more, they felt the responsibility to do so: without unified top-down guidance, people will either think for themselves, each one the source of a plurality of conflicting values and beliefs, or be led astray by “false” doctrines promulgated by self-interested individuals.5 Both possibilities are considered unacceptable. A lack of fixed standards on morality and truth leads to a dangerous pluralism, which the Mohists identify as the main cause of disorder (Mozi 11.1).6 Therefore, it’s the ruler’s responsibility to sanction institutionalized norms, values, and beliefs, and to enforce this unitary standard through a system of social emulation and punishments and rewards (Mozi 11.4). For instance, since the belief in retributive ghosts causes what the Mohists deem to be desirable behavior, it’s the sage ruler’s responsibility to sanction the belief in ghosts as truth and the doctrines that doubt or negate their existence as falsity (Mozi 31.6a). This stands even in the event that ghosts and spirits don’t in fact exist. Against a critic who argues that honoring and making offerings to potentially inexistent spirits entails a waste of precious resources, the Mohists contend that it’s not like “pouring the offerings in a sewage ditch and throwing them away,” for the living relatives and the rest of the community partake of the food and wine, which makes for “an enjoyable gathering and builds kinship among the townspeople” (Mozi 31.7a, 7b).7 Regardless of the facticity of spirits, everyone benefits from believing in their existence and power, and acting accordingly, which leads us to an important aspect of the Mohist concept of truth. Given the causal power of our beliefs and the fact that our beliefs can be manipulated (both by self-interested individuals and by sage rulers), truth is more esteemed for its normative value than for its descriptive content. Which isn’t the same as saying that the Mohists make no difference between the descriptive and normative aspects of truth. I take the previous claim on the desirable effects of the belief in the existence of ghosts (whether they exist in actuality or not) as evidence that the Mohists could and did establish this difference. However, they dismissed the representational or descriptive aspect of truth in favor of its normative value.8 Notice that this is a non-essentialist approach to truth particularly compelling for assessing phenomena that can’t be exhaustively comprehended by means of empirical observation, such as the existence of ghosts and fate. Given that evidence regarding these types of phenomena is either insufficient or

64  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo contradictory, truth discourses are approached in a non-representational, relational manner. And one of the most crucial relations is that of effect: what a thing does to others rather than what it is (or isn’t) by itself. In a pragmatic consequentialist vein, the Mohists claim that we must take to be true whatever, upon analysis and regardless of the accuracy of the belief in its description of reality, causes fitting behavior according to a given standard.9 The standard to decide which actions and action-guiding beliefs are desirable originates in the Mohist’s religious belief in Heaven (tian 天) as an anthropomorphized god-figure. Heaven is an infallible and impartial (jian 兼) moral agent who seeks to benefit all of humanity while preventing harm for all—what we’ll refer to as the collective benefit principle (literally, “to benefit each other mutually and impartially”—jian xiang li 兼相 利; Mozi 26–28). As van Norden notes, the Mohists define “benefit” in objective ways: resources to cover basic needs, large population to act as labor force, and social order.10 Heaven gives humans a unified, objective, and universal standard by which to decide what’s right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, and it’s a consequentialist one.11 All beliefs and their corresponding actions must be judged against the amount of collective benefit and harm they produce—not just for ourselves and our inner circle, not even only for our own state, but for all of humanity. Much as impartial Heaven, we humans must “do for others as one would do for oneself” (為彼者由為己; Mozi 16.1b),12 a maxim leading to the elimination of disorder and the creation of a world without war, poverty, and inequities, where everyone can have equal opportunities to flourish. The morality and desirability of a belief are evaluated by its consequences (i.e., the practical result of holding such belief in real life), and against the principle of collective benefit. If believing in retributive ghosts causes a larger amount of collective benefit, this belief must be sanctioned as morally right and desirable; and also true, since truth isn’t primarily a question of facticity. This notion of truth is also evident in the Mohist arguments against the existence of fate. In Classical China, fate (ming 命) is a non-subjective form of agency that causes things to happen without human control.13 Fatalism is the doctrine that the efficacy of human agency is limited, that humans have no full power to cause desired effects regardless of the amount of effort, availability of means and resources, and rational planning (Mozi 35.1). The Mohist rejection of fatalism via the “three criteria/standards” (san biao/fa 三表/法) serves to illustrate their distinction between the descriptive and normative aspects of truth as well as their inclination to place a heavier weight on the latter. The Mohists established three criteria to determine the truth or falsity (qing wei 情偽) of doctrines: root (ben 本), source (yuan 原), and utility

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  65 (yong 用).14 The root criterion requires that we examine received beliefs in authoritative historical records containing reliable testimony from sage figures and experts from the past. A claim that has received continued support and has been acted upon by morally or technically competent cognizers such as the Sage Kings passes the test; whereas a claim only supported by individuals of no moral or technical authority and arguably self-interested motives doesn’t. The source criterion, in turn, assesses the empirical evidence to justify a belief. It’s based on the testimony of contemporaries who may be able to report on certain experiences, such as witnessing (literally, “having seen or heard”) fate. Finally, the utility criterion is a pragmatic test investigating the utility of taking a claim as true, and acting as if it were true, in terms of the collective benefit principle. In the “Against Fatalism” triad, the Mohists first use the root and source criteria to assess whether fate in fact exists, that is, whether the doctrine of fatalism is true in a descriptive sense. However, both criteria prove somewhat inconclusive, with past accounts and empirical witnesses’ reports admittedly offering contradictory evidence. The Mohists urge us then to identify reliable epistemic subjects, such as the Sage Kings, who, according to records, never proclaimed nor acted upon the belief that they didn’t have the power to shape the course of events. In contrast, those who appealed to fate did it only for their own convenience, not for the benefit of the world. In this way, fatalism is proven to be the way of the tyrant, vicious, and morally weak to exonerate and free themselves of responsibility and accountability (Mozi 37). Clearly, appeals to the facticity of fate are unavoidably merged with appeals to the consequences of the belief in fate, given that the validity of testimony must be examined against the intentions and agendas of the epistemic subjects providing it.15 Hence the utility criterion presents the strongest argument against the belief in fate as true belief. Since a belief in fatalism brings disorder upon the world, the belief in fatalism must be strongly opposed (qiang fei 強非; Mozi 37.4).16 The Mohists are persuaded that only certain behaviors are desirable, and only certain beliefs reliably cause these desirable behaviors. All other beliefs necessarily cause unfitting behaviors, behaviors that create disorder and harm for all.17 These assumptions explain the Mohists’ profound distrust in pluralism—in people’s capacity to live harmoniously and thrive while adhering to different moral views, holding different beliefs, and engaging in different practices. If there’s a single, universal definition of benefit, only some actions that qualify as fitting behavior, and only some beliefs that reliably cause a disposition to engage in those actions, it logically follows that pluralism of beliefs and practices necessarily creates chaos and collective harm. The Mohists, having set the goal of ending disorder and bringing benefit to all within their social justice program, can’t but control the doctrines that people deem to be true. Hence, their

66  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo political philosophy was intended to eliminate pluralism and impose a unified and institutionally sanctioned system where they control not only resources, institutions, norms, and practices but also people’s dispositions, morals, values, and beliefs. The following points summarize the reasoning and combination of claims that drive the Mohists to become authoritarian ideologues: 1. Beliefs have causal power: they directly cause people to engage in certain behaviors. 2. True beliefs are those that cause fitting behavior (with lesser to no concern with facticity). 3. Fitting behavior is evaluated according to Heaven’s collective benefit principle: actions that promote benefits for all while avoiding harm. 4. Benefit is defined as wealth and resources, large populations, and social order. 5. Only certain beliefs cause benefit-promoting fitting behavior; all others lead to disorder and harm. 6. Beliefs can be manipulated. 7. Therefore, it’s the political elite’s task to institutionalize, sanction, and impose a unitary system of beliefs that cause fitting behavior while eradicating all others. The Mohists were radical both in their implacable quest for social equity and justice and in the extreme means that they were willing to implement in order to achieve it, which may have resulted in a dystopia had Mohism been governmentally implemented (it never was at great scale). Van Norden has argued that the fact that the norms and beliefs institutionalized by the Mohists aren’t decided arbitrarily (they are decided according to Heaven’s principle of collective benefit) acts as a limiting condition to their authoritarianism.18 However, appeals to divine will have often served the purpose of legitimizing the agendas of autocratic rulers, both in ancient China (with appeals to Heaven) and modern Europe and North America (with appeals to God). Additionally, as Locke explains, arbitrariness is only one among several factors involved in the creation of authoritarian regimes and ideologies; other threats against pluralism include absolutism and uniformitarianism.19 Mohist claims 3, 4, and 5 in the previous list are absolutist. There’s a single, substantive (content-dependent) definition of fitting behavior; a single, substantive definition of benefit; and a unitary set of substantive beliefs leading to those. Values, beliefs, and their corresponding behaviors are thought to universally apply to all humans and are ultimately justified by appeals to an absolute and infallible divine will. These claims also hold the view that values, beliefs, experiences, norms, and practices must be homogenized to avoid conflict arising from

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  67 competing claims. The system that the Mohists wished to implement was a government-sanctioned authoritarian ideology, which by definition couldn’t allow for pluralism in values, norms, beliefs, and practices. As Žižek explains (with Hegel), ideological phenomena comprise (1) “explicit doctrines, articulated convictions on the nature of man, society, and the universe”—such as the Mohist doctrines against fatalism and for the existence of retributive ghosts. (2) External “material existence in institutions, rituals, and practices that give body to it”—such as the Mohist system of social emulation and the institutions that enact punishments and rewards. And (3) social reality, “the elusive network of implicit, quasi-‘spontaneous’ presuppositions and attitudes” that lie at the core of economic, legal, political, sexual, etc., practices—such as the Mohist-sanctioned attitudes of impartiality and care.20 I understand the Mohist system as an authoritarian ideology insofar as it aims to impose by manipulation (via both coercive and noncoercive means) a unitary, uniform, and absolute set of beliefs, values, and norms that admittedly have causal power and will guide people toward a unitary, uniform, and absolute set of behaviors that are institutionally sanctioned as desirable (claims 1, 6, and 7). I’m taking a moderate approach to ideology between minimalist and demanding definitions. A minimalist definition understands ideology as a “descriptive vocabulary of day to day existence” that mediates our understanding of the world, how it functions, and what’s our role within it.21 Our reality is always mediated by a mutually reinforcing set of action-guiding beliefs that appear naturalized (not constructed nor externally imposed) and so remain unseen, which makes them extremely difficult to identify and challenge.22 In this view, there’s no outside to ideology; there’s only participation in this or that ideology.23 In contrast, a more demanding definition such as the Marxist understands ideology as the state product of modern class struggle, an apparatus of coercion of the ruling class based on misleading and false ideas that help support a social structure in favor of existing relations of domination and the (often economic) interests of those in power. The moderate approach that I attribute to the Mohists, in turn, sees ideology as an intentionally constructed apparatus of belief, value, and practice manipulation. Ideologues impose a unitary perception of reality after their own conception of what’s good in order to manipulate people into desired patterns of action. The ideas promoted have a clear political purpose: to shape people in ways conducive to the ruling power’s agenda and to cause them to act on behalf of particular interests. Nevertheless, the promoted ideas aren’t necessarily false in a descriptive sense nor are the ideologues’ interests necessarily aimed at subjugating the ruled people for their own benefit. In the Mohist case, the ruling power’s agenda is a social justice program, and their interests are those of benefiting all of humanity.

68  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo In my reading, their good intentions don’t turn their proposal any less ideological nor any less authoritarian, for the reasons discussed earlier. Taking an action-guiding, normative take on truth and acknowledging the causal power of beliefs doesn’t necessarily lead to authoritarian patterns of thought. In the next section, I present a case where these premises are combined with pluralism, skepticism, and perspectivism in a sophisticated critique of ideological dogmatism. 4.3 Zhuangist Philosophy: Pluralism and Anti-Dogmatism Knowledge has something upon which it depends to be correct, but what it depends on is peculiarly unfixable.24 (Zhuangzi 6, 225; Guo 2004, 225)

Where the Mohists acknowledged the power of beliefs to guide action, the Zhuangists attribute this causal power to every single element of a person’s (or conscious being) intersectional perspective. Zhuangist perspectives aren’t limited to sets of doxastic commitments such as propositional beliefs.25 Along the lines defined by Camp—“an open-ended disposition to notice, explain, and respond to situations in the world,”26 a perspective structures “one’s thinking in certain ways, so that certain sorts of properties stick out as especially notable or explanatorily central in one’s intuitive thinking.”27 Zhuangist perspectives are constituted by the beliefs we commit to and the values we endorse, but also by social norms, roles, and relationships; our sense of identity, personal aspirations, motivations, and expectations; preferences, fears, and dislikes; physical capabilities and limitations; formation, education, and skills; transitory moods; and no less importantly, biological features, needs, and tendencies. All of these elements intersect with one another in the emergence of a perspective, some being relatively stable like social roles whereas others, like moods, are transitory.28 Intersectional perspectives are the place (fang 方) from which we experience, know, interpret, value, and interact with the world. A window into reality that conditions what we’re able to see and imagine (and what remains hidden in plain sight, inaccessible and inconceivable), what we’re willing to accept as possible and right, and ultimately what our world becomes. Knowing that something is true means being able to imagine, formulate, and justify a claim from a uniquely bounded ground (a frame of reference) afforded by one’s temporarily adopted or relatively stable perspective. Truth is indexical: it depends on the perspective from which a claim is ­formulated.29 Just like this means different things depending on what I’m pointing at, any truth claim depends for its possibility, formulation, and

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  69 justification upon the perspective from which I’m asserting it. By virtue of appearing so, things are justified from within the perspective that affords their appearing so: “Each thing necessarily has some place from which it can be affirmed as thus and so, and someplace from which it can be affirmed as acceptable. So no thing is not right, no thing is not acceptable” (Zhuangzi 2, 69; Ziporyn 2020, 15). And things appear to us in radically different and even contradictory ways. This plurality is irreducible: opposing views, beliefs, values, perceptions, experiences, and truth claims all have their own grounds on which to be formulated and an equal right to be affirmed, their own field of justification inherent to the perspective that enables its emergence.30 At the same time, this irreducible plurality of coexisting truths, realities, and paths (daos 道) implies that no single one of them has the right to claim itself absolute or universal. In other words, the very fact that our perspective allows us to see and affirm the world in a particular manner entails the possibility and justification for our view. But since there’s an endless number of coexisting perspectives from which to perceive things and make claims about them, there’s no single standpoint from which to know the world nor a unitary standard from which to justify our truth claims. As the quote at the beginning of this section emphasizes, “what knowledge depends on is peculiarly unfixable.”31 For things are neither this nor that (distinctions, positions, and judgments belong to human perspectives, not to things), or rather, they are both this and that insofar they afford all possible experiences and assertions that can be made about them by humans and other conscious beings (and potentially also those that we aren’t able to make due to our own limited features). Feces are disgusting for humans but nutritive food for rabbits.32 Sleeping in a damp place makes humans ill and eels thrive. Is this wooden structure a beam or a pillar? Is this person a beauty or a leper? Which perspective is truer? The Zhuangist answer is that things accommodate any two opposite points in a dichotomy, that To be a this is in fact also to be a that, and every that is also a this. That is itself already both this and not-this, both a right and a wrong. But this is also already both this and not-this, both a right and a wrong. (Zhuangzi 2, 66; Ziporyn 2020, 14) Since the claim that knowledge is perspectival is made from within a particular human perspective, we must remain skeptical about whether things ultimately are different from or identical to what we perceive them to be, whether they are independent from our knowing them or instead they transform along with our knowing them. A human will never have access to a nonhuman perspective, although we’re capable of conceiving that there are nonhuman perspectives and even envisioning how they might

70  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo look like (with no guarantee of accuracy; it’s an exercise in imagination, as when we attempt to relate to how other species experience the world, or when we discuss the world from a dao-perspective, which we imagine to be neutral and all-embracing, without preferences, hierarchies, and distinctions). We know that what we can know is limited, contingent, and conditioned by our shifting but always human perspectives, and that’s enough to understand that things aren’t just this or that but both and more. The plurality and unfixability of both reality and knowledge are followed by two normative observations in the Zhuangzi, one against action-defeating relativism and another against dogmatism.33 First, Zhuangists suggest that plural, even contradictory, truths coexist. My belief that x is so is just as true as your belief that x is not so. Nevertheless, this truth pluralism doesn’t imply that all true beliefs have the same status, that they all are equally valid and useful for all situations. Some views, beliefs, values, and norms, afforded by some perspectives, are situationally and contextually (not universally) more fitting than others for a given agent dealing with a particular phenomenon within a field of relations.34 The normative implication is that we must acknowledge the binds and limitations of our own perspective, and be open to entertaining perspectives other than our own so that we can make good use of them as needed, which brings us to the stance against dogmatism. In experiencing the world from the naturalness and obviousness afforded by our perspective, we become oblivious to the multitude of coexisting ways in which things appear to others and tend to endow our valuations of rightness, possibility, normalcy, and acceptability with inflexible correctness and unwarranted universality. Zhuangists identify this recalcitrant rejection of the legitimacy of alterity as the main cause of strife, harm, and unhappiness in the world of humans.35 They contest it with the fact that any given perspective logically implies the coexistence of its opposite; every this (shi 是) implies that there’s a that (bi 彼), and there’s no concept of right (shi 是) without the concept of wrong (fei 非)—what’s referred to as the doctrine of “mutual generation of opposites” (方生之說). Simply this realization, this sudden awareness of the relativity, codependence, and coexistence of multiple perspectives, already entails an epistemic opportunity to become more flexible and open-minded, less dogmatic. Becoming aware of our own perspective qua perspective has revelatory value in the sense attributed by L. A. Paul, the value of discovering something new regardless of the subjective value we may assign to what we’ve discovered.36 As Connolly notices, a revelation is precisely at the core of what the Lord of the River (or River God) experiences in “Autumn Floods” (Zhuangzi 17). Flooded with autumn rains, the Lord of the River takes himself to be vast and limitless; yet upon his encounter with Ruo of the Northern Sea, he becomes suddenly aware of his limitations, his being

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  71 small in relation to something unexpectedly larger. In assessing himself for the first time from an unfamiliar and bewildering contrastive position, he discovers that what he previously took to be reality simpliciter was just reality from within a particular perspective. As a result, as in a Cartesian frenzy, he feels compelled to doubt and relativize his previously strongheld beliefs and values. Through this experience, Connolly remarks, the Lord of the River does not merely change how he thinks about his own values, but he learns something about the nature of value itself. His experience reveals that because each context has its own standard, which is particular to its place and time and cannot be applied beyond it, we are mistaken to attempt to apply one set of values as we make our way through the world.37 In gaining awareness of our own perspectives qua perspectives, it’s revealed to us that our entire perception of the world is partial and limited, a contingent and quasi-accidental product of perspectival intersectionality. That is, we gain a new insight into the process by which values and beliefs are formed—and with it, a newly found epistemic humility.38 Then, there’s the further revelation that our world, what we take to be absolute reality without caveats nor qualifications, can transform simply by shifting perspectives (just like the Lord of the River’s self-identity transforms from unbound vastness to a small body of water, and his conception of the nature of evaluative standards shifts from unitary, universal, and necessary to plural, local, and contingent). To anyone who’s gone through an equivalent experience, this revelation includes an opportunity to transform how we construct our identities, how we relate to our own views, beliefs, and values and those of others, and how we interact with the world. An opportunity to change our practical attitude, which I further discuss next with the notions of True Person (zhen ren 真人) and True Knowledge (zhen zhi 真知). Imagine that, upon having this revelatory experience, the Lord of the River had stopped at replacing his previous appreciation of himself as limitless vastness with the new (and shocking) appreciation of being just a small body of water in comparison to the sea. He would have simply traded one perspective for another, one that’s certainly larger and, we may say, better informed, toward which he would now show the same level of commitment as he used to the old one. By switching to a larger perspective, the Lord of the River would have acquired epistemic awareness of his own limitations, which is fundamental to combat the kind of clouded ignorance that triggers dogmatist views. But this larger perspective is still limited, partial, and contingent—one among many others, bound to its own premises.

72  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo The Lord of the River’s initial belief in his vastness is just as true as his new belief in its smallness; they just depend for their justification on the relative distinctions and comparisons that are being established in each case. The point of the revelatory experience that we’re invited to undergo in many of the stories in the Zhuangzi isn’t to replace a previously accepted epistemic framework with a new one. The ideal result of the perspectivist corrective (its revelatory value) is the insight that every perspective, old and new, smaller or larger, conventional or alternative is contingent and provisional, limited and relative so that this realization informs a different practical approach to action. But this ideal result isn’t something that automatically or instantly happens to the Lord of the River upon having his contrastive experience. He must accept the invitation extended by the experience and put the new insights into practice over time in order to effect a transformation in his overall outlook and attitude.39 At a level higher than truths (which are plural, relative, and justified within their own perspective, although not all of them of equal relational value and utility), Zhuangists place the notion of True Knowledge (Zhuangzi 6), the attitude that emerges from practicing the insights gained from the unique intersectional perspective of a True Person.40 This unique perspective is conceptualized as being located at the center of a circle (also called the axis of the dao). Each one of the infinite number of points that can be traced in a circle represents a singular perspective from which to open up the world. All but the point in the center, which instead of a perspective leading to a fixed set of beliefs, values, and dispositions, represents an empty location without commitment to any particular perspective, from which we’re virtually able to access all existing perspectives and use them adaptively (what Ziporyn calls the “wild card,” Moeller and D’Ambrosio call the “genuine pretender,” and I call the “adaptive agent”41). Positioned at the center of the circle, the True Person is a metaphorical shape-shifter (“now a snake, now a dragon”; Zhuangzi 20, 667–678), a person who accepts the plurality of truths afforded by reality and doesn’t privilege one over another except provisionally, situationally, and temporarily. As such, the True Person avoids commitment to the content-dependent norms, values, beliefs, and dispositions caused by any particular perspective, and acts adaptively in response to the thusness of a given situation (yin shi 因是)—now affirming this and then that (Zhuangzi 2, 70).42 Like the mirror that reflects any and all shapes it encounters but doesn’t store them—not allowing any of them to determine its identity (Zhuangzi 7, 307).43 This attitude is also called acting “without a method” or “without a fixed place/perspective” (wufang 無方; Zhuangzi 17, 584)—an open structure that allows the agent to be temporarily guided and filled with a plurality of mutually replacing perspectives and courses of action, none of which can ever become a stable standard nor replace the structure itself.44

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  73 A lived experience and practice, True Knowledge isn’t a set of doxastic and axiological commitments nor a collection of doctrines, but a practical attitude of constant skepticism and relativism, perspective-shifting, and adaptability.45 True Knowledge embodies what the Zhuangists consider to be fitting behavior—not a set of fixed actions deemed universally beneficial (as it was in the case of the Mohists), but the attitude to not know anything with certainty, relativize to what oneself and others take for granted; continuously reevaluate one’s positions, beliefs, and values against competing ones; shift in between perspectives without finally endorsing nor committing to any of them; and act according to circumstances in an adaptive manner. This content-neutral and procedural definition of fitting behavior explains why the True Person’s perspective acquires its privileged status as True Knowledge. As discussed earlier, if things are both this and that, they permit a multiplicity of perceptions, distinctions, assertions, and judgments, all of which can potentially become valuable for certain contexts and situations. But the perspective of the center affords an attitude toward knowledge and reality that is always fitting, insofar as it’s procedural and doesn’t commit the agent to a fixed set of content-dependent beliefs, values, norms, and actions.46 Instead, it encourages her to find the best fit among all available options at any given time and within a particular relational context. Ziporyn has argued that True Knowledge, a perspective just like any other, satisfies two criteria for objective knowledge that no other perspective (no other of the endless points in the circle but the center) can satisfy: first, it remains in force and irrefutable no matter what content-­ dependent perspective is operative, and second, it has practical advantages that help us handle the world more effectively regardless of our goals.47 While all plural and contradictory beliefs are true in the sense that they are justified from within a particular perspective, True Knowledge is True insofar as it affords us the practical attitude to effectively and happily live in a world of irreducibly plural and contradictory truths. True Knowledge is pragmatically superior to all other perspectival truths because of its comparatively advantageous guiding power, not because it describes the world in a perspective-independent or more accurate way. We can consider Zhuangist perspectives to act as ideologies in the minimalist definition, an everyday vocabulary that mediates our perception of reality. In this view, there’s no outside to perspectives, no perspective-free knowledge of the world, much as there’s no outside to ideology. Perspectives open up worlds, but they also impede the unfettered circulation of world-making possibilities; they act like ideological blinders through which only some amount of light can pass, filtering our experiences. Perspectives are “the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning,” as Foucault said of the ideological function of the author in the interpretation

74  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo of texts.48 Believing that there are a plurality of coexisting perspectives always at work and that each comes with a set of limitations and possibilities (as the True Person does) is a perspective itself—an ideological mediation of reality; but one that doesn’t lend itself to dogmatic uses and that’s highly effective insofar as it invites becoming a wanderer (you 遊), an agent that isn’t stuck in a single epistemic position and can pragmatically and noncommittally travel between them.49 As McLeod writes, Zhuangists suggest that universal and absolutist approaches to truth are stultifying.50 More so, they’re dangerous because they lead to dogmatic attitudes that create unnecessary strife and are highly ineffective in guiding our actions. Where the Mohists saw pluralism as the root cause of disorder and harm, the Zhuangists reversed the argument: it’s precisely the dogmatic adherence to values taken as universally valid, absolute, and indisputable (without awareness of the perspectivist corrective) which leads to disorder and harm, as the fable of the death of Chaos (hundun 渾沌) at the hands of his well-intentioned but ignorant dogmatic colleagues manifests.51 The goal, then, is to be able to identify our perspectives for what they are so as to not be deluded (like the frog in the well, who mistakes the blue circle above for the entire sky), caught in zero-sum games (like the archetypical opponents Confucians and Mohists, trapped in an endless circle of affirmations and negations of each other’s side), enslaved to arbitrary social conventions of virtue, normalcy, propriety, and morality (like Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who died of starvation in self-inflicted exile due to their steadfast loyalty to their king), or unintentionally harmful to others (like the king who killed the adored seabird by pampering it with a golden cage and other human commodities, and the mythical emperors who accidentally provoke Chaos’s death by applying to him their own standards of normalcy).52 Zhuangists believe that the death of pluralism under the yoke of dogmatism is the death of the possibility to live in a joyful and beautiful world, which reminds us of the Daodejing’s 道德經 injunction: “As soon as everyone in the world recognizes the beautiful as beautiful, therein already lies ugliness. As soon as everyone in the world recognizes the good as good, therein already lies evil” (Ames and Hall 2003, 79–81). It calls our attention to the principle of mutual emergence: opposites conceptually depend on one another both for their arising and intelligibility. More importantly, it reveals that any value we may cherish reverses into its opposite (fan 反) when universalized, absolutized, and institutionalized, when it’s meant to apply to all situations and all persons, accepting no deviations nor accommodations. In the Zhuangist view, we can’t imagine a future without coexisting contradictory perspectives/ideologies. But we can imagine a future where perspectives aren’t naturalized as neutral appearances of truth; where they are recognized as perspectives within a plurality of possible and

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  75 acceptable realities. Zhuangists encourage us to seek the conditions (such as the Lord of the River’s revelatory experience) that help us emerge as selfaware epistemic subjects capable of adaptively embracing and navigating a plurality of worlds. This is the Zhuangist sociopolitical and ethical pluralistic and anti-dogmatic project encapsulated in the notion of True Knowledge. Acknowledgments Thank you to my friends Albert Galvany and Lisa Portmess for reading a draft of this chapter and providing their always insightful comments and suggestions. Also, thank you to the participants and fellow panelists of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy (ISCP) panel at the 2023 meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA) Eastern Division in Montreal for the enthusiastic questions and discussion of the ideas present in this chapter.

Notes 1 Given that most if not all of the texts in the received corpus of Classical Chinese philosophy and literature were composite and enjoyed plural authorship, I use the terms “Mohists” and “Zhuangists” to represent views included in the compilations Mozi and Zhuangzi, respectively (rather than referring to individual philosophers Mozi and Zhuangzi). By Zhuangists I don’t mean a group of authors in contrast with Primitivists or Yangists, as per Graham’s classification (2001). I refer to all the views elaborated in the text, even when contradictory. I’ve used the following editions of the classical texts: Guo Qingfan’s (2004) 郭 慶藩Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋 and William Hung’s (1956) A Concordance to Mo Tzu 墨子引得. The Mozi and the Zhuangzi can be conveniently accessed, in Classical Chinese and English translation, on Chinese Text Project (n.d.) ctext.org. 2 Fraser (2016, 22–23). 3 For an introduction to Mohist philosophy, see Fraser (2002/2020, 2016). 4 Beyond controlling their beliefs, the ruling elite has other means to guarantee that people act in desired ways. These include emulation of authority figures and a consistent and transparent social system of punishments and rewards to reinforce the desired behavior until it becomes practically unavoidable. In the “Impartial Care” chapters, the Mohists argue that people are capable of doing difficult things in which they find no pleasure and toward which they show no a priori personal preference, such as going to battle, starving themselves, wearing impossibly painful clothes, or sacrificing one’s life for posthumous fame. They make these claims as a response to critiques of impracticability against their demanding injunction on impartial and reciprocal care (jian xiang ai 兼相愛, also called inclusive care, impartial care, and universal love). See van ­Norden (2018). 5 They explain that the reason why many of their contemporaries doubt the ­existence of spirits and endorse fatalism (deemed unfitting disbelief and belief,

76  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo respectively) is because evil rulers have initiated and transmitted these doctrines, thereby confounding the common, the poor, and the simple (Mozi 31 and 37). People must be protected against the evils caused by the spread of false doctrines, the Mohists argue in a way reminding of the most common principled defense of authoritarianism: paternalism. In Dahl’s words, “[T]he most readily available justification for nondemocratic rule is, as it has always been, the need for guardians of superior knowledge and virtue” (Dahl 1989, 262, 52, 64; in Mayer 2001, 148). This paternalistic guardianship is based on the principle of unequal competence or the incompetence argument: “those excluded are said to lack the capacity to make good political judgments and should therefore defer to some élite that does possess the requisite abilities” (Mayer 2001, 151). 6 Van Norden (2011, 58–60) also makes this point. 7 See discussion in Fraser (2016, 68). 8 See discussion in McLeod (2016, 63–71). 9 Referring to the blending of descriptive and normative issues, Fraser (2016, 68) argues that “the Mohists do not apply their own models judiciously enough” because, in the long run, we probably benefit more from pursuing beliefs (or their corresponding behaviors) that are true, rather than just instrumentally useful. Fraser’s assessment can be challenged from, at least, two perspectives. First, some scientists like Hoffmann (2019) have persuasively shown that we, humans and other conscious animals, don’t benefit from truth (which here stands for perception-independent reality). We have evolved to not see things as they are but through an interface that guides us toward useful action, presenting the salient features that we need for our survival. A second perspective from which to challenge Fraser’s assessment is historical. Ideologies such as nationalism, racism, capitalism, and individualism, as well as religious beliefs, have proven to be extremely efficient in motivating and manipulating behavior toward particular agendas, both in the past and in current days. 10 Van Norden (2011, 52). 11 Many have read Mohist ethics as a sort of utilitarianism or consequentialism (even “the world’s earliest form of consequentialism”—Fraser 2002/2020). Among them: Hansen (1985), Graham (1989), Fraser (2002/2020, 2016), and Van Norden (2007, 2011). 12 Van Norden (2011, 51) and Fraser (2020, 56–53). 13 Further discussion on how fate was conceptualized in Classical China and its functions in Valmisa (2019a). 14 See the Mohist triad against fatalism: Mozi (35, 36, 37). The expression “to separate truth from falsity” appears in Mozi (36.1). Fraser (2016, 64–69) argues that the three standards reflect an explicit concern not with truth or falsity but with dao—the proper way of policy by which to guide social and political action. This claim can only be made if we attribute a correspondence theory of truth to the Mohists. Indeed, the Mohists wouldn’t be concerned with truth if they understood true statements primarily as statements that accurately describe or represent reality. But this isn’t the case. For the Mohists, a belief or doctrine is true when it effectively causes fitting behavior (according to the collective benefit principle). They are very concerned with truth thus understood, as it determines policy and social order. See further discussion in McLeod (2016, 70 and onwards). 15 McLeod (2016, 66–70) has an illuminating discussion on how the Mohist reasoning for the existence of ghosts is a hybrid between empirical evidence

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  77 (“ghosts exist”) and normative concerns (“we should believe that ghosts exist”). 16 Interestingly, some of the Mohist arguments against fatalism overlap with their arguments for the condemnation of music (Mozi 32). Both the belief in fate and musicking (listening to music, dancing, singing, etc.; Small 1998) are said to prevent people from working toward the production of their own conditions of living (Mozi 32.7b; 35.1; 39.4–5). The Mohists can’t conceive of a person capable of enjoying music in the evenings and getting up for work in the morning, much as they can’t conceive of a person who believes that their personal agency is limited and yet gives their best effort in their professional and ethical lives. 17 The eradication of unfitting beliefs and behaviors is discussed in the “Identifying Upward” triad (Mozi 11–13). Among other measures, subordinates are expected to identify with what their superiors “deem right and wrong” (shi fei 是非)—that is, to share in their beliefs or, at least, to act as if they shared in those beliefs, which the Mohists thought should have the same practical effects as genuinely believing in something. The latter point is most explicit in the “Inclusive Care” chapters (Mozi 14–16), where it’s argued that acting as if (ruo 若) we cared for everyone equally reliably brings out the same fitting behavior as genuinely caring for others. 18 Van Norden (2011, 60). 19 Locke (1942, 53–66). 20 Žižek (1994, 10–15). 21 Fields (1990). Although, when it comes to the ideology of racism in the United States, Fields adds conditions that make it a more demanding definition, such as promoting false beliefs for which there is abundant counterevidence. 22 Barthes (1957). 23 Žižek (1994, 1). Žižek famously explains this minimalist approach to ideology with a joke from the movie Ninotchka (1939): “A man comes into a restaurant. He sits down at the table and he says, ‘Waiter, bring me a cup of coffee without cream.’ Five minutes later, the waiter comes back and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, we have no cream. Can it be without milk?’” Even though we would get the same thing in both cases, each feels different depending on how we conceptualize the absence. There’s no such thing as just black coffee (no such thing as reality simpliciter; reality is “phantasmic”; Žižek 1994, 2); there’s only coffee without cream or coffee without milk, according to our ideologies. 24 For an introduction to Zhuangist philosophy, see Hansen (2014); Valmisa (forthcoming 2024). 25 As in Schoenfield’s definition (Schoenfield n.d., 2, in Chung 2021, 2–3). 26 Camp (2017, 78–79), in Chung (2021, 4). 27 Camp (2017, 74), in Chung (2021, 3). I discuss the formation of situations via salient features afforded by our perspectives in Valmisa (2021a). 28 Species-relative examples of perspectives abound in the Zhuangzi. A fine steak is delicious and nourishing for humans, but it leaves a bird indifferent. Intraspecies examples also abound. A gigantic bird seeks the heights in the sky while small doves and quails see them as dangerous and inappropriate. A man like Confucius is agitated upon the sighting of a person in the wild waters of the Lu cataracts while the swimmer is just placidly taking a bath. 29 Hansen (1992, 281). 30 Here I’m disagreeing with McLeod 2016, 111–116 who argues that what makes a statement true in the Zhuangzi is not coherence with one’s own perspective but consistency with the dao, which is perspective independent. In his

78  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo account, there are perspective-independent truths, even though they can only be expressed and known from a particular perspective (they can be multiply expressed and run true across all perspectives). My current reading, as expressed above, is that, as finite beings whose knowledge of the world is necessarily constituted by this or that perspective, we can’t know whether there are perspective-independent truths, and for all practical effects reality depends on our perspective (including our evocative and powerful imaginations of a neutral, all-embracing dao). 31 Readers will remember that the Mohists wished to bring order to the world by establishing a universal, substantive definition of benefit as the main standard by which to evaluate the desirability of practicing a doctrine, then institutionalizing as true the doctrines that (in their analysis) reliably caused beneficial behavior according to their definition. Zhuangists explain why this won’t work. The standards that we can use to justify an assertion are as varied, contingent, and unstable as our perspectives. Not only the same phenomenon will be judged differently depending on the standards we choose to direct our inquiry, but there’s a high level of unfixability within the standards themselves. For example, we may want to take benefit as the standard to evaluate the desirability of a doctrine, as the Mohists do, but no stable content-dependent definition of benefit can be established. What can be asserted as beneficial in each case depends on the shifting situations, actors, perspectives, entities, and relations involved. This is what Zhuangists mean with the expression “external things cannot be relied upon/taken as necessary” 外物不可必 (Zhuangzi 26). We can’t know with certainty what kinds of behavior will reliably lead to desirable outcomes, for two reasons. First, things constantly change over time and along their shifting relations with others, so the same actions won’t lead to same outcomes. Second, there’s no possibility to establish a universal substantive definition of desirable outcomes, for this always depends on a plurality of shifting contingent factors. As we’ll see, the Zhuangist understanding of fitting behavior is procedural and content-neutral. 32 Hoffman (2019, 88) presents this lucid and (probably unknowingly) Zhuangist example. 33 McLeod (2016) also interprets the Zhuangzi as developing a position against radical relativism. Like Connolly (2011), Moeller and D’Ambrosio (2017) suggest that Zhuangist perspectivism is a methodological tool to present a polyphony of voices and avoid seriousness about any single reified position. They humoristic key in which they read the Zhuangzi is also a tool against dogmatism, as it “inserts a certain irony into the text that renders any understanding provisional and adds a grain of salt into the mix” (11). 34 I explain this point more clearly in Valmisa (forthcoming 2024), section “Implications and Further Research.” 35 Apart from dogmatism, this diagnosed recalcitrance leads to a variety of problems also explored in the Zhuangzi, which aren’t the focus of my discussion here, such as inefficacy in action, disharmony, maladjustments, tiring and fruitless games of rhetoric and disputation, lack of creativity and imagination for problem-solving, leading impoverished and narrow lives, physical danger, metaphysical discomfort, anxiety toward aging, illness, and death, etc. 36 Paul (2014, 13). 37 Connolly (forthcoming). 38 On epistemic humility, see Ryan and Lai (2021, 673–675).

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  79 39 In the narrative, the River needs a gentle nudge from the Sea to continue deepening his insights into the nature of value and perspective until he effectively transforms his overall attitude. Here I’m with Callard’s qualification to Paul’s analysis of transformative experiences in that experiences themselves (at least many of them) don’t effect and complete the transformation; the person does over an extended period of time (Callard 2018, 61–62). Indeed, we find in the Zhuangzi many examples of missed opportunities to effectively transform the characters’ understanding of reality, value, belief, and perspective. For instance, the small flying animals in the opening passage of the Zhuangzi gain no revelation when confronted with the unusually larger Peng bird, an experience that should, at the very least, have caused them to relativize their own perceptions of the normal and the good. Instead, the small birds arrogantly reaffirm themselves in their own limited perspectives and adaptive preferences while derogatorily dismissing Peng as irrisory, abnormal, and useless. Graziani (2021, 146, 160) similarly refers to the True Person as having a certain “temperament” and engaging in a “practice.” Valmisa (2019b) discusses the attitude of the small flying animals as a case of adaptive preferences/sour grapes (Elster 1983). 40 On the True Person’s unique epistemological perspective and its pluralistic practical implications, see Fox (2015). 41 Ziporyn (2012); Ziporyn (2015) reads, “Instead, what has appeared in Zhuangzi’s hand is a wild card. That is, it is indeed just one more card, one more perspective appearing out of nowhere, but it has some peculiar properties, for it has no fixed shi/fei of its own; and for that very reason it enhances the value of whatever shi/fei is currently operative”; Moeller and D’Ambrosio (2017) (see focused discussion on yin shi on pp. 114–115). In my account, the True Person is an adaptive agent. On adapting as a strategy for effective relational action in Classical Chinese philosophy, see Valmisa (2021b). 42 The linguistic equivalent of adapting for debate and persuasion (bian 辯/shui 説) are goblet spillover words (zhi yan 卮言; Zhuangzi 27), poured in response to what the opponent wants/needs to hear, only to leave the goblet empty again and refilled with new adaptive words to be poured, etc. See De Reu (2017). 43 Mengsun Cai is a privileged example of adapting to the thusness of a situation while “employing his heart-mind like a mirror”—he mourns when mourning is the most fitting course of action as dictated by social norms but without identifying himself with the mourning or the feelings associated with it. “He wails without becoming a wailer” (Moeller and D’Ambrosio 2017, 121). The most famous image remains the monkey-keeper in Zhuangzi (2), who adapts his affirmation of this or that to pacify the one-sided monkeys. Zhuangzi (6) is filled with illustrations of the True Person’s adaptive use of perspectives; for focused discussion, see Valmisa (2021b, 139–147). 44 More discussion in Valmisa (2021b, 19–25, and chapter 1 overall). 45 Without addressing the Zhuangzi, Nguyen (2022) discuss the anti-dogmatic benefits of playful perspective-shifting. On perspectives and pluralism, see also Lai (2006). 46 As discussed in a previous footnote, McLeod (2016) argues that Zhuangists resolve the problem of self-contradiction in perspectival relativism by resorting to perspective-independent truths that can be expressed in contradictory ways and remain true across most if not all perspectives due to their consistency with the dao (116). If this were so, the statement “both the Ru and the Mo are right” (which, in McLeod’s reading, would be a perspective-independent true

80  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo statement due to its consistency with the dao) should remain true across both the Ru’s and Mo’s perspectives, which clearly isn’t the case. I propose that the reason why Zhuangists don’t defeat themselves with their own perspectivism is due to their pragmatic, non-content dependent, and procedural definition of True Knowledge, which in its emptiness of content encourages attitudes that are always fitting and effective insofar as they aren’t limited to a single perspective nor content-dependent dispositions, values, norms, and beliefs. 47 Ziporyn (2015). 48 Foucault (1969). 49 In a delightful Zhuangist manner, Žižek (2012 (1994), 17) remarks that the position that there’s a demarcation between ideology and reality is just as ideological as the position that all is ideology; hence, we must renounce the notion of extra-ideological reality. Best we can do, then, is to live in the tension—while knowing that “ideology is at work in everything we experience as ‘reality,’” strive to keep the critique of ideology alive: “[i]t is possible to assume a place that enables us to maintain a distance from it, but this place from which one can denounce ideology must remain empty, it cannot be occupied by any positively determined reality—the moment we yield to this temptation, we are back in ideology” (qua narrow and blinding system of action-guiding beliefs). 50 McLeod (2016, 103). 51 In the fable of the death of Chaos (the emperor of the Center), Swift and Sudden, emperors of the Southern and Northern Seas, decide to return Chaos’s favors as a host by drilling seven holes on him over seven days, “as all humans have for the purpose of seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing” (Zhuangzi 7; Zhuangzi jishi 7: 309). As a result, on the seventh day, Chaos died. The involuntary crime of Chaos closes the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, overtly and dramatically manifesting the dangers of non-pluralist, dogmatist views. See Valmisa (2021b, 65–66). 52 All these examples appear in the Zhuangzi. For the latter point on challenging subjugating and harmful homogenizing social conventions, norms, and values, see particularly Zhuangzi (5) on the perspectivist power of abnormality and deviation (also, Galvany 2009 and 2019); and Zhuangzi (29) on the perspectivist power of amorality (also, Moeller and D’Ambrosio 2017, 103–111).

References Chinese Classics Chinese Text Project n.d. https://ctext.org edited by Donald Sturgeon. Guo Qingfan 郭慶藩, 2004. Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Hung, William, ed., 1956. A Concordance to Mo Tzu 墨子引得. Harvard-­Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, Supplement no. 21. Cambridge: Harvard ­University Press. Contemporary Scholarship Ames, Roger and David Hall, 2003. Daodejing “Making This Life Significant.” A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine. Barthes, Roland, 1957. Mythologies. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  81 Callard, Agnes, 2018. Aspiration. The Agency of Becoming. New York: Oxford University Press. Camp, Elizabeth, 2017. “Perspectives in Imaginative Engagement with Fiction.” Philosophical Perspectives 31 (1): 73–102. Chung, Julianne, 2021. “Doubting Perspectives and Creative Doubt.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 45: 1–25. Connolly, Tim, 2011. “Perspectivism as a Way of Knowing in the Zhuangzi.” Dao. A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10: 487–505. Connolly, Tim, forthcoming. “Zhuangzi and Transformative Experience.” Dahl, Robert, 1989. Democracy and its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. De Reu, Wim, 2017. “On Goblet Words.” NTU Philosophical Review 53: 75–108. Elster, Jon, 1983. Sour Grapes. Studies in the Subversion of Rationality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fields, Barbara, 1990. “Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the United States of America.” New Left Review 181: 95–118. Foucault, Michel, 1969. “What Is an Author?” (Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?). Lecture Given at the Société Française de Philosophie on 22 February 1969. Fox, Alan, 2015. “Zhuangzi’s Weiwuwei Epistemology: Seeing through Dichotomy to Polarity,” in New Visions of the Zhuangzi, Livia Kohn (ed.), St. Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, pp. 59–69. Fraser, Chris, 2002/2020. “Mohism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/mohism/. Fraser, Chris, 2016. The Philosophy of the Mozi. The First Consequentialists. New York: Columbia University Press. Fraser, Chris, 2020. Mozi. The Essential Mozi. Ethical, Political, and Dialectical Writings. New York: Oxford University Press. Galvany, Albert, 2009. “Debates on Mutilation: Bodily Preservation and Ideology in Early China.” Asiatische Studien/Études asiatiques 63 (1): 67–91. Galvany, Albert, 2019. “Radical Alterity in the Zhuangzi: On the Political and Philosophical Function of Monsters.” Philosophy Compass 2019: e12617. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12617. Graham, A. C., 1989. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. Chicago: Open Court. Graham, Angus C., 2001. Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters. Indianapolis: Hackett. Graziani, Romain, 2021. Fiction and Philosophy in the Zhuangzi. An Introduction to Early Chinese Taoist Thought. London: Bloomsbury. Hansen, Chad, 1985. “Chinese Language, Chinese Philosophy, and ‘Truth’.” The Journal of Asian Studies 44 (3): 491–519. Hansen, Chad, 1992. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hansen, Chad, December 17, 2014. “Zhuangzi.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/ Hoffman, Daniel, 2019. The Case Against Reality. Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. New York: Norton.

82  Mercedes Valmisa Oviedo Lai, Karyn, 2006. “Philosophy and Philosophical Reasoning in the Zhuangzi: Dealing with Plurality.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 33 (3): 365–374. Locke, Alain, 1942. “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy,” in The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, L. Harris (ed.), Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 53–66. Mayer, Robert, 2001. “Strategies of Justification in Authoritarian Ideology.” ­Journal of Political Ideologies 6 (2): 147–168. McLeod, Alexus, 2016. Theories of Truth in Chinese Philosophy. A Comparative Approach. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Moeller, Hans-Georg and Paul, D’Ambrosio, 2017. Genuine Pretending. On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi. New York: Columbia University Press. Nguyen, Thi, 2022. “Playfulness Versus Epistemic Traps,” in Social Virtue Epistemology, Mark Alfano, Colin Klein, Jeroen de Ridder (eds.), New York: ­Routledge, pp. 269–290. Paul, L. A., 2014. Transformative Experience. New York: Oxford University Press. Ryan, Shane and Karyn Lai, 2021. “Who is a Wise Person? Zhuangzi and Epistemological Discussions on Wisdom.” Philosophy East and West 71 (3): 665–682. Schoenfield, Miriam, n.d. “Deferring to Doubt.” Unpublished manuscript http:// www.miriamschoenfield.com/F/doubt-915.pdf. Small, Christopher, 1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Valmisa, Mercedes, 2019a. “The Reification of Fate in Early China.” Early China 42: 147–199. Valmisa, Mercedes, 2019b. “The Happy Slave Isn’t Free. Relational Autonomy and Freedom in the Zhuangzi.” Philosophy Compass 2019: e12569. https://doi. org/10.1111/phc3.12569 Valmisa, Mercedes, 2021a. “What Is a Situation?” in Coming to Terms with Timelessness. Daoist Time in Comparative Perspective, Livia Kohn (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Three Pines Press, pp. 25–46. Valmisa, Mercedes, 2021b. Adapting. A Chinese Philosophy of Action. New York: Oxford University Press. Valmisa, Mercedes, forthcoming 2024. “Zhuangzi,” in Chinese Philosophy and Its Thinkers: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. Volume One: Ancient and Early Imperial Thought, Selusi Ambrogio and Dawid Rogacz (eds.), London: Bloomsbury Academic. Van Norden, Bryan, 2007. Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Norden, Bryan, 2011. Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. ­Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Van Norden, Bryan, 2018. Review of Fraser, Chris, The Philosophy of the Mozi The First Consequentialists. Dao. A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 17 (3): 421–427. Ziporyn, Brook, 2012. Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early ­Chinese Thought: Prolegomena to the Study of Li. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Truth and Ideology in Classical China  83 Ziporyn, Brook, 2015. “Zhuangzi as a Philosopher.” Hackett Publishing Company https://hackettpublishing.com/zhuangziphil. Ziporyn, Brook, 2020. Zhuangzi. The Complete Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Žižek, Slavoj, 1994 (2012). “The Specter of Ideology,” in Mapping Ideology, Žižek (ed.), London: Verso, pp. 1–33.

5 Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth in Dharmakīrti’s Philosophy Davey K. Tomlinson

5.1 Caitra’s and Maitrī’s Cultivations Buddhist philosophers think that meditative cultivation makes a difference. A meditator takes some mental image or idea and repeatedly brings it to mind with fixed attention. After a long period of time, this results in an experience of that image or idea that is vivid (spaṣṭa), effortlessly giving rise to certain practiced judgments and activities with the same immediacy as one’s ordinary sensory perception. Unexpectedly, however, this presents a problem for some Buddhist philosophers working in Sanskrit in first-­ millennium South Asia. For it would seem that meditation results in such a vivid experience regardless of whether its object is real or not. So, is there anything distinctive about the experience of a practitioner who has meditated on something true? What difference does the truth make for the practice of Buddhist meditation? Consider the practices of two virtuoso meditators. One is skilled at what’s called the meditative cultivation of impurity (aśubhabhāvanā).1 Let’s call him Caitra. Caitra is beset by attachment to his own body and lust for others. So, he begins his practice by going out and finding a bloated corpse, either in a cremation ground or by the side of a dangerous crossroads frequented by thieves. He gazes at the corpse with fixed attention until he can maintain in his mind a “learning sign” or “acquired image” (udgrāhanimitta) of the corpse. With practice, the acquired image becomes as vivid in every last detail as his initial direct experience of the corpse. Back in the safety of his meditation chamber, he concentrates on that acquired image, returning to the cremation ground or the crossroads if it becomes unclear, thinking to himself again and again, “Repulsiveness of the corpse, repulsiveness of the corpse.” Gradually, the acquired image gives way to a vivid “counterpart image” (pratibhāganimitta), which depicts an idealized, unreal bloated-­corpse-­ in-­general. Meditation on this unreal counterpart image leads Caitra to see all bodies—or even everything in his visual field—as impure and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-6

Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth  85 repulsive, thereby counteracting his attachment to his own body and his desire for others.2 Now, consider another virtuoso meditator. Let’s call her Maitrī. She concentrates not on an image of a corpse, but instead—after considering the nature of suffering and its cause, the idea of an enduring self (ātman) and its possessions (ātmīya)—she cultivates its antidote, the idea of selflessness (nairātmya). With every passing experience, she thinks to herself, “This is not mine; this is not my self.” Gradually, this resolute affirmation becomes effortless, automatic. Faced with any occurrent episode of awareness, whether characterized by desire, anger, or love, she thinks, “This is not mine; this is not my self.” Eventually, her perception itself is changed: she sees only selflessness, not self. She comes to experience what Sakulā expresses in the Therīgāthā: “I saw my experiences as if they were not my own, born from a cause, destined to disappear. I got rid of all that fouls the heart, I am cool, free” (Hallisey 2015, 61). In both of these cases, meditative cultivation brings about a vivid experience for the virtuoso. Caitra comes to experience the impurity of the body with the same vividness as Maitrī’s cultivated experience of selflessness. Yet the two experiences would seem to be importantly different. The meditation on impurity might be instrumentally useful in overcoming attachment to one’s own or others’ bodies, but it depends on the vivid experience of an unreal counterpart image, an idealized corpse-­in-­general. Further, despite the usefulness of this practice in counteracting lust, a body is not intrinsically unattractive—just as it is not intrinsically attractive. For Buddhist philosophers, judgments of purity and attractiveness result from attachment and aversion; they are not intrinsic to their objects.3 So, if Caitra’s meditation results in the firm conviction that the body is really impure, his meditation has resulted in the vivid experience of a falsehood, however soteriologically useful that falsehood may be. On the other hand, Buddhists take it to be true that there is no self. Indeed, this is one aspect of the first of the foundational Four Truths of the Noble Ones, or Four Nobles’ Truths (caturāryasatya): truths (satya) first realized by the Buddha and taught in his early discourses.4 The Buddha taught that all conditioned phenomena are suffering (the Truth of Suffering); that suffering has its origin in desire, attachment, and the mistaken belief that there is an enduring self (the Truth of Origin); that nirvāṇ a, the cessation of suffering, is possible (the Truth of Cessation); and that there is an eightfold path of moral conduct and meditation that leads to nirvāṇ a’s realization (the Truth of Path). In later elaborations of these Four Nobles’ Truths, in the philosophical tradition of the Abhidharma, each is said to have four aspects: the Truth of Suffering, for instance, comprises the fact that all phenomena are impermanent (anitya), that they are painful (duḥkha), that they are empty (śūnya), and that they are selfless (anātman).5

86  Davey K. Tomlinson These are facts not just because the Buddha taught them; these aspects of the Truth of Suffering are true because they can be independently confirmed by philosophical argument.6 So, if it is true that all phenomena are selfless, what difference does this make to Maitrī’s meditative cultivation? When her cultivation is perfected and selflessness appears vividly to her in every moment of her experience, how is this different from the vivid appearance to Caitra of the counterpart image of the corpse or the impurity of the body in general? Here, I’d like to consider these questions from the perspective of the influential South Asian Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti (ca. 550–650). First, I’ll consider why this problem arises for Dharmakīrti’s account of yogic perception (yogipratyakṣa) in the first place. Then, we’ll turn to how Dharmakīrti spells out the difference between experiences like Caitra’s and Maitrī’s in terms of what it is that makes Maitrī’s yogic perception—but not Caitra’s yogic awareness—an instance of knowledge. Finally, we’ll return to our opening problem and see what difference the truth makes to the phenomenology of meditative cultivations like Maitrī’s. 5.2 Phenomenal Vividness and the Mechanics of Cultivation In Dharmakīrti’s epistemology, an instance of perception (pratyakṣa) is a source of knowledge (pramāṇa) that is a non-­conceptual (nirvikalpaka) trustworthy awareness-­event (avisaṃ vādijñāna). For him, this means that perception apprehends its object wholly, precisely as it is, without selective determinations conditioned by conceptual habits.7 In ordinary experience, however, precisely because of our conceptual habits, our interests shape our experience into a conceptually constructed form. Perception thus causes a determinate judgment or ascertainment (niścaya) that picks out some aspect of perception’s object to the exclusion of others. The form this judgment takes is determined by dispositions (saṃ skāra) and mental ­imprints (vāsanā) latent in our respective mental streams, left by past actions (karma) of various sorts (including past judgments, experiences of pleasure and pain, and so on). In an oft-­cited example, Dharmakīrti says that experience indeed produces ascertaining cognitions (niścayapratyaya) in accordance with one’s conceptual habit (vikalpābhyāsa)—as for ­instance when, [for an ascetic, a passionate man, and a dog, there arise, respectively,] the concepts of a corpse, a beloved woman, and food [at the sight of a woman’s corpse].8 The notion of “conceptual habit” suggests, on Birgit Kellner’s interpretation of this passage, “a habituation to a content-­specific conceptual cognition as it occurs in a specific situational context.”9 Such a conceptual habit

Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth  87 results from the repeated, successful application of specific concepts in specific situations. The dogs haunting the cremation ground have successfully applied the concept, “food,” to dead bodies they’ve seen there before; the man whose beloved has died sees just the body of his beloved; and the virtuoso who has practiced the cultivation of impurity sees a corpse that is simply unattractive.10 Each has gotten into a conceptual habit that shapes their distinct ascertainments of one and the same object that lies before them. Meditative cultivation is distinct from other forms of habituation in that it is undertaken intentionally in an effort to reshape these conceptual habits. Yet Dharmakīrti is explicit that such meditative cultivation succeeds regardless of the reality of its object. As he puts it in his Detailed Commentary on the Sources of Knowledge (Pramāṇavārttika), in Christina Pecchia’s most recent translation, be it “real or unreal, whatever is intensively meditated upon (yad yad evātibhāvyate) results in a vivid and non-­ conceptual cognition when the cultivation (bhāvanā) is perfected.”11 A virtuoso meditator like Maitrī, whose object of cultivation is selflessness, thus attains an experience endowed with the same phenomenal vividness as a virtuoso meditator like Caitra, whose object is the impurity of the body.12 This point follows from the way Dharmakīrti specifies the phenomenal character of non-­conceptual awareness-­events in the context of his discussion of yogic perception. In his mature work, the Inquiry into the Sources of Knowledge (Pramāṇaviniścaya), an opponent grants that meditative cultivation might bring about a vivid appearance, but then doubts that such an experience is thereby non-­conceptual. Dharmakīrti responds in a way that makes clearer what vividness consists of. “An awareness-­event that is bound up with conceptual construction,” he writes, “doesn’t involve a vivid appearance of an object.13 For, each and every awareness-­ event that is mixed up with language (even distorted ones) is one in which the clarity of its object is diminished. So, it’s not possible for this vivid appearance to be conceptual.”14 Conceptual awareness-­ events, or awareness-­events that trade in the sort of generalizations that are taken up in language, lack the phenomenal vividness (spaṣṭatā) or clarity (pāṭava) that defines non-­conceptual awareness-­events. It’s this sort of vividness that both Caitra’s and Maitrī’s meditative cultivations result in. Despite the fact that their objects are unreal and real, respectively, each of their mental streams has been reshaped so as to produce certain perceptual ascertainments spontaneously regarding the objects of their direct perception. 5.3 Yogic Awareness or Yogic Perception? The fact that Caitra’s and Maitrī’s resultant experiences both have the same vividness, however, does not mean that they are the same in every

88  Davey K. Tomlinson respect. As Dharmakīrti concludes his discussion of yogic perception in the Detailed Commentary, Among those [non-­conceptual awareness-­events with a vivid appearance that arise from meditative cultivation], that which is confirmed by a source of knowledge and is connected to a real object that has been ascertained earlier is accepted as perception that arises from meditative cultivation; the rest are distortions.15 A number of important distinctions are implicit in this verse. First, Dharmakīrti implies here that not all yogic awareness (yogijñāna) counts as yogic perception (yogipratyakṣa).16 Caitra’s awareness of the impurity of the body does not count as an instance of perception, properly speaking. It is not a source of knowledge. This is because, despite its having a vivid appearance and being non-­conceptual, it is not “confirmed by a source of knowledge” (pramāṇasaṃ vādi), nor is it “connected to a real object that has been ascertained earlier” (prāṅnirṇītavastuvat). What do these two qualifications do for Dharmakīrti? Let’s consider the second first. As Dharmakīrti’s commentators make clear, “ascertained earlier” here has a limited scope. Dharmakīrti does not mean to say that any awareness-­event that arises from cultivation and is based on something ascertained earlier counts as yogic perception. Rather, Dharmakīrti means to draw the reader back to what he himself had ascertained earlier in his Detailed Commentary: the Four Nobles’ Truths. A yogin’s awareness counts as an instance of yogic perception only when it has some aspect of these Truths as its object.17 The second chapter of the Detailed Commentary is devoted to an analysis of the Buddha and proof of the Buddha’s being a source of knowledge.18 The Four Nobles’ Truths are discussed at length, over the course of verses 146cd–280ab. In Dharmakīrti’s later Inquiry, he refers us back to this discussion when he defines the unique path that culminates in yogic perception.19 Referring to a canonical triad of forms of wisdom or insight (prajñā), he tells us that practitioners aiming at yogic perception must first apprehend the meaning of the Buddha’s teaching by means of the insight arisen from hearing scripture (śrutamayena jñānena). Then, the content of those teachings must be submitted to rational inquiry (yukticintā), sustained over a long period, and followed to its conclusions. Only after insight has arisen on the basis of that inquiry should the practitioner undertake mental cultivation regarding what they have understood. “What appears as vividly as in cases of fear and the like at the completion of this process,” he writes, “that is a non-­conceptual source of knowledge whose object is not unreal, [and so] it is perception, as in the case of the vision of the Nobles’ Truths, as I ascertained in the Detailed Commentary.”20 Yogic perception

Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth  89 proper results from a long, gradual path, comprising insight arisen from scripture, insight arisen from rational inquiry, and finally insight arisen from cultivation (the triad traditionally dubbed śrutamayī prajñā, cintāmayī prajñā, and bhāvanāmayī prajñā, respectively). It is important that the cultivation of the Four Nobles’ Truths takes place only after the contents of scriptural learning have been submitted for analysis. This anticipates a possible objection—one that was made by some non-­Buddhist critics of Dharmakīrti’s view. Suppose Dharmakīrti were to say that yogic perception is unique merely in that it results from the cultivation of what has been understood through a source of knowledge. This won’t work. I might come to know through inference (anumāna) that there is fire on a distant hilltop on the basis of the smoke rising from it. But surely, if a virtuoso meditator could then cultivate a phenomenally vivid image of fire, that would not count as yogic perception. Indeed, if the bar for what counts as a legitimate object of the Buddhist practitioner’s cultivation is so low as to include anything previously ascertained by a source of knowledge, the perceptual judgments of dogs and passionate men— which are not disconfirmed (avisaṃ vādi) insofar as they result in practical success (arthakriyāsthiti)—would be suitable objects of meditation. Clearly, Dharmakīrti doesn’t want that. So, he specifies that the practitioner should only take up objects known first through scriptural learning, and only then through rational inquiry. The notion of rational inquiry helps us see the force of the other qualification Dharmakīrti makes in his Detailed Commentary: that an instance of yogic perception should be “confirmed by a source of knowledge” (pramāṇasaṃ vādi). It might seem, again, that this casts too wide a net. When I see smoke rising from the distant hilltop and infer the presence of fire there, this awareness of fire is confirmed by a source of knowledge. Does that mean such awareness is a suitable object of a yogin’s cultivation? But when we put this qualification in the context of the insight arisen from rational inquiry, we see this isn’t the end of the story. While it’s true that the inference from smoke to fire is good in our conventional world of practical activity (vyavahāra), its presuppositions don’t stand up to the sustained reflection that leads to the insight that results from rational inquiry. In making that inference, for instance, I presuppose that a hill is a material object distinct from my awareness. But this, Dharmakīrti thinks, is ultimately false. Though he often operates in the commonsense world of external realism, Dharmakīrti occasionally follows his arguments to their idealist conclusions.21 Reason shows that when we consider the nature of our perceptual experience, the object of any given awareness-­event cannot in fact be distinct from that awareness-­event itself.22 The distinction we make between the subject and object of experience (grāhyagrāhaka) is really a distortion (viplava)—one that shapes all our ordinary experiences,

90  Davey K. Tomlinson but a distortion nevertheless. This is the conclusion of sustained rational reflection that finally leads to insight: “Those who analyze reality say this, which follows the nature of things: insofar as things are analyzed, to that extent they disappear.”23 Dharmakīrti’s reference to insight arisen from rational inquiry, then, implies that not just any phenomenally vivid awareness-­event resulting from cultivation and confirmed by a source of knowledge counts as yogic perception. Rather, yogic perception is only such an awareness-­event confirmed by rational inquiry when that inquiry is followed to its limits. This lets us bring together the two qualifications Dharmakīrti makes: “confirmed by a source of knowlege” in fact implies “connected to a real object that has been ascertained earlier” in the Detailed Commentary’s discussion of the Four Nobles’ Truths. For, when inquiry is not halted for practical purposes and is pursued to its ends, only those Truths stand up to reason. Consider Dharmakīrti’s argument that, when we unflinchingly analyze our ordinary perceptual experience, we come to the conclusion that there is really no distinction between the subject and object of experience. This is what the Buddha meant when he taught that things are empty: that they are empty of duality (dvayaśūnyatā).24 This fact stands up to reason. Emptiness does not dissolve as it is further analyzed: it is where rational inquiry finally stops. Emptiness of duality is the insight that arises at the culmination of inquiry into the nature of things. And it is also (on Dharmakīrti’s interpretation) one of the aspects of the Truth of Suffering: that all things are empty (śūnya). The proofs of momentariness (kṣanikatva), so central in Dharmakīrti’s tradition, can be seen in a similar light: when rational inquiry is followed to its conclusions, it is realized that any existent thing is momentary just in virtue of its existence. And this, too, is one of the aspects of the Truth of Suffering: that all things are impermanent (anitya).25 Insofar as things are analyzed, then, they disappear—and precisely the Four Nobles’ Truths are left standing. Only these are finally confirmed by a source of knowledge. And so it is only the cultivation of these that results in yogic perception. 5.4 Conviction and the As-If Character of Yogic Awareness This lets us draw a further distinction between yogic perception and yogic awareness. The two are in fact different types of mental activities: whereas yogic perception is a source of knowledge, yogic awareness is an instance of conviction (adhimukti, adhimokṣa). As Vasubandhu (ca. fourth to fifth centuries) puts it in his Commentary on the Treasury of Abhidharma (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya), a practice like the cultivation of impurity is a form of mental activity that proceeds from the force of conviction (adhimuktimanaskāra) and which, as his commentator Yaśomitra

Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth  91 (ca. sixth century) makes clear, does not bear on reality.26 Even for the virtuoso practitioner, it comes with a recognition that things are not really as they vividly appear to be. In other words, whereas Maitrī’s cultivation of selflessness is grounded on the knowledge that all things are selfless that is gained through rational inquiry followed to its limit, Caitra cultivates impurity as an expedient means to a particular end despite knowing full well that all things are not impure. It is only through the conviction that they are that he comes to directly experience them that way. Conviction plays a complex role in Buddhist accounts of ordinary experiential habits and meditative cultivation. Most simply, conviction is an attitude one bears toward an object about which one has made some ascertainment. In his On the Five Aggregates (Pañcaskandhaka), Vasubandhu defines conviction as “the affirmation that it is only thus-­and-­so with regard to a thing one has ascertained (niścita).”27 Explaining why a thing must have been ascertained for there to be conviction about it, Sthiramati (ca. sixth century) writes, “For, if a thing has not been ascertained, there can be no affirmation of it as only thus-­and-­so. A thing about which there is no doubt, thanks to logic or an authoritative teaching, is ascertained.”28 This makes good sense. If I am in doubt about whether or not the object in the distance is a man or a post, I’ll have no conviction about the matter one way or the other. A conviction, then, is the restrictive affirmation or determination that, based on certainty arrived at through some source of knowledge, takes the form, “This is only thus-­and-­so, not otherwise.”29 To this extent, it is reasonable that, as K. L. Dhammajoti has shown in his recent study of adhimukti, some philosophers hold conviction to be pervasive in our ordinary experience.30 Insofar as I have ascertained in the past that things that look like the object on my desk hold coffee and won’t light a fire, I have the conviction that this thing is a cup, not a lighter. I have such convictions all the time: as Dhammajoti puts it, “adhimukti decisively conditions the way we perceive the world […]. For the completely unenlightened, what is perceived is what they have actually already resolutely decided to perceive!”31 When we consider the role of conviction in meditative cultivation, things get more complex. First, in Mahāyāna literature on the path to buddhahood for the aspiring bodhisattva, conviction comes at a stage where the practitioner is explicitly said to waver regarding the object of their conviction (the so-­called adhimukticaryābhūmi). So, for instance, in The Stage of the Bodhisattva (Bodhisattvabhūmi), Asaṅga (ca. fourth century) tells us that conviction is what spurs the practitioner who has already ascertained the nature of reality through scriptural learning and rational inquiry, but who has not yet had a direct experience of it. It’s conviction that keeps the practitioner on track as their mind wavers, their attention gets clouded, and they suffer setbacks on the path to that direct experience.32 So, this

92  Davey K. Tomlinson conviction is abandoned as one ascends to higher levels of the bodhisattva path: practitioners who have had the direct experience of reality no longer need to make judgments about its being only thus-­and-­so, not otherwise, as if trying to convince themselves of the fact. They just directly experience reality.33 In a practice like Caitra’s cultivation of impurity, conviction is never abandoned. This is because, as we saw Vasubandhu say, it is only mental activity that proceeds from the force of conviction that pushes the yogin to experience things as they know them not to be.34 The implications of this point come across clearly in the writings of Saṅghabhadra (ca. fifth ­century).35 Referring to the meditation on a skeleton rather than on a bloated corpse, an opponent objects that a virtuoso like Caitra might see his entire meditation chamber as a room full of impure bones, despite the fact that the objects in his room are not such. Such meditation is thus deluded, the opponent objects, insofar as it visualizes what is not impure as impure. Saṅghabhadra’s response to this worry is revealing. He writes, One who cognizes a man with regard to a post does not comprehend thus: “I am now seeing the appearance of a man with regard to the post.”—this is then deluded. In this case, [however,] the meditator thinks thus: “Although the objects are not entirely bones, for the sake of subduing defilements [like desire and so on], I should see them all as bones through conviction.” Since he is comprehending accordingly as they actually are, in accordance with his intention, and is thus able to subdue the defilements, how can it be deluded?36 An erroneous awareness is deluded only insofar as one is not aware of their error, as when I mistake a post for a man at twilight. But, in the case of Caitra’s cultivation of impurity, he does know that he is having an erroneous experience when he sees his chamber as being full of bones, when he sees the acquired image of the bloated corpse when he closes his eyes, or when he vividly experiences the counterpart image of the bloated-­­corpse-­ in-­general. In each case, he knows full well that things are not as they appear. Yet, through sustained conviction that they are thus-­ and-­ so, he nevertheless comes to experience impurity in order to counteract his attachment and desire.37 Saṅghabhadra’s point is that such appearances are not deluded insofar as they are an effective means to a soteriologically valued end. But, I think, his response shows us something important about conviction more generally. Convictions can be formed unintentionally or intentionally. In ordinary experience, where we do not reflect on the possibility that our ascertainments lead us astray, convictions are formed unintentionally through habituation. In the context of meditative cultivation, however,

Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth  93 convictions are formed intentionally for the sake of coming to experience things in a way that is predetermined by some goal. Conviction thus lets us experience things as if they are thus-­and-­so, not otherwise: either when we know that they are in fact otherwise but want to experience them as thus-­ and-­so, as in the case of Caitra’s cultivation of impurity regarding things that are not impure; or when we know things to be thus-­and-­so through scriptural learning and rational inquiry, but we have not yet had a direct experience of their being that way, as in the early stages of the bodhisattva path. In either case, this kind of as-­if experience is different from an experience of the way things are.38 It comes with an implicit awareness that we are pretending as we force ourselves, through repeated practice, to experience things according to our intention. So, for Caitra, conviction cannot be abandoned because it is what lets him experience impurity regarding things he knows not to be impure. For Maitrī, on the other hand, conviction is abandoned when she finally comes to experience selflessness directly, just due to its being the nature of things. When she directly experiences things as they are, she no longer needs to pretend. 5.5 The Difference Truth Makes Maitrī’s yogic perception, then, differs from Caitra’s yogic awareness in that it results from a cultivation that takes as its object some aspect of the Four Nobles’ Truths, insight into which has been reached through scripture and sustained rational inquiry. It differs, too, in that it lacks any implicit awareness that things are not as they appear to be; it’s grounded instead on knowledge that things are as they appear. Maitrī’s awareness is shaped by insight, whereas Caitra’s is shaped by conviction. For these reasons, I think, Dharmakīrti is committed to the idea that what it’s like to experience yogic perception is different from what it’s like to experience mere yogic awareness—despite the fact that both experiences result from long processes of cultivation and both have the same phenomenal vividness. We can consider this problem from two perspectives: first, from the perspective of the effect that what’s real has on the mind, and second, from the perspective of the distinctive phenomenology of yogic perception’s certainty. The real’s effect on the mind is decisive. Dharmakīrti’s clearest expression of this type of “epistemological optimism” comes in the course of his discussion of the Truth of Path (mārgasatya) in his Detailed Commentary.39 There, he tells us that the natural mode of awareness is to apprehend its intentional object (viṣaya) just as it is, for an object simply generates an awareness-­event according to its present nature. Because objects are by nature selfless, empty, and so forth—as both scripture and rational inquiry teach us—the natural mode of awareness is thus to experience

94  Davey K. Tomlinson reality (tattvadarśana). This is what it means to say that the mind’s natural state is luminous (prabhāsvara)40: the mind inclines toward knowledge of the ultimate. It’s only because awareness is affected by ignorance, its natural luminosity occluded by beginningless imprints and conceptual habits, that error occurs and we don’t immediately apprehend what’s real. Importantly, Dharmakīrti does not mean to suggest by this epistemological optimism that the experience of ultimate reality is a return to some pre-­fallen state. Ignorance, imprints, and conceptual habits are all beginningless: there is no state of purity to return to.41 Rather, the context of Dharmakīrti’s discussion is the impossibility of backsliding once the real has been experienced. That is, even if a person were to put in considerable effort at cultivating the mistaken notion of self after a direct realization of selflessness, selflessness could not be uprooted. “For,” as the commentator Manorathanandin explains Dharmakīrti’s reasoning, “the essence, once directly perceived, cannot be interpreted otherwise.” That is, once selflessness has been experienced as the natural mode of awareness, there is no turning back, “for the mind sides with it” (tatpakṣapātataḥ).42 Dharmakīrti gives an illuminating example of what this experience is like for the yogin. With characteristic succinctness, he says that the error that is contrary to the natural mode of awareness is “unsteady (adṛḍha), insofar as it depends upon an instance of understanding for its cessation, just like the awareness of a snake.”43 The example of walking on a path at twilight and mistaking a coiled rope for a snake would have been well-­ known to Dharmakīrti’s audience. Manorathanandin’s commentary is nevertheless elucidating. He writes, Just as the idea of a snake with regard to a rope, which is engendered on account of an error, does not arise again after ceasing in virtue of an instance of understanding which apprehends the nature of the rope, in the same way the belief in an existing being no longer occurs when selflessness is perceived as something real—[i.e.] once the cause of error has been removed—since awareness is disposed to perceiving the nature of an object and the object is intent upon imparting its own form [to awareness].44 Consider what it’s like for an illusion to be dispelled. First, startled by what you believe to be a snake, you jump back in fear. But when you see the rope for what it is, relieved, your mind assents to the way things are: there’s a rope there, not a snake. When you’ve approached the rope, touched it, and confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that it is not a snake, you won’t fall back under the spell of the illusion. The experience of the Four Nobles’ Truths is like that, Dharmakīrti tells us. When the mind’s selflessness and its emptiness of duality has been experienced firsthand, the illusion of self

Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth  95 is dispelled. And because it is the mind’s nature to side with what’s real— and the object’s nature to impart its true form to awareness—there’s no falling back from this realization. Dharmakīrti doesn’t tell us more about what this experience is like. However, his philosophical forebears, Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, do. In the Ornament of the Mahāyāna Sūtras (Mahāyānasūtrālaṃ kāra), Asaṅga explains that the yogin’s experience of reality is akin to seeing through a magician’s illusion: “Just as people, no longer deceived, act as they please (kāmataś caret) in relation to the cause of the illusion, so too the ascetic (yatiḥ), no longer deluded upon his transformation, acts as he pleases (kāmacārī).”45 The illusion in question is a roadside magic show, wherein a magician turns a pile of sticks and stones into an elephant through the use of a spell. As Vasubandhu explains in his comment, the point is this: Just as people, no longer deceived with respect to the cause of the illusion, such as sticks and so on, act as they please (kāmataś carati), or are free (svatantraḥ), so too, no longer deluded upon the transformation of the basis (āśrayaparāvṛttāv aparyastaḥ), the Noble One (āryaḥ) acts as he pleases, or is free.46 Freedom or independence, svātantrya, characterizes the yogin’s experience of reality. Before the “transformation of the basis,” or the fundamental transformation of the mental stream caused by the direct experience of reality, the practicing yogin was still constrained by the illusion of a sense of self that keeps us all mired in saṃsāra. After that transformation, however, the illusion is dispelled once and for all, and the yogin acts freely regarding the impermanent and selfless phenomena that once served as the cause of the illusion.47 More than just the reality of its object, then, sets Maitrī’s cultivation of a truth apart from Caitra’s cultivation of a falsehood. There is a steadyness or firmness to Maitrī’s ascertainment of selflessness that Caitra’s ascertainment of impurity lacks. Dharmakīrti seems to think that this is because of the natural proclivity of the mind to side with what’s real. On its own, this might seem axiomatic rather than reasoned. But Asaṅga’s and Vasubandhu’s reflections on what it’s like for an illusion to be dispelled suggest why we might think the mind should have this proclivity. The mind sides with what’s real because the activity that follows from the experience of what’s real is effortless, unrestricted, and free. Despite the power of conceptual habits to make our perceptual ascertainments seem effortless, those ascertainments nevertheless buck the way things are. We suffer because the activity that follows from our judgments about ourselves and our world is thwarted by the nature of things. We suppose that we and our loved ones have enduring selves, that we possess things, that things are under our

96  Davey K. Tomlinson control, but all this is sooner or later proven false. Caitra’s experience of impurity is like that, too: the vivid experience of what is not impure as impure might have its benefits, but the way things are will push back against Caitra’s conviction sooner or later. On the other hand, activity that follows from the scripturally and rationally grounded direct experience of the way things are—selfless, impermanent, and so on—will not be thwarted in this way. It’s for this reason that there’s no backsliding from yogic perception. And it’s this that sets the experience of yogic perception apart from that of yogic awareness. 5.6 Conclusion Maitrī’s yogic perception of selflessness, then, differs from Caitra’s yogic awareness of impurity both epistemically and phenomenally. Because her experience is grounded on insight that is arisen from rational inquiry followed to its limit, it is steady and certain in a way no other experience is. It comes with the assurance that there will be no reappearance of the sense of self, no backsliding into illusion. And, because it accords with the way things are, or “proceeds by the force of something real” (vastubalapravṛtta), it results in activity that is free and unrestrained. Caitra’s experience, on the other hand, is not grounded on such insight; instead, despite the vividness of the experience, it comes with the implicit awareness that things are not as they appear. It’s shaped by conviction rather than knowledge. And because it does not accord with the way things are, it is unsteady and bound to be overturned. When Dharmakīrti claims that yogic perception and yogic awareness share the same sort of vividness, then, he only means to characterize each experience as a non-­conceptual result of cultivation. He does not mean to say that they are experientially indistinguishable. Rather, the experience of yogic perception is distinctive precisely because it results from the repeated practice of the Four Truths of the Noble Ones. List of Abbreviations AK/Bh Abhidharmakośa/Bhāṣya of Vasubandhu. See Pradhan 1975. MSA  Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra of Maitreyanātha/Āryāsaṅga. See Lévi 1907. MSABh Mahāyānasūtrālaṃ kārabhāṣya of Vasubandhu. See Lévi 1907. PV Pramāṇavārttika of Dharmakīrti. See Miyasaka 1971. PVA Pramāṇ avārttikālaṃkāra of Prajñākaragupta. See Sāṅkṛtyāyana 1953. PVin Pramāṇaviniścaya of Dharmakīrti. See Steinkellner 2007. PVSV Pramāṇavārttika Svavṛtti of Dharmakīrti. See Gnoli 1960.

Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth  97 Notes 1 Though Dharmakīrti, our primary focus below, mentions the aśubhabhāvanā, he does not give details regarding his understanding of its practice. For those details, I rely particularly on Pali Abhidhamma and Sanskrit Abhidharma literature. For general background on the practice and its development, see Dessein (2013) and Dhammajoti (2021, 123–230). Buddhaghosa (ca. fifth century) gives a particularly detailed exposition on the topic in the Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), chapter 6, which guides my discussion here; see Buddhaghosa (2010, 169–185). Vasubandhu’s (ca. fourth to fifth centuries) briefer discussion in the AKBh comes in AK 6.9–11. 2 As Buddhaghosa puts the culminating realization of this meditation, “For a living body is just as foul as a dead one, only the characteristic of foulness is not evident in a living body, being hidden by adventitious embellishments. [… The living body] is worked up into a state that permits of its being taken as “I” and “mine.” […] But in the ultimate sense there is no place here even the size of an atom fit to lust after” (Buddhaghosa 2010, 183–184). 3 For a rich discussion of this point in the context of desire and sexuality, see Cabezón (2017, 79–171). 4 For a recent philosophical introduction to the Four Nobles’ Truths, see Garfield (2022, 71–89). 5 Eltschinger (2014b) explores the 16 aspects of the Four Nobles’ Truths, particularly in relation to Dharmakīrti’s work. 6 As a famous Sūtra passage says, “Whether or not Tathāgatas arise, the nature of phenomena abides.” See Arnold (2005, 281 n. 39) for references. My thanks to Arnold for suggesting the relevance of this passage. For an introduction to some of these arguments, see Siderits (2022). For a more detailed discussion of Dharmakīrti’s arguments against the self, see Eltschinger and Ratié (2013). 7 For this point and the following discussion, see Kellner (2004) and Eltschinger (2014a chapter 4, esp. 298–305). 8 PVSV (32.5–7). Of the many translations of this passage, compare in particular Kellner (2004, 19), Eltschinger et al. (2018, 53), and Pecchia (2020, 790), as well as the discussion in Prueitt (2018). 9 Kellner (2004, 29). 10 It’s worth noting that the attractiveness of the corpse, especially when recently deceased, was a live worry in discussions of the virtuoso’s cultivation of impurity. Buddhaghosa says, for instance, A female body is not appropriate for a man nor a male one for a woman; for the object, [namely, the repulsiveness of the corpse], does not make its appearance in the body of the opposite sex, which merely becomes a condition for the wrong kind of excitement. To quote the Majjhima Commentary: ‘Even when decaying, a woman invades a man’s mind and stays there.’ That is why the sign should be apprehended […] only in a body of the same sex. (Buddhaghosa 2010, 174–175; see too 170–171) 11 PV 3.285 = PVin 1.31. Pecchia (2020, 791); compare Dunne (2006, 514,) Eltschinger (2009, 192 fn.99), and Franco (2011, 84). 12 As Dharmakīrti makes explicit in PV 3.284. See Dunne (2006, 516), Eltschinger (2009, 194 fn.109), Franco (2011, 84), Pecchia (2020, 791).

98  Davey K. Tomlinson 3 This much is in verse: PVin 1.32ab = PV 3.283ab. 1 14 PVin 28.11–13. See Dunne (2006, 517). 15 PV 3.286, reading: tatra pramāṇasaṃ vādi yat prāṅnirṇītavastuvat | tadbhāvanājaṃ pratyakṣam iṣṭaṃ śeṣā upaplavāḥ ||. See Eltschinger (2011, 82). On the interpretation of this verse, see Franco (2011, 85, fn. 28). Compare the translations in Dunne (2006, 515); Eltschinger (2009, 195–196); Franco (2011, 84); Pecchia (2020, 791). 16 See Eltschinger (2009, 196–197); Franco (2011, 87). Eltschinger (2009, 197), cites an especially clear comment in this regard from disciple and earliest commentator, Devendrabuddhi (ca. seventh century): “not all cognitions of yogins are perception, but [only] the one that has been stated before, i.e. the one that has been stated before as bearing upon the four Noble Truths.” 17 On this point, see Eltschinger (2009, 196ff.); Eltschinger (2014a, 298–328). 18 For translations in whole or in part of this chapter, see Nagatomi (1957) (translation in full, with brief selections from Prajñākaragupta’s and Manorathanandin’s commentaries); Jackson (1993) (in full with the commentary of rGyal tshab rje [1364–1432]); Franco (1997) (vv.34–72, with the commentary of Prajñākaragupta); Eltschinger and Ratié (2015) (vv. 220–256, with selections from various commentaries); Pecchia (2015) (vv.190–216, with the commentary of Manorathanandin); Gyatso (2016) (in full with the commentary of Karmapa Chödrak Gyatso [1454–1506]). 19 PVin ad 1.28, 27.9–12. For translations, see Dunne (2006, 507), Eltschinger (2009, 198), Pecchia (2020, 792). 20 PVin 27.10–12; translation as per Pecchia (2020, 792), with slight modifications. 21 This point is not uncontrovertial. On just how to interpret the relationship between external realism and (some sort of) idealism in Dharmakīrti’s work, see Dunne (2004, 53–79), Kellner (2017). For a consideration of what sort of idealism Dharmakīrti defends, see Dunne (ibid.), Arnold (2008), Ratié (2014). 22 See PV 3.194–219. A detailed consideration of this complex passage is beyond our scope here. For a translation, see Dunne (2004, 396–411). 23 PV 3.209. Cf. the translation in Dunne (2004, 401). 24 See PV 3.213. 25 For an exploration of the yogic perception of momentariness in Dharmakīrti’s tradition, see Tomlinson (2021) and the sources cited there. 26 For Vasubandhu’s comments on the three types of mental activity, see AKBh ad AK 2.72, and compare the use of adhimukti in the discussion of the aśubhabhāvanā at AKBh ad AK 6.9: Vasubandhu (2012, 696–697 and 1899) (with n. 121, p. 2054). For Yaśomitra’s comment, see Wogihara (1932, 247): adhimuktyā na bhūtārthe manasikāraṃ adhimuktimanaskāraḥ. 27 Xuezhu and Steinkellner (2008, 5.9–10): abhimokṣaḥ katamaḥ. niścite vastuni tathaivāvadhāraṇam. Compare the comments of some Sarvāstivādins, Dhammajoti (2021, 88–89). 28 Kramer (2013, 37.4–6): na hy aniścite vastuni tathaivāvadhāraṇasambhavo ’stīti. yuktita āptopadeśād vā yad vastu niḥsandigdhaṃ tan niścitam. This is the same as a comment of Sthiramati’s in his Triṃ śikābhāṣya; see Buescher (2007, 19–21). Compare the discussion in Dhammajoti (2021, 108–109). 29 As Sthiramati puts it, Kramer (2013 37.8), evam evaitan nānyathety avadhāraṇam adhimokṣaḥ. Again, see Buescher (2007, 22–23) for the parallel in the Triṃ śikābhāṣya. Dhammajoti (2021, 108), points out that this

Meditative Cultivation and the Force of Truth  99 characterization of adhimokṣa can be traced back to the Tattvārthapaṭala of the Bodhisattvabhūmi. 30 See Dhammajoti (2021, 83–122). 31 Dhammajoti (2021, 109). 32 See Asaṅga (2016, 524–529); compare 70–72, noting Engle’s fn. 270 on his translations of adhimukti and adhimokṣa. 33 Asaṅga’s comment, in Engle’s translation (Asaṅga 2016, 72), is worth citing in full: “Indeed, a bodhisattva who has realized the ineffable nature of all entities as it truly is with [a form of] the knowledge of the insubstantiality of phenomena that has long since penetrated [into the meaning] does not form any type of conceptual thought whatsoever and does not grasp anything other than the bare substance (vastumātram) [of entities] and [their] bare suchness. [That bodhisattva] also does not think to him-­or herself: “This is the bare substance [of entities],” or “This is the bare suchness [of entities].” Rather, the bodhisattva engages with the true import. Engaging this ultimate object, he or she perceives, with his or her wisdom, all entities as they truly are—[which is to say,] that they are [all] exactly the same in relation to this suchness.” 34 See again Vasubandhu’s AKBh ad AK 2.72 and AK 6.9–11, Vasubandhu (2012, 696–697 and 1898–1902). 35 See Dhammajoti (2021, 157–161). 36 Dhammajoti (2021, 161), translation modified slightly according to my conventions here. 37 Without appealing to conviction explicitly, Dharmakīrti’s commentator Prajñākaragupta (ca. ninth century) underlines this point when he writes that, for those practicing the cultivation of impurity and the like, “even though those objects appear to the yogins, still this meditative cultivation—which is a means to an end—indeed takes the form of something unreal. Therefore, those things appear to those yogins having the form of something unreal.” That is, Caitra never loses sight of the fact that the vivid appearance of impurity he experiences is nevertheless unreal. See PVA 327.19–21; the translation is that of Nilanjan Das, Catherine Prueitt, and myself. 38 For a recent exploration of the “as if,” see Appiah (2017, esp. 1–56). 39 See especially PV 2.205–216; Pecchia (2015). Compare the discussion in Eltschinger (2009, 200–207); Eltschinger (2014a, 298–305). Note that Eltschinger understands especially PV 2.206–207a as spoken from the perspective of an external realist rather than Dharmakīrti’s ultimate view of idealism, given the language he uses here of the apprehension of an object (viṣayagrahaṇa). I’m not sure this passage is in fact incompatible with Dharmakīrti’s idealism, but a consideration of this is beyond our scope here. 40 Dharmakīrti uses just the language of natural luminosity (prakṛtiprabhāsvara) in PV 2.208. Though he does not use the language of the mind’s natural state being the experience of reality (tattvadarśana), it is implied by his other comments, as his followers make clear: Devendrabuddhi understands luminosity to mean “having the nature of apprehending things as they really are” (yang dag pa ji lta ba bzhin du ’dzin pa’i rang bzhin), whereas Śāntarakṣita understands it to mean “consisting in the experience of reality” (tattvadarśanasātmaka). See Eltschinger (2009, 202–203), Eltschinger (2014a, 300–305). Kamalaśīla’s summary of this line of thought is especially clear: “It is firmly established that the intrinsic nature of the mind is to apprehend the real aspect of an object; but it has been explained earlier that the real nature of an object consists of its being momentary, selfless,

100  Davey K. Tomlinson and so on; therefore, the mind has the apprehension of selflessness for its nature.” See Eltschinger (2014a, 304); translation modified slightly. 41 On objections to this notion of beginninglessness in Dharmakīrti’s tradition, see Prueitt (2020). 42 See PV 2.210, with Manorathanandin’s commentary, translation as per Pecchia (2015, 151). 43 PV 2.207cd: vyāvṛttau pratyayāpekṣam adṛḍhaṃ sarpabuddhivat; compare Pecchia (2015, 173) (on whose translation I’ve relied here), and Eltschinger (2009, 202). 44 In the translation of Pecchia (2015, 147–149); Pecchia’s edition of the text is on page 148. 45 MSA 11.18, reading yatiḥ for patiḥ, as suggested by Lévi’s note in volume 2, page 109. 46 MSABh ad 11.18. Compare the translation by Jamspal et al., Maitreyanātha et al. (2004, 123). 47 Dharmakīrti himself makes reference to the āśrayaparāvṛtti in PV 2.205. For a edition and translation, with Manorathanandin’s commentary, see Pecchia (2015, 144–145). Eltschinger (2005) discusses the idea in Dharmakīrti’s work more broadly.

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6 Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice The Pyrrhonists, Diderot, and Regulative Epistemology Lorenzo Serini 6.1 Introduction: Regulative Epistemology and the History of Philosophy In this chapter, I explore the conception of skepticism as a truth-seeking practice in the Pyrrhonists and Denis Diderot from the perspective of what has been called “regulative epistemology” (Wolterstorff 1996; Roberts and Wood 2007). My exploration takes place at the crossroads of the history of Western philosophy and recent debates in non-­ standard epistemologies. In contrast to standard analytic epistemology, according to Wolterstorff (1996, xvi), regulative epistemology is not primarily concerned with theories of knowledge and rationality, but rather with the practical problem of “how we ought to conduct our understandings—what we ought to do by way of forming beliefs.” As Roberts and Wood (2007, 29) note, “[r]egulative epistemology is nothing new.” Many examples of this can be found in the history of philosophy. Wolterstorff (1996) focuses on Locke’s regulative epistemology and ethics of belief, and Roberts and Wood (2007) discuss Locke and Descartes—especially, the part of Descartes’ philosophy that is largely neglected by standard epistemologists. Drawing on their discussions, I want to argue that Pyrrhonian skeptics and Diderot, too, are directly concerned with issues relating to regulative epistemology, especially with questions concerning how to investigate well and manage our beliefs appropriately. Importantly, [r]egulative epistemology is a response to perceived deficiencies in people’s epistemic conduct, and thus is strongly practical and social, rather than just an interesting theoretical challenge for philosophy professors and smart students […]. It focuses on forming the practitioner’s character and is strongly education-oriented. (Roberts and Wood 2007, 21–22)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-7

104  Lorenzo Serini A similar practical and pedagogical focus and orientation can be found in the Pyrrhonists’ and Diderot’s respective philosophical programs. As Sextus Empiricus (2000, 216 [PH 3.280]) reports, Pyrrhonian “[s]ceptics are philanthropic and wish to cure, as far as they can, the conceit and rashness of the Dogmatists.” The overarching aim of the Encyclopédie edited by ­Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert is to “change the common way of thinking” (cited and translated in Wolfe and Shank 2022). Diderot pursues this aim also in his single-authored philosophical (and non-philosophical) works. Regulative epistemology focuses on the “formation of excellent intellectual agents,” thinking about intellectual virtues and vices, namely, about character traits or practices that are either spurs (virtues) or obstacles (vices) to knowledge broadly construed (Roberts and Wood 2007, 23). Thus, not only is regulative epistemology practically oriented, but it also focuses on practices, especially intellectual practices.1 On the one hand, certain practices contribute to forming virtuous intellectual characters; on the other, certain virtuous traits of character are essential to perform some intellectual practices optimally (see Roberts and Wood 2007, 113–150). While skepticism, understood as a set of theoretical arguments about the impossibility or limited possibility of knowledge, is at the center of standard analytic epistemology, there has been little discussion of conceptions of skepticism in regulative epistemology.2 In this chapter, I argue that the conceptions of skepticism and the skeptic we find in the Pyrrhonists and Diderot can help us address central questions concerning skeptical character traits and practices in regulative epistemology. Pyrrhonian skeptics and Diderot have a similar conception of skepticism as a practice of investigation, rather than as a theory about the impossibility or partial possibility of knowing. It is in this sense that I speak of skepticism as truth-seeking practice. They similarly think that the practice of skepticism is essential to pursue excellence in investigation because it enables the inquirer to avoid and combat the intellectual vices typical of dogmatism, including arrogance, rashness, and one-sidedness—intellectual vices that obstruct knowledge by maximizing the likelihood of error. Thus, for the Pyrrhonists and Diderot, skepticism contributes to forming an excellent intellectual character, including intellectual virtues such as modesty, caution, and open-mindedness. An excellent or virtuous truth seeker is a skeptic—someone who regularly adopts skeptical practices and who develops a skeptical attitude of the mind. However, they provide significantly different views of skepticism as a virtuous truth-seeking practice and of the skeptic as an excellent truth seeker. It is my contention that this difference is worthy of the attention of regulative epistemologists as well as of historians of philosophy. I will especially focus on Sextus’ presentation of Pyrrhonism in his Outline of Scepticism (between late second century or early third century) and

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  105 on Diderot’s characterization of what we may call the ‘Enlightenment skeptic’ in his Philosophical Thoughts (1746). Here, Diderot characterizes the excellent truth seeker as a skeptic in comparison with the Pyrrhonist. One of the main goals of this chapter is to think about this comparison in terms of regulative, virtue/vice epistemology. First, I will reconstruct Sextus’ description of the Pyrrhonian skeptic as an excellent inquirer and of Pyrrhonian skepticism as a virtuous practice of philosophical investigation that aims to avoid dogmatism and falsehood, while primarily aiming at tranquility too. Second, I will analyze the character of the Enlightenment skeptic portrayed by Diderot in contrast with the Pyrrhonist. I will show that Diderot’s criticism of Pyrrhonism provides us with useful tools for thinking about skepticism in regulative epistemology, suggesting that skepticism is not always a virtuous practice of truth seeking, and that without certain virtuous character traits of the skeptic—especially, their intellectual integrity—skeptical practices may in fact seriously hinder genuine philosophical investigation. Moreover, I think, looking at Pyrrhonian skeptics and Diderot from the perspective of regulative epistemology can help us better understand and appreciate their conceptions of skepticism and the skeptic. At first glance, from the perspective of the history of philosophy, it might seem odd to compare the Pyrrhonists and Diderot on skepticism. After all, the former ones are among the most radical skeptics who remain uncertain about everything in their philosophical investigations, while the latter is a thinker of the French Enlightenment, an intellectual period characterized by a confidence or faith in the cognitive powers of human beings to shed light on things. However, as we will see, Pyrrhonian skepticism can be regarded as a practice that is in an important sense directed at truth, and Diderot is much more ‘skeptical’ than one may initially assume, although he has been largely ignored as a skeptic and, in general, as a philosopher in the Anglo-American literature. Hopefully, in this chapter, I will also contribute to reconsidering the historical and philosophical significance of his intriguing conception and practice of skepticism.

6.2 Pyrrhonian Skepticism and Epistemology In contemporary debates, standard analytic epistemologists often refer to Pyrrhonian skepticism—admittedly, without a particular interest in historical accuracy—as a radical or even absolute form of skepticism, which they take to be a theoretical argument about the impossibility of knowledge that applies indiscriminately to any claim to know. And many contemporary epistemological theories are presented as responding to at least some aspects of this argument (see, e.g., Comesaña 2019).

106  Lorenzo Serini However, Pyrrhonism, as it is presented by Sextus, significantly differs from contemporary presentations of skepticism, especially from those in standard analytic epistemology. It is often claimed that one of the main differences is that Pyrrhonian skepticism has a practical orientation, while contemporary discussions are more theoretically oriented. On the one hand, the Pyrrhonists pursue skepticism as a way of life (agōgē) (Sextus 2000, 4 [PH 1.7], 7 [PH 1.16-17]) that is aimed at attaining the tranquility of the mind (ataraxia) (2000, 5–6 [PH 1.10, 12], 10-11 [PH 1.25–30]). On the other, standard analytic epistemologists today are not much concerned with practical questions, such as how to live; rather, they are narrowly interested in theoretical problems about the nature and possibility of ­ knowledge. There is another important difference. Pyrrhonian skepticism is not at all a theory about the impossibility of knowledge. As Michael Williams (1988) suggests, Pyrrhonism can be regarded as a skepticism without theory—or, at least, as a type of philosophy in which practice, not theory, is primary. This is no exaggeration. In reality, in Outlines of Scepticism, Sextus presents skepticism as a mode of investigation (2000, 3 [PH 1.1–4]) based on an ability—namely, on the ability to induce suspension of judgment by opposing conflicting accounts (2000, 4 [PH 1.8-10]). It is Williams’ (1988, 554) suggestion that Pyrrhonism, as a practice is not substantially based on theory; rather, it “depends on acquiring an ability, not on proving or even assenting to a thesis.” Odd as it might sound to us, the Pyrrhonian practice is not even based on a thesis or theory about knowledge. Pyrrhonian skeptics are simply not in the business of proposing, demonstrating, or even accepting theories, be they about the good life or about the possibility or impossibility of knowledge (Sextus 2000, 7 [PH 1.16-17]). According to Williams (1988, 557), Pyrrhonian skepticism is neither based nor centered on a theory of knowledge as it is standardly understood in the analytic tradition: not only is it “[independent from] epistemological commitments,” but it also lack[s] any privileged connection with epistemology.”3 In light of all of this, it seems clear that, whatever the Pyrrhonists do, their practice is very different from what standard analytic epistemologists do, and talk about, in recent debates on skepticism. Pyrrhonian skeptics are not much focused on theories of knowledge but on practices of investigation. Although, as we will see, they do not argue in any straightforward sense for rules of inquiry and belief formation, their characterization of the skeptic as an excellent truth seeker can offer us valuable insight about a regulative epistemology approach to skepticism—one that is, in addition, more historically accurate with respect to Pyrrhonism than standard epistemological approaches. In the next section, I will reconstruct Sextus’ presentation of Pyrrhonian skepticism as a practice of investigation and belief formation that is

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  107 primarily aimed at mental tranquility. In my reconstruction, I will address a set of interpretive questions relating to regulative epistemology: If Pyrrhonian skepticism is a practice that is not based on a theory of knowledge, is the Pyrrhonian practice related to truth? If yes, how? If the Pyrrhonists aim at tranquility, what is the place of truth in their practical program? 6.3 Pyrrhonian Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice In the opening of Outlines of Scepticism, Sextus (2000, 3 [PH 1.1–3]) ­introduces Pyrrhonian skeptics as people who are engaged in a specific kind of philosophical investigation. After all, the ancient Greek word ‘skepsis’ means investigation, and in its literal sense a ‘skeptikos’ is simply someone who inquires. This is emphasized by Sextus when he says that Pyrrhonian skepticism “is also called Investigative [or Zetetic], from its activity in ­investigating and inquiring” (2000, 4 [PH 1.7]). From the start, Sextus is keen to distinguish Pyrrhonism from other types of philosophical investigation, especially from the philosophies of the Dogmatists (including the ­Aristotelians, the Epicureans, and the Stoics) and the Academics (i.e., the philosophers of the Platonic Academy). This distinction has to do with how these different types of philosophical investigations relate to truth. In contrast to the Dogmatists, who “think that they have discovered the truth,” and to the Academics, who assert “that things cannot be apprehended,” Sextus tells us that “the Skeptics are still investigating” (2000, 3 [PH 1.3]). One way or another, for Sextus, both Dogmatists and Academics bring their philosophical investigations to an end. The former ones conclude their inquiry because they believe that they have discovered the truth; the latter ones—who can be regarded as ‘negative Dogmatists’—stop seeking the truth because they believe that it cannot be apprehended. The distinctive feature of the Pyrrhonian type of investigation, instead, is that Skeptics continue to investigate. As it becomes clear, by ‘truth,’ Sextus here means the truth concerning the real nature of things (see Bett in this volume): For those who agree that they do not know how objects are in their nature may continue without inconsistency to investigate them: those who think they know them accurately may not. For the latter, the investigation is already at its end, […] whereas for the former, the reason why any investigation is undertaken—that is, the idea that they have not found the answer—is fully present. (Sextus 2000, 69–70 [PH 2.11]) Unlike the Dogmatists, the Pyrrhonists acknowledge that they do not know the truth concerning the real nature of things. Importantly, for

108  Lorenzo Serini Sextus, this is one of the reasons why Pyrrhonian skeptics pursue their investigations. (Another reason, as we will see shortly, is the hope to become tranquil.) Furthermore, claiming not to know the truth is seen as consistent with continuous inquiry: the Pyrrhonists continue to investigate because they have not yet discovered the truth. Unlike the Academics, however, Pyrrhonian skeptics do not claim that the truth concerning the real nature of things cannot be apprehended: “[t]he members of the New Academy […] differ from the Sceptics in saying that everything is inapprehensible. For they make affirmations about this, while the Sceptic expects it to be possible for some things actually to be apprehended” (Sextus 2000, 59 [PH 1.226]). Sextus stresses that the Pyrrhonists do not accept the claim that knowledge is impossible. That things cannot be apprehended, for Pyrrhonian skeptics, is not clear, and further research is required for deciding this matter too. So, they continue to investigate. It is important to note from now that, as Sextus puts it, the Pyrrhonists have some expectations about the possibility of apprehending the truth: they expect truth seeking to be a worthwhile activity (although they do not expect it to always result in discovery); otherwise, they would neither launch nor continue their investigations. I will return shortly to the senses in which truth seeking is a worthwhile activity for Pyrrhonian skeptics. For the time being, suffice it to say that their investigative activity is meant as philosophical—Sextus speaks of “Sceptical philosophy” and of the “Pyrrhonian philosopher” (2000, 3 [PH 1.3]; 5 [PH 1.11])—not only because the Pyrrhonists investigate philosophical things but also because their investigations are related to truth, though in a very different way from those of the Dogmatists and the Academics.4 Pyrrhonian skeptics are truth seekers, albeit of a peculiar kind: as Diogenes Laertius reports, they were called “Zetetics or seekers because they were ever seeking truth, Sceptics or inquirers because they were always looking for a solution and never finding one” (1931, 483 [9.70]). As I have mentioned, this peculiar type of investigation is based on a practice, namely, on the “ability to set out oppositions” among views on things we perceive and think about (2000, 4 [PH 1.8]). Fundamentally, this is an intellectual ability to provide “conflicting accounts” of something under philosophical investigation (Sextus 2000, 5 [PH 1.10]). This can be understood as the search for, and development of, arguments on both sides of an issue (Vogt 2011). A Pyrrhonian skeptic, then, “is someone who possesses this ability” and excels at constructing oppositions between conflicting philosophical accounts or arguments (Sextus 2000, 5 [PH 1.11]). As talented inquirers, Pyrrhonian skeptics are always on the lookout for counterarguments. In their investigations, it appears to them that “to every account an equal account is opposed” (Sextus 2000, 6 [PH 1.12]). It seems

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  109 to them that for every account they have scrutinized (so far), there is another opposed account “purporting to establish something in a dogmatic fashion,” which is “equal [to the former] […] in convincingness or lack of convincingness” (Sextus 2000, 51 [PH 1.202-203]). This is what the Pyrrhonists call “equipollence”—namely, a condition in which “none of the conflicting accounts takes precedence over any other as being more convincing” (Sextus 2000, 5 [PH 1.10]). Given that the opposed arguments seem equal “with regard to being convincing or unconvincing,” Pyrrhonian skeptics find themselves unable to decide the issue under investigation and thus suspend judgment about it (Sextus 2000, 5 [PH 1.10]). We should bear in mind that, for them, suspension of judgment is neither based on a theory about the impossibility of knowledge, nor on a theory about zetetic or doxastic norms that regulate when one ought to suspend, has reason to suspend, is justified in suspending, etc. (see Friedman 2017); rather, it “is a standstill of the intellect” that comes about in practice when they do not feel particularly convinced or unconvinced by either of the conflicting accounts they consider (Sextus 2000, 5 [PH 1.10]).5 It is because of equipollence and suspension of judgment that the Pyrrhonian skeptics say that they “come to hold no beliefs”—or, more precisely, dogmatic beliefs about the real nature of things. These beliefs would involve “assent to some unclear object of investigation in the sciences,” and thus acceptance of an account as true or false notwithstanding that there is—or may be—an equally convincing or unconvincing counterargument (Sextus 2000, 6 [PH 1.12–13]). “Pyrrhonists,” as Sextus insists, “do not assent to anything unclear” (2000, 6 [PH 1.13]). To avoid the risk of forming rushed beliefs, they suspend judgment about undecided issues, neither posing nor rejecting anything in a dogmatic fashion and thus continue to investigate (Sextus 2000, 5 [PH 1.10]). 6.4 Pyrrhonian Skepticism as a Practice Aimed at Tranquility In addition to the expectations about truth I mentioned earlier, the Pyrrhonists have another motivation for launching their philosophical investigation: “the hope of becoming tranquil” (2000, 5 [PH 1.12]). Their method of opposition is deliberately aimed at attaining the tranquility of the mind: “the aim of the Sceptic is tranquillity in matters of opinion” about philosophical things (Sextus 2000, 10 [PH 1.25]). By constructing oppositions between philosophical accounts, Pyrrhonian skeptics “come first to suspension of judgment and afterward to tranquillity” (2000, 4 [PH 1.8]). What is interesting is that, according to Sextus, the tranquility that originally motivates the Pyrrhonists to commence their inquiry does not coincide with the tranquility that follows suspension of judgment. Let us call the former ‘original tranquility’ and the latter ‘suspensive tranquility.’

110  Lorenzo Serini Sextus explains this discrepancy between original tranquility and suspensive tranquility by telling the story of how one becomes a Pyrrhonian skeptic—the story of their so-called conversion (see Striker 2001). Originally, not unlike the Dogmatists, the proto-Pyrrhonists began to do philosophy in order to decide among appearances and to apprehend which are true and which are false, so as to become tranquil; but they came upon equipollent dispute, and being unable to decide this they suspended judgment. And when they suspended judgment, tranquillity in matters of opinion followed fortuitously […] as a shadow follows a body. (Sextus 2000, 10 [PH 1.26], 11[PH 1.29]) While proto-skeptics hoped that original tranquility would follow the discovery of truth (and falsity), they accidentally attain suspensive tranquility—that is, the tranquility that follows suspension of judgment and the simultaneous abandonment of the dogmatic-like project. It is possible to argue that after repeating this experience several times, the proto-Pyrrhonists began to devote themselves to developing their ability to oppose conflicting accounts in order to produce suspensive tranquility by inducing suspension of judgment. It is in this sense that we can speak of a ‘school’ of Pyrrhonism, a sort of intellectual gym in which the Pyrrhonists, no longer interested in original tranquility, train their skeptical ability to generate suspensive tranquility—without adhering to any philosophical belief about the nature of knowledge or the good life (­Sextus 2000, 7 [PH 1.16–17]). Sextus, it is important to note, specifies that suspension of judgment is not—and cannot be—the aim of Pyrrhonian skepticism (2000, 11 [PH 1.30]). After all, as I have mentioned, Pyrrhonian skeptics also have some expectations about truth in their investigations. Should they directly aim at suspension of judgment, this would raise serious doubts as to whether they are actually interested in deciding the truth of the matter under examination. Sextus does everything he can to emphasize the fact that suspension of judgment is something Pyrrhonian skeptics are subject to and that it comes about more or less accidentally or indirectly. Despite this, there is still a problem with the conversion story. This is clearly spelled out by Katja Maria Vogt (2010, 176): “it is difficult to see how the sceptic might still ‘seek the truth,’ even though, after his conversion to scepticism, he applies an arsenal of argumentative modes that intentionally and reliably produce suspension of judgment.” In other words, if suspension of judgment is intentionally and reliably produced by the (converted) Pyrrhonists in order to attain tranquility, can we say that they are still genuinely concerned about truth in their investigations?

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  111 Vogt (2011) helpfully addresses this question. The conversion story seems to expose Pyrrhonism to what she (2011, 33) calls the “Tranquility Charge: skeptical investigation aims at tranquility, rather than at the discovery of truths; therefore it cannot count as genuine investigation.” This charge, in Vogt’s analysis (2011, 33), relies on the “Discovery Premise: investigation is only genuine investigation if it aims at the discovery of truths.” But the Discovery Premise, she argues, heavily neglects other ways in which investigation can be directed at truth. In particular, according to Vogt (2011, 34), “[i]nsofar the avoidance of falsehoods reflects valuation of the truth, investigation that aims at the avoidance of the false should count as genuine investigation.” Thus, the Tranquility Charge can be dismissed: “the value of truth figures importantly in Pyrrhonian investigation, though Pyrrhonian investigation is more immediately concerned with avoidance of the false than with discovery of the true” (Vogt’s 2011, 34). Of course, as Vogt (2011, 46) specifies, a “Pyrrhonian skeptic cannot argue for any epistemic values and norms. But at the same time, it is clear that no one would turn into a skeptic if she did not deeply care about avoiding falsehoods.”6 In summary, Pyrrhonian skepticism may still be regarded as a genuinely truth-directed mode of investigation insofar as it aims at the avoidance of falsehood: even after their conversion, “[Pyrrhonian] skeptics aim at tranquility as skeptics, and that is, as investigators” (Vogt 2011, 34). This means that they aim at tranquility, while simultaneously aiming to avoid error too. The practical aim and the truth-seeking aim are compatible—indeed, they converge. 6.5 The Practical Implications of Pyrrhonian Skepticism Pyrrhonian skeptics live a life devoted to continuous philosophical investigation—and suspension of judgment—without holding any dogmatic belief. On a truth-seeking level, they want to avoid assenting to anything unclear under philosophical investigation and forming rushed beliefs; on a practical level, they aim at suspensive tranquility in matters of philosophical opinions, avoiding the mental troubles that are ascribable to these opinions. Since antiquity, and still today, philosophers have criticized Pyrrhonism on the basis of the so-called ‘apraxia’ or ‘inactivity’ challenge. According to these philosophers, the Pyrrhonian way of life would be practically unviable because it is impossible to act without any belief (see Bett in this volume). The Pyrrhonists were well aware of this challenge, though not too bothered by it. As Sextus tells us, they responded to this challenge by distinguishing between standards of truth and standards of action: “There are standards adopted to provide conviction about the reality or unreality of something […]; and there are standards of action” (2000, 9 [PH 1.21]). Of course, Pyrrhonian skeptics suspend judgment about

112  Lorenzo Serini “standards of truth” (Sextus 2000, 71–92 [PH 2.14–96]). Yet, for Sextus, it is not a problem to live a life without the philosophical opinions about the nature of things of the sort held by the Dogmatists. There are practical standards that are not based on these dogmatic beliefs and that allow the Pyrrhonists to “perform some actions and not others” in everyday life (Sextus 2000, 9 [PH 1.21]). One of these standards of action, perhaps the most famous one, is that Pyrrhonian skeptics live in conformity with the “costumes and laws” (Sextus 2000, 9 [PH 1.24])—without holding the belief that traditions and norms provide true accounts of what is good and bad by nature. Now, although Pyrrhonian skepticism can be regarded as a truth-seeking practice, and although their truth-searching aim (avoidance of falsehood) can be regarded as compatible with their practical, therapeutical aim (tranquility or avoidance of mental trouble), I want to ask a set of questions drawing on regulative, virtue/vice epistemology. Ought we practice Pyrrhonian skepticism if we want to investigate well? Is Pyrrhonian skepticism a virtuous truth-seeking practice? Is the skeptic characterized by Sextus an excellent truth seeker? In the following sections, I will address these questions by discussing Diderot’s conception of skepticism and the skeptic. 6.6 Diderot’s Characterization of the Enlightenment Skeptic As William Bristow (2017) notes, it might sound odd to learn that [s]kepticism enjoys a remarkably strong place in Enlightenment philosophy, given that confidence in our intellectual capacities to achieve systematic knowledge of nature is a leading characteristic of the age. […] The skeptical cast of mind is one prominent manifestation of the ­Enlightenment spirit.7 The skeptical cast of mind of Enlightenment philosophers, Bristow (2017) goes on to say, involves a “negative, critical, suspicious attitude […] towards doctrines traditionally regarded as well founded,” especially toward the dogmas of religion, metaphysics, and science, and a specific “attitude of inquiry” based on “distrust of authority and reliance on one’s own capacity to judge.” The fact that Enlightenment philosophy aims to form such a skeptical cast of mind or intellectual character, I believe, resonates very well with regulative epistemology. This, I suggest, is especially the case for Diderot. I concur with Petr Lom’s observation (2001, 61) that “Diderot was not interested in epistemological skepticism because he claimed these questions too far removed from practical life.”8 In reality, when Diderot talks about skepticism, he is generally referring to a practice, an attitude, or a

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  113 mindset, not to a theory about the impossibility or partial possibility of knowledge. Diderot is interested in skepticism as a practice of investigation and judgment that forms the intellectual character of an excellent truth seeker, and that, as we will see, has important practical, sociopolitical implications. All of this can be seen in his Philosophical Thoughts, where Diderot (1916, 45, §30) develops the intellectual profile of what we may call ‘the Enlightenment skeptic’ in comparison with the Pyrrhonist: “What is a sceptic? A philosopher who has questioned all he believes, and who believes what a legitimate use of his reason and his senses has proved him to be true. Do you want a more precise definition? Make a Pyrrhonist sincere, and you have the sceptic.” In the following sections, I will develop Diderot’s comparison between the Enlightenment skeptic and the Pyrrhonist. 6.6.1 The Enlightenment Skeptic “Has Questioned All He Believes”

Like the Pyrrhonists, Diderot (1916, 41, §24) conceives of skepticism as a practice of investigation, involving “a profound and careful examination,” a questioning or doubting attitude toward one’s beliefs, as well as toward the beliefs of others, and an exceptional ability to consider conflicting arguments. Diderot (1916, 45, §31) famously regards skepticism as “the first step towards truth”: “What has never been put in question has not been demonstrated. What people have not examined without [presuppositions and prejudices] has never been examined thoroughly. Skepticism […] must be applied generally, for it is the touchstone.” A skeptical practice of questioning and thorough examination, for Diderot, is the first step toward truth because it enables one to identify, avoid, and correct beliefs based on errors, presuppositions, and prejudices. Like Pyrrhonism, then, Enlightenment skepticism is truth directed at least in the sense that it aims to avoid falsehood. As an aid to avoiding error, skepticism is essential to bring investigation a step closer to the truth—though not necessarily all the way to the truth. Again, a bit like Pyrrhonian skeptics, Diderot (1916, 45, §29) attaches special importance to the search for truth, rather than to its discovery: “A search for truth should be required of one, but not its attainment.” In ­Diderot’s conception and practice of skepticism too, the actual discovery of the truth is not an essential requirement of genuine investigation. In his view, inquirers cannot be blamed for not finding the truth, and excellent investigative practices may not result in discovery (e.g., there is no sufficient evidence available to draw a conclusion). What is essentially required of a responsible inquirer is a sincere commitment to the search for truth and, in turn, to skepticism as a first step in that direction. However, as we

114  Lorenzo Serini will see shortly, in contrast to Pyrrhonian investigation, Diderotian skepticism is compatible with at least some discoveries, judgments, and beliefs. 6.6.2 The Enlightenment Skeptic “Believes What a Legitimate Use of His Reason and His Senses Has Proved Him to Be True”

Like Pyrrhonism, the Enlightenment skepticism presented by Diderot is a truth-searching practice that is aimed at the avoidance of falsehood and that does not require the discovery of the truth. But the similarities end here. Although Enlightenment skeptics question all of their beliefs, their investigations do not always result in suspension of judgment. First, as we have seen, the Pyrrhonists do not deny—and even expect— that “it is possible for some things actually to be apprehended” (Sextus 2000, 59 [PH 1.226]), but, in practice, they never find the conflicting arguments under examination to be evidently more convincing or unconvincing; reaching such an impasse, they are brought to suspend judgment to avoid getting things wrong, and their investigation never results in discovery. In contrast, Diderot rethinks skepticism as a continuous mode of investigation that may lead to discovery. This can be seen, for example, in his Thought on the Interpretation of Nature (Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature, 1753), where he conceives of philosophy as an experimental practice: “Experimental philosophy does not know what its work will yield or fail to yield; but it works without pause” (cited and translated in Wolf and Shank 2022). Experimental philosophy is meant as a patient intellectual practice of testing ideas on experience, which may or may not result in discovery. This can be regarded as an anti-foundationalist, pragmatist-like practice of truth (see Gori in this volume). Experimental philosophers are also skeptics because they do not unquestioningly assume the truth of the beliefs they are experimenting with, nor do they aim to establish their indefeasible certainty. Even when the experimental testing yields a discovery, as Petr Lom (2001, 62) suggests, for Diderot, the truth discovered will have the status of “conjectural or probabilistic knowledge”; “inquiry will be based upon probability not Cartesian certainty.”9 Thus, Diderot’s experimental philosophy does not aim to settle an issue in such a way that it can no longer be questioned; rather, its conjectural or probabilistic spirit keeps investigation open and ongoing. Not only are further experiments always possible, but discoveries can always be revised. Second, and relatedly, the Enlightenment skeptics characterized by Diderot (1916, 41, §24) question all they believe, but they are also ­ “­acquainted with the grounds of credibility.” That is to say, they are open and willing to accept an account or argument as credible and even as plausibly true when it is adequately supported by reasons and empirical evidence.

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  115 Pyrrhonian skeptics would never accept Diderot’s account of what counts as grounds of credibility and as a legitimate use of reason and the senses. As we have seen, the Pyrrhonists suspend judgment about “standards of truth” (Sextus 2000, 71–92 [PH 2.14–96]) and use arguments about the unreliability of reason and the senses as strategies to bring about ­suspension with respect to these matters (see Sextus 2000, 11–46 [PH 1. 1.31–186]). At the end of the day, the only legitimate thing to do for Pyrrhonian skeptics is to search for counterarguments and suspend judgment in order to avoid falsehood. For Diderot, reason and the senses may be legitimate guides to our judgments. However, Diderot is not imposing an absolute duty to ground our beliefs on reason and empirical evidence—he is not a hard-nosed positivist. His contention is that it would be unwise to completely renounce reason and empirical evidence because they are among the few bearings we can rely on in our investigations. This can be seen, for example, in his Addition to the “Philosophical Thoughts” (Addition aux «Pensées philosophiques», 1770): “lost in an immense forest at night I have nothing but a modest light to orient myself”; “[i]f I renounce to my reason I have no other guide left” (Diderot 1981, §8, §4).10 Furthermore, as Withey Mannies (2015a, 180) argues, Diderot’s conception and practice of skepticism are compatible with his materialism, which “entails the primacy of sense perception, though it does not thereby establish its infallibility: sense perception is both limited and inherently subjective.” Diderot is neither unquestioningly confident nor hopelessly diffident about the reliability of our senses, and, in his view, an Enlightenment skeptic would avoid either of these extreme views, maintaining that, however fallible, limited, and subjective, our senses, alongside rational thinking, remain a useful, indeed indispensable, tool for navigating the complexity of the universe we inhabit. On this regard, Diderot (1916, 34, §17) even mocks the Pyrrhonian skeptics’ tendency to exaggerate the unreliability of senses in philosophical investigation.11 Although Enlightenment skeptics are acquainted with rational and sensible grounds of credibility, Diderot (1916, 41, §24) acknowledges that “it is no easy matter to weigh arguments” because “there are no questions which have not two sides, and nearly always in equal measure.” This difficulty, he goes on to say, is exacerbated by the fact that “[e]very mind has its own telescope. An objection which is invisible to you is a colossus to my eyes, and you find an argument trivial that to me is crushing in its efficacy.” Investigators may look at a question from different perspectives—being motivated by different interests, ­including different philosophical or rational interests—and the same argument may appear more convincing from one perspective and weaker from another.

116  Lorenzo Serini Weighing arguments across different perspectives is no easy task, but Enlightenment skeptics take up the challenge. “The true sceptic has counted and weighed his reasons” (Diderot 1916, 41, §24). Like the Pyrrhonists, Enlightenment skeptics have an exceptional ability to consider conflicting arguments; unlike the former ones, they are also able to evaluate accounts as more or less credible, without presuming that the views under examination are in all circumstances equal in terms of convincingness or unconvincingness. To be sure, there may be particularly difficult situations in which Enlightenment skeptics too find themselves unable to judge and then suspend judgment, but, in other cases, they accept more credible arguments and reject less credible accounts.12 Undoubtedly, Pyrrhonian skeptics would diagnose this as an instance of dogmatism—that is, as a halt to investigation, involving rush assent to something unclear (Sextus 2000, 6 [PH 1.12–13]). Diderot disagrees with this diagnosis. This is not only because, in his view, some beliefs may be more credible than others, but also because, as he sees it, not all ways to believe need be in opposition to open, ongoing investigation. When Enlightenment skeptics form beliefs about something, they do so in a way that is compatible with their commitment to a skeptical search for truth. Not only are their beliefs the product of deep, careful examination and questioning, but they also hold these beliefs as skeptics and inquirers—that is, in a way that is informed by the experimental and probabilistic nature of their discoveries. Unlike dogmatic thinkers, who “are sure of everything, though they have investigated nothing carefully,” Enlightenment skeptics do not hold beliefs as unquestioned or unquestionable convictions; rather, they remain open and willing to hear criticism and revise their opinions (Diderot 1916, 43–44, §28). After all, as we have seen, they question all of their beliefs, including those accepted as true. While having some beliefs, Enlightenment skeptics continue to search for truth moved by the conscience that “truth has nothing to lose by examination,” neither by reexamination of their beliefs nor by further investigation (Diderot 1916, 46, §34). Thus, for Diderot, it is possible to continue research and avoid dogmatism, while managing beliefs with a questioning attitude. 6.6.3 “Make a Pyrrhonist Sincere, and You Have the [Enlightenment] Sceptic”

So far we have seen that, like the Pyrrhonists, Enlightenment skeptics question everything and that, unlike the Pyrrhonists, they can both question and believe. In effect, Diderot warns us against the intellectual—and, as we will see, practical—dangers of both believing without questioning and questioning without believing. Diderot (1916, 46, §33) sketches an

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  117 Aristotle-inspired virtue/ vice conception of skepticism, which I believe is worth the attention of regulative epistemologists: “It is as hazardous to believe too much as too little” (1916, 46, §33). Too much doubt or incredulity is just as vicious as too much belief; in a specular way, too little belief is just as vicious as too little doubt or incredulity. This is a conception of skepticism based on Aristotle’s account of moral virtue as a mean between the vicious extremes of excess and deficiency. This account can be transposed to intellectual virtues and vices, too.13 In the transposed account, virtuous skepticism can be conceived of as the mean between the intellectual vices of excess (too much doubt or incredulity) and deficiency (too little doubt or incredulity). The conception of too much belief/ too little doubt or incredulity as an intellectual vice is fairly standard in skeptical traditions: dogmatism or a deficiency of a questioning attitude is regarded as an obstacle to further investigation and as the harborage of error. Diderot (1916, 41, §24) considers the arrogance, rashness, and one-sidedness of dogmatism a “revolting” intellectual vice, which gets in the way of knowledge by tending to “cut knots with such a rapidity” that the intricacies of the issue at stake are not properly unraveled.14 What is interesting is that, for Diderot (1916, 46, §32), too much doubt or incredulity/ too little belief is similarly an intellectual vice: “[i]ncredulity is sometimes the vice of a fool”; “He who doubts because he is not acquainted with the grounds of credibility is no better than an ignoramus” (1916, 41, §24). An excess of doubt or incredulity is an intellectual vice because it stalls investigation, hindering the skeptic’s pathway toward truth. For example, vicious skeptical practices may too quickly dismiss compelling reasons or empirical evidence in support of an argument, missing available opportunities for new discoveries—or, at least, for new directions of research. In contrast, Diderot (1916, 46, §33) suggests, virtuous “scepticism is the only defence […] against these two opposite extremes.” Skepticism as an intellectual virtue avoids the vices of dogmatism (deficiency) and what we may call ‘stubborn doubt or incredulity’ (excess). Cultivating a balance between doubt or incredulity and belief, virtuous skepticism works as a spur to investigation and as a first step toward truth—both toward avoiding falsehood and toward grasping opportunities for new discoveries. In the entry on “Pyrrhonic or Skeptical Philosophy” attributed to Diderot (2003), Pierre Bayle is portrayed as an example of the virtuous skeptic: He had an upright mind and an honest heart; […] he was the friend of truth, just even toward his enemies, tolerant without being sanctimonious, credulous, or dogmatic. […] He knew too much either to believe or to doubt everything.

118  Lorenzo Serini In Diderot’s virtue/vice account, not only may skeptical practices and mindsets be more or less virtuous or vicious, but skepticism is closely linked to a number of other intellectual virtues and correspondent intellectual vices. On the one hand, a virtuous practice of skepticism is required to investigate well—to avoid dogmatism and falsehood—and to develop an excellent intellectual character. For example, the practice of virtuous skepticism may help avoid and combat the intellectual vices of arrogance, rashness, one-sidedness in dogmatism by promoting intellectual moderation, caution, and open-mindedness (Diderot 1916, 41, §24). On the other, a particularly interesting feature of the Diderotian account is that skepticism may turn out to be a suboptimal practice of investigation if the skeptic is not endowed with an excellent intellectual character made up of a set of virtues: “Scepticism,” as Diderot (1916, 43, §24) puts it, “does not suit everybody.” In his view, virtuous intellectual character traits such as courage and integrity prove to be essential to perform the skeptical practice optimally. I first consider intellectual courage. For Diderot, too much belief/ too little questioning is associated with a defect of intellectual courage, as well as with the intellectual vices of arrogance and rashness. While different types of dogmatic thinkers “question nothing because they have neither the patience nor the courage,” the Diderotian skeptic embodies one of the central mottos of the Enlightenment: ‘sapere aude [dare to know]’ (Diderot 1916, 43–44, §28). The Enlightenment skeptic has the courage to question all they believe, including the most deep-rooted and cherished ones. We should bear in mind that, despite Enlightenment, skepticism applies to all beliefs, this is not viciously excessive; rather, it remains moderate or mitigated because it acknowledges at least some grounds of credibility.15 The Enlightenment skeptic is also contrasted with the half-hearted skeptic, a less virtuous type of skeptical thinker who does not bring their skepticism far enough toward truth and “fears to investigate […] those privileged notions” that are considered vital in their way of life (Diderot 1916, 46, §34). Such a “half-hearted scepticism” is regarded by Diderot (1916, 46, §34) as “the mark of a feeble understanding which reveals a pusillanimous reasoner who permits himself to be alarmed by [the] consequences” of a deep, thorough skeptical investigation. Half-hearted skeptics remain partly Dogmatists, lacking the patience and courage to fully question all they believe. As a result, their skeptical practice is restricted in varying degrees by presuppositions, prejudices, dogmatic beliefs, and privileged notions. These restricted areas remain unexplored by half-hearted skeptics and may therefore contain undetected falsehood. This amounts to a lack of concern about possible errors and is thus a symptom of a defective commitment to the search of truth, one that half-hearted skeptics share with dogmatic thinkers.

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  119 In Diderot’s virtue/vice account, half-hearted skepticism, which is in fact a form of dogmatism in disguise, is a case of skeptical practice closer to the vicious extreme of deficiency (too much belief/ too little doubt or incredulity) than to the virtuous mean. This vicious skeptical practice, furthermore, is the product of a partial lack of intellectual courage. On the other extreme, that of excess, stubborn doubt or incredulity, for Diderot (1916, 45, §30), may result from a partial lack of intellectual integrity as in the case of Pyrrhonian skepticism. It is to this case that I now turn. According to Diderot, Pyrrhonian skepticism is not a perfectly virtuous skeptical practice. In particular, as Lom (2001, 63) stresses, “Diderot faults the Pyrrhonists […] for their inadequate intellectual honesty. He criticizes the Skeptics’ dogmatic assumption that all inquiry will necessarily lead to an impasse.” Although it is not completely accurate to say that this is a “dogmatic assumption,” Lom raises an important point about Diderot’s reading of Pyrrhonian skepticism. This point can be finessed thus: in Diderot’s view, the Pyrrhonists partly lack intellectual honesty or integrity in their searching for truth because, in order to attain tranquility, they do everything they can to put themselves in a situation in which they are forced to suspend judgment (this is a practice, rather than a dogmatic assumption). Diderot considers intellectual integrity one of the most important virtues in truth seeking, to the point that he regards it as almost equivalent to excellence in investigation. In other words, an excellent truth seeker must have the virtue of intellectual integrity. Thus, for Diderot (1916, 45, §30), not only is skepticism needed to pursue excellence in investigation but intellectual integrity is also essential to perform the skeptical practice optimally.16 In Diderot’s characterization, then, what makes a skeptic virtuous is their full commitment to intellectual integrity. This, as we have seen, requires (1) being open and willing to question all one believes and (2) being open and willing to believe what a legitimate use of reason and the senses has proved to be true. (Although, as we have seen, the discovery of truth is not a requirement of a sincere commitment to truth seeking, intellectual integrity requires a genuine openness and willingness to consider the possibility of discoveries, judgments, and beliefs.) Pyrrhonian skeptics, in Diderot’s reading, are honest truth seekers in terms of being open and willing to question all beliefs; however, they are not so virtuous with respect to being open and willing to believe—they partly lack the second feature of intellectual integrity. Now, is Diderot’s reading fair? To address this question, I return to ­Sextus. We have seen that the Pyrrhonian mode of investigation is not aimed at the discovery of truth but at the avoidance of falsehood. This can be understood as a concern about intellectual integrity. The Pyrrhonists want to avoid assenting to anything unclear under philosophical

120  Lorenzo Serini investigation and forming rushed beliefs about these matters—beliefs that may turn out to be false or erroneous. We have also seen that Pyrrhonian skeptics’ concern about avoidance of falsehood—and about intellectual integrity—is inseparable from their practical and therapeutical concern: the avoidance of the mental troubles they ascribe to dogmatism. Not only is forming dogmatic beliefs a matter of intellectual dishonesty, but it is also, and importantly, a threat to the tranquility the Pyrrhonists aim to attain. The rashness of dogmatism exposes the investigator to the risk of getting things wrong and forming false beliefs about these things; from a practical standpoint, coming to hold these beliefs, one would base their actions and life on errors. The risk of all of this is a primary source of anxiety for the Pyrrhonists. Although in Pyrrhonism the concern about suspensive tranquility is compatible with the concern about avoidance of falsehood, it is possible to argue that the Pyrrhonists’ concern about intellectual integrity is limited by, and subordinate to, their practical, therapeutic program. In other words, one may argue that Pyrrhonian skeptics are concerned about avoidance of falsehood and tranquility to such an extent that they might compromise their intellectual integrity. After their conversion, the Pyrrhonists are resolutely determined to practice their ability to oppose arguments and induce suspension of judgment about everything they investigate. Not only do they encounter conflicting accounts in their investigations, but they ­exhort themselves to actively search for counterarguments to set out oppositions. As Sextus (2000, 52 [PH 1.205]) explains, “They make this exhortation […] to prevent them from being seduced by the Dogmatists into abandoning their investigation and thus through rashness missing the tranquillity apparent to them.” To keep their investigation open and ongoing, Pyrrhonian skeptics are so obstinate in their search for opposite accounts that they would never accept an argument, not even if they think of it as powerful. “For example,” Sextus (2000, 12 [PH 1.33–34]) reports, “when someone propounds to [them] an argument [they] cannot refuse,” they respond by saying that, although they are now unable to find an equally convincing counterargument, it may as well be possible to find one in the future. This might as well be the case, but the Pyrrhonists’ determination to induce suspension of judgment about everything might also cast suspicion on their openness and willingness to accept an account or argument as true or, at least, as more convincing or unconvincing than others. On this suspicion, the Pyrrhonists avoid falsehood in their investigations, but they would do so at the cost of their intellectual integrity. To avoid the intellectual and practical risk of getting things wrong, they would de facto prevent themselves from honestly considering the possibility of discovering, judging, and believing things philosophical.

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  121 Diderot (1916, 44, §28) does not have a problem with the fact that “tranquillity could be allied with skepticism.” But he is openly critical of Pyrrhonian skeptics’ indifference to grounds of credibility. As Russel Goulbourne (2011, 16) notes, although skepticism is a major theme in Diderot’s philosophy (at least in his early writings), he does not attach “much value to ancient Pyrrhonism, accusing Pyrrho himself of simply having played a gratuitous and sterile game with ideas and caricaturing him in the Promenade du sceptique (The Sceptic’s Walk) as someone who […] ‘argued indifferently for and against, established an opinion and then destroyed it, caressed you with one hand and slapped you with the other [§41].’”17 This indifference, for Diderot, is the mark of a defective concern about intellectual integrity, especially about an honest consideration of at least some grounds of credibility. It is in this sense that Diderot insinuates that the Pyrrhonists cannot be regarded as fully excellent epistemic agents and that Pyrrhonian skepticism cannot be regarded as a perfectly virtuous skeptical practice. 6.7 Conclusive Remarks: From Truth-Seeking Practices to the Practical In the Pyrrhonists and Diderot, skepticism is conceived of as a practice that is essential to pursue excellence in truth seeking. It enables the inquirer to avoid and combat dogmatism, a constellation of intellectual vices that gets in the way of knowledge, impeding genuine philosophical investigation and careful belief management. Not only does dogmatism maximizes the likelihood of error, but, in their views, it has also dangerous practical implications—mainly, psychological implications for Pyrrhonian skeptics (mental troubles) and political implications for Diderot (e.g., intolerance and fanaticism). Sextus and Diderot characterize the skeptic as a virtuous truth seeker. However, by analyzing Diderot’s criticism of Pyrrhonian skeptics, I have shown that skepticism as a truth-seeking practice is not always virtuous, but there may be some vicious applications of it. Diderot’s virtue/vice conception of skepticism is interesting from a regulative epistemology perspective because it shows that not all skeptics are equally excellent truth seekers, and that certain virtuous character traits, especially intellectual integrity, are required to perform the skeptical practice optimally. By way of conclusion, I want to consider another aspect of Diderot’s (1916, 40, §22) conception of intellectual integrity, one that concerns the relationship between one’s intellectual life and practical life. This is spelled out by Diderot more clearly elsewhere: “A true man will not have two philosophies, one for the study and another one for society. He will never establish principles that will be forced to forget in practice” (cited and

122  Lorenzo Serini translated in Lom 2001, 64). Although Diderot does not directly apply this thought to Pyrrhonian skepticism,18 it is easy to see how this could be done. We have seen that the Pyrrhonists distinguish between standards of truth and standards of action, suspending judgment about the former ones and adopting the latter ones without presuming that they are philosophically true. So, they live tranquil in conformity with customs and laws. Friedrich Nietzsche can help us better understand and appreciate how this can be construed as a defect of intellectual integrity that has dangerous practical implications. In a largely neglected unpublished fragment of 1888, Nietzsche (1968, 251, §458) criticizes the “[d]angerous distinction between ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’” that can be found in the skeptics of antiquity: they “act as if practice must be judged by its own measure, whatever the answer of theory may be.” As for Diderot, for Nietzsche (2011, 115 §149), failing to act in accordance with one’s better judgment is a defect of the “intellectual conscience.”19 Against the ancient skeptics, Nietzsche (1968, 251, §458) maintains that theory is the only “method for judging a way of life,” for we do not know “any other method of acting well than always thinking well; the latter is an action, and the former presupposes thought.” Thus, Nietzsche (1968, 252, §458) suggests, the Pyrrhonists should be more like their “brothers” Buddhists,20 who are more consistent or more honest because, starting from an analogous form of theoretical suspension, they said, “‘One must not act’ […] and conceived a rule of conduct to liberate one from actions.” The fragment ends with an exhortation: “[n]ot to live with two different standards!—Not to separate theory and practice!” (Nietzsche, 1968, 252, §458). This separation, for Nietzsche (1968, 252, §458), leads the Pyrrhonians skeptics—and others who similarly separate between theory and practice—“[t]o accommodate [themselves], to live as the ‘common man’ lives, to hold right and good what he holds right.” This comment fails to bring out that in fact the Pyrrhonists do not live exactly like common people do—after all, the former ones are engaged in philosophical investigations (see Vogt 2010, 178). However, Nietzsche helps us see that the separation between theory and practice in Pyrrhonian skepticism results in a dangerous practical conservatism. This is stressed also by Max Horkheimer (1993, 271) in his criticism of Montaigne: “Philosophical scepticism is the exact opposite of destruction, which it occasionally appears to be to its adherents and opponents. It is in essence conservative.” I believe Diderot would be sympathetic to Nietzsche’s and Horkheimer’s criticism. For Diderot too, Pyrrhonism would seem a way of life based on a not completely honest distinction between intellectual and practical criteria. Enlightenment skepticism, as Diderot conceives of it, is not merely a practice to attain tranquility. Not only does Enlightenment

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  123 skepticism have a constructive aim in the intellectual life (discoveries, judgments, and beliefs), but it is a matter of intellectual integrity that skeptical practices and mindsets are used as guides in the practical life (see Lom 2001, 59–73). After all, the overt project of Enlightenment philosophy is a political one: to use intellectual criteria to improve human life. As an excellent practice of truth seeking and belief management, not only does Diderotian skepticism aim to transform the practitioner’s way of life, but it also functions as a political weapon to fight and eradicate prejudices and false beliefs in society, paving the way for better ways of thinking and living.

Notes 1 I fully subscribe to Roberts and Wood’s (2007, 114) view that “[t]he intellectual life is fraught with practices; they are its medium. The distinction, dating from Aristotle and enduring even to the present day, between the intellectual and the practical (theoretical versus practical reason, contemplative versus practical wisdom) is ill-drawn, because the intellectual life is fully as much a matter of practices as any other part of life.” 2 Exceptions perhaps include Le Morvan (2011, 2019). 3 Although we do find epistemological arguments in Sextus, particularly in the sections on the modes of suspension of judgment (2000, 11–46 [PH1. 1.31– 186]), I concur with Williams’ (1988, 578–579) claim that “the skeptical arguments given in the Modes do not ground, explain or give hints for the practice of the sceptic’s method: they instantiate it within epistemology”; and that “we are so used to thinking of scepticism as a thesis within epistemology, whereas, for Sextus, all epistemological positions, including theoretical scepticism, are just further things to be sceptical about […]. “The aim [of Pyrrhonism] is not to establish epistemological conclusions but to avoid them”” (1988, 580–581). 4 For a recent discussion on whether (or not) skepticism can be regarded as a philosophy see Bett (2019, 42–45) and Vogt (2020). 5 As Williams (1988, 549) notes, it is often assumed that “if a sceptic recommends or practices suspension of judgment, this can only be because he has come to entertain doubts about the possibility of knowledge, justification or rational choice between conflicting claims. Theory comes first; practice follows.” I concur with Williams that this assumption is erroneous. In Pyrrhonian skepticism, practice comes first. 6 On Vogt’s (2011, 45) hypothesis “the skeptics develop what I shall call their own epistemic preferences and injunctions” on the basis of their “debates with dogmatic philosophers.” 7 For historical discussions of different conceptions and uses of skepticism in the Enlightenment see Popkin, Olaso, and Tonelli (1997) and Charles and Smith (2013). Surprisingly, Diderot’s conception and practice of skepticism is not extensively discussed in these studies. 8 Marian Hobson (2011, 36) is of a similar view when she writes that “scepticism in Diderot is less a set of positions (however odd such a description of doubt and scepticism is) than a mode of writing, a way of injecting hesitation

124  Lorenzo Serini and complication into what is being expressed.” This is, however, a rather small part of Diderot’s conception and practice of skepticism. The full picture, I contend, becomes visible if we look at Diderot from the perspective of regulative epistemology. Having said that, the link between skepticism and style in Diderot is important. Skepticism as an intellectual practice can be expressed and communicated through writing; this, moreover, is a practical way to form the intellectual character of the reader. For an example of this see Mannies (2015b). 9 This invites an intriguing comparison between Diderot and the skeptics of the Platonic Academy (see Bett in this volume). The entry on “Skepticism and Skeptics” attributed to Diderot (2020) acknowledges that “[t]he academicians maintain that some of their ideas are likely, and others not; and that among those that are likely some are more so than others. The Skeptics claim that they are all equal, in terms of the credibility that we give them.” The Pyrrhonists distinguish themselves from the Academics because the former ones do not make use of probability or plausibility in their investigations (Sextus 2000, 60–61 [PH 1.227–231]). 10 My translation. 11 Mannies (2015a, 184) suggests that the “acceptance of the existence of external reality and sense perception—limited and flawed though it may be—­ separates the disingenuous Pyrrhonist from the sincere skeptic.” This is not completely fair to Pyrrhonian skepticism. More precisely, Pyrrhonian skeptics do not reject the existence of external reality and of what appears to them in perception; rather, they suspend judgment with respect to philosophical arguments about the true nature of what is apparent. In other words, they do not reject that honey appears sweet to them, but they suspend judgment and continue to investigate as to whether by nature honey is actually sweet (Sextus 2000, 8 [1.19–20]). There is, moreover, much more to be said about the differences between Diderot and the Pyrrhonists, in addition to their views on the reliability or unreliability of the senses. 12 For more on this, see Diderot’s (2021) account of the eclectic thinker in his entry on “Eclecticism.” The eclectic thinker is in many ways similar to the Enlightenment skeptic that Diderot characterized in his Philosophical Thoughts—­especially, in their common opposition to Pyrrhonian skepticism. The Eclectic is “a philosopher who, treading underfoot prejudice, tradition, age, universal agreement, authority, […] dares to think for himself, to go back to the clearest general principles, to examine them, discuss them, and admit nothing except on the testimony of his experience and his reason” (Diderot 2021). Eclectic thinkers are “less difficult” than radical skeptics such as the Pyrrhonists because they “[concede] a few points” to the philosophical views they examine, and they take “advantage of many ideas which the Sceptics [disdain] […] [for] the severity of [their] attempts” (Diderot 2021). The Eclectics do not merely let go of the conflicting philosophical accounts under investigation but scrupulously collect different arguments that are more convincing, without “stubbornly [trying] to make them square with some pre-determined plan” (Diderot 2021). They do so by following the “eclectic method”: “[w]hen he has examined and admitted a principle, the proposition that he looks into immediately afterwards is either evidently linked to that principle, or not at all, or is opposed to it. In the first case, he considers it true; in the second, he suspends judgment until intermediate notions that separate the proposition he is examining from the principle he has accepted show him its connection or opposition with the principle. In the latter case, her rejects it as false” (Diderot 2021).

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  125 13 For a recent articulation and defense of the Aristotle-inspired virtue/ vice conception of skepticism see Le Morvan (2019). 14 Here, Diderot (1916, 41, §24) directly refers to Montaigne—and, in turn, to the latter’s reinterpretation of Pyrrhonian skepticism. For a discussion of the similarities and differences between Montaigne’s and Diderot’s conception and practice of skepticism see Schwartz (1966, 60–85). 15 In certain specific cases, Enlightenment thinkers might even have reasonable grounds for legitimately refusing to doubt. As Katsafanas (2019, 16) notes, “[T]he Enlightenment account is not committed to the claim that unwillingness to doubt is always problematic. After all, it might be perfectly rational to refuse to doubt that triangles have three sides […].” However, rationally refusing to doubt is different from dogmatic and fanatic refusals to question their beliefs. “What distinguishes the fanatic is not simply the refusal to entertain doubts […] but the ground for this refusal […]. The Enlightenment thinkers emphasize that the fanatic refuses to entertain doubts for a particular reason: he takes himself to be in possession of distinctive type of ground for his belief; specifically, a ground that the Enlightenment thinkers judge to be non-rational.” In other words, there is a difference between dogmatism and fanaticism on the one hand, and intellectual firmness on the other. The latter is not necessarily a case of intellectual immaturity or vice. 16 For more analytical discussions of integrity, honesty, and truth seeking see Miller and West (2020). 17 Pyrrhonian skeptics’ indifference toward arguments for and against is empathized also in the Encyclopedia’s entry on “Pyrrhonic or Skeptical Philosophy” attributed to Diderot (2003). 18 In the entry on “Skepticism and Skeptics” attributed to Diderot (2020), it is only acknowledged “that Pyrrhon and the Pyrrhonists were ridiculed, as if they had reduced the life of men to total inaction, and that the same ridicule will fall necessarily onto those who will call themselves Pyrrhonists.” However, as we have seen, the characterization of Pyrrhonism as a life of total inaction does not do justice to Sextus’ outline. 19 In the Anti-Christ, Nietzsche (2005, 10, §12) praises the skeptics, plausibly including the Pyrrhonists, for their “intellectual integrity.” However, on the basis of what he says about the intellectual conscience in Dawn, it is possible to argue that Nietzsche would see the Pyrrhonian skeptics’ distinction between theory and practice as a limitation on their intellectual integrity. 20 On the brotherhood between the Pyrrhonists and the Buddhists see Diogenes Laertius (1931, 475).

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126  Lorenzo Serini Diderot, Denis. 1916[1746]. Philosophical Thoughts. In Diderot’s Early Philosophical Works, edited and translated by Margaret Jourdain, 27–67. Chicago & London: The Open Court Publishing Company. Diderot, Denis. 1981[1770]. Addition aux «Pensées philosophiques». In Diderot: Œuvres completes, vol. 9, edited by Herbert Dieckmann, Jacques Proust, and Jean Varloot. Paris: Hermann. Diderot, Denis (attributed). 2003. “Pyrrhonic or Skeptical Philosophy.” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, translated by Nelly S. Hoytand Thomas Cassirer. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing. http:// hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.164 (accessed 07/04/2023) Diderot, Denis (attributed). 2020. “Skepticism and Skeptics.” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, translated by Nathan D. Brown. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo. did2222.0003.787 (accessed 07/04/2023). Diderot, Denis. 2021. “Eclecticism.” The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, translated by Malcolm Eden and Philip Stewart. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo. did2222.0000.843 (accessed 07/04/2023). Diogenes Laertius. 1931. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Vol. II, Bks. VI–X, translated by R.D. Hicks. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Friedman, Jane. 2017. “Why Suspend Judging?” Nous 51(2): 302–326. Goulbourne, Russell. 2011. “Diderot and the Ancients.” In New Essays on Diderot, edited by James Fowler, 12–30. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Hobson, Marian. 2011. “Diderot's Earlier Philosophical Writings.” In New Essays on Diderot, edited by James Fowler, 31–46. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Horkheimer, Max. 1993. “Montaigne and the Function of Skepticism.” In Horkheimer, Between Philosophy and Social Science, edited and translated by G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Katsafanas, Paul. 2019. “Fanaticism and Sacred Values.” Philosophers' Imprint 19: 1–20. Lom, Petr. 2001. The Limits of Doubt: The Moral and Political Implications of Skepticism. Albany: State University of New York University Press. Mannies, Whitney. 2015a. “Denis Diderot and the Politics of Materialist Skepticism.” In Skepticism and Political Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, edited by John Christian Laursen & Gianni Paganini, 177–202. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mannies, Whitney. 2015b. “The Style of Materialist Skepticism: Diderot’s Jaques le Fataliste.” Philosophy and Literature 39(1A): A32–A48. Miller, Christian B., and West, Ryan, eds. 2020. Integrity, Honesty, and Truth Seeking. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Le Morvan, Pierre. 2011. “Healthy Skepticism and Practical Wisdom.” Logos & Episteme 2(1): 87–102. Le Morvan, Pierre 2019. “Skepticism as Vice and Virtue.” International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9(3): 238–260.

Skepticism as a Truth-Seeking Practice  127 Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968. The Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Random House. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2005. The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols: And Other Writings, translated by Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2011. Dawn: Thoughts on the Presumptions of Morality, translated by Brittain Smith. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Popkin, Richard H., Olaso, Ezequiel de, and Tonelli, Giorgio (eds.). 1997. Skepticism in the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Springer. Roberts, Robert C., and Wood, W. Jay. 2007. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Empiricus, Sextus. 2000. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, edited by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schwartz, Jerome. 1966. Diderot and Montaigne: The Essais and the Shaping of Diderot's Humanism. Genève: Libraire Droz. Striker, Gisela. 2001. “Scepticism as a Kind of Philosophy.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 83(2): 113–129. Vogt, Katja Maria. 2010. “Scepticism and Action.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, edited by Richard Bett, 165–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vogt, Katja Maria. 2011. “The Aim of Skeptical Investigation.” In Pyrrhonism in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Diego E. Machuca, 33–49. Dordrecht: Springer. Vogt, Katja Maria. 2020. “Scepticism as Philosophy: A Reply to Richard Bett’s How to Be a Pyrrhonist.” Sképsis: Revista de Filosofia, 11(20): 105–116. Williams, Michael. 1988. “Scepticism without Theory.” The Review of Metaphysics 41(3): 547–588. Wolfe, Charles T., and Shank, J. B. 2022. “Denis Diderot.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/ cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=diderot Wolterstorff, N. 1996. John Locke and the Ethics of Belief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7 Schopenhauer, the Practice of Beauty, the Practice of Compassion, and Metaphysical Truth Sandra Shapshay There are many kinds of “truth” in Schopenhauer’s transcendental-idealist system: there are truths about the world as representation, accessible through ordinary perception and scientific inquiry; there are logical and mathematical truths, accessible through careful reflection on the structures of our own thinking; and then there are what he calls “philosophical” or “metaphysical” truths. This last class of truths has a peculiar practical dimension in that it may only be attained when we relate to the world of experience in a non-egoistic manner. Egoism, for Schopenhauer, is the human default mode of cognition: in our ordinary epistemic and practical lives, we are interested in how things or others relate to us and ultimately in how they redound to our benefit or pose a threat to our well-being. According to Schopenhauer, ordinary perception and science are interested in this way. But there are exceptional modes of cognition: when we swap our ordinary egoism for disinterested (or in Schopenhauer’s terms, will-less) perception or contemplation [Kontemplation], we enjoy an aesthetic experience, and when we swap our ordinary egoistic way of engaging with others for compassion [Mitleid], we “suffer with” them [mitleiden] and act morally. Crucial for the theme of this volume, when we break from our ordinary egoism to cognize the world will-lessly in aesthetic experience, for Schopenhauer, we gain access to some metaphysical truths. This is insight into the “Platonic Ideas”—the essential features of the world as representation— and in the case of music, even into the nature of the Will qua thing in itself! Analogously, when we break from our ordinary egoism to feel and act in the world compassionately, we also gain access to a metaphysical truth. But what is the metaphysical insight of the other non-egoistic way of relating to the world for Schopenhauer? That is to say, what is the metaphysical insight of compassion? This has been a matter of scholarly ­debate. Some see the metaphysical insight along the lines of aesthetic experience—that is, an insight into the Platonic Ideas (Marshall 2020) or insight into the unindividuated Will (Schopenhauer’s famous DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-8

Schopenhauer, the Practice of Beauty, the Practice of Compassion  129 metaphysical monism); the latter being the traditional view. Elsewhere, I have argued that neither of these metaphysical insights can be the content of compassion because these are the sorts of metaphysical truths only on offer in aesthetic perception, on this system, and moral perception lacks the sine qua non of aesthetic experience, namely will-lessnness (Shapshay in Hassan ed. 2022). Compassion is non-egoistic, but it is still will-full in Schopenhauer’s ethics, for the compassionate person wills the prevention or alleviation of the other’s suffering. By contrast, the aesthetic perceiver wills nothing (except perhaps to linger in the experience itself) during aesthetic contemplation. Given what I see as the systemically required distinction in the sort of metaphysical truth on offer in aesthetic and moral perception, respectively, this entails a corresponding distinction in the sort of practice that would enable a subject to arrive at these truths. My aim in this chapter is to ­reconstruct these distinct practices of truth as they emerge in Schopenhauer’s philosophy: Call these “the practice of beauty” and “the practice of compassion.” 7.1 The Practice of Beauty For Schopenhauer, the experience of beauty--also known as “pure contemplation” [reine Kontemplation]—involves a will-less perceptual engagement with an object or environment. This is Schopenhauer’s version of Kantian disinterestedness. The will-lessness of the engagement enables the subject to attend to the thing “that is directly present, a landscape, a tree, a cliff, a building, or whatever it might be…”(section 34, WWR 1, 200– 201) for its own sake. As alluded to above, will-less [willenlos] perception—the subjective element of aesthetic experience—is a necessary correlate of the objective element of (non-musical) aesthetic experience, namely, the perception of Ideas, what Schopenhauer defines as “the original, unchanging forms and qualities of natural bodies, inorganic no less than organic, as well as the universal forces that manifest themselves according to natural laws” (WWR I, section 30, p. 191). The cognitive import of aesthetic contemplation is quite high in this picture, as it is the only way we can gain access, intuitively, to the essential features of the world. All (mature) human beings can to some degree perceive aesthetically, even with respect to ordinary objects around them in the world. Natural objects, and plants par excellence, “meet the [aesthetic] state halfway … by virtue of their intricate and at the same time clear and determinate form[s]” by which they “turn readily into representatives of their Ideas” (WWR I, 225). Thus, nature tends to draw one into what I am calling the ‘practice of beauty’ (WWR I, 221).

130  Sandra Shapshay We find this quality [of inviting our transport into an experience of beauty] above all in natural beauty, which gives even the most insensitive people at least a fleeting sense of aesthetic pleasure: in fact, it is striking how the plant kingdom in particular invites us to assume an aesthetic perspective, insists upon it, as it were. (WWR 1, 225; SW 237) While nature is ‘as if’ designed to get us to “assume an aesthetic perspective,” works of art are actually so designed. At least successful artworks for Schopenhauer get us to put the ‘will on ice’ as it were: They draw us into the experience of beauty, which consists of the calm contemplation of Ideas. How does a work of art facilitate the “practice of beauty” in Schopenhauerian terms? Ordinarily, we engage with glasses of water as mere tools for thirst quenching. In Heideggerian terms, these are ready-to-hand objects—­ equipment in our lives. But a still life painting such as Jean Siméon Chardin’s Water Glass and Jug (circa 1760) invites us to focus our attention on the ‘what’ of the glass of water. And when we look at this representation of an ordinary glass of water in a non-egoistic, non-instrumental way, for Schopenhauer, we gain insight into the essential aspects (the Idea) of water. This painting facilitates my cognition of water in one of its manifestations, luminous and still in its transparent vessel. For other essential features of water, I could contemplate the Trevi Fountain, where I would perceive water’s fluidity as it glides over stones, and its tendency to become mist under pressure, and so on. But this painting affords insight into water in its calm state and anthropological meaning, as the humble, precious, essential fluid of human life (Shapshay, in Hassan 2022). In addition to this cognitive gain, another key element of aesthetic contemplation on Schopenhauer’s view is pleasure [das Wohlgefallen]. Schopenhauer is rapturous when describing the pleasure of aesthetic contemplation: It is the painless state that Epicurus prized as the highest good and the state of the gods: for that moment we are freed from the terrible pressure of the will, we celebrate the Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing, the wheel of Ixion stands still. (WWR I, 220) Thus, in aesthetic perception, “[w]e are always so close to a realm where we have escaped all our misery completely” (WWR I, 222). This pleasure is described in mostly negative terms—as an escape even if only temporarily from the pains of willing. But an even more intense and

Schopenhauer, the Practice of Beauty, the Practice of Compassion  131 seemingly positive pleasure is to be found in the aesthetic experience of music, on Schopenhauer’s account. What the aesthetic subject perceives in music—at least with at least the right sort of, non-programmatic, ‘absolute’ music—is “not an imitation or repetition of some Idea of the essence of the world” (WWR I, 283) but rather “the copy of an original that cannot itself ever be directly presented” (WWR I, 284); “it is a copy of the will itself” (WWR I, 285). Putting a bit more flesh on this bold claim, Schopenhauer specifies that music offers a copy of the Will insofar as it does not express this or that individual and particular joy, this or that sorrow or pain or horror or exaltation or cheerfulness or peace of mind, but rather joy, sorrow, pain, horror, exaltation, cheerfulness and peace of mind as such in themselves, abstractly, as it were, the essential in all these without anything superfluous, and thus also in the absence of any motives for them. (WWR I, 289) By expressing universal emotions, shorn of motive and context, music allows us to perceive “the deepest recesses of our being [Wesen] given voice” (WWR I, 283), and the effect of this expression on the listener is a “heartfelt joy” (WWR I, 283); it is a “paradise” which “rests on the fact that it [music] renders all the impulses of our innermost essence but without any reality and removed from their pain.” (WWR I, 292). The experience of music (of the right sort, and in the appropriately aesthetic manner) thus constitutes the pinnacle of aesthetic metaphysical insight as well as the pinnacle of will-less pleasure, even joy: it is the “panacea for all of our suffering.” (WWR I, 289). To sum up, the experience of beauty—of pure contemplation—on Schopenhauer’s account involves (1) a hedonic gain: a feeling of pleasurable freedom from the pressures of the will-to-life (it constitutes a relaxing break from our perpetual strivings), and (2) it involves gaining intuitive insight into metaphysical truths—into the essential features of the world. Thus, the practice of beauty is a practice of truth, a practice of metaphysical truth. But how does one “practice beauty” for Schopenhauer? In other words, how does one cultivate one’s ability to perceive aesthetically? In fact, he does not dwell on how one may cultivate aesthetic perception; one must extrapolate from his aesthetic theory. It seems that many experiences of beauty (and the metaphysical insight that comes with it) just happen to a subject. Certainly, on this account, nature invites it, and artworks are designed to draw one into an experience of beauty. Thus, pretty obviously, one pedestrian way of cultivating a practice of truth—the practice of beauty—is to seek out experiences in nature or with art that invite us to put one’s ordinary concerns to the side (the whys and wherefores) and

132  Sandra Shapshay focus squarely on the ‘what.’ We can put ourselves in the place and mental space to let aesthetic contemplation happen to us. But there is one area in Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory where Schopenhauer is clear that the subject needs to put in some real work to attain aesthetic contemplation, and that is with respect to the sublime. In beholding threatening objects, the subject may “[n]evertheless … not direct his attention to this relation to his will which is so pressing and hostile,” rather he may “consciously turn away from it, forcibly tear himself from his will and its relations, and, giving himself up entirely to knowledge, may quietly contemplate, as pure, will-less subject” (section 39 WWR I, 201). Sublime experience, therefore, seems to require an additional effort on the part of the subject to that required in the case of the beautiful. The subject must redirect attention from the threatening object, and “forcibly tear himself” from his will, a will which prompts him to flee the scene rather than to stand his ground and contemplate it aesthetically. But if one can overcome the sense of threat, the Ideas on offer are quite profound, and the experience of overcoming the threat in order to contemplate will-lessly, is quite exalting. Certain environments—vast expanses of desert, mountains, stormy seas, frozen tundras (think of the environments favored by Romantic painters like Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner, and Winslow Homer)—as well as whole genres of art—dramatic tragedy par ­excellence— are especially sublime for Schopenhauer and would be the ones to seek out to test one’s mettle in overcoming the pressures of the will in order to gain the insights of sublime beauty. 7.2 The Practice of Compassion Metaphysical truth is also to be found in the feeling and practice of compassion for Schopenhauer, but in a way that is harder to discern than in the experience of beauty. In his ethical theory, most thoroughly explicated in his 1840/1841 essay titled “On the Basis of Morals” [Über die Grundlage der Moral], Schopenhauer describes the emotion as follows: [Compassion is] the wholly immediate sympathy [Theilnahme], independent of any other consideration, in the first place toward another’s suffering, and hence towards the prevention or removal of this suffering. … As soon as this compassion is alert, the well-being and woe of the other is immediately close to my heart, in just the same way, though not always to the same degree, as only my own is otherwise. (OBM section 16, 200, underlining is mine) As opposed to psychological egoists, Schopenhauer holds that this immediate sympathy with another’s suffering and the desire to prevent or

Schopenhauer, the Practice of Beauty, the Practice of Compassion  133 alleviate the other’s suffering is “wholly real,” and “by no means … rare” (OBM, 200). There are three main features of his ethics of compassion: (i) The view that the feeling of compassion is the source of all actions with moral worth. (ii) The offering of a moral principle that captures the motivations of a good (compassionate) person: “harm no one; rather help everyone as much as you can” (OBM, 140). (iii) The view that the compassionate person is objectively, normatively preferable to the egoistic or malicious person because she is in touch with the way the world really is. Otherwise put, the compassionate person has an epistemic advantage: her behavior expresses an intuitive insight into the deep metaphysical structure of the world. It is this last feature of Schopenhauer’s ethics that sees compassion as a practice of truth in its own right because compassion is epistemically revealing: it puts us in touch with the way the world really is, metaphysically speaking. But what kind of truth does compassion put us in touch with and how may one cultivate compassion? These are two highly vexing questions of Schopenhauer’s scholarship. Let me address each question in turn. What is the content of compassion such that the emotion puts us in touch with the way the world ‘really is’? The traditional view is that the content of compassion just is Schopenhauer’s metaphysical monism (Marshall 2020). On this interpretation, what the compassionate person perceives in the suffering other is their ‘shared essence.’ This ‘shared essence’ is the Will, and once one perceives that the suffering other is merely an “I once more,” then one has a motive to help or refrain from harming the other. On this view, compassion is a very enlightened egoism: in compassion one sees through the ‘veil of Maya’ to the truth that at the bottom, we are all just representations of the one, metaphysical, Will. Others’ suffering is our own; we, therefore, suffer with others [mitleiden] ultimately because we are all ultimately unified. There are many passages in Schopenhauer that accord with this basic picture. When Schopenhauer arrives at his argument that the compassionate person sees the world aright, and is thus objectively in contact with metaphysical truth, he draws explicitly on his transcendental idealism and metaphysics of will.1 He suggests that the compassionate person is not just approved of by morally sensitive people, but has also gotten things objectively right by virtue of the following argument: (1) The good person makes less of a distinction between the ‘I’ and ‘not-I’ than does the egoist or the malicious person (the latter of whom makes the greatest distinction). (OBM, 249).

134  Sandra Shapshay (2) While the egoist’s outlook (seeing great distinctions between ‘I’ and all ‘not-Is’) may be empirically justified, it is not justified from the transcendental perspective, [which in Schopenhauer’s hands means that] in the “countless appearances of this world of the senses it can really be only one, and only the one and identical essence can manifest itself in all of these” [“in den zahllosen Erscheinungen dieser Sinnenwelt doch nur Eines sehn und nur das Eine und identische Wesen sich in diesen allen manifestiren”] (OBM, 251). (3) Therefore, the outlook on the world of the compassionate person— which consists in “one individual’s immediately recognizing himself, his own true essence, in the other” [“das das eine Individuum im andern unmittelbar sich selbst, sien eigenes wahres Wesen wiedererkenne”]—is metaphysically correct, though empirically unjustified, and the egoist and malicious person, are in metaphysical error, though empirically justified (OBM, 253). The traditional reading of this argument is to take Schopenhauer’s metaphysical monism of will to ground the truth of the compassionate person’s stance and the falsity of the malicious or egoistic person’s stance. But it is important to pause here to note that Schopenhauer does not hold that the good person makes no distinction between ‘I’ and the ‘not-I,’ for in his extended account of compassion the compassionate agent always recognizes the separateness of persons, and crucially that the suffering with which she shares occurs in the other. For instance, in contrast to the view he attributes to Ubaldo Cassina, Schopenhauer writes that for compassionate people, “[I]t remains clear and present to us at every single moment that he is the sufferer, not us: and it is precisely in his person, not in ours, that we feel the pain, to our distress. We suffer with him, thus in him: we feel his pain as his, and do not imagine that it is ours” [“es bleibt uns gerade jeden Augenblick klar und gegenwärtig, dass Er der Leidende ist, nicht wir: und geradezu in seiner Person, nicht in unsrer, fühlen wir das Leiden, zu unsrer Bertrübniß”] (OBM 203). Thus, it is difficult to square Schopenhauer’s phenomenological description of the feeling of compassion—which always maintains a sense of the separateness and individuation of the ‘I’ and the ‘Other,’ the ‘Thou’—with the interpretation of the key insight of compassion as that into the completely unindividuated, metaphysical will. Another reason to resist the metaphysical monist interpretation of the truth of compassion is that it would reduce compassion to a kind of metaphysically enlightened egoism. Yet Schopenhauer is insistent that compassion does not reduce to egoism at all and that an action that is done from egoism—no matter how enlightened—has no moral worth. Further, and I think the most important objection to the traditional view, it is not clear why the intuitive recognition that we are all, at bottom,

Schopenhauer, the Practice of Beauty, the Practice of Compassion  135 Will—that endlessly striving, ultimately purposeless Ding an sich which forms the metaphysical basis for all of this suffering—should motivate compassionate feeling and action rather than a hopeless or absurd feeling and resignation. It would seem that if the real insight of compassion is the senseless striving of the metaphysical will, we’d end up in a pretty hopeless, de-motivating place. And, in fact, with really high degrees of universal compassion, and the recognition that one’s efforts to reduce or prevent suffering constitute a mere drop in the cosmic bucket, Schopenhauer suggests that resignation may very well set in. But more garden-variety experiences of compassion do not involve this recognition of futility on Schopenhauer’s ethical thought. They involve the recognition that another being is or will be suffering, and that recognition is motivating. For all of these reasons, I have argued elsewhere for a non-standard interpretation of the metaphysical truth of compassion. This interpretation takes Schopenhauer’s phenomenological description of compassion quite seriously: (1) the compassionate person always maintains some distinction between self and other; (2) but she also recognizes a shared essence between “I” and “thou”; (3) this recognition of shared essence moves the compassionate person to ‘suffer with’ the other and to try to alleviate or prevent the other’s suffering. What could the relevant metaphysical insight be that maintains these facets of Schopenhauer’s analysis of compassion? I believe the relevant insight is into the shared inherent value or intrinsic moral status of the other living beings for whom one can feel compassion. This prominently includes compassion for non-human animals. And the lack of recognition of animals as morally considerable, for Schopenhauer, is one of the fatal flaws of other ethical theories: Bah! What a morals of pariahs, chandalas, and mlechchas—which fail to recognize the eternal essence [das ewige Wesen] that is present in everything that has life [in Allem, was Leben hat], and that shines out with unfathomable significance [unergründlicher Bedeutsamkeit] from all eyes that see the light of the sun. But that form of morals recognizes and gives consideration solely to its own valuable species [Aber jene Moral kennt und berücksichtigt allein die eigene werthe Species] whose distinguishing mark, reason, is for it the condition on which a being can be the object of moral consideration. (OBM, 162, emphasis added) Here it seems that Schopenhauer espouses not the equal worthlessness of “everything that has life,”—which one might expect if the key insight of compassion was into the metaphysical will—but rather their equal inherent value, which value he describes as the ‘unfathomable significance’

136  Sandra Shapshay [unergründlicher Bedeutsamkeit] of all living beings. This significance ‘shines out’ from “all eyes that see the light of the sun.” Thus, the compassionate person has an intuitive cognition that ‘recognizes his [or her] own essence in itself in someone else’s appearance’ (OBM, 255) and that shared essence is shared inherent value. Yet, while this axiological interpretation, as I have argued, can make good sense of the phenomenology of compassion in Schopenhauer’s, ethics there remains a nagging suspicion that it leaves out something very important to his discussion of the “metaphysical basis” of compassion. What it leaves out is the connection between the perception of the other as valuable and the “real substratum of this whole appearance, our inner essence in itself” (OBM 250–51). In other words, in understanding the perception of “shared essence” as the perception of shared value, my axiological interpretation does not capture the pronounced monist-metaphysical overtones in his talk of the “same essence that presents itself in everything that lives” (OBM 253). In brief, the interpretation I am urging seems insufficiently monist metaphysical. But I think there is a textually grounded bridge between the axiological and the metaphysical monist interpretation of the metaphysical insight of compassion. Schopenhauer implicitly builds this bridge in the finale of OBM where he enumerates those ancient and modern systems of thought which have held that “all plurality is only apparent” and that “only one and the same truly existing essence really manifests itself, present and identical in all” (OBM 251):

• It is the “chief and fundamental doctrine of … the sacred Vedas” • “[T]he wisdom of Pythagoras was likewise based on it” • The “Neo-Platonists were permeated by it, in that they taught that ‘because of the unity of all things all souls are one’”

• “Scotus Erigena [was] inspired by it…” • “Among the Mohammedans we find it again as the inspired mysticism of the Sufis”

• “Spinoza’s name is identified with it” • “[E]ven the Christian mystics become entangled in it, against their will and intent.” (OBM 252, emphasis mine).

In a word, the monist element at the heart of compassionate insight, and which has appeared in many guises throughout the history of philosophical and religious thought is pantheism (Shapshay, in Hassan 2022). The type of monism he is highlighting is spiritualist rather than physicalist. In fact, for Schopenhauer, materialist monists offer a “physics without metaphysics … [that] would necessarily be destructive of ethics” (WWR II, Chapter 17, p. 185), and so that sort of monism certainly cannot constitute

Schopenhauer, the Practice of Beauty, the Practice of Compassion  137 the metaphysical basis for moral perception. On the contrary, he holds that it is “the pantheistic consciousness [which is] essential to all mysticism” (WWR II, Chapter 48, p. 628, emphasis added), and for Schopenhauer, mysticism is at the basis of every morally good deed. So what exactly is the insight into shared essence that is embraced specifically by a spiritualist or pantheist monist? It is that all individuals are ultimately part of the One that is Divine.2 Thus the bridge between the monist metaphysical insight (that it is “only one and the same truly existing essence [that] really manifests itself, present and identical in all”) and the axiological view of this insight (that the “I” and the “other” both have inherent value) is that in compassionate perception, the subject intuitively sees the one, real substratum that she shares with others as valuable because she sees it as divine. In other words, seeing the real substratum as divine is tantamount to seeing it as good or inherently valuable. The compassionate person may or may not articulate this intuitive insight in this manner, but it seems for Schopenhauer that seeing the other as inherently valuable based on a shared, divine essence, constitutes the metaphysical insight of moral perception. Granting this admittedly bold and non-traditional interpretation of Schopenhauer on the content of compassion, we arrive at the next vexed question: How would one practice or cultivate compassion on Schopenhauer’s view? The cultivation of compassion seems an even harder theme in Schopenhauer’s thought because he stresses that we all have an “inborn and unchangeable character” (FW 49–50). He holds that each of us has a certain amount of egoism, compassion, and malice. It’s not at all clear how we could fundamentally change our characters. Yet, Schopenhauer does discuss how we can change the expression of our characters in his thoughts on the ‘acquired character’, which seems fundamentally the acquisition of self-knowledge of our inborn character. There is also a section on the use of moral principles to serve as a ‘reservoir’ for compassion—to do right actions—even when compassion is not occurrent. So it seems that one can act in a manner that is more consistent with the feeling of compassion by the use of practical reason (even if there is no such thing as pure practical reason for Schopenhauer, pace Kant). But cultivating actual compassion is a topic that, unfortunately, remains permanently undertheorized in Schopenhauer’s work. Nonetheless, compassion is a practice of truth—of deep metaphysical truth—and those fortunate enough to be endowed with a compassionate character are in a great epistemic place. 7.3 Conclusion The aim of this volume is to explore how philosophers from various traditions have treated truth as a question of practice rather than as a question

138  Sandra Shapshay of theory. Schopenhauer’s philosophy certainly developed within a European tradition that regarded truth, first and foremost, as a matter of theory rather than practice. But I believe he goes farther toward a notion that truth may be attained through practice—specifically the practice of beauty (aesthetic perception) and the practice of compassion—than most of his contemporaries. The key for Schopenhauer in attaining truths through these aesthetic and moral avenues, and what fundamentally unites these two avenues, is the practice of stepping out of one’s habitual egoism. By putting one’s self-oriented desires on ice for a time in aesthetic contemplation, we attend to things and environments for what they are rather than what they can do for us, and this opens up a field of knowledge into essences, natural kinds, in Schopenhauer’s language, ‘Ideas.’ By putting one’s self-oriented willing aside in order to will to help or prevent harm to others, we attend to others (human or non-human animals) as having a shared essence, and a shared essence that has intrinsic value. The connection between a shared essence and intrinsic value is vouchsafed by a mystical element to compassion in Schopenhauer’s thought. Through compassionate eyes, we see that “eternal essence [das ewige Wesen] that is present in everything that has life [in Allem, was Leben hat], and that shines out with unfathomable significance [unergründlicher Bedeutsamkeit] from all eyes that see the light of the sun” (OBM 162). In a way that theoretical philosophy cannot clarify, but that the compassionate person intuitively understands, the shared essence in all of us is divine (Shapshay, 2022). In exploring the deep epistemic gains through the practice of beauty and the practice of compassion, Schopenhauer seems an outlier in nineteenth c. European philosophy. He was a thinker who reconceived the way that truth may be related to practice, specifically the practice of non-egoism in its aesthetic and moral guises. Notes 1 Exactly how Schopenhauer’s metaphysics should be understood—as transcendent, transcendental, or hermeneutic—has been a bone of contention for some time. For a variety of treatments, see Julian Young (1987), Rudolf Malter and Maurice Elise (1991), John Atwell (1995), David Cartwright (2001), Sandra Shapshay (2008), Daniel Schubbe (2010), Alistair Welchman (2017). 2 Although Gerard Mannion does not interpret the mystical element in moral perception in the specifically pantheistic direction I am suggesting here, he does suggest that Schopenhauer moves beyond an entirely negative characterization of the metaphysical will toward something positive that supports hope, writing, “If there is not explicit notion of divinity or supreme good in Schopenhauer, there are nonetheless several hints of such conceptions and ultimately, his ethics ­becomes logically dependent upon some form of one or the other” (Mannion 2003, p. 217; see also Mannion 2002, p. 115–116). I am indebted to Colin ­Marshall for pointing me to the similarities between my view and Mannion’s.

Schopenhauer, the Practice of Beauty, the Practice of Compassion  139 References Works by Schopenhauer are referenced in the text parenthetically, using the abbreviations listed below. Where available, I have used the standard English translations in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Schopenhauer, general editor Christopher Janaway. The German original derives from the Sämtliche Werke. SW 1–7 Sämtliche Werke, ed. Arthur Hübscher (Mannheim: Brockhaus, 1988), vols. 1–7. WWR I The World as Will and Representation [Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung], vol. I (1818/1844/1859). Trans. and ed. Christopher Janaway, Judith Norman and Alistair Welchman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ­ 2014. WWR II The World as Will and Representation [Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung], vol. II (1844/1859). Trans. Judith Norman, Alistair Welchman and ­Christopher Janaway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. OBM Prize Essay On the Basis of Morals [Über die Grundlage der Moral] (1840). Trans. Christopher Janaway. In The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (1841/1860), 113–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. FW Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will [Über die Freiheit des Willens] (1839). Trans. Christopher Janaway. In The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (1841/1860), 31–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Secondary Literature Atwell, John. 1995. Schopenhauer and the Character of the World: The Metaphysics of Will. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Cartwright, David. 1981. “Scheler’s Criticisms of Schopenhauer’s Theory of ­Mitleid” Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 62: 144–152. ———. 2001. “Two Senses of the ‘Thing-in-Itself’ in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy” Idealistic Studies 31 (1): 31–54. ———. 2008. “Compassion and Solidarity with Sufferers: The Metaphysics of Mitleid” European Journal of Philosophy 16: 292–310. ———. 2012. “Schopenhauer and the Value of Compassion.” In Bart Vandenabeele ed. A Companion to Schopenhauer. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 249–265. Copleston, Frederick, 1947. Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher of Pessimism. ­Oxford: The Bellarmine Series, Burns Oates & Washbourne. Hassan, Patrick. 2019. “Schopenhauerian Virtue Ethics” Inquiry, 1–33. https:// doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2019.1629337 ———. 2022. “Virtue & The Problem of Egoism in Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy” in Hassan ed. Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 77–102. Heidegger, Martin. 1962 [orig. 1927]. Being and Time. Transl. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. Janaway, Christopher. 2007. Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2020. “The Moral Meaning of the World” in Robert Wicks, ed. The ­Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 271–283.

140  Sandra Shapshay Marshall, Colin. 2020. “Schopenhauer on the Content of Compassion” Noûs. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12330 Mannion, Gerard. 2002. “Mitleid, Metaphysics and Morality: Understanding Schopenhauer’s Ethics” Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 87: 87–117. ———. 2003. Schopenhauer, Religion, and Morality. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2020. “Schopenhauer and Christianity” in Robert Wicks, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 401–424. Malter, Rudolf and Maurice Elise. 1991. “Le Transcendentalisme de Schopenhauer” Les Études Philosophiques 2: 145–171. Scheler, Max. 1970 [orig. 1923] The Nature of Sympathy. Transl. Peter Heath. London: Routledge. Schubbe, Daniel. 2010. Philosophie des Zwischen: Hermeneutik und Aporetik bei Schopenhauer. Würzburg: Königshauses und Neumann. Shapshay, Sandra. 2008. “Poetic Intuition and the Bounds of Sense: Metaphor and Metonymy in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy” European Journal of Philosophy 16 (2): 211–229. ———. 2019. Reconstructing Schopenhauer’s Ethics: Hope, Compassion, and ­Animal Welfare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2020. “Was Schopenhauer a Kantian Ethicist?” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 28(2): 168–187. ———. 2022. “The Moral Perception of Inherent Value” in Hassan ed. Schopenhauer’s Moral Philosophy. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 52–76. Welchman, Alistair. 2017. “Schopenhauer’s Two Metaphysics: Transcendental and Transcendent” in Sandra Shapshay, ed. The Palgrave Schopenhauer Handbook. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 129–149. Young, Julian. 1987. Willing and Unwilling: A Study in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Dordrecht: Nijhoff/Springer.

8 The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity Rejecting a New Myth of the Given Sabina Vaccarino Bremner

8.1  Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach (TF) has long been taken as a schematic program for materialist theory, concluding with the notorious final thesis: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it” (TF 11; 5:5). Yet the meaning of “these eleven deceptively transparent theses,” despite being “only a few sentences long,” as Louis Althusser claims, has long been less than clear.1 Given the Theses’ mysterious nature, one of the primary meanings interpolated into them has been an attack on ‘mechanical materialism.’2 Against a deterministic or fatalistic (‘mechanical’) construal of materialism which would reduce human behavior to the material determinants of their behavior, Marx’s main point in the Theses is taken to exhort his reader toward activity, where ‘activity’ is associated with material, concrete practice in the world (Balibar 1994: 13). Interestingly, however, in the Theses, Marx never uses the term ‘mechanical materialism,’ mechanisches Materialismus; the term can only be found employed by Friedrich Engels in a text published after Marx’s death, more than 40 years after the composition of the Theses (1886; 26:370). There, Engels rejects mechanical materialism as treating human subjects as mere objects of scientific investigation, affected only from without rather than as potentially changeable and free beings. Instead, in the Theses, Marx uses another phrase to disparage the brand of materialism he rejects, once again attributed to Feuerbach. He refers to anschauendes Materialismus, which in English has unfortunately been translated as ‘contemplative materialism,’ the obscurity of this phrase perhaps encouraging the conflation with ‘mechanical materialism.’ Instead, in what follows, I suggest that Marx is rejecting an intuitional or intuitive materialism, a materialism that acknowledges only passive affection by “sense objects” rather than recognizing that sensing constitutes an “activity” (TF 19; 5:3, 5:5).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-9

142  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner Thus, in my view, something has been missed in the course of translation. I take seriously the early Marx’s attack on intuitional materialism rather than mechanical materialism, and investigate the force a conception of sensibility as activity has for his conception of materialism. Doing so, I suggest, entails interesting and important implications for Marx’s philosophy of mind, a topic which, in the wake of certain trends in the twentieth-century reception of Marx, has been neglected. Indeed, it allows for a reading of Marx’s materialism as a continuation or extension of certain formulations of idealism (here, I emphasize ­Kantian transcendental idealism). In so doing, my reading can help to shed light on a problem for contemporary materialism articulated by Stuart Hall: The materialism of Marxism cannot rest on the claim that it abolishes the mental character—let alone the real effects—of mental events (i.e., thought), for that is, precisely, the error of what Marx called a onesided or mechanical materialism (in the Theses on Feuerbach). (1985: 100) Yet Marx’s framing of materialism as deriving its force from sensibility as an active faculty rather than (as it is generally conceived) as a merely passive receptivity does not leave contemporary understandings of idealism unchanged, either. A prominent strand of interpretation has read the post-Kantian tradition as united in rejecting the “myth of the given,” or rejecting the view of the cognizing mind as affected immediately by sense impressions independent of the conceptual operations of the understanding (Sellars 1956, Brandom 1994, McDowell 1994, Kukla 2002, Rödl 2007). I claim that construing the rejection of the myth of the given in this manner corresponds to the idealism Marx criticizes in the Theses, insofar as it identifies cognitive activity as the sole purview of the understanding on the one hand, and attributes cognitive passivity solely to sensibility or empirical receptivity on the other. Instead, I take Marx to associate materialism in part with the rejection of this dichotomy between the apparently ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ faculties; I claim that he, like Kant, points to reflection on organic life as a potential way out of this dichotomy. Thus, my interpretation does, in the end, lead us back to Engels’ later critique of mechanical materialism, but, as we will see, conceived differently than many of Marx’s interpreters would have it. 8.2  In the context of the Theses, Marx associates anschauendes Materialismus with a failure to notice what he calls “sensory” or “sensible human activity

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  143 [sinnlich menschlische Tätigkeit]” or “sensibility … as a practical activity [Sinnlichkeit … als praktische Tätigkeit]” (TF 1, TF 9;5:3, 5:5). This claim, much like anschauendes Materialismus, has been translated, somewhat unfortunately, as “sensuous human activity” and “sensuousness … as a practical activity.”3 As a result of the loss of the connection in translation to ‘intuition’ [Anschauung] on the one hand, and to ‘sensibility’ [Sinnlichkeit] on the other, an important connection to the history of philosophy, too, has been lost. As I show in this section, the translation of sensuousness corresponds to only one of the senses Marx attributes to Sinnlichkeit; the first, and primary, sense can be captured only by referring to ‘sensibility.’ On Kant’s conception of sensibility, “intuition [Anschauung] … takes place only insofar as the object is given to us, but this in turn, is possible only if it affects the mind in a certain way”; the “capacity (receptivity) to acquire representations through the way in which we are affected by objects is called sensibility [Sinnlichkeit]” (A19/B33). Sensibility, then, just is our receptivity to objects of intuition, our mind’s capacity to be affected by things outside us. Through sensibility, “objects are given to us”— indeed, “there is no other way in which objects can be given to us”; yet objects “are thought through the understanding,” from which “arise concepts” (A19/B33). The sensible content of our cognitive representations, the sense impressions of objects insofar as they affect sensibility, Kant terms “matter [Materie]” (A20/B34). Matter, as the apparently direct or brute impingement of sense impressions or sense data on our receptive faculty, is distinguished from the “form” of the appearance, as what allows the manifold “to be intuited as ordered in certain relations,” the latter of which Kant will later attribute to space and time (A20/B34). Marx begins the Theses by taking up and revising certain aspects of this Kantian model of sensibility and intuition. He claims that “the chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism—that of Feuerbach included— is that the thing, reality, sensibility, is conceived only in the form of the object or of intuition, but not as sensory human activity, practice; not on the side of the subject” (TF 1; 5:3). In this passage, Marx rejects a materialism on which sensibility is understood as an inert object or item in the brain, a merely “receptive organ,” as Lukács would later write (1923: 130) and where the object of intuition—the sensed object, the empirical datum—is taken to stand apart from the human subject, as if it can be considered independently of sensibility’s contribution in presenting it in consciousness. Instead, Marx claims, the sensed object cannot be given independently of the activity of sensing, which in turn constitutes a ‘practice.’ Indeed, Marx continues, “in contradistinction to materialism”— that is, materialism in the vein of Feuerbach—this “active side was developed abstractly by idealism—which, of course, does not know real,

144  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner sensing activity as such” (TF 1; 5:3). What materialism is missing, in other words, is a crucial insight from idealism: that experience is not given, but must be mediated by the activity of cognition in order to be intelligible at all. In Kant’s conception of transcendental idealism, what does the work of this mediation, of the contribution of cognition into experience, is, on many interpretations, not sensibility, but understanding. Thus, Kant claims in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason: “The same function that gives unity to the different representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of different representations in an intuition, which, expressed generally, is called the pure concept of understanding” (A79/B104). It is the understanding through its categories that ultimately synthesizes concepts into judgments as well as intuitions into unified representations. In the Transcendental Deduction, Kant seems to reiterate the idea that synthesis or combination, and with it all cognitive form or unity, is the sole purview of the understanding: “All combination, whether we are conscious of it or not, whether it is a combination of the manifold of intuition or of several concepts … is an action of the understanding,” since “the combination … of a manifold in general can never come to us through the senses” (B129–130). Insofar as sensibility is just another term for “receptivity,” its function restricted only to being “affected by objects” (A26/B42, A19/B33), Kant seems to give to sensibility the sense of a certain passivity of cognition in comparison with the understanding. This presents considerable conundrums for Kant’s conception of self-consciousness, which is divided between its empirical and intellectual aspects: since our “intuition” is not “mere self-activity, i.e., intellectual,” and “sensibility” refers only to the manner in which perceptions are “given in the mind without spontaneity,” we can know ourselves as subjects only “as appearance,” akin to empirical things (B68, my emphasis). While we are also aware of ourselves to be spontaneous, active, thinking subjects, such awareness, for risk of falling into paralogism, can never amount to knowledge. The passivity of sensibility thus presents the challenge, one which German Idealists would later reject as insurmountable, of reconciling these divided aspects of our self-cognition.4 Nevertheless, sensibility is also a Vermögen—which has the sense not only of cognitive ‘faculty,’ but also ‘capacity’ or ‘capability,’ and thus ‘activity’—one which also has its own forms, namely space and time, by which it, too, makes a structuring contribution to the presentation of experience. Thus, Kant leaves significant ambiguity as to the extent to which sensibility can be understood as active alongside understanding, and thereby, ultimately, not strictly passive after all. We can take Marx to exploit this ambiguity by radically extending Kant’s line of thought. Rather than attributing activity primarily to the

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  145 function of understanding, Marx attributes activity all the way down— even to the apparently brute affection of the subject by sense objects. It is in the failure to recognize that the activity of cognition extends down to the apparently mute reception of the manifold of intuition that the idealist “does not know real, sensing activity” as such (TF 1; 5:3). Thus, Marx claims that experience is not to be conceived in terms of passive copying of empirical givens, but as the product of the active work of mediation. Recent discussions in the scholarship parse Kant’s ambiguity on this point in terms of his position on nonconceptual content, or the extent to which sensibility makes its own independent contribution to cognition in abstraction from conceptual unification or the activity of understanding.5 On one prominent line, Kant’s conception of the mediation of cognition has been understood strictly in terms of conceptual mediation or rational spontaneity: the idea that, as Kukla puts it, “the objects of perception cannot be mute sense data or raw particulars,” because “we can see nothing if we have not developed a space of concepts that would let us make sense of what we see” (2002: 335, 324). Kant’s influence on the history of philosophy, it has been claimed, thus consists in the rejection of the Myth of the Given, as the idea that no intelligible distinction can be drawn between sense data given to conscious awareness and those cognitive processes by which this data is taken up and conceptualized (Sellars 1956, Brandom 1994, McDowell 1994).6 On such a view, the post-Kantian tradition is unified by the broad agreement that there is no ‘given,’ and this is because the particulars of perception are already conceptually mediated and propositionally structured. Governed by concepts as semantic rules, the perceptual features or sense impressions impinging on sensibility are thus never given as such, but already normative. Yet in claiming that the given is a myth, such a picture reinstates yet another distinction which Marx in the Theses explicitly rejects: namely, the dichotomy between sensibility as passive and understanding as active. As McDowell puts it, “experience is passive,” but “draws into operation capacities that genuinely belong to spontaneity” (1994: 13). In other words, to the extent that there is any active contribution of sensibility at all, McDowell attributes this activity to understanding as spontaneity, such that sensibility remains strictly passive (and indeed, has no isolable role at all): “Experiences have their content by virtue of the fact that conceptual capacities are operative in them, and that means capacities that genuinely belong to the understanding” (McDowell 1994: 66). Indeed, McDowell argues that we can avoid “falling into idealism” and “slighting the independence of reality” only by recognizing “the experiencing subject [as] passive, acted on by independent reality”—only by retaining a distinction between passive sensibility and active understanding or spontaneity (1994: 34, 67).7

146  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner Marx’s Theses have been understood in a similar vein. As Rödl interprets them, the prior materialisms Marx rejects conceive of “material reality exclusively as an object of intuition, or as to be known receptively” (2007: 122). Rödl writes that on the alternative Marx endorses, by contrast, “true materialism reveals spontaneity and its knowledge to be of, and thus to be, a material reality”; thus, it “conceives of material reality not merely as an object of intuition, but as spontaneity” (Rödl 2007: 122, 128). Here, once more, the activity of sensibility is ­reduced to spontaneity—in particular, the materiality of “first person knowledge, which is nonreceptive, nonempirical” (Rödl 2007: 14)—the activity only of the ‘higher faculties’ of understanding or reason rather than the ‘lower faculty’ of sensing. Yet Marx does not emphasize the materiality of understanding; instead, Marx expressly draws attention to a conception of sensibility as active, and hence not limited to merely presenting empirical ‘givens’.8 His primary critique of the idealists in the Theses is that they have developed the role of “activity” only “abstractly”—that is, at the level of discursivity (concepts or understanding), which is general and ‘abstract’ insofar as it is at a remove from (particular, concrete) intuitions and the senses (TF 1; 5:3).9 Marx claims, further, that what idealists have so far failed to a­ cknowledge is not the materiality of self-knowledge, but “sensing activity [sinnliche Tätigkeit]” (TF 1; 5:3, my emphasis). Thus, rather than restricting cognitive activity to understanding (or to reason), I read Marx as putting pressure on the very way in which this distinction is carved up—the identification of activity with understanding on the one hand, and passivity with sensibility or empirical affection on the other. Indeed, Marx claims that it is only insofar as an active, free role for sensibility is retained that human beings can exist in an unalienated relationship to the external world: For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals. (3:302) That is, the alienated subject can notice ‘food’ only on the discursive, not the sensible, level: only as an abstraction. Thus, she can make no distinction between food ‘in its crudest form’ and food in its ‘human’ form: no distinction, that is, in the sensible particularity of its form, at a level of discernment finer than that which can be carved up by concepts. For Marx, this capacity for sensible discernment shows up as an aesthetic capacity: “The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  147 and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense” (3:302). The alienated subject can only cognize concepts (‘commercial value’), and thus cannot discern distinctions among particular intuitions (‘the beauty and the specific character’ of a given mineral; ‘the finest play’).10 Thus, the activity of sensibility as sense perception manifests itself among alienated and unalienated subjects as a difference in strictly sensory capacity. Marx writes, “Just as only music awakens in man the sense of music, and just as the most beautiful music has no sense for the unmusical ear … the senses of the social man differ from those of the non-social man” (3:301).11 Marx specifies this by claiming that “the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form—in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man),” or “the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense,” all call for cultivation as part and parcel of the cultivation of species-being (3:301). Marx insists, in other words, on sensibility’s independence from understanding, which he takes to be expressed by sensibility’s active attunement to aesthetic richness as a capacity that must be separable from determination by abstract and generalized concepts. If Marx is read as rejecting the passivity of sensing in the way I have been urging, we might think that this commits him to a form of full-blown idealism—or, as McDowell puts it, to “the spectre of frictionless spinning, which deprives us of anything recognizable as empirical content” (1994: 18). Instead, Marx takes the recognition of sensibility as an active power of the mind to entail a rejection of idealism, in that it enables us to overcome the view that the “thing,” outer sense, is to be understood “only as object or as appearance,” instead acknowledging it as the product of “practical, human-sensible activity,” as “praxis, on the side of the subject” (TF 1, 5, 1, 1845; 5:3-4). The importance of “real, sensing activity” is just the point Marx claims idealists have missed: while they have grasped the role of activity “abstractly”—much as Sellars and his followers acknowledge the activity of the abstract conceptual capacities to be operative in sensibility—they have missed the role of genuinely “concrete activity,” and have thereby collapsed “sense objects” into “thought objects” (TF 1; 5:3). In holding that the object of sense is not inertly given but is shaped by the structuring activity of the mind, Marx understands this claim to be consistent, pace McDowell, with a rejection of idealism: consistent, in other words, with materialism. Marx, then, rejects the myth of the given, while also rejecting the usual strategy for overcoming the myth. That is, Marx rejects both empiricism (‘intuitional materialism’)—the view that knowledge is formed on the basis of sense content given to us without cognitive mediation—and idealism, as the view that such cognitive activity is wholly reducible to the

148  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner conceptual operations of understanding at work even in the receptivity of sensibility.12 Thus, Marx’s response to the myth of the given comes by way of expanding the domain of cognitive mediation to more explicitly encompass sensibility. In doing so, Marx does not take his account of sensibility to amount to a ‘frictionless spinning,’ but to be a way of acknowledging the objectivity of empirical content—a presupposition of materialism, not idealism. How can this be the case? 8.3  To answer this question, we must examine a second sense Marx posits of ‘sensing activity.’ In the German Ideology (1846), Marx and Engels claim that Feuerbach does not see how the sensible world around him is not a thing given directly from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed, in the sense that it is a historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession of generations, each standing on the shoulders of the preceding one, developing its industry and its commerce, modifying its social system according to the changed needs. (5:39) Thus, ‘sensing activity’ admits of another meaning than the one I considered earlier—namely, experience, the objects of sense, are shaped by our collective practices, as concrete (sensible) activity in the material world. For instance, the cherry tree, like almost all fruit trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by this action of a definite society in a definite age has it become ‘sense certainty’ for Feuerbach. (1846; 5:39) Thus, Marx suggests that the ‘given’ is a myth not merely in that it is shaped by the activity of the conceptual operations of the mind, but also in that it is shaped by human practice over the course of history and culture. Where the cherry tree appears as a brute object of intuition or mere empirical given, Marx and Engels claim that it can only take this form as the result of a long process of human intervention into the workings of nature. Even an apparently neutral, inert, and passively presented empirical datum, like a cherry tree, is already socially shaped by concrete human activity: what we take up in intuition is, in this now precisified sense, the product of sensible activity.

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  149 Thus, the first meaning of ‘sensory activity’ Marx recognizes picks out the activity of sensibility as faculty of sensing against a picture of the sensory apparatus as passive, mere receptivity; the second refers to the activity of human beings in making objects of outer sense as the domain of material, social practice. In both cases, the manifold of intuition is shaped by human activity: the first in consciousness, the second in embodied action. Where for Kant, the mediating work of sensibility consisted in the contribution of the spatiotemporal forms of intuition, for Marx, these structuring forms of experience are themselves empirically and historically constituted—hence, as he elaborates later in Capital (1867, 1894), the emphasis on distortions of time under capitalism (‘circulation time,’ ‘surplus labor-time,’ ‘time-wages’). In other words, both Kant and Marx agree that sensibility supplies its own form(s), yet Marx claims that this form is made in experience, and thus—in some sense—made in sensibility itself, rather than, as Kant holds, an a priori operation of cognition prior to experience. The empirical is thus not given, but made; insofar as we make the empirical, social world, our sensibility is, to that extent, an active faculty. In relating the making of the empirical world to sensibility as an active faculty, Marx thus recognizes a capacity for free agency distinct from moral agency. For Kant, the human faculty of choice [Willkür] can only be free in the positive sense if determined by practical reason (thus by the higher faculties), and thus only if moral. Yet the faculty of choice is also ‘impure’ for Kant in that it is inevitably also influenced by sensibility, even when determined by practical reason: That faculty of choice which can be determined by pure reason is called the free faculty of choice. … The human faculty of choice, however, is a faculty that can indeed be affected but not determined by [sensible] impulses, and is therefore of itself (apart from an acquired aptitude of reason) not pure but can still be determined to actions by pure will. (6:213) On Kant’s view, freedom and activity in the practical domain are fully expressed only through the spontaneity of reason, while sensibility remains passive, as what is merely affected by ‘impulses.’ Nevertheless, Kant characterizes the “faculty of desire”, equated with the “will”, also in terms of an actively technical capacity to bring about the object represented by one’s idea of an end (5:220). Kant later defines the products of this capacity as “work [Werk]”, or “art in general”, including the fine arts associated with genius that he goes on to discuss (5:303). Kant goes on to qualify that production in this sense can also be free: “By right, only production through freedom, i.e., through a faculty of choice [Willkür] that grounds its actions in reason, should be called art” (5:303). Thus, Kant comes to associate aesthetic production, as a higher instance of production (‘work’

150  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner or labor) in general, as the product of both reason as well as sensitivity to aesthetic particulars that cannot be articulated in determinate concepts. Kant later calls these aesthetic representations ‘aesthetic ideas’, or representations of imagination which “no language fully attains or can make intelligible” (5:314), and, while Kant is not at all consistent on his characterization of imagination, he sometimes construes it in terms of sensibility (e.g., 5:354)—hence, a free sensibility. Some instances of production count as ‘free’ on Kant’s account in being not only reason-guided, but also responsive to empirical particularity. Indeed, Kant coins a new term, heautonomy, to characterize their distinct mode of autonomy that guides responsiveness to empirical features in the absence of direction by understanding or by determinate concepts (5:186). Kant thus stresses, importantly prefiguring aspects of Marx’s account of unalienated labor, that the agent must be able to be “his own master”, which includes having a “skill” or “art... to support himself” in such a way that he can work for himself in a free and independent relation to the object he produces (8:295; see ­Herman 2007: 150-3).13 While an emergent view of free sensibility can thus already be discerned in Kant’s account of aesthetic production as practical purposiveness, it is made consistent only in Marx’s early writings on unalienation. By insisting on an account of sensibility as active, Marx can fully allows for a more capacious picture of human agency than Kant: one on which freedom does not find its source in motivation by a supersensible, non-­ natural order of causality, but through one’s sensitivity to the empirical order of nature. Thus, “the sensible outburst of my life activity is passion, which thus becomes here the activity of my being” (3:304). Thus, Marx calls for the marriage of a crucial materialist insight with a crucial idealist insight. The materialist insight consists in the recognition of the importance of sensibility, of reality, as against thought or understanding: human beings not as disembodied minds, but as shaped by historical, social, empirical circumstances and engaged in concrete shared practices. The idealist insight acknowledges that consciousness as such, and with it experience (through the work of sensibility), is an activity. These two conceptions, of sensibility as activity and the activity of concrete embodied labor, are not as distinct as they may initially seem. They are related by the notion of life, by which, as has often gone unnoticed,14 Marx and Engels generally qualify their conception of material processes.15 Thus, in the German Ideology Marx and Engels claim that “the existence of men is their actual life-process” and often refer not to the material determination of consciousness, but to “life” as what “determines consciousness” (5:37). Many of their references are thus not to determination by ‘material processes,’ but to the “real,” “material,” “physical,” “historical,” or “active” “life-process”; not to ‘material production,’ but to “the

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  151 production of material life” or to the “material conditions of life” (1846; 5:36, 93, 54, 479). Indeed, they refer regularly to “life” as such, where “life involves before everything else eating and drinking, housing, clothing and various other things” (1846; 5:41–42). While for Marx and Engels, “the ‘mind’ is from the outset afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter,” matter is not to be understood as brute or passive, but “makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language” (5:44). Matter, too, is conceived as embodied human activity, in particular the activity of communicating one’s inmost thoughts; it is thus continuous with, not opposed to, consciousness. Marx and Engels appeal once more to the idea of human activity, now the ‘active life-process,’ as a way of bypassing both empiricism and idealism: “As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts, as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists” (5:37). Thus, the “world of sense” is not a collection of sense objects, but constitutes “the total living sensible activity of the individuals composing it” (5:41). The means of production thus constitutes an organic process, not a mechanical one. In the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx refers to labor as “life-activity” and as “productive life,” yet material practice, as ‘life-activity,’ is cast in turn as continuous with consciousness: “man … has conscious life-activity” (3:276). The material and the mental are therefore conceived as of a piece with one another, rather than existing in opposition. The emphasis on ‘life’ as integral to consciousness brings out another dimension of Marx’s relation to Kant. A Brandom has noted, the “self that is identified with [Kant’s] synthetic unity of apperception is not happily thought of using the traditional category of substance. It is the moving, living constellation of its ‘affections’, that is, of the concomitant commitments that compose and articulate it” (2009: 41). Selves are not substances on the Kantian view because self-unity is the product of a “synthetic-integrative activity”; yet they are not pure spontaneity either, because they are a “moving, living constellation” of “affections,” shaped both empirically as well as by the activity of their own thought (ibid.). Marx thus establishes a new branch of taking up Kantianism: not the Sellarsian or idealist line of identifying cognitive activity with conceptuality and the higher faculties of understanding and reason, but a new line that elevates Kantian sensibility to a status higher than that of a lower, inert faculty associated with animalistic instinct and brute sense impressions. As such, Marx further develops a line of thought that, as we’ve begun to see, Kant begins to articulate himself in his account of aesthetic and organic experience in the Critique of Judgment. Indeed, for Marx it is because the activity of consciousness enables self-­ reflection on what one is doing that the material processes of laboring

152  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner activity can, when unalienated, count as free. Marx writes that “conscious life-activity directly distinguishes man from animal life-activity” because it is through consciousness that “his own life can be an object for him” and “his activity free activity” (3:276). Unestranged labor thus consists in “free, conscious activity,” in which the productive activity of labor is integrated into the activity of consciousness, as mediated through the sensory reception of what one is empirically producing (3:276). Thus, Marx diagnoses the opposition between materialism and idealism—an objectified, deterministic, brute materialism on the one hand, and an idealism that solipsistically takes current economic conditions to be a projection of one’s own mind on the other—as a symptom of widespread alienation under capitalism.16 In conditions of alienation, labor no longer appears as one’s own activity, but as “external,” “not one’s own, but someone else’s”; the “product of labor” thus appears only as “an alien object exercising power over [one]” (3:275). The “more the worker exerts himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself—his inner world—becomes” (3:272). Under conditions of alienation, the external world no longer appears to be the product of human activity, and thus as the potential target of change, but as an ‘alien world of objects,’ while human subjects are not animated by rich ‘inner worlds’ and ‘free, conscious activity,’ but determined mechanistically by brute causal forces. Counterintuitively, this distorted picture aligns not only with the viewpoint of crude materialism but also that of naive idealism, insofar as the latter takes the inner realm of the mental to be unaffected by external, empirical circumstances (thus appearing as an “alien world of objects”). Thus, in the idealism of the Young Hegelians, human beings’ “relations” are mere “products of their brains [which] have got out of their hands,” “chimeras, … ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under the yoke of which they are pining away” (5:23). Human beings, Marx claims, are not objects or automata, as under brute materialism, but nor are they disembodied minds, as entailed by naive idealism. If Marx and Engels reject the apparent opposition between materialism and idealism—and with it the division between mind and matter—as a mere byproduct of capitalist alienation, they advocate a materialism in its place which integrates the empirical and the ideal, the sensible and the conceptual, the mental and the material. Kant could, on one characterization, only make sense of the dichotomy between active spontaneity, as operative in discursivity, and passive sensibility, as the mute reception of empirical content, by relegating the former to the noumenal realm, and thus altogether outside of nature as the empirical domain of human life and activity. For instance, Kant claims that in the proposition ‘I think,’ “there is already no longer merely spontaneity of thinking, but also receptivity of intuition,” by which “the thinking self must now … not merely indicate itself as object in itself through the ‘I,’ but

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  153 also determine its kind of existence, i.e., cognize it as noumenon; which, however, is impossible” (B430). Because the spontaneity of reason, as evidenced in the representation ‘I think,’ constitutes “pure self-activity” that “goes far beyond anything that sensibility can ever afford him,” the self-conscious rational being “must view itself as an intelligence,” “as belonging not to the world of sense, but to that of understanding” (4:452). Thus, John McDowell notes that Kant’s “isolable contribution from receptivity” requires him to posit a distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal domains, a commitment that can only appear questionable by the lights of contemporary philosophy: for Kant, “receptivity figures as a susceptibility to the impact of a supersensible reality, a reality that is supposed to be independent of our conceptual activity in a stronger sense than any that fits the ordinary empirical world” (1994: 42). How, McDowell asks, “can the empirical world be genuinely independent of us, if we are partly responsible for its fundamental structure?” (1994: 42). On this basis, he attributes ‘responsibility’ for the ‘structure’ of the mental only to understanding and rejects an ‘isolable contribution’ from sensibility, which he takes to be sufficient, in turn, for rejecting any commitment to the noumenal. In Marx’s formulation of materialism, the particular given in perception, such as the cherry tree, is not ‘given’ not only in that our reception of it is dependent on the discursive or conceptual scheme into which we accommodate it but also in that it is shaped by its genealogy, the object’s role throughout human history and culture. Marx would thus take issue with the Sellarsian position which holds that the manifold of intuition is ‘not given’ only in the sense that it is conceptually mediated, as well as to think that the only way sensibility can be separable from understanding is insofar as it passively receives brute sense impressions as ‘empirical data’ or ‘sensory input’ independent of discursive conditions. Against the first, Marx insists that the object of intuition itself is made; the second presupposition, Marx suggests, is tantamount to denying the possibility of aesthetic experience, and with it, unalienated experience. 8.4  The conception of ‘life’ allows us to understand how Marx’s materialism can constitute a genuine alternative to mechanical materialism, even if Marx and Engels did not yet understand it under that moniker. Here, we can return to Engels’ later remarks on mechanical materialism, having properly situated them in their appropriate context. In 1886, after Marx’s death, Engels writes, The materialism of the last century was predominantly mechanical, because at that time, of all natural sciences, only mechanics, and indeed

154  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner only the mechanics of solid bodies—celestial and terrestrial—in short, the mechanics of gravity, had come to any definite close. Chemistry at that time existed only in its infantile, phlogistic form. Biology still lay in swaddling clothes; vegetable and animal organisms had been only roughly examined and were explained by purely mechanical causes. What the animal was to Descartes, man was to the materialists of the 18th century—a machine. This exclusive application of the standards of mechanics to processes of a chemical and organic nature—in which processes the laws of mechanics are, indeed, also valid, but are pushed into the backgrounds by other, higher laws—constitutes the first specific but at that time inevitable limitations of classical French materialism. (26:370) Here, Engels attributes the materialism of Feuerbach and his ilk to an incomplete understanding of nature, due, in turn, to an incomplete development of the natural sciences. Because the natural sciences were limited to principles of classical mechanics—which could only accommodate physics, relegating the more complex disciplines of chemistry and biology outside the domain of the sciences altogether—organic objects of nature, including human beings, could only be understood in mechanical terms, as brutely determined ‘machines.’ Against such a picture, Engels claims that scientific developments in the nineteenth century have made it possible to understand natural processes by pushing the ‘laws of mechanics’ into the background’ ‘by other, higher laws’ such that ‘vegetable and animal organisms’ could be understood in the dynamic terms of life rather than as the products of ‘purely mechanical causes’: first, as teleology, but ultimately also in terms of natural selection. Thus, in his eulogy for Marx, Engels would liken Marx to Darwin, Darwin as discoverer of “the law of development of organic nature upon our planet,” Marx as “discoverer of the fundamental law according to which human history moves and develops itself” (24:463). In his recognition of organic principles as constitutive of ‘other, higher laws’ than the merely mechanical, I think it is important to note that Engels is advancing a different view of the historical shift from teleology to natural selection than how it is generally construed.17 Many have understood the advent of Darwinian natural selection to be an extension of mechanical explanation to the realm of biological life, allowing for various, non-­ vitalist or physically reductionist views of the unity of the sciences.18 Thus, far from positing an irreducible level of teleological explanation, biological phenomena are taken to be continuous with mechanical cause-and-effect relations. To the contrary, Engels claims that science had to develop modes of explanation more sophisticated than the ‘exclusive application of the standards of mechanics to processes of a chemical and organic nature’ in

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  155 order to encompass biology and chemistry as full-blooded sciences,19 dovetailing with arguments to the effect that Darwinian natural selection retains an irreducible role for non-mechanical, purposive, explanation (Ginsborg 2004, Breitenbach 2009). To account for nature as a domain of life rather than as a collection of deterministically affected objects—as dynamic, not mechanical—called for a reorientation of cognition in the course of the history of science. Indeed, rather than merely extending mechanical explanation to organisms, we can already see Kant in the Critique of Judgment as reaching beyond the language of mechanism in order to encompass the more complex natural phenomena. Engels claims that this greater sophistication in scientific explanation ultimately allows for a more sophisticated formulation of materialism.20 Engels’ rejection of mechanical materialism thus recalls Kant’s conception of biological organisms as conceivable only by supplementing mechanical explanation with the concept of a purpose or end as a “heuristic principle,” “even though this principle does not make the way in which these products have originated more comprehensible” and “we would want to make no use of it for explaining nature itself” (5:411). In other words, our reception into the consciousness of the empirical particular (the organism) is an active process, one by which the normativity of thinking can be reoriented by integrating new principles, ones enabling us to make sense of the particular thing, the object of intuition, anew. Kant thus suggests a conception of science on which cognition must be reflexively reoriented in order to incorporate new empirical phenomena, presupposing that empirical particulars can challenge the conceptual schemes afforded by the understanding. Kantian reflection on natural organisms thus confronts us with the recognition that consciousness cannot consist either in the brute imposition of the mental and its fixed schemes on the material world or in the passive reception of the mechanical causation of matter. But this presupposes, first, that we take in particulars as particulars, as calling for potentially new concepts or principles, rather than as already discursively determined from the outset (Arendt 1970: 15). It calls on a way of judging experience that arises for cases in which “only the particular is given, for which the universal is to be found” (5:179). In the third Critique, Kant attributes the “constitutive principles a priori” for “feeling” to the power of judgment (5:196). As we began to see above, Kant thus advances an account of aesthetics that presupposes a conception of sensibility that is determinable independently of the conceptual operations of the understanding. We might extend Kant’s point, in other words, by saying that the process of “finding the general for the particular” rather than “merely … subsuming the particular under the general (whose concept is given)”21 calls on the activity of sensibility, a faculty which, in such cases, can no longer be strictly subordinated to the

156  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner understanding (20:209). Kant, of course, ultimately attributes activity to reflective judgment, not sensibility; nevertheless, Kant also accords a crucial role to the free play of imagination, sometimes construed, as discussed above, in terms of sensibility (e.g., 5:354). Thus, a Lukács noticed, the revolutionary “attitude … possesses a very real and concrete field of activity where it may be brought to fruition, namely art,” as evidenced by the theoretical and practical role “Kant in the Critique of Judgment assigned to the principle of art [as] mediator” in “perfecting [his] system” (1923: 137). It is by appeal to reflective judgment, here in its aesthetic expression that Lukács situates his conception of praxis: “If man is fully human ‘only when he plays’… the contents of life … may be salvaged from the deadening effects of the mechanism of reification. But only in so far as these contents become aesthetic” (1923: 138). Marx famously makes a similar remark in the 1844 Manuscripts: in unalienated labor, “man forms things in accordance with the laws of beauty” (3:277), thus drawing a connection between the two senses of ‘sensible activity’ I have outlined so far—the practical (in the sense of Kant’s ‘practical purposiveness’ or ‘faculty of choice’), and the sensory-perceptive (what Kant would construe as the mind’s affection by the manifold of intuition). Both, for Marx, as I pointed out in §II, are importantly aesthetic, as well as organic (expressions of ‘life’). In the second Thesis, Marx writes, “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question” (5:3). In understanding truth as non-isolable from practice, we interrogate the given not only as conceptually mediated, but as collectively made, leading us, in turn, to reflect on the current constitution of material reality, and with it, on the prospects for its alteration. We learn to see the “whole world of sense” as shaped by the “activity” of “labor and creation, [of] production,” just as much as “our own perceptive faculty” is (5:40). But we can only learn this mode of seeing if we extend the domain of cognitive agency beyond the stretch of conceptual schemes to encompass that presentation of the manifold of intuition as more than mere conceptual content.22 Notes 1 “The short flashes of the Theses on Feuerbach strike every philosopher who encounters them with their light, but everyone knows that a flash blinds more than it illuminates” (Althusser 1965: 25, 28); “in the Theses on Feuerbach, Marx is at pains to distinguish his materialism from that of previous materialists, but he tells us very little about what ‘materialism’ itself is supposed to be” (Wood 2004 [1981]: 165). 2 Raymond Williams and György Lukács claim, for instance, that Marx and Engels’ program for materialism is framed in opposition to “the naive dualism

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  157 of ‘mechanical materialism’” or “the mechanistic fatalism which was [its] normal concomitant” (Williams 1977: 59; Lukács 1967: xxv). 3 See also discussion in Labica (1987: 29–32). 4 See discussion in Vaccarino Bremner (2020). 5 See discussion in Heidemann (2014), Schulting (2016), McLear (2021). 6 This erasure of sensibility as a faculty in its own right also marks a tenet of the neo-Kantian tradition; see Ferrari (2012) for discussion. 7 Brandom, similarly, claims that Kant’s conception of discursive activity can be elaborated on the basis of “an internal coherence to the line of thought about concepts, judging, hence apperception and understanding” that can be considered “in abstraction from … considerations concerning sensibility” (2009: 50–51). However, I return to another suggestion from him which I take to be more in keeping with Marx’s view below. 8 Indeed, Rödl does mention, although does not emphasize, “acts of sensibility” and “powers of receptive knowledge” (2007: 17, 86), and thus does not share McDowell’s view of the extended role of conceptuality in Kantian thought. Nevertheless, a conception of sensibility as its own kind of activity, one distinct from intellectual spontaneity, is not a main focus of his account. 9 As Kant had claimed, a “concept is never referred directly to an object,” but is always mediated by intuition (A68/B93). 10 Compare Kant: “Even the botanist, who recognizes in it the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no attention to this natural end if he judges the flower by means of taste” (5:229). The botanist is alienated in some sense from the plant’s particularity. I am indebted to John Callanan for this suggestion. 11 I am indebted to Christoph Schuringa for suggesting these passages. 12 “Marx’s insistence on active sensibility can be fruitfully compared to Dreyfus’ criticism of McDowell. Dreyfus draws on the existentialist phenomenological tradition to argue that the discursive conditions of experience McDowell stresses themselves presuppose “a primordial nonconceptual mode of coping on the basis of which the conceptual world makes sense”, or an “absorption into [a] field of attractions and repulsions” that generate “solicitations to act” which are not “propositionally structure[d]” (Dreyfus 2013: 21-2; for ­McDowell’s response, see McDowell 2013). This exchange brings out the extent to which Marx, while importantly prefiguring the phenomenologists’ insistence on the nonconceptual, outlines a genuinely distinct third alternative between the phenomenological and transcendental idealist accounts. For Marx, we are not passively given over to attractions and repulsions on a ‘primordial’ level; an important marker of unalienation is instead being actively engaged in sensing, and thus also (in a connection I establish below) in actively making, the world of experience, which thus can have no primordial or primitive structure independent of its particular material determination at a given time. In this connection, it doesn’t seem to me that McDowell’s (2013) self-defense insulates him from the criticisms Marx lodges against the idealist tradition. I am indebted to Adrian Haddock for suggesting this comparison. 13 For more on Kant’s account of production as art in general, see Vaccarino Bremner (2022b); for more on aesthetic ideas as non-discursive, see Vaccarino Bremner (2021). I am indebted to Tyler Re for discussions on the relations between Kant’s account of practical purposiveness to Marx’s account of labor. 14 Khurana’s (2022) Hegelian reading of Marx’s appeal to life provides one very helpful exception. I advance a Kantian reading of this appeal in the following section.

158  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner 5 For more on this point, see Vaccarino Bremner and Canson (ms). 1 16 The solipsistic kind of idealism would seem to align with Marx and Engels’ critique of Max Stirner, who posits that nothing outside of the self has any value since only is one’s own interests exist; for further discussion of Stirner and the other Young Hegelians, see Whyman (2022). 17 Other passages in Engels (1886) suggest otherwise, and the text in general is contradictory in places. In part for this reason, I have cautioned against collapsing the conception of mechanical materialism advanced in this text to the view articulated in the Theses 40 years prior and have so far grounded Marx’s materialism in the views of the early Marx and Engels. 18 See discussion in Millikan (1993), Friedman (2001: 126–129), and Zammito (2006). 19 By ‘mechanism,’ I have in mind Cartesian mechanism; Newtonianism is, on this view, already a progression beyond classical mechanics insofar as it posits new forces irreducible to early modern conceptions of causality (such as the seemingly occult commitment to action at a distance; see Janiak 2008). 20 Interestingly, Lukács makes the inverse point, arguing that historical processes of reification come to take the form of mechanical, abstract laws of nature, and the agent the guise of the passive, observing scientist: “All human relations (viewed as the objects of social activity) assume increasingly the objective forms of the abstract elements of the conceptual systems of natural science and of the abstract substrata of the laws of nature. And also, the subject of this ‘action’ likewise assumes increasingly the attitude of the pure observer of these—artificially abstract—processes, the attitude of the experimenter” (Lukács 1923: 131). 21 For discussion of how this process figures into Kant’s account of organic life, see Vaccarino Bremner (2022). 22 The ideas for this chapter were developed in conversation with Chloé de Canson, and also inform our manuscript in progress (Vaccarino Bremner and Canson ms). I am indebted to her for occasioning this line of thought and for our ongoing dialogue on these topics, to Lorenzo Serini and Pietro Gori for their invaluable editorial assistance, to Christoph Schuringa for his sharp insights, to Frederick Neuhouser for first suggesting a connection between the 1844 Manuscripts and Kant’s conception of practical purposiveness in a 2017 course on Marx, to Tyler Re for his own development of these issues and for our conversations on his own evolving work, and to discussions on Marx’s views with Howard Caygill, Peter Osborne, Andrew Chitty, Karen Ng, Anton Ford, Thomas Khurana, Vanessa Wills, and John Rufo. I am also indebted to audience responses at the London Post-Kantian Seminar and the “Futures of Marx” conference hosted by the University of Potsdam and Berlin Center for Social Critique.

References References to Kant’s works use the standard Academy references, except for references to the first Critique, which use the standard A/B notation. Translations are drawn from the Cambridge editions of Kant’s works. References to Marx and Engels’ works are drawn from the Collected Works, vols. 3–29 (New York: International Publishers, 1975–1987). Althusser, Louis. 1965 [2005]. For Marx. Verso.

The Early Marx’s Materialism of Sensibility as Activity  159 Althusser, Louis. 1970 [2012]. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” In Mapping Ideology, ed. S. Žižek. London: Verso, 100–140. Arendt, Hannah. 1970. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Balibar, Étienne. 1994 [2007]. The Philosophy of Marx. London: Verso. Brandom, Robert. 1994. Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Brandom, Robert. 2009. Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas. Cambridge: ­Harvard University Press. Breitenbach, Angela. 2009. “Teleology in Biology: A Kantian Perspective.” Kant Yearbook 1.2009: 31–56. Dreyfus, Hubert L. 2013. “The Myth of the Pervasiveness of the Mental.” In Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate, ed. J. K. Schear. London and New York: Routledge, 15–40. Eagleton, Terry. 1991. Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso. Ferrari, Massimo. 2012. “Between Cassirer and Kuhn: Some Remarks on ­Friedman’s Relativized a Priori.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43.1: 18–26. Friedman, Michael. 2001. Dynamics of Reason. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory. London: Macmillan. Ginsborg, Hannah. 2004. “Two Kinds of Mechanical Inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1: 33–65. Hall, Stuart. 1985. “Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the Post-structuralist Debates.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 2.2: 91–114. Heidemann, Dietmar (ed.). 2014. Kant and Non-conceptual Content. London: Routledge. Herman, Barbara. 2007. Moral Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Janiak, Andrew. 2008. Newton as Philosopher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Khurana, Thomas. 2022. “Genus-Being: On Marx’s Dialectical Naturalism.” In Nature and Naturalism in Classical German Philosophy, eds. L. Corti and J-G. Schülein. New York: Routledge, 246–278. Kukla, Rebecca. 2002. “Attention and Blindness: Contingency and Obligation in Moral Philosophy.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28: 319–346. Labica, Georges. 1987. Karl Marx, les “Thèses sur Feuerbach.” Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Lukács, György. 1923 [1971]. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Cambridge: MIT Press. Lukács, György. 1967. “Preface to the New Edition.” In Lukács (1923), ix–xxxix. McDowell, John. 1994. Mind and World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. McDowell, John. 2013. “The Myth of the Mind as Detached.” In Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate, ed. J. K. Schear. London and New York: Routledge, 41–58. McLear, Colin. 2021. “Kantian Conceptualism/Nonconceptualism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E.N. Zalta. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford.

160  Sabina Vaccarino Bremner Millikan, Ruth Garrett. 1993. White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice. Cambridge: MIT Press. Re, Tyler. Manuscript. “The Art of Work in Kant’s Critique of Judgment.” Version as of February 5, 2023. Accessed July 5, 2023. Rödl, Sebastian. 2007. Self-Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Schulting, Dennis (ed.). 2016. Kantian Nonconceptualism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Sellars, Wilfrid. 1956. Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: ­Harvard University Press. Vaccarino Bremner, Sabina F. 2020. “Anthropology as Critique: Foucault, Kant and the Metacritical Tradition.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28.2: 336–358. Vaccarino Bremner, Sabina F. 2021. “On Conceptual Revision and Aesthetic Judgment.” Kantian Review 26.4: 531–547. Vaccarino Bremner, Sabina F. 2022. “Practical Judgment as Reflective Judgment: On Moral Salience and Kantian Particularist Universalism.” European Journal of Philosophy (online first). Vaccarino Bremner, Sabina F. 2022b. “Culture and the Unity of Kant’s Critique of Judgment.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 104.2: 367–402. Vaccarino Bremner, Sabina F. and Chloé de Canson. Manuscript. “Ideology as Relativized A Priori.” https://philpapers.org/rec/BREIAR-6 [February 28, 2023]. Whyman, Tom. 2022. “Introduction.” In The German Ideology: A New Abridgement, ed. T. Whyman. Repeater. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wood, Allen. 2004 [1981]. Karl Marx. New York: Routledge. Zammito, John. 2006. “Teleology Then and Now: The Question of Kant’s Relevance for Contemporary Controversies over Function in Biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37.4: 748–770. Žižek, Slavoj. 1994. “The Spectre of Ideology.” In Mapping Ideology, ed. S. Žižek. London: Verso Books, 100–140.

9 Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth Foucault, Nietzsche, and James Pietro Gori

In a 2003 paper, Michael Peters argues that, on the issue of knowledge, “Foucault’s innovation was to historicize ‘truth’, first, materially in discourse as ‘regimes of truth’ and, second, in practices as ‘games of truth’” (Peters 2003: 208). As Peters also points out, this innovation is grounded in Nietzsche’s conception of truth, and especially in his view that knowledge is strongly intertwined with human practices (in fact, it might be argued that for Nietzsche, knowledge can be defined only with reference to those practices). It is indeed well-known that Nietzsche was both a key point of reference and an inspiration for Foucault’s lectures on the “Will to Know,” delivered in 1970/1971, in which the latter defended an early anti-foundationalism and anti-essentialism about truth. To this, I would like to add another element that can be stressed in order to clarify Foucault’s early view of truth, on the one hand, and to shed light on the kind of relationship between truth and practice that might be outlined based on Foucault’s remarks from the 1970s, on the other hand. As will be argued, that relationship can be seen as the expression of a broad pragmatist approach to knowledge and truth, which apparently characterizes Nietzsche’s conception as well. In this chapter, I will elaborate on this and reflect on the attention to the practical dimension that—each in his own way—Foucault, Nietzsche, and the classic pragmatist thinker William James pay when confronted with the challenge of providing a non-skeptical response to the relativist stance on truth that arose in the post-Kantian age. I will focus in particular on the extent to which these three authors conceived of the practical framework as the only one that allows us to meaningfully address and determine truth. 9.1 Games of Truth In a 1977 interview, Michel Foucault addresses the issue of “Truth and Power” and reveals that one of the main problems that he aimed to deal with in his works was that of “seeing historically how effects of truth are DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-10

162  Pietro Gori produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false” (Foucault 1980: 118). This observation allows us to see that, for Foucault, “truth” is not a property inherent in our discursive practices, for it does not pertain to them essentially. On the contrary, truth is a product of those practices; more precisely, it is an effect of them. Furthermore, truth is an effect that can be appreciated historically—that is, if we observe how it is produced in concrete human cultural or political activities.1 Among these activities, Foucault focuses especially on power relations, which for him represent the actual framework for a meaningful determination of truth. In fact, he maintains that “truth isn’t outside power, or lacking in power. … Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power” (Foucault 1980: 131). On this basis, Foucault defines what he calls “regimes of truth,” which are the framework of any determination of knowledge and truth. These regimes are in fact “the types of discourse which [each society] accepts and makes function as true”; furthermore, they are “the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth” (ibid.). As can easily be appreciated, there is a relativist element at the basis of Foucault’s considerations, for in his view, there is no unique regime of truth but rather a variety of regimes, each of which depends on the society in which the discourses are actually practiced. Importantly, given the aim of the present chapter, Foucault focuses on the earthly, i.e., human, character of truth, which is not situated in a metaphysical realm, waiting to be discovered or grasped by the knowing subject. For him, truth arises from human discursive activity and has no ontological foundation that might be conceived as independent of that activity itself. Foucault is extremely clear on this in the conclusion of the 1977 interview, where an at least mildly instrumentalist (and hence pragmatist, as I shall argue later) view of truth is revealed. “By truth,” observes Foucault, “I do not mean ‘the ensemble of truths which are to be discovered and accepted’, but rather ‘the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power attached to the true’” (Foucault 1980: 132). For Foucault, what may be known as true or false depends on procedures, or practices, for the production of “systems of power,” systems whose effects are also fundamental to determining truth. There is an actual (not vicious but virtuous) circularity in Foucault’s conception of “regimes of truth … which [are] so essential to the structure and functioning of our society” (ibid.). These regimes in fact express the “circular relation” that links truth “with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it” (Foucault 1980: 133). Accordingly, these regimes express the “rules” that must be known in order to navigate within a social, cultural, and political context, thus providing us with a framework for the

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  163 new kind of knowledge that Foucault aims to outline. As noted earlier, this knowledge cannot be metaphysical in the traditional sense of the term; rather, it is instrumental and pragmatic insofar as it is grounded in the meaning-endowing discursive relations that are actually practiced. In an interview recorded in 1984, Foucault explains that he sometimes uses the concept of a “game” to mean the “ensemble of rules for the production of truth” (Fornet-Betancour et al. 1988: 15; on this cf. Peters 2003: 211). The idea of “games of truth” in fact appears in a series of lectures titled “Truth and Juridical Forms,” which Foucault gave in Rio de Janeiro in 1973, and it is worth considering not only because it sheds further light on the issue that I am exploring but also because it directly links Foucault’s conception of truth to Nietzsche’s thought. In the first of these lectures, Foucault in fact elaborates on Nietzsche’s perspectival conception of knowledge in order to outline his own view that “there are in society … places where truth is formed, where a certain number of games are defined—games through which one sees … certain types of knowledge come into being” (Foucault 2001: 4). Among these games, we find the juridical forms that Foucault explores in his paper and that he describes as “practices … governed by rules but also constantly modified through the course of history, … by which our society defined … forms of knowledge and, consequently, relations between man and truth” (ibid.). The fundamental Nietzschean idea that inspires this conception is that truth has no metaphysical essence; it has no origin (Ursprung) but is rather an invention (Erfindung) (Foucault 2001: 6).2 In other words, it is impossible to discover or reveal any essential content of knowledge claims; the only thing that we can grasp is their surface. In other words, we are confined within the boundaries of our own discursive activity. Knowledge, continues Foucault, is not a question of congruence between what we say and the object of our assertions. Rather, it is a game of domination that we play with what will always remain separated by us (Foucault 2001: 12). Furthermore, it can be argued that there is not an essence of knowledge, of the universal conditions of knowledge; rather, knowledge is always the historical and circumstantial result of conditions outside the domain of knowledge. In reality, knowledge is an event that falls under the category of an activity. … Knowledge is not a faculty or a universal structure. Even when it uses a certain number of elements that may pass for universals, knowledge will only belong to the order of results, events, effects. (Foucault 2001: 13–14) What can be inferred from this excerpt is that, in Foucault, there is a shift from the ontological problem to the dimension of human activity. The very

164  Pietro Gori notion of knowledge—and together with it the concept of truth—is no longer conceived as a fixed object of inquiry; rather, it becomes an event, a function: the function of performing discursive relations between agents of social groups. Accordingly, we must not search for truth outside or behind these relations. Truth is invented or created by these relations themselves and has no meaning if considered independently of them. Thus, Foucault maintains that if we want to consistently address this issue, we need to focus on the game that is constantly played at the level of political and economic practices, which are the actual “means by which subjects of knowledge are formed, and hence truth relations” (Foucault 2001: 15). How can we relate this conception of a practice of truth with Nietzsche’s view? And what does it have to do with pragmatism, as I have tentatively suggested? In the following sections, I will attempt to answer these questions. 9.2 The Will to Know As Foucault observes in “Truth and Juridical Forms,” “[W]hat I say here won’t mean anything if it isn’t connected to Nietzsche’s work, which seems to me to be the best, the most effective, the most pertinent of the models that one can draw upon” (Foucault 2001: 5).3 In fact, the view that truth is not an object of inquiry but rather an event or a function can be found in an unpublished note from 1887 that deeply inspired Foucault, where Nietzsche argues that truth is not something that’s there and must be found out, discovered, but something that must be made and that provides the name for a ­process—or rather for a will to overcome, a will that left to itself has no end: inserting truth as a processus in infinitum, an active determining, not a becoming conscious of something that is “in itself” fixed and determinate.4 (PF 1887, 9[91], in Nietzsche 1967, vol. 12) This is indeed an interesting passage that shows that Nietzsche reflected on the idea that, in order to address the issue of truth properly, we must shift from the ontological to the functional plane. We must take a closer look at the Nietzschean origins of Foucault’s conception of knowledge if we are to fully appreciate it, however. This can be easily done by considering ­Foucault’s lectures on “The Will to Know” given at the Collège de France from 1970 to 1971.5 In fact, in these lectures, we find the theoretical principles of Foucault’s later reflections on knowledge (savoir), principles that are expressly grounded in Nietzschean foundations. Among the various elements of interest that pertain to these lectures, I would like to stress the

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  165 fact that, starting from Nietzsche, Foucault elaborates on the sort of ­anti-foundationalist or anti-essentialist conception of knowledge and truth that he defends in the texts considered in the previous section. For Foucault, Nietzsche represents a final step in the history of Western practices of knowledge—namely, the moment where knowledge is finally separated from the dogmatic (Aristotelian) conception of truth. Variously stimulated by different spheres of scientific knowledge such as biology, history, and philology, Nietzsche was able to engage in “critical” reflection on knowledge and to treat from a different perspective an issue that had traditionally been addressed in metaphysical terms (cf. Foucault 2013: 27). Nietzsche’s criticism (with ‘criticism’ understood here in a Kantian sense) makes dynamic something that had always been viewed as fixed; it transforms the plane of discovery into invention and creation, revealing its inherent illusory and erroneous matrix. By attributing a dynamic aspect to truth—that is, by referring it to the plane of action and becoming, from which emanate the multiple ways in which humans categorize reality— Nietzsche allows Foucault to consider the notion of truth no longer (or no longer primarily) as an inert object of inquiry but rather as “an effect of a struggle at the level of discursive practices” (Foucault 2013: 195). What Foucault has in mind when he talks of “struggle” is basically Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power. Inspired by that notion, Foucault argues that “the will to know (savoir) refers not to knowledge (connaissance) but to something different; that behind the Will to know there is not a sort of pre-existing knowledge … but instinct, struggle” (Foucault 2013: 197). “The Will to know,” he continues, “is not originally linked to the Truth” in Nietzsche; “the Will to know composes illusions, fabricates lies, accumulates errors, and is deployed in a space of fiction where the truth itself is only an effect” (ibid.). Thus, knowledge, traditionally conceived as fixed and inert, is put in motion, as it were. Instead of a path leading to something that is “there” and that we can discover through inquiry, there is now a practice of elaboration of truth, a process of truth-making: “The Will to know does not assume the pre-existence of a knowledge already there; truth is not given in advance; it is produced as an event. … Truth is only an effect of fiction and error” (Foucault 2013: 198). These observations can easily be compared with those considered earlier. When combined, they allow us to outline a conception that has a pragmatist flavor insofar as it faces an anti-foundationalist stance in a non-­ skeptical way. I will return to this later in the chapter, but allow me to anticipate here that pragmatism (at least in its original form) should be seen as an approach to philosophical issues that attempts to provide an alternative to the epistemic relativism peculiar to the post-Kantian era. Pragmatism originated as an attempt to satisfy a philosophical need while avoiding skepticism and nihilism, namely the need to determine new,

166  Pietro Gori non-dogmatic, non-metaphysical principles for meaningful evaluation. Once it was established that such dogmatic principles in fact do not exist, or at least that we have no access to them, the only option left to us—if we do not want to give up and admit that no principles at all can ever be encountered—is to leave aside the metaphysical plane and look at the concrete dimension of human activity, that is, at human practices. Therefore, our evaluative criteria must shift from the relationship between the judging subject and the object to the act of judging itself, from the essence to the function, from the fact to the interpretation, from the ontological status of what we believe to have value (e.g., what we believe to be good or to be true) to the practical consequences of that belief for our concrete lives, activity, and behavior. This is precisely the view that Foucault attributes to Nietzsche’s conception of truth and his idea that the very notion of knowledge must be reconceived in perspectival, i.e., non-dogmatic, terms.6 As noted earlier, for Foucault, Nietzsche in fact tries to do away with the traditional conception of knowledge and truth by elaborating a relational model that allows us to conceive of truth as an everlasting process (Foucault 2013: 214). In the ­final lecture of the 1970–1971 course,7 Foucault further stresses this and deals with the idea of knowledge as invention, which he would later ­address in 1973, in contrast to the idea of a possible static reference or origin of our knowledge claims (Foucault 2013: 203). For Foucault, knowledge “is not joined to the structure of the world as a reading, a decipherment, a perception, or a self-evidence” because “things are not made to be seen or known” and, most importantly, they “do not have a hidden meaning to be deciphered” or “an essence that constitutes their intelligible nervure” (ibid.). Thus, knowledge does not lead us beyond the veil of ­appearances; it does not reveal any ontological foundation hidden by that veil (Foucault 2013: 205). On the contrary, “knowledge is the result of a complex operation” (Foucault 2013: 204), which is confined to the level of appearances. This is not the end of our journey, for Foucault, but rather the beginning of a process of perspectival re-configuration of the very level of appearances. Inspired by Nietzsche’s view of the dichotomy between the “true” and the “apparent” world, a dichotomy that is destined to collapse under the pressure of the perspectival approach that Nietzsche defends in his late writings (cf. Twilight of the Idols, “How the ‘true world’ finally became a fable,” and Foucault 2013: 206), Foucault maintains a strong anti-essentialist conception of truth. In Nietzsche, he in fact finds the idea that “there is no ontology of truth,” given that “all truth is deployed in the non-truth; truth is non-true” (Foucault 2013: 216–217).8 This view, connected with the principle of the will to power, allows Foucault to elaborate a model of knowledge as a “historical process” and a “network of relations” (Foucault 2013: 214 and 210, respectively), a model that defines

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  167 knowledge and truth in a new way insofar as the epistemic plane out of which they both arise and with reference to which their meaning is a­ ssessed is dynamic and therefore always changing. Accordingly, Foucault argues that “knowledge will always be perspective, incomplete; … it will never be adequate to its object,” nor will it ever be “rewarded with access to being or the essence.” On the contrary, knowledge constantly “gives rise to new appearances, sets them against one another and beyond one another” (Foucault 2013: 206). With this, I hope to have adequately outlined Foucault’s (early) ­antifoundational conception of truth and the theoretical basis of his conception of “regimes” or “games of truth,” as well as the idea that knowledge can be meaningfully assessed only as the effect of human (political) practices. It is now time to say something about Nietzsche on this matter. 9.3 An Instrumentalist Criterion of Truth Foucault’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s view of truth touches on interesting issues that deserve to be addressed in further detail, albeit briefly. The question of truth is indeed one of the most-discussed topics in Nietzsche scholarship—and for good reason since it is crucially related to a series of philosophical reflections that Nietzsche developed throughout his life. For reasons of space, I will limit myself to the consideration of a few elements that seem to me to be the most relevant to the aim of this chapter. More precisely, I will focus on the anti-foundationalist and instrumentalist conception of truth that Nietzsche consistently defends in On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense and in The Gay Science 354 (among other texts). My interest in these writings is twofold: first, they are among the works to which Foucault himself refers and upon which he elaborates his view of knowledge (The Gay Science 354, in particular, is a key point of reference for the notion of perspectivism); second, in these texts, Nietzsche reflects on the relationship between language/meaning and the social or communitarian dimension, as well as the dependence of the former on the latter, defending the idea that knowledge and truth are in fact the product of non-epistemic conditions. The 1873 unpublished work On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense is a decisive point of reference for Foucault’s view on knowledge as invention (Foucault 2013: 202 and 2001: 6). In this text, Nietzsche conveys his critical attitude toward the idea that language is “the full and adequate expression of all realities” (Nietzsche 1999: 143). For him, language is only a matter of legislation; its origins rest in the establishment of conventions and designations, which may be fruitful for the preservation of social groups (ibid.). Within this picture, words are mere “tokens of designation,” and what counts as the “truth” or a “lie” depends on how we use

168  Pietro Gori these tokens (ibid.). Nietzsche further defends the metaphorical value of “truths” insofar as they are the mere translation of neural stimulations into concepts “which, after they have been in use for a long time, strike a people as firmly established, canonical, and binding” (Nietzsche 1999: 146). Notably, Nietzsche conceives of this translation as a creative determination, not as the sort of direct mirroring that is at work in the correspondence conception of truth endorsed by common sense naive realism (cf. Human, All too Human I, § 11). Nietzsche is quite clear on this and argues, for example, that “where words are concerned, what matters is never truth, never the full and adequate expression” (Nietzsche 1999: 144). Furthermore, he remarks that truthfulness is only a moral obligation imposed by society, “i.e., the obligation to use the customary metaphors, or … firmly established conventions” (Nietzsche 1999: 146). But if our judgments are based on social or cultural agreement, then, contrary to what is commonly believed, the value of truth and lies is not fixed and unchanging, nor can it be assessed with reference to a metaphysical essence of our judgments. Rather, its value depends on the context within which these evaluations are made, which is a practical human context. This is but the first stage of a long-lasting reflection that Nietzsche would carry out throughout his life and that was imbued with a post-Kantian epistemology. On Truth and Lie was in fact inspired by the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Lange, whose engagement with Kant was profound, as we know. The main question they both raise—in quite different ways and with quite different results—is that of the relationship between the phenomenal world of our daily human experience and the realm of “things in themselves.” Is that realm really out there? Can we grasp it? Or is it a mere play on words, an illusion, a concept that we ourselves created in an attempt to give meaning to something that we do not fully understand or that we simply need to categorize in order to navigate easily in the world of experience? The evolutionary and instrumentalist approach to this issue is indeed endorsed by Nietzsche in a series of writings, starting from Human, All too Human, § 16, where he remarks that “we have been the colourists” of that marvelous painting “that we call the world, which is in fact the outcome of a host of intellectual error and fantasies which have gradually arisen and grown entwined with one another in the course of the overall evolution of the organic being, and are now inherited by us as the accumulated treasure of the entire past—as treasure: for the value of our humanity depends upon it” (Nietzsche 1996: 20). Similarly, in § 110 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche maintains that during the evolutionary history of humankind, “the intellect produced nothing but errors; some of them turned out to be useful and species-preserving. … Such erroneous articles of faith were passed on by inheritance further and further, and finally almost became part of the basic endowment of the

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  169 species” (Nietzsche 2001: 110). These “basic errors” have been “incorporated since time immemorial,” and consequently, “even in knowledge those propositions became the norms according to which one determined ‘true’ and ‘untrue’” (ibid.). However, “the strength of knowledge lies not in its degree of truth, but in its age, its embeddedness, its character of condition of life” (Nietzsche 2001: 111). What Nietzsche is trying to stress here is that we should not believe our world to be literally as we categorize it; we should not mistake a human representation of the world for a truthful, i.e., adequate, description of it. In other words, we should not treat our human, all too human “criterion of truth” as a “criterion of reality”; instead, we should understand that the “categories of reason” on which we place so much trust provide us with a mere “adjustment of the world for utilitarian ends” (PF 1888, 14[153], in Nietzsche 1967, vol. 13). Therefore, what we ordinarily call “truths” are only conventional and provisional resting points in our active relationship with the world, and their meaning resides only in that relationship and the concrete behavior that follows from it. These early considerations, which provide the basis for Nietzsche’s later attempt to reassess the value of the principles of our world description based on a non-essentialist justification of their meaning,9 are further developed in the important § 354 of The Gay Science. Here, Nietzsche conceives of consciousness as the product of the biological history of humankind, arguing that “consciousness is just a net connecting one person with another … [which] has developed only under the pressure of the need to communicate” (Nietzsche 2001: 212). Nietzsche’s fundamental idea is that thinking is an activity that takes place at the unconscious level, independently of our awareness of it. In fact, he argues that we are unaware of most of our thought, while the thinking which becomes conscious is only the smallest part of it …—for only that conscious thinking takes place in words, that is, in communication symbols. … In short, the development of language and the development of consciousness … go hand in hand. (Nietzsche 2001: 213) This is already of some interest for our purposes here; indeed, it allows us to argue that Nietzsche agrees that we should give thought to the social foundation of our linguistic practices, focusing especially on how language works as a means of communication. Nietzsche indeed remarks that “­language serves as a bridge between persons,” also claiming that this connection is made possible through the invention of “signs,” i.e., words, which are what actually convey knowledge.10

170  Pietro Gori Based on this instrumentalist conception of language, in the final part of The Gay Science 354, Nietzsche argues for a contextualization of knowledge within the human world-picture and a consequent revaluation of the value of “truth.” Both of these elements are implied in Nietzsche’s perspectivism, a proper definition of which can be found in this text11: This is what I consider to be true phenomenalism and perspectivism: that due to the nature of animal consciousness, the world of which we can become conscious is merely a surface- and sign-world …—that everything which enters consciousness thereby becomes … a sign.12 (Nietzsche 2001, p. 213) Thus, Nietzsche maintains that we are only conscious of those thoughts that reach the higher (superficial) level of our mental awareness, and only these thoughts are therefore translated into words, i.e., communication symbols. These words—which do not reproduce the world adequately but only provide us with the instruments we need to navigate it efficiently—are the frame of reference for our further actions and behaviors. Put differently, they represent the perspective on the world that we share as members of a social or cultural community. These premises imply an important consequence: if our engagement with states of affairs can only be perspectival in the aforementioned sense, if there is no way for us to access the world directly and to describe it literally (or “truthfully,” according to the correspondence theory of truth), then our very concept of “knowledge” must be reconceived. Accordingly, in The Gay Science 354, Nietzsche argues that “we simply have no organ for knowing, for ‘truth’: we ‘know’ (or believe or imagine) exactly as much as is useful to the human herd, to the species” (Nietzsche 2001: 214). By stating this, Nietzsche apparently agrees with Foucault that “knowledge” is a question of discursive practices and that what may be known as true or false depends on the rules governing those practices. There are no abstract epistemic conditions that allow us to assess the value of our knowledge claims but only practical frameworks hosting networks of relations that produce truth and untruth. It would therefore be appropriate to give up the ordinary idea of knowledge as an adequate description of the world and instead endorse a contextualist view that focuses on the dependence of our judgments on their frame of reference (whether biological, historical, cultural, etc.). This framework is the terrain on which the game of truth is actually played.13 9.4 Beliefs and Actions From what has been seen thus far, we may say that for both Nietzsche and Foucault, one must give up the traditional notion of truth conceived as a

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  171 matter of grasping independent states of affairs. Rather, truth is the result of an activity of knowledge production based on human relations. The practice of truth thus substitutes a purely theoretical conception of truth. That is, the value of truth does not reside in the adequacy of our knowledge claims with regard to their object, but rather in the effects that the very act of knowing, the practice of knowing, has on us. It is on this basis that, as noted earlier, it may be possible to draw a connection with a general pragmatist attitude. What is relevant for my purposes here is that, when it comes to the assessment of judgment claims (which include truth-value claims), in pragmatism we find an endorsement of the same anti-foundationalist shift toward practice that is exemplified in the early Foucault. Put generally, pragmatism can be seen first and foremost as an attitude or an approach toward philosophical issues—namely, the attitude of considering the human viewpoint as the sole reference and actual justification of our evaluations. Furthermore, as argued by Hilary Putnam in a 1992 lecture, we may say that “a central—perhaps the central—emphasis [of pragmatism] is the emphasis on the primacy of practice” (Putnam 1995: 733). That is to say, pragmatist thinkers tend to think of ideas, concepts, beliefs, and theories not on the model of pictorial representations of reality but as tools or instruments that we deploy in our engagement with the world.14 For them, things have no meaning in themselves independently of our judging activity; there is no hidden essence we might reach, and the only value we can attribute to states of affairs is a human value that can be assessed only within the boundaries of our daily practices (which can be individual, social, cultural, etc.). Thus, what is important, what makes these ideas, beliefs, etc., significant, is their effects on our practical behavior or the consequences of the practical activities we perform on their basis. Pragmatism is therefore much more nuanced and philosophically significant than the “mythical pragmatism (which the real pragmatists all scorned) which says ‘It’s true (for you) if it is good for you’” (Putnam 1995: 51). This sort of utilitarianism does not correspond to the pragmatist attitude, nor does it express the aim of the pragmatist thinker. As remarked by David Lapoujade, “pragmatism … is the symptom of a profound break,” a “profound loss of faith that translates into a profound crisis of action” (Lapoujade 2020: 5). That crisis is grounded in the potentially nihilistic idea that there is nothing in which we may believe: everything is meaningless. Pragmatism attempts to deal positively with this problem by arguing that if the traditional principles for meaningful evaluation prove to be ill-founded, there has to be another way to avoid complete disorientation. In the face of the consequences of anti-essentialist and instrumentalist commitments about evaluation claims, pragmatist thinkers do not surrender to relativism. Rather, they search for consistent principles

172  Pietro Gori of evaluation in the realm of human praxis, thus giving practical meaning to something that has lost all metaphysical meaning. What we might call the practical plane of reference can change depending on the interests and aims of the philosopher who endorses this attitude. It could be the individual life of each of us; it could be the social community; it could be the broader plane of power relations, and so on. The conception of a “practice” that we actually adopt is of secondary importance, the crucial element being the shift toward a non-skeptical relativism about judgment claims based on the primacy of practice over theory.15 In the papers in which William James first outlines pragmatism (based on the definition provided by Charles Peirce), this approach to the skeptical relativism that follows from an anti-foundationalist stance is in fact expressed quite clearly. For James, critical inquiry into human judgment shows us that the traditional essentialist conception of it is no longer plausible and that we need a new framework and a new method for meaningfully assessing both our ethical and our epistemic values. This framework, for James, is human experience, or even better, human life and its practical activity. In other words, truth—as much as any other value—is only produced in practice; it is the effect of human practices. Let me argue this in more detail. In an 1891 paper on “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” James explores the issue of the relativism of ethical values and defends the idea that “there is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance” (James 1977: 610). For James, any ethical evaluation is the product of a sentient being; therefore, ethical values do not reside in the inner essence of events but are the product of a human interpretation of facts that are in themselves neither good nor bad, i.e., valueless. As James argues, “[G]oodness, badness, and obligation must be realized somewhere in order to really exist, … Their only habitat is a mind which feels them” (James 1977: 614). It is only when someone feels something to be good that “he makes it good,” James continues; but if we trespass the boundaries of our experience we shall find no “moral ‘nature of things’ existing antecedently to the concrete thinkers themselves with their ideals” (James 1977: 616). James was apparently confronted with an anti-essentialist stance about moral values. For him, these values “mean no absolute natures, independent of personal support” (James 1977: 618); they have no meaning in themselves, in fact, but their significance can only result from an active determination performed by a human subject. Values are made by us; more precisely, they are realized in human practices. James further argues that the same can be said of truth. In fact, truth is a kind of evaluation that has only traditionally been conceived as supposing “a standard outside of the thinker to which he must conform” (James 1977: 615). “Truth can only exist in act,” observes James (1977: 619). But in what act? Even if we accept the shift

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  173 from the abstract to the practical plane, what is the standard of our evaluation? Should our own ideals count as law-giving ones? Of course not— provided we would like to “avoid complete moral scepticism on the one hand, and on the other escape bringing a wayward personal standard of our own along with us” (James 1977: 620). What is needed is therefore a method for assessing values in a new way, a test that allows us to determine, in any situation, what can be meaningfully held as good, true, etc. Jamesian pragmatism has been developed to fulfill this need and to provide us with a non-dogmatic principle of evaluation. The early definition of this approach can be found in the seminal paper “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” published in 1898. Here, James makes use of Charles Peirce’s principle that beliefs are rules for action; and the whole function of thinking is but one step in the production of habits of action. If there were any part of a thought that made no difference in the thought’s practical consequences, then that part would be no proper element of thought’s significance.16 (James 1977: 348) The focus of philosophical investigation, therefore, shifts from abstract theory to the plane of concrete praxis. A belief is significant only if it determines a relevant action; if not, it has no value. “Thus,” James continues, “to develop a thought’s meaning we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance” (ibid.). Accordingly, we must give up the notion that an object is known when we manage to elaborate an idea that is adequate to the state of affairs. The traditional view of truth as correspondence must in fact be abandoned, and we should at least re-configure that notion in functional terms. In other words, we should no longer ask, “What is true?” but rather “How is truth made?,” and our interests must therefore reside in the consequences of our taking an idea for true (on this cf. Lapoujade 2020: 35). What is important, for James, is not an idea in itself but its experiential, i.e., practical, fruitfulness: To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what effects of a conceivably practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, then, is for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all. (James 1977: 348) Based on this, James develops the famous definition of the pragmatic method that he would later publish in Pragmatism. In the 1898 paper, he

174  Pietro Gori in fact argues that in order to investigate a conception, you must “ask yourself right off, ‘What is it known as? In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value, in terms of particular experience? And what special difference would come into the world according as it were true or false?’” (James 1977: 360). As noted earlier, this can only misleadingly be read as the expression of a sterile utilitarianism. The issue is actually deeply philosophical, concerned with an anti-foundationalism about values and the problem of providing consistent principles of assessment. What is remarkable, then, is firstly the move made by James, the strategy that he adopts when faced with that issue, and secondly the consequent (re)definition of the notion of truth in practical terms. In his 1907 book, James argues that we must deal with ideas in terms of function, not form: The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its very-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation. (James 1977: 430) There is no separation between the activity of knowledge and the determination of truth; both elements are the expression of an event that we ourselves enact, and that represents the only meaningful reference of our evaluations. For James, “verify[ing] an idea consists of exploring the context associated with the orientation given by the idea” (Lapoujade 2020: 33); that is to say, there is no hidden essence that can confirm the validity of that idea, but only the practical plane of our actual experience and activity. Accordingly, James also maintains that true ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we can not. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as. (James 1977: 430) With this, I hope to have outlined the basic features of a pragmatist conception of truth, which hinges on a processual or functional view of truth in contrast to the traditional dogmatic conception. According to this view, truth is produced within practices that in themselves are neither true nor false but in light of which we can assess meaningful—albeit provisional— evaluations. What may be known as true or false in fact depends on these practices insofar as we can only appreciate an idea or a belief if we look at the effects it has on our further experience. Theoretically, we must leave aside the abstract plane of pure epistemology and instead move to the

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  175 dimension of our practical activity—where, as we have seen, truths are actually realized. 9.5 Conclusion In a 2011 paper that attempts to situate Foucault within pragmatists thinkers such as James, Dewey, and Rorty, Todd May observes that seeing Foucault’s work engaged with [pragmatism] does not permit us to surpass it, but instead to add a dimension to its already rich tradition … which has offered us a powerful philosophical perspective on the intertwining of our selves and our world. (May 2011: 61–62) I would like to build on this remark in order to provide a few final comments to my chapter. In exploring the early Foucault’s problematization of truth while stressing the broad pragmatist attitude that can be found at the core of both his and Nietzsche’s approach, my intention was limited to connecting different authors who developed similar (but not identical) views on an issue that was crucial for all of them. This connection was intended to enhance the various aspects of a question that Foucault, Nietzsche, and James stressed in different ways, according to their respective aims and from their different viewpoints. As I have tried to show, despite the dissimilarities between their views, they held something in ­common—namely, the idea that philosophical inquiry into truth must shift its focus from the epistemic to the practical plane if it is to achieve significant results. This shift was the expression of a dramatic change in the history of Western philosophy, one which was due to the crisis that arose in the post-Kantian era, when philosophers had to face the difficult challenge of living in a world deprived of metaphysical principles. Nietzsche was famously one of the first authors to deal with this issue at length, in an attempt to outline a path for future philosophers based on a perspectival, i.e., non-dogmatic, appreciation of the problem of “the value of values” (cf. On the Genealogy of Morals, Preface) and a contextualization of that problem within the human, all too human relationship with the world. A few years later, James would address the same problem in search of an evaluative method that avoided sterile relativism and skepticism; as we have seen, he found that method in the pragmatic consideration of the effects of evaluation on our practical activity. Finally, building on Nietzsche’s view, Foucault explored the same issue and, like Nietzsche and James, argued that knowledge and truth are the product of a network of relations that occur at any stage of our cultural history. What can be said conclusively is that each of these thinkers agreed that the only path

176  Pietro Gori open to philosophy—if it wished to face the core question of Western civilization and help us to orient ourselves within a relativist framework—was to abandon the traditional view of truth as a static object of inquiry and to endorse the idea that truth is a process, a mere effect of human activity. It is we who make things true; it is we who give meaning to the events that constitute the context of our daily praxes. The value we attribute to things, therefore, depends only on our practical engagement with them. Notes 1 Similarly, in The Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault defended this “neutral” conception of knowledge by arguing that knowledge is, first of all, “a group of elements, formed in a regular manner by discursive practice” and “the field of coordination and subordination of statements in which concepts appear, and are defined and transformed” (Foucault 1972: 182–183. Insofar as no particular value can be ascribed to the elements in themselves, isolated by the discursive practice connecting them, we may talk of a “neutral” conception). Furthermore, Foucault argues that knowledge is “that of which one can speak in a discursive practice, and which is specified by that fact” (ibid.). According to Peters (2003: 210), this shows that for Foucault “knowledge is not the sum of what is thought to be true, but rather the whole set of practices that are distinctive of a particular domain.” 2 These Nietzschean notions are thoroughly explored in the important paper Nietzsche, la génealogie, l’histoire published by Foucault in 1971. 3 Interestingly, Foucault’s final remark in the 1977 interview is that “the political question is not error, illusion, alienated consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself. Hence the importance of Nietzsche.” 4 This fragment is quoted in Foucault (2013: 214). 5 An interesting account of these lectures is provided in Patton (2018). 6 To avoid any misunderstanding, let me be clear on the fact that Foucault does not make any reference to pragmatism. He only attributes to Nietzsche an ­anti-essentialist conception of knowledge and the idea that the latter can be meaningfully conceived only with relation to human (power, discursive, social, etc.) practices. 7 Due to technical problems, we do not have a transcription of this lecture. The editors of the volume in which the course on “The Will to Truth” was published substituted this lecture with a paper on the same issue that Foucault delivered at McGill University (Montreal) in 1971. 8 A few pages prior, Foucault also observes that “truth is added to knowledge, later—without knowledge being destined to truth, without truth being the essence of knowledge” (Foucault 2013: 207). 9 The Revaluation of all values of which Nietzsche speaks, for example, in the Genealogy of Morals and Twilight of the Idols may actually be interpreted as an attempt to provide a historico-critical analysis of the “old truths” that constitute the frame of reference of our being-in-the-world. In Nietzschean terms, we might say that the truths (or “eternal idols,” as he also calls them) in which we fervently believe are merely an expression of our creative engagement with the world and that the reason we believe in them is the important role they have played in the natural and cultural history of humankind. Furthermore, they

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  177 have no hidden essence, nothing that could justify their value once and for all. In fact, they are hollow, for Nietzsche; accordingly, he argues that, as a philosopher, one should reveal this lack of content by “sounding them out” (cf. Twilight of the Idols, preface). 10 Interestingly, the issue of signs and interpretations is addressed in a lecture on Nietzsche that Foucault gave in Montreal (Foucault 2013: 212–213). This is a topic that we also find at work in Foucault’s critique of Kant in both his Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology and in The Order of Things, as argued by Alan Schrift (2018: 60). Finally, it may be worth stressing that in The Order of Things, Foucault views Nietzsche “as the precursor of the epistēmē of the twentieth century, the epistēmē that erupted with the question of language as ‘an enigmatic multiplicity that must be mastered’ (Foucault 1970: 350). For Foucault, it was ‘Nietzsche the philologist’ who first connected ‘the philosophical task with a radical reflection upon language’ (ibid.)” (Schrift 2018: 64). 11 Nietzsche uses the term “Perspektivismus” only once in his published writings—namely, in The Gay Science 354. Of course, there are other important passages where Nietzsche deals with the perspectival character of life and with perspectival seeing (cf. e.g. the preface to Beyond Good and Evil and Genealogy of Morality III, § 12), but I am firmly convinced that how this issue is addressed in The Gay Science is especially significant for appreciating Nietzsche’s view on the issue (I have tried to defend my view, e.g., in Gori 2019a, chap. 3). 12 This passage also implies one of the most delicate questions concerning Nietzsche’s view of knowledge and truth, namely his “falsification thesis.” I must regretfully leave this important issue to the side here, for I simply do not have enough space to deal with it exhaustively. On this, see the seminal (albeit controversial) work that gave rise to this discussion (Clark 1990) and some of the papers in which this issue is addressed (e.g. Hussain 2004, Andresen 2013, Nehamas 2015, Remhof 2016, and Gori 2019b). 13 The relativization of the value of our knowledge claims implied in this view does not necessarily lead to nihilism about values, for Nietzsche. In fact, he argues that truth and falsehood can still be adopted as meaningful categories, but only if we conceive of them in a new, re-valued way—that is, only if we view them as the result of perspectival judgements couched in shared linguistic practices (on this, cf. e.g. Beyond Good and Evil, § 34). 14 On this, Todd May (2011: 56) observes that, for pragmatist thinkers, “a truth is to be conceived as a belief that helps us navigate the world more efficiently to our purposes” (incidentally, I made use of this metaphor repeatedly in the previous sections). May also reports Richard Rorty’s idea that “[William] James’s point [when defining truth as ‘what is good in the way of belief’] was that there is nothing deeper to be said: truth is not the sort of thing which has an essence” (Rorty 1982: 162). In fact, May concludes (2011: 56), “[W]e discover truths when we recognize that certain beliefs are better to have than others, because they fit better with our attempt to live.” Interestingly, May also argues that “in this intertwining of truth, inferential structure, and living we find the relation of Foucault to pragmatism,” as we can appreciate from Foucault’s claims in the 1977 interview considered above (May 2011: 57). Indeed, “what Foucault is getting at is not truth per se but instead beliefs that are justified within a particular political and epistemic structure” (ibid.). 15 This does not mean that “practical” must be conceived as opposed to “theoretical,” though. The “practical” consequences that pragmatist thinkers consider relevant for assessing the value of a belief or idea can in fact refer to the domain

178  Pietro Gori of theoretical reflection. What is crucial is the focus on the effects that follow from that belief, which has no value in itself but only in a course of action. Therefore, following Lapoujade (2020: 33), we can say that for pragmatism, “‘practical’ is opposed not to ‘theoretical’, but to the vague or abstract.” On this cf. the eighth chapter of James’s The Meaning of Truth. 16 Elaborating on this Peircean element, Rossella Fabbrichesi defends the consistency between the late Foucault and pragmatism. For her, Foucault’s conception of parrhēsia “should not be interpreted as the necessity to speak the truth, in [an] epistemological or analytic sense, but as the ‘courage’ to act upon what is truthfully held, to ‘work out’ the effects of truth so understood. In this way, truth is no longer only speech but becomes pragma. This point is obviously related to the issue of the practices of truth, at the intersection among living praxes, ethical habits, and bodily dispositions through which knowledge is put to practice” (Fabbrichesi 2015: 262). The issue of parrhēsia, which involves the ethical and practical implications of truth-telling, with a special emphasis on the relationship between belief and truth (cf. e.g. Peters 2003: 212), is of course important for reflection on Foucault’s conception of truth in relation to practice, on the one hand, and for further comparing his approach with the pragmatists’, on the other. In fact, the idea that parrhēsia is a “practice of truth-belief” (an idea based on the view that Foucaultian “truth-telling” can be interpreted as focused on the idea of acting on what is truthfully held) could be a promising topic for future research.

References Andresen, Joshua (2013), “Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Falsification,” in Journal of Nietzsche Studies 44/3, pp. 469–481. Clark, Maudemarie (1990), Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fabbrichesi, Rossella (2015), “The Pragmatism of the Late Foucault,” in Cognitio 16/1, pp. 259–272. Foucault, Michel (1970), The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, Michel (1972), The Archeology of Knowledge, New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, Michel (1980), Selected Interviews and Other Writings. 1972–1977, ed. by C. Gordon, New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, Michel (2001), Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984. Power, ed. by J. D. Faubion, New York: Picador. Foucault, Michel (2013), Lectures on the Will to Know. Lectures at the Collège de France 1970–1971 and Oedipal Knowledge, Palgrave MacMillan. Fornet-Betancour, Raúl, Becker, Helmut and Gomez-Müller, Alfredo (1988), “The Ethic of the Care of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” in The Final Foucault, eds. J. Bernauer and D. Rasmussen, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 1–20. Gori, Pietro (2019a), Nietzsche’s Pragmatism. A Study on Perspectival Thought. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Gori, Pietro (2019b), “Nietzsche’s Fictional Realism. A Historico-Theoretical Approach,” in Estetica. Studi e Ricerche 9/1, pp. 169–184.

Anti-Foundationalist Practices of Truth  179 Hussain, Nadeem (2004), “Nietzsche’s Positivism,” in European Journal of Philosophy 12/3, pp. 326–368. James, William (1977), The Writings of William James, ed. J.J. McDermott ­Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lapoujade, David (2020), William James. Empiricism and Pragmatism, Duke ­University Press. May, Todd (2011), “A New Neo-Pragmatism: From James and Dewey to ­Foucault,” in Foucault Studies 11, p. 54–62. Nehamas, Alexander (2015), “Did Nietzsche hold a ‘Falsification Thesis’?,” in Philosophical Inquiry 39/, pp. 222–236. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967-), Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe (15 voll.), Berlin: De Gruyter. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1996), Human, All too Human, Cambridge: Cambridge ­University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1999), The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich (2001), The Gay Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Patton, Paul (2018), “Foucault, Nietzsche and the History of Truth,” in Foucault and Nietzsche. A Critical Encounter, eds. A. Rosenberg and J. Westfall, Bloomsbury, pp. 35–57. Peters, Michael (2003), “Truth-Telling as an Educational Practice of the Self: ­Foucault, Parrhesia and the Ethics of Subjectivity,” Oxford Review of Education 29/2, pp. 207–223. Putnam, Hilary (1995), Pragmatism: An Open Question, Oxford: Blackwell. Remhof, Justin (2016), “Scientific Fictionalism and the Problem of Inconsistency in Nietzsche,” in Journal of Nietzsche Studies 47/2, pp. 238–246. Rorty, Richard (1982), Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schrift, Alan D. (2018), “Nietzsche and Foucault’s ‘Will to Truth,’” in Foucault and Nietzsche. A Critical Encounter, eds. A. Rosenberg and J. Westfall, Bloomsbury, pp. 59–78.

10 “Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy, That Is the Hardest Thing” Genia Schönbaumsfeld

10.1 Introduction Most proposals concerning how to conceive of perceptual warrant in the literature—be they ‘liberal,’1 ‘conservative’2 or ‘moderate’3—accept that our starting point must always be an experience “as of something’s being the case,” never a factive experience that puts us in touch with how things actually are. In other words, most contemporary epistemological offerings are concessive to skepticism about perceptual knowledge from the very beginning: they already start by granting to the skeptic that an independent warrant for the proposition “there is an external world” is required before one is able to take one’s good-case perceptual experiences at face value.4 The notion that we need independently, and without any help from perception, to establish that there is an ‘external’ world, only makes sense, however, if there is an ‘internal’ world to contrast it with. That is to say, it is compulsory only if we believe that claims about our mental states or our ‘sensory experiences’ are somehow epistemologically prior to claims about ordinary physical objects (call this the ‘Cartesian picture’ of our perceptual situation), and hence that knowledge about the latter can only ever be ‘indirect,’ as it depends on an inference from how things subjectively seem to us to how they actually are in the world ‘outside’ of our own minds. If, on the other hand, and as Wittgenstein controversially suggests in his last collection of remarks, On Certainty (OC henceforth), any attempt to ‘ground’ the ‘background’ is incoherent (OC §205) since, among other things, the proposition ‘there are physical objects’ is nonsense (OC §35), then we need to abandon the idea that demonstrating that the ‘external world’ exists is so much as an intelligible notion.5 But, if so, then the thought, common to much contemporary epistemology, that without such a demonstration, no perceptual knowledge is ever possible, collapses into incoherence as well.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-11

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  181 Unsurprisingly enough, even those contemporary epistemologists who have mined Wittgenstein’s work for anti-skeptical strategies—such as, for instance, Wright (2002, 2014), Williams (1996), Pritchard (2015) and ­Coliva (2010, 2015)—are loath to take the full scope of these insights on board. For, if we follow where Wittgenstein’s path leads, radical skepticism—the thought that the ‘external’ world might forever be inaccessible to us (epistemically and/or metaphysically)—turns out, not to be false, but an illusion. Even Williams, who otherwise agrees with the need to reject the Cartesian picture, as it is the key driver of radical skepticism, calls this “a step too far” (Williams 2021). My aims in this chapter are twofold: (1) to explain why Wittgenstein thinks that the attempt to demonstrate the ‘external’ world’s existence is nonsensical and (2) to show that Wittgenstein’s rejection of the idea that it makes sense to ‘ground’ the background does not imply that Wittgenstein is a friend of anti-realism. Rather, Wittgenstein is endorsing what I like to call “realism without empiricism”—a modest form of realism that eschews various empiricist dogmas, such as the Reasons Identity Thesis (Schönbaumsfeld 2016)—the thought that one’s perceptual reasons in both the good epistemic case and the bad one are the same and can never give one access to how things actually are. This will enable us to see why accepting that what stands fast cannot itself be either true or false does not threaten to undermine our epistemic practices. 10.2 Cartesianism and ‘Global’ Doubt The Cartesian idea that one could scrutinize and reject all of one’s perceptual beliefs taken together comes under sustained attack in OC. Contrary to what Descartes attempts in his First Meditation, doubt, Wittgenstein shows, needs a context, a common human background that stands fast and against which specific epistemic claims can be assessed. A ‘global’ doubt is a paper doubt, as it tries to doubt everything at the same time and in this way fails to doubt anything at all: “if you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty” (OC §115). Radical skepticism is the thought that all our perceptual beliefs taken together could be false—i.e., could fail to ‘match’ the way the world is (if, indeed, there is one). In other words, even in apparently paradigmatic cases of perceptual knowledge, such as when I’m looking at my hands and nothing out of the ordinary is occurring, I might be wrong. One way of countering the skeptic’s proposal would be to insist, with Moore, that in such cases I do know that I’ve got hands. But Wittgenstein thinks that this is not a good strategy: ‘Moore’s mistake lies in this – countering the ­assertion that one cannot know that, by saying “I do know it”’ (OC §521).

182  Genia Schönbaumsfeld For if the existence of my hands really is in doubt, then I cannot rely on any ordinary way of checking that a physical object is in front of me (such as holding up my hand and looking at it) either: If a blind man were to ask me “Have you got two hands?” I should not make sure by looking. If I were to have any doubt of it, then I don’t know why I should trust my eyes. For why shouldn’t I test my eyes by looking to find out whether I see my two hands? What is to be tested by what? (OC §125) That is to say, if Moore’s opponent really did doubt that he had hands in ordinary circumstances, then such a doubt could not be alleviated by holding up one’s hands and looking at them, as it would then be futile to think that the testimony of one’s eyes is somehow more certain than the existence of one’s hands. Since if the existence of one’s hands can be called into doubt, then so can the reliability of one’s eyesight, one’s sense of touch, and anything else one had hitherto taken for granted. In this respect, Descartes is right that if you give doubt your little finger, it will bite off your whole hand. Consequently, it’s best not to play the same game as the skeptic, but rather to subject his doubt to closer diagnosis: “I know” often means: I have the proper grounds for my statement. So if the other person is acquainted with the language-game, he would admit that I know. The other, if he is acquainted with the language-game, must be able to imagine how one may know something of the kind. The statement “I know that here is a hand” may then be continued: “for it’s my hand that I’m looking at”. Then a reasonable man will not doubt that I know.—Nor will the idealist; rather he will say that he was not dealing with the practical doubt that is being dismissed, but that there is a further doubt behind that one.—That this is an illusion has to be shown in a different way. (On Certainty §18–19; emphasis in original) Wittgenstein seems to be making the following four claims in these passages: (1) “I know” often means: I have the proper grounds for my statement. (2) The idealist’s or skeptic’s doubts are not practical doubts. (3) A reasonable person will not doubt that I know that I have hands. (4) That there is a further doubt ‘behind’ the practical one is an illusion. Let’s start with the last claim first and ask what Wittgenstein might mean by saying that the skeptic’s (or idealist’s6) doubt is an illusion.

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  183 What is an illusion? An illusion is an apparent ‘claim’ (or set of claims) that only seems to make sense for as long as one is in the grip of it. One cannot, therefore, refute or deny an illusion, only dissolve or remove it, for only a coherent claim can be refuted, and an illusion is only apparently intelligible. So, it’s not that Wittgenstein thinks that Moore is wrong about knowing the things he claims to know—“the reasonable man will not doubt that I know”—it’s rather that insisting on one’s knowledge in this context (in a context where ordinary grounds for doubt are absent) is not going to remove the illusion that the skeptic is laboring under. Rather, doubt first needs to be cast on the skeptic’s doubt by asking what a doubt lurking ‘behind’ the practical one (where a ‘practical doubt’ is presumably one that could ordinarily arise) could so much as look like. A practical doubt, one might say, is one for which there is a place in the language-game, a doubt that could be assuaged by gathering further information, performing further checks, etc. It is a doubt where there are established means of settling whether one knows the thing in question. For example, say I visit someone in a hospital who has been in an accident, and his whole body is covered in bandages. In such a case, I might not know whether this person still has hands, for they might have been amputated. If the poor soul reassures me by saying, “I know I have hands,” then I will take this to imply that he has been able to check (say by having had the bandages removed by a doctor earlier in the day).7 Here the claim ‘I know I have hands’ is perfectly intelligible since we also have a clear idea of what it would be like not to know that one has hands (say by having failed to check). None of these conditions are met, however, in the case of what one might call ‘radical’ doubt. If I assert in ordinary circumstances where nothing unusual (such as accidents) has occurred, that I know that I have hands (in order to counter a radical skeptical claim, for instance), it is unclear what sort of justification I could offer for this. For if it were conceivable that I could be wrong in such a context, then this would be no ordinary ‘mistake,’ but would rather constitute what Wittgenstein calls “an annihilation of all yardsticks”: What if it seemed to turn out that what until now has seemed immune to doubt was a false assumption? Would I react as I do when a belief has proved to be false? Or would it seem to knock from under my feet the ground on which I stand in making any judgments at all? … Would I simply say “I should never have thought it!”—or would I (have to) refuse to revise my judgment—because such a “revision” would amount to an annihilation of all yardsticks? (OC §492)

184  Genia Schönbaumsfeld What Wittgenstein seems to be saying here is that while a mistake does not call into question the intelligibility of the entire practice in which one is participating—but only one’s own competence—the notion that I could be ‘wrong’ about the most fundamental things undermines the coherence of the very practices on which my expression of doubt at the same time depends (since if there were no such practice, there would be no such doubt): “if you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either” (OC §114).8 That your words mean what they do is also a fact about them. So, if everything is uncertain, as the skeptic supposes, then ‘meaning’ (including the meaning of the skeptic’s own words) would no longer be possible either. Consequently, it’s not just that skepticism is unstateable—but might, for all that, be true9—it is rather that, if Wittgenstein is right, it is no longer clear what the skeptic’s ‘thought’ can even amount to. For, if, for example, it were conceivable that one were falsely ascribing pain to oneself all the time, then it is just no longer clear what ‘pain,’ in such a context, could really mean. But if the meaning of ‘pain’ is under threat, what, then, could it mean to say, with the skeptic, “I doubt that there is such a thing as pain”? So, it seems that the kind of justification that the skeptic is after—a fully general evaluation of all our practices taken together—is impossible to provide. But this is not because human powers are unequal to the task. Rather, Wittgenstein thinks, the very idea is misguided: “So is the hypothesis possible that all the things around us don’t exist? Would that not be like the hypothesis of our having miscalculated in all our calculations?” (OC §55). For a ‘miscalculation’ in all our calculations is not, as it were, just an ‘aggregated’ mistake, but rather implies that we have never calculated at all—that nothing that we have ever done counts as an instance of calculating. Similarly, if the hypothesis is possible that there are no physical objects, then we are supposing that we have never encountered such a thing. But, if so, the skeptic owes us an explanation of what ‘calculation’ or ‘physical object’ really means, and of what it is, that we allegedly cannot do (or know). In the absence of such an explanation, we need not accept the skeptic’s challenge that unless we can show in advance that we are not radically mistaken about everything, we aren’t entitled to our ordinary knowledge claims. What we need to realize, in other words, is that there can be no such thing as a ‘global’ doubt. A ‘global’ doubt is the illusion of a doubt, as by trying to doubt everything, we never get as far as doubting anything. But if this is right, there can be no such thing as answering, or responding to, such a doubt either. For if radical doubt is an illusion, any ‘response’ to it turns out to be illusory too. It is for this reason that Wittgenstein rejects epistemological foundationalism—the notion that our epistemic practices

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  185 must be grounded in true basic beliefs of some sort: “I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between [what is] true and [what is] false” (OC §94). Hence, it is not that I should have satisfied myself of its correctness and did not do so because I was either too rash, too lazy or too gullible. Rather, with respect to our whole world-picture, there is no such thing as satisfying oneself of its correctness (or not doing so), since, as Williams (2011) has shown, so-called “knowledge of the external world” is not a natural kind. Instead, what we mean by this term is an amalgamation of all sorts of different beliefs, methods, and practices. Consequently, there is no unitary ‘entity’ here that one could so much as stand in an epistemic relation to.10 In this respect, Wittgenstein’s own claim, “the difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing” (OC §166), needs to be interpreted with caution. For we must be wary of taking ‘groundlessness’ itself to be an epistemic notion that implies that there could—or ought to—be grounds, although in fact there are none since what Wittgenstein is really trying to say is that it is logically impossible for there to be any and that the absence of the possibility of ‘global validation’ is, therefore, not to be viewed as a lack or as an epistemic shortcoming. So, it’s not that we groundlessly need to accept that we know that we have hands, for example, it is rather that we have no clear idea of what it might mean not to ‘accept’ it. If, in ordinary circumstances, Moore were to pronounce the opposite of those propositions that he declares certain, “we should not just not share his opinion: we should regard him as demented” (OC §155).11 If this were an ‘ordinary’ case of not knowing, where one could cite evidence, then one could just not share Moore’s opinion. If this is correct, then we don’t stand in an epistemic relation – groundless or otherwise – to what Wittgenstein calls ‘hinges’; the background that stands fast and around which our inquiries turn: “the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn” (OC §341). Propositions expressing our hinge commitments may look like ordinary empirical claims (and so one might try to assert or refute them like Moore or the skeptic) but that appearance is deceptive, for their role is “descriptive of the language-game” (OC §56) and in this much ‘logical’ or ‘technique-constituting’ (OC §95). So, one might say that ‘hinge propositions’ are an attempt to articulate the logical enabling conditions that allow our epistemic practices to operate, and without which even our words could not mean anything.12 But if this is so, then ‘hinge propositions’ cannot be in the market for knowledge, and hence it neither makes sense to assert nor to deny that one

186  Genia Schönbaumsfeld ‘knows’ them. At best, and as Wittgenstein says, such propositions can express a ‘logical’ (or ‘grammatical’) insight: If “I know etc.” is conceived as a grammatical proposition, of course the “I” cannot be important. And it properly means “There is no such thing as a doubt in this case” or “The expression ‘I do not know’ makes no sense in this case”. And of course it follows from this that “I know” makes no sense either. ‘I know’ is here a logical insight. Only realism can’t be proved by means of it. (§58–59) In other words, “I know I have two hands,” asserted in ordinary circumstances, really means “there is no such thing as a doubt in this case,” it does not make sense as a Moorean anti-skeptical claim. In order not to get confused between what Wittgenstein calls a ‘grammatical’ or ‘logical’ sense of ‘to know’ and ordinary uses of these terms, I therefore propose to distinguish between a ‘logical’ and an ‘epistemic’ sense of ‘to know.’13 For example, an unproblematic—i.e., straightforwardly ‘epistemic’—employment of “I know I have two hands” would be in the context of the accident scenario discussed earlier. Here the claim “I know I have hands” makes sense since we also have a clear idea of what it would be like not to know that one has hands. Furthermore, if one does know, one is able to offer justification for one’s knowledge claim (cf. claim (1) above in this section). Neither of these two conditions is satisfied in the radical skeptical context (i.e., in ordinary circumstances where radical skeptical error-possibilities are brought into play). Consequently, one cannot use “I know I have two hands” in order to counter such a scenario. At best, ‘I know’ can have a ‘logical’ use here, informing one’s interlocutor that a doubt makes no sense in this context, that it is ‘logically’ excluded (OC §194).14 This is the important insight that Wittgenstein believes Moore misses and that constitutes the mistake that we quoted Wittgenstein as identifying earlier. Moore is, in effect, conflating the ‘logical’ and ‘epistemic’ senses of ‘to know’ in the misguided belief that this verb can tolerate metaphysical emphasis (OC §482) and that one can use “I know I have two hands” to refute the skeptic. 10.3 Wittgenstein and the ‘Default View’ of Perceptual Reasons In spite of this criticism, however, Wittgenstein believes that there is something right that Moore is perhaps inchoately gesturing toward: “So one might grant that Moore was right, if he is interpreted like this: a

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  187 proposition saying that here is a physical object may have the same logical status as one saying that here is a red patch” (OC §53). In other words, Wittgenstein thinks that Moore’s ‘proof’ is ineptly trying to express the thought that physical object propositions and propositions about experiential seemings can be cognitively on a par: we can have the same kind of ‘direct access’ to physical objects as is commonly thought, on the Cartesian (or empiricist) picture, to accrue only to one’s experiential seemings (or ‘sense-data’). In ordinary circumstances where nothing is interfering with my perceptual capacities, there is no epistemic ‘gap’ between perceptual awareness of my hands and ‘knowledge’ of them that could be ‘bridged’ by evidential grounds. I am directly (i.e., non-inferentially) aware of my hand rather than of ‘hand-like’ seemings, appearances, or sense-data, from which I would have to infer the presence of my hands.15 If this constitutes the neo-Moorean insight that Wittgenstein is endorsing, it implies that Wittgenstein rejects the Reasons Identity Thesis—the thought that whether I am in the good epistemic case (where the environment is ‘friendly’ and nothing is interfering with my perceptual capacities) or the bad one (where the environment is ‘unfriendly’ and presents impediments to veridical perception), my perceptual reasons are the same, since, whatever case I am in, they can consist only of how things seem to me, never of how they are (even in the good case). One might call endorsement of this thesis the ‘default view’ of perceptual reasons, as it is so widely accepted in contemporary epistemology.16 It seems clear that Wittgenstein can have no truck with such a conception given that he thinks that it is an illusion to suppose that all of our perceptual experiences taken together could be exactly as they are even though there is no ‘external’ world (OC §54–55)—a supposition that is forced upon us almost immediately, however, if we endorse the ‘default view.’ Consider Wright’s notorious I-II-III argument (Wright 2002): I. My current experience is in all respects as if P. II. P. III. There is an external world. With this schema in place, one can only know (II) if one already knows (III).17 In other words, if one endorses the Reasons Identity Thesis—the notion that whether one is in the good case or the bad case perception only ever provides one with I—then the thought that we either first need to establish that there is an external world (III) or else must groundlessly take it ‘on trust’ (or ‘assume’) that there is, becomes compulsory.18 According to Wittgenstein, on the other hand, we cannot ultimately make sense of the idea that there could be no physical objects—just ­‘sensory experiences’—and, consequently, we cannot coherently ‘prove’ (or ‘assert’)

188  Genia Schönbaumsfeld that there are, either. As we have already seen, Wittgenstein believes that the proposition “there are physical objects” (or “there is an external world”) is nonsense (OC §35), and, hence, “there are no physical objects” (or “there is no external world”) is nonsense too (the negation of a piece of nonsense is itself nonsense). This puts paid to the whole structure of Wright’s I-II-III argument. Pace Wright, Wittgenstein thinks that we can know more than I (how things seem to us) and, what is more, this does not require prior demonstration of III.19 For if Wittgenstein is right that a ‘global’ doubt is not a doubt, then there is no radical skeptical problem left to answer. Furthermore, it is a prior endorsement of the Cartesian picture that makes radical skepticism seem unavoidable, as this grants to the skeptic that one can know the content of one’s sense-experiences even though these experiences as a class may never be experiences of an ‘external’ world at all.20 So, once the plausibility of this picture is undermined, we can stop conceiving of our epistemic situation in terms of Wright’s I-II-III argument and instead start with the notion that our good-case perceptual experiences can be taken at face value. But, if so, then these (factive) experiences will, in the good case, themselves provide conclusive perceptual warrant for the propositions in question, and, hence, no prior proof of the ‘external’ world’s existence is required. 10.4 Realism without Empiricism Wittgenstein once said, ‘not empiricism and yet realism in philosophy, that is the hardest thing’ (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Part VI, §23). The implication of this remark seems to be that Wittgenstein regarded such a conception as not just the hardest to achieve, but also as the most desirable. So, one might call the conception that I believe one can find in Wittgenstein’s writings ‘realism without empiricism’21 (or, what amounts to the same, ‘realism without Cartesianism22’), and this, in contemporary parlance, is a form of epistemic disjunctivism.23 Now one might think that this is to attribute a substantial theoretical view to Wittgenstein, which could be thought to be at odds with his anti-theoretical bent, but this is not so. For disjunctivism is really only the philosophical name for our ordinary conception of what perception can achieve—namely, yield knowledge of the world in the good case. It only looks like a substantial philosophical theory because a bad picture—the Cartesian picture of our epistemic situation—has turned our ordinary, pre-theoretical conception into something that seems dubious and epistemologically inflated. To someone who rejects this picture and the Reasons Identity Thesis, on the other hand, disjunctivism is just the name philosophers give to our ordinary way of thinking about the world.

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  189 Since Wittgenstein’s views have often, in the past, been associated with forms of anti-realism (Dummett 1978; Wright 1980; Boghossian 2007), it is worth pointing out that the conception that I claim one can find in Wittgenstein’s work—realism without empiricism—is a modest conception and not to be confused with what is sometimes called ‘philosophical realism’ or ‘metaphysical realism.’24 But neither is it to be conflated with idealism or, pace Coliva (2014, 2015), with a form of ‘internal rationalism’ that holds that assuming the existence of the external world is constitutive of rationality. For, if I am right, Wittgenstein would regard the idea that one could assume the external world’s existence as equally wrongheaded as trying to demonstrate its existence.25 Given her commitment to ‘internal rationalism,’ however, Coliva (2021) thinks it a mistake to believe that Wittgenstein’s views are a form of disjunctivism or are, at least, compatible with it. In order to substantiate this claim, Coliva quotes the following passage from OC, which seems prima facie to be friendly to disjunctivism, but turns out, Coliva contends, actually to be a criticism of it. It is worth looking at this more closely: “I know” has a primitive meaning similar to and related to “I see” (“wissen”, “videre”). And “I knew he was in the room, but he wasn’t in the room” is like “I saw him in the room, but he wasn’t there”. “I know” is supposed to express a relation, not between me and the sense of a proposition (like “I believe”) but between me and a fact. So that the fact is taken into my consciousness. (Here is the reason why one wants to say that nothing that goes on in the outer world is really known, but only what happens in the domain of what are called sense-data.) This would give us a picture of knowing as the perception of an outer event through visual rays which project it as it is into the eye and the consciousness. Only then the question at once arises whether one can be certain of this projection. And this picture does indeed show how our imagination presents knowledge, but not what lies at the bottom of this presentation. (OC §90) Coliva assumes that in this passage, Wittgenstein is implicitly criticizing disjunctivism when he speaks of taking an ‘outer fact’ into one’s consciousness: Taking knowledge to be akin to seeing, together with its factivity, ­produces a captivating “picture”, as he [Wittgenstein] calls it. Namely, a picture according to which knowledge would consist in taking outer facts into one’s consciousness. Yet this is just a picture, and a

190  Genia Schönbaumsfeld bad one at that, for Wittgenstein. For we do not take outer facts into consciousness; nor do we have knowledge only of inner facts, since the latter, being mental in nature, might be thought of being taken in consciousness directly. In fact, it is safe to say that for Wittgenstein there are no facts—outer or inner—prior to their being conceptualized in certain ways. (Coliva 2021: 223) I fully agree with Coliva that for Wittgenstein, there are no unconceptualized facts.26 I also agree that speaking of taking ‘outer facts’ into one’s ‘consciousness’ is not felicitous. But that is not a view I am recommending. For in order for talk of ‘outer facts’ to be pertinent, one must already have bought into the very picture that disjunctivism rejects – the Cartesian picture which assumes that anything non-introspectively known is ‘outer,’ i.e., something that transcends the immediately known realm of the ‘inner.’ Once we have rejected such a picture, however, there is no longer any reason to speak of ‘outer facts’ at all. Indeed, this seems to be exactly what Wittgenstein is suggesting at OC §90. Pace Coliva, he is not rejecting the thought that “‘I know’ has a primitive meaning similar to and related to ‘I see’”; he is rejecting the false picture that we might employ when trying to make sense of what this means. Since if we are still operating with the Cartesian picture, it’s going to appear as if perception can do something ‘magical’ here—namely, cross the inner/outer ‘divide’ by as it were ‘feeding us’ unconceptualized Givens. But to think that such a notion provides us with an accurate representation of epistemic disjunctivism is wide of the mark.27 For once the Cartesian picture is eliminated root and branch, so is the idea of an ‘interface’ or ‘divide’ which ‘outer facts’ must cross in order to reach the ‘inner’ realm of consciousness. Rather, and to speak with Heidegger, we are always already ‘in’ the world, ‘directly’ in touch with things. Hence, there is, in the relevant sense, no ‘external’ world at all, because there is also no ‘internal’ one.28 Talk of an ‘external’ world is an artifact of endorsing the Cartesian picture. Consequently, all that disjunctivism claims; on my view, is that when we perceive that such-and-such is the case, for example, that there are three chairs in the spare room, then, provided that the environment is epistemically friendly and my perceptual capacities are operating as normal, my seeing that this is so provides me with knowledge that this is so. Hence, should someone ask how I know that there are three chairs in the spare room, I could respond that I do, because I was in the room earlier in the day and have been able to check. Given that Wittgenstein accepts points (1) and (3)29 mentioned in the previous section, it seems uncontroversial that he would endorse this characterization.

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  191 Here is some further exegetical evidence to support my view: “The correct use of the expression ‘I know’. Someone with bad sight asks me: ‘do you believe that the thing we can see there is a tree?’ I reply ‘I know it is; I can see it clearly and am familiar with it’” (OC §483). Wittgenstein couldn’t be closer to disjunctivism in this passage; it is very hard to see how his response to the bad-sighted person is supposed to be compatible with the alleged defeasibility of reasons. Contra Coliva, I doubt that Wittgenstein would agree that although he knows that he is seeing a tree, is seeing it clearly, and is familiar with it, it might nevertheless be the case that he is wrong. On Coliva’s conception, on the other hand, even when one does know, one’s reasons are defeasible, rather than factive and knowledge-constituting. This ultimately makes knowledge impossible without the ‘assumption’ that there is an ‘external’ world, as this view just constitutes an endorsement of the Reasons Identity Thesis: that even in the good case (i.e., when one has ‘knowledge’), one’s reasons are non-factive and compatible with being massively deceived. So, unless one is able to rule out that one is not massively deceived, one cannot have knowledge on this view. Coliva’s conception does not, therefore, present an advance on the Cartesian picture or on Wright’s I-II-III argument, but just another iteration of it. Lamentably, Coliva thinks that Wittgenstein would share her conception because of his endorsement of the bipolarity of knowledge. What is more, she conflates the logical possibility (or exclusion) of doubt with the conclusiveness or defeasibility of perceptual reasons, two completely different things: For, saying that one does know that p, iff one has factive reasons for p—viz. because one has taken in the very fact that p—excludes the possibility of being wrong—that one’s reasons may not be conclusive—and that p isn’t the case. Yet Wittgenstein insists that it is only when that possibility remains open that we do have, and are allowed to claim, knowledge. When that possibility is not open, then we are actually stumbling on something categorically different. Namely, a hinge, and our use of “I know” in that connection would actually not be the ordinary but the grammatical one, in which no epistemic relation obtaining between a subject and a proposition is expressed. (Coliva 2021: 224) Nowhere does Wittgenstein say that it is only if I know, but nevertheless might at the same time be wrong, that it is possible to have knowledge (indeed, it is hard to see how such a notion is even compatible with the factivity of knowledge, which Wittgenstein clearly endorses). Neither does the bipolarity of knowledge and knowledge claims require it (the principle

192  Genia Schönbaumsfeld that I can only claim to know something, if it is possible that, had things been otherwise, I might not have known the thing in question). Take straightforwardly ‘epistemic’ uses of ‘to know,’ such as occur in the previously discussed accident scenario: it is possible to know (or to claim to know30) that one has hands in this situation because it would also have been possible not to know this either by having failed to check (e.g., by not having one’s bandages removed or asked a doctor) or by having had one’s hands amputated. Similarly to the bipolarity principle in the Tractatus, a proposition can be known (can be true), because it is also possible that had the world (or the agent) been different in some way, one might not have known it (the proposition could have been false). But it would be a serious mistake to draw the conclusion from this principle that bipolarity requires both scenarios to obtain at the same time! In other words, it would be an error to think that bipolarity requires a proposition to be capable of being both true and false at the same time or a proposition to be known but somehow capable of not being known at the same time. To put it another way, for Wittgenstein, the possibility of knowledge hinges on the possibility of counterfactuals: had certain things been different, I would not have known—e.g., if my eyesight were as bad as the person’s asking me, I would not have known that that’s a tree. That is all that is necessary for there to be a genuinely ‘epistemic’ sense of ‘to know.’ And this is perfectly compatible with holding, as disjunctivists do, that when I do have knowledge—and no counterfactuals obtain (as I am in fact in the good case)—then my reasons, which ground my knowledge, are not defeasible.31 Coliva is wrong to think that the foregoing makes my ordinary perceptual knowledge like ‘knowledge’ of hinges, where doubt is logically (not empirically) excluded.32 For if doubt is logically excluded, then there is no logical possibility of a counterfactual ever obtaining, as supposing that there could be such a thing would not constitute an ordinary mistake, but would rather be what Wittgenstein calls an “annihilation of all yardsticks”: In certain circumstances a man cannot make a mistake. (“Can” is here used logically, and the proposition does not mean that a man cannot say anything false in those circumstances.) If Moore were to pronounce the opposite of those propositions which he declares certain, we should not just not share his opinion: we should regard him as demented. (OC §155) In other words, scenarios where a ‘mistake’ is logically excluded are not scenarios where ‘to know’ can function epistemically. Consequently, these are not scenarios where one could have (or fail to have) conclusive

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  193 perceptual reasons for one’s beliefs. For, in genuinely epistemic scenarios where one might have conclusive perceptual reasons, it is also possible that one might have lacked them had things been different. For example, I claim to know that I have seen barns along the M4 motorway on the basis of having seen barn-shaped objects. If it subsequently turns out that these were part of an artistic installation and, hence, only barn façades, not real barns, then I would correct my mistake and retract my previous knowledge claim. None of this is possible in cases where doubt is logically excluded and where we are dealing, at best, with a grammatical or logical sense of ‘to know’ (where, as we have seen, ‘to know’ just means “there is no such thing as a doubt in this case”). If I doubt that we have ever genuinely calculated or identified a physical object, for instance, then this is no ordinary doubt for which there is a place in the system, but rather one that as it were explodes the entire language-game. This implies that one can also not turn the fact that one knows that one has hands in ordinary epistemic scenarios (such as the accident one) into an anti-skeptical claim à la Moore, for the attempt to do so would be to conflate a logical with an epistemic sense of ‘to know’: one would be moving from an ordinary epistemic context, where factive knowledge claims can be made, to a context where we are trying to assert that we are not radically mistaken—i.e., where we are trying to assert the truth of a hinge and hinges, as we have seen, are not in the market for knowledge, as they constitute the logical enabling conditions around which our ordinary knowledge claims can turn.33 In such circumstances, as Wittgenstein says, ‘I know’ is a logical insight; “only realism can’t be proved by means of it” (OC §59). That is to say, it is not that there can be no realism, it is rather that it cannot be proved in the manner of Moore, since ‘I know’ does not tolerate metaphysical emphasis34 (OC §482). 10.5 Conclusion If what I have argued in this chapter is correct, Wittgenstein gives us powerful reasons to reject the idea that a global validation of all our epistemic practices taken together is possible. But this is not to give in to radical skepticism, but rather to show that a global doubt makes no sense. There is no such thing, nor could there be such a thing, as demonstrating that the ‘external’ world exists (or ‘assuming’ or ‘trusting’ that it does). For the thought that such a demonstration is necessary is driven purely by prior endorsement of the Cartesian picture of our epistemic situation, which sees us as trapped inside an ‘internal’ world of representations, from which we must try to reason ourselves to what goes on ‘out there’ in the ‘external’ world (White 2014). Once we have jettisoned this picture, however, and

194  Genia Schönbaumsfeld with it the Reasons Identity Thesis that thrusts the ‘default view’ of perceptual reasons upon us, a realism without empiricism becomes possible that ‘reconnects’ us to the world from which an illusion of doubt threatened forever to sever us. Notes 1 See, e.g., Pryor (2000). 2 See, e.g., Wright (2014). 3 See Coliva (2012, 2014). 4 Pryor (2000) heroically defends the notion that an experience as of P is sufficient, if one has no reason to doubt Q (that there is an external world). 5 I am taking it that “there are physical objects” and “there is an external world” have the same extension, which seems uncontroversial. 6 There are debates in the literature whether Moore is addressing the sceptic or the idealist. Coliva thinks it’s the idealist, Maddy that it is the sceptic (see their recent exchange in 2018). Nothing much hangs on this for my purposes, as both the sceptic and the idealist doubt that we can have knowledge of an independent, physical world. 7 Cf. On Certainty §23. 8 Compare: “If my name is not L.W., how can I rely on what is meant by ‘true’ and ‘false’?” (OC §515). 9 A view that Stroud seems to defend (in conversation). 10 It only seems that way because on the Cartesian picture all claims about things “outside the mind” are necessarily doubtful. 11 This means that, on pain of irrationality, the sceptic cannot just bite the bullet here and ask why her demand would only be reasonable if our inability to meet it is a contingency. For one cannot coherently “want” what is logically impossible (it only makes sense to want what one could, at least in principle, have). If, for example, there is no such thing as “round squares,” then I cannot coherently “want” to find such things. If it makes no sense for people “to be” prime numbers, then I cannot coherently want to “find” a prime called ‘Caesar.’ Hence, by parity of reasoning, if I grant that “global validation” is logically impossible, then I cannot coherently continue to demand that there nevertheless be such a thing. 12 Since there would be no practices in which they could play a role. 13 I first drew this distinction in Schönbaumsfeld (2016). 14 At this point, a sceptically minded philosopher might perhaps object that, contrary to what I have just argued, we do have a clear idea of what it would be like not to know that one has hands, for, surely, that’s just the brain-in-a-vat (BIV) (or radical sceptical) scenario! That is to say, if I were a BIV, I could not know that I have hands, since, firstly, I could not know anything, and, secondly, I would not even have hands. Although the latter two claims are true, the objection does not constitute a genuine counterexample to the foregoing argument. Taking the second point first: if I don’t have hands (say, because I’m a BIV), and I could (miraculously) come to know this fact, then my claim “I know I don’t have hands” (or “I doubt that I have hands”) would be perfectly meaningful, and, indeed, not relevantly different from the accident scenario discussed above. If, on the other hand, the BIV scenario is only a fancy way of fleshing out the thought that one might be globally wrong about everything

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  195 (as it tends to be), then “I know I have two hands” no longer functions as an ordinary proposition about hands (or other body parts), but rather means something like: “I know I cannot be globally wrong” or “I know I’m not the victim of a ‘global’ sceptical hypothesis.” But, if so, we have moved from an “epistemic” use of ‘to know’ to what I have called a “logical” or “grammatical” sense. So, we are not concerned with an ordinary factual (empirical) claim, but rather with a logical enabling condition: if the obtaining of this condition is called into question, then the notions of “truth” and “falsity” that the sceptic needs in order to be able to formulate his doubt lose their meaning too. Consequently, “I know I have two hands” can look like an ordinary epistemic (empirical) claim, but in the radical sceptical context either has no clear meaning or else constitutes an articulation of the “logical truth” that “there is no such thing as a doubt in this case” (OC §58). 15 This implies that Wittgenstein rejects the priority of sensory knowledge. 16 See, for example, Avnur (2019), Bennett (1971), Burge (2003), Conee (2007), Coliva (2014, 2015), Dretske (1970, 2010, McGinn (1984), Nagel (1986), Pollock (1974), Pryor (2000), Stroud (1984), White (2014), Wright (2002, 2014). 17 For my experience ‘as of P’ is, of course, compatible with ~P. 18 For further discussion of this argument, see Schönbaumsfeld (2016, chapter 2). 19 This is ironic given that Wright takes himself to have been inspired by Wittgenstein when putting forward his entitlement strategy. 20 In this respect, my diagnosis of what creates the radical sceptical problem is quite different from that offered by Pritchard in his 2016. On my account, radical scepticism is an illusion generated by prior acceptance of the Cartesian picture (and hence of RIT), whereas for Pritchard the problem (or problems) arise from two paradoxes—one generated by the underdetermination principle, the other by the closure (RK) principle. According to Pritchard, disjunctivism (a rejection of RIT) can only answer the first problem; for the second, we need Wittgenstein’s insight that all epistemic assessment is essentially local. I discuss Pritchard’s proposal at length in The Illusion of Doubt, chapter 2. 21 See also Diamond (1991). 22 For empiricism also endorses the Cartesian picture. 23 I first argued this in Schönbaumsfeld (2016 and 2019). 24 For more on this, see The Illusion of Doubt, chapter 5. 25 If doubting that anything around us doesn’t exist isn’t, as Wittgenstein tries to show, fully intelligible, then neither is assuming that it exists. For what could this so much as mean? That I ‘assume’ that tables and chairs exist, for example, but that I can’t be sure? How would this absence of certainty manifest itself? It seems that either it wouldn’t or it would be a form of madness. That is to say, the ‘difference’ between someone who is sure and someone who only ‘assumes’ would either be one of ‘battle cry’ (see Zettel §414) only and not otherwise discernible in behaviour, or, if it did manifest in behaviour, for example, if the person in question kept touching objects in order to assure himself of their existence, we would probably conclude that he needs therapy (OC §155). 26 I’m pretty sure that McDowell would agree too, given that he thinks that perceptual experience is fully conceptual (McDowell 1994, 1998a, 1998b). 27 I explicitly reject such a notion (the Myth of the Given) in The Illusion of Doubt, chapter 3. McDowell (1994) also explicitly rejects it. 28 This is why I have put this notion in quotation marks throughout this chapter. 29 (1) ‘I know’ often means: I have the proper grounds for my statement. (3) A reasonable person will not doubt that I know that I have hands.

196  Genia Schönbaumsfeld 30 Pace Williams (2021), I think bipolarity applies both to knowledge and knowledge-claims. 31 In other words, conclusive perceptual reasons empirically exclude doubt; they do not logically exclude it. 32 Such a conception is closer to that of Williams, who believes that ordinary knowledge is an ‘objective certainty.’ Williams, however, is not a disjunctivist (though not for Coliva’s reasons). For my response to Williams, see Schönbaumsfeld (2021). 33 This also implies that on the conception that I attribute to Wittgenstein, closure doesn’t fail, but has no application in contexts where doubt is logically excluded. For further discussion and implications for closure-based sceptical arguments, see Schönbaumsfeld 2016, 2021. 34 Where giving ‘to know’ metaphysical emphasis means conflating its logical with its epistemic use.

References Avnur, Y. (2019), ‘The Nature and Limits of Skeptical Criticism,’ International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9/3, 183–205. Bennett, J. (1971), Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes (Oxford: Oxford ­University Press). Boghossian, P. (2007), Fear of Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Burge, T. (2003), ‘Perceptual Entitlement,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological ­Research, 67, 503–548. Coliva, A. (2010), Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty, and Common Sense (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Coliva, A. (2012), ‘Moore’s Proof, Liberals and Conservatives – Is There a (­Wittgensteinian) Third Way’ in Coliva (ed.), Mind, Meaning and Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 323–351. Coliva, A. (2014), ‘Moderatism, Transmission Failures, Closure and Humean Scepticism’ in Dodd and Zardini (eds), op. cit., 248–276. Coliva, A. (2015), Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Coliva, A. (2018), ‘What do Philosophers do? Maddy, Moore and Wittgenstein,’ International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 8/3, 198–207. Coliva, A. (2021), “’I Know’, ‘I know’, ‘I know’. Hinge Epistemology, Invariantism, and Skepticism’ in Christos Kyriacou and Kevin Wallbridge (eds), Skeptical Invariantism Reconsidered (New York and London: Routledge), 209–230. Conee, E. (2007), ‘Disjunctivism and Anti-Skepticism,’ Philosophical Issues 17, 16–36. Diamond, C. (1991), The Realistic Spirit (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press). Dretske, F. (1970), ‘Epistemic Operators,’ Journal of Philosophy 60, 1007–1023. Dretske, F. (2010), ‘Epistemological Self-Profile’ in Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa, and Matthias Steup (eds), A Companion to Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell). Dummett, M. (1978), Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth).

“Not Empiricism and Yet Realism in Philosophy”  197 Maddy, Penelope (2017), What Do Philosophers do? Scepticism and the Practice of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press). Maddy, P. (2018), ‘Replies to Coliva, Leite and Stroud,’ International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 8/3, 231–244. McDowell, J. (1994), Mind and World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press). McDowell, J. (1998a), ‘Criteria, Defeasibility and Knowledge’ in McDowell, J., Meaning, Knowledge and Reality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 369–394. McDowell, J. (1998b), ‘Knowledge and the Internal,’ Meaning, Knowledge and Reality, 395–413. McGinn, C. (1984), ‘The Concept of Knowledge,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy IX, 529–544. Nagel, Thomas. (1986), The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Nozick, R. (1981), Philosophical Explanations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Pollock, J. (1974), Knowledge and Justification (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Pritchard, D. (2015), Epistemic Angst (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Pryor, J. (2000), ‘The Skeptic and the Dogmatist,’ Noûs, 43, 517–549. Schönbaumsfeld, G. (2016), The Illusion of Doubt (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schönbaumsfeld, G. (2019), ‘Was Wittgenstein a Disjunctivist avant la lettre?’ in C. Doyle, J. Milburn and D. Pritchard (eds.), New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism (London: Routledge 2019), 113–130. Schönbaumsfeld, G. (2021), ‘Response to Critics,’ International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 11/2, 159–175. Stroud, B. (1984), The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). White, R. (2014), ‘What Is My Evidence That Here Is a Hand?’ in D. Dodd and E. Zardini (eds.), Scepticism and Perceptual Justification (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 298–321. Williams, M. (1996), Unnatural Doubts (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Williams, M. (2011), ‘External World Scepticism and the Structure of Epistemic Entitlement’ in J. Bridges, N. Kolodny and W. Wong (eds), The Possibility of Philosophical Understanding (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 43–61. Williams, M. (2021), ‘Knowledge without Experience,’ International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 11/2, 119–242. Wittgenstein, L. (1969), On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. Anscombe and D. Paul (Oxford: Blackwell). Wittgenstein, L. (1975), Zettel, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell). Wittgenstein, L. (1989), Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. G.H. von Wright, R. Rhees and G.E.M. Anscombe, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Blackwell: Oxford). Wittgenstein, L. (2009), Philosophical Investigations, ed. P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte, trans. Anscombe, Hacker, Schulte (Oxford: Blackwell).

198  Genia Schönbaumsfeld Wright, C. (1980), Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics (London: Duckworth). Wright, C. (2002), ‘Anti-Sceptics Simple and Subtle: G. E. Moore and John ­McDowell,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65, 330–348. Wright, C. (2014), ‘On Epistemic Entitlement (II): Welfare State Epistemology’ in D. Dodd and E. Zardini (eds.), op. cit. 213–247.

11 Arendt and Transformative Politics Yasemin Sari

11.1 Introduction: Problem and Thesis Kant begins his 1784 essay “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” thus: “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred ­tutelage,” and posits “Sapere aude,” “have courage to use your own reason” as the motto of the Enlightenment. Kant’s writing in the eighteenth century is during a time of revolutions—scientific and juridical—or what we now understand as the era of enlightenment—which stemmed from the sheer act of questioning absolute authority—of the church and of the king. To recall, this is also the time (thanks to Kant) when the human being emerges as a person with dignity (or intrinsic moral worth) who has the ability to judge and decide for herself (and to not be subjected to illegitimate/arbitrary external authority regarding her actions). Ultimately, Kant’s argument lays out the following tension: while we each have the capacity to think for ourselves, such reasoning requires not only the civil and political conditions ripe for it but also a public to be able to test out our ideas. Fast forward about 240 years, and this tension is still relevant. The acknowledgment that each one of us is capable of political judgment, that our equality inheres in our ability to judge and not defer or relegate that judgment to another body or collection of bodies is in fact at the heart of our democracy. Yet, politics is still seemingly understood to be a profession. What does this mean for political agency? Can we (or how do we)— as individuals—actively engage in politics or exercise political judgment? We as democratic citizens1 seem to engage in politics, insofar as we vote for our favorite leaders and the candidates whose worldviews seem to resonate with ours the most. More specifically, those of us who are eligible can vote in elections, attend caucuses and primaries, and participate in rallies on causes we support. But many don’t. Does this mean that some people do not exercise political agency? The answer seems to be complicated. My aim in this chapter is to consider how we might work against the tendency to reduce political agency to the acts

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-12

200  Yasemin Sari of professional politicians or to limit them to the realm of the exercise of political rights (such as voting) to create a platform for a transformative politics. A transformative politics does not merely involve transforming the world but also the participants in this world so that they can appear in their agency. As I will suggest, this will require a concept of political judgment that enables participants in politics to enter the public space in order to undertake genuine deliberation about matters of shared concern rather than merely affirming what has already been decided in advance by our hired politicians. For this, I want to focus on two central dimensions of the formation of a political space, or if you will a “sphere of deliberation.” First, the formation of such space is related to the content of political participation (or engagement) that motivates such action: there must be something that we have in common that concerns us—to motivate us to act. Does our town need a new school building or a library or a prison? Is it time for the next municipal election? This question linked with the content comes prior to reaching a conclusion or drawing a policy or “settling”2 an issue in securing an outcome (e.g., accepting the results of an election). Next, prior to the decision or outcome, the formation of political space also requires that citizens (not only recognize issues that are common to them but also) make use of values and principles to motivate their decisions. For instance, to put it in very simple terms, while climate change can be understood to be a common concern for contemporary societies, the value of economic growth and job security (state’s interests) may clash with the value of responsibility to future generations. Thus, the sphere of deliberation consists of both issues/concerns and conflicting values to which citizens are entitled.3 These two premises about the content of politics and the values citizens bring to it entail that what is common to us far surpasses what elected politicians or political pundits suggest. Furthermore, political agents that have the capacity for political judgments do not merely disagree. Let me give you two examples to illustrate this point. First, I turn to the 1960s to illustrate part of my argument regarding the content—as well as the role that truth plays in articulating that content (what I will refer to as the stuff of politics in the following): In 1954, the Supreme Court—through their decision in Brown v. Board of Education—reversed what had come to be known as the “separate but equal” doctrine resulting from the 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. To recall, Homer Plessy was a passenger (of “mixed race”—seven-eighths Caucasian, one-eighths Black) on a train to Louisiana who took a seat in the “whites-only” cart in 1892.4 In his refusal to leave the train upon the conductor’s inspection and insistence, Plessy was “arrested and jailed.”5

Arendt and Transformative Politics  201 The resulting decision in 1896 rested on an argument based on equality as it pertains to physical space and not to agency itself: thus, the carts can be separate but equal. The reversal of this desegregation legislation in 1954 (as Michelle ­Alexander explains in The New Jim Crow) was not only not executed smoothly, but it was outright rejected by certain southern states. One striking example of such rejection was Alabama’s Eugene “Bull” Connor, the commissioner of public safety of the City of Birmingham. In 1963, almost a decade after the Brown decision, Eugene Connor was wont to do anything in his power to keep segregation alive rather than submit to the authority of the Supreme Court. His power of course was not just limited to the police and their dogs and fire hoses but also included city ordinances that regulate people’s free (bodily) movement. As we know, Dr. Martin Luther King (MLK) and his compatriots disagreed not only with the conviction of the southern states to not follow through with the majority opinion in Brown but also with the city ordinance against protest. We can say that the content of the judgment (that is, the factual truth) is very clear: namely, there is a Supreme Court decision against segregation. What this simple yet striking example shows is that disagreement emerges in response to seemingly well-established and well-argued issues and events in the world even when they seem to be put forth by scientific and legal expertise. Such disagreement pertains to our approach to certain facts and the values that undergird the disagreement. Disagreement in this sense does not stem from mere ignorance or inability to acknowledge facts, but the disavowal of facts that go against our worldview. Simply put, democratic citizenship partakes in an explicit or implicit democratic ethos that guides our conversations and resulting decisions and actions (or the lack thereof). We have values—or we form values— and we act upon them. Next, I want to turn to an example I came to find out about recently on NPR’s “On Point.”6 The program’s guest was Shannon Watts, who founded Moms Demand Action in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting and who recently stepped down from her leadership role in the association. Watts, a mother of five, recalls the day she was listening to the radio in 2012 when she heard about the Sandy Hook school shooting as it was happening. The horror and shock of the moment had Watts realize that “it was up to everyday Americans” to do something, and that she wanted an “army of women, of moms” because everything else was “run by men.”7 Simply put, Shannon Watts became a political agent in response to the world (specifically an unjust and violent action targeting schoolchildren). And the grassroots efforts strengthened Moms Demand Action to the point of getting to be on a par with NRA lobbyists, where Watts recalls the first

202  Yasemin Sari time she testified in front of a group of lawmakers and being questioned not only about who she was but also about “her love of her country.”8 Political judgment has been a central tenet in the tradition of western political philosophy. As I have explored in my previous work (Sari 2020) not only the content of such judgment but also the agent thereof has been carefully explored in this tradition: while the initial conflict can be summed up to be between truth (Plato) and opinion (Aristotle) as regards the content, the Hobbesian transition from natural law to positive law shifts the question of content to the judge—that is, to who can judge (and judge for all). Kant and, subsequently in the last century, Rawls demonstrate the principles of equality and liberty that should be respected in each person’s ability to judge and decide on their own life plans. Notwithstanding, I want to turn to Hannah Arendt, another twentieth-century thinker of political phenomena to present the case for a transformative politics that rests on her political paradigm, which places the agency of the human being at the heart of the political. 11.2 What Is Political? The Arendtian Political Paradigm The fundamental premise of the Arendtian political paradigm is that nothing (and no one) is “inherently political” (Arendt 2005: 95) and that politics and the stuff of politics emerge—through relations—between people through speech (deliberation) and deed (action/decision). Her premise rests on two conditions of her political phenomenology: namely, plurality and equality, which appear in two stages.9 First, we think with others, and second, we act together: What makes man a political being is his faculty of action; it enables him to get together with his peers, act in concert, and to reach out for goals and enterprises that would never enter his mind, let alone the desires of his heart, had he not been given this gift—to embark on something new. (Arendt 1970: 82) For Arendt, the actions that pertain to our ethical and political existence together are properly understood to belong to the realm of politics, these too happen between human beings and at times institutions, and via speech. In addition to this, these actions have the capacity to create and maintain a “(political) space of appearances.” When individuals come together to make their claims known to others on the street (Hungarian Revolution, Occupy Wall Street, Gezi Park Protests) or in the university quad (recent demonstrations against the appointed rector at Bogazici ­University, Istanbul), these (public) places undergo a transformation: by the sheer e­mbodied togetherness and the expression of people’s claims

Arendt and Transformative Politics  203 (which mostly revolve around discontent or horror at injustice) such public spaces turn into political spaces—or what Arendt names a “space of appearance” (Arendt 1958: 199). In such togetherness, people create political space. At other times, people’s actions maintain what is deemed a political space: the legislature building offers a venue for discussion on legislation, which is understood to be a political act, and the legislative building is deemed political by way of its function. Hence, the way in which political spaces are created and maintained is not about the functions or names of the spaces themselves, but the activities that take place in them. (For instance, the otherwise strictly depoliticized school ground becomes—albeit temporarily—­political during caucuses or election times.) Arendt’s unconventional articulation of politics has been articulated on different registers: on the one hand, the agonistic model is favored by the more existential readings (exemplified by Dana Villa), on the other, a deliberative model takes precedence in critical theory (exemplified by Seyla ­Benhabib). Notwithstanding, her articulation of politics as that which stands against (or separately from) social and economic questions (which belong to housekeeping—and national housekeeping in the modern sense) has been the common aspect of criticism. That Arendt differentiates politics from any other human activity with a definite beginning and an end (such as production) is the basis of her criticism of both idealist and realist camps of political theory. Unlike Plato, Arendt does not think the purpose of politics is to mold a city or citizenry into its perfect shape, and unlike Hobbes, she does not think that politics simply is in service of self-preservation and wealth accumulation in society (or commodious living). Arendt contends, instead that politics has an auto-telic character, that it is its own purpose and one that is most becoming for the human person. This, however, does not mean that politics is devoid of value judgments, or moral responsibility (see Sari 2018, 2019). The normative strand of her argument can be perhaps identified in the characteristics of Arendtian politics that have been underdeveloped in the literature: politics as a non-partisan yet principled activity. Arendt’s account of non-partisan politics requires that issues concerning ethical and political problems are central to politics. In Arendt’s terms, political action happens when people are “neither for nor against” (Arendt 1958: 180) one another, but when they act in their togetherness. This togetherness does two things at once: first, it sums up her suspicion (and basic rejection) of identity-based politics (notwithstanding the recognition of individual/group rights being the condition of the possibility of becoming political agents; on this, cf. Sari, 2017); second, it offers a way to problematize the assumption of fixed or set political identities that comprise political actors to then act only in accordance with their (short-term)

204  Yasemin Sari self-interests. Certain so-called social issues do act as a driving force in motivating political action: the civil rights movement in the 1960s was an example among many. Articulated thus, we can see that our social lives indeed regularly relate to our “common world”—or matters of shared concern: whether it is to support a certain charity or a new business in town or to help fix the old historic theater that is not frequented as it used to be. These are things that pertain to our sociality and by which we claim certain identities. Let me give three examples to clarify what I mean by this: (1) by supporting the LGBTQ+ community center in town, I show that I support LGBTQ+ ­issues, that I am an ally; (2) by supporting the new vegetarian restaurant, I not only nourish myself according to my preferences but also show that I value vegetarianism, where the reason could be dietary, ethical, or environmental; and lastly (3), by my support of the historic theater in town I express my appreciation for independent and international art, even if it is not my aesthetic taste altogether. This analysis shows that the seemingly rigid demarcation between the social and the political does not hold and that social and political issues are complex and intertwined. That is, not only what is at times marked as social can indeed be political (e.g., the question of femicide or the broader umbrella of violence against women) or what is depoliticized does indeed affect politics (as exemplified in Marx’s eloquent critique of liberal rights in his “On the Jewish Question”) but also what is social can have implications for what is political (e.g., the problem of homelessness, and the resulting disenfranchisement of homeless people). Overall, Arendt’s argument is as follows: Premise 1. Nothing is inherently political; instead, politics happens (emerges) between human beings in their collective action and conversation. Premise 2. Such collective action and conversation are about matters of shared concern (recall the previous examples) and can stem from social or technological reasons and permeate through ethical or political ­debates. For example, homelessness, and a global pandemic. In conclusion, what is talked about in political space can and does change from place to place or generation to generation as each community has (new) issues that pertain to them in common and these issues also change over time. (And not necessarily foreseen with clarity). While environmental issues were prevalent even at the peak of the Industrial Revolution, such concerns at the time did not override the concern (of

Arendt and Transformative Politics  205 the capitalists) for economic growth and became the point of (environmental) legislation. Today we understand environmental or climate activism to be a thoroughly political concern rather than the content of poetry—for instance, Milton’s “Satanic Mills.” Still, the juridical advancements made in restrictions in, for instance, dumping toxins into rivers or the seas (to prevent irreparably polluting them) does point to a shared concern we may have for human and non-human life: that life should be sustained so that further flourishing can happen. This previous conclusion has further qualifications: the debate or conversation that accompanies political action aims to “reveal” one’s intentions rather than to “conceal” or “deceive” and the justifications offered in such speech implicitly or explicitly stem from what Arendt calls “political principles” (see Arendt 1968). Inspired by Montesquieu, Arendt counts among these principles, equality, freedom, public happiness, and virtue (Arendt 2005: 191–196). In recent Arendt studies, further principles that guide political action have been identified: “a democratic principle of responsibility” by political theorist Sofia Nasström (2014), as well as the principles of epistemic and democratic responsibility in my own work. Hence, Arendtian politics is a non-partisan yet principled activity. 11.3 The Political Agent: The Role of Truth in Political Judgment and Participation Recent discussions in political philosophy (especially deliberative democratic theory) have explored the question of revitalizing democracy through the formation of sortition-based chambers that motivate citizens to partake in democratic debate and decision-making processes that not only acknowledge the fact of plurality (that we are all different and diverse) but also foster a norm thereof, as well as create an “artificial” equality (so that we can all belong and be heard). The outcome of such examples (for instance, in Paris that I will take up at the end) has shown us that politics or political participation itself is a transformative experience: such participation both transforms one’s knowledge repertoire and one’s values and preferences. This means that political agents are formed via political judgment and participation (and not necessarily prior to it). Now what is the role of truth in such political judgment? In the following, I take political judgment to have an intimate relationship with opinion-formation: if I judge a certain phenomenon to be “unjust,” I can build my (normative) opinion on how we can approximate a more just

206  Yasemin Sari state of affairs accordingly. The critical ability then, to think, that is (of course as Kant understands) to judge is a necessary condition to have an opinion. Inspired by Kant, this ability to judge and be in a venue to be able to “exchange our opinions,” to “show who we are in speech and deed,” sums up Arendt’s articulation of political agency that gets scarce attention in the literature. While her novel articulation of freedom as freedom to act (and not just to choose or will) is central to her contribution to political philosophy, her account also allows for the “becoming of a political agent” that perhaps befits our own political experience more adequately. Thus, my theoretical interest in this “becoming” helps go beyond the usual assumption of western political philosophy that begins with citizens as by definition isolated political agents where the civic activities they partake in constitutes the parameters for such (political) agency. While this may be true in many cases, as the previous examples show, people can also become political agents either in the wake of a disaster (e.g., Sandy Hook parents after the shootings and Alex Jones’s spewing of lies about them) or in response to a particular policy perpetuating injustice (e.g., MLK and civil rights), and so on. Such transformation of people into political agents happens (usually) in response to certain events in the world. Let us call these factual truths. A quick look at historical events can demonstrate this: Hitler’s Reich, the Cold War, countless revolutions, legal protests, and uprisings have had something to do with this preoccupation with truth—or better with the detrimental effects of being served a steady diet of lies. To be sure, such claims of wanting the truth or protesting lies are also normative in nature: truth ought to play a role in our political existence. But how do factual truths inform/relate to questions of norms or values our political lives are filled with? I quote Arendt at length: Factual truth is always related to other people: it concerns events and circumstances in which many are involved; it is established by witnesses and depends upon testimony; it exists only to the extent that it is spoken about, even if it occurs in the domain of privacy. It is political by nature. Facts and opinions, though they must be kept apart, are not antagonistic to each other; they belong to the same realm. (Arendt 1968: 233) Factual truths (or lies) play a critical role in politics. The characterization of collective political action described in the earlier manner underlies the indispensable role of truths, debate, and judgment in Arendtian politics. Building on the Kantian paradigm of reflective judgment, she takes the human faculty of judgment to be the exemplary political

Arendt and Transformative Politics  207 faculty, and the activity of judgment thus becomes especially pertinent in her account. Reflective judgment or the judgment of particulars in this sense makes up a necessary but not sufficient condition for opinion-formation. She states, Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists, there may be moods—moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the former—but no opinion.10 (Arendt 1963: 268–269) Freedom of opinion requires, thus, that judgment be based on factual truths, and not deliberate falsehoods or lies. For judgments made upon falsehoods/lies cannot be articulated to be free as stemming from the agent’s ability to take into consideration what makes up our world, but rather stamped by the logic of propaganda and ideology. As such, factual truths play a role in our formation as political agents. Two conclusions follow from this: (1) human beings are not necessarily fully-fledged political participants in the world; that is, they are not actors in the political arena with set and fixed values who decide only according to their narrow and short-term self-interests, and (2) political discussion itself can transform individuals and create political agents. By this token, a focus on issues that matter to us earthlings all such as climate change, refugee crises, labor not only inform us (in our solitary existence) but also transform us in our sociality. 11.4 Arendtian Sphere of Deliberation Ultimately, Arendt’s distinction centers around her articulation of freedom as the freedom to act. Her key premise for this conclusion (in The Human Condition) rests in a spatial and content-dependent articulation of the distinction between the private and public realms. I quote her at length: The distinction between a private and a public sphere of life corresponds to the household and the political realms, which have existed as distinct, separate entities at least since the rise of the ancient city-state; but the emergence of the social realm, which is neither private nor public, strictly speaking, is a relatively new phenomenon whose origin coincided with the emergence of the modern age[,] and which found its political form in the nation-state. The distinctive trait of the household sphere was that in it men lived together because they were driven by their wants and needs. … Natural

208  Yasemin Sari community in the household therefore was born of necessity, and necessity ruled over all activities performed in it. The realm of the polis, on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom, and if there was a relationship between these two spheres, it was a matter of course that the mastering of the necessities of life in the household was the condition for freedom of the polis. Under no circumstances could politics be only a means to protect society-a society of the faithful, as in the Middle Ages, or a society of property-owners, as in Locke, or a society relentlessly engaged in a process of acquisition, as in Hobbes, or a society of producers, as in Marx, or a society of jobholders, as in our own society, or a society of laborers, as in socialist and communist countries. In all these cases, it is the freedom (and in some instances so-called freedom) of society which requires and justifies the restraint of political authority. (HC, 28-31, my emphasis) According to her argument, the private realm is the realm of the household (the family), and the public realm is the realm of politics. The life of the household rests on the conditions of wants and needs of human beings. For instance, the need for shelter, safety, and sustenance—namely, the basic questions of survival and well-being—are central to life in the household. The household exists in order to secure these wants and needs. Whereas the polis—the city-state—is the “sphere of freedom.” By surveying classical political philosophical positions that put forth politics or “political authority” as required and justified only to serve instrumental ends, Arendt lays out the theories she will oppose in the rest of her discussion. While in the tradition freedom is taken as a means either for ultimate salvation, or protection of property, or promotion of self-preservation and commodious living (the end of the relentless “process of acquisition”), or wage-labor, Arendt concludes that politics cannot be “only a means to” motivate these justifications. This point does not exclude politics dealing with these topics and questions, but being reduced to them (e.g., the generalization of fabrication experience). Before further taking up her elaboration of the “public sphere,” let us pause and examine her articulation of the birth of the “social” that she thinks coincides with the “emergence of the modern age” in the political form of the “nation-state.” What does this all mean? Arendt differentiates between the modern age and the modern world in and through the emergence of the rights-bearing (bourgeois) citizen. The formation of the nation-state that coincides with the aftermath of the French Revolution not only revolutionized the historical tradition of the Ancien régime but also the status of the human person: the human being emerged as worthy of “equality” and the “ability to judge” independently of birthright.

Arendt and Transformative Politics  209 11.5 Equality and Democratic Participation: Self-Government In her oft-cited 1999 essay “What Is the Point of Equality?,” Elizabeth Anderson explores the question of equality and what it means to be in relations of equality that goes beyond procedural or lack of egalitarian accounts of justice that fall short of showing the importance of relational equality in a democratic society. Equality, as a principle of justice, is relevant to our relations with each other, as well as to the structure of institutions in a democratic society. By depicting equality as the lack of oppressive relations or structures, Anderson also echoes the Youngian analysis of injustice that exposes the inadequacy of procedural egalitarianism, which has informed theories of justice of the twentieth century. Young’s approach brings together the question of a normative ideal of equality and considerations of the agents who are owed such equality, which Young identifies to be “social groups” (cf. Young 2001). It is curious, however, inasmuch as we experience politics mostly in terms of group affinity or partisanship, that the opinion polls that have become so ubiquitous do not take account of this and present a seeming “majority” or “public” opinion that goes unnoticed. “Public opinion,” as the result of such opinion polling, is put forth in an uncritical and unexplanatory manner that the agents of the public and the justifications for their opinions (or the lack thereof) are hardly shared to help with understanding what such an opinion in actuality represents. In deliberative democratic theory, there is a further distinction between “actual public opinion” and “considered public opinion” (Lafont 2020: 24, 144). In Lafont’s words, Democratic participation in decision-making is essential to prevent an alienating disconnect between the political decisions to which citizens are subject and their political opinions and will. A political system that requires citizens to blindly defer to political decisions made by others is quintessentially incompatible with the democratic ideal of self-government. (Lafont 2020: 22) As Lafont’s work reminds us, it is the ability of self-governance that makes equality a part of democracy. For such equality to become actual, we need to heed factual truths in the political realm as well as attempt to correct harmful biases that contribute to our value judgments. In her recent work “The Epistemology of Justice” (2020), Anderson turns exactly to this question to explore the “relevance of facts to judgments of value” that motivate not only our political discussions but ultimately our political

210  Yasemin Sari decisions. She agrees with Kahan (2016) that “politically motivated reasoning” affects the degree of agreement on what we understand to be factual truths (Anderson 2020: 7) and that today there is more disagreement “about the reality of anthropogenic climate change than about the justice of progressive taxation” (Kahan 2016: 1, in Anderson 2020: 7). The diagnosis rests on shared moral sentiments, but varying objects as recipients of these sentiments (such as respect, sympathy, reciprocity and so on; ibid. Anderson 2020: 7–9). The cultivation of respect, for Anderson, and hence “the stability of institutions depends on members’ accepting them without deception or coercion, a regime legitimized by deception or falsehood will be destabilized by publicizing the truth” (Anderson 2014: 3–4, in Anderson 2020: 11). Such stability seems to be a safeguard of democracy, broadly understood. Anderson adumbrates that politically motivated reasoning does not function “simply as an individual cognitive bias, but as a strategy deployed by the leaders and beneficiaries of unjust regimes to legitimize these regimes” and that “instead of contesting shared values, they promulgate empirical claims that, in conjunction with shared values, would appear to justify established practices and institutions” (ibid. Anderson 2020: 13). Anderson’s argument is that exposing false empirical information that motivates “distorted reasoning” that affects our moral and political judgments is necessary but not sufficient to override “epistemic injustice.”11 In her article, she takes up the example of slavery in the United States and the proslavery rhetoric that was patiently overridden by the abolitionists’ efforts to not only demonstrate the falsity of not only the claims objectifying African American people as “subordinate” and their subsequent denial of “alternative roles” in society (Haslanger 1993: 102–103 in Anderson 2020: 14). As Anderson states, “[G]etting people to accept—not just to avow, but to live by—morally relevant facts in the context of an unjust regime requires overcoming epistemic injustice and the biases that underlie politically motivated reasoning” (ibid. Anderson 2020: 19). The solution then does not merely reside in the exposure of factual and normative falsities but also in the “transformation of moral consciousness” (ibid.) by cultivating the proper affect of respect toward Black people: as she remarks, “pity for slaves” is different from “respect for blacks,” where the latter is required to address the injustice of racial inequality and promote and secure its opposite (ibid.:, 23).12 This analysis brings to focus my argument (Sari 2018) that factual truths do have a normative role in political debate. The facts that are shared and interpreted can lead people to take action in different ways. At first, this may seem like a causal response, as if there is something in human nature that translates facts to values and values to actions. This is not so simple.

Arendt and Transformative Politics  211 At this juncture, we can recognize this argument puts forth an Arendtian contribution to deliberative democracy for one salient reason: it is in our conversations together that we can project a future that acknowledges not only facts of the past or present but also the values that may need to be created or maintained for the future. The significance of conversation and deliberation has been implicitly informative in theories of “deliberative civics education” (Hanson and Howe). In their words, Deliberative democracy asks students to identify the reasons for [their] position, even if the sole reason at the start of the deliberation is simply that it is what their parents have said about the issue. Only by identifying their own reasons for a position can students engage in deliberation. (Hanson and Howe, 2011: 3 in Gordon, 2018: 61) 11.6 Transformative Politics: When People Decide How does such transformation happen? In the aftermath of the protests by the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in 2019, President Emmanuel Macron put together the “Citizens Convention for Climate” to discuss and come up with proposals for climate policy in France.13 150 citizens were selected to be part of the chambers to meet up monthly for a total of seven (+ three unofficial sessions) months. The citizens were to collect information, have discussions, and eventually come up with policy proposals by the end of this period—they came up with a total of 149 proposals. While Macron didn’t keep his promise to implement these policy changes, these mini-publics have since become more prevalent.14 Two salient things about the making of the chambers: first, the random selection was to ensure that people of all walks of life with varying levels of background information and prejudices (or biases) would be part of the study, and second, that area experts would be present during these meetings. It is in this way that factual truths “bring to focus an openness to interpretation, and discussion, and they become necessary for opinion-formation” (Sari 2018: 9). Perhaps some of these citizens had prior convictions and preformed ideas (or perhaps no ideas) about what should be the case but what the study showed is that the gathering of the people and the discussions that took place over these months transformed something about how they conducted themselves: the citizens became political agents or, more importantly, agents of change (without manifest activism). 11.7 Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined the role of truth in opinion-formation to show that while democratic theory submits to an articulation of political

212  Yasemin Sari agents with fixed identities and pre-configured values or principles, political participation, and deliberation become a transformative experience that helps create political agents. My argument has been threefold: First, I examined the formation of political space through Hannah Arendt’s political paradigm. Next, I explored the role of truth and the process of opinion-formation in relation to political judgment. Next, I argued that politics (along with the stuff of politics) or political participation is a transformative experience that may assuage the agonistic or partisan views of politics that seem to be in the background of most political discussions. To recap, this argument rests on four premises: first, deliberation is essential to what has been understood as Arendt’s “agonistic” characterization of political action; second, such deliberation (in order to be non-­ partisan) has to be faithful to not only factual truths, but also to the normative judgments these truths motivate; third, political action does not necessitate preformed political identities, but it becomes instrumental in creating them; and lastly, the capacity for such deliberation is egalitarian in character—that is, any rational being can partake in such deliberation (without the ability to necessarily claim legislative authority). Taking the Arendtian political paradigm as a starting point allows for a fruitful addition to the debate on “practices of truth” and deliberative democratic theory. Perhaps by articulating political action as a transformative experience for human beings—that outlines “becoming a political agent” through participation in deliberative practices helps us learn to appreciate what Arendt has called the “joy” of political participation or “public happiness” in her work. My aim, ultimately, was not to exhaust the question of political participation and political deliberation but to offer some language regarding the question of political judgment and its relation to political participation, agency, and transformative politics. In showing that membership in a demos (or namely, a decision-making body of sorts) does not require formal citizenship not only opens up the door for us to be more welcoming in our own communities but perhaps also to think of the rights of refugees differently. I hope, excitingly—and in a more social, interpersonal, and perhaps local and institutional manner—that this work brings to focus the significance of talking to each other and persuading each other to recover what we find valuable in democracy. Notes 1 Here I will use citizens to cover any residents of a territory to denote “participants” of a polity in general. 2 I borrow this term from Lafont’s discussion of the differences between the deep pluralist and the deliberative democrat in reaching a conclusion regarding a

Arendt and Transformative Politics  213 political issue. “Settling” an issue denotes reaching a “procedurally correct decision” rather than “consensus” or a “single right answer” (Lafont 2020: 38–39). On the other hand, she notes that a question can be “settled” insofar as “a shared view on its proper answer has been reached” (ibid., 39). 3 This brings about deep pluralist concerns that I will not go into here, but the reader can simply think of the Rawlsian conclusion about disagreement and the inability to impose one’s “comprehensive doctrine” onto another. 4 “Plessy v. Ferguson,” available at: https://www.history.com/topics/black-­ history/plessy-v-ferguson. 5 Ibid. 6 “Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts on a decade after taking on the NRA” available at NPR, “On Point”: https://www.wbur.org/ onpoint/2023/01/16/moms-demand-action-founder-shannon-watts-ona-decade-of-taking-on-the-nra 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 See Arendt 1958. Furthermore, Arendt’s political phenomenology (her articulation of subjective conditions of political experience) underscores how plurality and equality are conditions to be created and recreated time and again to be sustained. 10 For further analysis on the conditions of open discussion and public debate, see also Sari (2018). 11 Such propaganda and the promulgation of false empirical claims comprises what Fricker has dubbed “epistemic injustice,” which is manifested in “testimonial injustice” that denies credibility to individuals perceived as members of certain social groups (Anderson 2020: 13, my emphasis; also see Young 2001). In the case of Blacks in the United States, the proslavery rhetoric insisted that Blacks were not fit for freedom and that they in fact enjoyed their subordinate status, without, however, being able to put forth evidence of such claims (­Anderson 2020: 18). 12 Anderson states further that to “mobilize support for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and Congressional Reconstruction,” “blacks needed to activate respect by playing central and visible roles in demanding, and winning, their own emancipation” (Anderson 2020: 25). 13 Sigler, Gall. “A New Model of Democracy,” Washington Monthly, February 9, 2023 (available at: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/02/09/a-new-model-ofdemocracy/). See also “Citizens Convention for Climate” at https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Climate#:~:text=The%20stated% 20purpose%20was%20to,organized%20in%20response%20to%20it. 14 Yeung, Peter, “‘It Gave Me Hope in Democracy’: How French People Are ­Embracing People Power,” The Guardian, November 20, 2020 (available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/20/it-gave-me-hopein-democracy-how-french-citizens-are-embracing-people-power.

References Anderson, Elizabeth (1999). “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics, Vol. 109, No. 2, pp. 287–337. Anderson, Elizabeth (2014). “Social Movements, Experiments in Living, and Moral Progress: Case Studies from Britain’s Abolition of Slavery,” Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas, http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/14787.

214  Yasemin Sari Anderson, Elizabeth (2020). “The Epistemology of Justice,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 58, No. 1, pp. 6–29. Arendt, Hannah (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of ­Chicago Press. Arendt, Hannah (1963). On Revolution, New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah (1968). Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah (1970). On Violence. New York, NY: Harcourt. Arendt, Hannah (2005). “Introduction into Politics,” in The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books): 93–200. Gordon, Mordechai (2018). “Lying in Politics: Fake News, Alternative Facts, and The Challenges for Deliberative Civics Education,” Educational Theory, Vol. 68, No. 1, pp. 49–64. Hanson, Jarrod and Kenneth Howe (2011). “The Potential for Deliberative Democratic Civic Education,” Democracy & Education, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 1–9. Haslanger, Sally (1993). “On Being Objective and Being Objectified,” in A Mind of One’s Own, edited by Louise Antony and Charlotte Witt, (Boulder, CO: ­Westview Press): 85–125. Kahan, Dan (2016). “The Political Motivated Reasoning Paradigm, Part 1: What Political Motivated Reasoning Is and How to Measure It,” in Emerging Trends in Social & Behavioral Sciences: An Interdisciplinary, Searchable, and Linkable Resource, edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn, 1–16. Lafont, Christina (2020). Democracy without Shortcuts. A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nasström, Sofia (2014). “The Right to Have Rights: Democratic, Not Political,” Political Theory, Vol. 42, No. 5, pp. 543–568. Sari, Yasemin (2017). “An Arendtian Recognitive Politics: ‘The Right to Have Rights’ as a Performance of Visibility,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 61, No. 3, pp. 709–735. Sari, Yasemin (2018). “Arendt, Truth, and Epistemic Responsibility,” Arendt Studies, Vol. 2, pp. 149–170. Sari, Yasemin (2019). “Arendt and Nancy: Revolution and Democratic Responsibility,” Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 235–259. Sari, Yasemin (2020). “Towards an Arendtian Conception of Justice,” Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 216–239. Young, Iris Marion (2001). “Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgments of Injustice*,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1–18.

12 Historicism as a Truth Practice Anthony Jensen

The irony of the term ‘historicism’ is that its definition has varied widely over the course of history. Friedrich Schlegel’s Fragments about Poetry and Literature (1797) probably coined the word Historismus. His use was not systematic, and was employed widely to denote any theoretical inquiry imbued with a particular concern with the past (Süßmann 2012: 81). German philosophers, anthropologists, art historians, religious historians, economists, and sociologists of the nineteenth century narrowed this general inclination to link methodologically their various forms of explanation and the past, although in doing so they still invoked the word ‘historicism’ reflexively rather than reflectively. As a technical term, Historismus gained popular significance in Friedrich Meinecke’s Die Entstehung des Historismus (1936) as a watchword to declaim the dangers of relativism. If the truth of a statement is in some way dependent on a determined place or time, it was feared, then its value was relative rather than absolute. Karl Popper’s famous Poverty of Historicism (1957) defined historicism as an ill-­conceived quest to uncover grand teleological forces at work over the course of time, something marshaled to disastrous effect by totalitarians of several stripes. Historicism, for Popper, is an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the “rhythms” or the “patterns”, the “laws” or the “trends”, that underlie the evolution of history. (Popper 1957: 3) In a quite different and non-­political vein, Frederick Beiser defined historicism as a program of mostly nineteenth-­century philosophers who attempt to legitimate their claims as scientifically rigorous by appealing to the evidence of history (cf. Beiser 2007). Beiser recently refined that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-13

216  Anthony Jensen characterization as a grand “attempt to historicize the world, to see everything in the cultural and natural world as the product of history” (Beiser 2022: 3). In this latter sense of the word, historicism remains a principal philosophical orientation, encompassing any inquirers who investigate a problem, trend, norm, institution, or idea generally in terms of its relationship to the past. Yet since the word ‘historicism’—like all ‘isms’ and ‘ists’—references no ontologically real inherent quality of a thing so much as a semantic heuristic coined to describe a set of characteristics, wading into an argument about the objectively correct definition of historicism will not be our intention here. Neither will it be our aim to definitively classify certain thinkers as historicists or not. And neither will it be to condemn or defend the historicist orientation as a preferable or deleterious trend in philosophy. In keeping with the theme of the present volume, this chapter will consider historicism as a practice of truth—a manner of approaching the investigatory task whose end is to describe or explain some phenomenon. Once that change of approach is granted, it becomes clear that the umbrella of historicism covers several quite distinct practices. Accordingly, this chapter will consider a variety of historicisms as unique practices that approach their respective investigations by utilizing the past in distinct ways. The question is not ‘what’ history teaches, so much as ‘how’ it is employed by certain philosophers in the course of their practices. As a suggested organizing principle, I propose that that ‘how’ may be spoken about productively as one of four distinct modal relations: history is (1) helpful, (2) necessary, (3) sufficient, or (4) prohibitory in the practice of pursuing truth. And that ‘how’ has, over the course of history, a myriad of distinct exemplars over the past centuries, though we will limit this article to (5) phenomenological, (6) genealogical, (7) existential, and (8) anti-­realist. The result of this consideration will not be a systematic or exhaustive vision of historicism. But it will hopefully illuminate several distinct practices of historicism as a relation between the past and the pursuit of truth. 12.1 Helpful It would be too tedious to enumerate all the thinkers who reference the past as an aid in their investigations. One could well argue that the entire sphere of the social sciences requires of its researchers some reference to history, from the psychologist who begins their diagnosis by asking questions about a patient’s parents’ history with depression, to the politician who references some idyllic past to exhort their policies, to the economist who projects the present-­day precariousness of markets by reference to similar patterns in the past. In each case, the social science practitioner

Historicism as a Truth Practice  217 marshals the past in defense of some psychological, political, or economic claim in order to help its author make their point. That help may consist, for the psychologist, as a heuristic that suggests a higher or lower probability of certain classifications of maladies, allowing them, like a detective, to narrow their searches to the most likely suspects. Or the reference to the past can help as a sort of emotionally provocative rhetorical gesture for the politician intent to conner support for a bill. Or the past can serve as an orienting rudder for the economist faced with an uncertain market ­venture. While marshaling history can help in these functions and many others, in each case, their references to the past cannot logically demonstrate, prove, or predict their explanandum. Knowing a patient’s parents’ history can help, but is not necessary to form a diagnosis of, say, some hormonal imbalance. Exhaustive historical knowledge of the rise and fall of markets helps the economist’s confidence, but can hardly be considered sufficient to predict the future course of the market with any certainty. Reference to the past is thus helpful, but neither necessary nor sufficient for the doctor to properly diagnose, for the politician to win votes, or for the economist to play the market profitably. Among philosophers who strive to be more precise with such relationships, many have referred to some aspect of history as a gauge of probability, a purely rhetorical gesture, or else as an orienting factor within their inquiries. An example, though by no means the only one, would be Aristotle, who tends to utilize endoxa in a variety of such ways. Rarely providing axiomatic foundations for his arguments, especially in practical philosophy, Aristotle more typically starts his philosophical practice rooted loosely in ‘what has been said’ or ‘what many believe.’ As he explains in the Topics, the endoxa can express opinions common among the people, the views of experts, or the views of well-­known public figures (Topics I. 1; 100a30– b23).1 They are not just opinions, but opinions that have a history of being argued about such that they have prevailed over rival opinions. Aristotle does not treat an endoxa as proof so much as an investigatory launching pad to orient the reader, to emphasize the importance or novelty of what will eventually conclude, or sometimes to imply the incoherence of an inherited opinion. Some endoxa are more plausible and are helpful in allowing Aristotle to refine the popular argument or encourage more careful distinctions in meaning. But, rightly so, Aristotle never marshals such opinions, however plausible, as necessary or sufficient for his own demonstrations. John Stuart Mill is another example. Even if he denies historical studies of science are as valuable as natural observation combined with induction, Mill thinks historical inquiry of at least a loose sort is helpful in forming moral judgments in especially difficult cases.2 That is, where the determination of which action among many would bring about greater utility is

218  Anthony Jensen unclear, history provides the answer with at least moderate assurance. Mill insists, [T]there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, is dependent. (Mill 2001: 23f) To be wholly unaware of what has historically made human beings more or less happy hinders the proper adjudication of ethical dilemmas according to the principles of Utilitarianism. Thus, history is quite helpful in ethical deliberation, though hardly necessary or sufficient. 12.2 Necessary Beyond the presumption of helpfulness, it would be difficult to find a professional historian who denied the past was necessary to investigate the truth of some matter, though the grounds on which that necessity rests range widely. The father of history, Herodotus, begins his ‘Histories’ by making clear that presumption: The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-­Greeks; among the matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-­Greeks.3 Herodotus wishes to study a then-­contemporary phenomenon—namely, the Greco-­Persian conflict. Necessary to that end is the study of the development of the cultures in question. Without understanding the rise of the Phoenicians, the unifying political strategies of Croesus of Lydia, or the ascendency of Cyrus and Xerxes, the contemporary phenomenon cannot be properly understood. Herodotus never explains exactly why the clash between cultures in his day could not be a matter of a merely contemporary quarrel. He instead presumes the causation must go back as far as recorded history and even hearsay can go to fully understand the hostility. Consider, in a more contemporary iteration, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. While propagandist media may portray the Russian invasion as the inexplicably spontaneous decision of an unhinged demagogue on ­February 24, 2022, it would be unthinkable for any professional historian to ignore the lengthy history of aggressions, negotiations, and reneged agreements between Russia and Ukraine’s Western allies at least since the

Historicism as a Truth Practice  219 end of the Cold War. Just as Herodotus presumed, if one wants the true explanation for the invasion, it is necessary to turn in earnest to the past. There are several ways philosophers have taken up the historian’s practice of studying a thing’s historical development as a necessary condition of understanding a thing’s present-­ day instantiation. First, that without accounting for history, an inquiry will necessarily misrepresent the nature of the thing in question; second, that an inquiry is theoretically impossible without accounting for that phenomena’s history; or third, that insofar as history determines the meaning of the concepts being discussed, ignorance of a thing’s history renders the investigation meaningless. Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (1755) begins with the assumption that a genetic account of civilization must underscore anthropological analysis—to accurately view some of the inequalities among men as unnatural, one must first understand how they could have arisen. To study the nature of man by merely observing what he is today is akin to making a claim about the nature of Greek sculpture based on a contemporary glance at the statue of Glaucus: possible to do, but necessarily misrepresentative. Weathered over the ages to the point of disfigurement, too, the investigation of the human essence must go through a sort of regression analysis whereby the researcher strips away anything that the accidents of history have put upon man, including civil society, property, language, and all but the most basic forms of rationality. And so, history is not merely helpful but indeed necessary to Rousseau’s practice, even if that practice tends to be quite speculative. Without the past, any claims about the nature of man will be a misrepresentation. Hume, whose massive History of England (1754–1762) profoundly impacted his philosophical practice, considered the history of the development of the Whigs and Tories the necessary condition for discerning their mindsets today—in a way not wholly dissimilar from Herodotus (cf. Hume 1983: Appendix 3). To understand contemporary religious debates, Hume again advocated for the study of the Natural History of Religion (1757) as a way of describing the psychological factors underpinning religious convictions for the sake of understanding the motives of his contemporaries. To understand not only politics or religion but indeed human nature at all, historical inquiry about the common life—about customs as they have developed historically—is quite necessary. Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or

220  Anthony Jensen to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation. (Hume 1999: 45f.) Even beyond these functions, the past—even if not in this case ‘history’ in the academic sense—is for Hume the condition for the possibility of thinking any matter of fact. According to his famous ‘copy’ principle of idea formation, the presence of an idea of any matter of fact requires a prior impression from which it was evidently copied, either directly or in combination with other impressions. Where a subject would claim to have an idea, it is incumbent that she supply the impression or impressions she had had from which that idea was copied; and where there is no possible prior impression, there simply is no possible idea. Because no thinkable matter of fact is entirely independent of some prior experience, the past is entirely necessary. So, for Hume, there is a necessity in the first form listed earlier— namely, that without accounting for the histories of politics, the psychology of religion, or customs, the study of the object is incomplete to the point of misrepresentation. But beyond that, his empiricism suggests necessity in the second form as well— namely, that without past impressions the formation of ideas concerning any matter of fact is theoretically impossible. That history is not merely helpful to other philosophical projects but indeed necessary is a central aspect of sociological thinkers like Marx, Weber, and indeed to many stripes of critical theorists as well. Marx, for example, could not progress a single step in his critique of capitalism without first describing the history of its forms of alienation, its disastrous effects on several past cultures, and in general how it developed out of a fundamentally exploitative historical relationship. It was not merely an accidental feature of what happened to pass for his day’s capitalism, but a fatal flaw evident throughout capitalistic societies insofar as it has always treated the worker as a commodity alongside other commodities. To prove that capitalism was thus rotted, root to branch, a great deal of history was obviously necessary, so much so that Marx and Engels spilled liters of ink describing countless examples of capitalist wrongdoing over time. The necessity of history here resembles more the first than the second form: to explain the ills of capitalism without reference to its history may be theoretically possible, but it would be incomplete to the point of misrepresentation to omit it entirely. The third sense of necessary connection between the past and the practice of investigation is less prominent. In the sciences, even if they largely retained the positivist veneration of immutable and absolute truth demonstrated by reason, historicism entered with the thought of Thomas Kuhn (1970). His Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962/1970) traced the

Historicism as a Truth Practice  221 history of scientific advance in a way that noted the vacillation between periods of ‘normal’ science, wherein dominant theories are increasingly fleshed out and explicated more fully, and ‘revolutionary’ science which proceeds from the incommensurability between certain concepts within a given paradigm. When incommensurability is too pronounced to allow normal science to advance, a revolution emerges that embraces a new set of fundamental questions and a new framework for thinking about problems. That revolution, if successful, eventually gives way to a new paradigm of normal science wherein once again a scientist progresses by solving or better explaining problems within the existing paradigm. To understand the cogency of Ptolemaic or Copernican astronomy, or the superiority of Einsteinian to Newtonian physics, it is not enough to look at the data or proofs in an a-­historical fashion to discern which is ‘truer.’4 The meaningfulness and consequently the preferability of competing explanations are necessarily dependent on the paradigm within which they were issued. As such, the history of science, for Kuhn, is not merely idle trivia—something separate from genuine science. The history of science is entirely necessary, as it is the condition for the possibility of assessing the cogency of a scientific theory or explanation relative to the historically contingent paradigm within which it operates. Without historical awareness of the operative paradigms governing a possible explanation, no scientific proposition’s meaning can be assessed. 12.3 Sufficient A more radical performance of historicism presumes that understanding an object’s development over time is sufficient to understand the object. As with (1) and (2), there are a few different senses of the phrase ‘sufficient for truth.’ First, knowledge of a thing’s development logically exhausts knowledge of the thing insofar as there is nothing knowable beyond that historical development. Second, the knowledge of a thing’s development practically constitutes knowledge of the thing since there is nothing further worth knowing that would contribute to a complete description of the thing. Third, the knowledge of a thing’s development is sufficient to rhetorically convince a reader of a more general proposition. Giambattista Vico is in the first sense perhaps most representative, with his ‘Verum-­ Factum’ principle: “verum (the true) and factum (what is made) are interchangeable, or to use the customary language of the Schools, they are convertible” (Vico 1988: 45). We can only truly know the causes of what it is we ourselves have caused, for Vico. The natural world, created by God, can only be wholly known by God. The human world—which is to say the civil world of artificial things, customs, and social relations—is what human beings have made. As history is, for Vico,

222  Anthony Jensen the record of what human beings have made, it is thus history alone that can be known by them fully and exhaustively. Nothing non-­historical can be known insofar as it was not made by humans. The extent of what we can know is precisely the extent of a thing’s history. There is no means by which we can know anything beyond what its history has made it to be. The entirety of society today, for example, can be known to the degree that it manifests what Vico, in his New Science (1725), thinks is the ‘Ideal History’—a sort of historical version of a Platonic idea that every culture necessarily embodies in one expression or another. “Men first felt necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance” (Vico 1984: 241). This truth of all world cultures is only discernible insofar as we are the ones who, over history, have made it. Thus our knowledge of world history, of what was made, is constitutive of all that can possibly be known, and is thus convertible with what can be called ‘true.’ For J. G. Herder, the practice of history was not only necessary to understand a sociocultural phenomenon but like Vico, actually sufficient for that understanding. In his Yet Another Philosophy of History of the Development of Humanity (1774), Herder’s object of study was the human mind as it expressed itself via cultures, languages, and social interactions.5 But what he immediately found in each was the irreducibility of any of them beyond their iterations within particular historical frameworks. A historical understanding—via a sort of intuitive sympathetic awareness that he labels ‘sich einfühlen’ or ‘feeling oneself into’—of the inner mentalities of historically and geographically diverse peoples of itself constitutes what is valuable to know of them.6 Details about the times or locations of events, trivia about fashions, weaponry, political party membership, etc., although often discussed in petty histories, add nothing to our understanding of the genuine object sought—namely, the inner life of the people in question. And what can be known genuinely in this sense, is the historical manifestation of a manner of consciousness that the real historian can parse by that sympathetic awareness. To feel a people from the inside is tantamount to knowing them as far as is worth knowing. In that sense, the genuine practice of history—the sympathetic einfühlen—is sufficient for determining the real truth about any of those subjects. For the scores of anthropologists and natural historians that followed him, Herder was a major antidote to Enlightenment a-­historicism (cf. Zammito 2001). While it would be impossible to recount how many historical theorists have rested once they have provided a historical justification or criticism of a thing’s origin or development, a famous recent adoption is Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997). Diamond wishes to argue that the current hegemony of European culture is an

Historicism as a Truth Practice  223 accident contingent upon the comparatively more fortunate historical conditions in which it developed, especially in terms of geography, which in turn provided accidental advantages in animal domestication and with that nutrition and certain key germ antibodies, and so on. Diamond mostly ignores essentialism or certainly any form of ‘divine right’ explanation out of hand. The historical description of these material facts, he evidently feels, is sufficient to establish the thesis that European hegemony was quite accidental. His entire justification for that thesis is historical: describing the historical contingencies distinguishing cultures is sufficient to make his case. In this sense ‘sufficiency’ does not mean either ‘logically exhaustive’ or else ‘no possible alternative.’ For Diamond, and for many sociological historical theorists, describing select historical incidents is sufficient to establish a more general ‘truth’ about the matter they investigate. Logically, there are two problems with argument strategies like Diamond’s. Drawing a universal conclusion—that the success or failure of any society is an accident of material conditions—on the basis of particular historical examples—the relative calm of Mediterranean seas, etc.—violates the inductive fallacy. Suggesting that Western culture’s value today is somehow lessened due to its accidental historical development violates the genetic fallacy. Yet even if arguments like these are strictly fallacious, there is an undeniably powerful rhetorical influence of such thinking on the general populace. Consider the “1619 Project,” which implies the universally racist character of the United States today due to the undeniable racism of some people 400 years ago: pointing out some truly despicable examples is at least rhetorically sufficient for many readers to denounce the country entirely as endemically racist (cf. Hannah-­Jones et al. 2021). A similar ‘sufficiency’ historicist orientation fosters many other condemnations of contemporary social, racial, or gendered discriminations: to know the history of the development of such tendencies is sufficient for them to condemn anything that is entailed by that development or made possible by that development today. 12.4 Prohibitive The fourth relation whereby historicists marshal the past for the sake of a truth-­seeking practice is a negative one: history is in some way prohibitive to the search for truth. At least as Plato construes it, there is an acute problem for anyone who holds that knowledge can consist in a relation between unchanging Eidoi and a changing world. This is the problem with Heraclitus, who “says that all things go and nothing stays, and comparing existents to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river” (Plato, Cratylus 402a. Cf. Hussey 1982). Where the object of knowledge can both be and not be what it is due to change, there can be

224  Anthony Jensen conjecture or opinion but no immutable universal knowledge. Only of those things that are unchanging—mathematical universals and formal Eidoi—can there be hypotheses and genuine knowledge, respectively. History, which always treats what comes to be and passes away but never what is eternally, is consequently removed from the practice of truth-­ seeking as a distraction at best and a corrupting influence at worst. Thus, where one practices history there is no truth, and where one seeks truth there can be no practice of history. History and the practice of truth are mutually prohibitive. While Plato’s influence went far and wide through any philosophers or theologians who associated the search for truth with some relation to a supranatural realm, thereby subordinating or even excluding the role of history, it was Schopenhauer who most vitriolically condemned history as entirely antithetical to the pursuit of truth in his infamous essay on history in the second volume of the World as Will and Representation (1819). Several critiques run parallel to Plato’s critique of the poeticizing historians: they play so fast and loose with facts—highlighting what they want, omitting what they want—that they can only be considered unreliable story-­spinners rather than lovers of genuine truth (cf. Schopenhauer 1977: IX, 233).7 Schopenhauer held that knowledge was demonstrable and open to prediction, whereas history could only describe and identify trends. This was because science deals in universal concepts, whereas history deals merely with individuals in their individuality: “as history has to do with the absolutely particular and with individuals, which by their nature are inexhaustible, it knows everything only imperfectly and partially” (Schopenhauer 1977: III, 516). But most fundamental, for Schopenhauer, is that the kind of object history offers is something entirely contradictory to what truth seeks. Truth is about Ideas—universal immutable kinds—that are not subject to spatiotemporal alteration. Whereas the physicist talks about force as a universal phenomenon and the biologist talks of species without reference to the immediate individual, the historian always speaks of individuals living in particular places and times—and where they speak of war, humankind, abstract power, etc., they are more poet than historian. Accordingly, history prohibits the search for truth because it can only describe changing phenomena and comprehends nothing of the timeless and inner truth of reality. The material of history is the transient complexities of a human world moving like clouds in the wind, which are often entirely transformed by the most trifling accident. From this point of view, the material of history appears to us scarcely an object worthy of the serious and arduous consideration of the human mind. (Schopenhauer 1977: III, 517)

Historicism as a Truth Practice  225 Although in quite the opposite fashion, postmodern continental thinkers confirm the same hard division between the practice of history and the search for truth. But rather than deride history as a distraction to truth, the postmoderns deride truth as a sort of myth revealed as such by history. Whatever ‘truths’ are alleged have emerged as dominant narratives out of historical power struggles among competing views, discourses, and values. As Jean-­Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition (1979) characterizes the entire postmodern project as “incredulity toward meta-­narratives,” a critical recognition that what was presumed to have been demonstrated with logic and reason was no more than a historical accretion (Lyotard 1984: xxiv). This entails rejecting both the grand Hegelian ‘master discourse’ about progress and also the Enlightenment categories of generalization from which moral lessons are supposed to be derivable. Historical sense, and not the practice of seeking out what is true, is what allows postmoderns to challenge hegemonic ideas, values, and practices. The postmodernist’s job—as Derrida might have said—is to deconstruct what is taken to be ‘true’ by means of uncovering the historical disruptions and emergencies that constitute the ‘texts’ of the give. In this way, the postmoderns embrace precisely what Plato feared: they embrace history as a practice in order to disavow truth. Where one still seeks ‘truth,’ in the sense of a timeless and immutable correspondence between thought and the world, one must be willfully and woefully ignorant of history. Thus, from the opposite direction, they arrive at the same conclusion as Plato and Schopenhauer: that history and the pursuit of truth are mutually prohibitive. *** These four logical relationships between the past and the practice of seeking truth—that the past is helpful, necessary, sufficient, or prohibitive to the practice of pursuing truth—play themselves out in less or more complicated ways within a number of philosophical traditions. Although there is a great deal more to say, for the sake of brevity, I now turn to just a few of the most prominent: phenomenologists, existentialists, genealogists, and anti-­realists. 12.5 Phenomenologists Associated originally with Hegel and his Idealist followers and then right up through Dilthey and Husserl into the twentieth century, phenomenological history takes its bearing from Kant’s assertion that time is a matter of inner experience projected upon the world, which, along with the ideality of space, entails the objects of human understanding are phenomenal. To be conscious of history is a practice of experiencing the past in the ways the structures of the mind permit. Schelling picked up the lead here,

226  Anthony Jensen suggesting in his earlier attempts at a philosophy of nature and his later drafts for The Ages of the World (1811–1815) that the cosmic order is itself a kind of history whose progress follows the same structural patterns as the consciousness which alone can come to know that progress. As the transcendental self is a felt awareness of competing forces, so is the history of the formation of the cosmos and indeed all reality a sort of competition of polarities (Schelling 1856–1861: I/2, 23). “Nature is to be visible Geist, and mind invisible nature. Here, therefore, in the absolute identity of the mind in us and the nature outside us, the problem of how a nature outside ourselves is possible must dissolve” (Schelling 1856–1861: I/2, 56). Hegel’s famous equation of the actual (Wirklichkeit) and the rational (vernünftig) in the preface of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820) became an indicative phrase for the phenomenological project. Reason consists in both the awareness of contradiction and its sublimation by means of the speculative act of copulative synthesis, which at each stage results in an increased self-­recognition. At the same time, the development of history consists in a progressive structure of oppositions and their necessary synthetic sublimations, which leads to an ever-­increasing self-­awareness of freedom. The true proposition is, for just that reason, one that involves a processual thinking through an object’s development over time, its history, from its most commonsensical spatial-­ temporal interconnections to its most complex sociocultural ramifications. And in self-­conscious reflection on that act, I realize not only that my cognition constitutes history but also something more fundamental: that my thinking itself is constituted by the real movement of history. The project of philosophy in the context of history is thus “the thought that Reason rules the world, and that world history has therefore been rational in its course” (Hegel 1988: 12f.). In this sense, Hegel thinks there is a reciprocal necessity within history for seeking truth. To understand history properly necessarily requires us to understand reality as the gradual unfolding of Geist, and to understand Geist properly requires necessarily the proper understanding of history as a teleological progress of the self-­consciousness of freedom. Beyond necessity, it seems that Hegel also thinks phenomenological history is also sufficient for truth in the first and second senses. There is, for Hegel, no proposition outside the processual advance of Geist that proper philosophy could deem as true, and the objects of proper philosophy—mental processes, forms of social arrangement, art, or religion, etc.—are sufficiently explained once their relationship to the historical process has been adequately supplied. Thinkers like Husserl and Merleau-­Ponty would later give a more psychologically complex description of what cognition slowly unveils to us of objects within an interconnected Lebenswelt or ‘lifeworld.’ We intentionally interpret our world in ways that reveal a mutually constitutive practice. Our mind and the world both work on each other, so to speak, as a

Historicism as a Truth Practice  227 continual and mutually constructive activity that takes place within historical time. To orient ourselves self-­consciously in thinking is to bring to bear the full historical ramifications of our lives as subjects and a thing’s ‘life’ as an object in that mutually implicative relationship that constitutes what Wilhelm Dilthey would label the ‘Wirkungszusammenhang’—a productive nexus point where the interwoven temporal modalities of consciousness meet both with what historical forces have constituted and also with what future purposes we project of such an object in order to be such an object. Whenever we think, we cannot but bring to bear the historical realities that constitute our experience of objects, “the positive or negative value of the realities that fill it are experienced through feeling. And when we face the future, the category of purpose arises through a projective attitude” (Dilthey 2002: 222). Phenomenological history invites us to consider not so much true or false statements about the past, so much as our own subjective facticity in how we reconstruct that past. In that sense, phenomenological history is explicitly a practice of truth-­making as constrained by the past and anticipatory of the future, a sort of narrative constructing of our lives and of the world we encounter.8 As such a practice, it gradually reveals over a time of continuous reflection the authentic richness of the world and our experience of it. More than merely ‘helpful’ and in no way ‘prohibitive,’ phenomenology certainly presumes the necessity of history in its pursuit of truth. 12.6 Existentialists A common tendency among psychologically-­ perspicuous essayists and novel writers—for example, Montaigne, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, and Hesse—is the presumption that one reveals oneself to oneself in large part by way of reflecting on the project through which a person becomes who they are. Each either explicitly or implicitly denies that what we are as human beings is given or fixed. Focused more on the human person than a comprehensive system to explain reality, existentialists nevertheless employ history in their practice in a way consistent with the phenomenologists: at times as necessary and at times sufficient for understanding ourselves. We are projects, works in progress that emerge from our pasts and aim toward a future. To understand that project it is necessary to engage with our spiritual and material historical conditions. But it is not the case, for the existentialists, that understanding an agent’s past is sufficient for determining what courses those life projects will take. Jean-­Paul Sartre is explicit about this. In his novels, and especially in Being and Nothingness (1943), he rebuts the essentialist vision of a human being that had so long been presumed from Platonists to Christians to Cartesians. We are in a deep sense the actions we choose. And those

228  Anthony Jensen actions are performed out of what determinate historical-­material conditions have made possible and will make possible. Those conditions, however, are not exhaustively determinate. Despite our tendency to blame historical conditions for our shortcomings, we are radically free, indeed, ‘condemned’ to be free. Whether it is the athlete who ‘chooses’ to be tired at a particular moment of the race or a soldier who ‘chooses’ just to follow the orders of the leaders history has seated to rule over him, we live life in ‘good faith’ when we acknowledge our material conditions and even at the same time our freedom to at least choose what to do with them. In this sense, the Sartrian existentialist needs history to understand the conditions in which their life project is carried out. However, even a complete accounting of a person’s historical conditions is not sufficient for determining what acts they choose to enact within the constraints of those conditions. Martin Heidegger thinks the horizon of our very being—including our thinking—is the temporal order into which we find ourselves thrown. What makes human life a distinctive “Dasein” or ‘Being-­there’ is its historicity, what Heidegger calls ‘Geschichtlichkeit.’ From a person’s recognition of herself as part of a larger world to the recognition of objects in the full scope of their relationships with all other things, life, for Heidegger, is a continual practice of making oneself a self-­conscious or ‘authentic’ temporal being thrown into the historical circumstances of their lifeworld (cf. Heidegger 1962: 65–72; Heidegger 1985). Especially in Division II of his Being and Time (1927), Heidegger calls us to live authentically in a way that attempts to break free from the conditions of our material pasts and orient ourselves to the commonly-­fated future of our individual deaths. So, Heidegger’s existentialism entails the necessity of the awareness of how the past conditions the kinds of persons we are. But, similar to Sartre, the existentialist’s emphasis on freedom as the condition for any investigation into the truth of the nature of the human person entails the insufficiency of history alone. 12.7 Genealogists Like phenomenology and existentialism, genealogy is defined and implemented somewhat differently by each of those who practice it. Roughly speaking, genealogists consider their practice of truth-­seeking a continual project in which they are themselves enmeshed as contributors, assessing traditions from within them. At least speaking to our purposes here, they differ from existentialists insofar as their investigatory range spans more widely, into the entirety of human ideas, relations, cultures, and institutions. They differ from phenomenologists, again, at least for our purposes, both insofar as the objects of their investigation are not considered

Historicism as a Truth Practice  229 ontologically fixed or having an ultimate expression and also insofar as the continued revelation of the phenomenologists is considered ‘deeper,’ ‘richer,’ or ‘more comprehensive,’ whereas the genealogist rejects a teleological notion of fulfillment for an ever-­present continual process of revelation to which they contribute. Although varied in their ideals and practice, genealogists hold that to pursue the truth of any matter of inquiry –whether an object, a tradition, a norm, a power relation, a political development, or even the value of truth itself—it is at the very least helpful to know the conditions under which that matter came to be. Some genealogists hold the ‘necessity’ or even the ‘sufficiency’ relationship, though some do not, and, again, what exactly those terms mean varies. And there is even a genealogist—the first major canonical philosopher to have employed genealogy explicitly—who considered the past ‘prohibitive’ to the search for truth. Friedrich Nietzsche uses genealogy as an explicit strategy to call into question long-­ orthodox philosophical ideas and especially values by means of pointing out strands of competing power interests from which they historically emerged. “[U]nder what conditions did man invent the value judgments good and evil? And what value do they have in themselves?” (Nietzsche 1988, 249f.). In consecutive essays in his On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche exposes the history of Judeo-­ Christian values of good and evil, punishment, and the ideal of asceticism—guiding the reader to consider where these conventions originated, under what sociological circumstances they arose, and in what ways the concepts further or hinder the power interests of those in whom they emerge. In other places in his corpus, he genealogizes canonical philosophical concepts like substance, causality, the principle of noncontradiction, justice, truth, the self, and even himself as an object of knowledge. This genealogical practice, in Nietzsche’s usage, does little in the positive sense of ‘proving’ the validity or invalidity of this or that claim to truth. It’s not clear that Nietzsche thinks any mode of explanation is either necessary or sufficient to demonstrate truth, or whether he even thinks truth exists, much less is worth pursuing. But though they are logically separate, genealogy does helpful deconstructive work in a rhetorical and psychological fashion by exposing and thereby undermining rather than disproving beliefs. The historical refutation as the decisive one.— Once it was sought to prove that there was no God—now it is shown how the belief that a God existed could have emerged, and by what means the belief gained authority and importance: in this way, the counterproof that there is not God becomes unnecessary and superfluous. (Nietzsche 1988: 86)

230  Anthony Jensen Genealogy thus uses the past to prohibit a-­temporal universalist or essentialist claims to truth about various phenomena. As a practice, Nietzsche uses genealogy, on the one hand, as a helpful tool of belief deconstruction and, on the other, as a prohibition against absolutist or universalist declarations of true values. Yet, beyond its critical function, there is a definite positive enjoinder that the genealogical interpreter adds their own voice to the chorus of interpreters, to create new values and instantiate new narratives as truths themselves even while tearing down the belief in old values and truths (cf. Jensen 2019). With his repeated call for the creation of new values, history is again a negative sort of backdrop. Michel Foucault was the most noted implementer and expander of the genealogical practice of history. Foucault sees genealogy as a sort of pragmatic critical theory, wherein the genealogical practice problematizes hegemonic narratives that have traditionally served as justifications of ossified value systems.9 But unlike archaeology, which, Foucault thinks, attempts to find some supposed ‘true state of affairs’ that brought about values, genealogy is a continual process that locates values within power relationships both historically and in the present-­day reconstruction of those relationships. Notably in his work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault traces the emerging prevalence of psychological rather than physical punishment of criminals. He emphasizes that no single policy decision or even social utility ever brought about that shift, so much as a gradual transmogrification in the power interests of those wielding officially sanctioned power. The result was to reveal contemporary penal institutions as contingent confluences of emergent power interests rather than rationally justified societal norms. Perhaps more modest than Nietzsche’s exhortative version of genealogy, Foucault practices genealogy for the sake of describing knowledge and power dynamics for the sake of problematizing them without trying to offer solutions to those problems per se. In that sense, history is, for Foucault, necessary to understand the phenomena of punishment, the medical clinic, sexuality, etc., in the sense that no description that overlooked these phenomena’s history could be considered adequate. Moreover, unlike Nietzsche, it seems that Foucault regards the genealogical uncovering of inherited narratives more than a rhetorical aid; it is in fact sufficient for Foucault’s purposes to reveal those power struggles in the sense that there is nothing to the phenomena beyond those power struggles that can add to the adequate explanation of them—no eternal immutable essence of punishment, sexuality, etc., that would require some extra-­genealogical investigation to explain. Hannah Arendt stood roughly consistent with Foucault’s politically oriented practice of genealogy in a number of works, though perhaps to the greatest effect in her The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Arguing against the contemporary instantiation on historical grounds, Arendt

Historicism as a Truth Practice  231 locates the emergence as a crystallized confluence of imperialism, racism, and sociological tendencies to reduce individuals to groups.10 Beyond the critical function of revealing the origins of the heinous contemporary phenomenon, Arendt practices genealogy as a cautionary tale, helping to reveal what had disastrous social and political consequences was at the time a set of beliefs and institutions that were somewhat tolerated—­ something that must never happen again. The practice of genealogical history, for her, was not so much trying to demonstrate or prove the evils of totalitarianism—those, writing in 1951, she could safely presume—so much as unveil the historical conditions by which it emerged in order that those conditions may be prevented from ever crystallizing again. Genealogy, in Arendt’s idiom, is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove the ethical point about the evils of totalitarianism, but useful in serving as a sort of guard-­tower spotlight illuminating the slippery slope to tyranny. 12.8 Anti-Realists Anti-­realism here does not refer to the ontological view that denies an objective reality to things apart from the subject who represents them, and not to the moral view that would deny the objective reality of values either. Instead, it encompasses broadly any who would deny the adequate referentiality of propositions to an objective world outside what language or thought has created—a meta-­ epistemological orientation rather than something ontological or moral. Combining elements of the ‘sufficiency’ view and the ‘eliminative’ view, anti-­realist historical theorists of more recent decades have argued both that historical research shows there to be no possible adequate representation of the past and yet also that the historical act of itself creates a meaningful reality of its own practice. Drawing on Lyotard, Derrida, and especially Roland Barthes, Hayden White’s landmark Metahistory (1973) argued that historians construct a chronicle of events that reflects choices about what manner of emplotment they wish to communicate—whether history is a romance, comedy, tragedy, or satire. As they do, they decide what events, episodes, figures, etc., would contribute positively to inform the structure of their narrative. When complete, the historian purports to have described or explained an actual state of affairs that existed objectively outside of their reconstruction. But, as White shows, they have only ever constructed a narrative that intimates a reality beyond the discourse. What they purport as historical reality was never more than their own construction (White 1973: 2ff.; see also White 1978). White’s claim here seemed to invite the relativist’s objections. If history is no description of an objective state of affairs, then what differentiates historical narrative from literary fiction? If a historian can create whatever narrative they like, then why would such a story carry more

232  Anthony Jensen normative force than a literary fiction? White himself resisted this characterization by maintaining the objective truth of what factual ‘content’ the historian describes even while showcasing the subjective nature of the ‘form’ they choose to portray that content.11 Also following Roland Barthes, who coined the word, Frank Ankersmit was also keen to the ways historians communicate a ‘reality effect’ by their modes of narration (cf. Barthes 1989; Ankersmit 1989). Contrary to naive realists who ignore the subjective side of historical experience, Ankersmit’s practice of truth-­seeking involves recognizing the way logical representation enables the historian to weave together a reality out of the cloth of the raw past. Representation of the past is grounded in subjectivity, but subjectivity is itself grounded in more universal forms of rationality (cf. Ankersmit 1983). These more or less acceptable forms of representation themselves give answer to the relativist critique: accounts of the past, unlike mere literary narrative, are not value-­relative but either selected or discarded relevant to dominant patterns of representation. By extension, when we seek the truth of some state of affairs, it is not a matter of referential adequacy to an objective world order, so much as of aligned modes of accustomed representation. Just as the truth of advanced mathematics involves proper or improper representations of quantificational logic, so too are historical truths a proper or improper application of semantic or representational logic to various pieces of objective data. The general orientation of postmodernism found a ready partner in post-­colonialist studies in sociology, literature, and history. Edward Said’s famous Orientalism (1978) showcased how historians construct dominant narratives that result from geographical and racial power hegemonies. Those narratives in turn serve to shape the discourse as a sort of paradigm wherein the truth of a proposition is only a matter of the correct reference to what the paradigm itself has constructed. Instead of describing accurately some objective state of past affairs, history is a sort of feedback loop, creating the frameworks of meaning to fit historical data and mining the historical data to fit the frameworks of meaning. Especially nefarious, for Said, is the manner in which Western European, male, wealthy, educated historians have created a global historical narrative around their own values in confrontation with foreign ‘others.’ By doing this, Western historians do not seek truth so much as domination and theoretical subjugation over a foreign other, thereby reducing stories that lay outside that paradigm to a subservient position both sociologically and epistemically. Thus, for Said, it is the very practice of history that shows the untoward underpinnings of master-­narrative constructions that have traditionally been called ‘truths’ and yet at the same time contributes to their creation.

Historicism as a Truth Practice  233 12.9 Conclusion Whenever we describe practices of truth-­seeking, we necessarily encounter a plurality of views and voices aimed at a plurality of ends to which they may be more or less practically conducive. The same is true with ‘historicism.’ More often considered as a set of nineteenth-­century thinkers who employed some facts about the past as a justification for their philosophical conclusions, I have instead cast the net more widely to capture how a range of thinkers incorporate the past within their practice of seeking the truth. Considered as such a practice of relating the search for truth to an engagement with the past, several different investigatory orientations emerge. The past can be helpful, necessary, sufficient, or prohibitive in the search for truth. Each mode of practice has been instantiated by several thinkers, from Plato and Herodotus up to postmodernists like Lyotard, who each have been shown to exhibit idiosyncratic characterizations of that helpfulness, necessity, sufficiency, or prohibition. Somewhat more blended uses can be found in the practices of several important philosophical movements. Although one might very well discuss other movements—and discuss them in greater nuance than my more summary work can do here—I have only suggested how phenomenologists, existentialists, genealogists, and anti-­realists of various stripes have tended to utilize aspects of several of the orienting modes. Again, I have not pretended to offer a demonstrative or exhaustive interpretation of any of these figures or movements. But by this overview, I do hope to have shown that, in the practice of philosophy, historicism plays a central role in the myriad ways it links the past to its practice of investigation. Notes 1 A great deal has been written on Aristotle’s use of Endoxa. See among examples Most (1994), Renon (1998), and King (2013). 2 Christopher Macleod (2016) argues that Mill stood much more in keeping with nineteenth-­century historicism than is traditionally thought, especially in his lesser-­studied essays on Coleridge and Michelet. See also Heydt (2006). 3 Herodotus (1920: I.1, 0). 4 A classic account on the ramifications of Kuhn’s paradigm theory for truth claims generally is Hoyningen-­Huene (1989). 5 A solid collection of excerpts of Herder’s philosophy of history is Adler and Menze (1996). 6 On which see Beiser (2003, especially Chp. 3), also Forster (2018, especially Chp. 8). 7 For Schopenhauer’s critiques, see Jensen (2018). 8 A rich account on this score is Carr (1991). 9 An authoritative reconstruction of Foucault’s genealogy in a way that convincingly pulls his concept of historical problematization away from deconstructionism is Koopman (2013). 10 A quite fine treatment is Hyvönen (2021). 11 This is generally the argument of White (1990).

234  Anthony Jensen References Adler, Hans and Ernest A. Menze (eds.) (1996). On World History: Johann Gottfried Herder, an Anthology, Armonk, NY, M.E. Sharpe. Ankersmit, Frank (1983). Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historian’s Language. Leiden, Martinus Nijhoff Press. Ankersmit, Frank (1989). The Reality Effect in the Writing of History: The Dynamics of Historiographical Topology. Noord-­Hollandsche, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen. Barthes, Roland (1989). The Rustle of Language, translated by Richard Howard. Berkeley/Los Angeles, University of California Press, pp. 141–148. Beiser, Frederick (2003). The German Historicist Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beiser, Frederick (2007). “Historicism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, edited by Michael Rosen and Brian Leiter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 155–179. Beiser, Frederick (2022). “Historicism,” in The Routledge Companion to Historical Theory, edited by Cheil van den Akker. New York, Routledge, pp. 3–16. Carr, David (1991). Time, Narrative, and History. Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press. Diamond, Jared (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York/London, W.W. Norton. Dilthey, Wilhelm (2002). The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences, translated and edited by R. Makkreel & F. Rodi. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Forster, Michael (2018). Herder’s Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hannah-­Jones, Nicole et al. (eds.) (2021). The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. New York, One World. Hegel, Georg W. F. (1988). Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1837), translated by L. Rauch. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing. Heidegger, Martin (1962). Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, pp. 65–72. Heidegger, Martin (1985). History of the Concept of Time, translated by T. Kisiel. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Herodotus (1920). Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Heydt, Colin (2006). Rethinking Mill's Ethics: Character and Aesthetic Education. London, Continuum. Hoyningen-­Huene, Paul (1989). Die Wissenschaftsphilosophie Thomas S. Kuhns: Rekonstruktion und Grundlagenprobleme. Braunschweig, F. Vieweg. Hume, David (1983). History of England. Carmel, IN, Liberty Classics. Hume, David (1999). Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Hussey, Edward (1982). “Epistemology and Meaning in Heraclitus,” in Language and Logos, edited by M. Schofield and M. C. Nussbaum. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 33–59.

Historicism as a Truth Practice  235 Hyvönen, Ari-­Elmeri (2021). “Genealogy of Experiential Frames: Methodological Notes on Arendt, Genealogy 5, pp. 42–66. Jensen, Anthony (2018). “Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of History,” History and Theory 57 (3), pp. 349–370. Jensen, Anthony (2019). “Nietzsche and the Truth of History,” in The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Thomas Stern. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 249–272. King, Colin G. (2013). “False ἔνδοξα and fallacious argumentation,” Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 15, pp. 185–199. Koopman, Colin (2013). Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Kuhn, Thomas (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Lyotard, Jean-­François (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated by G. Bennington & B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Macleod, Christopher (2016). “Mill on History,” in A Companion to Mill, edited by C. Macleod & D. Miller. Malden, MA, Wiley-­Blackwell, pp. 266–278. Meinecke, Friedrich (1936). Die Entstehung des Historismus. München/Berlin: R. Oldenbourg. Mill, John Stuart (2001). Utilitarianism, edited by George Sher. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing. Most, Glenn (1994). “The Uses of Endoxa: Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Rhetoric,” in Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays, edited by D. J. Furley and A. Nehamas. Princeton, Princeton University Press, pp. 167–190. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1988). Genealogie der Moral, in F. Nietzsche, Kritische Studien Ausgabe, ed. by G. Colli & M. Montinari, 15 vols., vol. 5. Berlin, De Gruyter. Popper, Karl (1957). The Poverty of Historicism. London: Routledge. Renon, Vega (1998). “Aristotle's Endoxa and Plausible Argumentation,” Argumentation 12, pp. 95–113. Schelling, Friedrich W. J. (1856–1861). Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature as an Introduction into the Study of this Science (1797), in Sämmtliche Werke, edited by K.F.A. Schelling, 2 divisions, 14 vols. Stuttgart: Cotta. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1977). Zürcher Ausgabe: Werke in zehn Bänden, edited by Arthur Hübscher et al. Zürich: Diogenes Verlag. Süßmann, Johannes 2012. “Historicising the Classics: How Nineteenth-­Century German Historiography Changed the Perspective on the Historical Tradition,” in Thucydides and the Modern World: Reception, Reinterpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Katherine Harloe and Neville Morley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 77–93. Vico, Giambattista (1984). The New Science of Giambattista Vico (1744), translated by Bergin & Fisch. Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press. Vico, Giambattista (1988). On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language, translated by L. M. Palmer. Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press.

236  Anthony Jensen White, Hayden (1973). Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th-­Century Europe. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press. White, Hayden (1978). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press. White, Hayden (1990). The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press. Zammito, John (2001). Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Modern Anthropology. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

13 Genealogy as a Practice of Truth Nietzsche, Foucault, Fanon Daniele Lorenzini

With regard to expression, intention, and the art of surprise, the three essays that make up this Genealogy are perhaps the most uncanny things written so far. Dionysus, as is known, is also the god of darkness. — In each case, a beginning that should be deceptive: cool, scientific, even ironic, intentionally foreground, intentionally evasive. Gradually increasing unrest; scattered moments of sheet lightning; the muffled roar of very unpleasant truths becoming increasingly audible in the distance,—until finally a tempo feroce is reached where everything presses forward with a tremendous tension. In each case, an ending with absolutely terrible detonations, a new truth visible between thick clouds. Nietzsche (2005, 135–136)

This chapter has two main, interconnected goals. On the one hand, I argue that, even though the major forms taken by genealogy throughout the history of philosophy seem to make it impervious to truth, there is an important sense in which genealogy, specifically as conceived of and practiced by Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, is a practice of truth. How to make sense of this claim? The first two sections address this question and show that the (Nietzschean and Foucauldian) genealogist aims to produce “new truths” that function as disruptive ethico-political forces destabilizing current modes of thinking and being, and creating the concrete possibility for the emergence of new possibilities for thought and action. The third and final section, on the other hand, builds on these insights to argue that Frantz Fanon’s psychiatric writings, too, can be construed as genealogical practices of truth. By doing so, I will not only muster further, and clearer, evidence for my conclusions in the second section but also provide an alternate framework to make sense of Fanon’s own contribution to critical theory broadly construed—one that doesn’t reduce him either to the tradition of historical materialism, or to critical phenomenology or

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-14

238  Daniele Lorenzini phenomenological psychiatry alone. Far from reducing, in turn, Fanon’s work to Nietzsche’s or Foucault’s genealogical writings, however, I argue that the latter’s “truth-making” goal takes on a unique form in Fanon’s psychiatric writings by virtue of being explicitly connected with his project of politicizing and empowering colonized people. 13.1 Genealogy: A (Tentative) Taxonomy Genealogy has taken many forms, targeted different objects, and been used with varying aims throughout the history of philosophy. In its broadest sense, genealogy can be defined as a narrative describing how X has come about, where X can be a belief, a value, a concept, a practice, an institution, and so on. This narrative can be fictional, conjectural, or real—and it is often unclear where a given genealogy exactly falls in this regard. Many genealogies actually combine more than one approach. For instance, we might be hesitant, and rightly so, to follow Nietzsche in describing his own genealogy of Christian morality as “a real history of morality” (Nietzsche 1997, 8), but it is hard to understand whether his description of the slave revolt in morality and the emergence of the ascetic ideal is to be taken as a merely fictional narrative, as a conjectural one, or as providing an account of actual historical events through the lens of their psychological effects on different social groups. On the other hand, it is tempting to consider Foucault’s genealogy of the prison in Discipline and Punish (1995) as a real narrative since it thoroughly relies on archival sources and historical documents, but Foucault himself famously characterizes it, along with many of his other books, as a “fiction” (Foucault 1977, 213; 1978, 242), thus alerting us to the difference that he draws between his genealogical projects and traditional histories of madness, the prison, or sexuality (Foucault 1978, 242; 1984a, 456). The difference between traditional historical approaches and genealogical approaches has been construed in many ways (see, e.g., Geuss 1994; Saar 2008), but it seems to ultimately amount to what makes genealogy a properly philosophical—and, in a loose sense, normative—task: genealogy cannot remain “neutral” vis-à-vis its target because it always aims to vindicate or destabilize it. Indeed, as Foucault puts it, writing a genealogy always entails that the starting point of the analysis be “a current question” (Foucault 1984a, 460). Of course, a history of X—say, the French ­Revolution—can and likely will also produce effects on its readers that give them reasons to form specific judgments about X or to revise prior ones: vindicatory judgments if the French Revolution is presented as one of the crucial historical events that contributed to the formation of the modern values of individual freedom, democracy, and human rights, or critical judgments if it is construed as an episode in the longer history of Western

Genealogy as a Practice of Truth  239 imperialism, ultimately reinforcing a set of values inherently linked to colonial exploitation and oppression. However, what is distinctive of genealogy is that its vindicatory or destabilizing goal, tightly connected with the “current question” that the genealogist chose to address, is inscribed at the very heart of the genealogical narrative—and that, consequently, it is not only “hard” to find “merely explanatory” genealogies (Craig 2007, 182), but properly speaking a merely explanatory genealogy—that is, one that simply accounts for the formation and current existence of X—is not a genealogy at all. Thus, while in many other respects illuminating, it seems to me that Matthieu Queloz’s characterization of “pragmatic genealogy” doesn’t capture the most crucial feature(s) of genealogy, even though it attempts to find the common denominator to genealogical projects as (apparently) different as Hume’s, Nietzsche’s, Craig’s, Williams’, or Fricker’s: if pragmatic genealogies are “partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these ideas do for us,” what point they serve, and why we came to have them (Queloz 2021, 2), this doesn’t seem to capture the philosophical specificity of genealogy as a necessarily vindicatory or destabilizing endeavor. The distinction that Bernard Williams (2002) draws between vindicatory and subversive genealogies has become standard in the literature: while vindicatory genealogies aim to show that, given some basic facts about human nature and society, it was necessary for X to take the form it has today (see, e.g., Craig 1990), subversive genealogies “provide a historical dissolution of self-evident identities” (Geuss 2002, 212), or, in other words, they aim to show that the form that X has today is only one of many divergent outcomes that were possible at a given point in the past. While therefore vindicatory genealogies aim to instill in their readers a sense of necessity, subversive genealogies aim to produce a sense of ­contingency—not only in relation to our past history but also vis-à-vis our present and our future. An interesting and somewhat “intermediate” case is what has been called “ameliorative” genealogy: an ameliorative genealogy “undertakes to evaluate the point of having a concept or structure of concepts (along with related practices) and proposes improved resources to fulfil them” (Haslanger 2012, 372). Fricker’s state-of-nature genealogy of testimonial justice, for instance, is a good example of an ameliorative genealogy: while vindicating the value of testimonial justice for the kind of beings that we are, it also acknowledges that we are still very far from realizing it in practice, thus aiming to motivate us to more systematically cultivate the virtue of testimonial justice to counteract the distorting influence of prejudice on our epistemic practices (Fricker 2007, 118). Thus, thinking that only subversive genealogies are critical would be a mistake. Ameliorative genealogies too are critical—albeit not of their

240  Daniele Lorenzini target, but of our current practices. Moreover, subversion is not the only way in which a genealogical narrative can destabilize its target. Recent scholarship has explored at least two other main possibilities: “problematization” and “possibilization.” Colin Koopman suggests that Foucauldian genealogy is a problematizing endeavor: indeed, Foucault’s genealogies retrieve “the set of discursive or non-discursive practices” that constituted X as “an object for thought” (Foucault 1984a, 456–457); by thereby revealing how they were constituted and are still concretely exercised, Foucault’s genealogies aim to make our beliefs, concepts, and practices problematic once again, thus “facilitating” the task of transforming them (Koopman 2013; see also Allen 2016; Erlenbusch-Anderson 2018). Genealogy’s goal, according to Foucault, is therefore not straightforwardly to subvert its target—like Nietzsche does by showing that Christian morality is detrimental to human flourishing, and even more so in the context of widespread nihilism characterizing nineteenth-century European society. Still, Foucault’s genealogies do aim to destabilize the apparent necessity of their targets and to open up the space for a new problematization of our beliefs, concepts, and practices. For instance, Foucault’s genealogy of the prison in Discipline and Punish doesn’t aim to directly subvert our current punitive practices, but it does aim to make them problematic once again (as they were at the end of the eighteenth century) and to motivate us to ask the question: Why do we punish people by putting them in jail? More generally: why and how should we punish people in our society? And, even more radically: should we punish at all? Incidentally, this feature of Foucault’s genealogies has led scholars to misinterpret him as being ultimately “neutral” vis-à-vis the target of his genealogies. It is true that, when reading Discipline and Punish, for instance, the absence of explicit moments of criticism of our current punitive practices can be puzzling; however, Foucault’s engagement in the Prisons Information Group and many of his interviews throughout the 1970s and early 1980s leave no doubt about his critical aims (see, e.g., Foucault 2009; Thompson and Zurn 2021). I return to this question below. I have recently suggested adding to this crucial feature of Foucauldian genealogy another dimension, which I call “possibilizing” (Lorenzini 2020). The idea is that Foucault’s genealogies do not only aim to make our beliefs, concepts, and practices problematic once again but that they also aim to create actual conditions for thinking and acting differently—and not just to “facilitate” this task for us. They do so, I argue, by incorporating in their narratives the description of moments of counter-conduct and resistance, that is, explicit instances where people fought against the power/ knowledge and governmental mechanisms that a given genealogy is addressing, trying to think and conduct themselves differently. This provides the readers of Foucault’s genealogies with a framework for alternate

Genealogy as a Practice of Truth  241 thought and action in the form of a trans-historical community of resistance, one that is directly instrumental to the transformation and widening of our current “field of possibilities” (Foucault 1982, 789–790). The “possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think” (Foucault 1984b, 315–316) is thus not an abstract possibility, one that we might be able to realize in ways that, however, genealogy doesn’t (and cannot) indicate, but a concrete one produced by genealogy itself and supported by a trans-historical, albeit often discontinuous, tradition of struggles. Hence, problematization and possibilization work together. We might say that they are the two sides of the same coin, of the same praxis aiming to destabilize our current beliefs, concepts, and practices—one that doesn’t rely on the postulate that power is evil in itself, but on the insight that it is nevertheless always dangerous, and that the most dangerous thing of all is for power/knowledge mechanisms to be allowed to become congealed and fixed, thus exhaustively structuring and immobilizing our field of possibilities for thought and action. 13.2 Genealogy and the Production of New Truths While developing this—tentative and schematic—taxonomy of some of the main forms of genealogy, I never used the term “truth.” Indeed, if truth, truthfulness, or truth-telling can and have been the targets of several genealogical projects (see, e.g., Foucault 2014; Williams 2002; Lorenzini 2023), it seems that when it comes to defining the forms and aims of genealogy, one should categorically avoid talking about truth. The genetic fallacy objection is well-known: it would be a mistake to posit a general entailment from X’s origin to X’s truth-value (where X is something that can be true or false, for instance, a belief), or, for that matter, to any other kind of value (pragmatic, moral, political, aesthetic, etc.) we could attribute to X. Nietzsche himself was well aware of this potential objection to genealogical arguments: as he writes in The Gay Science, “the history of origins” of moral judgments “is something quite different from a critique,” because “a morality could even have grown out of an error, and the realization of this fact would not as much as touch the problem of its value” (Nietzsche 2001, 202). Thus, construing genealogy’s upshots in terms of truth seems radically inappropriate: genealogy doesn’t aim to demonstrate that a target belief is false or a target concept is not apt, and to build an argument to prove that we should replace it with a true or an apt one. Even vindicatory genealogies do not seem to have as their goal that of demonstrating the truth-value of a given belief or the aptness of a given concept. As Queloz (2021) convincingly argues, state-of-nature genealogies à la Craig or ­Williams aim to offer a—partly fictional, partly historical—narrative of

242  Daniele Lorenzini why we came to think as we do, to use the concepts that we use, and to hold the beliefs that we hold, thus emphasizing the pragmatic function that these concepts and beliefs play in our life. However, while being able to show us the pragmatic origins of our epistemic practice of valuing truth or truthfulness, genealogy cannot itself be straightforwardly evaluated in terms of truth or falsity. Yet the puzzle here is that Nietzsche and Foucault both talk abundantly about truth when describing the effects that they hope their genealogies will produce on their readers, and more generally in the world. In the third essay of the Genealogy, Nietzsche famously claims that “the will to truth itself needs a justification,” whereas the ascetic ideal’s main manifestation in philosophy and science has consisted in treating the truth as a value beyond any possible critique—“truth was set as being, as God, as the highest authority itself, because truth was not allowed to be a problem” (Nietzsche 1997, 113). From the very moment that faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is denied, there is a new problem as well: that of the value of truth.—The will to truth needs a critique—let us define our own task with this—the value of truth must for once be experimentally called into question. (Nietzsche 1997, 113, trans. mod.) Yet Nietzsche’s genealogy doesn’t aim to show that truth has no value whatsoever and that we must simply do away with it. On the contrary, it aims to question the “unconditional” nature of our “will to truth,” that is, the idea that such a will doesn’t need any justification because truth is intrinsically valuable (Nietzsche 2001, 200), and thereby to open up the space for the creation of new values—and new truths. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche characterizes the Genealogy, and each of the three essays that compose it, as a “storm” that unsettles received opinions, values, and practices: a deceptively calm beginning is followed by the lightning and the roar of “very unpleasant truths” in the distance, until a conclusion is reached where, “between thick clouds,” a “new truth” becomes visible (Nietzsche 2005, 136). How to make sense of these claims? It is helpful here to turn to Foucault, whom I read as making an analogous move when attributing a “truth-making” aim to his genealogies. Even though he is often considered the champion of reductionism and relativism, with many commentators, including some of the most astute ones, arguing that his project ultimately aims to motivate us to get rid of truth altogether (see, e.g., Davidson 2001; Hacking 2002; Harcourt 2020), Foucault is very explicit in pointing out that “all those who say that for me the truth doesn’t exist are simple-minded” (Foucault 1984a, 456) and that “the task of speaking the truth is an infinite labor: to respect it in its

Genealogy as a Practice of Truth  243 complexity is an obligation that no power can afford to short-change, unless it would impose the silence of slavery” (Foucault 1984a, 464). In the same interview, Foucault adds that the ethical impulse underpinning the entirety of his work consists in “a diligent transformation, a slow and arduous modification by means of a constant concern for the truth” (Foucault 1984a, 461, trans. mod.). It is therefore hardly surprising that Foucault characterizes the overarching goal of his genealogies as that of producing truths—“new” truths, we could say borrowing Nietzsche’s expression. More precisely, while claiming that in a sense his books are works of “fiction” (rather than history), Foucault also explains that this doesn’t mean that they are “outside truth” because fiction (read: genealogy) can be made to “work within truth,” and it is possible “to induce effects of truth with a discourse of fiction [read: a genealogy], and to make it so that the discourse of truth creates, fabricates something that does not yet exist” (Foucault 1977, 213). Foucault thus attributes a very specific meaning to the term “fiction” in this context: a discourse has a “fictionalizing” function or effect when it creates something that did not exist before. Indeed, in 1979, Foucault draws a clear distinction between his genealogical work, on the one hand, and the work of a historian or a novelist, on the other. He now claims that what he writes are “historical fictions”: his genealogies, he explains, are selective and sometimes “exaggerated,” they do not take into account all possible “contradictory factors,” and they focus instead on “one trend” among many; nevertheless, they (aim to) produce an effect on people’s perception of the target phenomena—­ madness, prison, sexuality, etc. (Foucault 1979, 301). This means, for Foucault, that they “have a truth in current reality” (Foucault 1979, 301, trans. mod.). In other words, Foucault’s genealogies aim “to provoke an interference between our reality and what we know about our past history,” and when successful, this interference “will produce real effects in our present history”: for instance, the fact that during a period of prison revolts in France, some inmates were reading Discipline and Punish and “shout[ing] the text to other prisoners” is for Foucault “a proof of a truth—a political and concrete truth—which started after the book was written” (Foucault 1979, 301, trans. mod.). Thus, the “new truths” that Foucault’s genealogies aim to produce are not to be understood in epistemological terms: they are not truths that Foucault’s genealogies “discover” or “demonstrate” but the (political) effect of people reading and using Foucault’s books in order to transform themselves and the society in which they live. It is in this sense that their truth only exists “in the future” because it is produced by people using them as weapons within a social and political battlefield: Foucault’s genealogies are made true by the struggles of those who are fighting to inaugurate the new problematizations that such genealogies make available and to change the ways in which we think

244  Daniele Lorenzini and act. By showing that the beliefs, concepts, and practices that we live by emerged as a consequence of a historically situated problematization, and that therefore they can be problematized anew and transformed, Foucault’s genealogies become “true,” properly speaking, only when the task of such problematization and transformation (or possibilization) is actually taken up by people in their attempt to no longer be, do, or think what they are, do, or think. This is the “truth” that Foucault hopes his genealogies will be able to produce: if their aim is to destabilize their target and show that it can be problematized anew and that people have fought in the past and can still fight in order to transform it, then it is only when people actually do start fighting and things actually do start changing that these genealogies can claim to be true. Genealogy, in this tradition, is therefore explicitly conceived as a practice, and more precisely as a practice of truth. However, far from claiming to be able to “discover” or “demonstrate” the truth, genealogy aims to “produce” the truth of its discourse—to make its own discourse true—by creating real effects of transformation in the world. What genealogy thereby attempts to “make true” is not any specific claim about its target, but a more general meta-claim that is common to all destabilizing genealogical projects: the claim that things could have been different, that the current configuration of our beliefs, concepts, and practices is not necessary, and therefore that it can be changed. Thus understood, genealogical truth-making is clearly not vulnerable to the genetic fallacy objection. We can construe this non-epistemological conception of truth in terms of what Foucault, in Psychiatric Power, calls “truth-event.” Contrasting it with the scientific conception of truth that he takes to be dominant in our society, characterized by the idea that the truth is omnipresent and can be in principle discovered by anyone (what he also calls “truth-demonstration”), Foucault defines truth-event as a “dispersed, discontinuous, interrupted truth which will only speak or appear from time to time, where it wishes to, in certain places” (Foucault 2006, 236). In other words, far from being omnipresent and accessible to everyone, in this conception the truth has “its favorable moments, its propitious places, its privileged agents and bearers”: while truth-demonstration is constant, demonstrated, and discovered, truth-event is discontinuous, aroused, hunted down, and produced, and while the relation between truth-demonstration and the subject is one of knowledge-connaissance, which means that it is governed by a set of formal rules establishing the conditions under which a subject can know an object, the relation between truth-event and “the person who is seized by it, who grasps it or is struck by it” is a relation of shock or clash, a “risky, reversible, warlike” relation—one of “domination and victory” (Foucault 2006, 236–237).

Genealogy as a Practice of Truth  245 The truth that Foucault’s genealogies aim to manifest is therefore clearly a truth-event, one that is not discovered at the end of a demonstration but produced in a conflictual, bellicose way by people attempting to concretely transform themselves and their sociopolitical reality. Thus understood, genealogy really is a practice of truth, one that aims to produce shocks and clashes, to inaugurate new problematizations in the form of concrete sociopolitical battlefields, and to give people weapons to fight against received truths in order to create “new truths” in the world. In this sense, the Foucauldian genealogist is akin to at least some of the parrhesiastic figures that Foucault addresses in his last lectures at the Collège de France (think, for instance, of the Cynics and their militant philosophical practice): like them, the genealogist aims to produce truths that work as disruptive ethico-political forces destabilizing current practices and creating the concrete possibility for the emergence of “an other world”—“un monde autre” (Foucault 2011, 287). 13.3 Fanon’s Psychiatric Writings as Genealogical Practices of Truth To further illustrate and clarify why I take genealogy—at least in its Nietzschean and Foucauldian versions—to be a practice of truth, I now turn to Fanon’s psychiatric writings. My suggestion here is that, in those writings, Fanon practices a form of genealogy akin to the one I just described, and that, at the same time, the “truth-making” goal of his work is distinctive due to its explicit connection with the political project of empowering colonized people. But is it even legitimate to construe Fanon’s project as a genealogical one? I claim that it is. Indeed, like a Nietzschean or Foucauldian genealogist, in his psychiatric writings, Fanon offers narratives that begin from a current question (how to make sense of and treat a given set of symptoms in his patients, who most of the time are colonized individuals), explain the way in which such a question is currently answered (usually, by appealing to widespread prejudices: North Africans are lazy; they always lie; their psychology is underdeveloped, and so on), and then provide a counter-­ explanation of the emergence of his patients’ symptoms that rejects any simplistic reduction of them to a single cause, taking instead into account the complex interplay of different forces, both psychological and social (including, most notably, racism and colonial oppression). Thus, Fanon’s goal is to show that his patients’ neuroses are not the necessary consequence of the supposedly already-pathological nature of the colonized’s psyche but the contingent—albeit, under conditions of colonial oppression and systemic racism, largely unavoidable—result of a transformable constellation of social and power relations. Much like Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s

246  Daniele Lorenzini genealogies, Fanon’s psychiatric writings aim both to criticize received narratives and to elaborate alternate ones in order to destabilize the complex interplay of psychological and sociopolitical forces that contribute to the emergence of a given neurosis in the first place. When developing his “socio-therapeutic” practices at the Blida-Joinville psychiatric hospital in Algeria, Fanon quickly realizes that they would have no chance of being effective if they don’t incorporate the “social morphology and forms of sociability” typical of Algerian society: Algerian men, for instance, show no interest in Western movies not because of their supposed “primitivism” but because they are not able to recognize themselves in the reactions of the main characters (Fanon 1954, 369), while Algerian women’s puzzling approach to the Thematic Apperception Test is not due to their alleged lack of imagination, but to the fact that the scenes depicted in the test are “elaborated by westerners and for westerners” so that the Algerian patients find themselves confronted with “a different, foreign, heterogeneous, and non-appropriable world” (Fanon 1956, 430). However, when the doctor shows them a blank card, things drastically change: Imaginary life cannot be isolated from real life: the concrete, objective world is what constantly fuels, enables, legitimates, and founds the imaginary. Imaginary consciousness is certainly unreal, but it drinks from the concrete world. The imagination, the imaginary, are only possible to the extent that the real belongs to us. […] No homogeneity exists between what the patient is presented with [in the TAT] and what is known to her: the world presented to her is already an unknown world, foreign and heteroclite. Faced with unusual objects, with unidentifiable situations, rejected by hostile because heterogeneous viewpoints, the Muslim woman is unable to elaborate any imaginary existence. The rare stories gathered did not restore us a world. […] [However, t]he imagination was able to develop when in the presence of the white card, since it was no longer impeded by foreign cultural fetters. Not running up against a world that excluded them, our patients formed rich and varied stories. (Fanon 1956, 431–432) In “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Foucault claims that genealogy, as conceived of and practiced by Nietzsche—at least when he “is truly a genealogist” (Foucault 1971, 371)—records “the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality” (Foucault 1971, 369), thus opposing the reduction of history to a linear teleological development. By offering a narrative about the “origins” of his patients’ symptoms that run counter to received explanations, which systematically ignore social reality and colonial relations of power, Fanon too aims to disrupt linear teleological

Genealogy as a Practice of Truth  247 narratives, focusing instead on the irreducible complexity of his patients’ “situation” and of the social context in which they live. In “The ‘North African Syndrome,’” for instance, Fanon addresses the phenomenon of North African patients living in France who go to the hospital claiming that “it hurts everywhere” and “all the time,” and that they are literally dying (“I am dying, monsieur le docteur”), even though medical examinations and X-rays often show no lesional basis for their claims (Fanon 1952, 41–42). The French doctors would systematically explain this behavior in light of existing prejudices according to which the North African is “a faker, a liar, a shirker, an idler, a phony, a thief” (Fanon 1952, 43): no medical evidence can be found for his pain because he is not really sick—he just doesn’t like working and always looks for an excuse to stay in the hospital for a few days (especially during severe cold spells). The North African patient is thus conceived and treated as an “imaginary invalid” (Fanon 1952, 44): Medical thinking proceeds from the symptom to the lesion. […] Any patient who complains of headaches, ringing in the ears, and dizziness must also have high blood pressure. But should it happen that, along with these symptoms, there is no sign of high blood pressure or of brain tumor, and in any case nothing testing positive, the doctor would have to conclude that medical thinking was at fault; and since any thinking is necessarily thinking about something, he will find the patient at fault— an indocile, undisciplined patient, who doesn’t know the rules of the game. Especially the rule, known to be inflexible, which says: every symptom presupposes a lesion. (Fanon 1952, 44, trans. mod.) But is the North African really a “pseudo-invalid” (Fanon 1952, 45)? In his article, Fanon argues that we need to elaborate a completely different framework for interpreting (at least some of) the symptoms of patients who, in their daily lives, are systematically discriminated against, racialized, and oppressed. Fanon thus develops and defends the notion of “situational diagnosis”: drawing from the work of German physician Heinrich Meng (1887–1972), Fanon claims that asking “which organ is ailing, what the nature of organic lesions is, if they are present, and what germ has invaded the organism” is never enough and that it is imperative to take into account the full situation of each patient—“his close relationships, occupations, and preoccupations, his sexuality and inner tension, his sense of security or insecurity, the dangers he faces,” as well as “his evolution, the story of his life” (Fanon 1952, 46). What is the situation of a North African individual living in France at the beginning of the 1950s? It is one, Fanon argues, almost unbearable, or unlivable. His North African patients

248  Daniele Lorenzini face daily obstacles when it comes to forming meaningful interpersonal relationships and systematic prejudice when it comes to their sexual life (they are considered serial rapists); they therefore live in “a perpetual state of insecurity” because their affectivity, their social activity, and their belonging to the community are constantly endangered (Fanon 1952, 46–47). In other words, the North African living in France faces a “daily death”: in the tram, at the doctor’s office or at the hospital, at work, at the theater, in the newspapers and magazines, he encounters nothing but prejudice, discrimination, and systematic oppression (Fanon 1952, 47–48). Thus, it should not be so surprising that he becomes sick: “all the conditions are met in the North African to make a sick man” (Fanon 1952, 47): Without a family, without love, without human relations, without the possibility of communion with the group, his first encounter with himself will occur in a neurotic mode, a pathological mode; he will feel emptied, lifeless, in a bodily struggle with death, a death on this side of death, a death in life. (Fanon 1952, 47, trans. mod.) On the basis of these insights, in his psychiatric writings, Fanon elaborates countless counter-narratives to reject the traditional explanations that rely on received prejudices reducing the North African’s words and behavior to their supposedly natural tendency to lie, steal, rape, and avoid work at all cost (Fanon 1952, 48). For instance, Fanon argues that the colonized’s idleness, far from being a structural feature of their “nature,” is to be interpreted as a historically and socially situated response to colonial oppression: as a “protection, a measure of self-defense, foremost on the physiological level” because labor in the colonies is always meaningless and forced labor, not a dignifying and fructifying practice (Fanon 1959– 1960, 530; see also 2004, 220). Much like Nietzsche and Foucault, however, Fanon too doesn’t conceive of the search for the “origin” of a given neurosis as an attempt to grasp the “essence” of the colonized subject: not only is there no such essence, but there is also no unique origin that, alone, could explain the emergence of a given pathology. On the contrary, according to Fanon, the psychiatrist’s task consists, first, in reconstructing the complex interaction between the environment (the social context), the power relations at play, and a series of psychological and psychosomatic processes underpinned by what he calls the “historical-racial” and the “epidermal-racial” schema—that is, by the sedimentation of prejudices and cultural meanings in a given society and by people’s responses to the mere appearance of a black or brown body in their experiential field (Fanon 2008, 91–92). And, second, on the basis of such reconstruction, in offering a narrative accounting for the emergence of a given neurosis in

Genealogy as a Practice of Truth  249 terms not only of “phylogenesis” and “ontogenesis” but also of “sociogenesis”: the psychological and sociopolitical alienation of the colonized subject is in large part socially produced while at the same time presented as a necessary consequence of a biological predisposition (Fanon 2008, xv, trans. mod.). In doing so, Fanon’s psychiatric writings, much like Nietzschean or Foucauldian genealogies, focus on “descent” (Herkunft) and “emergence” (Entstehung). In “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Foucault claims that, on the one hand, genealogy addresses the “numberless beginnings” and the “myriad events” that contributed to the formation of a given belief, concept, or practice, without aiming to restore any unbroken continuity, but instead maintaining past events in their dispersion (Foucault 1971, 374). On the other hand, he claims that genealogy addresses the emergence of beliefs, concepts, and practices not as the “final term” of a historical development, but in light of “the hazardous play of dominations” within given historical configurations of social and power relations (Foucault 1971, 376). Fanon’s psychiatric writings and his “socio-therapeutic” practice analogously focus on the myriad social factors that contributed to the emergence of a given form of alienation—in both senses of the term, medical and political (aliénation in French carries the two meanings simultaneously)—while refusing to attribute to a specific event in the past the status of unique origin capable of explaining the development of the pathological symptoms according to an unbroken causal chain. It is helpful to consider here a possible objection to my line of argument: doesn’t Fanon, as any psychiatrist must do, offer causal explanations of the emergence of pathological symptoms in his patients in a way that the Nietzschean or Foucauldian genealogist would categorically reject? For Nietzsche and Foucault, the link between a given historical event and the specific effect(s) it ends up producing is never a necessary one, because each event can give rise to several possible outcomes, and the fact that the genealogical narrative seems to take the form of a chain of causes and effects should never obscure its aim: showing that, at any given point in the past, something different could have happened. This radical possibilization of the past is certainly harder to detect in Fanon’s work. However, his simultaneous appeal to phylogenesis, ontogenesis, and sociogenesis, along with his defense of a situational diagnosis, introduces a complexity that makes it impossible to reduce his explanations to the conclusions of straightforward causal chains. In his psychiatric writings, Fanon addresses a multiplicity of (possible and actual) “causes,” thus preventing his readers from thinking that one or a well-defined set of them would be able to exhaustively account for the observed “effects.” Moreover, the “effects” ­themselves—that is, the series of neuroses manifested by the patient—are hardly isolable one from the other, and constitute instead a complex

250  Daniele Lorenzini constellation of interrelated pathologies defining the “alienated situation” of the colonized subject. In short, Fanon too ultimately rejects the possibility of finding a straightforward, necessary link of causation that goes from one given cause to one specific effect. Fanon is also extremely attentive to the singularity of each individual case, and of the “situation” of each individual patient. This doesn’t mean that he rejects all forms of generalization—quite the contrary. While the conclusion of “The ‘North African Syndrome’” consists in a generic criticism addressed to all those who are still limiting themselves to saying, “It’s not our fault!,” and with a plea to take responsibility for the tragic situation of North African people living in France (Fanon 1952, 49), Fanon’s views in the following years become increasingly more radical and uncompromising—until reaching the conclusion that no (psychological and sociopolitical) disalienation is possible without decolonization. Psychiatry alone, in any context characterized by colonial oppression and systemic racism, can never be truly effective, no matter the form it takes. First, society and the world as a whole have to be transformed: When colonization remains unchallenged by armed resistance […] the colonized’s defenses collapse, and many of them end up in psychiatric institutions. In the calm of this period of triumphant colonization, a constant and considerable stream of mental symptoms are direct sequels of this oppression. (Fanon 2004, 182) It is precisely through his psychiatric practice, and its repeated failures within a colonial context, that Fanon becomes increasingly aware of the urgency of the anti-colonial struggle for liberation, in a way reminiscent of Foucault’s famous claim according to which “knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for trancher” (Foucault 1971, 380)—where trancher in French means both cutting or dividing and taking a stand or resolutely making a decision between different courses of action. Thus, Fanon’s peculiar way of conceiving of and practicing psychiatry is akin to Nietzschean or Foucauldian genealogy also because it is a practice of truth. It leads Fanon—and aims to lead his colleagues and readers—to the conclusion that the struggle against all forms of colonialism is necessary in order to open up the possibility of achieving effective disalienation, in both senses of the term, thus creating the very conditions for the success of Fanon’s socio-therapy. As Fanon claims in The Wretched of the Earth, “only the armed struggle can effectively exorcize these lies about man [the lies propagated by colonial regimes] that subordinate and literally mutilate the more conscious-minded among us” (Fanon 2004, 220). In this sense, the fight to end colonial domination is also a fight against “all the untruths

Genealogy as a Practice of Truth  251 planted within [the colonized subject] by the oppressor” (Fanon 2004, 223), and first and foremost the very idea that the Truth is always White: For the people, only fellow nationals are ever owed the truth. No absolute truth, no discourse on the transparency of the soul can erode this position. In answer to the lie of the colonial situation, the colonized subject responds with a lie. Behavior toward fellow nationalists is open and honest, but strained and indecipherable toward the colonists. Truth is what hastens the dislocation of the colonial regime, what fosters the emergence of the nation. Truth is what protects the “natives” and undoes the foreigners. In the colonial context there is no truthful behavior. (Fanon 2004, 14) In “Conducts of Confession in North Africa,” Fanon aims to destabilize the received narrative employed by psychiatric experts in Algeria when confronted with a colonized individual who, even though he did commit a crime and confessed it at first, later refuses to acknowledge it and proclaims himself innocent. The explanation traditionally offered for this behavior is well-known: the North African is a pathological liar incapable of truth (Lorenzini & Tazzioli 2018). Fanon’s sociogenetic—or genealogical— explanation consists in arguing that, within the European penal system, the confession of one’s crime is so crucial because it constitutes the first step allowing the subject to take responsibility for his acts, to “give his life a meaning,” and thus, once the punishment is inflicted, to be reintegrated in the group that he has wronged by committing the crime: “confession becomes for its perpetrator the price of his reinsertion into the group” (Fanon 1955, 410). In the colonial context, however, the conditions for this “favorable resolution” are lacking: not because the colonized subject is a pathological liar, but because there has been no integration between the two social groups—the colonizers and the colonized. Therefore, the colonized’s confession cannot produce his reinsertion into his own group because it is demanded by the colonizer, and it cannot produce his reinsertion into the colonizer’s group because there was no integration to begin with, no “prior reciprocal recognition of the group by the individual and of the individual by the group” (Fanon 1955, 410, 412). The upshot of this alternate reconstruction, according to Fanon, is that [t]he accused Muslim’s refusal to authenticate, by confessing his act, the social contract proposed to him, means that his often profound submission to the powers-that-be (in this instance, the power of the judiciary), which we have noted, cannot be construed as an acceptance of this power. (Fanon 1955, 412, trans. mod.)

252  Daniele Lorenzini By providing this alternate explanation of the colonized’s behavior, Fanon thus opens up the possibility of interpreting his refusal to confess as a political act of resistance (Gibson and Beneduce 2017), the act of someone who is “dominated but not domesticated” (Fanon 2004, 16). As in the case of Fanon’s North African patients living in France, here too the colonized subject is in a sense trapped: his silence and lies are interpreted a priori by the colonizer as a confirmation of his supposedly deceitful and criminal nature. Colonial psychiatry was always an ally of colonialism in that, by pathologizing and thereby objectivizing the colonized subjects, it contributed to the limitation of their political agency and the production of them as subjugated subjects. By contrast, in his psychiatric writings, Fanon practices what could be called a “political epistemology of medicine” (Beneduce 2014). His counter-narratives aim to provoke an “interference” akin to the one mentioned by Foucault when talking about his genealogical projects: their ultimate goal is to empower colonized people by making, not only their words and acts, but also their silences and lies socially and politically intelligible (to themselves, to the Algerian nationalist elites, and up to a certain point even to the colonizers), and by indicating a way out—once colonization is brought to an end, new possibilities for thought and action will become available. Hence, as (genealogical) practices of truth, Fanon’s psychiatric writings aim to create the conditions, not only for interpreting the behavior and symptoms of his patients differently but also, and more importantly, for making their sociopolitical dimensions intelligible for the first time, thus linking them to the urgent task of the anti-colonial struggle for liberation (Robcis 2020; Luxon 2021). Disalienation, for Fanon, is ultimately unachievable without decolonization: this is the meta-claim that runs through all Fanon’s psychiatric writings, and that they aim to “make true”; this “truth” is one that his psychiatric writings aim to manifest, not in the form of a demonstration, but by empowering colonized people to produce it concretely through their struggles. Much like Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s genealogies, Fanon’s psychiatric writings, thus, aim to produce “new truths” that inscribe themselves into the texture of a given sociopolitical reality as disruptive forces that destabilize received narratives and traditional modes of thinking and acting, while also concretely creating the conditions for the emergence of an other world. In this sense, the truth of Fanon’s works too can only be manifested “in the future”—that is, it only exists when experimentally put into practice.1 Note 1 For insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter, I’m very grateful to Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson, Colin Koopman, Paul Showler, Tuomo Tiisala, and Sabina Vaccarino Bremner.

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Genealogy as a Practice of Truth  255 Luxon, Nancy. 2021. “Fanon’s Psychiatric Hospital as a Waystation to Freedom.” Theory, Culture & Society 38(5): 93–113. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1997. The Genealogy of Morality, edited by K. Ansell-­ Pearson, translated by C. Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2001. The Gay Science, edited by B. Williams, translated by J. Nauckhoff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2005. The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, edited by A. Ridley and J. Norman, translated by J. Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Queloz, Matthieu. 2021. The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robcis, Camille. 2020. “Frantz Fanon, Institutional Psychotherapy, and the Decolonization of Psychiatry.” Journal of the History of Ideas 81(2): 303–325. Saar, Martin. 2008. “Understanding Genealogy: History, Power, and the Self.” Journal of the Philosophy of History 2(3): 295–314. Thompson, Kevin, and Zurn, Perry, eds. 2021. Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970–80), translated by P. Zurn and E. Beranek. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Williams, Bernard. 2002. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

14 “We Come Together for Truth” Mother’s Movements, Decolonial Feminisms, and Coalitional Practices of Truth Ege Selin Islekel Saturday Mothers, the mothers of the disappeared in Turkey, have been meeting, getting arrested, getting targeted, disappeared, and killed but meeting for 982 weeks as of the writing of this chapter. Since their movement started, they have faced two periods of heavy pressure. The first one, between 1993 and 1996, during the height of the number of enforced disappearances in Turkey and also during the height of Turkey’s War on Terror. The second one is the one that we are in as of now, where they have not been allowed on Galatasaray Square, their usual place of meeting. The square is heavily guarded every Saturday by armed police and military vehicles, and any members that are at the square are immediately arrested. For the last 166 weeks, Saturday Mothers say that they will not stop speaking and they will not stop meeting, for their work is a work of truth. They have this task in common with various other mothers’ movements, most notably the Madres of Plaza De Mayo. Similarly to Madres, who have been meeting since the period of the Dirty War in Argentina, there are two key characteristics of the movement of Saturday Mothers: they are there “for truth” on the one hand, and they are there “to bear testimony together.” Moreover, the places they meet, such as the Galatasaray Square and Plaza De Mayo, they claim, are places of the disappeared, or spaces where they ‘meet with the disappeared.’ That is, they are performing practices of truth, performing methods of engaging with truth, and such practices they are performing are specifically about getting together and making political spaces together. Notably, thus, they are performing a kind of practice of truth that takes place as a coalitional act and one that is connected to the construction of political spaces. This chapter focuses on the relationship between these three elements, on practices of truth that take place in coalitional models of political subjectivity with respect to the task of political space making. I aim to take the mothers’ movements seriously in the account of their actions and thus investigate their common interest in reinventing political spaces through DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-15

“We Come Together for Truth”  257 coalitional practices of truth. What does it mean to create truth together? How does one invent truth, and how does one do so in relation and in coalition with others? What kind of an invention is at stake in such truth? How are spaces, specifically, political spaces, born in relation to practices of truth? To this end, the chapter has three sections. The first section discusses the mothers’ movements as a practice of truth and investigates what kind of a practice of truth it is—that is, what kind of relation to truth is found in these movements. Here, I will compare the inquiry model with the model of parrhesia, frank speaking, as discussed by Foucault, and analyze the relation between ‘finding truth’ and ‘telling all.’ The second section moves to the work of decolonial feminist philosopher Maria Lugones on the concept of ‘world-traveling,’ to demonstrate the possibilities of frank speaking as coalitional acts. For Lugones, world-traveling is both an experience and a practice: multiple, and at times contradictory value systems present themselves simultaneously to the decolonial feminist subject, and in turn, the subject actively practices building coalitions across these disparate value systems. The question, however, is about the inventive aspects of coalitions: what is built and invented in coalitions? How are practices of truth enacted onto spaces? Thus, the last part of the article will focus on world-traveling as an inventive act. Focusing on Wynter’s conception of autopoiesis, I will demonstrate that worlds are objects of invention, where the subject is reinvented together with her political and social milieu. Practices of truth, in this sense, demonstrate not only subjective reinvention but also the reinvention of the worlds in which subjects and their political spaces coincide. Overall, I argue that what is seen in movements such as the mothers’ movements is a conception of the practice of truth that is at the heart of decolonial feminisms: a coalitional practice that is inventive, that consists in inventing worlds through coming together, and in doing so, shifting the very terms of truth. 14.1 Search for Truth: Inquiry and Telling All Many of the mothers’ movements are formed in response to “enforced disappearances,” wherein a person is detained through official or extra-­ official methods, never to be seen again (cf. Perez Solla 2006). The lack of information on the whereabouts of the disappeared extend beyond the events of their disappearance. Most often, the forced disappearance of a person involves their erasure from public records, both the erasure of their detention or imprisonment but also, most often, their political and social existence as well, such that all too often, the simpler records, such as traffic tickets, birth records, hospital records, disappear together with the disappeared. Most of the disappeared are assumed to be dead. However, the

258  Ege Selin Islekel whereabouts of their remains, mostly thrown in mountainous regions, over the oceans, or in trash disposal areas, are as hidden from the families as what happened to them. As Antonious Robben states, “[T]he anonymous burial of the executed and the disappeared entails their physical, social, political, legal and spiritual eradication” (Robben 2015: 57). This kind of eradication involves the eradication of the body of the person, as well as their archival presence, where the question of what exactly happened to them is as hard to find as their remains, even as years and decades go by. Thus, there is the prima facie demand that is shared by the Saturday Mothers: to know what happened to their loved ones. In their search, they come together on a weekly basis to speak of those who disappeared: when and how; under which circumstances did they disappear; who saw them, either as they were getting detained or in detention; what have been the legal processes since their disappearance; any evidence that has been found, if any; and any remains that have been found, if any. On the one hand, there is a forensic aspect to this search, one about trying to find what exactly happened, where, and how through finding the body. As Emine Ocak, the mother of Hasan Ocak says, “[W]ho would not want to know what happened to one’s son? Who would not find a trace, a trace of what happened?”1 This kind of a search for truth is akin to what Foucault calls the ‘inquiry:’ In the 1973 lecture course “Truth and Juridical Forms,” Foucault contrasts different practices of truth, revolving around test, inquiry, and that of examination. While the former, the test model, aims to establish the truth of a claim by way of testing the strength of the parties through a test, the latter consists of examining the ‘dangerousness’ of the individual, thus analyzing the person at hand. The inquiry model, however, focuses on acts, as it aims to find “what happened,” to reestablish “who did what, under what conditions, and at what moment” (Foucault 2001: 5). As such, the inquiry model is “a matter of re-actualizing a past event through testimony presented by persons who, for one reason or another, because of their general knowledge (savoir), or because they are present at the event, were considered apt to know” (Foucault 2001: 58). Heavily relying on testimony, the inquiry is a practice of truth where the witnesses and their testimonies function to reestablish a fact.2 In a sense, the mothers’ movement and their search can be seen as an extended inquiry, aimed at gathering just enough testimonies that would be able to establish what exactly occurred to their loved ones, to be able to re-actualize the event. The archive would be in this sense an extension of the inquiry: aimed at finding what exactly happened, a look into records and also recorded testimonies, in order to reestablish the truth through these records. Nevertheless, the position of the mothers’ movements is quite different from the position of the inquisitor. For one, “Political power is an essential component to it (inquiry)” (Foucault 2001: 58). It is a process by which

“We Come Together for Truth”  259 the prosecutor, as the representative of the sovereign, asks questions in order to establish truth in the order of the sovereign. As such, inquiry is, “above all a process of government, a technique of administration, or a mode of management” (Foucault 2001: 58); it is a practice of truth in accordance with the representation of political authority, where the sovereign reestablishes their authority through inquiry. The mothers, on the other hand, are neither speaking from the position of representing the legal body nor are they themselves a part of the juridical order. Neither judges nor expert witnesses, the law that they invoke when aiming to find “who/ what/where’ is not the legal order of sovereignty, nor are they, by any means, “representatives” of the sovereign. Rather, they are oftentimes put in the position of opposing the sovereign body or even causing an infraction in their own right. Moreover, in the model of the inquiry, testimony comes from notable individuals, those whose words bear the force of truth: those considered “likely to know” are consulted without being forced to gather freely to share their knowledge in the work of acquiring the truth. The mothers are often denied the status of a notable subject of truth, often gaslighted and their memory questioned, told at times that their memory is betraying them and is completely false, and at other times presented with falsified records.3 Indeed, rather than being invited to partake in judicial proceedings, they are frequently silenced, or actively banned from legal p ­ roceedings, their entry to trials forbidden, or key pieces of information hidden from them. Take Berfo Kirbayir, who searched for her son Cemil Kirbayir, who was detained in 1984 and never to be seen again, for over 30 years: throughout her search, she was told that her son was never detained, the testimonies of those who had seen her son in the detention center continuously contrasted with testimonies of officers that said no such detention happened. Or, take the story of the Kizilbas family, a whole family of eight people detained in a town raid in 1994, and three members never to be seen again: those who searched for the family were told that no such raid ever happened, no houses were burned down, and definitely no one arrested, even though it was their own house that burned down in the raid, and they themselves were among those arrested. Indeed, considering the constant denial and prohibitions, the bans on the mothers’ meetings, and the discreditation of their identities, it is hard to see the mothers’ movements in the position of juridical subjects who are performing inquiries: as much as their search for truth is one questioning “what happened,” it is closer to producing an “external” truth to that which is produced by the juridical mechanisms. Indeed, as Foucault says, “there are in society other places where truth is formed:” in order to understand such formations of truth, one needs to “construct an external, exterior history of truth” (Foucault 2001: 4). Their words and discourse is

260  Ege Selin Islekel situated in a “battle” on the status of truth: on the very status of what counts as truth when it is spoken by whom, on the economic and political role of truth, on the consequences that effectuate through the status of truth. As subjects of truth, they are closer to subjects that speak truth rather than find truth, much closer to free-spoken subjects, subjects of parrhesia, rather than subjects of inquisito. Free-spokenness in the form of parrhesia is, according to Foucault, “ first of all and fundamentally a political notion” (Foucault 2008a: 8). It is situated in the political sphere, a matter of governing oneself and others, or a matter of acting on the actions of others. As such, Foucault defines it in the broadest sense as “telling all,” speaking without recourse to the norm and custom, speaking without the limitations posed by juridical or disciplinary mechanisms. Accordingly, “the parrhesiast is the one who says everything” (Foucault 2008a: 9). This act of ‘telling all’ has some pejorative sense to it, referring to one that speaks without any care, a chatterbox who can’t stop talking.4 But more importantly, it is also employed positively, as it “consists in telling the truth without concealment, reserve, empty manner of speech, or rhetorical ornament which might encode or hide it” (Foucault 2008a: 10): such an act of parrhesia is, thus “telling all, without hiding any parts of it.” Indeed, in and through their search, the mothers’ movements resemble such parrhesiast that “tells all” in many ways. For one, as they gather every week to share the findings and developments on the cases, the information they share is quite detailed, as they share everything, rather than only the case, or the fact of disappearance. In their case information, they do not divide information between ‘necessary’ or ‘not information,’ but include quite a lot more: details about that day, what the disappeared was wearing, what was on TV when the police came, what happened since the disappearance, how many times their neighbors moved, what kinds of dreams and nightmares they saw, are mixed in with information about the dates of the trial, the changes in the court members.5 Indeed, if parrhesia denotes an act of ‘telling all’ without hiding, there is much that can be seen in mothers’ movements that fit this type of definition. Parrhesia as telling all, however, is not only about telling all but also taking a risk through the act of telling the truth. Indeed, such risk is a definitive aspect of searching for the disappeared, and the relatives, whose meetings are routinely targeted and disrupted by the police and the military, who are detained at times, and imprisoned at others, know too well such risk. At the 700th meeting of Saturday Mothers on August 25, 2018, 46 of the mothers were detained, and the lawsuit against the relatives for “promoting enmity among society” is ongoing (cf. Soylemez 2020). Upon being asked, the mothers say that they are not surprised, as they always went there knowing that what they say is not well received. As Foucault

“We Come Together for Truth”  261 says, the parrhesiast takes “a risk (in speaking) this truth which he signs as his (sic) opinion, his (sic) thought, his (sic) belief” (Foucault 2008a: 11). There is a kind of danger involved, a cost that is born through speaking, this risk can “may go so far as to put the very life of the person who speaks at risk” (Foucault 2008a: 12). Such risk to one’s own life in search for the disappeared takes the form of imprisonment, but it also can take the form of disappearance as well. Indeed, searching for the disappeared as a kind of relationship to truth is a risky process: from social alienation to legal persecution, to disappearance itself, for the mothers, it requires bearing the cost, and accepting the possibility, each and every single week. However, there are significant difficulties still in considering the mothers’ movements with respect to free-spoken truth-telling, particularly with respect to the models of relationality at hand: unlike Foucault’s parrhesiast that is speaking the truth, the mothers’ movement is a collective movement, involving a large group of people, at times collaborating transnationally and at other times locally, but always in the plural. Indeed, as Diana Taylor says, becoming a Madre is a matter of taking on a political identity: it often involves dissociating with one’s own daily life, habits, and circles, in order to take part in the collective movement. In this sense, Madres are not mothers in taking up roles of individual agency in scripts of mothering, but they are rather political actors that are decidedly taking collective political action. Foucault himself also says that parrhesia is not a singular act, but rather an “activity involving several people, an activity with other people” (­Foucault 2008a: 5). However, the plurality that he focuses on is not so much a collective, as he immediately clarifies that it is “an activity with one other person, a practice for two” (Foucault 2008a: 5). It is a practice that is more so a ‘pact’ between the speaker and another person, where the parrhesiast “tells all” and the one who is spoken to “accepts being told the truth” (Foucault 2008a: 13). Who this person is, in Foucault’s analysis, is “variable:” it can be a teacher, spiritual guide, a student, but nevertheless, one that takes part of an interpersonal relationship between the speaker. Indeed, what the act of telling the truth does is to establish “a strong, necessary, and constitutive bond” (Foucault 2008a: 13). The speaker becomes constituted as a ‘subject of truth’ through this kind of bond with the interlocutor. This kind of bond, as Banu Bargu says, “highlights the crucial and constitutive ethical bond forged by the honesty of one and the autonomy of the other” (Bargu 2022: 166). In the case of the Saturday Mothers and the mothers’ movements, such a relationality between the self and the interlocutor is a difficult one to draw out. Even though the act is a necessarily collective one, it is not one that is shared by a duality: rather, it takes place among a group whose boundaries are not clearly delineated, where the members include both

262  Ege Selin Islekel those who are present, but also those who have been absent. Ever since Berfo Kirbayir, one of the oldest members of the members, passed, Saturday Mothers have been including her name in their meetings, saying that they “speak for Berfo Ana as much as they speak for themselves.”6 Together, in the public announcements, the mothers repeat that they speak not for themselves, but rather for all those who have disappeared, all those who have been a part of the movement, and all those who “ever lived in a world where it was possible for their loved ones to disappear:” in other words, the totality of the society, considered in larger terms, of the globe. In such an act, the boundaries of the ‘self’ that is speaking are hard to find and even harder to keep: inasmuch as many of the members age and pass in time, the long-durational acts of truth-telling in the case of Saturday Mothers, as they continually insist, “outlive” the selves of the members. In exchange, they all claim that the truth that they spoke of is “not their own truth,” but the truth of others already: of the disappeared and of other members of the group. This being the case, the ‘other,’ or the interlocutor, in the case of the mothers’ movements is even harder to find. Indeed, even though they are calling to find out the truth, their interlocutor is not the state in their parrhesiastic act: insofar as the parrhesiastic act involves “courage on behalf of the interlocutor,” the state or its juridical mechanisms do not participate in the act in receiving the truth, apart from the aforementioned modes of denial and repression. In turn, the Saturday Mothers repeatedly say that their acts are not addressed to the state, and even though they will never stop calling the state to justice, the denial of the state does not impact their own acts: they will keep speaking, and ‘telling all,’ whether or not the state responds. In this sense, such acts are quite different from the ‘parrhesia of the weak’ that Foucault discusses, for example, where the subject that is a victim of injustice “addressed the one with power and tells him what the injustice was” (Foucault 2008b: 133). As the state and its mechanisms are not the ‘other’ of the mothers’ movements, it is also hard to say that it would be the ‘public’ as an abstract persona. These are, to be sure, public acts: acts that take place by ‘taking the floor’ in sorts. However, there is no individual addressed in the public: similarly, the boundaries of the public, as they speak, go beyond the usual formulations of the political public sphere, as it involves those who are gone as well as those they speak with. In this sense, unlike the interpersonal relationship formed in Foucault’s examples of parrhesia, such as the master and the disciple, there is no trust or even uptake that is received from the public: in turn, the act of telling all does not put the relationship between the mothers and the public at risk, inasmuch as the public that is spoken of includes not only the living and present public but also the disappeared and those who are not there.

“We Come Together for Truth”  263 Even though it is difficult to speak of the mothers’ movements as interpersonal acts of truth, they are, nevertheless, decidedly coalitional acts of truth. Inasmuch as the mothers say, for example, that they will keep speaking “after the end of this world,” or “even if there is no one to hear them,” they also say that they are there “for each other.”7 Take Hanim Tosun, for example, whose husband disappeared 32 years ago, and whose remains were never found: she says she will go to the Altinsehir Mezarligi, an anonymous graveyard where many unidentified remains were found, even though her own spouse’s remains are not there so that she is there for all those who have found their remains there. Many say that they are there because they share their truth, and they are there not for themselves but for each other and for the disappeared. If the acts of the mothers’ movements are to be understood as practices of truth, thus, it could be with respect to parrhesiastic practice, rather than a forensic one, or an inquisitor one. The question is, however, about how to consider such acts of free-spokenness as coalitional acts, acts that specifically undermine the relationship between the self and the other, or blur the boundaries in between. How can one speak the truth of another, without speaking ‘for’ another or ‘to’ the other, but rather, is speaking as a collective act? How does one build coalitions in the acts of truth-telling, and what kind of coalitions are at stake in this? How does one speak the truth of the world of another? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to move beyond Foucault’s account and turn toward decolonial feminisms, and to consider the kinds of practices of truth that emerge making worlds through getting together. Indeed, it is important to question the possibility of a parrhesiastic act aimed toward building a collective, a kind of telling all that consists in traveling to the world of another. 14.2 Truth Making, World-Traveling Decolonial feminist philosopher Maria Lugones describes the experience of “world-traveling” as an “acquired flexibility (of an outsider) in shifting from mainstream constructions of life where she is constructed as an outsider to other construction of life where she is more or less ‘at home’” (Lugones 2003: 77). It is an activity, according to Lugones, that is done oftentimes out of necessity. She thus describes women of color’s experience accordingly, as at times a compulsory mode of ‘traveling’: a kind of necessity to make one’s experience and world intelligible to worlds that are hostile. In the case of Saturday Mothers, it is the kind of flexibility, for example, that someone acquires, to tell of the disappearance of their loved one in terms that are intelligible at courthouses, discuss the details of the assault, of the gaslighting, of the abuse, in cold legal terms. It is a kind of

264  Ege Selin Islekel flexibility that allows the person to not sound ‘crazy’ in their search, even when nothing around them makes sense. This kind of flexibility is, indeed, as Lugones says, often compulsory flexibility: it is a part of the work of survival, and in the context of madres’ movements, a part of the work of survival as a Madre or as a Cumartesi Annesi. Nevertheless, as Lugones says, “[W]orld-traveling can also be exercised resistantly,” as it can open up and strengthen coalitions, and more precisely, it can allow one to speak truths that are otherwise discredited from dominant constructions (Lugones 2003: 77). What is of interest here is specifically this kind of resistant world-traveling that is embodied in collective practices of truth: indeed, the kinds of acts of truth embodied in mothers’ movements demonstrate examples of this kind of a resistant world-traveling, of enacting truth through world-traveling taken as a collective act. Indeed, movements such as the Saturday Mothers’ are difficult to define as public movements, as they are situated rather as outsiders, rather than members of mainstream publics. Enforced disappearance is a way of isolating and excluding, where the remainders are pushed to the outside of the mainstream discourse, both on epistemic and political levels. Much of what is at hand in being relatives of the disappeared involves being excluded from the mainstream discourse regarding the disappeared, thus being actively at odds with the mainstream discourse about the general rules of rationality (Gordon 2008: 68). Indeed, according to dominant and public discourse, no disappearance ever happened: many of the relatives visiting official spaces in search of the disappeared were told continuously that their relatives were never detained, so it is not possible for them to have ‘disappeared.’ Similarly, as much of the disappearance take place within the context of numerous Wars on Terror of sorts, the mainstream discourse regarding the disappeared focuses on the various labels given to the disappeared: terrorists, enemies of the state, or, ‘subversives’ of sorts, but at any rate, no ‘normal’ or ‘rightful’ members have disappeared (Taylor 1997: 234). Accordingly, General Ramos Campos, for example, famously announced in the context of Argentina, that there wasn’t ‘anyone’ who disappeared, “but only the subversives” (Taylor 1997: 234). Anyone who affiliates with such a group of ‘not people’ but ‘subversives’ therefore exists only at the edges of the normal state of affairs, at that continuously precarious position of demanding or seeking “from the position of the outsider” (Lugones 2003: 79). The position of the outsider is always a precarious one, shaped by risk for both those who inhabit it and those affiliated: the ‘risk’ that is involved in speaking the truth, in this sense, or the risk of parrhesia, in this sense, stems particularly from their position as outsiders to mainstream construction of truth. Speaking from the position of the outsider to the mainstream, however, is a task of moving between worlds: traveling between worlds in performing acts of truth. The worlds that Lugones speaks of are formed in relation to

“We Come Together for Truth”  265 language, culture, history, but also, interactions with power as well as practices with resistance. As such, a ‘world’ for Lugones is a social category, but it does not describe a given society as shaped by geographic or cultural borders: it is not, in this sense, a ‘country,’ or an entire society, such as the “Turkish Society” or “United States Society.” Rather, she states, “rather, it (a world) is closer to the modes of living and existing within that society” (Lugones 2003: 79). As such, not everyone who lives in the same society lives in the same world. Rather, a given society is organized by worlds that are heterogeneous and multiple: the “United States Society” in this sense, is constructed of worlds that are at times in antagonism with each other and at times together. Similarly, the “Turkish Society” or the “Argentinian Society” is constructed of worlds that carry separate sets of accepted and justified truths, such as the world of the mainstream archives and officials that deny the existence of the disappeared, and the worlds of the many generations of mothers, who is ‘always filled with their existence” (Ocak 2019). These worlds are not autonomous from each other, but rather are “intertwined semantically and materially”: they exist with each other, as their material and discursive practices bring forth and necessitate each other (Lugones 2003: 79). The world of General Ramos Campos, for example, in which there are no disappeared people ‘but only subversives,’ is inseparable from the world of Nora Cortiñas, one of the oldest members of Madres de Plaza Del Mayo: the subversives of one mold into the ghosts of the other (cf. Bellucci 1999: 87). Moreover, as Lugones says, these ‘worlds’ are not hypothetical or possible worlds: rather, she focuses “tenaciously on actual worlds” (Lugones 2003: 20). Worlds are actual insofar as they are very much material and social constructions: “For something to be a world in my sense, it needs to be inhabited at present by flesh and bone people” (Lugones 2003: 87). Lugones says that a world does not have to be inhabited by a large group of living people in order to be an actual world, as “some worlds are inhabited by only a tiny construction of a particular society” (Lugones 2003: 87). A world can be inhabited only by a few people, and can still be an actual world. A world, however, can also be incomplete, insofar as is filled with specters of people, “some imaginary people” or “people who are dead,” or “people that the inhabitants of this ‘world’ met in another ‘world’ and now they have this ‘world’ in imagination” (Lugones 2003: 87). Similarly, it can be incomplete because it is filled with unfulfilled promises, or violence that was not registered. An incomplete world, in this sense, is a ‘haunted world,” as Avery Gordon calls it, one where the living and dead make up the inhabitants of the world together: a world can be the Galatasaray Square, for example, where the Saturday Mothers meet weekly, in order to “meet the disappeared”8 Moreover, a world may be incomplete, if the “things in it (the world) may not be altogether

266  Ege Selin Islekel constructed or some things may be constructed negatively (they are not what ‘they’ are in some other ‘world’)” (Lugones 2003: 87): it can be incomplete if fundamental discursive systems of truth of such world are not fulfilled: either the discursive terms of the world are not adding up to a coherent whole or the operative terms themselves are fundamentally shifting and not stable enough to functional referents. An incomplete world, in this sense, is one where the referents of truth do not add up to a coherent functional ensemble, one where speaking truth does not tell all, where there is something that is continually missing. In many ways, such is the kind of world that many of the Saturday Mothers describe: a world filled with ghosts, ghosts of unsaid words and paths not taken, ghosts of those who are gone never to come back, ghosts that call into question what is knowable and, as Gordon says, what is “unthinkable” (Gordon 2008: 64). Enforced disappearances, indeed, exist in that odd space of thought that appears impossible. Take the case of Talat Turkoglu, who was last seen getting on a ferry surrounded by military officials and never seen again. The officers accompanying him claim that he jumped out of the bathroom window of the ferry, a 20 by 20 cm big square window, in the middle of Marmara sea, and then swam to the shore from there.9 Or, take the case of Hasan Ocak, whose body was found in an anonymous graveyard, with ink used to take fingerprints, and also marks of torture commonly used in detention centers: the family is consistently told that he was never detained; there are no records stating that there were any search warrants with his name on it; his fingerprints were never taken by the state. Indeed, as Gordon says, “[D]isappearance is an exemplary instance in which the boundaries of rational and irrational, fact and fiction, subjectivity and objectivity, person and system, force and effect, conscious and unconscious, knowing and not knowing are constitutively unstable” (Gordon 2008: 97). Between moving detention centers, to graves that are emptied out, testimonies referring to impossible facts, the world of enforced disappearance is an incomplete world in that the things in it do not altogether make sense: within such a world, there is no possible functional ensemble, nor is there a rational public, inasmuch as the truth that is spoken already goes beyond the boundaries of rationality or coherence. Traveling from and among incomplete worlds, however, means engaging in a practice of truth that challenges dominant orders of discourse around truth and rationality. As Gordon says, “[I]t takes some effort to recognize the ghost and reconstruct the world that it conjures up” (Gordon 2008: 67). This effort involves, as many of the mothers say, part of the work of a ‘mad person,’ a kind of work of foolery: indeed, “when the whole situation cries out for clearly distinguishing between truth and lies, between what is known and what is unknown, between the real and the unthinkable and

“We Come Together for Truth”  267 yet what is precisely impossible,… social reality can make you feel like you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders” (Gordon 2008: 64). Hanife Yildiz, for example, one of the Saturday Mothers, says that it is indeed the work of a mad person, for continuing meeting week after week, telling stories week after week, searching week after week, when nothing around makes sense, when all information given appears unsupported at best and at worst straight up a falsity, when the so-called truths are enmeshed with absurdity. Lugones says there is a part of ‘trickery and foolery’ involved in world-traveling, perhaps precisely because of this: within such incomplete worlds as that of enforced disappearances, one has to see the ‘double edges’ of any particular world, one has to “see the absurdity in them and thus inhabit oneself differently” (Lugones 2003: 92). This means, for the most part, both keeping memories even in their absurdity. Take, thus, one of the mothers describing the heavily armed guards that came to counter them at their 910. Meeting at a graveyard, there were, she says, hundreds of armed police officers, dozens of armored water cannons, and multiple detention vehicles, all there to counter 14 mothers visiting a graveyard, carrying carnations in their hands. “I laughed at them,” she says, describing her detention: “I laughed, and I said, we will keep going there, now that there is so many of you to welcome us!”10 Such laughter is ‘survival rich,’ as Lugones says, for it is particularly the work of world-traveling, in painting the picture of those who dominate as funny. Indeed, in traveling from and between incomplete worlds, “there are truths that only a fool can speak of and only a trickster can play out:” in such a world, laughter becomes directed at the solemnities of facts presented as truths, playing out the trickery and foolery. In doing such world-traveling from incomplete worlds, moreover, coalition building forms not a side element, but a necessary aspect of this work. Saturday Mothers say, when speaking of Galatasaray, that being there with others is a necessity to them, the square itself is a place that belongs to them. As the mothers arrive from different times in the history of disappearances, they say that “everyone there share the same trouble,” that they “know that everyone there is like them” (Göral, Işık, and Kaya 2013: 56). The square is a place to meet “with each other and with the disappeared”: Galatasaray Square thus becomes a space of world-traveling, a space for conjuring ghosts together, to speak of a truth that consists in highlighting the absurdity, the absurdity of loved ones leaving never to be seen again, people jumping out of windows too small for a human body to fit, carnations countered by hundreds of armed police and armored vehicles. It is a kind of practice of truth that emerges neither out of an appeal to another nor out of a self-oriented practice. Rather, such kinds of ‘telling all’ consists in telling all that does not make sense, taking the risk to laugh at the armed police and long detention times, and to laugh at a world where the

268  Ege Selin Islekel impossible passes as the factual. As one of the mothers says, “When I go there, and I will speak frankly, I feel good.”11 It is important to note that the world of Galatasaray Square is not only a space of world-traveling, but it is also a world that is invented and reinvented. Indeed, the Saturday Mothers, as they have been banned from gathering in the square for 214 weeks as of this week, all say that they have “made the square into what it is,” that it is a space that they themselves have invented in the decades that they have put into it. In this sense, their acts of gathering and speaking in Galatasaray Square is not only an act of gathering together or building relations, but more specifically, acts of inventing worlds together: as they come together to ‘tell all,’ they re-invent the world of enforced disappearance from an incomplete world that does not ‘make sense’ into a space of coming together with the disappeared, a space of conjuring not only the disappeared but also conjuring a world in which the disappeared are found, a world in which disappearance is not. In order to understand this kind of conjuring through coalition building, however, one must consider how it is possible to conjure entire worlds in an act of telling all. 14.3 World-Traveling and World-Inventing Spatial politics of subjects are invented together with their collective formations of truth. Autopoiesis is the term Sylvia Wynter gives to the processes of reinvention that produce both new subjects and new schemas of truth: as such, autopoiesis is the process of reinvention of a new relationship between the subject and truth. The term that she borrows from Chilean biologists H. R. Maturana and F. J. Varela, in Varela’s terms, “focuses on the interpretive capacity of the human as an agent which doesn’t discover the world but rather constitutes it” (Varela 2009: 63).12 The subject, accordingly, is situated at the juxtaposition of being and inventing and thus occupies not only the role of a situated subject in a given context but rather is continuously articulating new relations. As such, the subject does not merely relate to the space and any political context in the way that these present themselves to the subject, but rather produces methods of interaction, and through that, produces the very contexts and spaces within which they exist. This process is at heart the reinvention of the discursive ensembles, or in Wynter’s terms, “founding fables” that are operative in a given political space: in the process of autopoiesis, the subject reinvents the ‘world,’ as well as the founding fables that keep the world afoot. Following Wynter’s lead in this sense would mean that the searchers or the mothers are not only gathering together or building relations with each other in their practices, but rather engaging in acts of invention of the mechanisms of truth within which disappearance is operative, together with reinventing spaces of coalitional engagement.

“We Come Together for Truth”  269 As noted by Max Hantel, Autopoiesis repositions the observer, the object of observation and the experience of truth, imagining a circular and self-perpetuating relationship in which “seeing for oneself” is not simply to adjudicate reality but to experience it and make sense of it through the same domain of seeable that defines “oneself” and is, in turn, partially created by “oneself”. (Hantel 2018: 62) The subject of truth is situated both with the object of observation and also with the experience of the object: to adjudicate truth is to adjudicate oneself as a subject of truth, positing a circular relationship between the subject that is experiencing truth and the subject that is making truth. Autopoiesis marks precisely those practices of repositioning oneself in order to invent the terms of truth within which one is positioned. Thus, repositioning the searcher as a political agent rather than a victim, or a collective, rather than an isolated individual, is inseparable from the terms of truth within which they are positioned. This repositioning marks a circular relation: for example, in the case of Saturday Mothers, making sense of oneself as a searcher reconstitutes the terms of truth within which searchers are positioned: the searcher as a victim that is subjected to the dominant orders of discourse proposed by the state, in this sense, is fundamentally different from the searcher as a political agent that is telling all, that is frank speaking and risk taking in their speech. Autopoiesis is the shift both in the searcher as a subject of truth, and also in the terms of truth that the subject operates in. This repositioning is not only the re-placement of the subject in the order of discourse, but rather inventing a new subject altogether. Riley Snorton writes, “Throughout her writings, Wynter often refers to ‘autopoiesis’ as a formal praxis of the sociogenic principle” (Snorton 2017: 238, fn. 23). The Fanonian principle of sociogeny, which stands, “besides phylogeny and ontogeny” (Fanon 2008: 11), denotes the inventiveness of power relations that takes place on the level of the production of new subjects: indeed, according to Wynter, “[W]e are simultaneously storytelling and biological beings” (Wynter 2015: 29) or hybrid beings that “combine bios and mythos” (Wynter 2015: 29). All human orders, as Wynter says, are founded through the sociogenic principle. Telling stories in practices of telling all, in this sense, is a process where the Saturday Mothers as political subjects become reinvented, and their stories reinventing not only the terms of dominant orders of truth but also their own positioning as subjects of truth. Being a ‘subject of truth’ in this sense is not only a process of telling all, but more specifically, one of storytelling, or of myth-making through

270  Ege Selin Islekel telling all. A “Saturday Mother” as a collective subject, in this sense, is drastically different than the individual who is a part of the collective, and a Madre is a reinvented subject than the person who has witnessed disappearance. Importantly, what is at stake is not only a practice of reinvention of a perspective or a viewpoint but rather the reinvention of “founding fables.” In “Columbus, the Ocean Blue, and Fables that Stir the Mind,” Wynter states that “each ‘general notion of the world’ contains within it … a specific idea of order” (Wynter 1997: 154). These specific ideas of orders make up the ‘founding fables’ of worlds, describing the intimacy of the relations between subjects and truth: they are formed not only with respect to the truth systems to which the subjects are subjected but also the active games of truth that the subject enacts and operates. Moreover, such founding fables, according to Wynter, are ‘adaptive truths’ in the sense that they are behavior-motivating patterns that reorient the subject toward the replication of their own operative orders.13 Founding fables as adaptive truth formations both reflect and replicate specific ideas of order. The kind of frank speaking involved in the gatherings of Saturday Mothers, in this sense, is not a practice of articulation of their side of the story, nor is it a practice of articulation of their perspective regarding why/how/where did disappearance occur. It is the reformulation of another adaptive truth, motivating different behaviors than the mainstream or dominant orders of truth. Specifically, a kind of adaptive truth where the disappeared meet with the searchers, a kind of adaptive truth where gatherings conjure up the disappeared, and a kind of adaptive truth that comes to be actualized through the coming together of the mothers. Autopoiesis is a ‘cosmogenic’ category—that is, a category that pertains to the way that the subject and truth relate to the world, or in other words, the terms of truth of the world that are available to the subject. The adaptive truths of the subject pertain not only to their understanding of their own position but also their understanding of the world, in both quite material and relational terms. What kinds of spaces are possible; what kinds of worlds within which subjects operate? Understanding the gatherings of Saturday Mothers as practices of autopoiesis necessitates considering the spatial politics within which their actions are inscribed, specifically as inventive spatial politics. Galatasaray Square, for example, as a space where the “disappeared come to meet with the searchers” reinvents not only the mothers but also the square and also the world of disappearance: through their gatherings, the world of disappearance takes in new terms and subjects, new terms of truth, and marks the ghosts that haunt such a world. The incomplete world of disappearance, filled with empty signifiers and incoherent statements, in and through the gatherings of the mothers, become a world where the ghosts speak: the disappeared come to meet the

“We Come Together for Truth”  271 remains, the stories of disappearance get filled up with testimonies and additional statements, and the Saturday Mothers invent a world together through traveling between worlds. We can thus return to the function of gathering and coalition building in the formation of truth. Considering autopoiesis from Wynter’s sense, one can say that truth of disappearance is invented and reinvented in the negotiation between the Saturday Mothers and dominant viewpoints, where it is continuously contested and taken back by the mothers’ gatherings and stories. Importantly, such negotiation does not take place in solitary formations of individual subjects, neither does it take place in a particular relationship between the subject and the “other” (whatever the referee of the signifier may be). The negotiation takes place in the emergence of Saturday Mothers as a political subject that is shaped in coalition-building practices: it is the coming together of the mothers that makes up a subject, and even more directly, it is the working together of the mothers that makes up a new subject. The reinvention of the subject as Saturday Mothers, circularly, reinvents the terms of truth around disappearance: their gathering functions not only as a mode of relationality and world-traveling but also an inventive relationality, where their gathering reinvents them as subjects together with the terms of truth within which disappearance operates. Saturday Mothers, thus, build a world and a new world order through their gatherings: a world where the disappeared have a place where they meet, a world where disappearance is shared and discussed among many, a world where the truth of disappearance moves beyond the falsified records and silenced testimonies. Insofar as it is a ‘battle’ on the status of truth, coalitional practices of truth are indeed battles of inventing new worlds, inventing a new founding fable that marks the relation between worlds and things. Hence, world-traveling and autopoiesis intertwine together in the mothers’ search for their loved ones: in their practice of coming together in their enactment of truth, they are inventing a new world together, inventing a new founding fable. Indeed, the world of disappearance is a haunted world, an incomplete world filled with violence not registered, archives erased, unsaid words and paths not taken. Traveling from and among such worlds means taking a risk, taking a risk of telling all to challenge dominant discourses of truth and rationality, and doing so in particular in forming coalitions in order to tell the absurdity that underlies haunted worlds. World-traveling, indeed, is an act of “trickery and foolery”: an act of building coalitions in order to tell all, which is at heart, the absurdity of the categories that make up the world of disappearance. This world-traveling invents new founding fables and new subjects through coming together. As Wynter says, the subject is always situated between being and inventing in its relation to truth: the subject is a

272  Ege Selin Islekel “bios/mythos” conjunction, constitutively reforming in the act of telling stories. Telling all by coming together in incomplete worlds is inseparable from inventing new worlds: the subject, the terms of truth within which they operate, as well as the spaces within which they act gets reinvented: the subjects turn from victims to searchers, the space of Galatasaray Square moves from a regular space to a space to “meet with the disappeared.” Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the world of disappearance and the orders of truth that mark such a world becomes reinvented: disappearance becomes flesh and bone; silent archives echo across meetings of long-lasting movements. Indeed, through autopoiesis, the ghosts of the world of disappearance come to speak, and the act of telling all becomes an act of coming together in order to conjure another world. 14.4 Conclusion: Telling All, Making Worlds We can thus come to see a coalitional practice of truth found in Lugones and Wynter’s works, exemplified throughout this chapter in the cases of mothers’ movements: a practice that consists in coming together in order to tell all, and in doing so, inventing a new founding fable for the world of disappearance. Indeed, practices of truth concern not only the subject and their relation to truth, nor are they necessarily self-oriented. Rather, they can consist in building coalitions in order to shift the orders of discourse in acts of traveling to and between worlds in order to tell a new story, a “new vocabulary of living and dying,” as Riley Snorton says, or a story for worlds haunted with those gone but not dead. There is a space between “searching the truth” and “telling the truth,” a space for inventing a new adaptive truth, motivating different behaviors. Indeed, inasmuch as the Saturday Mothers “search for truth,” their activities and their positioning are quite distinct from acts of inquiry: even though they search for what/where/how, they neither speak from the position of authority nor that of notable testimony: memories and testimonies continuously falsified by the authorities, their speech rather takes place in opposition to authority, and their acts of coming together expose them to risk. Their continuous speech in the face of adversity, their telling the stories of their loved ones in the absence of records, can rather be as a parrhesia of sorts: acts of courageous truth-telling, where the subjects are bound to truth and accepting consequences, in the case of Saturday Mothers, exile, disappearance, death, or imprisonment, in telling the truth. Nevertheless, these practices can hardly be seen as practices addressed to an “other,” be it the state or the public. In Lugones’ terms, it is more similar to ‘world-traveling’: traveling from and to the world of disappearance, a work of coalition building and relationality in the world of disappearance. The world of disappearance is an incomplete world: not all the

“We Come Together for Truth”  273 categories of truth that sustain it are complete, many of the functional categories are empty, and the world is filled with specters of people, unfulfilled promises, and violence not registered. It is haunted by the very categories of truth that sustain it, and by people that are gone but not dead, the referents of truth do not tell a complete story. Telling all in such a world is an act of “trickery and foolery”: coming together to tell the absurdity of a world where people disappear, where birth records get erased, and where 14 people carrying carnations have encounters with hundreds of armed vehicles. There is an important part of telling all that consists in telling new stories of disappearance or changing the adaptive truths within which disappearance operates. It is, in Wynter’s sense, an autopoietic practice, a practice of inventing new spaces, new subjects, and new founding fables. Indeed, in the ‘free-spokenness’ of the mothers, a new world is invented, where the disappeared come to meet their loved ones, where the last of disappearances is resolved, where another kind of subjectivity is possible. Notes 1 “Emine Ocak’tan Mektup Var: Vazgecersek, Adalet Olmayacak,” cf. Ocak (2019). 2 See Foucault (2001). In these lectures, Foucault argues that the emergence of the penitentiary apparatus demonstrates a process by which the examination model by and large supplants the inquiry model. However, as he says, these are never complete transitions, as they coexist and work together. 3 For further on techniques of epistemic injustice that target mothers’ movements, see Islekel (2019). 4 Foucault extensively discusses such pejorative use in The Republic, where Plato talks about the artists as parrhesiasts, as subjects that speak without any limitations. See Foucault (2008a: 9–10). 5 For sample testimonies from Saturday Mothers, see Göral, Işık, and Kaya (2013), Bozkurt and Kaya (2014). 6 Cumartesi Anneleri 915. See Hafta Basin Aciklamasi (Saturday Mothers, 915. Week Announcement), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOsTJ4ebP_w (Accessed November 2, 2022). 7 Cumartesi Anneleri 914. See Hafta Basin Aciklamasi (Saturday Mothers, 914. Week Announcement), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEnOO-YPX_g (Accessed November 2, 2022). 8 Saturday Mothers, 914th week announcement. 9 Cumartesi Anneleri, 888. Hafta Basin Aciklamasi (Saturday Mothers 888th Week Press Announcement), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZPKfyZ9rpI (Accessed November 2, 2022). 10 Cumartesi Anneleri 910. Hafta Basin Aciklamasi (Saturday Mothers, 910. Week Press Release), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUetGYKOO1o (Accessed November 2, 2022). 11 Ibid. 12 Cited in Paquette (2020: 2).

274  Ege Selin Islekel 13 Wynter gives the example of the pre-Columbus feudal-Christian conception of the world as divided between ‘habitable/inhabitable’ worlds as one such behavior motivating the founding fable, actively motivating subjects not to engage in any interaction with the parts of the globe that lie beyond the boundaries of Christian Europe.

References Bargu, Banu (2022). “The Silent Exception: Hunger Striking and Lip Sewing” in The Biopolitics of Punishment: Foucault and Derrida, ed. Rick Elmore and Ege Selin Islekel. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 153–185. Bellucci, Mabel (1999). “Childless Motherhood: Interview with Nora Cortiñas, a Mother of the Plaza de Mayo, Argentina.” Reproductive Health Matters 7, no. 13, pp. 83–88. Bozkurt, Hatice and Özlem Kaya (2014). Holding Up the Photograph: Experiences of the Women Whose Husbands Were Forcibly Disappeared. Istanbul: Hakikat Adalet Hafıza Merkezi. Fanon, Franz (2008). Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox. New York, NY: Grove Press. Foucault, Michel (2001). “Truth and Juridical Forms” in Essential Works of ­Foucault, 1954–1984: Power, ed. James Faubion, New York: The New Press, pp. 1–89. Foucault, Michel (2008a). The Courage of Truth: Government of the Self and Others II, Lectures at College de France, 1983–1984, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, Michel (2008b). The Government of the Self and Others: Lectures at Collége de France 1982–1983, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gordon, Avery (2008). Ghostly Matters: Haunting and The Sociological Imagination. Minnesota: The University of Minnesota Press. Göral, Özgür Sevgi, Ayhan Işık and Özlem Kaya (2013). Unspoken Truth: Enforced Disappearances. Istanbul: Truth, Justice and Memory Center. Hantel, Max (2018). “What Is It Like to Be Human?: Sylvia Wynter on Autopoiesis,” philoSOPHIA 8, no. 1, pp. 61–79. Islekel, Ege Selin (2019). “Nightmare Knowledges: Necropolitical Epistemologies of Disappearance” in Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory, ed. Banu Bargu (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 254–272. Lugones, Maria (2003). Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Oppression Against Multiple Oppressions. Lanham, Boulder, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Ocak, Emine (2019). “If We Give Up, There Won’t Be Justice,” Bianet, August 30, 2019. https://m.bianet.org/bianet/ifade-ozgurlugu/212407-emine-ocak-tanmektup-var-vazgecersek-adalet-­saglanmayacak Paquette, Elisabeth (2020). “Autopoietic Systems: Organizing Cellular and Political Spaces,” Radical Philosophy Review 2020: https://doi.org/10.5840/ radphilrev2020325109. Perez Solla, Mária Fernanda (2006). Enforced Disappearances in International Human Rights. Jefferson and London, McFarland &Co.

“We Come Together for Truth”  275 Robben, Antonious (2015). Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press. Snorton, Riley C. (2017). Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Soylemez, Ayca (2020). “Lawsuit against Saturday People over Their 700th ­Gathering,” Bianet, November 23, 2020: https://bianet.org/english/ law/234873-lawsuit-against-saturday-people-over-their-700th-gathering Taylor, Diana (1997). Disappearing Acts: Specters of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’. Durham: Duke University Press. Varela, Francisco J. (2009). “The Early Days of Autopoiesis,” in Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory, ed. Bruce Clarke and Mark B.N. Hansen. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 62–76. Wynter, Sylvia (1997). “Columbus, the Ocean Blue, and Fables that Stir the Mind,” in Poetics of the Americas: Race, Founding, Textuality, ed. Bainard Cowan and Jefferson Humphries. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, pp. 141–163. Wynter, Sylvia (2015). “Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversation” in Sylvia Wynter: On Being ­Human as Praxis, ed. Katherine McKittrick. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 9–89.

15 The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry in the Arts and Humanities Sami Pihlström 15.1 Introduction This chapter approaches the topic of this volume, the practices of truth, by proposing—admittedly somewhat programmatically—that we should develop a comprehensive philosophy of the humanities, analogously to well-established fields such as the philosophy of social science, and arguing that the pragmatist tradition provides uniquely promising resources for doing this, especially as it equips us with a pragmatic conception of truth that pragmatist philosophers (including William James, in particular) have compellingly articulated. The chapter first sketches important topics for pragmatist philosophy of the humanities in selected case study areas (i.e., philosophy of literary theory and criticism, philosophy of historiography, and philosophy of theology and religious studies) and then focuses on the problems of truth and realism concerning the objects of humanistic scholarship, arguing that a distinctively pragmatic form of realism can be formulated. For such a form of realism, it is vital to understand the pursuit of truth, in the humanities as well as more generally, as not just a theoretical activity but as a human practice. For example, when seeking historical truths in historical scholarship, we also seek ways of living our individual and social lives within our inevitably historicized practices. The chapter also considers an extension of the pragmatic conception of truth from the practices of inquiry and scholarship to practices of humanistic and artistic production, particularly literature. The final substantial section of the chapter can thus be read as a case study on what pragmatist reflections in the philosophy of the humanities may look like, as well as an illustration of the multifaceted significance of the concept of truth, and especially its pragmatist analysis, in this area of philosophical inquiry. This article will not make any detailed scholarly contribution to the study of the history of pragmatism, but it offers Jamesian-inspired ideas for a deeper understanding of our scholarly practices of truth (while also

DOI: 10.4324/9781003273493-16

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  277 referring, in passing, to other classical pragmatists, e.g., Charles S. Peirce, as well as contemporary ones).1 The chief message of my inquiry is that it matters tremendously to us how we view our practices or inquiry—in a broad pragmatic sense, including inquiries that are “artistic” (e.g., literary) rather than strictly speaking scientific or scholarly—as being able to bring us in touch with truth and reality. Whether we are able to see the arts and humanities as capable of truth determines whether we are able to view the world we live in as a “moral” one (to borrow a Jamesian expression).2 15.2 Toward a Pragmatist Philosophy of the Humanities The natural sciences are often considered the paradigmatic practices of truth, seeking to provide a maximally accurate account of the way the world is “absolutely,” independent of contingent human perspectives. However, when considering the multiple ways in which the concept of truth matters to us in our human activities, we cannot neglect the various non-scientific practices we continuously engage in, including ethics, politics, and religion or other worldview-related practices. In this chapter, I will focus on the practices of truth in the arts and humanities. I will approach my specific topic, the pragmatic conception of truth as applied to the arts and humanities, by first briefly sketching a program for a pragmatist philosophy of the humanities, i.e., a philosophical account of the basic character, research objects, and general ontology and epistemology of humanistic inquiry from the perspective of pragmatism, though clearly no such theory can be formulated in a single essay (cf. Pihlström 2022). The topic is wide-ranging, as I am talking about the humanities in general, yet specific, because my articulation of the nature of the humanities—and especially truth in the humanities—is based on the philosophical framework of pragmatism. More precisely, a pragmatist philosophy of the humanities—as well as any pragmatist conception of truth that enjoys even remote plausibility—should, I believe, be grounded in a distinctively “Kantian” version of pragmatism (see also, e.g., Pihlström 2020, 2021). As a concept naming a field of study, “philosophy of the humanities” is rarely encountered—at least in comparison to analogous expressions such as “philosophy of physics,” “philosophy of biology,” or “philosophy of economics.” “Philosophy of social science” is, of course, a well-established field, while “philosophy of the humanities” can hardly be regarded as such. As a first approximation, we may understand by “the philosophy of the humanities” the application of the problems, ideas, and arguments originally developed in general philosophy of science and theory of inquiry to humanistic inquiry in particular.3 We may also speak about the philosophy of the arts and humanities by including, for example, the pursuits of

278  Sami Pihlström literature in addition to literary theory in our discussion; the division between those two may be fuzzy in any event. Investigating the ontology and epistemology of the humanities has what we may call a significant weltanschaulich (worldview-related) impact: it can profoundly affect our understanding of the reality we live in. When William James—all the way from his early essay, “The Sentiment of Rationality” (1879) to famous later works like The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and Pragmatism (1907)4—was concerned with the question of whether the universe is “moral” or “unmoral”—that is, whether there is something we can legitimately call the “moral order” of the world—he was, arguably, primarily interested in whether the world we live in is reductively accountable in terms of scientific materialism or whether it contains human meanings and values that can (only) be articulated in terms of the arts and humanities. It is this essentially Jamesian pragmatist way of countering scientific reductionism that offers a context for our discussion of truth in the humanities.5 In the philosophy of science, it has been debated for decades whether, for example, we can plausibly maintain that scientific theories (also when they purportedly speak about unobservable entities) have truth-values and that the unobservable theoretical entities postulated in such theories for explanatory reasons “really exist.” Indeed, questions like this played a vital role in the emergence of twentieth-century philosophy of science. While it has been discussed to what extent we are justified in believing in the existence of unobservable theoretical entities on the basis of observational evidence (see, e.g., Niiniluoto 1999), some strong scientific realists go as far as to claim that only such entities in the last analysis exist: the objects postulated by best-explaining theories are what is ultimately real, as the “scientific image” ontologically replaces the “manifest image” of the world (cf. Sellars 1963; Tuomela 1985). However, even when such radical (scientistic) formulations of scientific realism are rejected, serious ontological attention is usually not directed to the ontological postulations of humanistic scholarship—perhaps apart from the discussion concerning the ontological status of historical facts and events. If we have good philosophical reasons to believe in the reality of, say, literary meanings or interpretive possibilities, our world is considerably richer than the world as seen from the perspective of the natural sciences merely. This, we may take it, is the kind of challenge James urged us to respond to by his notion of a “moral order”: instead of succumbing to the temptations of viewing the world as exhausted by natural-scientific (material) entities and causal processes, we should pursue the truth—pragmatic truth—about meaningful and valuational structures of human reality that matter to us (also acknowledging that the lack of meaning and value might turn out to be a “realistic” picture of what the human world, or its “moral order,” amounts to).

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  279 However, this does not mean, of course, that a humanities scholar (e.g., a literary theorist) could simply accept whatever ontological postulations their objects of study (e.g., the texts whose meanings they are analyzing) make. Historical documents contain truly weird ontologies, and humanistic scholarship may examine products of human thought expressing manifest falsehoods about what there is. Critical distance to the objects of study is as important in the humanities as it is in the sciences. Our concern with the Jamesian “moral order” by no means leads us to deny that humanistic inquiry needs to be compatible with a reasonably comprehensive natural-scientific picture of the world. For example, the theologian (understood as a humanistic scholar) cannot presuppose the existence of God or other religious “realities” that their objects of study—e.g., religious documents, doctrines, or social groups—may postulate but must critically examine those postulations and their history. Indeed, ontological postulations of various kinds—ways of thinking about the existence (or non-existence) of various types of entities—may themselves be among the objects of inquiry in the humanities. While there is hardly (explicitly) such a well-defined thing as “the philosophy of the humanities,” there are, of course, plenty of contributions available to its specific areas, such as the philosophy of literary theory, the philosophy of historiography, and the philosophy of religious studies.6 Both philosophers and historians have actively explored the methodology of historiography, for example (see Tucker 2009), and controversies on the epistemology and methodology of literary interpretation and religious studies are well-known. However, it seems that, for instance, the philosophy of history and the philosophy of historiography have not always been clearly distinguished even by central figures in the field; indeed, this division, as all conceptual distinctions, is subject to historical change (and should be pragmatically evaluated on the basis of the purposes it serves in different contexts). Traditional critical philosophy of history examines, e.g., the objectivity of historical knowledge and the nature of historical explanation (see, e.g., Mandelbaum 1977), topics clearly relevant to the question concerning realism about historical knowledge and its objects. Some major scholars in the philosophy of history and historiography, such as William Dray (1980), explore both philosophical issues of (the methods of) historiography, including, say, R.G. Collingwood’s classical views on historical understanding as reenacting past experiences or rethinking past thoughts, as well as the allegedly “scientific” idea of objectively reconstructing the past “as it actually was,” and more speculative or “metaphysical” issues in the philosophical interpretation of history itself, such as historical progress, human freedom in its historical contexts, and Spenglerian cultural pessimism.

280  Sami Pihlström The philosophy of the humanities should primarily focus on the former kind of topics instead of the latter, recognizing that a sharp division between them may be impossible. A monumental work like Paul Ricoeur’s Memory, History, Forgetting (2004) may successfully combine deep insights into the historicity of human existence and the ethical and political issues of memory with careful examination of the methodology of historiography, including explanation, understanding, and historical representation. Analogously, if we read G. H. von Wright’s classical Explanation and Understanding (1971), dealing with the methodology of historical explanation and developing the theory of intentional explanation in terms of the “practical syllogism,”7 in the context of his overall philosophical oeuvre, which also includes critical essays on the development of the Western civilization and the environmental crisis (e.g., von Wright 1993), we can appreciate the profound connections between the epistemology of historiography and the broader philosophical practices of understanding human beings as historical beings ethically concerned with their past, present, and future. All of these contributions to analyzing both human historicity and human attempts to understand that historicity can be regarded as inquiries into the “moral order” of reality James talked about. Analogous examples characterizing the situation in the philosophy of the humanities can be found in other areas. For example, when Paisley Livingston (1988) examines the knowledge that literary theory may offer us, he also comments on the epistemic status of literature itself. Moreover, while debates over the methodology of theology and religious studies are primarily confined to the epistemic credentials of scholarly contributions to those fields, it is almost inevitable that the possibility of “religious knowledge” is thereby also discussed. For a thoroughgoing naturalist, the commitment to naturalism (or atheism) as a background assumption of religious studies can hardly remain “merely methodological”: it is at the same time a commitment to a conception of the world according to which religious experience (due to its aspiration to the transcendent), for example, should not be regarded as being epistemically in touch with reality in the sense in which scientific experimentation is. A naturalist account of religion—based on, e.g., John Dewey’s (1991 [1934]) non-reductive pragmatic naturalism (cf. Pihlström 2013)—should thus determine how exactly scholarly perspectives on religious practices and their practitioners’ experiences are related to religious worldviews themselves.8 15.3 The Pragmatic Maxim and the Theory of Inquiry Any pragmatist philosophy of the humanities must be compatible with, and further elaborate, the classical pragmatist theory of inquiry, as well as the Pragmatic Maxim originally proposed by the founders of the tradition.

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  281 Regarding these pragmatist principles, we may apply to humanistic inquiry the seminal ideas we find in Peirce’s early essays on the scientific method, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878), as well as James’s and Dewey’s elaborations of them in their central works.9 The pragmatist conception of inquiry, often labeled the “doubt-belief” model of inquiry, takes its departure from the fact that we cannot begin our inquiries from a Cartesian-like universal doubt. We have to start from within the beliefs we already have—in medias res. In pragmatism, beliefs are literally understood as habits of action: to believe something to be the case is not merely to have a cognitive representation of something external to one’s cognitive mechanism but to be prepared to act in certain purposive ways in the world. Believing anything, however ordinary and primitive, is to be committed to ways of acting. This is the most fundamental pragmatist starting point for the philosophy of the humanities as well: the beliefs and theories we formulate within the humanities are, constitutively, habits of action. This even concerns our beliefs about the past; even those beliefs are ultimately habits of acting in certain ways with an eye to our future, not merely representing the past those beliefs are about. Accordingly, any claim to pragmatic truth within any inquiry whatsoever must honor this basic pragmatist understanding of the habitual and practice-embedded character of our pursuits of truth. A key point according to the pragmatist model of inquiry is reached when our habitual action (manifesting our beliefs) encounters something unexpected. Then, and only then, is inquiry properly speaking launched. Stimulated by a surprise, we start inquiring into the matter, and thereby we may revise or give up our initial belief—that is, the habit of action it was manifested in. And then the process will continue—arguably roughly analogously to the way the hermeneutic circle moves back and forth between an overall interpretation and textual evidence based on the details of the interpreted text. It is not difficult to see how naturally this simple model of the inquiry process can be applied to humanistic scholarship. We may analyze our beliefs and theories about literary works, historical events, or religious meanings and institutions as (broadly speaking) habits of action in terms of which, and by means of which, we are able to orient in the cultural world of literature, history, and religion or theology. From a pragmatist perspective, the value of humanistic scholarship lies largely in its ability to provide us with such orientation, which is a key dimension of the notion of truth, pragmatically conceived. A related idea, the Pragmatic Maxim, is based on Peirce’s (1992–1998 [1878], vol. 1, 132) original principle: “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then the whole of our conception of those effects is the whole

282  Sami Pihlström of our conception of the object.” Applied to the present topic, this means that our conception of any object of humanistic study—be it a literary text, a historical event or chain of events, a meaningful human action, or a religious set of beliefs and rituals, for instance—is completely cashed out in terms of our conception of the potential (conceivable) practical effects that we consider that object might have in/for our habits of action. This, however, does not mean that those practical effects would necessarily have to be actualized in our current or future experience; it is essential that we draw attention to the potential, i.e., conceivable, effects that the objects of our conception (or our study and interpretation) may have in order to determine the meaning of that conception.10 Just as Peirce himself applied the Pragmatic Maxim to clarify, e.g., the concept of reality, ending up with his famous definition of truth as the “final opinion” of scientific inquiry at the ideal limit, an opinion to which the view of an idealized community of rational inquirers would converge if they were able to employ the scientific method for an indefinitely long time, we may systematically apply pragmatism and the Pragmatic Maxim to determine what exactly we should mean by “reality” in humanistic scholarship. There may be no “final opinion” available in the humanities and the arts, but this by no means entails that there is no relevant way of applying the concept of truth. A profound entanglement of pragmatism and realism emerges as an outcome of applying the Pragmatic Maxim here—or so, I believe, the pragmatist can argue. 15.4 Pragmatism, Realism, and Truth The problem of realism is highly central to the pragmatist philosophy of the humanities and needs to be explored in a multidimensional manner taking into consideration its various aspects ranging from ontology to methodology. We may do so by applying questions central to debates on scientific realism (see, e.g., Livingston 1988; Niiniluoto 1999) to the humanities. First, ontologically, the realism issue in the humanities concerns the mind-­ independent existence of the objects (“reality”) of humanistic inquiry. The realist affirms that at least some of those objects—particularly theoretical entities postulated for theoretical reasons—exist and have the properties they do independently of our conceptualizations, inquiries, and theories, more or less analogously to the way in which the scientific realist claims that theoretical entities such as electrons or genes exist mind- and theory-independently.11 Second, epistemologically, the realism issue concerns the knowability of such objects of research; here the realist claims that we may at least to some extent know the objects of humanistic inquiry and their properties—though it may be asked what exactly it means to “know” such things.

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  283 Third, semantically, the problem of realism focuses on the reference of theoretical terms and the applicability of the concept of truth to theoretical statements; according to the realist, the theoretical vocabulary used by humanistic scholars at least purportedly represents objects existing in an ontologically realist sense, and the notion of truth can, in principle, be applied to theories in the humanities. That is, according to the realist, our use of theoretical terms in the humanities either refers to or fails to refer to really existing things depending on whether such things exist, and our statements about those objects are true or false depending on whether they correspond to the way things are. Fourth, we may ask, methodologically, whether it is possible to develop research methods that (tend to) lead us to the truth or yield an inquiry progressing toward the truth (in a quasi-Peircean sense) in the humanities; again, the realist affirms this. Fifth and finally, there is the axiological question about the aims and goals of research: does humanistic inquiry aim at the truth at all, as the realist claims, or does it pursue something else, such as practical problem-solving or perhaps individual or cultural welfare and self-understanding and/or social or political empowerment? We can easily see that the notion of truth is absolutely crucial in this entire discussion. A full-scale realism about the humanities would state something like the following. There is a cultural world “out there” independently of scholars’ use of concepts, language, and theories. It is, admittedly, a world created by human beings and their activities, containing objects such as meanings, representations, purposive actions, and cultural institutions, but its existence and properties are largely independent of any particular inquirers’ or groups’ of inquirers’ views, beliefs, opinions, and theories. By means of theoretical research and its methods, we may to some extent get to know this humanly created cultural world—ever more deeply. We may represent its objects and properties by using theoretical language, and our statements about it are typically true or false depending on the way the world is. Humanistic inquiry pursues truth about cultural reality and seeks to develop methods that bring scholars closer to the truth in the long run. Pragmatist answers to the list of questions concerning realism may take various stands between realism and antirealism. Arguably, while influential pragmatists (e.g., Rorty 1989, 1991) have attacked realism, no sane pragmatist denies realism altogether—either in the sciences or in the humanities. A reasonable form of pragmatic realism needs to be distinguished both from strong realism committed to a “ready-made” world existing with its own precategorized ontological structure and from radical antirealisms, such as thoroughgoing relativism and/or constructivism denying the theory-independent reality of any objects of study (in their radical form even in the natural sciences). On the other hand, whether these questions characterizing the discourse on scientific realism are as

284  Sami Pihlström appropriate in the humanistic context as in general philosophy of science also needs to be investigated; it can be expected that a pragmatist perspective yields a balanced assessment of the relevance of these issues, and thus of the relevance of whatever is the analogy of scientific realism to be developed to account for the scholarly practices of the humanities. As pragmatists have been able to defend plausible and sophisticated accounts of pragmatic realism in general epistemology and philosophy of science, it is a major future task for pragmatist philosophers of the humanities to investigate how far these conceptions, and especially the concept of truth, may be applied to the philosophy of the humanities. My own version of pragmatic realism (cf. Pihlström 2020, 2021, 2022) is deeply indebted, in addition to James and the other classical pragmatists, to Hilary Putnam’s (e.g., 1981, 1990, 2016) struggles with realism and truth over the decades. Putnam, however, never seems to have explicitly (apart from scattered remarks here and there) applied either his “internal realism” (his view in the 1980s) or his later versions of pragmatic realism to the humanities. Yet, a “Putnamian” conception of pragmatic realism in the philosophy of the humanities acknowledges that scholarly fields like literary theory and criticism, historiography, and theology and religious studies may postulate—as real objects of inquiry—such things as, say, interpretive possibilities and potential meanings of texts, and that our scholarly practices of inquiry in these fields may legitimately pursue truth about such entities. Putnam’s internal realism (pragmatic realism) emphasizes pluralism in ontology by admitting even objects like texts and their meanings among the “real things” there are in the world, as objects of inquiry. Indeed, Putnam (2004, 82–84) argues that there is “something mad” in the scientistic view that things like “passages which are difficult to interpret” do not exist. However, I believe we need, pace Putnam (and James), a Kantian-­ inspired critical transcendental account for such realism: pragmatic constructivism (emphasizing the human-made world) functions at the transcendental level, enabling “first-order” realism about the objects whose postulation is made possible by our engagement in practices of inquiry. Mere pluralism regarding ontology and truth, however pragmatic, is insufficient without a transcendental account of how the plurality of ontological postulations we need is possible for us within our goal-directed practices of inquiry. The fundamental pragmatic question is always how ontological postulations serve our human needs and interests. Therefore, a pragmatic realism about the humanities does not simply subscribe to the notorious Jamesian slogans about ideas being “true” simply “so long as to believe [them] is profitable to our lives” (James 1975 [1907], 42) and “the true” thus being “only the expedient in the way of our thinking” (ibid., 106; original italics). Nor does pragmatic realism identify truth with

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  285 idealized epistemic justification or idealized warranted assertibility in the way Putnam (1981, chapter 3; 1990) did during his internal realism period. Rather, pragmatic realism, as I am willing to develop it in the philosophy of the humanities and more generally, follows these pragmatists in starting from the obvious conviction of everyday realism according to which truth is “agreement” with reality but specifies this ordinary account of truth by offering a normative conception of our practices of inquiry; it is through our engagement in those practices, in the arts and humanities and more broadly, that truth, in James’s (1975 [1907], 97) words, “happens to an idea” (original italics). My favorite “Kantian” form of pragmatism does not interpret this “happening” as a causal process of turning a false idea into a true one but as a (quasi-Kantian) transcendental constitution of the very possibility of truth (and thus also of the very possibility of facts about which our truths are true) in and through our practice of pursuing the truth.12 Note, however, that while my basic approach here is (broadly speaking) Jamesian, this does not mean that we could neglect the very important Peircean strain in pragmatic realism. 15.5 “Real Generals” As a further twist in our account of pragmatic realism and truth as applied to the humanities, it needs to be acknowledged that humanistic inquiries do not merely investigate concrete particular objects, such as literary texts or unique historical events. They may also take more abstract entities and phenomena among their objects, such as (for example) historical tendencies of development, interpretive possibilities, as well as general traits of religious practices irreducible to any particular rituals. These can all be analyzed in terms of Peirce’s realism about “real generals” (e.g., habits, dispositions, laws), which has rarely if ever been developed in the philosophy of the humanities in any detail.13 It is important to understand our practices of inquiry in a manner enabling us to take a pragmatically realistic attitude to the truth-claims about this type of general traits of our human world. This seemingly abstract philosophical issue is, indeed, directly relevant to methodological questions of historical explanation, for instance. For the historian, it is important to be able to explain why a certain event or process took place at a certain time, and explaining this may involve explaining why some other event(s), among the countless number of events that could have taken place, did not take place; therefore, counterfactual questions (“what if…?”) and contrastive counterfactual explanations (answering questions such as, “why did X happen, instead of Y?”) are part and parcel of historical scholarship and have obviously been thoroughly explored by philosophers of historiography. Thus, the historian does not

286  Sami Pihlström merely seek to find out truths about what exactly happened and why. Their focus is on the fact that something happened rather than something else. Such a contrastive historical truth must be taken not only explanatorily seriously (in terms of contrastive and counterfactual explanations) but also ontologically seriously; it is a truth requiring interpretation and thus the entire value- and purpose-oriented scheme of inquiry through which we conceptualize historical reality. In this sense, the ontological status of historical truths as involving reference to “general” facts (in addition to historical events’ being in an obvious sense “particulars,” too) is fundamentally connected with their value-laden character. It is only in the context of normatively structured practices of inquiry that we can have any historical truths or facts. Therefore, arguably, only within a Peircean realism of generality can we really ontologically make sense of the idea that even though only the actual historical events really “exist” in the past (to the extent that anything that is past can be said to “exist”), historical scholarship can also seek truth about real generals, such as unactualized historical possibilities, i.e., things that could have existed but did not and do not. This is crucially related to the role played by historical representations in the study of history. Our historical facts, as well as the facts investigated within all the other humanities, ontologically (transcendentally) depend on our practices of re­presentation. There is a reflexive structure that again needs to be appreciated here: through those practices, we examine not only the objects represented but our representations and representational relations themselves. A pragmatist philosophy of the humanities investigates how representational relations develop within our practices, i.e., how (ontologically, epistemically, ethically) we represent, not just what we represent, and how it is possible for us to arrive at such representations.14 Analogously, the literary critic may study not only the actual meaning(s) of a literary text but also the possible meanings it could take under a plurality of different, possibly conflicting interpretations (even in the event that s/he does not consider all those meanings to really “exist” in the work itself). A related question is what exactly it means to say that a literary (or more generally artistic) work can be interpreted in different ways. Thus, pragmatic realism about generality is directly relevant to appreciating the semantic openness of literary works, which may be considered a key component of their literary value. Analogously, scholars of religion may examine general traits of religious ways of life and practices without claiming that they are always actualized as concrete ritual behaviors. Peircean realism of generality is extremely valuable for making sense of these ideas, too, because it draws a clear distinction between the concepts of existence and reality: the former applies to concrete particulars and events, while the latter applies to “real generals.” General patterns of thought and action

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  287 can be real without being always concretely realized in particular, contingently existing objects or events. Accordingly, interpretive possibilities can be regarded as Peircean real generals, and for this reason, pragmatism accounts for the openness of such possibilities—in other words, of the reality of open questions of interpretation—as theoretical entities of humanistic inquiry. Moreover, real generals are important in this context also because they can be reflexively applied to make sense of some of the fundamental ideas of pragmatist philosophy of the humanities itself: while humanistic ontology is value-dependent, as suggested, it may be argued that values are real generals, too; they do not exist as particular objects but are, rather, “real” as general patterns guiding our thought, inquiry, and action. Insofar as humanistic inquiry investigates possible interpretations, or possible ways of explaining a historical truth, it may be argued that the kind of real possibilities that Peirce postulated along with other “generals” need to be assumed in order to render possible the kind of pragmatic ontology of the humanities that (I have argued) we need. Appreciating the nature of open interpretive possibilities as central to the humanities may thus require a realism about generals; it is a major advantage of pragmatist philosophy of the humanities to be able to take ontologically seriously this openness of scholarly problems. Finally, our concerns with ontology and truth are complexly interrelated. As pragmatic realism needs to incorporate a view on pragmatist truth in the humanities and the arts, real generals will come to occupy a central role in this picture, too, because truth itself is a general, processual, feature of our practices of inquiry, something that tends to “happen” to our ideas in the course of inquiry. 15.6 Literary Modernism and Pragmatic Realism: Fiction and Truthmaking Having so far only sketched a picture of how a moderately realistic account of truth is available to the pragmatist in the philosophy of the humanities, I now wish to move from a general pragmatist exploration of the humanities to a somewhat more concrete case study, offering some brief comments on a particular piece of reality studied by the humanities, viz., literature, taking my lead from recent analyses of William James’s relation to literary modernism (see further Pihlström 2023, chapter 4). A comprehensive collection of essays, Understanding James, Understanding Modernism (Evans 2017), interestingly explores James’s relations to modernist art. Writers as diverse as James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf—all of whom experimented with literary techniques that could be taken to be responsive to the famous Jamesian

288  Sami Pihlström idea of a “stream of thought” (or “stream of consciousness”)—as well as leading American poets like Robert Frost and (especially) Wallace Stevens have been regarded as having been influenced by James, and even George Orwell can be read in a Jamesian context. In addition to the pivotal notion of the stream of thought, central to the very emergence of modernism, other well-known ideas of James’s, including pluralism, philosophical temperaments, radical empiricism, and the will to believe, can also be illuminated, and can illuminate, the modernist writers discussed in Evans’s collection. In general terms, modernism, emphasizing temporality, change, and the “flux” of reality in contrast to fixity, abstraction, stability, and unchanging essences, develops further a number of tendencies centrally at work in James’s pragmatism. Wallace Stevens is presumably the modernist poet most often mentioned in relation to James.15 According to Giles Gunn (2017, 126), Stevens can be firmly placed in the Jamesian framework, especially as we appreciate how he “associates modernism with an age of disbelief in which people who have experienced the disappearance of many, if not most, of the gods are forced to look elsewhere for the consolations once provided by religious faith,” now seeking such consolations in the world of literature, the arts, and philosophy itself, still pursuing “spiritual survival” albeit in “more secular, profane forms” (see also Gunn 2014). Or as Joan Richardson (2014, 34) puts it, quoting Stevens, James articulated in The Varieties the idea that “[i]t is the belief and not the god that counts.”16 This could be seen as an interpretation of James that seeks to disentangle pragmatic truth from any metaphysical conception of the world our truths are supposed to be about. It is Stevens’s idea of “fiction,” emerging first in “A High-Toned Old Christian Woman” (in Harmonium, 1923)17 and later in the famous long poem, “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction” (1942), that is most explicitly taken to refer to James’s The Will to Believe (see Case 2017, 178). Generalizing this argument, Kristen Case suggests that Stevens and James share and further develop the (pragmatist) tradition of viewing experience as inseparable from meaning and truth as something that is “arrived at via poiesis or making” (ibid.). Stevens, she argues, is “the writer who most forcefully makes precisely this pragmatist point, one suggested by James but never fully articulated by him: that the effect of words is their meaning” (ibid.).18 Accordingly, what we find here is a philosophical-cum-literary attempt to articulate the view that “reality is at least in part a matter of our creative construction, an aesthetic achievement”; in this sense, Stevens’s contribution to pragmatism can be seen as “an ongoing, imaginative construction of reality that understands itself as such” (ibid., 182). The word “fiction” must here be understood with reference to its Latin roots: fingere means “to fashion or form,” and is thus in some of its meanings

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  289 close to the Greek poiesis. “To believe in Stevens’s sort of fiction,” Case tells us, “is not to believe in something known to be untrue, but rather to believe in something known to have been constructed” (ibid., 183). I cannot take any stand here on how exactly such a conception of fiction can be analyzed out of Stevens’s rather difficult poetry. It is clear that the notion of fiction, as poetically developed, plays a major role in his oeuvre. Case’s proposal (see ibid., 187–188) to view Stevens’s notion of fiction in dialogue with James’s emphasis, especially in A Pluralistic Universe (1909), on reality “in the making” sounds plausible to me, no matter how exactly specific textual evidence from Stevens’s poems can be used to support this reading. In a similar vein, Patricia Rae (2017, 203–204) reads Stevens in the framework of what she calls a (Jamesian) “fluctuating process of truth-making.”19 Interestingly, Rae views this truthmaking as something that another (late) modernist writer, Orwell, may have inherited from James. Rae’s discussion of James and Orwell (ibid., 204–211) is refreshing because James is usually seen, especially by analytic readers, as someone who opened the slippery slope from his pragmatist conception of truth down toward the horrible fragmentation of truth that takes place in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1992 [1949]), viz., in O’Brien’s views on the dependence of truth on what the Party says is true.20 Orwell’s “terrifying vision of a world where accounts of reality became utterly malleable” (ibid., 206) has sometimes been seen as having its roots in the Jamesian conception of truth as something that is “good in the way of belief.” However, importantly, Rae reads Orwell as establishing “a vital new purpose for Jamesian radical empiricism, pragmatism, and pluralism, which is to offer resistance to totalitarianism,” seeking to “reinstat[e] sincerity and verification into a world overrun by unthinking orthodoxy and cynicism about truth” (ibid., 206–207). The “pure experience” of suffering—as in Winston’s case in Nineteen Eighty-Four—is also a strong Jamesian theme in Orwell (ibid., 209–210), while Rae identifies the simile of Winston’s glass and coral paperweight, “an antithesis of everything Big Brother represents,” as “Orwell’s most consistent Jamesian figure” reminding us of the sense of an individual’s “inner life” that the Party seeks to completely suppress (ibid., 210). Far from leading to an Orwellian destruction of truth, James’s pragmatism about truth can be understood as a resolute philosophical defense of precisely the kind of individuality—and individual sincerity—that the dystopic forces imagined in Orwell’s novel seek to crush (see also Kivistö and Pihlström 2016, chapter 5). Again, there is no need or possibility here to determine whether Rae’s reading of Orwell (or James) is correct, or even a plausible interpretation. It is plausible enough, however, to lead us out of the narrow way of seeing James as someone who simply leads us to a collapse of truth into

290  Sami Pihlström something like the Orwellian nightmare. The Jamesian-cum-Orwellian individual inner sincerity, responsiveness to (“pure”) experiences of suffering, and the pursuit of truth, or “truthmaking,” as constituting our existential orientation to the world and other human beings around us are all fundamental philosophical-cum-literary themes that can be seen as articulating both the Jamesian understanding of our individual responsibility for the ways we view the world from our distinctive perspectives and the Orwellian warnings that it is not only totalitarianism per se but more generally the fragmentation of such sincerity everywhere around us (manifested in “the thoughtless utterance of prefabricated phrases”; see Rae 2017, 210) that may lead to a destruction of the very possibilities of thinking and acting. Orwell joins James in showing us that, and how, our practices of truth matter. It is in this context that I want to offer my “Kantian pragmatist” understanding of James, especially of his views on truthmaking, as a way of reconciling the robustness of objective truth (which is clearly a major concern for Orwell, no matter how strongly he may have been influenced by James’s pragmatism) and the malleability of the world as a human construction—as studied both by the humanities and by the arts and literature. It is only at the transcendental level that we “make” truths and the world. We do not “make up” either truths or reality in the sense of just imagining them or creating them ex nihilo; the world we live in and write about is certainly not a fictional construct in that sense. James constantly refers to “real” losses, sacrifices, and sufferings, and a sincere attitude to such realities of human life requires that we take seriously objective truths about them, as pursued by both the arts (especially literature) and humanistic research. Even so, when responding to an objectively existing world we did not (fully) create in any factual sense, we may be said to have constituted the very possibility of such realities as elements of the human world. Perhaps the word fingo (the etymological basis of “fiction”) could then have a quasi-Kantian employment in this framework. No “Jamesian” writer, whether Stevens, Orwell, or anyone else, needs to be explicit about the transcendental constitutivity of human practices for the emergence of reality and truths about it, but this transcendental pragmatism offers a way of accommodating James’s realist, as well as constructivist pronouncement into a single pragmatist approach, analogously to the way in which Kant himself maintained that transcendental idealism and empirical realism are mutually supporting rather than conflicting.21 15.7 Conclusion Both in the philosophy of the humanities generally and in philosophical interpretations of modernist literature influenced by James (which was

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  291 briefly discussed as a case study), the concept of truth is vitally important. There is nothing we can do in pragmatist explorations of our practices without using this concept and considering not only its ontological and epistemological but also ethical dimensions, concretely manifested in our being obliged to view the world as “truthfully” as possible in its empirical reality that includes horrendous evil and suffering. James was clearly willing to say that a writer like Leo Tolstoy or Walt Whitman, both of whom he admired and often cited (and his readers may add that writers influenced by him, such as Wallace Stevens), may have had a “true” picture of some existentially important matter, say, suffering. His readers may equally well debate on whether the interpretations he offers of someone like Tolstoy or Whitman are “true” (about the literary-cum-philosophical “truths” those writers may have arrived at). Thus, the pragmatic conception of truth must be rich and multilayered enough to function at these different levels. It is therefore seriously wrong to reduce this conception to a textbook rival of the correspondence theory and other classical truth-theories. While I am not here going to discuss James’s or other pragmatists’ views on truth in any further detail (and though I must leave, for example, the more detailed differences between Peirce’s and James’s views on truth unexamined here), it must be understood that these ideas concerning truth are to be pragmatically applied at all these different levels. The sincerity of a literary depiction of reality and the scholarly insightfulness of an interpretation of such a literary depiction (possibly incorporating an analysis of interpretive possibilities as Peircean real generals, as briefly suggested) can both be true in the pragmatist sense. But so can, of course, a scientific theory, to which the traditional correspondence account is perhaps more readily applicable. The pragmatist conception of truth can thus be understood as a kind of meta-level account of the variety of functions of truth, accommodating scientific (correspondence) truth, scholarly interpretive truth, as well as literary or artistic existential truth, or even (for some of us) religious truth, among other species—and practices—of truth. There is, for a Jamesian pragmatist, no way to draw a principled dichotomy between truth as a metaphysical or epistemic matter, on the one hand, and truthfulness as an existential and ethical commitment to the pursuit of truth, a pursuit which may also very well be literary and aesthetic. All of these are aspects of our practices of truth.22 Notes 1 In this brief chapter, I will not be able to pay any detailed attention to the many differences between Peirce’s and James’s pragmatisms, but it goes without saying that their conceptions of what pragmatism is—or, indeed, what truth is,

292  Sami Pihlström when pragmatically analyzed—are not identical. See Pihlström (2009) for my more comprehensive reflections on the tension within the pragmatist tradition largely created by these two founding fathers’ diverging accounts of the meaning of pragmatism, especially focusing on the opposition between Peircean realism and Jamesian nominalism (which, as such, would be too crude a dichotomy for summarizing the tensions between their views, though). 2 The topic of this chapter has been more substantially explored in Pihlström (2022, chapters 1–2) and Pihlström (2023), chapter 4; some of the arguments only tentatively proposed here are more fully developed in those two recent books of mine. 3 I am not providing any explicit definition of “the humanities” here; the boundary between the humanities and the social sciences (and in some cases other fields of inquiry) may be fuzzy, but this does not prevent academics from understanding very well what we mean by the humanities. Ostensively, we may characterize the humanities as the practices that people affiliated at faculties of arts, as well as other relevant faculties, including law and theology, are typically engaged in at universities all over the world. 4 “The Sentiment of Rationality” is included in The Will to Believe (1897), and all these major books are available as volumes of James’s Works (1975–88). 5 As Wayne Proudfoot (2000, 51–52; 2004, 39–41) explains, James thus does not mean “moral” here merely in the sense of ethics but indicates, among other things, his dissatisfaction with, e.g., fully naturalized explanations of religion, especially insofar as religion needs to be seen to bring meaning and value into human experience. Thus, when James speaks about “moral order,” he means this in the sense of the “moral sciences” (i.e., the humanities and social sciences): the issue is whether to understand reality, including our religious responses to reality, and even religion itself, as a mere collection of ultimately meaningless material processes and contingent natural facts, or whether to understand it as “shaped to,” or perhaps even shaped by, human thought and action (cf. Proudfoot 2004, 32; see also Proudfoot 2000). The issue is, then, to what extent religion is a topic for humanistic inquiry that may, pragmatically, focus on its “fruits” in our lives and practices, rather than natural-scientific inquiry focusing on its causal origins (Proudfoot 2004, 37). Clearly, for James and Jamesian pragmatists, it is also ethically significant whether we view disciplines such as religious studies as (partly) humanistic or as purely scientific. 6 For example, philosophical issues in historiography have been extensively discussed by major scholars (e.g., Dray 1980; Mandelbaum 1977; Tucker 2009; Kuukkanen 2015), while literary theory and criticism as a scholarly discipline is explored by Paisley Livingston (1988). These studies fail to deal with pragmatism in historical detail, but see, e.g., Kuukkanen et al. (2019) for pragmatist viewpoints. 7 The basic idea of the practical syllogism, as formulated by von Wright (1971), is that human actions are to be explained as resulting from the agent’s intention to realize a certain state of affairs and their beliefs about the necessary conditions for bringing about that state of affairs. 8 See several essays in Bagger (2018), especially Proudfoot (2018) and Davis (2018). This issue can also be phrased in terms of the concept of disenchantment (Entzauberung), which we owe to Max Weber (see Joas 2017 for a highly relevant recent discussion). Our taking seriously the ways human beings have viewed, and continue to view, the world as “re-enchanted” (that is, rich in meaning and value, not reducible to mere matter in motion) should not lead to

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  293 too easy compromises with the disenchanted scientific worldview. Our practices are engaged in a dialectic between the two. Cf. also Pihlström (2021, chapter 4). 9 All of these and many other relevant writings by the pragmatist classics are available in the standard collected works editions (Peirce 1992–1998; James 1975–1988; Dewey 1967–1987). See note 1 on the differences between Peirce and James. 10 See also the remarks on “real generals” below. For Peirce, the paradigmatic practical effects to be considered here were experimental effects in a scientific laboratory, whereas for James, the range of applications of the Pragmatic Maxim was considerably wider, encompassing ethical and religious experience (see, e.g., Pihlström 2009). 11 Clearly, the objects of humanistic inquiry do not exist independently of human minds, precisely because they are humanly created cultural entities. These objects may not exist theory-independently either because it may be meaningful to discuss their existence and their properties only within a certain theoretical framework (though in a sense this can also be claimed to be the case with natural-scientific theoretical entities). However, whatever theoretical entities are postulated in the humanities, they may still be, realistically, independent of the researchers’ individual or collective opinions, beliefs, and wishes: they are not simply subject to contingent subjective ways of thinking or talking about them. 12 For further discussion of how the (Jamesian) pragmatist about truth can be committed to realism, see, e.g., Pihlström (2021, especially chapter 1). 13 Relevant writings by Peirce can be found in Peirce (1992–1998, especially vol. 2; though the theme runs through Peirce’s writings as a whole, all the way from the 1871 “Berkeley Review” [vol. 1] to his late essays on pragmatism and pragmaticism). For my own more Jamesian appropriation of Peircean realism, see Pihlström (2009, chapter 6); cf. Pihlström (2022, chapter 3). I am certainly not suggesting that Jamesian pragmatists would inevitably have to employ Peirce’s concept of “real general,” but I do find it a fruitful project in pragmatism scholarship to seek ways of overcoming the apparent tensions between these pragmatist classics’ tensions regarding the realism issue. 14 This is a Kantian-inspired “transcendental how” question in the sense that we are dealing with the necessary conditions for the possibility of representations within representational practices of humanistic scholarship—and the answers my proposed pragmatist philosophy of the humanities will deliver to such transcendental questions are thoroughly pragmatic. 15 He studied at Harvard during James’s professorship there, although he was mostly a pupil of George Santayana. 16 Richardson (2014) uses Stevens as a sort of guide throughout her discussion of pragmatism, even introducing her book through Stevens’s famous poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (in Stevens’s Harmonium, 1923; see Stevens (2006 [1984], 80–81; Richardson 2014, 10–12; cf. 61, 91). This poem is perhaps the best-known example of “pragmatist poetry.” 17 This poem (available in Stevens 2006 [1984]) is also analyzed in Richardson (2014, 91). 18 Analogous ideas were already developed by Richard Poirier in his seminal work, Poetry and Pragmatism (Poirier 1992), arguing that James and other thinkers in the loosely Emersonian tradition espoused a form of linguistic skepticism taking seriously the “vague.” James would thus be primarily read as a

294  Sami Pihlström philosopher of language, and this reading makes his philosophy strikingly relevant to modernist poetry. 19 Note, however, that the concept of truthmaking is loaded with different meanings. Its employment by literary scholars like Rae (2017) is very different from its use in contexts of analytic metaphysics. One important virtue of pragmatism might be that it can overcome such a gulf between very different ways of employing this concept. See Pihlström (2009, chapter 2) for a pragmatist account of (metaphysical) truthmaking. 20 Rorty’s (1989) radically neopragmatist contribution to this discussion, prioritizing freedom to truth, is unsatisfactory as it offers no way of countering O’Brien (or a “post-truth” figure like Donald Trump). See Pihlström (2021, chapter 1), for an attempt to find Jamesian pragmatist ways of stopping along the slippery slope sliding toward an Orwellian destruction of truth; for the importance of the matter, and Orwell’s 1984 generally, to a Jamesian response to the problem of evil and suffering, see Kivistö and Pihlström (2016, chapter 5). 21 For more comprehensive elaborations on these issues of Kantian pragmatism, see, e.g., Pihlström (2020, 2021). 22 Thanks are due to Pietro Gori for his kind invitation to contribute this chapter and to an anonymous reviewer for helpful critical suggestions.

References Bagger, Michael (ed.) (2018). Pragmatism and Naturalism: Scientific and Social Inquiry after Representationalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Case, Kristen (2017). “Notes toward the Specious Present: James and Stevens.” In Evans 2017, 177–191. Davis, Scott (2018). “Language, Method, and Pragmatism in the Study of Religion.” In Bagger 2018, 120–138. Dewey, John (1967–1987). The Collected Works of John Dewey. 37 vols. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Contains, e.g., A Common Faith (1934) in Late Works, vol. 9. Dray, William (1980). Perspectives on History. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Evans, David H. (ed.) (2017). Understanding James, Understanding Modernism. New York: Bloomsbury. Gunn, Giles (2014). “Is There a Pragmatist Approach to Literature?” Complutense Journal of English Studies 22, 41–49. Gunn, Giles (2017). The Pragmatist Turn: Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Formation of American Literature. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. James, William (1975–1988). The Works of William James. 19 vols. Eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Contains, e.g., The Will to Believe (1979 [1897]) and Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1975 [1907]). Joas, Hans (2017). Die Macht der Heiligen: Eine Alternative zur Geschichte von der Entzauberung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kivistö, Sari and Pihlström, Sami (2016). Kantian Antitheodicy: Philosophical and Literary Varieties. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and the Practices of Inquiry  295 Kuukkanen, Jouni-Matti (2015). Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kuukkanen, Jouni-Matti et al. (eds.) (2019). Special Issue: Pragmatism and the Philosophy of History. Journal of the Philosophy of History 13, 3. Livingston, Paisley (1988). Literary Knowledge: Humanistic Inquiry and the Philosophy of Science. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press.6/6/2023 Mandelbaum, Maurice (1977). The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Niiniluoto, Ilkka (1999). Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orwell, George (1992 [1949]). Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin. Peirce, Charles S. (1992–1998). The Essential Peirce. 2 vols. The Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Contains, e.g., “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878, vol. 1, 1992). Pihlström, Sami (2009). Pragmatist Metaphysics: An Essay on the Ethical Grounds of Ontology. London: Continuum. Pihlström, Sami (2013). Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God. New York: Fordham University Press. Pihlström, Sami (2020). Pragmatic Realism, Religious Truth, and Antitheodicy. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Pihlström, Sami (2021). Pragmatist Truth in the Post-Truth Age: Sincerity, Normativity, and Humanism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pihlström, Sami (2022). Toward a Pragmatist Philosophy of the Humanities. Albany: SUNY Press. Pihlström, Sami (2023). Humanism, Antitheodicism, and the Critique of Meaning in Pragmatist Philosophy of Religion. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Poirier, Richard (1992). Poetry and Pragmatism. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Proudfoot, Wayne (2000). “William James on an Unseen Order.” The Harvard Theological Review 93, 51–66. Proudfoot, Wayne (2004). “Pragmatism and ‘an Unseen Order’ in Varieties.” In Wayne Proudfoot (ed.), William James and the Science of Religions: Reexperiencing The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Columbia University Press, 31–47. Proudfoot, Wayne (2018). “Pragmatism, Naturalism, and Genealogy in the Study of Religion.” In Bagger 2018, 101–119. Putnam, Hilary (1981). Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, Hilary (1990). Realism with a Human Face. Ed. James Conant. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Putnam, Hilary (2004). Ethics without Ontology. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Putnam, Hilary (2016). Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity. Ed. Mario de Caro. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Rae, Patricia (2017). “Modernist Figures and James’s Pluralistic Universe.” In Evans 2017, 193–214.

296  Sami Pihlström Richardson, Joan (2014). Pragmatism and American Experience: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ricoeur, Paul (2004). Memory, History, Forgetting. Trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Rorty, Richard (1989). Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, Richard (1991). Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sellars, Wilfrid (1963). Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge & ­Kegan Paul. Stevens, Wallace (2006 [1984]). Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber. Tucker, Aviezer (ed.) (2009). Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. Tuomela, Raimo (1985). Science, Action and Reality. Dordrecht: Reidel. von Wright, Georg Henrik (1971). Explanation and Understanding. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. von Wright, Georg Henrik (1993). The Tree of Knowledge. Leiden: Brill.

Index

Aenesidemus 26 Arcesilaus 26 Anderson, E. 209–210, 213 Ankersmit, F. 6, 232 Appearance 32, 34–37, 87–88, 92, 110, 134, 136, 143–144, 147, 166–167, 185, 187, 202–203 Apraxia 26, 31–32 Arendt, H. 6, 155, 202–208, 211–213, 230–231 Aristotle 24–27, 39, 117, 123, 125, 202, 217, 233 Arts 7, 277–278, 282, 285, 287–288, 290, 292 Asaṅga 91, 95 Autopoiesis 257, 268–272 Barthes, R. 231–232 Bayle, P. 117 Beauty 5, 14, 129–132, 138, 146–147, 156 Belief 4, 6, 9–10, 13, 15–21, 37, 45–46, 57, 61–73, 75–77, 79–80, 85, 94, 103, 106, 109–121, 123, 125, 166, 170–171, 173–174, 177–178, 181, 183, 185–186, 193, 229–231, 238, 240–242, 244, 249, 261, 281–283, 288–289, 292–293 Bristow, W. 112 Buddha 4, 84–86, 88, 89–91, 122, 125 Buddhaghosa 97 Carneades 3, 26, 34–37, 39 Certainty 3, 11, 12–13, 19, 35, 37, 61, 73, 78, 91, 93, 114, 148, 181, 195–196, 194

Cicero 25–26, 34–37, 39 Colonization 250, 252; Colonizer 251–252; Colonized 238, 245, 248–252; Decolonization 250, 252 Compassion 5, 128–129, 132–138 Constructivism 123, 227, 283–284, 290 Consequentialism 64, 76 Conventions 42, 45–46, 51–54, 56, 74, 80, 167–168, 229 Conviction 19, 57, 67, 85, 90–93, 96, 99, 111, 116, 219 Cooper J. 44 Courage 47–49, 51, 55, 118–119, 178, 199, 262, 272 Customs 32, 46, 52–54, 122, 219–221 Cynics 3, 42–46, 49–58, 245 Darwin C. 154–155 Decolonial feminism 7, 257, 263 Deliberation 16, 200, 202, 211–212, 218 Democracy 199, 201, 205, 209–212, 238; Democratic theory/society/ participation 205, 209, 211–212; Nondemocratic rule 76 Democritus 33 Descartes, R. 103, 154, 181–182; Cartesian 71, 114, 158, 180–181, 187–188, 190–191, 193–195, 227, 281 Devendrabuddhi 98–99 Dewey, J. 175, 280–281 Dharmakīrti 4, 86–90, 93–100 Diderot, D. 4, 103–105, 112–119, 121–125

298 Index Diamond, J. 222–223 Diogenes 42–46, 57 Diogenes Laertius 34, 43–44, 57, 108 Disjunctivism 188–191, 195; Epistemic disjunctivism 188, 190 Dilthey, W. 6, 225, 227 Dogmatism 4, 30–31, 33–34, 37–38, 62, 68, 70–71, 74–75, 78–80, 104–105, 107–112, 116–121, 123, 125, 165–166, 172–175 Egoism 128, 133–134, 137–138 Empiricism 6, 147, 151, 181, 188–189, 194–195, 220, 288–289 Engels F. 141–142, 148, 150–156, 158, 220 Enlightenment 105, 112–116, 118, 122–125, 199, 222, 225 Equality 199, 201–202, 205, 208–210, 213; Egalitarian -ism 209, 212 Epicurus 25–27, 38, 57, 107, 130 Epistemology 1–2, 4, 6, 13, 25, 38, 86, 93–94, 103–107, 112, 117, 121, 123–124, 168, 174, 178, 180–181, 184, 187–188, 231, 243–244, 277–280, 282, 284, 291; Regulative epistemology 4, 103–107, 112, 117, 121, 124 Essentialism 172, 223, 227, 230; Anti-/ non- essentialism 63, 161, 165–166, 169, 171–172, 176 Existentialism 6, 8, 10–12, 157, 203, 216, 225, 227–228, 233, 290–291 Falsehood 61, 63, 67, 85, 95, 105, 111–115, 117–120, 177, 207, 210, 279; False 12, 29, 33, 35, 39, 63, 67, 76–77, 89, 109, 111, 120, 123, 162, 170, 174, 181, 183, 185, 192, 210, 213, 227, 241, 259, 271–272, 283, 285; Falsity 61, 63–64, 76, 110, 134, 195, 210, 242, 267 Fanon, F. 6, 7, 237–238, 245–252, 269 Feuerbach L. 141, 143, 148, 154 Foucault, M. 2–3, 5–7, 42–58, 73, 161–167, 170–171, 175–178, 230, 233, 237–238, 240–246, 248–250, 252, 257–263, 273 Foundationalism 6, 184; Antifoundationalism 5, 114, 161, 165, 167, 171–172, 174

Freedom 10, 34, 45, 49, 95, 131, 149–150, 205–208, 213, 226, 228, 238, 279, 294 Fraser, C. 61, 75–76 Frost, R. 288 Genealogy 6–7, 216, 225, 228–231, 233, 237–246, 249–252 Goulbourne, R. 121 Hadot 3, 24, 42, 44–45, 54–58 Hegel, F. 6, 67, 152, 158, 225–226 Heidegger, M. 130, 190, 228 Herder, J. G. 6, 222, 233 Herodotus 218–219, 233 Historicism 6, 215–216, 220–223, 233 Hobbes, T. 202–203, 208 Horkheimer, M. 122 Humanities 7, 276–287, 290, 292–293; Humanistic scholarship 276, 278–279, 281–283, 293 Hume, D. 6, 219–220, 239 Husserl, E. 225–226 Idealism 62, 89, 98–99, 142–148, 150–152, 157–158, 182, 189, 194, 203, 225; Transcendental idealism 4, 128, 133, 142, 144, 157, 290 Ideology 4, 61–62, 66–68, 73–74, 76–77, 80, 176, 207 Impurity 84–88, 90–93, 95–97, 99 Instrumentalism 14, 16, 76, 85, 130, 162, 163, 167–168, 170–171, 208, 212, 241 Intellectual integrity 105, 118–123, 125 Investigation 2, 4, 28, 30–33, 38, 104–111, 113–122, 124, 141, 173, 216, 219–220, 228, 230, 233 Inquiry 4, 5, 15–18, 21, 28, 88–91, 93, 96, 104–109, 112–114, 116, 119, 121, 128, 164–165, 172, 175–176, 215, 217, 219, 255, 257–259, 272–273, 276–277, 279–287, 292–293 James, W. 5, 7, 161, 172–175, 177–178, 276–281, 284–285, 287–294 Joyce, J. 287

Index  299 Justice 62, 65–67, 203, 206, 209–210, 213, 229, 239, 262, 273 Kant, I. 5, 129, 137, 142–145, 149–153, 155–158, 161, 165, 168, 175, 177, 199, 202, 206, 225, 277, 284–285, 290, 293–294 Knowledge 2, 4, 6, 9, 13, 18–21, 56, 68–76, 78, 80, 86–91, 93–94, 96, 99, 103–110, 112–115, 117–118, 121, 123, 132, 137–138, 144, 146–147, 157, 161–167, 169–171, 174–178, 180–181, 183–196, 205, 217, 221–224, 229–230, 240–241, 244, 250, 258–259, 279–280 Koopman, C. 240 Kuhn, T. 6, 220–221, 233 Lange, F.A. 168 Lafont, C. 209, 212 Lapoujade, D. 171, 173, 178 Law 32–33, 51–52, 112, 122, 154, 173, 202, 215, 285, 292 Life 1–3, 8–10, 12, 24–26, 31–34, 38, 42–46, 48–58, 64, 75, 106, 110–112, 118, 120–123, 125, 130–131, 135, 138, 142, 150–158, 169, 172, 177, 205, 207–208, 218, 219, 222, 226, 227–228, 246, 251, 261, 286, 289–290; Philosophy as a way of life 2, 3, 24, 42–44, 46, 49–50, 54, 56, 106, 111, 118, 122–123 Livingston, P. 280, 292 Lom, P. 112, 114, 119 Lucretius 25, 38 Lugones, M. 257, 263–265, 267, 272 Lukács G. 143, 156, 158 Lyotard, J.F. 225, 231, 233 Mannies, W. 115, 124 Marx, K. 1, 5, 67, 141–154, 156–158, 204, 208, 220 Materialism 2, 115, 141–144, 146–148, 152–158, 237, 278 May, T. 175, 177 McDowell J. 145, 147, 153, 157, 195 Meditative cultivation 4, 84–88, 91–92 Metaphysics 1, 5, 58, 62, 112, 128–129, 131–138, 163, 165–166,

168, 172, 175, 181, 186, 189, 193, 196, 288, 291, 294 Mill, J. S. 217–218, 233 Moore, G.E. 12, 181–183, 185–187, 192–194 Montaigne, M. 122, 125, 227 Monism 20, 129, 133–134, 136–137 Morality 48, 63–64, 74, 218, 238, 240–241 Mozi 61–68, 73–74 Nietzsche, F. 2–3, 5–11, 13, 20, 122, 125, 161, 163–170, 175–177, 227, 229–230, 237–243, 245–246, 248–250, 252 Nihilism 14, 165, 171, 177, 240 Norms 4, 27–28, 45–46, 51, 52–54, 61, 63, 66–68, 70, 72–73, 79, 80, 109, 111–112, 169, 206, 230 Orwell, G. 288–290, 294 Parrhesia 3, 7, 43, 46–49, 55, 57–58, 245, 257, 260–264, 273 Peirce, C. S. 172–173, 178, 277, 281–283, 285–287, 291–293 Perception 67, 69, 71, 73, 76, 84–88, 98, 115, 124, 128, 129, 136–137, 144–145, 147, 153, 166, 180, 187–190, 243; Aesthetic perception 129–131, 138; Apperception 151, 157, 246; Egoistic Perception 5; Moral perception 129, 136–138; Yogic perception 86–90, 93, 96, 98 Perspectivism 68, 78, 80, 167, 170 Peters, M. 161, 176 Phenomenology 6, 86, 93, 134–136, 157, 202, 213, 216, 225–229, 233, 237–238 Plato 25, 34, 43–44, 48, 50, 202, 203, 222–225, 227, 233, 273 Pluralism 4, 20, 61, 65–68, 70, 74–75, 79, 80, 212, 213, 284, 288, 289; plurality 63, 69–70, 72, 74–75, 78, 136, 202, 205, 213, 233, 261, 286 Plutarch 25 Politics 6, 7, 17, 52, 53, 61–62, 66–67, 75–76, 113, 121, 123, 164, 167, 176–177, 199–213, 215–220, 222, 229–231, 237–238, 241, 243,

300 Index 245–246, 249–250, 252, 256–262, 264, 268–271, 277, 280, 283 Popper, K. 215 Postmodern 225, 232–233 Power 1, 4, 7, 45, 61–68, 73, 78, 80, 95, 105, 120, 147, 152, 155, 157, 161–162, 165–166, 172, 176, 184, 201, 213, 220, 224–225, 229–230, 232, 238, 240–241, 243, 245–246, 248–249, 251–252, 258, 262, 265, 269, 283; Will to power 165–166 Pragmatism 2, 3, 7, 64–65, 73–74, 80, 114, 161, 162–165, 171–178, 230, 239, 241–242, 276–294 Proust, M. 287 Psychiatry 238, 250, 252 Putnam, H. 171, 284, 285 Pyrrho 26; see also Pyrrhonian skepticism Reality 1, 4, 5, 17–18, 31, 33–34, 39, 50, 58, 61, 64, 67, 68, 70–74, 76–80, 87, 90, 91, 92, 94–95, 99, 102, 111, 124, 131, 143, 145–146, 150, 153, 156, 165, 169, 171, 210, 224, 226–227, 231, 232, 243, 245–246, 252, 267, 269, 277–278, 280, 282–283, 285–292; Unreality 31, 33, 111; Realism 1, 6–7, 23, 89, 98–99, 168, 181, 186, 188–189, 193–194, 203, 232, 276, 278–279, 282–287, 290, 292–293; Antirealism 1, 6, 181, 189, 216, 225, 231, 233 Reason 28, 34, 89–90, 115, 119, 123–124, 135, 137, 146, 149, 150, 151, 153, 169, 181, 187–188, 191, 194, 225–226 Relativism 70, 73, 78–79, 165, 171, 172, 175, 215, 242, 283 Ricoeur, P. 280 Rights 200, 203, 204, 206, 208, 212, 238 Roberts, R. 103–104, 123 Rorty, R. 175, 177, 294 Rousseau, J.J. 6, 219 Said, E. 232 Saṅghabhadra 92 Sartre, J.P. 227–228 Schelling, F. 225–226

Schlegel, F. 215 Schopenhauer, A. 4, 5, 20, 128–138, 168, 224–225 Science 15–17, 30–31, 33, 76, 109, 112, 128, 141, 154, 155, 165, 199, 201, 215, 217, 220–221, 224, 242, 244, 279–284, 291, 292–293; Natural sciences 153–154, 158, 277–279, 283, 292–293; Philosophy of science 278, 284; Social sciences 215–216, 276–277, 292 Selflessness 85–87, 91, 93–96, 99–100; see also compassion Sensibility 5, 142–153, 155–157 Sextus Empiricus 3, 25–39, 104–112, 114–116, 119–121, 123–125 Skepticism 2–5, 13–14, 68–69, 73, 103–106, 117–119, 121, 165, 172–173, 180–185, 193–196; Academic skepticism 3, 25–26, 28, 34–38, 107–108, 124; Enlightenment skepticism 105, 112–116, 118, 122–123; Half-hearted skepticism 118–119; Pyrrhonian skepticism 2–4, 25–26, 27–34, 38–39, 57, 103–117, 119–125; Radical skepticism 6, 11–12, 105, 124, 181, 183, 186, 188, 193 Socrates 44–45, 48, 57 Stein, G. 287 Stevens, W. 288–291, 293 Sthiramati 91, 98 Stoicism 25–27, 33–37, 39, 46, 56–57, 107 Suffering 8–10, 19, 85–86, 90, 95, 128–129, 131–135, 289–291, 294 Suspension of judgment 27–32, 34, 38, 106, 109–111, 114–116, 119–120, 122–124 Tolstoy, L. 291 Tradition 1–4, 6, 26, 112, 228 Tranquility 27, 29–30, 55, 105–111, 119–122 Truthfulness 168, 170, 178, 241–242, 251, 291 Understanding 17–21, 94, 103, 142–148, 151, 153–157, 222, 225, 250, 279–280 Utilitarianism 76, 169, 171, 174, 218

Index  301 Values 4, 9, 14, 16, 45–46, 52, 61, 63, 66–74, 80, 111, 172–177, 200–201, 205–207, 210–212, 225, 229–232, 238–239, 242, 278, 287 Vasubandhu 90–92, 95–99 Vice 52–53; Intellectual vice 4, 104, 117–119, 121, 125; Vice epistemology 4, 105, 112, 117 Vico. G. 6, 221–222 Virtue 48, 56, 58, 74, 76, 117, 205; Intellectual virtue 2, 20, 104, 117–119, 121, 125, 239; Virtue epistemology 4, 105, 112, 117 Vogt, K. 108, 110–111, 122–123

Will 128–136, 138; Free will 10–13, 19; Will-less 128–129, 131–132 Williams, B. 239, 241 Williams, M. 106, 122, 181, 185, 196 Wittgenstein, L. 3, 6, 11–13, 20, 181–193, 195–196 von Wright, G. H. 187–189, 191, 195, 290, 292 Wolterstorff, N 103 Wood, J. 103–104, 123 Woolf, V 287 Wynter, S. 257, 268–274

Weber, M. 220, 292 White, H. 231–233 Whitman, W. 291

Zhuangzi 2, 4, 61, 68–70, 72–75, 77, 78–80 Žižek, S. 67, 77, 80

Yaśomitra 90, 98 Yogic awareness 86–90, 93, 96