Condemnation Without Absolutes!? Say what?!

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This guy epitomizes everything that's wrong with our universities today; the disease called postmodernism.

A bizarre view indeed...

October 15, 2001

Condemnation Without Absolutes

BY STANLEY FISH

HICAGO -- During the interval between the terrorist attacks and the United States response, a reporter called to ask me if the events of Sept. 11 meant the end of postmodernist relativism. It seemed bizarre that events so serious would be linked causally with a rarefied form of academic talk. But in the days that followed, a growing number of commentators played serious variations on the same theme: that the ideas foisted upon us by postmodern intellectuals have weakened the country's resolve. The problem, according to the critics, is that since postmodernists deny the possibility of describing matters of fact objectively, they leave us with no firm basis for either condemning the terrorist attacks or fighting back.

Not so. Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one. The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies. Invoking the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause wouldn't be effective anyway because our adversaries lay claim to the same language. (No one declares himself to be an apostle of injustice.)

Instead, we can and should invoke the particular lived values that unite us and inform the institutions we cherish and wish to defend.

At times like these, the nation rightly falls back on the record of aspiration and accomplishment that makes up our collective understanding of what we live for. That understanding is sufficient, and far from undermining its sufficiency, postmodern thought tells us that we have grounds enough for action and justified condemnation in the democratic ideals we embrace, without grasping for the empty rhetoric of universal absolutes to which all subscribe but which all define differently.

But of course it's not really postmodernism that people are bothered by. It's the idea that our adversaries have emerged not from some primordial darkness, but from a history that has equipped them with reasons and motives and even with a perverted version of some virtues. Bill Maher, Dinesh D'Souza and Susan Sontag have gotten into trouble by pointing out that "cowardly" is not the word to describe men who sacrifice themselves for a cause they believe in.

Ms. Sontag grants them courage, which she is careful to say is a "morally neutral" term, a quality someone can display in the performance of a bad act. (Milton's Satan is the best literary example.) You don't condone that act because you describe it accurately. In fact, you put yourself in a better position to respond to it by taking its true measure. Making the enemy smaller than he is blinds us to the danger he presents and gives him the advantage that comes along with having been underestimated.

That is why what Edward Said has called "false universals" should be rejected: they stand in the way of useful thinking. How many times have we heard these new mantras: "We have seen the face of evil"; "these are irrational madmen"; "we are at war against international terrorism." Each is at once inaccurate and unhelpful. We have not seen the face of evil; we have seen the face of an enemy who comes at us with a full roster of grievances, goals and strategies. If we reduce that enemy to "evil," we conjure up a shape- shifting demon, a wild-card moral anarchist beyond our comprehension and therefore beyond the reach of any counterstrategies.

The same reduction occurs when we imagine the enemy as "irrational." Irrational actors are by definition without rhyme or reason, and there's no point in reasoning about them on the way to fighting them. The better course is to think of these men as bearers of a rationality we reject because its goal is our destruction. If we take the trouble to understand that rationality, we might have a better chance of figuring out what its adherents will do next and preventing it.

And "international terrorism" does not adequately describe what we are up against. Terrorism is the name of a style of warfare in service of a cause. It is the cause, and the passions informing it, that confront us. Focusing on something called international terrorism — detached from any specific purposeful agenda — only confuses matters. This should have been evident when President Vladimir Putin of Russia insisted that any war against international terrorism must have as one of its objectives victory against the rebels in Chechnya.

When Reuters decided to be careful about using the word "terrorism" because, according to its news director, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, castigated what he saw as one more instance of cultural relativism. But Reuters is simply recognizing how unhelpful the word is, because it prevents us from making distinctions that would allow us to get a better picture of where we are and what we might do. If you think of yourself as the target of terrorism with a capital T, your opponent is everywhere and nowhere. But if you think of yourself as the target of a terrorist who comes from somewhere, even if he operates internationally, you can at least try to anticipate his future assaults.

Is this the end of relativism? If by relativism one means a cast of mind that renders you unable to prefer your own convictions to those of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began. Our convictions are by definition preferred; that's what makes them our convictions. Relativizing them is neither an option nor a danger.

But if by relativism one means the practice of putting yourself in your adversary's shoes, not in order to wear them as your own but in order to have some understanding (far short of approval) of why someone else might want to wear them, then relativism will not and should not end, because it is simply another name for serious thought.

Stanley Fish, dean of the college of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author, most recently, of "How Milton Works."

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), October 15, 2001

Answers

This was in the Op-ed section of today's NY Times.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), October 15, 2001.

What's wrong with that? Seems pretty sound to me. Like, do you want to win the war, or stand there waving a flag and tsk-tsking? The guy's just talking sense re how to beat a confusing enemy.

-- dave q (scrape100@hotmail.com), October 15, 2001.

dave q,

No; it's nonsense. Trying to understand someone's motives is one thing, which is fine as a secondary aim (the primary aim here being to simply kill them). But he's supporting a kind of moral relativism where our condemnation of them is no more objectively valid than their condemnation of us.

By the standard of human life, our position is good; theirs is evil -- they're pro-death -- and not just for others -- it's their own goal as well.

So, if human life is the standard, our condemnation of them is objectively rational; their condemnation of us -- using the same standard -- is objectively irrational, and evil.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), October 15, 2001.


The primary objective justifies the secondary ones. When cops want to solve a murder, do they rely on informants and give the guy cigarettes and coffee during interrogation, or do they just put up bulleting saying "Stop evil criminals?" They follow EVERY lead, and the criminal still gets to meet Old Sparky.

I believe that you've fallen for an bigger liberal lie (a lie so big, a la Goebbels, that people don't even consider it to be 'liberal' anymore, just 'common sense') - that 'hate' = 'lack of understanding'. See, it IS possible to see through alien eyes, to try and think like your enemy - and STILL send them to hell without misgivings. Ask any forensic psychologist. Nobody has ever won a war by ignoring information - knowledge is power, ALWAYS. (In the right hands, that is...)

-- dave q (scrape100@hotmail.com), October 15, 2001.

dave q,

I agree with your last post; and I don't see where it contravenes my position in any way.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), October 15, 2001.



"Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one."

This is just warmed-over epistomology. Not hardly controversial in my view.

Just to make it plainer, Mr. Fish isn't saying that pragmatic standards don't exist or even that universals don't exist, but only that our unaided human intelligence cannot determine whether we have truly found a universal or not.

Kurt Godel's first theorem shows that "it is impossible to establish the internal logical consistency of a very large class of deductive systems - elementary arithmetic, for example - unless one adopts principles of reasoning so complex that their internal consistency is as open to doubt as that of the sytems themselves."

Christianity gets around this through a mystical belief in divine revelation.

How do you get around it, Eve?

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), October 15, 2001.


Ever consider=prohecy,no? i didn,t think so.too bad!

what if there is a final AGE,to the rule of 666.

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), October 15, 2001.


LN,

"Just to make it plainer, Mr. Fish isn't saying that pragmatic standards don't exist or even that universals don't exist, but only that our unaided human intelligence cannot determine whether we have truly found a universal or not."

How do I get around this? Well, first let me ask you (and Mr. Fish, etc.) if you're proposing this statement as a universal -- as an absolute -- and we'll take it from there.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), October 15, 2001.


Godel's theorem is accepted as proved in the realm of mathematics. Based on Godel's work, Alan Turing proved that there are as many statements that are both true and unprovable as there are statements that are both true and provable. Turing's proof applies equally to false statements. Mr. Turing's proof is not confined to mathematical statements only, but includes any proposition that can be stated precisely enough to be susceptible of proof.

I am not a sufficent wizard at symbolic logic to know whether Mr. Fish's statement can be proved true or not. Any proof you can offer - one way or the other - would be welcome.

Without proof of some sort, Mr. Fish's statement may be a universal truth. But we can't tell. As a friend of mine likes to say, the demand for certainty greatly exceeds the supply.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), October 15, 2001.


BTW, answering a question with a question is somewhat bad form, eve.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), October 15, 2001.


LN, yes -- I'm guilty as charged on my answering your question with a question; I'm sorry. I just couldn't wait to focus on the contradiction of a postmodern relativist uttering an absolute. Just champing at the bit, dontcha know. :)

I get around the relativism by my position that there are absolutes in epistemology -- called "concepts" -- and absolutes in ethics as well -- the standard of the "good" is the human life.

In epistemology: The concept "table", for example, is an absolute when you realize it's the result of an interaction of consciousness and reality. We specify the essentials of what is a table (e.g., flat top, legs, etc.), then omit the measurements (the size, texture, color, etc.) until we've abstracted away the mental concept -- which becomes, in effect, a "universal". We then give the mental concept a word ("table") which stands for all the actual tables that could ever exist.

In ethics: If the action tends to foster the life of the actor without trampling on the rights of other actoors -- that's the most reasonable universal standard in ethics.

This is way too brief to answer lots of questions I know. But I hope this gives you a hint of an intimation of a suggestion of a clue of where I'm coming from.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), October 15, 2001.


Oh yes -- LN, if it's ok, can we pass on Godel for now? Or do you see this as essential to get through the other stuff?

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), October 15, 2001.

The Nazis were just doing their thang. We did not like their thang but they liked it. Who are we to say it is "evil" to kill 12 million people?

-- (moral relativist @ squishy.fishy), October 15, 2001.

Yes, eve. That does give me a clue where you are coming from.

It is fine with me to adopt practical standards of conduct as the basis for a practical ethics. Ethics, after all, cannot be divided from conduct (aka "practises"). But you are offering a hueristic as a universal absolute.

I don't deny that your general rule offers a useful standard that yields fairly "good" results, but the god is in the details. If there were indeed universal and absolute standards in ethics, then everyone who understands those standards could apply them to every action without deviation or disagreement.

Mr. Fish stated: "The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies."

The real world that I can observe conforms to this observation.

For example, look at the abortion debate. Both sides believe they have right on their side. Both sides desire what they think is best, based on "universal" ethical principles. Both sides make cogent arguments derived from reasonable premises. I would hazard the guess that, even within the objectivist community there are discernable shades of thought on this question, if not outright shouting matches.

Or am I wrong on this and every objectivist is fully persuaded of the correctness of one opinion in this debate? If so, tell me what the correct position is and I will try to test whether it is universally persuasive.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), October 15, 2001.


LN,

"But you are offering a hueristic as a universal absolute."

It's really a conditional absolute: "IF you are interested in survival and flourishing (which implies respecting the rights of others as they would have to respect yours), THEN..."

"If there were indeed universal and absolute standards in ethics, then everyone who understands those standards could apply them to every action without deviation or disagreement."

No -- I could link you to Objectivist discussion lists -- Rand proposed the basic structure, but there are still great complications in some areas that are still being worked out. Like abortion -- although the strict Objectivist position is that the concept of rights only applies to living, independent human beings -- so the woman ALWAYS has the edge here, morally speaking. I'd love to get into some of these but I'm in kind of a rush right now -- the last few posts I'm typing pretty much as I'm thinking, so my apologies for any sloppiness.

"Mr. Fish stated: 'The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies.'"

Well, I suppose we could HOPE to persuade Jeffrey Dahmer that his means of nutrition is quite flawed, but how far do you think you'd get with that? And, after a point, so what? Just get him out of the way. And how do you hope to persuade an utter nihilist such as Bin Laden that his means of practicing his religion is just not very rational? I mean, I don't see a huge problem with what y'all propose, as long as within a reasonable timeframe you're ok with just pronouncing the person insane or irrational and cut off your efforts to persuade them.

Where does this need to persuade everyone come from, anyway?

Just to let you know, in a little bit I'll be offline for a day or so. Been lots of fun so far, though, LN.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), October 15, 2001.



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