The
Philosopher as a Selfish Seeker of Truth
Philosophers are not judges of their own ideas but advocates. The arguments of a philosopher who says, "This is my idea and it is true, and here is why" are as trustworthy as those of a defence attorney or a prosecutor. Philosophers are no more dispassionate seekers of truth than lawyers are seekers of justice, or corporate PR reps are servants of public interest. Philosophers are human beings with ego and pride, perhaps even more than their fair share.
Philosophers need to feel that their work is useful and their time, well spent. When a philosopher spends many sleepless nights attempting to understand some obscurely written text, the idea that reading this text has been an enormous a waste of time is not likely to be well received at the emotional level. Then the reason will take over and find justification for the belief that the text has some useful, defensible, and perhaps even true ideas.
Similarly, when a philosopher labours to create and formulate anew idea, the emotions recoil and the notion that the effort has been wasted. Then reason, the faithful slave of emotion, does her magic and backs ideas with more ideas, more logic, more facts, more analogies, suppositions and even, in an emergency, equivocations, cunningly hidden fallacies and, if all else fails, cant-filled rambling.
The demonstration of this can been seen in works of all philosophers, from the Greats to the amateurs with their collection of "Introducing..." books. Almost every philosopher wholeheartedly rejects some other philosopher's ideas. Schopenhauer despised Hegel's work as "vague, obscurantist pseudo-philosophy". Bertrand Russell, in "History of Western Philosophy," wrote of Henri Bergson that ''as a rule he does not give reasons for his opinions." When Jacque Derrida was granted an honorary degree from Cambridge, the logician W .V. Quine described his writings as, "absurd doctrines that deny the distinction between reality and fiction, observation and imagination, evidence and prejudice." Every one of my philosophy professors has, at some point, described the views of some other philosopher as "not cogent".
Every philosopher is more than willing to point to a speck in a brother-philosopher's eye, and more then willing to overlook the log in one's own. This is not behaviour of selfless seekers after truth, but of people with ego and emotional attachment to their own ideas, of people willing to overlook the flaws in their own reasoning but not in the reasoning of others.
A philosopher is a seeker after truth but the notion that this pursuit is disinterested is as absurd as the notion that pursuit of sex or love can be disinterested. Philosophers seek a personal vision of truth that is a product of their background, their studies, their thoughts, their triumphs and failures. Few things could be less selfless than a pursuit of truth. No one seeks things that they do not desire, and if truth and reason are desired, how can their pursuit be selfless?
This is not a rebuke to philosophers but a description of how things are - not just in philosophy, but also in the sciences, in business, in politics. "Devotion to truth and the precision of the scientific method arose from the passion of scholars, their reciprocal hatred, their fanatical and unending discussions, and their spirit of competition –the personal conflicts that slowly forged the weapons of reason," as Foucault put it in "Truth and Method."
Nor is this an attempt to reduce reason to rationalization. Philosophers use reason to defend the ideas with which they are emotionally involved, but it is a creative process through which ideas are modified and improved and new ideas made. Rationalization is a debased form of reason that provides no foundation for further creation.
A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, but this love, like love between people, is not selfless or disinterested. A man in love with a woman is not likely to stop and think, " Am I the best person for her? My rival is more intelligent and more considerate than I am, not to mention better looking. I should step aside." Instead, he will pursue his love the best he can. However ethical or even saintly he might be, his feelings for the beloved are not selfless.
He will not be faulted if he does his best to present himself in the best light and fails to mention his rival's superior qualities. Similarly, a philosopher using reason will naturally overlook superior aspects of a rival idea. But if a lover stoops to, for example, forging crude emails from his rival to his beloved, that is blameworthy - and does not create a good foundation for future love and felicity.
Likewise, philosophers should not be blamed if they employ their skills in logic and rhetoric to make their idea look as good as possible -rather than disinterestedly comparing their idea with its rivals. But if they deliberately misrepresent their opponents' ideas - or perhaps take the more direct approach of formatting the hard drives with their latest work - then they may win at the short term, but at the expense and idea that has not been defended as well as it could have. This will provide a poor foundation for the idea's longer-term survival.
And like a lover, a philosopher must know when to gracefully give up. If the person you love has given you the "lets be friends" speech and stopped returning your voicemails, then it is time to give up rather than send her a dead animal in the mail. Similarly, if have exhausted every defence of an idea, you may yet achieve a temporary victory with a good burst of cant-filled gibberish that will leave your opponent at a loss for words. But in both cases you will be better able to fulfill your desire for love, or for wisdom, as the case might be if you move on and start again.
This is not a pessimistic view of the state of things. Without the ongoing conflict we could have no more confidence in the truth or falsehood ideas than we could in untested automobiles or software, or a legal case settled solely on prima facie evidence. If an idea has survived multiple challenges, than we can have confidence in it. Similarly, if we are forced to give up an idea despite every partisan defence than we could mount, we can be confident that it deserves to be given up. To put this in another way, if an independent judge concludes that the defendant is guilty (or not guilty), that leaves a lot of room for doubt. But if a prosecutor admits the defendant's innocence, or the advocate guilt - something neither will do without enormous pressure -then we can have far more confidence then we can ever have in the judge's pronouncements.
The notion that we can be independent judges of our - and others' - ideas is neither realistic nor desirable. Philosophical conclusions remain as debatable and uncertain today as they were at the time of Socrates. We should aim for the confidences of advocates who admit their error, not for the confidence of judges. If we will fall short, we will still get further with the former approach.
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