The Cartesian Affliction of Contemporary Philosophy

I was reading an essay by a philosopher several days ago, and it immediately bothered me in a visceral kind of way.  It was thoughtful, well-written, the author was obviously not stupid or inarticulate.  At first, I thought what bothered me about it was the breezy, self-congratulatory tone, but the fact of the matter was that I couldn't actually put my finger on what it was that bothered me about the article.

You can read it here if you like:

  http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/01/a-belated-reply-to-plato.html

Today the answer was revealed, and I think the answer is actually symptomatic of not only the author's work product, but endemic to the whole field of academic philosophy.  The author suffers from what I term the Cartesian affliction.

The essay provides the author's thoughts on what kind of rational justification can be brought to bear in support of democracy.  What could possibly be wrong with that?  Don't I support democracy?  You see, that is precisely what is wrong with the article, I do support democracy.  Furthermore, even if I came to the conclusion that the author's rational justification was in fact totally invalid, I would still support democracy.

What is the purpose of a justification?  One purpose is to persuade another person that your conclusion is the correct one.  Another purpose is a kind of self-discovery, of realizing the connections between one set of ideas and another.  You could call it self-persuasion.  A justification has a use when you have one set of unquestioned foundational beliefs, and you have another disputed belief.  

If you are standing on the ground, and you want to elevate yourself, you assemble some kind of structure, and then you can stand on the structure at the new elevation.  Justifications are sort of analogous.  They take us from our foundational beliefs, those beliefs about which we are certain, and attempt to elevate us to a controverted belief, about which we are not certain.

Which takes us to the problem with the article.  I don't know about my readers, but my support for democracy is pretty damn solid, about as solid as just about anything else I believe.  Especially democracy at the level of the average philosopher, with corruption, stolen elections, ballot stuffing, voter suppression, McCarthyism, legalized corporate bribery and legislative stalemate abstracted away.  I would believe in Democracy even if I came to doubt in a democracy.  Which, if you think about it, means that I can't--at least as far as I go--actually come up with any justification for Democracy.   Don't get me wrong.  I can make up thousands of reasons why Democracy is good--but they wouldn't be justifications.  Its like adding a stucco facsimile column on the front of a building for decorative purposes.  The fake column doesn't bear any weight.  Its not structurally part of the building at all.

Of course, another purpose of a justification is to persuade others.  I may believe in democracy, but others might not, so I might construct an argument to persuade other people to my side.  So I have to ask--who are the readers of this column?  Do any of them actually doubt democracy?  Do any of them actual seek to violently overthrow the government and replace it with some kind of autocracy?  This is surmise on my part, but I can't actually believe any of the readers of this article actually support anti-democratic political movements either.

Don't let me be misunderstood.  There are a great number of people throughout the world that doubt democracy, and a great number who support anti-democratic political movements.  I believe it would be a great benefit in the world to convince some or all of those persons that democracy represents the best way.  However, it occurs to me that if I wanted to persuade these people, I would need to understand their language and their world-view.  Further, my justification would need to be framed in terms of their language and their world-view, and not mine.  For example, in the right context, I might be more persuasive if I selectively quoted portions of the Qu'ran than if I discussed Plato's Republic.

What is wrong with the article:  the author provides a pseudo-justification for a belief that he does not actually doubt for the benefit of an audience who also does not doubt the belief that is the subject matter of the justification.  I have to ask--what is the purpose of making up pseudo-justifications for beliefs that everyone already believes?  This phenomenon I name the Cartesian affliction.

But here, let us offer an interpretation of Descartes.  Descartes lived in an age of emerging science.  Aristotle had been swept aside in a scientific revolution.  The conceptual and scientific foundations of the late middle ages were crumbling.  The certainty in the existence of God that characterized Europe for over a millennium was foundering.  Descartes lived in an age of doubt, and perhaps rightly, philosophy turned to the question of doubt.  Descartes's brilliance lay in creating a sense of sophistical pseudo-doubt in the existence of an external world, for which he constructed the pseudo-justification of God as a solution.  No one actually doubted the existence of an external world, and many people doubted the existence of God.  No one actually cared very much if the external world did not exist, but many people cared whether God existed or not.  Thus, Descartes convinced people that what they wanted to believe in but doubted was necessary in order for them to believe in what they did not care about but about which they were already certain.  It's a classic sales pitch:  you have to buy that, you want buy this, let me explain why you have to really buy this if you are going to buy that.  Have you ever read a Christian apologist who didn't parrot Descartes in some fashion?

But our contemporary article, while sharing Descartes's affliction, doesn't even seem to be selling anything on the mean terms.  It's completely useless.

I recall reading a series of writings by gay and lesbian Roman Catholics, and it was very moving to me.  Some of the writers came out in favor of their orientation, others in favor of Church dogma.  But all the writers were torn between two things they loved, and two different understandings of what love is.  It made me sad to read of people who through the course of their lives had been torn in two, and remain torn in two come what may.  There were real justifications in those writings.  But above and beyond the justification, there was real vulnerability.  A real question stems from a real place of vulnerability, and a real justification, a real answer, comes when we stop hiding and accept our vulnerability, our unknowing.  This I believe.  We must be truth before we can know truth.

What is wrong with the contemporary philosopher?  His (or her) method is about hiding.  Pretending to doubt beliefs undoubted.  Offering pretend justifications to overcome those pretend doubts.  Hiding in irony, skepticism, and most of all in a pretend doctrine of truth and wisdom.  Is it that philosophy has nothing to say, or is it that philosophers are afraid to say it?