Rationality, truth and democracy : Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, Noam Chomsky

Bertrand Russell, George Orwell and Noam Chomsky have at least one important, even decisive point in common: their categorical rejection of the constructivist, relativist conception of justified belief described above. All three are convinced that, despite all the criticisms that have been levelled at concepts such as "truth" and "objectivity", they have lost none of their importance, both from a practical - and particularly political - point of view and from a theoretical one. And all three also accept, as something that can hardly be disputed, that there are objective facts about what is true and what is not, and that, if we consider it important to believe, as far as possible, only things that have a reasonable chance of being (objectively) true, it is still science, despite all the abuses it may have been guilty of and all the reproaches it may have deserved, that provides the best example of how to arrive at justified beliefs, at least in factual matters. When it comes to deciding whether Galileo or Cardinal Bellarmine is right, even the revealed word contained in the Bible, which gives the Ptolemaic answer to the question, must bow to the conclusion reached by the theory based on observation, induction, deduction and inference, which concludes that the best explanation is at least probably true. This is not only what the vast majority of people in a culture like ours think, it's also a certainty that there are reasons to regard as objectively well-founded. Moreover, there is no serious argument in favor of the widespread idea that what seems more or less self-evident in the case of the natural sciences must be replaced, in that of the social sciences, by a completely different view of things: they too are likely to be based on facts that have an existence independent of the knowledge we strive to acquire of them, and the justification of the hypotheses and theories we formulate to explain these obeys principles that are not and cannot be fundamentally different from what they are elsewhere.

Needless to say, authors who, like the three discussed here, see things in this way may give the impression of belonging to a universe of thought that ceased to be ours some time ago, since the idea of granting science a privileged position seems to have been largely supplanted by that of treating it rather simply as one possible way among others, and not necessarily better than others, of knowing the world. This conception - which Boghossian calls that of the "equal validity" of all beliefs that claim to constitute a form of knowledge - may well have become more or less a form of orthodoxy in social science departments and in the literary world in general (for whom it is obviously something of a comfort), it is nonetheless one of those that Russell, Orwell and Chomsky suspect not only of being devoid of any real foundation, but also of having particularly disastrous consequences in the field of morality and politics.

Russell - and this is a point on which Orwell fully agrees with him - maintains that, if we abandon the idea of objective truth for that of a more "human" truth, understood as consisting in the agreeableness or usefulness of the belief concerned, we expose ourselves to catastrophes of the worst kind, the most spectacular examples of which have been provided by the great dictatorships of the ^twentieth century, at the very foundation of which we find, in no accidental way, an open contempt for truth and objectivity, not only in the field of history and the social sciences, but also in that of the exact sciences themselves. Russell argues that once the conception of objective truth has been abandoned, sooner or later one arrives almost fatally at the idea that the question "What shall I believe?" is one that must be settled by "the use of force and the arbitration of the big battalions" [3]. Orwell makes a similar observation about the way in which the events of the Spanish Civil War are reported: he wonders whether the notion of objective truth, first and foremost in history, but perhaps also in other fields, is not simply disappearing in favor of a truth that political power can manufacture and manipulate at will, and he wonders with concern whether propaganda, with the technical means at its disposal today, does not conceal possibilities of which we are only just beginning to get a real idea [4].

Like Russell and Orwell, to whom he explicitly refers, Chomsky is convinced that among the political battles that are both the most important and the most difficult to win, given the increasingly disproportionate means at the opponent's disposal, is that which aims first and foremost to gain recognition for facts that he has every interest in disguising or concealing. It is dictatorships, not democracy, that have a vital need for error and lies, and everything to fear from objective truth and a form of education that strives to develop in the citizen the ability to search for it methodically and to accept and respect it once it has been found, in all cases, at least, where there may be a question of a truth of this kind.

"If you are told," writes Russell, "that you are suffering from cancer, you accept the opinion with as much courage as you can, despite the fact that the pain inflicted on you is greater than that which would be caused you by an uncomfortable metaphysical theory. But where traditional beliefs about the universe are concerned, cowardly fears inspired by doubt are considered worthy of praise, while intellectual courage, unlike courage in battle, is considered unsentimental and materialistic. This attitude is, perhaps, less present than it was in Victorian times, but it is still present to a high degree, and it continues to inspire far-reaching systems of thought that have their roots in unworthy fears. I cannot believe - and I say this with all the emphasis I am capable of - that there can be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence that speaks in favor of something unwanted. It is not through delusion, however lofty, that humanity can prosper, but only through courage and steadfastness in the pursuit of truth."

It's no exaggeration to note that we are now, in many respects, probably much closer to the Victorian era than Russell was, and that the attitude he deplores enjoys a greater form of legitimacy and honorability than ever before. For him, it was still pretty much self-evident that democracy and the pursuit of truth - even when the latter risks depriving us of some of the illusions we believe we need most - are two interdependent undertakings, which need the same support and come up against the same obstacles: anything that offers freedom of examination and research a greater space goes both in the direction of advancing democracy and increasing our chances of knowing the truth. This is a conviction we have largely lost today, in favor of the idea that the progress of democracy now consists, to a large extent, in a radical questioning of the idea of truth - the will to truth being precisely the antithesis and enemy of the will to freedom. On the occasion of Noam Chomsky's visit to Paris, something which unfortunately has not happened for a very long time, we will ask ourselves whether it might not be time, if not to return to this idea, at least to agree to reflect a little more seriously on what may have given rise to it in the minds of those who conceived it and is likely to justify it in the minds of people who, like Russell and Orwell, continue today to find it important and even essential.

Jacques Bouveresse

[1] Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge. Against Relativism and Constructivism [Fear of Knowledge. Against Relativism and Constructivism, 2006], Agone, 2009.

[2] Richard Rorty, L'Homme spéculaire [Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 1979], Éditions du Seuil, 1990, p. 365-366.

[3] Bertrand Russell, "Pragmatism" (1909), in Essais philosophiques, PUF, 1997, p. 163.

[4] George Orwell, "Reflections on the Spanish war" ["Looking back on the Spanish war", 1942], in Essais, articles et lettres, Ivréa and L'Encyclopédie des nuisances, 1995-2001, vol. II, pp. 312-334.