Crisis of Truth
What I mean is not some specific truth but the condition of a society, not only Ukrainian but also Western which Ukraine has fully joined at least in this respect. I mean the triumph of a misinterpreted pluralism. Pluralism as the right of each not only to defend his/her point of view but also to have a truth of his/her own, incommensurate with the truths of others, as the recognition of the absence of an absolute truth, of a method to come to terms and find the truth in a dispute. As a result, instead of seeking the truth according to the generally-accepted rules, society paves the way to propaganda which sets rules of its own, those of show business and PR.
To better grasp the problem, one must go to the heart of it. So let us cast a look at the way capitalism evolved “there, with them.” It can be argued which came first, the industrial revolution or the ideology of bourgeois revolutions based on certain philosophies. In any case, to quote the Bible, “In the beginning was the Word,” in this case the word, rationalism. Rationalism is a belief in the ability of human reason to ascertain the truth, using experience as the basis and the criterion; a belief in the concrete and circumstantial nature of the truth and simultaneously that the truth is unique, not individual, under certain given conditions; it is a belief in the human ability to come to agreement on the basis of understanding and recognizing the truth. Rationalism opposed the irrationality, mysticism and scholasticism that preceded it. Rationalism laid the groundwork for the modern science that brought forth the industrial revolution; it was the flag of the philosophies that formed the ideology of bourgeois revolutions. Rationalism brought about the blossom and triumph of capitalism, which we now want to borrow from “them.” But as time passed the epoch of the triumph of rationalism in the West gave way to one of mistrust in it to the extent that some call our times the new Middle Ages. Indeed, this country is literally teeming with soothsayers, fortunetellers, astrologers, magicians, and sorcerers awarded a three month occult sciences course certificate. Mushrooming all over are all kinds of academies that lay claim to sound scholarship but are in fact a cover for places that spread the esoteric, mysticism, and other things medieval or are simply frauds trying to dupe credulous foundations into giving them grants. Even medieval dogmatism can seem a showpiece of common sense in comparison to what is going on in the humanitarian sphere. Take, for example, psychoanalysis and its successor, psychotherapy. About fifteen years ago Israel hosted the World Congress of Psychoanalysts which proclaimed, “Freud is no longer in fashion.” Even in the Middle Ages, holy fathers and theologians never went so antirational and frivolous as to proclaim that St. Francis of Assisi or St. Thomas Aquinas had simply gone out of fashion. The holy fathers would “substantiate” the overthrow of a certain authority with the claim that he had misunderstood or misinterpreted one dogma of faith or another. Of course, a dogma is not a rationally explained postulate, but even the ostensible justification of such measures left the masses believing, at least to some extent, in reason and common sense. But consider our current situation: we had our brains combed according to Freud yesterday, are having them set today according to Adler, and will have them curled according to Jung tomorrow! But these are only sprouts, not yet trees. Every day sees the emergence of two or so new psychotherapeutic schools, such as gestalt therapy, psychodrama, symbol-drama, etc. They all flatly contradict each without even trying to find which of them is right. In a normal rational science, the phase of genesis also displays competing hypotheses. But this is a dynamic condition, with one hypothesis winning sooner or later and the others being discarded or synthesized by a newly-emerging one. But here Freud, old-fashioned for some, is still in vogue with others. And in general, there is no accounting for tastes (and these are tastes, not truths) in the world of fashion. Everything is simple: the schools have divided the clientele between themselves and are dressing their hair in their own way.
In brief, a shaken belief in the possibility of a rational explanation of complicated social problems and making of an agreed-upon decision on what is good and what is bad for society and how to achieve the better leads to an atmosphere of civic passivity which is only good for corrupt and swindling politicians and which can only be occasionally broken by bursts of mindless aggressiveness.
This raises a question: why does the West fare better than we do even though these new Middle Ages came to us precisely from there? Because they have passed the way of a long (and, let us say, rational capitalist) development, laying the groundwork for institutions and traditions which have not yet managed to tumble down under the pressure of this new Middle Ages, although they are also paying for sinking into the fog at different prices in various fields of life. Every second American, poisoned with the intellectual venom of mass art, undergoes a course of psychoanalytic treatment, but when it comes to the crunch, the same American begins to think and talk business, as they put it, quite rationally. They have also preserved more rationalism in political life. Yet, we have borrowed the black and white PR precisely from them, so their domestic political life is also fogged today compared to, say, the epoch of Abraham Lincoln, but not to the extent ours is.
In Ukraine, as well as in Russia, normal capitalism began to develop much later than in the West and, as soon as it began, it gave way to seventy years of socialism. At first glance it might seem that socialism is no less rational than classical early capitalism because it was based on the doctrine of Karl Marx, and Marx, as we were taught, was a materialist and could thus claim his teaching was based on science, which is rightly associated with rationalism. In reality, Marxism is not based so much on science and therefore is not as rational as its adepts try to prove it is. Moreover, practically implemented in the Soviet Union, Marxism turned into a dogma differing little from medieval Christianity.
In what the practice of Soviet political judiciary differed from autos-da-fО was perhaps only the scale of reprisals. And the ban on genetics and cybernetics as false sciences and harsh reprisals against those who specialized in them can only be compared to the church ban on the teachings and persecution of Galileo, Copernicus, and Giordano Bruno. This is why Ukraine and Russia have just not had enough time to develop the institutions, traditions, and mentality still resisting the onset of the New Age mentality in the West. This is why its onset is far more destructive, dangerous, and detrimental here than there.
But why did the onslaught of the new Middle Ages occur and still continues over there? If rationalism was so good, why did they junk it? The point is that, as I have already said, modern rationalism emerged and developed simultaneously as ideology (philosophy) and the practice (method) of the natural sciences. And the success of rationalism in the field of the natural sciences raised philosophical rationalism quite high in mass consciousness. But it is the field of natural sciences, above all of physics, that has produced in recent times more and more paradoxes and contradictions that, let us say, have called into question the rational basis of science itself and hence the very belief in rationalism as such. And most of these phenomena are still to receive a rationally explanation. As a result, the West has seen a wild flourish and domination of relativist antirational philosophies. To give the idea of the latter and spare the reader of too many details, I will only cite Paul Feierabend, a well-known figure in this field who said basically the following: scientific theories are substantiated no more than a fortune teller’s reading tea leaves. Hence the triumph of these philosophies, going, naturally, through the prism of first high and then mass art and then capturing the masses, prepared fertile ground for the New Age mentality, the mentality of the new Middle Ages.
Did the adepts of tried and true rationalism try to stem this tide of relativism in philosophy? Of course, they did. Among those who did are some word-famous names, such as Bertrand Russell and a number of his analytical colleagues, as well as positivists of various hues, empiricists, etc. But none of them have met the challenge of rationally explaining the paradoxes of modern natural sciences mentioned above. In consequence, the relativists now undoubtedly hold sway, which was shown, for example, by two round tables held in Moscow last year and the year before last, which caused quite a reaction in the mass media.
Is there a way out of the situation? I think The Day should now open a debate, participated by not only politicians and political scientists but also representatives of other social and natural sciences, on drafting common research approaches to the understanding of today’s condition of our society and the paths of its development, so that we could look into the complicated processes of transformation and achieve harmony.
Editors’ note. Supporting the author’s proposal of the debate, The Day invites scholars, researchers, our experts and readers to take part. What kind of philosophy do you think should form the basis for our society’s development program?
