Commented selections on presuppositions of
participatory cooperative argumentative design and change[1]
(https://www8.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/page5.html)
(https://ia601007.us.archive.org/0/items/BeliefAndReason-InSystemsDesign/page5.html)
by Kristo Ivanov
University of Umeå, Institute of
Information Processing
1993 (rev 211028-2035)
CONTENTS
"My colleagues like to argue endlessly as to what
should be required courses for our MBAs. My answer is that I have great doubts
about making any of the existing ones required, but that I have no doubt that
we should require a basic course in theology." (Churchman, 1979, p.
99)
The body of
this working paper contains some texts that I wish to mediate to researchers
and students of information systems, and to people who try to influence, and
are influenced by information technology. Among students of information systems
I include practitioners and consultants who care for the fundaments and
long-run development of their work. In order to explain what all the following
is about, I must start by outlining a short personal background.
The prime reason for writing this paper is my dissatisfaction, not to
say deep concern, for what I perceive to be poor results of much research and
product development that goes on under the label of systems development,
computer supported cooperative work and electronic messaging. This must,
however, be seen in the following personal context of my own struggle and
failures.
During the
last five years a broad focus of my work has been the outlining of a collective
long run research program which investigates the "whither" and the
"why" of information technology as a presupposition of the
"what", "when", and "how", including "by
whom", "for whom" and "with whom". In this sense, this
paper is a strategy document for a department of informatics because it deals
with the why and whither of its survival, and growth, or development.
This interest flows from my initial work, in 1970-1972, on the concept
of quality of information (1972; 1974; 1987a; 1987b). The idea corresponds
roughly to what today stands at the basis of participatory evolutionary systems
development. It was also related to the rise and development of some branches
of the so called "Scandinavian approach".[2] It
differed from later participatory approaches in that it rejected the primacy of
material and technical reality, and allowed for the need of stable fundamental
assumptions in systems development.
The technology that was necessary for an easy inexpensive small-scale
implementation of the ideas, began to be available by the end of the eighties,
in the form of relational schemes built into early hypertext languages for
personal computers. Some possibilities for constructive computer applications
illustrating quality-based systems were outlined in 1988 (Forsgren, 1988b)[3].
Elaborations in terms of illustrative computer prototypes have been described
recently (Grönlund, 1993). In order to render explicit the sort and degree of
envisaged quality, I refined some of my original formulations, and their
formalization, in terms of the "HyperSystem" concept, originally
conceived in the seventies (Ivanov, 1975; Ivanov, 1993). It included a
systematization of the relations between the bearers of various system roles
(designers, managers, clients, users and other affected people), and task
content, for the continuous design and redesign of computer applications.
I noted then that, as often is the case in the economic and political
reality of applied research and development, despite all good intentions, the
computer applications of the ideas tended to loose their core meaning, as
understood in terms of HyperSystems. Like the much advertised
"participation" in systems development, they tended to become the
same thing that was anyway beginning to being done by many insightful
practitioners who had available cheaper advanced technology, without the need
of any pompous "systems approach" (Anonymous, 1993c; Whitaker,
Essler, & Östberg, 1991). In the process, the first things which get
sacrificed are the refinements of the systems approach which distinguish it from
so called client centering or market orientation. Then follows the sacrifice of
analytical sophistication, and of reliability concerns, well recognized as
being competitively necessary in practice (Anonymous, 1993a; Anonymous, 1993e).
Concerning theoretical integrity, the pragmatist content of the espoused
systems approach has to compromise with the utilitarianism and
"rhetorics" of daily consultancy. In "political" terms
success tends to be defined in terms of clients' acceptance, equated to
managerial acceptance, or: "after all you have to get paid to do something
with computers, have'nt you?". The situation is becoming, if possible,
even more problematic in face of the present wave of commercialization of the
universities, and their increased financial dependence upon external business
sources and granting institutions. What is often expected is immediate returns
on investments, or, rather, sheer "business acceptance" of research
and (mainly) development. This is a well known chaotic trend in both research
and university education.[4]
I did therefore reflect on the ultimate meaning of the risk that my work
might unintendedly support developments which I fundamentally did not approve,
exploiting mainly the power, not the least the rhetorical power,
of pragmatism (Ivanov, 1993, chap. 5.2). In my consequent effort towards the
"Whither" and the "Why", I think that I have been painfully
conscious of its preposterousness. I justified it thinking that it would not be
done mainly by and for myself but, rather, that I wanted to link my own to my
colleagues' work, and to offer researchers and students some suggestions about
where to proceed in order to formulate and investigate important research
questions beyond my time and capability. My suggestion was structured in terms
of different approaches to the meaning of information technology:
physical-technical, economic, mathematical, logical, statistical,
socio-psychological, and so on.[5]
My idea had been informed by my background in engineering and
psychology, indicating that what a thing "is", and the way of using
it, is a complex function of what one happens to believe that it is, and of
what it should be. If one looks at a computer from the disciplinary point of
view of mathematics, as being a mathematical machine, it will lead to different
consequences than if one looks at it as a numerical or statistical - graphical
visualization instrument (rather than "tool"for statistical analysis
and visualization. If one looks at the computer as if it were a
"person", then this means commiting oneself to what a "human
person" is, and ought to be, and ought to behave as, e.g. in terms of
"humanism" or in terms of some psychological or sociological ("role")
theory. The pitfalls of a facile acceptance of a superficial conception of
roles have been amply described in the marxist tradition (Forsén, 1978). All
this suggests a dependence of self-fullfilling prophecies upon what something
is believed to be, and it is perhaps one secular example of the interplay
between belief and reason, as addressed in some of the material to be presented
below. In our context of information technology I know of at least two example
of authors who suggest a similar understanding of the essence of the computer
(Turkle, 1980; Turkle, 1984; Whitaker, 1992, p. 131).
A couple of years ago I had to pause in my ongoing work in order to
detail the meaning of "humanistic" and "social", as
adjectives applied often to our particular approaches in information systems
research. These adjectives had begun to be used with increased frequency in
research which dealt with concepts such as "powerful" technology,
artefacts, design, participation, work-orientation, democracy, constructiveness,
communication, user - friendliness, evolutionary flexibility, interactivity,
computer supported cooperative work, skill and competence. Theories, laws,
facts, methods, instruments, truth, stability, tradition, authority,
responsibility, and objectivity were "out". Design principles,
useability, tools, artefacts, heuristics, change, trial and error, narratives,
styles, conceptual frameworks, debates, participation, and
"bricolage" were "in". I sensed that, at least during these
times of transition to good and bad in unknown proportions, the pragmatist
heritage in the dialectical social systems theory to which I had committed
myself (Churchman, 1971; Churchman, 1979) could be exploited in a superficial
way.[6]
This would contribute to efface the distinction between pragmatism,
utilitarianism, and sheer activism.[7] If
the popular version of the pragmatic test were to be applied to dialectical
social systems theory itself (i.e. to be evaluated by its fruits) its results
might tend to be negative.
The more I studied this application problem the more I realized that it
was a matter of relation between the science of information technology,
politics, aesthetics, ethics, and, finally religion. I felt distressed in
realizing that the concepts of ethics and humanism tended to be appropriated in
unfortunate ways. Ethics, for instance, was equated with explicitation of
conflicts of interest, and possibly with their negotiation, barely touching even
the concept of democracy. Aesthetic concerns, which I had also encouraged, were
being translated into postmodern playfulness. They could easily become prey of
present tendencies towards aestheticism, in concert with secularized
romanticism or postmodernism, far from any influence by, let alone
understanding of, the meaning of, for instance, of "theological
aesthetics" (Berdiaev, 1990, pp. 302ff; Sherry, 1992; Sherry, 1993).
Interesting work on aesthetics in our research area is anyway going on and is
dependent upon some kind of ethical anchorage (Stolterman, 1991).
I had to counter what I perceived as the risk of influence from
opportunistic development tendencies mixed with vague postmodern overtones. I
felt distressed in realizing that my concerns were leading me away from what is
traditionally considered as meritorious or profitable in academic and
consultancy work in our area, despite their constituting its basis and enabling
its evaluation. Even worse than that: my concerns and insights were in a collision
course with the explicit good intentions of several hard working researchers. I
myself could "statistically-democratically be wrong, i.e. remain alone or
in minority amidst the majority of my research peers who would eventually
evaluate me. Who likes the "pessimistic" messenger who brings the bad
news? Nevertheless I kept firm in my intention to work on such issues which
are, indeed "strategic". If a tenured researcher did not dare to
explore his convictions and to dedicate to them when necessary, who else could
be expected to do that? This eventually resulted in a more voluminous working
report (Ivanov, 1991b). It was a rather "odd" report, with more of
that type of detailed criticism which the reader may come to miss in this
paper. It succeeded, however, in attracting the attention of some colleagues
from near and far away in the international community, leading to promising
contacts and cooperation. It was followed by sabbatical work in Italy and in
France, where some selected academic contacts and a crash bibliographic study
at Bibliothèque Nationale allowed me to gather important literature for my
future studies, especially on the nature of technology and embodied
mathematical instruments like computers.
One main issue came to be how "social" and "humanistic"
would converge with "democracy" in the theories for development of
information systems. In this respect the effort could be seen as a continuation
of my earlier work at the interface with political science, sociology,
psychology, and history of ideas (1986; 1989; 1991b). I discovered that neither
liberalism nor socialism would be particularly helpful, and I identified Ernst
Troeltsch as an important historical name to study the work of (Ivanov, 1986,
p. 50; Troeltsch, 1977). Some old friends with Marxist sympaties tried to
combine Heideggerian existentialism and Wittgensteinian language games, while
others would acknowledge a wholesale commitment to "the modern
project", to radical humanism, to silent knowledge, or to discursive
argumentative action. One common denominator between them would be paying
tribute to terms like democracy and democratic values in the context of
participatory systems development and of computer supported cooperative work.
These terms, however, were left unquestioned but for possible references to
Kant and to the classical language of the Enlightenment.[8] I
felt that to the extent that research approaches were philosophically grounded
at all, they were grounded in the Enlightenment's Kantian humanism, and that
Kant had been anew "canonized", as Marx had been in the seventies.
Post-moderns had begun to coquet, more or less consciously, with late popular
variants of Nietzchean thoughts. In the meantime industrial technological development
from the big brother in the West would still dictate our so called concrete and
practical work in applying information technology, and the banality of its
theoretical ground would not be masked by the big words of the various
-"isms". The only "democratic value" which could be
envisaged in the chaotic industrial technological developments (Manasian, 1993)
was a "murderous" free competition, the apparent unquestioned banner
of a leading journal such as "The Economist". It is a reminder of the
scope and limits of modern economic thought in relation to information
technology, even if there are some heroic attempts to widen this thought to
encompass human and formal science (Mowshowitz, 1993).
My own struggle with the possible meaning and relevance of technical thought
and humanism for information systems design dates from the seventies when I
renounced to foster my academic qualifications by means of following up and
writing professional literature on, say, database theory and technology. I made
instead the risky choice of studying, among other things like the Confucian
decision theory of the I Ching (Klein, 1982, being an innovative application to
a model for human cognitive processing), the collected works of Carl Jung. This
I made mainly because of Jung's programmatic attempt to integrate psychic
functions, including the directed thinking of logic and the feeling of values.
While teaching decision models and quantitative methods to be used in decision
support systems (Churchman, Auerbach, & Sadan, 1975), I sensed the
problematic bridge between the quantitative and the qualitative, as embodied in
the objective functions. My intermittent struggle culminated with the issues of
humanistic computing science or of computer-supported human science.
Then, I
happened to rediscover a Swedish author that I already had noted more than ten
years ago in the context of an interesting critique of Marxism and of other
cultural criticism: Tage Lindbom (Lindbom, 1977). I had had my own struggle
with the meaning of humanism in a wealth of other literature. I could
appreciate that he seemed to have suceeded during the period of the last 30
years in formulating a great part of what I myself was realizing and was trying
to say in my book on systems design and rule of law, and in my paper on
humanistic computing science. This should be considered as the main motive for
my choice and concentration on Lindbom's work in the context of many other
options. What he writes "make sense" of most of what I have earlier
reported having experienced in my research field and related social life, and
gives courage to pursue work in a meaningful direction.
Starting as a historian and political scientist, politically engaged and
conscious social democrat, Lindbom was a pioneer writer on labor unions, work,
and "industrial democracy" beginning with a dissertation in 1938. He
has eventually become a historian of science, philosopher and theologian. For
nearly thirty years (1938-1965) he was director of The Central Library for Labor,
of the influential Swedish Social Democratic party. I discovered to be close to
his "conservativism", to be understood in its non-ideological sense,
i.e. implying the recognition of certain stable values which deserve to be
conserved.[9]
That reminds me that already in a book I wrote on the basis of earlier findings
(Ivanov, 1986) I felt like quoting on the back of the title page Nobel-prize
winner Pär Lagerkvist who in 1927 observes (my trans.) "Even if research never
before reached so far, never before reached such results, it still had
succeeded in aiming higher, towards more important goals"[10]. I
also wrote (ibid. p. 8) that whenever students asked about my political convictions
I told them that in the choice between left and right I tended to look upwards.[11] In
the case of Lindbom it could mean the tradition that is in associated with
names of intellectuals such as Frithjof Schuon, René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt,
Ananda and Rama Coomaraswamy, and others. They are mentioned in the English
translation "The tares and the good grain", one of Lindbom's main
works.[12]
Because of my estimate of the importance of this message for those
students of information systems who are working with cooperation, learning,
communication, skill and competence, aesthetics, methods, etc. I suddenly
decided to abdicate at least temporarily from ego-centered "original"
work. I decided to drop my immediate plans and to dedicate the summer 1993 to
mediate and introduce Lindbom's and others' work to Swedish and
English-speaking readers. This was done under the assumption that these readers
- as it is often the case today - would not find the original work easily
available or would not find the necessary time to dedicate to it, or would not
note its relevance for research in information systems. Lindbom is not
necessarily unique on the Swedish intellectual scene, and I guess that the
synthesis might have included some other authors .[13]
Some of their relevant works are listed among the references in this paper. Lindbom,
however, in the tradition of Christian spirituality, seems to be closer to the
problems of research in information systems because of his explicit
consideration of human sciences, technology, work, and methodological matters
of the history of science like, for instance, the quest for
"mathematization".
Regarding Martin Cyril D'Arcy I know that he was a Jesuit and lived, I
suppose, mainly in Britain, between 1888 and 1976. The U.S. Library of Congress
has about 10 entries in his name, and the University of California's libraries
about 50, dealing mainly with the relation between Christianity, humanism,
reason and faith.[14]
I realized that the difficulty of the matter associated to the
refinement of the authors' own language did not allow me to hope to be able to
edit my own synthesis of his work, say, in the form of a series of book
reviews. It allowed me still less to integrate it in any text of mine, at such
a short notice. Despite of my estimate that about one third of the text in
Lindbom's books intendedly overlaps the content of his other books I chose to
attempt a synthesis by means of a selection of excerpts from a set of chosen
books. In doing so I am aware that some duplications could not be avoided but I
had not time to make a closer review of duplications, and I also believe that
they can be justified in terms of the necessary emphasis on important issues.[15]
The main criterion for selection of the excerpts was that they should be
relevant for the relation between information technology seen from the
scientific point of view, and social science, humanism and ethics. In view of
the overall purpose of the selection I took the liberty to break the continuity
of the reading - I am painfully conscious of this - by overloading the text
inserting my own references in parentheses, and observations in square
brackets. They refer often to the possible relevance of the material for my
field of information systems research. This is indeed a working paper,
far from the purpose of a rhetorical executive summary which would aim at
relieving the reader from the need for the referenced literature. It is also
far from the purpose of relieving the anguish or the resentment of the reader
who feels guilty or is touched on the raw by the bad news, and keeps asking how
my text ought to be interpreted, or which conclusions ought to be
drawn from the text, or why I did not repeat and expand the detailed arguments
of my earlier papers which he has no time or interest to read. I use to tell
new students how ingrate is the task of telling them that certain things are
much more complicated than they thought, and that I have no answers, while they
might have hoped to hear that things were much simpler and that they would get
the answer in the form of a cooking recipe - "what to do". This
problem includes the hard fact that attractive convincing rhetoric mana flows
from optimistic oversimplifications associated with uncritical encouragement
fostering unjustified self-confidence.
For the rest, I tried to maintain the original wording of the author,
sometimes with a light editing which attempts to enhance continuity of thought
despite the selection process. This paper is supplemented by a separate appendix
which contains material written in Swedish. The division of the material is
made for purpose of economy, assuming that most Swedish readers also understand
English and most foreign readers who understand English do not understand
Swedish.
My selection should be understood as my sharing of the authors'
arguments, with the unavoidable shortcomings aggravated by my selection
process.[16] I
see their arguments and standpoints as a welcomed alternative to the common attitude
of many researchers in the Swedish community who consciously or unconsciously
share a secular liberal or socialistic approach to the development and use of
science and technology, and to the relation between belief and reason. Ingemar
Hedenius (1983), seems historically to be the Swedish representative for this
common attitude, which still permeates the Swedish research establishment much
more than is commonly realized.
The conclusions that I myself draw from this study are formulated at the
end of the paper, and they take into consideration also the material in the
supplementary appendix in Swedish.These conclusions are, of course, themselves
subject to the relation between belief and reason which is considered in this
paper.
Research on
computer supported cooperative work and communication does not make often
reference to the basic political science issues of democracy as related to
industrial technology. Still, it seems fair to say, the ideals which are embodied
in CSCW efforts and in democratic non-hierarchical electronic communication
correspond to progress in terms of "production - science -
cooperation", the trilogy of nineteenth century optimism. In order to
guide, implement, and evaluate communicative cooperation it is necessary to
understand the essence of this trilogy. Let us start by surveying some thoughts
which have been expressed in the context of "the design of inquiring
systems" (Churchman, 1971, pp. 202-4, from which the following quotations
are taken.)
The striving for progress can eventually lead scientists and managers,
if not clients, to identify themselves with the archetype of the hero, who may
also be seen as the archetype of the optimist in general, and of the modern
technical-economic optimist in particular. This hero, however, differentiates
himself from the classical hero mainly in that usually he is not
"alone" but, rather, in good company, rowing downstream.
To free the heroic mood in every man is an ideal, "the ideal of a unified
decision maker, client, and designer". The image of hero which emerges
from such thoughts tends to be the image of Greek mythology seen to stand at
the basis of Western scientific and philosophical thought. "The black
forest and its challengers are the mood that progress does not exist, that it
is only a process at best, that the enterprise is no enterprise at all. For the
hero in the midst of his journey has no assurance than anything will happen
except his own death and that of his companions...You are on the road, then
there is no progress, just change, which can be bright or dark, funny or sad,
tragic or comic. The rules are gone, laws make no sense".
But it is also true that the impulse for the adventure or quest, which
leaves the hero with no choice but to go forth, comes sometimes in the form of
a message from the gods. "If you are fighting the battle, or whatever the
mission may be, you are risking your soul for something overwhelmingly
important and central. Progress is no longer diffuse, but here and now in your
actions; revolution is one word for it. If you are on the way back, you may be
disillusioned, angry, dead in spirit, or payful, or senile."
I know that many computer scientists feel that they take the role of
hero leading a development for improvement of society and for personal
happiness. One underlying question in this essay will be which should our
heroic guidelines be: which is the relation between the hero and democracy,
that is, what is the place of the hero, sometimes also envisaged as a systems
designer who is a "radical humanist", in society. Is he only or
mainly an agent of action and change? Which action and which change or
revolution, and for what? Why should all rules be gone, and why should laws
make no sense? And what else could the hero be on his way back other than
disillusioned, angry, dead in spirit, playful, or senile, or just plain dead?
This justifies dwelling on the meaning of belief or of the "message
from the gods", or of risking one's soul for something overwhelmingly
important and central. Which gods or which God are in question here, and what
is this something overwhelmingly important and central which justifies the
risking one's soul, or was it the risking of only one's wellbeing? Or may it be
so that the whole issues amounts to the identification of the God with the soul
itself, including its relationship to spirit and mind, intellect and reason,
and with that something "overwhelmingly important and central"?
Churchman's own inconclusive struggle with the question of heroism as
representative of the moral force culminates in The Systems Approach and Its
Enemies (1979, pp. 68, 139-144, 151, 166, 201f).
It is interesting to note that in contrast to the Greek hero mentioned
above, there is the Christian "hero" as impersonated in Christ. It is
often forgotten that Western science and rationality is not based only on Greek
thought, which certainly includes and presupposes its mythology, but also on
Hebrew thought (de Raadt, 1991). Christ also represents a particular solution
of the integration of knowledge and love, belief and reason, a solution that
includes issues which are implicit in our research discussions about so called
cognitive styles, personal knowledge, double-loop learning, the nature of
"artificial" intelligence, presuppositions for discourse and for
cooperation, etc. For a secular criticism of heroism in the systems approach,
see appendix II.
The difficulty of the question, and the difficulty to express in an
acceptable way the relationship between religion, ethics, and science, supports
the appropriateness of the form of this essay in terms of choices of relevant
quotations from the literature. In this early version of my work, I repeat, I
divide the material into this part, in English, and a supplement in Swedish.
This part in English includes the preface and introduction, this initial
section on "heroism", conclusions, and the selections which happen to
be available in English or in an English translation. The Swedish supplement
contains the appendix with the selections which were available only in Swedish
or in a Swedish translation.
(P. 15)
Certainly one does not contest that in our secularized world there are both
true and false affirmations, but what one calls true nevertheless is not
recognized as something of absolute validity. For all is unstable in the
Kingdom of man. Everything is cut according to what is momentarily considered
as "scientifically established", or in pursuance of what is on record
as expression of the sovereign popular Will and this latter is revealed in the
ballot or in the public opinion polls. It is what man's sensory organs give
utterance to which will determine what must be regarded as true, just, and
good. But if secularized man conceives the sensory reality in which he lives as
absolute, one perceives that this is contradictory, that this reality at the
same time appears as something entirely relative.
When the transcendent source of truth, is denied, nothing remains for
the profane to "seek" the truth on earth here below. And when the truth
is no longer preexistent, one must conceive of it as something which may be
attained somewhere out "ahead of us". The search for truth in the
Kingdom of Man becomes therefore an operative process. Two ways then offer
themselves to our experience, that of positivism and that of Marxism.
We find in positivism an idea inherited from the Stoicism of late
Antiquity which represents truth not as an inspired vein of gold, but as a
multitude of particles of gold scattered like fragments through existence.[17]
This conception has been taken over by bourgeois liberalism and has become part
and parced of the Western notion of liberty. Thanks to never ending discussion,
to free scientific research and to a continuous process of selection [active
selection of possibilities, or a continuous construction process of artefacts]
the truth must be extricated in a progressive positivist perfectionment. The
faith so often expressed during the past two centuries, in the capacity of modern
science to resolve the enigmas of existence, would be very difficult to
understand from a purely psychological point of view if it did not have as
underlying hypothesis notions and hopes relative to a convergence of the
sensible world. [Cf. the Singer-inspired convergence in
"HyperSystems"], (Churchman, 1971, pp. 175, 241f, 256f; Ivanov,
1993).
The other way is that of Marxism. Here the truth is tied to the two
Marxist pseudo-divinities, History and Matter. In the Marxist material world
truth is nothing more than an ideological representation reflecting the
struggles of materially determined interests. Truth, like everything else, is
dominated by the historico-dialectic process and this is why the truth reigning
in such and such circumstances is not other than the dominant class' conception
of truth in the corresponding historic phase. The proletariat must finally
emerge victor in these historic struggles and, therefore, the proletariat's
conception of truth will ultimately prevail. The dialectical process,
developing towards an always more elevated level, implies an end at a final
state where the contradictions of existence are surmounted and where communist
society without constradictions becomes the definitive state in which truth is
of necessity liberated from all trace of relativism.
As a matter of fact, positivism as well as Marxism must have recourse to
pseudo-metaphysical representations showing that the truth must come to meet us
as scintillating and attractive gold, that the substances of truth have a
natural tendency to converge, or that the truth must "be developed"
according to a historico-dialectical process. [Only in later years
"post-modernism" seems to be trying to put the absence of goals
itself, "activities", and relativism, as a goal.]
The essential is that secularized man always ardently endeavors to reach
univocal representations which will deliver him from the relativism of truth
[univocal representations of at least "cooperation",
"togetherness", "security" and such; cf. Kant's relation
between duty and happiness]. Despite his denigration of a transcendent truth,
and his avowed relativism, he does in fact search for something true which
constitutes a fixed point amidst sensory existence. At the same time he
obstinately denies any transcendent reality. He denies the truth even while
recognizing it as a pre-existent point, and he tries to dissimulate this
contradiction in holding that, thanks to profane science, the truth will
finally be "discovered" [or, even "constructed",
"created", or, so to say "artefacted"] as the last
link in a long chain of researches. (Ivanov, 1991b, p. 33n, quotes Norström,
1912, who problematizes the difference between reality and truth, and
consequently also the oversimplified conception of "depiction"): The
problem, i.e. the task, is to clarify reality trough truth while truth
distantiates itself from reality".[18]
That which profane man does not want to see is that the truth is found
at the beginning and not at the end. [Cf. "It is difficult to find
something you are not looking for"]. We have an awareness of something
called truth and of something called untruth. Men are ceaselessly in
disagreement on that which, in such and such concrete situation, is true or
false. We can have all possible controversies on the interpretation of an
historical source or of statistical data. That which we concretely discuss is
one thing, but the important thing is that behind these controversies is
situated essentially the consciousness that truth and falsehood [in contrast to
only "perspectives" and "opinions"] constitute a pair of
opposites in existence.
(P. 20) Why does secularized man seek truth? Why this feverish
scientific research throughout the world? Before all else, secularized man
fears chaos. The fear of chaos is the firm motive which pushes secularized man
to try to establish a reasonable order in his existence
["rationalizations"]. When all values are declared relative and when
everyone must "save himself as best as he can", it may be tempting to
make of every aspiration to the truth an affair which concerns only the egoism
of the individual [subjectives valuations, as contrasted to values, and
perspectives]. We have to choose between a war of all against all and
submission to an organized [preferably "communicative"] and
institutionalized egoism. It is there that we are confronted with the problem
of power [in its relation to justice in "democracy"].
The fear of chaos has a positive pole: the classical - and cynical -
motivation for the profane exploration of the things of the world [and nowadays
also for the social world]: knowledge is power. This search for knowledge is
pursued with the intention of obtaining a position of earthly power, the
acquisition of notions and aptitudes of a utilitarian and operative character.[19]
This is not a way towards truth since the ambitious often manage the truth in a
manner utterly devoid of scruples. The idea of power in our secularized world
is in practice marked much more by cynical pragmatism than by the love of
truth. The more secularization is accentuated the more the sense of cosmic
solidarity is diminished and the more man experiences existence as empty space.
The greater grows man's sense of emptiness and he imagines that by his
activity, by his organizations and his constructions of institutions [including
communicative informational "networks"] he can occupy this empty
space. In this agitation without respite, scientific activity keeps the characteristic
role which has devolved upon it.
This secularized "search for the truth" involves us in an
increased pragmatism. No reasonable human being contests that scientific
research has its value for our daily life. But that which is lacking in the
Kingdom of Man is a corrective which responsibility before a superior power
would represent. The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Man are not responsible
except to one another, which is to say that the sensory needs and desires of
self-interested man become, in the final analysis, the guiding thread for all
life and all action. [Cf. client-centered market-orientation.] Also it is this
which ultimately determines social, cultural, and scientific movements. He
who wants to search for truth finds himself confronted with the growing
exigency to bring together that which he estimates to be true and just with the
needs and desires of self-interested man. [Cf. truth vs. democracy]. Here the
desire for power and the sensory desires of man meet in the forms of
pragmatism. The principles of power and of pleasure are, in fact, found to be
allies.[20]This
growing pressure of pragmatism makes one think that the more ancient and more
or less facetious expression according to which "the truth is
unbearable", takes on an ever more bitter realism in a context of
increasing secularization. [Cf. the increased dependence of university research
upon external business financial sources].
We do not encounter truth and falsehood in a simple option, in the
concrete and easy to make choice of an "either/or". Things are not so
simple, as though a divine message might be addressed to us at the same time as
the serpentine tempter might appear with a contrary message. [Cf.
"Faust".] The satanic power consists also in the capacity to disguise
himself, to present himself in an attractive aspect, in such a way that the
limit between the true and the false, between the good and evil, might seem
effaced. [Cf. the possible misuses of "perspectives" or of "silent
knowledge".] Thus it becomes possible for the subversive power to achieve
his final object as formulated by Baudelaire: "The cleverest ruse of the
devil is to persuade you that he does not exist".[21]
[The following paragraph appears wrongly translated in the English
translation, from the French. The version appearing below is translated by me
from the Swedish original, p. 31.]
(P. 23) To search the truth is to will the truth. But I do not will the
truth if I do not love it. Without the love of truth the will to attain it does
not exist either, and without this will all choice is deprived of significance.
(Pp. 25ff)
To will is to choose [cf. to construct, to create, to build and rebuild
artefacts], but if a choice is to have any meaning, it must be based upon an
order of solid values. In the Kingdom of Man, however, all values are relative
and therefore provisional. [Cf. the values of the designers of an information
system, or the values of the clients that they choose to serve.] In such
conditions a choice cannot truly amount to taking a position. It is nothing but
a provisional act, obedient to short-sighted desires and impulses. If I relate
myself only to my desires for power and pleasure, I will never be able to grasp
the truth with love. The love of the truth then becomes for me an alien
concept. This is also why in his aspirations to truth - which may often be
worthy of interest - secularized man sooner or later ends up in pragmatism.
(P. 28ff) It is not the case that the interior and intellectual light
burns ceaselessly with a clear flame and nothing can restrain its brightness.
If that was the case, the children of the world would march infallibly towards
a spiritual perfection under the conduct of pure thought [or of the the
argumentative communication and debate]. On the contrary, the way of truth is a
toilsome search up to the serenity which is reached only when man has left
behind him physically and mentally the agitations and discords of life.
As secularization proceeds, the light of truth shines with a
progressively weaker brightness. The champions of atheism have always acted in
the conviction that the religious idea, the fruit of superstition, of
ignorance, and the propaganda of the directing and ruling classes, would
disappear of itself when the light of science and of "enlightened
education" could be diffused liberally over humanity. Certain appearances
would seem to indicate that things really come to pass in this way. Man can be
led not only to deny, but to drive away and to "forget" the
intellectual consciousness. It is a question of total repudiation of conscience
and of religious sensibility on the psychic level.
(S. 33ff) The attacks, the exploitation and destruction of nature have
for motive the attraction of material gain, and these destructive forces are
directed also against man himself, being an expression of human egotism and
pride.[22]
The attack against symbolic rituals is no less virulent, but it has other
points of departure. In the first place it takes aim at symbols as if they had
been invented by man. [Cf. constructivism of artefacts.] (Ivanov, 1991b, refers
to correlated debates in "Linguistic humanism and semiotics", p. 25.)
It is claimed that the beauty of ritual worship is an expression of
human presumption, a manner of masking the image of God in order to substitute
man in his illusory and imaginary grandeur. The art of temples, sacerdotal
vestments, episcopal palaces, the loftiness of the pomp of the prelates, all
this is interpreted as expression of human - especially clerical - pride, and
the wish to dominate. Within the confines of the Christian world, this attitude
attains its maximum in Calvinism which is animated by a resentment that is
social in content and of which the outcome is the inverse: man is placed at the
center, and major decisions are taken by votings held in democratically
organized communities.
The symbol is one of the forms of divine manifestation in the world. The
other is revelation. But revelation is addressed to a world full of
imperfections and of contradictions. The play of oppositions does not remain on
the exterior of religious life. All our confessional antagonisms, all the
theological disputes, and all the wars of religion prove nothing concerning the
transcendent and immutable truth. All these struggles only attest that the
world is a created work, that the truth is certainly found manifested here, but
only "as in a mirror", perfect in its origin, but exteriorized by
imperfect men.
It is here that tradition enters. [Cf. the Church and the university,
and the Kantian undervaluation of tradition.] As terrestrial creatures, we are tempted
to forget ourselves in speculations and activities. If one had to allow that
the constant changes in terrestrial forms and the individual mutations might
serve as base for spiritual life, one would inevitably end in confusion and
dissolution. By allowing the play of oppositions of terrestrial
existence and individual subjectivism to ultimately determine the foundations
of spiritual life, without fail one would place this latter under the banners
of secularization. [Cf. the constructivist debate or conversation.] We live in
the world of forms and the intellective consciousness must be supported by the
forms that procure us our religious life. Ignorance, egoism, and wickedness
necessitate that the intellective process have a support in exterior life and
for revelation, an escort, a vigilant guard so that the message is known to be
true and authentic, and not a product altered by subjectivism and opportunism.
The primary objective of the tradition is here.
But the mission of tradition is not exclusively conservation. It is also
explanation. Or rather: it is an interpretation in terms, in ideas, and
in terrestrial concepts of the message given at the origin.[23] It
is at this point that hermeneutics enter, which is the just
interpretation of sacred documents, interpretation which always must include
penetration in depth of the texts, and an elucidation of all dimensions which
these texts contain.
(P. 44ff)
Lively polemics have arisen over the question of whether objective reality, the
truth, can be attained speculatively (Descartes), or by the gathering and
empirical observation of material (Roger Bacon) [opinion polls, convictions,
perspectives, or arguments], but a common base remains: it is that thinking
and searching man is the bearer of the aspiration to objective truth. The
way is then open to scientific positivism which triumphs in the Western world.
One system of thought, especially, arises against positivism, denying
that the human mind soars freely over sensory reality, speculating, examining,
gathering material and analyzing structures: Marxism. The spiritual is found to
be contained within the material reality and, as an active and dynamic energy
in the material world, it is the "reflection" of the latter. Man
lives, however, also in time. Marx has resolved the dualism characterizing
positivist thought which distinguishes between an observant spiritual subject,
man, and the object observed, the sensory world [including reciprocally other
humans]. In contrast to positivism's duality spirit/matter Marxism posits the
two pseudo-metaphysical existential categories Matter and History. Positivism
and Marxism have one thing in common: the object of their search is sensory
experience.
(P. 51ff) The man of empirical sensualism, however, has refused his
faculty of objectification from the moment when he refused to use intellective
knowledge and had recourse only to his sensory and mental capacities. With this
profane man, all knowledge, every notion, is subjective.[24]
For thought cannot think itself; it cannot scrutinize the tenor of truth of the
products that it elaborates qua instruments. It is in our intellective
consciousness that we experience the truth, and in the "eye of the
heart" that we objectify it.
(P. 53) In
the Kingdom of Man, the mundane secular search for the truth rests on an
argumentation which bears a strong moral imprint. Even if one may doubt the
possibility of finding the full and entire truth by profane ways, even if in
this profane search for the truth it is found impossible to attain that which
is objective and absolute; nevertheless, it is declared, all these efforts are
characterized by an honest and courageous quest for the true. [Cf. the
constructivist debate and "the force of better argument".]
Profane scientific research will thus be led with a ruthlessness which
has, in appearance, the mark of a noble passion for the truth. One must follow
the scientific ways of truth even if they lead to the gates of Hell. (Ivanov,
1992, refers to the correlated "Why Not?" strategy, the transfer of
the burden of proof, including the belief that dangerous questioning, revolt,
or revolution cannot worsen the situation in the long run). All the results of
research [including criminal accounts, responses to interviews, opinion polls,
or voting results] must be put at the disposal of humanity. To suppress the
results of research or an invention is the equivalent of joining the partisans
of obscurantism.
Nevertheless, even at its beginnings, European science allowed its
pragmatic character to appear. The principal objective of the Kingdom of Man is
to make the human being the custodian of power on earth, and one of the most
important means to reach this goal is science. It is for this reason that
science is in the first place at the appetite for power. This pragmatic
orientation of modern science constitutes at the same time the base of its
moral existence: enhance the physical and psychic well-being of men, and lead
mankind "forward". (Churchman, 1971, pp. 178n, 202, 254; Singer,
1936, p. 89 "The measure of man's cooperation with man in the conquest of
nature measures progress").[25]
Science thus becomes one of the most powerful instruments of the Kingdom
of Man. But, from the fact of its pragmatic - and consequently moral -
orientation, the requirements of truth cease to be essential. It is a question
of exploring the world of things [and construct or create artefacts, also in a
social context, in cooperation], in such a manner as to procure to man the
means of dominating this world. At the same time there are opened to man the
possibilities of enjoying without reserve all that the world can offer to its
dominator. Henceforth, all that is "beyond" seems ever less
interesting, and the speculations of profane science on this subject seems as
"unnecessary", as "useless".[26]
From this pragmatic point of departure, profane science lands in the bog
of existentialism and, on this moving terrain, the scientist defines himself
as at once humble, honest, and courageous in his search for the truth. He
believes himself humble because he knows how fragile and incomplete are the
results of all research. He believes himself honest because he considers that
he is not bound by any pre-rational notion and therefore thinks he pursues his
activity without preconceived ideas. He believes himself courageous because
he does not fear unveiling disagreeable things before men. [Cf the earlier
reference to the "Why Not?" strategy, and Lagerkvist (1959, pp.
131ff)] On the other hand the defenders of religion are presented as
"enemies of the light" who, in a sterile and life-negating manner, entrench
themselves behind dogmatic and orthodox systems. At the same time the defenders
of the faith are accused of being cowards who are afraid of the light; they are
taxed with pride and presumption because they persist in demanding the
recognition of an absolute and transcendent truth. Subsequently profane
science, to which one simultaneously attributes the humility of a servant and
the heroism of a Prometheus, can appear as responsive to all the moral
exigencies posed by the current system of values in the Kingdom of Man
[including "Equality" "Participation" and/or
"democracy"].
This attitude in the search for the truth, apparently so courageous and
at the same time so totally pragmatic, extends its effects well beyond the
domain of strictly scientific investigation. In modern society, power and
well-being, with the principles of power and desire, are the targets at which
all thought, all action and all aspiration are aimed. Opinion may be divided on
the means of reaching these objectives [cf. "perspectives" and
"silent knowledge"]. The consequences of our actions may be
miserable. Nevertheless, even if all that is as imperfect and deceitful as
possible, we are assured that all these efforts are stamped with "good
intentions".
The future is a "progress" unlimited by any horizon and
where no one will incur any responsibility.[27] The problem
of truth is more and more thrust to the rear for the sake of the moral
[paradoxically "ethical" as a buzzword] and, behind this latter,
pragmatic justification.[28]
Attention is ever more turned away from the notions of truth and falsehood to
be directed towards that which is profitable to man [and to the clients in
industry and in the service sector]. By this diversion, interest more and more
attaches itself to terrestrial things and is limited to the world of sensible
phenomena. That which serves to qualify intentions proceeds from the
terrestrial and tangible domain, and this domain defines good as that which
favors sensory well-being ["client centering" and "market
orientation"].
The profound objectives of the Kingdom of Man which are the practice of
an egoism without fetters and the possibility for the man devoted to his own
self-interests, of "realizing himself" [or gaining
"autonomy"] these objectives are dissimulated by a moralizing mask
and receive a "superior" legitimation: it is stated that it is not a
question of egoism, but of good, and it is this good which must be offered to
the inhabitants of the earth. (Churchman, 1979, s. 136; Ivanov, 1991b, cf. the
ethical program statement, p. 43 in the chapter on "pragmatism and
religion".) This dissimulation permits the presentation of subjective
egoism as disinterested and objective aspiration, and an apparent possibility
is envisaged to cooperate with movements which are, in fact opposed and
inimical [like atheistic communism or ruthless capitalism].
Under the aegis of popular sovereignity and drawing support from
"good intentions" and their moral justification, there is presently
developing in the Kingdom of Man a dream-like and utopian movement. [Cf the
dreams of "universal egalitarian, worldwide electronic networks]. This
stands in lively contrast to the objectivity which is supposed to hold sway
there.
The course of secularization progresses according to two great currents,
rationalism and sentimentalism. Cut off from the living sources of transcendent
truth, incapable of objectifying the world in which we live in the light of intellectus,
secularized man is reduced to his mental faculties - principally reason and
sentiment. But reason and sentiment are so often mixed and they interpenetrate
one another so intimately that it is frequently impossible to know what stems
from the one or the other. Thought cannot proceed in the clear light of
rationalism in a march that is "pure" and free of any sort of
"dross". The discursive operations of thought have as integral parts
memory, imagination, and sentiment. A thought without any preconception, unconditioned
and objective in the Cartesian sense [or logical - argumentative, in the
Habermas-Apel sense] therefore does not exist.
The system is reduced to a subjectivism in which two currents,
rationalism and sentimentality, mingle their waters. For the one part, the
Kingdom of Man entertains the idea that it is a question of establishing a
world that is objective, scientifically controlled, sober, and founded on real
facts. On the other hand, its prophets make use of sentimentality to muddle up
everything and raise a false warmth that one declares to be justice, love of
men, good will, and good intentions [the welfare state and "people's
home", in Swedish "folkhemmet"]. In the social, political,
philosophical, and pedagogical spheres rational and sentimental tendencies have
been intermingled since the epoch called - with very little reason - the
"century of light". In the nineteenth century there arose popular
social and political movements which, at the same time as the "low
church" sects, impregnated society with the poisoned mix that Rousseau had
made of sentimentalism and rancorous rationalism, aiming particularly at the
traditional elements that still bore the mark of hierarchy. Sentimentalism
grows uninterruptedly. Marked at the same time by self-pity and by
self-affirmation, secularized man goes his way. He believes that in his march
he has at his disposal a moral justification: "good intentions". [Cf.
appendix III to this paper.]
(P. 60) Who, in the final analysis, permits one to determine which actions
are good? Who, facing the continual choices of our daily life, must be there
and discern which intentions are truly the good ones? The response in the
Kingdom of Man, can only be this: men themselves [i.e. the General Will]. It is
therefore by means of public opinion polls and by plebiscites [cf.
participatory systems, and conferencing systems as an example of groupware for
"computer supported cooperative work"], that the leaders [systems
analysts and designers, or participating affected people] acquire data on what
may be called good and on the measures considered conducive to that good. It is
necessary now to follow the quantitatively [or argumentatively in the sense of
quantitative mathematical symbolic logic] determined way which leads to human "happiness"
[ideals]; it is necessary to "give to the people what they want"
[again: client-centering and market-orientation]. Good intentions, conforming
to quantitative [democratic] norms, must be translated into facts and this
adaptation takes place in feverish activity and by a labor of reform without
respite [projects portfolios, and flexible evolutionary systems].
(P. 69) In
principle, contemporary secularized man impugns every form of prerational
knowledge. That not only implies that the human being is less well equipped
than the animals, the instinctive equipment of which cannot be contested. It
signifies, at the same time, that the only valid conception of the true and the
just would be founded on sensory experience and rational examination. And this
amounts to a proclamation of subjectivism [and intersubjectivism]. One does not
any longer recognize any superior and universally valid truth. Nothing will
count any more but individual conceptions [perspectives] as well as the decisions
taken by majorities of voters, decisions moreover which new votes can annul at
any moment.
Nothing is above man, neither norm nor law. That which is supreme is not
law but the legislating will. (Ivanov, 1986, pp. 77ff, considers the problem as
expressing itself in "the rule of law"). To that another doctrine is
added: by nature man is good and has the means to live according to this
goodness. This turns to be possible by education, and in this philosophy of
education an extremely important principle is thus introduced: it is in making
a man a strong being, liberated from all repressive bonds, norms, and
authoritarian constraints that one permits him to achieve the innate goodness
in his nature. This becomes a basic educational principle: all wickedness
comes from weakness. Make a human strong, he will be good. Obedience, all
servile situations, all recognition of a superior truth are therefore,
according to this philosophy, sources of wickedness. [Cf.
"participation", "empowerment", and Kantian "autonomy",
which was influenced by Rousseau's ideas]. Thus the inhabitants of the Kingdom
of Man will be strong and their strength will render them free, happy, and
good. [The Kantian "categorical imperative" does apparently have no
simple and clear place in this type of elaborations.]
Social or socialist upsets will, however, not suffice in order to
suppress the "authoritarian man" with his tendency to think and act
in function of prejudices. These upsets must be accompanied by a psychic
upheaval which has to be accomplished by means of information aimed at
extirpating from the mentalities of men the last vestiges of prejudice. [Cf.
self-learning communication and information systems.] If man liberates himself
from his prejudices as from all authoritarian power, man is promised that he
will become a free creature, strong and harmonious. Soundly conscious of his
own value, henceforth he will act with a personal responsibility that also
permits him to show tolerance towards others. Locke and Rousseau, Marx and
Freud have convened an immense ecumenical gathering with the aim of realizing
this plan.[29]
(P. 79) The
veil which God has thrown over his creation is to teach men to distinguish that
which is real from that which is illusory, this veil becomes for them, in a
time of mounting secularization, a pretext and means of detaching themselves
from the principal cause of their life and of installing themselves here below
as if the world was real. It is then ever more easy to mingle good and evil, to
amalgamate lies and truth in a magic potion of ever increasing refinement which
is served to our world. In this carnival lies are presented in the attire of
truth and the militants of iniquity take "white as snow" airs of
innocence, exactly as the carnival festivals offer to the basest street
hooligans the occasion to parade in the uniform of a field marshall, or for the
worst blasphemer to vest himself in the robes of a cardinal.
There appears an intermediary zone where all is hazy and indistinct,
where it is more and more difficult to discern the truth from the lie, the
preferred domain of the spiritual "innovators" who always find there
a more vast and more propitious terrain for their unscrupulous exploitation and
experimentation with the values of the Spirit. It is there
where so many praiseworthy energies and so many good intentions are lost, for
the means of separation between the truth and lies are always lacking. All the
satanic intrigues aim initially at the confusion that results from doubt.
(Ivanov, 1991b, cf. the chapter on "cooperative work".) These states
of confusion permit the entry of luciferian forces which relativize all values.
It is this relativism which allows to incite revolt against all power and all
superior authority.
(P. 88) The
Kingdom of Man comes to us saying: make of the human soul a tabula rasa,
a clean slate, and let us search without, in the exterior, for a knowledge of
existence. In this world each step that we take is a step into the unknown. The
true and the false, the just and the unjust are notions, so it is pretended, of
which we have no direct preexistent knowledge. It is only after the fact, under
the effect of a constant process of "trial and error", that something
takes shape [is constructed] which, temporarily at least, may have some value
as the criterion of the true and the just. justice must be converted into an
"equilibrium" attainable only by empirical means and which in reality
is only a provisional state with a constantly changing content.
This astonishing comedy cannot be played without observing certain
fundamental rules. Because man is regarded as a clean slate and each decision
necessarily having been submitted to the "trial and error" process
beforehand, it is necessary that an entire liberty of thought and action reign.
One must, therefore, challenge all orthodoxy and all attachment to absolute
truths and immutable values. But, in order that this spectacle of a humanity
entirely free in its thought and acts may endure, an essential rule is
necessary: tolerance. For this swarming mass of life, of ideas and activities,
the most divergent and the most controversial things must likewise have their
possibility of expression. [Cf. participation and co-determination in "the
marketplace of ideas".]
[The following paragraph, found in the Swedish original of the book,
does not appear in the English translation].
That which the Kingdom of Man denominates tolerance is, in fact, a common
term indicating two different processes. One is the destructive tendency
towards a complete heterodoxy, aiming towards a relativism of values, where
every opinion, every principle, every norm will be transformed into something
temporary. This is a communional social life, where nothing can be believed to
be true beyond the validity of the latest research result, where nothing has
moral validity beyond the subjective judgements of the individual or of the
collectivity of interests, where nothing has longer judicial validity beyond
the period between the decision by the majority of the legislating community.
This leads us to the tendency of the second process under this same
rubric of "tolerance". The relativism of values creates a provisional
state which is a field of battle where each one would have the right to express
freely his thoughts and desires. The hostilities conducted in the name of
tolerance take the form of debate. This latter presupposes that a
preexistent truth does not exist, but that the "true" and the
"best" [provisional] would be comparable to fragments that one could
assemble, thanks to the shock of ideas produced in free discussion. [Cf.
Habermas's "ideal discourse" on the basis of rational argumentation,
as compared with dialectical inquiring systems.](Ivanov, 1991b, p. 61.) That
supposes in its turn that all participants in the debates are animated by a
common will, that of uniting their efforts in view of reaching that which they
[paradoxically] believe can be considered a noble end result of the debate -
the [provisional] truth.[30]
No reasonable creature questions the value of the exchange of ideas. But
in order to assure the liberty of these exchanges, two conditions must be
fulfilled: that those who think differently should benefit from a true
tolerance and that the exchanges concern essential subjects and lead to durable
results. Not one of these conditions prevail in the Kingdom of Man. Debate is a
means of struggle in the hands of egoist [or collectively egoist] forces who
work for themselves and who treat tolerance as a luxury that it useless for
their interests. [Cf. limitations to the membership in the debate.](Ivanov,
1991b, see pp. 60ff, "Neutralizing criticism", for an illustration.)
Any deepening of the discussion is carefully avoided.[31]
For one would see with overmuch evidence, if the interlocutors should there
encounter eternal truths, the fallacy of supposing that a debate or a dialogue
could be a selective process permitting the reunion [or reciprocal enrichment]
of scattered "fragments of truth". [Cf. the "fragments" vs
the "system"] The discussion would immediately come to a stop. This
must not be allowed to happen. The anxiety with which the participants in these
debates avoid every effort to deepen them shows one thing: a
"therapeutic" effect is attributed to these dialogues and
discussions, a means of giving some tension to mental life, of dispelling
ceaselessly menacing sadness, "engaging" men in a dialectical game
devoid of any real aim.
Today, that which one often refers to by "tolerance" is a
means of extirpating the last vestiges of a normative order. There is no longer
any place in this secularized world for an authentic tolerance. For when
egotistical man, subordinate to his sensory interests, has full scope to seek
his own advantage, the notion of tolerance loses its meaning. His neighbor then
is changed into an obstacle in his way [or - paradoxically - changed into a
conversation-killer who insists on using difficult or "philosophical"
language, or changed into a menace against his own "career" or
against his "noble intentions" or "self-realization"].
(P. 103)
Viewed superficially, the revolutionary movements, socialist, communist,
anarchist, seem on the way to achieving definitively and globally the
revolutionary work commenced in 1917. All over the world young revolutionaries
erected barricades, uttered their curses against "authoritarian structures"
and promised to replace them with a "living democracy" [today
"non-hierachical network organizations and computer supported
communication and cooperative work]. In reality, it is a new revolution that is
under way [also in the university and research world].
The French Revolution had proclaimed the advent of profane man, of the
autonomous individual, all-powerful citizens of the Kingdom of Man. The Russian
Revolution pursued the destructive work in making this individual an integral
part of all-powerful matter, with a soul that is nothing other than a
projection of this material world. The third revolution, silent and without
barricades, is the logical development of the two that preceded, principally in
that it manifests and brings to accomplishment the seeds of self-destruction
contained in all the anterior revolutionary strivings. Secularized man loses
his identity, and in materialism he loses even the possibility of maintaining
the illusion of spirituality, as he was still able to do in humanistic
"spirituality". It is an interior disintegration, a process of
decomposition going on without arrest.
This silent revolution is interior and it reveals itself constantly on
the exterior by acts of violence [and acts in general, grafitti, activity
without respite, projects, reforms, etc.]. Vacuity, absurdity, absence of
identity and of paternity, despair, manifest themselves in fits of fury against
"authoritarian structures" and "established interests" [and
"hierachies" - cf. the increasing difficulty to grasp the meaning of
the hierachy of a collegial organization like the university, or of the
Church].
This absence of identity, of consciousness of one's "me" and
of paternity is accompanied by an ever more marked absence of maturity, and a
result of this is an incapacity to assume human relationships in a normal and
adult fashion. Such a condition characterized by a growing confusion leaves no
other possibility to the new generations but to seek on an inferior level the
satisfactions of their needs for a common life. As there is no paternity and
hence no fraternity - the one is the condition of the other -
"symbiotic" coexistence is reduced to a state characterized by
nihilism and chaos [Cf. "groupies" and "flaming" on
"on-line" egalitarian electronic mail where everybody can communicate
with anybody, and about anything, over all boundaries.]
In this "symbiotic" and infantile manner of living together,
there exists neither comradeship nor true solidarity, but only the solitude of
the creature devoted to himself. At the same time there is no more demarcation.
For symbiosis involves the elimination of a sentiment lived during each process
of maturation, which is the consciousness of the "me" and the
"thee", of the rapport between the adult and the adolescent, between
the strong and the weak, and similarly for sex, for love, for mercy, and for
responsibility.
It is from this "symbiotic" confusion that the revolutionaries
presently loom. It is not a revolt under the sign of strength, but of weakness.
A young man [and a student!], healthy and virile, lives in a state of vital
tension with his father [or teacher-manager!], for he wants to become a father
himself one day. The image of the father is constantly before his eyes. On the
other hand, the "symbiotic" rebel, in the weakness of his person and
in his lack of maturity, lances desperate attacks against every father image,
because he would destroy it. And if he would destroy the image it is because he
does not desire to and could not become a fully mature father. It is in such
states of childish backwardness and debility that the
"anti-authoritarian" [and anti-hierarchic, egalitarian?] tendencies
of our time prosper.
Then all limits are obliterated from consciousness. Like the slogan, we
must live in a "world without frontiers", it must be forgotten that
all creation is a formal and limited world in which, as human beings, we must
know not only that frontiers exist but also where they are drawn: frontiers
between man and woman, between child and adult, between the beautiful and the ugly,
between good and evil, between truth and falsehood.[32]
The "absence of frontiers" in space must also be applied to
time. It seems that the bridges must be destroyed, before and behind. This
silent revolution produces a ["instant - flexible - project"] man
"without history" for whom the past appears indifferent and every
action seems equally indifferent in relation to its effects in the
[unpredictable] future. Time becomes a stunted "now", while space is
considered "without end" [cf. worldwide joint-ventures]. Both
thenceforth seem indifferent. [Cf. the effects of modern electronic
communication and world-wide transportation in "the virtual
organization"]. This permits the new revolution to remove the supports of
two keystones of human existence: the conception of time and space are in the
way of disappearing from the consciousness of man.
(P. 117) If
one chooses the way of revolution, one places oneself at the point of view of
collective egoism. If one gives oneself to the revolution of the sexual life,
the point of departure can be only that of the man egotistically bound to his
sensory desires. No love, and no community animated by love, can be born from
this egoism, for love exists already, as well as community, and that because we
are all children of the same Father. This community does not become a reality
except when we find this paternity and acknowledge it[33].
The Kingdom of Man is a social order. It is obliged to have recourse to
growing numbers of laws and ordinances, to threats and reprisals [or to the invisible
hand of murderous competition], in order to maintain the cohesion of
its troops when all the seductions of the all providential State no longer suffice.
[And the other way round: neo-liberal technocratic tendencies can be seen as a
menace and a promise, menace of being abandoned to oneself, and a promise of
getting the freedom necessary to become a winner - in face of our
dissatisfaction with the welfare state's inability to live up to our fanciful
expectations.]
One cannot avoid noting the disappearance of all true fraternity, as
well as the simple and daily sentiment of solidarity, of helpfulness and of
solicitude. Let us not embellish the past. The history of humanity overflows
with familiar conflicts and fratricidal struggles. Where can one find the
community, the family, responding perfectly to ideal desiderata? But even if
the family is presently decadent one has no reason to forecast a future for
human relations envisaging, not only that the family is placed in question as
an institution but that it is openly menaced with annihilation, for where there
is no longer love nor charity, the door is open to brutality. Such is human
nature.
(P. 121)
Justice is a transcendent guarantee giving assurance that not anything created
is submitted to a merely arbitrary treatment. It gives the lie to all those
doctrines affirming the predominance of hazard in existence.
(P. 123) No normal man remains passive in the grip of suffering and
difficulties. Everyone defends himself - and must do so - against suffering,
just as difficulties must be surmounted. That is in no way in contradiction
with divine justice. It is when one negates the superior order, and when man
refuses to recognize a superior power and even a superior justice, that
injustice arises in the heart of man.
There is a close relation between love and justice. Both are parts of
the created order, but each represents a different aspect. Justice is tied to
equilibrium, love to grace. (Ivanov, 1991b, see p. 41n, ref. to the Kantian
tension between love and law, according to Niebuhr, 1986, pp. 143ff.) The end,
for us humans, is not only judgement. With the latter, grace and mercy also
intervene. Our actions are placed on the pans of a balance. This is why justice
is, with its suum cuique (to each his own) the expression of an
egalitarian aspect of weighing. Grace in turn, as a force acting by love in
existence, touches us vertically.
love and justice are the great victims of the modern process of
alteration and destruction. The point of departure is always the same:
individual man. For in the Kingdom of Man, there are "no other gods but
me", and utilizing all means at his disposition the human being must
conquer his position of power. And when it is a question of love and of
justice, the premise is posed: there is no superior love, no superior justice.
The center of the one and of the other is the individual self, sensual man
devoted to his own self-interest. The point of departure is egoism.
How, in these conditions, can justice be established? How, in this
crossfire of sensory forces and interest, can any kind of justice prevail? In
Rousseau's writings one perceives a fundamental note: [existential] self-pity.
It is he himself that he loves. In this autistic world, he encounters his own
fragility, his weaknesses, his morbid tendencies, his torments, and his pains.
Rousseau is delivered up to himself and to his sufferings. Then he creates a
religious pseudo-world of which the center is the temple of sentimentality
which is called the human heart, and where he elaborates the new
"esoterism".
The center of man is the heart - it is there that the insoluble conflict
is to be found that opposes Rousseau to the much more cerebral encyclopedists.
The heart is the sentimental and autistic headquarters of the Kingdom of Man.
"At the bottom" of this heart, in this "natural" temple,
man is pure and good. There, not only our sensory but also our moral foundation
is to be found. Secularized man has "conquered" love and justice. The
power which is also necessary to man can be reconciled with his innate
"natural" goodness: all submission, all subordination, all servility
arouses malice in the human mind. Let us become strong, and we will become
good.
In the heart, then, resides sentimental self-pity, but also pure and
innocent Nature; and with Nature, the love of justice. Nevertheless, to reach
this goodness, this purity, this justice, and this love, man must be equally
free, strong, without bonds, "neither the lord nor the slave of
anyone". This problem can only be solved through equality. One must not
seek justice "above", but realize it here below, in earthly equality.
The individual is bearer of the human egoism, and the collectivity -
bearer of the egalitarian order. In this collectivity, devoid of charity, and
where, consequently, morality has only a single dimension, it is a question of
resolving double problems. For the one part, no one can be stronger than I -
and the self defends itself against a horde of wolves - and for the other, no
one can be weaker ["it could be myself", or "he could turn
against me"]. In such conditions all difference is a menace, even on the
part of the weak - which may be directed against me. This is why an important
element of the fundamental system of social security consists in eliminating
all backwardness in an egalitarian regime.
Equality, as the relationship of power, is then a balance of terror. But
power, it has been said, is only one aspect of the picture. The other is
self-pity. It explains the curious mixture: on the one hand, a conceited and
aggressive desire for power and, on the other, a sentimental compassion towards
one's own weakness and confusion. It is this last psychic
component which gives such a pronounced emotional note to the life of profane
man. Amidst all the glorification of democratic liberty and the exercise of
power by the citizenry one perceives an undeniable tendency to spread out and,
so to speak, to socialize self-pity. [To manifest their nobility of spirit by
proclaiming their identification with the oppressed, and their solidarity in
the struggle for their cause.]
The socialization of self-pity, however, does not lead to a true compassion
of a universal compass, since it is grounded in the fear of suffering. It
motivates abolition by the providential State of suffering implying,
positively, the well-being and the material and psychic satiety of the
individual. It is the negation of the imperfection of this world [which, in
turn, implies the negation of another directing higher spiritual world]. The
fear of suffering and the efforts to eliminate it provide the emotional base
for the order of profane justice.[34]
This must not be confused with compassion. This latter is man's disposition to
charitable sharing by placing himself in the position of his neighbor.[35]
Egalitarianism excludes charity because the former is not renunciation
but revendication and surveillance. It implies the quantitative control
of things.[36] At
the beginning and at the end of all this system is found the aspiration of the
egotistical individual to satisfy his needs for sensory enjoyments. The
existence of man becomes then, individually as well as collectively, a defense
of his own well being and not a disposition to sacrifice and renounce it. If he
wishes the well-being of all, this is neither from compassion nor from charity,
but because it appears to him as the one solid guarantee of his own individual
well-being. [Cf. the interest for the power of technology and the possible
motives for commitment to participation in the development and operation of
technical systems for increased well-being.]
(S. v) Many
people feel that, however attractive some of the Christian values and doctrines
may be, they cannot bear the light of reason. They hope against hope that there
may be some ultimate solution to the tragedies of everyday existence and to the
private, social, and international problems we have to face. Many know in their
hearts that the city built by man turns, all too frequently, into a city of
avarice and hate. They have lost faith in the "planning" about which
so much is written. Without some kind of inspiration from above such planning
is like the stitching of old clothes. The wearing out goes on despite the busy
needle.
(S. 3) Among
views which give little or no part to reason or intellect in faith, Kant holds
that our thinking is limited to phenomena and that we can know nothing of God
and spiritual freedom or spiritual personality because these conceptions have
no basis in sense. But though, philosophically speaking, such conceptions are
illegitimate and have no content they are demanded as postulates in the
practical order. We cannot live as free, moral men without them. Faith, then,
is a postulate of the moral and practical order. The influence of this view has
been great. It seemed to free religion from the difficulties of science and
give it a standing which, if not rational, was nevertheless also beyond the
range of hostile criticism. Many, therefore, think that they can have an
experience called faith which is genuine and true though it has nothing to do
with what scientists call reason.
Faith was thought of more and more as an experience of a unique kind
analogous to artistic experience. Reason and religious doctrine were separated
off from the heart of religion. Religion need no longer be defended on rational
grounds. Christian thinkers need lo longer believe that there exists any
content or doctrine of faith which must be considered immune from change.
Doctrine, no matter how sacred, can be believed or disbelieved without any loss
to essential Christianity. Liberal Christians followed this path. Faith
seems to mean for them an assurance of the Christian experience, and a
confidence that no matter what conclusions they form they will be assisted by
the Holy Spirit. The Modernist is more positive in his rejection of old
ideas than the Liberal. He has been influenced by the pragmatic philosophers,
such as William James. Truth is never more than a hypothesis which works. We
should believe in Christianity because above all other religions it works and
has value. The Christian story contains in mythical form the ideal towards which
man is evolving. The doctrines of Christianity have no absolute truth but serve
as symbols pointing man in the right direction.
Rationalist tendencies characterize certain thinkers who have followed
the contrary line, extolling reason, and wishing it to do a work which the
orthodox tradition says to be beyond its capacity. In pressing the rights of
reason they make it difficult to see how faith can be free and, as such, a
virtuous act, and how it can be supernatural and a gift of God to which he can
lay no claim.
In contrast, the Catholic view is that faith is an act of the intellect
directed by the will, that it is reasonable, and that we assent with certainty,
and lastly, that we assent to the word of God just because it is God's word,
given to us, therefore, on the authority of Truth itself. The fixed
characteristics to notice, then, are that the assent is supernatural, free and
certain, and that it rests on God's authority.
If you find
this chapter dry, remember that you cannot buy truth cheaply, especially
considering that few bother to think out questions of religion.
My first point is that it is not reasonable to reject a religion because
it calls itself a belief. A belief can be rational and even certain. The only
kinds of knowledge which do not include belief are direct knowledge by
perception and self-evident truths. Belief can mean probability amounting to
almost practical certainty, including the resting on the evidence and the word
of others. All knowledge which is not absolute certainty may be called belief,
but the more specialized meaning is that of knowledge which rests on the word
of others. A scientist cannont himself perform all the experiments whose
results are down in the textbooks, and he is dependent in part on the word of
other scientists as conveyed in the printed page of learned journals. Our daily
experience is a tissue of beliefs. [Cf. the beginning of this paper where I
state my temporary "abdication" from ego-centered academic work in
order to mediate and introduce others' literature to researchers in my
scientific field.]
(S. 19) By
belief I mean, primarily, any ideas of views we hold which do not rest on
direct experience or self-evident truths, and, secondly, all our knowledge
which rests directly or indirectly on the words of others. [Cf.
"trust" in democratic dialogue and debate.]
We have now to sift this mass of beliefs and separate the reasonable
from the unreasonable. To do this we distinguish between belief in the word of
another, belief in a cause, and belief in a person. The last - believing in (or
at least giving the benefit of the doubt to) a person like a friend - is
probably the strongest emotionally. The important truth lying behind this kind
of belief is that there are persons who deserve to be trusted, and that without
this trust many of the greatest enterprises for good will fail.[37] As
in giving one's word so in giving one's trust and love the decision ought, if
possible, to be irrevocable. [Cf. presuppositions or "fundamental
assumptions" of communication, dialogue, and of "cooperation",
beyond the "force of better argument".]
Belief in a cause implies more study and deliberation, but it is seldom
unaccompanied by intense emotion. beliefs of this kind change the world for
good or for ill, and no society prospers without a cause to defend. One of the
signs of decadence is the absence of any belief in oneself or one's community
or a positive ideal. Most of those who propagate their cause would be shocked
to hear they were thought irrational. In practice they are not only fully
persuaded that their cause is true but they try to justify it by arguing and
trying without end to persuade their fellow-men to believe in it.
We are at present strong in our belief in the virtues of democracy. Past
tests from experience are not in its favour, but we should probably reply that
they were not fair tests and we stick to our belief in it. Why? Well, I think
we are convinced that its view of man is the right one and it gives him the
best opportunities to live a full life. But notice that we are applying here a
criterion quite different from that of the scientist and empiricist one.
If we must test the Christian belief by its effects ("by their
fruits you shall know them") then it can give imposing evidence of truth.
There is no end to the things we owe to it, hospitals and a type of school and
university, a passion for learning, the laws which emancipated us and gave us
freedom and rights as free men (this was the work of English medieval lawyers
who were Churchmen), the religious orders who dedicated themselves to looking
after the poor and destitute, many of the glories of our painting and
architecture, new types of spiritual beauty as manifested in a Venerable Bede,
a Benedict, and Bruno and Francis of Assisi; a new idea, in truth, of human
nature with the accompanying virtues of brotherliness, respect of woman and
innocence, and humility. There are shadows in the picture, but if we take this
test of effects of Christianity a strong case can be made out. This is not the
supreme or only test, no more than, for example we need to take as the only
test of Communism [or of Democracy], its practical successes.
The final test of every religious theory and belief is the truth of its
premises and the height and consistency of its ideals. In discussing great
beliefs like Democracy and Communism and Christianity one can always wriggle
out of difficulties drawn from practice. You know the answer some of us give
"Christianity has not failed because it has never been tried". It
illustrates the indecisiveness of an appeal to practice. The real test is
whether it makes out its claims to be true and to answer the problem of man's
destiny. And because it does not hide away in a corner but offers its
credentials openly and without fear, it belongs to that category of belief
which is prima facie reasonable. There are faiths which rely on feeling,
on mystical insights, on pragmatical values alone. Christianity is not one of
them. True, it says that, if you accept the evidence that God has spoken, you
are bound in reason to accept that revelation, but, even then, the mind is
allowed to play upon the doctrines revealed. But before you accept you are
presented with a panorama of life, an interpretation of history, and a
philosophy of man, which you can examine to your heart's content freely and
without prejudice.
(S. 24ff.)
Many do not believe that Christianity has stood up to the tests of a reasonable
belief. To them religion seems to survive despite reason. Reason is cold and
impartial, religion appeals to the emotions and is partisan and propagandist.
They think that it has always traded on men's fears, lent itself to the wildest
orgies and resisted the advance of science. Book after book tells how those who
have been brought up in some faith have had to abandon it in later years or
have turned against its baseless threats, its narrow intolerance, its searing
inhumanity. Such evidence is far too strong to be dismissed with an angry
denial. But first notice that the same kind of indictment has been brought
against parents and political rulers, kings and governments. Yet even the critics
would not pretend that we can get on without parents and governments.
A generation or two ago it was the fashion to debunk religion by tracing
its origin to magic or animism or superstition. It is now clear that in
primitive worship a pure if confused idea of God can shine through barbarous
customs and superstitions [cf. Jung's psychology]. Growth in philosophy and
art and, generally, in religion does not proceed as in science from the lower
to the higher but from the confused to the distinct. The best things in
life never grow out of date; the worst that can happen to them is to be out of
fashion. To desert our true love is evidence of our fickleness, not of her
fading beauty.[38]
What part does reason play in all this? Science proceeds from the senses
and intellectual activities combined, philosophy from the mind, and morals
belong to the will; but religion is the response of the whole man to what is
his most vital concern. You are a man before you are a thinker or artist or
economist. It is you thinking, feeling, and desiring.
If, then, religion expresses the total man as no other human activity
can, if it is the mother country of the impulses, we can understand why no
civilisation endures for long when it abandons religion; why again the impetus
to live gradually declines in its absence, the meaning and purpose of life are
lost and man surrenders to fate and his own Frankenstein monsters [cf.
technological determinism]. Again we can see why religion can be so allied to
madness and produces such terrifying fanaticism and frenzies. It is the
primordial urge and gathers up within it all other impulses, thoughts, and
emotions. If it goes wrong, then mad fears and sex passions and avarice [and
technological utopias or political beliefs] may take charge in its name, and we
can have a crop of lunatics and hypocrites. Such aberrations are a witness to
its power and the desperate need of simplicity and wisdom in the direction of
it.
Christianity is a mature religion, and so far from despising reason it
has been accused of overrating it. It started as an historical event and it
expanded rapidly into a universal faith which challenged the moral, spiritual,
and intellectual ideas of the time and of the past. It had to defend its
assumptions and pretensions and justify its creeds. In fact, it is the
scientific age which has remained predominantly an antirationalistic movement,
based upon a naive faith. What reasoning is wanted, has been borrowed from
mathematics. Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared
to justify its faith or to explain its meaning; and has remained blandly
indifferent to its refutation by Hume.
Religion is far too vital a concern to be ignored because of the
boorishness or even human incompetence of some of its servants. All other
activities are nourished by the inner belief that our efforts are not all
wasted, that life is not all cross questions and crooked answers, and that the
end is a lame and impotent conclusion. Our very reason cries out against this,
and the soul cannot be satisfied with dusty answers or remain for ever placid
in [constructivist, or liberal ironic] doubt.
(S. 29ff)
The Christian belief claims to be reasonable; and in two ways. First before you
make any act of faith, the mind is invited to examine the evidence for
Christianity; and after you come to believe, the mind explores the content of
that faith under the direction and control of Revelation. Today, many are like
men who talk as if they intended to propose to a woman, but never do. Society
is at present [1946] permeated with a kind of God-fearing Agnosticism.
Instincts and habits are still Christian, but the mind is just confused and in
doubt. Such agnostics think that theirs is the most reasonable view. They say
that they do not deny the possibility that a God exists but that it is wiser to
suspend judgement. It is difficult to have patience with this oistrich-like
action. If God exists, as they say He may, He is not a noboby who can be
ignored. To treat the Being who fills the universe and on whom all depends as a
nonentity is in fact an insulting compromise, and a shallow form of atheism.
A free, full-grown, responsible and personal human being has begun to reflect
upon himself, on his status in the universe, on his relations with his
fellow-men and with nature; and he realises with his understanding that the
rationality in nature which he discovers, the ideas of truth which he is bound
to follow and learn, the standards of justice and love which he must aim and
obey, must all have a living source.
At the same moment that man discovers his own excellence and dignity as
a free, personal being, he also acknowledges a free, personal Godhead, and is
happy. As soon as he begins to lose sight of himself by confusion of thought or
sophistry, he also begins to lose sight of the nature of God. He denies his own
freedom and dignity, and the world becomes strange and impersonal [and the need
increases for a desperate "inter-subjective" communication]. He feels
himself the creature of fate and necessity [or of relativism], and he feels
that the world is too much for him [i.e. the motivation for relativism]. Only
the false romantic [the "sentimental"] can believe that in the
silent, inexorable world of atheism a man can be master of his fate. Our
Western civilisation has developed the idea of personal liberty from its
Christian tradition of a personal God.
This rule, that a right regard for our own free, personal nature and a
right conception of God as personal and providential must coincide is verified
today when the true idea of God has been lost and the shadow of necessity
haunts our civilisation with its scientific determinism [and its communicative
relativism], its economic necessities and the servile state.
There may be a twofold explanation of our modern Agnosticism. The first
is that we have been so deluged with ideas and counter ideas that we have
slipped into the habit of picking and choosing alternatives [or constructed
"artifacted" perspectives] without ever committing ourselves finally
to one of them. Our society lacks a unifying motive. [Cf.
"democracy"!] It has been taught to be tolerant of everything, even
evil, to be sceptical of fundamentals, of its soul and its freedom and of the
norms of morality set like stars in the firmament. We prefer to be nomads in
search of sensation [and in search of perspectives] rather than sure of our
spiritual city. To toss truth to and fro, to look wise and be non-committal,
has its pleasures.[39]
But to sit on the fence when the fence is rotting is not the act of a wise man.
So too in religion; it is more comfortable to regard God as a kind of absentee
landlord and dwelling as far off as the Virgin Islands. It might be decidedly
uncomfortable to have to face up to a living God who is not deceived by the
bogus, can expose us for what we are, and judges our motives and way of life by
the standards of pure truth. Far more soothing is it to stop thinking and rely
on vague, general terms and long-winded descriptions of the "great
hypothesis", the "inapprehensible reality", the "organic
absolute", and similar bung-holes without any barrel.
But there is a more worthy reason why intelligent men hesitate to think
of God as personal. In early religions the gods worshipped were far too like
ourselves, and man has a bad habit of making things after his own image. Now,
it is the work of science and philosophy to remove these fond imaginings and
replace them with scientific and abstract terms. To teach the multitudes,
however, we have to use pictures, and when we study with our minds we have to
use general and abstract terms, and that makes study laborious. This is the
chief defect of human thinking: we have to use abstractions and learn to clothe
them in sensible imagery. [Cf. "metaphorical" and
"heuristic" strategies for inquiry.] God does not have to use general
terms, nor is He an abstraction. Abstractions are like pennies which we human
beings have to use in place of silver, and are to be found in learned books.
But now notice that the learned tend to fall into their own pit, for you
catch them writing of Nature and Evolution and Progress and Mind and Reality
with capital letters, and so giving them a substantial status as beings which
they don't possess at all. When Christians call God personal they both avoid
the mistake of the anthropomorphists and that of the scientists. They do not
think of God as a kind of superhuman being like Jupiter or Wotan. Nor do they
stop at abstractions like Nature or Mind, into which the scientists lapse.
A point of
view begins when there is the chance of interpreting several facts or a number
of data. Except in hot argument we do not normally boggle over statements like
twice two is four. We have no personal point of view about it; it offers no
challenge to our mind. [Cf. the foundational views of mathematics, presently
ignored in applied science.] But immediately there is a challenge, and
the facts need collating, then points of view and different interpretations
begin, e.g. about the news in the papers, the habits of mutual friends, the
conduct of the war, the policies of governments, almost everything. We like to
have a point of view, and the point of view is fairly consistent. It is
dictated by a mixture in us of information, taste, affection, fears, and likes
and experience. We have each of us a kind of personal pattern and this pattern may
both quicken our insight and blind us. [Cf. "perspectivistic
blindness" as opposed to "perspectivistic seeing"!] We may be
quick to find what we like and quick to read into others [and into their own
arguments] our own pattern, and so miss a great deal. Critics may not get
inside the mind of the persons they abused; they were prejudiced. For true
understanding you must get inside the mind of others, by sympathy. If you don't
you will be prejudiced and have a narrow point of view.
Now, our point of view or pattern enters into all our ordinary
judgements. We are constantly unifying our experience and making it our own,
and much depends on whether we can keep on growing with an open mind and
enlarging our experience. One danger is that after a time we become satisfied
and complacent, and then our mind closes [i.e. works with only depictive views
of reality]. Another danger is that some passion or hate may discolour all our
thoughts and inclinations. Also those who allow themselves to be swayed by a
contemporary fashion, and talk about the necessity of truth being up to
date, and about outworn dogmas and the ancient superstition of religion,
have never understood men, and have blinded their own minds.
How, then, can the mind be freed from prejudice and made open to
recognize truth? Everyone should, among other things, not be content with mere
snapshots of reality and settle down into a complacent enjoyment of the second
rate, or anything less than a complex view of life: one which includes the
mystery of man himself, time and waste and sorrow and death and evil, as well
as scientific progress, joy in art, and the kind of high human thinking which
is illustrated, for example, in an anthology like Robert Bridge's Spirit of
Man.
Concerning faith, Christians arrive at the threshold of faith by reason,
but then go on: the human point of view is given a new perspective in a divine
pattern which is the point of view of truth. [Cf. an early footnote
about dogma] Passage from reason to faith, is not the black-out of reason but
the enlightening of it. Faith, however mistaken, is not founded on unreason, It
is much less unreasonable than what we ourselves are doing constantly, that is,
allowing us to be influenced by the views of another.
(S. 42ff) When
people say that science is opposed to [or inconsistent with] Christian belief,
we must ask, what is opposed to what? The real scientist, busy in
his field of research generally dislikes those who speak in his name and talk
too much about subjects outside his specialized work. He feels that he is
exploited by popularisers, and he is not responsible for that dreary jibe that
science deals with facts and progresses, while philosophy and religion avoid
facts and are stationary [cf. "depictive"]. He knows that discoveries
are made by science, but many so called facts are really only hypotheses, and
that scientific hypotheses don't profess usually to be more than makeshifts.
Only harm is done to science when people extend such hypotheses beyond the
field in which they hold good, and use them to explain everything. [Cf.
extending principles of social science such as democracy into a
"religion", like system science may be tempted to.] The itch of some
scientific thinkers to be philosophers and high priests leads them to
generalise in the most wanton manner. [Cf. the "evolutionism" of
"evolutionary embryonic" information systems which, used as a
metaphor, borrows from the power of the concept of evolutionism.].
There are in every age certain popular catchwords and tendencies. In the
nineteenth century, owing to the progress made in many directions, the idea of
evolution fell in with the mood of the time,and though it was only a scientific
theory it became a popular philosophy. It has never been very coherent, and the
good it accomplished is now interred with the bones of Spencer, Darwin, and
Huxley. The follies in the belief have cost us dearly - for we cannot deny that
that view of man has had a share in the disintegration and misery which have
followed in our day. Nevertheless there are people still ready to exploit the
scientific hypothesis and expound it as a view of life which ousts that of
Christianity.[40] It
is made to cover everything, the inorganic, the organic, and mind and spirit.
[Cf. auto-poiesis, and, again, evolutionary embryonic systems development.] But
notice, that an all-out Evolutionist cuts his own throat. The law of
development, he says, is that of survival value. Claws are advantageous,
therefore some animals have claws. To think has survival value, therefore
thought flourishes. But if this is so, his own theory follows the same law. It
is evolved not because it is true, but because it has survival value. [Cf. also
the pragmatism of "auto-poietic" "academic survival" and
"grant success" at universities.] He ought not be interested in its
truth, for in an all-out evolution that has no place or meaning. Then, too, none
of these Evolutionists can tell us what it is that evolves. Growth is
not mere change; it is change of something which remains more itself at the end
than at the beginning. In the inorganic world it is doubtful if anything grows.
Is it a bladder which has grown larger when a football is blown up? If protons
and electrons are the only physical reality, they remain completely the
same in all changes, and so there is no evolution. If you bring in the word
"structure" or "form" (Churchman, 1971, cf. morphological
classes, in chap. 3), then the units making up the form are never the same for
two minutes, and it looks as if a form which was other than its physical units
had grown. That is odd, because it suggests that the form is immaterial! What
is it then that grows? [Cf., again, what is the embryo of the information
system which will evolve?] What remains the same and becomes an individual in
his evolution from some remote ancestor? The truth is that evolution is only a
convenient hypothesis which helps to coordinate known facts in a limited field
of science. Christianity is quite content to accept it as such, but Christians
dislike the sloppiness of thought which applies it as a truth to everything,
the mind included. [Cf. so called embryos without determinate specifications,
auto-poietic evolution, and the evolving constructive mind.]
This example of evolution is typical of the theories, taken from physics
or economics or psychology, which are proffered as the last word of wisdom on
everything in general. [Cf. the temptations of sloppy "systems
thinking".] They attract because they are supposed to be up to date and
the product of science, which is infallible. Christianity has nothing to fear
from real science. From Newton onward there have always been plenty of
first-rate scientists who were at the same time thorough believers. But after a
blitz of false propaganda, people are now unwilling to believe anything which
is ancient as well as modern.
The real difficulty of our day I believe to be this clinging mist of
doubt. It has been spread wider by poor religious teaching and the feverish
inconsistancy of modern opinion. Some Christian teaching is so bad as to be
only a caricature. Let it be true; if it is thaught without conviction or
authority, it is soon forgotten. Unfortunately, too, we live in an age of
inconstancy. In a healthy society a man hasn't for ever be re-examining
himself. He is at home in an ideal and can go about his proper business in a
creative mood. Nowadays a young man has no continuity with his early years. He
finds he must change his ideas on politics, economics, and conventional morals;
and so he takes for granted that the same must hold true in religion. No great
philosophy of life warms the hearts of our generation.
The Christian philosophy, so far from thwarting man's aims, creates an
atmosphere in which man's aims can live best. No other philosophy makes room
for so much: for spirit and matter, reason and imagination, the rights and
duties of free persons. Everything is there in its right proportion: science in
its relation to man's other aims, the proper functions of families and nations,
and the solidarity of man, - and behind all, there is no impersonal fate but a
living God.
In an age which is one of mass-production, the influence of public
opinion [cf. "democracy"] seeps through one's reason into the soul,
and this is why even men of independent judgement may feel without knowing why
that the day of Christianity is over. People feel that a tide of disruption is
now at full flood, and that it is a cosmic [constructive] movement which cannot
be changed. We live in a flux. Language changes, habits, artistic tastes,
government change; and so stupendous are the changes in the extent of our
knowledge of the world that we feel an immense gap between what we and our
forefathers thought, and are inclined to think that they must have been
credulous and immature in their beliefs.
The answer to this trouble of mind is to study what Christianity really
teaches in its doctrines. It is not the truth of the doctrine which has grown
old but the imagery and associations that the language used calls up. But
though the clothing of an idea in language may repel, the idea itself may be
unalterably true. Christianity is not committed to any philosophical system. In
some respects Christian faith is like human love. It awakens devotion to a
person as well as attachment to a cause.
(S. 49ff)
Contemporary Agnostics share with the Communist and the Nazi, as well a with
the Catholic, a confidence which is not easily shaken by disturbing facts. They
are all believers. The difference which I would maintain exists between their
beliefs is that the Catholic one is founded on reason, the Nazi and the
Communist on messianic expectation, and the Agnostic on disillusionment and an
interior disharmony. By an interior disharmony I mean the result of the coming
to pieces of an early belief and the failure to resume the fragments under one
Creed. [Cf. the quest for a "systems approach".] There is now no "general
body of knowledge on the general truth of which civilised man could
agree". But that does not mean that all belief is absent. Even a negation
creates prejudices and feeds dislikes. The old is abused and tolerated more in
form than fact, and the novels like those of writers as H.G. Wells and B. Shaw
are avidly scanned in the hope that they may offer a clue out of the maze.
Their role, apart from their position as writers of the English tongue, is to
exhibit better perhaps than anyone else the bankruptcy of modern life and
thought. The modern Agnostic believes in a unity, but it is dark. [Cf.
"evolutionary system"]. He is aware that the past has slipped away
and that the present is carrying him along without his understanding it or
exercising proper control of it. His belief is a negative one; it has no
absolutes and no standards, and yet he likes to think that he is better off
than his Christian friend, more broad-minded, more far-seeing and closer to the
goal of human life.
It is difficult to dissipate this view, to puncture this nebulous
belief; for it is everywhere and nowhere. It can be extreme and form a dark
cloud of doubt which covers every approach to religion. To such doubters
religious persons are on the same plane as witch-hunters, fortune tellers, and
idolaters. But there are those who wish to preserve the values [like democracy]
which they recognise in religious nations while at the same time they are
unable to accept the content of any religious belief. This distinction is
applied with special force to Christianity. Few of its dogmas are up to date.
By rigidly adhering to past ways of thought it has lost hold on the modern
mind.
The feeling persists that dogmas are a relic of past ways of thinking
and that the modern mind has no use of them. [Cf., again, the early footnote
about dogma.] Our outlook now is experimental and tentative [communicative,
constructive, artificial, and eternally evolutionary]. It lives on
probabilities and hypotheses, it allows for growth [construction] of knowledge
[and artifacts] and flexibility in method. So much has been learnt and so vast
are the areas of uncertainty that the only wise policy is to make the best of
present knowledge and allow for its limitations. (Ulrich, 1987, cf. his
negative heuristics for social systems design) This mood expressed itself at
the beginning of the century in what has been called pragmatism and modernism,
a view which decried the absolute certainties of past ages and regarded the
mind as an instrument for service and life. Pushed to an extreme this view led
straight to scepticism [and utilitarism] but the modern critic says that each
age has its temptations, that he has corrected the bias of those years, and
that if this age is too fond of probabilities and surmises the medieval world
suffered from the opposite defect and was too fond of dogmatising. The revolt
against positivism plunged a generation into the opposite extreme. All thought
was considered to be tarred with the same brush; its claims to give truth were
denied, and it was made into the servant maid of some mysterious new function
or force and judged by its works.
This heresy against the mind was called pragmatism, and in
theology it took the name of modernism. It denied any real separation or
priority of spirit life. It denied moralism and sentimentalism as well as
intellectualism: life is the test and criterion of truth, as serviceableness is
of any instrument.[41]
Knowledge is thought of as a kind of plan made to suit experience and foretell
and control future experience. As such, of course, it could not hold the place
of honour which the Christian Church had given it. It had lost the absolute and
final character which the traditional philosophy gave to it.
This suicidal pragmatist view of reason has been
overinfluenced by the idea of progress and the limitations of the human mind
[Kant]. It is a prejudice that the human reason is only a practical instrument
for the needs of man. Speculation in such a view is just a scribbling in the
dark, a blind man's guess about the flowers of paradise. It is not realized
into what an abyss of ignorance such a defeatist doctrine of human reason
leads. The distrust of human reason and of man prepares the way for
superstitions and lunatic dreams which insult the world's intelligence.
(S. 85ff)
Faith, in contrast with moral choices, being concerned with an ultimate is not
unlike, in some respects, the kind of choice which the democracies have to make
in fighting Nazism or Totalitarianism. The struggle is between two contrary
views of life. Or to take another example: our Parliamentary system depends
upon the various parties having a common conception of society, about which
they agree. The various parties debate which is the better means for perfecting
such a society. This is like a moral choice. If, however, a new party arises
which has a totally different conception of society, debate must turn on to
fundamentals, and no Parliamentary system can work. This is like the choice
of faith.
From Aristotle downwards it has been accepted by the greatest number of
the great moralists of the world that the criterion of good and bad acts is to
be found in the judgement of the "phronimoi", the wise men. (Ivanov,
1991b, concerning "phronesis", p. 46 in the chap. on "pragmatism
and religion"). The virtue of Prudentia was regarded as the Queen in the
practical order.
It is simply difficult to understand the objection that it is impossible
to believe what one does not understand. Belief can be used for an opinion of a
high order, as when we say that we believe that the sun will rise tomorrow but
we have no absolute certainty. In this sense, of course, we must understand the
statement which we believe. But belief is also used in the sense of accepting something
on the word of another. In this sense I need not understand the meaning of that
"something"; in fact most people cannot be said to understand why it
can be that the earth is round. Many use the formulas of science in their daily
lives, in cooking and heating houses and in driving cars, etc., without knowing
the meaning of their formulas. They have some idea of what they are doing, but
then every believer, including the Christian believer, uses understanding and
judgement.
(S. 89ff) Faith is a virtue, and it can be compared to the virtue of
prudence. Prudence now often means little more than "wait and see" or
an excessive caution which is far from the original connotation of the name. In
a wise and prudent moral judgement a man is aware of the accord of what he is
about to do with what he should desire, or to put it more technically, with the
proper and appropriate end of his instinct or inclination. But not only is he
certain of this interior accord between his decision and his desire; he is
equally certain that the exterior circumstances and the nature of the action to
be performed, which solicit his assent, are such as to deserve it. In other
words, I judge both that this action is the right kind of course for a
right-minded man to follow, and also that the external circumstances are such
that in the light of them a good man ought to make this decision. [Cf. this
scheme vs. the modern conceptions of communicative action and rational
argumentation.](Östberg, 1993, cf. his conception of responsibility as virtue -
not only "personal knowledge" - in the context of "risk
management".)
In our moral choices our certainty lays both in the objective rightness
of the action and in the known interior accord of our desires with their right
end. Our action was virtuous and free because we thus corresponded with what we
realised to be right and good. But all such moral choices fell within the
general conception of the end of life and our ultimate good. In faith we are
concerned not with intermediate choice, not with ways and means, but with our
final end, with life and the eternal life. [Cf. Singer's and Churchman's
intersubjective "ideals".] Our whole existence is at stake, all that
we are is engaged, and we have to decide to accept of refuse, truth revealing a
new way and end and life. (James, 1956, gives the pragmatist account of this
type of concerns.) If, as it may happen, we recoil from the invitation and see
it from our all too human point of view, it may seem to us fantastic or mythological
or as making an unfair demand on the surrender of our precious private
judgement and desires. Faith entails a complete surrender. It is this
which scandalises those who are rich in mind or talents or noble ambitions.
They are shocked, and despise the act of total surrender as an act of
cowardice, and spurn the act of authority which demands it as wanton and
oracular.[42]
They are not, however, true to the highest instinct of man which makes him
when in love give his all and keep nothing back. If this be so between a man
and a maid, it must be the law of love between God and man.
The hesitations and objections, the delays and compromises which not
infrequently occur when the challenge of faith has to be met, are often a sign
of some interior and only half-undertstood resistance of the natural self to
the sacrifice demanded. The same happens when some grave moral decision should
be taken, when one has to change one's way of life, marry, or enter some
service. But such prolonged doubts are not rational; they are much more likely
to be rationalisations of some fear or selfish emotion which holds the self in
thrall.
Man is then really asking that faith should rest on purely natural
reasons and that his assent should be not one of faith but a conclusion resting
on premises and only as strong as those premises. Such an assent would neither
be free nor supernatural. There will and can be no virtue in it.
Now, faith has been defined as an act of the intellect directed by the
will, and it is because of this "direction of the will" that our
assent can be both free and virtuous as well as certain. The clue to the
possibility of such assent is to be found in morals. In a proper moral
judgement we saw we have both objective evidence to justify our decision, and
within us the sensed orientation of our desire according to right reason. This
gives us a certainty that our choice was right.[43]
The likeness between the act of faith and the practical judgement in
morals consists in that in both the assent is a virtue and free, that the
intellect is directed by the will. Despite this likeness there are, however,
differences. In faith the choice is of a final good and of a life which demands
complete surrender of the self with all its powers.
To begin
with I wish to remind and emphasize that this is a working paper. The
categorical style of the conclusions should be "discounted" by the
reader since these working conclusions formally do not claim to be more than
well motivated and supported hypotheses.
Since I may be treading on the toes of many people I also wish to
emphasize that the spirit of my criticism is such that its apparent strength or
even violence, and offence, stands in direct proportion to the extent of the
claims of those who feel criticized. These claims can be seen either in terms
of consumed research resources, or in terms of the number and kind of people
who are supposed to have been influenced or are supposed to be influenced in
the future. There is a paradox here which I have already noted in an earlier
paper. While I was writing it I happened to glance at the calls for papers to a
conference on systems thinking. Papers were invited for the following streams:
problem structuring, systems and operations research, systems and the social
sciences, information systems, choice of methodology, use of particular
methodologies, project management, and applications of systems thinking. I
realized with a certain uneasiness that it would not be difficult for some
schools and projects in the field of information systems research and computer
science to be successful in submitting papers to almost all the streams, not to
mention to other conferences on subjects like expert systems, decision support
systems, group decision support systems, computer supported cooperative work,
teleconferencing, human-computer interaction, hypermedia, educational
technology, computer-aided learning, geographical information systems, information
management, etc.
It should be obvious that under these circumstances nothing can be
questioned or even said without risking to tread on the toes of researchers and
practitioners who may feel that they have something valuable and revolutionary
to contribute in almost all those fields, plus in business, philosophy,
methodology of science, and culture in general including reform of our way of
living. It is nothing short of a synthesis of Western thinking in terms of its
major philosophers, a revolution of the human mind, of our human way of
thinking and creating our future, including our way of conceiving business,
organizing work and leisure, financing research and development, etc., all this
based on information technology. This seems to be the price we all have to pay
for the universal "rhetoric" appeal of buzzwords in the fields of
applications of the the universal cosmic tool called computer, which borrows
from the prestige of the queen of the sciences, mathematics. In other words:
under such circumstances the degree of offence that is felt by the possible
objects of criticism must be directly proportional to their degree of ego
inflation.[44]
Even so, I would have worked harder and longer with the purpose of softening
the occasional harshness of my tone in a language which I am far from
mastering, if it were not for the severity, that in accord with Lindbom's and
D'Arcy's analysis, is required towards that which, within ourselves and others,
despite all good intentions, can damage the intellect.
As an introductory conclusion I wish to state explicitly and ritually
that I continue to be in favor of technology, democracy and cooperation. This
paper should in no way be interpreted as contempt, disdain, scorn, or disregard
of efforts to develop artefacts or technological support of democratic,
participatory, cooperative, communicative, argumentative work and design. It
is, rather, an attempt to explore the meaning of these words in terms of some
of their presuppositions and fundamental assumptions.[45] I
wish to contribute to prevent them from becoming buzzwords. In doing so, I
concede that my approach in these few pages cannot make full justice to the
complexity of the issues. In particular, concerning "democracy", it
would be necessary to dwell further upon the delicate relation between
democracy and Christianity as suggested, for instance, in the works of Roger
Garaudy, Jacques Maritain, and others like, for instance Charles Taylor.
(Lindbom, 1980, pp. 47ff and 58ff, for instance, considers Maritain's and
Garaudy's work.) I wish also to emphasize that the extent and weight of
referred materials would be crushing if they were understood as an appeal to
the reader to solve it all, to dominate the whole thing in order to do valuable
work. There is an advantage in trying to desinflate the ego by having a
Christian attitude in the sense of also remembering that it is Christ
who bears the cross. Or, as August Strindberg - if I remember right the
unidentified passage - lets a figure in his play To Damascus express it:
"If you do not want Christ to bear the cross for you, bear it
yourself!". Furthermore, at the risk of some repetition, I wish to remind
all I wrote in the preface-introduction to this paper.
I wish also to emphasize what by now should be a pacific point, namely
that university research cannot consist only of answering questions and
improving material conditions but also, if not mainly, of formulating important
questions. If we happen to be in the middle of cultural crisis, however, it
must mean that whoever attempts to express such a fact can be expected to meet
particular difficulties. There will be no language available. Whatever is said
will tend to be misunderstood, be equated with either an aggression or a
"straw-man argument" or "bang into open doors", or be
judged "not relevant to our small scale daily work" [cf. Occam's
separatism]. Such a response will, in turn, require a paralyzing escalation of
literary-diplomatic talents. A paper like this one will also raise lots of
"Why Not?" questions, including questions about whether the message
stands for opposition to democracy, human communication, cooperation, science,
technology, and all other good things in life. Whatever is said or written, if
not bowdlerized, will raise resentment, aggressivity, fear, anguish,
outrage, or, in general, negative feelings. Not even Christ himself escaped
this fate in his historical confrontation with a cultural crisis. What to say
about those who obviously are very far from being a Christ, and, on the
contrary, risk all the time to be victims of an ego-inflation? Such a social
environment will convince a gradually increasing number of critical writers to
refrain from considering controversial issues, leading eventually to a total
conspiration of silence. The power of coarse pragmatism will, then, celebrate
triumphs. There are such tendencies, reported in the university environment,
where researchers refrain from criticizing and from exposing themselves to
criticism - even in a simple seminar or conversation - because of fear of being
misunderstood. This is cultural crisis. The sudden next stage may be
"war".
This is, then, a working paper, and its conclusions can be better
appreciated in the context of my earlier works in this very same direction of
what I perceive as a broad strategy for the study of information technology
(1984b; 1986; 1991a; 1991b).[46] The appreciation of the text selections is also extremetly dependent
upon the experiences and goals of the reader. Or, as it may be expressed
concerning the appreciation of a work like The Design of Inquiring Systems (Churchman,
1971): It is difficult to find something you are not looking for.
The complexity of the issues, being at the level of a cultural
criticism, it presupposes that the conclusions themselves are an illustration
of the interplay between belief and reason. This is to be interpreted even beyond
the scope of the classical pragmatist treatment of "the will to
believe" (Ferré, 1987, p. 45; James, 1956), and closer to the sense of
Christian humanism (D'Arcy, 1944). It has also been pointed out that
applicability alone, like consistency alone, is not enough. A conceptual
synthesis must not only be applicable to some experience which it interprets;
it must (much more demandingly) be adequate to all possible experience, if it
is to succeed in being of unlimited generality; that is, it must show all
experience to be interpreted without oversights distortion, or "explaining
away" on the basis of its key concepts. (Ferré, 1987, p. 163)
For the rest, concerning conclusions, it is difficult to accept painful
conclusions which remind us, against the background of the ongoing worldwide
political and economic upheavals, that it may be necessary to question, in a
more fundamental way than ever before, the directions taken by our scientific
rationality. For me, the preparation of this paper has been like a "watershed"
in my long struggle for identifying the "IS" and the
"OUGHT" of my own, and my research field's fundamental assumptions.
When this is said, I may be allowed to go into the heart of the matter.
One
conclusion of this study is that the spiritual postulates which were surveyed
are necessary for making sense of what is happening in our research area. These
postulates are related to the Kantian postulates of the practical and moral
reason recalled by D'Arcy, and to theological revelation as defined by Niebuhr:
"This intelligible event which makes all other events intelligible".[47] In spite of not having the kind of
spontaneous faith which seems to be required for feeling saved (the non-secular
version of liberated), I estimate that my "re-engineering" of myself
is culminating with this paper. It has been, like for Lindbom himself, the
result of a slow process which can be described in a sort of constructive
scientific terms. I am thinking of theoretical constructs - which are not only
constructs - like the mathematical operators of sub-atomic physics which allow
making sense of experimental results and observations.
I repeat: it is a matter of need of spiritual, intellectual postulates
of ethical and religious nature in order to make sense of the wealth of
uncathegorized experiences, including social experiences. With the help of the
proposed "dogmatic" postulates I am not only able to make sense of
these experiences which overlap with the experiences described in the texts and
in my referenced earlier work, not the least about problems of cooperative
work, and problem and challenges in HyperSystems (1991b, pp. 55ff; 1993,
chap.5). I am also able to connect in a purposeful convergent "Leibnizian"
network (Churchman, 1971, chaps 2-4) isolated areas of knowledge which could be
attributed to different fields like industrial information technology,
psychoanalysis, religion, economics, mathematics, history, political science
(socialism, democratic liberalism), etc. I am convinced that there are some
possibilities for secularized responses or, at least reactions, to these
insights. I judge, however, that these responses are not able to make sense of
the insights to the same extent {Ivanov, 1988 #923; von Wright, 1989 #1785, a
witness of Wittgensteinian deficiencies; Strömholm, 1993 #1786, from the field
of law}.
This conclusion, which I partially anticipated in the preface, allows me
also to make sense of a great amount of strong experiences I have had in my
thirty years of professional work, and more of fifty years of living in
different cultures. This includes not only making sense of my disappointment
with the directions taken in computer and information science in those branches
that attempt to deal with human-computer interaction and social contexts. It
includes also making sense of my general disappointment with most of the fruits
of the pragmatically inspired dialectical social systems theory which I myself
have struggled for. I am thinking of the failure of many of its followers -
among whom, in modesty, I must include myself - in making any real theoretical
progress beyond the point where its master left it, in a problematic state,
fifteen years ago, at the interface with politics, morality, aesthetics, and
religion (Churchman, 1979). As a matter of fact, I have the impression that
many followers can fail by oversimplifying the most simple and popular account
of the systems approach (Churchman, 1968), and by not living up to its most
viable refinements which happen to be, in fact, already available. In the name
of the necessary consultancy rhetorics, hilariously and insightfully described
by Ida Hoos in her "classic" (Hoos, 1983), several of the basic
features of the systems approach tend to be disregarded.
A further theoretical failure of dialectical systems theory is the
apparent divorce between belief and reason, and between morality and religion
that Lindbom covers in his discussions of virtue, and d'Arcy in his discussion
of prudence. Another is our incapability to evaluate its practical achievements
as embodied in the works of the followers, despite their possible wordly
success as consultants. On the contrary, their and their technical fellows'
apparent success can be paradoxically attributed to their command of surplus
psychic energy for "directed thinking". It is the energy which - as
hilariously pointed out by Lindbom[48] -
becomes freed when thinking is divorced from feeling, and ethical
responsibility is ignored or transferred by the "facilitator" to the
"invisible hand" of a negotiation process. Certain insights can, for
good and for bad but perhaps mostly for good, be paralyzing when psychic energy
is not freed and made available to wanton doing but, rather, remains tied to
the ethical inwards struggle.
My continued support for the particular systems theory comes from the
fact that I cannot envisage a better alternative than Churchman's thought for
those who want to relate hard science, hard economics, and technology to the
ultimate issues of the foundations of information technology, politics,
morality and religion. I still consider Churchman, with all his possible
shortcomings, as by far the deepest thinker and the best basis I know
concerning the fundaments of information systems research and computer support
("the design of inquiring systems").
It was the need for meeting the problems of dialectical social systems
theory which prompted me to look beyond systems, for "HyperSystems",
and for a "humanistic computing science". I claim that both D'Arcy
and (in particular) Lindbom succeed at a more general, non-disciplinary level,
in the task of formulation that I was attempting in my book of 1986, and in my
essay on humanistic computing science of 1991. Furthermore, Lindbom makes some
modest but important contributions which have not been the main focus of my
selections in this paper, in the direction of another effort of mine: the
understanding of what seems to be a process of mathematization of our culture.
It aims at the meaning of computerization and applications of information
technology, in work and in society at large. Lindbom's work allows also for
focusing on other matters that have not stood at the center of this essay but
still are highly relevant to information systems research, like, for instance,
"system" and "work".
Lindbom's work strengthens my conviction about the theoretical, and
therefore also practical limitations of the socializing and moralizing twist of
information systems research in the direction of participative work centering,
evolutionary flexibility, democratic communication and cooperative decision
making, etc. The texts of this paper make sense of the late quest in the
direction of post-modernism, phenomenology and existentialism, critical social
theory, cybernetic constructivism, and liberal irony. They also make sense of
the paradox that, in some quarters, the war against depictive positivism seems
to be made in positivistic utilitarian terms where market and client-orientation
tend to be substituted for sheer hedonism, and negotiation tends to be
substituted for ethics. It also make sense of the feeling of disorientation
which must necessarily assail researchers, not the least graduate students, who
are trying to orient themselves in the maze of different approaches or
"isms". These different approaches, often in the name of originality
or creativity, seldom take cognizance of each other. Despite my critical
attitude, I claim to have worked hard in order to relate, in mutual respect,
multifarious orientations and "-isms" in my academic community,
including my closest colleagues (Ivanov, 1990a). In "Leibnizian"
terms (Churchman, 1971, chap. 2), this amounts to trying to knit together a
plurality of isolated, non-convergent, consensus-based fact-nets, on isolated
islands of social groups or academic sub-cultures.
The probable reasons for my failure in this "ecumenic" work up
to now are also the main reasons for my renouncing in this paper to sustain a
detailed argumention which "shows" the shortcomings of various
research approaches in terms of buzzwords that are here cursorily criticized in
terms of Lindbom's text. It is enough to see the aftermaths of one such
detailed and insightful argumentation which was directed against a particular
Swedish school for "silent knowledge" (Rolf, 1991). A whole book that
is highly relevant for all talk about knowledge, skill, and organization,
including uses and misuses of Wittgenstein and Polanyi, importance of
tradition, authority, etc. was passed over by the information systems research
establishment in almost complete silence. This contributed to my process of
validation of Lindbom's and (in the footnotes) Reichmann's observations on the
nature and function of many modern "debates" (see the footnotes of
this paper). In the spirit of the "Why Not?" progressive strategy
considered in this and earlier papers of mine, debates can be also used as a
trap to suffocate insights and their expression, by requesting unwelcomed and
costly detailed argumentation on extremely complex matters. This seems to be a
variant of the fact that "the verification of the theory depends as much
on the cost of trying to apply it as it does on other empirical evidence"
(Churchman, 1961, p. 331). In any case, at least I feel pleased by my having
called, by the end of 1991, the attention of graduate students and many
colleagues on the specific contents of Rolf's book, pointing out the relevance
of its detailed topics for their ongoing work. Nevertheless, the overall
experience, and analog experiences like those corresponding to the lame
responses to other detailed and legitimate criticism of trends and schools as
by Whitaker (1992), do not encourage me to repeat the feats having as object
some other school in the field of information systems. This does not mean that
I renounce to carry on my argumentation, but it suggests that I turn it more
into a sort of extended Leibnizian net which links several isolated nets to
each other, in the same meaning as suggested by the reference to Ferré above
(Ferré, 1987).
I also question that outgrowth of American pragmatism, the empirical
idealism which led to West Churchman's dialectical social systems theory. I
claim to have worked hard to introduce it in Swedish research on information
systems, notwithstanding its occasional "strategic" renaming into
constructivism. Nevertheless this systems theory may be legitimate and
"work" to the extent that its followers do not imitate Icarus in his
following of Daedalus in the Greek myth. In their studies they must really
reach beyond its most popular presentation (Churchman, 1968), and must be
imbued by the same religious spirit and experiences as its founder.[49] In
this context I feel that the relation between Churchman and
"Churchmaniacs" is analog to the relation between Kant and Kantians.
In particular, I reject the practical expedient of reducing ethics to a matter
of communication, articulation, and negotiation among conflicting interests, as
much as I reject the rejection of any alternative to that on the basis that it
is "dogmatic" in the theological and philosophical sense of the word.
Only recently, in Sweden, has somebody dared to remind the intellectual
community of the complexity of the term dogmatic as it is
"technically" used in philosophy of science (Edman, 1993). I have not
been able to find in neither Kant nor in our field's Kantians any discussion of
the concept and of the contents of catholic dogmas (Kant, 1989), as compared,
for instance to Jung's attention to the issue (Jung, 1953-1979, CW 11,
[[section]]170).
Another conclusion is that I feel also encouraged in my progressive
distrust of secular existentialism which seems to have departed so much from
the Christian concerns of one of its founding fathers, Johann Georg Hamann. The
more I learn about the foundations of modern "enlightened" liberal
secularized thought the more I get convinced in my conclusion that it is
important to investigate the sources of secularization in order to be able to
attain lasting results which are accepted and shared by those who are affected
by them. The surveyed literature encourages me to reach further back before
Cartesian rationalism. I was already studying the deeper reasons for "the
unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" (Wigner, 1960) with the
hypothesis that it is supported by Cartesian theology (Buckley, 1987, pp. 68ff
on "universal mathematics"; Marion, 1981; Shea, 1991b). Lindbom
suggests the names of William Occam and Roger Bacon. He also enables me for the
first time to gain a convincing understanding of the key point in Rousseau's
thought as well as of the difference between Hobbes and Locke, including the
possible role of Calvinism, not the least in technology, industry and services.
I think that this is important in order to develop our understanding of the
anatomy of democracy which is often taken for granted in our
socialist-democratic faith in "participation". This had motivated my
studies based on related literature (Buckley, 1987; Riley, 1983; Riley, 1986)
which I interrupted for studying Lindbom's work and for writing this paper.
It also follows that I feel increasingly skeptical of much that has been
taken for granted as a superior aspect of the Scandinavian school of
information systems. I think, in particular, of its proud commitment to
participatory constructive continuous design and redesign of information
systems and computer artefacts, twenty years after its exordium and nominal
affirmation on the Scandinavian scene. The politically and economically nearly
impossible task of "rational" evaluation of what has been achieved,
apparently had to be approached in the timid mood of the child confronting the
emperor's new clothes (Whitaker, 1992, pp. 6n, 67n, 191f; Whitaker, et al.,
1991, pp. 25, 34ff, 40ff). It is easy to agree that valuable results have
decurred from about twenty years' research and action research. It would be
hard to argue "scientifically", but easy politically, with anybody
who claimed that what has been going belongs to the restless social activism
that is criticized by Lindbom.
In any case, I do not see a core meaning in what has been stated lately,
that "the party is over", or that we should rely on trial and error,
and on heuristic, technical "bricolage", with beliefs in progressive,
work-oriented, union-based playful democratic rationality. I do not believe in
what today seems to be desperate appeals to what remains of "the modern
project". I do not believe in second-hand reliance on secular currents of
thought like existentialism, marxism, Wittgensteinian ordinary language, or
liberal irony. I do not see stable results of the commitment to their names
beyond the fact that they represent a belief which has been used for a leap to
some kind of post-modern approach, or to liberal irony, or to aestheticism. In
the second-hand use which is sometimes made, for instance, of Heidegger's
thought, I miss the breadth and the kind of concerns of what I myself happened
to read in some of his original writings, and the concerns of others who have
used his work outside the information systems field.[50] I
repeat that I do not deny the possible merits of work which has been going on
in information systems design. I rather claim that the conviction about its
possible merits is a rather complex function of reason and of beliefs. These
beliefs are much more fuzzy and problematic than those formalized, and often
distrusted, in Christian doctrine.
In conclusion I also feel strenghtened in my conviction about the need
for watchfulness of restless, respiteless activities in all sorts of ill
conceived and inconclusively abandoned projects - the don juan syndrome. They
may claim to contribute to the survival, if not betterment, of mankind in
general and business in particular, on the basis of a second-hand follow-up and
servile use of a chaotically evolving technology. To the extent that such
restlessness is a sympton of honest involvement I would prefer to refer the
issue to the ethics of work. "Work" and "skill" or
competence are today, not the least in the socialist tradition, rather
"divinized" in its importance for the dignity of man. I prefer an
updating of the rather classical "theology of work".[51] In
summary, I prefer an outright theology of work (in analogy to the earlier
mentioned "theological aesthetics"), rather than a divinized working
man or a divinized beautiful work, and a divinized environment in terms of the
aestheticism of "form" as related to "function" and
"structure".
I reject the charge that the type of conclusions above would be
pessimistic or, what may amount to the same thing, patronizing, dogmatic,
orthodox, intolerant, fundamentalist, or non-constructive. "Optimism and
pessimism is the secularized insecure human's attempt to hide respectively
confront his inner inquietude".[52]
Despite the temptation of my looking for reassurance in the possibility for my
setting up profitable "laundry list" or "flip chart"
bullett-approaches, as often found in proposals for research grants, I agree
with Lindbom that the alternatives are to be sought primarily among a handful
of Christian thinkers and colleagues, and in allowing ourselves to reflect.
In this context I wish to emphasize that I am conscious that, with
Lindbom and D'Arcy, I may be allying myself with "loosers". Their
thoughts are namely not of the kind that can be expected to obtain grants or
make success with the establishment or with research peers. Students will not
welcome the added burden of "esoteric" literature. As such these
loosers will not contribute to my success either. I do not wish, however, to be
interpreted as overstating the importance and range of e.g. Lindbom's thinking.
Despite my estimate that it does not detract from his conclusions, his view of
the technology of work may have to be upgraded to the level of present
"high tech" which, by the way, will be obsolete in five years from
now. He may not measure up to Kant's philosophical heights or Marx's social
spread. I assume, by the way, that neither Kant's and Marx's followers today,
nor systems designers, can match those masters. And so what? Most systems
designers may, in fact, believe they need neither philosophical nor theological
support at all. Lindbom, of course, is not a computer scientist, he does not
solve all problems, and I do not agree with some of his positions which are
beyond the scope of this paper. In particular, I do not believe that his
somewhat tactical and "ritual" periodical assurance and approval of
the positive import of technology (an assurance which I am also tempted to
repeat and support) is, in the long run, a service to what I believe is our
common cause. Among other consequences, this attitude may contribute to the gap
between world and spirit.
What about
those scholars and students, not to mention practitioners, who then keep asking
what is the alternative, what should they do since everything seems to be more
or less questioned or "rejected"?
Concerning what to do, and not to do, passing discretely over the
problematic (pragmatist?) meaning of doing, I would start with a possibly
"scandalous" suggestion. I dare to refer reseachers and practitioners
to the Ten Commandments - all of them, and in their context of biblical
situated action - as an alternative to "ethical guidelines".[53]
This may counter, for instance, the belief that private life is ethically
separable from professional life, and that one can cheerfully fail in being
faithful to one's own family or employer, but still be faithful to one's peers,
to the labor union, or to democratic ideals. This might also contribute to
prevent our moralistic and sentimental coming back to the same or similar
issues every twenty years or so, as happens now with ongoing discussions on
ethical guidelines in information systems design, without having learnt the
lessons from previous debates (Churchman, 1970).
A corollary from such a shift of emphasis, in concert with the messages
in this paper, would be to stop asking who are and ought to be the clients who
ultimately define our tasks. Stop asking for whom, by whom, or with whom. The
alternative is to start asking what, and why. Try to worry more about which
goals should be served, which goals are good. Try to worry less about the
identification of our "neighbors" who happen to be the occasional
bearers of such goals.[54] In
doing this we should keep in mind that "good" is not a matter of only
debating and voting on a plurality of perspectives supported by the force of a
problematically (un)definible better argument. We should also keep in mind that
to be good is not the same as belonging to the class of the oppressed or to the
class of those who are supposed to have been liberated, or to have liberated
themselves in Rousseau's spirit. A modest initial step in the right direction
would be to stop talking about user centering, client centering, work
centering, work orientation, and market oriented information technology, as if
they were the key to ethics.[55] We
could at least remember, as a small step in the right direction, that a main
point even in the popular simplified version of the systems approach
(Churchman, 1968) was the distinction between the "roles" of decision
makers or managers, and clients or stakeholders. Furthermore, the definition of
resources and of environment also were important political, economic, and
ethical matters.
These latter considerations also support my view that, contrary to some
criticism (Whitaker, 1992, pp. 171ff.), the HyperSystem base is well advised in
intervening in the context of problem solving processes for computer supported
cooperative work (CSCW), reflecting aspects only as they are viewed through
the role-to-role mappings. In relation to the literature surveyed in this
paper this means taking seriously in consideration the hierarchic and power
dimensions of democratically organized work without succumbing to the
egalitarian illusion. This must be done, if not for other reason, in order to
be able to question the distribution of roles and of power.
Since, as already mentioned, I may be treading on many researchers'
toes, I want to emphasize the following. My use of D'Arcy's and Lindbom's
thought, and of several others' who are adduced in the footnotes, does not
question a circumscribed restrained use of technology-based participation,
debates, communication, constructiveness, model building, artificial
intelligence, or whatever, to limited mundane simple tasks of daily
administration, production, or services. A little improvement here, possibly at
the cost of a little systemic loss there (Churchman, 1968, chap. 2), may help
our poor mankind to go on earning its daily bread as it has been done up to
now. Nevertheless, as my late colleague Staffan Persson used to say, "it
is not simple to know what is simple". This is even less so in dealing
with the pervasive power of information technology with its embodied industrial
mathematization of our activities. In order to explore that, and in order to
understand the presuppositions and the long term effects of information
technology, we need, among other things, the stuff considered in this paper.
What I definitively reject on the basis of this paper are possible preposterous
claims or hints that the technology-based approaches mentioned above would
constitute a new sort of research and business "philosophy", a sort
of "Copernican" revolution in our view of rationality, an important
contribution to our business or, worse, that they would be a sort of democratic
ethical and humanistic - social breakthrough. I think that the latter claims
are more appropriate as "rhetorics" of sales engineers. I write
rhetorics with quotation marks because I am definitively in favor of legitimate
rhetorics, by sales engineers or whoever, including researchers (Pera, 1991;
Shea, 1991a).
For the rest, my "answer" to the question of what to do or not
do consists of three parts:
(1) I would like to refer to the question of "strategy",
considered below.
(2) I want to assure that, as an "old engineer", I appreciate
the importance of technology in its relation to money, and the importance of
"doing". I approve and encourage fund raising for meaningful
innovative projects. This paper includes some exploration of the meaning of
"meaningful", also for that context. In particular, I encourage
projects and work-oriented, or client oriented developments of whatever, that
are expressions of the personal stable involvement and participation which
characterizes all genuine work and related skills. This means,
among other things, the opposite of the don juan syndrome. It means bringing
individual projects to clear and responsible completion with clear ethical
accountability beyond sheer business acceptance. It means avoidance of pure
"rhetorical" use of any particular philosophy, or of eclectical mixes
between opportune "isms". It means avoidance of periodic reversals of
theoretical perspectives which follow the reversals of the granting policies of
funding agencies, and the occasional buzzwords in fashion on the computer
market. In the academic environment it means also willingness to submit oneself
to criticism by presenting one's work in seminars, and report it in a way which
is not only "rhetorical". Most of all, it means at least consistency
with, and possibly also serious consideration of, a theology of work in the
sense of work ethics as suggested in this paper.
(3) I want, however, also to suggest that we all should consider the
possibility of not necessarily "doing" and, in particular, not
feeling obliged to do so called project work where projects have become don
juanism, or to write so much as to "make career". It can be a
question of "sacrifice". Such a suggestion may appear to be
paradoxical in view of the volume of this paper of mine, including its
appendix. It is indeed of fundamental importance for scientific work to write.
The kernel of the matter, however, is that I think that we better not work and
not write with the main purpose of getting things going, getting them published
and "statistically" widely read in the short run, or in the expectation
of getting sizeable grants from the establishment, or, in general, in the
expectation that the whole will enhance our further career. I take - not
lightheartedly because of the possible consequences for others - the risk of
being sternly blamed on occasion of the next peer evaluation of my research
strategy.[56]
That is also why I respect also those also colleagues of mine who dwell
in what remains of the "ivory tower" or "phrontistery", who
deepen their and others' understanding by listening, studying, reading, and
moderate doing, renouncing to restless doing or wanton writing in the spirit of
the don juan syndrome or of the "publish or perish syndrome". They
may not make success of their research careers, but they learn, they are
competent, they help their peers in doing, in planning and in research, they
teach, and are, in fact, a sort of heroes. They may ultimately remain
unemployed or "get out of business", as a smart young researcher
expressed it, symptomatically without stating what he believed the nature of
our business to be. They may, nevertheless, cause less damage to their
"clients", and they are closer to the spirit of truth which was
surveyed in this paper.
The last but
not least conclusion concerns how these insights and conclusions should
influence the strategies for research and education at a department dealing
with information systems, administrative data processing, or informatics. I
would like to suspend until further notice my main judgement in this matter,
also hoping for the contributions of some readers. As a matter of principle I
refer the issue to the treatment that Lindbom reserves in his books for the
relation between the spirit and the world. I judge that the university's
primary responsiblity towards its students and staff is for the spirit and
intellect, and that the concern for their material well-being, supposed
organizational survival, and "career" is secondary. I read somewhere:
"Career? What is it? It's something about horses, is'nt it?" Carl
Jung would probably equate that problem with the issue of "the stages of
life" and of midlife crisis.[57] Career is a highly temporary and
relative matter. It may be perfectly legitimate to leave a great part of the
solution to the serendipity and subjective spontaneous inventiveness of the
involved people. Strategy for a research organization can then be seen as a
matter of design (Stolterman, 1991) - a matter of preparedness for thought and
action - rather than as guidelines or, worse, a specification of what to do or
not to do.
A recent issue of The Economist (Anonymous, 1993d), in fact, points out
that there seems to be no agreement on the most basic question of what is a
corporate strategy. There is a trend away from formal planning at big firms
which has been gathering pace for the past 30 years. In a vast outpouring of
writing on the subject during this period, management theorists have come up
with so many alternative views of what a corporate strategy should contain that
they have undermined the entire concept. "A growing number businessmen now
question whether thinking consciously about an overall strategy is of any
benefit at all to big firms." It may even be the case that a non-utilitarian
and historically grounded approach to serendipitous planning has better
long-run chances also for sheer "survival". Belief in so called
strategic thinking could not rescue old successful multinationals and stable
business giants from meeting recently unexpected catastrophes, developed in the
course of a couple of years. The catholic Church has survived two thousand
years, and the university - the archetypal "knowledge business" - has
survived one thousand years. To the extent that both the Church and the
universities become business and loose their soul, however, the more can they
be expected to run into the scandalous bankruptcies which have afflicted
comparatively shortlived business and financial empires.
This modesty of planning and organization may still be less problematic
than the implicit assumptions held by many people today when they believe that
ethical commitments can be developed and honored without organizational
support, for instance, by the Church. Serendipity can be practiced, with full
conscience that both people and their organizations, like successful
multinationals, can ultimately, "apocalyptically", die. And, still, I
would dare to refer both myself and the reader to "the classic"
Matthew 6:26. I guess that pessimism is an unconscious secular interpretation
of the apocalypse. It would be consistent with the sentimental attachment to
such issues like "survival" as if it were ultimate goal or top
priority for our and future generations' lives.
"The more unconscious we are of the religious problem in the
future, the greater the danger of our putting the divine germ within us to some
ridiculous or demoniacal use, puffing ourselves up with it instead of remaining
conscious that we are no more than the stable in which the Lord is born. Even
on the highest peak we shall never be 'beyond good and evil', and the more we
experience their inextricable entanglement the more uncertain and confused will
our moral judgement be."
(Jung, 1953-1979, CW11, [[section]] 267)
"I think one reason a professor may discourage the discussion of
ethical issues among his students in class is that he himself has no
satisfactory answer."
(Churchman, 1979, p. 118)
"Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death"
Goethe (Bly, et al., 1993, p. 382)
"Do not give to the dogs what is holy;
do not throw your pearls to the pigs:
they will only trample on them,
and turn and tear you to pieces."
Matthew 7:6 (The New English Bible)
I will
illustrate the dilemma of this study by referring its message, beyond appendix
II and beyond the earlier references to e.g. Ferré, to the most advanced
discussion I know of the issue of scientific method in information system
research (Nissen, Klein, & Hirschheim, 1991).
Klein, Hirschheim and Nissen claim (1991, p. 2) that knowledge [=truth?]
is a matter of community acceptance. The criteria for acceptance are an agreed
set of conventions which must be followed if the knowledge is to be accepted by
society. The set of conventions, however, are not arbitrary but are well
thought out and have historically produced knowledge claims which have
withstood the test of time.
I claim that this argument is akin to the arguments which e.g. D'Arcy
adduces for his Christian approach to the relation between belief and
knowledge, which has, in part, been produced "historically".
Klein et al. consider further that science, in its current sense, is a convention
- related to societal norms, expectations, and values - engaged in the search
for understanding.
I observe, with reference to the arguments by D'Arcy and Lindbom, that
this approach bypasses the issue of what is the difference, similarity, and relation
between such concepts as norms, expectations, and values (not to mention the
will). It also bypasses the issue whether there are, for instance values which
are or should be fixed, given once and for all.
Klein et al. refrain (p. 5) from trying to define and classify how
modern research approaches relate to the various schools of thought such as
rationalism, idealism, and empiricism (not to mention Christian thought).
Nevertheless they introduce a taxonomy which includes ahistorical or
undiscussed concepts (like supremacists, advocates of contingency, and
eclecticists, besides the preferred pluralists), and is fundamental for their
espousing a "pluralist" approach to research. In Lindbom view, such
pluralism would probably amount to a Kant-inspired outright liberal
"market" approach. It would be the liberal market where the best
product wins because of the force of the mix quality vs. price, corresponding
to the market of knowledge ("the free exchange of ideas", or
"the marketplace of ideas", pp. 7f): a piece of knowledge wins
because of the mix of "the power of arguments that can defend the claim
against any possible challenge". By being caught in a ahistorical
taxonomy, then, one not only misses the relation to rationalism, idealism, and
the rest, but also misses, for instance, the relation between pluralism,
eclecticism and syncretism. Both eclecticism and (especially) syncretism
have a history which would deepen the discussion beyond implicit liberal
pluralism.
Finally, in this short review, Klein et al. acknowledge that the volume
they introduce, like all research, is bound to exhibit a "bias" in
(p. 8, 16). I pass over the problematic and undiscussed concept of bias, which
in science seems to assume, in Lindbom's sense, the existence of a "true
value" (Churchman, 1979, s. 169; Ivanov, 1972). I only observe that the
authors in their quality of editors, in helping "to maintain the
marketplace of ideas and seek check and balances against ortodoxy", for
the purpose of quality of publication, "had to identify the fundamental
assumptions of each contribution". In this way they hoped to assure the
quality of the contributions by having them judged by "internal
criteria", seeking "knowledgeable" referees that pursued
"similar kinds" of research . I pass over their non justified
rejection of the concept of ortodoxy (and, incidentally, their acceptance of
"marketplace of ideas") which is discussed in Lindbom's work, and
also denotes - like dogma - a living concept of the Christian Church. I also
pass over the authors' understandable but problematic obvious need for
practicality and expediency in the task on hand. I observe, however, that this
kind of bootstrapping does not evade the issue of objectivity or ultimate
truth. The authors seem to assume that they can - from an acknowledged but not
positioned "biased position" identify, in an objective unbiased way,
not only their own, but also others' "fundamental assumptions", a
concept that is left undefined. This seem to me to be the result of unconscious
fuzziness regarding both the concepts of bias and of truth, i.e. one focus of
this paper.
I question whether pluralism, including in a broad sense also
eclecticism and radical contingency (p. 9) "in principle" can work at
all. Pluralism without an ultimate basis can be expected to lead either to
unconscious relativism or to the issues covered in this paper. Consequently, I
share the concern that Keen (1991) expresses in his own paper. "Diversity
may substitute dilettantism and carelessness for the ortodoxy and
methodological intolerance that marks narrow fields and narrow
communities". His only solution to the problem of ensuring quality in
diversity, however, is (besides a statement of belief in the philosophy of
language and hermeneuticss) "to reiterate the need for more attention to
scholarship and exegesis than just to 'research'" (p. 39f). For the rest,
despite of not having followed in my present work - because of space, time and
other reasons - Keen's suggested "checklist for improving information
systems research" (p. 44), I estimate that this work of mine could
reasonably satisfy such a list, if necessary. My main claim, however, it that
this paper of mine reiterates the need for more attention to scholarship and exegesis
than just to "research".
Dr. Werner
Ulrich is in my opinion one of the most serious, if not the most serious
student of West Churchmans dialectical social systems approach. He is probably
the one who has contributed with its most ambitious theoretical development.
Upon a visit and seminar at Umeå university in June 1993 we had a dialog and
later discussion which eventually led Ulrich to write a personal letter on July
22nd stating the following (quoted with permission). It is attached here in
order to give the reader an opportunity to sense the kind of "heroic"
complications which follow from a systems approach which tends to
secularization, and whose only other alternative to Kantian enlightened
liberalism would be along the socialist path described by Lindbom above. I
myself have been trying to approach the criticism against Kant on a couple of
earlier occasions (Ivanov, 1991b; Ivanov, 1991c). I do not share Ulrich's
heroic pessimism implicit in his negative heuristics. I do not share his
optimism for the potentialities of the mentioned currents of German
contemporary philosophy incorporating the language-pragmatic turn, as I do not
share Peter Keen's wholesale enthusiasm for (belief in) the philosophy of
language and hermeneutics being the most exciting direction of information
systems research (Keen, 1991, p. 40). That is, in fact, my reason for turning
to Lindbom's approach which considers exhaustively both the neglected socialist
alternative which stands as the intellectual and emotional basis for the nearly
facetious facile rejection of the "heroic" mood (Ehn, 1988, p. 188),
and also relates it to the Christian interpretation of heroism, if not sanctity:
a meaning for the heroes and the martyrs.[58]
And now the slightly edited text by Ulrich:
(1) West Churchman's systems thinking appears to adhere to an ideal
concept of comprehensive reason. His concept of reason (or of
rationality) is Kantian in the sense of Kant's ideal of a reason that would be
so comprehensive as to become transparent to itself and to justify the
conditions of its own possibility in an absolute, because complete, fashion
(the totality of conditions is itself unconditioned). This is in fact the
program of Kant's "transcendental philosophy", namely, to secure to
human reasoning and knowledge a way of justifying the conditions of its own
possibility.
The point is not that this ideal is wrong or irrelevant - it is, in
fact, epistemologically indispensable, namely as a critically-regulative idea.
The point is, rather, that a thus-conceived systems rationality is bound to
remain a mere program, for it is so ideal as to remain impracticable except, perhaps,
for gods [sic!]. That is why West Churchman's systems designer is bound to
become a hero!
Against this implication, one can advocate the critically-heuristic
turn (Ulrich, 1983; Ulrich, 1987): it seeks to maintain the critical
intent of Kant's approach without sacrificing practicability. A
critically-heuristic systems approach concentrates on the "negative
half", i.e., the critical task, of systems thinking, by seeking to help
practical men and women (including systems designers) to reflect systematically
on the inevitable lack of comprehensiveness - the sources of selectivity
and deception - in their propositions (systems designs) and thus to foster the
possibilities for disciplined self-reflection and reasonable debate under
real-world conditions of incomplete rationality. The concept of uncovering the
unavoidable boundary judgements flowing into any proposition or systems design,
and of unfolding their life-practical implications, provides a central
leverage-point to this end. It also makes clear why the systems approach
misunderstands itself (and specifically, the critical significance of the quest
for comprehensiveness) unless it renounces the idea of ever sufficiently (i.e.
comprehensively) justifying any proposition or systems design - a still widespread,
but ultimately technocratic and elitary utopia of the systems approach.
(Ivanov, 1993, can be seen as introducing with "HyperSystems" an
approach which unites the utopian striving with the conscientizing of - among
others - boundary judgements.)
(2) The importance of the critically-heuristic turn becomes perhaps most
visible in the domain of value judgements. Boundary judgements have normative
implications that need to be considered as an indispensable (non-separable)
part of systems thinking, rather than as a "slippery" subjective
issue that is best referred to an extra-rational domain of subjective acts of
faith (as conventional concepts of science, including systems science, have
it).
The branch of philosophy that deals with the issue of reasonable
discourse about value judgements and, in particular, ethical judgements
- is practical philosophy. West Churchman's thinking is strongly
oriented toward Kant's practical philosophy, as shows his concern in the categorical
imperative. However, Kant himself had to admit that his transcendental
approach failed to find a compelling justification for the "objective
validity" (binding character) of the imperative. Similarly to the Kantian
understanding of the systems idea (to which it is fundamentally related), the
attempt to live up to the imperative has "heroic" implications for
the systems designer, as he is compelled to put himself mentally in the place
of all concerned citizens and to become comprehensive in overviewing and
evaluating a design's practical implications for them. [Cf. the equally
"heroic" compulsion to identify, motivate or involve all affected
parties who ought to contribute with their perspectives on the design.]
Contemporary German philosophy has considerably developed Kant's
approach to practical philosophy, by incorporating into it the
language-pragmatic turn (shift from Kant's "monological" approach, as
embodied in the categorical imperative, to a "dialogical" or
communicative approach, as embodied in the structure of reasonable argumentation
itself (Ulrich, 1988, cf. the section 2 of the paper for an easy introduction).
Regretfully, West Churchman's systems thinking has not taken up this
development of practical philosophy. Instead, his equally
"dialogical" systems approach mainly relies on two earlier
philosophical developments subsequent to Kant. The one is Hegelian dialectical
thinking, an approach which - similarly to Kant's thought - has important
critical implications but is weak in securing (disciplined) practice (Ulrich,
1983, cf. chap. 5). The other development is the tradition of American
pragmatism (especially James's and Singer's pragmatism). Pragmatism (especially
Peirce's "pragmaticism") seems indeed to be truly important as a
basis of critical systems thinking (Ulrich, 1989), but it cannot replace
practical philosophy. In that sense, the conclusion is that Churchman's
systems approach seeks to secure a convincingly reflected critical purpose by
philosophically insufficient means - a conjecture which again makes
understandable the "heroic" implications of his systems approach [and
the tendencies to trivialize and misuse it in purely instrumental use!].
Somewhen in 1992
I unexpectedly received the following electronic mail message from an American
fellow researcher friend of mine who does not read Swedish and does not share
my particular research interests which happen to be explored in this paper.
When I received the message I had not yet thought of reading Tage Lindbom and I
had not mentioned his name to anybody. I edited the text only inasmuch I just
deleted some terms with embarassing details which would facilitate an
identification of the sender and of the referred work, whose author or title I
never had mentioned to the sender. I do not need to take stand here on the
quality of the book the sender refers to, or to take stand on the sender's
psyche which, by the way gives the impression of being completely normal, with
a positive attitude to both technology and human science. I do not consider the
text "insulting", aware as I am that similar things could be easily
be written about my own work. As a matter of fact, I concede that the reaction
of the sender may be caused by his not having understood the message of the
text he read. The main point here, however, is making sense of his emotional
reaction, which strikes me as nakedly honest and spontaneous.
It suffices, for the purpose of this paper, to show what I think is a
symptom of the probable impact of the sentimental mood described by Lindbom in
his book excerpted above. I have met an acknowledging understanding of the
reactions documented in the text when I showed it to some fellow researchers in
Sweden, independently, again, of any opinion of mine. I had, by the way, not
formed yet any opinion, and had no reason to share it with anybody.
I have no alternative hypotesis to offer which would explain in a
consistent way the emotions or feelings which provoked the sender of this
message. I take this as one piece of evidence which - ceteris paribus -
contributes to corroborating Lindbom's findings about the context of raising
sentimentalism in secularized man. Now, to the message:
Kristo
I find myself encountering things Swedish in unexpected places - such as
the book by ....published by ...under the rubric "Artifical Intelligence
and Society". If you've seen it, how did it strike you?
I struggled through much of it - but found myself first irritated and
then somewhat repelled, but I don't really know why! It is clear that these
essays come out of some active current of Swedish intellectual life, but what
moves that current is hidden from me. I can, so-to-speak, see the writers
gesticulating, waving their pens (or laptops) and I can see their mouths moving
but I can't make contact with anything they are saying. ARE they saying
anything? If so, why I cannot appreciate it? Why does it all seem so
cliché-ridden and predictable (with endless variants of what we would here call
'politically correct ideas'), and so self-justifying (see the chapter by the
chair-maker who seems to have 'wasted' (perhaps?) countless hours building a
replica of a [antique] chair...to satisfy various personal interests and now
wants to justify himself in a public as a good, sensitive, and thoughtful
person. Why does that *irritate* me so much?!)
Why do I have the strong impression that almost all essayists are
preaching (do you find this to be common in Swedish writing?) - if so, to whom
do they preach? To the Swedish intellectual who needs further
self-justification or to Americans like me whose enjoyment of technology and
stimulation by its problems needs to be "corrected" - first through
guilt and then through an appreciation of Swedish industrial democracy?
An abstract of one of the chapters:
"The re-emergence of dialogue is seen as part and parcel of an
attempt by some AI scientists to place information technology, "expert
systems", etc. into some sort of proper perspective [I already have a
strong yearning for an improper perspective]. This dramatic [??] re- emergence
is rooted in the need to understand the role of thought and experience in
working life, particularly in Sweden with its commitment to industrial
society."
Does any of this really have *anything* significant to do with AI and
society?
?
What ARE these people really saying??
Well, thanks for letting me unburden myself of my
irritation; any comments or therapy is welcome,
(Signed) XXX
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[1]This is a significant revision of the first edition.
It consists mainly of an expansion of the footnotes and of the list of
references in order to better support the arguments, and for purposes of
self-study. It consists also of a restructuration with some refinement of the
introduction and conclusions. A subject word-index and a new appendix (III)
have been added while the earlier appendix III is now numbered as appendix IV.
I wish to thank my colleagues and graduate students, in particular Erik
Stolterman, Åke Grönlund, Torbjörn Nordström and Anna Croon, for some criticism
which I have in part tried to meet in this edition.
[2]See Ivanov (1972,
chaps. 4-5, pp. 4.33 ff), the basic model of quality, summarized in later
publications (1986, pp. 47ff; 1987a; 1987b). The basic model was adapted by Ehn
(1973) and used as the original frame of the model for participation and
negotiations based on union involvement in information systems development.
This model was, in turn, taken up later by Mathiassen (1982, 2nd ed., p. 137,
fig 6.7), where the original link to my work is effaced, probably because of
the fact that the reference was dropped in further uses of Ehn's paper, in
making more ideologically explicit the "resource" dimension (Ehn,
1988, pp. 271ff, and esp. 316ff; Ehn, & Sandberg, 1979, p. 34, fig. 2.1).
The marxist view saw, for instance, the conditions of production as
"objective". I objected, however, that the explication or
determination of resources throws us, paradoxically and recursively, into the
need of having an "information system" for such a purpose. The
recursivity towards "fundamental assumptions" cannot be done away
with the help of ideology or secular philosophizing. The concept of quality of
information (systems) - as a link to Churchman's and Singer's work (references
given later) - includes also the basic idea of (co) constructiveness as it
appears in later ideas of constructive systems development (Forsgren, 1988a,
pp. 51ff, 125ff, 142ff, 168ff, English summary on p. 177, esp. the 4th strategy
of "computer application". Page refs. to the first printing).
[3]The criticism, later
in this paper, against constructivism, post-modernism, marxism, language
approaches, phenomenology, existentialism, etc. should not be associated to
particular authors who just happen to use these words. In contrast to
Churchman's systems approach which I have explicitly espoused, or to the tenets
and dogmas of Christianity, to paraphrase what D'Arcy writes in chap. 4.9
below, it is difficult to dissipate what may be wrong in those views, to
puncture nebulous beliefs; for they are everywhere and nowhere. There is a
chaotically evolving literature in all -isms, out of which some "latest
book" which has not yet been read, can be adduced as a rebuttal, or
wholesale dismissal of whatever is said. Concerning, for instance,
constructivism I have touched upon some sources of its different conceptions in
an earlier essay (Ivanov, 1991b, pp. 18-25).
[4]See Bok (1982, esp.
pp. 46-47, 76-77, 157-168, 266-270), and Woolridge (1992). The ongoing trends
deserve their own new book on the top of all what has been already written. See
e.g. Ivanov (1984a) on basic research, applied science, business economics, and
engineering science. Ivanov (1985) includes an extensive bibliography at the
end of the book.
[5]Ivanov (1991a)
introduces in an appendix the structure of unpublished manuscripts of work
under way. I say approaches instead of perspectives or views,
because I do not approve of the "postmodern" sense in which the word
perspective is sometimes used in research nowadays. In my understanding
perspectives could mean for example apperception, a-priori, Weltanschauung, or
elements of a "Singerian" sweeping-in process, (Churchman, 1971), but
not any subjective unarticulated relativizing "opinion". By opinion
here I mean e.g. a viewpoint or whatever assumed "feeling",
intermingled with wishes, wills, perceptions, personality factors, or whatever,
in the wishful belief that one can bootstrap oneself above e.g. psychological
theories and above intellect. Concerning perspectives and perspectivism see
also Ivanov (1991b, esp. pp. 35, 50n, 54, 72), and Reichmann (1992, pp. 62, 78,
225, 252, 258), (1993, pp. 85, 129, 280, 286, 298f, 303).
Concerning the aesthetical approach to meaning of
information technology, cf. "computer programming as a branch of
cinema" (Linderholm, 1991). It has also been pointed out, for example,
that comparisons can be made between postmodern architect Ricardo Bofill's
buildings and Bill Atkinson's programs such as MacPaint and HyperCard
(Thackara, 1988). I have already been trying to identify some basic ethical
problems which are ingrained in a postmodern "hypertext" programming
style (Forsgren, & Ivanov, 1990). My contribution was paramount for my
motivation to refine the idea of HyperSystems (Ivanov, 1993).
[6]This stands in a
paradoxical contrast to more recent tendencies which attempt to rediscover some
of the more refined aspects of the dialectical social systems approach under
new labels such as "situated actions", "activity theory",
"action regulation theory", or "contextual design". An
example is Oesterreich's and Volpert's work in action regulation (Oesterreich,
& Volpert, 1986).
[7]In particular, this
trend effaced the distinction between the concepts of tool and of instrument
(in the same spirit as of the philosopher of science G. Bachelard), as they
might be applied to the computer. (Ivanov, 1988, pp. 98f). I thank Kenneth
Nilsson for having called my attention upon Bachelard's work.
[8]In an earlier work
(1991b, p. 81n) I summarized in an extense footnote a representative and
problematic standpoint asking us to keep faithful to the
"emancipatory ideal" inherited from the Enlightenment and represented
today by the trade unions, a belief in progress, work, and democratic
rationality. I could not refrain from stating that to this I feel seriously
tempted to add "Amen", in the original and legitimate sense of the
word.
[9]Which are the
envisaged stable values will be clarified in the course of the text. They are
the Christian values which eventually became summarized in so called human
rights, and became, further, reduced to matters of power. Since a common
tactics against conservatism is to equate it to denigrated
"fundamentalism" I propose as an antidote the reference to a reader's
letter "A fundamental error" (Blair, 1993), following a rather careless
article (as it is rather common in religious matters) on fundamentalism in The
Economist. On fundamentalism, pluralism, and tolerance, see Reichmann
(1993, pp. 79f, 85f, 92ff), (1992, p. 256).
[10]"Om också
forskningen aldrig förr nått så långt, aldrig till sådana resultat, så har den
dock förmått syfta högre, mot betydelsefullare mål." (Lagerkvist, 1959, in
the essay "Det besegrade livet", p. 141)
[11]Prof. em. Archie
Bahm, whose work unfortunately I could not incorporate in the present essay,
impressed me observing (personal communication, November 11th, 1991) that it is
remarkable that Russian communism and American capitalism are collapsing
approximately at the same time in history.
[12]These authors may be
related to the "spiritualistic" currents of thought, with names such
as Norström in Sweden and Lequier, Renouvier, Ravaisson and Laprune in France,
that I had already noted in my earlier struggle for understanding
"humanism" (Ivanov, 1991b, p. 14n). See e.g. Schuon (1975; 1986), Burckhardt
(1987), Coomaraswamy (1989), Guénon (1946). In a personal communication
concerning these latter names (July 1993), James Hillman suggested that most of
these latter names could be characterized as "spirit people", as
contrasted to "soul people".
[13]Piltz and, in
particular, Reichmann, in Sweden , Guénon in France , or Buckley, Bell, C.S.
Lewis and D'Arcy in the English speaking world . In Sweden, I would like to
point out also Martin Allwood (1988; 1990a; 1990b). His multifarious criticism
of present cultural tendencies, and "rowing against the current"
seems to express at a somewhat more controversial secular or ecumenic level the
same deep discontent - not to say "moral outrage" in Churchman's
sense (Churchman, 1982), which lies at the basis of Lindbom's work.
Unfortunately I got hold of Reichmann's latest and most relevant books on truth
and culture (1992; 1993) too late for using them as a welcome complement to
some of Lindbom's works.
Religious
and Christian issues have notoriously been considered in the field of physics,
a recent example in Sweden being Renard (1989). In contrast to the well known
book by Davies (1983, which seems to be well considered among physical
scientists), Renard seems to try to relate to Christianity, rather than to a vague
concept of divinity. In the field of information systems research itself, to my
knowledge, the only one to take up seriously the ethical and religious
issue, beyond Churchman (1971) is Donald de Raadt (1991). His work, which I
have not had the opportunity to study in depth, relies heavily upon the Dutch
philosopher Herman (Hendrik) Dooyeweerd (1958; 1975). The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy under "Dutch philosophy" (vol. 1, p. 442), introduces
Dooyeweerd as a developer of the Calvinist "philosophy of the idea of
law", which denied autonomy to philosophical thinking and sought for the
origins of philosophy in the special revelation of God. In my earlier work on
humanism for information systems (1991b), I preliminarily surveyed a broader,
if not more relevant, range of such type of literature, including Kant's
critical friend and forefather of non-secular existentialism, the philosopher
Johann Georg Hamann (1967a; 1967b) who influenced e.g. the economist and
statistician Eugene Böhler, close to the issues of information systems (Böhler,
1970; Böhler, 1973).
[14]I thank prof. Hernán
López-Garay for calling my attention upon Martin C. D'Arcy, and, in general,
for encouraging me personally with regard to the importance of these issues,
and for inviting me to collaborate beyond his "systemic-interpretive
exegesis of planning" (López-Garay, 1993). Unfortunately I was not able to
get hold of D'Arcy's work "Humanism and Christianity" (1969) in time
for this paper. Probably it would have been even more to the point, than "Belief
and Reason". I also thank prof. Heinz Klein for encouraging me by
accepting my challenge, and inviting me to try to relate Christian thought to
his and Rudy Hirschheim's "rationality of value choices in IS
development".
[15]In this context I
thank Gunnela Ivanov for her proofreading an intermediate version of the
papers, and helping me to decrease the number and gravity of printing errors.
[16]Despite my sharing
and endorsing the authors' arguments, this is not to be understood, the less so
in a working paper, as my "identification" with the authors in a sort
of definitive position, taken on exceedingly complex issues. I estimate that I
will consider to have reached maturation in the subjects of this paper whenever
I happen to be able to understand or be able to judge the interface between
psychology and theology as exposed by James Hillman, and the anthropology of
science as exposed by Bruno Latour. (Hillman, 1985; Latour, 1990) (I thank
prof. Guje Sevón for calling my attention upon Latour.) I relate these kinds of
works to current socio-psychological patterns of participatory cooperative
argumentative change of behavior.
Ultimately,
however, my (decreasing) doubt may be a sign of cowardice, as D'Arcy suggests
in his work surveyed in this paper. The remarkable difficulty I find in
grasping (the exciting!) papers by Hillman and Latour reminds me of the
difficulties in reading Heidegger. It may be time to leap over doubt in
D'Arcy's sense, by considering dogma in its meaning of bridge between legitimate
doubt and legitimate belief in Jung's sense: "The fact that a dogma is on
the one hand believed and on the other hand is an object of thought is proof of
its vitality" (Jung, 1953-1979, CW11, "A psychological approach to
the dogma of the Trinity", [[section]] 170). Jung's thought, originally
influenced by the pragmatism of William James, leads much farther beyond C.S.
Peirce's conceptions of"The fixation of belief" (Peirce, 1877).
The flavour
of Peirce's dispiriting and oversimplified conception of the problem,
foreshadows the reasons for the later criticism of pragmatism in this paper. It
is exemplified by his comparing doubt to "whatever other stimulus",
and the satisfaction (belief) of the curiosity in doubt to the satisfaction of
physiological hunger: "doubt implies mainly a struggle to escape from
it". (ibid. p. 66n, my retrans.) So much for the love of truth whose
problematic erotic undertones Peirce himself felt but did not seem to
understand, and consequently hesitated in expressing (1877, p. 84). Peirce's
pathos comes most probably from his perceiving the "ethics of logic"
(Geach, 1991, cf. D'Arcy, in this paper, chap. 4.10), combined with his avowed
failure to relate it to aesthetics and religion (Ivanov, 1991b, p. 43). I thank
E.Stolterman for calling my attention upon this paper by Peirce in a volume I
had already used (ibid.). Cf. a later footnote with reference to W. James'
"The will to believe".
[17]Please observe - as I
already noted elsewhere, how the fragmentation can also have as object the concept
of truth itself. Truth gets bowdlerized by means of encasement in the boxes of
smart taxonomies. In the tradition of critical social theory and radical
humanism, for instance, the approach to requirements specification is conceived
in terms of not less than nine "effectiveness measures". They
arise from a prior taxonomy of three "object systems" classes -
technology, language, and organization, and four "action type
classes" - instrumental, strategic, communicative and discursive (Lyytinen,
Klein, & Hirschheim, 1991, p. 50ff). After such a mind-blowing
"Aristotelian" exercise it will be very hard for the critical social
theorist to sense, for instance, the political import of different kinds of
truths relabeled "criteria of validity claims" such as clarity,
truthfulness, correctness and appropriateness, or correspondence of depiction,
sincerity, intelligibility, correctness (ibid. pp. 46, 53). I can imagine
somebody sacrificing his life - like a hero or a martyr - for truth, but not
for one among nine criteria of validity claims.
[18]My translation of
"Problemet, d.v.s. uppgiften, är att klargöra verkligheten genom
sanningen, medan sanningen aflägsnar sig från verkligheten". Swedish
readers who wish to follow the details of Norströms argument may see, passim,
esp. pp. 114, 136, 156-8, 162-5.
[19]This is done, in the
best case, with emphasis on "democratic power", and
"empowerment". This is still not exactly the case I know of a young
ambitious consultant to the trade unions in matters of information systems, who
came to visit a professor at the university. This consultant confessed
initially to neither expect nor need to gain any particularly valuable
knowledge or insight at the university. What was wanted was, rather, to convert
the work already done into a Ph.D. dissertation. The academic prestigious
legitimation by the academic establishment of the work already done would
facilitate the candidate graduate student's continued struggle for winning
influence on systems development, on behalf of the workers. Cf. the
"partisan approach" in the taxonomy by Hirschheim & Klein (1989),
to which they attempt to contrast "radical humanism".
[20] Cf. key words such as
equality, participatory influence or co-determination, and client-centering.
Cf. a later footnote on power in pragmatism, and the pragmatist account of
power and the good in Ivanov (1991b, p. 43): The "making of truth" is
conceived as making for greater satisfaction and greater control of experience.
It renders the truth of any time relative to the knowledge of the time, and
precludes the notion of any rigid, static or incorrigible truth. Thus truth is
continually being made and re-made. To this process there is no actual end, but
an "absolute" truth (or system of truths) would be a truth which
would be adequate to every purpose.
[21] Cf. Ivanov (1991b,
chap. on "Cooperative work: examples of problems", pp. 55ff, esp. p.
70). Compare with Reichmann (1993, p. 286).
[22]Cf "The ability
to conquer nature is also the ability to destroy man. And of all the forces of
destruction none is more powerful than that which claims that the method and
knowledge and social organization by which man achieves the conquest of nature
are themselves no part of the values and ideals by which he may conquer human
irrationality. The social conditions under which man today conquers nature
makes possible not man's conquest of himself, but the conquest of man by other
men. Instead of universalizing, these social conditions particularize; and in
politics this results in squabbles over who shall conquer whom. Man's destiny
becomes synonymous with narrowing his allegiances, and in its highest political
reaches results in allegiance to nothing but power itself. Since no agreement
as to ends was initially possible, it should occasion no surprise that no
general end was achieved." (Simpson, 1951)
[23]The Swedish reader
can follow the insightful discussion of tradition by Rolf (1991, pp.129ff).
Further: democracy itself can, at its best, be a tradition. But then this
pushes us back towards religious issues as they seem to be implied in a recent
work on civic traditions in modern Italy: civicness is almost impossible to
create where it does not already exist. Anonymous (1993b) on Putnam (1993). Cf.
at the beginning of chap. 3.9. of this paper: "No love, and no community
animated by love, can be born from this egoism, for love exists already, as
well as community, and that because we are all children of the same
Father". This would mean that "The General Will" is collective egoism
if it does not square up with God' s will in the theological sense of the word,
and no democracy can come out of it.
[24]Cf.: "Once we
can abandon the primary delusion of subjective rational superiority - the
supposedly normal perspective of normal ego psychology - and its addiction to
meaning as relation to subjectivity, we begin to find ourselves living
familiarly, daily, in the mercurial, unwilled, irrational of otherness; the
whole world religious, revelation so continuous and hiddenness so present that
these terms become redundant." (Hillman, 1985, p. 314)
[25]Please note how
Churchman apparently nearly misses the point when he picks up this thread in
"The systems approach and its enemies" (1979, pp. 136ff). After
quoting a text on power, by Singer, he comments: "The word 'power' in this
passage is rather unfortunate, because the meaning of the term has been
changing radically in the last few years. To a nineteenth century mind (and a
part of Singer was nineteenth century) there could be nothing wrong with
each individual having more power, because it meant that he had an increased
ability to cope with life and its environment, and, in particular, to aid his
fellow man" [my emphasis]. But what about this being a particular
problem of, just, the "nineteenth century mind"? Why has the meaning
of the term power been changing so radically, and which are the consequences to
be drawn from the answer to this question? Is it this kind of problem that lies
at the bottom of the apparent inconclusiveness of, at least, Churchman's chapter
on "Ethics of the systems approach", and its apparent dissociation
from religion? Observe how these concerns become secondary in the aftermaths of
Singer and Churchman, as represented by one of Churchman's most illustrious
students (Mason, 1986).
[26]Cf. the present lack
of interest for the historical debate on the foundations of mathematics as
related to the foundations of the embodied mathematical logic of the computer
instrument (foundations of computer science and information science). Cf. also
the possible opinions on the supposed irrelevance of this essay for applied
information systems, and the fuzzy charge of "esoterism" directed
against the supposed "ivory tower" of the "old university".
[27]Cf.: "The moving
horizon of promised results keeps the image forever young" (Boland, 1987,
p. 374). Churchman (1979, cf. s. 169), writing on the pretended gradual
progressive "approximation" or construction, criticizes the lack of
calibration or adjustment to something corresponding to an objective "true
value".
[28]Cf Bourdil (1989,
chap. 82ff, chap. 4) on "History idolatrized". Cf. also Lewis'
reference to the historical perspective in "screwtape letter" No.25
(Lewis, 1942).
[29]Cf. Habermas's
substitution of philosophy of language for Freud, and of Kant for Rousseau. Cf.
also later "ecumenic", syncretist or eclectic tendencies in the field
of information systems, calling upon Marx, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. (Ehn,
1988) Lately, syncretist tendencies have appeared under the label of "design".
A contextual theory of styles in design of computer artifacts is envisaged, and
will be built mainly on the basis of a "repertoire" of paradigmatic
examples, in analogy to architecture.
The need of
"systematizing" the repertoire of paradigmatic examples and of styles-in-"context"
throws us, however, back into the "system"- problem which I started
mentioning at the beginning of this paper, leading further to HyperSystems,
etc. The idea of repertoire (cf. "toolbox", and the Swedish "smörgåsbord")
summons, of course, the problems of pluralism, syncretism, eclecticism and of
postmodern constructivism, considered in part at the end of this paper,
inluding appendix I. The acceptance of historically defined and legitimated
(paradigmatic) classes, or the construction of new classifications or coding
schemes, is also, of course, a systems "design" problem (Churchman,
1961, "The teleology of measurement"; Churchman, 1971, chap. 9).
Form, structure, and function, which exercise obvious fascination in the field
of design can, then, be accomodated in the interplay between morphological,
functional, and teleological classes (Churchman, 1971, chap. 3). Choice from a
repertoire is (ought to be) a "monistic" aesthetical and ethical
issue, and an integral part of the theory itself. In other words: each item of
a "repertoire" may have been a life long commitment and struggle on
the part of somebody, as often documented in the history of art. Which is, or
ought to be, your commitment? What directs your choice or
("Hegelian"?) synthesis of items from the repertoire, or of
archetypes from your unconscious, or of "partners to marry"? (Cf. the
references to belief and dogma in this paper.)
In this
sense it is true that Churchman's classes fall short of the challenge offered
by the relation between aesthetics and ethics. But, that was the point of
expanding the classes into Hegelian and Singerian inquiring systems (Churchman,
1971, chaps. 7 and 9, esp. pp. 170ff). This raises the issues around Hegel and
romanticism, as they were foreshadowed by, e.g., Hamann. So called paradigmatic
examples can be, rather, understood in terms of types and jungian archetypes.
(Bär, 1976; Hammen, 1981; Philipson, 1963) This hints at the potential
importance of "theological aesthetics", to be considered later in
this paper, not to mention the importance of theological ethics with which
aesthetics should converge. We deal, then, of course, with much more than a
supposed "theory of style" seen a "conceptual framework".
For an overview of architectural paradigmatic repertoire in terms of historical
styles, types and examples, and characteristic features, please see Webster's
(1961) under "architecture". For meanings of "systematic"
cultural criticism of architecture, "style", etc. see Spengler
(1981-1983/1918, esp. vol. 1).
[30]I thank T. Nordström
for calling my attention upon the following quotation, by R. Rorty, whom I
already had noted as an interesting but problematic representative of modern
tendencies in pragmatism (Ivanov, 1991b, pp. 15ff on "History vs.
structure - Liberal ironic humanism"). "If we see knowing not as
having an essence, to be described by scientists or philosophers, but rather as
a right, by current standards, to believe, then we are well on the way to
seeing conversation as the ultimate context within which knowledge is to
be understood." (Rorty, 1980, p. 389). Please note the mentioning of believing
and of current standards. I think that here we may have one main point
in "conversation killing" and in the breakdown of debate, possibly
turning into psychological breakdown or war under the aegis that there
is not time, no money, no trust for debate.
Compare,
further, this approach at its extreme with Reichmann's reference to certain
modern poetry which assumes that the reader will give meaning to nearly
meaningless poems through a process of co-creation. (Reichmann, 1993, pp. 150f)
Analog thoughts on the cooperative construction of discourse have fascinated
some researchers in computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Cf. with the classical
psychiatric case of Schreber where "jesting ambiguity appears
significantly in what Schreber calls 'the system of not-finishing-a-sentence'
'unfinished ideas, or only fragments of ideas' which 'became more and more
prevalent in the course of years'" as quoted by Hillman (1985, p. 291).
I agree with
Reichmann that the mentioned poetry (and analog postmodern science) ultimately
implies an attempt to systematize meaninglessness. Such a mind-blowing attempt
overlaps with what I contributed to criticize in hypertext, with implications
for interactive hypermedia principles (Forsgren, et al., 1990). Alternatively
it can be seen as an intuitive vulgar recall of principles of psychological
projective instruments like the Rorschach test.
Cf. also
Hillman's opening of deeper interpretation of possibly legitimate meanings of
behavioral patterns which, in me, recall postmodernism (1985, pp. 307ff,
316ff). To the extent that (post-) modernism is the era of artificiality,
please see an original depth-psychological conception of the (constructive)
striving for the artificial of the artifacts, by Rossi (1992), associated to
the work of the IMES group led by M. Negrotti at the university of Urbino
(1991). For an insightful discussion of the aesthetical dimension - artistic
representation - in this same context of artificiality and in the tradition of
the sociology of art, see Bertasio (1993).
[31]Cf. the typical
accusation that the discussion becomes "too philosophical" and
inhibits conversation, and should be more "pragmatic". Churchman
(1982, p. 57), touches upon this issue in a problematic way, in terms of
"conversation killers". The idea is being further developed by
Nordström (1990). What is problematic is that Churchman apparently does not
envisage this type of conversation killing, possibly and paradoxically because
he leans towards seeing ethics in terms of "eternal conversation"
without exploring the content and presuppositions of the conversation,
as for instance Apel and Habermas, in part, do. (Churchman, 1979, p.
118, cf.,. further, Ulrich's comments on Churchman's systems theory in the
appendix II to this paper; Churchman, 1982, p. 57). I see this very
questionable view of ethics where "human" values are regarded as
"neither relative nor absolute", as an Enlightenment ethics without
beliefs and without dogmas, but with a dogmatic belief in the goddess of
(undefined) "Reason". Very rightly so, the acknowledged
"hopelessness" of the enterprise (Churchman, 1982, p. 57), in a
framework which has no legitimate place for hope, opens unintentionally the
doors to the relativism (and the consequent utilitarian consultancy's misuses
of his work) that Churchman himself explicitly and "heroically" tries
to reject. I think that it is a document of the author's "Kantian"
difficulties in integrating religion and religious faith in his work, at least
up to the end of the eighties.
[32]Observe that the
non-separability of sub-systems allows for their existing as distinct entities,
which, however, relate to each other. (Churchman, 1971, chap. 3.) Cf. further:
"For
the mother's dependent son, all is infinite, endless, with no boundaries, like
clouds or open water; all is possible, all mergings and identities...".
Robert Bly (Bly, Hillman, & Meade, 1993, p.261)
[33]Cf. Hillman who writes
(Bly, et al., 1993, p. 269):
The missing
father is not your or my personal father. He is the absent father of our
culture, the viable senex who provides not daily bread but spirit through
meaning and order. The missing father is the dead God who offered a focus for
spiritual things. Without this focus, we turn to dreams and oracles, rather
than to prayer, code, tradition, and ritual. When mother replaces father, magic
substitutes for logos, and son-priests contaminate the puer spirit.
Unable to go
backward to revive the dead father of tradition, we go downward into the
mothers of the collective unconscious, seeking an all-embracing comprehension.
We ask for help in getting through the narrow straits without harm; the son
wants invulnerability. Grant us protection, foreknowledge; cherish us. Our
prayer is to the night of dream, to a love for understanding, to a little rite
or exercise for a moment of wisdom. Above all we want assurance through a
vision beforehand that it will all come out all right.
Without the
father we lose also that capacity which the Church recognized as
"discrimination of the spirits": the ability to know a call when we
hear one and to discriminate between the voices...
The mother
encourages her son: go ahead, embrace it all. For her, all equals everything.
The father's instruction, on the contrary, is all equals nothing - unless the
all be precisely discriminated.
[34]An understandable
paradox is that the imperfection of the world can very well be acknowledged,
when such an acknowledgment can work as an alibi for double morals. This means
that one readies oneself to give up "virtue" whenever one is
confronted with power, or has to choose between truth and utility, e.g. in a
consultancy situation. The apparently wise, and patronizing, motto can then be
for instance "Life is a compromise". For an in-depth discussion of
the problem of suffering when there is no "compromise", the Swedish
reader can refer to Reichmann (1988) and compare with the rationale of social reforms,
rationalizations or "re-engineering" of institutions, attitudes
towards death, etc.
[35]Ivanov (1986, pp. 75
and 133) treats the question in terms of "solidarity". As also
observed in a later footnote, the Swedish reader may compare the treatment of
solidarity with Reichmann's consideration of the issue
("client-centering"?) in terms of the Samaritan, in Luke 10:29ff
(Reichmann, 1993, pp. 269-277). Concerning Swedish historical examples of
massive national moral-ideological catastrophes decurring from a defective
understanding of these issues, in terms of Gunnar and Alva Myrdal's pioneer
"social-democratic" thinking on evolutionistic prophylactic racial
hygiene in Swedish population politics, see Ivanov (1986, pp. 145ff) with
reference to Myrdal, G. & A. (1934, pp. 217-229, 286ff, 300-301).
[36]Cf. the discussion of
rule of law as related to equity and equality by Ivanov (1986, pp. 74-76, but
also, about equality, on pp. 46ff, 58f, 101, 104, 120f, 131ff, 139).
[37]Cf. also Reichmann
(1993, pp. 105f, 282ff) and the problem of morality as negotiation,
conversation, or debate (ibid. pp. 44, 80-85, 93ff, 126, 130, 150, 293ff,
including "client centering", the "debate industry", and
the "debate machine") (Reichmann, 1992, pp. 18, 29, 53f, 256f). The
importance of trust in empirical economic reality has been richly illustrated
not the least in the context of historical scandal bankruptcies such as the one
associated with Ivar Kreuger (Thunholm, 1991). More recently we have the
scandalous business events associated in mass media with the names of Robert
Maxwell and Armand Hammer. In business economics the issue of trust has been
studied in secular terms, e.g. in Sweden, by prof. Sten Jönsson and others at
the Gothenburg School of Economics (Jönsson, & Sollie, 1993), and Lars Huemer
at Umeå University (Huemer, 1993).
What does
not seem to be appreciated is that the same issue of trust, and the same
scandalous events, which seldom end up being disclosed in scandals, are
relevant in the context of the university and in scientific research.
This is the more so concerning the fuzzy performance of software projects and
information systems, coming close to the legendary "emperor's new
clothes". This kind of reality was obviously well acknowledged in the
psychodynamics of the Tavistock tradition (Bion, 1961; Turner, & Giles,
1981). It would be sensational if ongoing research on participatory design and
computer supported cooperative work believed to be able to dispense of such
knowledge. Mike Robinson (1984, pp. 11ff) surveys cursorily and evaluates
Bion's work noting (p. 14) what I consider the key problem: "the object of
truth apart from the group itself". Cf. with a later note with reference
to C. Lasch about client-centered therapy.
Consider,
further: "The entire humanistic, secular approach to therapy will be
experienced by the patient as the workings of the anti-Christ, because it
wilfully ignores, and attempts to subdue, the noetic, spiritual quality of the
revelations. We can draw the lesson for our times and our own work that
attempts at humanizing patients through group therapy and feeling encounters
will miss the mark so long as these measures do not at the same time recognize
what the delusions themselves state: people are not merely people, humans not
merely humans; bodies are also embodiements, disclosing in their
characteristics and looks archetypal presentations of spirit. An individual
human person is also always the bearer of eternal verities that non-secular,
non-agnostic psychology perceives as daimones or spirits. (Hillman, 1985, p.
280, with implications for constructive cooperative work, and for understanding
resentment.)
Please
observe, finally, that lack of trust undermines reliance on "roles"
or "social actors" as often found in theorizing in information
systems research, since these sociological concepts rest upon meaningful
expectations. Recovery of "democratic - cooperative - constructive"
trust may have much to do with recovery from paranoid delusions - seen as
matter of degree - which work as killers of conversations or debates:
"Recovery means recovering the divine from within the disorder, seeing
that its content is authentically religious" (Hillman, 1985, p. 278, see
also about God's "infidelity" as source of secular jealousy and of
humanism, "divinizing the other person", p. 294.)
[38]Cf. theological
aesthetics (Berdiaev, 1990; Sherry, 1992; Sherry, 1993).
[39] Cf. Ivanov's
reference to Maurice Blondel's critique of relativism (Ivanov, 1991b, p. 35f,
in the chapter on "Psychological humanism").
[40]Cf. Lewis (1988, pp.
110-123, "The funeral of a great myth), and observe the possible
implications for auto-poiesis.
[41]Cf. the earlier
denouncement of sentimentalism by Lindbom. Despite the distantness of
dialectical social systems theory from its original pragmatist and empirical-idealist
basis, I have had lately the uncanny intuition that - disregarding most of
Churchman's students who seem to turn back to solid good old pragmatism or
utilitarianism - it tends towards a sort of sentimental preaching tone. It goes
under obviously righteous banners such as "Toward a Just Society for
Future Generations" (Churchman, 1990). This was preceded by a long series
of interesting and important "Churchman's conversations" concerning
mainly science, ethics, and peace (in the journal Systems Research, from its
Vol. 1, No. 1, 1984, and continuing for several years). Nevertheless most of
these texts appear to me to have been written in the same sort of increasingly
sentimental mood which, curiously enough, seldom, if ever, leads beyond Kant,
to the kind of issues or of literature considered in this paper. I attempted to
formulate some of the perceived problems (Ivanov, 1990b). They contributed to
my focusing on the meaning of "humanism" and, further, on this paper.
My personal hypothesis is that this possibly sentimental turn in Churchman's
work is contingent to what I characterized in an earlier footnote as his
failure to integrate religion to ethics and aesthetics, at least until the end
of the eighties.
[42]I understand,
especially from Kant's writings about religion (Kant, 1989), that this must be
one of the Kant-inspired secular Enlightenment's main tenets. Cf. the secular
organizations AA's and Al-Anon's first step, of the "ten steps" for change
(a so cherished concept in both postmodern family politics, crisis management,
and systems development), formulated mainly out of practical modern experiences
in coping with, and rehabilitating from alcoholism and drugs: "We admitted
that we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become
unmanageable" (Anonymous, 1981, p. 3, 7ff). Further: "When our eyes
and ears and hearts were opened, we could free ourselves from our rigid
determination to have things the way we wanted them." And the 2nd and 3rd
steps: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity", and "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives
over to the care of God as we understood Him.".
[43]Cf, again, with
modern approaches of communicative action and rational argumentation, theories
of design emphasising the ethical "choice" of the designer
(Stolterman, 1991), and Tage Lindbom's distinction between virtue and morals in
the excerpts included in this essay. Cf. also Hirshheim & Klein's rendering
of Kant's definition of human interest as "a cause determining the
will". (Hirschheim, et al., 1989) This discussion is relevant for the
belief that communicative action and rational argumentation will eventually or
at least periodically lead to a meaningful, true and good consensus. Besides my
own efforts, a few research peers are presently struggling with these issues,
and I have already expressed my gratitude for their encouragement and
invitation to cooperate in this ethical - religious quest: López-Garay (1993),
Klein & Hirschheim (1992), Werner Ulrich's ( his contribution to this paper
of mine, appendix II), and de Raadt (1991).
[44]Regarding
ego-inflation, cf Jung (1953-1979, in CW7 [[section]][[section]] 221-265 and
374-407, CW9 II [[section]][[section]] 43-67, CW10 [[section]][[section]]
431-721, CW17 [[section]][[section]] 230-252.) Please, cf., further, the
appendix III to this paper. Because of the functions of the ego in mathematics,
formal science, and in the "directed thinking" of technology, it
seems that the field of information technology attracts gifted ego-inflated
people. It would be consistent with the remarkable psychologizing speculations
and preposterous claims which have characterized many writings on
"artificial intelligence" - AI.
The possible
offence caused by this paper of mine, disregarding the obvious influence of
shortcomings in my own insights, modesty, sensitivity and diplomatic
"social competence", may, however, be a product of ego inflation in
the broad sense of the word. By this I mean the offended people's, and my own,
difficulty of taking care of the feelings of aggressivity and guilt raised by
the text, contrasted with the subjective self-righteous feelings of doing
"one's best" and of having that which Lindbom names "good
intentions". In other words: "Why should I be criticized when there
are so many others who - in such case - are much guiltier than I am?".
This would be the result of what Lindbom covers under the discussion of
secularized man's negation of the imperfection of this world in general, and of
our own sinful nature in particular. This is, in turn, related to what he calls
"the socialization of self-pity" and, further, to self-righteousness
and sentimentalism. I may have, of course, sinned myself in this paper by not
giving more emphasis to my own shortcomings.
[45]The claim that this
is not necessary since we have been created in the image of God in order to
take care of this world autonomously, without asking Him for administrative
daily details. This incurs, however, in Linbom's criticism of William Occam's
separatism, (Lindbom, 1970, please see the separate appendix IV, in Swedish.)
It is symptomatic to note that pioneers who care, like Churchman or Varela, do
not shrink from acknowledging the need to dig into their fundamental
assumptions, also called the guarantor's problem. Autopoiesis, for instance,
acknowledges the links of its "powerful and informative methaphor" to
Buddhism, rather than to Christianity. (Whitaker, 1992, pp. 83n, 106n,
symptomatically in footnotes.) I myself, too, had identified the Buddhist
ethical anchoring of autopoiesis in its linkages to European phenomenology
(Varela, 1992, esp. chap. 2 on "ethical competence"). One main
question in this paper, then, is which are our fundamental assumptions,
and what difference do they make in our conception of making science, and in
daily work?
[46]The reader who feels
disturbed by the feeling that the works chosen for review in this paper are
rather "odd", may wish to relate them to other which are, in a way,
more conventional. First of all Buckley's "At the Origins of Modern
Atheism" (1987), and D'Arcy's more focused work "Humanism and
Christianity" (1971) which I got hold of too late for using it in this
paper. The latter can be a good substitute for "Belief and Reason".
Secondly, the Swedish reader may wish to consult the work of the physician and
medical researcher Sven Reichmann (1992; 1993), but also of an established
scholar, a historian working in the field of "history of ideas", like
Svante Nordin (1989). In his extensive survey which culminates with thoughts
that are consistent with the works and conclusions presented in this paper (pp.
174ff), he indicates that these works are close to central historical names
such as, for instance, Ernst Troeltsch (as a better alternative, I noted in my book
from 1986, to Max Weber) and, possibly, Leopold von Ranke (ibid., pp. 29,
73ff). I agree with Nordin's observations about the character of
"Nietzschean" postmodern tendencies, and I have identified them as
such in earlier works (1991b; 1993). In particular, I agreed about the
similarity between the rhetorical aestheticism of American cybernetic
constructivism found in academia, and European postmodernism seen as
constructivism in its cultural practical guise. (1993, chap. on "Other
directions for educational systems design"). Finally, I also agree with
Nordin's concluding references to "the apocalyptic view of history"
(Nordin, 1989, pp. 181f), probably on the base of Klaus Vondung Die deutsche
Apokalypse (1988), even if I feel that Nordin has not had the courage to
take the final leap which could bring him in consonance with D'Arcy and
Lindbom.
[47]Niebuhr, H.R. The
meaning of revelation (New York: MacMillan, 1960, first publ. 1941, p. 69)
as quoted by Hillman (1985, p. 274), who also quotes (p. 286) Karl Jaspers
definition (Jaspers, 1967, p. 27, 21), "Revelation...is the premise of all
reasoning...The understanding of original revelation is what we call
theology". Cf. the earlier footnotes on the meaning of dogma.
[48]In Sancho Panza's
Windmills, 1979, p. 127f, surveyed in the Swedish supplement to the present
paper. To the English-reading reader may suffice a reference to Carl Jung's
concept of "directed thinking" (Jung, 1953-1979, CW5,
[[section]][[section]]4-46). In an earlier work I coined the expression
"don juan - syndrome" when describing the meaning of this deviation
of surplus energy into restless activism, and into certain kinds of
aestheticism including "rhetorics". (Ivanov, 1986, p. 135; Ivanov,
1991b, p. 35, the reference, mentioned in an earlier footnote, to Blondel,
1973, p. 9f.). My early (1986) observation that the don juan - syndrome, beyond
legitimate Jungian "extroversion", is psychologically close to the
clinically defined "borderline" psychotic states of e.g. "pathological
narcissism", is reinforced by Reichmann's recent work, in its focus on
"desperation and dialectics" (Reichmann, 1993, pp. 122-132, 283f). In
accord with a clinical psychologist like Sass (Sass, 1992), he sees there great
similarities with all the endless debates which surround us, where outlooks or
views are contrasted to other views. Cf. the possible motives for preference
for "open" debates in contrast with supposedly "gloomy"
monological systemic argumentation. Please refer, further, to the earlier
footnote concerning co-creating poetry, and to literature on "kitsch
science" (Montgomery, 1991). The Swedish reader may compare with the
severe attitude of Ellen Key to what seems to be aestheticism (Key, 1903-1906,
Livslinjer III: Lyckan och skönheten, part II).
[49]As in part suggested
in an earlier paper (Ivanov, 1991b) permeation by a religious spirit may, to a
certain extent, be estimated by the degree to which the "theories",
or the argumentation, mention and allow space to intellect and reason for attempting
to grasp concepts like love and power in their relation to knowledge and truth,
will, wisdom, hate, forgiveness, hope, faith, dogma, responsibility, trust,
respect, prayer, promise, obligation, righteousness, testimony, courage,
temptation, contempt, guilt, sin, vanity, humility, reproach, repentance,
honesty, duty, virtue, sacrifice, friendship beyond cooperation, tolerance,
suffering, sorrow, evil, death. Towards the end of an earlier essay (Ivanov,
1989) I had, in context, a long quotation from Jung (1953-1979, CW5,
[[section]] 113) concerning the importance of the religious spirit in
scientific work and directed thinking. I take the liberty of reproducing it
because of its relevance, when "exoteric social world" can be
substituted for "nature":
"If the
flight from the world is successful, man can build an inner, spiritual world
which stands firm against the onslaught of sense-impressions. The struggle with
the world of senses brought to birth a type of thinking independent of external
factors. Man won for himself that sovereignity of the idea which was
able to withstand the aesthetic impact, so that thought was no longer fettered
by the emotional effects of sense impressions, but could assert itself and even
rise, later, to reflection and observation. Man was now in position to enter
into a new and independent relationship with nature, to go on building upon the
foundations which the classical spirit had laid, and to take up once more the
natural link which the Christian retreat from the world had let fall. On this
newly-won spiritual level there was forged an alliance with the world and
nature which, unlike the old attitude, did not collapse before the magic of
external objects, but could regard them in the steady light of reflection.
Nevertheless, the attention lavished upon natural objects was infused with
something of old religious piety, and something of the old religious ethic
communicated itself to scientific truthfulness and honesty. Although at the
time of the Renaissance the antique feeling for nature visibly broke through in
art and in natural philosophy, and for a while thrust the Christian principle
into the background, the newly-won rational and intellectual stability of the
human mind nevertheless managed to hold its own and allowed it to penetrate further
and further into the depths of nature that earlier ages had hardly suspected.
The more successful the penetration and advance of the new scientific spirit
proved to be, the more the latter - as is usually the case with the victor -
became the prisoner of the world it had conquered. At the beginning of the
present century a Christian writer could still regard the modern spirit as a
sort of second incarnation of the Logos... It did not take us long to realize
that it was less a question of the incarnation of the Logos than of the descent
of the Anthropos or Nous into the dark embrace of Physis. The world had not
only been deprived of its gods, but had lost its soul. Through the shifting of
interest from the inner to the outer world our knowledge of nature was
increased a thousandfold in comparison with earlier ages, but knowledge and
experience of the inner world were correspondingly reduced."
[50]Please compare, for
instance, Whitaker (1992, p. 5n) vs. e.g. Heidegger (1978, on modern science,
metaphysics, and mathematics, pp. 243-282). I am also thinking, in particular,
of the careful laying of foundations by Hernán López-Garay, Ramsés Fuenmayor,
and the group for interpretive systemology at the school of engineering of the
University of the Andes, Mérida, Venezuela. An introduction to their work was
published in a series of articles in Vol 4, No. 5 (1991) of the journal Systems
Practice.
[51]See Lindbom (1970,
"Our daily bread" pp. 109-118), possibly appropriate for use,
together with Bischofberger & Zaremba (1985), Johannes Paulus II's encyclic
"Laborem Exercens" (1981), "Centesimus Annus" (1991), and
with surveys like Caprioli (1983), in undergraduate education on work
organization which reaches beyond the important, but by now so predictable
socialist - democratic message. Please observe also that Ivanov (1986, p. 133f)
refers to a discussion (Buttiglione, 1982, pp. 198ff, 224) on the relation
between participation, solidarity, opposition, conformism, and alienation. The
only source in English language I know for this discussion is Wojtyla (1977).
Since long I
am waiting for an opportunity to call the attention of our research on
work-organization upon the particular characterization of intellectual work in
the Ecclesiastes/Sirach 38:24ff "A scholar's wisdom comes from ample
leisure..." (and also 37:7ff concerning consultancy). Cf. also the I Ching
(1968, The Book of Changes!) on the relation and transition between the hero
and the sage: hexagram No. 1,"The Creative" (p. 9), but also No. 12
"Stagnation" (pp. 53, 448), No. 18 "Decay" (p. 78), No. 24
"Turning point" (p. 505), and No. 33 "Retreat" (p. 130).
That certainly does not square up with the conventional wisdom advertised in
the last 30 years of socialist divinization of manual work, or with the message
of the Chinese cultural revolution, divinized in many mass media during the
seventies, or with the insults against the "ivory tower". Today we
may be reaping the fruits of our cultural revolution of combined socialist and
liberal work-theorizing in the form of liberal ironic client-centering and
practical profitable market-orientation of intellectual work, including
university research. It is seldom one finds scientists expressing clearly their
feeling of outrage for the decay of intellectual work (Chargaff, 1971, p. 641:
"That in our days such pygmies throw such giant shadows only shows how
late in the day it has become"). In the same spirit of civil courage see
also C. Truesdell (1984a; 1984b).
All this material
should be contrasted to, and complemented with the theorizing about the nature
of cooperative work as found, e.g., in Bannon (1992, chap. 2.2.1), and Robinson
(1991). Please observe Robinson writing: "Equality, in the complex sense
of sensitivity to feelings, intuitions, and perspectives which are not
necessarily articulated, and not usually considered part of the work process at
all, is a necessary condition for undertaking and guiding [change of the way
people live]". And, quoting L. Suchman, he endorses that "Actual
attempts to include the background assumptions of a statement as part of its
semantic content...run up against the fact that there is no fixed set of
assumptions that underlie a given statement. As a consequence, the elaboration
of background assumptions is fundamentally ad hoc and arbitrary, and
each elaboration of assumptions in principle introduces further assumptions to
be elaborated, ad infinitum.". This illustrates the relations
between fundamental presuppositions of work, and the material in this paper.
[52]"Optimism och
pessimism är den sekulariserade otrygga människans försök att dölja respektive
möta sin inre oro." (Lindbom, 1962, p. 145, my trans.)
[53]Cf. the following:
"The question then arises as to the reasonableness of taking one maxim and
rejecting the rest. If the remaining maxims have no authority, what is the
authority of the one you have selected to retain?.... New moralities can only
be contractions or expansions of something already given. And all the
specifically modern attempts at new moralities are contractions. They proceed
by retaining some traditional precepts and rejecting others: but the only real
authority behind those which they retain is the very same authority which they
flout in rejecting others.... Those who urge us to adopt new moralities are
only offering us the mutilated or expurgated text of a book which we already
possess in the original manuscript. They all wish us to depend on them instead
of on that original, and then to deprive us of our full humanity. Their
activity is in the long run always directed against our freedom." (Lewis,
1988, "On ethics", pp. 74ff)
[54]The Swedish reader
may compare this issue with earlier references to solidarity and to Reichmann's
treatment of solidarity in terms of the Samaritan, in Luke 10:29ff (Reichmann,
1993, pp. 269-277). In classical Kantian philosophy some of these
considerations touch upon the relation between the three critiques, in
particular between theoretical and practical reason. The Christian thoughts
presented in this paper do not frame neatly in Kantian philosphy, suggesting
that what is interesting in this context is the other way round, in which way
Kantian thought is framed in Christian approaches which are not
"classically" philosophical. In earlier essays I have suggested
recourse to the criticism against Kant, mentioning J.G. Hamann, Max Scheler,
and others. See the earlier reference in this essay to Kant's writings on
religion, which would deserve an own separate treatment.
[55]Please, consider the
following possibly relevant meaning of "client centering", already
mentioned in an earlier paper of mine. "As psychiatry takes on the
characteristics of a new religion or antireligion, a 'protestant' conception of
the priestly function has grown up in opposition to the 'catholic' conception.
The 'protestants' have translated psychiatric theory into the vernacular, in
order to make it more accessible to their constituents. They have introduced
innovations in psychiatric ritual, like Carl Rogers' 'client-centered
psychiatry', with the intention of diminishing the magisterial authority of the
psychiatrist. They have condemned the arrogance of psychiatric priesthood, not
because they object to the therapeutic conceptions of reality, but because they
wish to diffuse them more widely than ever, rooting them in popular
understanding and daily practice" (Lasch, 1977, p. 135f).
[56]Please consider the
following:
"To be
sure, there are those today in philosophy who seem to be solely interested in
epistemic and methodological techniques, but care is required not to lead us to
mistake refinements (and sometimes over-refinements) of one part of philosophy
for its larger systematic framework. Not the least of the present virtues of
systematic philosophy is that it has not been caught up in the sweep of
employment as a handmaiden of officialdom. For that is often sneered at and
secretly envied. Just as often it is misunderstood and even maligned by
scientists themselves as being unwordly [cf. "esoteric"] (since it
may disapprove of the way the world is being run); impractical (since it
criticizes present practices); visionary (since it sees what can be done and
ought to be done as well as what is being done). Indeed, in certain
professional circles of scientists, the epithet "philosophical" is
the final degradation when applied to a colleague, even though to a philosopher
the patriotic and occupational chauvinism thereby evinced may seem the last
refuge of a scoundrel." (Simpson, 1951)
[57]Cf. Jung (1953-1979,
CW8, [[section]][[section]] 749-795). After an appropriate disclaimer for
purposes of modesty, please cf. the following, by Bly (1993, p. 97): "The
growth of man can be imagined as a power that gradually expands downward: the
voice expands downward into the open vowels that carry emotion, and into the
rough consonants that are like gates holding the water; the hurt feelings
expand downward into compassion; the intelligence expands with awe into the
great arguments or antinomies men have debated for centuries; and the mood-man
expands downward into those vast rooms of melancholy under the earth, where we
are more alive the older we get, more in tune with the earth and the great
roots."
[58]I have remained
impressed by the lapidary statement that "not only the Church, but the
whole free world of pluralistic, tolerant democracy is built on the blood of
martyrs and constructive dissidents". (Allwood, 1990b, p. 44)