philosophy – The philosophy of Darryl Naranjit

The Media and the Construction of Reality

The original philosophical enterprise, as it is outlined in Plato’s philosophy, and as such has been handed down in the tradition, seeks to distinguish between reality and appearance. S. Morris Engel puts it this way

“….the leading and dominant idea round which all philosophy turns is this insight regarding the existence of two worlds – the world of Reality and the world of Appearance, the world as it is in itself and the world as it appears to us.”

The philosophical path leads from opinion, which has as its object, shadows and images, through belief, to knowledge, which deals with the intelligible realm of forms. In the simile of the cave, Plato paints a picture of prisoners chained in a cave, who can see only the images and shadows of objects, and the ascent into the light of the sun where true reality is known. Seen in this way, philosophy is fundamentally concerned with truth as distinguished from illusion. Indeed, according to Plato, the true philosophers are “Those who love to see the truth.” It is this love of truth that leads the philosopher to seek knowledge rather than be satisfied with opinion or belief, through the process of dialectic which is “…the procedure which proceeds by the destruction of assumptions to the very first principle so as to give itself a firm base.”

In the original philosophical enterprise, this process of acquiring truth, of gaining knowledge of reality, is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, and involves the acquiring of virtue, that is, self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom. These virtues are intimately tied up with the pursuit of truth and knowledge of reality. Without them, the philosopher will make no progress along the path towards knowledge of reality.

This process of acquiring knowledge or reality is therefore accomplished through education which is the turning of the mind “…away from the world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality, and the brightest of all realities which is what we call the good.”

Education begins from an early age and involves a censorship on the type of stories with which children are presented, so that the “…first stories they hear shall aim at encouraging the highest excellence of character.”⁵ Censorship aims at carefully controlling the type of information presented, with a view to controlling the type of information presented, with a view to nurturing the right beliefs, particularly about good and evil. Education culminates in dialectic, which makes it possible to ascend to first principles, and eventually to the idea of the Good.

Philosophy was concerned therefore with truth, with formulating true knowledge of reality from the information that is presented to us. What does this concern with true reality translate to in contemporary terms? That is, to what does the contemporary interpretation of the on-going philosophical quest lead? What do the Platonic concerns translate to, and what does the concern for truth mean in contemporary society? For philosophy can be seen essentially, from this point of view, as the search for truth about reality.

What do we mean when we speak about reality? Perhaps the most appropriate way of looking at the question is in terms of an information model. Information is presented to an observer, and this information is processed and organized, hypotheses and theories are formulated about the nature of the information. It may be about physical objects, social or psychological realities.

S.I. Hayakawa speaks about two realities – verbal reality and extensional reality. In “Language in Action,” Hayakawa states,

“It is through reports, then, and through reports of reports, that we receive most knowledge about government, about what is happening in Korea, about what picture is showing at the downtown theatre – in fact, about anything that we do not know through direct experience.”

Hayakawa distinguishes between a verbal world, which is knowledge obtained about the world through words, and an extensional world, which is knowledge acquired through direct experience.

Contemporary society is termed an information society, because of the so-called information revolution, the immense increase in the ability to gather information and the technological means to process this information. As such, what Hayakawa would call the verbal world has increased tremendously as compared with the extensional world. Our world is thus very different (in terms of the information we receive) than ancient Greek society. Marshall McLuhan examined the difference in the conception of our own reality, with respect to the media through which we receive information. The tremendous increase in information alone, however, is sufficient to ensure that the way we deal with reality is different. In our contemporary society, verbal and visual reports are very much utilized than direct experience in providing us with information about reality. To a great extent, we may say, information is reality.

If information is so important is contemporary society, then the means by which information is disseminated is also important. The mass media fills the role of disseminating much of the information in society. It is through the media therefore, that our conception of reality is shaped to a great extent. Our reality is constructed in terms of “a global village” rather than in terms of the narrow domain of extensional information that must have been so significant in shaping reality in the ancient Greek city-states. Social events are measured against the background of global events; hence, they acquire meaningfulness from the perspective of this larger domain. McLuhan’s ideas about the “global village” are very relevant here. Our view of reality is shaped not merely by our experiential field but more so by our “verbal’ field. With the arrival of satellite television, an intricate system of inter-connected flow of information has been made possible. The debate over the consequences of this information is disseminated becomes a crucial factor in determining the nature of that information and the intended or unintended effects of that information.

The information age, the sophisticated and powerful telecommunications technology, the one-way flow of information, are all responsible for the substantially novel way in which our reality is shaped. Schiller has said that the American imperial structure depends on “…a marriage of economics and electronics which substitutes in part, thought not entirely, for the earlier ‘blood and iron” foundations of more primitive conquerors.”

Our reality, that is, how we view the world, is shaped by powerful and omnipresent media, fed by telecommunication technology. When events occur, therefore, we view these events in the light of whatever information we have received about these events. We make judgments on the basis of this information. The science of information manipulation, semantic juggling, has become crucial to World Empire. The importance of the media in this process cannot be overstated. The media, indeed, are the means of transmitting information on a daily basis, the means of creating our reality.

Conventional wisdom about the media is quite widespread. There is a common perception that the purpose of the media is to inform and entertain, and is quite objective in its function. The free press is considered essential to democracy, for if democracy is government by the people, then decisions made must be informed decisions, and the media play the role of providing objective, impartial information about events, etc. The intention, therefore, of information is simply to inform, or so it is claimed.

Our analysis of language and communication in the previous chapter discloses that the purpose of any communication can be traced to a pure purpose, an objective which is not the sub-objective of any other.

The matter is not as simple as conventional wisdom would have it. Schiller and others, for example, have associated the media with the propagation of the American empire, and empire not primarily based on “blood and iron” but on “economics and electronics.” We have to investigate the motives that lie behind the “transmission of information,” and it will be quite naïve to think that the only motive is simply “to inform.” “To inform” is not a pure motive. As Hayakawa says, “How then can we ever give an impartial report? The answer is, of course, that we cannot attain complete impartiality while we use the language of everyday life,” and furthermore, “…. Even if explicit judgments are kept out of one’s writing, implied judgments will get in.”

Rather than merely informing and entertaining, the media appear to be concerned primarily with justifying and legitimizing beliefs, attitudes and actions. Information, therefore, must be seen within this context. The juxtapositioning of facts, the timing of news releases, slanting of reports, the use of particular “loaded” words and phrases – all these play a part in the process of justification and legitimization. It should be remembered, however, that the effectiveness of the media depends largely on how credible it is perceived to be. The acquiring of credibility is therefore a pre-requisite to media effectiveness. Credibility is achieved through a process of gradualism, of moderateness, of finesse; the intention of the information must be carefully disguised. Truth and good intentions must therefore be mixed with falsehood and deceit. The greater effectiveness of the American media over the Russian media, for example, is precisely because of its greater finesse, its lack of extremism. It is this mixture of truth and falsehood that is in fact, ironically, so effective. To be effective, therefore, the media has to go through that process of establishing credibility and must continue with a certain amount of credibility.

The idea of “freedom of the press” is a particular effective tool for propagating believes and values. Schiller again says,

“Freedom of speech, however, interpreted to signify the unrestrained opportunity for the dissemination of messages by the American mass media in the world arena, has developed in the years since Truman spoke as an equally significant support in the American imperial arch.”

And furthermore,

“…the championing of freedom of communication (or speech) most often had as an indirect benefit, the global extension of American commerce and its value system.”

The tremendous imbalance of information flow between the western world and the Third World means that ‘freedom of the press” is merely a means of justifying the spread of particular beliefs and values.

With the development of telecommunications technology, and the popularization of democratic ideals, direct communication with the masses was seen as an important aspect of foreign policy. As the committee on Foreign Affairs Report No. 2 on “winning the Cold War the U.S. Ideological Offensive” states:

“… the recent increase in influence of the masses of people over governments, together with greater awareness on the part of leaders of the aspiration of people, brought about by the concurrent revolutions of the 20^th century, has created a new dimension for foreign policy operation. Certain foreign policy objectives can be pursued by dealing directly with the people of foreign countries, rather than with their governments. Through the use of modern instruments and techniques of communications, it is possible today to reach large or influential segments of national populations – to inform them to influence their attitudes, and at times perhaps to motivate them to a particular course of action. These groups in turn are capable of exerting noticeable, even decisive pressures on their government.”

The events occurring throughout the world today demonstrate the success of this course of action, and the immense part that the media and telecommunications in general, plays in shaping contemporary history. In the report of the Intra-Governmental Committee on International Telecommunications 1966, it is stated “…telecommunications has progressed from being an essential support to our international activities, to being also an instrument of foreign policy.”

These reports from the 1960’s were presented at a time when telecommunication technology was still in a relatively undeveloped stage; advances in technology have made the role of telecommunications even more significant, as Schiller says, “telecommunications are today the most dynamic forces affecting not only the ideological but the material bases of society.”

Truth and Power: Gandhi’s Political Philosophy

Mahatma Gandhi is a revolutionary thinker. Underneath the simple words and phrases that appear almost as platitudes, there is a meaning, a philosophy that challenges modern western thought at its core. This book is written as an attempt to uncover the meanings hidden in those simple words and phrases.

Gandhi used the term satygraha to name the strategy and philosophy he was using. The word satygraha literally translated means ‘truth-force’. On September 11, 1906, in South Africa, Gandhi explained his use of the term. “None of us knew what name to give to our movement. I then used the term passive resistance in describing it. I did not quite understand the implications of passive resistance as I called it. I only knew that some new principle had come into being. As the struggle advanced, the phrase passive resistance gave rise to confusion and it appeared shameful to permit this great struggle to be known only by an English name. Again, that foreign phrase could hardly pass as current coin among the community. A small prize was therefore announced in Indian Opinion to be awarded to the reader who invented the best designation for our struggle. We thus received a number of suggestions. The meaning of the struggle had been then fully discussed in Indian Opinion and the competitors for the prize had fairly sufficient material to serve as a basis for their exploration. Shri Maganlal Gandhi was one of the competitors and he suggested the word Sadagraha, meaning firmness in a good cause. I liked the word, but it did not fully represent the whole idea I wished it to connote. I therefore corrected it to Satyagraha. Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth.”

The question is why did he use this term. Was there, in Gandhi’s mind, a power associated with truth, a power that could bring down the British Empire? What is the relationship of truth to power? Nietzsche, arguably one of modern Europe’s most influential philosophers, has examined this relationship quite rigorously. Gandhi, therefore, may be compared with Nietzsche who is perhaps the most radical of modern western thinkers. They are, however, on opposite sides of the fence. Gandhi champions the “moral order” of the universe; Nietzsche dismisses it. Indeed the gist of this book is that Gandhi presupposes a cosmic spiritual struggle between good and evil, a struggle that takes place in the minds of human beings. It is a struggle between two opposing philosophies, two ideas, two world-views – a struggle between light and darkness, truth and untruth.

Nietzsche thinks that truth is merely the intellectualization of the ‘will to power’; he has been considered the foremost ‘philosopher of suspicion’. In comparing these two thinkers, it can be claimed that Gandhi turns the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ unleashed by Nietzsche on morality, on its head. This is the key to understanding Gandhi and this is what makes him probably the most revolutionary of thinkers. Whereas Nietzsche excludes himself from the probing light of the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’, Gandhi subjects every modern position to this suspicion.

Nietzsche’s ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ had subjected every post-Socratic philosophical position, every philosophical foundation, and all morality, to skepsis. His historical genealogy sought the genesis of morality in the ‘will to power’. All ascetic ideals were attempts to weaken and to destroy the affirmation of life. Nietzsche points to a struggle between life affirming forces and life denying forces, a struggle that occurs throughout history and in the history of thought.

For Nietzsche what is life affirming is all that enhances the ‘will to power’. For Gandhi, life affirmation is the discovery of the self as distinct from the ego. The self is the source of power; this is, of course, the classical Indian philosophical position. Nietzsche and Gandhi thus stand on opposite sides of what constitutes power. For Nietzsche, the ‘will to power’ is constrained and negated by conventional morality. What passes for morality, from this point of view, is a means of weakening the strong. For Gandhi, on the other hand, finding the true self means mastering the ego, and this is the source of power. These opposing viewpoints stem from different ideas about what is real and about what is true, and about the relationship of truth to power.

It is necessary to understand the differing ideas of how truth is related to power in both thinkers. For Nietzsche truth is related to power in the sense that every truth is an attempt of the ‘will to power’ to assert itself. For Gandhi, the self, the atman, is the source of power and of truth. What distinguishes these positions is the position of the will in the search for truth. Nietzsche locates the will prior to knowledge and in a sense directing knowledge, Gandhi thinks that the ego must be “reduced to a cipher” (i.e., the will must be ‘bracketed’, to use a phenomenological term) and truth is found only when the will is removed from the act of knowing, that is, when the self is found. The relationship of truth to power is crucial, therefore in understanding Gandhi’s philosophy.

Michel Foucault, who has been influenced by Nietzsche, has commented extensively on the relationship between truth and power. In his essay “The Subject and Power”, Foucault speaking about the effect of a ‘form of power’ says, “This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity: imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him.”¹ Truth is intimately connected with power; it gives power its unique intentionality. Power relations “…are imbued, through and through, with calculation…”²Every truth has as its objective – power. In this, Foucault is deeply influenced by Nietzsche. “Nietzsche’s genealogy of the way power uses the illusion of meaning to further self gave him good reason to be critical of hermeneutics both in its form of commentary on everyday life, and in its related form of deep exegesis of what everyday practices cover up.”³

In opposing hermeneutics then, specifically Heideggerian hermeneutics (for Heideggerian hermeneutics results in a critique of the will to power and its relation to truth), Foucault returns to Nietzsche. Heidegger’s philosophy, his attempt to place ‘Being’ beyond the ‘will to power’, is itself subject to Nietzschean hermeneutic suspicion. Has Nietzsche then triumphed over Heidegger, and what does such an overcoming mean? Does it mean that Nietzsche is truly the end point of Western philosophy and that the connection between ‘truth’ and the ‘will to power’ is the final word? Is every ‘truth’ connected to a ‘will to power’, and what is the relationship of all of this to Gandhi’s thought? Does it mean that Gandhi was a naïve premodern thinker unacquainted with the thrust of Nietzsche’s critique?

The author proposes that in fact Gandhi’s thought is a fundamental critique of Nietzsche’s position, in so far as Nietzsche’s thought permeates all postmodern western philosophy. Gandhi’s philosophy is in fact a critique of modern and post-modern western philosophy, in so far as it critiques the fundamental relationship between ‘truth’ and the ‘will to power’ made by Nietzsche. Such an interpretation of Gandhi’s thought attempts to make explicit what is implicit in Gandhi’s philosophy.

In the author’s view, Gandhi had grasped the essence of modern western philosophy. He realized that modern western philosophy denied that there was any objective truth, and instead held that all views about reality originated from particular perspectives (every truth is related to the will to power). To this perspectivism he proposed that there is truth; that truth is being and being is truth. What Gandhi realized was that the view that there was no objective truth was a view that ultimately legitimized and rationalized the western ideology of imperialism and exploitation and was an effective method to silence its conscience. If objective reality, the thing-in-itself, either did not exist or was unknowable, then reality could be subjectively interpreted according to one’s agenda. To Gandhi therefore the view that ‘truth’ was linked to the “will to power” was itself a view created by the ‘will to power’, so whereas Nietzsche would insist that the link between any ‘truth’ and the ‘will to power’ was a fact, itself the only truth, Gandhi would insist that this view linking any ‘truth’ to the ‘will to power’ was itself generated by the ‘will to power’ and would fall victim to its own logic.

This is the inexorable logic of Gandhi’s implicit critique of perspectivism and Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche himself, considered a ruthless seeker of the truth, is found to be the greatest camoflager of the truth. Nietzsche, of course, wore many masks, he pointed this out himself, so that the problem becomes which is the real Nietzsche, this is part of his strategy, to playfully put on masks and speak sometimes without a mask, so that only the discerning would understand. However, which is the real Nietzsche, and did he not deceive most of all, the “discerning”, was this not also his strategy? Gandhi would hold that all of Nietzsche was masked, particularly his ideal of the connection between ‘truth’ and the ‘will to power’.

This, to Gandhi, would be the greatest mask of all. For in putting this relationship forward, Nietzsche covers up what makes this relationship so necessary – guilt. Nietzsche, who presents himself as this most uncompromising seeker after truth, covers up the motivating source of his ideas – namely guilt. It is the guilt of Europe caused by the conflict between its Christian values and the violence of its actual history, its merciless exploitation and oppression of the non-western world that motivates Nietzsche’s ideas. Guilt, in this sense, would be the awareness of what one has done – the consciousness of one’s actions and the implications of one’s actions. It is a sense of having done wrong and the sense of impending doom or punishment. Nietzsche considered a great psychologist, disguised the psychology of his thought, for in order to remove guilt, Nietzsche has to overthrow a whole system of thought.

For Gandhi, there is truth, and truth is precisely this kind of self-awareness – a consciousness of what one has done. Untruth arises through the covering up of this awareness, through the rationalization that suppresses this awareness. Gandhi acts therefore as a psychotherapist who aims to uncover this awareness. Once awareness of this truth is uncovered, then one has to confront one’s actions without the justifications, rationalizations, etc. This is how truth acquires its power and this is the basis of satygraha or truth-force.

It is this satygraha, this truth-force, which Nietzsche, in a sense, sets out to combat. The truth appearing within man as the ‘good’, the conscience, announces itself as a force, a power that demands a response from man. Nietzsche combats this by labeling this power as a ‘fiction’, a pious fraud. This is his grand strategy. By presenting the ‘good’ as a fiction, and all fictions as generated by the ‘will to power’ Nietzsche can now create a genealogy of this ‘fiction’ and in doing so explain it and further disempower the ‘good’. Nietzsche thus reverses the cause and effect: firstly the cause, the ‘will to power’ then the effect, the fiction of the ‘good’. It is not now the ‘good’ and its effect, the power of the ‘good’, or of the conscience. The inversion of the relationship between the truth, the ‘good’ and the ‘will to power’ enables Nietzsche to disempower the conscience.

However, what is there to exclude Nietzsche from being subjected to a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’? The only reason is that Nietzsche presents himself as a ruthless seeker after truth whose uncompromising pursuit of truth leads him to reveal its insubstantiality. It is his mask of integrity that puts him above suspicion, but can this be allowed? Nietzsche cannot be above suspicion – can this be why Foucault, in speaking about the hermeneutics of suspicion, claims that it “… dooms us to an endless task …?” ⁴

This suspicion directed towards Nietzsche would be fatal to Nietzsche’s thought since if we question the idea that all ‘truths’ are generated by the ‘will to power’ and claim that this idea is itself generated by the ‘will to power’, then Nietzsche appears as the great deceiver, one whose greatest truth is itself a deception. He appears as one who attempts to cover truth itself. Thus, when Gandhi insists that there is truth, he claims all of this. Nietzsche’s thought and Gandhi’s thought cannot coexist. Nietzsche has a genealogy of morals wherein he examines the psychology that lies behind the adoption of particular moralities. Gandhi can be said, on the other hand, to have a genealogy of immorality and this understanding of Gandhi’s genealogy can be used to critique Nietzsche’s thought.

At the basis of Western ‘materialism’, Gandhi’s term for the western rejection of the idea of ‘the good’, Gandhi sees desire – desire in particular for wealth and power. Gandhi sees this desire for wealth and power as coming in conflict with Christian values, the value system that had shaped medieval western civilization. Beneath the dialectical jousting between modern western thought and Christian thought, Gandhi sees the real motive as the desire for wealth and power. The entire system of modern western ‘materialism’ is therefore driven by the desire for wealth and power. The claim of being objective, of being motivated by the desire for truth, Gandhi would deny as being merely the façade behind which stood the desire for wealth and power.

Gandhi is not claiming here that every stated intention is a façade, behind which lies a hidden deeper motivation, he is not subscribing to a universal hermeneutics of suspicion. Rather he examines each case as a particular instance. It could be that a stated intention is not a façade but describes things as they are. Each instance is particular and must be judged by ‘the fruit that it bears.’

In the case of the West, Gandhi finds that the fruit of western materialism is western exploitation of the rest of the world. Modern western philosophy, its denial of ‘the good’, its rejection of Christianity, is a consequence of the ulterior desire for wealth and power. Gandhi sees this motive behind the entire history of modern western thought. This is what modern western civilization really is – a desire for wealth and power that results in the rejection of true Christianity.

Gandhi would consider Nietzsche thought as the culmination of this whole process – as an attempt to justify and legitimize modern European civilization in the face of the critique that arises essentially from Christianity. This critique sets up the ‘good’ as that which determines the validity of any action. A sense of guilt is the consequence of transgressing the moral order. Even though the whole idea of the ‘good’ and of a moral order had been challenged (sometimes implicitly, sometimes covertly) since Descartes, its power – to paralyze action, to infuse action with doubt, to infuse life with death – still lingered on. Nietzsche attempts to exorcise this power of the lingering idea of the ‘good’.

‘God is dead’ he intones. The ghost of the ‘good’ must be laid to rest; it must be buried so that no reminder may linger on. The effect of this lingering sense of the ‘good’ is nothing other than a sense of guilt. Nietzsche philosophy can be seen there as an attempt to exorcise this sense of guilt: guilt occasioned by the idea of the ‘good’, manifested internally by the conscience. Nietzsche attempts to exorcise this sense of guilt by explaining it away, by tracing the genealogy of morality. What Gandhi does is to analyze the attempt to explain away the sense of guilt. Gandhi attempts to trace the genealogy of immorality so that Nietzsche’s hermeneutic of suspicion is turned against itself.

In doing so, Gandhi is saying that the conscience exists, it is an existential fact and the attempt to explain it away is itself generated by ulterior motives. The conscience, the moral order manifested within man, acts as an obstacle to the actualization of one’s desires, of one’s instinct to the ‘will to power’.

There is a link between this attempt to disempower the conscience and modern civilization – this is Gandhi’s thesis. Modern civilization has disempowered the voice of conscience in order to accomplish its ends. The means of this disempowerment is to connect all morality to the ‘will to power’ so that the hermeneutic of suspicion is turned against morality, ethics, spirituality and the conscience. The way is made clear, in this manner, for a philosophy of ‘hardness’⁵,of elitism, where the man of integrity is he who denies this ‘falsity’ of moral pretension, this claim of acting on behalf of compassionate motives. The truthful man is thus he who acts without this moral pretension, he who acts with ‘hardness’.

This philosophy justifies and legitimizes imperialism, colonialism, and the exploitation of the ‘weaker races’ by modern western civilization. It is a justification of the imperial, of pre-Christian Roman imperialism. It is a philosophy that allowed modern civilization to reject its Christian aspects of love, compassion, and to return to its older imperial and elitist nature, a tendency initiated by Machiavelli in modern times.

Gandhi says therefore, there is truth; truth is the bedrock of his worldview. Man’s relationship to truth is one of responsiveness, one of being responsive to truth as revelation. The subjectivism toward reality is checked, man does not create truth, he must be responsive to it; he must allow it to be revealed through him. Yet at the same time, the danger of distorting truth to serve one’s own purpose is not overlooked. This awareness produces the very criterion for truth – ‘one must reduce oneself to a cypher’⁶, one must be continually aware of one’s motives; one must be continually self-conscious and self-examining.

‘Hardness’ for Nietzsche becomes the mark, the sign, of nobility and integrity. ‘Hardness’ means, within the Nietzschean perspective, the attitude of overcoming the temptation to act with moral deception; indeed, for Nietzsche, all acts of compassion arise out of self-deception, that is, out of a sense of moral righteousness that is merely a cover for the ‘will to power’. The ‘will to power’ disguised appears as compassion, etc., whilst the ‘will to power’, uncamouflaged and true to itself, appears as ‘hardness’. Since all actions, all moral positions are ultimately linked to the ‘will to power’, then the ‘will to power’ undisguised, uncamouflaged is truth. ‘Hardness’ from this Nietschean perspective is linked to truth. Thus, modern civilization justifies itself.

Gandhi by claiming, implicitly though it may be, that this connection between all positions and the ‘will to power’ is itself a product of the ‘will to power’, cuts the ground from below the entire Nietzschean perspective. Truth, therefore, becomes the central point of Gandhi’s philosophy – there is truth, and there is a power associated with truth. Such an idea delinks the statement, or idea proposed, from the motive behind that idea. The whole problem of doubt, introduced by Descartes into modern philosophy in its most radical form, de-links and disconnects man from any reality out there, and thus makes any statement about such a reality ultimately a matter of motives. Nietzsche’s’ philosophy is a direct consequence of the Cartesian epistemology. Gandhi’s challenges it by a more fundamental hermeneutic of suspicion and, having done this, clears the way for the idea of the existence of objective truth.

Gandhi challenges therefore the whole tradition of the subjectivism of truth, which began with Descartes. He does this by unleashing a hermeneutic of suspicion directed against western philosophy, wherein the supposedly unbiased objective search for truth is linked to an attempt to overthrow the conscience and justify actions that are exploitatitive. He is the anti-Nietzsche. Thus, Gandhi enables Christianity, Platonism and philosophies of the ‘good’, to counterattack the Nietzschean offensive; he provides a powerful defense of the legitimacy of non-violence, ahimsa and ethical values.

At the same time, he seems to be saying that the classical values of the West, its Christian values, and what Gandhi calls ‘ethical religion’ (meaning the essential aspects of all religions), have been rejected by the West and have found a new home in the oppressed Third World. What is ironic about Gandhi’s position is that in rejecting ‘modern civilization’, he is in fact championing classical western values and the idea of universal ethical values, for these find resonance in the ancient way. The modern West, according to Gandhi, has rejected these values.

This, therefore, is the dynamic that we must become aware of in understanding Gandhi’s ideas. One the one hand the West, after thousands of years of being the propagator of classical western values, Christian values and universal ethical values (the essential aspects of which Gandhi claims underlie all religion), appeared to have rejected them, whilst the oppressed Third World has become a home to these values. These values coincide with those of the ancient traditions by their emphasis on the ethical, the moral and the spiritual. The torch of civilization itself is being passed on to the oppressed peoples of the world. Gandhi sees his role as reconciling the ancient traditions to the coming of classical western and Christian values and the advent of what he calls ‘ethical religion’.

To accomplish this, Gandhi must reinterpret and reform the ancient tradition; he must uncover its pure form from the slag of centuries of deterioration and decay. In doing so, Gandhi prepares the tradition for its encounter with the West. Gandhi reforms through reinterpretation, one that Gandhi considers to be closer to the original interpretation.

The Post-Truth Society

Introduction

John Maynard Keynes famously said, “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.”¹The ideas that give rise to the geist of the age are usually the work of an “academic scribbler” or many academic scribblers who have imprinted their ideas on the intellectual history of a culture. It is illuminating to know those thinkers who have imprinted their ideas on any particular time period. It would help to understand the actions of “practical men” who imagine that they are acting on their own designs yet are the “slaves of some defunct economist” or even more accurately some defunct philosopher or philosophy. Such an interrogation would help us understand our modern age, for example, and when one speaks of the “modern age”, one speaks also of what many have called “post-modernity” with the understanding that “post-modernity” is embedded in modernity as a worm at the core of it.

The essays in this collection of essays attempt to trace some of the important philosophers and philosophy that have shaped our intellectual history and impact on our understanding of the world with regard to the idea of truth and the importance of truth to society. The essays do have a continuity to them in that they look at the various skeptical attacks on the mainstream intellectual tradition of the West and ultimately try to trace the evolution of our post-truth society. What were the important intellectual events that brought about the post-truth society? These essays point out some of those important events along the way.

The first essay is called a “prologue” because it introduces the problem that we are looking at and analyses its earliest tendencies. In that essay, we meet the key personality, Socrates, around whom the question of truth becomes so important. In the prologue, two important “sophists” debate Socrates – Callicles and Thrasymachus. They articulate what can be called “the will to power” doctrine. Callicles’ “will to power” doctrine is remarkably similar to Nietzsche’s ideas. Socrates attempts to refute this doctrine by, in a sense, exposing what this doctrine implies. He uses the method of elenclus, questioning and subjecting what is being said to reason and logic. Observers to Socratic interrogation claim that Socrates seems to paralyze those who are subjected to his questioning. The boldness of his speech throws off his opponents. However it is more likely that it is the logic and the contradictions that arise from illogical statements that paralyzes.

What is justice? – That is the inquiry. The dialogue with Callicles comes from the Gorgias, a book that is supposed to deal with the issue of rhetoric, Gorgias being a renowned expert on rhetoric. Socrates makes a distinction between rhetoric and truth. Rhetoric flatters the listeners in order to win them over; truth lays out the facts as they are without any intention of pleasing the listener. Because of this difference, the rhetorician has to vacillate between conventional opinions, and what is ordained by nature, i.e. between nomos and physis. It is this vacillation that Socrates exploits in his debate with Geogias, Polus and eventually Callicles. This vacillation does not go down well with conventional opinion, with nomos, so that Callicles in spite of the fact that he is rhetorically clever has to express ideas that will not please his listeners. It is this strategy that enables Socrates to overcome Gorgias, Polus and eventually Callicles dialectically.

All pleasures are not equally good, some lead to painful consequences. Accepting this proposition leads Socrates to suggest an ordering of pleasures and of activities that lead to a happy life. It is the ordering of values that makes happiness possible. In The Republic when Socrates debates Thrasymachus, the issue becomes one of finding that right order. Socrates wields his dialectical logic with particular effectiveness against Thrasymachus. In the debate, Socrates gets Thrasymachus to admit that the “will to power” leader of the community, or the shepherd of the flock, has less interest in the welfare of the sheep than in the profits of the job. This exposure of his intentions does Thrasymachus no good, he seems to be on the defensive from that point. Socrates proposes to prove that the just man is happier than the unjust. When Socrates argues that the unjust competes with both with his like and with his opposite, and then later claims that “justice was the peculiar excellence of the mind and injustice its defect” ², Thrasymachus falls strangely silent. He seems to have been charmed like a snake by a snake charmer remarks Glaucon. Whatever the reason, Socrates elenchus prevails.

The second essay, “From via antique to via moderna: The ontological revolution” looks at the medieval Augustinian/Aristotelian intellectual construct of “ordo” , what it meant in terms of the relationship between Church and State and the ontological revolution that swept away the concept of “ordo”. “Ordo” was a word used particularly by St. Augustine to describe the meta-physical, underlying order to the world. It was a system of “right-relations”, at the summit of which was God and which was maintained by all creatures knowing their place and submitting to this order. Man’s unchecked will and desires were the antithesis of this order. Rationality was the intellectual grasping of this order so that through reason we could fit into the order. The Church was the embodiment of this order. The state was the embodiment of unchecked will and desire. The priority of church over state represented the manifesting of “ordo”, the “right-relations” that represented the right order in the world.

To combat this intellectual system, it was necessary to challenge the idea of “ordo” and the metaphysics that sustained it. This was accomplished by Ockham’s “ontological revolution” – the championing of nominalism and the rejection of metaphysical entities, like the Platonic Good and the Augustinian “ordo”. By philosophically questioning the possibility of meta-physical entities, universals, etc., the Augustinian system of “ordo” was overthrown. Marsilio came along and applied the implications of that revolution to politics, if there was to be an order it could only be established and sustained by the State. It was not a matter of submitting to the metaphysical “ordo” as represented by the Church, order came about through the action of the State and it was maintained by the State. The State, therefore, took precedence over the Church in the new philosophical view of things. It, rather than the Church, was responsible for order and peace.

The next essay, “A Commentary on Martin Buber’s Eclipse of God” looks at Buber’s account of Nietzsche’s comment that God is dead. Buber claims that it is not that God is dead but rather he has become hidden from man. An eclipse has come between man and God. The philosophers seek “on the one hand, to preserve the idea of the divine as the true concern of religion, and on the other hand to destroy the reality of our relation to him.” It is the reality of our relation to God that is dead. But the death of God brings about a disquietetude in man and that disquietetude suggests that something is missing. It is that which is missing that Buber tries to articulate.

The relation between man and God is most starkly expressed in the relationship of the ethical to the absolute. Buber traces the history of the relationship of the ethical to the absolute. There were, according to Buber, two great attempts to relate the ethical to the absolute. The Oriental and Greek ancients had spoken about the moral order of the Gods, rita in India, it was a cosmic order to which man had to align himself. There was however in Ancient Greece a discordant note between the bios and the cosmos. Plato sought to reconcile this discordant note through the idea of the Good. Man should attempt to become what he is. This first great attempt to relate the ethical to the absolute, however, did not, according to Buber, succeed.

The second great attempt was accomplished by a group of “cattle breeders” united by their common faith in God. “For these Hebrews or Jews, it was not the cosmic order that was decisive, but its sovereign, the Lord of Heaven and Earth.” This second attempt came to grief, according to Buber, because of firstly the individualism brought about by the Christian attempt to relate to the individual rather than the people and secondly the emphasis placed on grace rather than works. Both weakened the relationship of the ethical to the absolute and made way for the secular envisioning of the relation between the ethical and the absolute.

Buber then analyzes why this weakening and eventual disappearance of the relation of the ethical to the absolute occurred. He traces it to philosophy’s part in objectifying the relationship through the process of reflection. ^“From reflection, to mastery, to conjuration, to annihilation, this is the sequence that results in the so-called death of God, or possible more accurately – the fall of man.” As Buber puts it the “I-Thou” relation became transformed to the “I-It” relation and this was because of philosophy’s tendency to reduce all things to an object of thought through reflection.

The following essay is entitled “A Defense of Philosophy: Martin Buber and the Prison of Umfassung”. Is philosophy guilty of this annihilation of the ethical to the absolute? Is it because of philosophy’s reduction of all things through reflection to objects of thought? This essay questions that assumption. It begins by examining the issues raised by Descartes’ resolution of the problem of doubt. By privileging the subjective as that which provides certainty, Descartes creates a chasm between the subjective and the objective. Buber takes up this problem. Initially he thinks that knowledge of the objective could be obtained through mysticism. The subject imbues the object. Buber however realizes that mysticism cannot work. Either the subject is dissolved in the object or the object is dissolved in the subject. We have either the extinction of the self or the subjectivization of the object.

Buber proposes that the subject-object chasm can be resolved by the I-Thou relation, the Umfassung or inclusion. In the I-Thou relation, the I is held fast by the Thou. There can be no reflection, since reflection can only come about when the I is freed from the Umfassung so that the “bending back” of consciousness can occur. It is when this “bending back” or re-flection of consciousness takes place that doubt can enter into the picture. Doubt enters in that moment of freedom. Buber puts forward the Umfassung as a relationship in which the I is held fast by the Thou. There is no separation, hence no possibility of re-flection, and as a consequence, no doubting. But in order to accomplish this, the Umfassung becomes a prison where separation and freedom are impossible.

Buber makes a distinction between two types of faith – emunah and pistis. Emunah is characteristic of the type of faith manifested in the I-Thou relation. It symbolizes a kind of trust. Pistis is the faith exemplified by a more reflective type of faith. Emunah is more characteristic of the Judaism, pistis is more characteristic of Christianity. Pistis thus leads to that sequence that Buber outlines – from reflection to mastery to conjuration to annihilation – that leads to the death of God. So it seems that for Buber it is Christianity’s alliance with philosophy, with re-flection, that results in the death of God.

In questioning this position, the author points to the example of Job in the Old Testament. The protective fence of God’s presence was taken away to test Job’s faith. But even when he was separated, Job kept his faith. The example of faith in separation, the author uses as that possibility of faith during re-flection. If anything, it demands a greater reserve of faith. So the enemy of belief is not re-flection, it is doubt. The Umfassung is a protective fence that prevents humankind from the test of faith that comes from separation and freedom. What man does when that protective fence is removed is what is important.

The next essay is entitled “Epistemological Skepticism”. It looks at the phenomenon of doubt with particular interest in the mechanics of doubt. In other words, how doubt operates to invalidate one’s idea of what is certain and true and how can this invalidation be itself repudiated. Three models of skepticism are looked at, Descartes, Hume and G.E Moore. Two of these are taken from one of my earlier books – The Righteous State. The purpose of epistemological skepticism and its resolution is to create an accepted discourse of things wherein particular truths are accepted as ‘true’ and other claims are considered discredited, or gauche and passé, out of favour and obsolescent. When a claim cannot be discredited in an absolute sense, it still may be rendered ineffectual and impotent by making it untimely or obsolete.

Epistemological skepticism paves the way for the post-truth society. It questions the possibility of all knowledge; in its most radical form it implies no knowledge is possible. If there can be no truths about reality, then all truths about reality are on the same level of certainty. One perspective about reality is as good as the next. So who determines what perspective or view about reality is accepted? And what mechanisms are operative in this determination? It may be that the ultimate consequence of epistemological skepticism is that a conventional reality of accepted truths is created. A conventional view of reality is propagated and rules the day.

In the case of Descartes, the paradigm of doubt is the evil genius or demon who doubts every assertion that is made. Descartes looks for an assertion, or truth, that cannot be doubted. He finds it in the assertion: “cogito ergo sum” – “I think therefore I am”. This is Descartes’ pivot of certainty. He attempts to move from this one, fundamental truth to validate all that he thinks is certain about the world. But to do so, Descartes needs to prove two things, firstly that there is a God and secondly that God does not deceive him. He accomplishes the first by proofs of God’s existence, most noticeable St. Alsem’s ‘existential’ proof, and having proved God’s existence, he easily counts as God’s perfection, his lack of deceptiveness.

The problem with this is that proofs of God’s existence are not as persuasive to other philosophers as to Descartes. Hume for example completely rejects proofs of God’s existence. Descartes is stuck therefore with privileged access to the subjective aspect of knowledge but debarred from knowledge of the external world. He cannot get out to the objective. As we saw in a previous essay, this was the problem that Buber attempted to resolve – to get out to the external world. Descartes’ philosophy, as Heidegger observed, results in a subjectivism.

Hume rejects Descartes’ rationalism and considers all knowledge as arising from sensations; he champions Lockean empiricism rather than Descartes’ rationalism. Hume puts forward a radical skepticism. There can be no connectivity between events in the subjective domain; any connectivity is just a matter of force of habit. What we perceive are sensations, mental events, and these cannot point necessarily to the existence of external objects; the continued existence of objects is again a matter of an extrapolation based on force of habit; cause and effect are nothing but habitual expectations. Hume attacks the basis of the proofs of God’s existence given by Descartes. Reason cannot prove the existence of anything. From his empiricism he postulates that we can only perceive sensations, mental events, and from these mental events we can say nothing about what is out there externally, we cannot deduce existence from events in our mind. In this way, he sought to undercut the basis of Descartes argument for God’s existence. These were some of the intellectual consequences of Hume’s radical skepticism. As Hume himself said about the effects of his radical skepticism “…I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning and can look upon no opinion even as more probable than another.” ³

There were three basic reactions to Kant’s encompassing philosophical reply to Hume’s skepticism. One came from Hegel and was taken over by the ‘Young Hegelians’ and Karl Marx who turned Hegel’s philosophy on its head and ended up with dialectical materialism. The other led through Schopenhauer to Nietzsche and post-Nietzscheans and led to the idea that truths are generated by the will to power. The third reaction came from Cambridge philosophers such as Russell, Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore and led in general to the idea that philosophy itself has gone off track because of its misunderstanding of how language works. To the radical, skepticism of David Hume, G.E. Moore suggested that we needed to get back to a ‘common sense’ idea of reality.

Moore gave his proof of an external world in this way: (1) Here’s one hand, and here’s another; (2) There are two objects that exist; (3) Therefore there is an external world. The point Moore is emphasizing is that we can know something and yet can’t prove it. However, in a sense, as this essay attempts to show, Moore’s proof is structurally similar to Descartes’ proof of the “cogito ergo sum”. The “cogito” is asserted the more it is doubted, in other words, doubt reinforces thinking, so that the more the “cogito” is doubted the more it asserts itself. How is Moore’s proof of an external world similar to this? The more the “common sense” perception of reality is denied, the more it asserts itself. This can be called the “sociological force” of common-sense reality.

Wittgenstein critiques Moore’s proof of an external reality. He speaks about “hinge propositions”. He considers “Here’s one hand, and here’s another” to be a hinge proposition. A hinge proposition is one which cannot be proved, but it provides a framework wherein discourse takes place. If one accepts the hinge proposition then discourse based upon it is logically coherent. It is a view that seems to be supported by Richard Rorty when he speaks about language as something which is not tied to representing reality but instead it is an autonomous region of coherent statements related to each other. Moore later on in life seems to admit that he cannot prove that the external world existed but his common-sense view of reality won the day in Anglo-American philosophy.

The common-sense view of reality appears to have become the default position of linguistic philosophy. If someone asks about the reality of the external world, then they are using language in a way that it was not meant to be used, linguistic therapy is the solution for this excursion outside the limits of language. Linguistic philosophy thus seems to draw boundaries within which we can speak properly, outside these boundaries we flounder linguistically. There must be clear criteria for determining the truth or falsity of statements. If these do not exist, then we are wandering outside the bounds of proper language. However, for those operating outside this idea of language, Continental philosophers for example, there can be no common discourse about what is true or certain.

In the “Post-Truth Society”, I look at the other stream of thought descended from initially the struggle between science and philosophy which led to an epistemological crisis addressed by Descartes. Hume’s radical skepticism followed and then Kant’s response to Hume’s skepticism enchanted and bewitched philosophy. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Heidegger followed and outlined what can be called the post-modern stream of thought. It is this stream of thought which is most closely associated with the “post-truth’ society. Nietzsche weaponized the skepticism and turned it against the tradition of Western philosophy initiated by Socrates and Plato. All truths are a product of the will to power. In this view of things, the weak can shortcut the circuit of the strong through an ideology that celebrates and glorifies weakness.

Schopenhauer is a key figure in the turn towards Indian philosophy as an alternative world view that explains and gives an answer to the ‘problem of life’. The noumenon to which Kant referred, Schopenhauer claimed to be the ‘will’. We could know the will because we had direct access to it. We are the will. The will, however, leads us to desire something and when that desire is quenched, we want something else. The will leads us to unceasing desire that led to a sense of continual wanting, an unquenching thirst that produced unhappiness and boredom. Schopenhauer found that Indian thought had recognized this ‘existential’ problem and has solved it through what he thought was the suppression and eventual annihilation of the will. There are problems associated with Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Indian thought in this way. We will say more of this later. Sufficed to say, Schopenhauer’s final solution to the frustrating demands of the will was – annihilation of the will, what Nietzsche later called ‘decadence’ or ‘nihilism’.

Nietzsche was very much influenced by Schopenhauer early on but later repudiated his teaching of salvation through the annihilation of the will. It was this decadence, as Nietzsche puts it – the will preferring to will its own annihilation than not to will – that causes Nietzsche to seek a new answer. It was as a response to this ‘decadence’ that Nietzsche proposed the will to power as fundamental. The will to power is life. Life is more important than truth. Truth should be subservient to life. Truth should be therefore subservient to the will to power. In other words, truth should be sacrificed to the will to power in order that the will to power be justified as being above all things.

Schopenhauer by reducing noumenon to the will opens the way for Nietzsche’s move to put the will to power, “life”, above the annihilation of the will and his move to put the will to power above truth. Schopenhauer utilizes Indian philosophy to confirm or consolidate his ideas, but is Schopenhauer using Indian philosophy as it is understood in the tradition? Swami Vivekananda was one of the first to question Schopenhauer’s understanding of Indian philosophy. There is some confusion in Schopenhauer’s idea of the will. Is the will maya i.e., a false reality, or is it Brahman? If we negate the will to find salvation, then Brahman can’t be the will. Ayon Maharaj asks: “First, does Schopenhauer simply equate the will with Kant’s noumenal thing-in-itself? Second, to what extent is Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will compatible with Vedāntic philosophy, according to which the holy Ātman/Brahman is the noumenal essence of ourselves and the universe?…Moreover, Vivekananda reproaches Schopenhauer for misinterpreting Vedānta, which conceives the noumenal reality not as the evil will but as the transcendental Ātman/Brahman beyond all willing and suffering.”⁴ Schopenhauer therefore ultimately proposes that the will itself is noumenal reality, a position that is neither Vedantic nor Buddhist.

Ultimately there is a confusion between maya and Brahman, between atman and jiva, between moksha and bondage, Schopenhauer by his ambiguity makes it possible for Nietzsche to seize upon the annihilation of the will as salvation in Schopenhauer and to act as the high priest for life as the will to power, glorifying the will and downplaying the transcendence of the will. As Strauss will later exclaim, Nietzsche champions the devil while denying God ⁵The will to power alone exists. In Nietzsche’s view according to Strauss, the Devil exists, God does not. It is a tragic mistake for man, and it creates a culture where truth is subservient to the will to power, and humankind is returned to the cave in darkness and despair.

The genealogy of the post-truth society can be traced from Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Kant’s noumenon as the will, his misinterpretation of Indian philosophy’s concept of liberation or moksha as the annihilation of the will, Nietzsche’s correcting of Schopenhauer’s annihilation of the will by equating life to the will to power, thereby valuing will to power more than truth since Nietzsche is choosing will to power as fundamental to life and since truth is a function of the will to power.

Nietzsche has arrived then at that position where he can defend and turn back Socrates’ rebuttal of the “evil doctrine” of Callicles and Thrasymachus. Socrates rebuttal depended on his analysis of the “doctrine” showing that the proponents of the doctrine were interested in the final analysis in wielding a selfish power over those whom they were put in charge of. They were using their position of authority to aggrandize themselves at the expense of those they were in charge. Socrates, in other words, exposed them; stripped them of their masks. Nietzsche turned the argument around. Socrates, in this narrative, was the one who should be exposed; it was he who was wearing the mask. Will to power is life; the “evil doctrine” is a life-giving philosophy. Socrates wants to rob those who are empowered with life, of the source of their life.

But the weapon that Socrates wields is the scalpel of truth, the method of elenchus. Socrates uses the dialectical analytics of truth-seeking to uncover what he claims is the truth of what his opponent is saying. To Nietzsche, however, there is no objective truth, all statements are products of the will to power, so Socrates’ truth-seeking is suspect. It is an inauthentic act because it does not profess openly its will to power goal. Socrates truth-seeking is an attempt to disempower those who are authentically expressing themselves. Socrates’ attempt to disempower stems from weakness. Nietzsche claims it stems from his ugliness and all that it sociologically entails. Nietzsche thus turns the narrative around. Socrates is being false because he does not admit the will to power that lies behind his words. His opponents propose the will to power, even though it is disguised, as that which is behind their claims. Socrates in his attempt to uncover the “evil doctrine” just authenticates his opponents. In denying the existence of God while allowing the existence of evil, Nietzsche validates the “evil doctrine”. The Good simply does not exist in this narrative.

But is Nietzsche himself mutilating and distorting the truth? The will to power doctrine is itself suspect. Because if all truths are expressions of the will to power, then the will to power doctrine is itself also an expression of the will to power. It is the will to power trying to justify itself. The will to power doctrine is the “father of all lies”, it generates all lies since at the core of its assertion lies a duplicity. In this view of things, the will to power doctrine is generated by the will to power. It is therefore not a truth about reality, but merely a perspective that attempts to empower philosophically those who proclaim the will to power doctrine. Nietzsche himself falls victim to this logic. Socratic logic outmaneuvers him, the Socratic elenchus remains unscathed. In the post-truth society, however, reason and logic are thrown out, Nietzsche has lambasted reason and logic as the cause of the nihilism of Greek culture; Socratic rationalism – is the cause of the death of Greek culture. Nietzsche has clearly seen what he needs to banish and exile – Socratic rationalism. Ignorance and darkness overcome everything. We are back in the cave.

Endnotes

Keynes, John Maynard. (1964) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, A Harvest/HBJ Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, New York ch. 24, p. 383
Plato. (1985) The Republic, translated by Desmond Lee, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, p. 100
Lavine, T.Z. (1984) From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest. New York: Bantam Books, p 168.
Maharaj, Ayon. (2017) “Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic critique of Schopenhauer’s Doctrine of the Will”.

Strauss, Leo. (1996) Note on a Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil in Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Bibliography

Descartes, Rene. (1972) Discourse on Method and the Meditations. Translated by F.E. Sutcliffe. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Hume, David. (1968) A Treatise of Human Nature. ed. E.C. Mossner (originally published 1739) reprinted 1968.

Keynes, John Maynard (1964) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, New York: A Harvest/HBJ Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers.

Lavine, T.Z. (1984) From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest. New York: Bantam Books.

Maharaj, Ayon. (2017) “Swami Vivekananda’s Vedantic Critique of Schopenhauer’s Doctrine of the Will”.

Plato, (1985) The Republic, translated by Desmond Lee, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Strauss, Leo. (1996) Note on a Plan on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil in Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Guyana: Ideological Opportunism

Ideology, Pragmatism and Ethno-Opportunism

Ferguson has claimed that Jagan displayed an “essential ‘innocence’” that was responsible for much of his political problems with the United States and the United Kingdom, while Burnham “displayed a clear-headed grasp of the realpolitik of his environment” (Ferguson 1999, xi, xii). In this regard the conflict between political pragmatism and ideological purity needs to be examined. Certainly in the heady days of the 1960’s, when the Third World was aflame with independence and liberation movements, political idealism was not unusual. But the argument holds that Jagan was perhaps carried away by the revolutionary geist and rhetoric of the age.

Ferguson states:

The Burnham-Jagan nationalist coalition of forces in the early 1950’s for a brief moment galvanised the Guyanese people and inspired hope for a unity of purpose in nation-building. But this short-lived unity of the nationalist forces across class and race was irretrievably ruptured and has left in its wake the political debris – including recriminations, attribution of blame, deep personal enmities and the like – for a persisting and intractable alienation of the two major racial groups in Guyana. Stoking the embers of the emergent racial alienation at the time were exceedingly powerful external interests that unabashedly exploited this crucial political divergence in pursuit of their own geo-strategic imperatives, linked to the Cold War.

In this connection, Jagan and the PPP provided the two major and relevant Western powers of the period, the US and the UK, with a ready-made reason for their divisive interventionism. In the harsh Cold war context of the moment, the Soviet-oriented communist sympathies of the PPP’s top leadership were objectionable to them from their strategic vantage-point of the life-and-death struggle with the Soviet Union. This was the basic stuff of realpolitik, conceived as external policy and behaviour linked closely to power and national interests and divorced from considerations of morality and principle. Within the framework of the prevailing global ideological contestation for supremacy, the fate of Jagan and the PPP was effectively sealed. (Ferguson 1999, xi)

The question arises – when does pragmatism dissolve into opportunism? What are the limits of pragmatism and ideological purity? For small, militarily non-powerful, Caribbean states, the question is critical. The PNM’s post-1991 championing of the private sector as the engine of growth, Manley’s conversion to the doctrine of the private sector as the engine of growth, Jagan’s acceptance of the same doctrine, all of this points to the vulnerability of Caribbean states in the American Lake and the success of the “ideological offensive” of neo-liberalism (or neo-conservatism) in the post Cold War age. How is the limit of resistance to the curtailment of autonomy in the region to be gauged? For certainly Ferguson’s comments do not advocate a purely rubber-stamp role to Caribbean governments. They raise a critically important and legitimate issue, particularly in light of the fact that governments in the region, including Guyana, have embraced the doctrine of market led reforms anyhow. The PPP no longer advocates a Marxist state; its policies are avowedly market oriented.

If the question of pragmatism and ideological purity is one way of assessing the history of Guyana from the 1960’s, Ralph Premdas’ study introduces another perspective. For Premdas the history of Guyana since that split in the PPP produced two ethnically based parties, competing in a struggle to the death for dominance. The moment of reconciliation was irretrievable lost. According to Premdas:

The moment of opportunity to build a new basis for inter-group relations and a new society was lost forever it seemed, when the two sectional leaders parted company, formed their own parties and pursued their own ambitions for personal acclaim and power. The moment of reconciliation is a rare event in a multi-ethnic state suffused with all sorts of underlying predispositions for ethnically-inspired behaviour. What makes the loss of that opportune moment even more unbearable is the following sequence of events in which the old divisions embedded in the social structure were exploited and exacerbated by a new form of mass politics. A new type of party emerged, constructed on the discrete ethnic fragments into which the old unified party had been broken. (Premdas 1995, 45)

One may ask – what caused this moment of opportunity to be squandered? If the events leading up to the split in the PPP are analyzed, it is clear that pressure was brought to bear on the publicly proclaimed Marxist PPP by both the United States and the United Kingdom. As Ferguson writes – “The British had their clear strategic concerns in Guyana. Apart from safeguarding their colonial economic interests, a major concern, echoing that of the Americans, had to do with ensuring that Guyana was not ruled by a communist government, closely aligned with the hostile Soviet Union… the Guyana debacle of the early 1960’s was unfolding in the context of the Cold war at its height…” (Ferguson 1999, xii, xiii).

Maurice St. Pierre describes the events after the election of the PPP in 1953 (St. Pierre, 1999, 103-128). British troops were sent to British Guiana in October of 1953 to prevent “Communist subversion of the Government”. A number of PPP government ministers were detained. Tensions between PPP supporters and the colonial administration under Governor Savage escalated. (For a description of these events, see: St. Pierre 1999, 103-128; Jagan 1997, 123-146; Burnham 1970, xix) The constant pressure brought to bear on the PPP exacerbated the fault line between ‘moderates’ and ‘Marxists’. Finally in February 1955 a motion of no-confidence in the executive was moved by the Burnham faction. It was clear that the British government was sending a message that Burnham was a more acceptable leader than Jagan, and that message was having an impact on Burnham and his supporters.

The motion of no-confidence led to a walk-out by the Jaganite faction. At this point a new executive was voted in and Burnham was chosen as leader of the party. The Jaganite faction reacted to this by expelling Burnham and some of his main followers – Jai Narine Singh, and Dr. J.B. Latchmansingh – and disciplining other supporters of Burnham (St. Pierre 1999, 135). Eventually the party split into two factions, one headed by Jagan, the other by Burnham. The pressure put on the party and on the society as a whole by the events following the elections of 1953 and the election of a publicly declared Marxist PPP government was the trigger that fractured the party and the society.

Premdas writes about “triggers” that precipitate ethnic conflict. He claims:

The factors that triggered ethnic conflict were clearly identifiable but occurred at different times during the evolution of the problem. These factors were: (1) colonial manipulation; (2) introduction of mass democratic politics; and (3) rivalry over resource allocation. It is necessary to cumulatively conceive of the problem in which these factors at different points served as precipitating ‘triggers’. At various times, a particular triggering factor deposited a layer of division which in turn provided the next step for the deposit of a new layer of forces to the accumulating crisis. (Premdas 1995, 185).

The pressure put on the government and the society after the 1953 elections by the colonial powers were indeed a form of “colonial manipulation” designed to prevent what these powers conceived to be a “communist subversion”. There is no doubt that the geo-politics of the era was the deciding factor in that intervention. As Ferguson says, “In the harsh Cold war context of the moment, the Soviet-oriented communist sympathies of the PPP’s top leadership were objectionable to them from their strategic vantage-point of the life-and-death struggle with the Soviet Union” (Ferguson, 1999, xi).

The issue becomes then – how do Caribbean governments draw that line between pragmatism and ideology? How do Caribbean governments represent the interests of the masses who elect them in the face of the possibly opposing interests of hegemonic powers? Again the construction of a political language, which allows maneuverability by governments in the region, seems vitally important. Certainly, without that common political language, the distinction between “pragmatism” and “opportunism” is a difficult one to make. Such a distinction can be made only by reference to the actual political outcome of the various political actors time in office, i.e. their deeds.