by Kristo Ivanov
University of Umeå, Institute of Information Processing, S-901 87 UMEÅ (Sweden), 1993
Phone +46 90 166030, Fax +46 90 166126, Email (Internet): kivanov@cs.umu.se
"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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.
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].
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]
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.
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"].
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.
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. 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.]
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.
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.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 wo