Suicide of the West by James Burnham

Author:James Burnham [Burnham, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781594037849
Publisher: Encounter Books

IV

‘IN THE END,’ PROFESSOR FRANKEL suddenly admits, throwing in the sponge, “to believe in ‘the goodness of man’ is not to commit oneself to any particular description of human behavior. It is not to say that men’s good deeds outnumber their evil deeds, or that benevolence is a stronger disposition in men than malice. It is, quite simply, to adopt a policy—the policy of looking for cures for human ailments, and of refusing to take No for an answer.”9 That is to say: the meaning of the liberal belief about human nature, like that of the liberal beliefs about progress and history, about education, reform and equality, and indeed like the meaning of the beliefs comprising any and all ideologies, is not solely and not primarily a matter of truth and falsity. It is exceedingly naive to suppose that we have solved the problem of an ideological belief, or even understood it, by proving it true or false.

“Derivations,” wrote Vilfredo Pareto (using that term in the sense I am giving to “ideologies”), “comprise logical [i.e., scientific and true] reasonings, unsound reasonings, and manifestations of sentiments used for the purpose of derivation: they are manifestations of the human being’s hunger for thinking. If that hunger were satisfied by logico-experimental [i.e., scientific] reasonings only, there would be no derivations: instead of them we should get logico-experimental [scientific] theories. But the human hunger for thinking is satisfied in any number of ways; by pseudo-experimental reasonings, by words that stir the sentiments, by fatuous, inconclusive ‘talk.’ So derivations come into being.”10

The various liberal beliefs that we have reviewed—each of them a rather complex affair—do contain or entail cognitive assertions that are either true or false; in nearly every case, as a matter of fact, false. But the matter does not end there. In spite of liberalism’s assumption to the contrary, a doctrine’s objective claim to truth—especially about moral, political and social issues—is the least of the motives that lead men to believe in it; nor will an objective proof that the doctrine is false have much influence in leading anyone to abandon it. Moreover it does not automatically follow that if a doctrine is false, it is therefore “bad.” Even though the doctrine is false, its consequences in practice, for individual conduct or for society, may still be superior to those from any available alternative.

The doctrines of the liberal ideology, then, besides making certain assertions that may be judged true or false, also express attitudes, values, ideals and goals. Some of these are palpable on the surface—any reader can intuit the sentiments expressed in Mr. Schlesinger’s more excited passages, such as some of those I have quoted—and others are hidden more or less deep under the verbal wrappings. Now we cannot prove attitudes, values, ideals and goals to be false or true in the same sense that we can prove cognitive assertions to be true or false. We can merely try to understand them clearly, to estimate their probable consequences, to relate them to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.