This diary brings in some important ideas from political philosophy.
It is based on the innovative work of the French polymath, Bruno Latour.
In this diary I hope to begin here on dailykos the discussion of these three ideas: justice, truth and power.
The quotations below are from the publishers’ information on a book on Bruno Latour’s political philosophy.
This is complex material so we need to get started.
Politics is the place where the nature of justice is determined. Take any big issue like the environment or income inequality – the nature of justice on these issues will be determined through politics. It isn’t that the nature of justice is already known on these issues and can be implemented like a marketing plan, it takes a political movement. I added the bold.
There is a lazy tendency in our era to moralize every political issue, as if politics were merely the implementation of an already understood justice, rather than –as Latour holds– the place where the nature of justice is determined. Someone is always held to be morally at fault whenever a political situation goes wrong; politics becomes an actual knowledge of the morally right, whose truth is opposed only by those corrupted through inferior character or vested interests. Schmitt is certainly a good antidote to this customary excess: for Schmitt, the political begins only where the posturing over right and wrong ends. The enemy is declared, but the enemy is only to be defeated rather than dehumanized and annihilated. Schmitt is invoked in Latour’s Gifford Lectures because climate change skeptics have become the enemy with whom we can longer reason, and with whom we are locked in existential struggle in our effort to compose Gaia.
The last sentence points out that climate skeptics have to be defeated on the political place, not dehumanized and annihilated. It might take the possibility of the end of the human race to force the needed action on climate change. Another example is the Trump phenomena that needs to be defeated on the political stage to halt the potential slide into fascism. A very important actor is the corporate media that benefits by the show.
Lets look at a real political issue and what is at stake and it involves water.
A lurking contemporary example might be useful. Since too many recent political issues are easily translatable into moral terms, let’s choose one that is not so easy to moralize. For some years there has been a dispute between Egypt and its sub-Saharan neighbors over how much water each nation is entitled to take from the Nile. Egypt has long pointed to a treaty, signed by all of its neighbors, that guarantees it the right to a sizable portion of the water. Beginning under President Sadat in the 1970s, it was the stated policy of Egypt to bomb any dam constructed on the Nile by any country other than Egypt itself. Over the past decade, the sub-Saharan countries began to chafe at this implied threat, and to demand that Egypt negotiate the issue. When Egypt points to the treaty that speaks in its favor, the southern neighbors counter that this treaty was signed under British Imperialism and is therefore no longer binding. If Egypt responds by saying that unlike its neighbors it receives little water from rain, the other countries complain that Egypt wastes too much water through inefficient irrigation practices— though of course Egypt can make the same complaint in reverse. In the meantime, climate change threatens to reduce the amount of available water even as regional populations boom.
Latour has been working out the anthropology of moderns for the last 25 years. In his 1991 book, “We Have Never Been Modern” he says that the modern involves walking backwards distinguishing ourselves from the primitives. Later with the rise of gaia he says that the field of anthropology has worked with cultures and places that have been wiped out by “progress” the same thing is now upon all of us ( and we have never been modern anyway) — the earth is now an actor not just a backdrop, and the wide spread anxiety is that upon us is that culture and humanity can be wiped out. In short, WE are the culture that can be wiped out. We need to transcend current approaches.
In this respect, policy can never just amount to a death match between competing and equally valid interests: one’s sense of these interests must be open to transformation by what transcends them. Latour is nothing if not the thinker who tries to overcome our self-understanding as moderns. In the case of politics, that means overcoming our conception of the political as being made of either Truth or Power, or even of a mixture of both.’
So modern’s view of politics as Truth Politics or Power Politics or both must be overcome. This is something to think about.
Here is a way to think about them.
Yet there is a different polarity in modern political theory, one that cuts across the Left/Right distinction and is also of far greater relevance to the political theory of Latour. I speak of the difference between what we might call Truth Politics and Power Politics. I have already mentioned Rousseau and Marx as exemplars of the Left version of Truth Politics: the truth is basically already known, but is prevented from becoming reality by various social, economic, or ideological obstructions. Yet there are also Right versions of Truth Politics, as found for instance in the teachings of Leo Strauss. Here Socrates is interpreted not as someone who seeks the truth without finding it, as the name philosophia suggests.Instead, Socrates already knows the truth: that humans are not equal, but are arranged in a permanent hierarchy of types that transcends all historical context. Philosophy is dangerous for the masses, yet philosophers must conceal this fact with coded writing and esoteric signals, convincing the masses that they are normal patriotic and religious citizens in order to avoid the fate of Socrates himself. But this elitism is merely the reverse of the supposed egalitarian truth, since both think the truth is already known to some smaller or larger group. This sort of Truth Politics has nothing at all to do with the thought of Latour, who completely forbids any direct access to a “truth” that might trump the uncertain struggles between competing actors.
Last night in his concession speech Bernie pointed out that this campaign is radical because it is based on truth. Drawing on the first sentence of the quoted paragraph, “there is a lazy tendency to assume that the truth is clear and/or already known. ” With just a few clicks you can find the truth on the web, for example. Look how long it has taken for the truth of income inequality to be documented and to become an important issue around the world. Look how smoke screens have been used to deny climate change. Note that Latour forbids any direct access to “truth” that trumps uncertain struggles between competing actors. (One of Latour’s contributions is the Actor Network Theory and actors are both human and non-human. The non human actor, gaia, is not the most important actor). In summary, the truth needs to be grappled with in an ongoing dialogue with various actors.
Power Politics also comes in both Left and Right flavors, though it is perhaps more common on the Right. For Hobbes, nothing can be permitted to transcend the Leviathan. To appeal to a religious truth beyond the edicts of the State, or even to a scientific truth beyond such edicts, is to risk a bloody civil war of all against all. Transcendence is therefore forbidden. In the case of Schmitt, politics begins only in the sovereign’s decision that it is no longer possible to reason with one’s enemy, so that an existential struggle commences. We see Left versions of this Power Politics in various postmodern theories that dispense with the category of truth altogether. While Latour is naturally allergic to any form of Truth Politics, he remains permanently tempted by Power Politics, and fights these temptations for the remainder of his career. The young Latour shows open delight in defending the claims of Hobbes and Machiavelli, in erasing the purported distinction between Might and Right, in admiring a hypothetical Prince who would not just destroy or manipulate his human rivals, but would successfully arrange gas, water, and electricity lines as well. This early phase, in which Latour broadens Hobbesian politics to include inanimate beings alongside humans, ends in his 1991 classic We Have Never Been Modern. When Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer claim that the power of Hobbes outstrips the truth of scientist Robert Boyle, Latour suddenly intones: “No, Hobbes was wrong!” This is not because Boyle was right instead, but because both Hobbes and Boyle are wrong— by reducing the world either to Irrefutable Right or Irresistible Might. Both truth or power are employed by turns to efface the always uncertain play of political networks, in which rhetoric and proof, strength and weakness, all stand on the same footing.
The quotations above are from the book by the philosopher Graham Harman “Between Truth and Power: Latour’s Political Philosophy found on the book’s web page.
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Graham Harman also wrote another short article about the book
Rather than brewing a lukewarm mixture of Truth and Power, it seems better to assume that there is something wrong with both positions. In a recent book, I attempted to trace the gradual realization of this point in the career of the French thinker Bruno Latour, who is not usually regarded as a political philosopher.
Truth Politics and Power Politics both share the same defect: both think that they already know how the world works. That is to say, either they already know what a good political system would look like if only it could be implemented, or they already know that truth is an illusion and the world is nothing but a winner-take-all struggle to the death. This ignores that politics at its best admits uncertainty as to the best course of action: a learned uncertainty that Latour credits to the diplomat, one of his favorite figures. This leads Latour at last to an “object-oriented” politics, in which the object is never fully grasped but still organizes political activity anyway: the true factors behind climate change, the prions probably but not definitely responsible for mad cow disease.
One typical feature of object-oriented politics is its claim that political issues arise in intermittent and indeterminate fashion and require the participation of all those affected by it. Whereas the journalist Walter Lippmann saw the frequent ignorance of the American public as a barrier to democracy, John Dewey viewed it more optimistically, as a signal of individual freedom not to be informed about each and every public issue. Instead, each political issue defines its own new public, and each issue remains a subject of controversy and uncertainty for as long as it is with us. Much like Socrates never reaching a final definition of justice or virtue, the democratic public never reaches the final truth of an issue, but also (one hopes) never resorts to brute force alone in dealing with it. Yet the opposite feature also follows. Just as no political issue can ever be thoroughly illuminated, we also cannot let action be delayed indefinitely by the unattainability of direct political knowledge. At some point a decision is needed.……
On the State of Nature Hobbes saw life as nasty and brutish, while Rousseau argued humans lack inherent differences in power and strength. A better framework for understanding division in modern politics: Truth Politics versus Power Politics.
This material points out that politics is extremely important. While not brought up here, the negative view of politics goes back to Plato and it is common wisdom that politics sucks, but that common wisdom is totally wrong. We now have issues on the table and these are organizing communities around them and connecting them to politics. The he said/she said politics and the horse races need to be replaced by an authentic debate of issues.