TOM WELLS: Good
afternoon, everyone.
Good afternoon.
My name is Tom Wells.
I'm the dean of the law school.
And I'm very pleased to welcome
you to our 2019 Dewey lecture.
And we're delighted to welcome
Stephen Lukes, Professor
of Sociology from NYU, as
this year's Dewey lecturer.
But I'm not going
to introduce him.
In a moment I'll introduce Brian
Leiter who will introduce him.
I just want to say
how appropriate it
is for us to have a lecture
today in law and philosophy.
The law school from
its very founding
has been a place
that's been dedicated
to interdisciplinary scholarship
and interdisciplinary learning.
The law school was really
founded on the idea
that lawyers need to
know more than just
narrow legal doctrines, that a
theoretical underpinning of law
and law making is
important to produce
the weld-rounded lawyer.
And the Dewey lecture was
founded nearly 30 years ago
in honor, of course,
of John Dewey.
And Dewey, of course, had
a deep and many connections
to the University of Chicago.
He was chair of the university's
philosophy department
for over a decade.
And while he was here, his
intellectual work really
helped launch the Chicago
School of Pragmatism,
which is one of the most
prominent and influential
intellectual movements of
the late 19th and early
20th century.
And I also am quick to point
out that while he was here
Dewey also created the
University of Chicago's
laboratory school at which
many of our faculty children
are educated.
And since 1981 we have
had the Dewey lecture.
The Dewey lecture was created
when our then dean, Gerhard
Casper, decided that the
law school should recognize
Dewey's ties to the
university and, in particular,
his contributions
to legal theory.
And so he corresponded with
philosopher Sidney Hook,
who was then president of
the John Dewey Foundation,
about establishing
the lectureship.
And Hook readily agreed to
Dean Casper's suggestion
of the Dewey lectureship
in jurisprudence.
And in so doing, Hook wrote
back to Dean Casper about Dewey
and said the following,
that Dewey's association
with the University
of Chicago was
so central to his philosophic
career and so fruitful
for the many
disciplines that it is
a source of particular
gratification
for the foundation to help
establish this lectureship.
And since its founding,
the Dewey lectureship
has had an illustrious history
here at the law school.
To give just one example,
John Rawls' famous paper,
"The Idea of Public
Reason Revisited,"
was itself a Dewey lecture and
published in our University
of Chicago Law Review.
And many esteemed philosophers
have delivered this lecture,
including Martin Senn, Ronald
Dworkin, Richard [INAUDIBLE],,
Hilary Putnam, Peter Singer,
Patton McKinnon, our own Martha
Nussbaum, and we're delighted to
add to that distinguished list
today with Professor
Steven Lukes.
And introduce him,
it's my pleasure
to introduce our colleague,
Professor Brian Leiter.
Brian is the Karl N. Llewellyn
Professor of Jurisprudence.
He is also the director of the
Center for Law, Philosophy,
and Human Values.
Now, all of us at
the law school know
Brian's research and teaching
are moral, political,
and legal theory,
both in the anglophone
and continental
European traditions.
And, of course, he is also
a very popular professor
and teacher of the
law of evidence.
He's author of numerous
articles in both law reviews
and philosophical journals he's
the author of numerous books,
including most recently Why
Tolerate Religion? and Nietzche
on Morality.
So welcome to our
2019 Dewey lecture.
And please join me in
welcoming Professor Leiter.
[APPLAUSE]
BRIAN LEITER: Well, it
is my great pleasure
to introduce this year's
Dewey lecturer, Stephen Lukes,
whose wide-ranging work
over the last 45 years
has been tremendously
influential
in sociology, in social
and political theory,
and in philosophy.
A look at just some of
his academic positions
over the years is testimony
to his cross-disciplinary
approach.
He was fellow and tutor
in politics and sociology
at [INAUDIBLE] College,
Oxford for more than 20 years,
then Professor of
Political and Social Theory
at the European University
Institute in Florence,
subsequently Professor of Moral
Philosophy at the University
of Sienna, also in Italy,
and, for the last 20 years,
Professor of Sociology
at New York University.
In 1987, he was elected a
fellow of the British Academy
in the section of the Academy
recognizing distinguished
contributions to
political studies.
In the early and mid
1970s, Professor Lukes
produced three monographs
in quick succession, first
his classic study
of Emile Durkheim--
His Life And Work, second
the book Individualism,
an examination of
different conceptions
of it throughout
history, and then
the hugely influential
Power a Radical View,
which will be coming
out in the third edition
in the near future.
Now in his last
work, Lukes famously
argues there are three kinds
of power social actors can
exercise, overt power,
consisting of the ability
to prevail over others
in the face of conflict
in decision-making situations.
By contrast, covert
power consists
in setting the
agenda in controlling
what is even allowed to become
a topic for decision-making.
The third kind of power,
however, is the most insidious
and the most hidden from view.
It is the power to shape
desires and beliefs,
to influence people's wishes
and thoughts, leading people
to make fundamental mistakes
about their real interests.
That last kind of
power, of course,
resonates with the Marxian
ideas about false consciousness
and ideological delusion.
In the late '70s and '80s,
there was a flourishing
of analytically rigorous
work by anglophone scholars
on Marx's ideas.
Professor Lukes's
seminal contribution
to this revival of
interest in Marx
was his 1985 Marxism
and Morality,
in which he aimed to
resolve the apparent paradox
that on the one hand Marxism
seems to dismiss morality
and moral talk as
perniciously ideological,
obscuring the exercise of power
by the dominant economic class,
and yet, at the same time,
makes moral judgments of his own
all the time.
We were fortunate that Professor
Lukes discussed this work
with us at the Law and
Philosophy workshop
this past Monday.
Also in the 1980s,
Professor Lukes
edited, with the
philosopher Martin Hollis,
a famous collection of essays
on rationality and relativism
to which he also contributed.
It was, in fact, the
first book of his I
bought when I was an
undergraduate no less.
Relativism has been an
ongoing concern in his work,
manifest, for example,
in his 2003 collection,
delightfully titled, Liberals
and Cannibals The Implications
of, Diversity and his 2008
book on moral relativism,
as well as his writings to the
present day on what we might
call the sociology of morality.
In 1995, Professor Lukes
turned his hand to fiction,
in particular political
and intellectual satire
with The Curious Enlightenment
of Professor Caritat, a book
now translated into more
than a dozen languages
around the world from
Portuguese to Thai.
The review of the book
from Publishers Weekly
gives a sense for why
it has proved so popular
with readers around the
world, so let me share that.
Not many pages into the book,
its hero, Professor Nicholas
Caritat, a prominent
scholar of the Enlightenment
is given the nickname
Doctor Pangloss.
Having been arrested by the
military junta of the country
Militaria on the grounds that
his work foments optimism,
Caritat has just
been sprung from jail
by members of the Visible
Hand, a guerrilla group.
The Hand gives him a mission.
He must find quote
"grounds for optimism"
and quote "the possible world".
Caritat visits a
string of countries,
not to be found in our atlases,
that are founded on or warped
by various political
philosophies.
A citizen of the country
Utilitaria informs him
that quote "a high
suicide rate, provided
the suicides are
appropriately distributed,
can make a real contribution to
the overall sum of happiness."
[LAUGHTER]
In the laissez-faire
paradise of Libertaria,
it isn't long before
Caritat finds himself
on the street with the homeless.
Luke, says Publishers Weekly,
writes with great humor
and competence as the
insouciant Caritat
is buffeted from one
false utopia to the next.
Toward the end,
Caritat gets the point
and expresses his distrust
of utopias in a moving
letter to his
children, part of which
reads, another
thing I have noticed
is that everyone
I have met so far
seems to have stopped learning.
They seem as if trapped in
their language and their world
and quite closed to one another.
Well, my all too brief
overview of just some
of professor Lukes's work
makes clear he is plainly
not someone who has
stopped learning,
and he remains open to many
different worlds modeled
throughout his writings by
his generous and intelligent
engagement with multiple
disciplines that
can shed light on our social,
political, and moral lives.
Today, Professor Lukes will
talk us about power, truth
and politics.
So please join me in welcoming
Stephen Lukes as the 2019 Dewey
Lecturer lecture in
Law and Philosophy.
[APPLAUSE]
STEPHEN LUKES: What a
delightful introduction.
Thank you so much.
I'm inclined to
tell another story,
just since you were kind enough
mention my saterical novel
about Professor Caritat
travelling through imaginary
worlds.
I remember that I gave
this lecture in Oxford.
And John Rhodes, one of your
previous Dewey lecturers,
was present.
And one of the things you
didn't mention, Brian,
is at the end of the
novel, end of the story,
Professor Caritat
is still in search
of the best possible world.
And he is in search of
Egalitaria, of which
I say very little in the novel.
But John Rhodes, who was present
at the lecture, came up to me
afterwards.
And he said, that was a
very interesting lecture,
but I'd like to know
more about Egalitaria.
[LAUGHTER]
And I said to him, so would I.
[LAUGHTER]
So it's such a pleasure to be
here and such a [INAUDIBLE],,
that after thanking
you, which I do warmly,
I'm going to leap straight into
the topic, which is certainly
Dewian in it's in theme,
but not necessarily
in its argumentation.
BRIAN LEITER: [INAUDIBLE]
STEPHEN LUKES: But it
doesn't matter, Brian,
if you were worried
about the-- there
were a couple of sentences
I want you to have,
as it were, available
to you to read.
And I'm going to read
them out, and then I'm
just going to ask
you to remember them
because they formed,
so to speak, text
of what I wanted to talk about.
They're both from Hannah Arendt.
And the sentences
are these, just two,
from her famous essay, Politics.
Truth in Politics.
The first sentence
is this, no one
ever doubted that
truth and politics
are on rather bad terms
with each other was
the first sentence.
The second sentence
is a question.
And the second sentence
is the question,
is it in the very essence
of truth to be impotent
and in the very essence
of power to be deceitful?
So those two questions
are basically
what prompt would
form essentially
the frame of what I want to try
to explore tonight with you.
So just taking that
second question
about the essence of truth
and it being impotent
and the essence of
power being deceitful,
rather than discussing what
is to be an obscure question,
namely what the essence of
power and the essence of truth
might possibly be, I propose
that we examine instead
several more specific
questions namely, in what ways
truth might be deceitful,
and in what ways
truths might be impotent,
and in what ways
power may be deceitful.
That's to say, and in
particular, a more specific
question, how can power
render truth impotent and why
these questions are acute in
a special way within politics,
hence my title, Power
Truth and Politics.
These seem to be especially so--
these problems arise especially
acutely in present-day politics
here in the United
States and elsewhere.
And so I'm going to conclude
by asking why that might be.
So let's start with truth.
Now, truths, of course, come
in all shapes and sizes.
And these range from statements
of straightforwardly brute
facts like, for example,
who won the popular vote?
to truths and involving
interpretations
of meaning and [INAUDIBLE],,
such as, for example,
deciding whether there
was collusion with Russia
in the 2016 election.
Ranging from those sorts
of questions or truths
to scientifically warranted
claims such as those
concerning, for instance, the
extent and causes of climate
change, and then to
further, even more
a wide-ranging and
complicated truths,
like, for instance, the extent
of inequality in society over
[INAUDIBLE].
Then of course there are
what [INAUDIBLE] calls
these truths in the title of
her recent historical book
regarding political
equality, natural rights,
and the sovereignty of the
people, which Jefferson wanted
to call sacred and
inviolable truths
but was overruled by Franklin
who called them self-evident.
Now, there, of course,
also claims to truth
where the great question
of whether they can be
true or false is in question.
And some doubt, or used
to, that moral entitlements
are capable of truth, and
others that metaphysical or
ontological statements,
such as Mrs. Thatcher's
famous statement that there's
no such thing as society,
whether they could be
thought of as true.
Now the trouble becomes--
[INAUDIBLE] it's
something that is--
is it all clear?
Yes.
I want to say this, that
truths become impotent
when they fail to
register, that's
to say when they're
ignored or rejected
or when [INAUDIBLE] recognized,
they fail to guide action.
When this happens, there are
two kinds of explanation.
One is psychological,
so that one can bring
this first kind of failure--
one can think that the
psychological failures
as failures of
rationality, that's
to say the topic that's been
intensively and extensively
studied by cognitive scientists
and behavioral science,
for example, wishful
thinking and the like.
Now the explanation here,
where the explanation
is psychological, where it's a
question of internal problems,
this is typically in terms
of the mechanisms that
are internal to individuals
taken separately
or, indeed, people taken
interactively, as in the case
of groupthinking.
Or secondly there are external
explanations rather than
internal ones, that is to
say in terms of the impact,
direct or indirect, of others
on how people view facts
and issues, as, for
example, how they're
framed by politicians, teachers,
journalists, intellectuals,
and opinion influencers.
Now these two kinds
of explanations,
internal and external,
are obviously not
mutually exclusive.
External actors can,
deliberately or not,
and whether by acting
or merely existing,
activate and reinforce the
psychological mechanisms that
conceal, or distort, or
render inoperative truths that
would otherwise be seen
and accepted as true
and acted upon.
So truths can be impotent, and
the causes of that impotence
can be internal or external
or, very likely, both.
But as George
Orwell warned, what
is proclaimed to be truth can
also be able to [INAUDIBLE]..
People across an
entire society can
be brought to accept,
or at least not contest,
official truths which
shape their world.
In totalitarian
regimes, he wrote,
what is claimed to be
objective truth can control
the past as well as the future.
And I'm reminded of
that old Soviet joke
that the future is
certain, and it's only
the past that's unpredictable.
[CHUCKLE]
This relation of truth
and power in politics,
that dominated much of the
20th century, also, of course,
preoccupied Hannah Arendt.
But in the essay
from which I quoted--
with the two sentences
with which I began--
she focuses rather on the way
in which truth in politics
is always perspectival
and a question
of the matter of the
entanglement of opinion
and belief and it successfully
transmitted and acknowledged.
And how this happens
depends upon what
she calls the free agreement
and the consent, with which she
was preoccupied, in a
well-functioning politics.
Now what this illustrates
is an important point
that Ben Williams once
made, that effective methods
of discovering or
transmitting truths
will depend on the kinds
of truth in question.
So in various
different domains--
and I'm going to focus on this--
in various different domains
of life, informal norms
and institutional rules
and procedures
operate to control
the effects of partisanship,
and in general, to counter
to the role of interests
in propagating, distorting,
concealing, or
interpreting the message.
So we can call these practices
of truth governed, that is,
by norms, rules, and
procedures-- the point of which
is to enable and
constrain what counts
as reasoned theoretical debate.
So for instance,
science and journalism--
I'm going to take these four--
in science, in journalism,
and the legal system,
and in public administration.
In all these four
institutional spheres--
you could pick others, but
I'm going to focus on them--
there are distinctive,
recognized,
professionally-sanctioned
norms, rules, and procedures,
violations of which may
be less or more serious,
ranging from occasional
lapses to malpractice.
There are four distinctive ways
of securing and maintaining
trust within the
relevant communities.
And they consist in distinct
ways of grounding results--
scientific theories,
journalistic stories,
legal verdicts, and
administrative decisions
on properly-acquired evidence--
and limiting and really
avoiding falsification,
fraud, and corruption.
So much for truth--
now power.
It's going to be a
bit telegraphic here--
I try to say what I want.
Power-- why should anyone
think power-- as Aaron put it--
is inherently deceitful.
Michel Foucault thought this.
He said, for instance, power is
tolerable only on the condition
that it masks a
substantial part of itself.
Wendy Brown, in a
recent book, similarly
says that power must
deflect from the operations
and fashion itself as non-power.
In other words,
Foucault and Brown
are both saying that
power is self-conceived.
[INAUDIBLE]
Norms, in particular,
Wendy Brown
says, governed
precisely by seeming
to be unrelated to power.
But they are generated by
power and operate as power.
And she has in mind
particular gender
and sexuality norms and so on.
But this is what both Foucault
and Wendy Brown are saying.
Now, I think we need to do a
bit of conceptual housecleaning
here.
Because at it's most general--
I mean we to know, let's
say, what we mean it.
At the most general,
it's really quite banal.
It just needs basically
within it's outcomes,
whatever they may be.
More specifically,
in the context
of sexual relations,
the capacity
for significant social outcomes,
whether positively or negative.
But let's be more precise.
Let's say that power,
for the purposes at hand,
is the capacity to secure
the compliance of others--
of another or others.
Essentially, that's
what power is.
Now what Aaron, Foucault,
and Wendy Brown are up to is
they're focusing, however, on
the yet more specific concept
as an asymmetric relationship.
That is to say,
well the powerful
what they have over another
thing they do is they get them,
when they exercise that
power to act or think
or both, in a way that is
against their interests
and accords of interests
of those with power.
What's significant here and
relevant to an [INAUDIBLE]
claim is the suggestion,
when power [INAUDIBLE] is
successful, that's because
the compliance is secured
in conditions that put in
question the [INAUDIBLE] given
consent the person or
persons subject to--
that's her idea.
The compliance may be
induced by confronting people
within unfavorable
several options,
or it may result from the
processes or mechanisms
by which it's brought about,
or by previous history
of injustice.
The point being is that--
the compliance may be
unwilling or willing,
but if it's willing, it
must be under circumstances
that prevent or impede
adequate judgment
in the light of the
relevant evidence or facts.
So let's call that power
now more specific still--
domination.
Domination can be,
and very often is,
coercive, and in that
case it involves threats.
But it could also
be a matter of--
me making you an offer
you can't refuse,
or it could indeed be something
like coercive inducement--
we're not making, or
withdrawing, or threatening
to withdraw an offer [INAUDIBLE]
represent a significant loss.
The increasingly numerous
cases of sexual harassment
that we've been hearing about
illustrate the various ways
in which that can happen--
submitting where the [INAUDIBLE]
would submit to the [INAUDIBLE]
power.
Here, of course, there
need be no deceit.
But domination will be less
coercive or non-coercive.
[INAUDIBLE] the threat or
a [INAUDIBLE] to the extent
that people are
willingly accepting
that those who are more
powerful should be there.
So this leads us, I
think, to consider
the various ways in which that
willingness [INAUDIBLE] power.
Securing others' compliance
may of course be non-dominant,
and in advance of
people's interests,
in a domination-free situation.
But power and domination
occurs where, to the extent
that compliance is brought about
and sustained by the powerful.
For example, and Brandon's
very helpfully gone
through various possibilities--
in the controlling the agenda,
[INAUDIBLE] what has
been called mobilizing
the bias of the
situation, or it can
be in actually voluntary
compliance to domination
may not even require any
kind of manipulation,
or it could just involve
habituation, loyalty,
deference, and so on.
These are all alternative
ways in which,
whether through acting
or even not acting,
compliance is secured.
Now finally, we've reached
the topic of course.
Sorry about the long,
labyrinthine way,
but here we are.
The question is, in
what ways can power
render truth impotent?
And it needn't be by
deceit, of course.
That's my claim.
But how can it happen?
It can happen in several ways.
Power can be a danger to truth
in various domains of life.
And I'm coming now back
to the four domains
that I mentioned--
science, journalism,
the law, public administration.
These are all spheres
of collective reason,
I claim-- that is, the practices
in each ideally at least
involve arriving at results
guided by reasons where
the results are such that the
participants agree in taking
them to be justified as true
in the light of evidence
and reason.
These practices are in danger
from within and without,
and they're protected
from these dangers
by formal and informal norms,
so that the reasoning can
proceed as it should.
External dangers threaten the
boundaries of the practices,
and as these are--
and also-- so these are then
policed, the boundaries.
For example, what counts
as scientific theorizing
is continually in question--
notably in the so-called debate
between evolutionary theory
and intelligent design.
[INAUDIBLE] journalism is
threatened from without--
in many places,
journalists work and live
in danger of their lives.
These days in the
United States, they
have to deal, not only with
politically motivated assault
as purveyors of fake news,
but also as their jobs
and opportunities fall
away with the proliferation
in social media of untrained
and inexperienced citizen
journalists.
In the law, there is a constant
question of how to maintain
the principal-- some
say fiction at least--
of the public's belief that
legal reasoning and decision
making by judges from
the Supreme Court down
are autonomous, governed
by precedent and statute,
rather than interfered with
by [INAUDIBLE] politics.
And there's the question
about the relationship
between the law and religion,
and the law and morality.
These boundaries are constantly
having to be policed.
And similarly in
public administration,
rational bureaucratic
practice must
be protected from
public interference,
so that there's a
line to be maintained
between public and private.
Officials and
government agencies
must interpret the missions
of their institutions,
typically framed it
as a public good--
[INAUDIBLE],, protecting the
environment and the consumer,
and whatever.
In sum, in a well functioning
democratic society,
there are several answers
to these questions
of section boundaries around
the practices in question.
Moreover, the dangers
to these truth seeking
practices from within--
I've just been so far talking
about the dangers from without,
and the need to police the
boundaries-- from within,
the dangers have to
do with participants
violating the respective values
and norms of those domains.
And in these cases,
[INAUDIBLE] cases,
there is rivalry always
among, for example, scientists
engaging in scientific
research teams,
competing for
grants for instance.
Journalists compete
for work, [INAUDIBLE]
professional lawyers compete
for clients and promotion,
and state agencies
compete for resources.
The point being, however, that
when appropriately regulated,
these practices should
function against the background
of mutual trust,
respect, and cooperation.
Science, journalism, the law,
and public administration
function within what sociologist
[INAUDIBLE] called fields.
That's what [INAUDIBLE]
means by field.
That is to say, social spaces
within which actors mutually
recognize one another within
communities with regard
to professional or
specialized practices,
and shared assumptions
in which they compete
for what, in each field, counts
as success in realizing shared
value--
or as [INAUDIBLE] calls
it, symbolic capital--
in ways that are enabled and
constrained by shared norms.
And scientists and
journalists, payment--
so here, just to indicate
more specifically--
scientists and journalists, they
both aim, in different ways,
at what they respectively
call objectivity as they
respectively interpret it--
lawyers aim at implementing
the rule of law;
public administrators, at
providing and protecting
public goods.
But in all [INAUDIBLE] cases,
they have a professional
interest in securing
recognition by winning--
but the point being
that they have
to win by the rules of
their respective games.
They can't succeed in
these different ways
by resorting to any means,
by ignoring or changing
the rules-- that is
by aiming directly,
no holds barred, at
outcomes come what may.
What matters is that their
activities should lead outcomes
that are justified by
evidence properly acquired
and adequately interpreted,
and communicated,
according to the [INAUDIBLE]
professional community
standards.
The norms in each case
in these various fields--
for example,
replication in science,
fact-checking in journalism,
the bursary system
in Anglo-American criminal law;
bureaucratic rules and public
consultation administration
[INAUDIBLE] examples--
these are filtered [INAUDIBLE]
designed to ensure that--
what I've just said--
ensure it by winnowing
out [INAUDIBLE]
idiosyncrasy, incompetence,
favoritism, nepotism,
negligence, subterfuge,
skullduggery, malpractice,
fraud, and corruption.
They function to
restrict the power
of interest-driven parties
to render truth impotent.
Now, question.
Are they, in purporting
to do so, deceitful?
I want to return to this point--
to Wendy Brown's view that I
mentioned [INAUDIBLE] before,
that they are.
She thinks they are--
she thinks in other words
that norms govern
precisely by seeming
to be unrelated to power,
but are generated by power
and operated as power--
that's what she says.
Well, that view,
who's [INAUDIBLE]
view [INAUDIBLE] view.
This view-- [INAUDIBLE] his
point is to denaturalize norms
of for instance
gender and sexuality,
unmasking them as
patriarchical, for instance--
is when generalized, I think
unhelpfully undiscriminated.
It only appears plausible
if we're taking power
in its completely generic,
symmetrical sense,
of the ability to secure
compliance with [INAUDIBLE]..
Norms involve power in this
sense of [INAUDIBLE] a very
broad sense.
But if they're to function--
they have to-- they [INAUDIBLE]
very [INAUDIBLE] journalism,
because they have to be
enforced and policed.
But in the asymmetric sense of
dominating power that we are
now using, the truth tracking
norms I have just been
considering-- so in science,
journalism, the law,
and public administration,
they're in a different
category, because if functioning
well and as they should,
and though permanently
liable, of course, to abuse--
which can even as in the law
be serious and systematic
[INAUDIBLE] vulnerable--
these norms are needed for
both protection and detection.
They are there to protect
against dominating power
and to detect its
many manifestations.
[INAUDIBLE] having talked
about truth in power,
and the way in which power
can render truth impotent
[INAUDIBLE] politics.
We can now begin to
see I think why it is--
if politics is a field,
in [INAUDIBLE] sense--
it is distinctive, politics
from these other fields,
in a way that renders
plausible [INAUDIBLE]
claim that political
power and truth
are on rather bad
terms [INAUDIBLE]..
Though I'm going to suggest
how bad these terms would be
would depend on two
[INAUDIBLE] conditions.
[INAUDIBLE] fields I'm still
going to discuss-- science,
journalism, the law, and
public administration--
we can surmise that the
prospects for truth in politics
depends on how political
partisanship works.
The prospects will be rather
better under two conditions.
The first is that there
are institutional rules,
and procedures, and uniform
norms that part of which
tends to track truth and
are generally recognized
by participants, both within
and outside [INAUDIBLE],,
as legitimate--
specifically that means
that political actors and
institutions be responsive
to evidence-based results.
Science, journalism,
and the law,
and public administration--
in other words,
the very fields I've
been talking about--
have to be operating
well and respected.
And it also has to be the case
that these institutions are
largely autonomous--
that is, independent
of political interference and of
extraneous personal [INAUDIBLE]
action or [INAUDIBLE] interests.
It would also require,
among other things,
standard equal rights, freedoms
of speech and association
and so on.
Contested elections,
fair representation
of interests and opinions, and
another such constitutionally
liberal sort of things,
and an active civil sphere.
But the second condition
that I think is crucial
here is that citizens
actually recognize one another
as participating in the
same set of practices--
that is, following agreed
rules and procedures--
as forming a single,
all encompassing
unity of citizenry,
despite what may
divide them, whether it may
in fact be dividing them.
So here's the question--
is that true of politics?
That is to say is it true that
there is a common area of trust
and a basis of functioning at
truth tracking institutions?
The question isn't whether a
given set of presuppositions
are accepted, and what's
taken this common ground
by adversaries, or
even what the game is
that all are participating in.
The question is, to what
extent is that at work?
And here's my thought-- it seems
to me that question is itself
a political question.
It is self-evident
that politics can't
be understood as functioning
only under its [INAUDIBLE]
the [INAUDIBLE] truth making
conditions I just mentioned.
Some would say ideal conditions.
Nor is it obvious
that politics is
what is widely
understood as democratic
in democratic [INAUDIBLE]
open, true democracy.
We have to, in other words, see
political-- the political field
is different in the sense
that the question of what
the game is that people
are playing is itself
a political question.
I want to distinguish between
two kinds of view about this.
On the one hand, you have
so-called self-described
realists.
According to realists,
these conditions,
the ideal conditions--
under which politics
would be a field
in which the favorable
conditions are at work--
is so distant from actual
conditions of political life
that they're even relevant
to an understanding of what's
the practice of politics, even
democratic politics, really
amounts to.
Realists argue that
to view politics
in the light of ideal
function as more
or less this distant-- as
more or less distant from it,
but seeing it through the
lens of ideal politics,
is misconceived.
Rather, they say, we should
start from the other end,
so to speak, from Hobbes
rather than from Rousseau,
from Karl Schmidt rather
than from [INAUDIBLE]..
So let's make--
let's say that there
are two views of politics.
We could call it the agonistic
view and the deliberative view.
Chantal Mouffe proposes a view
of proper democratic politics
as [INAUDIBLE] you might
say [INAUDIBLE] realists do.
She thinks of
democratic politics
as what she calls
agonistic pluralism
where agonistic signifies
[INAUDIBLE] antagonism,
but which is tamed,
however, or sublimated.
Antagonism, she writes, is
struggle between enemies--
while agonism is struggle
between adversaries.
There may be shared
adhesion to the principles
of liberal democracy,
to liberty and equality,
but no agreement as to their
meaning and implementation,
certainly none that
could be reached
through deliberation
and rational discussion.
The most to be hoped
for is compromise.
Compromise is seen
as temporary respites
in an ongoing confrontation.
So in this view, politics is all
about taking sides, affirming
commitments of
passionate solidarity,
and making decisions,
including decisions
about when it's reasonable
to believe [INAUDIBLE] true.
So it's not an accident
that recently she
has argued in very strong terms
for what she calls left wing
populism, to confront the
right wing populism that we're
living with.
Now the contrast [INAUDIBLE]
the deliberative view--
and I think you find this among
[INAUDIBLE] people who've been
[INAUDIBLE] Arendt, but also
in [INAUDIBLE] and here,
what we can say is
the central idea is--
this rejects the idea of deep,
irreconcilable, intransigent,
intractable disagreement,
taking politics rather to be
a mutual--
just a mutual enterprise of
justification and reasoning
and deliberation.
Now the deliberative
model elaborated
by political theorists--
I wouldn't go into it because
I'm sure you're all familiar
with it-- but this idea,
elaborated by political
theorists, finds a home or
counterpart in what political
scientists Bartels and Achen in
their deflationary recent book
Democracy For Realists callled
the pub theory democracy,
which says, as they put it,
passed into everyday wisdom--
not just in the United States,
but in the [INAUDIBLE] other
countries-- according to which
democracy makes the people--
rulers' legitimacy derives
from their consent.
[INAUDIBLE] Hoffman
simply assumes
rationality, mutual
consideration,
the patient exchange of
publicly justified reasons
for supporting public discourse.
Realists, they
maintain, acknowledge
that identity is
politically powerful,
even [INAUDIBLE] the [INAUDIBLE]
theory of democracy, which
is the one they are criticizing
here, obscures or ignores,
and they go so far as to claim
that even the most attractive
[INAUDIBLE] seeking the
most attentive citizenry,
mostly about the
policy positions
of their political
parties as their own.
They are mirrors of their
parties, not their masters.
Well, unlike the other
fields considered--
science, journalism, the law,
and public administrations--
in politics, we
can't, or perhaps
can no longer, assume
a settled consensus
in which people mutually
identifying with one
another agree about the game
that they're participating is,
where the boundaries
of politics lie,
and what norms should
govern its practice.
And I shall now
suggest, we may also
conclude that trouble,
maybe very serious trouble,
is in store for truth--
when, to use Chantal
Mouffe's distinction,
agonism morphs into antagonism.
That is to say, when
adversaries become enemies,
where there is adherence of
the relatively safe zero sum
agonistic view of politics,
and their friends--
those adherents come to view,
the very deliberative view
itself, the very
deliberative view itself,
that the social practices that
embody it, and its adherents,
no longer as adversaries,
but as their enemy.
So now, I just want to come
to a little bit of history,
which is in our memories.
In November 2009,
Rush Limbaugh, when
discussing something that was
called Climategate on his radio
program, which was in fact
a manufactured controversy
in which scientists at
a research institute who
were falsely accused
on right wing
media of conspiring
to manipulate results
by global warming.
He said this, Rush Limbaugh--
scientists are bought
and paid for by the left.
I'm quoting now from Limbaugh.
He said is-- what this fraud,
what this uncovering of this
hoax--
it wasn't a hoax, but--
exposes, is the corruption that
exists between government and--
academia and science,
and the media.
Science has been corrupted.
We know the media
has been corrupted.
We know the media has been
corrupted very long time.
Academia has been corrupted.
None but what they say is real.
It's all lies.
He called these
institutions-- that is to say,
government, academia,
science and the media,
the four corners of deceit.
And he then went on to say
that he and his listeners
lived in a world apart--
we live in two universes.
Our universe-- one
universe is a lie.
One universe is an entire lie.
Everything run, dominated, and
controlled by the left here
and around the world is a lie.
The other universe
is where we are,
and that's where reality reigns
supreme, and we deal with it,
and seldom do these two
universes even overlap.
Now notice that this was seven
years before the election
of President Trump.
It's since become
entirely normal for media
figures like Limbaugh
and Fox News,
and of course the
president himself,
to denounce in the
same manner [INAUDIBLE]
turns the press as the
enemy of the people,
purveying fake news, or
that the TV's journalism,
TV journalism and Fox News,
climate science, judges,
the leadership of the
Department of Justice,
and the Mueller investigation,
even from its own intelligence
agencies, and to attack
several of its other agencies
by subverting missions by
appointing as their heads
and personnel people against
the very mission in pursuit
in general Steve Bannon's
project of deconstructing
the image of the state.
What is loosely
called polarization.
And I want to have
a moment at the end
where I actually will say
something about polarization.
I give myself to [INAUDIBLE].
What is loosely
called polarization--
[INAUDIBLE] of one side
denouncing and attacking
entire institutions
is taken over
by an enemy seen as unified.
So in a book by
Grossman and Hopkins
called Asymmetric Politics--
ideological Republicans
and [INAUDIBLE] interests
Democrats--
they write of informal
information polarization
as having its source in
the American conservative
movement--
decades-long battle against
institutions that it
is deemed irredeemably liberal.
Furthermore, the very practice
of truth telling has been put
in jeopardy [INAUDIBLE]
the federal government,
not by merely lying, as in
previous administrations--
notably the second
Bush administration--
but by bullshitting, defined
so elegantly by the philosopher
Henry Frankfurt,
as an indifference
to the very practice
of truth telling.
And the many millions of
supporters of the president
and the governing party, the
bullshit-ees, so to speak,
either [INAUDIBLE] are
unaware of or indifferent to,
indeed find enjoyment in,
even admire, the [INAUDIBLE]
of an unceasing flow of
untruths and inconsistencies.
Research by [INAUDIBLE] Schram
and Richard [INAUDIBLE] has
shown that relying on Fox
News and believing fake news--
relative to real news--
are strongly associated
with each other
and with supporting Trump
in the 2016 election.
So how should we understand
these developments?
No longer I suggest
in traditional terms,
as Rush Limbaugh's words
suggest, left and right,
nor has he constantly does
using the language of silos
as we constantly
do and often do.
Rather, talking about
silos and bubbles
and echo chambers and the rest
in which we live our lives.
Tribal.
In other words, the idea that
somehow this is a problem
we'll all face.
For these various
metaphors suggests symmetry
left and right are
in the same level
on the same level of spectrum
codes in a single force
field each requiring the other
for the very distinguishing
to apply left and right.
And the other
metaphors also suggest
that we're all equally
and similarly entrenched
or enclosed or separated
living our lives
in separate and uncommunicating
certain political worlds, which
of course was the
Limbaugh chapter.
We need, I think rather,
to take the measure
of the great asymmetry
at present [INAUDIBLE]
United States
today accounts for.
What we're seeing,
one might say,
is the developing
political struggle
that is in part to unite.
A struggle between the promotion
of credulity and the survival
of credibility.
So people can pretend to
be impervious to truth
and consistency because
both influences and beliefs.
But we can also be indifferent
to truth, consistency,
unlike [INAUDIBLE] in way.
But what we've got here I
think is a struggle still
in its early stages a kind
of meta-political struggle
not within but about
the very few [INAUDIBLE]
about its boundaries and
constitutive institutions
[INAUDIBLE].
Here's what the
German [INAUDIBLE]
Roberts has to say about this.
And I wish [INAUDIBLE]
this way of thinking.
He says, on one
side, what we have
is what we might call
the classical liberal
democratic, small and
small [INAUDIBLE] politics.
And in this view, politics is
a kind of structured contest.
Factions and parties battle
of interests and policies,
but the field of play
on which they battle
is remnants by a sort of
common institutions and norms
but inside the fence
is normal politics.
The subject of legitimate
debate development.
And outside the fence and
out of bounds in violation
stood standards.
But even what we might
call the game of politics
is defined by explicit rules.
So thus, it seemed a
primary expense of rules.
Principles of
constitution are enforced
by various legal and
prohibitive kind of ways.
Courts, executive branch.
But it's also defined
the implicit norms
written 100 rules more
informally enforced by press,
academia, and civil society.
And these latter institutions
are referees as well,
but their enforcement depends--
operates-- not through
law, but through trust.
Their trans partisan
on authority exists.
So it was participants
in the [INAUDIBLE]
agreed with the partisan.
So in present day for this
politics, and elsewhere,
I mean, we could be talking
about actually Britain.
In the context of Brexit, which
is intentionally very deeply
and without context.
Poland, Hungary.
I mean, places, in other
words, where agreement is
becoming less and less secure.
Democrats largely in America
are very much still in that game
in the game that involves
trust and respect of the norms
operating within the field
they're talking about.
But large swaths of
the Republican Party's
officeholders and many millions
of their voters are not.
I have to say, having
spent this morning
watching the congressional
delegation of Michael Cohen,
it became very, very
disappointing and visible to me
and very clear the way
in which this has now
infected the Republican
Party in business.
Large swaths of Republican
Party officeholders
and the millions of
their voters are not
participants in the game
as it can be understood.
That is to say, the game itself,
its institutions, and norms,
are increasingly under attack.
And our normally inherited
political category, populism,
authoritarianism, I think
is inadequate to capture
this debate.
[INAUDIBLE] recalls that
the anti-parliamentary,
anti-democratic
language of fascists
or quasi-fascist
politics, according
to which membership in
the same political field
was viewed as
complicity in a game.
But now I think that the
present threat is in a sense
even more worrying because
it is intra-democratic.
It operates from within.
It doesn't come from enmity to
part of injuries and democracy
as was the case with fascism
so the talk of fascism
is not only historically
but descriptively accurate.
What we are seeing, I think,
is subversion from within.
It consists in discrediting
the various institutions
and practices whose game
is arriving at conclusions
based on evidence, on collective
reasoning in attracting
the truth.
Which raises an
important, as it were,
practical political
question for Democrats.
Should the Democratic Party
go on to a [INAUDIBLE]..
Should it abandon the Obama
disposition, we might call it,
that derives from his
concept of politics to trust
or perhaps hope the
Democrats have faced
not enemies but adversaries.
Wouldn't doing so amount to
a safe and related point,
I'm asking, of being a
Democratic, large D and indeed
small D. So I have some more to
say, but I did promise myself
and Brandon I really wouldn't
go beyond 15 minutes.
And I think I probably--
how much more time do you
think I have to rely myself?
Another 5 or 10?
Is that all right?
BRIAN LEITER: Five more.
STEVEN LUKES: Right.
I want to conclude
with two thoughts.
I mean, it does all raise the
question, how did we get here?
And who's responsible?
Or rather, who or
what is responsible?
If you accept my answer
of every description.
One question which
I'd like to go into,
maybe we could in
the discussion,
is what role have intellectuals
played in all of this?
To what extent is all of this
the fault of intellectuals
who put the truth--
or thoughts about
the truth-- a book
about the truth into question?
What role will our thinkers
play in destabilizing--
even undermining--
the very idea of objectivity?
Should we include them
among the sources of truth?
Well, the Rand Corporation did
a very interesting recent report
called truth decay.
I don't actually think it's
so great as an analysis.
The concept is
pretty good, though.
I mean, they have
noticed that there's
something called truth
decay that's been happening,
and they offer a whole range
of reasons and accounts
of what it is about.
But my question
is, to what extent
are intellectuals seriously to
be thought of as responsible?
Have they contributed to
rendering truth impotent
in public life?
Are postmodernism,
[INAUDIBLE] irony about truth
who is to talk about
social reconstruction,
so-called science wars, to what
extent are they apart of this
still?
Well, I mean, I'm going to just
leave this is as a question.
I mean, that's not even
the topic of my lecture.
I have to say, I do
think there's something
to be said for a comment that
Steven Weinberg the physicist
made, which is, I've never heard
anything remotely postmodern
from a member of Congress.
I think the forces against
taking climate change seriously
are overwhelmingly economic.
It's like the question of
whether tobacco smoke is
bad for you, or whether if
sugary sodas serve as a factor.
All of these things
are opposed by people
who have a financial stake.
It's got nothing to do
with the science wars.
I mean, we should
bear that in mind.
Nevertheless, I mean, there
are intellectuals who have,
as it were registered,
alarm at the import of what
they've been saying.
So [INAUDIBLE] for
example, who was
a major force in the science
wars in destabilizing thought
about truth, did
write this [INAUDIBLE]
some 18 years ago or so.
He wrote, the hardware
that facts are made up--
that there is no such thing as
natural, unmediated, unbiased
access to truth--
that we are always
prisoners of language,
that we are always speaking
from a particular standpoint,
while dangerous extremists are
using the very same arguments
of social construction to
destroy argument evidence that
could save our lives.
I mean, that's something that
in turn, the truth was never
just somehow there's
a kind of a semi--
maybe I could go
there-- if it were.
And so that's just a question.
To what extent have we
been-- or, let's say,
friends and even in some cases
maybe intellectually hubris--
been at work in actually
contributing to truth decay?
But here's the last thing I
want to do, is to say something.
And this is a complicated
story, and it's perhaps
unfair to bring it up at the
very end of this lecture.
But I do want to say just
two words about polarization.
In the Rand report
on tooth decay,
there's a discussion
of polarization.
They call it one of the
drivers of truth decay.
And what I'm willing to
say here and we can explore
in discussion from that.
I think polarization
is a really loose term.
It's very widely used.
We hear endless talk
about how societies
are more and more polarized.
But actually, I think we
need to be much more precise.
Polarization means--
if you're going
to give it a precise
definition-- the clustering
of preferences,
policy, and beliefs,
around the poles that
are at some distance,
or maybe increasing
distance from one another.
And that should be
distinguished from what
we can call in political science
called party sorting, which
is the increasing
identification of people,
including, let's say, their
beliefs in a bimodal way, so
that they associate
with parties.
And that's very much what
the Achen and Bartels'
book is about.
And then there's a third
idea, which both of these
are separate from.
Which is the idea that--
the claim that various people's
beliefs and preferences,
in particular their
policy choices
about various different issues
are all aligned together.
And just rather than getting
into any detail about it
I just want to quote
one thing, which
is that some of the
findings that I think
are critical parts.
And that is, that most people--
and now we're talking
about the American public--
would prefer to divide their
votes across different issues
were it possible
and most people are
becoming more that would prefer
to divide them across there
is difference this is not
there in a bimodal way were
it possible.
And in fact, most people on one
set of issues, moral issues,
are becoming more liberal.
So the empirical truth is that
polarization needs, I think,
a superficial political fact.
It's true of the partisans,
it's true of the activists,
it's true of people who
are actively involved
in politics and above all true
with representatives and so on.
But there is a widespread belief
that there is polarization
and that misperception
is one that becomes real,
it has real consequences,
then we are increasing
antagonism and distrust.
And the so kind of
self-fulfilling prophecy.
The more we believe we are
polarized, the more we are.
So I'm going to
conclude now with just
to a few sentences,
a few thoughts.
I want to conclude with a
warning against polarization
talk, because it involves a
massive reduction in context
and leads to stereotyping
from which it is all
too easy to slip into the
rhetoric of people living
in different worlds.
Whether the didn't
believe in what
Foucault calls,
regimes of truth.
And from there
it's not a big job
to slide into a kind
of [INAUDIBLE] vision
of fixed irreconcilable
opponents each
with their own truths, a
vision of epistemic symmetry.
And I think if you just
want a single elevator
takeaway from this talk, it's
against epistemic symmetry.
Because basically,
practically and politically,
I think we should just
not think that way.
Practically and
politically what this does
is it argues against viewing
adversaries as enemies.
And it's also reason
not to reify them even
as adversaries for
once we do that we
learn to see potential areas of
engagement and transformation.
So, last thought.
Power can endanger truth.
Power can endanger truth,
it doesn't engender it.
It endangers it, but
it doesn't engender it.
Hannah Arendt was right to
say that truth in politics
are on rather bad terms with
one another, especially today.
That's why, I'm [INAUDIBLE],,
we must strenuously defend
the fields--
the [INAUDIBLE] doing
but then [INAUDIBLE]
like fields, the science
journalism, the law,
and public administration.
For example, living examples.
And you have to defend the
norms within which within them
when functioning as they
should, they protect truth
from the power that can
render truth impotent.
So, that's it.
BRIAN LEITER:
Thank you, Stephen.
So we do have time
for questions.
I will call people.
So, Martha, please.
AUDIENCE: You
didn't mention Mill
because I guess he
is not your guy.
STEVEN LUKES: He is, he is.
AUDIENCE: I think there's
something very profound
about those ideas, that
truths need to constantly
be tested by the most vigorous
possible counter arguments.
And so, where I really
see a quite general nature
among intellectuals
and I think we all
like to flatter ourselves by
hearing the things we like
to hear, is in the not
seeking out the most vigorous
contradictory views.
You really have to
work for the community
even like this, which is
all about contestation and
skeptical challenges and so on.
To arrange to have that
actually happen and not
to have the kind of lazy--
and I think this is
true of the left also--
the lazy cliches
parading as what's true.
And so then the problem
becomes that right now there
are very few people who are
responsible conservatives who
are in the academy because
they don't like to be there.
They're actually not
treated very well when
they're there and so on.
And so, there are one or two
that always get called in
and so whenever we talk
about same sex marriage
and we insist on having somebody
debated on the other side
there's always one
person, David Novak
from the University of
Toronto get abandoned
and here, I am lucky to have
the most wonderful colleague who
votes Republican and
we teach together.
But you know, this is
rare to have someone
with whom you can have
a truly fundamental
challenging exchange and then
exposes students to that.
So do you have any thoughts
about how to foster that?
Maybe NYU would have
some intimate [INAUDIBLE]
to this we could be helped by.
STEVEN LUKES:
Well, I didn't want
to suggest that we aren't
in fact pretty tribal--
we are.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
STEVEN LUKES: But I still want
to say that overall, there
is a difference.
And I did think very
clearly on television
this morning watching the
congressional discussion
that one side is out to fight an
enemy more or less at any cost.
So there was no come from
the congressional [INAUDIBLE]
but over that, which was the
delegation whether Michael
Cohen's testimony was
to be believed or not.
The whole practice
of Republicans
was to discredit him.
So it was [INAUDIBLE]
of being [INAUDIBLE]
there was no discussion
of what was at issue.
Now I'm not saying in
the Academy in particular
we're not sufficiently a
[INAUDIBLE] of intellect
because we don't have the
not real contestation.
I think you're right.
It's something that I know
that some people, for instance,
Jonathan Haidt, is very
concerned in the social
sciences there are
so few right-wing--
AUDIENCE: I think they go into
industry, or into other jobs,
because they're not treated very
well when they're in together.
I mean, this is--
I say conservative but I
need to include Libertarians
because those are
really what we have.
I mean, the two people
that are the on the right
in this law school are
libertarians not conservatives.
But anyway, to even
get those people
to come to consider an academic
job, why do they consider it?
They often feel
that they're going
to be marginalized by
people because it's not
cool with the latest fashion
treatment exemplified.
STEVEN LUKES: I don't know,
you will know much more
about this--
I mean, I realize that speaking
about this in Chicago--
I mean, I am
speaking in the place
where these [INAUDIBLE]
economics are the problem.
Actually, the
learning [INAUDIBLE]
and there's no lack
of, what we could say
is a the right-wing set of
opinions or the theories.
So maybe you're not engaging
enough with each other.
I mean, it seems to
me it's certainly true
that in theory there is
areas of the Academy.
There's a definite lack of John
Stuart Mill like contestation.
I couldn't agree with
you more about that.
All we've got to do--
you say got any ideas
about how to promote it.
Well, what?
I know you just named mentioned
something, which I don't think
too much about, namely the
fact that men especially
are going into industry
of wanting to financially.
I'm teaching a class at NYU
now on power and domination
and resistance.
And 39 of these
students are women.
I'm not sure what I
can do about that.
Because it's a fact
partly about recruitment
and where people
are choosing to go.
But if your general point is we
are insufficiently [INAUDIBLE]
in terms of
[INAUDIBLE] completely.
But it doesn't
touch the argument
I think that I was
trying to make,
which is basically,
one side as I
see it is actually out to
treat the other as enemies.
I don't believe that
we are doing it.
AUDIENCE: But I kind
of think in the Academy
and even in the
philosophy department--
let's forget about the
English department--
that there's a tendency
to treat anyone
who's conservative or even
libertarian as an enemy.
We were recruiting candidates
in the philosophy department
one day and I was describing at
the dinner for this candidate
the wonderful class I was
teaching with [INAUDIBLE] where
we had wonderful exchanges
on public morality
and legal conservatism.
And my philosophy colleagues
said, don't worry,
that never happens in the
philosophy department.
I was absolutely
thought that even
in the philosophy
department they
would think that to have
this kind of argument
as it was an exchange
which was a bad thing.
STEVEN LUKES:
There's no question
it's a permanent temptation.
I'm even aware when I'm
trying to argue against this
is succumbing to it.
I mean I think I like this
distinction between enemy
and adversary and we've just
got to keep it alive more.
AUDIENCE: So I wanted
to ask you whether you
are ruling all structural
critiques of the institutions
and social fields that you're
describing out of bounds.
Because certainly there's
a storied tradition
of engaging in just
the kind of critique
that you're suggesting--
you don't have to go to
postmodernism to do that--
we can talk about the
namesake of this lecture,
the famous Dewey-Lippman debate.
But we can also
talk about critics
of the judiciary and
classical legal thought
as naturally entrenching
certain norms that of course
have power embedded
within them, and that
are going to lead to
outcomes that are inevitably
slanted et cetera.
We can talk about certain
critics of the print press,
critics of the courts,
perhaps even science
for the reasons you gave that
the role of money in science.
We know that there's been a
long tradition of critiquing it
for precisely that reason.
And I guess what I'm
wondering is whether there
is any basis for
distinguishing, in your view,
between those kind of
critiques and the critiques
from the right that
you're describing.
STEVEN LUKES: I hope
I'm aware of where
your question is coming from.
I certainly don't
mean to rule out
critiques of the
law that stress all
the ways in which the rule
of law, the very phrase,
should be put in question.
I mean, I'm having
a long growing
debate with [INAUDIBLE] who used
to be here on this very topic.
There is a view,
which is actually his,
that it's for in the
end conservative power.
[INAUDIBLE] was it said
that the Constitution is
whatever the Supreme Court says
it is, something like that.
AUDIENCE: Well, Brennan
said something about right,
it's a matter of five votes.
I think that was Brennan.
STEVEN LUKES: So there is
a kind of extreme version
of this where you just
say, it's really--
it's all this divine court
and basically control
the interpreted in broad terms.
And I have said in resisting
that, I don't think that.
And as you mentioned
science, I mean,
there's a great deal to
be said and a lot of it
very plausible about
all the ways in which
certain scientific procedures,
scientific theorizing--
the claims about truth
tracking and certain progress,
all ways in which this can
be questioned and thought
of as industry.
I mean, I accept all
of this and think
that a lot of the work
along those directions
is extremely important.
But something has to be retained
of great importance, which
is that there is a way in
which I claim all these four
fields are [INAUDIBLE] track.
And it's subject to endless
danger and corruption
and so on, but that's
something that is [INAUDIBLE]..
Is.
AUDIENCE: Could I just
actually follow-up
in one small way, which is
I actually want to bracket.
I think the example of science
and even potentially the press
is probably wrong because
there is a failure
to abide by the
norms of the field.
But I actually think
the law is different
because there is a
deep critique that
suggests that the
entire stretching back
into the 19th or the 20th
century that has suggested
and has made for some
important moments of progress
by suggesting that the
conception of rights
or property that are
embedded within law
were fundamentally about power.
STEVEN LUKES: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: That's a critique
of the institution that
is about the rules
of the institution.
And I guess-- not to say
whether it's right or not,
but the question is,
is that equally sort of
epistemically
arbitrary or invalid
because it challenges the
norms of the discipline?
STEVEN LUKES: Well,
I think the answer--
I mean, these are huge
existential questions.
I picked up one word you
use, which was equally--
no, clearly there
are differences
as I was putting
them together before.
And clearly, the [INAUDIBLE] the
arguments of critical realism
just to take, for example,
are very powerful.
I don't deny that.
But nevertheless, I'm
resisting the kind
of reduction, which simply says
it's always the [INAUDIBLE]..
I mean, I'm not sure
how much further we
could get on this
discussion right now,
but I recognize
what you're saying.
I do want to say
that the norms have
some in part independent reports
independent of how [INAUDIBLE]
without taking the sort of
a [INAUDIBLE] interview.
It's just a matter of truth
tracking and justification.
BRIAN LEITER: Gentleman
in the back row?
AUDIENCE: Just because
you've mentioned
a lot of figures that are
very relevant to Horkheimer
and Adorno.
You didn't mention
them and there
was a piece written
shortly after the election,
I think it was in the
Atlantic but I can't remember.
Trying to understand
current events
through the lens
of sort of ideas
put forth in the
dialectic of the monument.
And I'm curious to know
to what degree you're
sympathetic to the view that
a lot of what's happening now
is sort of inevitable
given the way
that the economy
functions together
with the progress of technology?
That sort of this was a
storm in the waiting and that
until there's some sort
of fundamental change
in the way our economy is
structured that there is no way
to contain the forces even
with the institutions you've
mentioned, because of the
sort of inevitable things
that we know about how
the economy functions?
STEVEN LUKES: That kind of
economically-driven fatalism
is something that I
desperately try to avoid.
I don't think that way.
I mean, I really
do think that there
are ways of resisting these
in the foreseeable future.
I suppose this is
rather Dewey like.
I don't know.
It seems to me
that's doom liking.
Adorno and Horkheimer
were real fatalists,
revolutionary fatalists.
So I don't-- maybe it's
temperamental but I wouldn't.
Why would you think--
I mean, is it a
technological or is
it economically-driven
or both for you?
AUDIENCE: I think it's both.
Yeah, I think that
they see what happened
with the radio industry
is happening again
in social media.
The people with the ability
to make a profit off of it
will inevitably drive
us away from the truths.
Something like that, even if
they don't do it intentionally,
these forces or what have you.
STEVEN LUKES: Well, if
you're right, you're right.
That view is right
is right, it's right.
But still, I think
there's still room
even if the catastrophe
is a driving influence
of this inevitability.
There's still a resistance
that's possible along the way.
I'm encouraged, for
example, by just yesterday
by the fact that Brexit doesn't
seem as though it can say it.
We can say it that my own
country is a disaster so.
I'm not [INAUDIBLE] as that, no.
BRIAN LEITER: Please.
AUDIENCE: Hi, I guess the notion
that truth is respectable,
there is a long standing
hero of the detective who
knows that people lie.
His mission is to find the truth
by interrogating the suspects
and getting beyond his
respective aberrations.
Now there's another
interesting example of--
this is in Jaworski's
replied brief at Nixon
against the United States.
That the duty of
the grand jury is
to find the truth
and the whole truth,
that if there is a
conspiracy, you're
naming all the conspirators.
Now, this is not just
institutional norms,
this is really the idea
that legitimate power
is grounded in truth.
And that there's a
long tradition of that.
But to say that the essence
of power is to be deceitful,
this is really
Machiavelli's term
that Heidegger amplifies it.
But it's really the
common assumption
by most people in the
Academy and in politics
that Machiavelli is right.
A perfect example of why I
would say deceit for the left--
there was an article in the
University of Chicago's Maroon
saying the GRE, the Graduate
Record Exam and the SAT
don't really measure anything
of any the importance.
Now, one could say that they do
measure something of importance
and that everybody should
have a college education that
would enable them to
have some measure.
But instead because
people want to help
achieve more
diversity want to say,
well, it really doesn't
measure any [INAUDIBLE]..
Now I suppose that that's
an example of something that
isn't strictly speaking
true on the left, of course,
we could point to a multitude
of statements on the right.
My point is really it's
the common assumption
that we should say
what advantages
our political position
or the result of a brain.
And as a result
of that, everybody
assumes they're being lied to.
Even before Trump,
there was no respect
for the truth of
the sort that you
see in the hero of the detective
and in the role of the jury,
as Jaworski laid it out.
Sort there's a
kind of corruption
of a tradition which a
proper conservatism would
try to revive.
STEVEN LUKES: That's
very interesting.
I bet you would have
the same response--
I mean, I do think that
there's a whole tradition of--
which is as much
left-wing as right-wing
I'm guessing, unmasking and
debunking, which is very, very
important to preserve.
And which does rely on--
it does rely upon a kind of
assumption that you can--
the behind appearances that lie
as something to be discovered.
I make a distinction.
I mean our last thing
is figuring out what's
going on behind appearances.
Debunking is somehow
showing that you're being
fooled by the appearances.
I think that it's
terribly important
to keep that tradition alive.
I think we've given
examples of it.
But I was really talking about,
about the intellectuals whom
I think we have to
be worried, those
who just discount and want
to kind of destabilize
the very idea of
there being truth.
AUDIENCE: I'd like to ask you
an autobiographical question
if I may.
I'm young enough to have been
in college and graduate school
and went out in the early
part of this century.
And I remember in classes
about theories of power,
you were taught against Arendt--
STEVEN LUKES: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: And it's become
sort of a teaching curve
to use your work in
contradistinction to Arendt's
conception of power.
And I wonder to what extent you
think that's just a distilled
version of something
you wrote in the 60s
or whether you have come closer
to an Arendtian conception
of power that looks at power
as non-domination power
as absolute concept?
Because one implication of
the question that you posed
is that it isn't
the essence of power
to be deceitful, as she wanted
us to think of it, maybe
the idea of that essay--
I don't know-- but maybe
the idea of that essay
was that the essence of
if we've re-conceived
the power away from
domination then perhaps we
wouldn't think of things in
terms of adversarial politics
but only agonistic politics.
STEVEN LUKES: Yeah.
One thing I didn't
say today because it
would detract it
from the argument
that I was trying to make.
She did actually nominate
herself using a concept
of power which was different.
For her, power was acting
in concert with others.
She wanted to get away
from this very idea
when she wrote about,
for example, in her essay
on violence and elsewhere.
She wanted to say,
we should stop
thinking about in this
acerbic ways [INAUDIBLE]..
But I don't think that
really solves any problems.
You don't solve a deep
problem in politics
by redefining their terms.
So, I didn't talk about
how Hannah Arendt emerged
about [INAUDIBLE] power.
I think how she thought
about it was somehow too--
and it's striking
to me to someone
who wrote so much
about totalitarianism.
She had a kind of rob the nine
idea about consensual politics.
Wanted the touch of
power to go at you.
BRIAN LEITER: And last question.
AUDIENCE: So let me see if
I can restate your view,
and tell me if
I've got it right.
STEVEN LUKES: Please do, yes.
AUDIENCE: It's less in terms
precisely the truth about truth
will be connected.
It almost sounds like a
lament for the disappearance
of a certain form of
ideological argument.
So what they're afraid to,
in a sense, from essentially
the United States Constitution,
that we have people,
the idea of promoting
a general welfare,
and a standard left-wing view
of what an ideology does.
Brian touched on this in our
workshop a couple days ago.
Is that it presents itself
in the guise of promoting
the general welfare.
Does not present
itself as simply
in the interest of
some small group.
That has its for those
who want to attack it
because it's committed
to the thought
that it must defend itself
in terms of how it promotes
the general welfare.
If you have a president
who simply, clearly,
thinks in terms of presenting
things to a small subset
of the population, and if then
that becomes part of the way
in which political
discourse develops,
where you are not great-- at
least one group is not actually
presenting its ideas in terms
of how to promote the general
welfare--
but in terms now, this would
be [INAUDIBLE] moves one form
of adversarial into the other.
But solely in terms of
enemies and no notion of a we
the people.
Then in fact, there's not
much of a sort of a foothold
that one can have
to say, you are
hostage to a truth claim
about the general welfare.
We can now try to
explore and see
if it stands up to scrutiny.
Is that capturing something
of what you were lamenting?
Oddly enough, the
absence of a certain kind
of pretense of being concerned
for the general welfare?
STEVEN LUKES: Well, I'm
not advocating pretense.
AUDIENCE: No, but that sort of
degradation of the discourse--
STEVEN LUKES: Yes.
AUDIENCE: --has
reached the point
where that is lacking
because that at least allows
you some basis on which to
sort of try to push back.
STEVEN LUKES: I
mean, I think so,
to put it in more of the
sort of vernacular terms.
I mean, all politics is
kind of old-fashioned.
I'm a Social Democrat.
But you can just say something
substantial the answer is yes.
But it's more than that.
I mean, I might actually trying
to [INAUDIBLE] in two fronts.
First of all, we shouldn't
discount the standards as over.
The idea that you can have a
politics that is all embracing;
that is, in this sense, both
liberal and Social Democratic.
So what a Marxist might
call class compromised,
a secondhand wealth.
But I'm also lamenting
something else,
or I'm trying to contest
something else, which
is this idea of
epistemic symmetry, which
I think follows from the sort
of conclusion idea that--
and this is a topic that we've
been talking [INAUDIBLE]..
I mean, the truth is
a function of power.
That power engenders truth
rather than endangering it.
That is, that we can
think about all of us.
Let's say, we're going to
be America or from Britain.
Or, come to think of that,
think of it in Hungary
or Poland that way the very
sharply divided politics--
really, you can
sort of step back
and say, well everybody's in
their own epistemic world.
I mean, I think they're--
it's not just Rush Limbaugh.
I think there are
pressures at work
that get people to think
that way about themselves.
And that's dangerous.
That's what I was trying
to get at the very end
by saying we shouldn't be
thinking we're bi-polarized,
because we're not.
