Truth, Conscience, Courge

The Koningsburger Lecture at the University of Utrecht

GIVING VOICE TO CONSCIENCE

What is the connection, one might ask, between conscience and giving expression to it? If we go by the definition in any basic dictionary, we will find conscience to be an inner voice guiding us to the rightness or wrongness of our actions. As a paradigm, we might think of our being witnesses to something we believe to be wrong, or unjust, and rather than turning a blind eye to it, we choose to speak up, pointing a finger at it, and expressing our dissent from it, risking as we do so our chastisement or admonishment by our peers. Thus it is that Professor Koningsburger, after whom this lecture is named, spoke up to denounce the then-growing practice to discriminate against Jews at this university during the time when Nazism was on the rise in Europe.

It was in connection with the later trial of Nazi leader Eichmann in Israel in 1961 that Hanna Arendt, in an attempt to understand and explain Eichmann’s inhumane motives, invoked Socrates, attributing to him the source of what eventually came in the Western tradition to be described as conscience.[1] There are two aspects of this Socratic background that I must immediately clarify and distinguish from one another- both together providing us with the answer to our initial question about how conscience and speaking up are connected: there is, first, the famous passages in Plato that Arendt quotes where Socrates speaks about the compulsion to be at one with oneself [2]; and there is, second, that other side of the story, namely, of Socrates describing himself as a gadfly with respect to the people around him. In this role, what Socrates could be understood as doing is to externalize his inner voice with respect to the people around him, acting as it were as if he were their own audible conscience. I shall return later to discuss the curious public role Socrates has in this manner appropriated, and from which originates an entire epic in the history of political thought concerning the role of the philosopher –from being that of a political leader at one end of the spectrum, to being a silent recluse at the other. Meantime, suffice it to say that it is presumably this inter-connectedness between the daimonoi and the gadfly, so to speak, that could explain to us why we expect conscience to be displayed in some tangible behavior –either objecting to doing something considered inhumane or morally reprehensible, or speaking out against it.

It is not necessary for us to pursue Arendt’s arguments and conclusion with regard to Eichmann as a paradigm –wondering whether it is simply the internal dumbness and total absence of internal self-questioning that explains how human beings can bring themselves to act as he did, or whether, besides this, it is the fear of self-censure[3] consequent upon committing an injustice that acts as the real deterrent. Where I wish to go from here is to look more carefully into what speaking up, or speaking out against an injustice, might mean. And from there, I wish to return to the question of the role of the philosopher, in particular in light of how, paradoxically given how I have portrayed his daimoni earlier, he himself explains what his own voice advised him his role should be:

“. . . for you may be sure , gentlemen, that if I had meddled in public business in the past, I should have perished long ago and done no good either to you or to myself. Do not be annoyed at my telling the truth; the fact is that no man in the world will come off safe who honestly opposes either you or any other multitude, and tries to hinder the many unjust and illegal doings in a state. It is necessary that one who really and truly fights for the right, if he is to survive even for a short time, shall act as a private man, not as a public man.” (Plato, 437; 31d6-32e3 ).

It may be thought that the message Socrates here wishes to convey is ambiguous –does he or does he not admonish us to speak up? Is he suggesting a limit to how much one ought to speak up? It is clear that he addresses two issues here- that of him assuming a public office, in which case –he tells us- a direct confrontation over the unjust and illegal doings by the system of which he would be part would result, leading to his death, or to the annihilation of his role altogether –both therefore being useless outcomes; and that of him being a private individual, in which case his role would be one to do with telling the truth, that is, with speaking up. Even then, he tells us, fighting for the right will not proffer more than a short breathing space.

So, if it is not as a public official but as a private man that one could afford to make an intervention, then in what way could this happen best, and by whom? Note also that Socrates here makes a clear connection between feeling called upon to intervene, and telling the truth. But how can we understand this connection, or understand what he meant by truth? It was perhaps in the 50s that the Quakers in the United States introduced the now well-known expression ‘speaking truth to power’. It was a public attempt to circumvent what many democrats in America at the time feared may become official U.S. support of fascism both within the U.S. and in the world at large. In time, the expression came to be associated with the so-called ‘public intellectuals’ –especially those identified with being sympathetic to the leftist side of the political spectrum in the United States. Noam Chomsky may today exemplify this kind of intellectual, but it may be very much to Edward Said’s credit that he articulated this role, in particular with regard to U.S. policies in South East Asia as well as in Palestine. But in doing this he raised a very critical question: leaving aside the power that is to be spoken to, what is the truth that has to be spoken?

in effect, I am asking the basic question for the intellectual: how does one speak the truth? What truth? For whom and where?

What he was trying to determine in this context was whether the intellectual is culture-bound, or a universalist. Granted that giving voice to conscience comes down to meaning to speak up, or to speak truth to power, the question remains whether the conscience we have in mind is, or can be, universal, unfettered by the specificity of the intellectual’s contingent identity. Another way to put this critical question is to ask whether, as a public intellectual, Edward Said’s views would have been the same had he been Israeli? Are the truths here the same? I realize this is a hard, even perhaps an impossible question to answer. In fact, there are two questions embedded in it and not one, as we shall presently see. But it does raise the further question of whether the persona of the public intellectual is the same as that of the Socratic just-philosopher: ‘he who honestly opposes the multitudes in order to hinder the unjust and illegal doings of the state, and who really and truly fights for the right’. In other words, it does raise that fundamental issue of whether the public intellectual is a ‘truth-seeker’ in the philosophic sense of the word, whose role is that of a gadfly or a moral agent in the manner Socrates seems to have described himself – a philosophic role which, one assumes, requires him or her to have -not just a global outlook- but also a global rather than a specific national or religious identity.

Of course, there are many senses in which we use the term ‘public intellectual’, including the sense by which we refer to someone who is capable of ‘popularizing’ a particular scholarly field, making it accessible to the general public. Edward Said’s own Oritentalism may come under this heading, as well as also, for example, Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene, or Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos. But it is specifically in the sense of ‘speaking truth to power’ that the role of a public intellectual interests us here, inasmuch as it is or it is not that role that fulfils the function of the Socratic gadfly. And one way by which we can immediately distinguish between such a person and the kind of moral agent Socrates had in mind may be to consider the nature and degree of personal risk involved in their speaking up against an injustice, as well as, and perhaps more importantly, to what extent such a stand is viewed by the person concerned as a one-time engagement or part of what they regard as their primary role in life, or in the society or community in which they live. In determining the nature and degree of risk involved, we have to account for the fact that the power that may be of serious consequence is not only or primarily that of governments and authorities -the Nazi Authority, or the Stalinist or Fascist Regime or an Occupation –but also, recalling Socrates, ‘the multitudes’ or public of which the person is a part. Granted that in the Athens of Socrates the ‘multitudes’ also acted as the legislative authority and the jury and judge in his own case, but ‘the multitudes’ are typically also those publics –as in the Koningsburger case- that do not constitute a legal authority but that act as a kind of moral authority, determining what is acceptable and what is not in that particular society. The point to be emphasized here is that the truth is more often unpopular with and a challenge to this kind of unofficial public authority than it is unsavory to hear for the rulers. And while the Socratic moral agent risks being ostracized or –worse- being physically threatened by the multitudes we are speaking of, public intellectuals in contrast may well find themselves the center of public admiration and recognition for the truths they give voice to. But this can be read two ways: for while on the one hand the truth being voiced may well be that of the suffering voiceless, on the other hand it may well just reflect a coarse plebian passion, the intellectual in this case simply trading self-examined conscience for public admiration.

It is important to add here also that, on a smaller scale, even having the courage to voice dissent from a dominating opinion –where an evolving consensus seems to being formed largely by virtue of an intimidating rhetoric that leaves little room for disagreement- is itself a case of speaking truth to power, even though the risk may simply be that of unpopularity, and social ostracization.

Looking further into who, besides certain kinds of public intellectuals, might be set apart in some of their roles as moral agents, one could consider the question of the role one takes on in life as well as the space one defines as one’s area of interest or of competence: a journalist may during his or her career pick on one or two issues to challenge an injustice, but then turn to other matters in which moral issues are not raised. But they could also devote their entire careers in investigative journalism to exposing and fighting injustice, sometimes (as in the case of Anna Politkovskaya recently in Russia) incurring the mortal wrath of those exposed. But there are also the more common cases of the rest of us, where we may find ourselves during the course of our lives or work- not seeking injustices to expose- but confronted with a moral challenge where we may be called upon by our conscience to take a stand which we know in advance would or could bring suffering upon us and our loved ones, and where we decide nonetheless to listen to this conscience, and in so doing to give expression to it by taking such a stand. So, whether it is a public intellectual taking a stand calculated to invite a retaliation, whether against an official authority or challenging the public mood,[4] or it is a journalist or a parliamentarian, or it is simply a normal human being trying to live through his or her private life but suddenly coming face to face with an invited moral challenge involving a decision with a fore-known price-tag - conscience seems to be a common denominator, its voice however being sparked off in each case, perhaps in different degrees of intensity, to the tune of different truths the different individuals –again in varying degrees- feel bound to stand up for or to expose. But how generically different could such ‘trutghs’ be? Could, they, for example. Be ‘inconsistent’ with one another?

Interestingly from what has been said, the two subjects of what truth and conscience are on the one hand, and what kind of individuals are those who answer to both having a conscience and caring about the truth on the other, seem to be somehow inseparable. In other words, and especially having invoked Socrates, what may have initially presented themselves to us as the two apparently separate and separable issues of meanings and men –truth and those who speak it, and conscience and those who give voice to it- have transpired as two issues that are in matter of fact so welded together almost as to be two sides of the same coin –defining truth somehow being tied up with understanding what sort of person speaks it. And indeed, as we further try to untangle the matter of what truth or conscience mean, and what kind of person is the moral agent of whom Socrates speaks, we may find that we cannot fully comprehend what one is without also fully comprehending the other. Fully unfolded, this may sound like a far-fetched claim, for it may seem to reach out so as to cover what we in general regard as ‘truths’, defining them subjectively in terms of the people holding them to be such. This claim has in some (mental-genesis or evolutionary) form indeed been defended by very eminent philosophers, of which my choice-analysis is that of the late Harvard logician W.V.O. Quine. His analysis, however, does not allow for inconsistent truths, defended on the grounds of their being individual-relative. But the more specific claim of displaying the integral relation between inconsistent truths and those who stand up for themcan perhaps be displayed and resolved, especially when we focus our attention on situations where truth is strongly bound up with conscience. And here I come back to highlight a second important observation, namely that, unlike truth, conscience is monadic, that is, its meaning is fixed by its being an inner calling to act righteously in defense of the truth, whatever that truth happens to be, or is believed to be. This last comment is critical. For, if we take into account the two observations that we cannot disentangle truth from its speaker, such that it is the speaker’s general character that comes to be at issue, and that unlike truth conscience is monadic, then taken together, these two observations can perhaps help us better understand a whole hoard of conflictual issues, whether regarding the role of the moral agent, or regarding the cases where, like in Israel/Palestine, we come across for example an Edward Said and an Amos Oz who, driven by their respective righteous consciences, are passionate upholders of irreconcilable narratives. Here, I would claim, conscience being monadic, the judge of final resort, and once facts have been clarified, conscience cannot but uphold the one truth.

Let us then leave behind the common -but misguided, I believe- practice, of trying to understand or define what truth means as some abstract and ethereal entity, in isolation from the real-life situations where the seeking or speaking of truth comes in a package, so to speak, presenting us with a person’s entire character. And let us focus instead on truth-in-practice, as we might describe it, or on it as and when it is being sought, being told, or being avoided or withheld, in real-life situations by real-life people. There are three observations I wish to point out about these situations: first, that truth-seeking, -telling or –withholding and avoiding, or suppressing, are behaviors that are importantly associated, when with a particular individual, then with other human traits that also characterize that individual on both the positive and negative sides -some of them being considered praise-worthy and others reprehensible. For example, being truthful is associated with being honest, lying with being dishonest. Honesty, on the other hand, may be associated with people who keep their promises, while dishonesty with people who break them. And so on. We may thus collect together two distinct classes of all those different traits, identifiable perhaps by the two opposite epithets of good and bad. It is probably safe to say that the family of traits characterized as good are generally held in high esteem in most if not all cultures, while those displaying traits of the second kind are looked down upon, disrespected, and despised. These are of course only general parameters, permitting for all kinds of important exceptions, which we need not go into here. But it is worth noting that in all such exceptions another value is typically appealed to, confirming the general sense of respect for goodness, and what this stands for in our moral calculus.

The second observation I would like to make in this context is that all these truth-in-practice acts we are considering (telling the truth, suppressing it, etc.) are typically associated with some tangible, down-to-earth rather than with some ethereal or metaphysical subject. In other words, the typical situations where these acts are practiced are those in which those involved are judges or detectives or journalists, for example, trying to find out the truth, or criminals trying to suppress it. Significantly, it is not some ethereal philosophical meaning that is the object of attention in these cases, but some down-to-earth practical fact. This, by the way, is also what we might deduce Socrates to have been interested in- not only what justice is, but more practically what he viewed to be instances of injustice, and instances of wrong and corrupt acts in his milieu which he thought it was the duty of the righteous man to stand up to.