It is too easily forgotten that writers and academics and the intelligentsia in general have a direct personal 'interest' in scepticism. This will not govern the thinking of honest men, but it will constitute what religious people call a 'temptation' for many.
The nature of this particular temptation needs to be considered. Ideally at least, the intellectual - in the university and elsewhere - is a professional seeker of the truth: he is also a man skilled in the use of the mind. He is paid to deploy that skill, and he enjoys doing so.
But a fondness for intellectual enquiry is not as all the same thing as a hunger for the truth. The two may appear similar; but so far as the enquirer's motivations are concerned, they are in direct conflict. In so far as truth is actually attained in any matter, the enquiry is - to that extent - over. So, to that extent, is the particular and most rewarding kind of excitement which the enquiry provided.
Consider fox-hunting. Watching the riders and the hounds as they go streaming across the English shires on a winter afternoon, you might suppose that they actually wanted the fox. Perhaps the hounds do, but the riders certainly don't: what they want is the thrill of the chase, and when the fox is finally caught and demolished, the fun is ovedr for the time being.
Thate's all very well on the hunt-field, but it creates a fatal kind of schizzophrenia on campus. How often we have all met the learned man who is professionally committed to hunting for the truth, but intensely hostile to any suggestion that it might acvtually be captured, once and for all! It's very understandable: in so far as truth actually gets attailned, the seeker of it finds himself out of a job. The fox is dead, the enjoyable hunt is over.
It would be a mistake to press this cynical point too far. But all men have their particular temptations, and these are often occupational; and it needs to be recognized that the intellectual -as such- is chronically tempted to what might be called the sin of philosophical contraception. He wants to enjoy the legitimate pleasures of intellectual enquiry, but he is reluctant to be burdened with the activity's natural end-product, which is the knowledge of reality. He therefore takes steps - perhaps quite subconsciously - to sterilize his enquiry in advance by the adoption of relativist or sceptical philosophies. The lovers' play can thus continue foreverr, unimpeded by pregnancy and childbirth: the huntsman can thus enjoy the chase forever, knowing that the fox won't ever get caught. But the love-making and the hunt will both be fakes.
How far the intelligentsia yield to this temptation, we don't know and probanbly shouldn't ask: that they yield to it sometimes and in some degree is a matter of observation.
Is there really any firm ground on which the mind of man can stand with well-adjusted confidence? Let us agree that there are many kinds of false or illusory certainty; that some people who suppose themselves to be standing on firm ground are actually drowning; that dognatic assertiveness can spring from a desire to dominate;l that cravings for security and assurance can sometimes be pathological. But the case for scepticism is not thereby established. Comparabge ad hominem charges can be made in the opposite sense too: the motivations-game can be played in both directions, and the accusations so made will cancel one another out, leaving us with the objective question, which still needs to be considered on its merits.
What might those be? We can ceretainly guess and theorize forever. But can we really know reality or any part of it, such as the nature and destiny of man? If not, the idea of liberal education seems to me to become a mere delusion. What does it become in fact, among people who don't seem to believe in anything at all - not even the workings of their own minds, not even the evidence of their own senses?
Last summer, two young American friends came to my home, which is near London, and we discussed all manner of things. Both were pleasant and bright, and both were philosophy majors from liberal arts colleges of repute. The conversation developed on such lines that I eventually plucked up my courage and uttered the Chestertonian dogma 'Pigs is pigs'; and to this, both my young friends responded with a storm of contradiction and even of anger. No, I waS quit wrong: the mind cannot know anything outside itself, and it certainly mustn't classify its experiences in any essentialist language of objective pighood.
And so on. But soon it was time for them to go, and they started worrying about the time of their train. I pointed out, mildly, that since there was no real and knowable world within which their train could have any objective out there existence, their anxiety was misplaced. This irritated them a little: philosophy (I was givben to understand) was one thing, but the practical business of daily life was another.
"So you don't actually believe that sceptical philosophy of yours, in the sense of governing your lives by it."
No, of course they didn't: when pressed, they admitterd that for them and their instructors too, philosophy amounted to little more than a word-game, making no real claim to yield 'truth'.
I scented hope. I knew already that they were unhappy people, bright enough at the superficial and social level but bitter and alienated within, according to a widely prevalent pattern of bitterness and alienation; and I had long suspected that many troubles of that kind, apparently psychological in nature, are philosophical by origin. Split your mind into two halves, a discursive half and a practical half, and give them radically incompatible things to believe: the outcome is going to be interior conflict or stress. Too many people, finding themselves so troubled, run straight off to the nearest analyst: a good teacher of language and logic might provide them with a more health-giving therapy.
In that spirit of clinical benevolence, I therefore begged this young couple to start being sceptical about their own scepticism. Could we discuss this? Could we at least define our terms?
But I was too late: already they were off to that momentary appearance in the experienced flux of becoming which for some reason they insisted on treating just as though it could be known and used as a real train. And as they left me, I saw the same expression on both faces: it was an unmistakeable expression of fear. I had rattled them.
"The truth shall make you free"? I have heard that long term prisoners are sometimes terrified of release, and therefore commit some further crime before long so as to get safely back inside.
I cannot prove that fundamental scepticism is untrue. Nobody can prove anything except on some basis of agreed premises; and any premises that are capable of being put into words are also capable of being verally questioned. Any argument whatsoever can thus be made into an infinite regress - a happy outcome indeed, if your chief desire is that it sould go on forever.
In many kinds of discussion, however, there comes a point at which the question of sanity takes precedence over the question of demonstrable truth. I have just suggessted that psychological problems may have philsophical roots: the converse can also be true. Imagine some man who swears that there's a world-wide conspiracy against him, and interprets all public events in terms of this. You can't possibly prove him wrong; and you have to admit that in the strictest logical sense, it is possible - that is, it involves no contradiction - that there should indeed be such a conspiracy. You point out, feebly, that you can see no evidence of any such thing: but he is ready with his reply. "Do you think these people work openly? Would your expect their agents to reveal themselves? They're a long sight cleverer than that, I can assure you!"
You'll never win the argument, you'll never prove him wrong. But you know perfectly well that you're in the presence of a paranoid.
There are certain pathological states - some of them permanent, some of them induced temporarily by drugs or fever or exhaustion - in which the mind loses its grip on reality and slips into the void, so that all physical objects and even the perceiving self dissolve into a terrifying nightmare orf unreality and menace. Were I in such a state, down by the lakeside under this Californian sun, I might indeed perceive the ducks as monsters or apes or devils, or as everything, or as nothing at all; and if I so described them, you wouldn't be able to prove me wrong. But you would recognize that I was in a pathological state of some kind.
In our time, there's a widespread and possibly morbid interest in such matters. In my work as a literary critic, I am constantly coming across novels and other books - certain types of science-fiction, in particular - which indicate that the writer has, and expects his reader to have, a powerfully schizoid imagination. Many people nowadays seem to find madness more interesting than sanity, and I take this to be a bad sign of the times. It has an interesting precedent. Chaucer lived in the high civilization of the Middle Ages, and as far as I can remember, there isn't a single madman in the whole body of his voluminous works - though there are any number of villains. But when we get to that period of stress and breakdown which is optimistically called the Renaisance, all literature suddenly begins to be full of lunatics.
No, I cannot prove that ducks are ducks, or that pigs are pigs, or that there are both resemblances and differences between ducks and pigs, capable of being put into truthful words. No such proof is either necessary or possible. Such questions are not philosophical at all : they concern the presence or absence of the broad basic santity whcih makes philosophy or any other coherent activity possible. I have suggested that certain psychological problems could be eased by intervention and help of the philsophical kind: I want to suggest now that fundamental sceptiscism, where it is fully believed, is a pathological condition and calls for itervention and help of the psychiatric kind.
That emphasized qualificdation is important: without it, I might lay myself open to a great many libel- actions, for suggesting that a great many distinguished academics are insane. I don't suppose that they are; or at least, no more frequently than other people. My charge against them is a different one, though it might still be actionable if I were rash enough to give names,. The trouble isn't that they're insane: it's that they're pretending. For lecture-room purposes, they affect a kind of uncertainty which they forget completely when they'r e in the outside world of trains and ducks. If they retained it there, if they conducted normal life on a basis of real epistemological doubt, they would be recognized at once as psychiatric cases.
Both 'being' and 'knowing' are mysteries, capable of infinite analysis. But both are also manifest realities of the simplest kind.
Why then do so many brilliant men,. not schizophrenic or otherwise off their heads, talk otherwise? I can think of three reasons.
In the first place - and here I am very much in sympathy with them - the epistemological pseudo-problem is a word-game of the most fascinating and pradoxical kind. I adore all such games, and indulge in them shamelessly; for example, I can prove to you by algebra that 1 equals 2. I can also prove that nothing whatsoever exists, with particular cogency when I'm helped along by a couple of martinis. Give me two more, and I'll probably be able to work out a conclusive proof that a duck is really a pig. Thus we can enjoy ourselves, in a nice irresponsible way. The danger comes when we play such games in the presence of young people who are likely to take them seriously; and it won't always be averted by our frank statement that they are games. My two young friends had been so warned, quite explicity, but this didn't prevent their philosophical education from leaving them mentally hog-tied.
Secondly, and more seriously, I must repeat the psychological and ad hominem accusation at which I hinted earlier. The concept of actually known reality is a burdensome one, even an alarming one, and not only for those people who make their living by chasing a fox that must never be finally caught. Doubt, when carefully rationalized and nourished and sustained, is a splendid defence-mechanism agsainst it.
And then there is that vague but pervasive feeling that it's somehow modest and democratic to express doubt, but assertive and dictatorial to express certainty. This goes very far. At any moment now, we'll have some mathematician saying that while he doesn't want to be dogmatic, he does feel that from some points of view, it might be meaningful to suggest that 1 plus 1 equals 2.
Education is (among other things) a process of growing up; it takes away the child's freedom of ignorance and gives us the adult's better freedom of knowledge. But it can only do this in so far as knowledge is in fact availalbe; and it can only be 'liberal' in so far as we do have real knowledge about the nature and destiny of man. Ducks are a good starting-point, but they aren't enough.
From this, there follows a principle which is resoundingly at variance with the dominant thought of our time: to many, it would seem like a mere paradox or even a flat contradiction. It is the principle that liberal education must necessarily be dogmatic. It needs to be based upon the axiom that "the truth shall make you free", and must therefore presuppose some antecedent grasping of fundamental truth. If it tries to base itself upon the converse notion, seeing freedom as a necessary precondition for the seeking of a truth which still remains to be found, it will work peripherally but fail centrally. The empirical sciences will do well enough. But in deeper matters, including the philoosphy and use of those sciences, there will be no criterion by which thought can be assessed: erudite in particualr matters, the students will them be fundamentally at sea. Those struggling survivors of shipwreck, in the image cited earlier, were not free men: they were wholly at the mercy of the winds and the waves and their own terror. It was only those who were swept ashore onto firm ground who could then take stock, and evaluate their position and make free decisions, and in general enjoy some degree of liberty.
To deny the existence of firm ground is to deny all such possibilities: fundamental scepticism is the enemy of liberal education. Where it prevails, we may still be able to train highly efficient slaves. But we shall have nothing but petty amusement to offer to free men, or to men who hope to be free, or to slaves in their brief hours of leisure. we shall be able to say plenty about means but nothing about ends. We shall know how to build bridges, but not how to make your decision about whether to cross some bridge or not: we shall know how to keep patients alive, but not how to decide whether life is worth lving.
My two young pyhilosophy majors illustrate the point beautifully. They had each received a 'liberal education' as that phrase is currently understood, at the hands of well-qualified men in institutions of high repute. And the end-product in each of them was a fundamental confusion of the mind - a 'philosophy' which resolved itself into mere word-games and could not possibly be taken seriously in daily life.
They were still nice people, though not particularly happy people. But mentally, they seemed to me to be wholly enslaved, wholly at the mercy of such sub-rational influences as the fashion and trend of the time, the influence of the powerful media, and their own glandular and psyuchological pressures. If some new Hitler were to come along, skilled at the art of manipulation and propaganda, they would be mentally defenceless against him. In many senses - that political sense included - their enormouly expensive 'liberal education' had failed totally.
An illiterate peasant might well be a better philosopher, in the sense of being a more effective lover of wisdom. He would know at least that pigs are pigs.
Learning from him, let us now grasp the first of the two great dogmatisms proposed in this book, not as the findings of free enquiry, but as the necessary firm ground which makes free enquiry posssible.
This is the dogm that pigs is indeed pigs; that fundamental scepticism is untrue; that reality is real, exists independently of our perceptions of it, can be known (within limits, but certainly) by ourselves, and can be made the subject of statements or predictions which (again within limits) can be true or false and can be known to be so.
Call this an arbitrary dogma if you will: ; it might be called common-sense or sanity. It is quite certainly the necessary starting point for any real and effective freedom of the mind: it by-passesthe infinite-regress word-game of epistemological doubt, giving us an initial foothod upon firm ground. Without this, we cannot think at all.
The point was well made by G.K. Chesterton, writing many years ago about St. Thomas Aquinas. "Even those who appreciate the metaphysical depth of Thomism in other matters have expressed surprise that he does not deal at all with what many now think the main metaphysical question: whether we can prove that the primary act of recognition of any reality is real. The answer is that St. Thomas recognized instantly, what so many modern sceptics have begun to suspect rather laboriously, that a man must either answer that question in the affirmative, or else never answer any question; never ask any question; never even exist intellectually, to answer or to ask. I suppose it is true in a sense that man can be a fundamental sceptic; but he cannot be anything else; certainly not even a defender of fundamental scepticism. "
This might be called a brisk substitution of common-sense for the uncommon nonsense that passes too widely for philosophy: it certainly contains an implied threat to the livelihood of many an academic word-spinner, and might be resented accordingly. But it does set the mind free, enabling it to start work constructively and in the realistic hope of getting somewhere. The possibility of a liberal education begins here: this is the point at which we first struggle ashsore from our old helplessness in the chaotic seas of doubt and denial.
It is of course a dogma, in the sensse that it has to be experienced and asserted: it cannot possibly be proved. But if liberal education is to be restored, the first thing to go must be the old fallacy that 'dogma' and 'freedom' are antithetical terms. They are not. As Chesterton says elsewhere, speaking of that same Dominmican dogmatist. "It will not be possible to conceal much longer from anybody the fact that St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the great liberators of the human intellect."
ESCAPE FROM SCEPTICISM
CHAPTER FIVE
PIGS IS PIGS
CHRISTOPHER DERRICK