I learn from readers. A few weeks ago I wrote in this Leaf on the cowardice of intellectuals, always ready to march for the absurdity of the moment.
A reader from Recife, also intrigued by the phenomenon, wrote to suggest a book: “Why Intellectuals Are Deceived,” by Samuel Fitoussi (there is a Portuguese translation by Bertrand).
Blessed is this scholar from Pernambuco. I knew Fitoussi thanks to the newspaper Le Figaro, but not the essay, which provides new arguments for not taking the species too seriously. I never took it.
The author starts from the same principle: one would expect that more cultured, more educated and more intelligent people would be more attached to the truth.
But history – this showcase of horrors – justifies our skepticism. In the 20th century, communism and Nazism were intellectual phenomena and not masses or workers who followed or were subjugated by the elites.
In the Soviet Union, Fitoussi writes, those with a college degree were two to three times more likely to support the CP than citizens with a high school education.
And in Nazi Germany, most of those who decided on the “final solution” at the Wannsee Conference had doctorates. Explanations?
Charles Darwin was partly wrong, says the author. Yes, in theory, reason allows us to see reality as it is – a necessary condition for the species to make decisions that guarantee its survival.
But the truth is not everything. Or, to use Fitoussi’s terminology, there is a difference between “epistemic rationality” and “social rationality”. They are not always aligned. The first allows us to know the truth. The second leads us to ask to what extent it is socially advantageous to defend this truth.
In many circumstances, the possibility of becoming an outcast in our social or professional circles is worse than standing up for a lie. As much as the intellectual admires the examples of Socrates, Copernicus or Galileo, it is likely that he will side with those who condemned them.
Especially since another factor deserves to be mentioned: the lower the price of epistemic irrationality, the more the intellectual abandons himself to social rationality.
If, through absurdity, the intellectual suffered the consequences of the imbecile, even criminal, ideas that he defends, he would be more cautious with epistemic rationality. The truth would be more important than reputation among one’s peers.
But an intellectual, especially in the human sciences, never pays that price. It’s not a butcher who sells rotten meat. Bankruptcy or prison are not real consequences for him.
On the contrary: because your identity is closely tied to the ideas you defend, there is a perverse incentive to continue defending them regardless of the consequences for others – and with redoubled vigor.
Samuel Fitoussi recalls the case of Georg Lukács (1885-1971), for whom Marxism would continue to be valid even if all the empirical predictions of the theory were refuted (as in fact they were). Recognizing the mistake is more serious than dwelling on it.
And the honest ones? I’m talking about those who honestly believe the bizarre ideas they hold because they think they are the truth. How can we explain the insistence on error?
Once again, Fitoussi reformulates the cliché: the intellectual is not the one who chooses the best ideas, but the one who best defends his ideas beyond all evidence.
Or, to put it another way, it’s not the facts that change beliefs, but the beliefs that shape the facts.
An example: anyone who assumes that communism is always superior to capitalism does not change that position simply because communism has failed to reduce poverty.
The evils of capitalism are presented in new ways – materialism corrupts the mind, inequality is worse than poverty, etc. – so that the primordial ideology is maintained.
In fact, in one of the essay’s most illuminating observations, Fitoussi suggests that ideologies are like fossils: they sought to respond to a particular historical situation – but then survived as relics used as if they were still alive.
This alone explains, I add, the illogical logic of any ideology: the fact that it offers the same answer – more freedom, more equality or more fraternity – whatever the context.
Ultimately, the “marketplace of ideas” that liberals believe in, where the truth eventually emerges from debate, must be viewed with some caution.
Among intellectuals, where there is no cost to error, it is very likely that no one learns from anyone.
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