The Flight from Truth by Jean Francois Revel

[Boojatta]

If it's anti-progressive, then is it at least a more worthy opponent than Limbaugh and Coulter?

If it's disinformation, has anyone provided a detailed analysis of it?

[bemildred]

1. I went and read the reviews at Amazon.

He sounds like another ignorant wingnut propagandist. These things are a dime-a-dozen in remainder shops, and one would never be done if one decided to analyze all of them. The short analysis, however, provided free of charge here, is that he assume his conclusions before starting his argument, e.g. the evils of Communism and "the left".

He does have a good point about the human tendency to take the concepts of one's native culture on faith and not question them, but there is no mystery about it, violating cultural taboos and notions of right and wrong can get you in big trouble.

[Boojatta]

2. Perhaps we can consider this to be my review of your review?

He sounds like another ignorant wingnut propagandist.

I see no reason to assume that ignorance is the personal defect that puts someone at risk of becoming a propagandist. Nor would I assume that there are only two political orientations: progressivism and anti-progressivism. I don't even know that Revel is anti-progressive.

The short analysis, however, provided free of charge here, is that he assume his conclusions before starting his argument, e.g. the evils of Communism and "the left".

This is based on reviews at amazon? There are many possible defects that an argument might contain. How could you know in advance the defects of an argument in a book (assuming that the book actually contains something resembling an argument) without actually reading some sections or chapters of the book?

He does have a good point about the human tendency to take the concepts of one's native culture on faith and not question them (...)

You just stated the "good point" yourself within a single sentence. If that's the only good point in the entire book, then it's not worth mentioning except as part of an attempt to demonstrate the thesis that the book is worthless. However, I get the impression that the "good point" is mentioned in an effort to be (or to appear to be) dispassionate.

[bemildred]

3. Generally speaking I mean what I say.

I called him ignorant because he says ignorant things (already) in the small bits of his writing I have read, not as an a cause or explanation of anything else.

The reviews contain a lot of quotes, and his use of stereotypes and political cant, as quoted there, is what I based my opinion on. If he is not a propagandist, he is a KoolAid addict, a systematizer, someone that is hypnotized by his own words. The book itself seems to be from 1992, and sounds outdated in it's subject and its thinking.

It is a very good point, with or without a book, in my opinion, and that is why I brought it up, to give him credit where I could see it was due, and to point out the idea itself. It gets far too little attention, that natural human tendency to drink the KoolAid. History is littered with the folly and violence of true believers and unquestioning followers.

Given what he says elsewhere, there is no little irony in that he also emphasizes that point too, a classic case of not seeing the mote in ones own eye ...

I'm not making an argument or even trying to support the point of view I expressed. I just offered my views as a favor, if they don't suit you, I suggest you ignore them. As I said, I'm not interested enough to spend much time.

[Boojatta]

4. This will be more interesting when the thread contains excerpts from the book.

This confused me:

He does have a good point about the human tendency to take the concepts of one's native culture on faith and not question them, but there is no mystery about it (...)

You used the word "but", for whatever reason, to introduce the issue of mystery/non-mystery and to come down on the side of saying that it isn't a mystery. I tried to take what I saw as a hint. However, you have now provided a very clear statement:

It is a very good point, with or without a book, in my opinion, and that is why I brought it up, to give him credit where I could see it was due, and to point out the idea itself.

So that's settled.

The book itself seems to be from 1992, and sounds outdated in it's subject (...)

I don't understand that comment. Unless the title is misleading, the subject is a kind of subject that doesn't really become outdated.

and its thinking.

Do ways of thinking become outdated so quickly?

I just offered my views as a favor, if they don't suit you, I suggest you ignore them.

It's a favor to the whole board when you post your views for everyone to see. I don't regret that you posted your views. I see no problem in this thread that would warrant anyone ignoring anything.

[bemildred]

5. Mystery ...

I'm just saying that there are strong reasons, like survival, why people are predisposed to accept the preconceptions of their native cultures without much critical scrutiny.

[Boojatta]

8. "Dime-a-dozen" is figurative rather than literal, right?

He sounds like another ignorant wingnut propagandist. These things are a dime-a-dozen in remainder shops, and one would never be done if one decided to analyze all of them.

According to the dust jacket, The Flight from Truth has won:

• the Chateaubriand Prize (Paris, 1988)
  
• the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Prize (Geneva, 1989)
  
• and the Konrad Adenauer Prize (Bonn, 1990)
  

[Boojatta]

6. From the book

(...) during a state visit to Argentina and Uruguay, François Mitterrand declared with studied emphasis at Montevideo: "Democracy is nothing without development." To be sure, I realized long ago that for François Mitterrand an idea has no value as regards intrinsic content and as a statement of something known; rather, it is like an arrow, the chief interest of which is to be found in the position from which it is fired and the target at which it is aimed. For every individual -- and in particular for every politician, we must hasten to admit -- the interest possessed by an idea is divided in varying proportions between its truth-containing and its utilitarian function, between its content of information and its polemical power. But in few individuals more than in François Mitterrand have I seen such a complete effacement of the function of truth to the benefit of the function of utility. It is not, or not solely, a form of insincerity. It is simply the natural and total triumph of the tactical over the conceptual dimension.
(from page 128)

In reality, if democracy without development was meaningless, then neither the French or the American revolution nor the British reform movement should have been undertaken. At the time those happenings took place, all three nations displayed acute symptoms of what today would be called underdevelopment. Switzerland in the nineteenth century was a very poor country. Nonetheless, for centuries it had been practicing a form of direct democracy on the level of the canton, very much in advance of the rest of Europe. Should this have been halted so long as the country was not rich? (...) At what level of development can a society be regarded as ripe for democracy, and how is this to be determined? (...) Any society, according to the criterion adopted, can be considered as underdeveloped or developed. Brazil is at once overdeveloped and underdeveloped. (...) In 1944 France itself was profoundly underdeveloped, suffering from shortages of food, clothing, housing, electricity and heating, public and private transportation, with an annual per capita income that was less than that of 1900. Should freedom for his reason have been deferred and the Vichy regime prolonged until the country's economic development reached its plenitude? And who would be qualified to fix the degree of development above which a democracy ceases to be "nothing" and becomes a "something"?
(from page 129)

The power of ideology is rooted in a human lack of curiosity about facts.
(from page 203)

What, after all, could be more inoffensive than Assyriology? (...) It is easy to understand why certain areas of history should be jealously watched over by ideologists -- for example, the French Revolution, whose territory is littered with ideological debris that are still radioactive and upon which we venture to tread as though entering a castle, haunted by ghosts eager to be enrolled posthumously in our contemporary battles. But Assyriology! Only the thirsty for ignorance, the libido ignorandi, can explain its laborious beginnings. For when, in 1802, a young Latin scholar, Georg Friedrich Grotefend, informed the Royal Society of Sciences of Göttingen University in Germany that he had found the key to "the so-called cuneiform inscriptions of Persepolis" -- something that he had indeed achieved -- the news left this particular society completely cold. And yet, as a present-day Assyriologist, Jean Bottéro, has written, it was Grotefend who "first advanced along this road at the end of which, after half a century of effort, scholars were finally able to master the formidable triple secret which for two thousand years had defended Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions." (...)
(from page 204)

This reaction of apathy toward information is a basic fact that we must take into account if we wish to understand the mishaps of communication and comprehension. It comes before any invasion of ideology. As soon as the latter intervenes, it simply triples or quadruples the powerlessness of pure knowledge to retain our attention; it does not create this impotence from scratch.
(from page 204)

[Boojatta]

7. From Chapter 9: "The Need for Ideology"

It is quite normal that in our day we should be reminded of political examples when we think of ideology, just as before the eighteenth century people were always reminded of religious examples.

Even today, however, nonpolitical ideologies flourish. (...) If the principal characteristic of an ideology can perhaps be regarded as being its impermeability to "alien" information in order to protect an interpretative system, then it becomes clear that ideological "enrobing" immunizes entire constellations of convictions against assaults of reality in almost all spheres of thought and human activity. Ideology is political when it tends toward the conquest or conservation of power. But not all ideologies are primarily aimed at wielding power, even though not one of them is entirely uninterested in this. To the craving for intellectual domination is added the desire to preserve the influence of a coterie, or of one's ability to apportion university posts, material resources, honorific satisfactions.
(from page 169)

(...)

Human beings experience all sorts of needs for intellectual activity other than the need to know. The libido sciendi is not, contrary to what Pascal said, the principal motor of the human mind. It is only an accessory inspirer, and only among a small number of us. The average human being seeks the truth only after having exhausted all other possibilities.
(from page 170)

(...)

Foucault wanted to abolish the distinction between science, on the one hand, and a scientifically thematic ideology on the other, because this suppression is characteristic of this kind of ideology, in which he himself excelled. What characterizes the ideologist who propounds a scientific thesis is that he lays claim to being upheld by scientific demonstrations and experiments, while refusing any confrontation with objective knowledge, except on terms that suit him and on his specially chosen ground. His use of information simply mimics the scientific approach, which he does not regard as binding, and it possesses demonstrative value only for someone who has first embraced his ideology without prior questioning. To confront a scientific ideologist by objecting to the inexactitude of his findings or to the extravagance of his inductions is to be guilty of poor taste; it is a sign of malevolence, since the intrinsic thrust of ideological thinking is to make the value of the argumentation depend on the thesis that has to be established, rather than vice versa (...)
(from page 171)

The function of ideologies clothed in scientific vestments is to put the prestige of science at the service of ideology; it is not to subject ideology to the control of scientific method. The success of Teilhardism was due to the fact that it "reconciled the Catholic Church and modernity" -- in the sense that it provided a verbal concoction and a metaphysical potion rendering Christian dogma compatible with the evolution of the human species and human paleontology. All that was asked was that it fulfill this ideological mission. Obviously no one had read Teilhard's work with a view primarily to increasing one's knowledge of the sciences of biology and human life. But -- and therein lay the ambivalence of this ideology -- everyone had to pretend to have read it for this purpose, while resolutely abstaining from any truly critical examination of the work's "scientific" basis.

Medawar was accordingly regarded as the Devil incarnate, one who at all costs had to be silenced or discredited as being dull and devoid of imagination -- even though, it is worth recalling, no political issue was involved. Hence the brush-off I received from my journalistic friends. Not that they were fierce adorers of the reverend Father. I would be more inclined to say that they didn't care two hoots about Teilhardism. But, being professionally alert and receptive to the circumambient atmosphere, they sensed that they had nothing to gain by printing Medawar; on the contrary, they risked being taken to task for "retrograde scientism" and for being insensitive to "boldness" and "modernity" -- this last quality, curiously enough, usually being attributed to laborious patchings-up of archaic doctrines.

During a dinner with a friend, the historian Pierre Nora, I was delighted to hear François Jacob (who was to win the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1965) tell the editor in chief of an important weekly how interesting Peter Medawar's article was and what a good thing it would be if it were published in France. To my bitter surprise, the great biologist was no more successful than I had been in his efforts of persuasion, his incomparable authority notwithstanding.
(from pages 172 and 173)

[BrightVictor]

9. Haven't read that one

but I liked his book Anti-Americanism. It had some very interesting things to say about transatlantic relations.

[Boojatta]

10. Hello, BrightVictor, and welcome to DU!

:toast: