The last Rorty

        by Andrei Marga

[translated by: Theodora-Eva Stancel]

        
        Richard Rorty was supposed to come again to Cluj in September, to participate to the annual reunions on the “American Pragmatism” theme, which were inaugurated in 2006. He wasn’t able to attend it either last year, as he was dedicated, in the same time, a session in Rio de Janeiro. He remained delighted though, by the week he spent at the Babes-Bolyai University in 2002, when he received the honorary doctorate of the venerable institution, he held two debates on the platform- at the European Studies Faculty and at the Faculty of Letters- and went in a field trip to Aiud, Rameti, Alba Iulia, Sibiu, Medias, together with his wife. I accompanied him and he offered unforgettable conversations. For example, when asked by a journalist in Sibiu, about the worldwide philosophical hierarchy, he elegantly declined priority in favor of his great friend and philosophical rival Jurgen Habermas. It was well known, of course, that within that hierarchy Rorty was following closely the one of the most well-formed philosopher of all times. Otherwise, Habermas, Derrida and Rorty were already, for more then a decade earlier, in top of the best philosophers in the world.

        Meanwhile, Richard Rorty has passed away, leaving behind a work, which the passage of time will lay amongst the most original of its kind in the last centuries. For, this work is about (as I have shown in the volume “Introduction into contemporary philosophy”, Polirom , Iasi, 2002, whose consideration I will not resume once more), the reformulation of pragmatism on John Dewey’s shoulders but having as support initiatives owed to Quine ( the dislocations of the traditional distinction between analytic and synthetic, empirical and theoretical, contingent and necessary), Nelson Goodman (the dismissal of the thesis of the possibility of a description destitute of pre-suppositions), Sellers (the deconstruction of the myth of the given), Heidegger (the return to the existential theme) and Wittgenstein (the conception of knowledge as language). The reformulation signified, it has to be said, the most precise approach, from Plato and Aristotle, of the human life’s dependency on linguistic-conceptual constellations. Richard Rorty left us the philosophy of pragmatic relativism, that his book “Philosophy and the mirror of nature” (1978)- one of the modern philosophical monuments- represents it most articulately.

        After having published three volumes of “Philosophical Papers-Objectivity, Relativism and Truth” (1991), “Essays on Heidegger and others”(1991), “Truth and progress” (1997), that I have commented upon on other occasions -Richard Rorty gathered studies from the last decade in the volume “Philosophy as Cultural Politics” (Cambridge University Press, 2007), whose public reception he was no longer able to see.

        This volume counts, from now on inevitably, as “the last Rorty”. The interrogative frankness, the culture and the refinement of the previous volumes, dominate this volume also, however the author made steps forward towards a more vast impact of his philosophy. Scarcely conventional, “The Financial Times” remarked, at the disappearance of the celebrated American philosopher, his productive impact on…schools of business administration of developed countries.

         I bring, in my turn, homage to Richard Rorty’s universal reference work, to his unexpected disappearance, pondering with an assembled portrait on the philosophy of “Philosophy as Cultural Politics”. Which are the specific theses of this philosophy and in what resides its originality?

         As in the masterpiece “Philosophy and the mirror of nature” (and, otherwise “Philosophical Papers”), in his new book Rorty has put in relation Hegel’s conception of philosophy as “expression of its time” and Wittgenstein’s approach of knowledge as an assembly of “language games” within Dewey’s consideration of the human life as a continuous line of “resolving of practical problems”. In “Philosophy as cultural Policy”, he drew more consequences from John Dewey’s philosophy as “social hope reduced to a working program of action, a prophecy of the future”, being encouraged, I must say, by the impressive retaking by his illustrious disciple, Robert Brandom (whom he wasn’t reluctant to present as a landmark of recent world-wide philosophy), of Hegel’s optic.

        Rorty saluted enthusiastically Brandom’s call for the delimitation from “representationalism” (the conception, that believes that we reach the image of objects, from which the entire knowledge starts), even if he considered it necessary to come on this side of his (Brandom’s n.n) “inferential-ism” (the conception that considers as initials, the inferences that apply social norms), towards a more comprehensive conceptualization. His characteristic thesis sounds the in the following way: “the last human activity governed by norms is the cultural politics” (p.21). By “cultural politics” it must be taken into consideration, of course, an assembly of choices that conditions the concepts with which we operate and the reality criteria that we use.

         Rorty retrieves the idea of the “ontological precedence of the social” under the form of the supremacy of the “cultural politics” of divers societies. There are, of course, limits of a society regarding the recognition of reality -limits owed to “the need to talk about the object when we talk”, therefore transcendental, limits owed to the relation to transcultural realities ( for example the difference between food ad poison), therefore practical, and cultural limits, made by the previous decisions of those people- however reality is something assumed together with the linguistic-conceptual systems of that particular society. “Cultural politics”, in the reminded connotation represents “the last word” in the matters of the very existence. Therefore the question: “what is it?” is no longer solved, neither on basis of “facts” allegedly produced by assumptions, nor in a transcendental manner, but by questioning the “cultural politics”(p.19).

         The thesis of the precedence of the “cultural politics” has multiple implications and connections in Rorty’s philosophical system. The first one is the derivation of support of terms that assume entities, terms such as “Science”, “Knowledge”, “Reason” and the dissolution of the concepts in people’s “conversation”, and the dissolution of the disciplines (including philosophy) in “discursive practices”. The latter remain continuously contextual. We should cease, Rorty advises, to conceive contexts from the perspective of canonical designators and of a universal context. “Should there be such a context, this would be, of course, the very object of study of an expert culture, charged with the determination of the future direction of humanity’s conversation. However, such a context does not exist. “Ontology” is not the name of an expert culture, and we should stop imagining that such an expert culture would be desirable. It is the only way to proceed in order to be able to leave behind us what Heidegger named ‘onto-theology’” (p.24). Otherwise, philosophy proceeds adequately, creating itself as a “conversational philosophy”. “Following this path, philosophy’s task, is not to discover to what extent is something “real”, but to help us grow- to make us happier, freer, and more flexible. The maturation of our concepts and the increasing richness of our conceptual repertoire constitutes the cultural progress” (p 124).

         The “conversational” conception of philosophy had drawn, in “Philosophy as Cultural Politics”, changes not only in the manner of understanding philosophical “entities”, but also in the historical interpretation of philosophy, of the very pragmatism, and in the construction of the philosophy of religion and the conception of the relation of culture’s greatest fields of activity. The history of philosophy is presented by Rorty as a “progress in three stages” as far as it concerns “redemption”: the stage of the redemption through religion, then the stage of the redemption through philosophy and last, the stage of redemption through literature”(p 91). The last stage in which we are placed, began immediately after Kant, with Hegel, following who it was impossible to restore the former trust in philosophy, and Marx and Kirkegaard have announced the dissolution of classical philosophy. “The literary culture” supervenes after a turn that substituted both religion and philosophy and found redemption neither in a non-cognitive relation with the human person, nor in a cognitive relation with propositions, but in a non-cognitive relation with other human beings, a relationship mediated by human artifacts, such as books, buildings, pictures and sounds”(p.93). Within this stage pragmatism has brought, through James and Dewey, in a large extent with convergence with Nietzsche, a “romantic polytheism” , a “non-platonic and non-exclusive form of Christianity”, that states that “there is no inferential chain that ties the ideal of human fraternization to the ideal of the escape from the world of appearances inhabited by animals, and to the ideal of the real world in which people will become Gods’ s image” (p.33). Especially to William James we owe an “anti-representationalist conception” that allows the elaboration of a “pragmatist philosophy of religion”.

         Rorty sketches a philosophy of religion in five theses: considering that “believes” are “habits of action”, the duty to unify divers “believes” within one unique “worldview” recurs; the contrast between cognitive and non-cognitive dissolves itself as there is no truth separated from the “will to happiness”; there can be made a distinction between “projects of social cooperation”( represented by the natural sciences , law and so and so forth); “religious belief” is measured in relation not with “evidence” but with “projects”; the ideal of human brotherhood, that democracy borrows from the Judeo-Christian tradition, is connected to the assuming of the of “the democratic consensus regarding the maximization of happiness” (p.34-35). In consequence, religious fundamentalism should be rejected not only due to “the intellectual irresponsibility” that consists of disregarding the results of natural sciences, but mostly due to “the moral irresponsibility, that resides within the disdain of democracy.

         While having mixed attitudes, Rorty has observed the “diminishing of the interest for philosophy amongst intellectuals” and the triumph of “horizontal thinking” over “vertical thinking”. He considered that we have become “commonsensical finitists”(p.88). Within this context, Rorty promoted clearest and most energetic the program of “tolerant conversability”(p.103) amongst disciplines and cultural fields of activity and he himself embodied, through his writing “the conversation” of sciences, philosophy, literature , religion. However he remained faithful to the profile of the critical intellectual that identifies his roots in the American democracy from Jefferson to Dewey. His horizon is the attainment of the consensus upon the ways of maximizing each and everyone of us’ happiness. To renounce of the idea that there is an intrinsic nature of reality, that is to be discovered by prelates or philosophers or scientists, implies the separation of the need of salvation from that of the search for a universal agreement. It involves the renouncing of the search for an accurate representation of human nature, and thus of a recipe for the guiding of Man’s Good Life. Once these searches are abandoned, the limits of the steps of human imagination are extended forward, towards the assuming of the role that the submission before the divine will was played within a religious culture and the role that the discovery of what is effectively real was played within a philosophical culture. However this substitution is not the reason for the renounce of the search for a singular utopian form of the political life-The Good Global Society”(p.104). Rorty himself has carried on such a research, with a culture, talent and originality which will be difficult to match.
        
        

The Chaotic Society

    by Andrei Marga
    [translated by: Ormeny Francisc Norbert]

 

        It is considered fairly that, along with the work Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947), media have become, properly speaking, a  topic of philosophical reflection. Very much indeed, in their famous analysis, Horkheimer and Adorno anticipated the magnitude of the media-expansion in late Modernity and they interpreted the ample intervention of the means of mass-communication (radio, television, written press) as a way of  “homogenizing” and of “standardizing” of knowledge, of sensibilities, of tastes inside  this society, within a vast process of manipulation of citizens.   Gianni Vattimo – today’s illustrious philosopher, carried further away the thought, forty years later, and he moved his research behind the “standardizing” thesis, as promoted by the Frankfurt School. He considers that the cultural trend set along with the publication of  Lessing’s  book  The Education of Humankind (Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts - 1780)  and acknowledged by Hegel’s philosophy of history  -  trend which conceived history as a progressive process of achieving a goal (liberty, emancipation and so on and so forth) ends before our very eyes -  and that, following Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History (Über den Begriff der Geschichte 1938) this conception of  history will have to be deconstructed by historicization.

         The “post-modern” society means precisely leaving “history as something unitary” in favor of  the multiplication of  “local histories” and of  the perspectives on history, and, as a consequence, the abandonment of  “ the idea of progress” (with the corollary: the  abandonment of  Eurocentrism).

         The “post-modern” society – thus connoted by “the current crisis of unitary conception of history” and by “the crisis of the idea of progress”- is put by the author of the volume La società trasparente on account of two historical factors: “the end of colonialism and of imperialism after World War II” and the emergence of  “the society of communication”. In his turn, Gianni Vatimo ponders upon the “transparency” of this society. Decades ago Horkheimer and Adorno (the latter in Minima Moralia [1951] as well) accused that the tendency to “uniformize” of the “cultural industry” is present even in the production of what is labeled as “new” in the modern society, and they saw in the dawning “media society” (their term was “Kulturindustrie”) a confusioning in the public life, including the logic distinctions (singular – general, accidental – necessary, fact – value, and so on and so forth). Gianni Vattimo rejects the equalization of  today’s “society of communication” with a “transparent society”: the expansion of mass media does not shed more light upon the people’s clarification of the state of affairs. Horkheimer and Adorno would accuse the orientation of mass media towards the cultivation of  average -“media”(to the disadvantage of  exception), of “functionality” (to the detriment of value), of that which is “consumable”(in spite of the subtle relationships), of the “intuitive” (to the loss of concepts). Gianni Vattimo argues how wrong it would be to consider that today’s media expansion means more transparency, more cognition, an increased self-consciousness of humanity and a sort of  embodiment of  Hegel’s Absolute Spirit. On the contrary, that which increases along with today’s expansion of media is the opposite of  a “transparent society” – it is chaos that increases. The reason for  “untransparency” seem to lie in the fact that the media distributes subjectivized and uncorrelated cuttings of the “reality” thus hindering,  by its very own mechanisms, a direct-enough approach to reality and its understanding.   It is the case of a society that is now in an “explosive situation, a globalization that appears to be irresistible and which makes impossible the conceiving of the world and of history following some unitary points of view”(the Romanian edition, Pontica, Constanţa, 1995, p.10)

         We are not going to dwell right now on the question if not Dialektik der Aufklärung and La società trasparente assumed incompletely the impact of the media (because a more ample informing of the people is realized, however, by the media! )

         For Gianni Vattimo however, it is precisely the  disintegration, due to  the media, of the “unique reality”, that is the positive premise of a step forward: the release of people until the end from Spinoza’s as well as  the entire “metaphysical tradition” ‘s  postulate - according to which freedom depends on some understanding of the necessity -  and redirecting people to assuming history as “local history”, as creation, and to assuming the writing of history as “account” without obligations or constraints. The “society of communication” contains, therefore, an unexpected potential for emancipation. “Here emancipation consists rather in the uprooting, which is simultaneously also release of differences, of local elements, of what we might call, generally speaking, the dialect.  The idea of a central rationality of history having fallen, the world of generalized communication explodes as a multiplicity of  ‘local’ rationalities – ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, religious minorities, cultural or aesthetic minorities – which take the floor,  finally no longer silenced and repressed by the idea that there is only one true form of humanity to achieve, in expense of all singularities, of all limited, ephemeral and contingent individualities”(Ibidem, p.15) Gianni Vattimo believes that the emancipation of  one’s own “dialect”  would be exempt from risk of turning this “dialect” into an obligation for the others, because one’s own  “dialect” would commit itself to the acknowledgement of the “dialects” of others.

         Gianni Vattimo devoted to religion more works than any other philosopher of postmodernism. He assumed, as early as Credere di credere (1996),  that there is “a return of religion in our life”, after the modern interpretations that relied on the “liquidation of  religion” have collapsed. (the Romanian edition, Pontica, Constanţa, 1995, p.10) The dialogue Quale futuro aspetta la religione dopo la metafisica? (2005) ended with the emphatic statement: “in ogni modo, la religione non e morta…, Dio e ancora in circulazione…”(p.33) Gianni Vattimo actually claims that his very doctrine “the weak ontology” derives from the Christian heritage – “the weak ontology is a transcription of the Christian message” (p.35) and it and inherits “the refusal of violence”(p.58) – but applies to Christianity his own philosophy grounded on Heidegger. He wants in fact a  “found-again-Christianity”(p.93) driven by the value of “charity”(Richard Rorty, Gianni Vattimo, Il futuro della religione. Solidarietà, carità, ironia, Garzanti, Milano, 2002, p.13), which involves “demystifying Christianity”, a demystifying somehow parallel to philosophy’s release from metaphysics. On the other hand, according to  Gianni Vattimo,  it is precisely “the postmodern pluralism” which enables one to “rediscover the Christian faith”. In Jenseits des Christentums. Gibt es eine Welt ohne Gott? (2002) the philosopher argues that  “precisely because God as the ultimate foundation (which means: as absolute metaphysical structure of the real) can no longer be represented, it is therefore now possible to once again believe in God” (Carl Hanser, Wien, München, 2002, p.13)

The Invisible Society

 by Andrei Marga
 [translated by: Ormeny Francisc Norbert]

        Some diagnosis of the society of late modernity have focused on what really shapes the  relationships among people(“reality” – to use a language which we owe to Hegel) up to “invisibility”.  The most original sociologist of the post-war era, Niklas Luhmann (Die Realität der Massenmedien, 1996), was drawing  attention to the difference between reality and what comes to communication, after Foucault (in Surveiller et punir, 1972) had tried to destroy the liberal myth of the “society of performance”,  according to  which all reality it would present itself  in the public controversy. Ulrich Beck developed the motif of “the invisibility of society” (in Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne, 1986) and derived the idea of an inherent “risk” to people’s action in late modernity. Not long ago, one of the most prominent Spanish philosophers, Daniel Innerarity,  worked out the motif of the “invisible society” at the level of a comprehensive philosophy of  late modernity.

         In La sociedad invisible (Espasa, Madrid, 2004) the intelligent and highly cultivated philosopher from Saragossa, gives this diagnosis: if we try to interpret philosophically the society with which the  XXI th century started, then the “invisible society” has the most arguments on its part, which means: “  a society that escapes our comprehension and our practical control”(p.14); a society characterized by “complexity, contingency, untransparency”,  a society where one experiences feelings such as “intransparency, uncertainty, insecurity”; a society where one perceives “less objective variables than possibilities”(p.16); a society dominated  by a culture articulated less on “recognizable objectivities” than on the “suspicion” inherent to “uncertainty”(p.89).  “Invisibility is the result of a complex process within which  mobility, volatility, fragmentation and fusions, multiplication of original realities and the disappearance of explanatory blocks,  unusual alliances and the confluence of interests difficult to understand -  reach confluence. The distribution of power is more volatile; the determination of causes and of responsibilities is more complex; interlocutors are unstable; presences are virtual and enigmas are diffuse. Everything contributes to the fact that we inhabit a more enigmatical world.”(p.65)

         This diagnosis deserves attention for at least three reasons. Nobody has developed on a factual basis so wide the diagnosis of  “the invisible society”, as Daniel Innerarity did. The development itself is done on the  support of a literary, philosophical, sociological, economic and political culture – a culture essentially complete. Daniel Innerarity puts to work, as once Ortega y Gasset did, a thorough familiarity with the German philosophy, from the classics of  romanticism, passing through Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, then through Husserl, Heidegger, Bloch, Gehlen up to Habermas, Luhman, Ionas, and more close to our times, to Beck, Honneth, Nassehi, Sloterdijk. On the the background of a comprehensive processing of the universal literature worthy of reference of  late modernity, Daniel Innerarity fructifies a tradition that today even the enemies mimic, but can not bypass: the “critical theory”, which has gained literary relevance with Benjamin and Adorno, to become the most comprehensive philosophy of our time along with Habermas, and to record reformulations in the succession of the philosopher from Starnberg.

         A book so remarkable as La sociedad invisible, can be usefully exploited by the reader in various directions, directions given by just as many sketches of theories that the theory of the “invisible society” enfolds. For instance, the redefining of philosophy as “detrivialization of reality”(p.22) by means of continuous questioning before the appearances of  certainty and by means of anchoring in the facts of current experience; the restoring of the cultural role of  the conceptualized critique of reality as given in experience (page 36 and the following), including the differentiation between the “convincing critique” and the “radicalness of gesticulation”; the initiation of the freeing of the conceptual effects of  social “invisibility”(page 71 and the following), particularly the capturing of the dissolution of some traditional distinctions (civilian – military, victory – rout, and so on and so forth) as a result of terrorism, which reached a new threshold along with September 11 2001; the virtualization of the territory in future conflicts (page 102 and the following); the shift  of  the battle from programs to media “attention” (page 131 and the following); the theory of the construction of reality by means of media in late modernity (page 133 and the following); the attempt to penetrate the future  and to revive the “utopian energies”, energies indispensable to  any configuration of life not only in relation to present times, but also to future times (the chapter Sobre la posibilidad de un futuro alternativo).

         It is important to note that, faithful to the substantival tradition of  philosophy, Daniel Innerarity resumed the demanding conception of philosophy as “understanding of the current world (inteligibilidad del mundo actual)”.  He wants the cardinal theses of philosophy to absorb and make intelligible the facts of experience which people live. On the ground of these facts the Spanish philosopher proceeded to the reconstruction of ethics (Ética de la hospitalidad, 2001) and of politics (La transformación de la política, 2002), before publishing La sociedad invisible. But which are the facts on which it is based the diagnosis of the “invisible society”? We will not insist on Daniel Innerarity’s provocative reflection about the relation between theory and factual basis, including statistics (and on the legitimacy of the idea that today  we live the penury of  genuine theory, even when, perceptibly, “la sociedad est actualmente un asunto interpretativo”). He displays, in any case, as factual basis of  the thesis of the “invisible society”, facts such as: today’s crisis of “determinadas expectativas y evidencias”, which shed light upon the situation; the centrality they have acquired, inside the discourse on nowadays society, terms such as: risk, virtuality, exclusion, simulation, alternative, representation, and so on and so forth; the competition existing between frescoes of the world, ideologies and lifestyles, which suggests a world less clear; the relativistic acknowledgement of the plurisignificances of reality, which suggests the same thing; current pictures of the future are reluctant, defenseless or colonized with fears.

The Society of  lie ?

by Andrei Marga
[translated by: Ormeny Francisc Norbert]

        

To what extent, in the society that we inhabit, “truth” prevails over lie? How large is the area of “good” actions as compared to those that fall in the sphere of “evil”? In a Christianized society, how large is the “love” and where begins the empire of hate, cynicism, indifference? In everyday life we are obviously prone to not only assume that the truth, the good, the  love  must guide us but to also assume that these occupy in the largest measure the reality.  Consoling illusion, of course, but only an illusion!  In any case, it is too seldom that we ponder upon the nature of evil, deceit, hatred and indifference and we are too little critical of the realities we live.

         This difference between the presentation of things and their reality does not concern only great values (truth, good, love). The difference concerns – which is even worse – decisions on which everybody’s life depends. For example, should the  pupils and students ask themselves what is the professional caliber of those who govern us, they would no longer find complete reasons to learn. Should the citizens find out that today, a preeminently agrarian country like Romania can not produce its cereals and the quantities of  meat necessary to nutrition, they would regard otherwise the statements of the  policymakers. Should they find out that the integration of the country in the European Union has nothing to do with those to claim it on our country, a curtain of frauds would collapse.

         It is important however,  precisely in order  to understand what is, to solve the concepts with which we operate, which always remain the indispensable tools of knowledge. To this end I let myself be stimulated by the brilliant essay of the German historian Wolfgang Reinhard, Unsere Lügen Gesellschaft (Murmann, Hamburg, 2006) who bringing into discussion the extent in which “truth” marks the lives of people, at which point formulates diagnosis: people live, in fact, in a “society of lie (eine Lügen Gesellschaft)”(p.9) Let us see on what factual basis lies this diagnosis.

         The sociologist Robert Hettlage coordinated, in 2003, a volume,  under the title Verleugnen, Vertuschen, Verdrehen. Leben in der Lügengesellschaft, in which he argues that the current society is characterized by a “relaxed cohabitation with lying” and he lists over sixty ways of lying that are practiced today. The philosopher David Nyberg thematized “the moral complexity of  lie”, whereas the psychiatrist George Şerban (Lying: Man’s Second Nature, 2001) considered lie “man’s second nature”. The historian Wolfgang Reinhard brings into discussion the concept of lie and many examples taken from history in order to document a few theses meant to extend the up-mentioned analyses. It remains still valid the classical connotation of lie, which comes from Augustine, according to which “the lie is an untrue statement, formulated with the will to cheat”.  Neither  ”politeness”, nor succeeded “polysignificance”(p.15), nor “semi-truth”(p.16) are a part of the lie. On the other hand, “silence at the right time”, “political correctness” (p.20), “keeping a compromising secret” (p.21), “cheating by means of statistics”(p.26) are definitely a part of the sphere of lie. What remains yet to be remembered is that, on the one hand, in history we are dealing with multiple “kinds of truth”(p.121):  truth communicated through irrational ways(half of the social communication consists of gestures and mimics); shared truth; truth conceived in a personal manner; truth transmitted through education.  On the other hand, major theories of knowledge (Heidegger’s ontic theory, Thomas Aquinas’s theory of correspondence, Kant’s theory of coherence, James’s theory of utility) show, along with the theories of their family, an evolution within which “truth has lost its nimbus, it is disenchanted” and “it seems to remain but a designation for some arbitrary points of view”(p. 124). The conception of truth seems to follow the discouraging course of the expansion of lie and, therefore, of subjectivism and, by this, of uncertainty.

         The lie can not at all be  reduced to  the everyday life of children or adults, but it included the spheres of decision on which depend many people’s life-styles and the values the most irreducible. For instance, one talks about “reform” when it is only about some insignificant measures (including measures to reduce social allowances), one claims that there is “liberalization” when, as a matter of  fact,  one seeks but to reduce the staff, one resorts to statistics (there is “cheating by means of statistics”) in order to screen one’s own misperformances. “A creative approach to truth and untruth belongs to the policy itself, paradoxically even to  democratic politics” (p.35). There are, secondly, cheating-maneuvers in economy (maneuvers often promoted by means of advertising). Through media, one would spread the myth of the “consumer’s paradise” or the myth of the “free exchange of views”; media tend toward  self-referentiality, which means that they relate only to themselves and their products”(p.93). The classical “Theaterstaat” is thus completely thrown in the museum. Lie in scientific knowledge frequently takes the form of  an implicit consideration of  what is given as normal(p.100-107). In love one would lie motivating that he does so “for  love”.

         With his Unsere Lügen Gesellschaft, Wolfgang Reinhard did the radiography of the presence of lie in economy, media, science, sentimental life, education and, especially, in politics. With such support, he sought to argue three theses. The first is the thesis of  the unprecedented extension of lie.” Untruth proves to be not only common but also necessary, meanwhile, even friendly to man”(p.9). The second is the thesis of the complicity in the lie of those who and those who are being lied to. According to this thesis, the l political lie of those who lead is part of the political deceit that includes everybody (p.13). Finally, the third is the thesis of  the unfitness for politics, in the usual meaning, of those that do not accept complicity.

         “Skeptical and self-critical people are, because of this (the given configuration of politics  my note), weak politicians”(p.14), especially in this era, when politics broke up with the issues of content and become mere “fight between people”(p.30).

         Is there a way out of the “society of lie”, a society in which lie creates unexpected complicities, and where politics broke up with values and visions? Of course, it is not possible a coherent theory of  lie as long as we do not have a coherent theory of truth (p. 131) But, in this circumstance, we still hold the value of  “veracity(Wahrhaftigkeit)” – to present ourselves with a clean  conscience, as witnesses [confessors – translator’s note ] to the reality.

         “Even when no one can tell anymore what is the true - we still, forever, what is veracity”(p.125), writes Wolfgang Reinhard. This means that “indeed, we no longer know what truth is, but we want to at least find out what it is not. Because the will to veracity always drives us”(p.136) – hopes the famous historian.

The society of risk?

by Andrei Marga
 [translated by: Stancel Theodora-Eva]

        

In the context of the proliferation of fragmentary reflections upon life in today’s society Ulrich Beck boldly assumes to speak about its character. This is a rare enterprise in the age of “intellectual adjustment” to contexts. The thesis he accomplished is worth to be cited from a book that had not been previously taken into account enough at the time of the first edition: it is Risikogesellshaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1986). We live in a society- so the thesis states- that needs to be researched, factually, of course, which cannot be understood but as “the theory of society”. From the perspective of this theory, cultivated by German, American and French authors, “we are eye witnesses-subject and object- of a rupture within modernity, that detaches from the classical industrial society’s shapes and takes a new form- that of …”the society of risk”…It pretends a difficult equilibrium between the contradictions of continuity and of censorship in the modern world, that mirror themselves one more time n the contradiction between the modern and the industrial society, between the industrial society and that of risk”(p.13). Better said, we no longer are rigorously in modern society, but we live the change of modernity itself in a significant manner that demands new optics and concepts.

         It is worth to emphasis on Ulrich Becks’ diagnosis (even though the explanation of the used methods is deliberately postponed for later) not just because of the professor’s from Munchen University rare productivity. In reality, some of his books for example Was ist Globalisierung Irrtumer des Globalismus-Antworten auf Globalisierung (1997), are international bestsellers. As I was saying it is worth the emphasis,first of all due to the accuracy of the diagnosis: that we live in a “society of risk”! In fact, Ulrich Beck has captured in more concluding terms than  his predecessors the passing of the today’s people’s lives from under the governing of “the need (Not)” to that of “anguish (Angst)” or possibly, under both. According to the thesis we reach on the summit of modernity to an “modern middle age of danger” (p.8), meaning in a society where danger is generated not accidently, but structurally, and it is lived at every step. “It is not the omission that creates a catastrophe, but the systems that transforms the humanity of mistake in incomprehensible forces of destruction”.(p.8)

         What has really happened? Ulrich Beck commences his analysis from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion that he interprets as clue to the endangering of everything: the differences among people under the aspect of risks disappear, it is formed the “new force of danger that surpasses any zone of projection and the modern world’s differences”. On the other hand, “the dangers become blind passengers of normal consumerism. They travel by wind and water, hide in everything and transmit themselves along with the most necessary things for life- the air that we breath, food , clothing , the construction of dwellings- all being rigorously controlled areas of the modern world”(p.10). Even worst, “the social production of wealth goes hand in hand with social production of risks”(p.25). “Destructive forces” are released by people today in conformity with performances. The risks are not only personal, but have risen to the status “of global endangering”. Not long ago the risk in life was connected to courage and adventure, from now on, the risk is life’s self destruction. “We don’t inhabit a society of risk, not yet anyway, but we neither live just in the conflicts of distribution in the society of privation. To the extent of which this transition happens, it effectively occurs a change of society, that exits beyond the up to the present categories of thought and action”(p.27).

         From the four hundred pages of Risikogesellschaft, one may note the rich connotation of “the society of risk”. I linger here over five thesis concerning the present humanity’s “potential of self-endangerment”, that make as intelligible as possible this connotation. Here they are formulated as succinctly as possible: a) risks are often “irreversible damages”, “unnoticeable in nucleus”; they depend on “knowledge” and they are thus “opened for processes of social definition”; b) “risks” take to “social endangering”, and their processing has “a boomerang effect” (“the enhancement of international inequality”, “the undermining of the national states competences” and so on ); c) “risks” do not “interrupt the logic of capitalist development”, but amplify it (they always make room for big business); d) “the knowledge of the risks becomes today a political matter; e) that which until now was considered “un-political” in society, becomes now politic, as whatever refers to the elimination of “causes”, and the “catastrophes receives political potential”. “The risk society is a catastrophe society. Within it, the exceptional state threatens to become a daily state” (p.31).

         In the last decades, nobody has managed to formulate in a more impressive manner that Ulrich Beck, the “risk” within the very organization of today’s society.  His conceptual system leaves room for improvement, but surely the munchean sociologist has thrust a deep probe in realities’ role and extracted a relevant conception. The only objection hat can be formulated here is that the very “risk” risks to become, within the theory of the “risk society”, omnipresent reality, all comprising. It is well known, however, that nobody can ever say that he is not surrounded by risks on an ever increasing scale. Risks have become perceptible. Only that besides risks, that occupy of course large portions of our existence there are also certainties- family, friendship, the need of veracity, the need of truth and so on- on which we can build with trust. These do not reduce, of course, the area of the risk, but offers a support to approach it differently, in a comprehensive conceptual frame.