THE NON-JUSTIFICATIONIST MOOD

There are quite a few components in our complex picture, yet one is still missing. We have the agnostic mood which is defiant of its own desper­ation ; the inductive mood which is the optimistic, progressive and assured; and the need for assurance which is a matter of empirical fact, psycho­logical, sociological, and common sense.

Again the drastic instance, however rare or common it may be, is easy to grasp and it helps make the point sharply. The candidate for conversion, as William Sargant tells us in his Battle for the Mind, is ruthlessly broken down by his guide: the guide shatters the candidate’s expectations; watches new ones arise and shatters these; helps the candidate build still newer ones and then shatters them as well. The candidate is bewildered, lost, helpless, destitute. In other words, his sense of dependence is ligh­tened to a peak. Then the guide offers love and solace and a new set of ex­pectations to go with all of these.

The crux of the present study may indeed be the contrast or the mood of the brainwashed with the mood of an independent person - politician, philosopher, scientist - who makes a great and decisive switch. For Sargant all switch is brain-wash. This is (unintended) relativism at its rather ludi­crous end. For me the opposite of brainwash is the simply deliberate and autonomous decision of the well-composed flexible individual who faces certain alternative routes from the junction of his own understanding of his previous mistake, refuted expectation, or misguided aspirations.

But the two extremes, the brainwashed and the serene deliberator, are not such that middle positions are mixtures of both. We have, admittedly, measures of emotional dependence and intellectual dependence; but we also have degrees of responsibility, and we can contrast responsibility with the mood of justificationism, to use Bartley’s apt term.

When in civil society I stand before a judge properly accused, I am obliged to justify myself. Otherwise I am obliged not to. Justifying myself to me peers I in fact appoint them as my judges; and so long as I do so without their expressed consent I have imposed on them; I have made my­self dependent on them.

The fact that people are all too often guilty of such immorality is the central theme of all of Kafka’s works. Kafka also showed that this guilty act is felt by the guilty party as nothing short of a supreme effort of expiation of guilt and/or of proof of innocence or uprightness or guiltlessness - at least by comparison. But, of course, Kafka adds, the act is self-defeating.

Most common people in common situations are, again, not so extreme. They explain themselves, they show that their actions, their positions, their views, are eminently reasonable; that indeed their peers before whom they expound their own reasonableness cannot but endorse their views, justify their actions, share their positions. They are not behaving quite like the accused at the dock as Kafka’s hero does; but they mention witnesses, they describe significant facts and experiences. They appeal to the supreme authority of religion, of social norms, or of science.

Here the inductive mood and brainwash come extremely close. Many thinkers, I suppose, have felt uneasy about it and tried to throw a wedge between the two: brainwashed people rely on other people’s say so, scientists rely on their own experiences. But this means that I, as a scientist, rely on the experiences of other scientists - science becomes my social norm. If and when the scientific world happens to have a dogma, then I am an easy victim of it, with no redemption!

The only way out is to realize that my peers are not my judges: my actions, my expectations, my views, are not such that I need justify them except under very specific and legally well-specified circumstances. And then I have the right for legal advice.

V.