Social Power and Truth

Power displays itself in modern society mainly through political and economical institutions. It is clear that they reinforce each other. Laws are introduced, in many cases, to preserve the economic power elite, and vice versa economic programs are implemented in order to support a political narrative. Power, in both cases, requires a consensus – among the elite itself and among the lower classes – on the narrative proposed and controlled by the elite. The question, at this point, is: once that consensus is reached, is there anything else that matters? If consensus is equivalent to social truth – a correspondence between claims and reality that is accepted by the group – that consensus either becomes foundational (i.e. like truth in the common sense, the claim from which one can derive all properties of reality) or derivative (just a property). Since in both cases it reinforces the power narrative, why should that difference or anything else matter?

Here is where power meets culture, or critical thinking, or where narratives undergo a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ – see Leiter. And here is where social truth could be confronted by other types of truth – epistemic, ontological, etc. Proceeding in broad strokes, we can say that the relationship between power and culture is based on the issues that exist between the realist and anti-realist philosophical positions. A simplified description of truth can be as follows: someone is said to be holding the truth when his or her claim corresponds with reality. Two are the critical variables here: reality AND correspondence, or agreement. If reality were one and unchangeable then we just had to work on the meaning of correspondence, or how to define agreement of a claim with that unchangeable and unique reality. The realist position believes that reality is independent of us and that our claims have a correspondence with that reality. However, it is not clear whether the reality is one and unchangeable and if any correspondence can be foundational or genetic, i.e. can then allow us to deduct all properties of that reality. The anti-realists instead support the opinion that reality is dependent on the correspondence we establish between claims and reality. Since the correspondence is also based on reality, both reality and correspondence are defined reciprocally. It seems quite difficult to conciliate this position with any concept of genetic truth.

If anyone were holding the truth, he or she could say whether reality is one or many, unchangeable or changeable, and whether the correspondence were foundational / genetic or not. However, in order to believe him or her, we would need to reach an agreement with him or her. In the history of culture, we have relied on either religion or science (or both depending on what the issue was about) to guide us toward an agreement. Typically, religion is founded on revelation, science on rationality. Both have confirmation methods. For religion, it is based on the charisma of a book or a prophet. For science it is based on the experiment. It must be noticed that revelation comes from the outside of nature (the supernatural) while reason comes from the inside of nature. However it would come from the inside of what reality is for both since for religion God is reality while for science nature is reality.

Of the two, religion seems the closest to a pure realist position, that is the reality is one and unchangeable and claims can be foundation and genetic. In one word, God is where reality and truth meet. However, it is true that the nominalist position put this realist position under discussion – and in fact, it may have facilitated the development of science in the Western world. Although science tended, almost wanted, to reach the same pure realist position that religion held, it never reached a similar foundational or genetic truth, and it can be argued that it never will, by definition of science itself, since its method are based on rationality and experiment instead of on revelation and prophetic charisma.

The fact that there is no agreement may just mean that there is no need for one. One of the proposed criteria for reaching an agreement on truth has been pragmatic, i.e. which truth methodology would provide society with a better life. If a better life can be conducted having a stable conception of reality and truth then religion seems unbeatable since it bases itself on a pure realist position. However, belonging to religion do not eliminate doubt – as the nominalist controversy shows. Both science and religion have their own methods to handle doubt. If religion traditionally handled doubt in a more physically way – punishment and death – science, belonging to modern society, handled doubt in more socio-economical ways – exclusion from the academic environment, for instance.

If a person sacrifices cohesion for truth, likely that person is not what we would call a ‘social’ person, and would be rejected or adored by the community – both not being disruptive to the social cohesion of the community. But whether the search for truth originates on an individual effort – going to the desert or theorizing through mathematics or else – once whatever truth is communicated to society, isn’t group cohesion and agreement, hence a pragmatic goal, the ultimate goal in all cases? Isn’t hence the anti-realist stance a general stance at which point the anti-realist suspends judgment and instead the realist affirms a further correspondence? Why do the realists need to go further? If the realist cares essentially about social cohesion there would be no need to go further unless that cohesion is not satisfying or that cohesion is felt under threat. Are the realists, i.e. the people that are not satisfied by a pragmatic approach to truth, concerned about cohesion in a different way than the anti-realists? In a sense the belief seems to be that ultimate truth may provide the ultimate cohesion. In its essence, the question can be formulated as follows: is truth always a matter of agreement? Is hence truth always a matter of power? Is it possible or does it make any sense to hold the truth and be alone?

Power: the establishment of a relationship that reaches out to a vast extent (territorial, economical, conceptual, etc.) and allows commanding. By definition, commanding means getting a wanted outcome, i.e. an expected response – you want something hence you build an expectation for what the result of executing a command should be, you command, and what you wanted is executed and you get what you wanted. An unstable relationship can not hence allow power to function since it would not respond to command in a repeatable way. In order for the reach of power to be of a vast extent a solid and stable common ground must be found among the elements that constitute what is commanded. The relationship must satisfy the difference or go beyond the difference of the elements. Agreement: a stable relationship and structure that allows for the establishment of a difference, of something a name can be given to. It is almost using a common ground to establish a difference. If the difference is small then the agreement can take an existing name. Let’s assume now that the most valuable agreement supports growth, and growth requires differentiation (enough to require a new name). That agreement will then be challenging the authority of the power since will be not reinforcing the common ground but looking at the differences that can support the new. It is searching for weakening the grab of the power upon the single elements of the structure, constantly looking at deserving a new name. It will hence make any agreement unstable. That agreement is fighting power, any power. That (most valuable) agreement will be resisted. That (most valuable) agreement will not be reassuring. What if reality is what results from the tension between power and the truth (defined as the most valuable agreement) that seeks to fight that power in order to find a new level of power?

Social power will support whatever systems of belief reinforce its narrative and allow the elite to pursue their goals. Different institutional set-ups will facilitate the emergence of different systems of belief, and will certainly be changed by that emergence, in some cases quite radically. In a secularized society, rationality is certainly kept in good standing. However, religion can also provide support and is hence kept in good standing as needed. The social elite pursue consensus for maintaining their power. Historically, the Western elite favored rationality and revelation alternatively – from Classic Greece to Christianity to Modernity. Various attempts at some ‘secular religions’ have been tried and, in many aspects, Catholicism is perhaps trying more than other Western religions to cohabitate with science. The introduction and adoption of Eastern religions in the West can also be interpreted as attempts to conciliate revelation and rationality. However, the difficulties of these attempts are clear and, in fact, it can argued that there is no way to conciliate the two and that the struggle the Islamic world is facing is perhaps less deceptive than the conciliatory terms church and state are cohabitating in the Western world. At the end, society falls back to some kind of pragmatic agreement, and that determines the introduction of different types of morality supporting any related truth-methods.

Is there anything else beyond revelation and reason? Is poetic philosophy an alternative? Has philosophy ever reached its maturity or is it, like art, a prototypical game that precedes the power game? Is there anything else other than power relationships that allow for a choice of a truth-method? When we start talking about truth, are we there collapsing into a struggle for power? Can society be without power relationships and a method of justifying and reinforcing cohesion? Is it possible to agree on being different when power is the ontology of society and perhaps of reality? Is parametric universalism possible if implies a balanced power among the parameters?