Thoughts on Uninformed Arrogance and Political Health

Sometimes it pays to have expert acquaintances. A very insightful Doctoral Candidate from UWM whom I know through Facebook recently published this excellent analysis of Uninformed Arrogance in the contemporary United States drawing on his extensive research of the French Revolution of 1789. I was familiar with a few historical understandings of this phenomenon, notably Isaac Asimov's oft-repeated quotation that: “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” [emphasis in the original] Anyway, I hope this post helps further our understanding of why it is so hard to discuss anything of importance with some people.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, French historian, Hippolyte Taine, published a three-volume work on the French Revolution.  One of the questions he explored was why the Revolution had descended into chaos and violence.   A large part of his answer centered on the way in which the Enlightenment manifested itself in French culture.  According to Taine, throughout the seventeenth century France had developed what he called a “classical spirit.”  Taine defined this “classical spirit” as the belief that an “honest man,” without the need of specialists, had an “inner light” that could lead to sound conclusions in the search for truth. Moving into the eighteenth century, this intellectual populism coupled itself with the Enlightenment’s emphasis on metaphysics and abstraction. Taine suggested that this coupling formed a new kind of epistemology, one he called la raison raisonnante.  With the language of metaphysics and abstraction, its pretenses were lofty, but in reality it ignored complexity and lacked vigorousness.  Indeed, it was “powerless,” he said, “to fully portray or to record the infinite and varied details of experience.”  Yet the popular Enlightenment championed it.  The result was that influence shifted in a strange way.  Instead of a lifetime of study, and the respect and deference one earns from it, all one now needed was a salon or a pen to pontificate legitimately and be taken seriously on the most lofty of topics, including and especially politics.  Non-experts quickly became the experts, and those who chose to follow them did so with confidence and enthusiasm.  The political world fell under the jurisdiction of the arrogantly uninformed, according to Taine, and France marched inexorably toward chaos.       Taine’s scholarship has always challenged me to consider whether contemporary America has been infected by a form of la raison raisonnante.  Consider the following:

• A minor celebrity with no training in medicine is certain that her views about inoculation are superior to the medical community’s conclusions. Result: helps popularize a fairly successful movement against vaccination, which threatens the return of formerly eradicated diseases.

• Countless individuals with no training in science are adamant that evolution has no evidence and the scientific community is too brainwashed to know it. Result: science has to fight to stay in public school classrooms.

• Many with no knowledge of science refuse to accept the scientific consensus on global warming, thus placing their opinions above those of the scientific community.  Result: strong presence in congress of those who deny the science and slow governmental response to the problem.

• Many who have never closely studied history confidently assert interpretations at complete odds with expert consensus.  A result: Christian nation movement and its denial of church/state separation.

     Following Taine’s critical lead, perhaps American populism coupled with the spirit of radical Protestantism has developed and distributed a form of la raison raisonnante.  American Protestant values, which hold that any individual can interpret divine revelation for themselves and then are free to act confidently and authoritatively on it, certainly have had an effect historically on how Americans see the world and their place in it.  In some cases, however, there is an element that takes it to a different level.  Hovering in several places around this nexus of populism and radical Protestantism is fundamentalism, the kind that sees every problem as fundamentally solvable by the Bible. In this world, sociology, political science, economics, foreign policy, and every other area of knowledge that we draw on to help guide the nation therefore become an extension of theology--not the deep theology of dedicated and life-long scholars who draw on the wisdom of the ages; rather, the shallow, “proof-texting” theology of certain “honest men” who simply possess an unverifiable “inner light” and who are therefore, it is believed, without the need of special training or education. The result is that in certain circles, many very important areas of knowledge are under the jurisdiction of non-experts, ones that oftentimes believe their opinions to have divine sanction.  And those who choose to adopt the opinions of these non-experts do so with confidence and enthusiasm.
       This phenomenon cannot help but have a negative effect on the maintenance of a democratic society.  While most of the above nonsense has made it into politics or even legislative discourse, perhaps a greater threat is longer term.  When important historical knowledge has been modified, when the meaning of the Constitution and of the Country has been distorted, when pseudoscience has affected education, and when economic and foreign policies have been guided by a type of thinking that “ignores complexity” and “lacks vigorousness,” a rational and free society, one guided by law and pushing towards justice, can not be maintained. 
    
In my opinion, a form of la raison raisonnante plagues contemporary America.  Not sure?  Read the bumper stickers on the car in front of you.  

R. Miller

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