The Uses of Pessimism
by Roger Scruton
Oxford University Press, 2010
Reviewed by María G.
Navarro
The thesis put forward
by the British philosopher, Roger Scruton (born 1944) in The Uses of Pessimism seems simple: false hope together with an optimism
that is unfounded and unscrupulous are the cause of the most harmful conflicts
of our times. Political conflicts, institutional and financial crises,
unjustified pedagogic notions, non-consensual town planning, etc., are some of
the issues that the author analyses with the help of specific historical
examples.
Before
referring to some of these issues, I shall describe the scheme of reasoning
Scruton uses to put this book together.
The
Uses of Pessimism is divided into twelve chapters, seven of which are devoted
to analysing different fallacies. In this work the author analyses arguments he
considers to be fallacies. This fact is important as the book’s chapters
explicitly enumerate all the fallacies Scruton refers to in the book: The
First-Person Future; The Best Case Fallacy; The Born Free Fallacy; The Utopian
Fallacy; The Zero Sum Fallacy; The Planning Fallacy; The Moving Spirit Fallacy,
and The Aggregation Fallacy.
It
is important to stress that Scruton does not refer to these arguments as paralogisms,
nor as sophisms. At a propositional level a fallacy corresponds to a false and
widespread opinion that may often be accompanied by an invalid argument usually
presented as though it were correct. The differences between fallacy,
paralogism and sophism may be ones of degree, but even so it is useful to
remember them for the purposes of understanding why Scruton prefers to use the
term “fallacious” to describe certain propositions that are shared by a great
many people, and whose political, economic, educational and cultural effects
this book analyses.
In
contrast to a fallacious opinion and/or argument, a paralogism is an incorrect
argument that we sometimes hold to be true for the simple reason that it
resembles another valid form of inference. A ‘paralogism’ is an error made
without a bad intention and shows only a lack of skill in matters of inference
and argument. The term ‘sophism’, however, is used to describe a stratagem
whereby one attempts to prove something with the intention to deceive or, if
necessary, to confuse.
In
spite of these differences relating to good or bad intentions on the part of
the arguer, the term ‘fallacy’ may be used in a generic way to describe all
variants of paralogisms and sophisms. The
Uses of Pessimism is an innovative book from the standpoint of the study of
fallacies because it presents and analyses very widespread fallacious
assertions that are, nevertheless, not usually found among the fallacies
generally noted.
According
to Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations,
a fallacious argument is one that seems to be valid or correct but is not. The
seven fallacious arguments that Scruton analyses correspond, in my opinion, to
what the philosophy of language tradition has called ‘informal fallacy’. There
are formal fallacies and informal fallacies. A formal fallacy usually
corresponds to a deductive argument whose conclusion does not follow logically
from its premises, although it may appear to do so at first sight because, in
some respect, it evokes a pattern of conclusive logical deduction. But we use
the term ‘informal fallacy’ to describe discourses which have some kind of flaw
in their argumentational construction. The latter fallacies, the ‘informal
fallacies’, have aroused much interest since the last century. They are
characterised either by making illegitimate use of some rule of argumentational
interaction, or by employing discursive resources in an abusive way.
The
seven fallacies that Scruton presents are informal fallacies. In analysing
them, the author offers a detailed x-ray of the political life of our times,
which may be addressed from two essentially opposed positions or attitudes: the
‘I’ attitude and the ‘we’ attitude.
There
is a relation of reciprocity between, on the one hand, these two vital intellectual
and emotional attitudes and, on the other, the tendency to make use of and
trust in the informal fallacies to which Scruton refers. This relation is
essential for adequately appreciating the argumentational force of a book whose
discursive structure stems from the harmony it establishes between these two
goals: on the one hand, an analysis of fallacious discourse and, on the other,
an analysis of the emotional, cultural and even political dimensions that make
some people fall inevitably into using these fallacies...
These
two attitudes (the ‘we’ attitude and the ‘I’ attitude) govern public life and
are rooted in the deepest part of each of us, although their effects ultimately
show up in the way we live collectively. Roger Scruton thinks that “the ‘we’
attitude recognizes limits and constraints, boundaries that we cannot
transgress and that create the frame that gives meaning to our hopes (…) is
prepared to renounce its purposes, however precious, for the sake of the
long-term benefits of love and friendship. It takes a negotiating posture
towards the other, and seeks to share not goals but constraints. It is finite
in ambition and easily deflected; and it is prepared to trade increases in
power and scope for the more rewarding goods of social affection” (pp. 16-17).
On
the other hand, “this ‘I’ attitude is implanted deep in the psyche. The ‘I’
reaches out to the future and asserts its prerogative. It is infinite in
ambition and recognizes no limits, but only obstacles. In emergencies the ‘I’
takes command, and seizes whatever can enhance its power or amplify its scope.”
(p. 15). The author insists on the following: “Although freedom is an exercise
of the ‘I’, it comes into being through the ‘we’; it cannot be assumed that
people will still achieve freedom in a world where the ‘we’ is merely imagined
and relationships and attachments no longer exist” (p. 14).
The
informal fallacies explored in The Uses
of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope make it clear that “the dispute
between the unscrupulous optimists and the dystopians will not disappear, but
will be endlessly renewed as new futures occur to the one, and a renewed past
detains the other”. (p. 18).
The
Best Case fallacy describes the mindset attitude of the gambler. The reason why
the gamblers “have estimated the best case, the case in which their fortune has
been secured by their master-throw of the dice” (p. 23) is because “they are
not risk-taken at all; they enter the game in full expectation of winning” (p.
23). The author considers that the effects of the best case fallacy can be seen
in the Community Reinvestment Act, which was signed into law by Jimmy Carter,
the president of the USA
In
my opinion, it may be more appropriate to classify the best case fallacy as a
methodological fallacy, rather than an informal one. Methodological fallacies
are related to interpretations of statistical and even probabilistic estimates
concerning the political and social world. Methodological fallacies are linked
to cognitive bias and are thus reinforced by many factors. In a way, because it
acts as a trigger for other cognitive biases, the methodological fallacy itself
represents a bias in cognition.
A
very fine line separates informal fallacies from methodological fallacies, as
both are concerned with the construction of discourses. The Born Free Fallacy
arises in theoretical scenarios such as those described by Rousseau in The Social Contract, according to which
“freedom is what is left when we take all institutions, all restraints, all
laws and all hierarchies away” (p. 42), or in doctrines such as those defended
in the Plowden Report, one of the foundations
of the United Kingdom’s education policy, according to which “no party to the
teaching process (neither pupil nor parent nor teacher) is to blame for its
failure” (p. 53). In short, Roger Scruton believes the Born Free Fallacy
consists in thinking that human beings can and should be born free, which
dismisses the idea that “freedom is something we acquire” (p. 50).
The
Utopian Fallacy is perhaps one of the methodological fallacies that most
dominated the thinking of the last century – indeed, to such an extent that
authors such as Aurel Kolnai say “the utopian mind is the central mystery of
our times” (p. 63). Utopia is fallacious because it “is conceived as a unity of
being, in which conflicts do not exist because the conditions that create them are
no longer in place” (p. 66). This basic discursive feature, present in every
utopia, has two consequences. The first is that no utopia is de facto attainable. The second is that
every fallacious utopia leads, in the first place, to the division of human
beings and subsequently to the destruction of hope in those people considered
enemies of that utopia.
Although
this is not stated explicitly, the Zero Sum Fallacy is one of the most
important fallacies described in the book. This fallacy has been much in
evidence in relations between the developer and the developing World. “When
committed optimists are faced with failure (…) a process of compensation
begins, designed to save the Project by finding the person, the class or the
clique that has thwarted it. And this person, class or clique is marked out for
condemnation by the signs of success. If I have failed it is because another
has succeeded” (p. 80). According to Scruton, this fallacy governs approaches
to ‘third worldism’ in which “the former colonies of the European powers need
only to be liberated form the post-colonial relations of dependence, and
provided with a large injection of capital in compensation” (p. 83). This
fallacious approach to international politics results in a great number of transferable
grievances and resentments as part of the emergence of a wholly novel idea of
justice “that has little or nothing to do with right, desert, reward or
retribution, and which is effectively detached from the actions and
responsibilities of individuals” (p. 94).
The
Planning Fallacy consists of believing that we can advance collectively towards
our goals by adopting a common plan. Thus it may be said that “it is the
fallacy of believing that societies can be organized as armies are organized,
with a top-down system of commands and a bottom-up system of accountability,
ensuring the successful coordination of the many around a plan devised by the
few” (p. 98). Scruton presents this fallacy using the arguments of the
economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich
Hayek
in relation to the calculation debate generated by them in response to
socialist proposals for a centrally planned economy. But he also analyses the
fallacy in its relation to legislation on Member States urged by the EU.
Perhaps
the Moving Spirit Fallacy could be understood as a specific case of the
Planning Fallacy. The author declares his admiration for Hegel when the latter
conceives of freedom not as a natural gift but as an artefact that we construct
together through our shared social membership. However, Scruton attributes to
Hegel one of the most profound influences “on the incautious enthusiasms that
have turned our world upside down in the last century” (p. 128), because Hegel
thinks that history presents a continuous development towards full
self-consciousness and that each successive period of history exhibits a stage
in the spiritual development of mankind. This fallacy reveals itself as a
method for making sense of the past to the present and the future, and is
aggravated by the myth of progress. Scruton discusses the effects of this
fallacy on aesthetic theories and, particularly, in relation to architecture
and town planning – subjects on which he has written extensively.
An
example of the Aggregation Fallacy might be the revolutionary slogan Liberté, égalité, fraternité. The
methodological fallacy Scruton presents under this name consists of this: that
our desire for good things may come to cancel out “any attempt to understand
the connections between them” (p. 154).
The
Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope rigorously points out the
fallacies that prevent the emergence in civil society of a kind of collective
rationality that does not belong to a leader and whatever plans he happens to
have, but is rather the “we” rationality within a community of negotiation and
consensus. Authors such as Ray Kurzweil, Max More or Eric Drexler believe there
could be a future in which people are stored like information and that the
human being, a sort of tabula rasa,
may have to deal with a new kind of freedom. As against the transhumanists, who
consider human nature to be changing, Roger Scruton reminds us that these hopes
ought not to stop us reflecting again and again upon ourselves, since we are
creatures who are capable of negotiating while we observe our condition with
irony and seek a way of living in peace.
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