Weakening Of Judgment & The Decline Of The Critical Spirit

When one turns from the creation of thought and knowledge to the manner in which knowledge is spread and thought is taken up and used, the aspect changes. The state of what may be called popular thinking is not only one of crisis but of a crisis full of decay and danger.

How naïve the glad and confident hope of a century ago, that the advance of science and the gen­ eral extension of education assured the progressive perfection of society, seems to us to-day ! Who can still seriously believe that the translation of scientific tri­ umphs into still more marvellous technical achieve­ ments is enough to save civilization, or that the eradication of illiteracy means the end of barbarism! Modern society, with its intensive development and mechanisation, indeed looks very different from the dream vision of Progress!

The social life of our time shows a multitude of disquieting symptoms which can best be grouped under the heading “Weakening of Judgment.” It is really rather disheartening. We live in a world which is infinitely better informed about itself, its nature and its possibilities than at any time in history. We know better than our ancestors what the universe is and how it functions, how the living organism oper­ ates, how the things of the spirit are related, how the historical sequence of events is to be understood.

The human subject has more knowledge of himself and his world than ever before. Man has become greatly more capable of judgment, intensively in so far as the mind penetrates deeper into the composi­tion and nature of things, extensively in so far as his knowledge extends over a very much wider range and especially in so far as a certain degree of knowl­ edge is spread over a much greater number of in­ dividuals. Society regarded in the abstract knows it­ self. To “know thyself” was ever thought the essence of wisdom. The conclusion would seem inescapable:
the world has grown wiser. Risum teneatis.

We know better. Folly in all its various forms, from the frivolous and ridiculous to the wicked and de­ structive, was never so manifest throughout the world. It is now no longer a theme for a clever and smiling dissertation of a high-minded and gravely concerned humanist like Erasmus. We must regard the infinite folly of our time as a disease of society, analyse its symptoms, and attempt soberly and realistically to determine its nature with a view to seeking the means of curing it.

The fallacy of the syllogism: “Self-knowledge is wisdom—the world knows itself better than before— ergo the world has grown wiser,” originates with the ambiguity of the terms. “The world” in the abstract has neither knowledge nor power of action; it mani­ fests itself solely through the thinking and action of individuals. The term “knowledge,” furthermore, is anything but interchangeable with wisdom, a point which hardly needs elaboration.

In a society characterised by universal popular edu­cation, extensive and immediate publicity of the day- to-day life, and advanced division of labour, the average person grows less and less dependent on his own faculties of thought and expression. On the sur­face this might seem paradoxical. For it is usually assumed that in a cultural environment of lesser in­ tellectual intensity and with a relatively smaller spread of knowledge, individual thought will be under greater limitations, confined as it is within a narrow range of contacts, than in a more highly de­ veloped society. One associates with this more re­stricted thinking the qualities of conformity to pat­tern and sameness. This should not blind us to the fact, however, that with its more limited equipment and within this narrower range, such thinking centred on the subject’s own sphere of life achieves a degree of independence which is lost in more in­ tensively organised periods. The peasant, the mariner or the artisan of earlier times had in the sum total of his knowledge the pattern in which to view the world and its life. He knew himself unqualified to judge what lay beyond his ken (unless he were one of the professional talkers common to all times). He accepted authority knowing his judgment to be de­ fective. In his acknowledged limitations lay his wis­dom. It was the very limitation of his power of expression which, leaning on the pillars of the Holy Book and proverbial lore, often gave him style and eloquence.The modern organisation of knowledge-distribution is only too destructive of the beneficial effects of such intellectual limitations. To-day the average inhabitant of the western hemisphere knows a little of every­ thing. He has the newspaper on his breakfast table and the wireless within reach. For the evening there is the film, cards, or a meeting to complete a day spent in the office or factory where nothing that is essential has been learnt. With slight variations this picture of a low cultural average holds good over the entire range, from factory-hand or clerk to manager or director. Only the personal will to culture, in what­ ever field and however pursued, raises modern man above this level. Observe that we speak here only of culture in the narrower sense of the possession of a certain treasure of beauty and wisdom. It is not im­ possible that the average person of limited culture nevertheless succeeds in raising his life to a higher level through his activity in other fields such as the religious or the social.

Even where there is a genuine desire for knowledge and beauty, the noisy obtrusiveness of the modern cultural apparatus still makes it very difficult for the average man to escape the danger of having his no­tions and values forced upon him. A knowledge which is as diversified as it is superficial and an in­tellectual horizon which is too wide for an eye un­ armed with critical equipment, must inevitably lead to a weakening of the power of judgment.

This forcible feeding and defenceless acceptance of notions and values are not peculiar to the things of the intellect alone. In his appreciation of beauty and sentiments also the modern man labours under the strong pressure of low-quality mass-production. An excessive offer of trivial illusions supplies him with a hollow and false pattern for his tastes and feelings.

In this connection one other alarming but in­ escapable fact obtrudes. In older and more restricted forms of society man made his own entertainment. People sang, danced or played together. In the civiization of today all this has largely made way for watching others sing, dance or play. Of course there have always been performers and audiences. But the significant thing is that in our time the passive ele­ment is constantly gaining on the active one. Even in the field of sport, that vastly important part of modern culture, there is a growing tendency for the masses to have others play for them. This withdrawal from active participation in cultural activities has been rendered even more complete through the film and the radio. The transition from theatre to cinema is the transition from watching a play to watching the re­flection of a play. Word and gesture are reduced from living action to mere reproduction. The voice carried through the ether is no more than an echo. Even the spectacle of sporting events comes to be replaced by the surrogates of ringside broadcasts and newspaper reports. All this contains an element of cultural enfeeblement and devitalisation. It is particularly ap­parent in one other important aspect of the cinematic art of to-day. Dramatic action itself is practically en­tirely expressed in the outwardly visible while the spoken word is relegated to a place of only secondary importance. The art of watching has become mere skill at rapid apperception and understanding of continuously changing visual images. The younger generation has acquired this cinematic perception to an amazing degree. This novel bent of mind, how­ ever, means the atrophy of a whole series of intel­lectual functions. To realise this one need only con­sider the difference between following a comedy of Molière and a film. Without claiming superiority of intellectual over visual understanding, one is never­theless bound to admit that the cinema allows a number of æsthetic-intellectual means of perception to remain unexercised which cannot but lead to a weakening of judgment.

The mechanism of modern mass-entertainment, furthermore, is inimical to concentration. Mechanical reproduction of sound and spectacle virtually pre­cludes the element of surrender and absorption: there is no awe, no stillness, no communing with the inner­ most self. Such stillness and communion with the soul, however, are the very things without which there can be no true culture.

The susceptibility of the average modern to pic­torial suggestion enables advertising to exploit his lessened power of judgment. We are thinking here of both commercial advertising and political propa­ganda. Through an arresting picture the advertise­ ment evokes the thought of gratifying a desire. The picture and the phrase are filled with as much senti­ment as possible. They serve to create a mood dispos­ing the mind towards formation of judgment at a passing glance. It is not easy to say how the advertise­ment works through in the individual brain and how it achieves its aim. Does the individual’s decision to buy spring direcdy from his seeing or reading the advertisement? Or does the latter merely plant a memory in the consciousness of the multitude to which it reacts mechanically ? Is there reason to speak of a certain intoxicating effect?—The operation of political propaganda is even more difficult to analyse. Has anyone on his way to the polls ever been moved in favour of a certain choice by the sight of the various swords, hatchets, hammers, cog-wheels, clenched fists, rising suns, bleeding hands and severe countenances which the political parties flourish before his eyes? We shall not try to answer the question. At any rate it is certain that the advertisement in all its forms speculates upon an enfeebled judgment and that through its inordinate extension the advertisement it­self contributes to this enfeeblement.

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Our time, then, is faced by the discouraging fact that two highly vaunted achievements of civilization, universal education and modern publicity, instead of raising the level of culture, appear ultimately to produce certain symptoms of cultural devitalisation and degeneration. The masses are fed with an hitherto undreamt-of quantity of knowledge of all sorts, but there is something wrong with its assimilation. Un­digested knowledge hampers judgment and stands in the way of wisdom.

Has society no way of escape from this process of intellectual and spiritual cheapening? Is it to go on ever further? Or will it reach a point of all-pervading extension where it will work itself out? These are questions which must wait till we formulate the con­clusions of this study and which, even then, will find no definite answer. For the moment there are other signs of cultural degeneration which must first be considered.

THE DECLINE OF THE CRITICAL SPIRIT

Apart from the general weakening of judgment which we discussed in the foregoing, there is reason to speak also of a weakening of the critical spirit, a decline of the critical capacities, a diminishing regard for truth, this time not as a mass phenomenon of the consumers of knowledge but as an organic failing on the part of those who produce it. Related to this decadence-symptom there is still another which we may call the perversion of the function of science or the misuse of science as a means. Let us attempt to deal with this group of phenomena.

At the same moment that science began to reveal its formerly undreamt-of potentialities for dominating nature, vastly extending human power by virtue of its new depth of insight, its capacity to serve as a touchstone of pure knowledge and a guide rule for life declined. The proportion between its various functions changed.

These functions have long been threefold: acquisi­tion and extension of knowledge, education of society to higher and purer forms of civilization, and creation of means to adapt and control natural forces. During the rise of modern science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the first two functions generally kept pace with one another while the third still lagged far behind. The advance of knowledge and the reces­sion of ignorance and superstition filled people with enthusiasm. There was not a soul to doubt the high educational and guidance value of science at that time.

More was built on it than its foundations could ever support. With every new discovery the world and its processes came to be better understood. A certain ethical gain was implied in this growing lucidity of the enquiring mind. Meanwhile, what we have called the third function of science, the creation of technical means, made relatively little progress. Electricity was a curiosity for the educated public. Up till the beginning of the nineteenth century the age-old forms of traction and transmission of power remained virtually unchallenged. For the eighteenth century one might express the relationship between the three functions of science, extension of knowledge, education, and creation of technical means, in the series 8:4:1.

If one desired to give numerical expression to their relationship in our time it might be 2 :16 :16, for in­stance. The proportion between the three functions has become an entirely different one. Perhaps this low estimate of the educational value of science rela­tive to its knowledge and application values will arouse a storm of protest. And yet, could anyone maintain that the marvellous discoveries of modern science, inaccessible to the minds of any but the initi­ated few, as they necessarily must be, still continue to contribute materially to the general level of cul­ture? Even the best teaching at universities and in­ferior educational institutions cannot alter the fact that, while the acquisition of knowledge and its tech­nical application are still daily progressing at an astounding pace, the educational value of science is now no greater than it was a century ago.
The human being of to-day seldom, if ever, looks to science [Translator’s Note: The word “science” is used throughout in its wider meaning of the pursuit of knowledge in general— the German Wissenschaft.] for his philosophy of life. It is not science itself which is to blame. There is a strong tendency away from science. People no longer believe in its capacity for guidance, and not altogether without reason; there has been a time when science claimed too large a share of the world’s mastery. But there is also something else besides natural reaction: deterio­ration of the intellectual conscience. The impulse to achieve a maximum of objectivity and exactness in thinking on the rationally comprehensible, and to apply the test of criticism to such thinking, is weaken­ing. A vast and murky twilight seems to have spread over numberless minds. All the delimitations between the logical, the aesthetic and the emotive functions are purposely ignored. Sentiment is allowed to play a part in forming judgment regardless of the object of judgment and in direct negation of the claims of the critical intellect. Intuition is called upon to justify a choice which in reality is based on emotional pre­disposition. Interest and desire are confused with consciousness of truth. And to justify all this, what actually is the abandonment of the logical principle itself is paraded as the necessary revolt against the supreme rule of reason.

We have all long since outgrown the belief in a tyrannically consistent rationalism. We realise that not everything can be measured by reason. The ad­vance of thought itself has brought us this realisa­tion. A richer and deeper understanding than the solely rational has given greater meaning to our knowledge. But where the wise man, through freer and ampler judgment, finds a deeper sense in things and life, the fool finds in this freedom only licence for greater nonsense. It is a truly tragic consequence: in the process of realising the limitations of reason the modern mind has become susceptible to absurdi­ties to which it had long been immune. The neglect of the veto of criticism can best be illustrated with a few words about racial theories.

Anthropology is an important branch of natural his­tory. It is a biological science with a strong historical element like geology and palaeontology. Through exact methodical research based on principles of heredity, it has constructed a system of race differenti­ation whose utility yields only to that of other biological constructions, inasmuch as the criterion of skull measurement on which its conclusions are based leaves a relatively wide margin of doubt. The physical characteristics by which anthropology with varying degrees of positivity distinguishes races seem in gen­eral to be correlated with certain intellectual and spiritual features. The Chinese differ from the Eng­lish not only in appearance but in spirit also. To make this statement, however, means that in the consideration of the phenomenon of race one has unwittingly included that of culture. For the Chinese and the English are products of race plus culture.

In other words, the ascertainment of intellectual and spiritual race qualities is only possible after adding to the object under investigation (race) the anthro­pologically immeasurable element of culture. To as­sume an exclusively biological determination of spiritual race qualities is an obvious fallacy. For it is incontestable that at least some of the spiritual fea­tures of a race owe their development to the condi­tions and environment in which the particular race has grown up. A scientific separation of this extrane­ous element from the supposedly indigenous one is not possible. Nor can any research establish specific correlations connecting the physical peculiarities of a race with their intellectual counterparts (assum­ing that such intellectual characteristics could be shown to be common to anentire race at all). As long as anthropology suffers from these inabilities the belief that character is determined by race must con­tinue to lack scientific support. Even when sur­rounded with the necessary reservations it remains uncertain and indefinite knowledge. But if one ac­cepts the reservation that the concept of race cannot be handled without qualifying it with that of culture, one thereby virtually abandons the claim to a scientifi­cally formulated principle of race, in which case one will do well not to build any conclusions on it.

For instance, if intellectual genius could be traced to race, then it would seem evident that, conversely, similarity of race ought to follow from similarity of genius. The Jews and the Germans have a striking genius for philosophy and music. Conclusion: there must be a strong racial affinity between the Ger­mans and the Jews. The conclusion is absurd, but no more absurd than those which nowadays enjoy popularity with vast numbers of educated people.

The current vogue for racial theories in their political and cultural application is not due to any particu­lar obtrusion of the science of anthropology. It is rather an instance of the vindication of a popular doctrine which for a long time and until recently had never been able to pass the tests necessary to gain admittance to the domain of critically verified knowl­edge. From the outset rejected as untenable by genu­ine science, the doctrine of racial superiority had carried on its existence for half a century in a sphere of romantic fancy and sham erudition until political circumstances suddenly placed it on a pedestal from which it now dares to dictate scientific truths. This doctrine of superiority based on alleged racial purity has always exercised a strong attraction for the popular mind, because it is essentially cheap and be­ cause it appeals to a romantic spirit uncontrolled by the critical impulse and preoccupied with a desire for self-glorification. It was the fumes of a stale ro­manticism which clouded the spirits of men like H. S. Chamberlain, Schemann and Woltmann. The success of the views propounded by Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, who branded the labourer as belonging to an inferior race, was of a malodorous political flavour.

The argument of race in cultural conflicts is always self-praise. Has a race-theorist ever made the starding and shaming discovery that the race to which he deemed himself to belong is inferior? The motive is always exaltation of self and kin over others and at the expense of others. The racial thesis is always hostile, always anti, a bad sign for a doctrine which claims to be scientific. The racially inspired attitude is anti-Asiatic, anti-African, anti-proletarian, anti-Semitic.

It must be clearly understood that we are not deny­ing the existence of serious problems and conflicts of a social, economic, or political nature arising from the contiguity of two races within one state or region. Nor do we deny that the feelings of one race for another may be in the nature of instinctive aversion. In both cases, however, the dividing element is ir­rational and it is not the task of science to present this irrational moment as a critically established rule of conduct. The existence of these racial aversions renders the quasi-scientific nature of applied theories of race all the more evident.

If an instinctive racial aversion is indeed biologi­cally determined (as would seem to be the case with those to whom the odour of the negro is decidedly offensive), the civilized person of only a short time ago would have considered it his duty to render him­ self account of the animal quality of this reaction and to control it as much as possible instead of fostering it and priding himself on it. A society built on Chris­tian foundations has never had room for a policy planned on “a zoological basis,” as the Ôsservatore Romano so apdy called it. In a society which leaves free play to racial hostility and even encourages it, the condition “culture is control over nature” re­mains unfulfilled.

In the condemnation of politically applied race theories one must make two reservations. First, there must be no confusion with a well-considered policy of practical eugenics. What the latter may still do for the public weal need not be considered here. Secondly, the self-exaltation of one people over an­ other need not necessarily be rooted in racial pre­tensions. The Latin peoples’ feeling of superiority has always been based on cultural qualities rather than on race. The French la race has never acquired that pure anthropological ring. Pride and self-exaltation in cultural nobility may sometimes be slightly more rational and even somewhat more legitimate than racial pride; they are forms of in­ tellectual vanity none the less.

From whichever angle one looks at it, the applica­tion of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the purity of critical judgment. The brakes of criticism are slipping.

The brakes are failing in other respects as well. It is undeniable that with the renewed desire for syn­thesis in the social sciences, in itself a healthy and beneficial reaction against the excessive analysis of a preceding period, the “hunch” has come to play a growing part in scientific production. There is an unending succession of bold syntheses, often con­structed with great skill and erudition, in which the “originality” of the author enjoys greater triumphs than would seem compatible with sober-minded science. The social philosopher sometimes assumes the rôle of the bel esprit of former ages, but it is often not quite clear whether in so doing he takes himself seriously, though he certainly intends to be taken seriously by his readers. The result is something which stands in between cultural philosophy and cultural fantasy. A strong tendency towards aesthetic forms of expression often adds still more to the con­fused character of the product.

The natural sciences are not plagued with afflic­tions of this type. They have in the mathematical formula the immediate test of the veracity, not of the validity, of their products. In their domain there is no place for the bel esprit and the charlatan is im­mediately expelled. It is both the privilege and the danger of the humanities that for expressing their ideas they need notions lying beyond the sphere of pure reason in the domain of aesthetic perception.

Over the entire range of the non-exact sciences judgment has become less definite, in contrast with the natural sciences which are able to demand ever greater accuracy of statement. The thoroughly ra­tional is no longer the unchallenged instrument it used to be. Judgment is less tempered by formula and tradition than before. How popular and indis­pensable have words like “vision,” “conception” or “introspection” become to indicate the process of forming knowledge! All this has brought a large measure of indefiniteness to judgment. This indefi­niteness may be beneficial. But it carries with it the danger of intellectual vacillation between steady con­viction and an easy toying with ideas. In view of the antinomic quality of thinking in general, already commented upon, the decision: “This I really think” has become greatly more difficult for the rigorously self-critical mind. For the shallow or prejudiced mind it has become all the more easy.

The lowering of the standards of critical judgment has, I think, been promoted in no small degree by the trend of thought which may be called the Freud­ian. Freudian psychiatry discovered significant data whose interpretation led research from the field of psychology on to that of sociology and culture. Then the not unusual phenomenon occurred that the mind trained in exact observation and analysis, when faced with the task of sociological, that is, inexact inter­pretation, shows itself completely lacking in norms by which to judge and evaluate scientific evidence.

And thus in this unfamiliar field it is led to jump from any “hunch” to the most far-reaching con­clusions which would crumble into nothingness the moment they were subjected to the test of the philosophical-historical method. If, then, the constructions so arrived at are furthermore accepted in wide circles as recognised truths, and their technical terms passed about as ready-made instruments of thought, large groups of a low critical average are accordingly given a welcome opportunity to play at science to their hearts’ content. Think only of the pitiful exhibitions of the authors of popular disserta­tions who explain everything about man and his world in psycho-analytical terms, building their spacious theories and conclusions on “symbols,” “complexes” and “phases of infantile psychic life”!

From:

IN THE SHADOW OF TOMORROW BY J. HUIZINGA