A Leap of Faith: Political Action and Philosophy

We are in a troubled time.

Thankfully, humanity has always been in troubled times. There has never been a Golden Age of unfettered peace and prosperity. All appearances to the contrary are mere local illusions, and they often only appear to be in states of absolute prosperity due to the fact that someone, somewhere else, is suffering and paying the price.

I say that this is something to be thankful for because it indicates that we haven’t lost the keys to paradise; we have not fallen from grace. We simply were never there to begin with. When we look at the carnival of horrors that is history, we can at least take heart that we are of the same stock as the people who braved those conditions and survived, or even thrived, despite them. And we can take heart that rather than mourning a lost Golden Age, we can work harder to create something new.

Still, that being said, there is no denying that some problems facing our generation are unique and quite catastrophic. We have famine, the threat of disease, and the risk of war, but then again those have always been humanity's companions. What is different now is that we face a profound change in our global environment, such that these risks are heightened to new degrees of severity. And, of course, with nuclear weaponry now in the mix, we are constantly standing face to face with not only death and misery, but with global annihilation. Truly, these are interesting times to live.

Right, okay then. In light of those bleak conditions, I want to ask several questions.

First, what are the problems we are facing which demand a solution right now?

Second, what does philosophy have to do with political action?

Third (and least important) what does any of this have to do with the title “a leap of faith”?

The Problem

As to the first question, I want to avoid - as much as possible - making a list. Too often, serious problems are reduced to a mere multiplying of items on a list, and each item is given only a brief description. This leads to a “solution lists” where each problem gets a correspondingly brief answer. The problem with lists is, of course, that no problem and no (adequate) solution is ever truly simple. Perhaps extremely local problems, on the subject’s own level, (like a door jam or a broken garbage disposal) are easily fixed. But the moment problems reach social scales - which is to say, the moment they involve multiple human agents and, thus, politics - they become vastly more complicated.

With that in mind, I want to focus on only one foundational problem that we must resolve if we are to address any of the individual problems currently facing our generation. The name of that fundamental problem is instrumental reason.

What is instrumental reason?

Well, we can think of reason itself as a mind’s ability to formulate a way to navigate through its environment; an ability to locate a way forward towards one’s desires in a given context.

Of course, this description of reason is too abstract to be of any real use. One does not reason in a vacuum; it would, in fact, be impossible to do so. There would be nothing to reason about. Likewise, one cannot reason in general, for the totality of everything is as informative as nothing. If I were trying to reason my way through engine trouble with my car, it would be useless to think of literally everything in the universe. I need to bring my reason down to earth, and apply it to the specific context at hand.

In that sense, all actual instances of actual reason are contextualized reason. There is a more-or-less defined aim in mind, and a more-or-less defined set of contexts which shape the boundary conditions for reaching that aim.

In this sense, instrumental reason is not so different from contextualized reason. However, there is a slight change of emphasis which makes instrumental reason highly problematic, and prone to cause all sorts of troubles for us.

You could well say that instrumental reason is what happens when contextualized reason gets hyper-contextualized. The parameters of the context get narrowed to the point where all considerations that are “outside” the aim get erased. Thus, one is unable to see where their solutions spill out into the world and cause more problems than they solve.

Consider, as a silly example, the making of a sandwich. Imagine that I am hungry, and so I apply my reason in the context of the desire to eat and the environmental presence of what food I have available. I settle on the best course of action being to make a hot sandwich. To that end, I reason my way through the best order of doing things. I start the oven, and while the pan warms up I lay out the meat, cheese, and bread. When the pan’s warm enough, I lay on the meat and, while it's warming, put the bread in the toaster. Once the bread is finished, I quickly put the cheese on the heated meat, slap it all between the bread, and lay it in the pan a few more seconds to finish heating everything up.

But now let us consider that I come to enjoy having hot sandwiches so much that I begin to turn all my reasoning powers towards the sole aim of keeping a supply of hot sandwiches at the ready for me. I begin buying pound upon pound of meat and cheese, and loaf after loaf of bread. I keep the oven on at all times, with all four burners constantly heating four pans. Now, I’m not always hungry, but I never know when I’ll be hungry, so I simply keep making hot sandwiches all day long. The ones that are made when I’m not hungry, I simply throw away. For every one hot sandwich I actually eat, I throw dozens away. My relationships begin to suffer because the only thing I do all day is buy ingredients and make hot sandwiches.

This is, of course, obviously silly.

But the reason you can see that it's silly is because you are not (normally) in instrumental reason mode. You’re usually in contextualized reason mode, and this means that you’re able to expand the borders of context as the situation demands. You’re able to easily expand that contextual border out to include the fact that while making a sandwich when one is hungry makes perfect sense, standing around making sandwiches all day long is preposterous.

If one wishes to see a serious and real-life case of instrumental reason, they need look no further than the fossil fuels industry.

We have a need to be able to power our machines and do work, and in our current system we have a need to make money while we’re at it. To that end, the fossil fuel industry is contextually reasonable. They extract fuel to enable work, and they get money for doing so.

However, we know that there is more to the story than just money and work. The effects cannot be localized. Fossil fuels have led to a drastic increase in warming, which has now hit critical feedback-loop levels which have hastened the impending climate catastrophe.

Now, we know that there are other forms of fuel resources out there, like solar power. But the money aspect of the equation is lacking there; it simply isn't yet as profitable to produce power that way for the power-production industry. Fossil fuels remain the best way to produce power and make a huge profit. So to satisfy that narrowed aim (profit), despite all its problems, the wars it causes, and the environment it is destroying, fossil fuel extraction remained the “reasonable” thing to do. This is a destructive case of irrational instrumental reason; the emphasis on one aim and the inability to see the broader context.

I feel I need say no more on this subject, though I encourage the reader to think for themselves about other instances where the narrow, hyper-focused aim on profit has led to obviously irrational consequences. Wherever you find this - and you will find it plenty of times - you will also find instrumental reason at work.

If we are to tackle the irrational problems plaguing our world, we first must tackle the flagrant abuse of reason towards irrational ends.

So then, what does philosophy have to do with this aim?

How Philosophy Fits In

I wish to say upfront that philosophy is no one’s savior. The way forwards does not, as I once thought and hoped, involve the establishment of a new society ruled by philosopher kings. As it turns out, people are quite able to see the ridiculous problems that instrumental reason can lead to without formal philosophical argumentation. This is not to naively praise “common sense” as a be-all-end-all solution. It is simply to state that there need be no illusion that only the wise and well read can articulate the irrational harms and dangers of the abuse of reason.

However, philosophy is not at all useless in the fight to push back against our modern tendency to overvalue instrumental reason. The philosopher’s task now is to wed themselves more closely to society; to philosophize along with, not in spite of, the current culture. The trick is finding areas of the culture (and they will always present themselves if one is attentive) which are ripe for philosophical analysis.

A good philosopher will work to find those cultural points and to draw out their fullest implications. They will highlight areas of tension, where the cultural expectations are hypocritical and incoherent. In doing this, they will hopefully help articulate some of what “common sense” can point towards. They will also highlight areas where more attention and work can be put to good use, and perhaps even offer up suggestions. They will take their leisure time, which they are fortunate enough to have, and educate themselves enough to serve as a pathway between historical trends and the current conditions of being, and they will try to put that knowledge to good use.

In short, a good service for philosophy to provide now is to rigorously and unceasingly engage in cultural analysis and to work to revive the notion of articulate cultural criticism and debate. Doing this won’t magically fix society; nothing will. But reviving a strong tradition of philosophical cultural analysis and debate is a good element to add to the mix of solutions, along with practical and pragmatic political engagement.

The Political Leap of Faith

And now, let me address the final question. Why is the title of this piece “A Leap of Faith”?

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was one of the founding personages of what would eventually morph into existentialism. I will not go into detail on his philosophy here; suffice to say, one aspect of existence he focused on was the relationship between his Christian faith and his living it out in the world. For him, the chief philosophical question was something like “How does one live a true life?”

I think that today our primary question should be similar, though I obviously do not share in his religious leanings regarding the answer. For him, one had to commit a “leap of faith” and marry their spiritual being as a Christian to the way in which they lived and acted in the world.

I am an Atheist, and Kierkegaard’s Christianity has nothing in it for me. However, there is something to be said for the idea itself of the ‘leap of faith’. For if I am to commit both to philosophy and to political action to help address the troubles we face, can I do so in a way that is both authentic and effective? After all, there is no way to be certain before engaging with the world (which is to say other people) that anyone will be receptive to what I have to say. I may be shunned, or teased, or despised. In our current political climate, I may even face the threat of violence. And all for what? There is no way to know if my joining in any struggles will be to any avail at all.

So why? Why bother? Shall I retreat into quietism and merely watch, embittered and weak, as the world drifts?

Well, I could do this. But I choose not to. To put it philosophically, I am enacting an existential choice; a moment of imposing my will-to-power upon myself, defining my being by shaping the way I exist in the world. To put it plainly, I am appalled at the idea of weak inaction, and I don’t wish to be the sort of person who falls into that way of being. And so, I will choose to act for something rather than wallow for nothing.

But isn’t it still true that all my effort might be for nothing? Yes, of course it is. But this would be true in literally any attempt I decided to make. In every action I take towards any aim, I am making a miniature ‘leap of faith’ in the sense that I can never know if my actions will turn out to be well founded or foolish.

When it comes to politics, I must accept that I have limited information to act upon. I will never know all the facts. I will never know all the variables, nor will I ever know all the possible outcomes.

However, I do know my values, and I know at least some facts and at least some variables, and at least some possible outcomes. If I am not to sink into inaction, then this limited information will have to be enough for me to act. Of course, I want to be humble in my actions; always open to revising my commitments in the face of new contexts and conditions. Still, this is the only way to soundly move forward and to do something.

And so now, here I am. I am attempting to philosophize my way through real problems in the real world; to act where possible and to try to influence who I am able. Perhaps I will fail completely, perhaps not.

Only time will tell, and I may never even know.