Three Rival Methods of Pursuing Truth

MacIntyre argues that the history of Western ethics (and epistemological inquiry as well) can be divided up into three long-standing approaches: tradition, encyclopedia, and genealogy.  Each has key figures that can be identified with it, and each has key claims about the nature and source of right and wrong action.  (I would argue that Christianity is most compatible with the practice of tradition.) For our course's purposes, these concepts below are valuable because they show us how differing conceptions of truth value the past, creativity, and symbols. Consider how the following are related to some of the writers we have been reading this semester:

I. TRADITION:

• Like a journeyman in a guild or a novice in a monastic order, the seeker after truth is joined to an established tradition of inquiry. (Such as Christianity, but one could equally think about learning to play a sport or a musical instrument.)
• The seeker first learns the language, rules, and debates of the community. This most often takes the form of sacred texts.
• Every moral/aesthetic community has a specific goal or end (telos) that it seeks to achieve, e.g., the good life, the virtuous mean, the beautiful piece of art, the salvation of the soul.
• Within that tradition, its members tell each other the stories of their lives by relating them to the language and expectations of the community. Members hold each other accountable for their stories.
• As members grow in the tradition, they earn the right (so to speak) to help further define and relate the telos of the community (e.g., each person helps further nuance what kindness or beauty is, discovering ever new applications).
  [cf. Deut 6 – The blessing of the covenant community in the way of the Torah.]

Consider how this understanding of things is present in Sor Juana.   She becomes a member of a tradition of seeking after truth; she appeals to its common judgments (for example, the tradition of educated women, the pattern of scriptural exegesis) in order to argue her case, and she tries (at least) to add to its understanding of the role of women and education.  We will see how this same understanding becomes important to Eliot.  [Look at his ideas about tradition to further your understanding here.]

II. ENCYCLOPEDIA

(Part I – Enlightenment)

• Truth is something that can be obtained by an objective study of the facts, either by correlating all the available data or by an appeal to common rational principles.
• Seekers must eliminate their preconceived notions (a' la their traditions) and pay attention to the natural and social world.
• Truth and morality are not obtained by appealing to a divine or eternal standard of authority but by appealing to rational criteria. Individuals’ reasoned judgments are the test of reliability.
• The self is then the essential arbitrator of truth.

This notion of truth is present in Moliere's play Tartuffe.   Cleante makes appeals to nature and reason as if they were completely objective sources of information that anyone with clear insight could see and understand.  It is even present in a more understated way in Pope's Essay on Man Part I because Pope's appeals are mostly to reason, a reason which he assumes is accessible to all regardless of their confessional status.

(Part II – Romanticism & Existentialism)

• No consensus can be attained without a final ordering end (e.g., a revelation of truth); the search becomes essentially arbitrary.
• Ethicists moved from a reliance on reason to reliance on emotions (notions of natural sympathy) and imagination. This works for several generations, but soon this consensus (an "afterglow" of Christianity) breaks down as well.
• The next position is one of committed choice, a decision of the will (existentialism), but this also remains essentially arbitrary.

This pattern is present in Rosseau, Wordsworth, Keats, and even Henry James.  Each one seeks to depend upon an inward subjective understanding of truth.  This pattern takes its next logical step in Yeats and Stevens, who are both seeking to create truth in some essential way.

III. GENEALOGY

• Every claim of objective truth is an arbitrary will-to-power.
• There is no final truth, only the positioning of social groups, each seeking their own piece of the pie.
• "Truth" is power, discovered by uncovering one’s opponents’ hidden "genealogy," their suspect claims or secret motives. You gain power by deconstructing the other side’s claims to truth.
• Hence, there is no real self. People are products of psycho-social and cultural economic forces.

We will not be looking at a specific example of this semester.   However, this position is one that Derek Walcott is seeking to reject, even as he also plays into it. (cf. "Crusoe's Journal".)