Truth through Error

Who doesn't enjoy it when the mighty fall. I wish I were a better person, someone who didn't enjoy the photo of celebrity cellulite, the smug televangelist or politico caught in a malapropism that reveals his true politics. Others enjoy trashing philosophers, theorists, academics, writers--all those who let us down by not not knowing the truth, by not having the answers. That's fair enough. No one is immune to critique. And, when we fear that really dangerous ideas are taking hold, its unethical not to speak out.

I've been thinking, though, of a contrasting insight from Zizek (or Zizek's reading of Hegel), namely, that truth comes through error. Others say this in different ways, that's fine; I don't have a quarrel with them. It's the idea that counts, one that's important to keep in mind. To me in means that if we are never wrong, then we can never reach something like truth. We must be wrong first. In part, this is about the risk of thinking. But it's more than that, I think. It's about the risk of taking a stand, of articulating a position, knowing full well that it could and likely will be wrong, that a future will unfold in which it will likely be wrong, but that making in thinking it, in taking the risk, we hold open a utopian space, or we help, through our error, to move toward something better.

It's astounding, really, how little able we are to tolerate the being-wrong-ness of others, especially those who make a living by thinking, those who should know better. But, and this is something my dad just mentioned on the phone, words from his college physics professor, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. If it's important enough to attempt, then of course there will be errors, mistakes, missteps. Maybe the mistakes can create new spaces for thought; maybe they push the boundaries and in their error incite more thinking. When something is perfect, whole, complete, there isn't a space for anything or anyone else. Really, there isn't then anything left to say.

Comments

[Patrick J. Mullins]

I don't think you would be a better person if you didn't like seeing the televangelist and the world-class political bullshitter fall on their ass. The tragedy is that they don't fall on their asses often enough. I think it makes you a much better person to celebrate the downfall of these, otherwise it degenerates into christianity, etc.

Nietzsche and Rorty privilege falseness, with the latter making the difference between frivolous and serious (this just from that recent 'new yorker' article.) I can see the point. I think what's actually helpful is to be right enough so that it gets boring and you discover the richness of being wrong. That started happening to me a few years ago, because the 'perfectionism' will make you feel like your computer program when it's working--and that's extremely unpleasant.

[Jodi]

I should take a look at the Rorty article. Thanks for the reference.

[Patrick J. Mullins]

The article is by Jim Holt in the august 22 issue, and is called 'say anything.' It's another, but I thought good, piece on 'lying vs. bullshit' among other things. Actually, my entire knowledge of Rorty is this article, but of its kind was helpful to me.

[Charles R]

Just to deploy a little of Žižek's own cynicism here:

Isn't the express result of this interpretation of Hegelian philosophy—truth through error—one way of immunizing a self from the mistakes, of foreclosing a system from the very beginning? If Žižek, as the example, is said to be wily or difficult or contradictory or whathaveyou, he can point to this slogan written into the declarations themselves and further declare, "But mistakes and errors and missteps happen!" and there will not be a need to admit the contradiction (that is, admit it in the sense where one has to re-construct the system to account and respond to the problem or move entirely past the problem to a wholly new awareness of how to go about constructing theories). And, the thought goes, if it is *truth* that is being arrived at through error, will this be a truth of any significant duration, or is it a truth always put off while dealing with the missteps, errors, and mistakes?

With Ž's publicly avowed turn towards Christianity, aren't we getting a messianism—however nuanced—from him just as much as we were from, say, Derrida? For some people, it may not be a bad thing to look for a coming Messiah. For others, it just might.

None of this is to say, though, that I don't like your point about our fascination but intolerance with the wrong of others. It is to say, though, that I can't resist the cynical response.

[Bill Wilson]

The next step after a success is predictable and probable, as though rehearsed, and follows the same sets of rules observed in the success. In contrast, a failure can prompt improvisations, spontaneities, and other unrehearsed responses---as novelties emerge that would not have appeared without the failure. My point is the fecundity of error. On television, Charlie Rose asked about Frank Lloyd Wright's plans for a five-mile-high building. While he was corrected about Wright's one-mile-high building, I was imagining the elevator ride to the five-mile-high floor, & sending out for pizza. In an intellectual journal, a "scholar" lists two collage artists, Johann Herzfeld and John Heartfield, thereby obscuring Herzfeld's change of his name to Heartfield in order to dissociate himself from Nazism. I take no pleasure in that error because meaning is lost through pretention. More delightful is the error of two writers who allege that the Whitney Museum of American Art was founded by Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney. Gloria Vanderbilt founded her line of underwear and bluejeans, but Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney founded her Whitney Museum of American Art. My own errors are less jolly and less fecund.

[Jodi]

Charles,

You raise the question of immunization and foreclosure. But why immunization? The point would be that criticism is necessary for the next move. What you are really after, if I've understood, is the system. That is, you want to reject the dialectical approach insofar as it's a system that ends up in a kind of antinomy: it proves its success by failing; or so, weirdly, if it succeeds, it would then really fail.

I guess I have a couple of thoughts on this. One, this a system of logic and like any logical system will come up against contradictions for which it cannot account (I've been reading Rebecca Goldstein's book on Godel and thought it would be fun to say something like this).
Two, your criticism seems to rely on jumping from the super abstraction of Hegel's logic to the wily Zizek writing an editorial. This doesn't strike me as that convincing (but I could perhaps be pushed here). And, I guess I'm not convinced but I don't read Zizek as resorting to 'well mistakes happen' when confronted by his critics. That is never (I hope I'm not in trouble here) his response.

On truth and duration--that's a great question. I can't answer. I'm not even sure that duration (how long something lasts) tells us much about truth or lies. We can think of different kinds of truth--propositional, empirical, affective, normative...

Zizek doesn't look for a messiah. In fact, he endorse a notion of the Act that is grounded only in itself, in no hope or anything. Derrida puts hope in justice to come. These are pretty different views. It isn't clear to me what analytical clarity comes when we add in messianic.

[Jodi]

Novelties that would not have appeared without error. That's a nice way to put it, Bill. But I am struck by the way the errors that don't give you pleasure also point to nuances that the too quick 'truth through error' slogan ignores. That's interesting. It also makes me wonder if there is something potentially pathetically fatalistic in 'truth through error'--(maybe what Charles R. was thinking about with cynicism). Maybe it's like, well, so what if everything sucks, it will eventually get better. But, now that I've typed that, maybe I don't think this. Maybe it avoids fatalism by relying on a kind of hidden injunction to keep trying. That feels better.

[alain]

Jodi

I have to admit this part of Zizek is hard for me to get. And ofcourse it is a difficulty I face when I try to understand Hegel. The whole "Spirit is a bone" issue, that the same organ is responsible for urination and insemination. It just begs the question why is the crude materialist understanding necessary in order to achieve the higher spiritual one? And of course, what does this suggest for politics? I hope that makes sense.

[Jodi]

Maybe this will help: the idea begins from a rejection of complete transcendence, that is from, a metaphysics that views a transcedent realm apart from our human one, or that rejects Kant's complete separation of the noumenal and phenomenal realms. So, it begins in earth, in our material being, but doesn't say we stop there, our material being moves and changes, and part of this movement comes from our conscious experience. For politics, it means, I think, that appeals to justice are not separate from the muck out of which they necessarily arise.