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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume Two
Spring 2003
Thought, Belief, and Instinct
- Page 1
by Albert Min
Conflicts about religious beliefs often end in a deadlock, with both sides agreeing to disagree. A prima facie account of this would relegate it to opinions or the subjective nature of beliefs, but such an account is unable to give a clear picture of what happens when someone believes something religiously. What is often contested in these arguments is the truth of the beliefs held by those who are religious. It is necessary, then, to give a neutral account of truth that will suspend judgments of truth and allow for a proper account of faith and belief-statements. One such account considers the social, political, and historical effects of truth rather than its truth or falsehood. Such a consideration defines truth according to its active role and function, but it is limited by its inability to account for the causes of truth. Its neutrality, however, clears the way for another account of truth offered by the nineteenth-century Christian existentialist, Søren Kierkegaard, in which the subject considering truth focuses on his or her relation to truth. His definition of truth is able to account for the subject's role and its involvement in the formation of truth. Kierkegaard's account is informative in regarding an analysis of religion made by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's analysis is more extensive and begins with an examination of the language used in belief-statements and then proceeds to how belief-statements function in the life of the believer. His analysis, involving both accounts of truth, is comprehensive enough to arrive at a general philosophical theory of religion. His method is useful for pointing out the limitations involved in strictly adhering to either of the two accounts (particularly the over-reductive aspect of the first account), and his theory is informative for both religious and nonreligious considerations.
First to be considered, then, are the accounts of truth. One account of truth is given by Paul Rabinow in "Representations are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-Modernity in Anthropology," in which he considers the nature of truth in his analysis of representationalism in epistemology. Rabinow criticizes Richard Rorty for his inability to see truth in the contexts of power and society. By using Michel Foucault's consideration of these contexts, Rabinow is able to disarm the oppositional nature of truth in thought in order to research its active role in historical, social, and political institutions. Rabinow does, however, agree with Rorty's criticism of epistemology and its quest for certainty, and he offers Foucault's method as a solution. Rabinow describes Foucault's theory "not as deciding the truth or falsity of claims in history 'but in seeing historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false,'" and, he adds, "Foucault proposes to study what he calls the regime of truth as an effective component in the constitution of social practices" (240). Rabinow uses Foucault's theory to address what Rorty fails to consider: the contexts of power and social function. The values of truth and falsehood are cashed out in terms of their political power and social role. The phrase "regime of truth" implies truth's role as an active constituent within power. What becomes important are the "effects of truth." That is, truth is embedded in a network of relationships, and it can be defined by defining the nature of those relationships. Truth, defined this way, is given a broad range, but it is also limited in certain respects. The strict sense of objectivity employed in this method may be useful for detecting and emphasizing truth as an effective component of social, historical, and political practices, and may, thereby, allow for a grounded study in factual claims by avoiding abstract and esoteric epistemological claims; but failing to acknowledge the substantive importance of subjective experience tends to obscure the importance of objectivity. In order to understand the limitations involved in his method we must begin by raising the implicit theory or theories of truth that Rabinow supports.
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