In Praise of Prejudice. Theodore Dalrymple
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is an antipathy based upon “a faulty and inflexible generalization,” as Gordon W. Alport, professor of psychology at Harvard, put it in his great work The Nature of Prejudice, then some of the worst massacres of that century of massacre were motivated, or at least made possible, by it. The fact that a massacre might take place in specific historical circumstances that lent a superficial plausibility to the motivating prejudice is beside the point. That Rwanda was being invaded by Tutsi rebels, and in Burundi to the south a massacre by a Tutsi government of every single Hutu who had attended secondary school had taken place within living memory, does not serve to excuse a genocide that could have taken place only upon a foundation of long-standing prejudice. One might put it like this: no prejudice, no genocide.
Even the entirely laudable desire to avoid future genocide, however, does not permit us to commit errors of logic. If the existence of widespread prejudice is necessary for the commission of genocide, it is certainly not a sufficient one. Nor does it follow from the fact that all who commit genocide are prejudiced that all who are prejudiced commit genocide. It is certainly true that if prejudice were a necessary condition of genocide, then to cure mankind of prejudice would cure it also of genocide; but what is desirable, at least in this one respect, is not necessarily possible. And an unachievable goal cannot be a desirable one.
I very much doubt whether anyone, at least in polite company, would admit to a prejudice about anything. To admit to a prejudice is to proclaim oneself a bigot, the kind of person who can’t, or worse still won’t, examine his preconceptions and opinions, and is, as a consequence, narrow in his sympathies, pharisaic in his judgments, xenophobic in his attitudes, rigid in his principles, punitive towards his inferiors, obsequious to his superiors, and convinced of his own rectitude. Such a one is not very attractive, to say the least. Better, then, to swallow one’s prejudices than admit them in public.
To judge by self-report, we have never lived in such unprejudiced times, with so many people in complete control of their own opinions, which are, as a result, wholly sane, rational, and benevolent. Nobody judges anything, any person or any question, except by the light of the evidence and his own reason. Of course, not quite everyone in the world has yet reached this state of enlightenment: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are still to be found in the book-stores of the Middle East, bizarre cults flourish in the midst of the most technologically advanced societies, and ancient hatreds flourish in remote, and not so remote, corners of the world. Blacks cannot safely walk the streets of Moscow, it is better not to be a Hindu in Pakistan or Bangladesh, and so on and so forth; but in the intellectual heartlands of the world, where we all happen to live, prejudice has relaxed its iron grip upon our minds and reason now rules.
An unprejudiced person is the opposite of the prejudiced one. He subjects all his presuppositions (and other thoughts) to constant re-examination; he is broad in his sympathies; hesitant and generous in his judgments; is a citizen of the world rather than of any particular part of it; subtle and flexible in his conceptions; more inclined to understand than to condemn; and, despite a certain self-satisfaction, which is the natural consequence of an awareness of his own passionless virtue, is conscious of his own limitations. He knows, as Dr. Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest knew, that he is susceptible to draughts.
The man without prejudices, or rather, the man who declares himself such, is a man who is terrified to be thought first bigoted, and second, so weak of mind, so lacking in individuality and mental power, that he cannot think for himself. For his opinions, he has to fall back on the shards of wisdom, or more likely unwisdom, which constitute prejudice. Every proper man, then, is a Descartes on every subject and every question that comes before him. In other words, he seeks that indubitable Cartesian point from which, and from which only, it is possible to erect a reasonable opinion—that is to say, an opinion that is truly his own and owes nothing to unexamined pre-suppositions. The answer to every question, therefore, has to be founded on first principles that are beyond doubt, or else it is shot through with prejudice. Whether the person who declares himself free of prejudice knows it or not, whether or not he has ever read the Discourse on Method, he is a belated Cartesian:
I decided to feign that everything that had entered my mind hitherto was no more than the illusions of dreams. But immediately upon this I noticed that while I was trying to think everything false, it must needs be that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth “I think, therefore I exist” was so solid and sure that the most extravagant suppositions of skeptics could not overthrow it, I judged that I need not scruple to accept it as the first principle of philosophy that I was seeking.
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The Uses of Metaphysical Skepticism
WE MAY INQUIRE why it is that there are now so many Descartes in the world, when in the seventeenth century there was only one. Descartes, be it remembered, who so urgently desired an indubitable first philosophical principle, was a genius: a mathematician, physicist, and philosopher who wrote in prose of such clarity, that it is still the standard by which the writing of French intellectuals is, or ought to be, judged. Have we, then, bred up a race of philosophical giants, whose passion is to examine the metaphysics of human existence? I hope I will not be accused of being an Enemy of the People when I beg leave to doubt it.
The popularity of the Cartesian method is not the consequence of a desire to remove metaphysical doubt, and find certainty, but precisely the opposite: to cast doubt on everything, and thereby increase the scope of personal license, by destroying in advance any philosophical basis for the limitation of our own appetites. The radical skeptic, nowadays at least, is in search not so much of truth, as of liberty—that is to say, of liberty conceived of the largest field imaginable for the satisfaction of his whims. He is in the realm of moral conceptions what the man who refuses to marry is in the realm of relationships: he is reluctant to foreclose on any possibilities by imposing limits on himself, even ones that are taken to be purely symbolic. I once had a patient who attempted suicide because her long-time lover refused to propose to her. I asked him the reason for his refusal, and he replied that it (marriage) was only a piece of paper and meant nothing. “If it is only a piece of paper and means nothing,” I asked him, “why do you not sign it? According to you, it would change nothing, but it would give her a lot of pleasure.” Suddenly, becoming a man of the deepest principle, he said that he did not want to live a charade. I could almost hear the argument that persuaded the man that he was right: that true love and real commitment are affairs of the heart, and need no sanction of the church or state to seal them.
The skepticism of radical skeptics who demand a Cartesian point from which to examine any question, at least any question that has some bearing on the way they ought to conduct themselves, varies according to subject matter. Very few are so skeptical that they doubt that the sun will rise tomorrow, even though they might have difficulty offering evidence for the heliocentric (or any other) theory of the solar system. These skeptics believe that when they turn the light switch, the light will come on, even though their grasp of the theory of electricity might not be strong. A ferocious and insatiable spirit of inquiry overtakes them, however, the moment they perceive that their interests are at stake—their interests here being their freedom, or license, to act upon their whims. Then all the resources of philosophy are available to them in a flash, and are used to undermine the moral authority of custom, law, and the wisdom of ages.
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History Teaches Us Anything We Like
THE SLIGHTEST ACQUAINTANCE with history should be more than sufficient to persuade anyone that custom, law, and the wisdom of ages have often been oppressive and worse than oppressive. There is nothing quite so easy to abuse as authority, and the inclination to do so is present, if not in all, then in most human hearts. That is precisely why we do not trust dictators even when—or especially if—they achieved power by rebellion against another established dictatorial order. If it hadn’t been for the photograph taken by the Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, Ernesto Guevara would have been recognized by now as the arrogant, adolescent, power-hungry egotist that he undoubtedly was.
A certain historiography persuades