Another Judaïsm?

I’m Jewish, but often I wonder whether I belong to the same tradition as those who emphasize they are the chosen people and therefore claim the West Bank; or who dream of a Greater Israel; or who want to ban Muslims from the Temple Mount and, says former Mossad chief Shavit, in order to achieve that even want to risk a new destruction of Jerusalem and a new exile.

Anyway, I strongly disagree with these positions, and I’m inclined to see emerge in them the worst of what religion can be. In contrast, I would like to emphasize the good of the tradition to which I belong.

For me, the core of its focus is on learning. But saying this is not precise enough because, precisely in view of the excesses that I note, it appears that some forms of learning can be oppressive and meaningless. The good form of learning that I have in mind is contemporary learning that has a life-giving impact.

In the formative years of the rabbinical tradition (say, from the second to the eighth century CE) learning did have that constructive character. Such learning took the form of study of the traditional oral and written texts, with the intention to derive direction for the way the Jewish people could exist in those days. And that worked extremely powerful, thanks to the passion and intellectual ingenuity that were invested by the then rabbis.

Learning had impact. That’s in my view hardly the case with the descendants of those rabbis who ruminate their texts in jesjiwot. For them, it’s less about the struggle to obtain new answers – so about a creative, life-giving process – but rather about honoring the founders of the tradition. Therefore in my eyes they are victims of their own sacred cows, and not much inspiration radiates from that.

If we want Jewish learning in our time to have the same impact as the former rabbinic text analysis and discussion in their time, we will therefore have to find and deploy our contemporary forms. But if learning can no longer rely on text study and interpretation, what does contemporary, creative Jewish learning look like?

I believe that will be about our history. In the way Simon Schama learns and tells of the exile and Zionism. Or Bart Wallet about Dutch Jewry, or Leo Mock about the Jewish Middle Ages. Or, indeed, Josephus about the destruction of the Second Temple.

I search into that direction because of the effect I notice emanating from historians who manage to place all existing stories in a broad, nuanced perspective. That is beneficent and  space-creating, and thus guiding in a way that is similar to the learning of the rabbis.

Besides, I think the a-historical, classic study of fundamental texts not only for the Jewish tradition has had its day. That certainly applies also to Islam and Christianity. A-historical thinking is no option any longer, the turn is to multidimensional historical thinking.

That requires learning a lot indeed. But has Jewish tradition not always been good at that?

Alcoholism and Jihad

It’s bold what Lamyae Aharouay did in her column lately, but I can appreciate it. There she draws a parallel between Isis supporters and alcoholics. This is in the context of her argument that it is not appropriate to reproach moderate muslims for the behavior of fanatical jihadists. She had recently heard one of our politicians do so, and also another columnist who had said: “If Muslims slaughter Muslims on a grand scale it remains virtually silent”.

The comparison consists in the observation that alcohol abuse and jihadism are both problematic. And that, a little as you can blame moderate Muslims for the danger of  problematic drinkers, just as little you can hold moderate Muslims accountable for the danger of the extremists.

This statement by Aharouay is right, I think. At one point, however, the comparison is wanting, and I would like to see the parallels extended, precisely on that point.

The point I have in mind is the extent to which the problem is recognized as a serious threat and the extent to which the problem is being actively combated. As Aharouay indicates, alcohol addiction is explicitly mentioned by the World Health Organization as a serious threat to public health. The organization reports on it, so we know that alcohol makes for one of the 20 deaths per year, which is 3.3 million people worldwide.

Apparently our society is quite aware of the danger of addiction, and has established an organization to analyse the connecting problems and to encourage further awareness. This includes for example asking questions such as: to what extent is alcohol abuse encouraged by our individualistic lifestyles and widespread loneliness? What is the role of the intrusive adverts?

Elaborating on the comparison, something like that would seem to me desirable with respect to the addiction danger of Islam. Here too, analysis and reflection are needed that  penetrate to the heart of the matter. Where that addiction danger could be located? Could there possibly be something intoxicating in the central doctrine of complete surrender to Allah? And could the absence of the relativistic effect of (moderate) use of alcohol possibly stimulate religious radicalization?

Asking these questions and reflecting on them seems to me to be very urgent. Again, and in accordance with what Aharouay says about that, not in order to harass moderate Muslims  with it. But, as with alcohol, to discover the mechanisms that in interaction with social conditions lead to death and destruction.

Also see Alcohol

Immune

To remain equanimous and unperturbable, preferably under all circumstances. Thus was, traditionally, described what philosophy was about and so it still is by some.

Last week I was reminded to that view in an interview with the French philosopher and sociologist Frédéric Lenoir. He told about his admiration for the stoic Dutch Holocaust-victim Etty Hillesum because she had reached the situation that philosophers always considered to be supreme, namely the one in which nothing can hurt you deeply anymore. “Philosophers have always said, since the early Greeks: happiness does not depend on the situation you are in”. It is easy indeed to recognize in this statement Socrates’ goal of equanimity which he preached up to his poisoned cup, and which is the goal of many other philosophers to our time.

I can very well understand that man, in the midst of so many earthly turmoil and instability, looks for a kind of invulnerability. Still, I'm glad there are philosophers who questioned that desire for absolute certainty or exposed it as a pursuit of power. Nietzsche started doing so, and the twentieth-century postmodern philosophers followed in his footsteps. But these trends are far from being taken seriously on a broad scale. May that be called true philosophy, it is asked then. Because, true philosophy strives for absolute certainty, doesn’t it?

The problem is that the latter aim produces, besides certainty and safety, also a lot of nasty things, mostly of an uncanny character. I think of the deep-rooted tendency in our society  to objectification and measurement which can give our work floors and manners the sterility that many periodically suffer from. I think also of the extent to which people live alongside each other, safe but untouchable, and more chilly than they might want.
This way of communicating, which has learned not to touch core issues any longer, could very well stem from that age-old philosophical program that tries to reduce our touchability. With its help we have managed to develop to a high level the art of communicative immunity. The result is a safe and efficient society, but one that sometimes is nothing about any longer.

But how, then, is that communicative poverty to be related to Etty Hillesum, with whom I started this piece? Isn’t she an icon of openness and engagement with what was going on around her? Yes, maybe. If it is not the case – as some said of her – that she idolized her teenagegirl-like commitment; so if her engagement was sincere, then that matches obviously very well with the widely sought immunity.

You could say that the Etty Hillesum’s sacrificial heroism (as also eg Mother Theresa’s), and the communicative sterility of our behavior are two sides of the same coin. Both are strategies for achieving immunity, and the one succeeds through total surrender and the other by screening off touchability.

What falls out is the daily mix of vulnerabilities, in which injuries and excuses, dullness and success alternate. The trivial touchability gets orphaned . That is to say, to simply exchange about things that matter becomes problematic. It is true, there is no heroism involved in such exchange, but by rich and warm communication it's that which may hold off sterility.

Too few philosophers know about this. I cherish those who make it a subject of their speculations, and I continue to call them philosopher despite everything.

Also see Taylor, Levinas and Emptiness, The Trap of Universalizing Reason and Progress after all

Chefsache

It seems to percolate bit by bit now, even with top-executives: primary processes and information flows are Chefsache. We may learn this from the hitches in IT that shake government services, from the near-fatal neglect by Obama of the implementation of his health system, and from the imminent demise of Polare, a big Dutch booksellerschain.

This insight requires quite a mental change. Until not so long ago bosses were considered above all nót to be busy with the primary process. But for instance the crisis at Polare is attributed by some to precisely that lack of interest, namely because “the owners of Polare systematically neglect the primary process of a bookstore in favor of investment strategies, synergy and all kinds of other considerations. Management takes too little notice of substantive knowledge”.

But it is one thing to know that the primary process is essential, it is something else to act accordingly. Because acting accordingly means more than just changing priorities.

Indeed, this area requires a different way of approaching. It can not be operated the way one manages strategy or human resources or change management. On these topics, the chefs are used to think in broad lines, and to develop plans in a top-down way, roll them out and let them be implemented.

In a situation of real attention to the primary process, that way of operating might very well be less useful. Because such attention implies a certain involvement in the workplace, in the manner of implementation. Less distance. In addition to management skills the content becomes more important indeed.

The objection to this is predictable: the boss does not have time for that, of course. No, that’s true, that’s exactly what makes the change so dramatic. Such an approach would in fact mean that personal enterpreneurship of others, besides the boss, is of greater importance. That initiatives may be coming from more sides at once.

More attention to the primary process could very well lead to fewer Chef and more Sache .

Also see Blowing Bubbles

(Un)purity

Vaguely I was aware of it, but I never realized it as precisely as described by Stuart Isacoff in The Octave. That the establishment of our tonal system – in which we modulate through all keys back and forward and in doing so produce the most beautiful musical constructions – is the result of a major battle, and that this battle proceeded along theological and philosophical lines. The story of that struggle can be read as a sound built version of a larger story. If you want: a liberation story that has interfaces with the emancipation of Western man from the tutelage of the Greek classics and the Christian church.

The story begins with ideas and with a problem. The ideas include the view – based on Pythagoras and Plato – that music is the reflection of a universe which is organized according to harmonious mathematical relationships. Music therefore must be composed of pure intervals such as the perfect fifth (3:2) and the perfect fourth (4:3).

The problem with this was that Pythagoras’s formulas left no space for some very popular harmonies: the major thirds, the minor thirds and their counterparts, the sixths. These intervals were so popular because they made music more intimate, more sensual and more expressive. But their use generated a lot of discussion, because according to opponents these intervals did not fit into the the world order as proclaimed by Pythagoras and the Church.

There were quite some solutions for this problem. They were found in the musical practice and consisted in more or less cheating as to the purity of the intervals. With stringed instruments this could be done because the musician has to pitch the tone himself and always can intonate slightly higher or lower. Singers could do so the same by constantly adapting their pitch to make the different intervals sound together as harmoniously as possible.

These were pragmatic solutions in which the problem was not calked and which did not challenge the guardians of the strict mathematical order. But these solutions were half-baked, because singers were accompanied by organs and there was music written for strings with harpsichord accompaniment. And with keyboard instruments such as organ and harpsichord one can not intonate while playing as it can be done with a voice or a string. Instruments must be tuned properly in advance, and when you want to play thirds on them then you have to consciously tune them differently than when only fifths and quarters are to be heard.

This technical feature left less room for pragmatism, the question of tuning had quite some theoretical aspects. That’s why it soon attracted the attention and the interference of more or less self-appointed guardians of the divinely established order. And these had fundamental objections against any infringement of the pure mathematical relationships.

Meanwhile blood was thicker than water and musicians tried all kinds of tunings on their  keyboards. Concessions were made as to the purity of the intervals for the sake of the possibility to unlimitedly interconnect a variety of fifths, fourths, thirds and octaves without the music getting terribly false.

The opponents were not amused. The 16th century music theorist Zarlino Gioseffo believed, like many others, that singers naturally sing pure intervals and that the new tunings threatened the world’s unity. He was offended when Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo Galilei) found that singers in practice go in one piece through different tunings because they are constantly looking for a beautiful harmony. Galilei reproached Zarlino that he fought for an illusion and that the music had to be completely freed from the tyranny of the inviolable numbers.

Rousseau also took position in the debate and he chose for his own variant of the cosmic order. Therein music figured as a primeval force that definitely had to be defended against the refined and therefore decadent experimental tunings. Even Newton, who in his physical work was brave enough to describe the world as it is rather than as it should be according to tradition, showed conservative here: “It is unworthy of philosophers to interfere with the pure proportions” he thought.

In particular, in the appeal which is made here to the sanctity of a divine natural order – against the praxis actually experienced or sought by people – a parallel can be drawn between what happened in the musical area and what in other areas is still happening. I am thinking of some representatives of the established order that label gay sexuality as unnatural and therefore as undesirable. Or of managers who barely pay attention to the actual undercurrents in their organization because their self-invented order leaves no room for them.

From this perspective one could call the musical struggle against the illusion of purity and pro  the multiplicity of lived practice an exemplary European project. And fortunately that struggle  ended well. In the late 17th  century the physicist Daniel Bernoulli was able to show that each tone produces overtones and that the series of overtones ‘above’ the basic tone of a string is much larger than originally thought. Isacoff: “These additional sounds are an endless expansion of the range with tones that are generally not harmonious. So all vibrating bodies float in a sea of dissonants. The idea that nature has a preference for pure harmonies was, it appeared, permanently expelled from the scene.”

Also see Order

Unlearning

A human being can learn, but can she also unlearn? I don’t mean that she can forget, for example in the sense of a skill you get unused to and lose. No, I mean that one has gained insights and then returns them. And not so by progressive clarification, but because these insights have become socially less desirable. In that case the question is: did you really get rid of them? Is the situation as it was before you gained the insights?

If that would be the case, unlearning would indeed exist. But if you still carry the learned things with you and simply don’t talk about them, then there is no question of unlearning. Then anyway the situation is very different from what it was before you started to learn.

These thoughts come to me because the last two years at my work were geared to collective learning. By focusing, with the help of external consultants, on our customer (the Amsterdam citizen) and our primary staff the permanent question was: where do our management concepts and controldrive hamper us more than they help us. When the management factory becomes dysfunctional?

In the process, we learned that the reality of the customer and the workplace may sometimes be very different from the manager’s reality. And that, in order to bridge the gap, and especially in order to somehow “have a control dashboard” often too quickly ICT is embraced, forgetting that a subtle network of connections between people and between people and machines determines the quality of information. We learned that there is no quick route, and that only constant attention to these connections eventually guarantees quality.

Those are insights indeed. Can one just shake them off once they are there? It seems so. At my work I already heard the simplicities pass again: just name some goals and implement them, and then the desired information rolls with the push of a button from the machine. As if not information is the result of a multitude of dependencies and delicate interactions. But maybe that kind of talk comes from people to whom the insights of the past two years have gone by, that is: who didn’t learn anything anyway. Of course, in that case you also cannot dislearn.

With people who díd learn something the past few years I suspect that the situation is different. There, I think, things have definitely changed in a way that is not easily reversed. Once you have seen how dysfunctional an organization can operate, your alertness to sham management will be aroused for ever. Dislearning and return to a naive embrace of command-and-control management have become impossible then. A broken egg cannot be repaired.

Of course, a stiffer regime and tight economic conditions can curtail the space to give effect to these insights quite severely. But people do not just lose their insights like that, so something under the surface will be different from what was the case before the insights came. Completely back to before will therefore not really be an option.

Also see Blowing bubbles and AAA

Hazardous

In April’s www.managementboek.nl management guru Gary Hamel makes a few interesting remarks. He asks for instance why organizational theory keeps failing to be a full-fledged science. Further he calls management literature “generally weak”, and it appears he is not the only one who thinks so.

Hamel also provides an explanation for the lack of scientific development of organizational theory. Truly scientific thinking is only possible, he says, if you are fascinated by a problem that is truly worth attention. Developing an oppositional concept involves a high degree of personal risk, and most scientists are prepared to run the risk only if they are engaged with issues that really matter. Well, such a hazardous problem is to be found yet in management science.

In other scientific disciplines that kind of motivation is commonplace already for a long time, Hamel says. The greatest human achievements are all the results of a tremendous commitment to risky problems. For examples he mentions the quest for a cure for AIDS or the project of decoding the human genome. In this drudging conception of science he is confirmed by the new President of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences Hans Clevers, “You toil without knowing whether it is profitable. And then suddenly a window opens wide”. In line with that thought Hamel wonders: what is the management thinker’s moon mission?

I partly agree with this line of thought. I also believe that an obsessive theme is needed, but I do not think it is missing. I believe that such a ‘risky problem’ in organizations has since long been found, but maybe it’s just a bit too risky. What I have in mind is the phenomenon of shame and embarrassment. In my view this phenomenon plays an important, but hardly investigated or discussed role in our interaction, while it looms large, even in organizations.

And perhaps the role of this phenomenon, but also its hazardous character, is even extra large, precisely because it is undiscussed. It can therefore grow rampant and create stagnation which then remains unexplained. As Brené Brown says in her TEDTalk: if we want to break stagnation, if we really want to be creative and innovative, we need to talk about shame.

Hazardous it definitely is, amongst others for the following two reasons. First, it is often supposed to be unscientific behaviour to talk about emotions and feelings. In order to be scientifically acceptable according to current codes, mathematics professor Ronald Meester says, one should refrain from words like emotion, meaning, ethics, and thus also  shame. He does not like the codes but they are tough.

In addition, the mere bringing up shame and embarrassment for discussion may cause shame and embarrassment. And that’s scary.

But if Hamel is right in thinking that for science you need risky problems, then precisely in the just mentioned topic might be hidden a nice perspective. The way this theme of shame and embarrassment is painstakingly avoided in organizations could very well generate exactly the scientific stimulation an investigator needs. Risky this problem might righteously be called, more so than many problems of natural scientists who can retreat in their laboratories.

The envisaged problem may be read as follows: how do you combine the human qualities of self-promotion and systematic thinking, which are needed in management, with the inevitability of failure, shame and embarrassment? And that question sounds much like a central question that Hamel puts: how to make organizations just as human as the people who work there? This question seems to me to be risky ánd fascinating at once, with a moon mission’s dignity. Science could not but benefit from it.

Also see Something small

Polyphony

Not seldom the Jewish tradition is praised by people (including myself) for the multitude of opinions that can exist therein. The Talmud takes seriously different interpretations of transmitted texts and encourages discussion about them. Dogmatic coercion is not an issue, and that can be viewed as a pleasant and mature way of dealing with tradition and texts.

But there’s another current within the Jewish tradition which is equally old and respected. This current stresses harmony and a kind of mystical unity of the Jewish people. So, with the two currents taken together, how much polyphony is actually possible within the Jewish tradition as a whole? Let us have a closer look at that question.

Then at a first glance it appears that there is little question of polyphony. Because for example the book of Exodus describes how Moses went up the mountain and was there all alone with God when he received the Torah. The Midrash elaborates on that when it underlines the unequivocality of the revelation by the statement that where there is only the slightest division, the presence of God does not want to dwell. Philo of Alexandria connects to that when he says that all who rebel will be consumed by their inner desires, and Jehuda Halevi emphasizes the existence of a Jewish folk-soul that unites all Jews.

But it also says in Exodus that all the people have been listening to what happened at Sinai. Or rather, have been watching the voices. Furthermore, God proclaimed to Moses on Mount Sinai not only the Torah which afterwards was written down by Moses, but he also gave oral explanations, including any explanations that there ever would be, however contemporary they might be. Because, says the Talmud, even whatever any clever and serious student in the future will ask his teacher, has been revealed to Moses at Sinai. This means that the Torah cannot be but an explosive mixture, which includes many different things, or even contradictory things.

I emphatically confess myself to the current that cherishes the multiplicity of forms and voices. Because I associate the recognition of the multiplicity with a form of maturity. In that sense, I think the Jewish tradition is mature. There is that desire for an idyllic, smooth unity, but the tolerance for dissent is also well developed. This is evident from the multitude of discussing voices in the Talmud.

In our days this appears in yet another way. Namely in the way the Jewish image of the state of Israel is becoming more mature.

For a long time there was only one and therefore dominant image of Israel and its creation among Israeli historians. That was the picture of the small, brave Israel that stood alone against all-powerful Arab enemies. Like David against Goliath. In which picture the state was seen as the messianic, triumphant outcome of two thousand years diaspora and persecution. And in which the failure of peace plans was entirely due to the Arabs.

This was a way for historians to contribute to the unity and morale of the new state. It was their contribution to the myth-creation, a sort of feel-good history that the people needed to achieve the necessary efforts.

But, as happens with idyllic images and myths, they sooner or later get shattered. In the eighties there was a new group of Israeli historians (who are therefore called the New Historians) who opposed that idyllic image of Israel. They call that image one-sided and propagandistic. They are committed to view matters not only from the Israeli perspective. In their view, there is not just one single player (Israël) with the others as puppets. The Palestinians and Arabs are full players.

The self-criticism that is practiced by these historians caused a great deal of fuss: they were accused of befouling their own nest and even left-wing politicians were talking about a suicidal strategy. My point is that these historians have been able to break through the oppressiveness and coercion that is always connected with a closed dominant historical image. Now there is something to choose. There are now several documented and legitimate ways to look at the same thing, there are multiple voices, even if the discussions take place mainly in academic circles.

I myself am inclined to consider the emergence of these countervoices as evidence of the strength of Israeli society. I think it testifies of maturity if a society is able to produce and take seriously this kind of internal critical voices. Comparable to the way Torah always inspired people to take responsibility and to break the atmosphere of mystical unity that can surround the Torah as well. The New Historians are an expression of critical Jewish consciousness and therefore an asset to be proud of.

See also History as an exact science

History as an exact science

The Dutch religion basher Herman Philipse is not one of my favorite thinkers, but lately I heard him speak on the slipperiness of a lot of religion on which I could agree with him. He talked about the philosophical school of the logical positivists and explained that they view religious statements as impossible. That's to say, meaningful religious statements. Because, they and Philipse say, propositions are only meaningful if they are empirically decidable. So you have to be able to test on the basis of observable phenomena whether a statement is true or not. If you can not perform such a test those statements have no meaning.

When you claim a statement to be true, the question is, according to the logical positivists, to formulate it in such a way that the statement is verifiable. You can do that by adding specifications. For example by indicating, in making a prediction, as precisely as possible the phenomenon you expect to occur. If indeed it occurs then you're right, otherwise not. At least this provides clarity.

However, religions generally do not pretend to offer that kind of clarity. And as they don’t have such pretension they don’t bother so much when Philipse reproaches them unclarity or meaninglessness. There are different kinds of meaning, those religions say. So they don’t háve to worry about his criticism.

But Philipse also pointed out - and I found that interesting - that sometimes religions dó claim to make true statements about physical phenomena. He mentioned as an example the predictions of early Christianity, among other places reflected in the letters of Paul, about a soon end of the world. The end was expected to occur within a generation. So, here a specific, rebuttable statement is being made, which meets the requirements which according to logical positivism may be posed to propositions. And so appeared, because the world did not finish. So the statement was refuted by reality.

But, says Philipse, Christianity was not a good loser. People preferred not to dwell too long on this refutation of the prediction and instead they switched to another register. Namely the register of unearthly meanings. And even though I believe that these may have their own legitimation, I understand very well that to Philipse such a maneuver feels like cheating. Especially since after this first register change the switching between registers continued. The claim to be able to designate God's signs in the observable reality remained and we partly owe the flowering of Western science to that pretension. But, on occasion, that claim could be traded in for the idea that the Real Truth absconds from earthly dimensions.

The interesting thing about this is that it reveals a fundamental orientation of Christianity: it is about truth, and in that orientation towards truth empirical reality plays - sometimes - the role that reality plays for the logical positivists: to provide proof for propositions. However, when such proof cannot be provided, in Christianity the empirical gets a subordinate place and appears to be of only superficial significance. And that’s precisely contrary to what the logical positivists thought was right.

And different also from what historians want to do. Because in historical science, carried out properly, findings matter. The reconstruction of the past can change, based on new findings and insights, and even fundamentally so. This is shown for example in the historiography of the Second World War or with the New Historians in Israel about the creation of the Jewish state. From this perspective it is really strange, in fact, that logical positivism is associated primarily with the natural sciences. For in historiography the empirical matters substantially. Isn’t that what we call ‘exact’ indeed?

Authority

The British sociologist Frank Furedi was in Holland lately and he spoke and wrote about authority. But his line of thought was not really clear to me, neither during his Thomas More-lecture, nor in his NRC-article.

The tenor of his contributions is mostly bleak. Furedi gets pessimistic about the fact that society today has lost something it cannot miss, namely authority. No society can survive without the presence of authoritative institutions, a form of collective authority is required. Once that authority existed in the shape of the self-confidence of professionals - teachers, judges, scientists and doctors - and the confidence that the population as a whole had in those professionals. That was something a society could build upon. Such firmness is wanting nowadays. Professionals no longer believe in themselves, they prefer to hide behind procedures and 'experts'. And people no longer trust the professionals. Hence the proliferation of rules and procedures. Those should fill the authority vacuum, but actually tend to undermine authority only further.

But at the same time Furedi points out that those expert advices have only a shaky reputation. This is apparent "from the continuously fierce debates on subjects like education, health, lifestyle". Many citizens have an aversion against the exagagerated rules and the procedural society. They prefer to believe in themselves. It is true that this causes erosion of traditional authority but if – in line with Furedi's own formulation - authority has to do with belief in yourself, then that civil empowerment may be seen as a new form of authority. Indeed, should not this observation make Furedi a bit more optimistic?

I feel encouraged in that last thought because of the fuss surrounding the Dutch vaccination campaign against the Mexican flu. According to the pessimistic view that campaign does not proceed well. There is cause for concern because the Ministry and the medical profession don’t succeed in getting large groups of people to be injected. They don’t have enough authority.

But authority, defined as the radiation of faith in yourself and getting the respect for it, is present indeed. The person who refuses injection can be considered as the self-conscious person who rejects the patronizing society and overdone legislation which Furedi detests so much. He believes in himself and from that standpoint arrives at relativizing the rules.

And our national vaccination doctor, Mr. Coutinho, and his colleagues believe in themselves no less. They stand for the message they bring and they don’t blame failing communication strategies or stupid citizens for the lack of response. From that perspective, they are no less authoritative than are the refusers. Indeed, there almost is a surplus of authority, at least when you describe authority as ‘to stand for what you believe in’.

What is clearly lacking, especially compared to earlier times, is authority in the sense of control over society as a whole. Like something which a complete collective listens to. If Furedi wants to stick to that idea of authority - he almost approvingly cites Odysseus and Plato when they argue for collective authority under a single leader - he has reason to be pessimistic. But the question is whether that’s not an outdated idea. Until halfway modernity nation states could keep themselves going with that, at the national level citizens rallied behind their leaders. That does not work any longer.

Thijs Jansen and Loet Leydesdorff (in the newspaper Trouw) think we have reached the situation that no longer the entire population of a country can be convinced of the use of for instance such a vaccination campaign. At its best that may succeed in small, overseeable communities. Differences of insight will, thanks to scientific progress, remain with us. Indeed, they say, the awareness has been firmly established that knowledge is often only provisional. In former days people were not affected by that thought.

I want to add yet another factor, that has nothing to do with science or (post-) modernity. That factor is as old as the world and consists in the possibility people have to just say No. It has been frequently shown that the contents of an actual issue is completely irrelevant when it comes to such a refusal. It may even be that people agree with the contents of a plan and still refuse to accept it. Simply because someone else created it and thought in your stead.

Also see Parrhesia

Why Heidegger doesn't bring us any further

It is very understandable that reflexive managementauthors like Weick, Winograd and Flores look for inspiration towards Heidegger. If you want to stop the thinking about organizations in terms of schemes and diagrams, Heidegger offers a liberating perspective.

Heidegger holds that “knowledge lies in the being that situates us in the world”. That’s to say: we do not learn by taking a distance and by observing phenomena from the outside, but by being actively engaged in the world via work and relations. Heidegger prioritizes praxis and being in the world. By doing so he breaks through the deceit which originates from models and structures. Knowledge always is embedded in an acting way of being which precedes everything.

At the same time it is possible, in relation to the Heidegger oriented managementauthors, to identify two blind spots. The first concerns the unwillingness to communicate, which people - and not just in organizations - at times display. The authors seem not to be acquainted with this phenomenon. The spontaneous active being which they talk about in their writings, for them automatically coïncides with a permanent readiness to communicate.

The second blind spot concerns the difference one person can make with regard to another person. That people may disagree fundamentally about the direction and the goal of their acting is not a theme in the works of the above mentioned authors.

I tend so see a connection between those two blind spots. That connection, in my view, stems from the way in which Heidegger uses the concept of Mitsein. Namely, as a reference to a shared reality in which we humans collectively participate. We share Mitsein as a part of our active being-in-the-world. Communication arises from there almost automatically.

It is certainly true that Heidegger leaves room for individuals to conceive of primary being, where acting finds place, in their own, original way. But by the position he allocates to Mitsein there is a shift in the balance: the portion of collectivity weighs much more heavily than the portion of individual originality. Being is foremost one and collective, even if there is a multitude of personal insights in being.

This explains why plurality of thinking and profound differences between people get so little attention from authors who orientate themselves towards Heidegger. It is as Safranski says: the true nature of political thinking will be exposed by Hannah Arendt – as part of her answer to Martin Heidegger. Such really political thought derives from living communally our differences.

I would like to add that, for an elaboration of the radical difference between the one human person and the other, we can fruitfully turn to Levinas.

Also see Heidegger, Wittgenstein and traffic and Is the world sound?

To see and not to be seen

Gyges, a mythological figure from Antiquity, happens to find a ring which can make him invisible. From the moment he discovers this possibility he slips down into a attitude of complete immorality. Because now he can follow his bent and get away with it, he doesn’t shy back for anything anymore. He starts cheating people and he ends up raping the queen and murdering the king. Plato, who tells us this story, makes clear that there is an obvious relation between invisibility, shamelessness and moral decline.

Levinas loves this story. He applies it to the process of acquiring scientific knowledge. According to him, that process is characterized by putting the objects of scientific research at a distance and then passing rational judgments on them. In short, it is spying upon the world from a sheltered position: seeing without being seen.

Because of this interpretation of Gyges, Levinas’s evaluation of his actions is, unlike Plato’s evaluation, not just negative. Of course it is not sympathetic to reduce the world to dead material which, via experiments and reasonings, you can manipulate as much as you like. But in a way, according to Levinas, it is unescapable for us to do so: we humans are beings that create representations in our heads, by which we reconstitute the world and thus keep our foothold. And although that mental reconstruction is an illusion, we cannot help doing it. Moreover, says Levinas, the pursuit of objective knowledge is very laudable: it helps us make the world better accessible for each other.

Apart from that, for Levinas – in opposition to Plato and other philosophers as for example Sartre – shame is not only connected with being seen but as much with seeing. And, indeed, one may wonder whether watching without ever being moved, as Gyges apparently could, is possible at all. The manipulator (Gyges) may, be it only for the twinkling of an eye, be touched by the injuries his manipulative violence and objectifying gaze bring about. The accompanying shame comes from within and, by that, is not dependent on the visibility of his deeds. That shame will have a corrective effect on his intercourse with the world.

The Same and the Other

The same and the other can not enter into a cognition that would encompass them.

And another one:
Metaphysics, transcendence, the welcoming of the other by the same, of the Other by me, is concretely produced as the calling into question of the same by the other, that is, as the ethics that accomplishes the critical essence of knowledge.

Could it be more abstract?
Yes, with Levinas it can sound much more abstract. But nicer is to point to a scientific report that all of a sudden concretizes what Levinas describes. On the basis of that report it appears that Levinas managed to use age-old concepts, stemming from Plato, for expressing an insight which a scientific experiment can elucidate now in understandable terms.

The experiment that was reported about was neurologic and it showed that the braincells with which we think about ourselves are the same as those we use to think about people who resemble us. About people who do not resemble us we think with another part of the brain.

So it becomes clear that refractory Platonic terms as The Same and The Other reappear in an acceptable way in neurological surveys. Even at the level of the grammatical forms that are being used. It can look like being unnecessarily abstract when Levinas speaks about The Same and The Other in stead of about the Self and the Other.

But with a better look, this is exactly what happens in the report of the experiment. The crucial distinction we can make here doesn’t lie primarily between my self and the other, but between me and the people who resemble me – so: the same – on the one hand, and the rest – the other – on the other hand. So it’s exactly the most abstract wording which connects with the neurological experiment.

This is interesting in itself. But apart from that it has consequences for the way in which we interpret Levinas. The findings offer support for an interpretation of the Other as referring certainly not to each other person. For to the group of all other persons belong people who feel as likes. Rather the Other refers to others who, at a certain moment, feel as truly different. So, they form a selection from within the group of all others.

I want to add that also the confrontation with those other others does not always produce the encounter with the Other that Levinas discusses. This remains unpredictable.