The Saving Lie: Truth and Method in the Social Sciences

Conclusion: General Theses and Particular Cases

Conclusion: General Theses and Particular Cases Toleration is historically the product ofthe realisation ofthe irreconcilability of equally dog;matic faiths, and the practical improbability of complete victory ofone over the other. -Isaiah Berlin, "The Originality ofMachiavelli" The Itch for Totality I cannot imagine that there could ever be a theoretical resolution between the tractable, entirely amoral expected-utility framework and the morality -assuming but wholly intractable paradigm ofstructural functionalism . Nor do I admire single-minded hierarchy-obsessed visionaries who, as Louis Dumont did, pursue in every situation the prodigiously imagined chimera that is the whole, the single structure in which all is encompassed . Such grand ideas, Foucault said, are a kind of "tyranny"; they blank out vast areas ofexperience; they inhibit inquiring minds. At the same time, I know that there can be no understanding without imagined entities--categories, structures, and theories, which can themselves be presented only as if they were comprehensive wholes. The mistake is to ignore limitations. Expected-utility people are blind to morality, structural functionalists shy away from "divergent interests ," and both conduct themselves as if their own model deserves exclusive possession of the field because what the other deals with is at least secondary, if not entirely irrelevant. Nor can I imagine any unfudged theoretical compromise that would present those two incompatible paradigms as "a single intelligible structure."1 To choose one model and exclude the other, or simply to be tolerant and acknowledge that each has its merits, is to sidestep the incompatibility . An agency model, on the other hand, confronts it and (in a I. Gary Becker's A Treatise on the Family comes to mind again. It is a monstrous fudge. 186 Conclusion practical way) resolves it by discovering what happens to ideas when they are put to use. To challenge an idea with reality is, as I construe the situation, to challenge a saving lie with its rivals; it is then tested less for its truth than for the clout that its backers command. Foucault rejects "the tyranny ofglobalizing discourses" and favors an "autonomous, non-centralized kind oftheoretical production" which, I assume, would be closer to the domain of practice. The choice, however , is not exclusionary; practice cannot function without some level of globalizing. This concluding chapter repeats the book's theme: we cannot do without saving lies, but we can and should, by underlining their uncertain status, inhibit their tendency to tyrannize. General Theses and Particular Cases Alexis de Tocqueville, writing about democracy in America, neatly summarizes the costs and benefits of these two modes: "The chief merit of general ideas is that they enable the human mind to pass a rapid judgment on a great many objects at once; but, on the other hand, the notions they convey are never other than incomplete, and they always cause the mind to lose as much in accuracy as it gains in comprehensiveness" (1994, 2:3). The same two modes shape this book, and their difference rests in the level of abstraction. The unitary analytical fundamentalismsBlake 's "generalizing Demonstrations" or Foucault's "globalizing discourses"--of both expected-utility theorizing and structural functionalism , which require a high level of abstraction (Chapters 1-5), stand in contrast with the anecdotal, event-focused, fragmented particularism that seems to characterize the chapters on agency. In fact, although the book is divided in that way, it is also unified by one simple observation: the everyday world of experience puts all ideas, big and small, highly abstract and less abstract, at risk ofbeing considered false or, if not false, of being written off as pointless or condemned as dangerous. How it does so is a more complicated matter than those words suggest, for three connected reasons. First, ideas are formulated at different levels of abstraction. Second, the phrase "everyday world of experience" requires (to quote Kenneth Burke again) that "we ask ourselves what complexities are subsumed beneath it." Third, it may not be clear whether the test concerns truth or power. Propositions made at a low level ofabstraction more readily attract empirical truth-oriented examination. The higher the level of abstraction, the more likely is a proposition to be a function of power: Conclusion 187 it is accepted to the extent that its backers are powerful and its acceptance enhances their power. I will come to power later; first I consider ways in which big (very abstract and general) ideas differ from small (more practical and...