Supposing somebody was thinking about what he should believe - rather than conforming to what he perceived to be his aspirant peer group - except when it was expedient (i.e. when it breaking the rules benefit him, and he thought could get away with it).
Suppose such a person was thinking about what he should believe, and there was a genuine possibility that he would afterward believe what he had concluded as a result of thinking.
I think he has two basic options.
The first and usual option is that he will believe a thing he has concluded when, and only when, he has been able to convince "other people" of it.
He will try to convince someone else, and then he will believe it.
By "other people" I mean, whoever he regards it as vital to convince. For a scientist, it might be the other scientists in his field, for a bureaucrat or priest it might be some sufficient number of other priests, or perhaps one or more who have authority over him.
In other words, a thinking person's conclusions are, and can only ever be, tentative; and contingent upon the acceptance of his conclusions.
His own belief is therefore fundamentally dependent upon the beliefs of others - in a way that is ultimately and essentially the same as the beliefs of someone who accepts his beliefs passively (often unconsciously) from his particular social milieu.
And this is the great bulk of public discourse about fundamental matters - even of the better sort. It is conducted among people who are all trying to convince each other, and who are each waiting upon the outcome before making their own commitment.
The alternative is to be someone who will believe a thing when he has convinced himself; even when nobody else in the world believes it.
Of course, it is usual that such a person can find someone else (somewhere, at some time and place) who also believes what he has convinced himself is true - or maybe he will be able to convince one of his peers or contemporaries.
And this is reassuring, and encouraging for him - but the point is that the agreement of "other people" is not essential. "Other people" do not matter ultimately to what he believes. .
This autonomy of belief covers a multitude of possibilities, because different people are differentially convinced by different kinds of thinking.
Some people are psychotically-delusional in their thinking - and their convictions arise from reasoning that is unique because pathological - some kind of delirium or dementia, perhaps; when the stream of thinking is dislocated.
Others are very easily self-convinced, and very difficult to dislodge from conviction by subsequent experience - or, more exactly, such persons adhere unthinkingly and unswervingly to the conclusions reached in any brief moments during which they actually were thinking for themselves.
But autonomy of belief is also the characteristic of genius; and indeed autonomy of belief is a necessary component of genius.
And when the times and circumstances are so corrupted and so evil that all Men are called upon be a genius of their own most fundamental convictions - on pain of otherwise becoming assimilated to the general state of corruption and evil...
Well then it behoves all Men to ensure that the procedure by which they become personally convinced of some belief, is such as to satisfy his own best possible understanding of truth, beauty and virtue.
(He must do this for himself, and from himself; because otherwise he is merely accepting somebody else's standards. Even if he does accept somebody else's standards as fundamental for himself, then this needs to be done on exactly the same basis.)
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