"We live in a time when reality is in conflict with platitude, when a fact is in conflict with an a priori interpretation of it, when common sense is in conflict with a distorted rationality. It is a time of conflict between theory that plays fast and loose with practice, and theory that learns from practice; a conflict between two gnoseologies: the one that, from an a priori interpretation of the world, deduces how that reality should be seen, and the one that, from how reality is seen, deduces how that reality must be interpreted. In my opinion, how quickly our society evolves will depend on how quickly we can replace the first gnoseology--the metaphysical one--with the second, the dialectical one."
--Vaclav Havel, "On Evasive Thinking," 1965

I'm afraid I know too little Latin and too little about the various strains of gnoseology to care about this quote. However, I just started reading "Morons" for the second time the other night, and it's still proving to be such a tool. I love you're remark in the intro about ideology being a "proxy religion" for intellectuals who are above actual religion. I think I'm going to put that quote in the header on my little blog (citing your book, of course). I've also linked to your site.

"...the one that, from an a priori interpretation of the world, deduces how that reality should be seen, and the one that, from how reality is seen, deduces how that reality must be interpreted."

I think I understand his point -- viz., that interpretations should be adequate to reality and not vice versa -- but the notion of "deducing" interpretations from reality seems problematic.

A line from Kuhn is relevant here: our theories are fact-laden, and our facts are theory-laden. That is, an uninterpreted confrontation with reality is impossible.

In addition, his use of "dialectical" and "metaphysical" is odd.

Anyone care to help me out.

Ralph: Vaclav Havel is philosophically trained. He's certainly smarter than me, and a fortiori smarter than you. So let's give him some charity. Also, this seems like a quotation in a popular context, so perhaps to expect this little quote to reflect what he thinks of the Kuhn or to explain his slightly odd use of 'metaphysical' seems a little overboard to me. Besides, when you apply what he says not to Kuhn's theory but to the conflict between Marxism and human reality in Czechoslovakia, isn't his meaning rather clear?

(P.S. Josh, the root is actually Greek, not Latin. Anyway, here's the OED's definition: "The philosophy of cognition or the cognitive faculties.")

Skeptic,

Did you miss my qualifier "seems" or my request for help? People with philosophical training cannot make confused remarks? Kant is smarter than both of us. Are you a Kantian, then?

Perhaps you could use your superior brilliance to explain what Havel means. It isn't clear to me.

Thank you, Dan, from the bottom of my heart.

Ralph, my point was (1) that your complaints are obvious enough to someone trained philosophically that we should assume that Havel has at least thought about them; (2) that there doesn't seem to be a way for us based on this quotation to present what Havel has thought about them; (3) that Havel's concrete cultural-political meaning is rather clear (even if his entire epistemology isn't). From all of this follows, I think, that your comments in the context of this quotation (in contrast to a philosophy class on the Czech phenomenological tradition) are uncharitable.

(BTW I didn't mean to imply that because he's smarter than us we need to agree with his entire philosophical system, just that we shouldn't assume he's an amateur.)

Ralph,

If you are troubled by Havel's usage of the word "deduces," I don't think we really need to fret. Perhaps just consider that VH is not duty-bound always to use the word in its strict logical sense. (Moreover, to use the word in a sense other than it strictly logical one need not cost us philosophical rigor, so long as our meaning is clear.) The apparent equivocation (i.e., the first use is compatible with deduction in the strict logical sense, and the second use with induction) is transparent, not misleading, and it gives us some nice linguistic parallelism, to boot. Moreover, VH's intent, I think, is focus on our starting points--i.e., nonexperiential a priori system vs. reality-as-experienced--and simply to advocate the latter over the former.

(1) When I wrote my comment, I knew nothing about Havel, and so was not inclined to be charitable. If you say he's not capable of "amateur" mistakes, I'll take your word for it.

(2) If you (or anyone else) is not in a position to expound his view, we shall have to leave it at that.

(3) Is the cultural-political meaning that Marxist theorizors are at odds with reality? I certainly agree with that.

Aside from its obvious difficulties (which we are charitably attributing to the popular nature of his writing), I discern a general distrust for all things theoretical (a la Hayek; a theme which Dan seems to be fond of). In place of the theoretical, some thinkers (perhaps Havel is one) urge us to look at the facts. Who needs theory when the facts are so clear? I think such an approach is naive and simplistic. Gaping at facts accomplishes nothing. A theoretical framework is required, a framework that cannot simply be read off experience.

Now, am I totally off the mark here concerning Havel?

Oh Skeptic and Ralph you two crack me up sometimes.

I like this quote but would agree with Ralph that the last sentence which posits the choices as between the "metaphysical" approach and the "dialectical" begs further elucidation since those terms are freighted with many different meanings/connotations.

Clearly he is pointing out the disjunct between (at least late) communist thought and proper political rule. By "dialectical" he seems to mean not a historical dialecticism (ala Marxism) but a pragmatic one, possibly one that could be called "prudential."

What would he have been when he wrote this, in his late twenties? Three years before the Prague Spring it is interesting to see the extent to which the regime had completely lost its legitimacy for Havel, who I believe in his early days considered himself a socialist. That was a time when western European intellectuals were overwhelmingly still sympathetic to communism and certainly did not consider the Soviet bloc to be illegitimate.

Buzz,

Your last sentence is relevant to my concerns. Your write,

"VH's intent, I think, is to focus on our starting points--i.e., nonexperiential a priori system vs. reality-as-experienced--and simply to advocate the latter over the former."

It seems to me that this is a false dichotomy. Theory and experience cannot be fully separated in this way. See my response to Skeptic.

I hear you, Ralph. Perhaps the dichotomy is false (nods to Dewey et al.). I offer a refinement: Surely you will admit that, in practice, "theory" can/does sometimes give way to dogmaticism, jingoism, blindness, ideology, whatever you want to call an unwillingness or incapacity to be open to the whole of experience, i.e., antirealism--and as such can be quite pernicious. This sort of thing, I think, is what VH is opposing. To that end, we need to stick up for the facts when the bully of theory gets too big. Hence the rhetorical trumping-up of the (false) dichotomy.

On another note: I didn't mention earlier, and you might already be familiar with this point, but the "odd" way VH here uses "metaphysical" is actually fairly common among nineteenth-century Anglo-American positivist thinkers. (For them, it's an explicit barb, of course.) Likely, there are other precedents for this usage.

"...we need to stick up for the facts when the bully of theory gets too big."

Agreed.