Value Polytheism and the Pandemic: Short Outline of an Ongoing Analysis
Yannis Ktenas is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Sociology Department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is currently based in Vienna as a Junior Visiting Fellow of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM), studying the consequences of «Value-Polytheism during the Pandemic».
He has also published a book titled Can Values be Founded? Reconsidering the Question through Max Weber and Cornelius Castoriadis (2022) on the subject of values, where he explores the views of Weber and Castoriadis. The book is in Greek, but here is a brief summary:
Is it possible for political and moral values to be rationally founded? If each society defines its own criteria for good and evil, right and wrong, can there be universally valid norms? Could the assumption that there are no unshakable foundations for politics and morality lead anywhere else but to complete relativism? Questions such as these lie at the heart not only of philosophy and social sciences but also of our everyday concerns, when for example we talk about the ‘crisis of values’ that characterizes modern societies.
In this essay, Yannis Ktenas, by critically examining the views of Max Weber and Cornelius Castoriadis, attempts to show that the rejection of foundationalism does not necessarily end up in clichés such as ‘anything goes’. On the contrary, it invites us to assume responsibility for our personal and collective engagement, to take up the demanding task of deliberation, debate and disagreement, bearing in mind that political conflict and ‘value polytheism’ are constitutive conditions of human existence.
In what follows, I will try to briefly sketch out a possible direction for the analysis of some crucial social and political aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. It seems to me that this direction – Weberian in its inspiration, to the extent that it focuses on the various ever-conflicting values which inspire social action – can be proven fruitful and help us reach at a better understanding of this recent momentous phenomenon.
The idea that it is impossible to offer our values (the ethical and political principles which orient our actions and determine our stance towards life) a strictly rational foundation is simple as it is compelling, or at least hard to refute: given that rationalism always starts from certain fundaments, which are postulated as axioms, various sociopolitical principles can be seen as starting points of different and indeed incompatible, rational argumentations. There is no rational judge capable of resolving in a conclusive and objective manner the conflict between two or more incommensurable rationalization trajectories.
As opposed to the Platonic articulation of Being and Good (which grounds morality on an eternal ontological foundation), as well as to the Hegelian Absolute Spirit (which supposes that every ethical contradiction can ultimately be resolved by human Reason), this conception defines an intellectual tradition that can be traced at least back to Hume. The impossibility of deriving an Ought out of an Is holds a fundamental place in the philosophy of the pioneer of Scottish Enlightenment. Moreover, according to some of the most recent proponents of this idea, such as Max Weber and Hans Kelsen, not only do values vary, but they also contradict each other. In order to honor one of them, we are forced to sacrifice another one – this is what Weber has famously named, following J.S. Mill, value polytheism. Finally, during the second half of the 20th century, philosophers such as Cornelius Castoriadis, working under the influence of social anthropology, have argued that each culture creates its own ultimate criteria regarding good and evil, morality and immorality, greatness and vulgarity.
In such a context, value polytheism also seems to imply the permanence of politics, in other words, the irreducibility of debate, disagreement, and conflict over the affairs of the polis. There can be no absolute political science, imposing its conclusions upon the life of citizens via the appropriate means, in a sort of social mechanics exercise. Science, Weber used to say citing Tolstoy, will never be able to unambiguously respond to the perhaps most fundamental question: “How should we live our lives?”. This being the case, a variety of opinions, points of view, approaches, desires, and interests always lie at the heart of the political.
Although we live in an era when disagreement and conflict are indeed to be found in the everyday agenda, since we all express ourselves passionately and constantly on every possible issue on social networks and other platforms, we have to admit that the recent pandemic rocked the boat in the field of political thought and action, too. Paradoxical phenomena saw the light of the day: direct contestation of scientific findings and exacerbation of conspiracy theories; bizarre congruence of Left and Right groups on topics such as public health restrictions, civil rights, and vaccination; appeal to State interventionism on behalf of laissez-faire advocates and vice versa; and of course the great philosophical scandal of our days, namely the fact that Giorgio Agamben, one of the most renowned thinkers of our time, turned out to be a pandemic and vaccination denier.
The above leave their imprint on the political and philosophical debate, affecting the lives of far more people than those actively involved in politics, philosophy, or social sciences. The political map is designed anew since individuals formerly belonging to the same camp draw apart due to radically divergent approaches to the pandemic, while people who used to disagree in just about everything decide to bury the hatchet or even form an alliance in order to overcome the great danger threatening humanity. In any case, the most distinguishing and undeniable feature of the pandemic disputes is the intense polarization that characterizes them. Who has not thought that her opponent is not only a bearer of a different opinion or take on things, but also, quite simply, irrational, an enemy of reason incapable of conceiving obvious facts and making elementary inferences?
At first sight, this rather instinctive and certainly unambiguous emphasis on the irrationality of our opponents seems to contradict the theories of value polytheism; for those theories do not presuppose the belief in a unique and universal common sense, but the existence of various axioms that serve as bases for incommensurable yet rational ways of thinking. Would this mean that polytheism is something rather secondary, an epiphenomenon which disappears when things get tough?
Although this hypothesis might appear credible, I claim that this is hardly the case. There are two reasons for this: first, the endless debates over the pandemic demonstrate precisely the impossibility of a univocal response even towards the seemingly most undeniable problems; second, one must consider the possibility that these passionate disputes over the pandemic, which usually lead us to see our rivals as divorcés from reason rather than as proponents of different normative principles, are often structured around value conceptions.
In fact, is not the temporary pandemic truce among people, who in other respects disagree heavily, a sign that life and health are interpreted as fundamental values, the protection of which is presupposed by the pursuit of other, competitive and indeed conflicting sociopolitical projects? Moreover, did not the reaction of Agamben and his followers, when they were finally forced to admit (although not without ambivalence) the existence of a lethal virus, stem from their unwillingness to sacrifice all other values to the one of “naked life”? A passage from Agamben’s thoughts on the subject is quite telling: “What is a society that values nothing above survival? It is dispiriting to see a whole society dismiss entirely its ethical and political values when faced with what is, after all, an uncertain risk.”
Far from putting an end to value polytheism, the pandemic can be seen as a chance to reflect upon the philosophical and political issues posed by the problem of values in the light of a new, world-shaking event. A time of crisis like ours offers an advantageous viewpoint from which we can examine the confrontation and articulation of values like liberty, safety, economic growth, health, and life, situated at the core of most ethical and political philosophies, but also generating extremely different interpretations and prioritizations. This way, we can hope to reach conclusions that were inaccessible to previous generations.
At the same time, the affirmation of value polytheism’s great importance, as well as its persistence, does not mean that we are obliged to remain at the level of pure description. The purpose of our analysis is not to support that anything goes or that every opinion and stance is of equal merit – an idea that Weber himself, despite being constantly accused of relativism, repudiated explicitly. How is it possible, however, to adopt a critical stance, if we start from the assumption that there is not a unique, universal, and omnipotent Reason, but rather different forms of rationality based on various value preconditions?
Here, once again, it could be proven useful to follow Weber in what could be called his immanent criticism of values. According to him, although we cannot logically force someone to accept a value they do not accept, we can demand that they are honest to themselves, in other words, consistent with their own value system. For instance, one could argue that in order to achieve social freedom, the physical agents of freedom must first be protected and kept alive. Freedom as a value presupposes the value of life, and we cannot desire the former without the latter. It is perhaps no coincidence that Roberto Esposito used the following terms: “I personally believe that the defense of life is a value superior to any other – if only because it is presupposed by them: in order to be free or to communicate with others, one must first be alive” («The Twofold Face of Immunity«, 2020).
Moreover, an analysis that focuses on the value premises of the pandemic conflicts could also proceed the other way around, highlighting the way values affect our cognitive predisposition to the world – what Weber used to call Wertbeziehung, putting emphasis on the constitutive epistemological role values play in cultural sciences. For example, one could examine whether the opinions held by different value camps during the pandemic are able to sufficiently thematize the “factual aspects” (however ambivalent and problematic this term might be) of the situation, accounting for the nature of the virus and the severity of the illness it causes; moreover, he could investigate to what extent the bearers of the various value standpoints are capable of properly incorporating the – inevitably changing– conclusions of the scientific community. While it is true that different viewpoints shed light on different aspects of the infinite social reality, it might be the case that some standpoints are more productive and coherent than others.
To conclude, I believe that the analysis I have only sketched out briefly above could expand and search for its proper place within the landscape of value polytheism. In order to do that, we will have to practice our faculty of judgment and, at some point, take sides, without however starting from the false presupposition of a uniform and universal rationality. So, in this case, the reflective judgment might not only concern the ability to trace the universal through the particular, as Kant used to put it but also to discern the essential through the unpredictable, the unique, the unprecedented.