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Feyerabend on politics education and scientifi c culture Ian James Kidd Department of Philosophy University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD United Kingdom a r t i c l e i n f o Article history Available online 5 January 2016 Keywords Feyerabend Authority Education Free society Political philosophy Scientifi c culture a b s t r a c t The purpose of this paper is to offer a sympathetic reconstruction of the political thought of Paul Feyerabend Using a critical discussion of the idea of the free society it is suggested that his political thought is best understood in terms of three thematic concernsdliberation hegemony and the authority of sciencedand that the political signifi cance of those claims become clear when they are considered in the context of his educational views It emerges that Feyerabend is best understood as calling for the grounding of cognitive and cultural authoritiesdlike the sciencesdin informed deliberation rather than the uncritical embrace of prevailing convictions It therefore emerges that a free society is best under stood as one of epistemically responsible citizenship rather than epistemically anarchistic relativism of the anything goes sortda striking anticipation of current debates about philosophy of science in society 2015 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved When citing this paper please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 1 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to ask what sense if any can be made of the various political ideas and proposals offered by Paul Feyerabend and to ask how if at all they might relate to contem porary debates about the authority of the sciences in modern so cieties The cautious phasing of those two questions is a refl ection of the fact that Feyerabend s political thought is generally poorly regarded by even the more sympathetic commentators and also judged to be of less value and sophistication than his contributions to the history and philosophy of science 1Indeed proposals such as the formation of a free society and of the separation of science and the state are often cited as self evident indications of the imma turity if not irresponsibility of Feyerabend s political thought especially when considered alongside his putative enthusiasm for anarchisticepistemology Suchconcernsnaturallymotivate sincere worries that the worst enemy of science might not have anything sensible to contribute to political philosophy beyond fanciful speculations about a utopia in which epistemically and socially anything goes Chalmers 1999 p 159 Although it is easy to sympathize with concerned critics and oftendiffi cult to disagreewiththem there still remains the fact that political ideas and concerns were clearly central to Feyerabend s philosophical interests An idea like the free society may be prob lematic but it does seem to refl ect certain deep concerns and pre occupations that were important to Feyerabend studying those concerns may therefore be instructive Certainly when one looks to hislaterwritings fromroughlythemid1970sthroughtohisdeathin 1994 a variety of politically charged themes emerge These include the protection of cultural diversity against the predations of West ern imperialism the social and epistemic marginalization of sub ordinated groups within developed world societies environmental destruction and the homogenization of global cultures and the social and spiritual alienation endemic tolatemodern societiesdall of which contributed to Feyerabend s status as a hero of the anti technological counter culture Preston 2012 x2 17 Moreover those themes are often clearly related to Feyerabend s more obvi ouslyphilosophicalconcernsaboutscientifi cmethodology andalso converge intelligibly if not inevitably in the narrative of the conquest of abundance described in his last unfi nished book 2 E mail address dfl 2ijk 1 See e g Oberheim 2006 p 22f and Preston 1996 ch 10 2 See Feyerabend 2001 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in History and Philosophy of Science journal homepage http dx doi org 10 1016 j shpsa 2015 11 009 0039 3681 2015 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 57 2016 121e128 There are then good reasons to suppose that a study of Feyerabend s political thought will help us to better understand core themes of his work as a whole even if the ideas in them selves fail to pass muster My strategy here will therefore be to use a critical analysis of the free society as a way into Feyerabend s political concerns to identify and articulate his guiding principles and themes and then to examine how those concerns inform his views on education It emerges that although the political pro posals that Feyerabend offered should be rejected as they stand das critics have suspecteddthey can still be usefully seen as refl ecting an intelligible and indeed plausible set of concerns about the authority of the sciences in modern societies The paper closes by articulating those concerns and placing them in the context of growing contemporary interest in philosophy of sci ence in society 2 The free society The ideal of the free society featured in Feyerabend s work from the late 1970s through to the early 1980s and was regarded by him during that time as the centerpiece of his political philosophy The verytermfreesocietycanbeunderstoodintermsof atleast twosets ofmotivatingideas Thefi rstisthesuspicionaboutwhatFeyerabend calls the increasingly tyrannical character of the modern sciences Specifi cally of their constituting a comprehensive system of thought that reigns without checks and balances being both exempted from criticism and prone to employ dogmatic defense against any attempted resistances Feyerabend 1975 1999 pp 181 182 The studies of the history and philosophy of science that occupied Feyerabend during the 1960s and early 1970s were not simply intended as epistemological correctivesdto correct posi tivist confusions saydbutalso ascontributionstotheidentifi cation and exposure of self serving myths about science Perhaps the obvious myth is that of methodological monism the claim that science enjoys a privileged epistemic authority owing to its employmentof adistinctivesetof context invariantmethodological rulesda frozen image of science that distorts our judgments about the proper scope of scientifi c methods Feyerabend 1993 p 2 Such claims were of course hardly original to Feyerabend being part of the intellectual climate of the mid twentieth century and it is worth noting that they were common currency in major Conti nental European philosophical traditions perhaps best exemplifi ed by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer 1979 The second sets of factors informing Feyerabend s enthusiasm for the idea of the free society are the prevailing cultural conditions of the late 1960s and early 1970s It is well established amongst commentators that Feyerabend adapted easily and intensely to the trends and fi gures with whom he was engaging that he was a chameleon able to adapt to the changing interests and attitudes of both academic and popular culture Oberheim 2006 pp 15 and 24 The free society is an adaptation to and refl ection of a period of recent cultural history that was liberal and pluralistic a time of fl ower power and counterculture free love and cannabis 3It also refl ects if imperfectly a broadly Millian vision of a society that respects and embraces a plurality of different modes of life and welcomes experiments in living untrammeled by the oppressive constraints and conservatism of entrenched social and intellectual authorities even if the fi delity of the vision to Mill s own liberalism is debatable Indeed it was also around this culturally turbulent time that Feyerabend fi rst encountered On Liberty whether by chance or design 4The impact of the much misunderstood slogan Anything goes surely owes as much to this cultural mood as it does to the emergence of post positivist philosophies of science and the lyrical stylings of Cole Porter 5 The ideal of the free society therefore fi nds its origins in con cerns about the putatively tyrannical character of the modern sci ences and a prevailing cultural enthusiasm for the inclusion of a greater diversity of cultures and traditions Certainly these two themes are visible throughout the characterizations that Feyer abend offers of the free society as one in which all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centers of power and which recognizes the value of any particular mode of life Feyerabend 1978 p 106 and 1980 1999 p 112 Indeed a defi ning feature of a free society is that it is not based on any particular creed and which would replace our faith in the excellence of science with the recognition that it is on a part with all other beliefs including astrology and black magic Feyerabend 1970 1999 p 125 and 1993 p 228 The emerging picture is of a society that accommo dates a rich plurality of cognitive and cultural traditions including many that the denizens of late modern societies would regard as metaphysically and epistemologically incredibledan early presage perhaps of the abundance that would be celebrated some thirty years later in Feyerabend s last unfi nished book These ideas and themes can be understood in terms of two principles implicit in but not articulated by Feyerabend which I ll dub the hegemony principle and the liberation principle These provide the normative basis for his political thought Unfortunately each is also untenabledor so I ll argue The hegemony principle is the conviction that the predominance or entrenchment of any one tradition or a closely related set of tra ditions necessarily constitutes apolitically andepistemically restrictive hegemony Thisprinciple manifestsitselfindifferent ways throughout Feyerabend s life and work including in his enthusiasm forMill sliberalism theobviousdislikeofcultural homogeneity and the conviction that Homeric polytheism is more attractive and hu mane than the god monster of Xenophanean monotheism Each of these refl ects the sense that hegemony necessarily follows when some onesociety tradition ormode of living dominates Indeed one might go further and suggest that resistance to hegemony and to alliedtraitslikedogmatismandconstancy wasapowerfulconviction defi nitive of Feyerabend s character or temperament a hatred of being nailed down confi ned or otherwise trapped within a single fi xed scheme of thought or way of life Many passages in his autobi ography testify to his being reluctant to be nailed down and to an abidingsenseof restlessness thatonlypassedwhenhefoundhimself confrontedwithanoutsidechallenge Feyerabend 1995 p 105 But though this psychological claim strikes me as plausible based on Feyerabend s own autobiographical writings and conversations with his friends and intimates it is mentioned here speculatively rather than assertively The liberation principle is the positive counterpoint to the he gemony principle political and epistemic freedom requires the presenceofapluralityofalternativeandequallyregardedtraditions The freedom of a society argued Feyerabend increases as the re strictionsimposedonitstraditionsareremoved Feyerabend 1980 1999 p 220 Again this principle manifests in diverse ways throughoutFeyerabend swritings hisvigorousdefenseofpluralism in both science and philosophy the hostility towards dogmatism and conservatism the defenses of eccentric beliefs and practices likevoodooandastrology andtheconstantneedtoexperimentwith in Mill s sense and shift between different ideas styles outlooks 6 3 On the cultural and political context of Feyerabend s philosophy see Kidd 2016 4 See Kidd 2010 ch 5 5 On the slogan see Tsou 2003 6 See e g Oberheim 2006 Part III I J Kidd Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 57 2016 121e128122 Clearly enough Feyerabend synonymizes hegemony with monism on the one hand and liberation with plurality on the other and his normative epistemological and political prescriptionsdfor theo retical pluralism say and cultural diversitydare both refl ections of theconvictionthat science philosophy andcivilization requirethe abandonment of a single theory or system of thought and the embrace instead of a plurality of theories and forms of life and notjustinthe rathernarrowandtechnicaldomainofthephilosophy of science Feyerabend 1985 p vii These two principles converge in Feyerabend s conviction that within modern societies the sciences have become hegemonic to a degree that requires our liberation from their tyranny This claim has a historical aspect In How to Defend Society Against Science he argues that the sciences have at certain stages in their history been an instrument of liberation and enlightenment dduring the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saydbut that they came to deteriorate over time owing to changes in both science itself and wider social and political conditions there is nothing inherent in science that makes it essentially liberating Feyerabend 1975 1999 p 182 Since Feyerabend was an early advocate of the pluralistic disunifi ed nature of science he could hardly argue that it was intrinsically anything at all e for there is no thing called science to inherently bear any characteristics at all But the fact of this deterioration is however obscured by prevailing myths and by a failure on our part of due critical vigilance for instance because it is very diffi cult nowadays to seriously ask the question of whether the pursuit of science is worthwhile owing to the intensive authority that science enjoys Feyerabend 1970a pp 141 142 Therefore although the sciences have therefore been eman cipatory at certain points in their history it would argues Feyer abend be na ve to suppose that they will continue to be so especially since there are in his judgment good reasons to suppose that it has become hegemonic and tyrannous in modern societies It is clear that such remarks and thewider historical narrative in which they are grounded are both strong and problematic The focus here though is not on the historical narrative which is persuasively challenged by Clark 2002 Heit 2016 and Preston 2016 Consider instead the philosophical idea that of the free society that it was intended to support Specifi cally there are four closely related problems with the idea of the free society that collectively undermine both its plausibility and its attractiveness enough at least to justify its rejection and that of the hegemony and liberation principles that constitute it The fi rst is that the hegemony principle is a gross generalization that would not survive historical and sociological inquiry Although there have been and still are hegemonic societies of the kind he envisions the idea that all societies with a single dominant tradi tion must evince a state of oppressive hegemony is far too strong and broad a claim not least without any supporting evidence of which Feyerabend to my knowledge offers none This being so Feyerabend gives us no reason to either adopt the hegemony principle or to fi nd it plausible The second closely related problem is that the predomination of a single tradition does not automatically entail the obviously negative state of hegemony envisioned by Feyerabend Cases could be imagined if not cited in which a society was in fact dominated bya single tradition and yet remained receptive tocritical debate If so to secure the concern about hegemony a further caveat is needed that the predomination of a single tradition only consti tutes hegemonydof a bad sortdif it includes intellectual or institutional structures that in practice degrade or demotivate criticism At certain times in fact Feyerabend recognizes this adding that the idea of criticism can be sustained or suffocated by the particular system of thought or institutional framework of a given society 1981 p ix If so worries about hegemony only apply within societies where the dominant tradition brings with it intellectual and institutional structures that impair criticism as with swallows and spring one tradition in itself does not make a hegemony Including this caveat also adds a further problem for the castigation of hegemonic traditions by coupling this to institu tional arrangements it introduces the possibility that hegemony can come in degrees To take a topical example Reporters Without Borders produces an annual rating of media freedom depending for example on the extent and intensity of state censorship 7The hegemonic status of a tradition is therefore a matter of degree and clearly the epistemically and culturally oppressive societies that Feyerabend envisions are extreme and for that reason fairly rare cases though not rare enough of course The third problem with the principle of hegemony is that few societies if any actually achieve a state where a single tradition achieves the hegemonic status that Feyerabend describes There are of course candidates perhaps including modern day North Korea but it is plausible to suggest that these are the exception rather than the rule and therefore not a sensible basis for a generalized claim Certainly it prevents the hegemony principle being able to function as widely as Feyerabend needs it to The fourth problem concerns the liberation principle and the possibility neglected by Feyerabend that exposure to a diversity of traditionswouldinfactincapacitateourcapacityfordecision making and deliberation It is a commonplace of social and political philoso phy and not just in their communitarian forms that the capacity to make judgments decide priorities and debate with others is groun ded in shared inherited institutions and traditionsdfor which a classicmodernstatementisRawls 1971 Yetafreesocietyofthesort described by Feyerabend would be lacking such preconditions for public cooperation not for the reason that it contains a plurality of traditionsdas modern liberal societies anyway dodbut because no single tradition or set of traditions is allowed to provide shared means of enabling debate and discussion The members of a free so cietywillnotbe leftatthemercy ofthesurroundinginstitutions but will instead appeal to the tradition to which he or she belongs whether that be Hopi culture or fundamentalist Protestantism includingthe epistemiccriteria peculiartoeachtradition Feyerabend 1980 1999 pp 218 and 220 But such a situation would however clearly be anarchisticdin an appropriate usage of that termdsince it would be extremely diffi cult for it to evince the sort of foundational epistemological consensus that equitable coor dinated public life depends upon Many moral philosophers including Bernard Williams 2006 and Alasdair MacIntyre 2007 have emphasized that our moral and social life is grounded in and guided by an inherited tradition one that though contingent and changeable still is not infi nitely malleable at least not to the extent presumed and required by Feyerabend This being so the simultaneous dissolution of defi ned authorities and establishment of a plurality of alternative traditions may therefore incapacitate rather than liberate Even an anarchist requires a stable tradition against which to rail and rebel and it will be in part the contingencies of that tradition that make rebellion possible if not compelling 8 Consideringthesefourcloselyrelatedproblemsitisunsurprising that the ideal of the free society slowly disappeared from Feyer abend s writingsthroughoutthe1980sand intothe 1990s Tellingly 7 See for 2013 http en rsf org press freedom index 2013 1054 html 8 One might in fact wonder whether a free society of the sort Feyerabend envisions could ever naturally emergedor whether it would have to be imposed by the sorts of large scale artifi cial reordering projects to which he was of course temperamentally and philosophically hostile Richard Rorty 1989 speculated upon the possibility of a broadly similar liberal ironic society I J Kidd Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

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