Tackling the Crisis: Lessons from Pragmatism
Josh Forstenzer and Robert Stern (Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield, UK)
As philosophers, we have no special expertise to offer the world when it comes to solving the medical, scientific, economic, or logistical problems caused by our present Covid-19 crisis. However, we do have a studied concern for humanity’s capacity to think carefully, to understand one another, and to solve common problems. In short, we think philosophy can help respond to the need for clear thought and careful communication in these uncertain times. One philosophical tradition which we think can offer useful guidance here is pragmatism. For, at the heart of pragmatism is a concern with intelligent problem solving, and what strategies we need to adopt to resolve the practical difficulties which face us as agents. We believe that the pragmatist tradition which grows out of nineteenth century American philosophy rightly highlights that if we are to successfully work through the problems posed by Covid-19, we need an approach which embodies four central values: transparency, accountability, solidarity, and hope.
- Transparency
Already, governments of various stripes have made new and invasive demands of their citizens in their handling of the health crisis. Whether it’s closing down businesses, issuing stay-at-home curfews, or mandating the implementation of social-tracking and contact-tracing apps in return for some measure of protection against the disease. While these reductions in personal liberties have been expedient, the crucial reasoning and information underpinning such decisions have not always been clearly communicated to the public in some countries. Yet, the crucial counterpart owed by governments who wish to be trusted by their citizens is complete transparency regarding the science, the strategic thinking, and the results of government action. Too often, we have seen governments occlude and confuse through questionable figures and PR tricks rather than enlighten and honestly inform the public about the nature of this crisis and about how they are exercising unprecedented levels – outside of war time, at least – of executive authority. Avoiding blame and scurrying from scrutiny seems to be the goal for too many governments, when instead they should be focusing on bolstering learning about our evolving situation and sharing clear and unedited facts about the reality of the situation and the results of their policy decisions. The pragmatist approach, which models itself on scientific inquiry and problem solving, makes clear that transparency is necessary in order to foster rational decision making at all levels, while it can also importantly lead to the sharing of crucial information, and the possibility of valuable criticism and scrutiny – just as scientists must make public their methods and results, and be subject to the scrutiny of their peers. Transparency is also needed to foster trust, which itself is crucial if policies to resolve the problem are to be properly taken up by those affected, and also if groups are to work together.
- Accountability
An important further feature of problem solving is identifying the source of the problem, and why it has arisen in the first place. This will require finding out how it has happened, and if necessary holding institutions and people responsible. However, at the same time we should be cautious about rushing to blame, as if wrongly handled this can get in the way of problem solving. The question of blame has become of fundamental ethical importance during this crisis: Who is to blame for the rise of Covid-19? Who is to blame for slow governmental action? Who is to blame for failure to comply with, often confusing, new policies? Who is ultimately to blame for the differential avoidable deaths in different countries? In normal times, the act of blaming is an important moral practice. It enables us to hold one another to account and, hopefully, to educate one another about rightful and wrongful actions. However, in a time of crisis, the temptation to find someone – anyone – responsible for our suffering and to blame them for it is dangerously seductive. It might help relieve the feelings of confusion and powerlessness in the face of a new and threatening situation, but at grave risk. From international multilateral organizations, to national authorities, local leaders, companies and corporations, the media, foreigners and refugees, and even neighbours who are perceived not to follow the rules – all have been the object of blame by someone or other in the current crisis. Evasions of responsibility for past detrimental actions, shirking responsibility to protect key workers and medical staff, attempts to hide the number of deaths caused by Covid-19, imprisoning or side-lining dissidents, reducing environmental protections, diminishing the power of civil society, or even emitting dangerous musings that masquerade as medical advice – are all blameworthy actions which governments should refrain from engaging in. However, the unrestrained search for blame can itself lead to poor behaviour. For example, instead of focusing on discovering the facts regarding genuine responsibility, blaming can – and often does – become a form of scapegoating. That is to say that it serves to deflect blame from oneself, without regard for whether or not the new object of blame is indeed responsible for the harm that remains unaccounted for. Moreover, blaming without good grounds for doing so can encourage ‘virtue signalling’, where to avoid blame people put great effort in demonstrating their blamelessness, but in a self-righteous and self-focussed manner, which seldom actually achieves the good action that is being signalled. In both of these cases, instead of holding people to account for their actual behaviour, blame serves the function of shifting the public perception of blame away from oneself towards an arbitrarily selected other. In the best of circumstances, accountability requires that we carefully and systematically establish causal and moral responsibility for a given wrongdoing. While in the current state of widespread confusion we need to hold the powerful forces shaping our reality to account, we must also be cognisant of the fact that, when directed at social groups, the act of careless blaming can be uniquely damaging. It can also get in the way of problem solving, as valuable resources (both real and emotional) are spent on blame, which would be better used in getting to grips with the issue itself.
- Solidarity
This then leads to the third pragmatist requirement, which is for solidarity. Without solidarity, there will not be the kind of shared endeavour required for resolving shared problems, while groups that could help will be excluded from the effort to overcome the problem. This can happen at many levels: relevant expertise is ignored, practical skills are set aside, different understandings and experience of the problem itself are neglected. Just as scientific problems require teams to work together, so we are required to work together to face the challenge of Covid-19. We must therefore be careful to balance the urge to blame others with the need for solidarity, since ungrounded blaming can have divisive effects. Indeed, blaming the wrong people for the wrong things can result in an irreconcilable severance of the ties that bind us together. When we blame the right people for the right reasons, this fellowship can be restored through processes of forgiveness. While blame can be a useful instrument to hold the powerful to account when we have little more to appeal to, if we are to preserve a sense of solidarity with other human beings we must be cautious not to blame the weak and vulnerable. The danger of blaming marginalised people within a country or entire nations is that it breaks up this solidarity. This is all the more important since, in a crisis of this sort, standard ways of restoring community through forgiveness are often lacking (for example, legal proceedings may well be in limbo, public expressions of dissent are reduced, and responses from others may well be hard to hear through the media noise about the crisis). This means that the divisiveness caused by scapegoating is harder than usual to overcome; the record cannot easily be set straight. And yet, in the face of Covid-19 we need more solidarity between and among people than ever before.
- Hope
Pragmatists believe that hope plays a special role in enabling collective problem solving. Understood as a positive orientation towards the likelihood of eventual success, hope highlights the possibility of good outcomes within a given situation – just as a scientists must hope their experimental methods will yield success. While there is much to fear and grieve in our world, only a grounded and responsible shared hopefulness can sustain us in the face of the many failures we are likely to experience before finding solutions to our problems. On the pragmatist view, this insight applies not just to Covid-19 but also to bigger global challenges – like climate change and wealth inequality. Crucially, however, to sustain hope it is often essential to acknowledge and honour the depths of our very real grief and frustration in the face of catastrophe. There is no necessary opposition between making space for our pain and embracing a hopeful outlook. But, for pragmatists, hope is the light that can see us through the deepest challenges by giving us a very real practical reason to continue to build a transparent, accountable, and solidary community of inquiry which can enable us to solve our biggest problems, together.
Joshua Forstenzer is a Lecturer in Philosophy and the Co-Director of the Centre for Engaged Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, UK. Before that he was the Vice-Chancellor's Fellow for the Public Benefit of Higher Education also at Sheffield, as well as a Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Visiting Fellow at Tufts University's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. His main research interests are in political and social philosophy, philosophy of education, and American Pragmatism. His first monograph Deweyan Experimentalism and the Problem of Method in Political Philosophy was published by Routledge in 2019.
Robert Stern is a Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, UK, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University. He has written extensively on themes in German Idealism (particularly Kant and Hegel) and on pragmatism, and his main research interests are in ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. His books include Hegelian Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2009), Understanding Moral Obligation (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Kantian Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2015), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Routledge, 2013), and The Radical Demand in Løgstrup’s Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2019).
[ Editor: ZY ]
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