On Making Bold Claims

Allow me to begin with a bold claim. There are, it seems to me, two general ways to make an argument. One way, the way of the polemicist, is to make grand, totalizing assertions, dismissing contrary positions as out-of-hand or ignorant. The second, the way of the academic, is to qualify claims by nuancing a position so that it can nimbly avoid most obvious objections.

Of course, many academics are polemical, and some folks who make bold claims have done the hard work to nuance them properly. But it seems as though, in an intellectual climate where all claims are met with a hermeneutic of suspicion, assuming, of course, that all assertions are merely veiled power-plays, even the most nuanced of position is open to misunderstanding or death by virtue of the failings of whatever rational system makes the claim intelligible. 

Now, don't get me wrong, there is an important place for careful argumentation and close analysis of evidences in order to find conceptual clarity. There are too many people who assume the role of prophet and indeed fall into the brute use of power in slapping down all objections to said prophet's 'true' ideology. We should expect people to at least demonstrate an attempt at using persuasion and appeal to some discussion of method, what counts as evidences, and an analysis of those same evidences. This kind of academic virtue has largely been lost in the 'fake-news' society in which we live, and it would behoove us to encourage those practices again.

Nevertheless, I also want to defend the making of bold claims. There are types of debates in which it is precisely the act of nuancing a claim that falsifies it. I have written before of the contrast between the claim that "Black Lives Matter" versus the claim that "All Lives Matter." It should be axiomatic that all lives matter, but the problem, historically and at this present moment, is that the common use of this universal claim has been radically restricted to a privileged few. In order for the universal claim to become true, the claim that Black Lives Matter must be given priority over the claim that All Lives Matter. In this instance, it is the function of the claims, not the dictionary meaning of the words in the claims, that determine the truth value of the claims. (Of course, in Canada, this could be applied to various issues surrounding the TRC and the monstrous claims of Senator Beyak - while it may be true that some Indigenous people had a subjectively 'good' experience at the Residential school [I have a friend who learned to play the guitar there for example], it does not mitigate the objective evil of cultural genocide which the Residential school system perpetrated against indigenous people.) These debates point us to the performative nature of speech. To call something a true claim, it is insufficient to make certain claims that merely correspond to certain true states of affairs, they must also be fitting. Black Lives Matter is logically presupposed by All Lives Matter, but functionally, at this moment in history, Black Lives Matter is clearly not presupposed by those who would make the claim that All Lives Matter. There is an element of truth as performance at work here. It is necessary at this moment in history to make the claim that Black Lives Matter in service to the truth that All Lives Matter, acknowledging that at a certain point in the future, it may become the case that a different claim needs to be advanced. Truth as performance is an example of the type of bold claim that does not need nuance, and can be said to be true only for a certain context. These kinds of statements only succeed in a particular context and are falsified if universalized - nevertheless, we need room to be able to make these kinds of prophetic one-offs that are patently not qualified or nuanced in any way.

Bold claims are also appropriate especially in debates where there is a stalemate regarding methodology. In these instances, it is necessary to advance a claim that performs a sort of therapy upon the debate. The nature of this therapy is such that it shatters the categories by which the debate is being had. Often, public debates are deadlocked because of two conflicting rationalities, for example, in the abortion debate, pro-choice advocates tends to begin from an account of property rights that entails self-ownership of a woman's body, while pro-life advocates begin with the premise of the intrinsic sanctity of every human life. While many pro-life/pro-choice advocates may agree on many of the particulars, they are operating out of different moral logics, and thus can never ultimately find evidences that are wholly satisfying to the other. It is into such stalemates that a bold claim could be made that rejects the dichotomy of the conflicting rationalities and offers a new mode of reasoning by which a consensus may be reached. 

Such a claim might benefit from being highly nuanced, showing, for example, exactly why either position is inadequate before moving on to a solution. But this is not always necessary. The reason for this is that no matter how highly nuanced you are, what you are doing, in effect, is rejecting two modes of reasoning. Appealing to criteria that would satisfy the objections of those modes of reasoning would force you back into adopting one or the other of those modes of reasoning and the therapeutic force of your claim would evaporate. Some attempts could, and probably should be made to anticipate certain major objections, but in the contest between rationalities, it is sometimes necessary to avoid being drawn into certain lines of argumentation. To so enter in would essentially be to give away the farm!

I have suggested that there are a couple of situations in which careful argumentation and qualification of bold claims serves to hinder rather than help clarity in public discourse. First, truth-claims-as-performance are necessary to be able to say the right thing in the right setting. Reductionist views of truth insist that the truth is always the truth, regardless of the setting. This is to wholly ignore the performative/functional aspect of making claims. The second situation in which bold claims are called for is in the overturning of rationalities. Only limited appeal can be made to alternative modes of reasoning without simply adopting those modes. It is therefore necessary to encourage another set of virtues in the arena of public debate. In addition to the 'academic' virtues I outlined above, people should cultivate the aesthetic sensibility that provides direction for when and how to make a truth-claim. My proposal, therefore, is not a new one, it is merely to point us to the classical wisdom that Truth belongs properly with Goodness and Beauty. In isolation, these three can become monstrous distortions of themselves, but held in triune-unity, they may yet shape us into the type of people that can recover a civilized public-discourse that is more than a nihilistic pursuit of power.