A Problem with Truth
This article "Kompromiss" appeared in the business section of the Sunday Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on November 16th. For an article that discusses the virtues, philosophy, and practice of compromising, when disagreements in an organization threaten to block forward movement, the author Professor Nils Goldschmidt approaches the subject obliquely and cryptically: "We have a problem with the truth, when the 'truth' is too sure of itself."
Dr. Goldschmidt must have watched Apollo 13 to introduce his article this way. If he had wanted to inject humor in the article, he could have begun it, "Earth to God, we have a problem believing the truth." As it is, however, the Goldschmidt article reads like the writing of a man who has lived too long in an ivory-tower to understand how problems get solved in the real world. "Truth" has blinded him to the truth, that the give-and take of productive, informed discussion enables the solutions, and no one has to feel that they have compromised anything.
He writes that pride has conditioned us to believe in an "absoluter Gewissheit" (absolute certainties) in the bright sunlight of an "universalistischen Vernunft" (universal truth). He continues that these terms may work in the fields of mathematics or natural sciences, but not so well when building the constitutional framework of a human society: "Hubris makes human reason a risky advisor." Goldschmidt quotes from the German writer Goethe who writes in his revolutionary play Faust that human reason contains "den Schein des Himmelslichtes" (illusion of heavenly light); but nowhere in the article does Goldschmidt talk about more earthly affairs, like running a business, where producers and customers depend on active knowledge about things like inventory, outstanding orders, accounts receivables, and logistics. They need an experienced human judgment, assisted by mathematical certainties. The modern Word depends on this unheralded symbiotic relationship.
Then Dr. Goldschmidt quotes from a book by the American economist Richard Rorty, Justice as a Larger loyalty. He praises Rorty's disabusing us of the "Scheinheiligkeit einer scheinbar überlegenen Vernunft" (the false sanctity of a prevailing system of reason).
In the back of my mind, I keep wondering, who is this guy really criticizing? People who trust too much in their reasoning faculties? Single-minded people who can't entertain opposing viewpoints? So, the German radical party the AfD, the Trump administration, or constitutional originalists? The format of this "Kompromiss" article has all the tendentiousness of a political attack, couched in softer academic terms.
I also picture Professor Goldschmidt hard at work in his ivory tower, working through the night to finish up another essay, another book or speech, like so many scholars. Outside, the local Uber Eats crew waits to serve him his nocturnal coffee and croissants, so that he does not have to stop. If he can allow himself to stand back from his concern with human reason and hubris, he might detect in the functions of Uber Eats the very "reason" he cannot see in philosophy, his own included.