There is much to be learned from this book and a short review cannot do it justice. Both the range of scholarship and the intelligence of critique are very strong. If I raise objections, it is not from lack of admiration.
What is the political importance of objectivity? For Steinberger it derives from the “actual significance of the thousands upon thousands of rules that ultimately constitute the essence of the state” (p. 74). It is not irrelevant that Steinberger is the author of a fine book on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right as well as one on judgment. Thus, he continues, “the customs of my community and the exigencies of my language establish constraints that that regularly and routinely shape and direct the kinds of actions I take and the kinds of thoughts that I think” (p. 75).
In this context, what then is objectivity? In reviewing the (mainly philosophical) literature, Steinberger usefully distinguishes three kinds. Objectivity can be understood as “evidence based,” that is resting on what is recognized as evidence by the community. The problem here is of course that there are different epistemological communities. (pp. 18–19). Or objectivity can be “formal-procedural,” proceeding form a “standpoint that is neutral, impartial, and disinterested insofar as it is governed by a ‘mechanical rule’ … which bypasses the weaknesses of the mind” (p. 40; this occurs in a fine discussion of Bacon). The problem here is the tendency for procedure to assume precedence of the “sheer evidence of the particular thing” (p. 43). Lastly, objectivity can be understood as “structural-coherentist.” This understanding is derived mostly from Kant and will be developed favorably by Steinberger throughout the last part of the book. Here “the activity of thought is anchored by structures of coherence that are both internal to thinking itself and that are shared by all thinkers, hence are independent of and external to the distinctive, idiosyncratic features of this or that individual” (p. 32; italics are Steinberger’s).
The argument for the superiority of the third understanding is consequent to “our own shared understanding of political society.” The original move (the subject of a long Chapter Two) he makes here is to claim that this can only be made intelligible by considering the “sense in which modern political conflict is merely an instance of the inherent logic of political conflict per se” (p. 61). Importantly, in this sense, “the essence of any institution [recall the point about rules] … is nothing other than an intellectual structure, … a structure of truth-claims” (p. 78, 82). Political conflict is … in the last analysis, a matter of ideas” (p. 194).
The book is thus an attempt to find in the political realm an instantiation of the philosophical argument that one associates with Robert Brandom, Martin Heidegger, Wilfrid Sellars, W. V. O. Quine, Hilary Putnam, and many others (all listed on p. 142). (He criticizes scholars like Wendy Brown, Linda Zerilli, William Connolly, and others). His originality consists in exploring this understanding not in relation to the subject of agreement but to the subject of conflict.
Thus Steinberger turns in Chapter Three to an exploration of conflict. It is most generally “the attempt to engage and resolve serious disagreement about how things in the world really are” (p. 143). He does not duck the obvious problem: suppose a “culture … is fundamentally … at odds with itself?” (p. 144). Steinberger here holds to his guns, as it were, weapons that are now explicitly recognized as philosophical rather than social scientific. “The conceptual analysis of the logic of political conflict is one thing, the causal analysis of who wins something entirely different” (p. 193)—in other words, the logic of political conflict is towards agreement and truth and “the tyranny of truth is no tyranny at all” (p. 192).
Thus disagreement is an essential and defining quality of social life (the word ‘dialectic’ does not appear but might), Disagreement is the ground of conversation (internal to a “universe of discourse”) and when it is about “authoritative expressions” (the preceding chapter gave a fine discussion of Max Weber) we are engaged in political conflict, the “underlying intention [of which] is always the same, namely to pursue the overall coherence of the legal structure understood as the effective instantiation of the state itself” (p. 196). Conflict is necessary for objectivity.
There are important practical political consequences to the differing notions of objectivity, and Steinberger spends much of the last chapter drawing them. Consider, for instance, the debate as presented in most media as to the tax cuts proposed by then candidate Romney. They would have greatly benefited the rich and necessarily lead to extensive benefit cuts for the others. Procedurally this is presented as “Republicans say … whereas Democrats say …” Such discourse is grounded on the notion that objectivity means to be impartial and give all points of view. An objectivity grounded in truth—the third kind—would do no such thing. Steinberger tellingly also instantiates the structure of Presidential debates in the United States as compared to the “detailed and highly substantive exchange of ideas, theories and criticisms … governed by little other than the principles of civilized discourse” in France (p. 263). Political conflict is, or should be, “a struggle for truth … one form … of the larger human project to which we are all committed, whether explicitly of otherwise.” Politics and philosophy are “two sides of the same coin, inseparable, mutually sustaining, integral parts of a single organic whole” (p. 270).
The structure and pedagogy of this book are, I think, Hegelian. The book builds on its conversation with itself and with the everyday world. Like any Hegelian, the book assumes that the reader will recognize himself in the ‘we' who gives the book its common applicability. Steinberger presumes—our hope against hope—that the sharing of a common logic is not lost. If that capacity were lost, then there is no account to be given.
Steinberger’s argument is not meant to deal with monsters, nor should it be required to do so. So, how could one possibly object to what he says? A response would come, I believe on two grounds, the one political and the second philosophical (which, they too, come together).
Take the argument for the immanence of truth. Politically, it seems to me that there are several possible actualities.
First, would be that that some simply do not care for truth when it is a matter of power and conflict. This is the stuff of empires. “Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can,” say the Athenians to the Melians, and they go on to indicate that such has always been and always will be the law for those with power.
A second is a kind of debased Platonic “noble lie”—the fact that a political body feels that something not being true is less important than the good that it allows. This is a political move such that actions should appear as founded in and on truth, that it is politically useful that people at least believe that the government is telling the truth when it gives reasons for its actions. This raises the question of the relation between truth and the appearance of truth.
Third, there is the question of what the actors themselves believe. It is conceivable (and I indeed think it the case) that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld actually believed that they were bringing or trying to bring democracy and social justice to a realm in which it had notably been lacking. Here the problem is not so much a contempt for the truth, but the fact that claims to truth are not necessarily checked by the world. The stance is something like what Theodor Adorno in Minima Moralia said about the Germans, that they never tell a lie that they don't believe to be true.
I think that Steinberger’s arguments meet the first objection, can be argued to deal with the second, but do not met the third unless over time. Do consequences come to change minds? (Rumsfeld has shown no sign of this.) After all, Hannah Arendt once noted that it was no longer clear that people would say that Germany invaded Belgium at the start of World War I. Over time we are all dead—and philosophical correctness is of little use.
These are political objections. The strongest philosophical one comes from Nietzsche and to some degree from Max Weber. It is to ask, with Nietzsche, precisely as to what the value of truth is. I cannot elaborate this argument here (though I have elsewhere). But what would Steinberger make of this passage from Max Weber: “Kant’s epistemology … proceeded from the assumption that ‘scientific truth exists and it is valid’ and then went on to inquire what intellectual assumptions are required for this to be (meaningfully) possible” (Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” The Vocation Lectures. David Owen and Tracy Strong, eds. Hackett. Indianapolis, IN, 2004), 28–29). The striking thing is the word “assumption.” Steinberger does not question this assumption.
