9 - Science and ideology

Summary

Allow me to honour the memory of the Angelic Doctor [St Thomas Aquinas] by placing the present study under the patronage of what he called the Philosopher. In the prologue to the Nicomachean Ethics, we read this:

Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just matters, which politics investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature … We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline … In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits … And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. 1094 b 11–1095 a 2)

Why did I quote this text? Not for the luxury of epigraph and exordium, but for the very discipline of reasoning itself. For I propose to show that, if the properly Aristotelian thesis of the plurality of levels of scientificity is maintained, then the phenomenon of ideology is susceptible of a relatively positive assessment. Aristotle tells us several things: that politics has to deal with variable and unstable matters, and that here reasoning begins from facts which are generally, but not always, true; that it is the cultivated man and not the specialist who is judge in these matters; that it is therefore necessary to be content with showing the truth in a rough and approximate way (or, according to the above translation, ‘roughly and in outline’); finally, that this is so because the problem is of a practical nature.

The text has cautionary value at the threshold of our inquiry.