Alexandre Koyré: The Political Function of the Modern Lie (1945) /John Keane: lying, journalism and democracy
NB: This line of theoretical and sociological inquiry is crucial for an understanding of the contemporary world, and has been neglected (in the main) by political scientists and historians. Alexandre Koyre (1892-1964) was a Russian-born philosopher and historian of religion and science. His 1945 essay on The Political Function of the Lie was used by Hannah Arendt as a source for insights into her study of the origins of totalitarianism. Some observations and extracts are supplied below, along with links to Koyre's original essay, as well as a 2010 lecture on lying in journalism. They are worth reading, as a reminder that the deceitful and intimidatory atmosphere of our times is rooted in political phenomena that were commented upon decades ago - DS
The initiated, the members of the elite, by virtue of a kind of intuitive and direct perception are aware of the profound innermost thoughts of the leader, know the true secret aims of the movement. And so they are not troubled a whit by the contradictions & inconsistencies in their chief's public utterances: they know that these have only one object: to deceive the crowd, the enemy, the "others," and they adulate the leader who manipulates and practices the lie with such skill. As for the others those who believe they evince by their belief that they are insensible to contradictions, impervious to doubt, incapable of thought. Koyré: The Political Function of the Modern Lie, (p 298-9)
we live in times of rising sensitivity among
publics to lying and that, in consequence, some old and vitally important
perennial questions to do with lies and truth and power and the role of
journalism in a democracy are making a comeback. Inspired by a recent range of
global controversies, for instance to do with weapons of mass destruction,
WikiLeaks and climate change, pseudology is suddenly fashionable and
commentaries on the subject of lying are flourishing. It has become
conventional to quote the work of Plato on noble lies, or Kant‟s discussion of
whether it is justified to save the life of a friend by telling a lie (he
didn‟t approve of that), or more usually to draw upon the writings of Hannah
Arendt stimulated by the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
But it was the Russian-born philosopher and historian of science Alexandre Koyré who was the first contemporary writer to pose new questions about the activity of lying: to ponder its changing historical significance and to emphasise the potentially catastrophic consequences of political lying in the age of media-saturated democracy.1 His treatment was not only careful, sophisticated and unsettling. Its strengths and its weaknesses should ensure that it retains great relevance today.. Keynote lecture at the Journalism Education Association of Australia Conference, Sydney, 2010. John Keane - lying journalism and democracy
see also
कुमार प्रशांत - तो राष्ट्रीय स्वंयसेवक संघ ने एक बार फिर गांधी से दो-दो हाथ करने का मन बनाया है // Bharat Bhushan: BJP icon SP Mookerjee complicit in raising funds for defending Gandhi's assassins
A perceptive analyst and a close
reader of Alexandre Koyré, Arendt described totalitarian regimes as being “secret societies established in broad daylight.” (see Koyre, pp 296-7). By imitating
the apparatus of secret societies without ever trying to keep their own goals a
secret, these movements, just like secret societies, suppress dissenting
opinions and seek to “safeguard the fictitious world through consistent lying,”
as manifested, for example, in the Nazi’s “racial selection,” the Bolshevik’s “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and the infallibility of the leader.. (Julia
Kristeva, Hannah Arendt, 2002, p 137)
Download Koyre's essay here: The Political Function of the Modern Lie : (extracts): The initiated, the members of the elite, by virtue of a kind of intuitive and direct perception are aware of the profound innermost thoughts of the leader, know the true secret aims of the movement. And so they are not troubled a whit by the contradictions & inconsistencies in their chief's public utterances: they know that these have only one object: to deceive the crowd, the enemy, the "others," and they adulate the leader who manipulates and practices the lie with such skill. As for the others those who believe they evince by their belief that they are insensible to contradictions, impervious to doubt, incapable of thought. Koyré: The Political Function of the Modern Lie, (p 298-9)
The study of the secret
society has been singularly neglected by sociologists. Even if we do have
comparatively ample knowledge of the secret societies of equatorial Africa, we
know nothing, or next to nothing, of those which existed and still do exist in
Europe. Or, where we do know their history, we are still ignorant of the
typological structure of these groups, whose importance was recognized by
almost no one but Simmel. (p 294).
NB: See The Sociology of
Secrecy and of Secret Societies; Georg Simmel; American Journal of Sociology;
Vol. 11, No. 4 (Jan., 1906), pp. 441-498. Available on JStor. DS
But it was the Russian-born philosopher and historian of science Alexandre Koyré who was the first contemporary writer to pose new questions about the activity of lying: to ponder its changing historical significance and to emphasise the potentially catastrophic consequences of political lying in the age of media-saturated democracy.1 His treatment was not only careful, sophisticated and unsettling. Its strengths and its weaknesses should ensure that it retains great relevance today.. Keynote lecture at the Journalism Education Association of Australia Conference, Sydney, 2010. John Keane - lying journalism and democracy
see also
Tom Phillips - China seeks to eradicate 'vile effect' of independent journalism
China’s
memory manipulators: by Ian Johnson
Book
review: Ian Buruma on Simon Leys - The Man Who Got It Right
Tom Phillips - Beijing shuts down art exhibition on violence against women
The
Crises of Party Culture: by Yang Guang
China’s
Brave Underground Journal - Remembrance
Modi
blows hot air at China in a rally in Arunachal ...
An Open
Letter to the world on the Bangladesh crisis...
Glory
Days, or remembering how Indians love(d) China
"Tell
the world! Tell the world!" Tien An Men, June 4, 1989
An
Open Letter to the world on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971
Chinese
Journalists resist censorship: Timothy Garton Ash on The Southern Weekly affair
Tobias
Stone - History tells us what will happen next with Brexit & Trump
A Final Warning by George Orwell
The
Supreme Court, Gandhi and the RSS
The
Broken Middle - on the 30th anniversary of 1984
The
Abolition of truth - सत्य की हत्या
RSS tradition of manufacturing facts to suit their ideology
Satyagraha
- An answer to modern nihilism
