Words&Dirt

“There is one last set of problems which, particularly perhaps as we discuss these matters under the auspices of UNESCO, should be mentioned as peculiarly defying our understanding and revealing our ignorance: the problems, that is to say, of how to live together.  No-one is going to deny, presumably, that there is such a problem, in the sense that various groups constantly, repeatedly, all over the world, find it remarkably difficult to live with one another.  In this sense, certainly, there is something we do not know––how to live together, except under a variety of fairly favorable circumstances.  However, it is a different claim, and it might be thought on reflection rather an optimistic claim, that this represents an intellectual problem: the problem, as we might put it, that we do not know why we do not know how to live with each other.  This suggests that there is something to be found out about the causes of conflict, something which is presently hidden from us and which, when it is found out, may enable us to negotiate and progressively eliminate those conflicts.  Perhaps there is some such thing which is presently hidden from us, and certainly we should not relax our efforts in asking what it might be, seeking the help of psychology, anthropology, history and perhaps biology in so doing.  However, we cannot be sure that there is an intellectual problem which takes the form of finding some central explanation which is hidden.  Perhaps, rather, we already know most of what is to be known at a general level about the causes of human conflict, and there is nothing very deep or extensive, which we do not already recognize, to be learned about it.  What we need to do is rather organize the resources which, in general terms, we already know to be necessary to deal with such conflicts, in so far as they can be dealt with, understanding each in terms of its own circumstances.  If we cannot mobilize the resources, or it is not the sort of conflict that will respond to any resources that we might mobilize, we shall not suppose that there is some further, potentially revealing thing we do not know.  We shall have to reconcile ourselves to a perfectly obvious thing, that we do not know how to deal with conflict.

This second, and bleaker, account, we do not necessarily have to accept.  Perhaps the happier idea, that there is still some important thing to be learned about why human beings are so disposed to hate and kill one another, has some promise.  If it has, we would certainly like to know that it has.  If the bleaker story is true, however, perhaps we do not want to know that it is.  With this, the most pressing of all our questions, the position is as it often is with matters that come close to our interests: we cannot know whether we really want to overcome our ignorance until we have done so.”

––Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, by Bernard Williams, pg. 178-9