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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 357 denial in order to keep one's acknowledgment of the betrayal at bay. And the effects of these strategies may be exacerbated if one's personal investment is not only in one's idealized conception of moral reality, but in one's idealized conception of the betrayer, and of oneself as a perspicacious judge of character. The same considerations apply, for the same reasons, in the event that one is the betrayer: One may rationalize one's betrayal, by minimizing one's obligation to keep trust with the betrayed; or dissociate one's betrayal, by telling oneself that one did not realize what one was doing; or flatly deny to oneself that any such betrayal took place. The authority of fact, then, disposes us to preserve our ideal descriptive moral theory as a realistic and factually well-confirmed one; and to pseudorationalize any evidence, including first-person theoretical anomaly contributed by our own behavior, that undermines it. Not just any set of descriptive principles can receive the authority of fact. If the principles intended to describe an ideal social reality are internally inconsistent, or are seen to apply only at some times and not others, then these principles will fail to constitute an identifiable ideal, and fail to carry authority for the child to whom they are conveyed. For example, take a child who is brought up to believe on the one hand that all human beings are equal, and on the other that some human beings - for example, blacks or women - by their very nature are made for servitude and suffering.1 Either he must sacrifice the authority of one of these two descriptive principles, or else pseudorationalize them - perhaps by denying full humanity to blacks or women, or rationalizing their suffering as a virtue while minimizing the moral significance of the harm he thereby causes them; or dissociating as irrelevant the requirement of equal treatment, and restricting his conception of equality to equality of opportunity alone - so as to maintain the appearance of their horizontal consistency. As we have seen in Chapter VIII, pseudorationality engenders a need for further pseudorationality; and this ultimately undermines the rational unity both of the self and of external reality simultaneously. So only sets of descriptive principles that satisfy the requirements of horizontal and vertical consistency over time can preserve the authority of fact. 2. Commands Conferring the authority of fact on an ideal descriptive theory of social reality gives commands their peculiar linguistic structure. It is commonly assumed that commands such as "Keep your promise!" are interchangeable, in most contexts, with imperatives such as "You ought to keep your promise." I Cf. Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream for an interesting description of the evolution of a European American child's divided consciousness under the condition of PostReconstruction racism in the American South. 1 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
