In the view of Bent Flyvbjerg, a Danish social scientist,
the ways of knowing that have prevailed in the social sciences have fallen
short: “social science never has been, and probably never will be, able to
develop the type of explanatory and predictive theory that is the ideal and
hallmark of natural science.” Like Richard
Ned Lebow and others, Flyvbjerg believes that modern society took a
“Rationalist Turn” with the Enlightenment, emphasizing instrumental reason.
Also like Lebow, Flyvbjerg rests his intellectual strategy on recovering a
basic distinction of the ancients and employing it to critique the methodology
of contemporary social science. For Lebow, that meant recovering antiquity’s
understanding of the psyche; for Flyvbjerg, it entails recovering Aristotle’s
conception of three ways of knowing, the intellectual virtues of episteme, techne, and phronesis. As
Flyvbjerg explains:
Whereas episteme is found in the modern words "epistemology" and
"epistemic," and techne in
"technology" and "technical," it is indicative of the
degree to which thinking in the social sciences has allowed itself to be
colonized by natural and technical science that we today do not even have a
word for the one intellectual virtue, phronesis,
which Aristotle saw not only as the necessary basis for social and political
inquiry, but as the most important of the intellectual virtues. Phronesis is most important because it
is that activity by which instrumental rationality is balanced by
value-rationality, and because such balancing is crucial to the sustained
happiness of the citizens in any society. (3-4)
Taking Flyvbjerg as
our guide, let us look more closely at each of these terms and then consider
the implications for the role of the social and natural sciences.
The term "epistemic
science" derives from the intellectual virtue that Aristotle calls episteme, and which is generally
translated as "science" or "scientific knowledge” . . . Episteme
concerns universals and the production of knowledge which is invariable in time
and space, and which is achieved with the aid of analytical rationality. Episteme corresponds to the modern
scientific ideal as expressed in natural science. In Socrates and Plato, and
subsequently in the Enlightenment tradition, this scientific ideal became
dominant. The ideal has come close to being the only legitimate view of what
constitutes genuine science, such that even intellectual activities like social
science, which are not and probably never can be scientific in this sense, have
found themselves compelled to strive for and legitimate themselves in terms of
this Enlightenment ideal.
Whereas episteme resembles our ideal modern scientific project, techne and phronesis denote two contrasting roles of intellectual work. Techne can be translated into English as
"art" in the sense of "craft"; a craftsman is also an
artisan. For Aristotle, both techne
and phronesis are connected with the
concept of truth, as is episteme. . .
. Techne is thus craft and art, and
as an activity it is concrete, variable, and context-dependent. The objective
of techne is application of technical
knowledge and skills according to a pragmatic instrumental rationality. . . .
Whereas episteme concerns theoretical know
why and techne denotes technical know how, phronesis emphasizes practical knowledge and practical ethics. Phronesis is often translated as
"prudence" or "practical common sense." . . . It focuses on
what is variable, on that which cannot be encapsulated by universal rules, on
specific cases. Phronesis requires an
interaction between the general and the concrete; it requires consideration,
judgment, and choice. More than anything else, phronesis require experience. . . . The person possessing practical
wisdom (phronimos) has knowledge of
how to behave in each particular circumstance that can never be equated with or
reduced to knowledge of general truths. Phronesis
is a sense of the ethically practical rather than a kind of science. Where
rational humans for Plato are moved by the cosmic order, for Aristotle they are
moved by a sense of the proper order among the ends we pursue. This sense
cannot be articulated in terms of theoretical axioms, but rather, is grasped by
phronesis.
Some interpretations of Aristotle's
intellectual virtues leave doubt as to whether phronesis and techne are
distinct categories, or whether phronesis
is just a higher form of techne or
know-how. Aristotle is clear on this point. Even if both of these intellectual
virtues involve skill and judgment, one type of intellectual virtue cannot be reduced
to the other; phronesis is about
value judgment, not about producing things. (55-58)
Phronetic research, according to Flyvbjerg, entails taking
as our point of departure the following questions: “1) Where are we going? 2)
Is this desirable? 3) What should be done?” That was the classic phronetic approach,
he writes, but he insists on the need for additional questions: “Who gains and
who loses; by which mechanisms of power?” He wants to “use social and political
studies not just as a mirror for society but also as society’s nose, eyes, and
ears.” Flyvbjerg realizes that “there is no unified ‘we’ in relation to which
the questions can be given a final answer,” but that does not prevent an
analysis that consciously sets forth and weighs the competing values at stake. (60-61)
What sort of activities in “political science” correspond
with techne, episteme, and phronesis? Certain
studies of ways of getting and holding power (as in the contemporary art of
winning elections) might be seen as falling under the rubric of techne. Military professionalism—the knowledge
of the application or threat of military power—might also reasonably be
included under that rubric. An instance of episteme
would be Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of
International Politics, in which Waltz made predictions of state behavior
based on the position of states and the distribution of power within the
international system. Another instance, but from the liberal rather than
realist camp, would be the so called “law” that democracies don’t fight one
another. Yet the search for phronesis
does not go a begging, even in the academy. In policy pronouncements and the mass of
commentary that attends the conduct of foreign affairs, for instance, it is
commonplace to confront the set of questions Flyvbjerg identifies with phronesis: Where are we going? Is this desirable? What
should we do? Political scientists, like other commentators, cannot avoid
employing “value rationality” in addressing matters of public concern, but for
many within the discipline such works do not count as political science. That
is, it is precisely because they are phronetic in character that they do not
count as episteme.
In one sense, Flyvbjerg’s judgment regarding contemporary
social science is bleak. He documents that social science has attempted to
emulate natural science, an enterprise he sees as a cul de sac. “Mainstream social theory and social science
methodology stand in need of reorientation.” (4) By the same token, however, it has more to
offer than the natural sciences in crucial respects:
[Richard] Lewontin and others are
right, albeit perhaps not for the reasons they believe, when they say that
social science has set itself an impossible task when it attempts to emulate
natural science and produce explanatory and predictive, that is, epistemic, theory.
[However,] this does not imply the oft-seen image of impotent social sciences
versus potent natural sciences, which is at the core of the Science Wars. (3)
Just as social science has not been
able to contribute with Kuhnian normal science and predictive theory to
scientific development, so natural science has had little to offer to the
reflexive analysis of goals, values, and interests that is a precondition for
an enlightened development in any society. However, where natural science is weak,
social science is strong, and vice versa. For Aristotle, the most important
task of social and political studies was to develop society's value-rationality
vis-à-vis its scientific and
technical rationality. Aristotle did not doubt that the first type of
rationality was the most important and ought to influence the second. Since
Aristotle's time, however, this view has receded into the background,
especially after the Enlightenment and modernity installed instrumental
rationality in a dominant position in both science and society. Social thinkers
as diverse as Max Weber, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas have pointed out
that for more than two centuries value-rationality (Wertrationalitdt) has increasingly given way to instrumental
rationality (Zweckrationalitat). In
the words of Richard Livingstone: "if you want a description of our age,
here is one: the civilization of means without ends." (53)
We may pause here to query the adequacy of that description.
Modern civilization, whether in the West or elsewhere, surely embraces ends as
well as means, though this may include ends that not all of us approve of (or results that none of us like). It is virtually a condition of living that one has to employ
value-rationality alongside instrumental rationality. The decision to build a
nuclear plant, for instance, is inevitably bound up with value-laden questions
from many different angles, and it would be impossible to justify a decision
either way without attending to these questions as a matter of course. I take
this as an example because nuclear power must be a sort of Exhibit A of a
civilization that has substituted means for ends, but yet displays, in the way
in which society argues about it, detailed attention to both instrumental rationality and
value rationality. The collective mind or “global brain”—even
knowledgeable individuals—can handle both of these inquiries at once. It's just not
that difficult to think in these different categories, though it may be extremely difficult to arrive at a wise or even satisfactory answer.
* * *
Altogether different is the claim that contemporary social
science has set its sights on episteme
at the expense of phronesis. In the
self-understanding of much of the American political science profession (and
even more so in neo-classical economics), the natural sciences continue to be a
model. The announced search is for laws of political behavior that are
parsimonious and express timeless truths. The method is deductive-nomonological
versus historical-comparative. Flyvbjerg
rightly questions this approach. His reasons to prefer the latter are not too
different from those of Francis Bacon. Objecting to the literature of the
Scholastics, Bacon
observed:
There are and can be only two ways
of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and
particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of
which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the
discovery of middle axioms. This way is now in fashion. The other derives
axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken
ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the
true way, but as yet untried.
Flyvbjerg notes that Aristotle linked phronesis directly with political science:
[Aristotle]: Political science and
prudence [phronesis] are the same
state of mind [They are not identical, however. Phronesis is also found at the
level of the household and the individual] . . . Prudence concerning the state
has two aspects: one, which is controlling and directive, is legislative
science; the other . . . deals with particular circumstances . . . [and] is practical
and deliberative.'
[Flyvbjerg]: Two things are worth
noting in this context. The first is Aristotle's assertion that political
science, as a consequence of the emphasis on the particular, on context, and on
experience, cannot be practiced as episteme.
To be a knowledgeable researcher in an epistemic sense is not enough when it
concerns political science because "although [people] develop ability in
geometry and mathematics and become wise in such matters, they are not thought
to develop prudence [phronesis]."
Aristotle explains that a well-functioning political science based on phronesis is imperative for a
well-functioning society, inasmuch as "it is impossible to secure one's
own good independently of . . . political science." (59)
The first step toward achieving a new perspective in social
science is for teachers and students “to make explicit the different roles of
science as episteme, techne, and phronesis."
Today's researchers seldom make explicit
which one of these three roles they are practicing. The whole enterprise is
simply called "science," even though we are dealing with quite
different activities. It is often the case that these activities are rationalized
as episteme even though they are
actually techne or phronesis. . . . The oft-seen image of
impotent social sciences versus potent natural sciences derives from their
being compared in terms of their epistemic qualities. Yet such a comparison is
misleading, for the two types of science have their respective strengths and
weaknesses along fundamentally different dimensions. In their role as phronesis, the social sciences are
strongest where the natural sciences are weakest. (61)
* * *
It seems then that social science has a great superiority over natural science, but one it has failed to exploit because it chased after the harlot Episteme and gave up its once solid (if rather stolid) relationship with Phronesis. Social science therefore has, by Flyvbjerg's light, an entirely conjectural superiority, and could only improve itself by a repudiation of its current method. This seems rather unlikely: it is a safe bet that political scientists will continue to live in sin.
Flyvgberg’s approach has great implications for the role of scholars, teachers, and students. Scholars may resist it because it threatens their methodological presuppositions or because it seems to augur a greater degree of political involvement than they would feel comfortable with. In his concluding chapter, “Social Science That Matters,” Flyvgberg argues that we should “drop the fruitless efforts to emulate” the natural sciences and instead “take up problems that matter to the local, national, and global communities in which we live.” I think that that is a worthwhile undertaking, but it is surely not the only proper role for academics. A better way of putting the charge to social scientists is that they need to devote more time and attention to studying activities requiring phronetic reasoning, less to discovering (or rather attempting to discover) universal laws of political behavior. Teachers need to teach about phronetic reasoning, not shunt it aside as if were unworthy of deliberation and study.
I distrust Flyvgberg’s formulation a bit because it seems to lose the distinction between academic study and political practice, which surely must remain fundamental; we can study politics without being politicians. On the larger point, however, Flyvgberg is right. We need to put back in to social and political inquiry what had previously been hived off from it, at some considerable cost. As Lebow remarks, the dominant tendency in the social sciences striped away cultural and moral justifications to get at hidden causes and parsimonious laws. This entailed a sundering of the human personality and ultimately formed a barrier to understanding it. “Conventional paradigms of politics and international relations," notes Lebow, "are rooted in appetite. Liberalism and Marxism describe politics as driven by material interests, and realism acknowledges their primacy after security. Scholars who work in these paradigms attempt to penetrate what they believe to be the smokescreen of culture and ideology to get at the political, economic and military realities they are understood to obfuscate.”
Flyvgberg’s approach has great implications for the role of scholars, teachers, and students. Scholars may resist it because it threatens their methodological presuppositions or because it seems to augur a greater degree of political involvement than they would feel comfortable with. In his concluding chapter, “Social Science That Matters,” Flyvgberg argues that we should “drop the fruitless efforts to emulate” the natural sciences and instead “take up problems that matter to the local, national, and global communities in which we live.” I think that that is a worthwhile undertaking, but it is surely not the only proper role for academics. A better way of putting the charge to social scientists is that they need to devote more time and attention to studying activities requiring phronetic reasoning, less to discovering (or rather attempting to discover) universal laws of political behavior. Teachers need to teach about phronetic reasoning, not shunt it aside as if were unworthy of deliberation and study.
I distrust Flyvgberg’s formulation a bit because it seems to lose the distinction between academic study and political practice, which surely must remain fundamental; we can study politics without being politicians. On the larger point, however, Flyvgberg is right. We need to put back in to social and political inquiry what had previously been hived off from it, at some considerable cost. As Lebow remarks, the dominant tendency in the social sciences striped away cultural and moral justifications to get at hidden causes and parsimonious laws. This entailed a sundering of the human personality and ultimately formed a barrier to understanding it. “Conventional paradigms of politics and international relations," notes Lebow, "are rooted in appetite. Liberalism and Marxism describe politics as driven by material interests, and realism acknowledges their primacy after security. Scholars who work in these paradigms attempt to penetrate what they believe to be the smokescreen of culture and ideology to get at the political, economic and military realities they are understood to obfuscate.”
“Constructivism” in IR theory, at least in some of its precincts, is all about the inadequacies
of that theoretical enterprise. However, it should be noted that Constructivism’s
strictures against Realism and Liberalism apply only to academics writing in
the last couple of generations (as reflected especially in the ascendancy of "neo-realism" and "neo-liberalism" in IR); it should not be confused with a critique of older
writers in these traditions, nor, of course, with political practice, which is
especially identified with the need for phronesis.
A question for students: what kind of knowledge is the most worth having among the three? What way of knowing would you especially want to be excellent in?
* * *
Bent Flyvgberg, Making
Social Science Matter (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
