For individuals, truth helps us to feel in control of our lives. Within institutions, truth creates the possibility for organised action.

Knowledge continuously butts against the complexity of the world. The concepts that help us make sense of the world inevitably fall short of true, accurate representation, and this can produce practical failures. This relationship between the world of ideas and the world of practice is well known and recognised. ‘Good in theory.. (not so in practice)’ is an oft heard phrase, as is, ‘it’s easier said than done’, both of which speak to the distinction between clean, simple ideas, and a complex, multifaceted reality, as well as the practical pitfalls that result when the clean is applied to the complex. Despite our familiarity with this phenomena, it does not stop us being seduced by the status of certain concepts and knowledge systems as ‘truth’. In all of us, there remain concepts which are indisputable, and constitute ‘truth’, and it is seductive because it makes our lives predictable, it informs our action. Yet, as Geoff Mann argues regarding being wary of the predictive power of climate models, it is just as instructive to ‘take stock of what we do not or cannot know’ (London Review of Books September 2023).

I continue to read Foucault’s A History of Sexuality, Volume 1, and his distinction between the ‘will to knowledge’ and the ‘will to truth’ is useful for this discussion because it highlights the possibility of knowledge which is not ‘truth’. It explains why it is possible to understand that something you say or believe may not be ‘true’, that knowledge which is produced to help us understand the world, can be treated as fallible, and subject to revision. Foucault treats the emergence of the ‘will to truth’ as a significant historical moment (beginning with Plato and Aristotle), in which Western societies were no longer content with knowledge occupying such an uncertain position, but desired it to be regarded as truth, as indisputable fact. The practical benefit of this move from knowledge to truth, is that ‘truth’ enables purposeful action. Knowledge-as-truth establishes causal patterns, and attempts to make the world predictable. This creates a sense that we can act on the world to produce certain outcomes; that we can control it. At the level of the individual, it enables us to act towards our personal goals. At the level of corporate, national and global governance, it enables the organisation of action on a large scale. ‘Not knowing’ is a prerequisite to indecision and inaction. In attempting to pursue aims, an idea of what is true is essential. Knowledge must take some kind of order (even if there is none in reality) so that it renders the world predictable and does what it is designed to do; inform action. Yet no concepts are truly representative of the real world. Knowledge and the world it attempts to represent are different things. The world is made up of complex interactions between innumerable animate and inanimate objects across space and time, and knowledge is an ordered system of words and meanings held within our subjective experience.

I reflected on this division between the world of ideas and the world of practise when listening to David Runciman’s synthesis of Max Weber’s lecture ‘The profession and vocation of politics’ (Talking Politics, A History of Ideas). To Weber, navigating the relationship between these two worlds were central to political leadership. Speaking to a group of students in Munich in 1919, at a time when the German state had failed, and, as Runciman describes, the future of German politics was wholly uncertain, Weber advocated for a political system which created leaders who were ‘professional politicians’. To be a professional politician, Weber claimed, was to know how to lead using both the ‘ethic of responsibility’ and the ‘ethic of conviction’. Failed political leaders are those who lack a balance in their use of these competing ethics. To lead solely using the ethic of conviction means leading on the basis of a vision for how the world should and could be; Conviction is value-laden, personal, and idealistic. It supplies politics with it’s driving force; an idea of good and evil, of justice, and, through these, creates a political ‘end’ to be pursued. But Weber warned that conviction politicians risk pursuing this end no matter the means, even if the means require acts of deep depravity, such as widespread violence and death. This charge was levelled pointedly at the communist revolutionaries, filled with conviction politics, who were among the students he was speaking to.

On the other hand, to lead solely with responsibility means ‘doing the thing which is judged on the basis of its consequence’, and Runciman articulates Weber’s wariness of this beautifully:

Bureaucrats could not be political leaders any more than academics could, or scientists could, or soldiers could. As a political leader you have to do more than just weigh up the consequences, you can’t make a political decision on the basis of what it says in your models or charts, you can’t calculate how many deaths are the price worth paying for some particular outcome, because something about that outcome has to have a value for you [your conviction] that goes beyond just calculation’.

To be a politician is, according to Weber, to understand that the practical implementation of your vision will have unintended impacts, will result in collateral damage. They must have enough conviction to be decisive, but not so ideologically motivated as to ignore the consequences of its practical implementation. Weber, then, thought it was necessary at some level for politicians to be hypocrites, that there was no such thing as a morally pure politician. When operating a modern state, an inherently coercive institution, coercion will inevitably be required to realise any political end, and so, the ideal of the the end will always, in part, be stained by the practical means. He understood that this came with a great deal of stress, as politicians have to reconcile their convictions with the inevitability of being responsible for coercion. In Weber we find an elaboration of how to carefully navigate the worlds of ideas and practice.

The ‘practise’ of politics, then, in Weber’s account will always contaminate the purity of the ideals it pursues. This is because the reality that politics is trying to control is simply too complex. Rory Stewart’s account of his experiences within parliament between 2010- 2018 describe the practise of British politics. Whilst filled with examples of Weber’s ‘professional politics’ (hypocrisy, and an acceptance that ideals may have to be compromised when faced with practical barriers) it would be too generous to characterise these stories as simply examples of professional politicians navigating an inherently morally fraught profession. What we can learn from Stewart’s account is that there appears to have been a systematic failure within British government to recognise how much they don’t know about the messy reality they claim to govern. In Stewart’s account, definitive claims to knowledge within government policy meeting practical shortcomings are a running theme. For example, he writes of his time working in the Middle East:

‘I had seen how the Afghan National Development Strategy, with its acronyms, jargon and fantasies of state-building, excluded all references to real places, ethnicities, or recent history. I had learned how much we lied to ourselves to conceal our failures’.

He also describes how:

‘Environment secretary Liz Truss ask me to produce a 10-point plan for the national parks within a week of my taking office, thus revealing that what pretended to be policy was simply a press release designed to give the illusion of dynamism’.

Put in Weber’s terms, what Stewart describes feels like an extreme failing of both responsibility (in the basic, rational calculation of context in Afghanistan) and conviction (in being so lacking in conviction as to be comfortable asking someone to fabricate a ten point plan with no true desire to realise it).

I have been reflecting on my own experience of idea informed practise at school, specifically on the use of labels for students with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities), which I feel overly define the experience of students at school. Labels coding for various types of SEND follow students around their life at school, and partly define them in the eyes of their teachers. Generic instructions are given on how to teach students with ASD (Austistic Spectrum Disorder), or ADHD (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder). Whilst these instructions reflect good teaching practise, the range of students who are categorised as possessing the same SEND is so great that single sets of practises to deal with each disability seem to miss an individual complexity, especially as they are treated as codes which narrowly define their learning ability. I am not advocating for more tailored advice to suit the specific needs of each individual student; teachers are already overwhelmed with student information they are supposed to process and respond to in real time. Rather I wonder whether these labels given to students to inform teacher practice result in negative pigeon-holing, both in the minds of the teacher and the student. Furthermore, the ways in which conditions such as ADHD and ASD are practically diagnosed leave a large margin for error. For ADHD, a common method of for diagnosis is an hour and a half interview between a psychiatrist and the parent and child, in combination with reports from parents and/or teachers. The assessment for ASD is similarly centred around anecdotal accounts from adults about the child, in combination with a relatively short examination. Diagnoses can hinge upon whether the condition can be proven to be having a negative impact upon the life of the child. I spoke recently with a family therapist who understands the practicalities of diagnosing both ADHD (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder) and ASD (autistic spectrum disorder). The practical pressures which surround the referral and examination process are great. The waiting list is large, and, working within a financially under-resourced community, the parents who this therapist works with are under immense emotional and financial strain. My own experience has uncovered the pressures of this process as well. I have noticed parents push the school hard for a SEND diagnosis, when pressure builds around repeated behaviour incidents, repeated phone calls and meetings with teachers. This therapist reported that parents can feel ‘powerless’ in the face of these difficulties with their children, and are anxious, understandably, to place responsibility for difficulties elsewhere; either on the school for not supporting their child sufficiently, or on an undiagnosed SEND need. Above all, having observed the dynamics within multiple families, this therapist remarked upon the problem diagnosing the symptoms of these ‘disorders’, which can easily be misattributed to SEND, when in reality they stem from family relational dynamics, or trauma. A primary symptom for ASD, for example, is difficulty communicating effectively, yet this may be the result of a child who has grown up in an environment in which they are not listened to, or are reprimanded for expressing themselves. Social anxiety is increasingly being given to students as a label with which they can understand themselves, as well as a symptom for ASD, yet distinguishing between potential causes, inherent neurodivergence on the one hand, and environmental stressors on the other, is surely difficult. When the main source of evidence are the reports of adults close to the child as well as self-reporting, there are many relational dynamics between the adult and child which can inhibit accuracy; teachers and parents may project their own frustrations and failings onto the child, whilst the child could easily misidentify a passing phase of negative emotion for a pathological condition. These diagnoses are significant to how children are perceived by parents, teachers and themselves. At school, unfortunately the label of SEND can in some cases result in all parties lowering their expectations. The therapist I spoke to said they would put money on their ability to get an autism diagnosis, by simply picking certain true memories (which would demonstrate anxiety, distractibility etc), and eliding others. In this case, again, it feels as though knowledge is straining to contain and represent a messy, complex reality.

A final example of the collision of the ideas and practice, knowledge and the real world, comes from Geoff Mann’s warning about how little we know about our climate future. The messiness climate models are trying to contain is illustrated by a quote Mann uses from Martin Weizmann:

‘there’s exists here a very long chain of tenuous inferences fraught with huge uncertainties in every link beginning with unknown base-case GHG emission; then compounded by huge uncertainties about how available policies and policy levers transfer into actual GHG emissions; compounded by huge uncertainties about how GHG-flow emissions accumulate via the carbon cycle into GHG-stock concentrations; compounded by huge uncertainties about who and when GHG-stock concentrations translate into global mean temperature changes; compounded by huge uncertainties about how global mean temperature changes decompose into regional temperature changes; compounded by huge uncertainties about how adaptations to, and mitigations of, climate change damages are translated into utility changes- especially at a regional level; compounded by huge uncertainties about how future regional utility changes are aggregated- and then how they are discounted.

The frightening take from Mann’s article, unfortunately, is that we are more likely to be under- than over-reacting to our present circumstances, given they have no historical precedent. This lack of precedent makes the models even more speculative, unable to predict the end times, even if they were around the corner.

In our society, and within our social and political institutions, the ‘will to truth’ remains strong. Despite knowledge failing to represent life’s complexity, people and institutions crave definitive, categorical, ‘truthful’ knowledge about it. I think this can be explained quite simply: For individuals, truth helps us to feel in control of our lives. Within institutions, truth creates the possibility for organised action.