Why Epistemology Matters: A Reply to Kress

Author(s): Jane Flax

Source: The Journal of Politics , Nov., 1981, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Nov., 1981), pp. 1006-1024
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political
Science Association

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 Why Epistemology Matters:
A Reply to Kress

JANE FLAX

IT HAS RECENTLY BEEN SUGGESTED that the political theorists who

have conducted a "philosophical" critique of positivism may be open
to the same criticisms they have leveled against the behavioralists.'
These political theorists have objected to behavioralism's

. ..obsessive preoccupation with methods or techniques, as well as its reductionism:

the determination to explain politics in more 'basic' languages. . . . Behavioralists, it
was often observed, disliked the very subject of politics ... (yet) are there not at least
grounds for suspicion that (these theorists) are engaged in a similar adultery, but with a
different mistress - epistemology?2

There is an additional problem: ". . . political theorists who have

heavily invested in epistemology often find themselves entrapped in
what is not only an extremely academic pursuit, but one which may
be particularly hostile to the subject matter of politics."3
While acknowledging that some theorists interested in
epistemology have succumbed to the danger of the "reification of
principles and rules which are prior to and divorced from any par-
ticular subject matter,"4 I will argue that this need not be the case.5

I Paul F. Kress, "Against Epistemology: Apostate Musings," Journal of Politics 41

(May 1979), 526-542.
2 Ibid., 531.
3 Ibid., 533.
4 Ibid., 534. Jurgen Habermas's recent work is an example of the dangers of
reification. See his essay, "What is Universal Pragmatics," in Communication and the
Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979).
5 As evidenced by the recent work of a number of theorists interested in
epistemology. See, for example, Michael H. Best and William E. Connolly, The
Politicized Economy (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1976); and Sheldon Wolin, "The
State of the Union," New York Review of Books, May 18, 1978, 28-31.

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WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1007

Epistemological studies, properly conducted, are not intrinsically

hostile to the subject matter of politics and do not necessarily move
one "further from the realm of direct political criticism."6
In fact, epistemology is connected integrally both to the practice
of politics and to political theory. This is so for three reasons. First,
any form of knowledge contains assumptions about the nature of the
subject (and hence about human nature) and about the relationship
between the subject and the "thing" known. This relationship, as
well as the subject and object, are constructed by and through
human activity. Thus, the study of epistemology can reveal impor-
tant information about the social relations between subjects and the
social construction of objects.7 These relations underlie what are
often presented as abstract epistemological statements.
Second, forms of knowledge are not merely abstract bodies of
thought but both reflect and enter into ongoing social processes.
Epistemologies may be transformed over time into ideologies. This
process is not inevitable but depends upon complex social variables.
Especially important is whether or not the epistemology is con-
gruent with (or expresses) the viewpoint of a social group which is
either already in power or capable of displacing those in power.8
This transformation of an epistemology into an ideology may con-

6 Kress, "Against Epistemology," 534.

7Marx's analysis of the commodity is a model for this form of analysis. See Karl
Marx, Capital, 3 vols. (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 71-129. My
understanding of Marx's method is dependent on Georg Lukacs's early work, especially
the essay, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat," in History and Class
Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971). See also Alfred Sohn-Rethel, In-
tellectuial and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology (London: The Macmillan
Press, Ltd., 1978), especially 1-9. Nature is constructed by and through human activ-
ity in a double sense - not only is it transformed though labor but we construct theories
of nature which are then taken to be reflective of its reality. In fact, these theories
reflect as well human social relations projected onto "natural processes." On this
point, see Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenitient
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 20-33. Feminists have begun to explore how
the relations between men and women are reflected in our theories of and relations
with nature. See Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermitaid and the Miniotauir (New York:
Harper & Row, 1976), 124-156; Susan Griffin, Women and Natture (New York:
Harper & Row, 1978), 5-46; and Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Natture: Wolel,
Ecology and the Scientific Revoltution (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), especially
1-41; 164-215.
8 See Lukacs, "Reification"; and Antonio Gramsci, "The Study of Philosophy and
of Historical Materialism" in The Moderni Prince and Other Writings (New York: In-
ternational Publishers, 1968).

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 1008 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

tribute initially to the release of previously unexpressed human

capacities. However, to the extent that the power of a group is
dependent upon domination, either internal (over aspects of the self
and forms of human self-expression) or external (over other social
groups), the ideology necessarily will place limits on the possibilities
of human action. What may have been revolutionary in relation to
the then dominant ideas and social forces becomes rigid and
repressive in relation to new and disturbing possibilities.9 In addi-
tion, older modes of domination may be incorporated within the
ideology of the new ruling group as long as they are either useful to
it or not threatening to their interests.'0
Third, the current reality paradigm, technical rationality, is the
most compelling example of the inter-relationship between
epistemology, ideology, and politics. Technical rationality is a
political force and a political problem which must be understood on
two levels -as a mode of thinking and as a form of social organiza-
tion. While epistemology is obviously not the only expression of
social activity relevant to the theory and practice of politics,
technical rationality renders it an especially important one.
Technical rationality includes a claim to power based on a form of
knowledge which is allegedly both socially' neutral and
methodologically superior. 11 These claims are simultaneously
epistemological and political. In fact, the two sorts of claims are
inter-dependent. In order to critique them, an alternative
epistemology must be utilized which can expose the political and
social relations that, it is asserted, are excluded in principle from the
constitution of technical rationality.

The Knower and the Known

Social scientists are apt to claim that problems such as the rela-
tionship between the knower and the "thing" known are merely

9 See the discussion of "the dialectic of enlightenment" in which the Enlightenment

concept of reason becomes the basis of domination in Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialec-
tics, 81-119; and also Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, Harvest, 1936), 40-41.
10 Zillah R. Eisenstein argues, for example, that older patriarchal ideas were incor-
porated within liberalism. See The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (New York:
Longman, 1981), 33-88.
11 See Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York:
Macmillan Co., The Free Press, 1947), 339.

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 WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1009

muddles which philosophers enjoy creating; after all, they say, we

only describe what is, hence such questions, if they are important at
all, exist on a plane that is irrelevant to our concern. Yet, this claim
to description is not at all unproblematic; it is an unknowingly
mediated assertion of the sort that Hegel analyzes in The
Phenomenology. 12
What does it mean to describe? What is being "described?" What
is the relationship between the describer and the "thing" described
and between these things and other things? Unless these questions
are answered, the adequacy of the description cannot be deter-
mined; nor can this description be integrated methodically with
others so that eventually a comprehensive understanding of ap-
parently isolated phenomena is possible and a general theory can be
formulated.
At best, formal rules of coherence, evidence, internal consistency,
non-contradiction, etc., can be established. The relationship of the
formal rules to the "thing" being described would remain unre-
solved. These descriptions have no ontological or epistemological
status if the relationship between the knowing subject and the
observed objects cannot be clarified. For example, I could make a
perfectly logical argument that the moon is made of blue cheese, but
the relationship of this logical proof to the way the world really is
would be unknown. I could articulate the rules of argument that
the proof had followed and show that the proof was not self-
contradictory, but what I have shown about the real world is still in
question. In order for me to demonstrate a relationship between
my proof and the structure of the world, I would have to postulate
some connection between the method of my argument and the ac-
tivity of the subject and/or the nature of the world. Otherwise I
would have a proof which has no guaranteed status vis-'a-vis the
world about which I am trying'to make a statement.
In order to clarify the relationship between the subject and the
object, or between an argument and the structure of the world, the
process by which we come to know the world must be made con-
scious, and in turn this process must be the basis of our consciously
applied method. We must assume that consciousness is con-
sciousness of a subject who exists in the world and is able to know the
world because she lives in it and has access to its structure. Our

12 G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J.B. Baille (New Yor
Harper & Row, 1967), 149-178.

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1010 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

method of knowing the world is both a description of a state of being

in the world and reflects the process by which consciousness becomes
aware of its own nature and that of the world it inhabits. Without
these assumptions, there can be no certainty that our knowledge of
the world has anv relationship to the way the world really is or that
consciousness is part of that world. Although these conditions are
epistemological statements, they go beyond theories about the
nature and proper methods of constructing logical arguments, devis-
ing methods of proof concerning statements about the world, etc., to
the problem of the nature of the subject and the process of knowing.
Indeed, from these quite schematic conditions for a method to be
adequate to its task (to provide means for exploring reality),
epistemology understood in the traditional sense (the relation of our
knowledge to reality) immediately opens into the question of the
relationship of knowledge and existence. For questions of the status
of knowledge inevitably involve the problem of the nature of the
subject, even if the subject is conceived purely as cognition, mind or
consciousness. Comprehension of the subject requires an investiga-
tion of its origins, and its constitution. Such an inquiry will lead
beyond purely internal questions of the nature of cognition, for,
insofar as the self is, as it were, the essence of subjectivity,
clearly what is said abstractly about the epistemological relation
between subject and object has concrete meaning in terms of
psychological conceptions of the self and its relation to others-to
objects, to the environment, to other selves."''3
The concept of mind (whether consciously held or not) influences
notions of subjectivity and of "human nature";'4 this, in turn, in-
fluences notions of the possibilities of practical activities (including
politics) and work as well as notions of the nature of human needs.
For instance, if one begins, like Locke, with a notion of the subject
as a passive receptor and of human needs as private, subjective and
irrational (or arational), it follows that practical activity is con-
ceived in terms of private acquisition and gratification. A par-
ticular notion of freedom follows-freedom as an absence of im-
pediments toward possession, grounded in human needs for in-
dividuality expressed through acquisition. Individuals are seen as

1' Ellen Wood, Mind and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972),
47.
14 Ibid., 11.

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 WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1011

isolated atoms who grow most meaningfully in the private sphere. 15

On the other hand, if one begins with an Hegelian notion of an ac-
tive subject who needs a relationship with an other to develop a self,
it follows that freedom is not a negative concept. This notion of
freedom is grounded in the human need for individuality and self-
realization through meaningful social creative activity. The ques-
tion here is not which notion of self and the constitution of con-
sciousness is "correct," but, rather, the consequences for a notion of
politics of employing one epistemology instead of another. Such
consequences operate whether or not one chooses an epistemology
consciously, for inherent within any form of knowledge are assump-
tions about the nature of subjects (hence about human nature).
These assumptions influence conceptions of the possibilities of
human action - what the self can achieve and sustain - hence also of
the possibilities and necessities of political action and policy.
The debates over determinism provide another example of how
this influence works. If one assumes that subjects are not capable of
transcending some "objective" force whether that force is primitive
human need structures or economic laws, the view of political
possibilities will be quite different from that of persons who believe
transcendence is an inherent part of subjectivity. Of course,
epistemologies need not be unambiguous on these questions. Very
different conclusions can be drawn from either Marx or Hegel, for
example, depending on how one interprets their accounts of the con-
stitution of the subject and its relation to historical processes. These
different interpretations do not negate the general point that one
must come to some epistemological conclusion and that it will affect
the substance of a theory -as Marx's appropriation of the Hegelian
dialectic, for instance, affected his theory of history, his notion of
the proletariat as the universal class ("the negation of the
negation"")'6 and so on.

15 See C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (London:

Oxford University Press, 1964), especially 238-251. This is not to deny that there is a
fundamental ambiguity in Locke's theory. The subject also has "natural reason"
which is to be determinant in social and political matters. This seems to contradict
the "blank tablet" view of reason and to sound more like the activist notions of the
Enlightenment. However, there is a fundamental difference-reason is implanted in
us by God for the purpose of recognizing the natural law (also given to us by Him).
Reason does not actively construct its own principles. It is not a law giver to itself.
16 Karl Marx, Capital, I, 763. For a discussion of the complexities of Marx's ap-
propriation of Hegel, see Jean Hyppolite, Studies ofl Marx and Hegel (New York: Basic
Books, 1964), especially Chapter Seven.

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1012 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

The relationship between knowledge and existence becomes even

stronger if the subject is conceived not merely in terms of thought or
cognition, but, rather, as a full human being who has feelings, fan-
tasies, and wishes, and who acts as well as thinks. This subject is
necessarily a person who has been created in and through social rela-
tions with others.'7
Thinking is a form of human activity which cannot be treated in
isolation from other forms of human activity, including the forms of
human activity which shape the humans who think. Philosophy
and political theory will bear inevitably the imprint of the social
relations out of which they and their creators arose. Philosophy and
political theory thus can be read (among many other ways) as a
stream of social consciousness. The very persistence and continuing
importance of certain philosophies and philosophic issues can be
treated as evidence of their congruence with fundamental social ex-
periences and problems. Philosophy must at least resonate with
central social and individual wishes and offer some solution to
deeply felt problems. 18 In philosophy, however, as in
psychotherapy, what is not said, or what is avoided, is often as
significant as the manifest content of thought.
As Watkins has suggested, the political theorist must adopt some
of the methods of psychoanalysis.'9 From this perspective, certain
questions immediately arise: what aspects of social experience are
repressed and why? What distortions are introduced into the struc-
ture of mind and our accounts of it by acts of repression and the
defensive mechanisms against the return of the repressed? How do
social prohibitions and power relations enter into the construction of
individual personality and thus partially determine the individual's
acts and thought? The contents of the unconscious, its influences
and consequences, can be revealed by an analysis of conscious

17 On the social construction of human beings, see D.W. Winnicott, The Matura-
tional Processes and the Facilitating Environment (New York: International Univer-
sities Press, 1965); Margaret Mahler, Fred Pine and Anni Bergman, The Psychological
Birth of the Human Infant (New York: Basic Books, 1975); and Harry Guntrip, Per-
sonality Structure and Human Interaction (New York: International Universities
Press, 1961), 356-444.
18 For a similar view of political theory see Norman Jacobson, Pride and Solace:
The Functions and Limits of Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1978), especially 1-20.
"I Frederick M. Watkins, "Political Theory as a Datum of Political Science," in Ap-
proaches to the Study of Politics, Roland Young, ed. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1958), 154.

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WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1013

thought processes, their form, contradictions, implicit assumptions

and significant avoidances, and by how (and by whom) human ex-
perience has been reconstructed through acts of interpretation.
Such an approach will permit an appropriation of philosophy in a
form useful to political theory. We can then ask, what forms of
social relations exist so that certain questions and ways of answering
them become constitutive of philosophy? This question is impor-
tant both to understanding the current state of philosophy and the
interpretation of previous philosophical work. In philosophy, be-
ing (ontology) has been divorced from knowing (epistemology) and
both have been separated from ethics or politics. These divisions
were blessed by Kant and transformed by him into a fundamental
principle derived from the structure of mind itself. 20 A consequence,
of this principle has been the enshrining within mainstream Anglo-
American philosophy of a rigid distinction between fact and value
which has had the effect of consigning the philosopher to silence on
issues of utmost importance to human life. Furthermore, it has
blinded philosophers and their interpreters to the possibility that ap-
parently insoluble dilemmas within philosophy are not the products
of the immanent structure of human mind and/or nature but,
rather, reflect distorted or frozen social relations.21 However,
political theorists need not be bound by these dilemmas but are in a
position to offer a political critique of them.

Epistemology and Ideology

Epistemologies contain assumptions not only about the nature of

subjects but also about the world they inhabit. An epistemology
represents a socially and politically mediated series of statements
about what is significant and valuable in all the possible experience
we could have in and of the world. Although grounded in human
existence, an epistemology, once adopted, can become a filter
through which subsequent experience is ordered, shaped, and
distorted. The mode of consciousness and existence first described
and accounted for becomes reified into a perfectly adequate, ex-
haustive account of all possible knowledge and methods of knowing

20 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. F. Max Muller (Garden City,
N.J.: Doubleday Anchor, 1966), 18.
21 This is of course not true of all philosophers. Much of Habermas's work has
focused on precisely this possibility. See, for example, Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge
and Human Interests (Boston- Beacon Press, 1971), especially the Appendix.

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1014 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

about the world. An epistemology can become an ideology which

both reflects and reinforces power relations and thus has political
and social consequences.22
An ideology need not exhaust all the possiblities of the
epistemology from which it is derived. For example, a simple
mechanistic determinism may be derived from Marx's theory. This
same determinism may be critiqued on the basis of Marx's Hegelian
moments. Which epistemological approach is taken, however, has
enormous consequences for the ideology and practice claimed as
true or "orthodox" Marxism. Thus, ideologies and epistemologies
are interrelated complexly but not usually identical.
An epistemology also can become a metaparadigm which at-
tempts not only to give a theoretical account of the grounds and con-
ditions of knowing but to determine the possible substance of
knowledge as such. Such an epistemology provides the grounds for
determining what is real and what is not, what is rational and must
be taken seriously, politically and otherwise, and what is not ra-
tional. Although it is tied to a particular mode of consciousness, it is
hypothetized into the only possible mode of knowing. The deter-
mination of the origin and methods of knowing provides not only an
account of how we know but also rules to justify the exclusion of cer-
tain areas of experience from what can be known -hence, what can
be socially shared and acted upon on some rational basis. For ex-
ample, one of the consequences of Weber's neo-Kantian
epistemology is the separation of the world of experience into "fact"
and "value." Values are purely subjective and hence cannot pro-
vide a firm basis for rational social action.
The ways in which theories about and rules of knowing affect and
enter into valuations of experience and the substance of knowledge
itself cannot be ignored. To a large extent, these rules are based on
an already existing mode of consciousness and represent a choice
among competing modes, e.g., Kant's choice of Newtonian science.
The form and content of knowledge cannot be kept completely
apart. Nor can we ignore the ways in which what is defined as ra-
tional is both affected by and affects social and political factors.
Perhaps the notion of an epistemology as a metaparadigm of real-

22 Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality

(Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday Anchor, 1967), 123, define ideology as "a particular
definition of reality [which] comes to be attached to a concrete power interest."

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 WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1015

ity will become clear if it is compared to Kuhn's23 notion of

paradigm generalized to include the structure of knowledge itself.
For Kuhn, paradigms are "universally recognized scientific
achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions
to a community of practioners."24 The paradigm defines what is
significant, what does not have to be thought about, and how
anomolies are to be fitted into the paradigm (methods).
Epistemological paradigms, like scientific ones, must also be ac-
cepted by a community which is in a position to teach the paradigm
to others (socialization). Once the paradigm has been established,
there is a group of persons who takes on the task of maintaining its
hegemony and of ensuring the proper socialization of community
members. The class of maintainers may not be the same group of
persons who constitute the class of socializers. Gradually the
epistemology may be transformed into a belief system. For exam-
ple, at one time a particular religion may be the primary embodi-
ment of the paradigm and the socializers (and maintainers), priests.
At another time the socializers may be schools or psychiatrists and
the maintainers philosophers or social scientists.
Over time, the paradigm is stretched to include anomolies and
new discoveries and events. Eventually, a revolutionary shift will
occur and one epistemology will be overthrown by another (for ex-
ample, Kant's "Copernican revolution" or Marx's standing Hegel on
his head). This process of paradigm shift is brought about through
a complex process which involves varying political, economic, social
and ideological factors. The importance of each factor also varies;
in one shift only one or two factors may be crucial. How such shifts
come about is an historical problem necessitating particular analyses
of each paradigm and each shift. Who or what institution or class is
the fundamental paradigm creator, on what its power rests, who the
class of socializers and maintainers are, and what the nature of the
paradigm is are crucial political/philosophical questions.25

23 Thomas Kuhn, Structuire of Scientific Revoluition.s (Chicago: University of

Chicago, Phoenix Books, 1962), especially 10-20. I am extending Kuhn's notion of
paradigm along the lines of Sheldon Wolin's reinterpretation See "Paradigms and
Political Theories" in Politics and Experienice (Cambridge England: The Cambridge
University Press, 1967).
24 Ibid.. x.
25 For investigation along these general theoretical lines, see Berger and Luckmann,
Social Construction; Burkhart Holzner, Reality Construction in Society (Cambridge,

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 1016 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

Even this brief discussion of epistemologies and ideologies raises

enough questions to force us beyond a purely formal analysis of
forms of knowledge. How knowledge comes into existence,
whether or not a body of thought is accepted as knowledge, and the
significance of that knowledge are all rooted in social processes.26
The production of knowledge in a society is related intimately to the
crucial social processes of socialization and legitimation and is a
political as well as cognitive process, For, "Power in society in-
cludes the power to determine decisive socialization processes and,
therefore, the power to produce reality."27 If knowledge is
understood only as a body of thought and analyzed from an internal
point of view (i.e., what constitutes proof, what is the system of
logic, etc.), many aspects of knowing and knowledge will remain
opaque. Indeed, ". . . one is tempted to suggest that
epistemological disputes sometimes revolve around propositions that
seem unintelligible, or at best formalistic and scholastic until they
are understood to have some other meaning or intention, whether
political or otherwise - that is, until they are read as something
more than propositions about the nature of cognition."28 For in the
last analysis, "Rival definitions of reality are . .. decided upon in the
sphere of rival social interests whose rivalry is in turn 'translated'
into theoretical terms. "29
Epistemology can be conceptualized as the study of the life-
situation of consciousness, an inquiry which is ultimately political
and historical. As Plato and other political theorists have argued,
claims to knowledge cannot be divorced from claims to power.
However, it would be a mistake to collapse the two sorts of claims,
or to argue that in the "last instance" knowledge or practice is deter-
minative or that the two are identical. They are complexly inter-
related, but to submerge one in the other would do violence to both.
They are linked, in part, by the paradoxical capacity of humans to
create through a process that both incorporates and transcends the
present. Aesthetic activity provides an analogue: in a Greek urn the

Mass.: Schenkmann, 1968); R.D. Laing, Politics of Experience (New York: Ballantine,
1967); Wolin, "Paradigms and Political Theories"; and Michel Foulcault, Madlness anld
Civilizationi (New York: Random House, Vintage, 1965).
26 Holzner, lieality Con.struction., 1 1.
27 Berger and Lnckmann, Social ColLstrncetioni, 119.
28 Wood, Minid anid Politic.s, 2.
29 Berger and Ltnckmann, Social ColLstructioni, 120.

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 WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1017

figures reveal something of the concrete social relations in which its

maker is embedded. The relationship to nature can be seen in the
clay, type of pigment, glaze, etc. The level of technological
development can be estimated by examining the type of firing. Yet,
in addition to all these social and historical particulars, the urn
evokes something, means something beyond its concrete elements.
Its truth is not exhausted by the chemistry of the pigment or the
social structure of the city-state, nor can it be understood without it.
The truth exists in each of these, their inter-relations, the tensions
among them and the whole which is both the sum of the parts and
more. Similarly, knowledge with mediations may become practice
and practice with mediations become knowledge. What needs to
be understood is the tension and inter-relations between the two.
Both exist as elements within the activity of a creature which is
simultaneously biological, social, meaning constructing, past-bound
and present-transcending.
It is sometimes claimed that to say that all knowledge reflects the
social relations of its creators is to say simultaneously (or necessarily)
that all knowledge is relative. This, in turn, implies that there are
no grounds for making judgments-either political or
philosophic - about competing truth claims or epistemologies. Fur-
thermore, this position seems to imply that if all epistemologies are
merely the expressions of the interest of some social group, it would
make more sense to study the group (or groups) instead of the
abstract form of expression of their interests. Finally, it is claimed
that a social relations' approach to knowledge implies that an
epistemology could not have the necessary autonomy to serve as a
metatheory but could only be a self-serving screen or filter - that is,
as an ideology in the crudest sense, an expression of the interests of
the ruling class.
An adequate reply to these claims would necessitate a resolution
of many of the central problems of nineteenth- and twentieth-
century social thought.30 Nonetheless, a few simple points may be

30 Many of these problems center on the possible grounding of knowledge, the

breakdown of belief in some transcendental basis for knowledge and the consequences
(and possible resoltution) of this "crisis." For very different l)erspectives on the crisis,
see Friedrich Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdotm (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1971), especially
Book 5; Friedrich Nietzsche, Oni thte Genecalogy of Morals anid Ecce Iloito (New York:
Random Houise, 1969), 118-119; 151-163; H. Sttart Htighes, Contsciousness anld Soci-
ety (revised edition; New York: Random Houise, Vintage, 1977); Leo Stratiss, Naturoal
Ilighlt anid History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), especially 1-80;

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 1018 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

noted. There is no necessary relationship between the claim that

knowledge is constructed socially and that all knowledge is relative.
As Mannheim points out, this confuses "relational" and "relative"
knowledge. 31 Additional epistemological assumptions must be
made to make sense out of this claim. Paradoxically, implicit in this
claim is the assumption that there is only one standard of objective
knowledge; it must be eternal, transcendental, and ahistorical. The
very notion of "relative" implies a comparison, "relative" to what?
Relative to a certainty grounded in eternal, unchanging truth,
evaluating truth claims does become more problematic, but not
necessarily impossible. Furthermore, there is a contradiction
within the claim of relativity itself. To say that all knowledge is
relative is to make an absolute statement for which epistemological
grounds must be offered -an apparent impossibility. By the logic
of the social construction of knowledge, absolute relativity must also
be an expression of a set of social relations which can be in-
vestigated.32 There are also problems with the crude theory of
ideology. All ideologies must to some extent provide an accurate
account of social reality or they would lose explanatory and
organizational power and cease to be believed. Contradictions in
society may be reflected in contradictions within forms of
knowledge and conversely the contradictions within society may
enable one to speculate beyond the merely given. Thus,
knowledge may gain a socially rooted moment of autonomy.
Finally, the problem is complexly tied up with questions of the

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Univer-

sity Press, 1964), 83-98; Herbert Marcuse, "The Concept of Essence" in Negations
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1968); Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970;
Lukacs, "Reification"; and Fred R. Dallmayr, "Beyond Dogmas and Despair: Toward
a Critical Theory of Politics," American Political Science Review 40 (March 1976),
64-79. The "Frankfurt School" has been increasingly influential in ar-
ticulating/interpreting this crisis. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston:
Little, Brown & Company, 1973); Paul Connerton, The Tragedy of Enlightenment
(Cambridge, England: The Cambridge University Press, 1980); Susan Buck-Morss,
The Origin of Negative Dialectics (N.Y.: Macmillan Co., The Free Press, 1977); and
Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jiirgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1978) all provide useful historical and philosophical analysis of these
thinkers and their cultural context.
31 Mannheim, Ideology, 79.
32 Theodore Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: Seabury, 1979), 35-37.
Especially important, as Nietzsche points out, is the devaluation of the "merely
human."

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 WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1019

moral content of language33 and whether or not there are certain

privileged vantage points within society from which the most ac-
curate knowledge is possible.34 These questions in turn raise
the problem of consciousness, its content and its relation to political
action.
Epistemology provides important clues to understanding human
nature, consciousness and political discourse. Hence, political
theorists have been and should be concerned with epistemological
matters. However, I must still make clearer why epistemological
questions have taken on a new urgency in the advanced industrial
states.

Epistemology and Technical Rationality

The dominant epistemology of the twentieth century has been

called technical rationality.35 Technical rationality is defined here
as the production and transformation of material and people
through a methodological-scientific apparatus. It is simultaneously
an epistemology, an ideology, and a material/psychological force.
Indeed, since one of its primary characteristics is the fusing of all
these spheres, an adequate analysis requires superceding a formal

33 See Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1972), especially 225-302.
34 Mannheim. and Lukacs identify different privileged groups (intellectuals and the
working class). For an argument that feminists may occupy such a position, see
Nancy Hartsock, "Can There Be a Specifically Feminist Materialism," in Discovering
Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology,
Philosophy of Science, Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka, eds. (Dordrecht,
Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1981).
35 This mode of rationality and its effects have been widely discussed. See Max
Weber, "Politics as a Vocation" and "Science as a Vocation" in From Max Weber, ed.
H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958); and Friedrich
Nietzsche, Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Random House, Vin-
tage, 1959), especially the parable of the last man. On cultural life, see Theodore
Rozak, The Making of the Counter Culture (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, Anchor,
1969); William Thompson, At the Edge of History (New York: Harper & Row, 1971);
and Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1969). Precursors of the
cultural critique include the Pre-Raphaelites (especially Ruskin and Morris) and
Schiller; see his On the Aesthetic Education of Man (New York: Ungar, 1965). On
technical rationality as ideology and social force, see Herbert Marcuse, One-
Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon, 1964); also Jurgen Habermas, Towards a Rational
Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970) and Knowledge and Human Interests;
Horkheimer and Adorno, The Dialectic; and Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1972).

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1020 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

notion of epistemology. An examination of technical rationality il-

lustrates both how epistemology and ideology become linked and
why it is important to trace out these relations.
Technical rationality as a social-epistemological form is con-
stituted by the transference of positivism into the social world and
by the consequences of this transference.36 It is embodied in institu-
tions, social roles, rules of proof and method, which are rapidly
negating in practice the possibility of other forms of understanding,
knowledge, and praxis. Technical rationality denies the possibility
of other forms of knowledge (of their reality and rationality) and
claims an inherent necessity for all its actions and effects. ("There
are simply no alternatives, given a large, complex, technically ad-
vanced state.
Kress himself notes, "That area in which behavioral norms of
'scientific rationality and manipulative efficaciousness,' once but a
subculture, has come to dominate the total culture".37 If
positivistic-scientific methodology is transferred into the domain of
the social world, the reification of that world will follow. The at-
tempt to establish intersubjectivity and mutual relationships with
appropriate social organizations and forms of knowledge will be lost
and replaced by domination and manipulation. Thus,

We may be the first people to experience what it means to live in accordance with the
fundamental postulates of the scientific and technological credo .... It is quite ... (a)
thing when an entire society attempts to shape its life by scientific and technical
knowledge, making that knowledge the very foundation for the continuance and the
security of society . . . because that knowledge is, by the admission of its exponents,
silent on the questions of how a man should live and what we should try. Those who
have interpreted the meaning, presuppositions, and methods of scientific and technical
knowledge have insisted that it cannot prescribe ends. They have also asserted that

3" Although Kress states that "while there were and continue to be efforts to main-
tain a logical empiricism in more sophisticated form," he evidently agrees with a
"panelist at the 1975 national convention of the APSA" who asserted that "behavioral
metaphysics within the discipline had long been a cadaver." (531) However, it ap-
pears to me that this cadaver is a fairly lively fellow. As evidence one might cite the
current preference in faculty hiring for "policy" and public administration orientations
and the Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1978, by John C.
Wahlke, "Pre-Behavioralism in Political Science," American Political Science Review
73 (March 1979), 9-31. Wahlke proposes the most crude "non-mentalist,"
"psychophysiological" model of human action upon which a truly behavioral political
science is to be based. See especially 28-29.
37 Kress, "Against Epistemology," 541.

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 WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1021

other forms of knowledge whose business it is to traffic in 'values' lack the

characteristics of genuine knowledge e.g., empirical verification, quantifiability, even
rationality. 38

Technical rationality is important because it is a world view with

increasing hegemony over all other world views, and because it is
embodied in certain institutions (the bureaucracy and multinational
corporations) which are also becoming more powerful and univer-
sally pervasive. Thus, there is some urgency to the task of political
theory (which has itself been weakened by technical rationality): to
elucidate and to examine the most prominent paradigm of reality,
its characteristic institutions, the social and political forces which
stimulate and support modes of rationality, and to explore alter-
natives to the "givenness" of everyday life. It also is important to
identify the values inherent in technical rationality despite its
"value-free" claim.
Although technical rationality as such could not emerge as both
an effective ideology and as a powerful social/political force until
certain economic factors also were present (mass media, universal
communication and travel, an increasingly integrated world
economy, computers, intensive and extensive technological ra-
tionalization of production, the spread of bureaucracy from
economic to other institutions), its beginnings lie in the application
of the scientific method to human affairs. Thus, it is rooted
epistemologically both in positivism and in the intent (which is not
exclusive to positivism) to control and dominate the natural world.
The intent to control nature in a particular way and then extend this
mode of control to the social sphere and the assertion of the right of
science to have access to any aspect of life are among the most im-
portant values of technical rationality.
Although technical rationality is grounded in positivism, it is
qualitatively different from it in that it has become a powerful
ideology and social and political force.39 Developments in ad-
vanced capitalism have created new modes of production and
distribution in which science and knowledge creation have

38 Sheldon Wolin and John Schaar, The Berkeley Rebellion and Beyond (New
York: Random House, Vintage, 1970), 106-107.
39 This is not to say that any other epistemology could possibly be divorced from
social and political forces and expressions. Technical rationality is qualitatively dif-
ferent from any previous totality and poses a unique challenge to social and political
life, however, owing to its unprecendented penetration into all areas of life while
claiming to be value-free.

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1022 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

themselves become crucial parts of the productive apparatus and its

maintenance. Certainlv, other modes of rationality (the shaman,
for instance) had control over nature and/or people as one of their
primary intentions. But these modes differ from technical ra-
tionalitv in at least three fundamental ways: the attitude toward
nature (cooperation and connection rather than mastery and
otherness), toward "values" and normative questions (self-
consciously normative rather than "objective" and neutral), and in
the extent to which hegemony has been possible (partial rather than
universal through international organizations, communications,
embodiment in all institutions, breakdown of old cultures, etc.).
Technical rationality is also difficult to challenge because of the
"miracles" and contributions to the improvement of life that it has
made possible (modern medicine is a good example), because of its
claim to objectivity, true knowledge, and methodology, and because
of the systematic devaluation of the "merely" subjective and inter-
subjective, which is reinforced by increasing control over in-
struments of socialization (especially education).
As a reality paradigm it cannot be challenged on its own grounds,
since ". . . formal rationality is . . . determined only by the
calculable and regulated functioning of its own system."40 Within
the system it cannot be asked whether or not the method is truly ap-
propriate to the situation or what the best way to proceed is (in a
moral or political sense, these being wholly separate or nonsensical
criteria). Thus, once technical rationality gains hegemony, it can-
not be contested except by offering a critique of the mode as a whole
and an alternative notion of how consciousness works and of the
aims towards which people should be working.
Once the claims of positivism (upon which the identity of truth
and technique depends) are examined, it will be evident that even
on its own terms positivism cannot explain its unique mode of
knowledge (especially how this knowledge is inter-subjectively
transmissible). In order to explain the intersubjective and social
components of scientific knowledge as well as the human meaning of
such knowledge, we must put it back into its context and consider it
as a human activity. Once this is done, positivism's claim to the sole
possession of truth can be shown to be false and the contradictions
within this mode of knowing exposed. Then, technical rationality

40 Herbert Marcuse, Negations, 224.

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WHY EPISTEMOLOGY MATTERS 1023

can be treated as an ideology and its social and political power and
the consequences of its increasing hegemony can be analyzed.
The choice between reality paradigms is a political problem, for,
"Neither the new paradigm nor the old can provide neutral pro-
cedures for deciding between their respective merits, because each
paradigm has its own distinctive procedures. Because each group
uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense, the
neutrality of each is impunged and there is no tertium quid
available. "4' Technical rationality denies the existence of and
necessity for this process by its claims of neutrality and objectivity,
but this denial is precisely a claim which must undergo thorough
analysis.
Unless this total critique is undertaken, the true nature of
technical rationality as an ideology cannot be made apparent. The
social and political forces and functions the mode serves remain hid-
den. In the new ideological consciousness the systems seem to func-
tion according to structural constraints. In fact, however,
"Technology is always a historical social project; in it is projected
what a society - and its ruling interests - intend to do with men and
things. Such a 'purpose' of domination is 'substantive' and to this
extent belongs to the very form of technical reason. "42
It is the'task of an epistemologically sensitive analyst to tease out
these connections and to make their consequences clearly
understood, for otherwise the spell of "inevitability," which is in fact
merely a claim for hegemony and control, exerts its mystifying
power.
This task is impeded by one of the consequences of the dominance
of technical rationality: the debasement of the "primary level of
political discourse, the language of the commonsense world of
political practice. "43 Examples abound. The terms introduced
into ordinary political discourse during the Vietnam War-
"friendly fire," "body counts" or "incursions""-alone suggest such
discourse may be in need of reconstruction. "The resources of
primary language" may now be "insufficient to achieve that clarity
of expression by which alone authority can be made responsible. "44
Thus, while it is possible that a concern for epistemology nar-

41Wolin, "Paradigms and Political Theories," 138.

42 Marcuse, Negations, 224.
43 Kress, "Against Epistemology," 538.
44 Ibid., 539. Other examples include the many uses of "national security" and "ex-
ecutive privilege" and of course, "terminate with extreme prejudice".

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1024 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

rowly understood max, "leave the house of theory empty of tenancy

entirely,'45 such need not be the case. The close connection be-
tween knowledge and politics indeed makes "Ours . . . an
epistemological century."-46 Far from fleeing from the cave,
political theorists interested in these matters are penetrating to the
heart of a major political dilemma: the possibility for meaningful
discourse and action in the ever-lengthening shadow of the iron
cage.

45 Ibid., 542.
46 Ibid., 531.

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