Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory,

and Circularity: Plato and John Rawls

Aryeh Botwinick
In this paper, I would like to argue that the best kind of philosophical
defense of democracy is one that is worked out within the framework
of negative theory. In a post-metaphysical intellectual climate, negative
theory enables us to theorize the best defense of democracy possible. I
am using the phrase negative theory on analogy with the term negative
theology. Just as negative theology argues that we can only indefinitely
say what God is not but cannot pinpoint in a positive sense what He is, so,
too, negative theory would advocate that we can only ceaselessly explore
and highlight the limitations of reason, without being able to arrive at a
positive content that is incontrovertible and uncontestable.
Some of the most dramatic manifestations of a negative theoretical
approach to political governance are found in the implicit acknowledgements of the inevitability of circularity insinuated by some of the major
philosophers of Western thought. In this paper, I would like to analyze
Platos argument in the Theaetetus in order to illustrate the ways in which
Plato is committed to the thesis of the inevitability of circularityand to
address some of its political implications. In the second part of the paper,
I will try to show how a deep reading of John Rawlss meta-ethical theory
reconnects it with alternative visions of liberal democracy beyond those
that he develops, and in a very surprising and suggestive way re-evokes
the structure of the Platonic argument in the Theaetetus.
I will try to make the case that viewing circularity as a permanent feature of argument is symptomatic of a deep-seated skepticismwhich in
its overt form is an unsustainable philosophical thesis. To be consistently
skeptical requires one to be skeptical of skepticism as well as of alternative
Telos 161 (Winter 2012): 2950.
doi:10.3817/1212161029
www.telospress.com

29

30 Aryeh Botwinick

and competing philosophical doctrines. This requirement of consistency

or reflexivity suggests that one cannot straightforwardly move from a
consideration of the inevitability of circularity to a theoretical defense
of democracy. At most one can point to pronounced rhetorical affinities
between skepticism and the practice and theory of democracy.
Plato
The Theaetetus intensifies and systematizes Platos argument concerning
circularity, which is developed to one extent or another in the Greater Hippias, Cratylus, Sophist, Protagoras, Meno, Parmenides, and Phaedrus. In
the Theaetetus, Plato sets up an ideal-typology between two diametrically
opposed starting points for Greek philosophy and shows how they both
terminate in incoherence. Heraclitus and Protagoras had assigned centrality to constant flux and motion and therefore also to immediate perception
as the source of knowledge. Parmenides had shifted the emphasis to theoretical frameworks (with their extreme heightening in the notion of the
One) as enjoying primacy in the generation of knowledge. Plato shows
from numerous perspectives how we cannot move from either starting
point to the familiar epistemological judgments that we make without
already presupposing what we are trying to prove. The Theaetetus is also
one of the most unabashedly biographical (or autobiographical) of the
Platonic dialogueswhere Socrates speaks in an intensely personal vein
in analyzing the mainsprings of his intellectual career. He identifies that
career (by way of further extension of the model provided by his mother)
with metaphoric midwiferyattending to the germination of ideas that
his carefully selected interlocutors are struggling with. The overwhelming
emphasis of the Socratic self-analysis and self-definition falls on processperpetual reengagement with the throes of intellectual creation
despite the vulnerability and often instability and un-sustainability of
most of the ideas produced. Like the literal midwives of ancient Greece
who were allowed to perform in this role only after their child-bearing
years were over, Socrates claims to be barren. Creativity resides in the
otherand turns out to be a function of process rather than substance. In
the Theaetetus, we have a classic prefiguration of how certain limits to
knowledge and to truth constrain the assigning of priority to process over
substancehow the rhythms of the intellectual life are most in harmony
with a continual wrenching away of supremacy from substance and its

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 31

reallocation to process. I will elaborate on each pole of the argument of

the Theaetetus in turn.
Socrates establishes a conceptual linkage between the Protagorean
notion that man is the measure of all things and the Heraclitean conception that everything is in flux. Translated to the field of perception, the idea
that man is the measure of all things signifies that perception is knowledge. Whatever the individual judges by means of perception is true
for him. No man can assess anothers experience better than he, or can
claim authority to examine another mans judgment and see if it be right
or wrong. Only the individual himself can judge of his own world, and
what he judges is always true and correct.1 What lies to the background of
the Protagorean position is Heraclitean metaphysics. If everything is constantly changing, then what we perceive at any given moment is our only
source of knowledge as to what the world is like. Socrates invokes against
the Protagorean-Heraclitean position the issue of reflexivity: How could
it ever be, my friend, that Protagoras was a wise man, so wise as to think
himself fit to be the teacher of other men and worth large fees; while we
in comparison with him the ignorant ones, needed to go and sit at his
feetwe who are ourselves each the measure of his own wisdom? Can we
avoid the conclusion that Protagoras was just playing to the crowd when
he said this?2 Both Protagorass and Heraclituss formulations fail to pass
tests of reflexivity. Obviously, Protagoras wants his relativist position to
hold against all competitors. But if man is the measure of all things,
then a philosophers objectivist, anti-relativist position is as much the
measure of things as Protagorass own relativist position. On what theoretical, cognitive basis can Protagoras privilege himself in relation to the
positions he rejects? Analogously, Heraclitus considers everything to be
in flux except his own view that everything is in flux. How can he close
the gap between what his statement officially communicates and his point
in making the statement in the first place? Why is his formulation exempt
from his own strictures concerning the pervasiveness of flux?
Another casualty of the Protagorean-Heraclitean position is the possibility of genuine disagreement and mutual correction and criticism. To
examine and try to refute each others appearances and judgments, when
1. Myles Burnyeat, The Theaetetus of Plato, trans. M.J. Levett (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990), 161d; p. 285.
2. Ibid., 161d161e; p. 285.

32 Aryeh Botwinick

each persons are correctthis is surely an extremely tiresome piece of

nonsense, if the truth of Protagoras is true, and not merely an oracle speaking in jest from the impenetrable sanctuary of the book.3 If everything is
always in flux and perception is knowledge, then we are always talking
past each other and have no way of acknowledging or stabilizing or building upon common reference points in our interactions with each other.
Socrates points to the absurd, self-destructive consequences of the
Protagorean position. The logic of his position requires Protagoras to be
committed to the falsity of his own position.
Socrates: Protagoras admits, I presume, that the contrary opinion about
his own opinion (namely, that it is false) must be true, seeing he agrees
that all men judge what is.
Theodorus: Undoubtedly.
Socrates: And in considering the truth of the opinion of those who think
him wrong, he is really admitting the falsity of his own opinion?
Theodorus: Yes, inevitably.
Socrates: But for their part the others do not admit that they are wrong?
Theodorus: No.
Socrates: But Protagoras again admits this judgment to be true, according to his written doctrine?
Theodorus: So it appears.
Socrates: It will be disputed, then, by everyone, beginning with Protagorasor rather it will be admitted by him, when he grants to the
person who contradicts him that he judges trulywhen he does that,
even Protagoras himself will be granting that neither a dog nor the man
in the street is the measure of anything at all which he has not learned.
Isnt that so?
Theodorus: It is so.
Socrates: Then since it is disputed by everyone, the truth of Protagoras
is not true for anyone at all, not even for himself.
Theodorus: Socrates, we are running my friend too hard.
Socrates: But it is not at all clear, my dear Theodorus, that we are running off the right track. Hence it is likely that Protagoras, being older
than we are, really is wiser as well; and if he were to stick up his head
from below as far as the neck just here where we are, he would in all
3. Ibid., 161e162a; p. 285.

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 33

likelihood convict me twenty times over of talking nonsense, and show

you up too for agreeing with me, before he ducked down to rush off
again. But we have got to take ourselves as we are, I suppose, and go
on saying things which seem to us to be. At the moment, mustnt we
maintain that any man would admit at least this, that some men are wiser
than their fellows and others more ignorant?
Theodorus: So it seems to me, at any rate.4

Plato shows how with very slight logical nudging Protagorass position
metamorphoses itself into its opposite. The phrase man is the measure of
all things connotes rampant equality. Fleshed out more fully, it is as if the
sentence read Each man is the measure of all things. However, given
his own premise, Protagoras must admit the truth of those who dispute
this judgment even when they affirm that they are right and Protagoras
is wrong. (Given his premise, Protagoras of course has to affirm that he
may be wrong and his antagonists right.) But if Protagorass statement
can be so easily turned on its head, then what he is saying really amounts
to the opposite of what he appears to be saying, namely, that Man is not
the measure of all things. The undermining of the original Protagorean
premise is suggestive of inequalitythat some men and women enjoy a
privileged insight into the nature of things.
Conjoining the premise that knowledge is perception with the key
premise of its background theory that everything is in motion only deepens the paradoxes of reflexivity.
Socrates: Is it possible to give any name to a color which will properly
apply to it?
Theodorus: I dont see how one could, Socrates; nor yet surely to anything else of that kind, if, being in flux, it is always quietly slipping away
as you speak?
Socrates: And what about any particular kind of perception; for example, seeing or hearing? Does it ever abide, and remain seeing or hearing?
Theodorus: It ought not to, certainly, if all things are in motion.
Socrates: Then we may not call anything seeing rather than not-seeing;
nor indeed may we call it any other perception rather than notif it be
admitted that all things are in motion in every way?
Theodorus: No, we may not.
4. Ibid., 171a171d; pp. 29899.

34 Aryeh Botwinick

Socrates: Yet Theaetetus and I said knowledge was perception?

Theodorus: You did.
Socrates: And so our answer to the question, What is knowledge?
gave something which is no more knowledge than not.
Theodorus: It seems as if it did.
Socrates: A fine way this turns out to be of making our answer right.
We were most anxious to prove that all things are in motion, in order to
make that answer come out correct; but what has really emerged is that
if all things are in motion, every answer on whatever subject, is equally
correct, both it is thus and it is not thusor if you like becomes,
as we dont want to use any expressions which would bring our friends
to a standstill.
Theodorus: You are quite right.
Socrates: Well, yes, Theodorus except that I said thus and not thus.
One must not even use the word thus; for this thus would no longer
be in motion; nor yet not thus for here again there is no motion. The
exponents of this theory need to establish some other language; as it is,
they have no words that are consistent with their hypothesisunless it
would perhaps suit them best to use not at all thus in a quite indefinite
sense.
Theodorus: That would at least be an idiom most appropriate to them.5

The key background postulate to the Protagorean position that perception is knowledgethe Heraclitean notion that everything is in
fluxboth supports and undercuts the Protagorean theory of knowledge. If everything is in flux, then all we have to go by in validating
and constructing an external world are our perceptions from moment to
moment. By the same token, however, there is no perception (or series of
perceptions) stable enough to be able to sustain the weight of an external
world. The Heraclitean metaphysics both directs us to assign credence to
the notion of perception and deprives that concept of any philosophical
usefulness.
We are now in a position to more deeply appreciate how the two parts
of the Theaetetus relate to one another. On the surface there appears to
be an abrupt transition in the dialogue between a discussion of Protagoras and Heraclitus in the first part and a consideration of Parmenides in
the second. What underlying currents of thought link the two sections of
5. Ibid., 182d183b; pp. 31213.

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 35

the dialogue? One possibility is that after confronting the dead ends that
conferring primacy upon perception yields, Plato turns to Parmenides as a
theorist of mind-ordained categories potentially facilitating a release from
the conundrums surrounding philosophical concentration on perception:
But I was almost forgetting, Theodorus, that there are other thinkers who
have announced the opposite view; who tell us that unmoved is the
universe and other similar statements which we hear from a Melissus or
a Parmenides as against the whole party of Heracliteans. These philosophers insist that all things are One, and that this One stands still, itself
within itself, having no place in which to move.6

This One stands still, itself within itself can be understood as a

metaphoric expression of the idea that Parmenides is in search of organizing categories in terms of which to make sense of realityand that
these categories enjoy ontological primacy over the reality that they
group together and organize. The One constitutes the most abstract and
encompassing category of all that brings to a satisfactory halt the search
for reasons and causes. In fact, we might say that the Shadow of the One
is the human maker, artificer, nominalistic coiner of words, phrases and
concepts. The densely abstract Parmenidean formulation devolves into the
latter set of notions.7
What are the reflexive dilemmas that arise from an invocation of
mind-ordained categories in contrast to direct perception as the source of
knowledge? The focus of the second part of the dialogue (personified by
Parmenides) is that knowledge is to be found not in the experiences but
in the process of reasoning about them; it is here, seemingly, not in the
experiences, that it is possible to grasp being and truth.8 Socrates adds
that, We shall not now look for knowledge in sense-perception at all, but
in whatever we call that activity of the soul when it is busy by itself about
the things which are.9 Theaetetus adds that this activity is called judgment (in contrast to perception).10 Socrates then begins developing an

6. Ibid., 180d180e; p. 310.

7. Compare the discussion of the Parmenides in my book Postmodernism and Democratic Theory (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993), pp. 1046.
8. Plato, Theaetetus, 186d; p. 318.
9. Ibid., 187a; p. 318.
10.Ibid.

36 Aryeh Botwinick

issue that was central to the argument of the Cratylus11 and ends up driving
the argument in the same direction as that pursued in the earlier dialogue,
namely, the issue of false judgment. The reflexive dilemma surrounding
this issue is that if admitted, it would mean that the same man must, at
one and the same time, both know and not know the same objects.12 If
what one knows is a judgment it could not possibly be false. If it is false,
it is notand could never have beena judgment. What are the logical
mechanics of a judgment that is false? How does a string of words manage
to support both identities simultaneously? Socrates buttresses his theory of
judgment with an arresting account of what is involved in thinking:
A talk which the soul has with itself about the objects under its consideration. Of course I am only telling you my idea in all ignorance; but this is
the kind of picture I have of it. It seems to me that the soul when it thinks
is simply carrying on a discussion in which it asks itself questions and
answers them itself, affirms and denies. And when it arrives at something
definite, either by a gradual process or suddenly, when it affirms one
thing consistently and without divided counsel, we call this its judgment.
So, in my view, to judge is to make a statement, and a judgment is a
statement which is not addressed to another person or spoken aloud, but
silently addressed to oneself.13

En route toward grappling with this dilemma of reflexivitythat we

classify something as a judgment and yet declare it to be falsePlato
invokes two themes that are amplified more fully elsewhere in his philosophy: The paradoxes of knowledge in the Meno and the role of tacit
knowledge in the Phaedrus. The following quotation seems to be a recapitulation of Platos paradox in the Meno:
Socrates: Well, then, dont you think it is a shameless thing that we,
who dont know what knowledge is, should pronounce what knowing is
like? But as a matter of fact, Theaetetus, for some time past our whole
method of discussion has been tainted. Time and again we have said we
are acquainted with and we are not acquainted with, we know and
we do not know, as if we could to some extent understand one another
while we are still ignorant of what knowledge is. Or here is another
11.Plato, Cratylus, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1997), pp. 10156.
12.Plato, Theaetetus,196b196c; p. 331.
13. Ibid., 189e190a; p. 323.

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 37

example, if you like: at this very moment, we have again used the words
to be ignorant of, and to understand, as if these were quite proper
expressions for us when we are deprived of knowledge.14

The invocation of tacit knowledge occurs in the following passage:

Socrates: Then using our image of possessing and hunting for the
pigeons, we shall say that there are two phases of hunting: one before
you have possession, in order to get possession, and another when you
already possess in order to catch and have in your hands what you previously acquired. And in this way even with things you learned and got the
knowledge of long ago and have known ever since, it is possible to learn
themthese same thingsall over again. You can take up again and
have that knowledge of each of them which you acquired long ago but
had not ready to hand in your thought, cant you?15

In order to grapple with the paradoxes of reflexivity that accrue when

one assigns priority to mind-ordained categories over perception in the
generation and validation of knowledge (and thereby illuminate the affinities between these paradoxes and the paradox of knowledge of the Meno
and the paradoxes associated with tacit knowledge), Socrates follows the
trajectory of argument of the Cratylus: He again invokes nominalism.16
The precise juncture at which he does this is when he asks Theaetetus
to formulate an amplified theory of knowledge in the face of the mounting paradoxes affecting the priority-of-mental-categories epistemological
position:
Theaetetus: Oh, yes, Socrates, that is just what I once heard a man say;
I had forgotten, but now its coming back to me. He said that it is true
judgment with an account that is knowledge; true judgment without an
account falls outside of knowledge. And he said that the things of which
there is no account are not knowable (yes, he actually called them that),
while those which have an account are knowable.
Socrates: Very good indeed. Now tell me, how did he distinguish these
knowables and unknowables? I want to see if you and I have the same
version.

14. Ibid., 196d196e; p. 332.

15. Ibid., 198d; p. 334.
16.Plato, Cratylus, 429b; p. 145.

38 Aryeh Botwinick

Theaetetus: I dont know if I can find that out; but I think I could follow
if someone explained it.
Socrates: Listen then to a dream in return for a dream. In my dream, too,
I thought I was listening to people saying that the primary elements, as it
were, of which we and everything else are composed, have no accounts.
Each of them, in itself, can only be named; it is not possible to say anything else of it, either that it is or that it is not. That would mean that we
were adding being or not-being to it; whereas we must not attach anything, if we are to speak of that thing itself alone. Indeed we ought not
to apply to it even such words as as itself or that, each, alone, or
this, or any other of the many words of this kind; for these go the round
and are applied to all things alike, being other than the things to which
they are added, whereas if it were possible to express the element itself
and it had its own proprietary account, it would have to be expressed
without any other thing. As it is, however, it is impossible that any of the
primaries should be expressed in an account; it can only be named, for a
name is all that it has. But with the things composed of these, it is another
matter. Here, just in the same way as the elements themselves are woven
together, so their names may be woven together and, become an account
of somethingan account being essentially a complex of names. Thus
the elements are unaccountable and unknowable, but they are perceivable, whereas the complexes are both knowable and expressible and can
be the objects of true judgment.
Now when a man gets a true judgment about something without an
account, his soul is in a state of truth as regards that thing, but he does not
know it; for someone who cannot give and take an account of a thing is
ignorant about it but when he has also got an account of it, he is capable
of all this and is made perfect in knowledge.17

The second, Parmenidean portion of the Theaetetus can be read in one

of two ways: it can be seen as a broadening of the problem introduced in
the first part of the dialogue, pursuing a dialectical plan of philosophical
exploration that exhibits how issues of reflexivity emerge just as forcefully when one assigns primacy to mind-ordained categories as when one
accords primacy to perception. Or else it can be viewed as a delineation
of a solution to the problem sketched in both the first and second parts
of the dialogue predicated upon the remedial role performed by a particular mind-ordained categorynamely, nominalism. While the structure
and content of the dialogue as a whole (as we have seen) clearly suggest
17. Ibid., 201c202c; pp. 33839.

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 39

a broadening of the problem, on a more subterranean level the dialogue

also insinuates enough elements to facilitate the working out of the second approach. Especially when viewed against the backdrop of Platos
argument in the Cratylus, it is possible to read the Theaetetus (and might
even be compelling to do so) as presenting nominalism as a solution to its
problem and not just as illustrating how pervasive the problem is.
The second part of the Theaetetus can be read as a return to the implicit
strategy of the Cratylus. Nominalism restores consistency to our otherwise
aborted statements by invoking circularity for the smallest possible meaning and reference quotients of sentences, which now cannot fail the test
of consistency because nominalism facilitates the establishment of a rigid
barrier between one minute meaning and reference quotient and the next.
With regard to the paradoxes attendant to the formulation of the notion
of a false judgment, the content of falseness has to be nominalistically
severed from the articulation of the judgmentwith the presuppositions
of statement and utterance in each case closely matching (or duplicating)
the logical requisites of sentential coherence. By blocking out contact
with and reference to an external world, nominalism enables meaning and
reference to be distributed across sentences in a thoroughly insular, circular fashion. What we need by way of background theoretical assumption
and presupposition to make a particular component of a sentence work is
nominalistically supplied. If circularity appeared first as a problemwe
couldnt get our sentences to work as we read back the fractured results of
the requirements of consistency into the presuppositions and theoretical
backgrounds of the words and phrases going to compose our sentences
then nominalism provides us with a key to transform circularity into a
solution for its own problem by insulating the requirements of sentential
consistency and coherence from the constraints exerted by the external
world and from the other constituent elements in our sentences. We can
now apportion assumptions and presuppositions and implications
governed exclusively by the requirements of reflexivity undisturbed by
considerations of what the world is supposed to be like and what the other
components of our sentences appear to presume.
Platos philosophy of tacit knowledge can be understood on one
level as a response to his awareness of how nominalism in philosophy
facilitates a creative use of circularity. Establishing non-overlapping and
non-interfering meaning and reference quotients for the various segments
or phases of sentences is such a complex and delicate task that for the most

40 Aryeh Botwinick

part we need to see it as already embedded and submerged in linguistic

usage and practice rather than something than can be (or needs to be)
systematically plotted. The Theaetetus alerts us to another stratum among
the non-fully-rationalizable elements that are subsumed under the term
tacit knowledge: the drastically severed sense and reference of key sentential terms or phrases whose uninterrupted flow engenders dilemmas of
reflexivity. Tacit knowledge therefore in the Theaetetus (and the paradox
of knowledge in the Meno, which forms part of the case for tacit knowledge18) constitutes part of the alchemy whereby circularity as problem gets
transmuted into circularity as solution.
There are two tiers left to Platos argument in the Theaetetus that
strengthen the argument concerning the pervasiveness of circularity and its
transformation from problem to solution through the nominalistic strategies I have outlined. Theaetetus had defined knowledge as true judgment
with an account.19 According to this approach, true judgment without
an account falls outside of knowledge.20 Since the primary elements
in any judgment can only be brutely, nominalistically given, they have
no account and can only be named but cannot be known.21 Socrates goes
on to attack what he claims looks like the subtlest point of allthat the
elements are unknowable and the complexes knowable.22 He points out
how arbitrary the whole matter of individuation is; whether something is
regarded as single and without parts or composed of many parts is more a
matter of nominalistic stipulation than anything else.
Socrates: Now, my friend, a little while ago, if you remember, we were
inclined to accept a certain proposition which we thought put the matter
very wellI mean the statement that no account can be given of the
primaries of which other things are constituted, because each of them is
itself incomposite; and that it would be incorrect to apply even the term
being to it when we spoke of it or the term this because these terms
signify different and alien things; and that is the reason why a primary is
an unaccountable and unknowable thing. Do you remember?
18. For a discussion of the Meno, see my book Skepticism and Political Participation
(Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1990), pp. 7071.
19.Plato, Theaetetus, 201d; p. 338.
20.Ibid.
21. Ibid., 202a202b; p. 339.
22. Ibid., 202d202e; p. 340.

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 41

Theaetetus: I remember.
Socrates: And is that the reason also why it is single in form and indivisible in parts or is there some other reason for that? I can see no other
myself.
Theaetetus: No, there really doesnt seem to be any other.
Socrates: And hasnt the complex now fallen into the same class as the
primary, seeing it has no parts and is a single form?
Theaetetus: Yes, it certainly has.
Socrates: Well now, if the complex is both many elements and a whole,
with them as its parts, then both complexes and elements are equally
capable of being known and expressed, since all the parts turned out to
be the same thing as the whole.
Theaetetus: Yes, surely.
Socrates: But if, on the other hand, the complex is single and without
parts, then complexes and elements are equally unaccountable and
unknowableboth of them for the same reason.23

The way to resolve this dilemma is to openly acknowledge and

embrace the presence of circularity: Certain elements in verbal-conceptual
complexes are designated as primary, while other elements are taken to be
complex even though the classification of the first as single and without
parts and the second as multiple and consisting of many parts remains
fundamentally arbitrary. Through nominalistic stipulation we render
the division into these two categories immune from any hypothetical
real-world constraintsand ensure that whatever constraints might hypothetically exist are predicated upon this divisionrather than the other
way around. Protocols of tacit knowledge reinforce and transmit these
habits of individuation through mechanisms of ordinary speech.
In an effort to escape the pervasiveness of circularity, Socrates proposes one last revision in his definition of knowledge. He says that If a
man with correct judgment about any one of the things that are grasps in
addition its difference from the rest, he has become a knower of the thing
he was a judger of before.24 Socrates condemns this expanded definition,
as well, on grounds of circularity. He says that if under this altered definition we are required to get to know the differentness, not merely judge
23. Ibid., 205c205e; p. 344.
24. Ibid., 208e; p. 348.

42 Aryeh Botwinick

it, this most splendid of our accounts of knowledge turns out to be a very
amusing affair. For getting to know of course is acquiring knowledge, isnt
it?
Theaetetus: Yes.
Socrates: So, it seems, the answer to the question what is knowledge? will be correct judgment accompanied by knowledge of the
differentness...
Theaetetus: Apparently so.
Socrates: And it is surely just silly to tell us, when we are trying to
discover what knowledge is, that it is correct judgment accompanied
by knowledge, whether of differentness or of anything else? And so,
Theaetetus, knowledge is neither perception nor true judgment, nor an
account added to true judgment.
Theaetetus: It seems not.25

The Socratic inquiry terminates with the circular notion that knowledge depends upon knowledge that can either be interpreted in a minimalist
way as suggesting whether we focus our analysis on immediate perception
or shift it to a preoccupation with mind-ordained categories we cannot
avoid circularity or in a more maximalist way as affirming that circularity
deliberately applied via the medium of a nominalist metaphysics resolves
dilemmas associated with both reflexivity and circularity by dramatizing
as keenly as possible that there is no alternative to circularity, so that circularity can only be regarded as virtuous.
The Theaetetus is unusual among Platos dialogues for its biographical musings. Socrates tries to fix for Theaetetus the nature and limits of his
personality. The supreme metaphor that he adoptswhose ramifications
he discusses fullyis that of the midwife.
Socrates: Then do you mean to say you have never heard about my
being the son of a good hefty midwife, Phaenarete?
Theaetetus: Oh, yes, Ive heard that before.
Socrates: And havent you ever been told that I practice the same art
myself?
Theaetetus: No, I certainly havent.
25. Ibid., 209e210b; p. 350.

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 43

Socrates: But I do, believe me. Only dont give me away to the rest of
the world will you? You see, my friend, it is a secret that I have this art.
That is not one of the things you hear people saying about me, because
they dont know; but they do say that I am a very odd sort of a person,
always causing people to get into difficulties. You must have heard that
surely?
Theaetetus: Yes, I have.
...
Socrates: I mean that it is the midwives who can tell better than anyone
else whether women are pregnant or not.
...
Socrates: Theres another thing too. Have you noticed this about them,
that they are the cleverest of matchmakers, because they are marvelously
knowing about the kind of couples whose marriage will produce the best
children?
...
Socrates: So the work of the midwives is a highly important one; but
it is not so important as my own performance. And for this reason, that
there is not in midwifery the further complication, that the patients are
sometimes delivered of phantoms and sometimes of realities and that
the two are hard to distinguish. If there were, then the midwifes greatest and noblest function would be to distinguish the true from the false
offspringdont you agree?
Theaetetus: Yes, I do.
Socrates: Now my art of midwifery is like theirs in most respects. The
difference is that I attend men and not women, and that I watch over the
labor of their souls, not of their bodies. And the most important thing
about my art is the ability to apply all possible tests to the offspring, to
determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that
is, an error, or a fertile truth. For one thing which I have in common with
the ordinary midwives is that I myself am barren of wisdom. The common reproach against me is that I am always asking questions of other
people but never express my own views about anything, because there
is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough. And the reason of it is this,
that God compels me to attend the travail of others, but has forbidden me
to procreate. So that I am not in any sense a wise man; I cannot claim
as the child of my own soul any discovery worth the name of wisdom.
But with those who associate with me it is different. At first some of
them may give the impression of being ignorant and stupid; but as time

44 Aryeh Botwinick

goes on and our association continues, all whom God permits are seen to
make progressa progress which is amazing both to other people and to
themselves. And yet it is clear that this is not due to anything they have
learnt from me; it is that they discover within themselves a multitude of
beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light. But it is I, with
Gods help, who deliver them of this offspring.
...
Socrates: There is another point also in which those who associate with
me are like women in childbirth. They suffer the pains of labor, and
are filled day and night with distress; indeed they suffer far more than
women. And this pain my art is able to bring on, and also to allay.26

I believe that we are presented in the Theaetetus with a central connection that is integral to the design and justification of liberal democracy.
Philosophical thought beginning at either endthe particular and perceived or the general and imposedeventuates either in incoherence or in
a radical adjustment of our expectations with regard to the rationality of
arguments. Whether we start with what we see or with what makes sense
to us to invoke as the organizing framework for our perceptions, we are
not able to bring our analytical apparati into harmony with our judgmental
and decision-making practices. The gap between how we reason on a secondary philosophical level and how we judge on a primary practical level
can only be closed by assigning a central role to circularity in reshaping
our premises in the light of the directions and ends of action we wish to
pursue.
Given the limitations of our argumentative condition, the appropriate organization of human life consists in a preoccupation with process.
The quintessentially human moments are associated with movement,
with fashioning the new, with giving birth. The common thread running
through Socrates self-description and self-presentation is that his powers
are largely defined in negative terms. He is not able to attain truth but he
can perform the much more humble task of helping his interlocutors to
distinguish between phantoms and realityto be able to reject un
or non truth. He can point to logical fallacy and expose the weaknesses
of argumentseven if he cannot arrive at truth. Socrates himself is barren of wisdom. He can only nudge others onto deeper levels of critical
awareness and onto more refined and self-aware reformulations of their
26. Ibid., 149a151a; pp. 26871.

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 45

positions. The progress some of his dialogue partners make is not due
to anything they have learnt from him. He merely gets them to see more
clearly who they arewhat is already within them. Intellectual growth
is defined negatively in terms of the losses it exacts from those devoted
to itas labor, rather than in terms of the fulfillment of some positive
goal. The cultivation of midwifery is a function of the tongue-tiedness
of thought. The tongue-tiedness of thought in turn (as the Theaetetus
makes clear) is a function of certain logical-linguistic constraintsand is
not just a matter of Socrates verbal aggression against his interlocutors.
After the beginningthe articulation of new possibilitiesthere are
endless deflections, distractions, reconsiderations, and reformulations that
restore us to some point in the middle (poised for a new beginning) instead
of the end glimpsed in the first crystallization of the beginning. Since the
return to beginnings is everlasting, the appropriatethe definingphilosophical emotion becomes wonder: This is where philosophy begins and
nowhere else.27 Wonder is preeminently the emotion that defines our
attitude toward beginnings. To be in a position to initiate things again and
again is a primal source of human wonder.
Rawls
One of the most interesting features of John Rawlss A Theory of Justice is
his open, emphatic embrace of circularity as a virtue. Rawls, in following
the model of the classical modern social contract writers from Hobbes
to Kant, seeks to theorize the principles of justice from the hypothetical
vantage point of an original position, with deliberators operating under
the constraint of a veil of ignorance to decide upon or reconstruct the
basic structure of political societywhat the classical writers called the
social contract. In this deliberative setting, with choosers deprived of a
thick conception of their personal identity and of certain knowledge of
their socioeconomic terminus point in the fully developed political society, individual members of society hypothetically choose the governing
principles that would determine the basic structure of political society,
motivated only by the self-interest encapsulated in their thin sense of personal identity and their large-scale ignorance concerning how they would
eventually fare in the social and economic lottery of life. The thick sense
of personal identity would include such information as whether one was
27. Ibid., 155d; p. 277.

46 Aryeh Botwinick

born the grandson or granddaughter of David Rockefelleror the child of

a single, working mother in North Philadelphia; whether one had musical talent, mathematical talent, or entrepreneurial talent; whether one was
socially gregarious or abnormally shyor fell somewhere in between
these extremes. The thin conception of personal identity to which the
deliberators in the original position are privy incorporates their attachment
to what Rawls calls primary goods, since these goods include the things
that every rational man is presumed to want.28 According to Rawls, the
chief primary goods are rights, liberties, and opportunities, and income
and wealth,...[and] self-respect.29 What makes these goods primary for
Rawls is that they normally have a use whatever a persons rational plan
of life.30
The confluence of these two factorspossessing a thin conception of
personal identity that integrates attachment to primary goods and ones
overall ignorance concerning his/her socioeconomic location in society
is supposed to ensure that one will deliberate concerning the basic structure
of political society in a self-interested yet neutral way. One will want to
nurture and protect his/her attachment to primary goods, but given the
pervasive ignorance of the hypothetical deliberators concerning socioeconomic distributional outcomes as well as what their aptitudes and talents
might or might not be, one will have a vested interest to devise safety
nets to protect the least advantaged members of society,31 lest one find
himself/herself among their number.
In an early section of A Theory of Justice where Rawls addresses the
question of The Original Position and Justification (section four), he
describes the method he has pursued in arriving at his two principles of
justice as fairness (the principles chosen by the hypothetical deliberators
in the hypothetical original position)32 as reflective equilibrium. Rawls
28. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999),
p.54.
29.Ibid.
30.Ibid.
31. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia UP, 1996), p.6.
32. In his final statement of the two principles of justice for institutions, Rawls
says: First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total
system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. Second
Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a)
to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle,
[which is a principle of inter-generational justice] and (b) attached to offices and positions

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 47

theorizes reflective equilibrium in an unabashedly circular way: By

going back and forth, sometimes altering the conditions of the contractual
circumstances, at others withdrawing our judgments and conforming them
to principle, I assume that eventually we shall find a description of the
initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted.
This state of affairs I refer to as reflective equilibrium.33 In determining
the constraints on choice in the original position under a veil of ignorance,
Rawls acknowledges that it is a matter of adjusting those constraints and
the principles that they yield in relation to the individual judgments that are
rendered under their headingand the converse movement of adjusting
the individual judgments in the light of the principlesuntil the moment
of optimal equilibrium (of mutual adjustment of constraints, principles,
and judgments) is reached in which one is able to accommodate within
one scheme both reasonable philosophical conditions on principles as well
as our considered judgments of justice.34
Lest one think that the recourse to circularity is a quirk or limitation
of moral and political theorizingand that other areas of philosophy fare
better and rest on a more secure footingRawls in a significant footnote
says that the process of mutual adjustment of principles and considered
judgments is not peculiar to moral philosophyand refers the reader
to Nelson Goodmans Fact, Fiction, and Forecast for parallel remarks
concerning the justification of the principles of deductive and inductive
open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (Rawls, A Theory of Justice,
rev. ed., p.266). Principle 2a Rawls calls the difference principle. He theorizes the just
savings principle (the rider attached to the difference principle) as follows: Thus imagining themselves [the hypothetical deliberators in the original position] to be fathers, say,
they are to ascertain how much they should set aside for their sons and grandsons by noting
what they would believe themselves entitled to claim of their fathers and grandfathers.
When they arrive at the estimate that seems fair from both sides, with due allowance made
for the improvement in circumstances, then the fair rate (or range of rates) for that stage
is specified. Once this is done for all stages, the just savings principle is defined (ibid.,
p.256). Due to the claims of inter-generational justiceso that each generation submits its
material, social, and intellectual inheritance intact to the next generationsavings can be
justly set aside by members (including the most advantaged) of each generationwhich
places a limit on the amount of wealth that can be diffused downward in any given generation in order to remedy the inequalities affecting the least advantaged members of society.
33.Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed., p. 18.
34. Ibid., p. 19.

48 Aryeh Botwinick

inference35that is to say, the basic structures of argument in which

philosophical discourse in all areas of philosophy is worked out and communicated. Let us turn briefly to Goodmans arguments in Fact, Fiction,
and Forecast to get a better sense of where the inspirations and sources of
Rawlss argument come fromand in order to set the stage for considering the larger question of what the political implications of Rawlss and
Goodmans joint understanding of the limitations of reason might be.
Goodman distinguishes between The Old Problem of Induction and
The New Riddle of Induction. The Old Problem of Induction was the
one diagnosed by David Hume, that inductive generalizations are neither
reports of experience nor logical consequences of it.36 A prediction of
a future event based upon past observed regularities is obviously a leap
beyond a straightforward act of reportage of those regularities or of the
individual events constituting them. The prediction also cannot be sanctioned on the basis of a sheer logical inference from those regularities. As
Hume famously argued, There are no necessary connections of matters of
fact.37 The Old Problem of Induction was how to resolve the basis(es)
of inductive inference and generalization. The New Riddle of Induction
grows out of Humes resolutionor, more properly speaking, dissolutionof The Old Problem of Induction. Hume invokes mechanisms of
association, projection, and habit to account for inductive inference. When
certain events have regularly followed upon the heels of other events in the
course of our experience, the mind expects them in the future also to succeed upon each other and projects outward a necessary relation between
them and develops the habit of always expecting them to be conjoined
with each other.
A major difficulty with Humes resolution of The Old Problem of
Induction is that Hume has given us what looks like a plausible account
of the origins of inductive judgment without having in any way validated
or justified it. The New Riddle of Induction consists (at least to some
extent) in figuring out how to read Humes account of the origins of
inductive judgment as a validation or justification of it. How can Humes
narrative concerning the naturalistic series of stages through which inductive judgment arises be understood as providing us with the utmost that
35. Ibid., p. 18n7.
36.Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1965), p. 59.
37.Ibid.

Liberal Democracy, Negative Theory, and Circularity 49

philosophic justification of induction can provide? This is the juncture at

which Goodmans circular theorizing of both induction and deduction to
which Rawls refers comes into play.
The upshot of Goodmans openly circular approach to induction is
that Humes account of how we come to make inductive inferences is the
furthest we can travel along the road of justifying induction. In Goodmans virtuously circular reading of induction, the ises of how we in fact
draw these inferences as determined by the ongoing mutual correlation
between the general rules of induction and the inductive inferences that
we make secretes and confirms its own series of oughts concerning
how these judgments should be made. From this perspective, when Hume
offers us what looks like a psychologistic account of how we come to
make the inductive inferences that we do, he is not guilty of a category
mistake (confusing questions of origin with questions of justification) but
is implicitly situating philosophical analysis in the direction of registering
how a persuasive account of the is of inductive inference constitutes
simultaneously the outward perimeter for registering the ought-ness of
such judgmentsanswering to the question of why they are normative for
us. From Goodmans perspective, Hume in presenting his genetic account
of induction as a response to the problem of justifying induction is as assuredly flagging the issue of the inevitability of circularity as is Goodman
himself when he speaks about the need for mutual adjustment between the
general rules of induction and inductive judgments. In Goodmans words:
[Hume] in dealing with the question how normally accepted inductive
judgments are made...was in fact dealing with the question of inductive
validity....The problem of justifying induction is not something over and
above the problem of describing or defining valid induction.38
A good deal of the philosophical criticism that was directed against
Rawls in the 1970s was that his argument was viciously circular (with
the implication that it was possible to transcend circularity).39 I have
been arguing that perhaps the most charitable and fruitful way to make
sense of Rawlss argument is from the perspective of the inevitability of
38. Ibid., pp. 64, 65, and 65n2.
39. See, for example, Thomas Nagel, Review of John Rawls, A Theory of Justice,
Philosophical Review 82 (1973): 22034; Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1977), pp.15083; Gerald Dworkin, Non-Neutral Principles,
Journal of Philosophy 71 (1974): 491506; Adina Schwartz, Moral Neutrality and Primary Goods, Ethics 83 (1973): 294307. I have discussed some of these earlier criticisms
of Rawls in my book Postmodernism and Democratic Theory, pp. 3850.

50 Aryeh Botwinick

circularitywhich confers the deepest and most poignant justification

possible upon the principles and institutions of liberal democracy without
restricting them to a permanent substantive content. From the perspective
that I am advancing here, instead of (as Nagel, Dworkin, and others have
argued) circularity being seen as a key vulnerability of Rawlss argument,
it now looms as the strongest factor that can be cited in its favor.