Scepticism in Public Life

Postmodern theorists have encouraged us to be highly sceptical of the motives of institutional authority, and the virtues of such an attitude in public life will now be considered. Scepticism is a long-running and well-respected part of the Western philosophical tradition, developed in the first instance in classical Greek culture, and it has functioned very effectively within that tradition over the years as a form of internal critique, checking the more outlandish claims made by the philosophical fraternity. To be sceptical is to be explicitly anti-authoritarian in outlook, and thus to foster radical, and ongoing, assessment of belief systems and received wisdom – in short, the dominant ideology of the time. The various areas of public life where such an exercise would be very valuable indeed in the current climate will now be explored, with reference to politics and the financial sector in particular. There is a general lack of sceptical attitudes in these areas, where a fundamentalist mindset is so often in operation instead (reinforced by group-think), and their absence is to be deplored. All systems benefit from an internal critique, and where this is absent the system in question can all too easily close in on itself and lose touch with changes in the wider world, as well as with how it is perceived there, to its ultimate detriment: