Een politiek van onzekerheid

Abstract

A politics of uncertainty. The desire for certainty and the capacity to doubt mark a grounding existential difference between people. This article seeks to politicise this 'social distribution of doubt'. Instead of reviving the uninteresting essentialist dichotomy between universalism and relativism, it proposes a judgmental continuum which focuses on mixed motives and gradual differences. This gradualism better accommodates relevant distinctions between, for example, religious fundamentalism, Enlightenment fundamentalism, and various modalities of relativism. Against 'symmetrical' relativism, I venture an affirmative and expansive type of relativism which may introduce a further institutionalisation of social and political doubt. The macho culture of 'normal' politics suffers from a fatal absence of dubiousness, reflection, self-criticism and ironization. In this regard, the current certitudes of the new conservative-liberal right simply mirror the former political arrogance of the left. What is needed is a more equal distribution of the 'means of doubt', which teaches all citizens (and their political representatives] to endure a larger measure of uncertainty.