Bayle and Montaigne on torture

Detail of a memorial stone on the remains

of the gallows of Amerongen, Netherlands.

When Bayle wrote his treatise on tolerance, he seldom referred to other thinkers who had influenced him or whose ideas he used in order to substantiate his stand. However, there is one striking exception: Montaigne. After having read my last blog, I think you’ll not be surprised that Bayle fully rejected a practice that was common and also legal in his days and that was often used in juridical fact-finding examinations: torture. Torture was also used when (religious) authorities like the inquisition wanted to convert or punish heretics. Although generally Bayle is quite comprehensive in his argumentation, not so when he rejects torture. He simply says that torture often makes that accused confess crimes that they haven’t committed, and then he goes on: “Montaigne writes about this very wise: ….”, followed by a long quotation after the colon. Since torture is still practised, legally and illegally, I think that here, too, it is worthwhile to quote Montaigne in full as well:
“The putting men to the rack is a dangerous invention, and seems to be rather a trial of patience than of truth. Both he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals the truth, and he who has not: for why should pain sooner make me confess what really is, than force me to say what is not! And, on the contrary, if he who is not guilty of that whereof he is accused, has the courage to undergo those torments, why should not he who is guilty have the same, so fair a reward as life being in his prospect? … But when all is done, ’tis, in plain truth, a trial full of uncertainty and danger: what would not a man say, what would not a man do, to avoid so intolerable torments? ‘Pain will make even the innocent lie.’ Whence it comes to pass, that him whom the judge has racked that he may not die innocent, he makes him die both innocent and racked.” (Essays, Book II-5). And Bayle adds: “These are really the most terrible effects of the terrible pains that a man, whose limbs are violently stretched out, have to suffer.” (Tolerance II-2).
As said, in Montaigne’s days and a century later when Bayle lived, too, torture was an accepted practice in juridical examinations and also as a means of punishment. Then it was often executed in public. Since torturing is illegal nowadays, so hidden, in most countries, it is difficult for modern man to imagine how cruel it was. You can get an impression by visiting a torture museum or by googling a bit on the internet and looking for torture instruments. It’s unbelievable what kinds of cruel instruments man has developed through the ages (and actually still develops).
Montaigne was nearer to the execution of torture than Bayle. While Bayle was “not more than” a philosopher, for many years Montaigne has worked as a counsellor of the courts (“Parlements”) of Périgueux and Bordeaux. However, he was neither directly involved in this practice, nor has he ordered to torture someone. Montaigne was a kind of examining magistrate and his job was collecting information and evidence for lawsuits. He didn’t pass judgements himself. By the way, Montaigne was not against the death penalty (nor was Bayle), but then he wanted a short and simply execution.
In the essay just quoted (titled “Of conscience”) Montaigne didn’t only demonstrate that torture is pointless and senseless, in an example he also showed that it can be unjust:
“A country-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one of his soldiers that he had taken from her children the little soup meat she had left to nourish them withal, the army having consumed all the rest; but of this proof there was none. The general, after having cautioned the woman to take good heed to what she said, for that she would make herself guilty of a false accusation if she told a lie, and she persisting, he presently caused the soldier’s belly to be ripped up to clear the truth of the fact, and the woman was found to be right. An instructive sentence.”
But what if the country-woman did have lied and the soldier was innocent? It makes me think of another practice that was also not unusual in Montaigne’s time: Women accused of being witches were thrown in a lake. If she remained afloat, she was a witch, and was hanged as yet; if she sank, she was innocent. Too bad that she didn’t survive the test.
From the end of the 18th century on the legal practice of torturing almost disappeared. Also the number of offences punishable by death diminished a lot. While before a simple theft could be punished with the death, since then in most countries the death penalty can be imposed only yet for murder or for serious violation of the public order. In many countries, especially in Europe, torture and death penalty have become illegal, anyway. Nevertheless, illegal torture and illegal death penalties are still widely practised. The recent attempt to murder the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is an example of a failed illegal execution. Or think of Belarus, where arrested demonstrators have been tortured simply because they were protesting against the illegal re-election of “their” president.
I think that everybody will agree that torture is cruel, for otherwise it would not be practised. It is practised just because it is cruel and people cannot withstand the suffering. However, just because of this – to quote Montaigne again –, “[a] thousand and a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions … Are not you [then] unjust, that, not to kill him without cause, do worse than kill him?” But is not the cruelty already reason enough to stop the practice? 

Sources
- Montaigne’s Essays quoted from https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/hazlett-essays-of-montaigne-vol-4#lf0963-04_head_006
- Pierre Bayle: See blog last week.

Tolerance

Pierre Bayle

The modern idea of tolerance goes back to what Baruch de Spinoza and John Locke have written about it. Of course, they had their predecessors, such as Montaigne and the Dutch Renaissance scholar Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert (1522-1590). Less known is Pierre Bayle’s contribution to the development of the idea.
Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was a French Huguenot who had to flee from his country because of his religion. He lived many years in exile in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where he also died. He was one of the leading scholars of the Early Enlightenment. One of his main works was Tolerance. A philosophical commentary (abbreviated title), published in 1686. In this book he developed one of the “three leading tolerance conceptions of his time”, so Buddeberg and Forst (p.21). The work must be seen against the background of the persecution of protestants in roman-catholic countries in the 17th century, especially in France. Before Bayle, Spinoza had already argued for an individual freedom of religion, although the state could order which religion would be publicly practiced within its territory. A few years after Bayle Locke argued for a separation of church and state. Religions should be allowed to organize themselves in voluntary societies and there should be freedom of conscience. The state could interfere only when a religion would question the authority of the state and when a denial of the existence of God would undermine the moral foundations of society. (ibid.) Bayle was more radical and pleaded for freedom of conscience anyway
Bayle’s Tolerance consists of two parts. In part 1 he rejects the arguments based on Augustine’s view that it is allowed to force non-believers with violence to accept the right Christian faith. In part 2 Bayle discusses possible replies to his arguments in part 1. One can summarize Bayle’s argumentation against violent non-tolerance as follows: Violent non-tolerance is either 1) hypocrite, or 2) it is senseless, or 3) it is counterproductive. Let me explain. 

1) Bayle says, for instance: Assume your faith is a minority faith in the country where you live and you are persecuted by the defenders of the main religion (as was the case in the early days of Christianity in the Roman Empire, for example). Or you are sent as a missionary to China, but the Emperor of China chases you away by force. What would you say then? Indeed, your view would be that the rulers have no right to do so and you’ll detest what they do. But what right then do you have to persecute and kill others who don’t accept your faith, when you are the ruler of a country? It’s hypocrite to think that you are allowed to persecute non-believers in case you have the power to do so. You are not allowed to do to others what you don’t want that they do to you.
2) Persecuting those who don’t have your faith is not only hypocrite, often it is also senseless. Assume now that you are persecuted for having a minority religion. For example, you are a Huguenot in France at the end of the 17th century. You are not allowed to have public and many non-public functions any longer. Your possessions are robbed by the state. Many people with your religion are tortured because of their faith and you fear to be tortured, too. You can even be killed because of your faith. What will you do? It’s not unlikely that you’ll think: Let me pretend that I have given up my faith and let me feign that I have accepted the official religion. And so you do and from then on you go to the state church or temple and you do the prescribed rituals. But in your heart you still belief what you always believed. Your conversion is mere appearance. The tries to convert you by force have been senseless.
3) It is also possible, however, that the violent tries to convert non-believers fail and just make that they are strengthened in their belief. Doesn’t the Gospel say already that your faith will be badly received by the world? That’s what you are experiencing now, and you think that your salvation is in the hereafter, not in this world. If non-believers react in such a way, tries to convert them with violence are simply counterproductive. 

These are the main reasons why Bayle pleads for a complete tolerance of all religious views and for freedom of conscience. He wants a tolerance of different and dissenting religious views, anyhow. Actually, there is only one standard for what you believe: your conscience. For what else should decide which religion, view or opinion is true? Who will say which conviction is best? It is absurd to say that there is a criterion to decide this. If you think that such a criterion exists, what actually happens is that the strongest wins and that the arguments of the strongest are seen as best. Then being true and being the strongest are different words for the same. Or, as Bayle also says: We give a beautiful name to what is ours but hold in contempt what belongs to others.
Bayle aimed against religious intolerance, but his arguments are valid against all kinds of intolerance. It makes Bayle one of the founders of the modern idea of tolerance, together with Spinoza and Locke. Although now Bayle is less known than them, his view has certainly been as influential. 

Source
Pierre Bayle, Toleranz. Ein philosophischer Kommentar. Herausgegeben von Eva Buddeberg und Rainer Forst. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2016.
There are several English editions of Bayle’s Tolerance. Just google.

Fake News

Now that Trump has left the White House, an era of fake news has ended. Do you believe it? I don’t. Fake news is of all times. Millenarian movements are a case in point.
If you ask what fake news is, many people will have an answer. Nevertheless, I think that a correct reply to this question is not easy. It’s not simply so that fake news is a message or generally a fact that is said to be true although actually it is false. For example, if in the 13th century someone would have said that the earth revolves around the sun, probably he would have been accused of bringing fake news. Maybe he would even be sentenced to the stake for that view. At least in Europe this could happen. In the 17th century, however, there were already many people who believed that the statement was true, although in some countries it was still dangerous to say so (see what happened to Galileo). Now in the 21th century almost everybody thinks that the statement is true and it is safe to express this view. Nevertheless, people in the 13th century had good reasons to think that it’s not the earth that revolves around the sun, but that’s the other way round. Then (in Europe) the highest authority for truths was the Bible, and hardly anybody called in question what is written in this Holy Book. Today the highest authority is science. This shows that what fake news is, is not only an objective fact but also a social affair.
Here we see that what fake news is, is determined by two factors: Its truth and its relation with other statements that are considered to be true. However, both factors are problematic, for when do we call a statement true? There are several definitions of “true” (or “truth”). The most accepted definition says that a statement is true, if it corresponds to the facts, or, as others say, to the actual state of affairs. But how do we know what the facts are or what is actual? Here we have a problem. In short it is this: In order to know what a fact is, we must now what is true, and in order to know what is true, we must know what the facts are. The circle is round. You might try to solve the problem by developing reliable measures instruments, but even then the question remains when we consider instruments reliable. Another way to solve the problem is saying that the search for truth has a long history and that we must try to relate new statements to the already established facts in order to find out whether they are true. If a new statement coheres with the old truths, it’s probably also true, if it doesn’t it is apparently false. However, does it get us any further? For in medieval Europe what the Bible said was considered true, so seen that way the idea that the sun revolves around the earth was correct. Today we say that it is false.
Gradually I have come to discuss already the second factor just mentioned that determines whether a statement is fake or fact: Its relation with other statements that are considered to be true. This leads us to another theory of truth: A statement is true not if it corresponds to the facts, but if it properly fits with a system of coherent facts that have been accepted on reasonable grounds. However, also this approach is problematic, for also here the question arises what makes us accept a system of coherent facts. Also here the circle is round. Nevertheless, I think that there is an elegant solution of this circularity problem. Actually it combines both views on truth just discussed and it leads to a kind of spiral idea of truth: Karl R. Poppers idea of error elimination. Represented schematically it goes this way:

P1 > T1 > E > T2 > P2.

P1 is a problem we want to discuss. Then we form an idea (statement, theory) how things might be arranged (T1). Next we test the idea with what we consider reliable means, such as an experiment, in order to judge whether it holds. If not, we eliminate the idea as being false. If it holds, we add it to the existing stock of knowledge, which leads to an improved or extended theory (T2). Our knowledge has reached a higher level, so to speak. It has spiralled upward. Now the process can start anew with P2.
So far, so good. For this works for science where we have time, means and money to test statements, but not in daily life where these sources are often scarce. Even so, I think that what I have written here can be used as a guideline to judge what is fake and what is fact, if critically applied. The central questions are: What is the established stock of facts and what does a new view or statement add to it? Can it be fit into the established stock? Does it undermine established facts, and if so do we have reasons to belief that it undermines these facts on good grounds? Actually, this is the only thing the average citizen can do but it is at least something she or he can do in order to distinguish fact from fake. 

Sources
- Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979; p. 164.
- My blog “Why it is good to make a bad plan”, dated 13 July 2015. 

What’s in a name?

Would Hillary Clinton have beaten Donald Trump in the American presidential elections in 2016, if she would have had a less round shaped face? This is what studies on the Kiki-Bouba effect discussed in my blog last week implicitly suggest. For when I searched for information on the Kiki-Bouba effect for that blog, I saw that it is not an isolated phenomenon. It is an effect with social implications. This became clear to me, when I read a research article by David N. Barton and Jamin Halberstadt. It will be the main source for my present blog (see Source below).
Barton and Halberstadt wondered whether there is a connection between a personal name and the kind of face that you think that belongs to that name, or rather what kind of shape the face of a person named so and so should have. Or, the other way round, what kinds of name would best fit persons with round faces or persons with angular faces. In short, the researchers wanted to know whether there is a kind of Kiki-Bouba effect between name and face shape. So should Bob have a round face and Kirk have an angular face?
In order to investigate this question, Barton and Halberstadt selected names that require rounding of the mouth to pronounce like Paul, Bob and George and names that require a more angular shaping of the mouth like Pete, Kirk and Mickey, and they took differently shaped faces (rounded or angular; the researchers used only male names and male faces). Then they combined arbitrarily names and faces or had test persons make name-face combinations. The researchers did several tests such as asking test persons to rank order names in terms of their suitability for ten rounded and ten angular male face caricatures, when the name-face combinations were given; to give the selected names to the faces; etc. The result of the tests was unequivocal and significant: Rounded names should belong to rounded faces and angular names should belong to angular faces. A man with a rounded face should have a name like Paul, Bob or George, and if he had an angular face a good name for him would be Pete, Kirk or Mickey. It is likely that the relationship exists also for female names and female faces.
In view of this result, I am glad that my given name fits the shape of my face. For the connection between name and face is not trivial, but it has social implications. The test persons didn’t only think that name and face should fit, but they also preferred persons with preferred name-face combinations. They liked them more, slightly but consistently. Therefore, Barton and Halberstadt investigated also the political consequences of the name-face relationship. They refer to an article by G. Friedman (2015) that shows “that candidates with extremely well-fitting names won their seats by a larger margin – 10 points – than obtains in most American presidential races, [which] suggests the provocative idea that the relation between perceptual and bodily experience could be a potent source of bias in some circumstances.” Research by the authors themselves shows that “well-named” political candidates who ran for the U.S. Senate between 2000 and 2008 inclusive had an advantage over those with non-congruent names by earning a greater proportion of votes.
In view of all this, Barton and Halberstadt conclude: “People’s names … are not entirely arbitrary labels. Face shapes produce expectations about the names that should denote them, and violations of those expectations carry affective implications, which in turn feed into more complex social judgments, including voting decisions.” Therefore, it is not too bold to say that, if Mrs. Clinton’s given name wouldn’t have been Hillary, but, say, Rose, she would have won the American presidential elections in 2016. So, don’t say anymore “What’s in a name?” 

Source
Barton, David N.; Jamin Halberstadt, “A social Bouba/Kiki effect: A bias for people whose names match their faces”, in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 25 (2018), pp. 1013–1020. Also on website https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-017-1304-x