Philosophy as the great naïveté

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Jason Stanleyinterviewed by Richard Marshall.

Jason Stanley is a multi-groove philosopher at Rutgers. He translated some Fregewith Richard Heck. He wrote a cool book Knowledge and Practical Interestsand last year a brain-boning book Know Howthat lames the virtue epistemology and ethics tradition started way back with the Ancient Greeks. He thinks philosophy is perpetual crisis. For many he is to philosophy what Ocarina of Timeis to video games.

3:AM:You have strong views about philosophy in general, in particular the public perception of its place in the academic curriculum. You wrote a piece ‘The Crisis of Philosophy’where you said that in America at least the place of philosophy in the humantities was unclear. You’ve been engaged in a number of high profile defences of the subject, from the New York Timesto the rousing debatewith Carlin Romano. Can you say why you think there’s a suspicion of philosophy, and a kind of crisis and why you defend the important place of philosophy in our culture?

Jason Stanley:There has always been a suspicion of philosophy, dating back to Socrates. The talk of “crisis” falsely suggests that there is something new about the issue of the relevance of philosophical work. Hannah Arendtis right when she describes as unavoidable the question, “How can anything relevant for the world we live in arise out of so resultless an enterprise?” There is also no new crisis in the discipline. Philosophy itself is and ought to be in continual crisis.

There are areas of philosophy that have obvious relevance for the world we live in. For example, it’s obvious that Doug Husak’s work has extrinsic value – he uses philosophical reasoning to criticize the prison industrial complex, the great moral failing of our country. But ethics and philosophy of law are not my areas. I have spent my life thinking about knowledge, representation, and intelligent action, and I hold out the perhaps naïve hope that a greater understanding of the capacities that make humans distinctive in the world will end up having relevance beyond simply an expanded self-understanding.

I’m also engaging in philosophy when I write about the value of philosophy. There is a grand tradition of skepticism about my field – Humeand even more clearly Nietzschzecome to mind. It’s sad that there are no current sophisticated defenders of that tradition with whom to engage, because it’s healthy for philosophers to be forced to defend the worldly relevance of what they are doing. The fact that I work on questions that do not have obviousextrinsic value makes the intellectual challenge more formidable. But I think that my philosophical work is better because I take this intellectual challenge seriously.

That said, I do think the estrangement between philosophy and our fellow humanities takes a particular form right now. There has been genuine progress in neighboring areas in the humanities. The progress has come through the realization of how much of the traditional humanities was done from a specific empowered, privileged perspective, either a white European male perspective, or from the perspective of the state and not its inhabitants, and the realization of how taking such a perspective skewed the work. Think, for example, of the time in the 1960s when it became clear to historians, via belated recognition of the work of Du Bois, that historical research on the Reconstruction era in the south was largely inaccurate, and the inaccuracies were due to underlying racial biases of the historians. In almost every humanities discipline, there are examples like this – cases in which it was realized that biased perspectives resulted in shoddy and inaccurate work or scholarship. The recognition of the pervasive nature of implicit (or explicit) bias in perspective, and the recognition that such bias impedes truth-seeking enterprises was an important moment in intellectual culture. But it left the discipline of philosophy relatively untouched. That has created an even wider than usual gulf between the rest of the humanities and philosophy.

Finally, as I emphasized in my Inside Higher Educationpiece, there is an additional difference between philosophy and the humanities, one that is less profound but nevertheless equally divisive. Our fellow humanists write aboutnovelists and artists and musicians. In contrast, the intellectual life of most philosophers is closer to that of novelists and artists and musicians than people who study novelists and artists. There is great naïveté in the ambition to write the great American novel, naïveté that is mirrored in the ambition to solve some of the long-standing philosophical questions once and for all. It’s utterly natural to view someone who is trying to write the great American novel, or is trying to explain once and for all how autonomous action is possible, as not only naïve but also ignorant (of the greatest of Melville, or the greatness of Kant). So there really is a cultural divide between the vast majority of humanists and the majority of philosophers.

3:AM:One of the things that will support your defence of philosophy is getting more people to see what you and your peers are doing. It’s sometimes difficult for those outside the discipline to get a grip on the geography of what’s going on that’s important at the moment. Eric Schwitzgebel‘s just posted on his blogabout how there can be philosophy of more or less anything, even dating, which kind of makes the point about how difficult it is to know where to look. Philosophy of language is perhaps where you are best situated so perhaps you could give a broad outline of what the main issues are in that domain at the moment. I love your comment about your piece on philosophy of language in the 20th Century for Routledgewhere you say, “I attempt to summarize philosophy of language in the Twentieth Century. It’s a completely absurd task, and I fail miserably.” We’ll take another failure if its as good as that one!

JS:Let me begin by responding to your points about the relative accessibility of philosophical work. Even topics the significance of which is obvious to the lay public involve arguments that will stretch the patience of the lay public. For example, the significance of the topic of consciousness is very easy for the lay public to understand. But the best work on even this topic involves stretches of reasoning that are dauntingly complex. The conclusions David Chalmers’ draws from his views are accessible and sexy to the public. But the views of content he has that support these conclusions are deep, complex, and subtle. They are certainly not accessible to the lay public. It’s the arguments he gives that make him a great philosopher, rather than the accessibility of his conclusions.

As Peter Ludlowemphasized in his comments at the Philosophical Progress conference at Harvard, philosophers need to introduce terminology that may not have pre-established usage. A successful definition carves up conceptual space the right way. This makes philosophical work, like mathematical work, terminologically heavy. Mathematical progress depends in part on arriving at the right sort of definitions – what Fregein The Foundations of Arithmeticcalled “fruitful definitions” (the example Frege gives is that of the continuity of a function). Philosophical progress is no different. Both mathematics and philosophy are difficult to access, because they are terminology heavy in similar ways.

Philosophy of language is particularly close to mathematics in this regard, because of how close it is to mathematical logic. As I emphasized in my piece on philosophy of language in the 20th century, philosophy of language has made so many advances because of the advances in logic in the late 19th and early 20th century. Developments in logic, and in particular model-theoretic semantics, gave impetus to the discipline, and its sibling empirical discipline in linguistics, formal semantics. Right now, there is a large body of researchers sprawled across philosophy, linguistics, and computer science (and perhaps psychology as well) working on similar topics. For example, if you take Rutgers as an example, the leading program in philosophy of language in the world, you see that our semantics research group has active faculty members in linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. I would describe the principal goal of all of our work, as with my own research in the philosophy of language, to be devoted to figuring out how much of linguistic interpretation is due to convention, and how much is due to general knowledge about the world.

There was a trend in the philosophy of language starting in the 1970s to argue that what appeared to be due to linguistic conventions was in fact due to knowledge about the world and general reasoning. Probably, this divorced philosophical work on linguistic representation from thought about representation elsewhere in the humanities, where theorists were looking for symbol-like representational systems everywhere. Philosophy of language instead was devoted to emphasizing how little conventionality played a role in linguistic communication. As I have also pointed out in the essay you mention, this was the result of quite accidental sociological features of the discipline – because of the titanic influence of Saul Kripke’s work, in the 1970s and the 1980s the focus of the discipline was on defending the view that proper names that had the same reference, such as “Mark Twain” and “Samuel Clemens”, had the same conventional meaning. A lot of energy in the discipline was devoted to defending this thesis. There was interesting work done here, but also some stagnation. There was a sort of template for writing a philosophy of language paper for several decades – start with an interesting phenomenon that seems to reveal complex conventionality (like the difference in meaning between “Mark Twain” and “Samuel Clemens”, or the fact that “Every beer is in the fridge” can convey different things in different contexts), and argue that really the symbol system itself gives us very little guidance in interpretation. This really isolated the philosophy of language from many disciplines – both the humanities at large, and linguistic semantics, and even formal pragmatics in linguistics, where people were interested precisely in investigating the special features of the symbolic system.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, a group of philosophers of language with training in linguistics started to reverse the trend, and focus on the special, quirky properties of symbolic systems. As a result, philosophy of language has emerged from its relative isolation. Because the focus in philosophy of language was for so long on arguing what the symbolic system didn’tdo, there was a lot of catching up to do. A lot of the interesting topics and developments, such as research into the meaning of questions, had moved into linguistic semantics, where it was a bit divorced from philosophical concerns. Now, there is a great deal of excitement in the field, as people have realized that there is so much more complexity to linguistic meaning that we had realized. Philosophers such as Elizabeth Camphave started to see that there is a case to be made that phenomena that seemed obviouslynot conventional in nature, such as sarcasm, might be conventional after all. The discovery by Andy Egan, John Hawthorne, and Brian Weathersonthat epistemic modals – terms like “might” as they occur in a sentence like “It might be raining outside now” (said by someone ignorant of the weather) – behave in ways very different than standard models of meaning would predict have led to the thought that a new model of meaning might be required. Motivated by the complex properties of very simple words, philosophers and linguistic semanticists have started to formulate new theories of content, giving new life to old programs such as expressivism. So it’s a very exciting time in the philosophy of language, and has been for about a dozen years.

For a long time, philosophers of language had thought that there was nothing foundational to be learned anymore from detailed work on particular constructions in language. We have now learned that this is false. Thinking intensely about the meaning of words like “might” or “if”, or the relation between the meaning of questions and declarative sentences, has led to really interesting discoveries. We are at the beginning, rather than at the end, of inquiry into the complex properties of the distinctive representational system that is natural language.

3:AM:Now one of the subjects that you keep returning to is Ryle’s distinction between knowing that and knowing how. Before you tell us about your argument which I believe is to say that knowing how is a species of knowing that, can you say what’s at stake here. I think sometimes one of the problems for outsiders is that they don’t pick up on the large and important issues that the detailed arguments are then engaged in sorting out.

JS:There are two ways to look at my new book. The first is that I am using a defense of thesis that knowing how to do something is knowledge of a truth to shed light on the notion of knowledge. The second is that I am using a defense of the thesis that knowing how to do something is knowledge of a truth to shed light on the nature of knowledge how and related notions such as skill.

Philosophy, and indeed broader intellectual culture, is in the grip of a false conception of factual knowledge, one that is antithetical to much recent work in epistemology. Once one has the correct externalist conception of knowledge, a dichotomy between practical and theoretical knowledge starts to look dubious. To use an example Robert Stalnakersuggested to me, think of my knowledge that the code to an alarm is 17-32-14. I may not be able to tell you what the combination is – I just can type into the alarm pad. The knowledge resides, so to speak, in my fingers. But it’s still propositional knowledge – I know that the code to the alarm is 17-32-14, I just can’t tell you. One reason the conclusions of Know Howmatter is that they free us from a constraining and misleading picture of propositional knowledge.

A second reason the conclusions of Know Howmatter is that they shed light on how much of skilled action is due to learning information about the world. Knowledge how to do something is a large part (or maybe all of) skill. I can only be skilled at basketball if I know how to play basketball. If I am right that knowledge of how to do something amounts to learning a truth, then we learn that skilled action requires learning something about the world. Even if I’m right, the question is open as to how much of the acquisition of a skill is acquiring information about the world. Does knowledge exhaust skill, or is skill knowledge together with something else? What about improvements in skill? Does that amount to additional knowledge about the world? There are a whole set of questions and positions about the notion of skill that are opened up here.

It is of the utmost importance for philosophy to gain greater clarity on what is involved in acquiring a skill, since skill and competence plays such a central role in so many philosophical projects. For example, virtue epistemologists hold that propositional knowledge relies on skills – think of the appeal to competence in the work of, for example, Ernest Sosa. The appeal to skill in Sosa’s work has a reductive character – knowledge requires competence, and competence itself does not presuppose knowledge. It is important that competence does not presuppose knowledge, since competence, for the virtue epistemologist, halts the regress of justification. If knowledge how is propositional knowledge, many if not all versions of virtue epistemology are imperiled.

There are many other uses of the notion of skill in philosophy that will need to be rethought if the conclusions of my book are correct. Philosophers have typically assumed that knowing how and skill are not propositional knowledge states, and used these notions in their theories. Generally, the pattern of argument is to establish some connection between the target notion to be analyzed – be it linguistic understanding, virtue, knowledge, or perception – and knowing how. The assumption that knowing how is a non-propositional state is then brought in to solve some kind of problem, e.g. to halt a regress, or to provide a reductive, non-factual basis for something. There are projects in epistemology, in ethics, in philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language that have this character. In general, if I’m right, all of these philosophical projects have to be rethought.

The topic of the relation between knowing how to do something and factual knowledge is not local to philosophy. It has been picked up by many disciplines. For example, it is a label for a distinction in artificial intelligence, and is thought to mirror a fundamental distinction in cognitive neuroscience, between procedural and declarative knowledge. My book takes up all of these issues. For example, in chapter 7, I argue that the cognitive neuroscientific discussion of declarative knowledge is muddled. And obviously, many disciplines care about the notion of skill. The thesis of my book bears on all of this work.

3:AM:Another area of interest is that of the role of context in making meaning. Your book of essays, Langauge in Contextcontains a treasure trove of your thoughts on this area. Again, though, I wonder if you could just lay out why this is an  important issue outside of philosophy before we look at some of your arguments?

JS:My work in the philosophy of language is devoted to preserving a certain view of linguistic representation. Think of a basic non-linguistic act of communication, such as a tap on the shoulder or a kick under the table. We do not interpret what is communicated by such acts by applying highly specific rules to structured representations. Interpreting such acts does not involve much convention. Instead, we rely on our general knowledge about the world, together with facts about the context in which the act is performed. Prima facie, linguistic communication is different. With linguistic communication, we rely on conventions governing the representations we employ. But there is a lot of reliance on general world knowledge and facts about the context of use even in linguistic communication. So the context-dependence of what is communicated by an utterance of a sentence provides an argument that linguistic communication and non-linguistic communication are not so different after all. The purpose of my work on context is to save the prima facie distinction between linguistic communication and non-linguistic communication, in the face of this kind of challenge. In contrast to non-linguistic communication, I argue that the role knowledge of context plays in linguistic understanding, and production, is limited to a few conventional sources. In short, the goal of this work is to preserve a theoretically significant distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic communication.

All of my philosophical interests coalesce around explaining the properties that make humans distinctive. My work in philosophy of language is part of this project. Sophisticated language use is one of the properties that is distinctive of our species. This strongly suggests that it involves a distinctive kind of representational mechanism. This gives me confidence to pursue the difficult details of accounting for the fact that, like non-linguistic communication, it relies on knowledge of facts about the context of use.

I tend to assume in this work that linguistic communication is distinctive in being the application of highly specific (and conventional) rules to structured representations. I tend to assume, for example, that pictorial representation works differently. But the work of Gabriel Greenberg, now a professor of philosophy at UCLA, has shed some doubt in my mind about the distinctiveness claim. He mounts a good case that at least some kinds of pictorial representation involves many of the same features as linguistic representation.

3:AM:You won a top prize for your book Knowledge and Practical Interests. There you claim that my knowing something is dependent on my practical interests. So knowledge turns out to be dependent on how much it matters! This is counter-intuitive – and so exactly what I want from my philosophers! So could you explain this position and why you argue what you do?

JS:My two books about knowledge are connected. Both take on the distinction between the practical and the theoretical. In my first book, I argue that there isn’t the kind of sharp divide between practical and theoretical reasoning that we learned there was in our introductory philosophy classes (when we, for example, discussed Pascal’s Wager). In my second book, I take on the distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge. Both books are in the service of explaining the value of knowledge by connecting knowledge to action.

My specific argument for the stakes-sensitivity of knowledge, the thesis that whether or not you know something at a time is dependent upon how much the knowledge matters to you at that time, has to do with the connections between knowledge and action. For example, if I am right, then if you know something, you can act on it. But whether you can permissibly act on something depends on what is at stake – whether I can act on my belief that there are nuts in my salad depends upon whether I have a fatal allergy to nuts. It is via the connection to action that knowledge gains its dependence on what is at stake.

I deny that the thesis is counter-intuitive. It’s commonsensical to think that if what’s at issue really matters, you need to do more work in order to know something. Knowing that a country poses a threat to the United States requires a huge amount of investigation, if what is at stake is the decision to go to war.

3:AM:Another area that you have intervened in is that of intention in action. There’s been a lot of recent interest in this subject through the book of Essays on Anscombe’s Intentionlast year. It seems as if you take issue with those philosophers who argue for a notion of direct knowledge/action that is incompatible with causation (i.e. those who move away from Davidson’s interpretation. I guess McDowell is the parade case?). It’s something you write about in a dispute with Jennifer Hornsby, a contributor to Anscombe book, in terms of the phenomenology of meaning. Is that right? This is another of these big issues where the stakes are not always made clear to outsiders. But this dispute seems to be about the scope of a scientific causal explanation in human intention. Those arguing for the idea of a ‘direct’ thing outside the scope of a causal relation almost sound like they’re saying we don’t need science or can’t have a scientific explanation of intention. I always feel a bit lost with this because I’m sure that there’s something I’m really missing here. Can you say what you take the big issue is with this and what your take on it is?

JS:My 2005 debate with Jennifer Hornsbyis but one chapter in my overall project of emphasizing the centrality of factual knowledge, properly understood. Hornsby argues that knowledge of meaning is not factual knowledge, but something else, practical knowledge. I argue, against her, that knowledge of meaning is indeed factual knowledge. Again, the significance of this debate is that it bears on the nature of factual knowledge, and the nature of skill. Knowledge of meaning is just one of the battlegrounds in the larger war about whether factual knowledge is what gives us the capacities that make us distinctively human.

3:AM:I think we can see that you are wrestling with core issues that are not orthogonal to the deep, eternal and traditional philosophical questions. We are living in hugely complex times and troubling ones too. The financial crisis, mass inequality, war, eco doom – there’s a hell of a lot out there that seems we need philosophical thinking. What do you think will be the dominant themes, contributions and discoveries of philosophy in the next decade? Where are your interests going next?

JS: I can’t predict where philosophy is going next. Probably that question has as much to do with accidental sociological features of the discipline than anything else. I have been consistently working on a general picture of knowledge and agency for many years now, and increasingly find myself isolated from the hive mind in philosophy.

I have been working for about twelve years on my book on knowing how – which I started as a joint project with Timothy Williamson. I took time out from this project to write my first book (which, as I’ve said, is related). My own work over the next several years will be devoted to exploring some of the consequences of my work, both within philosophy, for the projects of virtue epistemology and virtue ethics, and also the cognitive sciences. For example, I want to continue the research I started in cognitive neuroscience, and in general track the notion of skill across the various disciplines that study it.

However, I am easily distractible. This is why I have published on so many different topics (of course my extensive project in philosophy of language is not connected to my main work in epistemology and action theory). I expect I will continue to do research on a wide variety of topics not directly related to my central philosophical life project. I’m also interested in certain topics in philosophy of language that relate to politics, such as the nature of propaganda (as in my recent New York Timespiece). I have been thinking a lot lately of how politicians and their handlers use the special features of our symbolic system to manipulate us. It’s an interesting enough topic that I can imagine eventually writing something substantial on it.

3:AM:And finally, are there things outside of philosophy itself – such as the arts, novels and so on, that you find a source of inspiration and help. So has there been something you read that has helped shape your perspective on the issues you brood on?

JS:The issues I brood about and the literature I read when I’m not absorbed in philosophy have exclusively to do with man’s inhumanity to man. I’m not yet sure whether philosophy is my refuge, or where I think I will ultimately find the explanation.

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Culture: “Armutsbetroffen” (Affected by Poverty) at TD Berlin: Theater for a future without poverty

Director Helge Schmidt has taken on a new topic. #armutsbetroffen tells the story of full-time poverty, which makes those affected ill. Friday columnist Janina Lütt also contributed.

By Elena Philipp

[This article posted on 7/8/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.freitag.de/autoren/elena-philipp/armutsbetroffen-am-td-berlin-theater-fuer-eine-zukunft-ohne-armut.]

The costumes of the three actresses are inspired by the Star Trek series, which presents a vision of a just future without poverty.

What is poverty? “When the ice cream truck rings and your child is the only one who doesn’t run over beaming with joy.” When you live in a village and have no social connections because you have no car and no money. Or when the letter from the medical officer says: “The remaining working capacity of the person examined is no longer economically viable.” Poverty affects all aspects of daily life; it means constant stress, permanent deprivation, and it is passed down from generation to generation. Poverty is a full-time job that makes you sick.

Those affected often appear in the independent theater scene as “experts of everyday life.” Their expertise is taken seriously, as they know best about their situation, even without an official job title. Speaking “from poverty,” not about it, is also a concern of the theater production #armutsbetroffen at TD Berlin.

Director Helge Schmidt collaborated on this with authors from a writing project at the University of Duisburg-Essen entitled Alltägliche Armutserfahrungen – Erzählen als politisches Sprechen (Everyday Experiences of Poverty – Narrative as Political Speech). Among the authors is Janina Lütt, who writes in her columns for Freitag about the lack of respect in the debate on universal basic income and malnutrition among children affected by poverty.

Helge Schmidt knew her as a public figure, wrote to her, and Lütt put him in touch with people affected by poverty across the entire spectrum. Contributors include a single mother—often a path to poverty in Germany—a pensioner, and a former high earner who, after a stroke, is now considered “useless human capital.”

The production avoids clichés about poverty

Everyday experiences like hers received widespread attention on Twitter in 2022 under the hashtag #ichbinarmutsbetroffen (I am affected by poverty). Tweets can therefore be found in the play, as well as texts from the Duisburg workshops and excerpts from Janina Lütt’s columns.

Only statistics and meta-analyses are missing, although Helge Schmidt often incorporates sociological and economic perspectives into his research, for example in his documentary play about the Cum-Ex tax scandal or on pharmaceutical profits from cancer drugs. In #armutsbetroffen, he wanted to prevent the autobiographical stories from disappearing behind the numbers, as so often happens in the discussion about poverty.

The production also avoids clichés in the portrayal of poverty in theater, film, and television. “When it comes to poverty, someone is often wearing a ribbed T-shirt and holding a beer can,” summed up scientist and author Francis Seeck, who grew up on welfare and advises theater festivals on classism, in an interview with Zeit Online.

In #armutsbetroffen, the three round carpets on the sparsely furnished stage are official blue, and the curved office lamps are reminiscent of a government office, but there are no other concrete references. There is no dreariness, as was the case in the Kaiserslautern stage version of Christian Barons’ Ein Mann seiner Klasse (A Man of His Class) – a production that walked the fine line “between enlightenment and social pornography,” as the author himself put it. A poor appearance or the sound of domestic violence; nothing could be further from #armutsbetroffen. Lea Kissing’s clearly structured, tidy stage stands rather for the discipline that poverty demands of those affected.

Too busy surviving

Costume designer Sina Brüggeman dresses the three actresses Agnes Decker, Ruth Marie Kröger, and Laura Uhlig in sporty, retro-futuristic outfits inspired by the series Star Trek, which is cited as a vision of a just future without poverty and wealth. Helge Schmidt contrasts the harshness of the lives of those affected by poverty with the humanistic series and sends a message of hope. The focus is on self-told stories based on the genre of auto-sociobiography, on books such as those by Annie Ernaux, Édouard Louis, and Didier Eribon.

Although the texts in #armutsbetroffen reject the socially acceptable accusation of being lazy at the expense of taxpayers, they deal with the hatred and cyberbullying that followed many of those who stepped into the spotlight. But the authors also report on empowerment and self-empowerment. “The hashtag #ichbinarmutsbetroffen (I am affected by poverty) was life-changing,” it says at one point. And one author writes about the power of coming together independently, without the support of, but also without the regulation of, organizations such as Verdi or the Diakonie: “We wanted self-representation by ourselves, for ourselves.”

Janina Lütt also speaks of a “milestone in poverty activism” in the follow-up discussion. When asked about the chances of a project like #armutsbetroffen bringing about structural change in a federal government that is threatening cuts to welfare benefits, Malina, who does not want to give her surname, points to the utopian core of the project. Holger Schoneville, a professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen who co-initiated the writing project, also rejects the idea that those affected by poverty have a duty to act. As Ruth Maria Kröger, speaking on behalf of one of the play’s authors, puts it indignantly: “Why is there no uprising of the poor? Because we are busy surviving.”

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USA: Deadly politics

by Lukas Hermsmeier

[This editorial posted on 7/10/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.woz.ch/2528/usa/toedliche-politik/!V5VC1R64KME7.]

 

The budget package passed last Friday in the US will lead to many deaths in the coming years. Because people will lose their health insurance and can no longer afford treatment. Because hospitals and nursing homes will close, creating increasing care deserts. Because cuts to weather services and disaster response will affect warning systems and emergency response. Because medical laboratories will lack the money for research and diseases will spread more quickly. Because refugees will be deported to countries where their lives are in danger. Because the militarization of the police will be pushed further and further and prisons will be filled. Because the end of development aid threatens the livelihoods of fourteen million people. Because the US Army will have more money at its disposal.

Donald Trump wants us to talk about the “Big Beautiful Bill.” Out of journalistic self-respect alone, we should avoid using this name. Left-wing author and activist Astra Taylor calls it the “Debt, Deportation, and Death Bill,” which more accurately describes the consequences of the legislative package: debt, deportations, and death. When it comes to debt, however, the growing national deficit of several trillion US dollars can easily be ignored. As the world’s reserve currency nation, the US has considerable leeway. The real issue is the social emergencies that this package of laws will cause for generations to come. One only has to consider the abandonment of all climate protection measures while simultaneously unleashing fossil fuel production to understand the irreversible devastation that will result.

 

When Donald Trump entered the political arena in 2015, he set himself apart from the other Republican presidential candidates by condemning America’s “endless wars” and ruling out cuts to the welfare state. His portrayal as the savior of the “little guy” was riddled with hypocrisy from the outset, because he pushed through tax breaks for the rich and simply waged the wars at home: against immigrants, trans people, and anyone who isn’t included in “Make America Great Again.” Ten years later, the populist spectacle has been completely emptied of meaning.

Around 11 million Americans could lose their Medicaid health insurance for the poor as a result of the cuts that have now been decided. The tax breaks continue to benefit primarily top earners and large corporations. The US is directly involved in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and is dropping bombs on Iran and Yemen. Trump is continuing US imperialism; his politics are right-wing class warfare from above. A classic Republican, if you will. Only more fascist, even more anti-democratic.

 

Trump’s program unfolds what Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe has called “necropolitics”: rule over life and death. Some can become doctors, others cannot. Some enjoy the rule of law, others do not. In a country where extreme weather is on the rise while aid infrastructure is being dismantled, not many people are spared from necropolitics. According to the New York Times, last week’s floods in Texas, which killed over a hundred people, might have turned out differently if there had not been extreme government cuts beforehand. While billions upon billions of US dollars are being poured into the deportation regime, important government agencies are understaffed.

“Disaster nationalism” is what Northern Irish author Richard Seymour calls the apocalyptic politics of Trump and other neo-fascists. Disasters are not being counteracted, they are being exploited. More isolation, more surveillance, more repression. Under these circumstances, for many people in the US, one thing will be particularly important between now and the next presidential election in three and a half years: survival.

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Power and its specters: “Through the prism of conspiracy, everything becomes legible again.”

What’s behind it all? An important question, but one that can lead to dangerously simplistic answers, says Donatella Di Cesare. The philosopher explains how belief in conspiracies is linked to feelings of political powerlessness and why she no longer feels free in post-fascist Italy.

[This interview posted on 7/10/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.woz.ch/2528/die-macht-und-ihre-gespenster/durch-das-prisma-des-komplotts-wird-alles-wieder-lesbar.]

“The problem arises when questioning skepticism turns into dogmatic certainty,” says Donatella Di Cesare.

WOZ: Donatella Di Cesare, your book “The Conspiracy in Power” was first published in Italian in 2021. Today, it still reads like a diagnosis of the current situation. Why do more and more people believe in powerful conspiracies, i.e., that there is a reality behind reality?

Donatella Di Cesare: Donatella Di Cesare: I wouldn’t talk about a reality behind reality. It’s more a world behind the world that people refer to: the world has a hidden side, a behind-the-scenes world. This concept is crucial to conspiracy theories: people believe in a secret empire where the strings are pulled, where clandestine activities take place, plans are forged, information is manipulated, and thoughts are controlled. The seat of power lies in the occult intrigues of this hidden world. As if by magic, everything there seems clear and enlightened, everything has a solid foundation and a cause. There, one can leave the global disorder behind. Through the prism of conspiracy, everything suddenly becomes legible again.

The courageous philosopher

Donatella Di Cesare is one of Italy’s most important intellectuals. A professor and author of numerous books on philosophy, but also on pressing contemporary issues, she teaches philosophy at La Sapienza University in Rome. She regularly speaks out in political debates. In a talk show on Italian television in 2023, Di Cesare said that Giorgia Meloni’s agriculture minister spoke like a “governatore neo hitleriano”: like a Gauleiter. The minister sued her for defamation. In May 2024, the lawsuit was dismissed by a Rome criminal court. If convicted, the 69-year-old would have faced a prison sentence.

WOZ: Where does this way of thinking come from?

Donatella Di Cesare: It has a long historical tradition. In my book, I try to reconstruct the “primal scene” in literature. From the vast mass of literary texts, three narratives emerge that have acquired mythological significance in the political imagination. They deal with three conspiracies: the Jewish, the Jesuit, and the Masonic. While the Jesuit conspiracy has exhausted itself, the other two overlap and become the “Jewish-Masonic” conspiracy.

WOZ: Can you name any specific literary texts?

Donatella Di Cesare: One story was penned by Hermann O. F. Goedsche, a former Prussian postal secretary who published the very mediocre novel Biarritz in 1868. It contains a chapter entitled “The Rabbi’s Speech.” This chapter was the convoluted source of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This myth, which triggered and accompanied the Shoah, is still used today to stir up anti-Semitism. I could cite other examples, such as Alexandre Dumas’s Masonic novel “Joseph Balsamo” from 1846/47. In all these stories, the conspiracy always comes from somewhere else. Strangers invade our innermost being: immigrants, migrants, but also bankers, looters, and vagabonds. And behind the scenes, “the Jew” as the stranger of all strangers pulls the strings, hidden, invisible, and intangible, both superhuman and subhuman at the same time.

WOZ: In terms of the history of ideas, would you therefore place the origins of these conspiracy theories in the 19th century, but with lasting consequences for the present?

Donatella Di Cesare: If conspiracy theories were a remnant of the past, they would have to be increasingly exhausted. We see that the opposite is the case. There is an intimate connection between conspiracy and democracy. The keyword “power” can explain this. After the French Revolution, the people were finally sovereign. But where was their power? Previously, it had been concentrated in the body of the king, and now no one knew where to find it again. It seemed temporary and fleeting. The power of the people was the power of no one. This is precisely where Claude Lefort saw the revolutionary aspect of democracy and spoke of a “void in democracy.”

WOZ: What does that mean?

Donatella Di Cesare: There is a lack of foundation, there are divisions, openings: within the democratic community, the people can only declare themselves sovereign in a symbolic sense, not in a substantial and identitarian sense. This means that they cannot occupy the seat of power, which must remain empty. One can understand the amazement of the new democratic citizens faced with this new political form. And one can also understand why this void is filled with all kinds of ghosts. This temptation is greater today than ever before.

WOZ: Why is that?

Donatella Di Cesare: There is no doubt that power today appears increasingly fleeting, omnipresent, networked, and increasingly projected onto the channels of technology and the flows of the economy. It seems to have no center and possibly no direction. It has no face, no name, no place. One senses only its diffuse presence—which further increases uncertainty and suspicion. We infer a cause from the effect. That’s why we feel powerless. We experience this feeling of powerlessness every day. Every evening, we see what’s going on in the world on the news: wars and crises of all kinds. But we have the impression that we can’t change any of it. We are a demos without power, without kratos – in other words, we are no longer a democracy.

WOZ: But if I perceive myself as powerless and then construct a figure who pulls the strings in the background, that doesn’t give me back any power, does it? I remain powerless.

Donatella Di Cesare: I must emphasize that it is usually not just one figure. And there are certainly valid reasons for assuming the existence of this background world. For years, we have been experiencing a hollowing out of democracy. Politics has become nothing more than “governance,” the administration of the economy. In this sense, conspiracy theories are an expression of a diffuse unease. They point to the crisis of democracy. How many broken promises! How many betrayed hopes!

WOZ: But doesn’t democracy actually mean government or “sovereignty of the people”?

Donatella Di Cesare: And yet this sovereign people feels anything but sovereign. Democratic power seems to be slipping away from them. And this is not just a suspicion: democracy often seems completely illusory. Governments change, parties replace each other, but nothing really changes. What remains is the so-called deep state, the institutional power that is able to maintain and perpetuate itself thanks to castes, lobbies, banks, dynasties, and a few media corporations. That’s why I wouldn’t just call it a fantasy.

WOZ: What can be done to counter this dangerous feeling of political powerlessness?

Donatella Di Cesare: I don’t know. What is certainly problematic is the resentment that allows us to wallow in our own powerlessness. It is the new opium of the people. But it only confirms our own political powerlessness. Participation in the democratic process is the way forward. But first we need to think about conspiracy theories as an important sign. All I can say is that resentment prevails precisely where the principle of hope disappears.

WOZ: Can you elaborate on that?

Donatella Di Cesare: Conspiracy theories are neither a mental cramp nor merely a post-truth. Such stigmatization is misleading and ineffective. Recently, an anti-conspiracy movement has emerged that claims sole ownership of the truth and ridicules and delegitimizes theories that it considers deviant, irrational, and dangerous. Such overly simplistic anti-conspiracy thinking runs the risk of further hardening the lines between “official” and “hidden” truth. Basically, we are all conspiracy theorists—we have to admit that. Because when we hear about a new event, we all ask: What’s behind it?

 

WOZ: It’s actually an innocent question.

Donatella Di Cesare: Of course! And it’s an important question. The problem arises when questioning skepticism turns into dogmatic certainty.

WOZ: Let’s continue with the topic of politics: Right-wing politicians are currently benefiting most from the crisis of democracy you mentioned and the feelings of powerlessness that many people are experiencing. Is there a connection between conspiracy theories and the shift to the right?

Donatella Di Cesare: Absolutely. I would put it this way: we are currently experiencing a strong depoliticization. What does depoliticization mean? It means, for example, that we no longer participate in elections, which is a problem in many European countries.

WOZ: Why don’t people vote anymore?

Donatella Di Cesare: It’s just a symptom. The real depoliticization is the loss of the polis, that is, the loss of politics as a political community. Political ties are being lost. In this respect, it is a very dangerous phenomenon. One could even go so far as to say that depoliticization is already a symptom of a new authoritarian regime. We see this new form in Trumpism. We no longer believe in politics and democracy.

WOZ: What do we believe in instead?

Donatella Di Cesare: Well, I believe in politics and democracy. That’s why I try to point out the dangers, and I also want to regain the radical meaning of democracy.

WOZ: That sounds good. Are there any specific political movements you have in mind that are trying to do that?

Donatella Di Cesare: It’s not my job to point out the specific path. Besides, what does “specific” or ‘practical’ mean, and what does “theoretical” mean? I’m a philosopher, not a politician. My job is to think. Thinking is very dangerous, as we know, as Hannah Arendt said. And thinking is more important today than ever.

WOZ: In your book, you write that conspiracies are always constructs of meaning, explanations, simple narratives that name culprits and so on. But for a functioning democracy, we would need more complex meanings.

Donatella Di Cesare: I am talking about the “unreadability of the world.” The world seems to have fallen apart. The thread of the narrative has been broken. All that remains is an intricate web of intrigue that is difficult to unravel. Conspiracy theorists are, in a sense, nostalgic for legibility. They harbor the illusion that they can explain everything. The intrigue of which they see themselves as victims can thus be clarified. That is why they are so attracted to the political strategy of the new right, which points to a simple scapegoat and stokes fear.

WOZ: So you’re saying that the new right is ruling by playing on people’s fears?

Donatella Di Cesare: You could really call it a phobocracy. Power is exercised through phobos, through fear. This is what characterizes the new right’s government. They promise protection they can’t deliver. What’s more, they deliberately stir up fears, fuel hatred, and create enemies. Xenophobia and conspiracy theories are fundamental aspects of the same aversion to the “outside” and the foreign. What is Trump doing? What is Georgia Meloni doing? What is Viktor Orbán doing? They identify a perpetrator who can be considered guilty: Mexicans, transgender people, feminists, migrants. Conspiracy theories are a direct response to the complexity of this world. But instead of finding a solution, people constantly point to a scapegoat. This is a political strategy that is unfortunately gaining ground. We see it every day.

WOZ: Since you mentioned Georgia Meloni, how would you describe her government?

Donatella Di Cesare: For me, Meloni is different from Trump. She comes from the radical Italian right and is a post-fascist in every sense of the word. We have a post-fascist government. At first, this was traumatic for me—and not just for me. Especially in Italy, the country of Mussolini, where fascism was once born, the first post-fascist government in Europe is emerging after a hundred years. I would like to emphasize that first. But at the same time, I have to ask myself: Is Italy like Hungary? I was in Hungary recently and can answer: absolutely not.

 

WOZ: Why not?

Donatella Di Cesare: Because Italy has both a great left-wing tradition and a large left-wing movement. Unfortunately, however, this left wing is not adequately represented.

WOZ: What do you mean by that?

Donatella Di Cesare: I have often spoken of a “diffuse left” lately. I wouldn’t say that Italy is a country that has clearly shifted to the right. There are a lot of people in Italy who are left-wing. There are demonstrations every day. In many cities, there are protests, resistance, demonstrations. Countless numbers. So there is a lot of resistance in Italy. And of course Italy is a divided country, but it always has been. That’s also part of our history. It’s not easy to say whether the left will be represented in government in the future. Because it’s difficult to make good migration policy. We also have a big problem with poverty. We have a high rate of young people leaving the country. At the same time, we have a major demographic problem. So there are all these very complicated issues. And I fear that the wars and this plan to rearm Europe will have major negative consequences in Italy.

WOZ: You yourself have been a victim of the Meloni government (see “The courageous philosopher”). How do you see the situation of intellectuals in Italy today?

Donatella Di Cesare: In recent years, a number of intellectuals in Italy have been prosecuted. One trial after another took place, including mine, that of Luciano Canfora, a historian, that of the writer Roberto Saviano, and others. Since then, it has become more difficult to speak in public, I have to admit. I myself speak very often in public, on television, in public debates. And lately, I have often asked myself: Do I still feel as free as I did before?

WOZ: And what is your answer?

Donatella Di Cesare: I would say no. I no longer feel as free as I did before. And I probably won’t feel free again. I’ve also lost confidence. Nevertheless, I continue to speak out, as do other intellectuals. And almost every day, I say what people don’t want to hear, namely that we have a “post-fascist government.” But of course, I notice that freedom of expression in Italy has been greatly reduced. Everyone feels that way.

WOZ: You recently signed an open letter against the return of fascism. Can you say where you see differences, but also similarities, with historical fascism today?

Donatella Di Cesare: That’s an important question. Unlike other interpreters and political scientists, I am convinced that there is continuity between historical fascism and post-fascism. There are differences, but there are also similarities. I would like to mention just one of them, and that is the attempt to reduce the demos to the ethnos. For me, the main danger of Trump’s America or Meloni’s Italy or Orbán’s Hungary is that democracy is becoming ethnocracy. This means that ethnic boundaries are constantly being emphasized and defended. And that is what we saw in National Socialism and in Mussolini’s fascism. It suffices to mention the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and the Italian racial laws of 1938. This interpretation of the demos as ethnos is the most important connection to historical fascism, and today it is decisive for migration policy and citizenship rights, for example. In Italy, for example, we have a reactionary citizenship law.

WOZ: Can you name another difference?

Donatella Di Cesare: There are many differences. Just look at the historical context, which was completely different. What seems decisive to me is the fact that Meloni’s post-fascism is spreading in a democratic context, which he nevertheless seeks to change.

WOZ: A widespread sentiment today, which is eagerly exploited by the right, is resentment. Why is it so difficult to harness powerful resentment for progressive politics?

Donatella Di Cesare: Of course, resentment could also be “used” for left-wing politics. We feel resentment, for example, when we believe we are victims of injustice. Resentment is a political emotion, and in this sense it is also justified. The difficulty for the left lies in “processing” individual resentment so that it can be elaborated and articulated for a common political project.

WOZ: The right wing processes such resentment into populist politics. In your book, you mention Ernesto Laclau, who, together with Chantal Mouffe, defined populism as an emancipatory force for the left. What is your view on populism?

Donatella Di Cesare: The question of populism is difficult. In Meloni’s view of Italy, there is a direct relationship between the head of government and the people. Why do we need the press? Why do we need intellectuals? It’s me and the people: that’s Meloni’s populist model. But I also agree with Ágnes Heller, the Hungarian philosopher who fought tirelessly against Orbán at the end of her life and analyzed the phenomenon of Orbánism. I would agree with her that Orbánism is not populism, but ethnic sovereignty. Orbán primarily stokes hatred against foreigners and anyone who is “different.”

WOZ: Is there also left-wing populism?

Donatella Di Cesare: To be populist, it is not enough to be close to the people, as is often claimed. We must not forget that populism has a history and manifests itself in different forms, especially in the Latin American context. It is not so much about an ideology as a political style that consists of mobilizing the masses against the elites. Populism can therefore also be left-wing, and above all it can offer an alternative to the prevailing crisis. French political scientist Jacques Rancière was right to use the word “populism” as a label for the crisis of legitimacy in politics. While left-wing populists appeal to the people, to the poorest sections of society, in order to revive their demands, Orbán uses nationalist populist rhetoric. And given the way he and the new right use populism, I prefer to speak of sovereignism or, as I said, ethnonationalism, because I think that is more precise.

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