The demands of piety due to a scholar, argues Raymond Guess, is the uninhibited discussion of her works and approach. Re-reading the biography of the great scientist Michael Polyani, I felt that he would surely be unmoved by any interpretation of Geuss\u2019s view that does not treat courage of conviction as central to the work of a scholar. In this sense, the value of a scholar\u2019s work can not exclusively be evaluated based on the level of its abstraction, its stupendous application of the rules of logic or the sophistication of its method. Keeping Derrida\u2019s lament of an incompetent and irresponsible intellectual with \u201ccourage for the wrong reasons\u201d for another time, the statement that commitment to truth is core evaluative criterion of the worth of an intellectual inquiry ought to carry sufficient truism to pass without comment.<\/p>\n
But commitment to truth is not without consequences. The exogenous risks of truth-seeking are blindingly obvious \u2013 at least since Socrates. In two of her piercing essays \u2013 The Group and My Confession \u2013 both full of narrative vim and vigor, Mary McCarty<\/a> showed how even a radical mind can be susceptible to herd behavior and group conventionalthink enforced in case of dissent, as she said, by a powerful instrument of ex-communication that can not be shielded by feigning complacency. Authoritarianism poses a different risk. It crushes intellectual courage with terror and seduction. In the latter case, intellectuals are made either not to imagine a better alternative or to sell their mind for the highest bidder (The Captive Mind<\/a> and The Mercenary Mind). The orchestra adjusts itself to the falsetto singer, not the other way round. The intellectual tells what power wants to hear; the interests of power are repackaged as \u201cjustice\u201d, \u201cdemocracy\u201d, \u201crule of law\u201d or any other marketable value. Thus, Heidegger writes in service of the F\u00fchrer: \u201cTruth is the revelation of that which makes a people certain, clear, and strong in its knowledge and action.\u201d<\/p>\n Consider how prevalent this Heideggerian tradition is in EPRDF\u2019s Ethiopia: a philosopher<\/a> who proffers his belief in the slogan that \u201cunexamined life is not worth living\u201d, with all its attendant consequences of thought and action, has nothing to say about the injustices of the present regime in a penetrating philosophical interview; a political science professor profanely claims that the Ethiopian political system is more democratic than that of America; a sociology professor<\/a> whitewashes the finding of brave judges that the government was responsible for the post-election killing of civilians by soldiers; artists <\/a>happily cheerlead \u201cdevelopmental art\u201d that is just a manipulative ideological-speak for art as propaganda. Nonetheless, for now at least, the most potent danger to intellectual courage in Ethiopia is not power\u2019s seduction, but terror-induced panic and capitulation. It is the silence, not the pro-authoritarianism noise, which is deafening.<\/p>\n With one exception. Philosopher Dagnachew Assefa<\/a>, a man who writes in firm and judging manner in the great tradition of philosophy, came to the public\u2019s attention days after Birtukan Mideksa\u2019s imprisonment in December 2008. His first article on Addis Neger<\/em> that lampooned the government\u2019s decision to take away the pardon granted to Birtukan in 2007 was one of finest Amharic newspaper commentaries on the relationship between morality and law. He eviscerated the legal justifications given by officials for Birtukan\u2019s arrest, inveighed against the cretinous irresponsibility of their decision, and intuited the hollowness of some rules of law, which lack foundational moral principles without making the claim that the law is applied ethics. One must marvel in how prose and concept are mixed to a devastating effect in this essay. But even more startlingly, this was done during the moment of utterly debilitating climate of fear. Nor was subversion a one-night stand for Dagnachew. In a rejoinder to Getachew Reda\u2019s critique of his article, he published a beautifully written piece, which elaborated and refined his earlier view. Two months later, Dagnachew at his most profound, undertook a thorough philosophical exposition of Birtukan\u2019s Kale(My Word)<\/a> in comparison with MLK\u2019s Letter from Birmingham Jail<\/a> and the Socrates’ defense in Plato\u2019s Apology<\/a>, risking the ire of government officials who had repeatedly warned that \u201ccanonizing criminals\u201d was a crime.<\/p>\n All of Dagnachew\u2019s articles and interviews on Birtukan are rich in history, politics and law. Doing philosophy for him, it seems, is the study of human institutions and history in a reflective way. That is typical of the tradition of the Critical Theory<\/a> of Philosophy. Yet the dogma of method has not restricted him from taking ideas from the school of Normative Theory, demonstrating in effect that the incompatibility of the two traditions is overstated. A sensibility to the consequences of the intervention of political philosopher in the arena of politics is also visible in his writings. Relentless and fearless, Dagnachew has treated the Birtukan case as an emblem of the struggle of people who aspire to live with their heads up, in freedom, and a state that wants to subjugate. Modesty might have stopped him from putting himself in that category, but there is little doubt that he has said \u201cno\u201d with honor, courage, rigor and wit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The demands of piety due to a scholar, argues Raymond Guess, is the uninhibited discussion of her works and approach. Re-reading the biography of the great scientist Michael Polyani, I felt that he would surely be unmoved by any interpretation …<\/p>\n