The modern Western narrative would have us believe that freedom of thought and expression are ideals that are the envy of those living under authoritarian rule. While these ideals are indeed taken seriously in many spheres of life, the West has a nasty track record of curtailing the very products that it has claimed to promote since the Enlightenment project began. The Enlightenment was supposed to elevate reason above superstition and free minds from the clutches of dogmatism. By the 20th century, however, thinkers, like those of the Frankfurt School[i], had pointed out that the Enlightenment was a failure, and that humanity has yet to escape its intellectual prisons. At the same time, we witnessed the rise of the experts[ii], who couched their propositions in academic jargon, and separated themselves from the masses, routinely silencing them with their credentials. The critical spirit was once again betrayed when millions came under the spell of ruthless dictators, who led their followers to commit unspeakable crimes against humanity. The bleakest years of the last century are a stark reminder that the critical spirit of humankind is ever under attack.
People, however, can be surprisingly resilient in their fight to throw off the fetters of domination. Some fight institutions that try to tell them what to think. Others see the enemy as all-pervasive: the class of powerful elites wants to dominate everyone else through instrumental reason and the dissemination of a crass popular culture. At the forefront of this defensive are the radical free thinkers who distrust the established order’s official narratives, a current that is galvanized by the troubling evidence leaked on social media channels. Radical independent thinkers will agree that whatever the new outfit that is donned by the class that seeks domination over others, one constant is the competition for control over the prevailing narrative, and the drowning out of others that tell a different tale.
We can quickly notice a danger with viewing the world in this way: either due diligence becomes a way of life, or we adopt a stance of rejecting every opinion we encounter for fear that it might be a piece of elite-sponsored propaganda. The former is critical thinking. The latter is radical. This kind of radical independent thinking assumes the ability that one can arrive at conclusions without relying on anyone else’s opinions and preferring to remain obdurately skeptical of them. The latter does not accept or reject them until one has assessed them first.
I believe we all share in this aspiration of thinking for ourselves. Taken to the extreme, anything short of being a radical independent thinker is foolishness. Such people are resistant to received opinions and are scornful of experts whom they suspect of trying to impose their ways of thinking on everyone else. One who thinks himself a radical independent thinker takes pride in his own cognitive work and has immense confidence in his ability to reach logical conclusions untainted by the opinions of others. But while these are admirable traits, the truth is that no thinking can be genuinely independent. The act of thinking requires assumptions which are not wholly original, many of which have been either established or refuted by past thinkers. The radical independent thinker may care little for the thoughts of his predecessors, but he cannot avoid acknowledging their epistemic contributions. At some point, he’ll discover that his argument he thought was original, was debated centuries ago by someone else. Moreover, his commitment to this ideal is unnecessarily taxing if carried out on his own. I’ll return to this point momentarily, but the point I’m making here is that it takes a community to produce knowledge, which means relying on past and present thinking—preferably, good thinking—done by others. Besides, approaching knowledge in this way need not undermine one’s personal autonomy.
Of all the disciplines, philosophy depends most on previous thought. In fact, one cannot conceive of doing philosophy without engaging with the assessments and claims made by philosophers. It is not surprising then that Oxford philosopher Timothy Williamson says that the radical independent thinker “takes nothing for granted and uses nothing second-hand”. Williamson is critical of this type of person, who “refuse[s] to learn anything from other people.”[iii] The thoughtful layperson might be tempted to think that he can get away with what the philosophers, who depend on previous thinking, can’t. This is wrong-headed.
Nevertheless, independent thinking has a strong appeal to a deeply felt human need. So strong is the inclination that, if taken to the extreme, we outright reject opinions or beliefs that are not our own. One who takes a moderate approach would merely want to rely on his own knowledge and lived experience, while acknowledging the same for others. Because we take pride in accomplishing the cognitive work required to draw our own conclusions, we value them more than we do others’, if at all. Besides, independent thinking also empowers us to resist pressure to be silent or to accept uncritically the preferred narrative of the ruling classes. In the face of tyranny, resistance in the form of protecting the independence of our minds is the last line of defence.
As stated earlier, the business of forming beliefs is an individual one. But in the extreme cases mentioned above, we may be indulging the desire to assert our radical independence, rather than endeavouring to discover truths without outside influence. It is this excessive indulgence, coupled with a stubborn skepticism that seems to fuel the claims of radical independent thinkers. This skepticism is less interesting because it borders on paranoia. At one point or another, most of us have come across an outlandish claim of a “radical independent thinker.” I am more curious about the cases of radical independent thinkers who justify their stance as the only way to maintain one’s personal autonomy.
Without a doubt, this concern is one that all humans share; however, taking the radical approach in order to preserve one’s own autonomy is not only pointless, it is counterproductive to gaining knowledge in order to form beliefs and opinions. If Williamson is right, the radical independent thinker does himself a disservice in his pursuit of intellectual originality. Williamson cautions that not learning from others is “a recipe for the endless repetition of the same elementary mistakes, generation after generation.” (Ibid.) In other words, when we do not engage with what others have explored before us, we risk falling into the same reasoning errors that have trapped our predecessors. The thinker who labours under the illusion that he has formed his own thoughts and opinions free of influence is ignorant of the accomplishments of thinkers whose steps he has unknowingly reproduced and is unaware of any refutations that those opinions may have merited.
Moreover, while we can all sympathize with our need to critically draw our own conclusions and preserve our intellectual autonomy, taking nothing second-hand is a huge commitment, if not an unrealistic one. Imagine if one must painstakingly conduct all the necessary research to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. Of course, the hard work can pay off—the radical independent thinker could arrive at the same conclusion as the most seasoned expert. But it seems like a lot of work when you add up all the thinking that one needs to do to get on with life. First, consider the usual big questions the average person grapples with at one time or another—the existence of God, the question of free will, the purpose of life—for which critical thinking is especially appropriate. Then, consider that life is saturated by questions of a more practical nature that require their own measure of attention and research. One committed to the ideal of radical independent thinking is likely to face trouble juggling the big questions with the pragmatic ones such as whether it is the right time to buy a house, what the next career move should be, or whether to be a vegan or an omnivore. Judging from how much content—often contradictory—we have to rummage through to achieve a satisfactory answer, it would be a miracle if we had any time left to enjoy the fruits of his intellectual labours.
We’re not the first of our kind to be preoccupied with using our wits to arrive at our own beliefs and opinions. In the 12th century, Ibn Tufayl turned a thought experiment into a story about a feral child who was raised by a doe. The boy, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (lit. Living, son of Awake) had little choice but to be an independent thinker in the most radical sense: a single human living among animals on a deserted island. He painstakingly worked through an endless series of deductions, speculative and experimental inferences all on his own, with no predecessor to rely on. His intellectual labours (and luckily for the reader, his survival and his resistance to despairing) result in a body of knowledge that is remarkably comparable to the knowledge and beliefs held by a traveller who grew up in civilization, who happened to disembark on the same island. The author of the tale intended to resolve a long-standing theological and philosophical problem of reason and revelation. But the reader cannot help but make a no less remarkable observation: Hayy ibn Yaqdhan’s genuine perseverance and hard work in arriving at the conclusions he does. It is hard not to sympathize and admire the protagonist, who, left to his own devices, is driven to exhaustion before being gifted with the exhilaration of a breakthrough and insight. Hayy struggles with a dilemma:
For some years Hayy pondered over this problem, but the arguments always seemed to cancel each other. Neither position could outweigh the other. Baffled and exhausted by this dilemma, he began to wonder what each of the beliefs entailed. Perhaps the implications were the same![iv]
Independent thinking is worthwhile but hard work. Like Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, a genuine thinking person needs to embrace the reality of making progress and regularly backsliding.[v] Hayy ibn Yaqdhan was on an island untouched by civilization, without access to any previous thinking and remnants of human ingenuity. If this is what it takes to be a truly radical independent thinker, then, it seems highly unlikely in today’s hyperconnected world.
But there are ways in which we can strike a balance between relying on others, while still maintaining intellectual autonomy. Take for example what usually happens in medical consultations. What does it mean to respect patients’ autonomy and their ability to think without being influenced by a medical expert? In the context of delivering bad news to the patient, the doctor typically aims at providing three things. The first is the information about the patient’s condition, the opportunity for the patient to reflect on the news and finally the doctor’s expert advice by taking care not to influence the patient. Perhaps what is needed is a context in which people are given the opportunity and time to evaluate others’ opinions, see their merits and decide whether they are worth adopting.
In conclusion, the demands on a radical independent thinker are unreasonable and the whole ideal now seems stale, since all thinking takes a lot for granted. But this does not mean that one ought to give up on the idea of independent thinking entirely. Even if you gave up your commitment to the unreasonable, and perhaps impossible ideal of the radical independent thinker, it does not in any way undermine your autonomy, because one can still exercise critical and independent thinking while relying on history’s ability to test the validity of ideas and opinions.
[i] How the Frankfurt School diagnosed the ills of Western civilisation | Aeon Essays
[ii] The Changing Role of the Public Intellectual. (2013). United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.
[iii] Popular Philosophy and Populist Philosophy (Guest Post by Timothy Williamson—Daily Nous)
[iv] Ibn Ṭufayl & Goodman, 2009, p. 131
[v] Ibn Ṭufayl & Goodman, 2009, p. 9
