Bertell Ollman on "Explanations Yes; Justification No" (fwd from the Marxism-Thaxis)

[Ted Winslow]

Perhaps a little self-analysis is required before realistic explanations are
possible.  Some of the explanations I've read, for instance, seem to have
been produced by people unable even to consider that the motives of the
hijackers may have had something to do with the identification of injustice
with "dishonour" and a corresponding identification of justice with
"vengeance", with defending the sort of Islam represented by the Taliban,
and with gaining immediate entry to "paradise" through "martyrdom".

I don't think the evidence currently available provides an adequate basis
for realistic explanations.

Though the first problem (the unconscious factors at work in "explanations")
makes its practice very difficult, Keats' "negative capability" would be
helpful in the present context.

"I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects;
several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality
went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which
Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is,
when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without
any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

John Keats, letter to George and Thomas Keats, 21 December 1817

Ted