Topoi (2006) 25:137–142

DOI 10.1007/s11245-006-0021-2

Philosophy, the ‘‘unknown knowns,’’ and the public use of reason

Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006

Abstract There are not only true or false solutions, ‘‘unknown knowns,’’ the disavowed beliefs, supposi-
there are also false questions. The task of philosophy is tions, and obscene practices we pretend not to know
not to provide answers or solutions, but to submit to about, although they form the background of our
critical analysis the questions themselves, to make us public values. To unearth these ‘‘unknown knowns’’ is
see how the very way we perceive a problem is an the task of an intellectual. This is why Rumsfeld is
obstacle to its solution. This holds especially for today’s NOT a philosopher: the goal of philosophical reflection
public debates on ecological threats, on lack of faith, is precisely to discern the ‘‘unknown knowns’’ of our
on democracy and the ‘‘war on terror’’, in which the existence. That is to say, what is the Kantian tran-
‘‘unknown knowns’’, the silent presuppositions we are scendental a priori if not the network of such
not aware of, determine our acts. ‘‘unknown knowns,’’ the horizon of meaning of which
we are unaware, but which is always-already here,
Keywords philosophy Æ unconscious Æ ideology Æ structuring our approach to reality?
truth Æ paranoia Æ reason Let us take an even more extreme case, that of
James Jesus Angleton, the ultimate cold warrior: for
In March 2003, Donald Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit almost two decades, till 1973, he was the chief of the
of amateur philosophizing about the relationship counter-intelligence section of the CIA, with the task
between the known and the unknown: ‘‘There are of unearthing ‘‘moles’’ within the CIA. Angleton, a
known knowns. These are things we know that we charismatic, highly idiosyncratic figure, literary edu-
know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there cated (a personal friend of T. S. Eliot, even physically
are things that we know we don’t know. But there are resembling him), was prone to paranoia. The premise
also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t of his work was the absolute conviction in the so-called
know we don’t know.’’ What he forgot to add was the ‘‘Monster Plot’’: a gigantic deception coordinated by a
crucial fourth term: the ‘‘unknown knowns,’’ things we secret KGB ‘‘organization within the organization,’’
don’t know that we know—which is precisely the whose aim was to penetrate and totally dominate the
Freudian unconscious, the ‘‘knowledge which doesn’t Western intelligence network and thus bring about the
know itself.’’ If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers defeat of the West. Not only was Angleton convinced
in the confrontation with Iraq are the ‘‘unknown that there were innumerable ‘‘moles’’ in the very heart
unknowns,’’ the threats from Saddam about which we of the CIA, not to mention the Western-European
do not even suspect what they may be, the Abu Ghraib intelligence establishment (he thought that, among
scandal shows where the main dangers are: in the others, Henry Kissinger, Harold Wilson, and Olaf
Palme were KGB agents); he also dismissed all the
signs of disunity in the Socialist ‘‘camp’’ (the autono-
S. Žižek (&)
mous way of Yugoslavia; the split between the USSR
International Center for Humanities, Birkbeck College,
University of London, London, UK and China; ‘‘Eurocommunism’’ in the 1970s and early
e-mail: [email protected] 1980s) as an orchestrated deception destined to arouse

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in the West the false notion of the East’s weakness. On Therein resides, more than ever, the future task of
top of it and most catastrophically for the Western philosophy. Today’s sciences shatter the basic presup-
intelligence community, Angleton dismissed practically positions of our everyday-life notion of reality. So how
all KGB defectors offering invaluable information as are we to react to their breakthroughs? Is it not the
fake defectors, and sometimes even sent them back to time to start with patiently discerning the actual lessons
the USSR (where, of course, they were immediately of, among others, recent bio-technological break-
put to trial and shot, since they were true defectors!). throughs? In 2003, Japanese telecom carriers came up
The ultimate outcome of Angleton’s reign was total with the world’s first mobile phone that enables users
immobilization—crucially, in his time, not one true to listen to calls inside their heads—by conducting
‘‘mole’’ was discovered and apprehended. No wonder sound through bone. The phone is equipped with a
Clare Petty, one of the top officials in Angleton’s sec- ‘‘Sonic Speaker’’ which transmits sounds through
tion, brought the Angleton paranoia to its logical self- vibrations that move from the skull to the cochlea in
negating climax by concluding, after an exhaustive and the inner ear, instead of relying on the usual method of
long investigation, that Golitsyn (the Russian defector sound hitting the outer eardrum. With the new hand-
with whom Angleton was engaged in a true folie à set, the key to better hearing in a noisy situation is thus
deux) was a fake and Angleton himself the big mole to plug your ears to prevent outside noise from
who successfully paralyzed the anti-Soviet intelligence drowning out bone-conducted sounds. What we
activity. Indeed, one is tempted to raise this question: encounter here is a weird Real that has no place in the
what if Angleton was a mole justifying his activity by external reality to which we are used.
the search for a mole (for himself, in the final real-life As a step further, in 2003, at the Center for Neu-
version of The Big Clock/No Way Out plot)? What if roengineering at Duke University, monkeys with brain
the true KGB Monster Plot was the very project to put implants were trained to move a robot arm with their
in circulation the idea of a Monster Plot and thus thoughts. The Duke researchers have now moved onto
immobilize the CIA and neutralize in advance future researching similar implants in humans: it was reported
KGB defectors? In both cases, the ultimate deception that they succeeded at temporarily implanting elec-
assumed the guise of truth itself: there WAS a ‘‘Mon- trodes into the brains of volunteers; the volunteers
ster Plot’’ (the very idea of the ‘‘Monster Plot’’); there then played videogames while the electrodes recorded
WAS a mole in the heart of the CIA (Angleton him- the brain signals—the scientists trained a computer to
self). The nicety of this solution—and the ultimate recognize the brain activity corresponding to the dif-
condemnation of Angleton’s paranoia—is that it ferent movements of the joystick. This procedure of
doesn’t matter if Angleton was sincerely duped by the ‘‘eavesdropping’’ on the brain’s digital crackle with
idea of a Monster Plot or if he was in fact the mole: in electrodes (where computers use zeros and ones, neu-
both cases, the result is exactly the same. Therein rons encode our thoughts in all-or-nothing electrical
resides the truth of the paranoiac stance: it is itself the impulses), and transmitting the signals to a computer
threat, the destructive plot, against which it is fight- that can read the brain’s code and then use the signals
ing—these are its ‘‘unknown knowns.’’ to control as machine, already has an official name:
In what, then, resided the deception here? In our ‘‘brain–machine interface.’’ Further prospects include
failure to include in the list of suspects the very idea of sending the signals to somebody standing nearby with
(globalized) suspicion, i.e., to put under suspicion the electrodes implanted in his hearing centers, so that he
very idea of suspicion. Recall the old story about a can ‘‘telepathically’’ listen to my inner voice ... the
worker suspected of stealing: every evening, when he Orwellian notion of ‘‘thought control’’ will thus
was leaving the factory, the wheelbarrow he was rolling acquire a much more literal meaning.
in front of himself was carefully inspected, but the Even the proverbial Stephen Hawking’s little fin-
guards could not find anything, it was always emp- ger—the minimal link between his mind and outside
ty—till, finally, they got the point: what the worker was reality, the only part of his paralyzed body that
stealing were the wheelbarrows themselves ... such a Hawking can move—will thus no longer be necessary:
reflexive twist stands for a minimum of philosophical with my mind, I can DIRECTLY cause objects to
gesture. Under what social-ideological conditions is, move: it is the brain itself which will directly serve as
then, such a gesture possible? We are led to become the remote control machine. In the terms of German
aware of the ‘‘unknown knowns’’ of our predicament Idealism, this means that what Kant called ‘‘intellec-
when time gets ‘‘out of joint,’’ when our full and tual intuition’’—the closing of the gap between mind
spontaneous (prereflexive) immersion in what Hegel and reality, a mind-process which, in a causal way,
called ‘‘social substance’’ is disturbed. directly influences reality, this capacity that Kant

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attributed only to the infinite mind of God—is now interventions, but, precisely, that NOTHING will go
potentially available to all of us. And since, as we wrong, that genetic manipulations will function
learned from Kant as well as from Freud, this gap of smoothly—at that point, the circle will in a way be
finitude is at the same time the resource of our crea- closed and the specific openness that characterizes
tivity (the distance between ‘‘mere thought’’ and causal being-human will be abolished. The same point is made
intervention into external reality enables us to test the in more common terms by cultural critics from Francis
hypotheses in our mind and, as Karl Popper put it, let Fukuyama to Habermas: they worry about how the
them die instead of ourselves), the direct short-circuit latest techno-scientific developments (which poten-
between mind and reality implies the advent of a tially made the human species able to redesign and
radical closure. redefine itself) will affect our being-human. Their panic
In May 2002, it was reported that scientists at New reaction is best encapsulated by the title of Bill
York University had attached a computer chip able to McKibben’s book: ‘‘enough.’’1 Humanity as a collec-
receive signals directly to a rat’s brain, so that one tive subject must put a limit to, and freely renounce,
could control the rat (determine the direction in which further ‘‘progress’’ in this direction. McKibben
it will run) by means of a steering mechanism (in the endeavors to empirically specify this limit: somatic
same way one runs a remote-controlled toy car). For genetic therapy is still this side of the enough point,
the first time, the ‘‘will’’ of a living animal agent, its one can practice it without leaving behind the world as
‘‘spontaneous’’ decisions about the movements it will we’ve known it, since we just intervene into a body
make, were taken over by an external machine. Of formed in the old ‘‘natural’’ way; however, germline
course, the big philosophical question here is: how did manipulations lie on the other side, in the world
the unfortunate rat ‘‘experience’’ its movement which beyond meaning. When we manipulate psychic and
was in fact decided from the outside? Did it continue to bodily properties of individuals before they are even
‘‘experience’’ it as something spontaneous (i.e., was it conceived, we pass the threshold into full-fledged
totally unaware that its movements were steered?), or planning, turning individuals into products, preventing
was it aware that ‘‘something was wrong,’’ that another them from experiencing themselves as responsible
external power was deciding its movements? Even agents who must educate themselves by the effort of
more crucial is to apply the same reasoning to an focusing their will, thus obtaining the satisfaction of
identical experiment performed with humans (which, achievement—in short, such individuals will no longer
ethical questions notwithstanding, shouldn’t be much relate to themselves as responsible agents.
more complicated, technically speaking, than in the The insufficiency of this reasoning is double. As
case of the rat). In the case of the rat, one can argue Heidegger would have put it, when we try to define the
that one should not apply to it the human category of limit of the permissible in this way, the true catastro-
‘‘experience,’’ while, in the case of a human being, one phe already took place: we already experience
should ask this question. So, again, will a steered ourselves as in principle open to technological manip-
human being continue to ‘‘experience’’ his movements ulation, we just freely renounce to fully deploy these
as something spontaneous? Will he remain totally potentials. But the crucial point is that the dystopian
unaware that his movements are steered, or will he descriptions of the ‘‘meaningless’’ universe of techno-
become aware that ‘‘something is wrong,’’ that another logical self-manipulation are a victim of a perspective
external power is deciding his movements? And, how, fallacy: they measure the future with inadequate
precisely, will this ‘‘external power’’ appear—as present standards. That is to say, the future of tech-
something ‘‘inside me,’’ an unstoppable inner drive, or nological self-manipulation only appears as ‘‘deprived
as simple external coercion? If subjects remain totally of meaning’’ if measured by the traditional notion of
unaware that their spontaneous behavior is steered what a meaningful universe is. Who knows what this
from the outside, can one really go on pretending that ‘‘posthuman’’ universe will reveal itself to be ‘‘in
this has no consequences for our notion of free will? itself’’? What if there is no singular and simple answer,
No wonder that, with the prospect of the biogenetic what if the contemporary trends (digitalization, bio-
manipulation of human physical and psychic features, genetic self-manipulation) open themselves up to a
the notion of ‘‘danger’’ inscribed into modern tech- multitude of options? What if the utopia—the well-
nology, elaborated half a century ago by Martin known dream of the passage of human identity from
Heidegger, has turned into common currency. hardware to software, so that we will float freely in a
Heidegger emphasizes how the true danger is not the digital immortality, downloading ourselves from one to
physical self-destruction of humanity, the threat that
1
something will go terribly wrong with biogenetic See McKibben (2004).

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another embodiment—and the dystopia—the night- different the self-same man, identical in mind and
mare of humans voluntarily transforming themselves spirit, may become, according as he is brought up
into programmed beings—are just the positive and the from childhood amongst the French or Germans,
negative of the same ideological fantasy? What if the or has passed his whole life amongst Chinese or
true PHILOSOPHICAL task still lies ahead of us: to cannibals. I likewise noticed how even in the
explore the bio-genetic challenges without preju- fashions of one’s clothing the same thing that
dices—in short, not just to measure and judge them pleased us ten years ago, and which will perhaps
with our traditional standards, but to clearly perceive please us once again before ten years are passed,
how they will compel us to change these very stan- seems at the present time extravagant and ridic-
dards? ulous. I thus concluded that it is much more
This was the task of philosophy from its very custom and example that persuade us than any
beginnings: at its very inception (the Ionian pre-Soc- certain knowledge, and yet in spite of this the
ratics), philosophy emerged in the interstices of sub- voice of the majority does not afford a proof of
stantial social communities, as the thought of those any value in truths a little difficult to discover,
who were caught in a ‘‘parallax’’ position, unable fully because such truths are much more likely to have
to identify with any of the positive social identities. In been discovered by one man than by a nation. I
On Tyranny, Leo Strauss answered the question ‘‘In could not, however, put my finger on a single
what does philosophic politics consist?’’ as follows: person whose opinions seemed preferable to
those of others, and I found that I was, so to
In satisfying the city that the philosophers are not
speak, constrained myself to undertake the
atheists, that they do not desecrate everything
direction of my procedure.3
sacred to the city, that they reverence what the
city reverences, that they are not subversives, in One should therefore always bear in mind the insub-
short that they are not irresponsible adventurers, stantial character of the cogito: ‘‘It cannot be spoken of
but the best citizens.2 positively; no sooner than it is, its function is lost.’’4 The
cogito is not a substantial entity, but a pure structural
(This, of course, is a defensive survival strategy trying
function, an empty place (Lacan: $)—as such, it can
to cover up the actual subversive nature of philoso-
only emerge in the interstices of substantial communal
phy.) This crucial dimension is missing in Heidegger’s
systems. The link between the emergency of the cogito
account: how, from his beloved pre-Socratics onward,
and the disintegration and loss of substantial communal
philosophizing involved an ‘‘impossible’’ position dis-
identities is thus inherent, and this holds even more for
placed with regard to any communal identity, be it
Spinoza than for Descartes: although Spinoza criticized
‘‘economy’’ as the household organization or polis.
the Cartesian cogito, he criticized it as a positive onto-
Like exchange according to Marx, philosophy emerges
logical entity—but he implicitly fully endorsed it as the
in the interstices BETWEEN different communities, in
‘‘position of enunciated,’’ the one that speaks from
the fragile space of exchange and circulation between
radical self-doubting, since, even more than Descartes,
them, a space which lacks any positive identity. Is this
Spinoza spoke from the interstices of the social
not clear especially in the case of Descartes? The
space(s), neither a Jew nor a Christian.
grounding experience of his position of universal doubt
In fact, Spinoza is a ‘‘philosopher as such,’’ with his
is precisely a ‘‘multicultural’’ experience of how one’s
subjective stance of a double outcast (excommunicated
own tradition is no better than what appear to us as the
from the very community of the outcasts of Western
‘‘eccentric’’ traditions of others:
civilization); which is why one should use him as a
I had been taught, even in my College days, that paradigm enabling us to discover the traces of a similar
there is nothing imaginable so strange or so little displacement, of a communal ‘‘out of joint,’’ with re-
credible that it has not been maintained by one gard to all other great philosophers, up to Nietzsche
philosopher or other, and I further recognized in who was ashamed of Germans and proudly emphasized
the course of my travels that all those whose his alleged Polish roots. For a philosopher, ethnic
sentiments are very contrary to ours are yet not roots, national identity, etc., are simply not a category
necessarily barbarians or savages, but may be of truth; or, to put it in precise Kantian terms, when we
possessed of reason in as great or even a greater reflect upon our ethnic roots, we engage in a private use
degree than ourselves. I also considered how very
3
Descartes (1994), p. 33.
2 4
Quoted from Norton (2004), p. 217. Karatani (2003), p. 134.

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of reason, constrained by contingent dogmatic pre- refer here to Deleuze’s notion of universal singularity
suppositions, i.e., we act as ‘‘immature’’ individuals, as opposed to the triad of individuality–particularity–
not as free human beings who dwell in the dimension generality; this opposition is the opposition between
of the universality of reason. This, of course, in no way Kant and Hegel. For Hegel, ‘‘world-civil-society’’ is an
entails that we should be ashamed of our ethnic roots; abstract notion without substantial content, lacking the
we can love them, be proud of them, returning home mediation of the particular and thus the force of full
may make us feel warmth in our hearts—but the fact actuality, i.e., it involves an abstract identification
remains that all this is ultimately irrelevant. We should which does not grasp substantially the subject; the only
act like Paul who, while being proud of his particular way for an individual to effectively participate in uni-
identity (a Jew and a Roman citizen), was nonetheless versal humanity is therefore via full identification with
aware that, in the proper space of the Christian abso- a particular Nation-State—I am ‘‘human’’ only as a
lute Truth, ‘‘there are no Jews or Greeks.’’ The German, Englishman ... For Kant, on the contrary,
struggle which truly engages him is not simply ‘‘more ‘‘world-civil-society’’ designates the paradox of the
universal’’ than that of one ethnic group against an- universal singularity, of a singular subject who, in a
other; it is a struggle which obeys an entirely different kind of short circuit, bypassing the mediation of the
logic, no longer the logic of one self-identical sub- particular, directly participates in the Universal.
stantial group fighting another group, but of an This identification with the Universal is not the iden-
antagonism that, in a diagonal way, cuts across all tification with an encompassing global Substance
particular groups. (‘‘humanity’’), but the identification with a universal
It would be easy to counter here that this Cartesian ethico-political principle—a universal religious collec-
multiculturalist opening and relativizing one’s own tive, a scientific collective, a global revolutionary
position is just a first step, the abandoning of inherited organization, all of which are in principle accessible to
opinions, which should lead us to acquire the abso- everyone.
lutely certain philosophic knowledge—the abandoning This is what Kant, in a famous passage of his ‘‘What
of the false shaky home in order to reach our true is Enlightenment?’’, means by ‘‘public’’ as opposed to
home. Did not Hegel himself compare Descartes’ dis- ‘‘private’’: ‘‘private’’ is not the individual as opposed to
covery of the cogito to a sailor who, after long drifting one’s communal ties, but the very communal-institu-
around the sea, finally catches sight of firm ground? Is tional order of one’s particular identification, while
thus the Cartesian homelessness not just a deceitful ‘‘public’’ is the trans-national universality of the exer-
strategic move? Are we not dealing here with a cise of one’s Reason. The paradox is thus that one
Hegelian ‘‘negation of negation,’’ the Aufhebung of participates in the universal dimension of the ‘‘public’’
the false traditional home in the finally discovered sphere precisely as a singular individual extracted from
conceptual true home? Was in this sense Heidegger or even opposed to one’s substantial communal iden-
not justified in approvingly quoting Novalis’ determi- tification—one is truly universal only as radically sin-
nation of philosophy as longing for the true lost home? gular, in the interstices of communal identities.
Two things should be added here. First, Kant is unique The task of philosophy as the ‘‘public use of reason’’
with regard to this topic: in his transcendental philos- is not to solve problems, but to redefine them; not to
ophy, homelessness remains irreducible, we remain answer questions, but to raise the proper question. In
forever split, condemned to a fragile position between an old joke from the defunct German Democratic
the two dimensions and to a ‘‘leap of faith’’ without Republic, a German worker gets a job in Siberia; aware
any guarantee. Secondly, are things with Hegel really of how all mail will be read by censors, he tells his
so clear? Is it not that, for Hegel, this new ‘‘home’’ is in friends: ‘‘Let’s establish a code: if a letter you will get
a way homelessness itself, the very open movement of from me is written in ordinary blue ink, it is true; if it is
negativity? written in red ink, it is false.’’ After a month, his friends
Along these lines of the constitutive ‘‘homelessness’’ get the first letter written in blue ink: ‘‘Everything is
of philosophy, Kant formulated the idea of the cos- wonderful here: stores are full, food is abundant,
mopolitan ‘‘world-civil-society [Weltburgergesells- apartments are large and properly heated, movie the-
chaft],’’ which is not simply an expansion of the aters show films from the West, there are many beau-
citizenship of a Nation-State to the citizenship of a tiful girls ready for an affair—the only thing
global trans-national State; it involves a shift from the unavailable is red ink.’’ The structure is here more
principle of identification with one’s ‘‘organic’’ ethnic refined than it may appear: although the worker is
substance actualized in a particular tradition to a rad- unable to signal in the prearranged way that what he
ically different principle of identification—one can reports is a lie, he nonetheless succeeds in getting his

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message across—how? By inscribing the very reference articulate our unfreedom. What this lack of red ink
to the code into the encoded message, as one of its ele- means is that, today, all the main terms we use to
ments. Of course, we encounter here the standard designate the present conflict—‘‘war on terror,’’
problem of self-reference: since the letter is written in ‘‘democracy and freedom,’’ ‘‘human rights,’’ etc. etc.—
blue, is not its entire content true? The solution is that are FALSE terms, mystifying our perception of the
the very fact that the lack of red ink is mentioned situation instead of allowing us to think it. In this
signals that it SHOULD have been written in red ink. precise sense, our ‘‘freedoms’’ themselves serve to
The nice point here is that this mention of the lack of mask and sustain our deeper unfreedom—this is what
red ink produces the effect of truth independently of its philosophy should make us see.
own literal truth: even if red ink really WAS available,
the lie that it is unavailable was the only way to get the
true message across in this specific condition of cen-
References
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