The Australian Library Journal

Truth and libraries

Miroslav Kruk

Manuscript received January 2003

The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect - what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth came before us - or was it we who came before the problem? It is a rendezvous, it seems, of questions and question marks. And though it scarcely seems credible, it finally almost seems to us as if the problem had never even been put so far - as if we were the first to see it, fix it with our eyes, and risk it. For it does involve a risk, and perhaps there is none that is greater.

Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil

The need for certainty and Truth, to know the world as it verily is, is not a privilege of philosophers or their contrivance; it simply is human, and it is most unlikely that it will ever be extirpated... Truth will remain always the great word that lets the heart beat more strongly.

Leszek Kolakowski Debating the state of philosophy

Knowledge and opinion, fiction and non-fiction

It is often stated that the aim of libraries is to provide access to information. Apart from public libraries, which may collect recreational materials, all other libraries are focused on allowing readers to learn and become more knowledgeable. In secondary schools, teachers emphasise the role of independent research in the process of learning and encourage students to use school libraries, often called learning resources centres, for this purpose. The role of university libraries is even more important. It is impossible to imagine a good university without an extensive library. Libraries are assumed to contain materials that present a true picture of the world. Readers have confidence in books they find in libraries. They assume that authors are honest in their presentation of the matter they write about and do not want to trick them. Readers also trust librarians who, they believe, would not collect books written by malicious writers who purposefully distort the image of reality.

This confidence in books finds its fullest expression in the core of any library, a reference section. This part of the library is treated with reverence as a place where Truth abides. The reader who takes an encyclopedia into his/her hands assumes that its authors made every possible effort to get the facts right - a fact must be true if it is presented as such in the encyclopedia. Are these expectations of readers reasonable? Are librarians 'guardians of truth'? Are libraries 'temples of knowledge'? The classical theory of knowledge is based on the opposition of knowledge and opinion. Plato says that opinion (Gk. doxa) is inferior to the genuine knowledge (Gk. episteme). Opinion is an expression of a belief which is not always justified. Only by rational examination of a belief we can determine whether it may be accepted as knowledge. Knowledge, is therefore, a collection of justified beliefs that correspond with reality. In other words, knowledge is about how things really are while opinion is how things appear to be.

It seems that librarians rigorously apply themselves to give the public access to a true representation of the world. They insist on the division of the collection into two clearly separated domains, fiction and non-fiction. Fiction denotes imaginary writing, in other words, made-up stories. Non-fiction is restricted to books containing truthful representation of facts. When readers enter the non-fiction section they assume that they have access to knowledge and not mere opinions. A Statement on Core Values of Librarianship and Information Service, prepared by the American Library Association, gives the readers 'assurance of free and open access to recorded knowledge, information and creative works'. Creative works describe imaginary characters and situations, existing only in authors' and readers' minds. In contrast, knowledge and information is a representation of the world as it really is, perceived by our senses and organised by our minds in a coherent mental picture of the world. Novels describe events that did not really happen. Even in historical novels, which are partly based on facts, the fictional and subjective character of the story is self-evident. The author acts as creator and his role is deemed so important that books in the fiction section of the library are arranged according to the authors' names. Entirely different rules are applied in the non-fiction section. Here, the author is less important. The focus is on the reality that is recreated in author's mind. Re-created and not created - or invented - as in fiction.

This dichotomist model of the library is based on several basic unstated convictions about the nature of the world, as reflected in human minds and expressed in words: the world exists independently from our minds; our minds mirror the world; objective knowledge about the world is possible; knowledge transcends individual experience; it can be expressed in words; it is fundamentally different from opinion. It seems that these assumptions are quite reasonable and acceptable to all librarians. However, not everyone is satisfied with them. For John M Budd, assumptions of this kind are of positivistic nature. Budd asserts in his article 'An epistemological foundation for library and information science' (Library Quarterly 65 [3], July 1995) that library and information science is firmly grounded in positivism. However, it is questionable whether such a narrow understanding of the most fundamental assumptions made by librarians is legitimate. Budd wants to cast off positivism as the epistemological foundation of modern librarianship and replace it with the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. He tries to disarm potential defenders of the current model of librarianship by showing that what they want to defend deserves only to be discarded. Positivism for him manifests scientism, empiricism, reductionism, uniformity in its approach to different sciences and its inability to recognise the special character of human sciences (Dilthey's Geisteswissenschaften).

Attack on reason

Similar criticism is made by other writers on librarianship. In fact, modern librarianship is under pressure to reinvent itself. One of the most radical re-evaluations of the epistemological foundation of librarianship is proposed by Gary P Radford in his article 'Flaubert, Foucault, and the Bibliotheque Fantastique: towards a postmodern epistemology for library science' (Library Quarterly 62, October 1992). Radford is dissatisfied with the model of the library as a mirror of reality. In his view, the library has existed as an institution that imposed constraints on readers and limited their freedom to explore the world and to express freely their opinions. In the past, readers visited libraries with the sole purpose of searching for information. Their actions had to take place within rules devised by librarians. Readers had to meet the expectations of librarians and were forced to play the role of those who always wanted to know more. In Radford's model they had no other choice but to accept the rules of the game imposed on them by librarians who reserved the right to define and determine the nature of social intercourse occurring in libraries. The whole process was highly institutionalised. Only certain forms of knowledge were sanctioned by librarians. Knowledge was systematically organised and there was no room for dissent. Only one side had the right to decide what was 'true': knowledge was intimidating because it was Truth itself, imposing and non-negotiable. Radford wants this allegedly positivist conception of the library to be smashed into pieces. Readers must be liberated from the stifling embrace of librarians. Radford writes approvingly of Michel Foucault's refusal to differentiate between the library and the fantastic, reason and madness, scholarship and dream. In this view librarians have always controlled reading materials and kept readers in subjugation but the time has come to set readers free. Librarians must be stripped of authority. They will no longer be allowed to interpret, filter and evaluate what library users want to read.

Radford therefore proposes a post-modernist revolution: In the 'bibliotheque fantastique', there is no longer a canon to turn to and master. Everything is potentially valuable or worthless, depending on its position in the temporary contexts that are created in individual library searches. Dichotomies such as the true and the false, the important and the trivial, and the enduring and the ephemeral lose their previous importance. For Radford and his fellow postmodernists, knowledge is constructed and not discovered and has no universal pretensions. What Radford finds exhilarating is the boundless energy of the reader, encompassing irrationality and madness. As Budd before him, he also uses the epithet of positivism to castigate librarians who are still attached to the allegedly old-fashioned concepts of rationality and objectivity:

The positivist framework cannot conceive of a library where collections are temporary rather than universal, subjective rather than objective, and which follows structures of rationality that may be entirely different from those imposed by the library system. The search for knowledge is replaced by the idea of the construction of knowledge in the experience of the fantasia. Should librarians capitulate and accept the postmodernist model of librarianship? If they are inclined to do so they might be well advised to contemplate what the consequences of such a move would be.

A proto-postmodernist reader

Let us look closer at one historical personage who well exemplifies the problem of library users having boundless freedom. It is the first decade of the twentieth century and our reader, a young man, is coming from a provincial town to Vienna, a modern Central European metropolis. He is ambitious and idealistic and has a burning desire to understand the world. It is not an easy task in the Austro-Hungarian empire in the last years before the First World War. The empire is a conglomerate of ethnic communities which just recently discovered, or created, their national identities. The young man belongs to the ruling ethnic minority which finds it increasingly difficult to keep the lid on the boiling kettle of ethnic, religious and political tensions. He is a keen observer and also reads voraciously. He spends whole evenings in libraries. He is a member of several large, state-supported libraries and also belongs to smaller lending libraries. He will later write that he had always been surrounded with books. Books were his whole world, as his friend, August Kubizek, would reminisce. Gradually, he develops a Weltanschauung of his own. He believes that observations of the external world and knowledge gathered from printed matter allow him to grasp the truth about the world.

Libraries played a crucial role in this process although he used them in an independent manner. He was an autodidact who avoided the undue interference of librarians. He was not interested in librarians' opinions and did not seek anyone's assistance. Neither was he intimidated by immensity of knowledge he found in books. He knew he could discover Truth on his own. Books provided him with raw material out of which he constructed his own vision of the world.

Outside my architectural studies and rare visits to the opera, for which I had to deny myself food, I had no other pleasure in life except my books. I read a great deal then, and I pondered deeply over what I read. All the free time after work was devoted exclusively to study. Thus within a few years I was able to acquire a stock of knowledge which I find useful even today. But more than that. During those years a view of life and a definite outlook on the world took shape in my mind. These became the granite basis of my conduct at that time. Since then I have extended that foundation only very little, and I have changed nothing in it.

Radford would nod approvingly. That is what he advocated - a reader who gives himself freedom to create his own world view, not constrained by objectivity and rationality. This is the case of reading that is liberated from limitations imposed by librarians. It is an exemplification of the reader-centred model of librarianship. The trouble is that the young man was Adolf Hitler.

What he sought in libraries was to reinforce his pre-conceived ideas, a vulgar and poisonous mixture of chauvinism, xenophobia, social Darwinism, megalomania and a predilection for violence. Now, either we accept that Hitler had the right to read what he wanted and draw any conclusions he deemed truthful or we do not give him such a right. The same observation applies to other readers. Hitler gave himself the right to find Truth on his own. In his view he was the only judge of what was true and disregarded objective reality. He had a Romantic vision of reality in which individuals have the power to shape the world according to their own will.

Postmodernism is also a Romantic movement. It is often said that postmodernists reject the great project of the Enlightenment when people wanted to build a civilization based entirely on Reason. We are faced once more with the choice between two philosophies of life. The question of truth, or Truth, is again at the centre of our attention. We must ask ourselves: is truth eternal or changeable? Discovered or created? Monolithic or pluralistic? Is it liberating or enslaving? Revealed to us by Being itself or imposed by us on it? Or maybe, it is a correspondence between our thoughts and the external world?

The reader-centred model of librarianship

If we accept, as postmodernist librarians want us to, that every reader is entitled to have his own opinions and is free to read books in any way he finds fit, libraries will lose their reason for existence. In a traditional library, readers are under pressure to accept a rigorous method of searching for information. Books make demands on them. Rules of searching for truth are clearly defined and knowledge is differentiated from opinion. Radford and other postmodernists want to give people total freedom in expressing their views about the world. In the past, knowledge was built from coherent and testable statements that corresponded with reality. Hence, broadly speaking, there were three theories of truth depending on what characteristic was stressed (the correspondence, the coherence and the pragmatic theories of truth). Postmodernists not only rejected these theories but, quite simply, they lost interest in truth. What they want is a kind of vulgar and individualistic pragmatism. A postmodernist reader would say: I believe in what is good for me; I create my own version of the world; I do not have to justify my opinions and can change them any time because I am my own authority. Postmodernists are guilty of creating a mental environment in which all ideas are permitted. They want to replace philosophy, which is a love of wisdom, by philodoxy, which is the love of opinion.

This hostility to truth leads to confusion and detachment from reality. In the postmodernist world, we are stuck in a limbo between objects and words. Our verbal utterances do not reflect what really is because there is nothing behind the words. To Nietzsche, there are no facts: only interpretations. To Derrida, there is nothing outside the text. This atmosphere is well expressed by Czeslaw Milosz in his poem Oeconomia divina:

I did not expect to live in such an unusual moment.
When the God of thunders and of rocky heights,
The Lord of hosts, Kyrios Sabaoth,
Would humble people to the quick,
Allowing them to act whatever way they wished,
Leaving to them conclusions, saying nothing.
It was a spectacle that was indeed unlike
The age-long cycle of royal tragedies.
Roads on concrete pillars, cities of glass and cast iron,
Airfields larger than tribal dominions
Suddenly ran short of their essence and disintegrated
Not in a dream but really, for, subtracted from themselves,
They could only hold on as do things which should not last.
Out of trees, field stones, even lemons on the table,
Materiality escaped and their spectrum
Proved to be a void, a haze on a film.
Dispossessed of its objects, space was swarming.
Everywhere was nowhere and nowhere, everywhere.
Letters in books turned silver-pale, wobbled, and faded
The hand was not able to trace the palm sign, the river sign, or the sign of ibis.
A hullabaloo of many tongues proclaimed the mortality of the language.
A complaint was forbidden as it complained to itself.
People, afflicted with an incomprehensible distress,
Were throwing off their clothes on the piazzas so that nakedness might call
For judgment.
But in vain they were longing after horror, pity, and anger.
Neither work nor leisure
Was justified,
Nor the face, nor the hair nor the loins
Nor any existence.

According to postmodernists, truth is dead. Richard Rorty, American philosopher and a self-confessed pragmatist, dismisses questions about the nature of truth as pointless. He claims that, so far, nothing interesting has been written about the subject. The Platonic tradition with its questions about the nature of Truth, Beauty and the Good is not worth continuing because these big questions have lost their relevance. It is permissible to ponder about what is true, beautiful or good but no conclusions will ever be reached. Turning these adjectives into nouns and capitalising them is unjustifiable. For Rorty, Platonic concepts only obscure philosophical problems.

The Platonic foundations of librarianship

The alleged death of Truth is part of a broader trend. It is common among philosophers to claim that Platonism is dead. Similarly, when Radford and like-minded critics attack the current model of librarianship they are not only against Positivism but also against Platonism. Yet, Platonism in librarianship is still adhered to by many librarians. It may not be explicitly expressed but is nevertheless present. A librarian-Platonist believes that:

• The universe is intelligible.
• Man uses reason to understand it.
• Language can grasp reality as it is.
• Man has a natural inclination to seek beauty, truth, good.
• As a social creature, man shares his knowledge with his fellow human beings.
• Knowledge is fundamentally different from opinion; its core is permanent, immutable and universal because such is human nature.
• Truth and knowledge are trans-national and trans-cultural.
• Libraries are places where knowledge is stored and disseminated.
• Librarians are guardians of knowledge and truth.
• There are many paths leading towards truth; however, pluralism should not lead or be confused with relativism.
• The primary concern of librarians is how to serve truth and not their political masters nor the multitude.

But it must be admitted that Platonism is not without its own dangers. Plato has often been accused of being a patron saint of people with authoritarian if not totalitarian tendencies. Karl Popper holds him responsible for the anti-democratic strain in European thought. Indeed, Plato thought that vulgar people could only see mere opinions while knowledge was accessible only to the chosen.

Platonist librarians could be accused of a tendency to impose their ideas, or rather Ideas, on library users in an un-democratic manner. Books that do not conform to their standards of good, truth and beauty would not be found on library shelves. They do not agree that they are servants of readers. Their primary duty is to maintain and develop a book collection which would reflect what is best in humanity. They believe that high standards must be rigorously adhered to. There is no place in the library for books read for mere entertainment. Reading is identical with thinking, therefore only books that make people think are worth reading. Platonists claim that values and ideas are outside of history and eternally true. Good books are immortal as they reflect eternal Truth.

For post-modernists, grand questions about the nature of reality and our place in the universe are pointless. There is no Truth; there are only provisional statements that are neither valid nor invalid. Distinctions between good and evil, beautiful and ugly and true and false are not discernible any more. There are no good books and no bad books. No one has the authority to make such judgments. Consequently, there is no canon. No group of people can claim that they know what reality is. We apparently create meaning and do not discover it. Post-modernist librarians do not pay much attention to collection development. Books are to be read here and now because they will soon be superseded by new books. Books resemble newspapers in their ephemerality and unimportance. Reading is not a serious engagement and does not lead to the discovery of truth. It is rather like a distraction.

A quarrel between Platonists and Postmodernists can be understood as a dispute between conservative and supposedly progressive forces within the fraternity of librarians. Platonists look back into the history of librarianship and they like what they see. Postmodernists are dissatisfied with the past. Platonists long for the lost Golden Age in librarianship which they locate in the nineteenth century. Then, libraries belonged to the sphere of the sacred. There was a clear pattern in the way public space was organised. A church, cemetery, town hall, school, university, courts and a library were not ordinary places. Their special character was indicated and reinforced by their architectonic style. Libraries were housed in grandiose buildings that resembled Greek or Roman temples. It was a conscious link to the values that ancient architecture symbolised such as Order, Divine Benevolence, Virtue and Temperance. The Universe was like a book that could be read. Learning was to read the Liber Mundi, or discover a divine pattern and order in the universe. One could see in reading a form of worship, perhaps a divinely inspired activity. It is not an accident, then, that library buildings resembled churches. Big nineteenth century libraries inspired awe through their imposing structure.

In contrast, modern libraries are entirely practical. While libraries in the past had vertical orientation modern libraries are horizontal. They are not meant to be places of special character. Churches, universities, town halls, cemeteries met the same fate. Public space lost meaning and moral significance. Yet, the sacred has not disappeared entirely from our lives. It returned as its own caricature. Now we are inclined to feel awe in front of gigantic office buildings, inside shopping malls and during rock concerts and mass sports events. The message the new library seems to be sending is that reading is of no consequence and that there is nothing noble in reading. Modern libraries point towards the everyday, mediocrity, secularity, nonsense. Nothing is serious any more, everything is a game, including reading. Most people read for the fun of it. Reading is not a special activity, as in the past, when it was a solitary contemplation of words that represented reality.

One can find this veneration for books well exemplified in the paintings of Rembrandt. In 'Two philosophers', two men are bent over a book that is illuminated by the Divine light. The rest of the room is in darkness. Another book is placed vertically on a desk suggesting that books direct the mind upwards. Through reading, Rembrandt believed, people have access to Divine Wisdom. Through books, Being exposes itself, if one can use the imagery of Heidegger.

Platonism versus post-modernism

To understand what is at stake in discussions about models of librarianship for the future it is necessary to reflect upon the prevailing trends in modern thought. We are being told that we live in times of absence of grand narratives. Platonism, a grand narrative on which European or Western civilisation is based, is said to be dying. Platonism is based on the belief that behind the world of appearances there is a domain of ideals - Truth, Beauty and Good - of which material reality is a mere reflection. Plato thought that we live in the world of Becoming where everything is in a state of flux but that we aspire to access the world of Being where pure and abstract ideas reign. Our perception of reality is, according to Platonists, based on clear boundaries between sacrum and profanum. Our lives have temporal and spatial limitations but we refuse to recognise them. In Christianity, which absorbed Platonism through Neo-Platonism, there is a tension between our bodies, dragging us down, and souls, lifting our spirits upwards. One can make similar observations of dichotomy between Becoming and Being, vertical and horizontal, sacral and ordinary, carnal and spiritual in many aspects of our lives. Postmodernists want to get rid of this allegedly antiquated worldview. They insist that there are no ideals behind appearances; there is only Becoming and not Being; profanum and not sacrum and everything is ordinary. People are motivated by base instincts, human behaviour is just a power game and nothing is serious any more.

Postmodernists dethroned the concepts of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. They do not see the need for any coherent vision of us and our place in the universe. They declare that Truth is dead. They are attached to cultures and distrust civilisation. As Truth is necessarily supra-cultural it can only flourish in an atmosphere in which civilisation is valued more than cultures. What is true must be true in all cultures. Postmodernists distrust Reason. For Platonists, belief in Reason is the core itself of philosophy. Socrates linked Reason with the Good. God was for him good and rational; He created an orderly world and gave us mental powers to discover this order. The orderly character of the world may be hidden behind layers of appearances and might be difficult to discover but it is nevertheless there. Western civilisation is based on faith in God's reasonableness and goodness.

All these metaphysical assumptions penetrated the lives of our ancestors for centuries. They were necessarily reflected in public institutions, including libraries. Until recently, the pillars of librarianship were firmly grounded in Platonism. Only now, in our post-Christian and post-Platonic times, they are being questioned or rejected. We live in a Romantic period when feeling is more valued than thought. We are being told that all cultures are equal and that they are superior to civilisation. Cultures are supposedly warm and human-friendly while civilisation is cold, brutal and destructive. Cultures are a testament to the diversity of human experience while civilisation is apparently a simplistic invention of the Enlightenment when Reason was glorified, if not deified as during the French Revolution. Feelings are considered superior to Reason which, embodied in science, is being blamed for destroying Nature.

Libraries in the current social and political climate

Liberals and socialists in the nineteenth century thought that people were essentially good. They hoped that once people broke the social chains imposed on them by cruel political and social systems and freed themselves from material privations they would be able to elevate themselves to a higher level of humanity. Marxists believed in the proletariat, liberals put their trust in ordinary people. However, to the horror of both, people used the newly gained freedom from hunger and oppression not for elevation but for spiritual degradation. What could socialists do now? Their beloved people chose ignorance instead of enlightenment, vulgarity instead of refinement and moral degradation instead of elevation. The only solution was to approve the people's choice because the people were the salt of the earth. The old values have been rejected in expectation that the people will institute new values and will tell us what is good, beautiful and true.

As Constantine Cavafy writes, we are 'Waiting for Barbarians',

What are we waiting for, gathered in the market place?
The barbarians will come today.
Why is there no activity in the senate?
Why are the senators seated without legislating?
Because the barbarians will come today; what laws can the senators pass now?
The barbarians, when they come, they will pass the laws.

According to post-modernists, there are no Platonic essences any more. No more fixed values independent of man's changing judgment. The people are the ultimate judge of values. No-one has the right, the argument goes, to dictate to the people what they should read, listen to or watch. People know very well what is good for them. The motives of elitists who insist on canons, standards and values are highly suspicious. What they really want is to restore an ancien régime and create an intellectual apartheid. In contrast, Platonists believe that we live in a world of Becoming and that there exists a world of Being above us to which we should strive to come to as closely as possible. However, it requires strength of character, discipline and hard work. It is unrealistic to believe that the majority of people are prepared to reject the temptation of mental comfort and to look for Truth at any cost. Stephen Hart describes the road to truth, in 'The Wayfarer', as a pathway 'thickly grown with weeds' where 'each weed was a singular knife'. No wonder that 'none has passed here in a long time'. The democratisation of truth and moral norms, when only the majority has the power to legitimise them, is the source of today's relativism. Platonism was as a shield against crude pragmatism, vulgar utilitarianism, skepticism, relativism and irrationalism. Postmodernism has opened a Pandora's box with all these plagues. Truth has been one of postmodernism's first casualties.

Quo vadis?

If libraries are to survive as public institutions working for the common good they must be defended from the postmodernist attack. Once we lose the ability to discern between knowledge and opinion, there will be no need to consult the approved version of the world as presented in library collections. Postmodernists want to label all books in the library as fiction. If they succeed in convincing readers that all versions of the world presented in books are equal there will be no need to read in order to learn. It will be logical to conclude that what readers already know is as good as what they would learn if they read more.

If all interpretations are permitted there is no need to challenge oneself by exposure to new ideas. Reading loses its meaning as learning and becomes a mere entertainment or distraction. Restoration of Platonism in librarianship is necessary if libraries are not to become superfluous, but it would be foolish to advocate a return to some authoritarian form of Platonism: certain postmodernist ideas - such as irreverence towards authority, cultural and linguistic sensitivity, rejection of nationalism, sympathy for the underprivileged and dispossessed - are certainly worth retaining. However, generally speaking, postmodernism is a threat to libraries because of its attack on the most basic Western assumptions about truth, common good and objectivity without which libraries cannot exist.

Bibliography

Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf translated and annotated by James Murphy. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1939.

American Library Association Librarianship and Information Service. A Statement on Core Values 5th Draft (28 April 2000); http://www.ala.org/congress/corevalues/draft5.html

Budd, John M 'An epistemological foundation for library and informationscience' Library Quarterly 65, July 1995 295-318.

Kubizek, August The young Hitler I knew. Trans EV Anderson. Westport Conn. Greenwood Press, 1976.

Radford, Gary P 'Positivism, Foucault, and the fantasia of the library: Conceptions of knowledge and the modern library experience.' Library Quarterly 62 October 1992, 408-424.

Biographical information

Miroslaw Kruk undertook his studies in librarianship at the Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records at Monash University. He works as an information analyst at Abix, a Melbourne-based provider of business information. His e-mail address is mirek@net2000.com.au.