Sobre El Concepto de Contingencia en Las Ciencias Sociales

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Problematology and Contingency in the Social Sciences

par Nick TURNBULL

| Association de la Revue internationale de philosophie | Revue int ernat ional e de phil osophie

2007/4 - n 242

ISSN 00-48-8143 | ISBN 978-2-9600-6403-2 | pages 451 472

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Turnbull N., Problematology and Contingency in the Social Sciences, Revue internationale de philosophie2007/4,n 242, p. 451-472.

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Problematology and Contingency

in the Social Sciences

Nick Turnbull

Wherever we look in the social sciences today we find references to contin-

gency.1It goes by many namespostmodernity, liquid modernity, indetermi-

nacy, problematization, destabilization, flux, radical undecidability, and so on.But whichever term is used social scientists have identified how modernity has

been called into question and causality and certainty have been replaced by a

more problematic social reality, such that contingency is the defining attribute

of contemporary society.2Social relationships are characterized by contingency

rather than necessity, as are the social sciences themselves which have reflex-

ively recast their own theories in light of the realization that social scientific

knowledge can only be a partial perspective. This has produced a wealth of

new approaches but also many difficulties. How are we to make sense of theworld in all its plurality and questioning of established traditions yet develop

a theory of consistent, logical relationships to describe it? That is, how can

we theoretically express the contingency of the world without annulling it in

a system which represents it as a series of determinate states linked via causal

necessity? Luhmann points to the extent of the contingency problem for the

social sciences in noting that contingency is a weak generalization compared

with necessity and impossibility: is there a theorythat can make use of the

conceptof contingency?3

Given that contingency has been produced by theproblematization of society and the social sciences, one answer to this question is

to conceptualize contingency in terms of problematization itself. Many variants

of poststructuralism have attempted this, yet arguably have not made significant

advances because they often see problematization as disruptive rather than as

constitutive of knowledge. Instead, at least as far as social scientific inquiry is

concerned, we could conceive of this generalized problematization in positive

terms. Michel Meyers philosophy, problematology, can do this because it is

1. Thanks to Barry Hindess, Toby Fattore and Harry Blatterer for their valuable advice.

2. Niklas Luhmann,Observations on Modernity, trans. William Whobrey (Stanford: Stanford Univer-

sity Press, 1998), 44.

3. Luhmann, Observations, 46.


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Nick Turnbull452

built upon questioning as a fundamental property and so establishes the philo-

sophical ground for a theory to describe contingency in social relations.

The contingency of contemporary society has been identified in the destabiliza-

tion of established social structures and identities, for example of class, ethnicity,

and nation. However, while the tenor of social inquiry has changed, many ques-

tions which previously occupied social scientists reappear today, albeit in less

structured form. Despite empirical problematization and the political and social

change it has produced, the question now is not just to understand the dynamics

of this change but why so much remains constant and why we often continue

on a similar course despite the problems which confront us. To understand the

lack of questioning in a problematized world we must conceive of questioning

in more than a literal sense by explaining how it operates in practice to motivate

change or to reinforce the past. Instead of determinate social systems which

are either fixed or overturned by revolution we find Luhmanns continuously

evolving, self-organizing social systems which are thoroughly contingent and

yet still produce a significant degree of order. In politics, problematization has

not necessarily led to more questioning of power with Bauman describing how,

in postmodernity, uncertainty and its anxieties can lead to political quiescence

and surrender because we lack the confidence to envision a better future. For

him, we face a life in the presence of an unlimited quantity of competing forms

of life, unable to prove their claims to be grounded in anything more solid and

binding than their own historically shaped conventions.4To conceptualize

this period in which we face a dynamic contest between forms of life for which

history is but an argument, we must conceive of society rhetorically, a rhetoric

which includes a place for the passions since these express the human necessity

to choose and therefore deal equally with constancy as with change. And if the

political has become a concern of social theorists, it is because it deals explicitly

with the contingency of the differences between us and the ambiguous choices

confronting us about the future. Contingency and problematization are normal

in politics, for which rhetoric is the only discourse appropriate for deliberating

upon problems and legitimating decisions.

To thematize this contingency in a consistent and integrated way requires a

philosophical approach. Meyers problematology tackles the problem of articu-

lating contingency at the foundational level of thought. Since philosophy has

always sought unity Meyer rejects the twentieth century fragmentation of reason

as non-philosophical, saying that we must attempt to explain fragmentation

4. Zygmunt Bauman,In Search of Politics(Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 120.


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Problematology and Contingency in the Social Sciences 453

rather than reflect it in our own discourse.5Therefore he returns to metaphysics,

to philosophy as the search for first principles, the interrogation of reason itself.

At the same time, the indeterminate foundation he proposes confirms the anti-

foundationalist attitude of much contemporary philosophy and social theory,

even while securing it via the foundation of questioning. Problematology does

not simply point to the flaws or limitations of ontology but moves beyond it

entirely. In the derivation of the principle of questioning and the deduction of

the problematological logos, Meyer presents us with a grounded philosophy

and a theoretical construct through which to integrate contingency into a social

science adequate for the times.

In this article I outline the basis of a problematological approach to the social

sciences. I proceed inductively from Meyers argument for the foundation of

questioning and how this necessitates a theory of answering which expresses

contingency. The key concepts here are the two dimensions of answering:

the problematological which expresses a question, and the apocritical which

dissolves the question. By putting these on an equal footing and explaining how

they are interrelated, problematology reflects and articulates the problematic

which lies at the heart of reason itself. Hence this dual conception of answering

can be used at any derived level of reasoning to indicate the contingent along-

side the necessary, what is in question and what is out of the question. Next, I

explain that a problematological philosophy of social science would be based

on the tripartite properties of the question-answer relationship which are already

common in constructivist social science; dialectic (and dialogue), hermeneu-

tics, and rhetoric. Finally, I develop this line of thought by extending rhetorical

interpretation to a discussion of how problematology might frame key questions

in the social sciences: the subject, social practice, social relations and social

systems, and politics. Of course, each of these warrants extensive treatment, so

this is only the most preliminary of outlines. Nonetheless, it shows how, using

problematology, we can reflect the contingency of contemporary social science

and integrate these key questions through a singular philosophical perspective.

Most importantly, this incorporates the rhetorical dimension as fundamentally

important to human nature and to social scientific inquiry into it. It locates the

passions at the centre of human existence and in so doing provides new and

systematic possibilities for social inquiry which expresses the passionate dimen-

sion of social life, from the construction of identity in a problematized world tothe mobilization of political passions in order to change it.

5. Michel Meyer, Of Problematology: Philosophy, Science and Language, trans. David Jamison

with Alan Hart (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3.


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Nick Turnbull454

The necessity of contingency in the problematological difference

Contingency arrives most importantly in the social sciences with the rejec-tion of a causal model of social relations and a subject which grounds objective

interpretations of society. The major changes to Western economies and societies

have problematized these ideals. Social identities are now in flux and subject-

centered interpretations have been equally problematized as we reflect upon the

social situatedness of the scientific observer. Ontology, which is concerned with

being, cannot adequately express this problematic reality, and is a particularly

unsuitable ground upon which to base a theory of politics which is concerned

not with being but with problems, not with fixed reality but with possibility. Inboth the problematization of forms of life and the new political problems arising

from them, social scientists must deal with the generalized contingency of their

object of study and their own epistemological perspective.

Despite its difficulties, this generalized contingency does give us something in

common to work from in the form of problematization. However, this cannot be

formulated from an ontological or propositional base. A hypothetical proposition

makes an independent assertion which is opposed to another proposition, the goal

being to eliminate one through recourse to some third element which can adjudi-cate between them. Meyer rejects this view of judgment as partial, noting instead

that before we can formulate any proposition, we must already have a question.6

A proposition is already a response, an answer, whether or not the question to

which it responds is explicitly put forward. In suppressing questioning, proposi-

tional reasoning sees contingency as a temporary state of affairs to be eliminated

by some method which rules one answer out and justifies the other as the truth.

Questioning is different. It expresses contingency by making explicit the first

level of reasoning, showing that alternative propositions are alternative answersto a question and gain meaning through this relationship. When we are faced

with a question we do often arrive at a solution which dissolves it, for example

by mutual agreement or by adjudicating upon the alternatives through reference

to a pre-established answer to a different question. But equally, we could extend

the questioning process by elaborating upon it, transforming and yet maintaining

the problematic, or even challenging the formulation of the problem itself. All

these options achieve epistemological progress even though they do not all

respond to the initial problem by dissolving it. By theorizing them all equallyas answers, we see that contingent answers also contribute to knowledge even

if they do so differently from apodictic responses.

6. Meyer, Problematology, 72107.


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In social relations, contingency is common because social interactions are

problematic and highly variable. This is particularly the case in politics, where

the object is to express problems and generate debate as much as it is to eliminate

questions through practical solutions. And yet, theoretical approaches such as

behaviorism and rational choice theory continue to hold appeal because they

produce results, regardless of whether they capture the reality of contingent social

processes which do not easily lend themselves to the problem solving model.

But theories which suppress contingency or relegate it to an undifferentiated

noise are of little use in the contemporary context. Meyer would describe such

theories as propositional since they repress the problematic in defining social

reality as a series of determinate, independent states. They cannot articulate

contingency except as a residual, that which is left over from the hypothesized

causal link between A and B. Conversely, questioning expresses contingency at

its base, articulating the alternative and showing that there is a choice without

negating that choice by excluding the problematic a priori.

Questioning goes to a more fundamental level of thought and by bringing it

forward we can see the contingent relationship between question and answer

which lies at the heart of all reason. This does not mean that all answering is

equally contingent. Rather, problematology simply puts contingent answers on

an equal footing, as answers, with necessary answers. Social science appears

weaker than the natural sciences only if we presuppose that an answer isand only

isan apodictic solution which eliminates a question. But when we identify the

answerhood of propositions we see that the apodictic is but one particular form

of answering which occurs only in particular contexts and is of less relevance to

contingent human affairs. Social science deals with subjects, who are questioners,

and therefore the social sciences are more explicitly problematological.

But if questioning expresses fundamental contingency, then isnt problema-

tology as contingent as any other philosophy and therefore arbitrary? Here, we

need to separate the principle of questioning from Meyers deduction of the

problematological difference which forms his theory of the logos. Meyer asks

the question of what is first in philosophy, what is the principle of reason.7What

is first in the question of what is first is questioning itself, no matter how one

poses the question, therefore questioning is the first principle of thought. One can

question this principle but not refute it because to question the principle simply

confirms it. The principle of questioning is therefore necessary. However, as the

historical record shows us, the answer which reflects this principle is not neces-

7. Ibid., 56.


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Nick Turnbull456

sary. This is because, in response to a question, many answers are possible other

than the problematological one which confirms questioning. Indeed, even though

they have all practiced questioning, until now philosophies have repressed their

questioning origins in their various responses to historical problematization.8

But problematology is different from other philosophies because it reflects

this multiplicity in its answer by confirming questioning, in contrast to other

systems which, in the search for necessity, attempt to justify a universal answer

which eliminates the problematic in general. Reflecting questioning generates

the concept of the problematological answer, that which responds to the foun-

dational problematic by explicating it and thereby creating a difference without

abolishing the question in the response. Problematology poses language itself

as a partial answer, a problematological reply to and reflection of the founda-

tion as question. In making this response, language expresses both questions

(problematological answers) and answers (apocritical answers) and it is in the

difference between these properties of answering that we find the synthesis of

necessity and contingency: it is necessary that we question and that we answer,

but because knowledge is grounded in questioning there is always an alterna-

tive. The problematological difference is a more fundamental difference than

the propositional link, which actually takes place at a secondary level at whichonly the apocritical element appears. Underneath this, we see the contingency of

answering which we can make explicit by asking the question of the foundation

and showing that to answer is to confirm the problematic itself.

Questioning is necessary and by explicating it Meyer gives voice to the prob-

lematic and also to the contingency of answering, a contingency expressed in the

fundamental alternative to explicitly reflect questioning or to repress it. Prob-

lematology is the only philosophical answer which thematizes this contingency

instead of repressing it in an answer which is denied as such in the concept of

the proposition. Problematology does this consistently with its own principle

so it is reflexively secured in method and theory. The question-answer pair,

problematologically conceived, shows that the necessity of questioning produces

the contingency of answering. This appears paradoxical only if we presuppose

the propositional view, in which reason is the giving of answers which neces-

sarily eliminate questions. But such a conception of reason itself presumes an

answer to the question of questioning without having asked it, a contradiction

which we can uncover and correct by pointing out that this in turn implies that

8. See, Michel Meyer, Questionnement et historicit(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

2000).


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it is in questioning in which we find the nature of philosophy and that which is

fundamental to thought.

The problematological difference in social exchange

The mechanism of the problematological difference is the key to the dynamic

nature of problematology and its utility for theorizing social relations. As I

noted above, Meyer presents language itself as a first level of answering which

expresses both questions and answers. The move from implicit worries to the

explicit expression of questions through language establishes a primary logical

difference Meyer terms theproblematological difference.9Because it respondsto the question of questioning, language is an answer and therefore apocritical

(an answer which solves and suppresses a question)10and alsoproblematological

because in answering it expresses a question.11A problematological answer

demarcates the solution-to-be-reached, without which the solution would not

make sense.12This conception of the logosarticulates the problematological

difference at two levels of thought: 1) the difference between implicit worries

and explicit problems, and 2) the difference between questions and answers

within the second level of explicit discourse.The problematological difference creates a dynamic logic by which knowl-

edge is generated and intersubjectivity made possible. How? It specifies that

answers must be both apocritical and problematological, but not for the same

question because this would be contradictory. Instead, an answer is apocritical

for the question it resolves and problematological for a different question. The

apocritical effect represses the question, making it autonomous from that ques-

tion.13Apocritical answers thus do not appear to be answers but autonomous

statements, or propositions, suppressing their answerhood in directing attentiontoward their objects. The outcomes of questioning thus appear to be objective

even though they are in fact subjective results.14The autonomy of the answer

gives the world constancy and identity by making what was in question no longer

so: answering phenomenalizes the world.15This also applies to the question of


10. In the primary case, the question solved is the question of making explicit the foundation as ques-

tion. The initial questionthe question as foundationremains implicit and explicit language

responds to it, expressing it without reducing it to a presupposed, hypostatized linguistic form.

11. Ibid., 211.

12. Ibid., 210.

13. Ibid., 213.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., 215.


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Nick Turnbull458

individual identity which is constructed from the many judgments made through

experience and stored in our unconscious, judgments we usually do not question.16

The autonomization of answering gives usand gives the world for usidentity

and constancy, permitting us to operate in a routine manner. At the same time,

the autonomization of the answer evokes the problematological effect, gener-

ating a new question or relating to a new questioner.17The problematological

difference comprises a dual mechanism which makes an answer autonomous

and also enables it to become part of a synthesis linking a series of questions.

Inquiry is an active process which produces problematics that enable us to relate

to each other and to the world. Questions are linked together dialectically, each

new line of questioning can enrich an earlier one, which can thus be brought to

completion, weakened, or used for other purposes.18Social action conceived as

a series of static, linked propositional stages is inadequate for describing inter-

related, complex social processes whereas the problematological conception of

intersubjectivity shows that there is a question in every social exchange. The

apocritico-problematological link supports intersubjectivity by relating one

question to another through the mechanism of answering.19

The problematological difference shows that we need not separate contingency

from necessity because this difference captures both. We cannot help but offer

answers which relate to questions and thereby give form to the world and shape

to our social relations. In the problematological difference, this synthesis has a

dynamic property.20We cannot reach the end of reason nor the end of history since

every answer is necessarily problematological; beyond the question it answers,

it raises the possibility of a further question for us and for others interested in

the matter at hand. Even to refuse to answer is another way of answering, so

silence and inaction can have meaning for us by relating them to a question. At

the second level of reasoning we can insist that certain answers are necessary,

however this is only so in a limited context. For example, scientific laws can

take on new meaning by being interpreted through questions of culture. Hence

questioning never ends, each resolution adding to the context via the apocritical

accumulation of answers while simultaneously offering up a new problematic

16. Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Frederick

Lehnert (London: Heinemann Educational, 1972).


18. Ibid.

19. For a full discussion of meaning and intersubjectivity in problematology, see Michel Meyer,

Meaning and Reading: A Philosophical Essay on Language and Literature(Amsterdam: John

Benjamins, 1983); and Problematology, 23557.



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via the problematological effect. The logic of questioning is fundamentally

dynamic, contrary to the static logic of propositional reason which focuses only

on the results of social interactions and interprets that little is happening if the

whole remains largely consistent, when in fact each interaction is a dynamic

process and stability is a possible response to contingency as much as change.

This should be apparent today when so much is in flux yet so much of modernity

remainshistorical contingency does not necessarily equal radical change, even

if it is the condition which promotes the search for new answers. In the prob-

lematological dialectic the constancy of the social world is a result, an answer

to a multitude of questions which form a dynamic questioning process.

The dimensions of the question-answer relationship are shaped by three funda-

mental properties familiar to social scientists: dialectics, hermeneutics, and

rhetoric. Reason is inherently dialectical because answering makes it possible to

link questions together. Similarly, since people relate intersubjectively through

questioning, the dialectical exchange between individual questioners is equally

dialogical, whereby the problematological difference is materialized as each

person in turn becomes questioner and answerer.21In dialogue, the autonomiza-

tion of answering generates a question for the listener as to the meaning of the

answer, that is, how it relates to a question via the context. Comprehending

meaning is thus a hermeneuticalquestioning process in which one substitutes

one problematological answer for another, producing an apocritical result.22

This substitution establishes a problematological equivalence between the two

questioning processes.23The hermeneutic dimension is linked to the least used

concept in the social sciences, the rhetorical: when we cannot prove answers

demonstratively by eliminating all the alternatives, questions remain open and

there is a chance for debate.24Rhetoric does not deal with the truth value of a

particular thesis but concerns the problematicity affecting the human condition,

in its passions as much as in its reason and its discourse.25The context of social

21. Ibid., 220.

22. Ibid., 224; see also Meyer,Meaning, 14168.

23. Meyer,Meaning, 153; Meyer, Problematology, 224. Meyer argues that all meaning is generated

hermeneutically, even in the simplest exchanges which are understood easily and without conscious

effort. The context provides the presuppositions for the discourse, including socio-cultural vari-

ables and the answers built up in dialogue (also known as tacit knowledge; Michael Polanyi,

The Tacit Dimension, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967). The questioning process allows

us to hermeneutically interpret the implicit from the explicit.

24. Michel Meyer,Rhetoric, Language and Reason(University Park: Pennsylvania State University

Press, 1994), 96.

25. Michel Meyer, Rhetoric and the Theory of Argument,Revue Internationale de Philosophie

50(2) (1996): 337.


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Nick Turnbull460

interaction informs the questioners about their relative distance from each other,26

a distance which is negotiated rhetorically, whether through discourse or other

recognizable symbols. Meyer provides a general definition of rhetoric as the

negotiation of distance between men with regards to a question or a problem

[original emphasis].27This encompasses the many diverse aspects of rhetoric,

from deliberative argumentation through to the figurative meaning of literature

and art. Together, these three properties describe the structure and potential

variability of the relationship between questions and questioners.

Rhetorical social relations

Problematology provides an ideal philosophical basis upon which to build

contemporary social science because it expresses contingency at a fundamental

level. The questioning concept highlights the alternative inherent in the dialectic

of every social exchange, reflecting the temporalization Luhmann described in

the elements of social systems.28In questioning social questioning, problema-

tology also affirms the centrality of questioning for hermeneutic social science,

as described by Gadamer. Here, I emphasize only the rhetorical dimension

because this offers the most potential for a new understanding of how individualsand societies deal with contingency. Importantly, we need not restrict rhetoric

to the study of discourse. To speak is to act so all action, whether discursive or

otherwise, can be conceived as a response to an implicit problematic. Military

strategy, for example, is non-discursive but it is rhetorical, when one general

positions his army in such a way so as to deceive his opponent by implying that

he will pursue a different strategy from that which he intends. So, we can use

rhetorical concepts to describe the negotiation of distance between people in

general, whether in terms of their distance from each other in the market, acrosssocial classes, genders, races, national identities, and so on, and even to describe

the subjects relationship with her unconscious. Rhetoric is relational and agen-

tial, expressing the possibilities of the relationship between self, other, and world

as a question mediated through the passions: it is the logic of contingency.


27. Meyer, Theory of Argument, 334.

28. Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz, Jr. with Dirk Baecker (Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 1995), 11.


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The subject

History has put the subject in question so the problematological response

is not to dissolve the subject but instead to characterize it as a question. The

problematization of the subject thus produces a rhetorical anthropology.29Today

identity is rhetorically constructed so that we can be A and B at the same time,

different within ourselves as well as for others. The question view shows us

that rhetoric is a fundamental property of the logosand this lends rhetorical

agency to the subject.30We can question ourselves and the world and change

in response, or equally we can avoid dealing with questions by making them

rhetorical, suppressing the problematic in order to ensure the consistency of the

world which so uncomfortably puts us into question. The subjects relations

with others have also been problematized, or rhetoricized, reconfiguring the

primary question for human beings which is how to live together. The social and

the political arise from the contingency which defines the relationship between

questioners, so to conceptualize social relations in a problematized world we

need rhetoric.

In Meyers rhetorical anthropology, each individual is a questioner operating

from his own subjective perspective. This forms a three-part orientation: the

subjects relationship with himself, with others, and with objects.31The world has

meaning for us because we ask questions of it. The answers we reach contribute

to our identity (ethos) which is formed most importantly through our relations

with others. We engage with others whom we question and respond to and

whom also question and respond to us (logos). How others appear to me and

how I appear to them affects how I see myself. And because I have agency, I

can attempt to project a particular ethos in an attempt to appear to others how

I wish them to see me.32There is also the unconscious which operates beneath

the surface of my thoughts, providing me with preconceived answers about how

to be in the world (pathos). The individual has agency in that she can question

herself and question the world, each problematic varying with the particularity

of the questions but also limited through the implicit context provided by the

answers of the unconscious and the social conventions which construct identity

at the collective level. Identity is formed by our questioning, it is the quest itself,

29. Meyer,Rhetoric.

30. Nick Turnbull, Rhetorical Agency as a Property of Questioning, Philosophy and Rhetoric37(3)

(2004): 20722.

31. Michel Meyer, Philosophy and the Passions: Toward a History of Human Nature, trans. Robert

F. Barsky (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 214.

32. See Emmanuelle Danblon, Problematology, Language, Rhetoric,Revue Internationale de

Philosophie(this issue).


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Nick Turnbull462

nourished by the alternatives which follow along in train.33Problematized social

relations pose more questions for individuals who live in greater contingency

and they respond through the passions, through fear and anxiety at being called

into question or through excitement at the opportunities for transformation or

through the many different motives toward engaging collectively with others.

Social practice

Since human beings live in contingency, we act through the passions, for

passion is the alternative itself.34Rather than seeing the passions as something

which must be overcome in order to attain reason, Meyer explains the utility

of a passionate way of acting, articulating a theory of the passions as an essen-

tial aspect of human nature which has both positive and negative qualities.35In

everyday life we face new questions all the time, however we desire continuity

and security so we deal with these questions by making them rhetorical, abol-

ishing problems as we find them.36This process of rhetoricization is what the

consciousness gives itself to assure its identity and external coherence.37Meyer

deduces that rhetoricization requires passion to function. We do not need or want

to reconstitute the world each time we encounter it, so by making new questions

rhetorical we avoid thinking about everyday actions; we would be in a state

of permanent confusion if we had to do so.38But we do not consciously make

questions rhetorical because we must act as though questions are not, in fact,

questions. So, the unconscious covers up the process, annulling problematicity

and giving us the impression of permanence by performing an unconscious

resolution which disguises the rhetoricization of the questions. The unconscious

resolution is the rendering rhetorical of the process of making rhetorical, which

annuls the problem at hand.39On one hand this has a positive effect in allowing

us to develop routines for complex actions and to obtain a sense of security in

the familiar, but on the other hand it is also the source of all our prejudices and

the blindness of the unconscious, where we see only what we want or expect to

see.40In this process of repressionwe also find a problematological link between

the problems of the world and the emotional problems of the psyche, such that

33. Meyer, Passions, 255.

34. Ibid., 7.

35. Ibid., 225.

36. Ibid., 216.

37. Ibid., 218.

38. Ibid., 217.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid., 216, 218.


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we can (rhetorically) theorize the relationship between the character of the

individual and collective social forces.

Social practice is a rhetorical phenomenon whereby social actors encounter

new situations and approach them on the basis of past solutions which have

become internalized. This forms their habitus,41their dispositions made up of

embodied problematological answers through which they interpret the world. It

is most difficult to reflect upon and alter our habitus because we not only want

to remain within comfortable boundaries, we are passionately committed to

doing so because they securely affirm our identity. So, while we do often ques-

tion ourselves, securing our identity also involves the rhetorical repression of

questions: The problematological analysis attempts to show that we prefer to

not have to ask too many questions.42Common sense is the comfort of presup-

posed answers which permit us to act practically without excessive demands

for verification. Passion permits us to be pragmatic, to operate efficiently and

quickly within contexts which are known to us and, in other situations, is what

renders the unfamiliar in familiar terms, providing us with ready-made responses

which reduce the anxiety that accompanies the unknown.

Through the rhetoric of the passions the problematological difference explains

both consistency and continuity as dynamic. Passion provides security in repeti-

tion but it is also the site at which accepted solutions become the object of reflec-

tion. For example, where we experience pleasure we seek repetition, but pain

operates as a difference which threatens the equilibrium of these orientations,

put[s] them into question and brings on instability.43In the latter case, passion

makes us conscious that the status quo is unacceptable, it puts the question of

whether to make reality rhetorical or to pursue an alternative.44Reflection is not

just a sterile process of uncovering the truth underneath the passionate illu-

sion; passion modifies our identity itself when it prompts us to reflect.45Reflec-

tive questioning is different from unreflective questioning but they are related

through passion.

The logic of questioning leaves open the possibility of reflexive questioning or

closing off questioning through rhetoricization. Repressing the question creates

constancy and social practices develop over time through repeated rhetoriciza-

41. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of A Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1977).


43. Ibid., 249.

44. Ibid., 253.

45. Ibid., 254.


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Nick Turnbull464

tion. However, the generation of practices should not be mistaken for simple

recurrence nor an effect of conscious, rational choice. Rather, it is rhetorical and

impassioned. The repetition of practices pleases us; we enjoy the consistency

of performing in a similar way so that these responses become embodied in our

unconscious dispositions via the rhetorical effect. In classical rhetoric the use

of repetition in speech is known as anaphora.46It has a pleasing and persuasive

effect by organising several clauses under one semantic form (e.g., Churchills

we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing groundswe shall

never surrender). Applying this to social practice, anaphora is the rhetorical

scheme by which practices are taken on by individuals and rhetorically trans-

mitted to others across a social group. This form of repetition is not tautological

because the repetition itself raises a question for us, a question which is resolved

through pleasure. That is, passion responds to and resolves the problematological

effect generated by the repetition of an act or utterance. Using this rhetorical

term distinguishes it from repetition as an inconsequential recurrence of an

event or as representing the result of a new rational calculation each time. Its

rhetorical property explains the longevity of practices in the attachment we feel

to routines, cultural practices, and rituals, which have a similar role in repressing

the problematic.47What counts is the repetition of these shared acts, thereby reaf-firming the answers to the question of our individual and collective identities

over and above the individual acts themselves. The impassioned construction of

normative practices can be appreciated if we think of their converse; violating

conventions and rituals can produce responses from discomfort to aggression

in those who feel these norms should not be questioned. Alternatively, excess

repetition can sometimes provoke in us a malaise which prompts us to question

the established answers.

Social relations and social systems

Luhmann notes that a complete social theory must deal with both change and

preservation which can only be theorized at the level of elemental events because

a social system is confronted at every moment with the alternative of ceasing

or continuing [my emphasis].48Consistent with this temporalization, problema-

tology describes individual events at the elemental level of social systems in

46. The rhetorical conception of anaphora is different from its linguistic definition which explains

repetition in terms of referring back to preceding utterancesfor example, through pronounsbut

does not consider its pleasing effect.

47. See Luhmann, Social Systems, 452.

48. Ibid., 347.


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terms of an alternative, i.e., as a question. The treatment of these alternatives

generates dynamism through the problematological difference because each

event is an apocritical answer which in turn invokes the problematological effect,

generating meaning for another question or questioner. Through this dialectic of

questioning, contingent social interactions build systems autopoietically. Social

systems are self-organizing in that they build up answers which in turn become

the context for new questions, providing the reference points which are placed

out of the question and through which systems reduce complexity.49The prob-

lematological effect enables systems to refer to these previous answers and to

deal with new questions through them, such that the dual process of answering

is not tautological but is open and closed at the same time.50Anaphora is the

mechanism by which social systems generate self-reference at the level of prac-

tice, creating bonds between their members who recognize and re-enact shared

solutions. Through a succession of questioning exchanges at the elemental level,

societies evolve vast complexity over time at the meta-level. Social systems

are nonlinear because each solution feeds back into the system to become part

of the new context, while also making possible an alternative insofar as each

answer can lead to new directions by being related to one or more other ques-

tions. This differs from the propositional view, which would conceptualizesystems in terms of propositions, as fixed states linked by causal necessity.

Here, social change is therefore either structurally determined or must origi-

nate in a source external to the system. In contrast, autopoietic social systems

produce semi-structured forms which work to fix the action through answering

but which never completely prescribe it because they are built upon questioning,

so they always give rise to contingency in an alternative. In order to cope with

this problematicity, social systems create reference points through answers in

the form of, for example, norms, practices, the conventions of everyday socialinteraction, rituals, discursive narratives, political institutions and law. The social

sciences have always sought to understand how disorganized social interactions

in which individuals have agency can produce a reasonably stable and patterned

social order. In social systems we find flexibility and change alongside order

and continuity. If contingency has become more explicit in the late modern

or postmodern period, then we should see it in terms of a greater degree of

problematicity, not as eliminating the apocritical but as the problematological

becoming stronger in relation to it. Epistemologically speaking, the two fallunder the same questioning dynamic.

49. Ibid., 46066.

50. Ibid., 460.


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Nick Turnbull466

We live in societies so our identity is formed through our relationships with

others through whom we experience different forms of recognition. Recogni-

tion is effected through a symbolic rhetoric which varies with the audience,

i.e., the social groups and the locations which form the context of social action.

Social norms and political institutions also come into play in attributing values

and character (ethos) to individuals and groups. In the public sphere there is

an ongoing debate (epideictic) about our social identity, as to what is positive

and what negative about the character of different groups, about who deserves

approbation and who condemnation. Individuals stand in a rhetorical relationship

with society in which identity and difference are constructed through rhetor-

ical negotiations around the distance between us in regard to social questions.

Modernity pluralizes sources of identity, and today even the structures of class,

ethnicity, culture, and nation have been rhetoricized and consequently highly

politicized.

Individuals contribute to the social system but the system also acts upon and

through us. We are not separate from the system but continuously create it

through our intersubjective relations with each other: problematology is consis-

tent with a constructivist view of social action. Social relations are not causal,

necessary forces but contingent relations between problematological constructs.

The social system reduces complexity by building up a body of common answers

which delimit the scope of problems while also permitting openness via the

problematological effect. Systems which balance questioning and the repres-

sion of questioning support reasonably stable identifications within the system

without stagnating and failing to deal with new problems: they are reflexive

but not so reflexive as to undermine their own coherence through excessive

problematization. Instead, the movement is toward the internal differentiation

of questioning into complex subsystems.51At the elemental level, the passions

provide the continuity which contingent social encounters are otherwise lacking.

At the meta-level, the system reduces complexity by differentiating itself inter-

nally through a range of institutionalized (problematological) mechanisms for

treating questions. Dialectical questioning processes produce complex and

dynamically stable systems which continuously interpret, resolve, and reprob-

lematize through hermeneutic and rhetorical means. At the system level, we

no longer suppose that social structures comprehensively direct events but are

perhaps better understood as rhetorical forces which influencewithout causallydeterminingthe relationship between questioners, analogous to the relation

51. Ibid.


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between speaker and audience.52Social forces are rhetorical figuresincluding

practices, values, and more ambiguous symbolic narratives or tropeswhich

structure social action through their rhetorical effect upon us. Anaphora is one

such mechanism. Another example is Bourdieus53characterization of the struc-

ture of accumulating administrative and scientific capital in science as chiastic,

the acquisition of each type producing an inverse movement in the other. To

these examples we could add, from the political thought of Quentin Skinner and

Ernesto Laclau, the idea of social relations being rhetorically constructed through

the tropes ofparadiastoleand catachresis.54All these examples suggest that we

could draw on many other rhetorical schemes to theorize social relations.

Politics

The means of dealing with overt problematization in social systems is politics.

The contingent nature of the human condition means we lead a political life in

which passions are necessary but must also be regulated.55Not all contingency

is political but contingency makes politics necessary because it raises questions

for which we do not have self-evident solutions. Politics is how we share and

deliberate upon our problems and treat the differences between us without, we

hope, resorting to violence. Since politics is the explicit treatment of social

problems, its discourse is explicitly rhetorical. This is where we find rhetoric

in its conventional sense as persuasive discourse. Political discourse reflects

the contingency of the social world and therefore it takes on a rhetorical form,

the object of which is to give voice to the problems of society and to deliberate

over them in the search for solutions. In this deliberation, interpretation and

argumentation are linked. The operation of the problematological difference

separates meaning from intention, permitting us to rhetorically disguise our

intentions and to appeal to the audience through the means of persuasion (ethos,

pathos, and logos).56Similarly, we cannot prevent our answers from being inter-

preted differently by others, so the ethos of the speaker is always in question in

political debate; when we are called upon we must justify ourselves (logos) by

explaining our own problematic. Also important is the counterpart of persua-

52. Clearly there is no intention to persuade in this case, however this analogy preserves the idea of

social forces as persuasive and seductive.

53. Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity, trans. Richard Nice (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2004), 57.

54. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics: Volume 1, Regarding Method(Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2002); Ernesto Laclau,Emancipation(s)(London: Verso, 1996).


56. The medium of the delivery is also important, so contemporary politics employs all sorts of

rhetorical devices adapted to the demands of the media, especially television.


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Nick Turnbull468

sion in the pathos of the audience, the willingness to be seduced by political

leaders and the ability of people to rhetorically gloss over difficult questions

upon which they disagree, so as to avoid conflict. At moments of crisis, when

facing the problematic cannot be avoided, rhetoric becomes all-important, the

only means by which we can treat urgent and vexing questions, defining them

and giving them shape through metaphor, and articulating collective sentiments

to provide the rationale for a way forward. The greatest orators are made at such

moments, their rhetoric establishing unity and purpose for a divided people.

Whether politics uses rhetoric to draw people together or push them apart, to

openly debate questions or to disguise them in the will to manipulate and be

manipulated, power in society is constituted rhetorically.

The key question of political systems is their legitimacy. But problematization

has rendered contemporary politics more contingent, so that political theory

which seeks normative principles of legitimation asks the wrong questions.57

Thornhill explains that Luhmanns post-Enlightenment conception of legitimacy

arises from his insight that, in self-organizing systems, legitimacy is gener-

ated from contingency through the mechanism of internal differentiation and

self-reference.58The legitimacy of a system does not arise from some external,

normative principle but is generated by the systems own internal operations:

a government is legitimate wherever it can motivate citizens to recognize and

follow laws, and wherever it can introduce autonomously validated laws (or

policies), which are then accepted as legitimate.59In other words, legitima-

tion isrhetorical. Since politics is contingent, there is always a question to

face about the legitimacy of political authority, which takes its best known

form in the differentiation of state and society. The political system limits itself

through deliberate choices which define the scope of the state, the problems for

which it takes responsibility and those it leaves to civil society. Conjoint with

the states treatment of each public problem is this meta-political, ideological

contest about what the state should and should not be responsible for, so that for

each political problem the proposed solutions imply an answer to this related

question through which the practical question is also defined. In democracies,

the solutions to policy problems might always be in dispute, however each of

these problematological solutions also substitutes for a solution to the larger

legitimation question, establishing a problematological equivalence such that the

57. Chris Thornhill, Luhmanns Political Theory: Politics After Metaphysics? inLuhmann on Law

and Politics: Critical Appraisals and Applications, edited by Michael King and Chris Thornhill

(Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2006), 84.

58. Ibid., 83.

59. Ibid.


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state-society difference is reaffirmed and the legitimacy of the state is implicitly

renewed each time (except at elections in which the question of legitimacy is

formally put and apocritically resolved). The problematological difference

between state and society is incrementally adjusted through this mechanism

of substitution. And yet despite their contingent nature, democracies are stable

precisely because they incorporate and promote continual questioning more

effectively than any authoritarian polity: when in doubt, democratic questioning

itself becomes the legitimating normative answer.

In order to function, societies require that a diverse range of social actors

cooperate. Coordination problems are more complex in democracies which

permit more players a legitimate interest in political decision making. This

makes legitimation in democracies more problematic, so they are characterized

by deliberativerhetoric around substantive problems. Authoritarian regimes

institutionally restrict the ability of people to question the state, so in these we

find an epideicticrhetoric where the only question is to praise the leader, for

example in the mass public displays of the former Ceausescu regime in Romania.

Legitimation in such states attempts to reduce the distance between state and

society by motivating in the people a singular identification with the metonymic

figure of the leader. So, following Meyers definition60of the rhetorical genres

in terms of the interrogative variability which characterizes them, in political

regimes we find a relationship between the form of political rhetoric and the

institutional structure of legitimation questions.

A key problem of politics is how to create a stable polity with efficient and

consistent governance but which also supports critical questioning and change

at the same time. When is change desirable and when is it more important to

affirm stability and coherence? This is a classic problem of political leadership.

In answering it, leaders must read the passions of the people and respond accord-

ingly. An excess of questioning might lead to social instability but repressing

it can frustrate those demanding attention to new problems and access to the

legitimate institutions. Politics is the domain of arguments between people on

such questions and the source of violent reactions against authority which resists

putting things into question.61Policymakers have a responsibility to be alert to

the problems of the people and to seek solutions to them but also to do so in

a way which carries everyone along with the questioning. This is the ongoing

dilemma of legitimation, the question which accompanies all political problems.

Whatever the case for moderate or adventurous rule, reflective questioning is

60. Meyer, Theory of Argument, 342.



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Nick Turnbull470

essential in politics for without it we could neither shape nor respond to social

problems.

Conclusion

What form of social theory can make use of contingency? Propositionalism

asks only about results without considering their relationship to questions,

thereby abolishing the answerhood of answers in presupposing that the whole

of knowledge is made of solutions which necessarily eliminate the problematic.

This philosophical construct fails to see the question-answer dynamic, and in so

doing separates contingency from necessity so it cannot but thematize contin-gency in a negative, or at best, residual way. Meyer has identified this pattern

in the Aristotelian division of logic and rhetoric62and the historical separation

of the passions from reason.63And yet the passions and rhetoric are essential to

human nature because they are the means by which we live in contingency. We

can effectively theorize this contingency only if we think of reason as grounded

in questioning, a ground confirmed in the reflexively secured principle of ques-

tioning which necessarily generates contingency. While questioning is neces-

sary for philosophy, the problematological response is historically contingent.Certainly, we do not have todevelop a problematological approach to the social

sciences because problematology is also a contingent, historicized response to

philosophical questioning, so it is rhetorical. But this is precisely what makes

it the most appropriate response to historical problematization: the argument

presented for its effectiveness is the effectiveness of its presentation of argu-

ment. In the philosophy of questioning and the tripartite properties of the prob-

lematological difference we have tools for developing an integrated conception

of social relations in terms of the problematic, of the contingent, especially inthe property of rhetoric which stands across both constancy and change, from

the elemental level of embodied social practice and dialogical exchange to

the meta-level of social systems and political responses to social problems.

It is through rhetoric that we negotiate our differences in regard to questions,

whether by obscuring them through rhetoricization or by explicitly treating

them in mediating our relations with others. Most importantly for the social

sciences, the problematological difference provides a single logical construct

through which to make use of contingency and to integratekey questions atdifferent levels of analysis.

62. Meyer,Rhetoric.

63. Meyer, Passions.


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The problematization of established institutions and cultural identities has not

revolutionized modernity, it has problematized it so that many of its character-

istics remain even if they have lost their apparent necessity. The subject is not

dead but it is in question, hence it has been rhetoricized, so that in the human

sciences we look for the sources of destabilization but also try to understand

how and why much remains the same despite the prevailing climate of contin-

gency. In uncertain conditions we construct stability by rhetoricizing many of

the questions which face us. This provides comfort but, in turn, produces its

own anxieties. At the same time, the appearance of generalized contingency has

reduced the ability of traditional means to achieve this, putting us into question

as a society. Do we flee from contingency toward certainty or should we embrace

it? How do we cope with the new individualized risks? How can we reconstruct

our collective identity in relation to history when established practices, rituals,

and norms have been problematized to such an extent that collective memory

itself has been called into question and forgetting is a passion of the times? In

politics, how do we acknowledge contingency yet still proceed with convic-

tion in the face of opponents who claim to have all the answers, an argument

which itself holds such strong appeal for those experiencing the anxieties of a

problematized identity? Whatever our responses to these questions, they willbe conditioned by contingency in terms of questioning and therefore subject to

the rules of the problematological difference.

The University of Manchester

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