Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYit should be true. (The fact that we are unable to conceive of the falsityof a statement is in many cases only a reason for suspecting thatour power of imagination is deficient or undeveloped.) It is one ofthe gravest mistakes if a philosophy ever offers self-evidence as anargument in favour of the truth of a sentence.”“for there is no doubt that we are all suffering under our ownsystem of prejudices […]; that we all take many things as selfevident,that we accept them uncritically and even with the naïve andcocksure belief that criticism is quite unnecessary; and scientists areno exceptions to this rule, even though they may have superficiallypurged themselves from some of their prejudices in their particularfield.” 89“Is it not a common experience that those who are most convincedof having got rid of their prejudices are most prejudiced?” 90“Thus we do not, in general, see the truth when we are most convincedthat we see it;” 91Now an interesting and at once important question:Who is in our case the one who is most fanatically convinced to possessthe truth? In order to find this out, a tolerance test needs to bemade: Who forbids whom to speak? Who puts whom into prison? Who burns whose books?I sincerely wish that the answer to these questions were “no one.” Itis obvious that the revisionists are not forbidding anybody to speak andnot arresting anybody or burning anybody’s books. Whether in futurethis can be said about the Federal Republic of Germany depends inlarge part on the decision of this CourtThe more fanatically we believe in the truth of our prejudices, themore we tend to immunize them from attempts to disprove them. Forthis reason, attempts at immunization are a good indicator of unscientificdogmatism.In order to illustrate how theories can be immunized, I shall give twoexamples from everyday life, so to say:89909170Ibid., p. 217.Ibid., p. 223.Ibid., pp. 390f.