“Contraries are reconcilable in a higher synthesis, while contradictories exclude one another” - Bob Doran SJ, Theology and the Dialectics of History.
My primary interlocutor in this project is Bernard Lonergan, whose theories of societal progress and decline will provide a framework for my analysis. One of the key interpreters and developers of Lonergan’s thought is the late Bob Doran SJ, who is quoted above.
I am now about half way through my research interviews, and have been delving into a range of other material (newspaper articles, parliamentary debates etc) from the 90’s in particular. One of my initial observations is that the idea of consensus in politics provokes a very mixed response. For some, it is almost a dirty word. Consensus, from this perspective, is nothing more than a mushy middle, with a desire to be nice getting in the way of the hard reality that politics is about choices. You can’t, on this argument, have it both ways, you can’t please everyone (and by extension, why even try).
This is a challenge given that consensus, or a more consensual approach, is often held up as one of the defining characteristics of devolution’s hoped for new politics (alongside the four Consultative Steering Group principles - participation, power sharing, accountability and equal opportunities).
Doran’s distinction between a dialectic of contraries and a dialectic of contradictions gives us, I think, a useful tool for understanding what is meant by consensus in its best sense.
There are some things, ideas, choices that are simply contradictory. You can’t have both simultaneously. Like the 0 and 1 in the binary system, if you have 1 you don’t have 0, and if you have 0 you don’t have 1. Something is true or false, yes or no. There is no consensus outcome possible, no nice and easy meeting in the middle.
But there are other ideas, choices, things that are different, that are contrary to each other, that exist as two opposite poles, but the existence of one does not exclude the existence of the other. It is possible to have both one and the other, to have a mix of both, or better still, to have something emerge from the interaction of both that is more fitting than either. As Doran would have it, drawing on Lonergan, it is possible to use the tension between contrary poles as a source of creativity and dynamism and this is where, I would argue, a consensual approach becomes not only possible, but in many/most cases also the ideal.
An example from the history of devolution might be the tension between constituency representation (which favours a first past the post electoral system) and proportionality (which favours STV or some form of list system). It is not an either/or choice because, as we saw, it was possible to develop a system that had elements of both, and delivered what was fundamentally important in both. The system that emerged is not perfect, but it was a more fitting choice for the Scottish Parliament on its creation than either pole on its own.
In our politics today, we too often label things as contradictory (either/or) when they are in fact contrary and capable of more consensual, both/and solutions. In particular, I believe we have allowed ourselves to see the independence/union debate in terms of contradiction - yes or no, one or the other. That is not surprising given the political penchant for emphasising dividing lines and the fact we went through a binary process of voting Yes or No.
Independence and Union in a dialectic of contradiction was almost certainly the case in the 18th or 19th centuries when being an independent nation state meant something different from what it does today in this world of greater interdependence and multi-national bodies such as the EU. Today, we accept that it is possible to share sovereignty, to be both independent in some areas and working in partnership, or in a union, in others. That does not mean that there is an easy way of combining the two, because statehood is still a reality, but if we are open to the possibility, we can begin to see the different poles of independence and union, autonomy and partnership, as a source of potentially creative and collective dynamism rather than as a focal point for winner-takes-all division.