Critical Thinking Against Archetypes

Rigorous scientists can defend irrational and inhumane positions, devoid of any ethics, on certain subjects. This paradox reveals the deep mechanisms of conformism and collective fear.

The Blind Spots of the Scientific Mind

Even the most enlightened, the sharpest minds, are not free from preconceptions about what they do not know, about the other, and are not free from the need, indeed the necessity, for simplism in areas foreign to them. This observation, which I have been able to make numerous times throughout my professional and personal journey, deserves our attention. For it touches on something fundamental in the way we collectively construct our relationship with reality.

Let us take a concrete example: quality scientists, recognized in their field, can dismiss with a wave of the hand those who questioned certain health policies during the Covid period. They label them “anti-vaxxers,” even though these people, like Professor Christian Perronne, claimed to be in favor of vaccination in general, but not in favor of all vaccinations blindly. Is it not precisely the hallmark of a scientific approach to not see things as a monolith, but to delve into the details of analyses, controversies, and objectification?

Caroline Ibos and Éric Fassin, in their work La savante et le politique (2025), remind us that science does not rest on the neutrality of the researcher, as is sometimes heard, but on the objectivity of their approach. Feminist epistemologies claim, against the illusion of neutrality, the requirement of a “strong objectivity,” capable of protecting us from biases and situated knowledge. This distinction between neutrality and objectivity is essential: the researcher is never neutral, but they can strive toward objectivity by making explicit their position, their presuppositions, their limits.

Gaston Bachelard, in The Formation of the Scientific Mind (1938), had already identified what he called “epistemological obstacles”: those habits of thought, those too-quickly-accepted evidences, those hasty generalizations that hinder knowledge. The most formidable obstacle, according to him, is that of “first opinion,” that spontaneous knowledge that believes itself definitive. The scientist who believes they know before having questioned closes themselves off to new knowledge. Yet this is exactly what happened on certain subjects during the Covid period: scientists considered the matter settled, that questioning amounted to obscurantism, without taking the trouble to examine the arguments put forward, especially since doing so represented the risk of being discredited.

Paul Feyerabend, in Against Method (1979), pushes this critique even further. He shows that scientific progress has often been made against established rules, through approaches that the guardians of orthodoxy would have qualified as irrational. Galileo did not convince through the force of his logical arguments, but through propaganda, rhetoric, appeals to intuitions that did not yet have a solid experimental foundation. Science, Feyerabend reminds us, does not advance in a linear and methodical way, but through ruptures, through transgressions, through what he calls “epistemological anarchism.” What is considered true in one era may be recognized as error in the next, and vice versa.

Social Conformism and the Cost of Dissent

How can we explain that people who think, who have made critical thinking their profession, find themselves caught in postures that deny their very ethics, without being aware of it? It seems to me that a first element of response lies in social conformism. In order not to be excluded from the social space, to keep one’s place, one’s relationships, one’s job, one aligns with the dominant doxa, consciously or not.

Étienne de La Boétie, in his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1576), had already analyzed this mechanism with remarkable acuity. How is it, he asked, that so many human beings sometimes endure a single tyrant, who has no power other than that which they give him? The answer lies in the chains of dependence and complicity that are woven: each person derives a small advantage from their submission, and fears losing that small advantage if they rebel. Servitude perpetuates itself because it is voluntary, because it ignores itself as servitude, because it presents itself as reason.

Paradoxically, an “ordinary” person, an employee in a low-skilled field, can be freer than an academic whose entire identity comes from their social trajectory, from their intellectual legitimacy built through connections with peers. If the academic deviates from the doxa, if they voice a critical position that is not that of the consensus, they risk being discredited, marginalized, losing their research funding, even their job. In the medical sector, where research laboratories are largely funded by the pharmaceutical industry, this dependence is even more marked. Voicing the slightest criticism on certain subjects meant risking permanent loss of funding.

This process can be conscious and venal, or unconscious and sincere. During the Covid period, whoever exercised freedom of thought became dangerous, and had to be discredited, because if they were not, it was the entire edifice that risked collapsing: the social reality of an entire professional milieu, and even the reality of the capitalist system, which had used the opportunity of this epidemic to strengthen itself in an unprecedented way.

The Scapegoat Mechanism

René Girard, in The Scapegoat (1982), developed a theory that powerfully illuminates these phenomena. According to him, human societies, confronted with crises that threaten their cohesion, tend to designate a scapegoat on whom collective violence is concentrated. This mechanism allows the group to reunite, to channel tensions toward a single target, to restore order by sacrificing the other.

The scapegoat is generally chosen according to “victim signs”: they are different, marginal, foreign, or they have distinguished themselves by a word or act that places them outside the group. During the Covid period, the “unvaccinated” played this role. They were blamed for the persistence of the epidemic, the overcrowding of hospitals, collective misfortune. They were stigmatized, excluded from many social spaces, sometimes even reported by their relatives, colleagues, or neighbors. Families even split permanently because of this.

Yet, as Girard shows, the scapegoat is always innocent of what they are accused of. Their guilt is constructed by the gaze of the group, by the group’s need to find someone guilty. The scientific consensus was moreover forced to admit after the fact that vaccines did not protect against transmission, which was however known from the start, and which some were shouting for the truth about, for which they were vilified, labeled “conspiracy theorists.” The stigmatization therefore had no rational basis: it stemmed from an archaic mechanism of cohesion through exclusion.

Girard insists that this mechanism is most often unconscious. The persecutors do not see themselves as such: they sincerely believe that the scapegoat is guilty, dangerous, that they deserve their fate. This is what makes the phenomenon so difficult to deconstruct from within. It takes distance, an outside perspective, a conversion of one’s gaze, to perceive the innocence of the victim and the violence of the group.

The Religious Dimension of Scientific Belief

There is a third element that seems important to me for understanding these phenomena, and it touches on something even deeper. It is a question of religion, in the broad sense of the term. Science, which has a certain number of stable axioms in order to apprehend known situations, finds itself helpless in the face of radical novelties, like this new virus that had appeared. Faced with these novelties, it sometimes abdicates and relies on beliefs that are precisely the beliefs of social conformism, which allow the group to continue functioning.

There is, even among the most demanding scientists, a share of beliefs that do not stem from demonstration, but from faith. Some great scientists believe in God, which may seem paradoxical for those who associate science with pure rationality. But what is this God? It seems to me that it is a unifying principle, a “what holds things together,” a possibility of letting go of reason on certain points in order to maintain it on others.

During the Covid period, the self-signed authorizations during the first lockdown, for example, perfectly illustrate this quasi-religious dimension. These attestations, juridically aberrant, amounted to self-control without any rational legal basis. Yet they were respected by the vast majority, and those who did not respect them were fined, sometimes arrested in case of repeat offense. There was something of the order of ritual, of submission to an authority, that transcended juridical reason.

Allegiance to this secular religion, paradoxically, gave the possibility of being free elsewhere. Because one had pledged allegiance in certain strategic places, one could act freely in others. It is the same mechanism as that described regarding mafia systems: if you pay the tribute, you can freely exercise your activity. It is obviously not freedom, but it presents itself as such. In the same way, vaccinated people who had obtained their “pass,” their QR code, spoke of “regained freedom,” when it was the exact opposite: a regime of authorization, which is the opposite of a regime of freedom.

Submission to Authority and the Banality of Evil

Stanley Milgram, in his famous experiments on submission to authority conducted in the 1960s, showed that ordinary people, placed in a context where an authority figure asked them to inflict suffering on others, obeyed in a considerable proportion. The experiment, described in Obedience to Authority (1974), reveals the power of the mechanism: as soon as an authority is recognized as legitimate, the individual feels de-responsibilized and can commit, through obedience, acts that they would condemn in other circumstances.

Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1966), coined the concept of “banality of evil” to describe this phenomenon. Eichmann, responsible for the logistics of the deportation of Jews, was not a monster, but a zealous bureaucrat who obeyed orders, who did his job, who did not think. The most terrible evil is not that of sadists and demons, but that of ordinary people who stop thinking, who follow instructions, who fit into the mold.

This is precisely what happened during the Covid period. Many scientists, intellectuals, citizens normalized measures that, in other times, would have been considered unacceptable. Restrictions on freedom were greater in France during this period than during the Occupation during World War II. Curfews, lockdowns, health passes, professional exclusions: all of this was accepted as normal, as necessary, as a matter of sanitary common sense.

The question has often been asked: would I have been a resistance fighter or a collaborator during World War II? We got the answer during the Covid period. Just as during the Occupation, the majority of people, believing very sincerely that they were on the side of good, collaborated. Pétainism presented collaboration as the most reasonable way to get through that period, to avoid the worst. And it was at the cost, little by little, insidiously, believing they were doing good, of considerable destruction.

The Social Cost of Critical Thinking in Times of Crisis

Contrary to what is sometimes said, the dynamic of human beings in times of crisis is not at all selfish. Human beings seek mutual support, seek above all solidarity, the common good. Faced with crisis, we seek to reform a group, to reform society. This is moreover why it is often during very serious crises that the most lasting things are forged. The French Revolution, a moment of extremely grave crisis, founded modern Western societies. The National Council of the Resistance, formed to resist during World War II, made it possible to build a more solidary society at the Liberation.

Thus, each crisis is an opportunity for refoundation, for deep reflection on each person’s position. But this refoundation can take very different directions. It can strengthen solidarity and democracy, or on the contrary consolidate authoritarianism, division, and the designation of a scapegoat. Everything depends on the collective capacity to maintain critical thinking, to resist the sirens of fear and conformism.

The problem is that critical thinking has a considerable social cost, particularly in times of crisis. Whoever questions, doubts, refuses to follow blindly, is perceived as a traitor, a public danger, an internal enemy. They are stigmatized, excluded, sometimes persecuted. The rare dissenters of the Covid period, those “dangerous conspiracy theorists” who were in reality resistance fighters, were ostracized by their peers. The left, which should have carried this dissent in the name of its values of freedom and emancipation, did not dare. It was afraid of being discredited, of losing voters. When precisely, in this type of situation, dissent was the best it would have had to offer.

The Extreme Center and the Boulevard Offered to the Far Right

On the political aspect, it is terrible that it was the far right that took up the arguments of common sense and freedom. The far right carries values of rejection of the other, of constructing the scapegoat, that I consider unacceptable. But what is even more unfortunate is that the loss of freedom, the stigmatization, the totalitarian regimentation were the doing of people who did not present themselves as extremists, when they were.

The historian Pierre Serna coined the concept of “extreme center” to designate this phenomenon: a power that presents itself as moderate, reasonable, centrist, but that practices a policy of violence, surveillance, exclusion. The extreme center is triumphant money draped in the clothes of reason. We were subjugated by extremists who do not present themselves as such, who present themselves as sensible and moderate. It is contemporary Pétainism.

This willful blindness opens a boulevard to the far right. Today we demonize the Rassemblement National, but we refuse to face the fact that totalitarianism has already been here, and that we supported it. If the RN has the intelligence to construct arguments based on fear, as the extreme-center government did, it will be able to bring many people along in its project. Those who obeyed yesterday to the extreme center will obey tomorrow to the far right. Submission to authority, whatever it may be, remains the same psychological mechanism.

Understanding to Forgive, Forgiving to Move Forward

If I am writing on these subjects, it is not to stigmatize in turn those who collaborated during the Covid period. It is to better understand and share the systemic reasons that led some to find themselves in those positions. Each person is responsible for their actions, certainly, and obeying the most problematic orders is always being responsible for one’s actions. But the environment has influence. We are not alone. The same person, in different contexts, can do good as well as do evil.

Understanding is not excusing. But understanding allows for forgiveness, and forgiving allows for moving forward. Everyone can be forgiven. Even the worst behaviors must be able to find their redemption. I bear no grudge against anyone. I bear no grudge against those who stigmatized me, despised me, excluded me, reported me. These “honest people,” as Georges Brassens said with such irony, I know the spark in each of them. I know the goodness in each. I know that those who did the worst are also capable of doing good.

I know the intrinsic contradiction in every human being. What I wish to cultivate is love of neighbor. Not a Christian morality, but a secular ethics. What I wish to defend is the dignity of the other as universal respect, as absolute value. And the other, even the one who was capable of the worst, can grow in their consciousness, as long as they are respected.

This is why I respect those who hate me, because I do not enter into this hatred, I do not cultivate it. I place myself in the position of love and dialogue, including with my “executioners.” I propose that we transcend our differences, that we respect each other, even when we are convinced that the other is a danger, that the other has done the gravest things. For it is not only they who did this, it is they caught in a system of which they were also a prisoner, even if they are not aware of this system.

For Collective Scientific Probity

The judgment of scientific probity must belong to everyone. It is not because one is not a specialist in a particular science that one cannot provide an ethical opinion on the way this science is conducted. This is the whole role of ethics committees, which are not made up only of scientists from the discipline concerned, precisely so that there is another vision, a critical distance, thinking outside the box.

Those who are within their framework, whether scientific, economic, or cultural, may believe that the world is only their vision. They may naturalize their vision, which is a cultural construct. It is the contribution of the human sciences to show this construction. We therefore need other perspectives, otherness, to collectively discuss scientific probity.

Sandra Harding, an American philosopher and pioneer of feminist epistemology, developed as early as the 1980s the concept of “strong objectivity.” She shows that traditional scientific objectivity, which claims neutrality of the knowing subject, is in reality a “weak objectivity” that masks the biases of those who practice it. Strong objectivity, on the contrary, requires making explicit the social position of the researcher, their presuppositions, their interests, in order to better neutralize them. Paradoxically, it is by recognizing that knowledge is always situated that one can tend toward more objectivity.

In this case, during the Covid period, it would have been better to responsibilize people, to provide scientific knowledge, instead of infantilizing, martyrizing, using totalitarian approaches, manipulating, spreading false information, lying to ultimately defend purely capitalist interests, with contempt for public health, all while claiming to be acting for public health.

It was a test for democracy, a test that was unfortunately failed. But it is never too late to work for the common good. Errors, even the most collective ones, can be personal and collective lessons. Let us take them as such. Consciousness, as La Boétie said, can always awaken. Servitude is only voluntary, and what is voluntary can cease to be so.

Critical Thinking as Living Practice

I hope I have somewhat illuminated this paradox which, at first glance, seems mad: how can the greatest minds fall into obscurantism? The answer lies in a few words: the blind spots of the scientific mind, social conformism and its cost, the scapegoat mechanism, the religious dimension of belief, submission to authority. These factors, combined, allow for understanding. Understanding is not justifying, but it is the condition for forgiveness, and forgiveness is the condition for collective progress.

Critical thinking is not a comfortable posture. It exposes one to marginalization, stigmatization, exclusion. But it is the condition for freedom and democracy. It must be exercised everywhere, including and especially on what is evident, on what “goes without saying,” on what “everyone knows.” For that is where the worst blindnesses lurk.

Critical thinking, as I have developed elsewhere, means questioning from the outside practices that are internalized. To do this, experimentation, cultural action, play, subversion are privileged paths, in my view. It is not only about reflecting, but about living differently, about experiencing other possibilities. It is in this living practice that critical thinking is forged and maintained.

And what if we began by mutually forgiving each other our wanderings, to build together a future where fear would no longer be the engine of our collective choices, by creating together?