Of the Uncertainty of our Judgment

We are, all of us, critics after the fact. A general retreats, and if the retreat saves his army we call it the masterstroke of an experienced commander who knew when not to fight; if the enemy pursues and destroys him we call it cowardice and incompetence. The action is identical in both cases. Only the sequel differs. And yet we speak of the two generals as though they were entirely different kinds of men — as though the successful retreat demonstrated qualities absent from the unsuccessful one, rather than demonstrating merely that fortune smiled on the one and not the other.

This same act can be prudence in one man and cowardice in another, not because they performed it differently, but because the circumstances around it — which neither man fully knew or controlled — arranged themselves differently. The world judges by results; the philosopher should judge by reasons. But the philosopher who has never held command and never acted under the fog and pressure of actual decision tends to judge by a standard of imaginary perfect knowledge that no living commander ever possessed. He sits in his study and asks: why did he not see that the left flank was vulnerable? Because in the smoke and noise of that afternoon, with a messenger arriving every three minutes with contradictory reports, no one could have seen it, that is why.

“We require of men in action a certainty that is not available to men in action. We require of them, after the event, that they should have known what only the event itself could teach.”

This is not a counsel of despair about judgment. We must judge — we must distinguish the capable commander from the reckless one, the honest minister from the corrupt one, the wise policy from the foolish one. But we should judge with some consciousness of how little we know and how much we are influenced by outcomes that were not, in any strict sense, predictable from the information available at the time. The uncertainty that pervades every great decision is not a failure of the men who make those decisions. It is the permanent condition in which all action takes place. Acknowledge it, and you will judge with more justice, and with more humility about the judgments you yourself will face.