what “ought to” be. If we decide to abandon the notion of a border be-
tween facts and values, to give up the distinction between science and
ideology, to stop deploying the border police and stop fighting smug-
glers, then in order to put minds at ease, we shall have to doat least as
well asand, if possible, better than, the arrangement that we are aban-
doning. The credibility of our politics of nature is at stake. Quality
control has to be maintained over both future facts and future values,
whatever new meaning we may give these words—just as the French
border police has to continue to maintain its control in the European
space covered by the Schengen agreements even though material bor-
ders have disappeared.
Dispensing with a dichotomy and with the metaphysics that under-
lies it does not mean, then, that we can get rid just as easily of the re-
quirements that were attached to this dichotomy and this metaphysics
for reasons that were thought to be necessary but that are in reality
only contingent. Thus we do not propose to abandon the crucial dif-
ferences that are awkwardly expressed in the distinction between facts
and values, but tolodge them elsewhere,in a different opposition be-
tween concepts, while proving that they will be better protected there.
If he will only agree to modify his job description, Sisyphus will dis-
cover that his labor can become productive at last.
The Power to Take into Account
and the Power to Put in OrderHow can we abandon the confused distinction between facts and val-
ues, while still preserving the kernel of truth that it seems to contain,
namely, the requirement of a distinction that keeps the collective from
combining all propositions in the dark in which all sheep (cloned or
not) look alike? In the next three sections we are going to unpack
and then repackage the fact-value distinction. The solution that we
have adopted for this chapter consists in untying the two packets, fact
and value, in order to liberate the contradictory requirements that
were unduly combined in each, then (in the following section) re-
grouping them differently and under another name, in much more ho-
mogeneous parcels. The operation is not an easy one, but there is
no way to proceed quickly or more simply when one is trying to estab-
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