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The World, Self, & Language – Or Musings upon Mere Apples by Graham Lister
Given that certain philosophical issues (idealism versus materialism) have recently been raised on the blog and are, in my view central to any political practice, I thought I might give my brief and initial views on these topics. Serious issues are multi-factorial and multi-faceted. Intellectuals, particularly of a certain Enlightenment/liberal type in the so-called social sciences and humanities, tend to want to make a neat division between “facts” and ‘values’. However, values enter into what counts as a “fact”. A large leap is involved in moving from “raw data” to a judgement of fact (even in the hard sciences). The more complex an historical-cultural event is, and the more important the issues it raises contemporaneously, the less it is possible to sustain a simplified fact-value division. This does not imply that all there is is a conflict of prejudices and biases as data are manipulated to one worldview or another, rather that questions and answers are shaped by experiences, contexts, norms, values, and pre-existing beliefs. All those factors are bound to be relevant in how we judge the issue at hand. A great deal can, of course, be learnt from those who do not share our presuppositions about both the strength and weakness of our position on a particular philosophical or political subject. For example, there is a whole ecology of anti-liberal positions and arguments, from a wide set of perspectives. Any sophisticated accounting of the problems generated by hyper-liberalism as experienced in our “postmodern” societies requires an appropriate and mature synthesis of these perspectives. One example I have in mind is the excellent critique of the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of the liberally-derived international legal-order by Danillo Zolo (Victors’ Justice: From Nuremberg to Baghdad). It is indeed a vulgar intellectual error to dismiss penetrating and powerful anti-liberal analysis, ipso facto, because one does not share the ultimate values and/or suggested prescriptions of the author. Yet the image of ecology suggests that plurality and difference do not say all that is required. There are also inter-relationships, coinherence, communication and life-giving forms of unity which need not deny or violate legitimate difference. The outcome of experiencing, understanding, and knowing should be about the wisdom which is concerned for shaping a rich and sustaining individual and collective life; trying to making sense of what these forms of life may look like against a depressing background of continuing inorganic diversity and cultural fragmentation. It is no accident, as old Marxist hacks used to say, that so much of the post-modern liberal world is profoundly ugly, in both form and spirit, and indeed is proud to be so (for example, in the built environment think of the baleful legacy of the “highbrow” Le Corbusier or the example of the undeniably “lowbrow” contemporary American shopping mall). The fragility of beauty, truth, and goodness – indeed any form of virtue - is aptly demonstrated by both those monstrosities. Three crucial elements that shape our judgements are the world, self, and language (and the interplay between them). Obviously, this is a very complex subject but I will try to outline a non-reductionist yet materially-grounded account with an everyday ordinary object and demonstrate the multi-faceted phenomenon it actually is. Take a humble ...
apple. You initially learnt what an apple is through linking the sounds and symbols for the word apple to a particular type of physical object and building up a web of associations with it by experience – sight, touch, taste, smell. Apple, language and the sensory-self have been involved from the start. But what is going on in knowing about that particular apple in the bowl Is this an apple? The first level is experience – in relation to the apple, seeing it. But seeing can be mere gaping. You only start the process of knowing if you ask or imply a question – in this case: What is it? The second level can then happen: as earlier learning links with present experience, you might have the insight – it is an apple! This is now your understanding of the object. But you might be wrong. It might be an imitation apple, made of plastic or plaster. So you ask further questions to test your initial insight. You can touch it, or smell it, or even bite into it (how does it feel, what is its scent, how does it taste?). Your first insight is confirmed. This is judgement at the level of tested insight. At this level it is right to speak of knowledge after a process of experiencing, questioning, There is unlikely to be much controversy about an apple but often more complicated issues are, and bitter disagreements can emerge as to what the questions are, let alone what the correct answers are. It seems important to acknowledge the differing aspects of any relevant process of gaining genuine insight. It is naive to think experiencing is knowing, or that untested understanding is knowing. Knowing is experiencing plus understanding plus judging, and the dynamism of that movement to knowledge is in questioning. So far you have settled a very simple question about the apple – what is it? Knowing that apple has many other dimensions. Some further ‘apple questions’ will be restricted to the ‘brute materiality’ of the apple as an example of an intransitive physical phenomenon. The scientific questions of what is its chemical make-up? What is its nourishment value? What is the genetic make-up of it? Why does it fall if dropped? What climate is needed for its growth? Such questions are not about meaning or value per se. Yet some ‘material’ questions start to segue along the intransitive-transitive spectrum with human concerns about meaning and judgements emerging. How was this apple grown? Was it protected by sprays or was it organically grown? Empirical questions of economics can be asked. How much did it cost? Who marketed it and how much profit was made from it? Why is this type of apple available but not another? What were the pickers paid? Was import duty paid on it? Such questions easily coalesce around both expressive values and instrumental issues of trade policy and agricultural practice. Some questions might be culinary. How is this apple best cooked? What other ingredients would go well with it? Now we are into the domain of socio-cultural questions. How do you eat this apple politely? If my daughter gives it to her teacher what does this mean? As a gift what does an apple signify? What does an apple symbolize and what associations do we have with apples from literature, films, art? Then you can ask aesthetic questions. Is this apple beautiful or ugly? How can you better appreciate its colours and shape? Do you think of this apple differently after mediating upon some of ? There can be historical questions – when was this type of apple first produced and by whom? Finally there are personal questions. Do you like apples? What are the associations and memories from the past that this apple calls up? Have you learnt to tell apart different apple scent and tastes? Do you like apple juice or cider? All of those questions have legitimacy but what lessons from the apple can be taken from this about knowing and knowledge? First, there are many valid interests in knowing which is implied by the differing types of questions. But without the ‘brute materiality’ of the apple nothing of this network of questions can arise. The apple is not adhering or conforming to some ‘ideal’ of appleness. The apple merely is. Second, there are many valid methods of knowing which serves these different interests along an intransitive-transitive spectrum, through the natural sciences, social sciences, history, the arts, personal experience and testimony etc. A danger is in seeing one interest and its methods as ‘better’ than others. Ask a scientific question of an apple (what is its chemical composition?) and you get a scientific answer, but as a set of procedures and methods organic chemistry is blind to the reality of apples as an economic commodity or to a literary and cultural interest in apples as a symbol. Yet ask a cultural or personal question of an apple and it is blind to all those scientific questions. It is not really a scientifically answerable question if one asks, do you personally like apple crumble? Or indeed if one likes Cezanne’s painting of apples? Third, knowledge is both individual and social. Obviously individuals experiencing, understanding and judging is part of the production of knowledge, but the social is often ignored. To answer many of those ‘apple questions’ adequately you must rely on numerous other people’s research, knowledge, and testimony. We trust their experiencing, understanding, and judging. A crucial element in what we know is whom we trust. A great deal of knowing is really the attempt to judge on whom it is right to rely (for example, any self-described, non-Jewish, European ‘Zionist’ invites instant distrust). Fourth, knowledge can be almost instantaneous but mostly it comes to us over time and with pro-active effort. One dominant conception of knowledge tends to be ‘taking a look’. But a quick look at our apple just gives a very basic experience. What you know about it will depend on the questions you ask and the methods you use. If the question is: What is it? Or what colour is it? then our answers may be both instantaneous and correct. But a chemical analysis to determine if pesticides have been incorporated into the apple will take time and depends on a background of many years of collaborative scientific work in chemistry and upon analysts who have spent years training. Generally speaking the more important sorts of knowing take a great deal of time and effort: knowing a language, a person, a scientific discipline, an art, or even an ontology. Even knowledge that seems instantaneous is actually the product of long experience, understanding, and judging, as when a doctor glances at a rash and makes a quick diagnosis. Fifth, a unit of knowledge such as ‘this is an apple’ might be relatively distinct, but further questions usually reveal how interconnected one unit is with others. Knowing one apple can, just by asking questions and tracing connections, be linked to many sciences, agriculture, economics, politics, cookery etc. The networked nature of knowledge has given rise to a way of assessing its reliability by reference to to the coherence of one unit with others – coherentism. Obviously with any approach to knowledge the whole process is fallible, but a physically grounded approach that acknowledges the ‘brute materiality’ as the base of the structure is one that allows for genuine self-correction. The more complex the object or phenomenon and the knowing process the more difficult it is likely to be to exclude significant error. But when can you tell you are wrong? The only way is go through the process of experiencing, questioning, understanding, testing, and judging, open to the correction of others. Knowledge is fallible but also corrigible and can be corrected by the same sorts of operations as discovers errors, if it is an open system of understanding that responds to new evidence. This is the problem with philosophical idealism and the worst of ideology and theology (for example Biblical literalism and creationism) is that they are closed systems and viciously circular in nature. How can we ever tell from within those systems that they are in error? If the apple insufficiently adheres to the idea of an apple how could we tell? It is noticeable that dogmatic ideologues of all types regularly rely on the trope of “well the core or essence of my cherished idea was always correct but in practical, unideal, everyday reality some unfortunate external circumstance prevented it from being properly realized”. The map is, in principle, not allowed to be checked against the real territory for accuracy or error. What a world-view grounded in materiality has over such closed systems is this – it recognizes the brute observation that things merely are and is it open to those things in their own terms (Wallace Stevens’ poetry is very much shaped by this insight). What do I mean? That we humans are only a small part of larger whole that consists of many ‘mere things’ like apples. Irrespective of whether we remained completely ignorant of chemistry, in general our humble apple would always have had a particular chemical composition. The apple is part of an ontologically independent world. The apple is not simply an idea or mental construct. Yet all those transitive questions about apples could still emerge from our interactions with them even in ignorance about the specifics of its materiality. One can cook the apple in an excellent recipe without any deep knowledge of organic chemistry. But the ‘brute materiality’ of the merely existing apple is the ground from which all these questions emerge. I doubt scientific knowledge would even be possible if we are not embedded within an system of ontologically independent objects and phenomena with particular intransitive properties. Another vital level of questioning about the apple is what to do with it? Eat it? Sell it? Paint it? Throw it at someone? The interface between present and future is where experiencing, understanding, and judging interact with deciding. This interface is obviously of the greatest practical importance in human affairs. There is always a future horizon in our knowing – we have some aim or interest in view in pursing questions. Language is especially important in expressing alternative futures and possibilities; and self and world are both changed by practical decisions. World, self, and language all come together, with objective/scientific knowledge only part of the shaping of ongoing life. Experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding still go on, but different phenomena require very different approaches – experiencing a bereavement, a dream, a legal system, a song, or a lover will all be very different from experiencing an apple, and so will the relevant questioning, understanding, judging, and deciding. Feeling and imagination are hugely important in life and the contours of feeling affect our knowing profoundly, particularly in the transitive and expressive domains of life. The world is more complex than an apple; language is only one aspect of communication and of course the self is also extraordinarily varied in forms and dimensions. Who we are and how we experience is affected by our previous life experiences, our gender, our age, our health, and dozens of other factors. The self is always and profoundly social. One massively important conclusion from all of this: our knowing, because there are so many diverse factors involved in each case, has to have a great respect for particulars. Knowing has to appropriate to the particular thing being known, and has to account for the relevant specifics of self and language. But such operations cover a multitude of diverse phenomena. Trying to find you way around a garden using a map of the world is not useful. Global maps have their uses, but much of our knowing our way about is at the level of gardens and localities. So “appropriate” knowing is the watchword. What then does this imply for politics? That it must be grounded in the real. One thing that ideological-minded people do consistently is to mistake their partial and, by necessity, simplified models of the world (conservative, liberal, socialist, fascist or whatever) for the totality of reality. Thus the, in reality very incomplete, but allegedly “global” map is mistaken for the real territory (individual life and collective human affairs are simply too complex to be totally captured by any of these models). This implicit mode of politics as a form of philosophical idealism has had disastrous expressions in the 20th century. It is not a viable mode of political practice or philosophy. Even worse if the proposed ‘global map’ is ultra-simplistic it makes the person promoting it appear to be a cretin, hence instantly dismissible (Kai Murros and the ‘leather boys’ fetish spring to mind as one vivid example – but perhaps it was a subtle joke than went above my head). Political life thus must be empirically grounded, open to revision, and pragmatic; yet also concerned with ideals and values – it is not either/or but the intelligent synthesis of these elements. So the ontological project of GW is, in my view, very important because it is a rather intriguing attempt to ground a political philosophy in deep, non-liberal, realities about the human condition. Foundational commitments and insights define and shape the specific forms of political actions pursued. It is therefore of critical importance to take care and effort to understand and spell out the base assumptions underlying those commitments fully and thoroughly. What matters is that anti-liberal politics is grounded, as fully as is possible, in the real ‘brute materiality’ of the individual and collective aspects of human experience. After all the recent record of ethnocentric politics has been one of utter impotence. So why not radically “re-imagine” the form and shape of ethnocentric politics? Could any putative alternative possibly do any worse than what has been on offer previously? Poorly-judged violence will not work, gene-talk will not work, Neo-Nazi rave music is risible as a political ‘educational tool’, Hitler “worship” is repulsive, and institutional Christianity is but a hollow and empty shell with little genuine sociological importance or significance for ethnocentric discourse. There is no substitute for serious thinking as to what an anti-liberal politics, or rather a post-liberal politics, for the 21st century would look like. It requires a genuine and creative use of the political imagination - something that has been in very short supply - which does not ignore inconvenient facts or runs from reality (and thus is nothing more than fantasy), but rather faces modernity and ruthlessly and rigorously critiques it, yet does not reduce itself to being merely a reactive “resistance” or “oppositional” movement. If it is to have any chance of success, such a political model will ultimately be a form of political thought that must aspire to be sophisticated, mature, and serious enough so as to be credible and worthy of assuming the moral and intellectual leadership of our European societies. It must offer a positive vision. And as afterthought for some of our American friends, the formulation of “Republicanism and/or Christianity plus a side-dish of racism” is simply not good enough. But then I think America is probably lost as a quasi-European society, but that is a whole other topic (America is now little more than Israel’s most strategically important “colony”). Comments:2
Posted by Rod on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:32 | # I guess you would like input from the absolutist Idealist that lurks at a distance. Graham, you have not got hold of Idealism: there is no Idea or ideal of an apple. Apples exist but they are not existential. This is the difference between a fact or truth [apple] and an absolute Truth which is a dynamic phenomenon. This problem arose with Plato’s idealism [small “i”]. Plato speculated on the Idea of truth, beauty and goodness. There is the Idea of Truth, but no Idea of beauty and goodness. Unfortunately this speculation was enough to get Plato on-side with Christianity and the illusion of goodness was forced on the West with the endorsement of both Plato and Christianity. Hegel did not endorse Plato and he did not speculate about the Idea of beauty or goodness. His thoughts about Truth were focused on metaphysical logic. Consequently you will see that Idealism gets confused with moral idealism and you have made this error. For example you say, “…the problem with philosophical idealism … is that they are closed systems and viciously circular in nature.” You need to specify what brands of idealism you are talking about. Hegel’s system is more a source of bewilderment than vicious circularity. And Marx used Hegel’s Idealism to construct communist idealism. Later you say, “What a world-view grounded in materiality has over such closed systems is this …”. Sorry Graham, you have not managed to corral absolute Idealism up with the closed idealist systems you know of. “Political life thus must be empirically grounded, open to revision, and pragmatic; yet also concerned with ideals and values – it is not either/or but the intelligent synthesis of these elements. So the ontological project of GW is, in my view, very important because it is a rather intriguing attempt to ground a political philosophy in deep, non-liberal, realities about the human condition. Foundational commitments and insights define and shape the specific forms of political actions pursued. It is therefore of critical importance to take care and effort to understand and spell out the base assumptions underlying those commitments fully and thoroughly.” I think you mean, “Political theory must be empirically grounded …” – I disagree because the theory suffers from being lost in relativity and it will not escape morality. Secondly, Ideas and moral values do not mix – oil and water, absolute and relative. Thirdly, GW may have a deep intuition but not the deep methodology to concisely articulate his Idea. For “human condition” write “individual condition”. GW’s fixation on [individualist] existentialism does not allow him to connect with society. Heidegger makes sense to him and he does not see the limitations of existentialism. Your last sentence is contradicted by your difficulty distinguishing Idealism from idealism. Finally, “…worthy of assuming the moral and intellectual leadership of our European societies.” Loose “moral and” from that sentence and you will really have the ontological bug. I’ll give you a high mark for effort and a low mark for command of the subject. Well done all the same. 3
Posted by Graham_Lister on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:07 | # Rod thanks for the patronising reply. I really don’t mind as I’m not trained in philosophy but rather the grubby and lowly realities of the biological sciences. So by all mean rip it/me to shreds. I didn’t really feel I got a good grip on the subject – one of the difficulties is that ‘Idealism’ is like a jelly one is attempting to nail to a wall. Forgive my ignorance but I did actually think philosophical idealism was the conceptualised as offering an explanation of reality or human experience in which ideas, concepts or spiritual, non-physical elements are of central importance. Is that incorrect? So it is wrong, from an idealist point of view, to claim that an apple adheres to the idea or concept of appleness, yes? As for Hegel and his ‘Absolute Idealism’ - well I think life is too short for his obscurantism. What precise work is the term absolute doing? Language gone on holiday perhaps? And in my book that Hegel inspired Marx would be a massive negative against him, not a positive point. More broadly I would say the early philosophical work of Roy Bhaskar (“A Realist Theory of Science”) and his transcendental realism/critical naturalism approach is very attractive. Bhaskar puts ontological questions at the heart of the philosophy of science and his scheme of precisely how experimental science works strikes me as very compelling and accurate. On ethics and politics I’d say I am a bit of a fan of Aristotle and virtue ethics. I think of values, culture, and society as a complex combinatorial optimisation problem. Not all desiderata are equally possible to achieve. Virtue ethics has its origins in non-liberal theory unlike deontological or utilitarian ethics which are liberal to their core. Inevitably in any biological system or cultural system there are trade-offs but the trade-offs and values maximally enacted under modern hyper-liberalism are in my view unsustainable and radically undermine the common-good – at least in part because the ‘model’ of the human self at the base of liberal theory is a poor caricature, at best, of real human beings. From the little I know of Heidegger his account of human beings seems far more grounded in the messy realities of actually existing people. Perhaps he is wrong but he cannot possibly be as wrong as liberal theory. 4
Posted by Graham_Lister on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:33 | # @Søren Renner Sorry you have lost me. @Captainchaos OK but I have encountered very many people that think the entire human world is captured by their ideology and/or theology. The problem is that ideologies are VERY crude models of the totality of human experience and human affairs. Yet for ideologues of all schools they will not admit the possibility of their model being wrong. So their ‘map of the world’ is distorted but they refuse to admit even to the possibility that it might be incomplete or partial - I think ideologues in this sense are profoundly dishonest. Have you actually ever spoken to a Trotskyite? Talk about a ‘viciously circular’ belief system. But it is a phenomena observed across the ideological spectrum. As a scientist I CANNOT stand that type of ‘thinker’ - I’m an evidence driven person - I can point out the negative real-world effects of hyper-liberalism without the folly of thinking I have all the answers. I’m a ideologue for recognising the limits of politics. Do you? Or was it my quip about Hilter worship being awful and repulsive that pissed you off? 5
Posted by danielj on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:49 | # There is the Idea of Truth, but no Idea of beauty and goodness. Unfortunately this speculation was enough to get Plato on-side with Christianity and the illusion of goodness was forced on the West with the endorsement of both Plato and Christianity. Platonism and Christianity are fundamentally opposed. 6
Posted by danielj on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:55 | # Plus, the Third Man critique is devastating and was raised by the man himself. 7
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:27 | # Daniel, If Platonism and Christianity are fundamentally opposed what was Plotinus saying? Why was humanism a product of the Catholic Church as it passed out of the late Middle Ages, allowing for Dante and Petrarch to come after? How did Ficino author the doctrine of the immortal soul yet establish the Platonic Academy in Florence? 8
Posted by Graham_Lister on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:36 | # Yes I was wondering about the history of Platonism and Christianity - some philosophical/theological schools have at least attempted to marry them, yes? 9
Posted by danielj on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:51 | # I will address this in essay form when I get off work. 10
Posted by danielj on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:53 | # The Catholic Church has attempted to wed Aristotelianism and Jesus, spectacularly unsuccessful as far as I’m concerned. 11
Posted by Graham_Lister on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:07 | # danielj - look forward to that. Thomas Aquinas is certainly one of the most important theologians so you view will be of interest. Just briefly this is a little summary I found of Bhaskar’s early project. Bhaskar’s early work rests upon the need to retain both the subjective, epistemological or ‘transitive’ side of knowledge and the objective, ontological or ‘intransitive’ side. Bhaskar developed a theory of science and social science which he thought would sustain the reality of the objects of science, and their knowability, but would also incorporate the insights of the ‘sociology of knowledge’ movement, which emphasised the theory-laden, historically contingent and socially situated nature of knowledge. What emerged was a marriage of ontological realism with epistemological relativism, forming an objectivist, yet fallibilist, theory of knowledge. Bhaskar’s main strategy was to argue that reality has depth, and that knowledge can penetrate more or less deeply into reality, without ever reaching the ‘bottom’. Bhaskar has said that he reintroduced ‘ontology’ into the philosophy of science at a time when this was almost heresy, arguing for an ontology of stratified emergence and differentiated structure, which supported the ontological reality of causal powers independent of their empirical effects; such a move opened up the possibility for a non-reductivist and non-positivistic account of causal explanation in the human and social domain. Personally I find his work on the ontology of science really interesting, if somewhat difficult get into. 12
Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:13 | # Rod, Let’s deal with this question of morality, since it seems to be the source of the confusion. You and I share, I think, the position that ethicism as we see it in all the large-scale ideational systems prevalent in the West today is everywhere dangerously false. We are not going to fall out over that. But is this falsehood one of morals or one of there being morals? In other words, are you seeking to abolish only ethicism, false morality, or to banish all moral consideration from the world? I would appreciate your clarification on that. Speaking for myself - and for Graham, I imagine - what is good is what increases genetic interests (for example, adaptive life choices). Man cannot escape this morality. But it is possible for men to act in the belief that they are doing good while they are doing harm. This capacity to get it wrong, this degree of free will, is also inescapably part of our nature. For natural selection could not function without it. There could be no organism more complex than a simple, evolutionary static self-dividing cell. Now we come to the existentialist heart of the matter (and never let it be said we can’t conjoin science and existentialism). What leads toward a higher incidence of adaptive outcomes in life-choices is the turn to consciousness of self. From my Part 2 essay:
Finally, speaking of whether an argument for life can connect to the world - basically, making a revolution - I do not know. But I have not sought to resolve this question. What I would say is that ontology is the beginning, as you yourself have said. But it is also the end. The future of all successful politics is Conservatism. 13
Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:18 | # Graham, Soren is protesting your presentation for its length and exhaustive complexity. He is, let it be said, the very apostle of brevity himself. 14
Posted by danielj on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:18 | # Well…. This is supposed to be the Socratic method in action, nahda fucking game of hide-and-seek… 15
Posted by Thorn on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:40 | #
Thank you, GW, for your attempt to explain the bizarre eccentricities of Mr. Renner. 16
Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:51 | # And there was me thinking Sterne’s warm but mischievous sense of humour was the attraction. 17
Posted by Thorn on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:08 | #
HAH! You guys are so gay! 18
Posted by Rod on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:31 | # Graham Sorry to be patronising. I admire the fact you had the balls to attempt to write on Idealism/idealism. It is no shame to get them confused. The difference, as I pointed out in my last essay, is that absolute Idealism is about dichotomies and moral idealism is about dualisms. As for our backgrounds in philosophy, you are more academic that me. Philosophy is my hobby, but I am driven since I finished up being an Idealist and that is not easy to do. I simply followed my intuitions and prejudice against ethics which I believe I have confirmed.
Right and wrong. Here we have the confusion that goes back to Plato. It is easy to speculate on the existence of Ideas, but difficult to know what an Idea actually is. Plato guessed there were Ideas behind truth, beauty and goodness. He got one [truth] right out of three, but he did not lay any foundation for Idealism though it appears he did. Influences aside, Hegel laid the foundation and you know how difficult he is. Absolute Ideas are existential and syncretic. Think male and female for a symbolic and simple example. Think capitalism and socialism as encapsulated by liberalism for a political example. For capitalism as a relative truth think laissez-faire capitalism. For socialism as a relative truth think communism. So liberalism as a synthesis of capitalism and socialism is close to being an Idea. In its closeness to being Ideal, liberalism is strong, but liberalism is not based on metaphysics, it repudiates metaphysics and prefers values, and it is the relativity of values that is dragging liberalism and the West down. Back to the apple. As I said, there is no Idea of apple or horse. It is a mistake that comes from the pseudo-Idealist Plato.
“Life is too short”, correct opinion in my opinion, but for those to whom Hegel matters his teleology cannot be ignored. Try to find a good primer. I strongly recommend “From Socrates to Sartre: the philosophic quest” [1984 and 1989] by T. Z. Lavine, Bantam Books. As for Hegel’s ontology, well that is a mission. What does “absolute” mean? When dichotomies are synthesised you get absolutes. Do not count Marx against Hegel. Say that again I will become pointedly patronising.
Idealists are really not interested in science. Science studies phenomena. Phenomena is relative and science does not get beyond phenomena. Some physicists have been receptive to mysticism and ideas of implicate order such as David Bohm. Bohm had correspondence with Jung, so we are going back a bit. So a few physicists are broad-minded enough to entertain metaphysics but they are the exceptions. Materialistic ontology seems like an oxymoron to me. I enjoy oxymorons but this one I cannot get my head around. This is where GW is coming from and it’s a mystery to me. Guessed Worker Yes, we agree. I would banish ethics from philosophy. It is only rules for individual behaviour at best. Ethics has no place in politics. Politics is not applied ethics as liberals see it. There is no metaphysical Idea called goodness. There is no animal in appearances called goodness. And goodness cannot hide behind normality because goodness does not exist and normality is not goodness. Sorry, “genetic interest” is science and science is not my number. The quote from part 2 of your essay is incomprehensible to me. “Dasein is falling into the they” – is the nub of it and it beats me. You seem to say the confusions you list are the lot of man. No, Idealism to the rescue. This quote apparently means something serious to you and to me it is awful. I cannot believe this is the same guy who writes great editorials.
Yes, ontology is the core and beginning of metaphysics but it is not the end. You know it combines with teleology. The future of all successful politics is Idealism taking command of relativity. 19
Posted by Graham_Lister on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:58 | # Ahh…“Tristram Shandy” and all that. Sorry I have never read any of Sterne hence the reference was missed! As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram’s narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, to the extent that we do not even reach Tristram’s own birth until Volume III. Perhaps a subtle protest after all - no worries - its not my life’s work. I’m rather a fan of Wallace Stevens - certainly a master of language. 20
Posted by Jimmy Marr on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:34 | # Rod, Thanks for the bibliography. I had been wanting to ask. As some here know, I have a fairly intensive history in the study and practice of Zen. The odd thing about my Zen experience is that I practiced exclusively in West Coast, Soto zendos, but my strongest intellectual inspiration, which by necessity, I pursued on the sly, came from a European interpretation of Zen offered under the title The Supreme Doctrine: Psychological Studies in Zen Thought. The author of the book, Hubert Benoit, adamantly rejected the use of footnotes, or any other form of source attribution. Over the years, and particularly of late, I have come to suspect that his primary influence must have been Hegel. It’ll be nice to have sources for the confirmation of this suspicion. Even though the book is replete with obligatory Nazi bashing via the forward by Aldous Huxley, I have also come to suspect that Benoit was in sympathy with National Socialism during WWII. Thanks again for the book recommendations. 21
Posted by Graham_Lister on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:42 | #
OK I think we probably have radically differing world-views. I don’t think the biological phenomenon of individual death is relative, nor is the collective phenomenon of a species or sub-species extinction relative. Why can we not combine the best of Darwin with the best of Heidegger? Ontology and questions thereof only arise because of ‘brute existence’. There is no other grounds of our being other than in physicality/materiality. To be one must first exist. And the non-existent will never be in a state of being. It is only because we are the, apparently unique, type of animal that is fully aware of the inevitability of our own non-being in death that the question of being arises. Death is our one fully and totally democratic institution – one life equals one death. Camus suggested the only true question of philosophy was that of the permissibility of act of suicide in the face of the radical absurdity of life. Yet if we are emotionally and physically healthy we reject such ideas as individuals (and hopefully as communities). So for the material objects, human beings, that by the mechanism of evolution by natural selection have the astonishing emergent properties of self-awareness, consciousness, and reflexivity can still find meaning in being, but how and in what? What might be loosely termed the sacred and the transcendent, not strictly understood as religious or theologically grounded notions, but as moments and phenomena that breaks our chatter and the illusion of the eternal present and which turns us toward the forces that sustain being and the continuity of being. Yes we are transitory beings but we are the products of continuity. Evolutionary history and cosmic history is one such ground of meaning. It’s an astonishing thought that we are all the product of almost four billion years of biological struggle of life over non-life. The very stuff of life, DNA, is the same material phenomenon that has flowed out as the river of life, into countless forms of existence, since it first emerged on this planet. Imagine the many billions of organisms that are our biological predecessors within the tree of life. Moreover we are in cosmic terms literally star-dust. Matter that comes to know itself. The Universe literally reflecting upon itself. More specifically as human beings we encounter moments of deep continuity, both our linkage to it, yet also our separation from it in the birth of our children – we obliquely encounter our own death and passing, yet acknowledge and rejoice in our connection to the next generation. Also in the aesthetic moment from both natural beauty and cultural beauty we have something like an encounter with the eternal. We are taking out of the ordinary present and out of ourselves during the aesthetic moment. Even in the act of orgasm we momentarily lose our self – perhaps this why the French call it ‘la petite mort’ – the little death - the death of the self in connection with another being. One Jewish self-styled ‘radical thinker’ opined that the white race was the cancer of history. If one did have terminal cancer suicide might be a reasonable option. Yet Europeans are not uniquely evil, nor uniquely virtuous. Yes our collective history has episodes of both banal evil and occasionally radical evil. But this dark history is shared by every identifiable group of humans. The possibility of evil runs through every human heart. No human community is without its collective moments of moral turpitude. And the high points of European collective life are magnificent – our literature, art, science, music and so on is a bright thread in warp and weave of the rich tapestry of human life. We are not cancerous, and we should not commit suicide. Existence is sacred, life is precious. Our existence is sacred, our life is precious. For such a thing as our European homelands to continue to exist, and for our local cultures and our collective high-culture to exist then we must continue to exist as people in distinct socio-political communities which are the continuous living embodiment and source of those collective accomplishments. If the project of the Enlightenment, of maximal individualistic liberty threatens our survival then we must refuse to collectively live and die as Voltaire’s bastards and readjust modernity back towards sanity and sustainability. It feels good to get that off my chest! 22
Posted by Captainchaos on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:29 | #
Do Germans who think palingenesis is pretty cool piss you off, Graham? I mean strictly as a scientist and not as a Brit who is resentful because the English are perpetually second best to Krauts. 23
Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:47 | # Rod, When I say the future of all successful politics is Conservatism I am making what, for me, is a rather Hegelian statement. The problem with liberalism is that it never gets beyond the revolutionary middle phase - never creates the moment of arrival or finality of which the political object then becomes one of stability. Liberalism is, by definition, an unending, uncompletable revolution because its goal - the replacement of God the Creator with Man the Creator - is non-real. It is never more than “endless progress”. Liberalism’s impossible teleology begs the development of a philosophy of the possible, which is why truth and consciousness have to be the latter’s watchwords for all three phases of the revolutionary process. 24
Posted by Leon Haller on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:54 | # If Platonism and Christianity are fundamentally opposed what was Plotinus saying? (GW) What are you getting at here? Did Plotinus say anything about Christianity? I think what you meant to observe was that Plotinus (generally held to be the principal and founder of Neoplatonism) was the source from which many of the Church Fathers of middle antiquity came to know Plato - and to discover affinities between the Plotinian Plato and their own theology(ies). 25
Posted by Desmond Jones on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:02 | #
Heidegger’s existentialism insists on a radical dualism of matter and mind in which the human mind or soul utterly transcends the human body. It denies evolutionary theory. 26
Posted by Rod on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:48 | # GW Now that you have enlarged on what you mean by conservativism, I agree. 27
Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:48 | # Thank you, Leon. Yes, Plotinus was saying things that Christians found compatible with their developing thought. 28
Posted by John on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:16 | # “Unless, that is, one’s politics is inclusive of a desire to see Englishmen colonize Mars as an auxiliary living space to their much loved and not so jealously guarded of late earthly home of Britannia.” If European peoples ever did find a way to colonise Mars, there is no doubt that 3rd Worlders would follow them there, some with spaceships with spinner rims on them and all with hats in hand. To “enrich” them, mind you. 29
Posted by John on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:40 | # The meaning of realism gets turned turned on its head when compared with nominalism (I am more of a nominalist than a realist, btw). Nominalism is the notion that abstractions, categories (and “nominalisations”) have no real existence anywhere but inside our heads. To a nominalist, there is, for example no such thing as “happiness” but rather sentient beings who can be described as “happy”. Realism, unfortunately (I think it’s unfortunate, as I hold that it better describes my pov and nominalism, the opposite pov), as the opposite of nominalism, means nearly the opposite of what it means when taken as the opposite of idealism. 30
Posted by John on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:44 | # “Opposite of nominalism” realism just as Platonic as “opposite of realism” idealism. 31
Posted by danielj on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:23 | # John, why do we describe these various sentient beings by the same term? Is there such a thing as gravity? Are the laws of logic universal and binding? 32
Posted by Graham_Lister on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 20:34 | #
Are you sure of this - is it of cardinal importance in his work? I was not really aware that Heidegger was merely a jazzed-up Cartesian! Anyway I will not be posting anything on the blog for a while, as from this weekend I will be on on a much needed holiday (enjoying ‘La Dolce Vita’) so I’m sure that will be a relief for many Don’t worry I’ll return eventually. 33
Posted by John on Sun, 21 Aug 2011 12:28 | # danielj: “Is there such a thing as gravity? Are the laws of logic universal and binding?” Gravity is an abstraction from observing smaller objects move toward larger objects. For language to better reflect reality (itself a nominalisation from “real”), one should describe gravity process not with a noun, but rather with a verb or better yet with yet another class of word. Nominalising processes reduces and makes the dynamic seem static and fixed. This affects our thinking and the models of the world and universe that we build. English, as do most Indo-European languages, has a far from precise way of expressing abstraction levels. 34
Posted by Leon Haller on Sun, 21 Aug 2011 14:57 | # Anyway I will not be posting anything on the blog for a while, as from this weekend I will be on on a much needed holiday (enjoying ‘La Dolce Vita’) so I’m sure that will be a relief for many (Lister) Europe had its little “dolce vita” for, arguably, about 55 years, say, 1953-2008, though the really wonderful years, assuming one wasn’t too worried about what was long thought to be the impending Soviet invasion, were about 1955, by which time most of the rubble had been cleared, and basic rebuilding accomplished, to 1965, when the putrid Sixties really got underway, and the West began its descent. Ahh, to have been a single white man with some money in the years 1955-65 ... hardly surprising that was the period when the James Bond novels were published ... those days will not come again ... Anyway, it’s “Austerity Europe” (probably Austerity Planet) from now on. 35
Posted by danielj on Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:54 | # Gravity is an abstraction from observing smaller objects move toward larger objects. Do they do it universally with law lilke regularity? 36
Posted by John on Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:00 | # danielj: Do they do it universally with law lilke regularity? Try as I might, I cannot discover this “regularity” you refer to. Should I look for it in the larger objects, which the smaller objects tend consistently to move toward, or the smaller objects, which tend consistently to move toward the larger ones? Though you use a noun to describe it, I doubt that “regularity” is a real object, but rather, that you abstract with unnecessarality. 37
Posted by danielj on Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:14 | # John, So it is possible that some day I might observe the opposite of what I consistently observe now? I might suddenly float away into space? 38
Posted by John on Mon, 22 Aug 2011 20:36 | # That’s not what I’m getting at at all. I’m saying the language we use is inaccurate and that affects our thinking. That things that weigh more attracting things that weigh less dense things doesn’t imply that another “thing” exists. That gravity (as well as regularity) only exists in people’s heads and not in nature but that doesn’t mean we can ever expect to float off the earth or that anything else inconsistent with what we call law of gravity could happen. That to use the word “force” as a verb is more accurate than to use it as a noun (though with gravity it’s harder to know precisely what the subject is than the object). I’m saying that in using language we, often unavoidably, make inaccurate statements about what’s around us. 39
Posted by danielj on Mon, 22 Aug 2011 23:10 | # That gravity (as well as regularity) only exists in people’s heads and not in nature but that doesn’t mean we can ever expect to float off the earth or that anything else inconsistent with what we call law of gravity could happen. What prevents us from floating off the earth then John? 40
Posted by John on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 09:09 | # danielj “What prevents us from floating off the earth then John?” For me, to answer “gravity” is only slightly less satisfactory than “the earth godess”. You can prove that bigger things invariably attract smaller things to them. But you can’t prove that a “thing” that you call gravity exists and causes things to attract other things like you can prove that your cat exists and causes mice to die. You’d have to admit at some point that what the word points to is not substantive, but rather is a construct abstracted from you and others have observed. In that sense, it doesn’t exist except in our minds. With what we presently know, though the objects are identifiable, to make a statement with an actor subject and say you’ve described adequately what’s really going on is reductionistic and inaccurate. “Describe the process that…” would be a better question that “what…”. 41
Posted by John on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:33 | # Sorry, I meant slightly more satisfactory in the first sentence above. 42
Posted by danielj on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:14 | # Would you describe the process as invariable, law like and universal? Or just invariable? Or would you prefer invariable so far? Post a comment:
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Posted by Captainchaos on Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:30 | #
Yet what is real - all that presently exists, all that has existed, and all that possibly could exist - is a far broader thing than is relevant to, and indeed I think would tend to muddle the understanding of, the effective practice of politics and thought about those things political. The physical constitution of the Martian soil may be of interest to eggheads, but hardly seems germane and only onerously superfluous as a consideration for how to get Brit-voters to pull the lever for the BNP so that Griffo can fulfill his destiny of becoming the greatest prime minister since Churchill. Unless, that is, one’s politics is inclusive of a desire to see Englishmen colonize Mars as an auxiliary living space to their much loved and not so jealously guarded of late earthly home of Britannia.
In addition to what you said, then, it is of the nature of serious political thought that serious thought about politics does itself produce a more narrow, and therefore more simplistic, account of what is real than serious thought about all that is real would. In short, political philosophy is a specialized discipline. Taking that point into consideration, it is hardly then a convincing indictment of ideologized political thought to say that it is narrow for all non-eccentric political thought is relatively narrow. The objection you really wish to express is that “conservative, liberal, socialist, fascist or whatever” political thought does not concern itself with what you wish it would consider and remain studiously ignorant of that which you wish it would not consider. Except to openly say as much would be to explicitly commit the same intellectual sin which you accuse ideological thinkers of: pressing down their aesthetic cookie-cutter on a much resentful reality.