Mike Gutierrez
Philosophy, Art, History, Music.
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May 23, 11:09 PM
There's a good term in here: retinal art. Could be some interesting points of contact with Seurat.
May 23, 10:54 PM
Didn't plan to post Warhol, but this Japanese commercial is something special.
May 16, 11:05 PM
I think it would be much, much better if people were told to be lazy. To shirk the job.
May 16, 10:59 PM
Hard to believe that one of my favorite writers from the first half of the 20th century has Youtube interviews knocking about.
May 16, 10:48 PM
via Economist's View by Mark Thoma on 5/16/12
Galbraith conducted a few weeks ago by Roger Strassburg and Jens Berger
of the German blog NachDenkSeiten (first part, second part).
This is on the Euro crisis:
NDS: You've pretty much followed what's been happening in Europe in the
past years, haven't you?
Galbraith: I have been.
NDS: You've seen what's been going on in Germany? I've sent you some stuff that may or
may not have enhanced what you know.
Galbraith: Thanks to you I have some familiarity.
NDS: I think if you look at the euro crisis, the
financial crisis, and the reaction from German policy-- because
Germany's power – became the European answer to the Euro crisis. Do you
think that if we look at inequality, is inequality rising due to
reactions like the austerity policy, like the constitutional debt
brake, which now comes in future and … the Stability Pact...
Galbraith: Well, what you're seeing already is divergence across Europe, and
that's the basic mechanism of rising inequality – and again, what
played out in the United States in the form of credit booms to sectors,
and in some cases in housing to various parts of the country – that
boom followed by a bust played out in Europe as credit booms to
countries, so you see the rise and the fall of Ireland and Spain and so
forth, and it's that divergence which is truly the major, the largest
single stress in the euro zone right now. Obviously what you describe
going on inside Germany is also important, but the German national
community is still bound together with a great many stabilizing
institutions that still exist, although they are – as in the United
States...
NDS: ...very much weakened...
Galbraith: …they're weakened,but they are still strong compared to what happens across national
lines. So you expect things to fracture along the weakest links, and
that's clearly the national boundaries in Europe. What will happen as a
result of that is that you'll have a re-management of populations. It's
clear that anybody with a professional qualification and the ability to
do so will exit Greece to large expatriate communities already in the
United States and in Australia. People will go – and Europe has a long
history of people emigrating from Portugal and Spain – and if pressed,
they will do that again. So you're going to see that the failure to
stabilize national economies in Europe is simply going to lead, in the
long run, to the redistribution of its populations.
NDS: I know you did compare inequality in Europe with the United States in your book. Do
you think it's really legitimate to compare Europe, though, to the
United States? In general you don't move from one country to another
very often, because learning a language, of course, you're not going to
learn a language and then move somewhere else two years later.
Galbraith: But I assure you, people do in fact, and they will. But it
doesn't matter – in any event, for a valid measure of inequality, it is
not necessary that people physically move. The important thing is that
Europe is a unified economic whole from the standpoint of, let's say,
an enterprise making investment decisions or an investor making
portfolio decisions. The absence of barriers to capital mobility is
just as decisive in creating a unified entity as fluidity of labor
movement. But the other thing is one should not exaggerate the extent
to which people inside the United States move permanently from one part
of the country to another – it's very common for professionals, but a
very large part of the population lives where it started from.
NDS: I don't know if you'd just call it a strategy, or if it's just more of an
ideology of competitiveness between countries – Germany even goes so
far as to want to have competition between the states for investment.
Galbraith: One consequence of European integration, which was clearly
foreseen from the beginning and is characteristic of all industrial
systems as they move to larger scale is that activity concentrates in
the most competitive spot, and it's not just industrial, it's also
agricultural. You've actually had concentration of certain agricultural
activities in north Europe, which would hardly be thought to be ideal
for that, but it happens. And it was foreseen that this would require
compensating investments in the European periphery, but those
investments haven't been close to being of an adequate scale. The same
exact thing was true in the United States. You had, as the country
developed on a continental level, industrial activity concentrated the
North, Northeast and the Midwest. What ultimately happened to offset
that was the New Deal. And the New Deal distributed economic activity –
massive infrastructure projects in the South. We had, of course, the
advantage of having a single country from the standpoint of
distributing military expenditures, which is very important in the
State of Texas, very important in other parts of the South. And we had
a continental-level Social Security system that was established, which
basically means that your base retirement is done at the national
standard, not the local standard. So if you have a working life in
Alabama, you're still getting at least the federal minimum Social
Security payment. This has an enormous equalizing effect. People talk
about the ways in which the United States is a very unequal country,
but over the last 80 years, it has become radically less unequal
geographically than it was before. It was a huge difference between the
North and the South, which is no longer the case. Even forty years ago,
when I was a kid, nobody, let's say, very few academics would consider
making a move from New England to Texas. Because it was a oneway trip,
you took a big cut in pay and you would never be able to come back. Now
it's routine. The whole place has become substantially integrated, at
least to a certain level. Now there are lots of inequalities and
growing inequalities at the local level in the U.S., which is what
people observe, but at the national level, it's much, much less than it
used to be.
NDS: So do you think that a modern version of the Roosevelt
New Deal would be the right answer for the euro crisis?
Galbraith: I think that a functional union requires measures that redistribute
income and activity effectively across large areas. Otherwise things
collapse to the center. The European Union has done it on a very large
scale in the structural funds to governments, which leads to
infrastructure projects. You get a lot of paving – Portugal has become
like California – a very dubious strategy of economic development, but
there it is. What you don't have at the European level is distributive
mechanisms to individuals. There's no equivalent of a continental
social security system. And you don't have the same level of, let's
say, redistribution of operations and maintenance, which we do with the
military budget in the U.S. The Greek military is paid for out of the
Greek tax base, and so...
NDS: ...and they have a large military...
Galbraith: ...and they have a large military, which is a heavy burden
on the Greek economy...
NDS: ...and Portugal and Greece are the ones that import the most weapons – statistically recently published – they spend the most on the military in Europe.
Galbraith: This, of course,is a legacy of the politics of these two countries in particular.
NDS: It's hard to imagine why they would need so much, I mean, Greece looks
at Turkey and says, “you're dangerous”...
Galbraith: It has nothing to
do with that, it has to do with the legacy of '74 and the deal made
with the Greek military to keep them content with being in the
background of politics, and it has to do with, of course, the
intra-European arrangements, because these are German tanks and French
submarines that they're buying. They don't seem to be easily sacrificed
as part of austerity packages.
NDS: Well, it's one of the things that
the German government wasn't so interested in sacrificing.
Galbraith: I can't imagine why not, with all this talk about austerity...
NDS: German submarines, too...
Galbraith: German submarines...
NDS: But do you think that the idea of trying to promote competition between
countries is a good one? This is kind of what the EU is doing, wanting
the countries to compete against each other.
Galbraith: Well, the idea that a country like Greece can effectively compete against Germany – in
what, exactly?
NDS: Olive oil...
Galbraith: Yeah, that's right... There is a real problem of the difference between increasing and diminishing return sectors here.
NDS: We have to almost ask the question of what
Greece can do – particularly in a currency union – because Greece is
not going to be exporting like Germany does. It's not going to be able
to.
Galbraith: Of course it's not, which is why one has to have a
permanent policy of stabilizing income flows. Otherwise the country is
simply being squeezed until its population leaves, which, of course, it
will do. Nobody in the United States says that Florida should be
competing, with, let's say, Ohio, for the assembly of Hondas. That
isn't what Florida is there for.
NDS: Florida is there to be a retirement center, basically.
Galbraith: That's right, and in fact, the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico has been largely kept free of oil and gas development for precisely that reason, so as not to have the
kinds of potential disasters such as that which we saw in the
Mississippi Canyon last year.
NDS: Germany – and not just Germany – has been pretty much against the idea of having that kind of flow of money, flow of income into any of the countries, into the south. They don't
want a transfer union.
Galbraith: It is a contradiction of one of the basic principles of a functioning economic union.
NDS: On the subject of Greece – do you think there's any way out for them? What do you
think is going to happen there? I can imagine now that, of all things,
they're cutting wages – not just in the public sector – they're cutting
wages, which, of course, is not going to help the tax situation, it's
not going to help their debt situation – supposedly in order to make
them more competitive, you know, internal devaluation. I can see what's
going to happen: People aren't going to be able to pay their rents,
people who own the houses are going to go bankrupt, there's going to be
another credit crunch, do you see that kind of a cycle?
Galbraith: It's very difficult to escape taxes levied on, let's say, the ordinary
working population in Greece, because they're taxing property and
they're running the tax through the electric bill, so unless you are in
a position to move off-grid – which requires a certain capital
investment – you are going to be stuck paying those taxes so long as
you want electrical service. So this is a downward spiral. The cuts in
public services in Greece, which are cuts in a very under-performing
public health system and an under-performing educational system in a
very already inefficient and stressed transportation system are of the
type that will make it much less attractive for foreign investment. So
the idea that there is some route through internal devaluation to
restore competitiveness is a transparent falsehood. It's a transparent
falsehood. So what do we have to ask? What is being done here? I think
it's not very difficult to understand that in order to recycle funds to
the French and German banks and to create conditions in which private
creditors could escape from the losses that they would suffer when the
Greek debt was ultimately written down, which it has now been, the
pretense had to be given to the German electorate that this was
assistance to Greece in return for Greek sacrifices. The only thing
that was real about that was the sacrifices. Those were palpable, they
provided a justification for the policy, but there was no assistance to
Greece associated with this.
NDS: This is where my German criticism comes up – there is a certain mentality, I think, that sacrifice is a good thing in and of itself.
NDS: Yeah, absolutely.
NDS: I think it's a very dominant mentality.
Galbraith: Of course it is, so one cannot be entirely critical of Chancellor Merkel for insisting on this, because all she is doing is meeting the conditions for the political
acceptability of the policy.
NDS: Most people support her in that.
Galbraith: Right. So this is a Greek tragedy in the classic sense in
which people are doing what the conditions of their politics require
that they do, and what is being sacrificed here is a small country of
11 million people.
NDS: You read in the papers here about every month
that economists are surprised that Greece has not been able to improve
its situation, and we sit back and say, “right, why are these people
surprised?”. What I think is that even maybe we're being too
optimistic, because if you think about it in an economy where people
can't pay their rent, I mean, they're just getting by and all of a
sudden they have to decide between paying the electric bill and paying
rent. That, of course, is going to ripple on to the landlord or the
electric company, that it's going to expand as more of a chain
reaction. Do you see that happening, do you see that as a likely thing
to come?
Galbraith: Well, I was in Greece in October, and I gave a talk
for a major company, and so it was an occasion where you had the chance
to chat with prominent business leaders, and what they said to me was
that they saw no hope – let alone what ordinary people are
experiencing. There was no sense anywhere in the country that the
policies, that the situation that the country was in, had a turning
point ahead. There was some sense of this – at least this was what
people in government said in the first year or so of Papandreou's
government – that they were at least willing to express the official
line that if the reforms were pursued effectively that this would yield
a return of confidence to the credit markets. I had a conversation
about this directly with Papandreou's first finance minister,
Papaconstantinou, in the summer of 2010. The reforms were pursued
energetically in that government, and some of them, I'm sure, were very
valid things to do. You're looking at a government that was never a
paragon of efficiency, to say the least.
NDS: Not all the criticism of Greece is misplaced...
Galbraith: A great many useful things were attempted by Papandreou's government. The element of illusion crept in in a belief, or an expressed belief – it's hard to tell if people took
it seriously – that if they did the reforms effectively that this would
be rewarded by the credit markets.
NDS: The confidence fairy...
Galbraith: ...the confidence fairy, and that the confidence fairy was a
benign figure who surveils how well you are working and gives you
improved access to the credit market on the strength of your
performance. Once you realize that what you have here is a European,
not only a European, but a global credit crisis, and you realize that
the effect of events anywhere in the world is going to be felt equally
by all of the weak borrowers, whether you're talking about Greece,
Portugal, Spain, Ireland...
NDS: Essentially everybody needs to deleverage. Well, not everybody...
Galbraith: ...but in a flight to safety, and this is putting it even more straightforwardly, a flight to
safety, all of the weak ones are going to be sold off. So there is
nothing that a government can do, no matter how virtuous it is, to
transform itself from a weak to a strong borrower. People are still
going to classify it as one of the weak ones, and they're still going
to dump them – not only when bad events happen, but even there is a
simple speculative movement in, say, the market for CDS. So it was just
from the very beginning illusory to think there was some path back into
the credit markets.
NDS: Do you think products like CDS are even worthwhile having, or do you think they're more a danger?
Galbraith: They're obviously a very dangerous development. What is interesting to
me is whether there is any effective way that one can now control them.
Having been invented – this is a little the aspect of the nuclear bomb:
once it was realized that it could be made, it was going to be made and
it cannot be unmade.
NDS: You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Galbraith: A credit default swap is just a contract between two private
parties on an over-the-counter basis that says that if event x happens,
then I will make payment y in return for a stream of payments z in
advance. We can call them credit default swaps, but I don't see how one
can make such a contract ultra vires, how one can remove it from
legality.
NDS: You can make regulation, like in Germany it's forbidden
that I take out a life insurance on someone else's life. It is in the
United States, too, generally.
Galbraith: Well, that's true, but can you stop a subsidiary of company x and a subsidiary of company from making the same contract in Singapore? Good luck!
NDS: True. Can you prevent major financial institutions from making those contracts so
that it doesn't get to be a systemic risk?
Galbraith: I don't know the answer to that. I think that the answer is probably not
straightforward.
NDS: Back a little bit to European austerity: Do you think that those who are demanding austerity – Merkel and Schäuble are the two main culprits here – do you think they really believe that this
is going to help?
Galbraith: I do not know Chancellor Merkel, I do not know Herr Schäuble. All I can tell you is that political leaders should not be suspected of believing things that they say.
NDS: I mean, it should be sort of obvious that this is not going to work. Our
speculation is more along the lines of this being a crisis that's too
good to waste in order to get rid of social programs, to cut government
down – much like the Republicans in the United States are doing.
Galbraith: It is a hypothesis with a certain amount of explanatory
power.
May 16, 12:23 AM
Gorgeous 70s TV blur on this one.
May 13, 08:13 PM
Been a while since my last panda installment. Back to a familiar trope: pandas on slides. Via Serious Cuteness, who stole it from God knows where.
May 12, 09:00 AM
Purpose
A philosophical meditation on the basis of the right to protest, through Aristotle, Thoreau & social contract theory, and Hannah Arendt
Structure
We will have a look at three moments in the history of philosophy and consider how they bear on our theme.
- Aristotle (circa 4th century BC) and the sense of justice as decency [epieikeia ]
-Suggested reading: Nicomachean Ethics (Book V, chapter 10)
-decency: justice that concerns justice that is not, or not yet, written law, but ought to be
- Thoreau and the Social Contract Theorists (roughly 17th-19th century)
-Suggested reading: Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience”
-Further reading: Hobbes, Leviathan; Locke, Second Treatise, Rousseau, Social Contract.
-social contract theory holds, in general, that the underlying rationale, legitimacy, and authority of a government stems from its protection of its citizens – in exchange for this protection, the citizens agree to give up certain kinds of freedom
-civil disobedience: the refusal to conform to an unjust government in the effort to reform it
-Suggested reading: “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man, from The Origins of Totalitarianism
-Further reading (on the psychology of modern political conformism): “Duties of a Law-Abiding Citizen” from Eichmann in Jerusalem
-Statelessness: the phenomenon of a people without a home or government protection
-Question: has the very act of protest become a de facto individual political secession in the current climate of radical political conformity?
Conclusion
Although the sense of justice and decency remain the constant companions of the democratic ideal, the codification of the right to protest in positive law (1stamendment) still fails to guarantee that right. The right to protest, therefore, is not a preliminary right that must be secured in advance of protesting – it is a right that is petitioned for and self-endorsed in its very execution. That means there are no “standards” for how to properly protest – what is proper must be determined in accordance with the political goal.
May 11, 07:39 PM
People’s Summit
5/12/12
Michael Gutierrez: “From Aristotle to Arendt: A Quick Philosophical Primer on the Basis of the Right to Protest”
Room 521, 11:45 - 1:15 pm, 500 W Cermak Ave
Welcome
Thank you for taking the time out of your lives to be a part of this Summit, and thank you for your interest in this workshop. There are a lot of fascinating workshops going on this weekend, along with music & arts events, and I encourage you to check out as much as you can. This particular workshop shares the same interest in the themes of social, political, and economic justice that are being engaged with this weekend by all the participants at the Summit, but I’ve shaped the presentation according to a little more philosophical and historical lines. That is, less topical and more theoretical, more abstract.
This is the point in the presentation where all the good Marxists emit a collective , repeating to themselves Marx’s famous line from Theses on Feuerbach, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Fair enough; the fact that we’re all meeting here today to participate with predominately practical agendas, such as “Health Care is a Human Right” & “Rush Limbaugh, Radio Policy, and the 2012 Illinois Radio License Renewal Window,” testifies to our shared belief that ivory tower, armchair politicking is not enough. That being said, every yin has its yang, so to speak, and I think a circumspective theoretical approach is a necessary and helpful complement to practical political action.
So what good is the theoretical, philosophical approach, especially with regard to our chosen theme “The Basis of the Right to Protest”? It’s an important question to be clear on, because what we learn here may not be of immediate assistance for any of us that head out to protest next weekend at the NATO summit. If you get a little too close to the police barrier and an officer warns you to “move back,” or “move along,” or just plain “get the hell out of here,” DON’T tell them you have a right to protest because Aristotle said this, or Arendt said that. Your philosophical resourcefulness will not likely impress and you will most likely receive, according to current parlance, “A billy club to the fucking skull.”
On the other hand, the theoretical approach will help us gain an overall view of the social and political and economic problems that confront us – an overall view that will sustain us and guide us when the ephemeral topicality of issues that come and go makes it difficult to discern the straightest path to justice. To this end, I invite us all to think together on three questions that will guide the three sections of today’s presentation.
First, with Aristotle, we will ask: what sort or sense of justice is that which forms the basis of the right to protest?
Second, with Thoreau and the social contract theorists, we will ask: what is the political basis of our right to protest – and when does protest become more than a right, rather an obligation as a fulfillment of civic duty?
Third, with Arendt, we will ask: what is the fate of the right to protest in our present day situation?
Writing Exercise: Question, What is the basis of the right to protest?
But before we begin the presentation proper, I’d like to invite people to join in a short 5 minute writing activity. Participation is optional. The question is our question at this moment: What is the basis of the right to protest? (Paper and pens have been provided) The answer needn’t be long; it needn’t be theoretical, it needn’t be practical; it only needs to be an honest and best effort reply to the question. Don’t sign your names. We’ll collect them after 5 minutes and, after the three part presentation, sort through the responses and consider together whether our answers still satisfy us.
In the meantime, I’ll provide some autobiography – feel free to tune me out as you think about the question.
Bio
Currently, I’m a second year PhD student in philosophy at Loyola University. I’m new to Chicago, having moved from Boston where I completed my M.A. in philosophy at Boston College. My research interests focus primarily on German transcendental philosophy, 20thcentury and contemporary phenomenology, and ancient Greek philosophy. In other words, I am primarily NOT focused on philosophical issues of social, political and economic justice. But Loyola University happens to be fairly good in that area, so I’ve been more attuned to these issues lately. Then along came the Occupy movement, which I’ve been watching with interest and has gotten me to think deeper on these issues than I might have otherwise. Overall, I’m amazed at the resilience and level-headedness of the movement. I can probably be counted among those political wallflowers with generally progressive political views, but with a general pessimism about the possibility of turning progressive ideas into realities by means of bottom up political action. At least in America. But Occupy has me thinking a little differently about the prospects for progressive social change, so I’m enthusiastic to see where it’s headed, and help it along towards the best destination possible, in the best manner possible.
Part 1: Aristotle and epieikeia [decency]
Reading: NE Bk. V, ch. 10
Equity/Decency(1137a31)
Let’s turn now to Aristotle. The 4th century BC Greek philosopher might not immediately seem like the best candidate for an argument in favor of the right to protest. On the face of it, that gut reaction is correct. Aristotle was not a democrat – even according to the ancient conception of the term – and the ancient Greek city/state was a social, political and economic entity that depended heavily on a large slave caste in order to sustain its way of life. This slave caste, of course, was the class in most need of political liberation and all that comes with it, including the right to protest. Such a thought was, of course, unthinkable to the ruling class of ancient Greece.
But great things have small beginnings, and ancient Greek philosophy’s abiding interest in justice set the course for the political progressivism of the next two millennia.
One particular sort of justice will occupy us here: epieikeia, or decency. Aristotle picks up a discussion of epieikeia in his book Nicomachean Ethics(NE V.10). Some translations of epieikeia give us “equity” (Burnet/Rackham), others give us “decency” (Sachs). Both interpretations are trying to give us a sense of justice that concerns justice that is not, or not yet, written law, but ought to be. In other words, decency is a sort of justice that is concerned about what is justice IN THE FACE OF written law, or what is just in the conventional sense.
Etymology: For the etymology fans among us, Aquinas provides a nice little breakdown of epieikeia in his Commentary on Aristotle. He breaks epieikeia into “epi” (among other meanings, “above”) and “(h)ikos” (among other meanings, “obedient,” according to Aquinas. So, in epiekeia, there is the sense of surmounting obedience, or suppliance, but not in the sense of a rejection of the suppliant attitude, not in the sense of absolute disobedience. The movement over and above obedience preserves obedience as its basis and as the inspiration of the movement over and above. I take it that this movement is analogous to the movement of decency, which has written law as its point of departure that must be surpassed in order to achieve what the written law ought to, but does not, achieve: namely, justice.
Epieikeia, then, as decency or equity, is a sort of abandonment of (one kind of) justice in the name of (a superior kind of) justice. This ambiguous sounding statement corresponds to the ambiguity raised at the beginning of chapter X: what is just and what is decent are neither simply the same, nor different. What is said to be a decent act or a decent person is said to be better than a certain kind of just thing – not better on the basis of being some other way than just, but rather by being a superior kind of justice.
At 1137b12, Aristotle indicates that what makes the decent superior to the legally just (written law, or positive law) is that the former can correct the shortcomings of the latter. When justice in the form of a decent act or a decent person is manifest (for, presumably, what is decent does not always manifest itself as anything besides written law), what is decent holds authority over written law, and the latter is re-shaped according to the mandate of the former.
Around 1137b14, Aristotle identifies the shortcoming of written law as its unyielding universality. What written law commands, it commands universally, the same for every situation. The contingency of human affairs, however, means that some things – particular cases, special circumstances unforeseen by the lawmaker – are not properly treated universally. In these special cases, decency is required to set the law straight in such a manner that the original lawmaker, recognizing the unity of intention between the written law and its emendation, would assent to the adjustment.
We can think of contemporary examples involving most every Occupy protest scene where justice in the sense of epieikeia/decency was sorely needed. Think of how petty bylaws, like the open hours of public parks, have been manipulated to stifle protest. In some cases, we’ve seen Orwellian moments where, in the supposed interest of public safety, student protestors have been treated with violence (UC Davis pepper spray – every major Occupy standoff experienced one-way violence). What is needed here is the decency to know that a clear sidewalk is worth less than addressing social, political and economic justice – and furthermore, the courage is needed to act on that knowledge.
How does Aristotle envision epieikeia in action? At 1137b29, Aristotle introduces the notion of the decree [psephismatos], which is an executive adjustment to written law in the interest of justice. The executive adjustment was accomplished by the executive power, which, in the case of an ancient Greek city/state, would either be an individual tyrant, or the tyrannical ruling class in general. At this point we have to part ways with Aristotle – but, over two thousand years ago, he has already given us this much:
First, laws written in the name of justice do not always remain just, or are not justly enforced in every situation. (This is important because it conveys the understanding that laws are made for people, not people for laws.)
Second, once an unjust law has been identified, it is a superior sort of justice to correct the law. (This is important for the ancient Greeks because it was not at all obvious to ancient humanity that laws were created for the sake of justice. A more primitive understanding of law, such as Draconian law, placed a greater value on preserving order, rather than justice. The notion that humans [zoon logikon] were effectively well-equipped, morally and rationally, to manage their own affairs in the name of justice was a new idea.)
Part Two: Thoreau and the Social Contract Theorists
Reading: Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”; Hobbes, Leviathan; Locke, Second Treatise, Rousseau, Social Contract.
By way of an enormous historical transition to Arendt, let me make a few brief remarks about the social contract theorists and Henry David Thoreau as an intermediate stage of political development. What is social contract theory? In short, social contract theory, most dominant in the 17th to 19th century, is a field of political philosophy whose major presupposition holds that the legitimacy & authority of a state issues from the decision of its citizens to relinquish certain individual freedoms in exchange for the protection of certain other rights. The rights must be, on average, more appealing than the relinquished freedoms in order for this model to be convincing. Hobbes, for example, paints such a dire picture of life outside the protection of the state that, were his picture accurate, it would be a very easy decision to surrender one’s liberty in exchange for a more secure existence.
Most accounts of civil liberties given by contemporary American academics (and most average Americans, I think) have quite a lot to say about this collection of thinkers. Not without reason. Whereas the ancient Greek thinkers planted the seed of the modern democracy, we can say, in a rough and ready fashion, that it was social contract theory that tended to the plant of modern democracy until it bore fruit. The first two major political actions of modern democracy – the American and French revolutions at the end of the 18th century – determined their beginning through various sorts of social contracts: either written documents or political congresses, such as the American Constitution (1788) or the Tennis Court Oath (1789). In fact, it is the first amendment of the US Constitution that is generally cited as granting the right of protest, although no exact wording correlates to this right: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The continued importance of the US Constitution to our political life, in terms both real and symbolic, is one reason for the continued relevance of social contract theory to our contemporary political scene. Another reason, I would argue, is that the legalistic reliance on a written document as a standard for justice gives citizens an apparently clear and distinct path for a redress of grievances; that is, “opting out” of the social contract by way of imprisonment or emigration until such time that the unjust law is emended. The 19thcentury author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau offered an elegant rendering of this strategy in his notion of “civil disobedience” in an essay by the same name. Since then “civil disobedience” has embedded itself in the popular consciousness, as a sort of apology for the injustices of our democratic state and the general ideological shorthand for all protest rationales.
There is reason, however, to suspect that the explanatory power of social contract theory is waning and that the average sort of naïve notion of civil disobedience, fashioned in the 19thcentury political, no longer best serves the 21st century dissident. Does the following line from Thoreau’s essay still ring true: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Or do we have the inkling in our country — which displays a historically unprecedented eagerness to lock up its citizens – that protest as a politics of martyrdom is exactly what the proverbial “they” want?
Part Three: Arendt and Statelessness
Reading: Arendt, “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man, from The Origins of Totalitarianism & “Duties of a Law-Abiding Citizen” from Eichmann in Jerusalem.
In this final section I would like to suggest that (1) social contract theory is no longer a helpful model to understand the mechanics and meaning of contemporary protest, and (2) that clinging to that model in spite of available evidence to its contrary, has eroded, and is currently eroding, our right to protest and to meaningfully participate in our democracy, and, finally (3), that Arendt’s notion of “statelessness” can give us some conceptual tools for re-assuming our right to protest (and civil liberties in general).
Now, according to Arendt, “statelessness” is the condition whereby an individual or people, by a stroke of historical consequence, no longer have a state to call home and protect their rights. This phenomenon was always an unfortunate side effect of political geography, but we can observe that “statelessness” becomes especially pronounced during the modern period, and especially during the colonialist expansion, when there was a great race to stake formal claims on land. The phenomenon migrated from the colonies to Europe itself in the course of two world wars, wherein geographical, political, and national boundaries were more or less up for grabs, and entire peoples were set adrift from their homelands. All of this is standard history, but Arendt puts an interesting twist on the standard interpretation: rather than “statelessness” being an accident of political history, she views it as a necessary consequence of the modern presupposition that our political rights are guaranteed by the lofty and abstract ideas embodied in such written documents as the American Constitution or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.
As she writes, “From the beginning the paradox involved in the declaration of inalienable human rights was that it reckoned with an “abstract” human being who seemed to exist nowhere…” (OT, 291) In the absence of a humanity abstract enough to claim their universal rights, the application of universal rights devolved upon nation-states, which determined who enjoyed rights according to who enjoyed citizenship. This was bad news for the stateless, who lost both their homes and government protection; but for the citizenry, too, there was a consequence. Rather than the state holding authority & legitimacy on the basis of the state’s ability to uphold a social contract – which is the model of social contract theory – the citizen, in order to enjoy the rights of citizenship, was (and is) forced to “prove” his or her citizenship through conformity to written law, where it was unwritten, and to unwritten law – that is, force – according to whatever political entity held (or holds) the greatest sway.
Let me say that again: in a political situation where the enjoyment of human rights depends on whether one is or is not a citizen – and to anyone with eyes, this is the situation today – the greatest part of a citizen’s political activity will be a pursuit of conformism to the state – or worse, the state’s interpretation of itself. This can’t fail to affect the right to protest, which finds creative ways to conform even in the act of dissent (one example here: contenting one’s self with voting for hopeless 3rd party candidates).
On the other hand, the dissent of those who present genuine alternatives – that is, who refuse to be content with the mock rivalry of the two party system, etc. – their dissent is hardly registered as protest at all. In fact, as we have seen with the unionizing movements and the civil rights movements, dissenters are painted quite easily as enemies of the state. That’s just human nature and the politics of power, but we can see how badly the situation has got, and how low our country’s intolerance for new political ideas and non-conformism has become, that, in these recent Occupy protests, even against the landscape of massive scandals in the financial industry, decades of recession, unemployment, the country at large still finds the point blank pepper spraying of students and their violent eviction from public spaces a MORE PALATABLE alternative than allowing them to openly and non-violently protest in the name of a corrective justice that authorities – at least according to the finger wagging rhetoric of officials – agreed with. That is, the state agreed with the protestors and the protestors agreed with the state – at least at the level of moral sentiment. But the actual act of protest itself was a bridge too far, too dangerous, a threat, as we are told again and again, to public safety – a true absurdity. It is almost as if the very act of protest had become a self-statelessness making act. That is, to protest is to secede on the individual level, whether the individual recognizes it or not. A grim thought.
I’ll conclude here, and I apologize for going so long and not ending on a higher note. In short, the notion of corrective justice, of epieikeia, of decency, of emending laws in the name of justice, has been around for as long as the Western political inheritance can honestly trace its history.
Moreover, one of the more popular models for understanding the dynamics of our present political scheme – social contract theory – provides us with a rationale for joining into a political community to preserve our rights, and also suggests an alternative of civil disobedience when those rights are not preserved.
But, finally, it’s not clear the social contract model describes the present day dynamics of political dissent and assent. The spectre of statelessness has produced an anxious and conformist citizenry that demands less and less accountability from its government. What is left of the right to protest in this environment? Along this reading, I think you have to say: very little. On the other hand, were we expecting that some piece of paper & a judge’s reading of it would amount to such a right? Perhaps we are left where we always have been: that no political right is given but must always be fought for, including the right to protest. And if we want to work towards authentic political alternatives, rather than ceaselessly conform to the dictates of a government we thinkguarantees our rights, than we need to start thinking beyond the boundaries of the symbolic documents that have come to replace our sense of national identity. I think we need to look beyond our borders, and look to the needs of the great many politically invisible people who are already within our borders, if we want to forge a collective political unity worthy of our highest ideals.
I’ll leave it at that, and we can have a look at the Responses.
May 11, 08:19 AM
The Chicago People's Summit is tomorrow (and Sunday). I'm presenting tomorrow morning from 11:45 - 1:15 pm. Click the title to be warped via the interwebz for more information. Paper/Workshop title: "From Aristotle to Arendt: A Quick Philosophical Primer on the Basis of the Right to Protest."
It will be held at W Cermak Ave in Room 521. Free admission, and a bunch of other cool stuff happening.
It will be held at W Cermak Ave in Room 521. Free admission, and a bunch of other cool stuff happening.
May 11, 07:57 AM
May 08, 12:02 PM
In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology Husserl sketches out a history of objective validity along the trajectory of Western thought, from ancient Greece to the present. The general method adopted is that of a historical phenomenology. As more or less distinct from the static and genetic approach, the historical phenomenological method is concerned with the historicity of objective validity. Accordingly, in the Crisis the famous epokhe uncovers not only objective idealities, but also the theoretical epoch in which those objective idealities are instituted as valid. Husserl proceeds, by means of a regressive inquiry, to trace the epochal history of theoretical thought back to ground of the life-world of ancient Greece (in particular, to the pre-scientific art of measurement).
I propose to retrace Husserl's regressive critique, following the thread of cause (causation, causality), as a moment of objective validity. As such a moment, the historicity of cause can be traced from its empirico-scientific present to its pre-theoretical past. This paper will concentrate on two bookend moments of the phenomenological history of cause: first, cause in the empirico-scientific present, as the problematic instigator of effect in formalized, mathematized nature; second, cause [aitia] in the life-world of ancient Greece, as a legal, political, ethical and proto-scientific phenomenon. The final part of the paper will attempt to understand how cause does or does not manifest itself in Husserl's proposed science of the life-world.
We can proceed in three general steps:
(1) establishing the problematic of empirico-scientific causality
(2) returning to the originary sense of cause [aitia] in the life-world of ancient Greece
(3) advancing into a proposed causality for a science of the life-world
(1) Hume, naivete, and the “bankruptcy” of philosophy and science
What is causality for Hume? In general, his notion of causality remains the dominant operative conception of causality for both the natural scientist and the average layperson. For Hume, causality is not a quality that impresses itself upon our understanding in the experience of causal events (T 1.3.2.5), such as heat might be a quality of the experience of fire or green might be a quality of the experience of grass. According to the famous billiard ball example, the causal connection between the first ball and the second ball – wherein the former strikes and sets in motion the latter – is not in itself sensible (Abs 9-10). In lieu of cause as some empirically-available, existing datum issuing from the object of experience, Hume suggests that the idea of causality is derived from some relation among objects (T 1.3.2.6). To this end, three salient features of causal relation are described: contiguity, priority, and necessary connection. First, contiguity is the requirement of spatio-temporal proximity of the cause and of the effect. If the first billiard ball is set in motion on Monday in Milwaukee, and the second ball is set in motion on Tuesday in Toledo, there would no impressively adequate causal relation between the two. Second, priority is the requirement of temporal order between cause and effect. Cause must precede effect and the two cannot be co-temporaneous. If the second billiard ball moved before it was struck by the first ball, or if the two moved simultaneously, we would look elsewhere than the first ball for the cause of motion (T 1.3.2.6-7).
Finally, Hume hits upon necessary connection as being “of much greater importance” than contiguity and priority in determining causal relation (T 1.3.2.11). Contiguity and priority may be observed between objects without yielding a causal relation. Discerning the necessity of the connection between cause and effect, on the other hand, would yield the desired philosophically and scientifically rigorous determination of causality. But after having set the bar so high, Hume withdraws, insisting that empirical assessment is insufficient to discern the necessity of causal relations (T 1.3.2.12) just as it is insufficient to grasp cause as a quality.
If we are unable to discern the necessity of causal relations, then we can say that our decisions based on causal reasoning are based on, at best, probability. But life often demands more from our reasoning than mere probability can supply – how then do we function? Hume's response is that we fill out the gap between what we ought to know and what we can know through beliefs in accordance with custom and habit (Abs 15). In the repeated experience of seeing the first billiard ball strike the second ball, the “mind is immediately carried by habit to the usual effect” and believes in a necessary causal connection that empirical evidence cannot in itself provide.
Hume's example of a life unaided by custom, habit, and belief is revealing. He makes a thought experiment of the biblical Adam, “created in the full vigor of understanding, without experience,” happening upon the billiard balls (Abs 11-14). Would Adam infer a causal relation between the first and the second ball? Hume denies that he would, as one would expect if we take Adam as the first human without any past experience to inform or contextualize his experience of the billiard balls. With repeated experiences of this same event, Adam will learn to anticipate the motion of the second ball from the impact of the first ball, but, initially, no custom or habit is in place to support the belief of a necessary causal connection. Experience, with all its uncertainty, is nevertheless the highest court of appeal.
The Husserlian critique will immediately point out the self-negating skepticism of Humean causality, on at least two main fronts. First, in a Kantian vein, Husserl takes issue with the covert reliance on necessary causal connections in order to overtly deny their objective validity (C 23). From whence comes, for example, the understanding of the identity of identical causal events? If we don't understand the billiard ball event at t1 as the same event at t2, and necessarily so, there is no basis for the observations of contiguity and priority, let alone affirming or denying a necessary connection. Second – and this critical point strikes upon a line of questioning that is more intimately connected with Husserl's project of historical phenomenology in the Crisis – is it correct to characterize custom and habit, and the beliefs based thereupon, as an entirely futural, prospective process of experiential accumulation? Or is their a backwards looking, retrospective and pre-givenfacet of our understanding of causality, and objective validity in general? Hume's Adam example is particularly revealing because it puts on display the fundamental presupposition of late empiricist thinking that the mind is more or less a blank slate requiring the (sense-)impressions provided by experience, and the impression of their regularity, before the human owner of that mind can meaningfully and accurately assess his or her world. This seems at least partly right insofar as we are speaking of humans along the continuum of birth and death, wherein the infant has very little to say about the world and the elderly have, presumably, much to say.
The explanatory power of the Adam example, however, does not issue from this average sort of experiential accumulation. It proceeds, on the contrary, from the basis of the miraculous presupposition that the first man encounters a cultural artifact – the billiard balls and table – in the absence of a cultural milieu. This presupposition is not a contingent detail of the story that could be disposed of while still maintaining Hume's essential point concerning causal relation, experience, and habit. Rather, it is an essential presupposition without which Hume could not get into the skeptical, philosophical bind that he wants his reader to get into. On the one hand, Adam must be entirely free of experiential baggage in order to demonstrate Hume's point that causal relations are built out of habit and custom, rather than empirically demonstrative necessity; on the other hand, Adam must have an operative (and unacknowledged – because he's the “first man”) understanding of causality in order to meaningfully deny or affirm the necessary connection of cause and effect in the billiard ball experiment.
Husserl targets the concealed historical conceptual inheritance and the major effort of the Crisis is the unconcealment of this history. This history is not the “condition of possibility” in the Kantian sense of constitution, but rather in the particularly Husserlian sense of meaning-fulfillment. What was impossible for a Humean skepticism, becomes possible for a historical phenomenology that reconnects the theoretical assertions with their ground of validity. That is, the life-world, as the pregiven matrix of practical activity and presuppositions, including inherited concepts, problematics, and pre-existing scientific community, which grounds and orients meaningful scientific inquiry. Such a regressive critique draws upon the full temporality of habit and custom, as possessed of a past, along with a present and a future.
(2) aitia, etymology, Aristotle and fourfold cause
In keeping with Husserl's historical procedure, we will go back to the life-world at the beginning of the theoretical turn, the life-world of ancient Greece, to look for a pre-given, pre-theoretical understanding of cause. To stop short of a full return – say, to elucidate the ground of the meaningfulness of Humean skepticism with a genetic phenomenological account – could be helpful in the sense of making the skeptical stance less philosophically appealing by pointing out its self-negating posture. But such a response by itself would have a mostly numbing effect, undoing the damage of this or that skepticism, without providing an alternative positive systematic account that would eliminate reckless skeptical assaults in the future. Husserl is more ambitious in the Crisis; he wants a science of the life-world to be this positive account that fills the yawning gap of human knowledge with a philosophically rigorous theoretical certainties, instead of contingent Humean belief. If the epokhe truly opens up previously unknown, infinite fields of investigation, if a science of the life-world is possible, and if cause has a place in it, then cause must be followed back to its pre-theoretical source in order to understand the full scope of its historical inheritance.
We will investigate the historicity of cause in the following steps:
(a) first, for the sake of time and space, we will telescope the regressive inquiry to a treatment of cause in the life-world of ancient Greece, foregoing analysis of the intermediate phases in Husserl's account.
(b) second, we examine the etymology of cause [aitia] as a clue towards its pre-theoretical understanding.
(c) third, we examine the fourfold causality of Aristotle as a proto-scientific, pre-theoretical summary account of cause.
(d) fourth, we collect the results of (b) & (c), and contrast with the empirico-scientific conception of cause.
Bearing in mind the telescoping procedure of (a), we can proceed with (b). The etymology of the English 'cause,' as well as its analogues among the Romance languages, goes back to the Latin 'causa,' which was the Roman/medieval rendering of the Greek 'aitia.' The range of meanings in this three phase history include legal, political, ethical, philosophical, and (proto-)scientific dimensions. In general, the sense of 'cause' as an empirico-scientific correlate of effect becomes more pronounced towards the end of the history, whereas the legal and ethical dimension is more pronounced towards the beginning. I've included the three phase family of definitions below to indicate the general trend. Definitions are given as prioritized by the lexicon and repetitive or too far removed definitions have been excluded.
[cause] (Oxford English Dictionary)
I.1 That which produces an effect; that which gives rise to any action, phenomenon, or condition.
I.2 A person or agent who brings about or occasions something, with or without intention.
I.3 A fact, condition of matter, or consideration, moving a person to action; ground of action; reason for action, motive.
I.4 The object of action; purpose, end.
II.7 (legal sense) The matter about which a person goes to law; the case of one party in the suit.
[causa] (Oxford Latin Dictionary)
A.1 Judicial proceedings, a legal case, trial.
A.2 The case of one side in a legal or other dispute, plea, cause, side.
A.4 A case or plea considered from the point of view of its merits, a (good, etc.) case, claim.
A.6 A ground (of action), justificatory principle, (good) reason.
A.7 A motive, reason (for an action).
A.8 A causal or metaphysical principle; a causal explanation.
A.9 A causal agency.
A.10 The origin, source, history (of something).
A.11 Responsibility, blame (for).
[aitia] (Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell/Scott)
I.1 Responsibility, guilt, blame, accusation.
I.2 In forensic oratory, invective without proof.
II. Cause.
III. Occasion, motive.
IV. Head, category under which a thing comes.
V. Case in dispute.
Overall, the persistence of the legal signification stands out: in the Greek, 'aitia' as 'accusation' or 'blame' or 'responsibility' indicated a formal public declaration of grievance of one citizen against another; in the Latin, the first three definitions all share a legal source; in the English, the priority of the legal usage gives way to more or less scientific, philosophical significations, although the use of 'cause' in a more average, everyday parlance can be seen in definitions I.2-4.
The philosophico-scientific signification of the English 'cause,' as correlate to effect, is foreshadowed by the metaphysical signification of the Latin 'causa' in definition A.8. Its interesting to note that there is no explicitly philosophical or metaphysical or scientific definition of the Greek 'aitia.' Aside from the distinctly legal coloring of 'aitia' in definitions I.1-2 and V, the Greek sense of the word maintains a non-technical, non-terminological slant in definitions I.1 & II-IV. The Liddell/Scott lexicon mentions its use in the diverse discourses of poets (Homer, Lucian, Pindar, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Sophocles) and historians (Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides), along with its more thematized employment in Plato and Aristotle.
Whatwe are seeking is the pre- and extra-scientific [vor- und ausserwissenschaftlich] understanding of aitia as determined in the “naive” way of speaking of life [die naïve Sprechweise des Lebens] (C 9l). What is “naive” here is not to be taken as misunderstanding, but rather as a pre-theoretical mode of understanding that holds no commitment to scientific objectivity. This notion of naivete (to be kept distinct from the naivete associated with the empirico-scientific method, which has its own peculiar historical basis) is current through all the sedimented iterations of the life-world, past and present. Naivete, as the possibility of forgetting one's ground, is the very possibility of sedimentation and is a key constitutive characteristic of the life-world as such. Naivete is the possibility of original intuition. A robust inventory of the naïve senses of aitia will provide us the best possibility of understanding the meaning fundament of the ancient Greek life-world, out of which the modern sense of 'cause' emerged. To gather together this inventory, we will rely on Aristotle and his endoxic approach regarding aitia in the Physics.
Before diving into (c), however, let's raise one objection: how can we be satisfied with a “robust” inventory, as opposed to a complete one? I think the reply should run something like: ancient Greek thought was not a systematic, interlocking matrix of logically consistent propositions that strove for completion in the modern sense of a universally applicable science (mathesis universalis). So, on one level, “robust” is simply the best we can hope for – and Aristotle makes a wonderful candidate for study in this regard because his treatment of topics most closely approximates the comprehensiveness that we expect from modern scientific inquiry. (Another possibly reply: that Husserl's epokhe, insofar as it opens up infinite fields of investigation for the phenomenologist, also moves phenomenological investigation away from the possibility of completion and comprehensiveness in the sense of a universally-applicable science that “conquers” the finite world. But this requires more explanation.)
Aristotle's fourfold description of cause (c) features in both the Physics(Phy II.3 194b24-195a3) and the Metaphysics (Meta V.2 1013a24-1013b3) and describes (i) the material cause, as the matter out of which a thing develops or into which it dissolves; (ii) the formal cause, as the answer to the question 'What is it?'; (iii) the efficient cause, as the agent of change or motion; (iv) the final cause, as the end or goal of some thing. His method for working towards this description involves a primitive history of philosophy (Phy I; Meta I.1-7; and elsewhere) which is motivated by the general endoxic procedure of collecting and classifying credible sources of the subject under investigation. After his consideration of historical sources, Aristotle claims that his fourfold summary adequately collects all the operative senses of aitia in pre-Socratic thought: “Clearly is is after these types that they are groping, however uncertainly” (Meta I.7). Assuming we can take him at his word, a further objection presents itself as regards our purpose of finding the naïve, pre-theoretical understanding of aitia in the ancient Greek life-world: has the fourfold description of cause already crossed the threshold into the theoretical? Surely it is plausible that the philosopher who had so much to say on theoria (NE X.7-8), considered his work theoretical activity and, consequently, his fourfold description of cause as theoretical assertion? Our objection runs as follows: a distinction must be made between the work of the Physics of the Metaphysics.1The pre-theoretical endoxic of cause in the former is preparatory, and forms the basis for the theoretical assertions of the latter. That is, the discussion of cause in the Physicspresents cause as phenomenally available prior to the intervention of theory and scientific objectivity – in the Metaphysics, on the other hand, the discussion of cause is merely the starting point for a theoretical assertion that takes us beyond [meta-] the everyday phenomenal availability of cause – beyond change and motion – to the theoretical substrate of cause, that is, substance [ousia]. For Aristotle, substance becomes the object of objective science in his overall metaphysical project, but the fourfold endoxic of cause remains merely preparatory to this project, pre-objective, pre-theoretical, pre-scientific, and pre-given. In other words, precisely die naïve Sprechweise des Lebenswe are searching for relative to the use of cause [aitia] in the ancient Greek life-world.
Finally, we can (d) collect the results of (b) & (c) and compare the fundamental source meaning of cause [aitia] with the average conception of empirico-scientific cause, in order to come to a more precise understanding of how the general crisis of objective validity expresses itself through cause in particular.
From (b) we gather that the more official use of aitia in its legal dimension was grounded in the much broader, naïve employment in everyday life. Aristotle's endoxic approach to the collection and classification of these various employments, from both historical and contemporaneous sources, resulted in (c) the fourfold account of cause as (i) formal, (ii) material, (iii) efficient, (iv) and final. In comparison to the empirico-scientific conception of cause – taking Hume as representative of late empiricism – we can immediately see the more or less suspect peculiarity of the formal, material, and final causes.
Regarding formal cause, although it is important for the biblical Adam to see that the billiard balls are, indeed, balls rolling on a table (with all that this implies according to the habitus of billiards in the life-world) in order to comprehend the question of cause and effect, it's not the case that Hume thinks formal cause explains how Adam comes to see this. Whatever formal knowledge of the billiard ball is required to understand the question will be derivable, for Hume, from experience.
Regarding material cause, although it is important for Adam to see that the billiard balls are composed of this or that material (with all that this implies according to the habitus of our engagement with materiality in the life-world – for example, we cut & fold paper, we shape plastic, we stand on concrete, etc.) in order to understand the question of cause and effect, it's not the case that Hume thinks material cause explains Adam's familiarity, or lack thereof, with the behavior of the billiard balls and their style of impact. A general understanding of materiality, according to Hume, would be at best a second-order inductive familiarity – say, an induction towards a general understanding of the behavior of wood based on many separate encounters. The primary access to materiality, however, would be the immediate sense perception, the empirical experiences, on which the induction was based.
Regarding final cause, although it is important for Adam to understand the effect as the terminus of the cause (with all that this implies for the ethical, political, social telos of the practical activity of the life-world) in order to understand the question of cause and effect, nothing is more questionable and absurd than determining a cause according to the end of a thing. Contiguity and priority, as necessary conditions for the determination of a correlate cause/effect, only serve to make more conspicuous the empirical unavailability of the sufficient condition, the necessary connection between cause and effect.
On the other hand, the entire weight of the conceptual heritage of cause appears to have fallen on the efficient cause in late empiricism.2For Adam to understand the Humean question of cause and effect, he only needs to grasp the proximate agent of motion: either the hand setting the first billiard ball in motion, or the simply the first billiard ball itself as it rolls toward the second in anticipation of the impact-event. Having grasped the proximate agent (and having concealed the understanding of formal, material, and final cause hiding in the obviousness of this grasping), Adam possesses the first link in a chain of causal determination that makes evident both the contiguity and priority of the billiard balls in the impact-event, but leaves the necessary connection of the two forever out of reach.
That the efficient cause takes the place of honor in the modern era is not surprising given the central role played by the scientific method in the advance of the empirical and theoretical sciences. The method – which requires both the formulation of a theoretical hypothesis and its subsequent testing against experience – places the scientist, as efficient cause, at the head of every chain of causal determination. Nature is provoked to respond by scientific inquiry; these responses are recorded along ultimately empirical lines; the valid hypotheses are preserved, generalized into mathematical values, and abstracted into formulae that are naively taken as the pre-given, valid starting points for future, higher level scientific inquiries. But with the substitution of algebraicized nature for the life-world, by scientists who were no longer the founding discoverers of new truths, but rather the devotees of an institutionalized (thereby, repetitive) technique, introduced an absolute distance between phenomenally-available cause and the increasingly-empty, efficient cause of empirical science.
Such was not the case with cause [aitia] in its ancient Greek origin. In its primitive sense, cause was not what lies behind a manifested effect, as the first billiard ball lies behind the second billiard ball as the non-manifest instigator of the manifestation of the effect. Cause is the very manifestation itself as a universal givenness, as a pre-theoretical phenomenality of life, which theoretical activity, along with the entire gamut of practical activity, took as its basis. Phenomena is not reduced to the expression of a mere cause or effect; far from it, the abundance of the ambiguously natural/cultural phenomena of the life-world necessitated the attribution of several, or all, of the causes to the same thing [Phy II.3 195a4-9). And while we cannot hope to re-inhabit (nor should we) the original life-world of ancient Greece in the effort to reclaim the fullness of cause, we can take the fourfold description as a clue towards where that fullness came from in the life-world of the past, and where it comes from in the life-world of the present: namely, the (pre-)givenness of experience. We can treat this as a starting point for understanding the role of cause in a putative science of the life-world.
(3) das Motiv: a proposal for causality in a science of the life-world
According to the approach of historical phenomenology, we return to the fundamental, pre-theoretical origin of the topic of investigation. But having returned, we cannot remain in the past, but rather must move forward, retrieving the fullness of the origin for the purpose of future understanding. What does our retrieval of the original sense of cause tell us about the prospect of cause, beyond the contemporary problematic of empirical science, in the science of the life-world? It tells us in an informal fashion that the average, original understanding of cause matched the contours of the life-world; furthermore, this fuller meaning remains with us as a cultural and linguistic inheritance in latent form. Bringing this inheritance out of latency is the possibility of formalizing the insights into one particular component, concerning cause, of an overall science of the life-world.
The great challenge of this endeavor is to formalize these insights – retrieved from the past, delivered to the future – without knitting together yet another “well-fitting garb of ideas” [ein wohlpassendes Ideenkleid] (C 9h) that would carry us further along the path of alienation from the life-world. As a proposal for future research, I would like to suggest that the role of cause in a science of the life-world, arrived at from a historical phenomenological trajectory, can be conveyed in the multifunctional conceptuality ofMotiv [motive/motif]. In his book Kausalität und Motivation, Bernhard Rang explicitly draws the connection between causality and motivation along the lines of a static and genetic phenomenology. Adding the historical account of aitia/causa/cause, I propose, would illuminate Motivin two intertwined manners.
First, Motivas motif captures the formal and material sense of cause as the basis for a synthetic unity of both in the manifest givenness of the life-world laid bare (entkleidet!) by phenomenological research. The cogitatum of Husserl's ego-cogito-cogitatum (CM 15) includes both (i) the “formal” noetic modality of intuition and (ii) the “material” noematic fullfillment of the intentional directedness, as co-constitutive moments of full, meaningful intentional experience. This possibility of meaning and fulfillment in experience, which is nothing less than our access to the life-world, is the pre-requisite for any attempted science of the life-world.
Second, Motivas motive (related: motivation) captures the efficient and final sense of cause as the basis of a trans-historical unity of both in the practitioner of the practical activity of the life-world: that is, the one called to a vocation [Beruf] (see C 35). The call [Ruf] of the vocation includes both (i) the “final”goal of the motivated seeker, whether an individual or culture, as well as, (ii) the “efficient” motivational ground, whether an individual or practical situation, by means of which the seeking commences. The efficient-teleological directionality can be understood in such average examples as “the cobbler.” But it is especially conspicuous in the self-conscious project of the philosophers, the “functionaries of mankind” (C 7), furthermore, the phenomenologists, who effect the epokhe as the practical basis of the theoretical activity of a possible future science of the life-world. Once again, the unity of the “efficient” and “final” senses is trans-historical because the work of historical phenomenology reveals the life-worlds of previous epochs, and the phenomenological perspective – which re-occupies past life-worlds, in the present life-world, in order to pass to a future life-world – is a fundamentally trans-versal historical perspective.
Another advantage of thinking a post-epokhal causality through Motivis the performative ambiguity of the work accomplished by the concept. A proper understanding of cause in the life-world, as proper to the infinite task of the science of the life-world, will neither reduce motif to motive, nor motive to motif. The trans-lingual uncertainty is the anxious uncertainty and reminder that the science of the life-world must constantly refer back to the practical concerns of the life-world as the pre-given basis and orientation of the science, just as the shifting sands of living languages necessitate a constant awareness of the living meaning before any worthy act of interpretation in attempted. Those same shifting sands are a good indication that the performative ambiguity of Motivis, for our purposes, a passing phenomenon of language. But the provisional nature of language nevertheless lends us the key insight that we can hold onto from Husserl's Crisis: look, see, recognize the world that is before you in its orginality. Indeed, this is less an insight then an imperative – and here we are reminded once again of the original ethical inflection of aitia, which, combined with Husserl's tracts on the irresponsibility of unchecked technicization in the sciences, projects the ethical inflection of aitia (guilt, blame, responsibility) through the entire history of causality into the science of the life-world as an ethical rebirth of theoretical thought.
To develop the Motivdiscussion in more depth requires a more universal consideration of Husserl's work beyond the Crisisand will not be attempted here.
Works Consulted
Aristotle The Physics trans. Philip H. Wicksteed. Loeb Classical Library.
_____ Metaphysics trans. Hugh Tredennick. Loeb Classical Library, 2003.
_____ Nicomachean Ethics trans. H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library, 1999.
Bacon, Francis The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis ed. Arthur Johnston. Oxford University Press, 1974.
Dodd, James Crisis and Reflection: an essay on Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences Kluwer Academic, 2004.
Gasché, Rodolphe Europe, Or the Infinite Task Stanford University Press, 2009.
Hume, David A Treatise of Human Nature ed. David Fate Norton, Mary J. Norton. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Husserl, Edmund The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology trans. David Carr. Northwestern University Press, 1970.
_____ Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie(HUA VI) ed. Walter Biemel. Martinus Nijhoff, 1969.
_____ Cartesian Meditationstrans. Dorion Cairns. Kluwer Academic, 1999.
_____ Cartesianische Meditationen ed. S. Strasser. Martinus Nijhoff, 1963.
Joachim, H.H. Commentary: The Nicomachean Ethicsed. D.A. Rees. Oxford University Press, 1951.
Owens, Joseph The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian 'Metaphysics' Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978.
Rang, Bernhard Kausalität und Motivation Matinus Nijhoff, 1973.
1Making this sort of claim with regard to Aristotle and his works will always be controversial, given the long history of scholarship. For support, see H.H. Joachim's discussion in his Commentary on NE (pp. 178) where he denies that prime matter is properly understood as a real antecedent to the phenomena, as a real “thing” subtending appearance. On the contrary, prime matter is a moment of the perceptible thing along with cause. But whereas cause shows up in a pre-theoretical, phenomenal appraisal of the thing, bringing prime matter to the fore requires “logical or metaphysical analysis.”
2This was not always so. At the beginning of the Enlightenment, Francis Bacon found use for all four conceptions (AOL VII.4), although doubtless in modified form. Locke, too, made the quasi-Aristotelian distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The bankruptcy of cause was a gradual development throughout the history of empirical science.
May 05, 09:05 PM
The Cartesian way.
The way from the life-world.
Together, the paradox of human subjectivity (see Crisis 53).
Ethical motivation splits the difference.
May 05, 02:48 PM
Here's my projected Fall schedule, pending any canceled classes & un-negotiable time conflicts. It looks like a lot -- it is a lot. But keep in mind that I'll only be officially enrolled in 3 of the classes, 2 of which are language classes (no term papers, less writing). My goal for next year is to write the dissertation proposal in the fall, defend in the spring, and have background research/writing going on the whole year.
| Fall 2012 | m | t | w | th | f |
| 8 | latin 815-905 | latin 815-905 | latin 815-905 | ||
| 9 | Metaphysics 845-1115 | ||||
| 10 | |||||
| 11 | German 1130-1220 | Greek 1130-1245 | German 1130-1220 | Greek 1130-1245 | German 1130-1220 |
| 12 | |||||
| 1 | |||||
| 2 | |||||
| 3 | |||||
| 4 | Aristotle 415-645 | ||||
| 5 | |||||
| 6 | Husserl 6-915 | ||||
| 7 | Kant 700-930 | ||||
| 8 | |||||
| 9 |
May 05, 01:05 PM
I had to share this email from an old Classics professor, Edith (Penny) Livermore. She is ancient, and I've never taken a class with her, but I always see her very kindly tutoring students in the department. I'll be taking a class on Greek Tragedy with her this summer, and I had to let her know that I would miss a few days due to previous commitments. Her reply is wonderful, and singular, and reminiscent of the sort of manners and magnanimity that can only be found in the great books of great civilizations. Academia cultivates rare flowers.
Thank you for writing, dear Michael,
for caring this much about our Classical Tragedy class --
I am delighted you shall be there,
and there is no need whatsoever
to drop the class --
I understand the conflict well,
and we cannot bi-locate !
So, just come on the days you are able to be there,
and, as far as "making up" the missed class time,
the best way shall be, probably,
simply to take time to reflect on these beauty-full ancient stories !
I look forward to seeing you soon !
Thanks again for your integrity
in wishing to write to me about this conflict --
you are noble indeed.
Warmly,
Penny Livermore
Thank you for writing, dear Michael,
for caring this much about our Classical Tragedy class --
I am delighted you shall be there,
and there is no need whatsoever
to drop the class --
I understand the conflict well,
and we cannot bi-locate !
So, just come on the days you are able to be there,
and, as far as "making up" the missed class time,
the best way shall be, probably,
simply to take time to reflect on these beauty-full ancient stories !
I look forward to seeing you soon !
Thanks again for your integrity
in wishing to write to me about this conflict --
you are noble indeed.
Warmly,
Penny Livermore
May 04, 01:10 PM
Freedom in Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts
Hegel's Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts provides an account of actualized freedom that begins with right [Recht] in its most abstract form (Grl 34) and concludes in the concrete, singular person of the constitutional monarch (Grl 279). The itinerary between these two bookends consists of a systematic articulation of right as existing freedom, actualized in ever ascending orders of social and political life. To gain a better understanding of how this account proceeds and what it contains, we will divide our exposition into three parts, concerning: (1) what precedes the account, including the deduction of right from free will in the introduction of the Grundlinien as well as where the text fits into the larger context of Hegel's philosophy of spirit [Geist]; (2) the systematic deduction of the various levels of abstract and concrete communal life internal to the account, including the individual person with property and duties, through family life, civil life, and the life of the state; and (3) what follows the account, including the discussion of world history and right beyond the border of a sovereign state. Parts (1) and (3) frame Hegel's account in (2) regarding how human freedom actualizes itself in its highest ideal ethical and political objectivity.
(1) (a) the broader context of Hegel's project and (b) the introductory deduction of right from free will
(a) Hegel's Grundlinien as the moment of objective spirit
In Hegel's formidable three part Enzyklopädie the major themes of the Grundlinien– in particular, right [Recht], morality [Moralität], and ethical life (or, ethicality) [Sittlichkeit] – are treated as moments of objective spirit. The objective spirit, in turn, is a moment of spirit as such, bookended by the accounts of subjective and absolute spirit. All three moments of spirit, taken together, make up the the Philosophy of Spirit, which is the third part of the Enzyklopädie trilogy that begins with the Logic and continues with the Philosophy of Nature. According to Hegel's general philosophical method of moving from the more abstract to the more concrete, we should understand the trilogy as an increasingly concretized account of systematic, metaphysical truths, from the most abstract and empty concept of being to the most concrete and fulfilled idea of absolute spirit. In other words, the three parts of the Enzyklopädie are not to be taken as discrete treatises on discrete subjects – rather, the trilogy is a continuous development of the self-same spirit described from the perspectives of logic, nature, and the self-comprehending perspective of spirit itself in the final part. Insofar as the moment of objective spirit – explored in detail in the Grundlinien – is merely one link in a longer chain of deduction, it is neither more, nor less important than the other links in the chain in terms of ensuring the philosophical rigor and completeness of the account.
The question, then, might be raised: why devote the additional time and effort to a fuller treatment of objective spirit in the Grundlinien? A few reasons suggest themselves. First, in a theoretical vein, it makes sense to expound in greater detail the concluding moments of the Enzyklopädie. If the account is truly a movement from the more abstract to the more concrete, then there should be more contingent details to sort through in the final moments of the grand scheme of the deduction. Second, in a practical vein, the questions of ethical and political life occupy the average person more so than the minutia of logic, or even of nature. In addition, Hegel's students, which included many future lawyers, would have presented an overriding demand for a philosophical curriculum with relevance to the legal sphere. Finally, we can mention a more polemical motive. What distinguishes Hegel's account of freedom from that of many of his contemporaries (both to his left and right on the ideological spectrum) is that he does not appeal to a social contract to guarantee freedom (versus the social contractarian left), although he does require a form of constitution that articulates the organs and organization of government as the realization of freedom for all (versus the neo-feudal right). The Grundlinien was Hegel's opportunity to formulate a detailed political philosophy in opposition to his contemporaries.
(b) the deduction of right from free will in the Introduction to the Grundlinien
Just as the Enzyklopädie provides a preview of the major themes of the Grundlinien, it also foreshadows the first movement of the latter: the deduction of right from free will. Free will is derived in the final moments of the argument in the subjective spirit section of the Philosophy of Spirit, whereas abstract right is derived in the initial moments of the objective spirit section. The chief transition that must be grasped in order to understand the inner motive of the Grundlinien, therefore, is the transition from free will to right. The importance of this transition deserves to be emphasized because, as was addressed in (1)(a), the movement of Hegel's argument is a conceptual unfolding from the more abstract to the more concrete. Where Hegel's account of freedom completes itself is determined – in accordance with deductive, or demonstrative, necessity – by where the account begins. The account of actualized freedom, which beings with the abstract concept of right, is itself the result of the deduction from free will.
The deduction can be summarized as follows.
(i) Hegel identifies the subject-matter [Gegenstand] of the science of right as the idea [Idee] of right (Grl 1). The idea includes both the concept of right and its actualization, which indicates that the abstract form of right is not yet actualized and requires philosophical development before being realized as concrete. As indicated in the third part of the Enzyklopädie, the point of departure for this development is the realm of spirit, in particular, the will (Grl 4).
(ii) Sections 5-7 are doubly significant. First, because they do the majority of philosophical work in the introduction. Second, because they provide the overall pattern for the deductive logic operative in the Grundlinien: the movement from the universal, to the particular, to the individual. In section 5 the will is described in its universal sense as the abstract, purely indeterminate. The possibility of the abstracting will in this universal sense, however, already implies the particular determinations of the will from which the will might abstract. In section 6 the will is described in this particular sense as the differentiations, or determinations, that make up the content of willing. Finally, in section 7, the will is described in its individual sense as the unity of both the universal and particular moments. Through self-realizing acts of willing, the will finds its freedom in the universalization of its particular acts through the unity of the willing I.
(iii) The fundamental dynamic of the universal-particular-individual triad in regards to free will has been sketched in a formal way in (ii). The task remains to fill out and actualize the formal sketch, taken up by sections 10-24. The actualization of the will is first described in an immediate manner as drives, desires, and inclinations (Grl 11), which is free will in the form of contingency (referred to as Willkür in section 15). As actualized and existing, the various determinations of drives fall into conflict since different drives will different aims, ends, and goals (Grl 17). The contradiction among the various determinations of contingent will necessitates a purification [Reinigung], or a rational ordering, of the drives (Grl 19). The rational ordering proceeds by submitting the immediate will – which we may also call the subjective will in view of its necessary attachment to an I – to the rationality of the objective will (Wille, as opposed to Willkür).The objective will, too, is attached to the I, but the attachment takes the form of a mastery that puts the subjective will(s) into the service of the individual. Through the will that wills itself as its own object, the particular moments of willing are universalized, and the will (and the I that wills) discovers its freedom (Grl 22-25).
(iv) Not only does the willing I discover its freedom, it discovers its freedom as existing, or being-there [Dasein] (Grl 26), because what the will wills produces a concrete result in the world. When the free will takes this manifest freedom as its own object, as a free will that wills its own free will (Grl 27), the abstract will is actualized. Hegel departs from the vocabulary of “will” to express the actualization of will by calling it right [Recht], that is, “any existence in general which is the existence of free will. Right is therefore in general freedom, as Idea” (Grl 29).
With this, the deduction of right from free will concludes. The account of actualized freedom will consist of the unfolding of right from its most abstract sense to its most concrete sense. However, in the exposition that takes up the remainder of the Grundlinien, a number of themes prevalent in the introduction will resurface – notably, the conflict between subjective/objective free will, which implicitly motivates the transitions toward higher levels of communal organization in search of a rational ordering of the diverse inclinations of family, society, and state.
(2) the unfolding of right [Recht]
The unfolding of right begins with the most abstract sense of right as instantiated in the personhood of the person (Grl 34-40) in Part One; from here, Hegel will develop right, as actualized freedom, through the various interconnected and ascending levels of Morality [Moralität] (Grl Part Two) and Ethical Life [Sittlichkeit] (Grl Part Three), including the moments of the family (Grl 158-181), civil society (Grl 182-256), and the state (Grl 257-320; the discussion of right continues in Grl 321-360 with regards to what is beyond the internal workings of the state, and will be addressed in (3)). Each successive level of the discussion (prior to Grl 321) develops contradictions in the social, ethical and political realm that require a solution in the form of a higher order, rational governing concept or political body. This pattern of contradiction and resolution continues until the idea of right finds its perfect form of expression in the decision of the constitutional monarch. We will briefly treat each major step of the discussion, starting with Abstract Right.
Abstract Right [abstrakte Recht]
The deduction of right from free will was accomplished in the individual person whose free will wills its own free will. It is this same general notion of person that the discussion of right begins in Part One. Right is here conceived in its most abstract and universal sense as the personhood, or personality, of the person. We do not know who the person is, where the person comes from, what particular role the person plays in civil society, or what the person's destiny may be in the organic unity of the state – we only know in general that the person ought to respect other persons and be respected as a person, as the distinct individuality of personality demands (Grl 36). We can hear echoes of Kant's categorical imperative here: to respect each person as an end in him- or herself, never strictly as a means.
Hegel proceeds to unfold in a general and abstract manner what necessarily follows from the fact of personality. That is, how does right manifest itself in regard to pure personality? In property (Grl 41-71) the person discovers his or her realm of actualized freedom in a general way; in contracts (Grl 72-81) the relation between property and many property-owners is negotiated; and in the discussion of wrong (Grl 82-104), the infringement of contracts – a primitive and incomplete notion of injustice – is raised to the higher level of universal right. When the will takes its own personality as object, the particular concerns of property and contractual justice are universalized (Grl 104) as concerns for property and contractual justice as such and for all.
The preoccupation with property and contracts reveals a common point of interest Hegel shared with his contemporary social contractarians, including Locke and Rousseau. That contracts and property are dealt with early on in the Grundlinien, and surpassed in favor of a higher order discussion, can be taken as an implicit criticism by Hegel of social contractarianism. The freedom won through property and contracts is prior even to the emergence of proper morality.
Morality [Moralität]
When the person has taken his or her own personality as object (in a movement analogous to the will taking its own willing as object), the person discovers the full freedom and possibility of a rationally-ordered morality that considers what is right for the person, as such, rather than this or that person. The subjective striving towards this objectively rational end is the expression and fulfillment of morality. While still remaining at a very general level, Hegel describes this striving as the instantiation of purpose and responsibility (Grl 115-118); the multiplicity of purposes inherent to a multiplicity of persons, however, necessitates a discussion of intention and welfare (both my own and others') (Grl 119-128); and the possibility of overcoming the contradictions of multiple purpose and intentions rests with the idea of Good, as the unity of the concept of the will and the particular will (Grl 128-129), a discussion that invokes conscience as the disposition to will what is good in and for itself (Grl 137), exclusive of the more primitive notion of the good as the advantage relative to, say, the fulfillment of a contract.
Once again we can hear the echo of Kantian morality in the notion of a will whose, “...true function must be to produce a will which is not merely good as a means to some further end, but is good in itself” (Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals). And once again we can read into Hegel an implicit criticism of Kant: that the dictates of a will that is good in itself remain too abstract, both for philosophical and ethical purposes. As Hegel moves forward into a discussion of family, he will attempt to show how the dynamics of abstract right and morality concretize themselves in higher levels of actualized freedom, wherein, for the first time, we see the “real” communal aspect of Hegel's discussion make its appearance as ethical life, or ethicality, or Sittlichkeit. Sittlichkeit will be the embodied forms of right, which we could also call the substantiality of the spirit (recalling that the “realm of spirit” [das Geistiges] is the basis and point of departure of right (Grl 4)) in the modes of actualized ethical, economical, and political freedom.
The Family [Die Familie]
The first immediate substantiality of Sittlichkeit is the family (Grl 158), which is the actual, existing, realized freedom of the private sphere. In the family each person's personality is subsumed in the large unity of the family, as a member of the family. The unity is maintained through love. Hegel divides the analysis into three moments: (i) marriage, (ii) the family's resources, and (iii) the upbringing of the children and dissolution of the family (Grl 160).
The (i) marriage, which Hegel terms an “ethical relation,” is the proximate starting point of the family. Through marriage both sexes freely surrender their personality to the higher unity of their union (Grl 168). The mutual surrender establishes the family itself as a higher order personality, which, like the personhood of abstract right and morality, has its own property and responsibilities. In (ii) the property is termed as the resources that provide for the livelihood of the family (Grl 170-172). The ability of the family to provide for itself – and therefore its capacity to preserve its unity – becomes strained as the circle of blood relations widens through marriage and offspring. In (iii) the responsibility of raising and supporting children (Grl 174) brings the family to the limit of its self-identity as the children “come of age” (Grl 177) and are recognized as legal persons in their own right. The family is, thus, subject to disintegration according to natural and conventional limitations: the father and mother do not forever remain capable of providing support, the children to do not forever remain in need of support, and the widening circle of blood relations means that the “head” of the family (Grl 171) will not be able to represent the whole of the family, nor will the boundary lines of familial responsibility be adequately drawn.
The family disintegrates into a plurality of families with no clear head determining and providing for the needs of the whole. The contradictions within family life are provisionally addressed by the next level of Sittlichkeit, civil society, which provides a generally economic response to the ephemeral freedoms of family life.
Civil Society [Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft]
In civil society, the needs and freedoms of individuals and families are accommodated more fully by establishing an economic network of customs and social habits to regulate society on an inter-subjective basis. Again, Hegel breaks the analysis into three moments of civil society: (i) the system of needs, (ii) the administration of justice, and (iii) the police and the corporation (Grl 188). By way of anticipation, civil society will provide a provisional solution to the contradictions encountered in family life, but – as a still intermediate level in the actualization of freedom and as a community based on contracts rather than unified will – civil society will run into contradictions on the basis of its own inner limitations as well.
The (i) system of needs articulates the necessities of life and the means for their fulfillment in more or less stable economic infrastructure. The communal aspect of the economic system allows for a refinement of the needs (Grl 190) as well as means (Grl 191). Such differentiation and distribution frees up society to express itself in various forms of work, and estates form to satisfy needs and provide means. The system of needs introduces the right to property in the economic sphere, but the task of the protection of property falls to (ii) the administration of justice. Through law, civil society preserves itself, at least in an incipient manner. The final movement of the civil society discussion concludes with (iii) the police and the corporation; the former secures the welfare of the individuals (Grl 230) that the law promises, while the latter acts as guarantor of its members as their “second family” (Grl 252).
The conflicts and contradictions posed by (iii) police and corporations are readily apparent. Without overarching governance, it is unclear whom the police are meant to serve and the corporations could easily grow hostile towards each other, predatory, and annul inconvenient contractual relations at will, depending on their relative degrees of self-sufficiency. Another clue to the insufficiency of civil society unto itself is the
“rabble” [Pöbel] discussion (Grl 244). In a society crafted according to reciprocal economic relations, those who fall below a certain resource threshold will be disenfranchised as a mass without an identity or role – an undesirable result for a variety of reasons. Through a pervasive and durable social and economical matrix, civil society provides a robust contribution to the actualization of human freedom, but its conspicuous shortcomings require yet another higher order solution.
“rabble” [Pöbel] discussion (Grl 244). In a society crafted according to reciprocal economic relations, those who fall below a certain resource threshold will be disenfranchised as a mass without an identity or role – an undesirable result for a variety of reasons. Through a pervasive and durable social and economical matrix, civil society provides a robust contribution to the actualization of human freedom, but its conspicuous shortcomings require yet another higher order solution.
The State [Die Staat]
The highest form of political freedom is realized in the state, wherein the universal, particular, and individual aspect of freedom is actualized in its fullness of the ethical idea (which began as only the most abstract sense of right). The universality of freedom is realized insofar as the freedom of all – not simply the majority, nor a plutocratic elite, or an autocratic individual – is actualized in the organic unity of the state. The section is again divided into three parts: (a) constitutional law [Das innere Staatsrecht], (b) international law [Das äussere Staatsrecht], and (c) world history (Grl 259). We will treat (a) immediately below, and (b) and (c) in (3).
We will examine (a) constitutional law in a bit more detail than other sections of Hegel's account because it is the completion and fulfillment of the account of actualized freedom as the actuality of the ethical idea (Grl 257). As the fulfillment, the state described therein includes all previous levels of more or less realized freedom, from right in its most abstract sense, to morality, family life, and civil society; the state operates as the overarching governance that unifies and rationally order all previous ethical, social, and political demands into a single, organic, functioning whole.
The organic conception of the state – as opposed to the contingent, contractual arrangements of civil society – exerts a transformative effect on both the members of the society, who begin to view themselves as citizens, and the reigning model of governance, which supercedes the local, parochial interests of contractual arrangements between individuals, estates, and corporations, in favor of the interests of the whole.
The transformation in the individual amount to the cultivation of a political disposition, which Hegel equates with patriotism in general (Grl 268). Patriotism is the habit of character that conditions the citizen to act in such a way that his or her subjective will is realized in the objective, rational, unified will of the state. Because it is incumbent upon each citizen to instantiate patriotism in the best state, patriotism has an inescapably subjective aspect. As mentioned above, the patriotism of the soldier will look different than the patriotism of the civil servant. But the subjective instantiation of patriotism is not to be confused with a subjective motivation of patriotism. For example, the vengeful soldier who kills the enemy purely out of hate, instead of duty, is not acting out of patriotism – rather, the soldier is motivated by the subjective inclinations of arbitrary will (Willkür, as opposed to Wille).
The transformation in the reigning model of governance will also be affected by the cultivation of a political disposition. The governed will expect some form of political constitution to inaugurate and preserve the unity of the state. The political constitution is this very organization of the state, conceived both as an internal relation of different essential moments of sovereignty and also as an external relation of the sovereign whole to other states (Grl 271). Hegel would distinguish a rationally-deduced, actualized constitution from the contingent foundation of a written social contract, but he does appear to value having the constitution in a written form (although he de-emphasizes the importance of who would write it – see Grl 273).
Internally, the state is constituted by (i) the universal moment of legislation, by (ii) the particular(izing) moment of executive power, and by (iii) the individual moment of the constitutional monarch (outlined in Grl 273). The unity and inter-functionality of all three moments is required in order for the state to realize its highest possibilities, so all three are merely moments of the same state. But, as actualized and existing, each manifest moment is separable from the whole for the purpose of analysis.
In (i) the universal moment of legislation, the legislative power determines the content of new law insofar as new law is required (Grl 298). Hegel's account details a bicameral legislative body, consisting of an upper (Grl 305-307), a lower house (Grl 308), and aided by sundry deputies and the influence of the estates. Public opinion also enters the picture (Grl 316-318), but apparently only to ascertain what laws have been, or will be, passed. Thus, the public has no real, direct input on lawmaking – not dissimilar to our contemporary situation. It's important to note that the two other moments of the state play a role in legislation: the executive power serves as adviser and the ultimate decision is reserved for the constitutional monarch (Grl 300).
In (ii) the particular moment of executive power, the sovereign's decisions and particular laws are upheld in the interest of the state (Grl 287). This task subsumes the functionality of the judiciary and police, thereby resolving the question encountered at the level society regarding the partiality of police authority. In order to fulfill its duties the executive power divides itself into separate departments (Grl 290) and grooms citizens to fill particular jobs vital to the common good (Grl 291-294), from the highest adviser to the monarch to the more mundane roles in civil service.
Finally, in (iii) the individual moment of the constitutional monarch, the itinerary towards the actualization of freedom is fully realized in the decision of the monarch. The triad of universal-particular-individual recurs here, in regard to right, and is operative in all three fronts in the (particularizing) decision of the (individual) monarch, who acts in the interests of the (universal) whole. In its ideal form, every decision of the monarch is at the same time his or her own decision as well as the decision of the rest of the nation, bonded together as a unity of wills. For Hegel, if a sovereign state achieves this status, there is no further real, conceptual development that can elevate the political freedom of a nation to a higher level. The only tasks that remain are tasks of preserving and sustaining the freedom that has been won, lest the sovereignty of the nation be compromised or the nation revert to a lower stage of ethical and political development.
(3) right, apart from sovereignty, and world history
Hegel's account of actualized freedom reaches its pinnacle in the decision of the constitutional monarch. The final section of the Grundlinien, however, continues beyond the inner workings of the state to discuss the state's relation to other sovereign states and world history. Because the freedom and political right of the individual in one sovereign state cannot be expressed in the decision of an opposed sovereign state, according to the very notion of sovereignty, it is unclear how the account of freedom fares at the level of international politics.
The English title of the next major sub-section is, in fact, “International Law” [Das äussere Staatsrecht], according to the Wood translation. The translation loses the contrast of inner and outer contained in the opposition of das äussere/innnere Staatsrecht. Furthermore, “International Law” may mislead us into thinking that law is being used in an univocal sense in both the innere and äussereaccount. Such could not be the case: on the one hand, the average citizen should expect to have their rights and the rule of law respected according to the inner [innere] workings of their nation; on the other hand, the citizen of state X does not have the right to expect anything from state Y, according to external [äussere] workings of the nation, except what can be won by treaty (Grl 332-333). Yet the treaties, like contracts at the level of civil society, are contingent constructs with no higher court of appeal than conflict, which, in the case of international politics, is war (Grl 334).
At the level of international politics, states function as particular actors with each their own agenda, interests, means – a diverse multiplicity that inevitably leads to conflict, the rise and fall of individual nations throughout world history. Hegel tracks the emergence of different realms [Reiche] – the Oriental, Greek, Roman, and finally, Germanic – as the unfolding dialectic of the spirit of nations. Although Hegel promises the present (presumably, the Germanic realm) has shed its barbarism and unjust arbitrariness [die Gegenwart hat ihre Barbarei und unrechtliche Willkür...abgestreift] (Grl 360), it's unclear how the abstruse and somewhat poetic conclusion to the Grundlinien secures the freedom of the average citizen, even in the ideal picture of world history. This suggests a certain pessimism regarding the possibilities of politics as the salvation of humanity. For a clue as to how to continue the Hegelian account we can refer to the larger frame of the philosophy of spirit, where the account of absolute spirit picks up where objective spirit leaves off. If the overall system of Hegel's philosophy requires that the political account be surpassed by more all-encompassing features of human life, such as art, religion, and philosophy, than the lack of any discussion of a supranational political body, like the United Nations, is unsurprising. For Hegel, there is no political entity large enough, full enough, real enough to encompass the human spirit – for which reason, politics is tragic and the Grundliniena tragedy. Humanity must seek its salvation elsewhere.
Works Consulted:
Hegel, G. W. F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right trans. Allen Wood, 1991.
Hegel, G. W. F. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (Werke 7), 1996.
Hegel, G. W. F. The Encyclopaedia Logic, Part I trans. T.F. Geraets; W.A. Suchtig; H.S. Harris, 1991.
Hegel, G. W. F. Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I (Werke 8), 1986.
April 29, 08:16 PM
Below is a revised abstract for a paper that I hope to workshop at the upcoming Phenomenology Roundtable at Marquette University. Actually, no abstract is required as far as I can tell. Whatevs.
In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental PhenomenologyHusserl sketches out a history of objective validity along the trajectory of Western thought, from ancient Greece to the present. The general method adopted is that of a historical phenomenology. As more or less distinct from the static and genetic approach, the historical phenomenological method is concerned with the historicity of objective validity. Accordingly, in the Crisisthe famous epokhe uncovers not only objective idealities, but also the theoretical epoch in which those objective idealities are instituted as valid. Husserl proceeds, by means of a regressive inquiry, to trace the epochal history of theoretical thought back to ground of the life-world of ancient Greece (in particular, to the pre-scientific art of measurement).
I propose to retrace Husserl's regressive inquiry, following the thread of cause (causation, causality), as a moment of objective validity. As such a moment, the historicity of cause can be traced from its empirico-scientific present to its pre-theoretical past. This paper will concentrate on two decisive moments of the phenomenological history of cause: (a) cause [aitia] in the life-world of ancient Greece, as a legal, political, ethical and proto-scientific phenomenon; and (b) cause in the empirico-scientific present, as the instigator of effect in formalized, mathematized nature. The final part of the paper will attempt to understand how cause does or does not manifest itself in Husserl's proposed science of the life-world.
The structure of the paper unfolds in three steps:
First, the identification of the contemporary problematic: a critique of the groundlessness of causality according to empirical evidence. The lack of a priori justification for the linkage between cause and effect motivates the realism/idealism debate and Humean skepticism. Static and genetic approaches mitigate the problem in the present, but the historical inheritance of causality operative in the life-world remains unclarified.
Second, a return to the life-world of ancient Greece in search of a pre-theoretical notion of cause. The first clue will be (a) the etymology of cause [aitia] in its legal, political, ethical signification [aitia, as accusation, charge, guilt]. The second clue will be (a) the pre-Socratic understanding of cause, as sketched by Aristotle. His fourfold treatment of cause as (i) formal, (ii) material, (iii) efficient, (iv) and final marks out an ambiguously natural/cultural phenomenon (both statues and trees have formal causes) within the life-world. In its primitive sense, cause is not what lies behind a manifested effect (see empirico-scientific causality: X causes Y, X as the non-manifest instigator of the manifestation of Y) – cause is the very manifestation itself as a universal givenness.
Third, an advance beyond the contemporary problematic of causality through the appeal to the givenness of the life-world. The retrieval of the pre-theoretical ground of our theoretical assertions preserves the validity of empirico-scientific causality by circumscribing its explanatory power within a certain epoch of theoretical thought, while simultaneously pointing to a new scientific possibility beyond the present: a science of the life-world. Does cause have a place in a science of the life-world? I will sketch a picture of cause as das Motiv – an important and recurring concept in the Crisis –which captures the constitutive ambiguity of cause as both a manifest giveness (motif: see formal & material cause) and teleological instigator (motive: see efficient & final cause).
If such a historical phenomenology of cause/aitia can be written, we will have accomplished at least two worthy ends: (1) describing in detail one facet of Husserl's compelling, yet under-developed, notion of the science of the life-world, and (2) grounding the political, legal, ethical imperatives of the Crisisin the real historical basis of cause as aitia [accusation, charge, guilt].
---
Some open questions:
Concerning cause/causality/causation & objective validity:
-What is the precise relation of cause and objective validity according to the parameters set by Husserl? -Is cause a subsidiary moment of the objective validity, or a separate phenomenon?
Concerning historical phenomenology:
-Does the sketch of the historical phenomenology of cause run parallel with objective validity, or does the former decisively intersect with the history of the latter only during certain scientific epochs?
-Can historical phenomenology “skip epochs,” as I have done in this paper, telescoping the historicity of cause into the transition from the life-world of ancient Greece to the contemporary empirico-scientific scene?
-What sort of necessity governs the advance from epoch to epoch in Husserl's history?
Concerning the life-world:
-How detailed can the account of the life-world be drawn while still remaining pre-theoretical?
-How do the procedures for marking out the life-world vary according temporal situation?
-What counts as valid for marking out the life-world of the past, the present, and how are these systems of validity similar or different?
April 29, 12:33 AM
Seth Myers kills it. What more can be said? To take you back a bit, Obama was struggling through the early election brouhaha stirred up by the "Birther" antagonists -- chief among them, Donald Trump, who becomes the richly-deserving whipping boy of the night. Enjoy!
April 25, 07:57 PM
Abstract/Proposal
Husserl’s Crisis is a critique of the naïvete of contemporary empirico-scientific theory, which, on his account, proceeds as the coordinated accumulation of empirically-derived assertions. These assertions are generalized, through induction, into a body of free-floating propositions detached from the original grounds of their validity. The limitations of empirical experience for the purpose of determining a rigorous science has been a recurring sub-theme of the idealism (what we can say about the world) versus realism (what there is to be said about the world) debate. In the absence of a general solution, the titans of unleashed technological productivity claims an unreflective hegemony while a crisis, concerning what science means for humans, lingers in its shadow.
Through a historical-phenomenological method, Husserl attempts to reconnect empirico-scientific theory (and, in general, theoretical thought as such) with its ground of validity. The regressive critique traces the history of objective validity through multiple epochs of Western thought back to its decisive inception in the theoretical turn of ancient Greek thought. The inaugural movement of theoretical thought, loosely sketched as the move from the art of surveying to Euclidean geometry, discovers as its base and condition of its possibility a pre-given, pre-theoretical matrix of human praxis, which Husserl terms the “life-world.” The life-world – far from being a colorless, neutral reserve of possible experience – is the rich and differentiated community of actualized (but nevertheless pre-theoretical) experience in which theoretical assertion of the inaugural movement, and every theoretical advance thereafter, finds the practical ground of its significance.
The overall method, then, is both a return and advance. The return to the life-world is meant to precipitate an advance beyond the naivete of contemporary empirico-scientific theory. This paper intends to examine one particular topic that falls within the general scope of this regressive critique: the topic of causality. Cause, causation, causality; the concept recurs throughout the history of theoretical thought and also finds a place in the operative understanding of the pre-theoretical life-world. In various steps, I would like to examine how causality fares after the phenomenological critique.
First, an identification of the contemporary problematic: a critique of the groundlessness of causality according to empirical justification (see Hume: the poverty of induction and the divorce of cause/effect).
Second, a return to the pre-theoretical life-world of cause: (a) the fourfold causality of Aristotle, (i) formal, (ii) material, (iii) efficient, (iv) final, as the ambiguously natural/cultural manifestation of finite existence; (b) see also the etymology of cause [aitia] in its legal, political, ethical signification [aitia, as accusation, charge, guilt]. In its primitive sense, cause is not what lies behind a manifested effect (see empirico-scientific causality: X causes Y, X as the non-manifest instigator of the manifestation of Y) – cause is the very manifestation.
Third, an interlude, a sketch of the progress towards the contemporary crisis (of causality, in particular) as ongoing sedimentation of abstracted theoretical advance and the consequent withering of the original fullness of the concept of cause. Sedimentation, as the accumulating strata of obsolete finite worlds (the finite world of Geometry, buried beneath the finite world of Algebra, and so on). See Bacon’s Advancement of Learning for the break towards the present problematic.
Fourth, the advance towards a concept of cause in a science of the life-world: the method of historical phenomenology retrieves the original fullness of pre-theoretical cause in a post empirico-scientific context as the trans-finitization of objective validity (the causality proceeding THROUGH the finitudes of the theoretical strata) of das Motiv. Das Motiv simultaneously captures the ambiguity between both ‘motif’ and ‘motive’: the former, the return, motif, being the intra-epochal manifestation of the ground of objective validity; the latter, the advance, motive, being the inter-epochal projection of theoretical assertion and the possibility of future objective validities.
In conclusion, the trans-finity of das Motiv, as a relative infinity which demarcates the actual and possible range of theoretical thought, should be distinguished from the absolute infinity that figures as the infinite pole of orientation for universal human comportment, including the activity of theoretical thought. The recognition of the distance between the trans-finite and the absolute infinite is not the acquiring of an additional fact, or principle, or method. On the contrary, it is an ethical imperative which motivates critical reflection concerning the meaning of theoretical activity for the life of the life-world.
See also:
aitia
I. a charge, accusation, Lat. crimen, and then the guilt or fault implied in such accusation, Pind., Hdt.:—Phrases: αἰτίαν ἔχειν to be accused, τινός of a thing, id=Pind., etc.;—reversely, αἰτία ἔχει με id=Pind.; ἐν αἰτίαι εἶναι or γίγνεσθαι Xen., etc.; αἰτίαν ὑπέχειν to lie under a charge, Plat.; αἰτίαν φέρεσθαι Thuc.; αἰτίαις ἐνέχεσθαι Plat.:—opp. to these are ἐν αἰτίαι ἔχειν or δι᾽ αἰτίας to hold one guilty, accuse, Hdt., Thuc., etc.; ἐν αἰτίαι βάλλειν Soph.; αἰτίαν νέμειν τινί id=Soph., etc.
2. in good sense, εἰ εὖ πράξαιμεν, αἰτία θεοῦ the credit is his, Aesch.; οἳ ἔχουσι ταύτην τὴν αἰτίαν who have this as their characteristic, Plat.
II. a cause, Lat. causa, Plat., etc.; dat. αἰτίαι, like Lat. causa, for the sake of, κοινοῦ ἀγαθοῦ Thuc.
IV. the head under which a thing comes, Dem.
April 25, 07:57 PM
Etymology ::: Eubouleus : good counsel, soundness of judgment, prudence
Eu [good] + Boule [counsel]
Overall points: deliberating is a kind of inquiring (1142a32); deliberating inquires and calculates (1142b2); skilled deliberation is some sort of rightness, but not that of knowledge or opinion (1142b8-9); skilled deliberating is right in the sense that it arrives at a good result (1142b23) through the correct means (1142b23-28); something may be deliberated well either simply or in relation to some end (1142b29-30);
Task: get an understanding about skilled deliberation (Sachs) or deliberative excellence (Loeb): euboulia.
- Is it: (i) knowledge [episteme]? (ii) opinion [doxa]? (iii) skill in guessing [eustokhia] or (iv) something different?
No, it’s not (i), because deliberating is a kind of inquiring and knowledge is something possessed (or not possessed), not a seeking after.
No, it’s not (iii), because deliberating involves slow calculating, which is different from the quick randomness of guessing. Objection: what makes guessing into skilled guessing? If it was some sort of calculation then skilled guessing would resemble skilled deliberating. Reply: that skilled guessing is intellectual imagination (Sachs) or Quickness of Mind (Loeb), not skilled deliberation.
No, it’s not (ii), as stated at 1142b7-8, and argued for in the following ways: (a) skilled deliberating is a rightness, and rightness of opinion is simply truth, and truth is different from skilled deliberation (1142b11); (b) opinion is a kind of assertion, but skilled deliberation is not yet an assertion (1142b15-16).
- Is skilled deliberation a rightness?
Yes, because to deliberate badly results in error while to deliberate rightly does not (1142b9-10)
- What sort of rightness?
A rightness that is arrived at by way of a reasoned account (1142b13) and a “thinking things through” (1142b14) that is not yet an assertion (1142b15) and is a “certain kind of rightness of deliberation” (1142b18).
- Rightness has more than one meaning: in what sense is skilled deliberation a rightness? Is it (i) rightness in the sense of properly gauging the means to attain any end whatsoever? Or is it (ii) rightness in the sense of attaining a good end? And if it is (ii), is skilled deliberation a rightness when it achieves a good end through (a) any process of reasoning, or only (b) correct reasoning?
No, it is not (i), because someone with bad character or a lack of self-restraint can use effective reasoning to very poor ends. Therefore, it is (ii), because skilled deliberating is not concerned with arriving at any result, but rather seeks a good result. Furthermore, it is not properly called skilled deliberating if (a) the good end is hit upon (tukhein) by false reasoning, or incorrect means, but only if (b) the correct means is adopted to arrive at the good result.
- Skilled deliberation,(i) simply & (ii) in relation to some end.
Regarding (i): deliberation executed well in view to a simple end. (What is a simple end?)
Regarding (ii): deliberating executed well in view to a particular end. (What is a particular vs a simple end?)
Summary at 1142b33-36: skilled deliberating belongs to the [phronemoi], it is rightness in accord with what is advantageous in relation to the end, and practical judgment is a true conception of this.
April 20, 08:55 AM
Yesterday I bought a few records from a local record shop in Evanston, including Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra. Listening now. Completely forgot that the opening -- "duhhh, dUUUH, DUH DUH!" --- also makes a major appearance in Kubrick's 2001: Space Odyssey. A sort of hokie start, but there's more to come afterwards. In fact, the bombastics quiet down appreciably (not entirely, of course), giving way to a sweet, if sometimes syrupy, Romanticism.
Wild cover on this one, far out, riding the 2001 stoner vibe.
Wild cover on this one, far out, riding the 2001 stoner vibe.
April 19, 12:24 AM
[Please don't read this if you were expecting something more universally applicable than a local intra-university grievance. This is not a matter that concerns everyone, although I consider it important, nevertheless, and it certainly has global implications for us local ethical actors. A lesson is here to be learned.]
Dr. X,
I respectfully submit that the graduate students have already provided feedback on this issue when the AGSP met & concluded through a democratic process that we would invite majors into the Grad Lounge Monday mornings, on a trial basis. This gesture was roundly, and without comment, rejected --- and we learned of its rejection in hushed and humiliated tones, second- or third-hand. It's hard to believe that the faculty was unaware of the fallout of this decision, but given that the faculty contact on this issue also happened to be the dissertation director of our highest elected grad student representative, it's possible that the extremity of our unhappy reaction was never communicated, out of fear of conflict.
But now we are being asked again to provide feedback. I will do my best below, and I should mention that I am in an especially good position to comment, as I am likely the most constant presence in the Grad Lounge.
I noticed in your email that the original motive language of the proposal, "to build community," was dropped in the message below. That is sensible, since the initiative worsened community relations on the whole. First, because it was enacted by an autocratic decision. Second, because it compromised a valuable yet already thinly-distributed resource that full time graduate students depend on as a home away from home, and for meeting/reading/translation group space. Third, because it reinforced an already prevalent view that the grad student body is becoming increasingly marginalized in terms of academic resources (grad classes cut down, general faculty indifference) and financial resources (the AGSP budget fell from $4,000 to $3,100). Fourth, because other spaces were available for the initiative, notably the common area at the center of the department. Fifth, because the total faculty involvement amount to a few stiff conversations and pretzel rods. Sixth, because the undergraduate honors society meeting, in which grad students were effectively kicked out of the Grad Lounge, communicated the fact that this was not community building -- this was appropriation, at the behest of 2 or 3 undergrads, at most, and 1 freshman student.
If the revised motive of the initiative is to attract undergrad majors to the department, then, according to the influx of 3-4 undergrads, it's not clear that the aim has been accomplished. Nor is it clear that the Grad Lounge is best used to accomplish this aim, despite the administration's unflinching insistence that all other possibilities were off the table from the start. In terms of immediate negative impacts, I can mention that the psychoanalysis reading group has faltered for lack of a reliable fallback place to meet. We reserved a space through Brynn in Dumbach; but the reservation is for a limited time, and cannot be rescheduled when necessitated by the fluctuating time demands of the group's membership.
Given the lack of faculty involvement with this, I find it especially troubling when the administration forces policy on us that pulls up by the root the tender plant of academic community that the grad students are trying, for the most part on their own (Dr. Jacobs is a significant exception), to cultivate -- in the name of building community no less!
Here are my thoughts for moving forward: end the initiative, or relocate it to the common area, and withdraw any "community building" proposals in which the faculty (a very significant part of the community!) don't wish to participate. I say this from the perspective of having observed and participated in this initiative more closely than most. I will admit that I have been against the policy from the start, but in my private exchanges with the undergrads, I have been hospitable, engaging, encouraging, and did my best to provide thoughtful advice and responses when appropriate. It was never the desire of the grad student body to build a wall between themselves and the undergrads, and, in fact, the Grad Lounge was never off limits to undergrads. But maintaining a welcoming attitude is a far cry from an autocratic appropriation of a grad student resource.
Once again, I respectfully submit this feedback in a spirit of constructive criticism. I am for community. I would propose more lectures, more reading groups, more translation groups, more placement advice, more seminars/conferences/workshops, more invited speakers, and more faculty participation in all of the above. Joint academic activity is how one builds community in an academic setting -- not through squeezing more sardines into the single can of the Grad Lounge. That's empty policy that accomplishes the opposite of community building. At best, it pleases upper level administrators intent on enhancing the undergraduate experience -- but if we are coming up with empty policy initiatives designed to appease upper level administrators, can we be more creative and come up with something that doesn't impinge on increasingly sparse grad student resources?
Most grad students feel this way. Doubtless you will receive sunnier responses that my own on this topic, but I hope the administration will wisely consider the obstacles, both real and imagined, that prevent most grad students from fully speaking their mind on the issue. As always, we depend on the faculty's good will, in classes, for our dissertation, for recommendations in the future --- in the face of difficult job market, many grad students will hold their tongue. I hope I am not being too reckless in expressing my own opinion, because I am equally dependent on the good graces of the faculty, but I feel that what was said above needed to be said for the sake of all of us.
Thanks for your attention.
Best,
Mike
Dr. X,
I respectfully submit that the graduate students have already provided feedback on this issue when the AGSP met & concluded through a democratic process that we would invite majors into the Grad Lounge Monday mornings, on a trial basis. This gesture was roundly, and without comment, rejected --- and we learned of its rejection in hushed and humiliated tones, second- or third-hand. It's hard to believe that the faculty was unaware of the fallout of this decision, but given that the faculty contact on this issue also happened to be the dissertation director of our highest elected grad student representative, it's possible that the extremity of our unhappy reaction was never communicated, out of fear of conflict.
But now we are being asked again to provide feedback. I will do my best below, and I should mention that I am in an especially good position to comment, as I am likely the most constant presence in the Grad Lounge.
I noticed in your email that the original motive language of the proposal, "to build community," was dropped in the message below. That is sensible, since the initiative worsened community relations on the whole. First, because it was enacted by an autocratic decision. Second, because it compromised a valuable yet already thinly-distributed resource that full time graduate students depend on as a home away from home, and for meeting/reading/translation group space. Third, because it reinforced an already prevalent view that the grad student body is becoming increasingly marginalized in terms of academic resources (grad classes cut down, general faculty indifference) and financial resources (the AGSP budget fell from $4,000 to $3,100). Fourth, because other spaces were available for the initiative, notably the common area at the center of the department. Fifth, because the total faculty involvement amount to a few stiff conversations and pretzel rods. Sixth, because the undergraduate honors society meeting, in which grad students were effectively kicked out of the Grad Lounge, communicated the fact that this was not community building -- this was appropriation, at the behest of 2 or 3 undergrads, at most, and 1 freshman student.
If the revised motive of the initiative is to attract undergrad majors to the department, then, according to the influx of 3-4 undergrads, it's not clear that the aim has been accomplished. Nor is it clear that the Grad Lounge is best used to accomplish this aim, despite the administration's unflinching insistence that all other possibilities were off the table from the start. In terms of immediate negative impacts, I can mention that the psychoanalysis reading group has faltered for lack of a reliable fallback place to meet. We reserved a space through Brynn in Dumbach; but the reservation is for a limited time, and cannot be rescheduled when necessitated by the fluctuating time demands of the group's membership.
Given the lack of faculty involvement with this, I find it especially troubling when the administration forces policy on us that pulls up by the root the tender plant of academic community that the grad students are trying, for the most part on their own (Dr. Jacobs is a significant exception), to cultivate -- in the name of building community no less!
Here are my thoughts for moving forward: end the initiative, or relocate it to the common area, and withdraw any "community building" proposals in which the faculty (a very significant part of the community!) don't wish to participate. I say this from the perspective of having observed and participated in this initiative more closely than most. I will admit that I have been against the policy from the start, but in my private exchanges with the undergrads, I have been hospitable, engaging, encouraging, and did my best to provide thoughtful advice and responses when appropriate. It was never the desire of the grad student body to build a wall between themselves and the undergrads, and, in fact, the Grad Lounge was never off limits to undergrads. But maintaining a welcoming attitude is a far cry from an autocratic appropriation of a grad student resource.
Once again, I respectfully submit this feedback in a spirit of constructive criticism. I am for community. I would propose more lectures, more reading groups, more translation groups, more placement advice, more seminars/conferences/workshops, more invited speakers, and more faculty participation in all of the above. Joint academic activity is how one builds community in an academic setting -- not through squeezing more sardines into the single can of the Grad Lounge. That's empty policy that accomplishes the opposite of community building. At best, it pleases upper level administrators intent on enhancing the undergraduate experience -- but if we are coming up with empty policy initiatives designed to appease upper level administrators, can we be more creative and come up with something that doesn't impinge on increasingly sparse grad student resources?
Most grad students feel this way. Doubtless you will receive sunnier responses that my own on this topic, but I hope the administration will wisely consider the obstacles, both real and imagined, that prevent most grad students from fully speaking their mind on the issue. As always, we depend on the faculty's good will, in classes, for our dissertation, for recommendations in the future --- in the face of difficult job market, many grad students will hold their tongue. I hope I am not being too reckless in expressing my own opinion, because I am equally dependent on the good graces of the faculty, but I feel that what was said above needed to be said for the sake of all of us.
Thanks for your attention.
Best,
Mike
April 17, 09:25 PM
Text below. It was hard to write this because I had to synch up the text, which I wanted to pull one way, with a Powerpoint put together by my professor, which wanted to pull itself another way. It's all sort of garbled and rambling. Hopefully it will be clearer in the delivery.
Recapitulation
Slide (1)
Today is the second of four scheduled Levinas meetings. The lecture schedule indicates that the first Levinas meeting covered the chapters on “Secrecy and Freedom” and “The Face” in Ethics and Infinity. Dr. Miller has asked me to speak today on “the face,” on what is the status of the face in Levinas’ philosophy. So, if the topic has already been broached, I’ll try to continue to develop the main ideas; if it has not been broached, take today’s remarks as an introduction to a rich topic within Levinas studies.
On methodology: I will, for the most part, stick to Dr. Miller’s powerpoint presentation. If questions & sidebars cause the conversation to drift into productive territory, that’s fine too.
Slide (2)
By way of approaching the question of the face, let’s review some of the main ideas of “Secrecy and Freedom.” Some of the keywords floating through the chapter are: “totality,” “infinity,” “synthesis” (along with “(non) synthesizables”), “transcendence,” “ego,” “secrecy,” “freedom,” “sociality,” “infinity,” and our watchword, “the face.” Hopefully, by the end of the lecture, we’ll have a clearer idea of how all these themes are woven together into a coherent perspective on the philosophy of Levinas.
A quick digression on the philosophical lexicon of Levinas: the philosopher not only demonstrates an awareness of the history of Western philosophy, he also demonstrates a desire to philosophize in a way that explicitly draws on the meaning of the arc of Western philosophy and critically reflects on that inherited meaning. Compare this approach to that of another 20th century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote in the preface to one of his books: “How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before my by another.” (TL-P) I would hold this attitude in contrast to that of Levinas, who felt a certain responsibility of the history of philosophy. Accordingly, the key themes and concepts of his work will have a very broad scope of applicability in the history of philosophy. When Levinas speaks about “totality,” or any of the other keywords we touch on today, he quite frequently means to speak of the word or the concept in reference to the entirety of its development along a roughly 2,500 year narrative of Western philosophy. That can make the task of the reader of Levinas a somewhat intimidating task.
Having said this, however, it can be very ably counter-argued that Levinas meant his philosophical project to speak to the specialist and non-specialist alike. Today’s topic of discussion, “the face,” speaks to this dual sensitivity: we can all immediately grasp the ethical importance of the face, as the primary avenue through which direct ourselves to others. More remains to be said, but the initial initiation into the thought of Levinas requires no expert knowledge.
Now, I’ll return to “Secrecy and Freedom” with the following question: Who among us is strong enough to digest the entire history of Western philosophy for the purpose of critical reflection? Not you, not I; I respectfully submit, not Dr. Miller either, nor even Levinas. For Levinas, there was one philosopher who at least made the best and most courageous attempt: Hegel, pictured above. Hegel’s philosophical project could be characterized as the attempt to weave all the separate strands of being and knowing into a single, coherent, necessary narrative culminating in a universal and absolute Concept that contains and logically orders all the separate moments its development into itself. Such an absolute Concept would contain within itself everything essential to being human in its aesthetic, religious (ethical), political and philosophical dimensions. It is an ambitious project; a project that would, in a certain sense, “conclude” philosophy; a project which Levinas respected, but also was deeply critical of.
I’ll gloss the Levinasian critique as follows:
The Hegelian attempt to synthesize all the separate moments of being and knowing into a single Concept passes over and systematically excludes all that cannot be, or cannot be known, in a philosophically rigorous sense. Levinas makes this point in exemplar fashion by drawing out the tension between totality and infinity in his book by the same title, Totality and Infinity. He asks whether it is possible at all for the infinite to a component member of a larger totality. For Hegel, this was a real possibility – his philosophical attempt at a synthesis of all being and knowledge included the infinity of the absolute Concept as the final component member of a chain of philosophical deduction. For Hegel, totality, properly understood, simply WAS infinity, because there was nothing great or higher than either totality (the sum of everything) and infinity.
Levinas find this equation of totality and infinity unjust because it finitizes the infinite by drawing it into a finite relation with finite being. How can anything that is truly infinite be reduced to finite terms? And what are the consequences of such a reduction? In theological terms, we can put the problem as follows: if we seek knowledge of God through a totalizing approach that claims to leave nothing out, have we not reduced God to something mundane, have we not lost the divine aspect of God that resists reduction to our mortal aspect, have we not lost what we are seeking? Apart from theology, we can gloss this in average, everyday ethical terms: if we are seeking out our ethical obligations to others through a totalizing approach that takes itself to know, in advance, what there is to be known about the other, what are the needs of the other, have we not lost what we are seeking?
In opposition to the equation of totality and infinity, Levinas will argue that the true infinity is beyond totality. In theology, that God is beyond the totality. In matters of ethics, that the other human being is beyond the totality; not in the sense that we can never encounter other human beings – we are social beings, we live with each other everyday – but rather beyond in the sense that I can never reduce other human beings to what appears of them for me in the world. I know others as teachers, as colleagues, as fellow citizens in a general sort of way; I know my parents and my siblings in a very intimate way – and yet, what each person is does not reduce to the person's relation to me – what they are for me. Each person is always something more, and that is their uniqueness, their dignity, and what lies beyond what I can know of them in a theoretical sense. That is their secrecy.
Dr. Miller draws on the language of war and peace here (from the Preface, TI). In terms of this language, to attempt to claim what belongs uniquely to the other as one's own is to engage in an act of war. This can sound somewhat poetical in everyday situations, but consider the example of the great genocide that marked Europe's arrival in the New World. Here is an instance where the dignity of a people was, in large part, disregarded with disastrous results. Instead of respecting the distance which lay between the conventional understanding of the average European, on the one hand, and the world view and customs of the native Americans, on the other hand, the general policy amounted to appropriation and violence. Europe knew who the native Americans were: they were savages, slaves, heathens without a God – and European policies in the New World, generally speaking, were ordered on that premise. What was required for peace was not the assimilation of native Americans into the European worldview – what was needed, no both sides, was generosity, respect, and courage to look into the face of truly unfamiliar culture, to recognize the humanity there. This, as we know, did not generally occur.
Slide (3)
This first difficult passage concerns the possibility of breaking free from the factual objectivity of historical time. A totalizing history – similar to or as part of a totalizing philosophy – already deduces the fates and identities of its historical actors, in much the same way that the first Europeans already understood the native Americans in advance as savages. But, if one possesses the courage to direct himself to the face of the Other, what will be found there is not an objective fact, but rather an imperative. For example, if you look into the face of a person in need, what is encountered there is not an objective fact, not merely the “color of the eyes,” but first and foremost we encounter the ethical imperative to help, to be of service – even if we don't act on it! This is the irruption of the secrecy into objective historical time, an irruption that brings new facts to our attention in its wake.
In the second passage, Levinas emphasizes the primacy of the ethical obligation that speaks in the face of the Other. The secrecy of the Other, the absolute worth of the Other: if one can respect these, one is on the way to justice and peace. On the other hand, to ignore the worth of the Other, to claim their secrecy, what is their own, as my own: this is to declare war and sow injustice.
Slide (4)
(just a metaphor)
Now we've spoken of the other in the sense of peoples (native Americans) and we've spoken of the other as individual persons. When we now speak of the face – as a vital point of engagement with the Other – we can straight off see how the face especially illuminates the other as individual person. Each person has a face; and we engage most intimately with the other through the life of the face. Levinas says that the access to the face is straightaway ethical – this is because, unlike an inanimate object, the face can impose ethical obligations on us. When we look into the eyes of someone in need, we feel that need. There is no barrier or intermediate of ethical obligation, as there might be, for example, in the case of a stop sign that has fallen; we know the stop sign must be raised, to avoid accidents, to save lives; but the people we are obliged to help in this situation are at least once removed – the stop sign in itself is indifferent to its placement.
This direct appeal of the face is its “nakedness;” its naked need is its “destitution.” The need is a need that calls to us to satisfy it. If we lack the courage to help, we may ignore it, we may pass over that need, we may even try to erase it, turn away, tune it out, to escape the sense of ethical obligation. For example, wearing headphones is a marvelous way to tune out certain miseries of the urban environment – you don't have to acknowledge a panhandler with headphones on – after all, you simply didn't hear his or her need. But to take off those headphones, to turn towards the face of the Other: that requires courage, because to truly face the Other directs you beyond what you think you know, what you may think you have the right to expect.
Slide (5)
Language will play an important role here because the discourse that emerges between oneself and the Other is possible only on the basis of our ethical obligation to the Other. The Other, as a beyond, is the very possibility of language insofar as the separation between myself and the Other REQUIRES language as the attempt to negotiate that separation. Levinas' distinction between the saying and the said reiterates his belief in the fundamental role of ethics in authentic communication. When one says: “Good morning, how are you?” the content of the utterance – the said – is almost nothing. It may be a bad morning, and the other person may obviously be very badly off. But the saying, the motive of our directing ourselves to the other person, may perhaps be very significant. That the other person might appear to be in bad shape is precisely the importance of asking the other person how she or he is. (Counterexample: the tyrant who has terrible conversations)
The face will, of course, be the primary site of such discourse. And the ethical obligation that imposes itself on us through the expressiveness of the face places the face, in a metaphorical sense, at a height. The Other is the most high, and we are placed in ethical service below.
Slide (6)
This language of “height” was developed in depth in an article titled “Transcendence and Height.” I'll tread more lightly over this point because, though I think I know what it means, I'm not sure why it should mean.
Here's what it means: “height” indicates the asymmetry of my relation with the Other. When I look into the face of the Other, the fundamental experience is of my ethical obligation to the Other. There is no correlative experience in which the Other is ethically obligated to me in reverse fashion. If that sounds strange, think of what would result if the relationship was symmetrical. Instead of an ethical duty motivated by an “ought,” a corresponding right would result in each side of the relation crossing their arms and waiting for his infinite worth to be recognized.
Levinas introduces one wrinkle into this scheme of asymmetry: the prospect of the multiplicity of Others. There is an old saying, “One cannot serve two masters” – in a similar vein, the “height” of the Other is compromised by our obligation to a multiplicity of Others. Whose need is paramount? To determine this, or attempt a determination, some type of utilitarian calculus will be required. But the introduction of metrics into the realization of ethical obligations is tricky business: metrics measure what is finite, while the Other is absolute, infinite, beyond, and incomparable. Nevertheless “real life” forces a decisiveness on us that involves a certain amount of ethical violence, that is, ignoring the need of this human for the sake of that human.
Slide (7)
A lot has been said here, but by way of recap & conclusion, let me emphasize some key points:
(1) the Western philosophical project can be characterized as a continuous development towards a totalizing systematic philosophy – following Levinas, we take Hegel as the culmination of this tendency.
(2) Levinas attempts to provide a philosophical counter argument against this tendency by asserting that totalizing philosophy overlooks the very real phenomenon of Otherness, in which what is beyond knowing lends significance and ethical orientation to what is known.
(3) We have illustrated the dangers of ignoring the phenomenon of Otherness at the level of peoples (native Americans) and individual persons, and we have said that the face is the primary avenue of encounter with the individual Other.
(4) In the face of the Other we have direct ethical access to the Other.
(5) The face obligates us in an ethical sense to recognize its worth and need because there is nothing either in our totalizing understanding that can domesticate the Other as what is always beyond our understanding. The command of the face also expresses the “height” of the face and the asymmetry of the ethical relation.
(6) Levinas is not alone in his thought concerning the possibility of asymmetrical relations of this sort. Descartes has a similar thought with his “idea of the Infinite” whose infinite meaning escapes its finite expression – the face, as a finite avenue towards the infinity of the Other, expresses a similar thought. But Levinas is unique in emphasizing the primacy of the experiential, practical quality of the transcendent experience.
Recapitulation
Slide (1)
Today is the second of four scheduled Levinas meetings. The lecture schedule indicates that the first Levinas meeting covered the chapters on “Secrecy and Freedom” and “The Face” in Ethics and Infinity. Dr. Miller has asked me to speak today on “the face,” on what is the status of the face in Levinas’ philosophy. So, if the topic has already been broached, I’ll try to continue to develop the main ideas; if it has not been broached, take today’s remarks as an introduction to a rich topic within Levinas studies.
On methodology: I will, for the most part, stick to Dr. Miller’s powerpoint presentation. If questions & sidebars cause the conversation to drift into productive territory, that’s fine too.
Slide (2)
By way of approaching the question of the face, let’s review some of the main ideas of “Secrecy and Freedom.” Some of the keywords floating through the chapter are: “totality,” “infinity,” “synthesis” (along with “(non) synthesizables”), “transcendence,” “ego,” “secrecy,” “freedom,” “sociality,” “infinity,” and our watchword, “the face.” Hopefully, by the end of the lecture, we’ll have a clearer idea of how all these themes are woven together into a coherent perspective on the philosophy of Levinas.
A quick digression on the philosophical lexicon of Levinas: the philosopher not only demonstrates an awareness of the history of Western philosophy, he also demonstrates a desire to philosophize in a way that explicitly draws on the meaning of the arc of Western philosophy and critically reflects on that inherited meaning. Compare this approach to that of another 20th century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote in the preface to one of his books: “How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before my by another.” (TL-P) I would hold this attitude in contrast to that of Levinas, who felt a certain responsibility of the history of philosophy. Accordingly, the key themes and concepts of his work will have a very broad scope of applicability in the history of philosophy. When Levinas speaks about “totality,” or any of the other keywords we touch on today, he quite frequently means to speak of the word or the concept in reference to the entirety of its development along a roughly 2,500 year narrative of Western philosophy. That can make the task of the reader of Levinas a somewhat intimidating task.
Having said this, however, it can be very ably counter-argued that Levinas meant his philosophical project to speak to the specialist and non-specialist alike. Today’s topic of discussion, “the face,” speaks to this dual sensitivity: we can all immediately grasp the ethical importance of the face, as the primary avenue through which direct ourselves to others. More remains to be said, but the initial initiation into the thought of Levinas requires no expert knowledge.
Now, I’ll return to “Secrecy and Freedom” with the following question: Who among us is strong enough to digest the entire history of Western philosophy for the purpose of critical reflection? Not you, not I; I respectfully submit, not Dr. Miller either, nor even Levinas. For Levinas, there was one philosopher who at least made the best and most courageous attempt: Hegel, pictured above. Hegel’s philosophical project could be characterized as the attempt to weave all the separate strands of being and knowing into a single, coherent, necessary narrative culminating in a universal and absolute Concept that contains and logically orders all the separate moments its development into itself. Such an absolute Concept would contain within itself everything essential to being human in its aesthetic, religious (ethical), political and philosophical dimensions. It is an ambitious project; a project that would, in a certain sense, “conclude” philosophy; a project which Levinas respected, but also was deeply critical of.
I’ll gloss the Levinasian critique as follows:
The Hegelian attempt to synthesize all the separate moments of being and knowing into a single Concept passes over and systematically excludes all that cannot be, or cannot be known, in a philosophically rigorous sense. Levinas makes this point in exemplar fashion by drawing out the tension between totality and infinity in his book by the same title, Totality and Infinity. He asks whether it is possible at all for the infinite to a component member of a larger totality. For Hegel, this was a real possibility – his philosophical attempt at a synthesis of all being and knowledge included the infinity of the absolute Concept as the final component member of a chain of philosophical deduction. For Hegel, totality, properly understood, simply WAS infinity, because there was nothing great or higher than either totality (the sum of everything) and infinity.
Levinas find this equation of totality and infinity unjust because it finitizes the infinite by drawing it into a finite relation with finite being. How can anything that is truly infinite be reduced to finite terms? And what are the consequences of such a reduction? In theological terms, we can put the problem as follows: if we seek knowledge of God through a totalizing approach that claims to leave nothing out, have we not reduced God to something mundane, have we not lost the divine aspect of God that resists reduction to our mortal aspect, have we not lost what we are seeking? Apart from theology, we can gloss this in average, everyday ethical terms: if we are seeking out our ethical obligations to others through a totalizing approach that takes itself to know, in advance, what there is to be known about the other, what are the needs of the other, have we not lost what we are seeking?
In opposition to the equation of totality and infinity, Levinas will argue that the true infinity is beyond totality. In theology, that God is beyond the totality. In matters of ethics, that the other human being is beyond the totality; not in the sense that we can never encounter other human beings – we are social beings, we live with each other everyday – but rather beyond in the sense that I can never reduce other human beings to what appears of them for me in the world. I know others as teachers, as colleagues, as fellow citizens in a general sort of way; I know my parents and my siblings in a very intimate way – and yet, what each person is does not reduce to the person's relation to me – what they are for me. Each person is always something more, and that is their uniqueness, their dignity, and what lies beyond what I can know of them in a theoretical sense. That is their secrecy.
Dr. Miller draws on the language of war and peace here (from the Preface, TI). In terms of this language, to attempt to claim what belongs uniquely to the other as one's own is to engage in an act of war. This can sound somewhat poetical in everyday situations, but consider the example of the great genocide that marked Europe's arrival in the New World. Here is an instance where the dignity of a people was, in large part, disregarded with disastrous results. Instead of respecting the distance which lay between the conventional understanding of the average European, on the one hand, and the world view and customs of the native Americans, on the other hand, the general policy amounted to appropriation and violence. Europe knew who the native Americans were: they were savages, slaves, heathens without a God – and European policies in the New World, generally speaking, were ordered on that premise. What was required for peace was not the assimilation of native Americans into the European worldview – what was needed, no both sides, was generosity, respect, and courage to look into the face of truly unfamiliar culture, to recognize the humanity there. This, as we know, did not generally occur.
Slide (3)
This first difficult passage concerns the possibility of breaking free from the factual objectivity of historical time. A totalizing history – similar to or as part of a totalizing philosophy – already deduces the fates and identities of its historical actors, in much the same way that the first Europeans already understood the native Americans in advance as savages. But, if one possesses the courage to direct himself to the face of the Other, what will be found there is not an objective fact, but rather an imperative. For example, if you look into the face of a person in need, what is encountered there is not an objective fact, not merely the “color of the eyes,” but first and foremost we encounter the ethical imperative to help, to be of service – even if we don't act on it! This is the irruption of the secrecy into objective historical time, an irruption that brings new facts to our attention in its wake.
In the second passage, Levinas emphasizes the primacy of the ethical obligation that speaks in the face of the Other. The secrecy of the Other, the absolute worth of the Other: if one can respect these, one is on the way to justice and peace. On the other hand, to ignore the worth of the Other, to claim their secrecy, what is their own, as my own: this is to declare war and sow injustice.
Slide (4)
(just a metaphor)
Now we've spoken of the other in the sense of peoples (native Americans) and we've spoken of the other as individual persons. When we now speak of the face – as a vital point of engagement with the Other – we can straight off see how the face especially illuminates the other as individual person. Each person has a face; and we engage most intimately with the other through the life of the face. Levinas says that the access to the face is straightaway ethical – this is because, unlike an inanimate object, the face can impose ethical obligations on us. When we look into the eyes of someone in need, we feel that need. There is no barrier or intermediate of ethical obligation, as there might be, for example, in the case of a stop sign that has fallen; we know the stop sign must be raised, to avoid accidents, to save lives; but the people we are obliged to help in this situation are at least once removed – the stop sign in itself is indifferent to its placement.
This direct appeal of the face is its “nakedness;” its naked need is its “destitution.” The need is a need that calls to us to satisfy it. If we lack the courage to help, we may ignore it, we may pass over that need, we may even try to erase it, turn away, tune it out, to escape the sense of ethical obligation. For example, wearing headphones is a marvelous way to tune out certain miseries of the urban environment – you don't have to acknowledge a panhandler with headphones on – after all, you simply didn't hear his or her need. But to take off those headphones, to turn towards the face of the Other: that requires courage, because to truly face the Other directs you beyond what you think you know, what you may think you have the right to expect.
Slide (5)
Language will play an important role here because the discourse that emerges between oneself and the Other is possible only on the basis of our ethical obligation to the Other. The Other, as a beyond, is the very possibility of language insofar as the separation between myself and the Other REQUIRES language as the attempt to negotiate that separation. Levinas' distinction between the saying and the said reiterates his belief in the fundamental role of ethics in authentic communication. When one says: “Good morning, how are you?” the content of the utterance – the said – is almost nothing. It may be a bad morning, and the other person may obviously be very badly off. But the saying, the motive of our directing ourselves to the other person, may perhaps be very significant. That the other person might appear to be in bad shape is precisely the importance of asking the other person how she or he is. (Counterexample: the tyrant who has terrible conversations)
The face will, of course, be the primary site of such discourse. And the ethical obligation that imposes itself on us through the expressiveness of the face places the face, in a metaphorical sense, at a height. The Other is the most high, and we are placed in ethical service below.
Slide (6)
This language of “height” was developed in depth in an article titled “Transcendence and Height.” I'll tread more lightly over this point because, though I think I know what it means, I'm not sure why it should mean.
Here's what it means: “height” indicates the asymmetry of my relation with the Other. When I look into the face of the Other, the fundamental experience is of my ethical obligation to the Other. There is no correlative experience in which the Other is ethically obligated to me in reverse fashion. If that sounds strange, think of what would result if the relationship was symmetrical. Instead of an ethical duty motivated by an “ought,” a corresponding right would result in each side of the relation crossing their arms and waiting for his infinite worth to be recognized.
Levinas introduces one wrinkle into this scheme of asymmetry: the prospect of the multiplicity of Others. There is an old saying, “One cannot serve two masters” – in a similar vein, the “height” of the Other is compromised by our obligation to a multiplicity of Others. Whose need is paramount? To determine this, or attempt a determination, some type of utilitarian calculus will be required. But the introduction of metrics into the realization of ethical obligations is tricky business: metrics measure what is finite, while the Other is absolute, infinite, beyond, and incomparable. Nevertheless “real life” forces a decisiveness on us that involves a certain amount of ethical violence, that is, ignoring the need of this human for the sake of that human.
Slide (7)
A lot has been said here, but by way of recap & conclusion, let me emphasize some key points:
(1) the Western philosophical project can be characterized as a continuous development towards a totalizing systematic philosophy – following Levinas, we take Hegel as the culmination of this tendency.
(2) Levinas attempts to provide a philosophical counter argument against this tendency by asserting that totalizing philosophy overlooks the very real phenomenon of Otherness, in which what is beyond knowing lends significance and ethical orientation to what is known.
(3) We have illustrated the dangers of ignoring the phenomenon of Otherness at the level of peoples (native Americans) and individual persons, and we have said that the face is the primary avenue of encounter with the individual Other.
(4) In the face of the Other we have direct ethical access to the Other.
(5) The face obligates us in an ethical sense to recognize its worth and need because there is nothing either in our totalizing understanding that can domesticate the Other as what is always beyond our understanding. The command of the face also expresses the “height” of the face and the asymmetry of the ethical relation.
(6) Levinas is not alone in his thought concerning the possibility of asymmetrical relations of this sort. Descartes has a similar thought with his “idea of the Infinite” whose infinite meaning escapes its finite expression – the face, as a finite avenue towards the infinity of the Other, expresses a similar thought. But Levinas is unique in emphasizing the primacy of the experiential, practical quality of the transcendent experience.
