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authorSilvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net>2018-02-22 09:34:43 -0300
committerSilvio Rhatto <rhatto@riseup.net>2018-02-22 09:34:43 -0300
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Books: One-dimensional man: chapter eight
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circle of the mutilated universe of ordinary discourse, it is at best entirely
inconsequential. And, at worst, it is an escape into the non-controversial, the
unreal, into that which is only academically controversial.
+
+### Universal Ghosts
+
+ Contemporary analytic philosophy is out to exorcize such “myths” or
+ metaphysical “ghosts” as Mind, Consciousness, Will, Soul, Self, by dissolving
+ the intent of these concepts into statements on particular identifiable
+ operations, performances, powers, dispositions, propensities, skills, etc. The
+ result shows, in a strange way, the impotence of the destruction—the ghost
+ continues to haunt. While every interpretation or translation may describe
+ adequately a particular mental process, an act of imagining what I mean when I
+ say “I,” or what the priest means when he says that Mary is a “good girl,” not
+ a single one of these reformulations, nor their sum-total, seems to capture or
+ even circumscribe the full meaning of such terms as Mind, Will, Self, Good.
+ These universals continue to persist in common as well as “poetic” usage, and
+ either usage distinguishes them from the various modes of behavior or
+ disposition that, according to the analytic philosopher, fulfill their meaning.
+
+ [...]
+
+ However, this dissolution itself must be questioned—not only on behalf of the
+ philosopher, but on behalf of the ordinary people in whose life and discourse
+ such dissolution takes place. It is not their own doing and their own saying;
+ it happens to them and it violates them as they are compelled, by the
+ “circumstances,” to identify their mind with the mental processes, their self
+ with the roles and functions which they have to perform in their society.
+ If philosophy does not comprehend these processes of translation and
+ identification as societal processes—i.e., as a mutilation of the mind (and the
+ body) inflicted upon the individuals by their society—philosophy struggles only
+ with the ghost of the substance which it wishes to de-mystify. The mystifying
+ character adheres, not to the concepts of “mind,” “self,” “consciousness,” etc.
+ but rather to their behavioral translation. The translation is deceptive
+ precisely because it translates the concept faithfully into modes of actual
+ behavior, propensities, and dispositions and, in so doing, it takes the
+ mutilated and organized appearances (themselves real enough!) for the reality.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Moreover, the normal restriction of experience produces a pervasive tension,
+ even conflict, between “the mind” and the mental processes, between
+ “consciousness” and conscious acts. If I speak of the mind of a person, I do
+ not merely refer to his mental processes as they are revealed in his
+ expression, speech, behavior, etc., nor merely of his dispositions or faculties
+ as experienced or inferred from experience. I also mean that which he does not
+ express, for which he shows no disposition, but which is present nevertheless,
+ and which determines, to a considerable extent, his behavior, his
+ understanding, the formation and range of his concepts.
+
+ Thus “negatively present” are the specific “environmental” forces which
+ precondition his mind for the spontaneous repulsion of certain data,
+ conditions, relations. They are present as repelled material. Their absence is
+ a reality—a positive factor that explains his actual mental processes, the
+ meaning of his words and behavior. Meaning for whom? Not only for the
+ professional philosopher, whose task it is to rectify the wrong that pervades
+ the universe of ordinary discourse, but also for those who suffer this wrong
+ although they may not be aware of it—for Joe Doe and Richard Roe. Contemporary
+ linguistic analysis shirks this task by interpreting concepts in terms of an
+ impoverished and preconditioned mind. What is at stake is the unabridged and
+ unexpurgated intent of certain key concepts, their function in the unrepressed
+ understanding of reality—in non-conformist, critical thought.
+
+ Are the remarks just submitted on the reality content of such universals as
+ “mind” and “consciousness” applicable to other concepts, such as the abstract
+ yet substantive universals, Beauty, Justice, Happiness, with their contraries?
+ It seems that the persistence of these untranslatable universals as nodal
+ points of thought reflects the unhappy consciousness of a divided world in
+ which “that which is” falls short of, and even denies, “that which can be.” The
+ irreducible difference between the universal and its particulars seems to be
+ rooted in the primary experience of the inconquerable difference between
+ potentiality and actuality—between two dimensions of the one experienced world.
+ The universal comprehends in one idea the possibilities which are realized, and
+ at the same time arrested, in reality.
+
+ [...]
+
+ This description is of precisely that metaphysical character which positivistic
+ analysis wishes to eliminate by translation, but the translation eliminates
+ that which was to be defined.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The protest against the vague, obscure, metaphysical character of such
+ universals, the insistence on familiar concreteness and protective security of
+ common and scientific sense still reveal something of that primordial anxiety
+ which guided the recorded origins of philosophic thought in its evolution from
+ religion to mythology, and from mythology to logic; defense and security still
+ are large items in the intellectual as well as national budget. The unpurged
+ experience seems to be more familiar with the abstract and universal than is
+ the analytic philosophy; it seems to be embedded in a metaphysical world.
+
+ Universals are primary elements of experience—universals not as philosophic
+ concepts but as the very qualities of the world with which one is daily
+ confronted.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The substantive character of “qualities” points to the experiential origin of
+ substantive universals, to the manner in which concepts originate in immediate
+ experience.
+
+ [...]
+
+ But precisely the relation of the word to a substantive universal (concept)
+ makes it impossible, according to Humboldt, to imagine the origin of language
+ as starting from the signification of objects by words and then proceeding to
+ their combination (Zusammenfügung): In reality, speech is not put together from
+ preceding words, but quite the reverse: words emerge from the whole of speech
+ (aus dem Ganzen der Rede).7
+
+ The “whole” that here comes to view must be cleared from all misunderstanding
+ in terms of an independent entity, of a “Gestalt,” and the like. The concept
+ somehow expresses the difference and tension between potentiality and
+ actuality—identity in this difference. It appears in the relation between the
+ qualities (white, hard; but also beautiful, free, just) and the corresponding
+ concepts (whiteness, hardness, beauty, freedom, justice). The abstract
+ character of the latter seems to designate the more concrete qualities as
+ part-realizations, aspects, manifestations of a more universal and more
+ “excellent” quality, which is experienced in the concrete.8 And by virtue of
+ this relation, the concrete quality seems to represent a negation as well as
+ realization of the universal.
+
+ [...]
+
+ These formulations do not alter the relation between the abstract concept and
+ its concrete realizations: the universal concept denotes that which the
+ particular entity is, and is not. The translation can eliminate the hidden
+ negation by reformulating the meaning in a non-contradictory proposition, but
+ the untranslated statement suggests a real want. There is more in the abstract
+ noun (beauty, freedom) than in the qualities (“beautiful,” “free”) attributed
+ to the particular person, thing or condition. The substantive universal intends
+ qualities which surpass all particular experience, but persist in the mind, not
+ as a figment of imagination nor as more logical possibilities but as the
+ “stuff” of which our world consists.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Now there is a large class of concepts—we dare say, the philosophically
+ relevant concepts—where the quantitative relation between the universal and the
+ particular assumes a qualitative aspect, where the abstract universal seems to
+ designate potentialities in a concrete, historical sense. However “man,”
+ “nature,” “justice,” “beauty” or “freedom” may be defined, they synthetize
+ experiential contents into ideas which transcend their particular realizations
+ as something that is to be surpassed, overcome. Thus the concept of beauty
+ comprehends all the beauty not yet realized; the concept of freedom all the
+ liberty not yet attained.
+
+ Or, to take another example, the philosophic concept “man” aims at the fully
+ developed human faculties which are his distinguishing faculties, and which
+ appear as possibilities of the conditions in which men actually live.
+
+ [...]
+
+ Such universals thus appear as conceptual instruments for understanding the
+ particular conditions of things in the light of their potentialities. They are
+ historical and supra-historical; they conceptualize the stuff of which the
+ experienced world consists, and they conceptualize it with a view of its
+ possibilities, in the light of their actual limitation, suppression, and
+ denial. Neither the experience nor the judgment is private. The philosophic
+ concepts are formed and developed in the consciousness of a general condition
+ in a historical continuum; they are elaborated from an individual position
+ within a specific society. The stuff of thought is historical stuff—no matter
+ how abstract, general, or pure it may become in philosophic or scientific
+ theory. The abstract-universal and at the same time historical character of
+ these “eternal objects” of thought is recognized and clearly stated in
+ Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World:10
+
+ “Eternal objects are … in their nature, abstract. By ‘abstract’ I mean that
+ what an eternal object is in itself—that is to say, its essence—is
+ comprehensible without reference to some one particular experience. To be
+ abstract is to transcend the particular occasion of actual happening. But to
+ transcend an actual occasion does not mean being disconnected from it. On the
+ contrary, I hold that each eternal object has its own proper connection with
+ each such occasion, which I term its mode of ingression into that occasion.”
+ “Thus the metaphysical status of an eternal object is that of a possibility for
+ an actuality. Every actual occasion is defined as to its character by how these
+ possibilities are actualized for that occasion.”
+
+ Elements of experience, projection and anticipation of real possibilities
+ enter into the conceptual syntheses—in respectable form as hypotheses, in
+ disreputable form as “metaphysics.” In various degrees, they are unrealistic
+ because they transgress beyond the established universe of behavior, and they
+ may even be undesirable in the interest of neatness and exactness. Certainly,
+ in philosophic analysis,
+
+ “Little real advance … is to be hoped for in expanding our universe to
+ include so-called possible entities,”11
+
+ but it all depends on how Ockham’s Razor is applied, that is to say, which
+ possibilities are to be cut off. The possibility of an entirely different
+ societal organization of life has nothing in common with the “possibility” of a
+ man with a green hat appearing in all doorways tomorrow, but treating them with
+ the same logic may serve the defamation of undesirable possibilities.
+ Criticizing the introduction of possible entities, Quine writes that such an
+ “overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic
+ sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes, but this is not the worst
+ of it. [Such a] slum of possibles is a breeding ground for disorderly
+ elements.”12
+
+ Contemporary philosophy has rarely attained a more authentic formulation of the
+ conflict between its intent and its function. The linguistic syndrome of
+ “loveliness,” “aesthetic sense,” and “desert landscape” evokes the liberating
+ air of Nietzsche’s thought, cutting into Law and Order, while the “breeding
+ ground for disorderly elements” belongs to the language spoken by the
+ authorities of Investigation and Information. What appears unlovely and
+ disorderly from the logical point of view, may well comprise the lovely
+ elements of a different order, and may thus be an essential part of the
+ material from which philosophic concepts are built. Neither the most refined
+ aesthetic sense nor the most exact philosophic concept is immune against
+ history. Disorderly elements enter into the purest objects of thought. They too
+ are detached from a societal ground, and the contents from which they abstract
+ guide the abstraction.
+
+### Historicism
+
+ Thus the spectre of “historicism” is raised. If thought proceeds from
+ historical conditions which continue to operate in the abstraction, is there
+ any objective basis on which distinction can be made between the various
+ possibilities projected by thought—distinction between different and
+ conflicting ways of conceptual transcendence? Moreover, the question cannot be
+ discussed with reference to different philosophic projects only.13 To the
+ degree to which the philosophical project is ideological, it is part of a
+ historical project—that is, it pertains to a specific stage and level of the
+ societal development, and the critical philosophic concepts refer (no matter
+ how indirectly!) to alternative possibilities of this development.
+
+ The quest for criteria for judging between different philosophic projects thus
+ leads to the quest for criteria for judging between different historical
+ projects and alternatives, between different actual and possible ways of
+ understanding and changing man and nature. I shall submit only a few
+ propositions which suggest that the internal historical character of the
+ philosophic concepts, far from precluding objective validity, defines the
+ ground for their objective validity.
+
+ [...]
+
+ The objects of thought and perception as they appear to the individuals prior
+ to all “subjective” interpretation have in common certain primary qualities,
+ pertaining to these two layers of reality: (1) to the physical (natural)
+ structure of matter, and (2) to the form which matter has acquired in the
+ collective historical practice that has made it (matter) into objects for a
+ subject. The two layers or aspects of objectivity (physical and historical) are
+ interrelated in such a way that they cannot be insulated from each other; the
+ historical aspect can never be eliminated so radically that only the “absolute”
+ physical layer remains.
+
+ [...]
+
+ I shall now propose some criteria for the truth value of different historical
+ projects.
+
+ [...]
+
+ (1) The transcendent project must be in accordance with the real possibilities
+ open at the attained level of the material and intellectual culture.
+
+ (2) The transcendent project, in order to falsify the established totality,
+ must demonstrate its own higher rationality in the threefold sense that
+
+ (a) it offers the prospect of preserving and improving the productive
+ achievements of civilization;
+
+ (b) it defines the established totality in its very structure, basic
+ tendencies, and relations;
+
+ (c) its realization offers a greater chance for the pacification of existence,
+ within the framework of institutions which offer a greater chance for the free
+ development of human needs and faculties.
+
+### Determinate choice
+
+ If the historical continuum itself provides the objective ground for
+ determining the truth of different historical projects, does it also determine
+ their sequence and their limits? Historical truth is comparative; the
+ rationality of the possible depends on that of the actual, the truth of the
+ transcending project on that of the project in realization. Aristotelian
+ science was falsified on the basis of its achievements; if capitalism were
+ falsified by communism, it would be by virtue of its own achievements.
+ Continuity is preserved through rupture: quantitative development becomes
+ qualitative change if it attains the very structure of an established system;
+ the established rationality becomes irrational when, in the course of its
+ internal development, the potentialities of the system have outgrown its
+ institutions. Such internal refutation pertains to the historical character of
+ reality, and the same character confers upon the concepts which comprehend this
+ reality their critical intent. They recognize and anticipate the irrational in
+ the established reality—they project the historical negation.
+
+ Is this negation a “determinate” one—that is, is the internal succession of a
+ historical project, once it has become a totality, necessarily pre-determined
+ by the structure of this totality? If so, then the term “project” would be
+ deceptive. That which is historical possibility would sooner or later be real;
+ and the definition of liberty as comprehended necessity would have a repressive
+ connotation which it does not have. All this may not matter much. What does
+ matter is that such historical determination would (in spite of all subtle
+ ethics and psychology) absolve the crimes against humanity which civilization
+ continues to commit and thus facilitate this continuation.
+
+ I suggest the phrase “determinate choice” in order to emphasize the ingression
+ of liberty into historical necessity; the phrase does no more than condense the
+ proposition that men make their own history but make it under given conditions.
+ Determined are (1) the specific contradictions which develop within a
+ historical system as manifestations of the conflict between the potential and
+ the actual; (2) the material and intellectual resources available to the
+ respective system; (3) the extent of theoretical and practical freedom
+ compatible with the system. These conditions leave open alternative
+ possibilities of developing and utilizing the available resources, alternative
+ possibilities of “making a living,” of organizing man’s struggle with nature.
+
+ [...]
+
+ the truth of a historical project is not validated ex post through success,
+ that is to say, by the fact that it is accepted and realized by the society.
+ Galilean science was true while it was still condemned; Marxian theory was
+ already true at the time of the Communist Manifesto; fascism remains false even
+ if it is in ascent on an international scale (“true” and “false” always in the
+ sense of historical rationality as defined above). In the contemporary period,
+ all historical projects tend to be polarized on the two conflicting
+ totalities—capitalism and communism, and the outcome seems to depend on two
+ antagonistic series of factors: (1) the greater force of destruction; (2) the
+ greater productivity without destruction. In other words, the higher historical
+ truth would pertain to the system which offers the greater chance of
+ pacification.