Modernism and the Age of Analysis
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Freud’s Psychology of Human Nature A. J. Ayer and Logical Positivism Max Weber and Legitimate Authority Dewey’s Critique of Traditional Philosophy
Heidegger: Wittgenstein and Language Analysis Structuralism: Saussure and Levi-Strauss
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Introduction The first half of the twentieth century has been aptly described as an age of extremes.” The Western industrialized nations underwent dramatic changes and traumatic crises in the first half of this century. In this context of tumult and change, philosophers sought to reconceptualize the role and function of their discipline. The result was the development of three competing conceptions of philosophic practice: philosophy as regulative, philosophy as therapeutic, and philosophy as edification. Outline The first half of the twentieth century has been aptly described as an ~age of extremes.” The Western industrialized world went through a series of rapid transformations in all facets of life that resulted in a milieu of uncertainty and anxiety. In this context, modern philosophers reexamined the function and role of their discipline and sought to respond to this new uncertainty in a variety of ways. II. The Western industrialized nations underwent dramatic changes and traumatic crises in the first half of this century. A. Central to all these transformations was the ~maturation” of industrial capitalism and its transformation from an era of familial entrepreneurialism to an age characterized by more formal and corporate forms of centralized economic power. 1. The early twentieth century saw the emergence of the new vertically integrated holding company that controlled all the input, resources, and marketing necessary for particular industries. 2. Industrial technology resulted in the rise of expensive ‘~consumer” goods that could be purchased by individual families with credit financing. 3. Modern corporations became bureaucratic institutions with steeply graded hierarchies of officers, long-term planning, and research and development facilities. 4. Major industrial sectors underwent cartelization. 5. Despite the efforts of cartels, the business cycle continued to fluctuate between extremes in an increasingly international marketplace. B. This period also witnessed the rise of mass media and the communications industry, changes that helped contribute to the growth of mass consumerism. 1. William Randolph Hearst helped introduce cheap national newspapers, centrally owned and produced for a newly created national market. 2. New media of communication and entertainment were developed, such as radio, motion pictures, and television (at the end of our period). 3. The rise of mass media created a venue for a new scientific “advertising” based on group psychology and market research. C. Concomitant with these changes was a dramatic political transformation in the industrialized world. 1. The laissez-faire principles of nineteenth century classical liberalism cave way to a new activist conception of the state 2. The much-sought "concert of Europe" was finally smashed by the outbreak of the Great War ( World War I). 3. The aftermath of the war saw the rise of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes in the very heart of Europe. 4. The epoch ends with the Second World War and the detonation of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, revealing to the entire world the dark potentials of modern scientific rationality. D. The culture of the modem West was also transformed in this period by the emergence of "relativism” and "irrationalism,” forces that seemed to call the whole modern program of secular knowledge and progress into question. 1. Science itself seemed to move in a relativist direction. In his famous theories of relativity, Einstein destroyed the Newtonian core convictions about absolute position and movement and even shattered the Euclidean conception of space itself. 2. Kurt Godel’s incompleteness proof undermined the belief that mathematics was ultimately reducible to pure logic. 3. Werner Heisenberg’s “Copenhagen” interpretation of quantum physics and his famous “uncertainty principle” further undermined the mechanistic determinism of the Newtonian universe. 4. Franz Boas and other anthropologists of this period first formalized our current conception of “culture" as a shared world of meanings that is fundamentally relative to personal and social circumstance. 5. A dark sense of fear and foreboding seems to linger over much of the literary production of this period. III. In this context of tumult and change, philosophers sought to reconceptualize the role and function of their discipline. The result was the development of three competing conceptions of philosophic practice: philosophy as regulative, philosophy as therapeutic, and philosophy as edification. A. The regulative conception saw the role of philosophy as that of a high cultural censor and sought to create order in the chaos of an increasingly relativistic culture by imposing rules and criteria for warranted assertability. 1. A. J. Ayer exemplifies this approach in his positivist analysis of language. The goal of the rigorous analysis of linguistic meaning was always to allow the philosopher to identify and purge “nonsense” from the philosophic and high cultural scene. 2. Saussure shared Ayer’s critique of metaphysical analyses of language and meaning. One is tempted to think of Saussure’s structuralism as a French analogue of logical positivism. 3. Max Weber accepted the positivist distinction between is and ought, as evidenced by his call for a value-free sociology. B. The therapeutic conception of philosophy sought understanding to ameliorate the human condition 1. This tradition was initiated by Freud. His pessimistic and naturalistic analysis of the divided self (id, ego, superego) was always intended as a scientific means to reduce psychic trauma and pain. This “treatment” takes the form of a ‘talking cure,” the central strategy of which is to reduce the power of hidden conflicts and drives over our minds by uncovering them to our view. 2. While drawing heavily on Freud, the Frankfurt School offered its critical theory of modem society as a form of therapy for Western societies and polities rather than the psychologically conflicted individuals within them. Like Freud, critical theory is itself a kind of talking cure that weakens the power of media and corporate or state manipulation over us by rendering it transparent. 3. Wittgenstein started as a regulative thinker very much in accord with A. J. Ayer. The latter Wittgenstein, however, is thoroughly and self-consciously therapeutic. Wittgenstein cures philosophic distempers by showing that philosophic problems arise from confusions among linguistic problems. 4. In the hands of C. S. Peirce, pragmatism was intended to be purely regulative. William James, however, moved pragmatism in therapeutic directions as he sought to use it to resolve metaphysical and psychological conflicts. James’s talking cure shows us what’s practically at stake (psychologically) in seemingly dry, abstract, and technical metaphysical disputes. It was Dewey who directed pragmatic therapy toward society, as well as the practice of philosophy. C. The practice of philosophy as edifying is concerned with the central questions about the meaning of life and the nature of the individual. 1. Edmund Husserl is a critical figure in the development of edifying philosophy in the twentieth century. His invocation of the transcendental ego and “consciousness as such” (the result of the first or epoche reduction) is part of a quest for the ultimate basis of reality in subjectivity. 2. Martin Heidegger pushed Husserl’s phenomenology in a far more explicitly existential direction. Heidegger rejected mere scientific rationality for “self-uncovering” discourses of Dasein (our place in the world). Heidegger focused on the subjective experience of “being-in-the-world” to interrogate questions about our existence and identity as individuals. Essential Reading: W. Warren Wagar, Worldviews: A Studs’ in Contparative History (Hilsdale, IL: 1977), pp. 135-184. Supplementary Reading: Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes (New York: 1996). Questions to Consider: 1. What are the characteristics of the regulative conception of philosophy’? 2. In what major ways did the philosophy of the twentieth century represent a departure from that of the previous century? Analytic proposition: A sentence is analytic, if and only if. its validity depends solely on the definitions of the symbols it contains. Correspondence theory of truth: The idea that one’s ideas are true when they are accurate representations or copies of the things that they are about. Das man self: According to Heidegger, the inauthentic man. Dasein: According to Heidegger. each of us. Diachronic: See synchronic. Eidetic reduction: For Husserl, the phenomenolocical analysis of essences. including consciousness. Epoche: From the Greek, meaning “suspension of judgment.~ Forms of authority: For Weber. they were three in number: legal or bureaucratic, traditional or patriarchal, and charismatic or personal. Langue: In the linguistics of Saussure. langue refers to the overall system of signs (along with its rules for grammar. syntax. and standard usage) that allows people to communicate with and understand one another. The langue lies deeper than thought and is accepted unconsciously, rather than chosen consciously, by those who use it. Saussure distinguishes langue from parole, a specific instance of speech or writing that arises from (and is the product of) the controlling langue. Lebenswelt The lived world. Logical positivism: A twentieth-century philosophical movement that sought to use formal logic to demonstrate that the meaning of a statement was conditional on its method of verification. Mytheme: See phoneme. Ontic: Having to do with particular things and their nature. Parole: See langue.
Phoneme: In the structural linguistic
studies of Roman Jacobson, a phoneme is the smallest unit to which language can
be reduced (i.e.. an individual vowel sound or letter). Pragmatism: For William James, a philosophy based on personalized experience; one that compels people to believe based on efficacy of application, a result of invention rather than revelation. Sign: In the theories of Saussure, the sign is the basic linguistic unit; it is formed by the union of a signified and signifier. Signified: In the linguistic theories of Saussure, the signified is the concept toward which the sound-image (or signitler) refers. The relationship between the signified and signifier is arbitrary (there is no essential reason why one sound should be chosen over another to represent a given concept). In addition, the signified, though it serves as a reference point for the signifier, possesses no inherent life or truth of its own (the signified is merely a concept and is not to be confused with the eternal, self-existent forms, or ideas, of Platonic metaphysics). Though Saussure stated that the relationship between signified and signifier was arbitrary, the deconstructionists went beyond this statement to assert a more radical breakdown between the two. Signifier: See signified. Structuralism: A modernist school of thought that originated in the linguistic studies of Saussure but quickly expanded to take in all areas of thought and study, including anthropology (Levi-Strauss), history (Michel Foucault), literature (Roman Jacobson and Roland Barthes). psychology (Jacques Lacan), and SO Ofl. Structuralists turn their focus away from all metaphysical systems that would see reality as proceeding downward from some logos or presence and focus instead on deep, underlying structures that are unconscious rather than conscious, material rather than metaphysical, deterministic rather than humanistic. Thus, according to the structural linguistics of Saussure, when we speak or write or even think, our words (10 not come to us via revelation; they are products of an objective, scientific linguistic structure that determines the meanings of our words and thoughts. Structures are not founded on “things” (elements that have meaning in and of themselves), but relations between things (see phoneme). Synchronic: According to Saussure, a linguistic system of signs can be studied either synchronically (by focusing on the way that each individual sign interacts with the overall structure or system) or diachronically (by focusing on how the system itself changes and evolves through time). Saussure’s own viewpoint is clearly synchronic; he attempts in his writings to freeze a given linguistic system and study it apart from history. Levi-Strauss, following Saussure, suggests that mythic structures can also be viewed either synchronically (vertically) or diachronically (horizontally). Like Saussure, he prefers a synchronic approach that will freeze the myth in time and uncover its recurring patterns. The later, ire radical structuralist Michel Foucault (following in the footsteps of Marx), adopted a diachronic approach centered on historical changes in the structure. Synthetic proposition: A sentence is synthetic if we can test its validity by determining whether it enables us to predict or anticipate experience. Transcendental ego: For Husserl, the act of ½racketing out the natural world. including the concept of causal relations "reduces" experience to connsciousness—a consciousness that he labels as the transcendental ego.Adorno, Theodor (1903—1969). Adorno. the philosopher, sociologist, and literary critic, was a leading member of the Frankfurt School. He obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of Frankfurt in 1924. After teaching there for two years, Adorno immigrated to England in 1934 to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews. He taught at the University of Oxford for three years and at Princeton (1938—41), then served as co-director of the Research Project on Social Discrimination at the University of California. Berkeley (1941-48). Adorno and Max Horkheimer returned to the University of Frankfurt in 1949 to rebuild the Institute for Social Research and revive the Frankfurt School of critical theory, which contributed to the German intellectual revival after World War If. Ayer, Alfred Jules (1910-1989). Ayer. the British proponent of logical positivism, was born in London. He was educated as a King's scholar at Eton. studied classics at Oxford. and studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. where he was affiliated with the Vienna Circle. In 1933. he was appointed to a lectureship at Oxford. After service in the Welsh Guards and in military intelligence during World War II, Ayer returned to Oxford. where he was appointed dean of Waldham College. In 1946, he became a professor of philosophy at the University College in London but returned to Oxford as a professor of logic at New College from 1960 to 1978: for five years thereafter, he was a fellow of Wolfson College. In 1970. Aver was knighted by’ the British crown. Dewey, John (1859—1952). Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, into a family of modest means. Both his parents were raised on farms in rural Vermont and his father was a grocer. Dewey’ attended public school and received his undergraduate education at the University of Vermont. After graduation, he taught high school for a few years before going to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied philosophy with Charles Sanders Peirce and George Sylvester Morris. He received his Ph.D. in 1884 and accepted a position at the University of Michigan. In 1894. he went to the University of Chicago and, in 1904, became a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. He was a leading figure in the progressive education movement and a prominent social democrat. Freud, Sigmund (1856—1939). Freud was born into a middle-class family in Frieberg, Moravia. When Freud was five, his family’ moved to Vienna—the city in which Freud was to live, with some exceptions, for the next seventy-eight years. In 1885, he graduated from medical school and became a lecturer in neuropathology. After briefly studying hypnosis in Paris under Jean-Martin Charcot, Freud abandoned his earlier biological research and turned toward clinical practice. In 1893, Freud and the physician. Josef Breuer. published what is often considered the first paper on psychoanalysk: ‘On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena.” Freud later incorporated their "cathartic method” into his own theory. Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in 1904. and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905. Although Freud’s work was at first poorly received, he collected a small group of devoted followers by 1906—among them Carl Jung and Alfred Adler. During the 1920s. Freud increasingly wrote about culture and religion. When the Nazis occupied Austria in 1938. Freud fled to London. where he died the following year. Heidegger, Martin (1889—1976). Heidegger was born in Messkirch. Germany. His father was a Catholic sexton. After finishing high school, he joined the Jesuits as a novice and studied theology and philosophy at the University of Freiburg with Ilusserl and the neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert. Heidegger began to lecture at Freiburg in 1915 and, in 1923. became a professor at the University of Marburg. In 1928, he published his seminal work. Being and Time. The following year, Heidegger was appointed to Husserl’s vacant chair at the University of Freiburg. where he remained until 195 1. In the 1 930s. Heidegger joined the Nazi Party and gave speeches in support of Hitler. He crew disillusioned with the Nazis and his wartime activities were investigated after the war, but his support of Hitler was not found to be serious and he retained his position at Freiburg. Horkheimer, Max (1895—1973). The German sociologist and member of the Frankfurt School was born in Stuttgart. He was Director of the Institute for Social Research from 1930 to 1958 and rector of the University of Frankfurt from 1953 to 1958. Husserl, Edmund (1859—1938). Husserl. the founder of phenomenology’. was born to a Jewish family in Moravia. He studied at the Universities of Berlin, Leipzig, and Vienna and received his doctorate in mathematics in 1882. He then turned his interest to philosophy and psychology and converted to Evangelical Lutheranism. In 1887, he became a lecturer at the University of Halle. where he remained until 1901, when he received an appointment at the University of Gottigen. Among his students were Jean-Paul Sartre. Rudolf Carnap. and Martin Heidegger. He retired in 1928. and Heidegger took Husserl’s position at the university. When the Nazis took power in 1933. Husserl was excluded from the university and silenced. His relationship with Heidegger ended. He took ill in 1937 and died the following year. James, William (1842—1910). James was born into a wealthy family in New York City. His father, Henry James, Sr.. was a member of the New England transcendentalist movement and a principal supporter of Emmanuel Swedenborg’s Church of the New Jerusalem. William James's brother. Henry, became a famous novelist. William studied medicine at Harvard Medical School. accompanied the naturalist Louis Agassiz to the Amazon River in Brazil, and conducted research in Germany. He was constantly in poor health and lived with his father, doing little but reading until he was thirty. In 1872. James became a lecturer in anatomy and physiology at Harvard but within a few years switched to teaching psychology and philosophy’. He married Alice Howe Gibbens in 1878 and his health began to improve. He retired from Harvard in 1907. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1908— ~. Levi-Strauss, the prominent French social anthropologist and leading exponent of structuralism. was born in Brussels, Belgium, and educated at the University’ of Paris. where he studied law and philosophy. For a time, he taught high school and was part of the circle of existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1934. he was appointed professor of sociology’ at the University of’ Sao Paulo in Brazil, where he did research on the Brazilian Indians. Levi-Strauss was visiting professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City during World War II. From 1950 to 1974. he was director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at the University of Paris. In 1959, Levi-Strauss became professor of social anthropology at the College de France. Marcuse, Herbert (1898—1979). A political philosopher and member of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse was born in Germany. His Marxist critical philosophy and Freudian psychological analyses of twentieth-century Western society were popular among student leftist radicals in the late 1960s. Marcuse received his Ph.D. from the University of Freiburg in 1922. He was a cofounder of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Marcuse fled to Geneva, then to the United States in the following year. where he taught at Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1940. During World War II. Marcuse served as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army and headed the Central European Section of the Office of Intelligence Research after the war. He returned to teach at Columbia in 1951. then went to Harvard. He later taught at Brandeis University’ (1954—65) and the University of California at San Diego (1965—76). Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857—1913). A Swiss linguist whose pioneer work. Course on Gene,’al Linguistics, is the founding text of structuralism. Saussure taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and at the University of Geneva. where his influence was strongly felt. He published Memoir on the Original System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages in 1879. Weber, Max (1864—1920). Weber grew up in Berlin. His father was a lawyer who was active in the liberal politics of’ the day’. His mother was a woman of humanitarian religious commitments. Weber received an excellent education in languages, the classics, and history. During his college years. he studied law. philosophy, economics, and history’ at universities in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Gottingen, as well as undergoing a year’s military training. He passed the bar examination in 1886. He received his Ph.D. in 1889 and was married four years later. During these years, he served as a govermnent consultant, lectured in law at the University of Berlin, and continued a grueling schedule of research. In 1894, he was appointed to a professorship at the University’ of Freiburg and, in 1896, to a similar position at the University of Heidelberg. He suffered however, from a debilitating nervous illness, culminating in a nervous breakdown in 1898. Completely debilitated for more than three years. Weber was never able to resume teaching. Instead, in 1903. he became the editor of a social science journal. During World War I. he directed army’ hospitals at Heidelberg and, after the war, helped draft the memorandum on German war guilt and advised the commission that prepared the first draft of the Weimar constitution. He served briefly as a professor at the University of Vienna. At the time of his death, Weber had recently been appointed professor of economics at the University of Munich. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889—1951). Wittgenstein was born in Austria to a wealthy family. Though of Jewish descent. Wittgenstein was baptized in the Catholic Church. He was educated at home before studying engineering and mathematics in Linz, Berlin. and Manchester. He soon became interested in pure mathematics and its philosophical foundations and became a pupil of Bertrand Russell at Cambridge in 1912. Wittgenstein served in the Austrian army’ during World War I and was captured in Italy at the end of the war. Durinc the war, he continued work on the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. which was published in 1921. After the war, he gave away his inherited fortune and became an elementary school teacher in Austria. By 1929. Wittgenstein had returned to Cambridge. During this time, he reconsidered his earlier philosophy’ of the Tractatus and wrote voluminously’, although he refused to publish anything in his lifetime. His major work of this latter period is his posthumousl~ published Philosophical Investigations (1953). In 1939. he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at Cambridge. succeeding G. E. Moore. During World War II. he worked as an orderly in a London hospital. He resigned his university post in 1947 and died of cancer four years later. Darren Staloff, Ph.D.
Influenced by the work of Charles Sanders Peirce,
William James created his theory of pragmatism, which held that the meaning of
any idea can be found only in experience. James melded Nietzschean
perspectivalism with the American thought of Emerson. James’s project was a
philosophical “Protestant reformation,” with the individual rebelling against
the authority of accepted truths and absolutes. The world is not fixed, James
argued, but is constantly remade by us. Therefore, independent analysis of the
world from a priori assumptions is impossible. Outline I. William James’s (1842—l9 10) pragmatism is one of the most influential and enduring philosophical projects of the last one hundred years. A. James’s pragmatism was the American version of Nietzschean perspectivalism. B. Though Nietzsche projected an elitist contempt of the herd, James put an American spin on his perspectivalism, celebrating tolerance. openness, and democratic egalitarianism.
C. James’s democratic ethos is exemplified in
the rhetoric of pragmatism. The text is pitched to the layman or common educated
person, because James believed the average person ought be the ultimate judge of
philosophical issues. II. James opens the discussion with a lecture entitled “The Present Dilemma in Philosophy.” A. He interprets the longstanding philosophical dispute between the rationalist/German idealist and empiricist/positivist traditions as the clash between two different temperaments. 1. The tender-minded offer cosmological promise and inspiration but at the price of our intellectual conscience. They are idealistic and optimistic and stress the idea of free will. 2. The tough-minded preserve their judgment at the expense of irreligion and ennui. They are pessimistic, pluralistic, and skeptical.
B. The rational person wants the good things on
both sides of the dispute, and pragmatism enables him or her to have them. III. For James. pragmatism is both a method and a theory of truth. A. The method argues that the meaning of an expression is determined by the experiences or consequences that would ensue if it were true. B. The pragmatic theory of truth is “genetic.” 1. We invent new truths to cope with anomalous experiences.
2. Such invention is limited by the imperative
to conserve belief. IV. James applies the pragmatic method to several longstanding metaphysical problems, including the dispute between materialism and spiritualism. A. Materialism teaches that the sun will super-nova, the universe will die, and all our aspirations and projects will have meant nothing. Spiritualism gives us hope that somehow and somewhere our achievements and examples will persist, if only in the mind of God. B. Determinism means that the future will resemble the present and past, which can lead to pessimism and despair, while free will pragmatically means that we can expect novelties in the future. C. The doctrine of God or design assures us that everything will work out in the wash and, thus, allows us to take the occasional moral holiday. D. James concludes that pragmatism represents a philosophical “Protestant reformation” or rebellion against authority on behalf of the individual.
V. Toward the end of his series, James turned to a more complete account of the pragmatic or “instrumental” theory of truth. True beliefs are instruments of action, not eternal copies of the world or thoughts in God’s mind. This destroys any notion we might have of absolute truth. A. James urges that this theory is humanistic. The world is not a fixed given that we must correspond to, but is made over in our image as we parse it and work on it. B. By naming things and properties, we break up the flux of experience, parse it, and “humanize it,” or make it serviceable for our human needs. C. Culture, thus, changes or “mutates” according to evolutionary dictates. 1. Beliefs are called true when they have a survival value. 2. Common sense is just the fund of such previously effective beliefs and posits. Essential Reading: William James, Pragmatism, various editions (Cambridge, MA: 1978). Supplementary Reading: David Marcell, Progress and Pragmatism: James, Dewey, Beard, and the American Idea of Progress (Westport, CT: 1974). Richard Rorty. Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: 1982. Questions to Consider: 1. Why is James’s pragmatism so distinctively American’? 2. Is truth merely those beliefs that work best for a society?
Freud’s Psychology of Human Nature Dennis Dalton, Ph.D. Sigmund Freud’s immensely influential theory rests squarely on his analysis of human nature. Like Plato and Marx, Freud conceives of a tripartite self. Unlike them, however, Freud says that the personality is driven by a powerful unconscious element, which he calls the id. This part of the self, composed of sexual and aggressive instincts, determines much of our behavior. Thre other two parts, the ego and the superego. representing the principles of reality and morality, respectively, struggle to contain the unruly id, but they lack its supreme power. The result of this incessant internal struggle is usually unhappiness. When this discontent is projected on society at large. the aggressions arid dissatisfactions of the individual are multiplied, often causing social distress and even warfare. We seek to cope with the inner turmoil through sublimation of our instincts, but as Freud says, our coping mechanisms are inadequate, and unhappiness is much easier to attain than happiness. Freud’s conclusions are unquestionably pessimistic and powerfully expressed in his classic text, Civilization and Its Discontents. Outline I. Who was Sigmund Freud’? A. Born in 1856, Freud was, like Marx, a profound moralist and atheist.
B. His last home, in London, reveals much about
this “archeologist” of the mind. Whether or not his theories are correct, as
Peter Gay has noted, “we all speak Freud now.” II. Plato, Marx, and Freud have certain similarities, but their views of human nature and history are very different. A. Plato, like Marx and Freud, had a theory of the tripartite self. But where Plato believed that reason controlled the self, Freud believed that reason was the weakest part of all. B. Freud and Marx differ profoundly on human nature. 1. Marx believes that human nature is capable of infinite development, leading to the classless society and the end of alienation. 2. Freud harbors no such optimistic view of human nature or of man’s ability to achieve happiness and contentment. He is a preeminent realist, like Hobbes or Machiavelli.
3. According to Freud, man’s inevitable lot is
pain and suffering, arising both from his own psychic alienation and from his
victimization by other human beings. His efforts to escape from suffering
through intoxication, isolation, or sublimation are inevitably self-defeating. III. Like Marx (and Plato), Freud has a tripartite theory of personality. He is not concerned with the cash nexus but the ~‘bash nexus. A. The id is the center of sexual and aggressive instincts. 1. The id seeks to gain pleasure and avoid pain; it knows no moral value judgments. 2. Although it is the unconscious part of our psyche, the id inevitably dominates the other parts. 3. The id produces frustration by constantly making demands that cannot be fulfilled. B. The ego is the rational, cautious, and commonsense element of the psyche; it is concerned with the external world of objective reality. It is also, for Freud, the weakest part of the personality. 1. The “ego,” unlike its meaning in common parlance, represents the external world to the id. 2. Ego tries to negotiate and conciliate among the external world, id, and superego, but ultimately it is dominated by the id and superego. Pressured by all three, the ego generates anxiety. C. The superego represents conscience and imposes standards of moral perfection that are impossible to attain. 1. Like the id, the superego is totally irrational, but it is the id’s main adversary. 2. The superego is more powerful than the ego but less powerful than the id. Its main weapon is guilt (instilled by one’s parents as the main shapers of the superego). Its two main parts are the conscience and the ego ideal.
3. The pleasure and reality principles are
replaced with the morality principle. IV. Freud examines the individual’s social condition and the origins of human suffering in his classic work, Civilization and Its Discontents. A. Life is suffering, and suffering comes from any of three sources: our own bodies, the external world, and our relationships with other people.
B. All three are inevitable, and the latter is
the most painful. Essential Reading: Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: 1961). Supplementary Reading: Sigmund Freud, Future of an Illusion (Garden City, NY: 1964). Nevt’ Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (New York: 1965). Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: 1989). Totem and Taboo (New York: 1960).
Character and Culture (New York: 1963),
especially chapter 10, Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (New York: 1988). Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (New York: 1961). Questions to Consider: 1. Do you find Freud’s pessimism to be logical, given the experience of war and persecution in the twentieth century’? Or is his grim view of humanity excessive or unfounded?
2. Does Freud’s tripartite theory of
personality make sense as a model? Dennis Dalton, Ph.D. In Marx and Freud, we are suffering from a common malady that we have termed "the alienated split self.” For both of them, we can confront the problem of alienation constructively by raising our consciousness. Freud, in particular, perceives society as the collective expression of individual aggression. Outline In both Marx and Freud, we are suffering from a common malady that we have termed ~the alienated split self.” What is the split self? It is the personality in conflict: we are divided within ourselves between conflicting sets of motivations and drives, expectations and aspirations. A. What are we alienated from? 1. For Marx, we are alienated from our essence, which is our sense of species being. 2. Freud believes that a profound alienation pervades our personalities, but basically alienation is twofold: alienation of the id from the superego, as well as alienation of both from the ego, which represents reason and is in touch with external reality. B. What remedy is there for such alienation? 1. Marx offers the more optimistic prognosis for resolving alienation, because his remedy is to know our species being, which will inevitably occur through historical development. The evolution of economic relations will produce the class consciousness and class revolution necessary to destroy the old order and usher in the new communist one. 2. For Freud, the prognosis is, at best, guarded. The remedy is analysis, but analysis is open only to a few; the masses will probably continue on their destructive paths and, perhaps, destroy us all. 3. Alienation, then, is inevitable among the majority. For Freud, conflict is destructive; we strive not to cure or to overcome but to contain and to cope. In that struggle, strengthening of the ego is our last best hope in a world fraught with aggression. II. For Marx and Freud, we can confront the problem of alienation constructively by raising our consciousness. But there are severe limits on how much consciousness-raising can attain. A. An economic determinist, Marx places limits on what can be attained by raising consciousness. 1. He says that social existence determines consciousness; in other words, economic conditions constitute the controlling independent variable in our progress. 2. Consciousness-raising helps, but all the increased consciousness in the world will not work until basic changes occur in how we produce and control our material resources. Only class revolution at the right time could provide the remedy. B. Freud is, by contrast, a psychological determinist who believes that the unconscious remains a key determinant of our behavior. 1. We must strive to expand our personal consciousness through analysis. 2. Yet, at best, our conscious element will be the tip of the psychic iceberg. Our ego is besieged, embattled, and weak compared to the td and the superego. We must try to strengthen it because it comprises our common sense, our rational faculty, and our contact with the environment. We strive to reinforce our ego so that we will not cave in and surrender to a runaway id or be smothered by the guilt of a suppressive superego. III. Freud perceives society as the collective expression of individual aggression. A. Civilization and Its Discontents (1929) is a reflection of his honor at the senseless slaughter of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, his own financial difficulties, and his personal fight with cancer. B. Freud describes three ways in which humans cope with suffering: 1. Intoxication. 2. Isolation (although this solution is impractical for most people). 3. Sublimation (i.e., the expression of a powerful aggressive impulse in socially acceptable fashion, such as through sports or work). C. The mass id (the collective lust for aggression and domination) struggles with the mass superego (expressed in ethical systems and religion). D. Civilization (embodied in the impossible standards set by the great religions) cannot hope to triumph over the force of the mass id. The prescription of great religions that we love our enemies seems perverse to Freud. E. Men are innately aggressive: homo homini lupus (“man is a wolf to man ‘). The inclination to aggression disturbs our relations with society, and it explains the persistent phenomena of war and persecution of minorities. I. Freud rejects Marx’s view that human nature is benign and that only private property causes pain. The blame lies not with the system but with human nature. 2. Freud sees private property as just one means by which we register our aggression against others. 3. With his dim view of humanity, Freud would not have been surprised by the Holocaust. Essential Reading: Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: 1961). Supplementary Reading: Sigmund Freud, Future of an Illusion (Garden City, NY: 1964j. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (New York, 1965). Beyond the Pleasure Principle (New York: 1989). Totem and Taboo (New York: 1960). Character and Culture (New York: 1963), especially chapter 10, "Why War?” Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (New York: 1988). Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (New York: 1961). Questions to Consider: 1. Freud argues against Marx that the psychology of the self, rather than the economics of the capitalist system, is responsible for human unhappiness. Which aspects of Freud’s position seem most plausible and why? Or why not? 2. What does Freud mean by sublimation? How effective are the forms of sublimation in coping with either aggression or suffering?
A. J. Ayer and Logical
Positivism Darren Staloff, Ph.D. A. J. Ayer was one of the leading logical positivists. In Language, Truth, and Logic, Ayer argued that philosophy should abandon the study of metaphysics and take up a detailed analysis of language. He argues that assertions that cannot be verified in empirical experience are "nonsense". Ayer believed that all our talk of the world is a logical construct of our phenomenal and sensual experience. Philosophy was to be the handmaiden of science, and the job of the philosopher would be to explain the meaning of scientific terms and logic. Outline I. Logical positivism is one of the most important philosophic movements of the twentieth century. The positivists were responding to two important phenomena in their environment. A. First was the profusion of speculative metaphysical systems in the post-Kantian epoch that threatened to reduce philosophy to a series of equally absurd flights of imaginative fancy. Hence, the “positivistic” or pro-science stance. B. Second was the culmination of a revolution in symbolic logic that began in the nineteenth century with Cantor and Boole and took off with Frege and the foundational mathematical researches of Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica. Hence, “logical” positivism. II. A. J. Ayer’s text, Language, Truth, and Logic, a ~young man’s book” full of bluff and bluster, is a positivist manifesto of the doctrines shared by the famed “Vienna Circle,” whose philosophic lineage was, according to Ayer, Berkeley and Hume. A. Ayer begins his text with a chapter entitled ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics.” He achieves this goal by analyzing the form of metaphysical sentences and demonstrating that they violate the criteria for literal significance and are, thus, nonsensical. I. Metaphysical sentences fail to express propositions. which are the only bearers of truth values and are either factual/synthetic or tautological/analytic. 2. Metaphysical sentences are linguistic expressions without cognitive content, neither true nor false, but rather, literal nonsense. Neither monism nor pluralism, for example, tells us anything about the world we didn’t already know. B. The function of philosophy is critical rather than speculative. Its proper task is to analyze various problems and issues and clarify our linguistic usages. The forebears of logical positivism are Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. 1. The nature of philosophic analysis is to offer definitions for terms. 2. Unlike the lexicographer writing a dictionary, the philosopher does not give explicit definitions that are based on synonym, but rather definitions in use. 3. Such definitions translate a symbol into equivalent sentences that contain neither the symbol nor any of its synonyms. C. Propositions are either analytic/tautological or synthetic/factual. 1. Analytic propositions (a priori) are raised for the empiricist by the problem of accounting for mathematics and logic. 2. Synthetic propositions are empirical hypotheses. Unlike tautologies, these propositions offer no certain knowledge. Thus, there is no way to create foolproof empirical hypotheses. III. Having delimited the range of literally significant sentences, Ayer turns to an analysis of the traditional philosophic fields of ethics and theology. A. Ethical statements comprise four classes: definitions of ethical terms, descriptions of moral phenomena and their causes, exhortations to virtue, and ethical judgments. The first class is ethical philosophy proper, the second is social science, the third is self-explanatory, and the fourth is literally meaningless. B. Ayer proves that it is impossible to prove demonstratively that God exists. Talk of God is either about everything or nothing and, thus, “God” is not a genuine name. IV. Philosophy, or logical positivism, for Ayer, is the handmaid of science. A. Ayer’s thought follows the scientific trajectory of empiricism since the Enlightenment. B. The philosopher, then, is a critic of our language usage. Essential Reading: A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (Dover: 1946). Supplementary Reading: Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: 1981). Questions to Consider: 1. What are the flaws in metaphysical statements? 2. What is the relationship between science and philosophy?
Max
Weber and Legitimate Authority Darren Staloff, Ph.D.
Max Weber is regarded by many as the founder of modern sociology. He studied power relations in societies as part of his effort to “demystify the world.” His writings examined the structure and development of capitalism, world religions, and bureaucracies. His greatest insights were into the varieties of authority (he distinguishes among charismatic, traditional, and formal-legal authority), and he offered a profound diagnosis of the ways in which power is legitimated and administered in modern bureaucratic societies. Weber’s greatest works included The Protestant Ethic and the Theory of Capitalism (1920), General Economic History (1924), and Economy and Society (4thed., 1956) Outline 1. Max Weber is the principal architect of modem sociology. He offered taxonomic schemes for cross-historical analysis of sociology that have informed most social scientific and historical thought in the twentieth century. II. The centerpiece of Weber’s most important work, Economy and Society, is the formulation of the three pure types or archetypes of legitimate domination or authority. A. Domination, or the rule over a considerable number of persons, requires a "staff’; thus, a three-place relation exists among a ruler, staff, and subjects. B. Claims to legitimacy are based on three distinct grounds. 1. Rational grounds rest on a belief in the legality of enacted rules and the right of those given authority to issue commands (legal authority). 2. Traditional grounds rest on a belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority (traditional authority). 3. Charismatic grounds rest on a devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, and exemplary character of an individual and the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him (charismatic authority). III. Legal authority with a bureaucratic administrative staff is the pure type of legal domination. A. Pure bureaucratic administration is “monocratic” and is technically the most efficient and formally the most rational means of exercising authority over people. All orders must be written to ensure that they are universal and rational. B. This pure type is found in a wide variety of institutions, such as corporations, hospitals, schools, priests in churches, political parties, and modern armies. C. Bureaucratic domination tends to produce (1) a social “leveling” in favor of technical competence, (2) plutocracy in the interest of elongating the possible length of technical training, and (3) a spirit of cold, formalistic impersonality. IV. In the pure type of traditional authority, the ruler is not a “superior,” but rather a personal master. Personal loyalty is what binds the staff to the master. Obedience is not to abstract rules, but to a person. A. In traditional rule, jurisdictions overlap and the lord adjudicates such issues. B. Patrimonial retainers are not technically trained and receive support from a variety of sources, though generally from benefices. Only in the West and Japan have such benefices become fiefs. C. Traditional authority strengthens traditional attitudes toward the economy. This “noblesse oblige” undermines capitalism. V. Pure charismatic authorities are accorded superhuman, supernatural, or at least exceptional, powers and qualities. A. An organized group subject to charismatic authority is called a “charismatic community” rather than a staff. 1. Such persons are not appointed, promoted, or fired, but instead respond to a “call” by the leader based on their charismatic qualifications. 2. The charismatic community has no hierarchy, and its financial arrangements are communal, voluntary, and “otherworldly.” B. New judgments are made on a case-by-case basis and are considered divine judgments or revelations. 1. Charismatic figures always preach new obligations. 2. Charisma is the revolutionary force in epochs of traditional authority. C. Charismatic authority is inherently unstable. It becomes traditionalized, rationalized, or both—usually after the death of the leader. D. Charismatic authority can be transformed in a “democratic direction.” Public recognition becomes the basis of legitimacy. Essential Reading: Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: 1978), Vol. 1, pp. 2 12—306. Supplementary Reading: Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: 1954). Derek Sayer, Capitalism and Modernity: An Excursus on Marx and Weber (New York: 1990). Questions to Consider: 1. What effect does charismatic authority have on economic norms. 2. Why is charismatic authority inherently unstable?
Husserl and
Phenomenology Robert Solomon, Ph.D. Edmund Husserl had a profound influence on European philosophy in the twentieth century. The existentialists Martin Heidegger and JeanPaul Sartre both studied his work (Heidegger was actually his student), and his method, ~‘phenomenology.” became an important philosophical movement in its own right. This lecture focuses on Husserlian phenomenology as a response to positivism and historicism. Husserl was opposed to relativism, skepticism, historicism. and positivism, because they all naively attempted to explain mind in terms of nature. rather than nature hv was of consciousness. Philosophy seeks certainty, not empirical findings, as in natural science. Philosophy, in an important sense, comes first. Husserl sought an "Archimedean point” from which to establish a foundation for all knowledge. (Husserl himself was a mathematician, and his enduring interest was in the "necessity” of mathematical truths.) Outline I. Who was Edmund Husserl? A. Edmund Husserl (1859—1938) was a German-Czech mathematician who became involved in philosophy through his interest in the foundations of arithmetic. B. He became the founder of phenomenology, a radical epistemological attempt to establish an absolutely certain foundation for knowledge. II. Husseilian phenomenology was a response to positivism and historic ism. A. Husserl was opposed to relativism, skepticism, historicism, and positivism, because they all naively attempted to explain mind in terms of nature, rather than nature by way of consciousness. 1. Relativism (exemplified in its most radical form by Nietzsche) refused to believe that any truth exists apart from particular perspectives. 2. Skepticism insisted that, even if there was such a truth, we could not know it (or, at any rate, we could not know that we knew it). 3. Historicism insisted that truth is relative to a historical or cultural epoch (in the twelfth century it was true, at least for them, that the world was flat). 4. Positivism insists that all truth must be known on the basis of the facts, but this ignores the role of the mind in knowledge, and it eliminates the very idea of necessary truths, which is what mathematics and the foundations of knowledge must be. B. Philosophy, according to Husserl. seeks certainty, not empirical facts, as in natural science. 1. In this, Husserl follows a long tradition in philosophy, beginning with the Greeks (Plato in particular) and including many modem rationalists, notably Descartes and Kant. 2. Philosophy, in an important sense, comes first. The truths of philosophy are those basic “rules of the mind” that underlie and make possible all empirical knowledge of the world. 3. Husserl sought an “Archimedean point” from which to establish such a foundation for all knowledge. III. Husserl’s “Archimedean point,” the foundation of all knowledge, was the transcendental ego. The parallel to Descartes is obvious. A. Husserl exaggerated this similarity in the popular lectures he gave in Paris in 1928, later revised and published as Cartesian Meditations. B. Like Descartes, Husserl sought certainty by way of a method that focused on consciousness as such, or subjectivity. C. But Husserl rejects Descartes’s systematic doubt and insists that knowledge can be established through an investigation of consciousness (not by appeal to God). D. This investigation of consciousness is called “phenomenology.” IV. A deep ambiguity runs through Husserl’s works. A. On the one hand, Husserl has the idea that the truth is given to consciousness through intuition. B. On the other hand, he has the idea that the world is constituted by consciousness, that it is somehow “set up” through the workings of consciousness itself. C. In either case, the result is necessary, not merely contingent, truth. D. This conflict between “realism” and “idealism” pervades much of twentieth-century thought, both in the philosophies of the existentialists and in the work of analytic philosophers of science, concerned with the sense in which theories in science are “true.” E. In many ways. Husserl most resembles Kant, who faced the same ambiguity (and was wildly interpreted by some of his “German idealist” followers as saying that we “create” the world in our own minds or that the world is ultimately an illusion). V. The phenomenological investigation of consciousness proceeds by way of a phenomenological “reduction.” A. In fact. Husserl describes several such “reductions” and, thus, gives rise to considerable controversy among his followers (including Heidegger and Sartre. B. One of these reductions, discovered early in Husserl’s investigations, is the epoche (Greek for “suspension”). 1. One “brackets out” the natural world, including the concept of causal relations. 2. One thus “reduces” experience to consciousness as such. C. In Husserl’s later writings, he re-describes this consciousness as such as the transcendental ego. D. He also describes an “eidetic” reduction. 1. The word comes from the Greek eidos. which was Plato’s word for “form” or “idea.” 2. The goal of the eidetic reduction is the discovery of essences, the meanings that are immanent in consciousness. E. Husserl refers to this return to pure consciousness as “going back to the things themselves.” 1. Given the long and confusing history of the concept of the “thing in itself,” this idea was bound to cause misunderstanding. 2. Moreover, the emphasis on pure consciousness raised an obvious question about intersubjectivity—the fact that we share our knowledge with other people. Husserl did not come around to tackling this problem until very late in his career. VI. Toward the end of his career, Husserl introduced the idea of lebenswelt, or “life world,” the meaningful world of shared human experience. A. This concept was part of his attempt to emphasize the shared nature ot our experience. B. ft was also an attempt to introduce a pragmatic dimension into his philosophy, as opposed to the paradigm of pure mathematics that had inspired him throughout his career. Essential Reading: Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, J.N. Findlay, tr. (London: 1970). Philosophy as a Rigorous Science and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Quentine Lauer, tr. (New York: 1965). Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, W.R. Gibson, tr. (London: 1969). Supplementary Reading: Husserl, Paris Lectures (reprinted in Solomon, Phenomenology and Existentialism [Rowman and Littlefield, 1979]). Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (The Hague: 1993). Questions to Consider: I. What is phenomenology? How is phenomenology relevant to the questions of meaning that are the main concern of the existentialists (and others)? 2. What is the phenomenological reduction? What is the purpose of it? Can you do it? What is involved in the attempt to “reduce” your experience to consciousness as such?
Dewey’s Critique of
Traditional Philosophy Scope: John Dewey represents the stereotypical American philosopher. He had influence not just on philosophy, but also on American education. His instrumentalist version of pragmatism represented the American values of democracy, progressivism, and optimism. Dewey’s main philosophical contribution was his historical deconstruction of philosophy, which showed that certain philosophical theories—such as those of Plato and Aristotle—merely represented the social situation of these philosophers at that time. Dewey was skeptical of truth, believing that what we call “truth” is simply what works best for us at the time. Man’s moral ends are not eternal truths but are fbrmed through customs and habits that change over time. Outline I. John Dewey (1859—1952) was, in many ways, the stereotypical American philosopher. He was democratic, progressive, and optimistic. He was most famous for his “instrumentalist’ version of pragmatism, the “American” philosophy. A. Pragmatism was a philosophical movement based on a theory of meaning. This theory held that the meaning of a statement was the practical results in experience that we would expect if that statement were true. Pragmatism was also a method of dissolving arid metaphysical disputes, by testing whether there was any practical difference between disputants and whether their assertions had any meaning in the first place. B. Dewey’s chief contribution to pragmatism was to give it a historical and historicistic dimension. He was a trained philosopher, trained, in fact, as a Hegelian. 1. Dewey’s historical defense of pragmatic philosophy is a difficult project because, in the ‘~traditional” sense, pragmatism is not a philosophy at all, but an anti-philosophy. 2. Dewey tried to show us how we came to practice traditional philosophy, rather than state the reasons we might offer for or against it. II. At the center of Dewey’s historical criticism is an interpretation of the origins of philosophy and a critique of the traditional philosophical fixation with the contemplative or “spectator” view of knowledge. A. Philosophy emerges when, as in Greece. breakthroughs in mathematics and practical knowledge threaten to undermine customary beliefs. Philosophy’s real goal should be to show us how things “hang together”—or ought to. B. The spectator view, which interprets knowledge as a relation between a passive knowing subject set apart from an inert world of objects, has given rise to several unfortunate distinctions and quandaries. Plato and Aristotle, as part of the idle aristocratic class, saw knowledge as contemplative and unchanging. This tradition came down through the medieval scholastics and Descartes. 1. First is the distinction between knowing subject and known object as metaphysical categories. 2. Second is the distinction between theory and practice. Philosophy thus becomes painfully abstract and meaningless to many. 3. The contemplative vision of knowledge also gives rise to the distinction between mind and matter. None of these dualisms has been fruitful. C. The result of traditional philosophy has been to divorce inquiry from actual historical conditions and needs. III. Dewey’s historical deconstruction of traditional philosophy is the preparatory phase to the reconstruction of a post-traditional philosophy that he describes as naturalistic empiricism or empiricistic naturalism. A. Dewey replaces the epistemic situation of subject and object with the naturalistic relation of organism and environment. 1. Dewey conceives of the natural environment as including both cultural and physical problems. 2. Our theories of the world, and our parsing of it, are “instruments” for adapting ourselves and the environment. 3. Dewey’s epistemological naturalism renders skepticism pointless, because it eliminates the problem of a subject properly observing an object. 4. The whole subject of truth is left aside in favor of “warranted assertability.” B. Dewey’s empiricistic naturalism also has profound effects on the practice of moral and political philosophy. 1. The task of pragmatic ethics is to guide intelligent action in pursuit of an end. 2. Although ethics guides action in pursuit of an end, it does not itself determine that end. Our ends arise from our culture, customs, and habits, and they change over time with our needs. 3. Dewey has his own particular ends, which are progressive and democratic. The ultimate test of any custom or institution, then, is how it contributes to the growth of all the individuals in the given society. IV. Dewey’s pragmatism is a combination of, on the one hand, particularly American attitudes toward democracy, work, progress, and science and, on the other hand, a set of philosophical dispositions that constitutes a dissenting theme in the modem philosophical genre. Essential Reading: John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: 1985). Supplementary Reading: Matthew Festenstein, Pragmatism and Political Theory: From Dewey to Rorty (Chicago: 1998). Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New York: 1997). Questions to Consider: 1. How did Dewey’s class and social status influence his philosophy? 2. What roles do experience and custom play in forming our values’?
Heidegger—Dasein and Existenz Scope: This lecture focuses on Heidegger’s early philosophy in Being and Time. Heidegger is often associated with both the existentialists and the postmodern philosophers who were inspired by him. lie began with Husserl’s idea of phenomenology (he studied with Husserl), but his interests were in theology and metaphysics. The focus of his philosophy was the study of being, which for him always had religious, as well as metaphysical, significance. The focus of the study of being, however, is on our own place in the world, what Heidegger calls Dasein, or simply, "being-there.” From this seemingly simple starting point. Heidegger weaves a refreshing new way of thinking about knowledge, ourselves, and our place in the world. Heidegger has always been a controversial figure, both because of his conscientiously obscure style and because his brilliance in philosophy was compromised by his terrible taste in politics. Outline I. Who was Heidegger’? A. Martin Heidegger (1889—1976) was a German philosopher and (for a while) philosophy professor. B. He started his career with an extensive study of theology. His philosophy always retained a deeply religious dimension. C. He studied with Husserl and learned phenomenology. for which he was an early advocate. D. In 1933, Heidegger engaged in an infamous flirtation with the Nazi party. Although he resigned from the party the following year. he never renounced or explicitly regretted his affiliation or the horrors of that regime. II. Heidegger’s masterwork, Being and Time (1927), was written while he was a young philosophy instructor, fresh from his studies with Husserl. A. Heidegger’s early work is often referred to as ‘existentialist,” although he himself rejected that affiliation. B. Heidegger began with Husserl~s idea of phenomenology (he studied with Husserl), but his interests were in theology and metaphysics. C. l-leidegger insisted on calling his own explorations “ontology,” or ‘~fundamental ontology,” which he described as the ‘question of being.” 1. Being is to be distinguished from all particular beings, or entities. 2. Being has clear religious overtones (and Heidegger later commented that the purpose of philosophy was to "invent a new God”). 3. We are essentially ontological creatures, which means, in Heidegger’s view, that we necessarily query the world about our own existence and identity. 4. The being that so queries the world, the being that each of us is, is what Heidegger calls Dasetn. D. The quest for being first of all requires an understanding of ~‘that being through whom the question of Being comes into being,” in other words, Dasein. 1. On the one hand, the idea that we are essentially questioning creatures is common to almost all philosophers, dating back to Plato and Aristotle and culminating in Descartes. 2. On the other hand, Heidegger refuses to talk about this questioning in terms of consciousness and subjectivity, as Descartes and Husserl had done. 3. Nor would he describe us in the more naturalistic terms of “human being,” because from the innocence of the first-person view, the question of what we are in nature remains to be determined. 4. Being and Time is largely devoted to the phenomenological description of what it is to be a Dasein. E. Although Heidegger believed that fundamental ontology was only possible as phenomenology, he rejects Husserl’s emphasis on consciousness and the transcendental ego. 1. He also rejects the epoche and the phenomenological reductions, although Heidegger still conceives of his project in terms of finding the essential structures of Dasein, which he calls “existentials.” 2. Heidegger’s aim is to clarify being and disclose us to ourselves. The process of such disclosing, which proceeds by way of interpretation, is called hermeneutics. III. The proper understanding of Dasein cannot proceed by way of the usual philosophical emphasis on theoretical knowledge. A. A proper understanding of Dasein begins with our undertaking of everyday tasks—for example, housework. 1. We come to understand the world as not “things” but as “equipment,” an integral part of a holistic behavior, as “being-inthe-world.” 2. In thinking of being-in-the-world, such distinctions as “body versus mind” do not arise. (John Dewey would make a similar objection against what he called ~‘the spectator view of knowledge.”) B. Among the concerns of Dasein is the question of its own being, that is, the “who of Dasein.” 1. This need and capacity to clarify our own mode of being, to be “ontological,” raises the question of what it is to be genuinely one’s own self—or authentic (eigentlich)—and in what way we can then properly approach the question of being. 2. It also raises the question of what it is to be inauthentic (uneigentlich). 3. Most of our lives, we are not our genuine selves, not authentic but inauthentic, what Heidegger calls the dos Man self. C. The existential structures of Dasein are threefold: existen:. facticitv. and fallenness. 1. Existenz is that feature of Dasein through which we envision our possibilities. It is the capacity to make choices. a. It is our necessary ability to look into the future and disclose to ourselves the three interwoven dimensions of time: the present. the past, and the future. b. Our moods (not to be conceived as merely transient mental states) are ways of being “tuned” into the world, in which our existen: is disclosed to us. 2. Facticitv consists of the brute facts that characterize us. such as our height, our weight. our date of birth, and so on. Heidegger says we are “thrown” into the world. 3. Fallenness is the “pre-ontological” way in which Dasein fails to face up to its ontological condition and “falls back” to daily inauthenticity. das Man. D. Heidegger goes on to distinguish various authentic and inauthentic modes of being: understanding as opposed to curiosity, thinking as opposed to calculation, speech as opposed to chatter. All of this is an attempt to clarify the notion of authenticity. E. But the most dramatic suggestion in Being and Time is that we are all “Being-unto-death” (Sein-zum-Tode): this is the spur to authenticity. 1. The recognition of our own mortality prompts us to “take hold of ourselves” in an authentic “resolution” of our own existence. 2. It also forces us to appreciate our limitations and immerse ourselves in our “historicity.” our historical situation. F. This last point is immensely problematic because Heidegger was for a brief time) a Nazi and never repented for his involvement in the National Socialist cause. Essential Reading: Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh (New York: 1997). The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays New York: 1977). Supplementary Reading: Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’ s Being and Time, Division 1 Cambridge: 1991). C. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge (Indianapolis: 1983). Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis, (Cambridge: 1993). Julian Young, Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism (Cambridge: 1997). Questions to Consider: 1. What does Heidegger gain by referring to Dasein (“being-there”) rather than “human consciousness” or just “people.” for example? Is Dasein an individual? The human collective? Both? Neither? Why talk in this novel way? 2. What (who) is das Man, the dos Man self? To what is it opposed? What role does death or, more precisely, “Being towards-death” play in the realization of authenticity? 3. What, in general, is the relationship between a philosopher and his philosophy? Nietzsche comments (in Beyond Good and Evil) that every philosophy is “the personal confession and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.” What (if anything) might you suspect as “pro-Nazi” implications of Being and Time?
Wittgenstein and Language Analysis Mark Risjord, Ph.D. Scope: Wittgenstein claimed that traditional metaphysics was flawed, because it was based on mistakes in the use of language. In this he was influenced by the work of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Claiming the solution lies in the method of logical analysis, his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus offers a method of analyzing any sentence into its ultimate logical constituents. Wittgenstein spent the rest of his life, however, undermining his early views and, by extension, the foundations of modem philosophy. Yet he retained his original belief that philosophical problems arise from linguistic confusion. The solution was to focus on those uses of language that cause confusion, using philosophy as a therapy against, in his own words. ‘the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” Outline I. Wittgenstein’s work is summarized in two publications. A. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was published during his lifetime and quickly became a classic. It fits into the modem period of philosophy. B. Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously, is a profound critique of the former work and of modern philosophy as a whole. II. Wittgenstein’s interest in philosophy grew from his work with mathematics. A. After studying engineering in Berlin, he went to Manchester. England, to do aeronautical research. B. Exciting developments in the study of logic and mathematics were being driven by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. C. Inspired, Wittgenstein studied logic with Russell at Cambridge. III. The philosophical issues with which Frege and Russell were concerned are essential to understanding Wittgenstein. A. First, there is the problem of non-existents. 1. What does “Pegasus flies” mean? 2. Pegasus does not exist. Is this sentence meaningless? B. There are two philosophical approaches to the meaning of words. 1. From one perspective, words refer to things. For example, the word “horse” refers to a type of animal or properties of horsiness. 2. This implies that words are meaningful only if they correspond to real objects, a concept that makes “Pegasus flies” meaningless. 3. From another perspective, meaning comes from an idea in the mind of the speaker. “Pegasus” and “flies” refer to mental images. We can speak of nonexistent objects as long as we have a mental image of them. 4. However, the phrase “Pegasus does not exist” also seems both meaningful and true. 5. My idea of Pegasus does exist, however. If “Pegasus” refers to my idea, then “Pegasus does not exist” is false. 6. On this basis it becomes impossible to meaningfully deny existence to anything. C. Russell saw this problem as arising from a linguistic mistake. 1. Grammatically, “Pegasus” is a name. Logically, it is an abbreviation for a description of a horse with wings. 2. All these properties exist but not in one single thing. 3. “Pegasus flies” can be meaningful as well as false, and “Pegasus does not exist” can be meaningful and true. 4. Logical analysis can solve problems and sometimes dissolve them. IV. Wittgenstein’s early work also argued that philosophical puzzlement derives from mistakes about logical form. A. His Tractatus provides a method of analyzing any sentence into its ultimate logical constituents. B. Its implication is that, with the mistakes corrected, there is no further need for philosophy. V. After the Tractatus, Wittgenstein spent the rest of his life undermining the foundations of his earlier thought and, by extension, the foundations of modem philosophy. A. His linguistic analysis led him to refute the “picture” theory: not every word can stand for an object, words such as “here” or the number two.You cannot ask someone to bring you a block and a “two”! B. Similarly, Wittgenstein critiqued essentialism, which presupposes that concepts share a common core of features—their essence. 1. For example, all games do not share all the same characteristics. 2. Games do, however, have a “family resemblance”— they share one or more common features. C. Wittgenstein’s simple point has enormous ramifications. I. It shows that language does not mirror the world. 2. Thus, logic and language cannot be the source of philosophical principles. D. Wittgenstein also refuted the theory that meaning is use. Linguistic use implies a social, public dimension. So how can psychological terms, such as “headache,” have meaning? They represent private experiences. VI. The “idea” theory of meaning is deeply entwined in modern philosophy, A. Descartes’s method presupposed something of the sort. Descartes proposed to doubt the existence of everything outside himself, yet lie could not doubt that his words were meaningful. B. Wittgenstein believed the problems of modern philosophy arise from this philosophical standpoint: external world, other minds. 1. The idea of a private language presupposes that we could self-impose rules and judge whether we were following them, 2. If all we have to work with are our immediate experiences, we have no permanent criteria on which to base our judgments. 3. The “idea” theory of meaning rests on the philosophical fantasy that we could have correct and incorrect applications of a rule without appeal to anything independent. VII. Wittgenstein saw psychological phenomena as necessarily two sided. A. Such phenomena induce sensations and affect behavior, B. Thus, contrary to Cartesian theory, the mind and body are connected. C.
Without this link, we could not learn and use psychological language. VIII. The Philosophical Investigations represented a profound critique of both Wittgenstein’s earlier work and modern philosophy as a whole. A. Much of philosophy has depended on a “picture” theory of language or the “idea” theory of language. neither of which is tenable in Wittgenstetn s view. B. For Wittgenstein, philosophy begins in the world of people and things. C. Thus, philosophical questions about the external world have no value. D. Nevertheless, genuine philosophical problems still exist. E. These problems can be resolved by clarifying the role that words play. F. Philosophy should be a kind of therapy that eliminates confusion by focusing on the uses of language that cause such confusion. Its goal should be to eradicate the need to theorize. Essential Reading: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigation,, translated by (j.E. M. Anscombe (New York: 1953). . Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D.F, Pears and B.F. MacGuinness. (London: 1961). Supplementary Reading: Ronald Suter, Interpreting Wittgenstein: A Cloud of Philosophy, a Drop of Grammar (Philadelphia: 1989). Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: 1990). Questions to Consider: 1. According to Wittgenstein. why are traditional metaphysics flawed? 2. What was Wittgenstein’s view of psychological phenomena?Douglas Kellner. Ph.D. Scope: Members of the Frankfurt School developed highly provocative and original perspectives on contemporary society and culture, including analyses of fascism, state monopoly capitalism, the culture industries. advanced industrial society, and the high-tech and consumer society that we currently find ourselves in. Drawing on Hegel. Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Weber, the Frankfurt School synthesized philosophy and social theory to develop a critical theory of contemporary society. Outline I. The term “Frankfurt School” refers to a group of German-American scholars who worked first in Frankfurt, Germany, in the 1930s. The group went into exile following the rise of Hitler. settling at Columbia University, where the core members worked until World War II, when the group dispersed. A. The Frankfurt School includes Herbert Marcuse. who eventually became the most famous member of the group when he emerged as a guru of the New Left in the 1960s. 1. Other members include Max Horkheimer. who was the group’s director and a prolific philosopher and social theorist. 2. Theodor Adorno was one of the major philosophers and cultural critics of the century. 3. Erich Fromm became one of the most popular writers in the United States. Escape from Freedom (1941) provided one of the first and best critiques of German fascism, while such books as Man for Himself and The Art of Loving became bestsellers. 4. Leo Lowenthal, a major literary and cultural critic, was an important member of the inner circle of the group. 5. Jurgen Habermas has emerged as the most influential contemporary representative of the Frankfurt School and is himself the subject of a subsequent lecture in this series. B. This lecture explains why the Frankfurt School is so important and discusses the major contributions, and some of the limitations, of the members’ work. II. The project of the Frankfurt School was to develop a critical theory of contemporary society that would combine philosophy, social theory, economics, and cultural criticism in a new type of interdisciplinary theory. A. These scholars began their work in Frankfurt and experienced the rise of German fascism. Because they were Jews and radical, they emigrated in the mid-I 930s and remained in the United States during the war. Some of the members, such as Horkheimer and Adorno. returned to Frankfurt after the war, while Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Leo Lowenthal remained in the United States. B. The group’s interdisciplinary work in the 1930s produced an analysis of the new era of state capitalism and is among the group’s many significant contributions to social theory that continue to be important today. 1. This work involved an updating of Karl Marx’s nineteenth-century theory of entrepreneurial capitalism. This theory centered on a market economy that the state was to leave alone and that was characterized by intense competition, family enterprises, and the eventual rise of big corporations. 2. The new form of state monopoly capitalism, according to the Frankfurt School, provided important new roles for the state, which was to manage the economy. provide employment and welfare, and overcome the crisis of the 1930s depression. a. There were two different models of state capitalism, the Frankfurt School argued. First was fascism, in which the state took over the political sphere. dominated the cultural sphere, and played a major role in the economy. b. Fascism, as a form of state capitalism, was contrasted by the Frankfurt School to democratic state capitalism, exemplified by the Roosevelt administration and the New Deal in the United States. Under this model, the state provided welfare and jobs, managed fiscal and monetary policy, and, unlike fascism, preserved democracy. 3. But, according to the Frankfurt School. state and monopoly capitalism, in both its democratic and fascist forms, produced new forms of administration, bureaucracy, and domination, cutting back on individual freedom and curtailing democracy. a. The result, the Frankfurt School claimed, was a mass society and culture marked by homogeneity, standardization, and social conformity, resulting in a decline of individuality and rise of massification. b. In its vision of new mass societies with new forms of social control and domination, the Frankfurt School was among the first to see the important new roles of science, technology, and bureaucracies as instruments of administration and social domination. 4. Moreover, in analyzing the new mass societies, the Frankfurt School was the first to see the role of mass media of communication and culture. a. In Nazi Germany, the members of the group experienced the fascist control of newspapers, radio. cinema, mass rallies, and so on, which used culture for propaganda to inculcate fascist ideology. b. In their exile in the United States, the group members concluded that the corporations of Hollywood film, network broadcasting, national magazines. advertising and other forms of mass culture were inculcating American ideology as effectively as German cultural institutions were reproducing fascist ideologies or, one might add, as the Soviet Russian cultural apparatus was transmitting communist ideology. c. The results, the Frankfurt School concluded, were new forms of mass culture and society in which institutions of mass communications—such as film, broadcasting. advertising. magazines, and journalism—were powerful instruments of socialization and social control. 5. The Frankfurt School was also among the first to analyze the consumer society, dissecting the functions of advertising. packaging, design, and consumer capitalism. C. Hence, the Frankfurt School provided many important insights into contemporary societies, analyzing the role of the state and bureaucracy, the culture industry, the consumer society, new fOrms of social control. and the key roles of science, technology, and the individual in the construction of modem technological societies. III. In terms of their intellectual antecedents and sources, the Frankfurt School was eclectic, drawing on a wide range of sources from a European cultural tradition that focused on characterizing the distinctive features of the modern age. A. From Hegel and Marx, the Frankfurt School appropriated the dialectical method, in which society and history were marked with conflicts and contradictions and clashes of opposing forces would fuel historical progress or, in some cases, regression. 1. From Hegel, the Frankfurt School derived a sense of the power of spirit, of Geist, of cultural forms, in human and social life. The members deeply respected Hegel’s idealism and dialectical method. 2. From Marx. they derived an appreciation for the role of material forces and interests and, thus, of the role of economics in daily life and history. B. In addition to) synthesizing Hegel and Marx. the Frankfurt School was also influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche. in particular. his critiques of mass society and culture, morality, and the state and bureaucracy. 1. In such books as Thus Spoke Zarathrustra (1888), Nietzsche described the state as the "New Idol.” anticipating the idolization of the state in German fascism. He also criticized its bureaucracy and forms of social control and administration. 2. Nietzsche was one of the first critics of mass society and massification; of course, the Frankfurt School developed this aspect of Nietzsche’s critique. 3. The Frankfurt School was also impressed with Nietzsche’s critique of Western culture, including his critique of morality, religion, and philosophy, which influenced the group’s thought. C. The Frankfurt School was also influenced by Sigmund Freud, whom they believed had deep insights into the role of sexuality in human life, the power of the unconscious, and the influence of the family in the process of socialization. D. Finally, the German social theorist Max Weber influenced the group with his critique of instrumental reason, which described how rationalization processes created the capitalist economy, a bureaucratic state, and the loss of freedom and meaning in everyday life E. The Frankfurt School saw that the family was declining in importance—as was the individual—at the expense of mass conformity and state control. IV. Duritig the 1 940s, members of the group, especially Horkheimer and Adomo, attempted to update their critical theory in response to the horrible experiences of World War II, including war and carnage on a global scale, concentration camps and the extermination of the Jews, and what appeared to be massive historical regression into barbarism. A. Their analysis of this new stage of history was developed in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenntent (1947), which emerged as one of the major texts of the Frankfurt School. B. Their frightening thesis in this book was that enlightenment and the supposedly highest achievements of Western civilization had turned into their opposites. 1. That is, reason and enlightenment were supposed to create freedom, democracy, and a rational society. But the systems of technological rationality developed by German fascism created a war machine, concentration camps, and irrational war and destruction. 2. Hence, whereas science, industry, technology, and reason were supposed to create a higher stage of civilization, they appeared to be leading Western civilization into barbarism. 3. Democracy itself had chosen such regimes as Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s national socialism, so democracy itself had also turned into its opposite. 4. Likewise, culture was supposed to cultivate more civilized, educated, and humane human beings, but the culture industry, Horklteimer and Adorno feared, was doing the opposite, making people more stupid, more cruel, and less humane. C. The result of Horkheimer and Adorno’s analysis in Dialectic of Enlightenment was perhaps the first critique of modernity, of modern science, technology, culture, and the Enlightenment, from within critical social theory and from the Left. 1. Previously, leftists and liberals were on the whole pro-modernity. The most radical critique of the modern era tended to come from the Right—from Edmund Burke. Joseph de Maistre. and other conservative critics who affirmed tradition, religion, and institutions of the past over modernity. 2. Horkheimer and Adorno, however, described the unintended consequences of the Enlightenment and the modern era, in which science, technology, rationality, democracy, and culture turned into their opposites. What were supposed to be forces of emancipation and progress became instruments of domination and destruction. 3. Their critique anticipated later postmodern criticisms of the Enlightenment. modernity, science, and technology and sought new modes of thought, values, culture, and society to replace what they considered problematic aspects and institutions of modernity. V. Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment was not. however, the last word in critical theory. They themselves returned to Frankfurt in the late 1940s and reestablished the Institute for Social Research. became cultural icons in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. and continued to develop a rather pessimistic version of critical theory. A. Other members of the Frankfurt School, such as Erich Fromm. Herbert Marcuse, and Leo Lowenthal. remained in the United States and became major intellectual figures in their adopted culture. 1. Erich Fromm published Escape front Freedom in 1941, which provided one of the first and best critiques of German fascism, while such books as Man for Hintself and The Art of Loving became bestsellers in the late 1940s and 1950s. a. Fromm also published popular books on Marx. Freud, Zen Buddhism, technology, aggression, and other topics. b. He was politically active as well, writing books against nuclear weapons, opposing the Vietnam War, and supporting efforts for world peace. 2. Herbert Marcuse published Eros and Civilization in 1955. which with its vision of the liberation of Eros: his celebration of art, play, and the aesthetic dimension; and his critique of existing technological society, was a major influence of the counterculture in the 1960s. a. Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, published in 1964. contained one of the most radical critiques of contemporary advanced industrial society and strongly influenced the New Left in the 1960s. b. Indeed, Marcuse achieved world renown as a major influence on the New Left and was perhaps the most discussed and controversial figure of the 196Os. 3. Finally, today, Jurgen Habermas has emerged as the most influential contemporary representative of the Frankfurt School. a. Haberrnas studied with Horkheimer and Adorno in Frankfurt and published his first major book on the origins, genesis, and decline of the public sphere. The work demonstrated that democracy was made possible by the rise of newspapers, literary journals, and public spaces where ideas critical of the existing order could be discussed and debated. b. Habermas eventually turned to the study of language and communication and carried out some dramatic developments of critical theory. He and followers all over the world are still active, and the Frankfurt School remains a lively source of ideas and controversy today. c. Indeed, there are followers of the Frankfurt School in almost every academic field, and their ideas are still current in discussions of the nature of philosophy and social theory; the nature and effects of capitalism, science, and technology; the role of mass communication and culture; and the emancipatory possibilities of theory and art today. B. The Frankfurt School emerges as one of the most original and creative groups of thinkers during the twentieth century. German Jews, they experienced the horrors of German fascism and emigrated to the United States, where they developed critiques of contemporary Western civilization. They are important for their interdisciplinary work, which combined philosophy and the social sciences to develop a critical theory of contemporary society. Essential Reading: Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School (Cambridge. MA: 1996). Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston: 1973. Marxism and Totality (Berkeley: 1984). Permanent Exiles. Essays: The Intellectual Mit~ration from Germany to America (New York: 1986), Supplementary Reading: Albrecht Wellmer, The Critical Theory of Society (New York: 1974). David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory (Berkeley: 1980). Hehnut Dubiel, Theory and Politics (Cambridge: 1985). Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity (Baltimore and Cambridge: 1989). The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, edited by Andrew Arato and Eike (ebhardt (New York: 1982). Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, edited by Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas Kellner (New York: 1989). Questions to Consider: 1. What do you consider to be the major changes in capitalist societies since the nineteenth-century market and competitive capitalism described by Marx? How well do the Frankfurt School theorists describe these changes? What are their major contributions and limitations? 2. The Frankfurt School theorists believed that interdisciplinary work was necessary to develop adequate critical theories of contemporary society. What is your impression of the results of their interdisciplinary project?
Structuralism: Saussure and
Levi-Strauss Lou Markos. Ph.D. Scope: In this lecture, we consider the modern school of structuralism, an interdisciplinary approach to all branches of human knowledge that rejects all ontological and epistemological sources of meaning in favor of an anti-metaphysical approach. This approach posits that all humanistic pursuits are the products of deep structures that pre-date human consciousness. After tracing the roots of this approach in Marx and Freud, we unpack the linguistic and anthropological systems of Saussure and Levi-Strauss. We will also define the at-times obscure terminology used by structuralism and decode its rather elaborate theoretical systems. Outline I. Structuralism breaks with both ontology and epistemology to posit a new source and direction for meaning. A. In the beginning, ontologists like Plato believed in the real existence of ideas and asserted the transcendent, timeless qualities of these ideas. 1. Structuralism denies that such ideas exist; metaphysical meaning (both philosophical and theological) does not proceed downward from some divine presence but upward from material structures. 2. The classic embodiment of this central structuralist belief is Marx’s assertion that religion, philosophy, art, and so on are not pure vehicles of higher truths but are products of underlying economic structures. B. Epistemologists, such as Kant, though they abandoned Plato’s belief in the forms, replaced it with a belief in the equally transcendent qualities of subjective mind (Descartes’s cogito). 1. Structuralism, however, also rejects the subjective self (ego) as the final source of meaning; the subjective self, too, is determined by material structures. 2. Freud hastened the death of the self as a center or origin of meaning by showing that it is not the clear, meaningful patterns of our conscious minds that determine who we are as individuals, but the deep hidden structures of our unconscious minds. 3. Having broken down the systems of ontology and epistemology, the structuralists posited the real source of meaning and truth as deep structures that are pervasive, but hidden, throughout society. C. Let us review several qualities that define a structure. 1. First, structures are unconscious rather than conscious, material rather than metaphysical. deterministic rather than humanistic. 2. The clearest example of this can be seen in the structure of language itself: when we speak or write or even think, our words do not come to us via revelation: they are products of an objective. scientific linguistic structure that determines the meanings of our words and thoughts. 3. For Marx and Freud, as we saw above, vast patterns of economic forces and unconscious motivations function as structures that determine the ideology of the state or the ego of the citizen. 4. Second, structures are not founded on ‘things” (elements that have meaning in and of themselves), but relations between things: structural meaning rises out of the differences between its constituent parts. 5. To use a modern example: the individual ones and zeros that make up the binary code of a compact disk have no meaning in themselves; yet, when strung together in a system of differences (one is defined as not being a zero and vice versa), they can “produce” a complex symphony. 6. More radically (and “metaphysically”). our DNA is composed of a string of “units’ (C, a. t, g). each of which, by itself, is meaningless. But when arranged in a system, we get a living person. 7. Third, structures are complete. logical, and all-encompassing: every element of the structure can be systematically plotted along the horizontal and vertical axes of the Cartesian coordinate system. 8. Fourth, structures are not static, but dynamic. They are constantly transforming themselves, spiraling outward to form new elements (and relations) that can, in turn, be plotted on the coordinate system. 9. Fifth, structures are found in all areas of thought and study, from history to linguistics, psychology to anthropology: structuralism as a method, therefore, is interdisciplinary and seeks to re-found even the humanities on a more objective, scientific base. II. Structuralism as a method originated in the linguistic studies of Ferdinand de Saussure, as elaborated in his Course in General Linguistics (1913). A. According to Saussure. no ready-made ideas exist before words. 1. A word (or sign) does not unite a thing pre-existent thing-in-itself) with a name, but a concept (signified) with a sound-image (signifier). 2. The relationship between signified/signifier is arbitrary: if it were not, the world would have only one language. 3. Neither Platonic forms nor transcendent truths lurk behind the words (signs) we use; they are merely arbitrary. man-made concepts. 4. Signs have no meaning at all apart from the system; their meaning emerges out of the differences that set them apart from other signs within the overarching system (or structure). 5. Indeed, even such a simple sign as the word c-a-t is made meaningful only by the fact that it is not b-a-t or c-a-n. B. This overarching linguistic structure stretches out both vertically and horizontally similar to the first quadrant of a Cartesian coordinate system. 1. Saussure calls this structure (which is deeper than thought) the langue and distinguishes it from parole: a specific instance of speech or writing. 2. Vertical meaning is synchronic: it is concerned with how each sign interacts with the existing structure. 3. Horizontal meaning is diachronic: it is concerned with the evolution through time of the structure. Marx, for example, is interested in diachronic meaning. 4. Saussure’s concern is with the langue and synchronic meaning. III. Structuralism was refined by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. A. Levi-Strauss encountered Saussure via the groundbreaking linguistic work of Roman Jakobson. 1. Jakobson broke language down even further into its smallest units: phonemes (i.e., not c-a-t, but the “c” or “a” by itself). 2. All language (and. thus, thought) is composed of these phonemes. but the phonemes have no meaning in and of themselves. 3. Building on this concept of the phoneme, Levi-Strauss posited that complex mythic structures are composed of “mythemes”: individual units with meaning that arises solely from difference and structure. 4. Thus, argues Levi-Strauss, mythic archetypes (like the sun), to which traditional anthropologists attempt to affix stable meanings. are, in fact, not possessed of any inherent, cross-cultural significance: their meaning shifts each time they are used in a different mythic structure. B. Levi-Strauss interprets myths by critically analyzing their deep structures. 1. Just as Saussure arranges each sign of a given linguistic system into a complex, overarching langue, so, too, does Levi-Strauss arrange each element of a myth so that it can be read both horizontally and vertically. 2. He uses the analogy of a pack of cards spread out in four columns: the first column begins with the ace of hearts and proceeds numerically to the king of hearts; the next column does the same for the spades; and so on. 3. If we interpret the cards in the way described above, reading them from left to right, then repeating the motion three more times, we are performing a simple diachronic reading. 4. However, we can also read the card-structure by interpreting it as a series of thirteen rows, each composed of four cards that are identical in number but vary in suit. 5. When we thus read synchronically. we begin to notice the hidden structure that underlies the system: we see its “subconscious patterns of sameness and difference. 6. Read diachronically. Genesis offers a succession of stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (and their families). 7. However, if we were to view the same stories synchronically (paying attention to the rows rather than the columns), we would note that the overall mythic web (or structure) is obsessed with doubling. Abraham “marries” two “wives” (Sarah and Hagar); Isaac marries only one woman (Rebecca). but she gives birth to twins; Jacob fathers children with two wives and two concubines. and his favorite two sons (Joseph and Benjamin) are the two sons of his second wife. 8. We might also note the persistent element of younger sons (Isaac. Jacob, Joseph) supplanting their older brothers (Ishmael. Esau. Reuben). 9. The mythic structures that Levi-Strauss traces are wide in scope: they encompass not only tales of heroes, but also economic and mercantile realities, incest taboos, and the everyday rituals of cooking and eating. C. Two ironies of structuralism. 1. Though the structuralists insist that meaning is not a product of human desire, their near-obsession to organize all thought and practice into a universal system betrays a traditional metaphysical desire for order. 2. As Derrida will show, their rejection of all ontological and epistemological centers is followed by their own positing of structure as a new center. Essential Reading: Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, translated by Wade Baskin (New York: 1966). ode Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. Volume I, translated by Claire Jackson (New York: 1974). Supplementary Reading: Hazard Adams, ed. Critical Theory Since Plato. Revised Edition (New York: Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: 1983), chapter 3. Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralisrn, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca, NY: 1975).
Robert Scholes, Structuralisni in Literature: An Introduction (New Haven:
1974). |
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