Modernism and the Age of Analysis
Home
|
Bookmarks
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
|
Links
|
|||||
|
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 cult |