Summer reading lists

[118118]

I got 4 months or so off uni and want to do some philosophy reading. Is anyone reading any of these at the moment, it would be great to talk -would help me to concentrate when its not something i really have to do.
Writing and Difference
Tractatus
Ecart
Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
Couple of books by Bhaskar
Couple of books by Adorno on music/serialism
Mayby Critique of Pure Reason

Failing that why not amusw each other by posting up your reading lists.

 

[CNT36]

Don't read any Adorno see if you can rent the movies or something. Its a bit dull.

 

[118118]

yeah cheers cnt. do you know if there are videos re music? or are they like flciks?

 

[nino_savatte]

There's nothing wrong with Adorno. I think he's much maligned and misunderstood.

 

[articul8]

Don't read any Adorno see if you can rent the movies or something. Its a bit dull.

this is ironic, right?

I would go for the Philosophical Investigations rather than the Tractatus. On Adorno, personally I find something like Minima Moralia a more approachable text than the musicology - not that the writings on music aren't interesting though.

I plan to listen to Jay Bernstein's lectures on Hegel (google: the Bernstein tapes").

edit what is Ecart? Do you mean Lacan's Ecrits? Or Descartes?

 

[gorski]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meister_Eckhart maybe?

Thanx for this: http://eha.no-ip.org/eHa/wiki/index.php?page=The+Bernstein+Tapes - will have a go...

Btw: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/147.html - there is another B., who used to come to Zagreb and to Korcula, together with Marcuse and Fromm, Bloch and many others... The Praxis School gathered them all. He wrote a book on it but it was not really well received by some of my colleagues... Dunno, haven't read it...

Horkheimer and Adorno: Critique of Enlightenment might be a great read... Just read it carefully and watch out for the nonsensical stuff like "instrumental Reason"...

Has anyone seen this: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=8469514 - not the book itself but the site?

Oh, back to my preparation for MA in EU Studies... Let's see... Held's "Models of Democracy"? Hmmm...

 

[articul8]

url]

Horkheimer and Adorno: Critique of Enlightenment might be a great read... Just read it carefully and watch out for the nonsensical stuff like "instrumental Reason"... :

"Dialectic of Enlightenment"? And what's nonsensical about "instrumental reason" - seems entirely appropriate to me,

 

[gorski]

It's a wooden steel type of notion - Reason can not be instrumentalised.

We can talk about whether these are some aspects of either Understanding [the Calcule aspect of it] or Sensus Communis [Bon Sense, Common Sense, zdrava pamet] and that certainly can be "instrumentalised". One can even argue that Understanding can not do much more but "find the way to the proverbial cheese in the merely existing" and leave it as it is... If you wish: spatial versus temporal intelligence.

One way or another, Reason is the critical instance here. Without it they can not claim anything of the sort - but they have "elegantly" and rather "conveniently" "forgotten" it...

The reason for it? Many have taken this infatuating position [from Heidegger, who took it over from Nietzsche] about this alleged technological and scientific monster that [almost?] completely got out of hand and now we have created something which we can not control any longer and so we can but moan about it and.... well, do nothing essential to change it...

Well, its strange that a historical approach from Marxian perspective can bear such fruit, as he certainly never gives up on our responsibility for our world and certainly never sits on his hands and cries his eyes out over something that is our product. Hence we and only we can and, indeed, must be the ones to change it. The question of conditions necessary for it to happen is relevant, sure - but there is no issue that we CAN do that! And we MUST take responsibility for it. I can hardly see any light in such a position, if one proclaims incapacity to control and change that beast...

And with many, even in Critical Theory, not to mention a whole cohort of French Po-Mos, German Conservatives of various colours and so on, this was almost an inevitable conclusion of way too many studies - but I'd say not much more than a fashionable position worthy of a critique [in CT terms in particular] from their own best position!

With the CT it means trying to understand where it all comes from in terms of their context - the Cold War and so on... Remember a critic stating that "they are in an unenviable position of a dog trying to chase its own tail"? This time they failed miserably, much to my distress and disappointment, when I was studying it.

But one thing is clear: the very fact they were/are critical rests squarely on their capacity/capability to Reason! In other words, without it they could not be saying anything critically meaningful at all.

If anyone disappointed me in that regard, after all that studying of Hegel, especially, so to speak, is Marcuse, from whom I learned so much otherwise...

 

[nino_savatte]

Theodor Adorno - The Culture Industry

 

[articul8]

we and only we can and, indeed, must be the ones to change it. The question of conditions necessary for it to happen is relevant, sure - but there is no issue that we CAN do that! And we MUST take responsibility for it. ...

Woah..this will take a fairly extended answering

Well I think we need to distinguish between Reason - in its most comprehensive sense - from the traduced, instrumentalised form of 'reason' that the enlightenment has degenerated into. The concept of reason has been sequestered in class society from normative questions - which necessarily reinvoke questions of our own fundamental nature as materially embodied thinkers - what is best, for us qua the kind of beings we are. Instead, "reason" is abstracted and all which lies outside itself becomes something to be mastered, controlled, regulated... There are some parallels with Heidegger here, but also to Husserl and later materialist phenomenology. So in a way reason has to go to work on itself, in order to reveal its own limitations and overcome/sublate them (the Hegelian legacy).

Nowhere, that I am aware of, does Adorno abdicate ethical responsibility or suggest - as would the PoMo-Nietzschean crowd - that the critique of reason is a cause for scrapping all claims to reason whatsoever. But Adorno takes seriously the question that the enlightenment emerges coterminously with a model of subjectivity that sees the repression of those aspects of our species-being most capable of resisting the relentless reification of the human into the commodity-form.

No doubt in part because of Adorno's grounding in psychoanalysis - he surpasses Marx in his ability to see the very subject positions from which we are obliged to begin, are already in part vitiated by the historical fact of instrumentalised social relations into which we find ourselves cast. (in psychoanalysis what is being repressed is fundamentally part of our human nature - which Adorno never separates off from the natural world "outside" - which is part of what makes him such a compelling thinker on ecological issues - THE PROBLEM IS NOT JUST WHAT WE DO (TO WHOM or WHAT) BUT HOW WE HAVE COME TO SEE OURSELVES IN DOING SO!

It isn't true to say that Adorno was 'just a pessimist' - he is an inspiring thinker in that he refuses to take any half-baked, instrumental notion of what "human liberation" might be (eg. so-called Marxists who aspire to push and shove around minions in a statist bureacracy in the name of "the workers"), and continues to seek, in those areas which have resisted - in however distorted or marginal form - the monolithic stamp of enlightenmnet culture.

In Adorno we see catastrophe, memory, care and hope for a redeemed humanity. We don't get a half-arsed promise of a better tomorrow which repeats all the flaws of what is being fought against.

 

[gorski]

OKI, let's try a really nice, sophisticated dance...

Firstly, thanx for the effort! Quite refreshing! Let me try giving some of my "observations" and put a few questions to the table.

The debate created there certainly goes to the core of who we are/can become, as CT puts it. The threefold relation: Spirit - Body, Man - another Man, Man - Environment does define us, in Modernity, and so debateing those grounds/essential relationships is extremely interesting to me, too...

Well I think we need to distinguish between Reason - in its most comprehensive sense - from the traduced, instrumentalised form of 'reason' that the enlightenment has degenerated into.

Which is what we do not have in CT - done properly, unfortunately. As I said, smuggling the notion of Understanding or Common Sense under the notion of Reason does no favour to anyone, as it takes away from the analysis much more than it adds to it. I question the very need/reason to do so!

The concept of reason has been sequestered in class society from normative questions...

How so? By whom? How is that "Reason" and not "Understanding" or "Common Sense"? Why would the notions of Understanding and/or Common Sense be foisted upon "Reason"? We do have those notions for a reason and then, all of a sudden... Now, the real question is: why? Where does it come from, the aforementioned "smuggling"? And why in CT, of all the schools of thinking?

...which necessarily reinvoke questions of our own fundamental nature as materially embodied thinkers - what is best, for us qua the kind of beings we are.

Normative, after all - isn't it? If so, we are talking about a specific interpretation of our Nature and the notion of "Reason" with it. Placing everything in its rightful context is the job of CT, so why didn't they apply it to the notion from which they got their critical categorical aparatus? I'm baffled...

Instead, "reason" is abstracted and all which lies outside itself becomes something to be mastered, controlled, regulated... There are some parallels with Heidegger here, but also to Husserl and later materialist phenomenology. So in a way reason has to go to work on itself, in order to reveal its own limitations and overcome/sublate them (the Hegelian legacy).

There I have to disagree most profoundly. I see no evidence of it "overall". If I understand you correctly.

Point by point:
-How can "Reason" be 'abstracted'? What from? Itself? The world? I think not, if that is the case. Anyone reading Hegel, showing the development of thought and the world [in History] might see that as quite a problematic "abstraction"...

-"All that lies outside itself" in Hegelian terms, would be our spirit externalised and then those product must be regulated, when it comes to Society, Political sphere, Economy etc. Thereby the Spirit comes back to itself etc. Marx jumps in and asks, in his early works, about the content of the regulations, the procedures and institutions that bring those about and then sees, as you mentioned, the class/caste structure interests corresponding to those laws etc. They mastered the institutions and the processes for their own ends etc. However, we see nothing less than Reason, as THE CRITICAL INSTANCE, at work here!!

-I see nothing else but Reason "working on itself" through all that! Indeed, how can we not see that, with the Kant-Hegel development, and then Marx and co.?

I think we are being short changed in CT at that point!

Nowhere, that I am aware of, does Adorno abdicate ethical responsibility or suggest - as would the PoMo-Nietzschean crowd - that the critique of reason is a cause for scrapping all claims to reason whatsoever.

Methodically speaking, "materialists" would give account in terms of where they got their notions from. Not so with the "instrumental reason" forgery. That "tool" distracts a great deal, as to in which quarters one searches for answers and which methodology does one use, it seems to me... And as we know from methodology, once one sets the question and puts forward the tools to search for an answer - the road is not so wide any longer...

But Adorno takes seriously the question that the enlightenment emerges coterminously with a model of subjectivity that sees the repression of those aspects of our species-being most capable of resisting the relentless reification of the human into the commodity-form.

But the impulse that comes from "Negative Dialectics", for instance, is not at all clear, in terms of strategy, and there I think he does hit the wall, with his approach, as Habermas claims. The way he investigates the notion of Self, and distinguishes with various pre-Self impulses and so on, frequently, to my mind, petrifies much more than it searches for various grounds in the existing processes of Modernity towards Emancipatory "impulses" for Humanity. If you set the question the wrong way, then searching for an answer becomes that much more difficult.

In other words, that is but a strand of Modernity. Not the whole of Modernity. Another smuggling process taking place there, I think...

No doubt in part because of Adorno's grounding in psychoanalysis - he surpasses Marx in his ability to see the very subject positions from which we are obliged to begin, are already in part vitiated by the historical fact of instrumentalised social relations into which we find ourselves cast. (in psychoanalysis what is being repressed is fundamentally part of our human nature - which Adorno never separates off from the natural world "outside" - which is part of what makes him such a compelling thinker on ecological issues - THE PROBLEM IS NOT JUST WHAT WE DO (TO WHOM or WHAT) BUT HOW WE HAVE COME TO SEE OURSELVES IN DOING SO!

Indeed, this does sound awfully Heideggerian and way too petrifying to my mind, at least if he wants to see himself as a "Marxist".

Certainly, the wide variety of social relations are nothing but instrumentalised but the question for a Marxist analysis would be "how did we get there, what are we doing and what do we need to do to change it", is it not?

In terms of putting Marx and Freud together I would suggest a much more valuable insight by Wilhelm Reich, who opened the whole area of Social Psychology, investigating not so much "Id being sublated by Ego" but "Ego being sublated by Super Ego". How do "the historical facts of instrumentalised social relations into which we find ourselves cast" form our character etc. etc.

One just needs to be careful to get the early Reich, not the latter one, at least not without the early variety always on one's mind, as one might see the whole thing in the totally distorted manner. Which is why the rest of CT gave up on him and never properly acknowledged his contribution, before he moved on to "cosmic" stuff, that made them part their ways completely...

It isn't true to say that Adorno was 'just a pessimist' - he is an inspiring thinker in that he refuses to take any half-baked, instrumental notion of what "human liberation" might be (eg. so-called Marxists who aspire to push and shove around minions in a statist bureacracy in the name of "the workers"), and continues to seek, in those areas which have resisted - in however distorted or marginal form - the monolithic stamp of enlightenmnet culture.

Not sure what such a monumental picture might actually mean. Marx himself has a lot of good to say about all of those pushing within the present boundaries, while we, the academic, critical lot, are explaining to them their inconsistencies and contradictions, from our comfortable chairs..."

Indeed, this is where Habermas takes on an unenviable task of building precisely on those grounds... And gets berated, all too frequently, from those grounds... Undeservedly so, to my mind.

In Adorno we see catastrophe, memory, care and hope for a redeemed humanity. We don't get a half-arsed promise of a better tomorrow which repeats all the flaws of what is being fought against.

One thing we can learn from History, says Hegel, is that we can't learn a darn thing from it... One should remember that one, I think, when one has 2 world wars and Holocaust in front, not just at the back of one's mind...

Every generation has to search for their own answers and ways for searching for them. And anew! Completely. At least in the West. Adorno certainly is one of those to point out to a variety of problems. Not sure about searching for answers or the answers themselves [if any?], for reasons given above.

 

[articul8]

a lot here....!

jeez...thanks for the epic post - i hope i can do it justice in return

Which is what we do not have in CT - done properly, unfortunately. As I said, smuggling the notion of Understanding or Common Sense under the notion of Reason does no favour to anyone, as it takes away from the analysis much more than it adds to it. I question the very need/reason to do so!

"Instrumental reason" is more than just the (false) received wisdom, though. The subject's attempts to 'know' itself through its knowledge/mastery of the object does open up new and real historical possibilities. However the epistemological violence of the subject-object split means that the subject isolates itself from "that which is there to be known", and in doing so also isolates itself from the unknown within itself - the condition of its own fundamental materiality.

Adorno reads this material substratum which elides the instrumental forms of epistemology as the kernel around which develops a negative dialectic. ie. it is not just a straightforward con-trick to be counter-posed to pure Reason. it is a stage which Reason must surpass if it is to become itself. However, it also sets in play a logic where the subject's attempt to know/master the object is detrimental to the pursuit of Rational ends, and to both man's relation to the world and his relation to himself. All that is left for the philosopher subject is to turn thought's resources in on itself in order to recognise the symptomatic traces of its own mis-recognition.

I guess it's a matter of "bearing witness" in the wake of an alternative, rather than eliciting one.

Ironically enough, you are much closer to Heidegger when you dismiss "instrumental reason" as simply false, as you fail to incorporate its historical emergence into the context of the equally historical project of reason realising itself in autonomous thought.

The "smuggling" is a ruse of History. You can't just ditch the concept reason and start afresh. Reason has accrued the meanings of instrumentality, but necessarily so. Only by encountering the traces of its own self-vitiation can Reason emerge in its full glory - true Reason (as opposed to reason) is always the Reason-still-to-come.

i'm sure there's more here for me to get stuck into, but this seems to be your main objection.

 

[articul8]

Certainly, the wide variety of social relations are nothing but instrumentalised but the question for a Marxist analysis would be "how did we get there, what are we doing and what do we need to do to change it", is it not?

agree with "how did we get here" and "what are we doing" - but the difficulty of answering these questions comprehensively means the third question can't be answered with any degree of reliability.

Who are "we"? How can we be sure that our interpellation as subject is not amongst the symptoms of the condition from which are trying to find a cure? Can we fathom enough about how "we" have been shaped and how this "we" is being shaped today? Can the institutional constraints to this self-knowledge be overcome? What would it mean to bring about substantial change rather than to repeat all the existing flaws to an even greater extent?

In terms of Reich (and Marcuse actually) I find that far too often they work with a naive romantic binary of repression = bad, instinctual liberation = good.
Whereas sexual instincts can be socially disturbing in a way which any society would find itself needing to repress (you simply can't let everyone indulge in rape, murder, torture etc. whensoever they might please). In the same way, the "return of the repressed" might not be some great flowering of eroticism but a pogrom or brutal slaughter.
I don't think it's any coincidence that Adorno sees the Marquis de Sade as a more likely source of wisdom on the confluence of instrumentality and irrational sexual drives than the over-optimistic writers you cite.
Authority, Repression etc are not universally evil, it is their heteronomous imposition which we should resent.

Not sure what such a monumental picture might actually mean. Marx himself has a lot of good to say about all of those pushing within the present boundaries, while we, the academic, critical lot, are explaining to them their inconsistencies and contradictions, from our comfortable chairs..."

This is accusation is a bit hackneyed. I guess the Adornoite response is that exercising the freedom of philosophical thought (pushing the boundaries if you like) is a damn site less destructive than building Gulags to imprison 'class traitors' and 'indisciplined' comrades.

Every generation has to search for their own answers and ways for searching for them. And anew! Completely. At least in the West. Adorno certainly is one of those to point out to a variety of problems. Not sure about searching for answers or the answers themselves [if any?], for reasons given above.

I disagree with this - we don't ever face a political situation as a tabula rasa. Memory, bearing witness, solidarity with victims; those who suffer; those who lost, or made mistakes, or were disappointed. These at least hold open the hope that all this experience will not have been in vain. This day may, probably will, never come. But this is why I think Adorno is more socialist than all the promethean wide-eyed optimiststs who never asks questions of themselves.

 

[gorski]

Very cool! I like...

"Instrumental reason" is more than just the (false) received wisdom, though.

False consciousness, more like... Hence no Reason at all. Understanding is the kind of capacity we deploy in this manner, i.e. forcing an object [of cognition etc.] in front of ourselves and "violating it" through manipulation of all sorts...

However...

The subject's attempts to 'know' itself through its knowledge/mastery of the object does open up new and real historical possibilities. However the epistemological violence of the subject-object split means that the subject isolates itself from "that which is there to be known", and in doing so also isolates itself from the unknown within itself - the condition of its own fundamental materiality.

We do have an alternative, as I mentioned - that [the interpretation I view as objectionable] is but a strand of Modernity. The other one is the Subject-Subject paradigm, at the very latest started by young Hegel... And worked on by many. Why do we conveniently forget about it? To me it's rather inconvenient, as I have to write long posts, then...

Adorno reads this material substratum which elides the instrumental forms of epistemology as the kernel around which develops a negative dialectic. ie. it is not just a straightforward con-trick to be counter-posed to pure Reason. it is a stage which Reason must surpass if it is to become itself.

Since we are mentioning "material substratum" [and Adorno's insistence on the "whole being a lie" rests squarely on this point]: what would be the material substratum of such a stance? Would Adorno take any notice/give any importance to those who worked on "something else"; whereby Hegel, expressing through his System a certain stage of the development of Humanity, is the only thing worth mentioning and debating and anything and everything else simply isn't or is to be ignored?!? If Hegel is to be opposed on the grounds of multipolarity and diversity of Reality which HAS to be taken into account for the picture to be accurate - why isn't Adorno doing the honour to those who did so in Philosophy? Starting, at least, from [early] Hegel himself?

In other words: how about seeing/acknowledging the manifold ways in which Philosophy expresses itself in Modernity and interprets Modernity? And you know what I am talking about, don't you: not just Spinoza's "Ethica more geometrico", i.e. everything deduced from a single principle, where one can't even want that which s/he is not supposed to want, as some newer interpreters have warned, in spite of his emphatic insistence on Freedom throughout his work, it fundamentally insists on determisnism. As opposed to those strands of Modernity that took into account the Ancient Greek lesson of "To on legetai polachos".

However, it also sets in play a logic where the subject's attempt to know/master the object is detrimental to the pursuit of Rational ends, and to both man's relation to the world and his relation to himself. All that is left for the philosopher subject is to turn thought's resources in on itself in order to recognise the symptomatic traces of its own mis-recognition.

See, I told you Habermas has got it right: Adorno did hit a wall...

That would be the PoMo shite, methinx: turning in on itself in a self-referential manner, more than anything else... Like Hollywood these days, where they do not necessarily need to refer to the "reality" but their "reality", i.e. itself, quoting each other ad nauseam, as they did create this kind of reality figuring as the reality, which some in CT call the industry of dreams, with a lot of reason, too... The self-important Hollywood gits. Did CT go down that road, too, at least partially? Well, if it did - we are free to act on the issue...

I guess it's a matter of "bearing witness" in the wake of an alternative, rather than eliciting one.

I don't want to misunderstand you here: can you, please, extrapolate a bit...?

Ironically enough, you are much closer to Heidegger when you dismiss "instrumental reason" as simply false, as you fail to incorporate its historical emergence into the context of the equally historical project of reason realising itself in autonomous thought.

Now, I can't stress this strongly enough: there are many thinkers who have seriously questioned this "conceptual bastard" and with lots of good reasons for it and I agree with them - you are uncritically, to my mind, taking their smuggling of this notion into the analysis. It can NOT be! It simply isn't! It's a forgery!

And we can not see where they got it from! They do not show us where they got the notion from! Other than all too quickly subsuming "the horrible recent reality" [of 2 World Wars and so on] squarely under the notion of Reason, as if it was somehow "orchestrated by the Hegelian Philosophical Reason" itself, thereby proclaiming "Reason's" corrupt nature and all of a sudden reducing it to "instrumental Reason" rather unceremoniously, but more importantly without any real effort!? So, it's one of those shotgun ones we are allegedly forced to deal with and the whole thing is going so fast, not giving us the time to question it's very raison d'etre, it's very existence. It's a like a bad Hollywood movie where the action is set at a seriously high pace so one has no time to reflect and ultimately can't see the emptiness of it all...

I urge Nietzschean "slow reading" and looking at other sources regarding this particular conundrum... I learned my lessons on the topic from Praxis Philosophy, but I fear that wouldn't help you much, as you possibly don't speak Serbo-Croat...

The essence of it is this: where could they have derived such a notion from, what would the ultimate critical instance be - to deride Reason itself like so - but Reason itself?!? In which case they are in a bit of a nasty situation, as they are trying to appeal to a "Reason" against another "Reason", which they got - no one knows how exactly...

The "smuggling" is a ruse of History. You can't just ditch the concept reason and start afresh. Reason has accrued the meanings of instrumentality, but necessarily so.

Slow down, please: someone coined it at some point in time and exercised his/her "creativity" and now we are not to be allowed to question and even reject it, if we find good enough reasons to do so? Someone has thereby foisted it upon us. It must have "become", it must have been given that new meaning at some point. Now, we must have the right [and the need, as Philosophers, to my mind] to question it and even reject it and reclaim it!! It doesn't matter who that was and whoever took it over!

Otherwise, someone might do the History thing for us and we're not allowed a go ourselves... I for one reject such "one does" or "one must", as I find it way too authoritarian... Not to mention reifying... [Heidegger - Lukacs primacy debate on "alienation" is insignificant here...]

Only by encountering the traces of its own self-vitiation can Reason emerge in its full glory - true Reason (as opposed to reason) is always the Reason-still-to-come.

Nope, I'm happy to say, in relation to the above: there are other options in Modernity. Also, other possibilities of interpretation regarding the notion itself.

 

[articul8]

I will come back on this, but not till tomorrow as i want to give it proper attention

 

[gorski]

agree with "how did we get here" and "what are we doing" - but the difficulty of answering these questions comprehensively means the third question can't be answered with any degree of reliability.

Indeed, there's no such thing as 100% prediction in all things Human. Does that mean we can not have an educated guess or at least express ourselves in negative ways, as to what a possible future must not be like? Mind, we did build quite a body of [ever growing] work around Human Rights. Of course, the solidarity ones were in there only thanx to the insistence of the Soviets...

Who are "we"? How can we be sure that our interpellation as subject is not amongst the symptoms of the condition from which are trying to find a cure? Can we fathom enough about how "we" have been shaped and how this "we" is being shaped today? Can the institutional constraints to this self-knowledge be overcome? What would it mean to bring about substantial change rather than to repeat all the existing flaws to an even greater extent?

A very good question, as many have asked it already. Some like Hobbs are quite clear: we are awful and the darker the picture of Human Nature painted the stronger the role of the state required/advocated/justified. Some others, on the other hand, like Ernst Bloch, would even go as far as saying something like "Positing that Humans are always open to doing both good and evil does not help and it actually reifies". So, depending on the overall position one can give very different answers to it.

However, the main insight we can posit is that we did change our very nature - essentially, by our own deeds/effort/action. Look at the French and American Revolutions and onwards, for instance. Compare with Feudalism. Not much need to argue the case of a fairer, more just society these days, is there? And that's, in essence, the meaning of "historical"! Our product. Not God, not Nature, no feudal lords, no bullshit.

We, therefore, can not close the horizon for the coming generations, as they will have to write their own history and create their own present and future. It takes a little faith in Humanity they aren't gonna be any worse than us. That should take away the need to be overly prescriptive and strictly bound them by our own achievements, standards etc. Openness is what one finds in Marx, for instance, and not much of that in, say, Heidegger. And I draw the line right there.

At the beginning there was - Future! Essentially, I think, together with Kangrga and co. this crucial, Modern thought comes out of Hegel...

In terms of Reich (and Marcuse actually) I find that far too often they work with a naive romantic binary of repression = bad, instinctual liberation = good.

Whereas sexual instincts can be socially disturbing in a way which any society would find itself needing to repress (you simply can't let everyone indulge in rape, murder, torture etc. whensoever they might please). In the same way, the "return of the repressed" might not be some great flowering of eroticism but a pogrom or brutal slaughter.

I think you'll find that at least Marcuse is not that naive and that you're not giving him the credit he deserves. After all, he was Heidegger's student for quite a while...

However:

1) Humans have no instincts. Please, see the long thread we had about Social Darwinism before in this very section: http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=208276

2) Sexuality can not be directly and "intimately" connected with the horrors you mention. Not without a helluva lot of mediation. But then we'll see exactly that - how our urges are shaped/mediated by society [barring the most extreme somatic deviations from the "norm"].

3) I think conservatives of all colours [starting at least with Hobbes and onwards to Hitler and co.] would find your last sentence quite reassuring about their own role. You are seeing Human Nature, by definition, as exceptionally awful - or [at least] the formulation shows no signs of qualifications that should have been there, having in mind your previous thoughts on "nature - nurture" debate...

I don't think it's any coincidence that Adorno sees the Marquis de Sade as a more likely source of wisdom on the confluence of instrumentality and irrational sexual drives than the over-optimistic writers you cite.
Authority, Repression etc are not universally evil, it is their heteronomous imposition which we should resent.

So, we should internalise Authority and all will be well, so long as we're allowed to gently suck it in with our mother's milk and we feel as if there's no heteronomy involved? You see, I worry here, as you have painted Human Nature all too darkly to begin with, and as this is the starting point it seems to me that further investigation might be seriously unambitious, for my sense of openness of philosophical research.

This is accusation is a bit hackneyed. I guess the Adornoite response is that exercising the freedom of philosophical thought (pushing the boundaries if you like) is a damn site less destructive than building Gulags to imprison 'class traitors' and 'indisciplined' comrades.

Dunno. Maybe we should remember that when the venerable Professor Theo wasn't shown enough deference by his students - he simply called the Police to the Uni... They were "too unruly" and a bit "too lively" for the seriously repressed Professor...

I disagree with this - we don't ever face a political situation as a tabula rasa. Memory, bearing witness, solidarity with victims; those who suffer; those who lost, or made mistakes, or were disappointed. These at least hold open the hope that all this experience will not have been in vain. This day may, probably will, never come. But this is why I think Adorno is more socialist than all the promethean wide-eyed optimiststs who never asks questions of themselves.

Hmmm... I think Humanity is learning about itself, through building the institutions and processes of negotiations and various standards, like Human Rights and so forth...

But... Maybe we can continue after you have your think and say...

Cheers!

 

[articul8]

You're right - I can't speak Serbo-Croat

False consciousness, more like... Hence no Reason at all.

I've never held to 'false consciousness' as a model of ideology - I prefer the Lacanian tradition whereby fictions/misrecognitions are both not literally true but also have real effects. Instrumental reason undoubtedly requires a huge element of misrecognition, but also allows us to do things we couldn't otherwise have done (this is both enabling and incredibly dangerous).

We do have an alternative, as I mentioned - that [the interpretation I view as objectionable] is but a strand of Modernity. The other one is the Subject-Subject paradigm, at the very latest started by young Hegel... And worked on by many. Why do we conveniently forget about it? To me it's rather inconvenient, as I have to write long posts, then...

Ok, I see I'm going to have to take on Habermas here. Clearly the subject-object (philsophy of consciousness)(1) and intersubjective (2) episetemologies are intimately related to social phenomena: 1) the diviison of capital/labour 2)the emergence of a institutionalised norms governing communicative action [public sphere etc.]. 2 main strands of modernity, if you like.

The problem is if you isolate the former from its context in the lifeworld and assess in purely formal terms the norms of constituting rational dialogue, you end up 1)with an 'ought' which has no affective purchase on the lives of concrete communties (who is going to fight to the death to preserve an ideal speech situation?!), and 2) no understanding of the historical process which HAVE ALWAYS VITIATED THE PUBLIC SPHERE EVEN AS THEY HELPED IN ITS EMERGENCE.

ie. The public sphere as it has historically developed in modern western liberal democracies is always already parasitic on the alienation of the subject forced to sell its labour power as a commodity. To simply forget this means that you effectively end up with pre-Hegelian Kantian formalism and an anaemic liberal pluralism - which is pretty much where Habermas has ended up. Incidentally, this also helps to explain Habermas's replacement of psychoanalysis with developmental psychology is a regression. You can't begin with the subject - you need to begin with the violence through which the subject is created in opposition to the object.

This also has direct consequences for the practical value of Adorno v. Habermas. Habermas can only bemoan the fact that his beloved communicative action is being put assunder by the rapacious colonisation of the lifeworld by capital. He is left saying it ought not to happen. But he doesn't understand the dynamic (dialectic) by which modernity subverts its own achievements even whilst enabling them.

So we don't have a free choice as to which "strand" of modernity we take up - one strand - the alienation/reification of the subject's own capacities as a commodity - simply IS the core of modernity. Insofar as other 'strands' emerge they are all parasitic on this one. Maybe this involves hitting a wall. But better to face a real impasse than to imagine a false way out of one.

Essentially, we have to remember that all philosophy inherits concepts with a history already built into them. Just as you can't leap straight from agrarian feudalism to advanced capitalism, so the means of philosophical production - concepts - are developed in relation to the wider forces of historical production. As revolution needed the development of the bourgeoisie, so philsophical Reason has passed through instrumental reason.

All we can do (edit: as philosophers) is metareflection - using concepts to expose the inadequacy of our conceptual tools, and glimpsing the moments of non-identity where the violence of the concept jars with sensuous particularity.

 

[gorski]

Part I

I've never held to 'false consciousness' as a model of ideology - I prefer the Lacanian tradition whereby fictions/misrecognitions are both not literally true but also have real effects. Instrumental reason undoubtedly requires a huge element of misrecognition, but also allows us to do things we couldn't otherwise have done (this is both enabling and incredibly dangerous).

Not to put too fine a point on it but: is there anything of importance that isn't? Ideologies in particular.

As for "false consciousness [of true reality]" - it may well also be the "correct consciousness [of false reality]". Either way, it most certainly is true that most people have serious difficulty realising and in particular acting in their own best interests [and "can't help themselves"]. Until Freud, Liberal theory presumes we do know what our best interests are... So, I think Marx is spot on there, slightly preceding Freud on this one...

The problem is if you isolate the former from its context in the lifeworld and assess in purely formal terms the norms of constituting rational dialogue, you end up 1)with an 'ought' which has no affective purchase on the lives of concrete communties (who is going to fight to the death to preserve an ideal speech situation?!), and 2) no understanding of the historical process which HAVE ALWAYS VITIATED THE PUBLIC SPHERE EVEN AS THEY HELPED IN ITS EMERGENCE.

Since you state that "episetemologies are intimately related to social phenomena" wouldn't you say that this "ideal speech situation" is actually "Democracy" and in particular "Social Democracy", as its best variety? And there are many who would die for it, say, in the face of Nazi/Fascist tide, to answer your Q directly. It has already happened. Many a time in History.

As for the "is - ought" conundrum: Hegel thought he resolved the Kantian hiatus and it is happening [for Hegel: "it has happened", at least according to some interpretations of his work - but there are others, stating he left the whole thing much more open in his earlier versions of the system and they are quite convincing, too!!!] precisely in History. But one needn't be faint-hearted when one "observes", he says.

Re. 2) I am not sure I understand fully. Care to explain a bit more, please? Maybe an example might be of greater service, so we do not misunderstand each other? "The cunning of Reason in History" maybe?

ie. The public sphere as it has historically developed in modern western liberal democracies is always already parasitic on the alienation of the subject forced to sell its labour power as a commodity.

Is it? How so? For "late" Marx it's the same principle of constitution that stems from Bourgeois Society to Political State [he learned that from Hegel and English National - later Political - Economy, later on in his life, past 1848], which Political State sphere is but one of Bourgeois Society's capacities [on N-th power"]. In other words, it is not a neutral, "night-watchman state", as it already is siding with private ownership etc. So, in his time one can see how he could say that and not need to qualify it.

However, today the situation has changed, in so far as the state becomes the greatest investor and employer, the mover of markets, not to mention the regulator under a greater public scrutiny than ever before etc. I can see how today it is a co-constitutive sphere and how it can be of significant influence on the "corrupting" power of the Bourgeois Society, if left unregulated. That is happening thanx to a democratic constitution of at least some late Western Democracies. The "public use/exercise of Reason" is to be carefully assessed here, I think, not dismissed out of hand, in a rather quick and easy going, completely unqualified manner...

To simply forget this means that you effectively end up with pre-Hegelian Kantian formalism and an anaemic liberal pluralism - which is pretty much where Habermas has ended up.

Has he? I am not sure about this at all. He is by no means God and hence we can but carefully assess his work, on the whole [where I happen to agree with the bulk of his push] and in parts [and sometimes I most certainly do not agree with some of them].

Incidentally, this also helps to explain Habermas's replacement of psychoanalysis with developmental psychology is a regression. You can't begin with the subject - you need to begin with the violence through which the subject is created in opposition to the object.

I don't think so. That is but an option! Most certainly not the only one! I think you have a specific vision here and do not allow somewhat dogmatically, if I may notice, for anything else as a rational proposition - maybe as a "pie in the sky" but not seriously. Dunno why [for now] but maybe you'd care to explain, please? I would like to understand your core principles, from which your rather dark understanding of Modernity comes from.

This also has direct consequences for the practical value of Adorno v. Habermas. Habermas can only bemoan the fact that his beloved communicative action is being put assunder by the rapacious colonisation of the lifeworld by capital. He is left saying it ought not to happen. But he doesn't understand the dynamic (dialectic) by which modernity subverts its own achievements even whilst enabling them.

Not at all. Your last formulation on its own seems to shoot itself in the foot. There are no guarantees in all of this, of course. The whole thing rests squarely on the [intellectually, morally, professionally etc.] competent and interested Modern Subject. Without us it just wouldn't succeed. But this shouldn't frighten or unnerve anyone! I don't lose my faith in Humanity under a possible threat of us going bonkers. Even if we do that for a while. I think that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hence I do not give in to this "temptation", shall we say...

So we don't have a free choice as to which "strand" of modernity we take up - one strand - the alienation/reification of the subject's own capacities as a commodity - simply IS the core of modernity. Insofar as other 'strands' emerge they are all parasitic on this one. Maybe this involves hitting a wall. But better to face a real impasse than to imagine a false way out of one.

Most interesting. Would you say that you might be thinking differently seeing all this from a Scandinavian/EU, rather than the US, perspective? Maybe?

You see, Freedom begins with being able to choose from at least 2 options [priests/priestesses in Ancient Greek rituals, for instance] but it doesn't stop there. Modern notion of Freedom not only presupposes the possibility of choice but also, more importantly, our capacity to CREATE NEW OPTIONS, NEW CHOICES! Here, I find your stance most conservative and anti-Modern, formulated in such a characteristically unqualified manner!

Essentially, we have to remember that all philosophy inherits concepts with a history already built into them. Just as you can't leap straight from agrarian feudalism to advanced capitalism, so the means of philosophical production - concepts - are developed in relation to the wider forces of historical production. As revolution needed the development of the bourgeoisie, so philsophical Reason has passed through instrumental reason.

But here is MY point. Certainly, the potential Modernity had at the beginning of Capitalist endeavour, has been diminished with not recognising all Human Beings as equal in Rights and Dignity [slavery, women and have-nots without the right to vote etc. etc.] but that did NOT stop us improving in all directions, has it?

I think, in all honesty, you need to seriously re-think this one.

There is always a possibility that we might push a few wrong buttons and end up being nothing but fertiliser on irradiated soil - but that means, as I have just outlined - our capacity to overcome those possibilities, too. You can't have it just one way. If we are open to erring - surely we are open to doing it right!!!

Being so adamant in refuting such an option would, methodically speaking, involve being God and/or:

either an arch Conservative [we know what "Human Nature" is - by definition the lowest common denominator - and it's unchanging and it's awful and so we need to harness and arrest it etc. etc.]

or a Bolshevik [we have the "Knowledge of History" and we know the only viable option there is, as we have been to the Future, seen all the possibilities, so we shall take you by the hand and lead you... to the promised land...].

All other options are open! You trying to close them like that, if I understood properly the consequences of such a position, does not make it any easier...

 

[gorski]

Part II

All we can do (edit: as philosophers) is metareflection - using concepts to expose the inadequacy of our conceptual tools, and glimpsing the moments of non-identity where the violence of the concept jars with sensuous particularity.

Well, there are at least 3 major options that I can see:

Heidegger/Lucacs one, of getting all mucked up in the Historical developments, blood, guts and all...

Independent and non-aligned one, with a fierce critical edge in all directions.

A third one: trying to engage and influence, as much as Humanly possible - everyone as much as they can... Academia, politics, general and professional public sphere... Something Habermas and co. are doing or trying to do. And why not? I mean, how many arch conservatives and/or "Libertarians" are doing precisely that, via their influence over the Academia and the world of Politics...

And the worst, most laughable thing about it is: when they are trying to do it then it's all "normal and natural" but when Habermas and the Left in general are trying to do the same thing - then it's all "ideology" and a "pie in the sky", "sheer Utopia", dontchaknow... To me it's utter arrogance, presuming they know it all, as they are somehow "born to rule and 'lead'" - at which point I get a terrible rash...

But do tell, please, why such a sharply dark picture of who we are and/or can become - or rather "keep becoming"?!?

 

[articul8]

Since you state that "episetemologies are intimately related to social phenomena" wouldn't you say that this "ideal speech situation" is actually "Democracy" and in particular "Social Democracy", as its best variety? And there are many who would die for it, say, in the face of Nazi/Fascist tide, to answer your Q directly. It has already happened. Many a time in History.

I certainly don't think that an ideal speech situation is liberal democracy as we have come to know it. Adorno witnessed just how feeble the Weimar commitment to Social Democracy really was - it couldn't hold back the fascist tide at least in part because it did not command the degree of visceral commitment than did the fascist appeal to authoritarian personality characteristics. Social Democracy doesn't the same affective content, in psychoanalytic terms.

Re. 2) I am not sure I understand fully. Care to explain a bit more, please? Maybe an example might be of greater service, so we do not misunderstand each other? "The cunning of Reason in History" maybe?

Habermas fails to adequately account for the conditions which make possible the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere - ie, the development of capital to the point where a there is a growing professional/commercial/mercantile middle class to compose a community of civically engaged citizens. Capital let us not forget, requires the appropriation of surplus value created by the worker having to sell her labour power as a commodity. Which doesn't mean that economics 'gave us' democracy. But is does mean that division of capital/labour is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for its emergence. Hence, the same processes which help to enable the emergence of the public sphere - and the norms appropriate to it - also lay the conditions for its ultimate erosion. Democracy is increasingly bypassed by the interests of capital.

By extension, epistemologically speaking, the possibility of a subject-subject relation is already dependent upon a prior subject-object division. Habermas thinks - wrongly - that privileging intersubjective commmunication/ethical recognition - somehow allows him to avoid all this. But his position is pre-Hegelian formalism which only allows him an 'ought' with no purchase on the way that norms are grounded experientially in specific historical contexts (Hegel's Sittlichkeit).
It isn't a matter of just "asking a different/better question" - that's a voluntaristic illusion: the concepts we have bear within the social history of their emergence - but yes we need to see the aporetic nature of the philosophical apparatus/historical circumstance we have been bequeathed.

Of course we must be open to futurity, new options, the reconfiguring of society etc. But our capacity to act as subjects is both produced and limited by the historical/material circumstances in which we find ourselves. Adorno is more faithful to Marx in his attitudes than is generally realised. He just thinks that the problems facing critical thought/human liberation are even more deep-rooted than political "Marxists" are wont to allow.

Reason for my dark outlook is only the self-inflicted violence involved in constituting the instrumental relation between ourselves and the rest of the material world, which also involves savagely repressing our own corporeal needs and desires. This is the psychoanalytic element in Adorno. Hence, the flip side to the emergence of 'reason' (not Reason!) is the release of a violent unreason defined as produced in the process.

But equally, the very material substratum disclosed by the non-identity of representation and sensuous particularity - whether in dream, or art, or philosophy bears witness to the violence we have perpetrated upon our own nature and points to the possibility - no more - of a better world beyond. Our responsibility, our ethical duty, is to remember, witness, and hope.

 

[--suzanne--]

oh man i really want to read this thread but it's doing my head in

 

[gorski]

It's actually simple... I will write an answer soon....

 

[gorski]

I certainly don't think that an ideal speech situation is liberal democracy as we have come to know it.

Like you, and the rest of thinking, critically minded, enlightened Humanity, obviously, I think there's a lot to improve about it. Especially in the Anglo-American, Neo-Liberal, conflict-based context...

But I also think that the Social Democratic one is better than any other so far in our History and that it holds a promise of an even better one - depending on us, needless to say...

Adorno witnessed just how feeble the Weimar commitment to Social Democracy really was - it couldn't hold back the fascist tide at least in part because it did not command the degree of visceral commitment than did the fascist appeal to authoritarian personality characteristics. Social Democracy doesn't the same affective content, in psychoanalytic terms.

There is an essential lesson in all this nonsense with Nazi-Fascism...

First of all - Social Democracy before WW II did NOT exist in Germany! Quite the opposite!

Adversarial type of Capitalism before the WW II, in Germany and elsewhere, landed us in an enormous conflict, the biggest Humanity has ever witnessed and on an industrial scale, as you were explaining convincingly in other threads.

The fact that Germany was totally destroyed twice, following the model, taught them a lesson which can be universalised to all: when they were trying to dominate and exploit others - they were devastated!!! After the WW II they actually said to their neighbours: "We don't have to be great friends and brothers, but at least we can sit down around the same [European] table and recognise each other and then - co-operate..." I.e. sit down and calculate, forget about "Blut und Boden"...

Since then Germany and other such countries prospered so much that after a few decades the majority of people in it lived better quality lives than majority in the countries that won the War and stayed with the same adversarial model they had before the war [US and UK in particular].

There must be a serious lesson in it for all of us!

What happened? After the WW II all the [German, Austrian etc. - in their respective states, obviously] parties, the State, the Unions, the employers and other social factors - sat around the same table and... negotiated... All of them gave up parts of their interests [consciously] and through it built a new model, a co-operative one, the Social Democratic model, that was enormously successful and it still is the best [or at least: the least shitty] model we have seen on the face of the Planet, since the beginning of History!!!

If you have a better idea, please, let us know. And that is always the most difficult one: an alternative...

Habermas fails to adequately account for the conditions which make possible the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere - ie, the development of capital to the point where a there is a growing professional/commercial/mercantile middle class to compose a community of civically engaged citizens.

Does he? How so?

Capital let us not forget, requires the appropriation of surplus value created by the worker having to sell her labour power as a commodity. Which doesn't mean that economics 'gave us' democracy. But is does mean that division of capital/labour is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for its emergence. Hence, the same processes which help to enable the emergence of the public sphere - and the norms appropriate to it - also lay the conditions for its ultimate erosion. Democracy is increasingly bypassed by the interests of capital.

I think you are now jumping to big conclusions without the proper analysis.

There is that danger, of course - always!!! However, there are other possibilities for as long as we're living and breathing, thinking Human Beings! There is NO DETERMINISM IN ALL THINGS HUMAN!!!! [If I read the underlying tone of your posts correctly... and they do seem quite gloomy and almost pointing to the "inevitable", almost of the "what can we do?!?" sort... I hope I'm wrong here but your tone and the thrust of your arguments are going in that direction, without ever pointing to other possibilities, I'm afraid... Sorry if I misread but...]

By extension, epistemologically speaking, the possibility of a subject-subject relation is already dependent upon a prior subject-object division. Habermas thinks - wrongly - that privileging intersubjective commmunication/ethical recognition - somehow allows him to avoid all this. But his position is pre-Hegelian formalism which only allows him an 'ought' with no purchase on the way that norms are grounded experientially in specific historical contexts (Hegel's Sittlichkeit).

I think you misunderstood the very essence of the S-S paradigm: it is always there, depending on us recognising it as a possibility and embracing its potential consequences... It most certainly is not dependent upon a prior subject-object division. It's an option when one perceives/understands/interprets the world and then from there all else follows. However, there are other options, to return to my prime objection regarding your type of thinking...

It is possible to order our Sitten in such a manner that we, even emotionally, do give up parts of our interests for the greater good, consciously[!!] and we adhere to the Whole which necessitates at least us tolerating some such parts of the system.

From the Systems Theory we know that the Whole can be improved. I.e. the society as a whole can learn, not just individuals. By bringing in new sub-systems we most certainly can improve, in ways so far unheard of in our History. In other words, we:

1) CAN produce new options

2) are NOT inherently bad, evil, selfish, nasty, without any consideration for the other, as these considerations are now built into the system itself, from progressive taxation to Universal Human Rights and so forth...

Human Rights, for instance, are one such great school for Humanity, where we do learn about ourselves, as we expand the whole thing and keep doing it... ever more so...

It isn't a matter of just "asking a different/better question" - that's a voluntaristic illusion: the concepts we have bear within the social history of their emergence - but yes we need to see the aporetic nature of the philosophical apparatus/historical circumstance we have been bequeathed.

The Academic sphere can work in different ways and I think Habermas' idea of the Truth achieved by consensus is wrong [Rousseau knew better!]. However, that does not necessarily mean the same thing is invalid for a society, as a whole, from a political and structural point of view... We do not have a better model today, I'm afraid - the Scandinavian one is by far the best, if you wanna use that language, to anything else we have seen - as in "ever before"...

Of course we must be open to futurity, new options, the reconfiguring of society etc. But our capacity to act as subjects is both produced and limited by the historical/material circumstances in which we find ourselves. Adorno is more faithful to Marx in his attitudes than is generally realised. He just thinks that the problems facing critical thought/human liberation are even more deep-rooted than political "Marxists" are wont to allow.

Not sure what you mean here, however... It seems to me, overall, that you are insisting on the elements that are closing those options.... much more than you realise... And I just wonder if it has anything to do with your own society reneging on social democracy, as seen emerging in the US after the Great Crash... but then largely abandoned in the last few decades, to the detriment not just of most of the US but also the rest of the World???

Maybe it is time Europe taught that lesson back to the New World...???

Reason for my dark outlook is only the self-inflicted violence involved in constituting the instrumental relation between ourselves and the rest of the material world, which also involves savagely repressing our own corporeal needs and desires. This is the psychoanalytic element in Adorno. Hence, the flip side to the emergence of 'reason' (not Reason!) is the release of a violent unreason defined as produced in the process.

I think I understand that perfectly and I agree with the possible consequences of it!

However, [edit] we do have a proper notion for it - Understanding and/or Common Sense. We do not need to denigrate Reason to either "reason" or "Instrumental Reason" to make the point. And then it would be perfectly in line with the "inherited notions" someone at some point in time, neglected to honour... [And you now want us to honour that dishonourable attempt to disqualify that which gives them the very grounds to attack the worst of Modernity... - which they do very justly, of course and here we can all agree, no doubt but not by subverting the very instance without which this is NOT possible!!!]

But equally, the very material substratum disclosed by the non-identity of representation and sensuous particularity - whether in dream, or art, or philosophy bears witness to the violence we have perpetrated upon our own nature and points to the possibility - no more - of a better world beyond. Our responsibility, our ethical duty, is to remember, witness, and hope.

Where the hell did ACT disappear????!!!!????

All the very best, A!!!!

 

[articul8]

the Social Democratic one is better than any other so far in our History and that it holds a promise of an even better one - depending on us, needless to say...

But the global power and reach of Capital are making ameliorist projects of Social Democracy (eg. in Scandanavia!) increasinglt incapable of withstanding the neoliberal agenda.

To tackle this needs more than enlightened leadership from "progressive" capitalist governments. It needs - amongst other things - a critically self-reflexive consciousness amongst millions of ordinary workers, something that the structure of experience under late-capitalist/neoliberal society continually mitigates against as we are dehumanised, refied and commodified.

{First of all - Social Democracy before WW II did NOT exist in Germany! Quite the opposite!

Not quite so simple. The Weimar republic was a nascent liberal democracy with checked imperialist interests, in which the Social Democrats played a substantial role, and indeed led the government at certain stages (eg. 1918-22).

What is when this liberal democratic structure was challenged from the far right, the public not only failed to leap to the alternative offered by Social democracy, but felt little affective commitment even to the idea of democracy itself.

What happened? After the WW II all the [German, Austrian etc. - in their respective states, obviously] parties, the State, the Unions, the employers and other social factors - sat around the same table and... negotiated... All of them gave up parts of their interests [consciously] and through it built a new model, a co-operative one, the Social Democratic model, that was enormously successful and it still is the best [or at least: the least shitty] model we have seen on the face of the Planet, since the beginning of History!!!

I think you are badly out of date here. Before its electoral defeat the SPD passed through a major trenche of neoliberal reforms (described as Thatcherism in one go). This will be taken further by Merkel and effectively undermine the basis of the post-war Social democratic compact. So much for enormously successful - it has been powerless to withstand the forces which have led us all into the same free market swamp.

If you have a better idea, please, let us know. And that is always the most difficult one: an alternative...

Indeed - but the difficulty of a question in no way denies its urgency. We need new forms - but can we find them? This BTW is not surrending to "inevitablity" - it is being realistic about the extent of the constraints under which we are historically obliged to operate under,

I think you misunderstood the very essence of the S-S paradigm: it is always there, depending on us recognising it as a possibility and embracing its potential consequences... It most certainly does not dependent upon a prior subject-object division. It's an option when one perceives/understands/interprets the world and then from there all else follows. However, there are other options, to return to my prime objection regarding your type of thinking...

It is possible to order our Sitten in such a manner that we, even emotionally, do give up parts of our interests for the greater good, consciously[!!] and we adhere to the Whole which necessitates at least us tolerating some such parts of the system.

I think I overstated my case on this. OK, I accept that there is no such thing as a "subject" outside of 'being with' other "subjects" - which suggests, as you say, the ever-present possibility of a relation outside of subject-object.

That said, the "subject-object" relation is not simply some giant philosophical mistake. It was necesary to our development as a species - ie. to gain control over our environment in order to feed, clothe, care etc. our selves and our dependents. It enabled the growth and development of society, and also gave us the material infrastructure for the emergence of critical self-reflexive thought, but at the same time has built an alienated relation into the very fabric of modernity.

It's not just a case of 'voluntarily' choosing S-S over S-O relation, as though it were a matter of free choice. We have to graps their dialectical relation, and see that our very existence as subjects is bound up with the historical development of these conceptual relations, even as we are irreducible to them in our materiality.

Where the hell did ACT disappear????!!!!????

There are two distinct questions. What we can responsibly hope to achieve as those who aspire to critically self-reflexive thought (philosophers if you like, although I dislike the implied elitism), and what we can 'do' as historical agents.

The thing is, it is always possible to act - easy, perhaps frighteningly so. What is much more difficult is to act in due accordance with that critical autonomy. When we act without really understanding the forces which shape our understanding of the circumstances we face, we risk merely reproducing our own alienation in new, and perhaps even more oppressive, conditions.

Just abour every murderous tyranny in history has been built by those who thought they were building a "better humanity". I don't say that the impulse is illegitimate in itself. But the role of critical thought is to prevent itself being instrumentalised, or at least bear witness to the violence done to itself, so that the gap bewteen our true potentiality of our autonomous existence
and our empirical social being is never prematurely foreclosed.

 

[gorski]

Part I

But the global power and reach of Capital are making ameliorist projects of Social Democracy (eg. in Scandanavia!) increasinglt incapable of withstanding the neoliberal agenda.

How so? Last time I checked such "small and meagre forces" were in many respects more than just "holding their own", being even more successful than the US in terms of technological penetration [IT etc.], not to mention all other matters of REAL importance to us all [the quality of living as such, from pay and conditions issues and co-operative, "stake-holder" processes and institutions of the production/economy sphere, to pensions, education, public transport, public health service and so on and so forth!] and making quite an impact on the EU from within, arguing their case successfully in terms of persuading their colleagues from the rest of EU to follow their successful example, to foreign policy impact etc. etc. Moreover, the most balanced overall development was recorded precisely there.

On the other hand, the "neoliberal agenda" is being attacked left, right and centre everywhere, from the US onwards. So, you can't have it both ways, I think. If the process is always open - why do you always put the heavy accent on the worst possible option, which then seems to be closing down all sorts of possible outcomes, in which real alternatives seem dead in the water? I'm really baffled...

To tackle this needs more than enlightened leadership from "progressive" capitalist governments. It needs - amongst other things - a critically self-reflexive consciousness amongst millions of ordinary workers, something that the structure of experience under late-capitalist/neoliberal society continually mitigates against as we are dehumanised, refied and commodified.

Agreed, without the strong pressure from bellow it will be impossible to do anything, short, mid or long term!

However, I think there is a possible change in the US where the squeezing of the bottom part has gone so far that... Oh, we'll see... From Iraq onwards it seems to me that the dissatisfaction with the neo Cons has grown dramatically to the critical stage where a change is quite possible. How deep it will be depends on so many factors. I should not try to predict either way, as such an adventure would be foolish, at this stage. Although, you might be quite free to presume the worst possible outcome, once again, in a kind of a slight of hand manner...

Not quite so simple. The Weimar republic was a nascent liberal democracy with checked imperialist interests, in which the Social Democrats played a substantial role, and indeed led the government at certain stages (eg. 1918-22).

Does that mean we had any kind of a REAL GO at the change of paradigm, at that stage, from an adversarial model of politics, economics etc. to the co-operative one I mentioned? I think not. The really deep change happened after the WW II, whether domestically or in terms of foreign policy, strategically and tactically, structurally [democratic institutions and procedures], and in terms of attitudes/values.

What is when this liberal democratic structure was challenged from the far right, the public not only failed to leap to the alternative offered by Social democracy, but felt little affective commitment even to the idea of democracy itself.

Sure, we all know of those failures... back then...

We have that in many places, even today, from, say, various quarters of the British "elite" - never accepting democracy at all, let alone the Social Democratic option...

But does that invalidate the point/argument/strand of thinking/processes we see today, at least in the EU - but also in other quarters of the world? To presume that the same thing will happen time and time and time and time again... is a bit.. Godly... I, for one, have not seen the future and to my mind there is a huge dissatisfaction EVERYWHERE with the neoliberal agenda, which, btw, brought the last EU deal down, by the French electorate, not allowing any further inroads into the achievements of their social democratic structures and processes!

I think you are badly out of date here. Before its electoral defeat the SPD passed through a major trenche of neoliberal reforms (described as Thatcherism in one go). This will be taken further by Merkel and effectively undermine the basis of the post-war Social democratic compact. So much for enormously successful - it has been powerless to withstand the forces which have led us all into the same free market swamp.

You may want to remember that the German Right is much more to the Left than the British, never mind the US, "Left" and that it was them who stopped the New Left in power in going too far, eroding some of the achievements of Social Democracy! Moreover, the Unions are much too strong there and the processes and institutions of Solidarity are NOT to be underestimated in Germany in particular! Confrontational politics and all that follows is not a very good way of doing things there.

The biggest Union can put 100 000 of their members out of work in a heart beat and keep them there for a very long time. It happened before. The industry in EU stopped very quickly. Many Govs pressured the German Gov then to go back to the negotiating table and the model not just survived but was strengthened by it.

Again, I think you are seriously misrepresenting these achievements in your very own manner, which is way too gloomy and then the whole thing seems sooooo inevitable - it hurts... I think, once again, you might wanna see some of these from other perspectives, not just the current US one...

Indeed - but the difficulty of a question in no way denies its urgency. We need new forms - but can we find them? This BTW is not surrending to "inevitablity" - it is being realistic about the extent of the constraints under which we are historically obliged to operate under

We have a very successful, "new/old" model which can not be made redundant by the neo Con shite - simply because they had 2 victories in the US elections, one of which was worthy of Stalin and his lot!!!

That does not allow anyone to somehow interpret the Social Democratic co-operative paradigm as "gone"!!!

The non-violent, non-militaristic influence EU is starting to exert in the world is getting stronger and stronger. The dialectics of the horror which the US Administration is exposing the world to is making it ever more necessary!!!

If you use your own logic, from your next paragraph, then the current US idiocy might be playing a role towards the rest of the world accepting a much healthier EU paradigm over the sick US one, which is setting us all up against each other, grimacing painfully, with clenched teeth and ever-growing grip around each other's throats...

I think I overstated my case on this. OK, I accept that there is no such thing as a "subject" outside of 'being with' other "subjects" - which suggests, as you say, the ever-present possibility of a relation outside of subject-object.

Good to be able to find a common ground on which to build on... I hope...

 

[gorski]

Part II

That said, the "subject-object" relation is not simply some giant philosophical mistake. It was necesary to our development as a species - ie. to gain control over our environment in order to feed, clothe, care etc. our selves and our dependents. It enabled the growth and development of society, and also gave us the material infrastructure for the emergence of critical self-reflexive thought, but at the same time has built an alienated relation into the very fabric of modernity.

I would say that the other options were always there, otherwise they wouldn't have emerged. If you set the Q like that - maybe you'll find different answers to it?

Especially if we see just how much of "egalite" and "fraternite" from the tri-colour flag of the French Revolution has been built into all our lives, into the Democratic Institutions and Processes, painstakingly and with forethought, consciously and with a lot of sacrifice, over the last 2 centuries. I think "forgetting" or "neglecting it" is a very easy way of selling all of those great achievements of Humanity down the river of neoliberal/neocon stream full of shite...

I would be a bit more careful when "dismissing" or "forgetting" all of those so easily...

It's not just a case of 'voluntarily' choosing S-S over S-O relation, as though it were a matter of free choice. We have to graps their dialectical relation, and see that our very existence as subjects is bound up with the historical development of these conceptual relations, even as we are irreducible to them in our materiality.

In our materiality? How about our Spirituality? I would say that we are precisely that - wholly interdependent and emerging through all of those S-S relationships. Once we "forget that" and want to "establish ourselves as 'superior' to the other" and forget the essential interdependency - we have the real problem to grapple with.

The S-O paradigm is not going to be easy to get rid of, sure. It was foisted upon us in a variety of ways, especially after the FR but the other, liberating processes have never been "abandoned" to begin with, and the struggle for recognition will never be quashed! Therein lies the essence of being Human! No theory can simply "give in to the 'inevitable', roll over and kowtow to the fierce neocons"... or something...

There are two distinct questions. What we can responsibly hope to achieve as those who aspire to critically self-reflexive thought (philosophers if you like, although I dislike the implied elitism), and what we can 'do' as historical agents.

Can we really dissolve one from the other and separate the two somehow? I mean, it seems to me as if the two, in such a setup, are somewhat "too distinct" and "disjointed". As if I'm listening the "Sur-Real Socialist" story of "great theory but crap practice" once again. Any theory which doesn't take into account the methods of "putting it into practise" is a bad theory, at least since Machiavelli. Hence, it [the formulation, at least] seems to me somewhat lacking in precision, in terms of possibly making a hiatus where one might not exist... Well, not necessarily...

The thing is, it is always possible to act - easy, perhaps frighteningly so. What is much more difficult is to act in due accordance with that critical autonomy. When we act without really understanding the forces which shape our understanding of the circumstances we face, we risk merely reproducing our own alienation in new, and perhaps even more oppressive, conditions.

Agreed!

Here I would just have to repeat your words in warning you, yet again, to try to figure out where does your dark picture of possible outcomes come from: "really understanding the forces which shape our understanding of the circumstances we face", so as not to "risk merely reproducing our own alienation in new, and perhaps even more oppressive, conditions"...

As I mentioned several times, it seems to me like there is no way out in your gloomy mindset [only "at the moment"? (I warmly hope so!)] and from it, indeed, there might not be a way out, which might mean just reproducing the [somehow inevitable???] "merely existing"...

Please, re-think...

Just abour every murderous tyranny in history has been built by those who thought they were building a "better humanity". I don't say that the impulse is illegitimate in itself. But the role of critical thought is to prevent itself being instrumentalised, or at least bear witness to the violence done to itself, so that the gap bewteen our true potentiality of our autonomous existence
and our empirical social being is never prematurely foreclosed.

The way historical actors understand themselves and try to sell themselves does not oblige us to buy their attempts at justifying, grounding etc. their actions.

On the other hand, for the umpteenth time, Critical Thought [as in "based in Reason"] can not be "instrumentalised"... That, by definition, is the part of us that is "irreducible" to the current conditions we find ourselves in... It would not be possible to state something of the sort if such an instance did not exist, to begin with! It comes with being Human!

 

[articul8]

double post

 

[articul8]

How so? Last time I checked such "small and meagre forces" were in many respects more than just "holding their own", being even more successful than the US in terms of technological penetration [IT etc.], not to mention all other matters of REAL importance to us all [the quality of living as such, from pay and conditions issues and co-operative, "stake-holder" processes and institutions of the production/economy sphere, to pensions, education, public transport, public health service and so on and so forth!]
On the other hand, the "neoliberal agenda" is being attacked left, right and centre everywhere, from the US onwards. So, you can't have it both ways, I think. If the process is always open - why do you always put the heavy accent on the worst possible option, which then seems to be closing down all sorts of possible outcomes, in which real alternatives seem dead in the water? I'm really baffled...

Because I entirely dispute your empirical claim that the forces of social democracy are "holding their own".

Take Germany - With the passing of Hartz IV, the unemployment rate leapt over the 5 million barrier, for the first time since 1933! For the impact of the neo-liberal Hartz IV agenda:
http://www.gegen-hartz.de/

Social Democratic parties across Europe have effectively gone over lock stock and barrel to the neo-liberal consensus. OK - I think there is also elements of protest to this emerging. But where has the left outlined in any detail an alternative political economy?

The really deep change happened after the WW II, whether domestically or in terms of foreign policy, strategically and tactically, structurally [democratic institutions and procedures], and in terms of attitudes/values.

In the meantime formal liberal democratic institutions are being crushed by the power of capital, as multinationals effective purchase freedom from legislative restraint (see the dropping of the Bae corruption investigation over here). The public sphere is becoming ever more commodified and is effectively excluding those without consumer power - ie. the heteronomous element which helped to give rise to the public sphere and possibility of communicative action is now corroding it from within.

If you use your own logic, from your next paragraph, then the current US idiocy might be playing a role towards the rest of the world accepting a much healthier EU paradigm over the sick US one, which is setting us all up against each other, grimacing painfully, with clenched teeth and ever-growing grip around each other's throats...

You see, I simply don't accept the conditions of this binary. We have a deeply sick US political culture, but the neocon. policy element is to a degree a contingent phenomenon. What is more pervasive - including across Europe - is the hegemony of the consumerist/neoliberal model whereby all services/welfare provision become market transactions rather than a matter of citizenship and entitlement.

I don't see how democratic values can have real social purchase going ahead whilst we live in a society structured according to the logic of capital.

 

[articul8]

On the other hand, for the umpteenth time, Critical Thought [as in "based in Reason"] can not be "instrumentalised"

OK, a little clumsy. I'll try to clarify - The birth of autonomous critical self-reflection is historically inseperable from the birth of instrumental reason - it is entirely possible that the former can find its scope of operation increasingly circumscribed by the latter.

The ethical demand posed by the existence of the Other must be articulated/objectified through mediating social structures. If society is so instrumentalised to make that articulation extremely difficult (nb. I do not say absolutely impossible) then it is no good offering a voluntarist picture whereby a historical agent can "choose" one or other 'way in' to theorising social relationships. Unfortunately, history has seen instrumental reasoning emerge much more powerfully than intersubjective communication (nb not necessarily inevitably, but has happened nevertheless), and whilst we might try to recover from this situation, we need to recognise the extent of the task we face.

 

[gorski]

Because I entirely dispute your empirical claim that the forces of social democracy are "holding their own".

Take Germany - With the passing of Hartz IV, the unemployment rate leapt over the 5 million barrier, for the first time since 1933! For the impact of the neo-liberal Hartz IV agenda:
http://www.gegen-hartz.de/

Heh, only if we forget that they had to absorb a huge sink-hole that is the East Germany. So, for instance, can you imagine the UK absorbing, say Belorussia or some such completely rotten place and do it successfully? I think you need to put things into the proper context, with a proper analysis, as this sort of an "abstraction" and a subsequent drive to despair can all too easily be done by anyone...

Moreover, the whole thing is getting better over there and I see no signs of Americanising the EU the way you may be implying... Sure, the Big Capital interests may well be claiming all sorts of things and they may well be trying to push it the "only possible way" but I just can't see it working in the EU, as I indicated above, whether Germany or France, Scandinavia or Benelux countries. That part of the world is not going down so easily, rest assured! And it's not just the will of parts of those societies that is in question here but the structures and processes, as the whole model is essentially different to that kind of thinking!!! In the UK most people may well be "grinning and bearing it" but NOT across the Channel!

Social Democratic parties across Europe have effectively gone over lock stock and barrel to the neo-liberal consensus. OK - I think there is also elements of protest to this emerging. But where has the left outlined in any detail an alternative political economy?

Heh, it's already there!! It has been for a long time! And it's extremely successful, in many a country! Deeply rooted!!! It's a real alternative to the Social Darwinistic model we see in the Anglo-American world!

And in EU I can see no S or SD party changing their tune when it comes to all of those elements to the well ordered Social Democratic society I mentioned above, from the very nature of the model as such onwards!

There is no such thing as a "neo-lib consensus" unless you count them as agreeing with themselves, of course... But that is not much of a victory, that's for sure... You should ask the whole Socialist Movement or at least some of its parts, really... Not that you should be overly concerned at all with hundreds of millions being represented by them but...

In the meantime formal liberal democratic institutions are being crushed by the power of capital, as multinationals effective purchase freedom from legislative restraint (see the dropping of the Bae corruption investigation over here). The public sphere is becoming ever more commodified and is effectively excluding those without consumer power - ie. the heteronomous element which helped to give rise to the public sphere and possibility of communicative action is now corroding it from within.

Heh, again you're jumping to conclusions big time, from an example or three without any real analysis and proper evidence...

Well, I can see that American administration is suffering more and more, scandal after scandal, lie after lie, affair after affair and more and more people everywhere, from the legislative sphere downwards, in the media and so on - all having enough of that sort of thing! Why not take a good look at that "bit" of reality, m8? Why always looking down the glass and despairing?

Sure, there are always setbacks but so what? We sit on our hands and cry our eyes out? Where would that take us?

Of course, we will all stand up and be counted when it comes to doing the right thing, won't we? And aren't we? So, this doom and gloom stuff - I can understand up to a point in the US or the UK but... Not exactly in the EU. And it's not like they are going to roll over and die and invite Emperor Bush to continue his good work, is it? Especially after all the lies and scandals, sociopathic excesses and all manner of shite we have witnessed and testified, non?

You see, I simply don't accept the conditions of this binary. We have a deeply sick US political culture, but the neocon. policy element is to a degree a contingent phenomenon. What is more pervasive - including across Europe - is the hegemony of the consumerist/neoliberal model whereby all services/welfare provision become market transactions rather than a matter of citizenship and entitlement.

You have no one to blame for this but yourself: if you claim there's this "necessary dialectical development" where:

It's not just a case of 'voluntarily' choosing S-S over S-O relation, as though it were a matter of free choice. We have to graps their dialectical relation, and see that our very existence as subjects is bound up with the historical development of these conceptual relations

...then you have to accept that this development surely has it's antithesis and then... we'll see... Depending on us, of course... But I see no determinism on the books yet, thanx...

Ergo, not so! I'm happy to point out to Scandinavia and challenge this assumption. To begin with. We can go on about it from there and see how much of it there is elsewhere - but for sure, the model and the structures and processes over there are NOT for sale!!!

I don't see how democratic values can have real social purchase going ahead whilst we live in a society structured according to the logic of capital.

Purchase? I'd say you're coming from a specific society, m8... And the language sometimes reveals more than it hides... In this case I think it did. Your society, not a Social Democratic one.

Once again, would you really think the same way if you had a Scandinavian EU perspective?