Filed under: Auguste Comte, Baruch Spinoza, David Hume, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, Introduction to Positive Philosophy, Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes | Tags: Cixious, Descartes, history of philosophy, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Spinoza
When someone speaks of the history of something, it is commonly understood as an unfolding of events, or a historical narrative of past actions. Despite our inclinations to tell the story of the past, we have no real basis for the certainty that the events are at all connected. In the case of a history of philosophy: with what degree of certainty can we claim that because one thinker had a certain thesis, a later thinker had another? Why has history felt the need to put the past into a narrative of an unfolding chain of events?
The alternative stance to a historical narrative would assert that events are not connected. Instead of manifesting the past as an unfolding of events, the past would be separate absurd instances. By linking instances together and interpreting multiple events in terms of cause and effect, the historian is thereby making a hefty assumption of causality. However, if this were popular thought, practical morality would vanquish alongside responsibility, resulting in a highly dysfunctional and lawless society, suggesting that this narrative of history also acts as a social control mechanism. To examine this, we must first determine what a history of philosophy would look like under the pretext of popular narrative history.
A helpful way of understanding the history of the modern era comes with the application of Comte’s law of three stages. This law describes three different theoretical states of human intelligence throughout one’s development. First is the theological or fictitious state, then in later years the physical or abstract state, and lastly the scientific or positive state. “There are three kinds of philosophy or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena which are mutually exclusive of each other” (Comte 129). That is to say these three systems, which concentrate on the whole of existence, the ‘aggregate of phenomena,’ are individually different but mutually exclusive in that they are one in the same mind as well as part of the same overall unfolding progression of consciousness. The same psychology of the intellectual development of the individual is applicable to the psychology behind the history of the modern period.
One would commonly encounter the theological state as a small child, just discovering the world. When reflecting on why things are the way they are, Comte claims they are conceived as “produced by the direct and continuous action of more of less numerous supernatural agents, whose arbitrary intervention explains all the apparent anomalies of the universe” (ibid). The child is able to accept his or her surroundings as merely objects that are, without any specific agent or meaning. It is not until shortly after that ‘warm blob’ becomes associated and personified with ‘mama,’ and any meaning is attributed to the object that carries you. Next, in the metaphysical state, “the supernatural agents are replaced by abstract forces, real entities or personified abstractions, inherent in the different beings in the world” (ibid). Where earlier the question was ‘why objects?’ it has now become ‘who put them there?’ Here the child begins to understand humans as having some sort of agency to manipulate the world around them, ultimately leading to the notion of responsibility. Lastly, “in the positive state, the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of obtaining absolute truth, gives up the search after the origin and hidden causes of the universe and a knowledge of the final causes of phenomena” (ibid). Becoming cynics in retrospect, we accept the boundaries and limitations of our cognitive capabilities and begin to develop an interest in the unfolding of an idea, or the corresponding pattern of another set of ideas, rather than seeking truth in the individual ideas, notions, or theories as was previously the norm. By applying this same psychological unfolding of the individual to the modern period a history of philosophy is able to emerge—a narrative of the emerging relations. Whether or not the story is valid and to what end the story anticipates remain questions on the horizon for future thinkers to come.
René Descartes established the modern era with his methodological doubting of his prior beliefs in search of an unshakable piece of truth. Everything he knows must be unlearned in order to free his mind of false or misleading modes of knowing, in order to “establish anything at all in the sciences that [is] stable and likely to last” (Descartes 19). He begins with the most elementary mode of understanding, that of sense-certainty as the starting point for his solipsistic examination of himself and his ‘I’ which thinks.
In order for Descartes to remain absolutely certain that whatever knowledge he comes upon is true and steadfast, he must doubt any mode of knowing which has deceived him in the past. He claims, he “should hold back my assent from opinions which are not completely certain and indubitable just as carefully as I do from those which are patently false” (Descartes 20). Although his senses may not deceive him at all times, they have in the past, and he must thereby resolve that no conclusions reached through his senses are reliable truths, for “it is prudent never to trust completely [that] which has deceived us even once” (ibid). The application of senses to a medium to reach a conclusion (such as in physics, astronomy, medicine, etc.) remains doubtful to Descartes; he puts his stock in math and geometry—the purely intelligible, rather than the purely sensible. For example, what we rationalize as ‘depth perception’ is merely an instance in which the senses routinely deceive. Although the tree in the distance only appears a few inches high, we ‘know,’ or understand that it is indeed much taller than two inches, despite the input of our senses. This problem remains troublesome for Descartes throughout his meditations and lies at the core of his investigation. On the contrary, he believes the purely intelligible realm of math is the more reliable medium of understanding truth. “For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five, and a square has no more than four sides. It seems impossible that such transparent truths should incur any suspicion of being false” (Descartes 21). Whether conscious or unconscious, a two and three will always result in five, and a triangle will remain a three-sided figure long after Descartes has died.
These intelligible truths are of paramount interest to Descartes, as they seem to exist as the key to an absolute truth. For Descartes, the world around him is merely a product of his intellect. This doubting of the senses and sensory world is an illustration of the primary fictitious stage of Comte’s three stages of history. Like a child discovering him or herself as an agent in the world alongside the sheer mystery behind the objects, Descartes discovered that even in the sensory world one is unable to escape their own mind, meaning “bodies are not strictly perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination but by the intellect alone” (Descartes 26).
Inheriting this problem and moving into the Abstract stage of development, Baruch Spinoza took Descartes emphasis on mathematical truths and built an entire system of a unitary substance based on self-evident axioms. In this system, Spinoza examines the totality of existence as a single overarching ‘substance’ governed by logical necessities. Definitively, substance is “what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e., that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from with it must be formed” (Spinoza 115). Substance stands alone and exists on its own necessity without the need for negation against another entity. This is not to say crudely that everything is the same, but rather, ‘everything’ consists of various attributes of the same overarching substance. Where the carbon atoms that compose all sensible life as we understand it illustrate the substance, individual items or entities, cheeseburgers, viruses, wallpaper, and even inconceivable ghosts and ghouls all consist of different attributes of the larger substance (in that each of these attributes or objects are composed of carbon atoms). “Matter is everywhere the same…its parts are distinguished only modally, but not really” (Spinoza 123). This seemingly abstract notion is even illustrated in the technological advancement in the sciences. The further we see out into the cosmos and the closer we examine our microbial properties, the clearer this illustration of Substance becomes. The sheer range between the largest and furthest objects in space to the tiniest microscopic particles that compose life on earth is parallel to the totality of substance.
A substance cannot be the product of another entity, as “in nature there cannot be two substances of the same attribute, i.e., which have something in common with each other” (Spinoza 116). Thus, substances are the causes of themselves, “its nature necessarily involves existence” (Spinoza 117). Because a substance is the cause of itself, it necessarily exists, unbound by the influence of its producer(s)—ultimately, for Spinoza, this necessary and self-causing substance, simply put, is God. Insofar as God is a free and infinite entity, existing in and for itself, and each attribute is a piece of the infinite, to live as an attribute and exist as such is to play a part in the schema of substance as such—Spinoza’s idea of freedom. While Descartes also held a stake in God, Spinoza attempts to answer Descartes sensory doubt by concluding that the objects which puzzled Descartes are indeed created by the intellect, but are part of an overarching whole, each attribute a part of the entire substance, and thus of the same nature. Spinoza’s abstract stage in the unfolding of the modern era of philosophy searches for and creates a system for/of meaning within the world of doubt established by Descartes just as the child attaches meaning to the objects that before were a befuddlement. However, the logical nature of Spinoza’s entire system is subject to fire by Nietzsche who tests the limits of rationality and asserts with his notion of the ‘will to power’ that no amount of truth can come from the world or the objects within it, for the measure of all things is man. To continue to claim that we can trust out own reason and observations is to continue to invest in the cover story of society. The age of Nietzsche follows the positive stage of history, where we become aware of the limitations of our rationality and observation as legitimate vessels for reaching any degree of truth or certainty about the world.
Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ marking the final stage of the modern period denotes the extreme subjectivity within all prior modes of thinking. ‘Will to power’ is in itself a double entendre, suggesting the will of the society goes to those in power, as well as suggesting man’s desire to overcome the world and impose a set of values and truths upon it. Nietzsche suggests the former when he states, “the judgment ‘good’ did not originate with those whom ‘goodness’ was shown! Rather it was ‘the good’ themselves, that is to say, the noble, the powerful, high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as good, that is, of the first rank, in contradistinction to the low, low-minded, common and plebian” (Nietzsche 25). Nietzsche describes the origin of morality as coming out of a pathos of distance where economical standing and social rank determined the goodness or badness of a person. The latter prong of the double entendre of the ‘will to power’ comes with man’s desire to impose an entirely anthro-centric values system on an otherwise natural and self-contained world. Nietzsche drew upon English philosopher Herbert Spencer who stated, “that which has always proved itself useful is good” (Nietzsche 27). However, Nietzsche does not outright adopt this theory, but rather reflects upon it as inspiration for his investigation into language. The time-tested dogma is that man rose from the apes when he learned to speak, very much mirroring Nietzsche’s investigation into how man attempts to impose himself onto the world.
Following the modern period into present day post-modernity, we are able to reflect upon Nietzsche and our inability to know anything outside the realm of man. Out of this spawn a number of art forms, namely avant-garde, in which a new fascination regarding playing games with the creation and foundations of meaning become the central focus of the work as a whole. With this hindsight it becomes appropriate to ask: is the historical narrative of the unfolding of philosophy an accurate retelling of the series of events, or are the links and developments merely assumptions created to soothe the desire for continuity in a society’s history?
David Hume illustrates the idea of an absurd past without causality through his investigation of causality between events in the present. Hume’s investigation into causality leads him to question how it is possible to arrive at any degree of accuracy or certainty of our knowledge when all our knowledge is rendered through our process of perception. Initially, the real entities have a stimulus in such a way that it is translated by a sense organ. These sense organs produce sensations, which are converted to representations or ideas when finally ending up in the mind. What is most peculiar about this is Hume’s investigation into how humans continually, despite knowing this psychology of representation, create and refine science, and “in vain we do home, that men, from frequent disappointment will at last abandon such airy sciences, and discover the proper province of human reason” (Hume 359). One generation creates a metaphysical science that is ultimately debunked, but people continue in vain to create these.
Hume begins his analysis of causality by stating three principles of connection between ideas: resemblance, contiguity, and cause or effect. Resemblance is the association of an image with an idea; seeing a painting of an object leads to an impression of the object in our mind. Contiguity is an appeal to the universal understanding of an object in order to comprehend a specific instance—talking about a shoe brings up impressions of a formal shoe. Lastly, cause and effect is the pairing of a cut and pain in a single instance, associating them simply by their order of occurrence—because they happened in succession, the first instance (the cut) caused the second (the pain). By means of cause and effect, “we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses” (Hume 366). Both resemblance and contiguity require the use of our memory and our senses, however, cause and effect relations require no memory of past events and the causal relationship is totally intelligible, completely outside the realm of experience. Yet, we continually cling to these causal relationships in science laboratories and daily life. Hume asserts that with this common sense belief in the world, our knowledge has a genesis in consistency and our objectivity depends on one’s subjectivity. We infer upon the basis of an objectively constant world, yet we have no reason for believing it to be as such.
The problem with this, for Hume, is that nothing is able to more forward prior to theory. All information Hume is able to accrue is done so in the very same manner as when he was a child in his crib. “I cannot now discover an argument which, it seems, was perfectly familiar to me long before I was out of my cradle” (Hume 372). This primary belief in causal relations has at its root the faith that “the future will resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible qualities” (Hume 371). However, the past does not dictate the future, and any certainty of the qualities of the future is derived from uncertain means—certainty derived from subjective interpretation of real entities through the process of representation. At the end of Hume’s analysis, causality is shown to be the primary mode of association of two ideas. If philosophers striving for certainty are gathering information in the same way as a child in the crib, what then does that say about the degree of certainty that we can attain from our representations? Additionally, to what degree can history be retold given this complication with the immediate present?
Immanuel Kant introduced the idea of history as a narrative and wrote Perpetual Peace in which he explains the way in which the totality of human events is moving to an end of perpetual peace, where wars are fought with strict argumentation—the quintessential mode of being for humanity. Given that each person pursues their own end, “the unconsciously proceed toward an unknown natural end, as if following a guiding thread; and they work to promote an end they would set little store by, even if they were aware of it” (Kant 29). Without knowing the future of our society, we strive for its perfection through the pursuit of our ends. “Earlier generations appear to carry out their laborious tasks only for the sake of later ones, to prepare for later generations a step from which they in turn can raise still higher the building that nature had in view” (Kant 31). If one is to buy into historical narratives, improving the future by building on the past becomes a pragmatic work ethic. How societies keep their citizens working towards an unknown goal varies by culture, however the practice itself is ubiquitous. For Kant, even the seemingly insignificant or hindering members of society contribute to history’s unfolding.
The limitation of Kant’s Enlightenment view becomes realized within the context of our contemporary mainstream instantaneous society, which chooses to not use their reasoning ability, not out of cowardliness, but of the sheep-like qualities of placid cognition, despite their freedom to do so. Kant refers to a cowardliness that “lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use [reason] without guidance from another” (Kant 41). Humankind yearns for authority, so as to comfortably dwell in the innate cowardliness, where if one has “a book to serve as [their] understanding, a pastor to serve as [their] conscience…and so on, [one] need not exert [themselves] at all. [One] need not think, if only [one] can pay” (Kant 41). Americans, perhaps more than any other society embody this statement to the fullest through the continuation of our consumer-based economy. The problem arises when these exertion-relieving conveniences become expectancies or necessities, as is the case with most Americans. As a society, Americans are seen to have significantly more overall possessions because of the undisputed foundations and economic success of capitalism and consumerism within society. After accruing the numerous luxury items such as music players, laptops, multiple pairs of shoes, jewelry, and so on, we as a society become content, and therefore focus on the lesser issues at hand to worry about, such as celebrity gossip and fashion, because of the security felt within the bounds of our possessions.
Being able to not consider how we are going to get through the day comfortably and healthily leaves the minds of society to generally gravitate towards the entertaining aspects of life, and this is where the state of popular American society is today. This hedonistic societal mainstream of thought puts the use of public reason on hold in lieu of entertainment, because society is blinded by the omnipotent security blanket that consists of the crippling notion that American society already is the cosmopolitan intent that Kant predicts, because of the widespread gift of freedom to reason publicly.
The essential difference between modern apathy and Kant’s cowardliness is modern apathy is built on the foundation that we have ‘reached’ the cosmopolitan intent, the society where “reason absolutely condemns war as a means of determining the right and makes seeking the state of peace a matter of unmitigated duty” (Kant 116), essentially replacing war by means of bombs to war by means of breath—verbal argumentation. Clearly this is not the case, being in a time of war with multiple nations, yet somehow society manages to keep its naïvety by staying entertained and well fed. Surely there is a great deal of argumentation and debate happening in the United States, but those who partake are very much a minority within the larger scope of contemporary society. This ineptitude may very well be another cog in the antagonism machine, however, this problem of constrained use of reason is noteworthy because it has masked itself in a makeshift disguise of antagonism, essentially hiding the problem as a problem because of its majority in standing within the mainstream.
The most effective alleviation to this problem will unfortunately have to come by means of a drastic event that threatens or destroys the establishing foundations of America and its contentment. Only when the mainstream society is lacking the means to a comfortable and constantly entertained lifestyle, will this problem solve itself through the use of public reason. Unfortunately, either reasoning must become entertaining within popular culture, or the vice of entertainment and consumerism must be loosened in order for Kant’s prediction of the unfolding of human history to hold legitimacy within the post-modern world after Nietzsche. “Is it truly rational to assume that nature is purposive in its parts but purposeless as a whole?” (Kant 35). While it may not be rational, Nietzsche showed the post-modern world limits of human reason that Kant was otherwise unaware. While it perhaps defies reason, the possibility of history as an absurd amalgamation of events remains very real by post-modern standpoints.
Within post-modern society, the possibility of an absurd history becomes very real. Hélène Cixious undertakes this challenge of disavowing the history as well as understanding the bounds of human rationality in a unique, though perhaps not totally Nietzschean way (thought in hindsight, of course). “The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them by repeating them, and to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural” (Cixious 875). While she does not deny that the physical effects of the past are not with us—the liberty bell is still cracked—they do not necessarily result in nor should they dictate what is to come. What is unique about Cixous is her position as a feminist theorist. Her claim is that by rejecting the phallocentric economy of social exchange and binary gender understandings she is able to elude the prevalent masculine-centered discourses, much like Nietzsche was able to elude the masculine (by default) discourse of rationality with his prophetic nihilist theory and rejection of worldly methods of judging certainty.
The extent to which a narrative history can accurately portray events in the past rests on the foundations of each culture to which their own history is formed. If we are to accept a more Kantian notion of overall progress to an unspecified end, a causal narrative of history become necessary. If Cixious prevails, the narrative of history is legitimately under skeptical scrutiny. For the time being, a causal account of history provides society with a flag to rally around and a set of data for interpretation and reflection. For the philosopher, this seemingly necessary evil must suffice for the general cohesion of the lowest common denominators of a given society. Until someone elects in (or someone incites a coup) Plato’s philosopher king, societies will continue to appease the practical and useful rather than the truthful. A history of philosophy is possible only insofar as it accounts for its historical subjectivity and ultimately its falsity. For the philosopher, a history is never possible for it can never escape society, and is ultimately a construction of mankind. For the historian, a history is possible only insofar as the historian’s society accepts Hume’ s analysis of (non) causality as common sense—a position yet to be filled.
Filed under: Charles Baudelaire, Immanuel Kant | Tags: aesthetics, art, Baudelaire, beauty, history, Kant
Kant’s investigation of the inherent experience of beauty and Baudelaire’s theory of beauty both illustrate the inherent essence of beauty. Kant proposes that the experience of finding something beautiful is the same for everyone, the judgment behind the claim is the same process for each individual, but the specific object of beauty may differ for various individuals. Baudelaire states that beauty is bifurcated into two elements, the rational and the historical, where the rationality serves as the common ground, rather than Kant’s experience, and the historical is used as a way of understanding or manifesting the rational.
Kant separates beauty into two parts: imagination and understanding. He claims, when the two are united, this is “the basis of this pleasure in the harmony of the cognitive faculties” (Kant 6). The pleasure we experience when we see something beautiful is the harmony of our imagination and understanding. Kant claims the pleasure in this synthesis is “universally communicable” (ibid), “pleases universally” (Kant 7), and is inherent in each experience of aesthetic judgment. Additionally, this “universality which does not rest upon concepts of the object…is in no way logical, but aesthetic, i.e., does not involve any objective quantity [sic] of the judgment, but only one that is subjective…” (Kant 5). We can never speak of beauty itself, as in, what beauty is, however the experience of people’s judgments of beauty are the same—we are objectively subjective. No matter what one seems as beautiful, the experience of that judgment—the synthesis of imagination and understanding, will be the same. Our understanding of the universal statement ‘this is beautiful’ paired with our imagination of taste—similarly having an expectation and having it met (and possibly beyond), is the experience of the beautiful. In this way, the object we experience as beautiful acts as a caricature of beauty, insofar as we objectify and possibly idealize an object based on its fulfillment of our expectation or notion of beauty. To denote something as beautiful becomes to denote something as the exemplary object in itself, worthy not of necessity but of preference.
Baudelaire takes a similar view, arguably a macrocosm of earlier Kantian theory in that where Kant was concerned with the individual’s experience, Baudelaire is concerned with entire histories of individuals and the unfolding of their rationalities. He refers to the “relative, circumstantial element…its fashions, its morals, its emotions” (Baudelaire 3) as the historical viewpoint, similar to Kant’s previous assertion that what is beautiful is different between people. What is useful about Baudelaire’s theory is its application over long periods of time in phenomenological investigations, whereas Kant’s theory applies more intimately to the individual. Baudelaire suggests his addition is an imperative, and “without this second element [historical analysis]…the first element [rational experience] would be beyond our powers of digestion or appreciation” (Baudelaire 3). This viewpoint considers the dialectical relationship of individuals (rationality) and institutions (history/society) and how beauty is constructed within.
As I think both Kant and Baudelaire have used the same overall schema of aesthetic analysis, it is hard to say which I feel is more convincing. Depending on whether you are looking at an individual level or a larger scale would determine the effectiveness of either.